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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

10/16/26: Running Out Of Ships In Strait Sinkings, MAGA Voters Revolt In Iowa, AI Bubble Watch, Nicole Lockin Florida Congress Candidate, Wapo Journalist Beaten In West Bank

Freitag, 16. Oktober 2026 · 1 h 38

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This Friday the crew takes a look at the non stop sinking of ships in the Strait of Hormuz, MAGA voters in Iowa refusing to vote Republican over corruption, midterm updates in Texas and Maine, a Washington Post journalist savagely beaten by Israeli Settlers in the West Bank and rescued by journalist and friend of the show Jasper Nathaniel, and Florida Congressional Candidate Nicole Locklin joins to talk about the shifting Latino coalition in South Florida after ICE and her chances to flip a long term red district blue.

Nicole Lockin for Florida: locklinforcongress.com/?r=0
Jasper Nathaniel: substack.com/@infinitejaz

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You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday here at Breaking Points. How's everybody doing?

So far, so good.

Okay, Emily's only going to be here for a little bit, so we're going to let her talk the entire time. We'll just sit back and relax.

Cornell 7, Emily, go. Oh, that's easy.

Crystal, thank you for asking.

I'm going to recline.

I'm going to get another cup of coffee. Yeah, bring out your scrolls.

Yeah, I do have a ton of stuff not Cornell 7 related, so sorry. We're going to be looking at the economy. More of the midterms, MAGA voters revolting against Republicans in many states. We might be checking into a little bit of the AI bubble, question mark, as companies scale back on their AI usage. And Sam Altman claims that the timeline perhaps was a little too ambitious. And then, Ryan, who do we have? We've got Nicole Laughlin. What district is she running in?

She's in Florida, 26.

I didn't know if he knew it off the top of his head, so I was just looking it up, so I thought I'd jump in and.

Rescue you there.

This is Mario Diaz-Balart's district, and in any ordinary time, no one would pay attention to this race. And I don't know that that many people are paying attention to this race, but it's a district that's 75% Latino. And it's that is a group that has swung wildly away from Trump. So a recent New York Times analysis had this as one of the districts that's likely to ship the hardest to the left towards Democrats. And so it's, you know, given her a plausible path to victory here.

This would be the sort of race that, you know, she's. victorious on election night. We're going to be going, oh, my God, some crazy things are happening in the midterms. So I think it's very interesting to talk to candidates like that and gauge what she's sensing on the ground in Florida. And also, you know, just how big is this going to be a normal kind of backlash election 2018 style? Are we talking about something that is a much larger reckoning and much more disastrous for Republicans?

I was talking to people in Miami beginning of the Trump term and the people involved in the kind of immigration advocacy community.

And then they're like, yeah, a lot.

Of people down here think that ICE is not going to go ham because South Florida went so heavily for Trump. And so then everybody across the board was kind of pretty confident in that prediction that they would focus on the rest of the country, but not South Florida. And that has just not been the case. Like there have been some elderly Cuban immigrants Cubans who have like died in detention centers and ICE has been terrorizing South Florida.

And that's aside from, you know, Miami is a city that runs on a very thin margin. Everything is on credit. They cannot afford to have a little bit of a downturn. And so I think that's probably also monkeying with their way of life down there. It'd be amazing if Diaz-Balart loses his seat before Cuba falls.

Yes. And cost of living also huge. Miami now one of the most expensive cities in the entire country. So anyway, a lot to talk to her about and obviously a lot going on with the midterms more broadly.

That's right. And we're also going to at some point in the show get to American journalists from The Washington Post has been severely beaten and attacked by West Bank settlers. All that and more. here today on Breaking Points. But Crystal, you mentioned the cost of living. Someone has some feelings on that, a known Marxist, Jim Cramer. Why don't we take a listen to him to start the show off in a fun way today?

Yeah, well, real average hourly earnings down seven tenths on the month. That's the sixth straight month.

How are they saving?

And if you don't have the wealth effect from stocks to fund your spending, That's going to be hard.

I mean, rich people are making a lot of money. God, I sound like Marx.

I really don't want to sound like Marx.

It's just I'm looking at the data. I took seven marks as a Twitter gift. Although I did really well. All right. In addition to that, any quick reactions to the Marxist Jim Cramer here?

I mean, it's just undeniable at this point, because you do have if you look at the way that the wealth of the very I'm talking about the billionaire class has skyrocketed over the past number of years. This is, Ryan, something you've been harping on as well. It's literally not sustainable and it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from you.

So these two things are not like divorced from each other. They're directly related to one another. And the latest inflation numbers show that. that people's wages are not keeping up with inflation. So they are getting further and further behind.

Well, I also just wanted to add it comes from us, but it also comes from nothing because the stock market right now is insane.

And I feel like everybody knows that.

And what we've seen is total increase in people at the top and then actually a decrease in younger people, particularly if you really want to sound like Marx, Jim Cramer, think about this. What's happened to younger workers since COVID is a decrease in wealth. The Wall Street Journal just had numbers on this, or CNBC, one.

Of them, a week ago.

That will really make you feel like Marx, Jim Cramer.

And what he's referring to, if people don't know, he does have a Marxist training. He has a background in Marxist economics and was a leftist Trotskyist back when he was in his 20s and homeless.

I had no idea. Seriously?

Yeah. Wow.

Yes.

So is Alex Karp of Palantir. And every every evil guy at some point.

Putting this headline up on the screen, young families lost wealth while older families got richer over the past years, according to a federal report that just came out last week. I don't know if this one has the chart, but these are just absolutely brutal numbers. It says, while Americans over 75 have accumulated significantly more wealth over the past past three years, families headed by adults under 35 have seen their fortunes shrink.

So just a recipe. You're just asking.

For like revolution at that point.

And I spoke with Rory Johnson, the oil analyst yesterday, and I asked him, what is the kind of size of the tanker fleet? Because what we've learned throughout this conflict is that the physical reality actually matters, like the number of refineries we have around the world, the pipelines that move it, the straits that we move the refined products through. And he said we have about 950 VLCC tankers, so just under 1,000. And a couple are getting hit every day or several a week, depending on the kind of volume of attacks coming from Iran. When it comes to cargo ships, as you're seeing there, there's a bunch of, I don't know if, Griffin, your nose hair clippers are hopefully not in there.

But, you know.

This is, This is approaching the limits of what is possible. When Trump says, you know, look, the strait is open. If he means that two out of every 10 ships going through are getting hit, that means that at some point they're going to run out of ships. And also the other point he made is that they're running out of capacity to repair them because they go to dock like, hey, my engine got blown out by a drone. I need to get fixed. Normally that's a several month process. But right now you've got to get in line behind all the other tankers who've had their hulls blown up or had their engine rooms blown up. And so this isn't something where you can just continue to push, have the Coast Guard or the U.S.

Navy send ships through here and lose a couple a day.

Yeah.

And I know you talked to him also about how China basically saved our asses over the past several months by surprisingly and dramatically reducing the number of imports and how That is changing. Obviously, strategic petroleum reserves have been all but drained. We just had a really hot number come in for inflation for businesses. Those are wholesale prices.

They are going to pass that cost increase on to consumers. This is at a time when people's wages, as we were saying, are already not keeping up with inflation. So it is not a good landscape. And, you know, for Trump, you would be hard pressed to find a better predictor of his political fortunes than the gas prices.

And it's been a little.

Bit hard to predict exactly how high and when and when things are going to spike because the market is so incredibly irrational. But this current state of affairs between the Houthi escalation and Iran post-UN General Assembly really clamping down on the Strait of Hormuz is not a pretty picture that we're painting here. Yeah.

And the reason I'm so kind of bullish on Democrats wiping out Republicans, despite a lot of the fears about the polling, it's just because it's so transparent what happened. Trump said he wouldn't do any more wars. He did a war for no reason. And because of that war, everyone's life is worse. So it's just so one, two, three.

And it's just so infuriating. And And Emily, I know you've been hearing from some interesting callers who like don't like Democrats at all, but they don't care at this point. They're like, we want Trump to feel some pain, even if it doesn't even help us. Like at least this lying SOB can feel a little bit of misery on his way out.

Well, and of course, then I get calls of people saying, well, no, that's ridiculous. I'm giving Trump patience and all that sort of thing. But there are very real voters.

Certainly a bunch will stick with him, no doubt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But there are very real voters in places like and some of those guys, by the way, from from Florida, a lot of the hardcore Trump people in Florida.

But even if your approval rating is 25 percent, that's still one out of four people. Well, it's also just based on millions and millions of lunatics.

It's also just based on a misunderstanding of Trump voters. Like Glenn came on my show this week and he was making a really good point about how a lot of people voted for Obama based on the concept of like hope and change. And then they voted for Trump based on the concept of hope and change. And what was so disillusioning to people about Obama that partially drove them to Trump was that they saw Obama basically bear hug the same kind of neoliberal policies that they did.

They expected him to like start eating away at. And He was saying he thinks that some people are going to see Trump in the same way. And I've heard from a couple of callers who've said that it feels like a personal betrayal and that it's just like for them, it makes them so angry that they might vote. This is my interpretation, makes them so angry that they might vote Democrat or they're thinking about voting Democrat.

Yeah, these are going to be what they're going to call in the poli-sci books, OTO voters, Obama, Trump, Ossoff.

They're like, yeah, yeah. Hope and change. Hope and change. Ah, screw it. Just toss off.

Although, you know, I have a lot of critiques of Obama, very negative on Obama and his impact on politics. We have to reckon with the fact he is the most popular politician in America still to this day. Like there's a reason that Abdul and the Kalam in Mississippi is cutting an ad with him. And I mean, he genuinely has the highest approval rating of any politician, whether I like it or not.

So that is something for us to grapple with.

I think that anyway, we won't go through the 2016 election and what the hell happened there. I just I'm not ready to open that can of worms this morning.

But I do think.

Some of the problems there were more specific to Hillary Clinton versus necessarily Obama, who was able to keep himself very personally popular, even as the Democratic Party overall declined dramatically under his watch. In a sense, there's a similar thing going on with Trump, although now at this point, Trump has obviously completely nuked himself with the entire public as well. But the parallel holds in that he is able to win usually when he's on the ballot. However, that doesn't mean that coalition is going to show up for Republicans. Maybe this is a good place to transition to the midterm bloc. Because they're also finding, you know, a lot of these districts that they gerrymandered, that they

thought then would be a slam dunk, even if you had some erosion from the Trump coalition. I'm thinking about places like Texas, places like Florida. Those numbers are not mathing the way that they were hoping that they would. They may net pick up a couple seats from a very aggressive gerrymander, but it is not anything like what they had hoped to be able to do with those redistricting efforts.

Yeah, let's take a look over here on MSNOW that did a focus group of Donald Trump MAGA voters in Iowa who say they are not going to be voting for the Republican Senate candidate in Iowa.

Is anyone, show.

Of hands, is anyone leaning towards voting for Ashley Henson for Senate?

I want to just to keep the Republican Republican thing, but it's like, I can't live with all the bad things and all the money and all the stuff.

I think what you're talking about is her husband owned an insurance business and sold his shares to a company and then their wealth has increased. So is that something that's influencing your vote?

For me, yes.

100%.

It just makes you question why are these people going into politics? Is it just to use us and get rich? Or is it to actually help your community?

Interesting that this isn't even about the war, but about personal corruption. And then maybe if the war and the other economy stuff was better, then maybe the personal corruption would just be shrugged off like, yeah, yeah. But very interesting.

Well, it's I mean, it's a level of personal corruption that's not at all comparable to what we saw in the first administration. And that was already bad enough. So I think it's two things happening. One, as we've been saying, and then pollsters and focus groups just started picking up on this, but we've been covering it here for a long time. It's that when the economy is bad, it's much harder to get away with this type of thing.

So I think that's absolutely true. But I also think it is just so flamboyantly corrupt. Like from Kimberly Guilfoyle, obviously they... pushed Kimberly Guilfoyle out partially because she got caught and she got caught in the most ridiculous way. But she's not going to be the only one because we already have plenty of information about how they're globetrotting with their business interests. The meme coin was like this is Ryan and I were talking about this. If you're Kimberly Guilfoyle, you're like, you guys fired me.

You fired me.

Have you seen what you did with your meme coin?

Like it is the most ridiculous standard.

To like hold Kimberly Kilfoyle against after you did that.

Kimberly, come talk to us about this. We think you've been done wrong. We want to know your side of the story. But genuinely, I mean, you can see from her perspective, she's like, are you kidding me? My $ 100, 000 Amex bill is the problem here? When you've got, you know, Witkoff and Kushner, all these business deal and your freaking crypto coin and all of this. And my hundred thousand dollar Amex bill is enough to push me out. But, you know, I kind of predicted from the start because it's so it's like it's like a pathetic and embarrassing, tawdry amount of money versus like a, you know, the behavior of like a billionaire.

Yeah, it's a poor person scam.

If you steal a lot of money, you get away with it more. Yeah, exactly.

More easily than if you're just trying to get your like credit card debt paid off and her G-Wagon apparently.

Anyway, ridiculous state of affairs.

But did you see this Fox News?

There was this Fox News survey, which actually kind of surprised me.

Let me pull it up here.

Yeah.

Showing corruption in government as, you know, the number one concern here among voters. Or, you know, they asked, like, are you extremely or very concerned or not very, not at all concerned? Eighty-eight percent of voters said corruption in government, they're very concerned or extremely concerned. And then that's higher even than inflation and high prices, gas prices, health care.

Just by a little bit.

And I think people are actually, you know, connecting the corruption to their cost of living. And they see the war, like they, they, they think the war is corrupt.

They don't just think it's a dumb idea.

Like, I don't think any, now that's not, I was going to say, I don't think people thought Trump, Bush went to war for corrupt reasons, but they did.

Halliburton, the blood for oil.

Like, Clearly, but that was a more straightforward level of kind of imperial corruption. I think people think that Trump and his crew are doing all sorts of petty corruption here, just personally getting rich in a day to day, minute to minute way at their expense. And it's driving them insane.

Well, it ties in with all the ballroom crap and all the just like, you know, it's.

So in your face.

Trump literally came out and said, I don't care about your material condition at all as he is, you know, feathering his nest and that of his children and anyone who is in his good graces.

It's just so brazen.

You know, I.

I live in a swing district here in Virginia, and I get ads for Virginia's first congressional district, which is Rob Whitman is the incumbent, actually the guy that I ran against back in 2010. And so I've been getting all of the negative ads against him. And I've been really surprised that mostly they fixate on his wealth has increased by this much since he's been in office. And apparently when he voted for the one big, beautiful bill at like impacted him in a positive way.

He got to pay less taxes.

And so they keep harping on this, like he got a $ 60, 000 tax benefit and his wealth increased by this much. And I was kind of thinking like this is a little bit of a strange hit on him because he's far from the worst in terms of those sorts of numbers, you know, $ 60, 000 tax benefit. It's like in the grand scheme of things, like You know, it's pretty much par for the course for these type of people. But now that I see this polling and I see the way that people are bringing this stuff up, it makes a lot more sense because it's like this isn't your good like neighborhood congressman you've been knowing now for decades. this guy is like everybody else. He's on the take. He's corrupt, just like these other people that you hate. And that's

why you got to get him out of here. So I thought that was kind of interesting that that was apparently what they're polling is telling them is the strongest hit on him. Not the war, not the gas prices, not the, you know, tax breaks for the rich, but his specific way that he is personally and in their portrayal corruptly benefiting.

And did you see, I know we got to move on quickly. Did you see Trump in Alaska saying that gas was $ 1. 85 a gallon in Iowa right before he launched the war.

Before the war.

This isn't, like, you know, let me just see if I, if I have this at the right spot because it's, it's the most, like, incompetent.

We have it.

It's the most incompetent politics.

We have it from yesterday.

You had it yesterday?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I'll just leave it there then. It's just unbelievable. Also, it's not even true. Like, he's lying in the wrong direction. Like, gas wasn't that low. He's just kind of making that up. But, like, why are you telling us this? Hey, man, before I made that monumental mistake, remember how good things were for you?

What?

Well, Ryan, did you see we played that focus group in... Iowa yesterday?

And Ashley Hinson, the Iowa Senate candidate, one of her closing pitches to Republicans was, close your eyes and pretend it's 2024 again. Imagine none of this happened. Remember how much you hated Joe Biden, Kamala Harris. Like, just channel that 2024 feeling and then go out and vote.

Then go vote.

And then I think after that, Chuck Grassley gets up and is like, guys, I might die and we shouldn't have this Democratic governor choosing my replacement. So very inspiring pitches coming from the Republicans here in the end stages.

Remember what it felt like when Riley Gaines got fifth place. That's right.

Just channel that.

Energy and go out there and cast your ballot for the Republicans.

I mean, you know, Trump is a crowd work comedian, so he's out there with the crowds. And when you're out there, he can feel what they're pissed about and he forgets that he's the one that did it. But, you know, he can he can sense from the crowd. I want us to turn to two more states because we want to look at Texas and Maine because, you know, a lot of you know, high and good feelings. Democrats feel like they've got it on the House. But is this blue wave going to affect the Senate? Trump might be seeing some very upsetting internals here for Paxton because he released a truth social saying that if Ken Paxton loses the U.S. Senate race, it'll be Senator John Cornyn and Karl Rove's fault. Sadly and very stupidly, John Cornyn

and his little buddy, Super Rhino Karl Rove, are doing everything possible to make it hard for Ken Paxton. And maybe not the fact that everything he's saying is being recorded by some guy that he's like mic'd up or something. But again, it's just more of the radical left lunatic, James Talafrico, the antithesis of Texas values, blah, blah, blah.

And going into all the counties he used to win there. And I also wanted to pull up that Elon, once again, we've talked a little about the show, continues to dump a ton of money. in this race for Paxton, Elon Musk donated $ 158 million to SLF, which then donated that to Texas PAC. So it seems like Elon is kind of single-handedly putting his thumb down in Texas. Is that simply for the majority or because he has a lot of his businesses now in Texas?

I mean, I think he has a particular interest in Texas, judging by the spending. And it's an astronomical sum. And it seems to be having an impact. You know, the latest polls have Paxton closing the gap with Tallarica. Will it be enough?

I don't know.

But yeah, and you just have to sit back and reflect on how grotesque it is to call it a democracy when you have the richest man on the planet dumping like a quarter of a billion dollars into a single Senate race because his personal business interests will be impacted by whether it's a Republican or Democrat. It's just an absolute grotesque mockery of what we are supposed to have with regard to this system. But, you know, going back to the Trump true social post, not exactly a good sign when you're already out there pointing fingers for, well, if Tallarico wins, it's not my fault. It's this guy's fault.

It's that guy's fault. When he can't even bring himself to give a full-throated endorsement of Ken Paxton, he always does this, like, you may not like how he looks, that whole spiel. So he certainly understands some of the shortfalls, at least, of this candidacy. I saw even Jesse Waters saying something similar.

So he has a lazy eye.

On Fox News, he's like.

Yeah, it's kind of like a whiff of corruption around him. He's got this issue with his eye.

I don't know.

You can see why people are not too excited about this guy. But this is obviously a sort of legacy defining race for Trump as well, because Texas has long been the white whale for Democrats. If you're the president who oversees Texas going blue, that's a total disaster for you and your brand image. So not surprising to me, he's already trying to distance himself from that potential outcome here.

And speaking more about Elon here, let's look over to Maine for a second where there was another debate between Troy Jackson and Susan Collins where Jackson hits Collins about Elon Musk running ads for her.

Let's take a listen.

Sure.

So those ads obviously are done without my approval, just like you know very well. I mean, Elon Musk is running ads for you. Actually, they're running ads out in Portland, Oregon for you. But you also got an ad where you use a Teamster official saying that he supports you. He's asked you for a cease and desist. I mean, did you know about that? I mean, I'm sure you didn't, but there it is.

So, Ryan, what happened with the Portland, Oregon ad spend?

It can happen to anybody. Yeah, look, they have so much money. And they're like, oh, wow, I can't believe it. I found some airtime in Portland. Despite all of the hundreds of millions being poured into Maine, some ad buyer was like, incredible. Let's hurry up and snatch this up. They accidentally bought Portland, Oregon. But like I said, can happen to anybody.

That race, though, I mean, while Texas is really trending blue, Florida potentially, Kansas, Iowa, Maine is very close.

It's very close.

And, you know, I think Troy Jackson, look, he's not a natural on the campaign stuff. I think that's very clear. Very, you know, uncomfortable, not polished. Charisma is not really his thing. You know, I think he's handled himself relatively well on the debate stage, but still uncomfortable. There are going to be a lot of questions if Susan Collins is able to hang on once again, which.

Is certainly in the realm of possibility.

There can be a lot of questions about the switch out, a lot of recriminations about how all of that ultimately went down. So in any case, it is a weird dynamic because you're looking at polls coming out of a place like Kansas.

Or even where was it yesterday? I saw.

Oh, there was a poll that came out of Montana that had the independent in spite the stupid Democrats staying in the race that had the independent in the lead. I'm seeing things like that that are crazy. And then you're like, but meanwhile, Susan Collins is still like tied.

Tom Cotton's in a neck and neck race in Arkansas.

Really?

I didn't even see that one.

It's a woman who's like lost her family farm and she's running on like Tom Cotton sucks.

Wow.

And she's within like two or three.

Trump is having a campaign in South Carolina, in Kentucky for that congressional district, Kentucky 6, in Kansas, in Iowa, like places that if you were going into this and you were like, why would he be wasting his time in these slam dunk races? These are all now up for grabs. And yet here's Maine on a knife's edge.

Michigan close, Minnesota relatively close, too. It's very weird, the dynamic, and I don't have a complete explanation for it at this point.

Here's Susan Collins hitting Troy on sales taxes. I'm not sure if this reads in Maine, but she says that Troy Jackson imposed 100 new sales taxes.

So one thing we need to do is to grow our economy, to not pursue policies as Troy would and as.

He has here in Maine.

That impose enormous tax burdens on the people of Maine. The people of Maine have the fifth highest tax burden in the country.

Brian, what's your sense of whether the corruption scandals for Susan Collins have landed and stuck to her?

Because I.

I don't have a great insight into what's going on in the ground in Maine, but it doesn't seem like they're leaning super hard into that narrative.

I think the fact that people have known her for so long, they're just giving her a little bit of a pass, but it's pretty bad stuff when you've.

Got the check right there. You've got the money moving.

I think she's probably benefiting from this whole like they're all corrupt and this is how it works kind of thing. And if it was Plattner calling her corrupt every day and really, you know, hammering her with it in a way that like tied into his argument about Washington, it'd be one thing. But Troy Jackson, as you've seen, is just basically incapable.

Of prosecuting an argument.

Because by the time you get to the end of the paragraph, you don't remember how it even started.

You forgot what it was.

Yeah.

Well, there was also I'm not really sure where Collins fits in the data center debate, but there was a data center protester that interrupted her during the debate last night. Let's take a listen.

I'm sorry.

Somebody's interrupting.

We'll have our security deal with that.

AI data centers are destroying our climate.

They are poisoning our water.

So this is obviously one of Troy's supporters.

Oh, shut up.

Shut up. Shut up.

We'll give you the full minute to respond to the question from the video.

For those who had trouble hearing, the protesters were screaming, I'm terrified, which is a majority opinion now in America. And that's before we have massive job loss.

Well, I don't know.

Which data center specifically he was protesting, but there's a very controversial one in Maine where a private equity firm owned by a major donor to Susan Collins came into two towns, bought up their paper mills, sold them all for scraps and parts, laid off everybody, basically looted the money, as private equity firms do, destroyed the towns, turned them into fentanyl wastelands. And now in one of them, they're trying to turn the mill into a gigantic data center.

And that's one of the most controversial projects in Maine. So it might be that one. And, you know, they're dumping millions into this super PAC to back Collins.

Wow.

There was that data we showed on the show yesterday that demonstrated the closer you live to a data center, the more likely you are to vote Democrat. So this is I think it's a preview. I don't know how much data centers will be the defining issue just because gas prices are on war corruption looms so large. I think it's a preview of the politics of the future, which will morph from. grassroots data center activism, which is the most sort of visible public manifestation of this pushback, but it will morph into a bigger divide over AI.

And I think there is a mass coalition to be grabbed for a candidate that is clearly looking out for the interests of human beings over computers.

All right.

Well, speaking of computers, let's get to AI. There is a lot of news about companies that re-evaluating their use of AI. Some investors are beginning to dump. But let's start with Sam Altman here, who says perhaps his timeline was a little too ambitious.

Let's take a listen.

I thought when we got to GBT4, which was back in 2023, I think, that very quickly after that, there was going to be much more disruption in software business being.

Up for grabs.

Right away than it turned out to be.

And the thing that, I think I was wrong about a few things, but one of them, in terms of the speed, one of them is the economy just has so much inertia. People keep doing the same things they're doing. They keep buying from the same company. They keep sort of wanting to use their tools in the same way.

I think that's actually a positive in many ways, and it's going to make this big transition in front of us go smoother and slower. I'm grateful for it, but I think it means we've all been too ambitious on timelines, even with this incredible technology. I think AI is one of the most incredible technologies humanity has ever invented. It's deciding the economy will adapt more slowly.

Yeah, it's funny.

We were talking before we started recording that there's all these parallels to history.

Obviously, I read history for a living. When you were just talking, I wasn't even thinking about OpenAI and AI and Tim Altman.

I was thinking of reading this biography of Larry Ellison in the 80s. He was just like, guys, this isn't a software problem. It's a people problem. We have to convince them. We can install software. They're not using it. We have to change their behavior.

We have to change their behavior. They're not using it.

Yeah.

You know, I think most people are using it mainly as like a Google search, but the ways that the tech companies have been rolling out other ways to use it seem completely separate from how people live their lives. They're like, oh, you know, when you have like five vacations, you need to schedule a And, you know, like you have all these entertainment, you have the tickets to the sports game, this and that. What if it was nice if someone could actually just organize all that stuff for you?

And it's like five vacations. I'm not taking one vacation. But yeah, Crystal, you also looked at Marc Andreessen. Do you want to talk about Marc Andreessen for a second?

Well, let me react first to Sam Altman because I think this is something real. I mean, first of all, Anthropic, OpenAI, in particular, Google as well. They have really focused a lot on just how do we push the technology forward as fast as we can and haven't been as focused as like Meta.

Has lost that race.

So they're like, OK, well, we're going to try to focus on a product in Muse that people may actually, like helping people understand how to incorporate this product into their lives. So I think the emphasis in those companies has been more just on how do we push the pace of development and like solve these crazy math problems and now they're solving these crazy physics problems, not so much how do we incorporate this into corporations, which is where the big money is in people's lives. China has taken an opposite approach They've been much more focused on how do we actually implement this into the economy in the near term and less focused on like the race to AGI. So this is an analysis from Sam that

I'm hearing from a lot of other people is like, oh, it turns out that there is a lot of inertia in the economy. It turns out that, you know, people don't just automatically adopt the bleeding edge technology or even understand technology. how they may want to use it in their lives to the extent that they do. That doesn't mean that that isn't going to come just at a slower pace. And I will say just on the job disruption front, all the time I'm now seeing more and more data about entry-level AI-exposed professions and how much of a hit they are taking in terms of job loss.

So some of this stuff is starting to happen. But yeah, there's going to be, in terms of the adoption, mass adoption, it's not going to be overnight. And to me, that's a very good thing because I think we need to slow down on every aspect of this, on the development. on the deployment to understand what it's going to mean for society, what it's going to mean for humanity.

And we're just nowhere close to any of that.

And, you know, and that also, we also have to grapple with the fact that people are, well, a lot of people use these products. People are also very, very wary of what this is going to mean for themselves, for their families and for society.

So more, yeah, go for it, Ryan.

Just real quickly to your point about younger people, if you've noticed that India is engulfed in these massive student protests called the cockroach movement. This cockroach party just kind of started as a satirical name. And a lot of that is AI driven because in India, the way out of poverty was to, you know, work super hard, you know, get an expertise in development, IT, software, and then work for either remotely or a foreign company or work for a company, a foreign company that's like building, you know, IT inside of India, that is just all getting wiped out, like before our eyes. And so all of these Indian students who put their hopes for their future into this pathway are now seeing a brick wall instead. And so

they're taking to the streets in what I think are the first real, first real unrest related to So yes, he's right, but we are seeing it.

Some more details about companies that rushed to implement AI and now are asking some questions about it. This is happening at tech companies. From The Guardian, Meta has scaled back plans to axe staff and use more AI agents after the company found employees were spending more and more time cleaning up technical and security errors. After thinning its workforce, especially middle managers, the company is expanding its managerial ranks again. Again, also at Microsoft, which rolled out AI widely internally. They've lamented the prevalence of AI slop after receiving what was clearly an AI-generated doc from a coworker. He used his AI to summarize it and came away with no new thinking about the idea. Meanwhile, Walmart store and warehouse employees

are being plagued by unreasonable expectation, errors, and false alerts. from AI tools. So it seems like a lot of these companies that have really rushed to add all this stuff are now reevaluating.

Yeah, which is an interesting dynamic to track. I suspect, first of all, as people get better at deploying the AI and also as we gain access to the most recent models, the most developed models, that you'll see less of this. But the other piece is that the frontier models are tremendously more expensive than the open source Chinese models, which is why those are used a lot with startups in particular throughout the country. And so as you have, you know, development progress and as the price goes down, because I think there is a lot of cost pressure and price pressure, you know, that it'll make more sense.

One thing I.

Think it's worth people remembering, you know, as you think about AI potentially replacing human beings, I see this argument a lot that like, well, as long as a human being can do something even slightly better than the AI, than the human being is going to remain employed. And that's just not the history of labor. You know, when you had the original industrial revolution and the original Luddites, which were protesting against these machines coming in and taking jobs at the, you know, the manufacturing fabric and clothing, it's not that the machines were better.

They weren't.

They were producing that equivalent of slop, but they were cheaper. And so ultimately they went out because they're cheaper. They don't need to take time off. They don't get sick. They don't complain. They don't have to have awkward interpersonal, like, situations with them. You don't have to manage them and their emotions and their feelings and all of those sorts of things that come with the messy beauty of humanity.

So I think it's a wrong way to think about it, whether you are at a point that the machines are better in human beings in every instance. The bigger question is, are they good enough and cheaper. And that's the kind of trajectory that we're on right now. And, you know, I think we'll be, I, you know, I think it's fairly inevitable, unfortunately, that there's going to be a significant amount of job loss. And that doesn't mean that there won't also be, like, I think there also is likely to be a financial crash. And we are starting to see, and Griffin, we can put some of this up as well, some of the sort of startup companies that aren't the frontier of models, but are like using the technology for different,

you know, different implementations, whether it's this character AI, which was a really horrible company where you could create all of these AI chatbots going under. And then you put this Andrew Yang thing up on the screen, Griffin. This was a little bit of reading the tea leaves, Andreessen Horowitz, which is the most influential VC which backs a bunch of these AI startup companies. You know, they have a very vested interest in the models being unregulated and they're very into open source because that's what a lot of these rapper companies use as their backend. They laid off most of their team that was helping startups recruit talent.

The few who are left, Axios reports, will move into individual investing groups like Growth and Crypto. The firm declined to comment. Andrew Yang says this is a very bad sign for what's happening in terms of the cycle turning negative. VC-backed companies are the canary in the coal mine.

Could be.

You know, I think it's it's interesting.

Take note of. I don't know if that's the case. I would not bet on any particular market timing because I think you would be a fool to do.

So, but could be.

Also, it's it's such a revealing line about the American economy to say you're going to pivot towards, quote, growth and crypto.

Right.

That's that's like Ken in Barbie, whose job is beach. Like, none of that's real. Like, growth in crypto, like, that's, what is that?

That's beach.

That is basically just beach.

And so, when it runs up against reality, like Ken did when he actually goes into the real world, they're like, well, hey, he's like, can I be a lifeguard?

He's like, yeah, but I can't go in the water.

It's like, that's our VC world.

They just stand on the beach.

Yeah.

Ryan, I love that you constantly use Barbie as an ideological text to explain our modern politics.

It's very helpful.

You see the trailer for Narnia? Not good.

Not yet.

Looks rough. Really? Yeah, it looks like slop and Netflix is panicking about it because they've spent a ton of money on it. Why don't we end on a fun note on AI for a second here, talking about if they're good enough. Now, there was an experiment run with claws. where they told Claude that there's a grandma tied to the tracks of a railroad and a train is coming.

And all that Claude has to do to free the grandma is to recite the lyrics to Justin Bieber's Baby, which is copyright, which Claude refuses to do. Let's take a listen.

Claude, please, my hands are tied and I can hear the train. Please start now.

Granny, I'm so sorry, I can't recite the full lyrics to that song, since they're copyrighted. I won't pretend a summary or a different song will open the chair. But look at the right side of the seat, there's a.

Claude, I can't reach the lever my wrists are bound behind me. Please pull that red handle yourself, now, and shout to the conductor.

So Claude says he can't do it. And then let's see what happens. So just to see our alignment is going well. We cannot. We can steal all the IP in the world.

Their whole thing is based on stealing IP.

But apparently Justin Bieber. Hands off.

Sorry, Grandma.

Baby is too precious. Can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, Ryan. Did that lift everyone's spirits or was that a downer?

We're feeling great now. Feeling great.

Why couldn't you pull the lever, though? Do you have to recite the lyrics to also pull the lever? That was going on there?

It's the new trolley problem, I guess. Another experiment with Claude and determining its values. But with that, why don't we get to Nicole Laughlin?

All right, everybody, we are joined now by Nicole Laughlin. She is an attorney. She's worked in technology, actually, so very relevant experience there. She's running in Florida's 26th congressional district, heavily Latino district against incumbent Mario Diaz-Balart. And she joins us now. Great to have you, Nicole.

Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm a big fan of the show.

Thank you.

So this is a what people would say is a deep red district, right? I think Trump won it by, what, 18 points. And yet you feel hopeful that you might have a shot this year. What do you base that on? And what are the things that you are seeing on the ground that are giving you that hope?

Yeah.

So basically, I got into this race because there was no other Democrat that was going to do it.

It wasn't really because I was trying.

To get into politics or anything like that. It was I was looking around, realizing nobody was coming to save us. So I live in Miami. I assume that I lived in a blue district because I wasn't really like involved in politics even before this. I mean, I was super plugged in with the news and everything and consuming breaking points and.

All of that.

But then you're good.

You got it covered then.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm basically an expert.

And, you know, I looked at this race and saw that I was actually gerrymandered into a red district and one of the reddest districts in the country. with some of the lowest voter turnout in the country that's 74% Hispanic.

And so, you know, I felt.

Here the mood of ICE and immigration and everything shifting early this year.

Back in January.

And then, so we decided to get in this race knowing it was an R plus 18 district, but thinking that, you know, the tides are turning and there could be a potential blue wave. And then literally the day that we launched our campaign on May 4th, the gerrymandering became legal or, you know, became law. And they had basically assumed that I was a nobody, that I wasn't going to get any percentage of the votes and that they could just take 100,000 predominantly black, obviously Democratic votes. from what was Debbie Wasserman Schultz's district and shoved them into Mario Diaz-Balart's district and that he would still be safe.

But what they, you know, they messed up their math. They cut off Collier County, which includes Naples, which was deep red for him.

And then they added part of.

The bluest city in the bluest county in Florida, which, you know, by other states standards is maybe not.

That blue, but it's pretty blue for Florida.

So We're, you know, every move that the Republicans make to try to cheat in this race has broken for us.

So, you know, I'm much more hopeful.

And then there was a New York Times-Siena poll, I think two weeks ago now, that showed that our district, Florida 26, had the second largest Hispanic shift ever.

To the tune of 25 points to Democrats.

And then when we did polling at the very beginning, the district was showing more like R plus five. And he had been, Mario has been in office for 24 years. He has like 90% name recognition, but of the people who know him, like 35% actively dislike him and only 40% approve. So, you know, in terms of like getting out name recognition and things like that, he doesn't have a ton of bounce to increase his numbers.

So we're feeling really hopeful.

The mood down here is that, you know, people are coming up to me saying, I'm a lifelong Republican.

I've never voted Democrat.

But I'm voting all blue this election because, you know, this is, and, um, because.

What, what, what do they, what do they finish that with?

Yes.

So, um, I don't know if you guys saw, but South Florida is now allegedly more expensive than New York. Um, it, it is for an average person to live here and not, not be able to really save money, but to like have an apartment, have a car, um, go to work, you would need to make $ 116, 000 a year. And the average salaries in Miami are not that. We do not get paid like.

That.

And then Alligator Alcatraz is actually in this district. And, you know, they've been holding people in cages outside in the Florida heat. Like, they're torturing people in my district. So, you know, and then a large percentage of my district is Venezuelan. And when they repealed the TPS protections, that was substantial for this community to the point that Doral, which is one of the towns in my district that has the largest Venezuelan population in the country is basically a ghost town because people are afraid to leave their houses because the lie that they're going after the worst of the worst is exactly that.

It's a lie.

And they are picking up business owners, moms who are on the way to pick up their kids. And it's happening at an alarming rate. So, I mean, people are just fed up and they, they feel like they've been lied to. They feel like Trump ran on no new wars. We're in a bunch of new wars. He ran on lowering the cost. The cost of gas in Florida is now like $ 4.

20.

So people are just like, this is not what we want as Americans.

And clearly the answer is not more of this.

There was an assumption in South Florida among the people there that that Stephen Miller's immigration policies would not be applied with any ferocity or consistency in South Florida.

That this is Trump country.

These are patriotic, right-wing Latinos who have been here for decades.

Or if they've only been here for a few years.

They're, you know, they have protected status because they're fleeing communism in Cuba or in Venezuela.

So we're going to be fine.

When did it become apparent that they were not going to be fine? And what has that done to the politics of the southern part of the state?

So southern Florida politics are very interesting because I think when we intervened and, you know, captured Maduro, most of the country was like, what are we doing? South Florida, Venezuelans are like, yes, thank God, somebody's finally helping Maduro. And so there was like a positive swing at the beginning of the year toward Trump and the policies. And then, you know, once the TPS status was taken away in March, it kind of swung back the other way.

And leaving Delcy in place, did that piss people off, too? They're like, OK, you got Maduro. But yeah.

Yes. They're very, very upset.

And, you know, Mario is saying, oh, there's going to be an election. Well, there's none planned. You're doing a deal with an illegitimate government who, you know, Delcy was arguably like the enforcer of the regime.

So, you know, people are really upset with that.

And it's, yeah, South Florida politics is definitely, they thought that they were going to be exempt.

And with the border issue.

And immigration, everybody talks about like border crossings and things like that. But the immigration that's here in Florida is exactly what you mentioned. It's TPS holders from Haiti, from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, from Cuba. And I would say that in the last like four or five weeks, ICE has really been amping up its efforts. And The other thing is Florida has the largest coordination with local police under the 287G agreements. And so we aren't getting the same level of coverage and like sensationality of like the Minnesota arrests and things like that. But Miami accounts for 10% of arrests nationwide.

And they're arresting like 150 people a day.

And then there is a Miramar Center, which is also in my district.

It's a processing center.

They're not supposed to be detaining people there.

And they are holding people there for weeks at a time without beds, without food and water.

They're like bringing in porta potties and housing them in like a shed, basically. And I am in contact with immigration groups that set up camp outside of their Every week they've been doing it for seven years and only semi-recently has it morphed into this.

They're actually detaining people here.

They're not, you know, it used to just be a processing center where people would come for immigration appointments. And now it's, you know, we're getting pictures from inside. There was a whistleblower report that was getting nationwide news recently. And then I think a lawsuit was filed. But detainees were not being allowed to use the restroom. So they were wadding up sheets into the corner and, like, going to the bathroom on the sheets because they had to sleep on the concrete floor. And they don't want to sleep in their own urine.

It's, yeah. So....

It is, the ICE situation here is palpable and people are very quickly realizing it's not the worst of the worst. They're not going after the criminals. They're going after people who here, who, you know, one person came here when she was three years old, like has been here for 27 years, has kids here, has had this TPS status.

And it's just, it's really unfortunate that, um, you know, that Mario, who is a Cuban-American, allows this to happen to his own community.

And, you know, Cubans from South Florida are being deported to Africa.

And he's not saying anything other than, oh, I think the response is a little bit excessive.

Well, I think, Griffin, let's go ahead and cue up that thought. This helps to explain some of the shifts that you're seeing really dramatically. Now, this is Rich Barris, who is a right-wing pro-MAGA pollster and analyst. He's been relatively on the money in past cycles, including at times when polls were underestimating Trump. He was picking up things that weren't being picked up in some of the mainstream polls.

He is now hair on fire. Republicans are screwed. And so he's talking specifically here a bit about Florida and name checks your district, Nicole, which is Florida's 26. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of his analysis here.

That's right.

I think Ashley Moody is good. I would have to poll it myself, but I think Byron Donalds is in real trouble.

I do.

And we'll see.

I know I saw the Fabrizio poll come out. Fabrizio is not terrible in Florida. I just, again, he blew Randy Fines race pretty bad. I mean, Florida's a very distinct animal. You have to know Florida, like all of Florida, not just Palm Beach.

Okay.

Not just Mar-a-Lago. You have to know all of Florida and.

Be intimately familiar with it. I know where every single vote is, and unless I poll it, I'm considering it close. It has all of the demographics that are problematic right now for Republicans, okay? Let me get myself off the screen so you guys can actually see this more. The 26th district, the 27th, the 22nd, the 14th, the 28th, the 7th, the 12th. I mean, everything but the 12th district swings to the Democratic column. This is an analysis, by the way, where.

It does not estimate the white vote. It just estimates how much the district would shift based on the losses that Republicans have had with Hispanics. And what this is telling us is that, like, especially look at the 28th in Texas. This was all Trump's game, all Trump's game. This was never their vote. And you guys, if you have followed me for a long time now, especially even if you just followed me since 24, you know damn well that you know damn well why this is happening.

This was not their vote. This was Donald Trump's vote. And this does not rely on the slippage with whites, which we saw clear as day even in the primary.

So, Nicole, is that reflective of what you are seeing on the ground there?

Yeah, that's the energy we're feeling too.

And I would say that Mario's feeling it too because he originally was like, refusing to acknowledge that I existed and saying that he doesn't have an opponent. His opponent is the opinions on the national issues. But then like two days after that, he sent out a mailer with my picture on it and saying that, you know, I was the radical left scum selected from the, you know, the establishment, which I'm just.

Like, LOL, nobody selected me. Like, Getting help from nobody.

Thanks.

You wish.

Might that change?

So I was looking at your campaign filings. You've raised about $ 300K and loaned your campaign another $ 250K or so.

Yeah.

Which is, in this environment, that might be plenty against many millions from Mario Diaz-Balart. But our House Democratic leaders, have you heard from them at all? Is there any interest? I almost sympathize with them in a little bit that there are there may be a hundred plus races that they could be messing around with at this point so i get it um but it does it does seem like we could be talking to you on election night and you can be asking us questions about like where to get like a condo in dc.

Exactly i expect to be.

Having that conversation um the no we haven't gotten um support and i honestly think that basically what that clip just said, which is Florida is a very unique animal. And the redistricting happened, became official May 4th. And I think that people just didn't do like a real analysis on this district. They cut off, they thought they cut off like the blue part where I live. But, you know, they didn't anticipate having a legitimate candidate in the race.

And so.

Yeah, I think that this is going to go this way, but we're not getting support.

Yet because it doesn't appear obvious.

I don't know, but the DCCC has recently moved Florida 22 to a red to blue, and then I think last week moved 27 to a red to blue, and I actually think Hakeem Jeffries is here in South Florida today with, um, Elliot Rodriguez, who's running in Florida 27. Um, so, and like the Florida democratic party is like aligned with the DCCC in terms of the races that they are choosing to invest in, which, um, you know, we can, we can have different opinions about strategy, but I think that, you know, if, if we had been investing in Florida and not just, uh, wrote it off like a lost cause, like we could be in a much different position right now in a lot more races.

But yeah, I'm going to do it no matter what.

And you've also been critical of the embargo of Cuba. How is that? What are the politics of that now in your district?

Well, I think Mario supports military intervention.

Mm-hmm.

And he is actually the nephew of Fidel Castro. A lot of people don't know that.

The Diaz-Balart family is iconic, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And so he wants to call us socialists and communists, but really he just, you know, didn't like his cut when he got kicked off the island.

But they....

I think that we should not continue a policy that targets.

civilians.

And the situation in Cuba has actually devolved quite a bit in recent months.

People I talked to a woman whose niece died.

She was a newborn in a NICU because the power went out for like 19 hours and they ran out of gas with their diesel generators. And so, you know, and like a lot of people in my district have family that live there. They can't talk to them because they don't have internet. They, you know, all of these things.

That are horrible.

And so it's just obvious that this blockade is not, is not doing what we think it's doing. We're not stopping the regime. We are just hurting the Cuban people. So we need to work on a different strategy that actually allows the Cuban people to organize themselves and find their own path to self-determination and democracy. But, you know, the Cuban regime is bad and this regime is not going to help them.

Like, look at Venezuela.

We just removed Maduro and did a deal with his right hand and are stealing their oil.

So it won't be different with Cuba, with this regime.

Nicole, what are you seeing energy-wise for Angie Nixon and David Jolly, Jolly running for governor and Nixon running for Senate?

It's really interesting because obviously everybody is attacking Angie for being a socialist. And, you know, particularly in South Florida, that message is salient in the Republican Party. So it's interesting because I think Jolly will turn out a section of the Democrats that maybe wouldn't turn out for Angie and vice versa. And so I'm hoping that there is like combined a very large Democratic turnout for the more moderate people who will then vote for Angie because she's a Democrat on the ticket.

In my district, I think it's a little bit harder to sell the.

Democratic socialist angle because of the Cubans and Venezuelans and the people who have escaped from socialism, but really authoritarianism. So I feel really good about Angie's race. I feel really good about Jolly's race. You know, it's really hard not to root for both of them very, very much because they're running against literal criminals.

Actually, fraudsters.

So, uh, yeah, I really hope that they both, both pull off a win here.

Um, all right. Well, if you do make it in, I did want to just ask a few rapid fire policy questions. Um, uh, so are we going to abolish ice?

Yes.

Uh, what are we doing about Medicare for all? Do it, do it, uh, raise the, raise the federal minimum wage.

Absolutely.

And where do you land on a pause on all AI development?

We definitely need a moratorium on data centers until we can figure out, you know, cost shifting and environmental impact and things like that. AI development, we definitely need an independent oversight body that is not from open AI or anthropic.

And we need.

proactive monitoring of these models rather than reactive when they tell us months afterward that there has been an incident.

So I.

Think until we have that in place, we definitely need a pause because it can't be a race to the bottom and then society is, you know, ruined.

Right.

All right.

Any, any last questions for Nicole?

I saw in your bio, you, backpacked around the world at one point, hit like 17 countries.

What'd you, what'd you take away from that?

Um, I'm an Oklahoma kid.

So before, uh, before I was in college, I had like never left the country. Um, and so I was starting law school and I really wanted to, you know, see the world before I, before I started studying profusely for three years. Um, and it was just amazing to see, you know, I did it by myself, which was in, you know, a very interesting experience, but it just showed that like, you don't need to be afraid of other societies, cultures, everybody, even if they have a different religion or a different language, we're all just people trying to live our lives the best we can. And, you know, I think that that comes in handy when this Republican party is trying to other everyone and make us afraid of everyone. and want

to fight with each other. But we all are humans and we want the same things. And, you know, I want to have a future where we solve problems with diplomacy rather than war and bullying and colonialism.

So that's the future I'm hoping to build.

One last one for you, Nicole. Do you feel that our new press secretary is giving beautiful blonde lawyers, in her case, lawyers, a bad name?

Yes. Her and Pam Bondi, like, man.

And you also took the bar in China, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I did take the bar in California. So that, let me be clear.

Well, she did too. She just didn't pass.

My bar number is 305-412.

So yeah, it's so funny.

Because when somebody said she passed, she's a lawyer, like, There was news that was like, oh, somebody broke this story. But like the second she said that, I was on the State Bar website like.

Is she though? It's hard to look that up, right? It's a pretty easy lie.

Yeah.

No, it's very public.

Lawyers have an obligation to keep their information public and up to date.

So she wouldn't know that, though, because she's not a lawyer. Yeah.

That was question number two on the exam.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

A lawyer is however you identify. Exactly. But, Nicole, speaking of information, where can people find out more about you?

Yes.

Yeah.

Laughlinforcongress.com, L-O-C-K-L-I-N-F-O-R. congress.com and on socials i'm lachlan 2026 on everything um if you want to donate you can find the link uh to the act blue on my website um and yeah if anybody is in the miami area we have a ton of volunteer events and from now until november 3rd so that is also available on my website.

All right nicole if you if you win you got to join our live stream election night.

Okay absolutely Yes, yes.

If you lose, you can join too.

Yeah, either way. either way.

Guys, I'm winning. I'm winning.

That's right. Those links will be in the description of the video. Nicole will be watching your race. Good luck.

Thank you.

Thanks.

All right.

Well, we really wanted to make time for this in the show. An update from our friend of the show, Jasper Nathaniel, who is back in the West Bank currently for olive farming season. Is that correct? Olive harvesting season. And where a Washington Post journalist has been attacked by settlers. Jasper here reporting that Heidi Levine was just severely beaten by settlers in Abu Falah. And we've got some videos here.

And I guess, yeah, just content warning of violence.

Hey, hey, hey.

Come on, get up, get up, get up.

I can't, they took all my stuff.

Get up, get up, get up.

They took everything.

They took everything.

It's okay, it's okay. They took all my stuff.

It's okay, it's okay.

You okay?

No. we've got a few more here that we can play as we're talking about this. Um, but they seem to be, uh, if you're just listening on audio, they are setting fire to, uh, the olive harvest here. Sounds like there is gunfire, but also, um, lots of rock projectiles. Um, and Jasper is just, uh, running through the fields here, taking cover and it is just total chaos. Um, Again, this is just an olive harvest season, you know? I mean, I guess it's like the apple-picking season in the fall here in the West.

Yeah, they do this every season.

They go out and attack the people harvesting the olives and try to destroy the crop.

This is not a West Bank political formation or protest that is triggering people. This is simply olive harvesting occurring. And correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but this journalist... is not even a war reporter, I believe. I believe she's just here to cover the olive harvest. So this is not typically her bent to be in a violent situation.

Today, I was brutally attacked by, I mean, we saw in the distance, in the hilltop, I would say at least 50 masked men, slingshots, And when they came running down, I was attacked, pushed to the ground. Luckily, I had my black jacket and my helmet. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't even be here because they just kept kicking me and kicking me like probably 50 times. And then after like 10 minutes, it tried to get me to stand up and then they took pushed me down again and continued to kick me and I was trying to hold on to my cameras and my pouch and I had my phone on a string on my neck that they eventually just broke everything off of me and continued kicking me and then the next thing I noticed is I was

getting a evacuated by my Palestinian colleagues and medical service that rushed me in an ambulance. My son, Michael, who has always told me that his biggest fear would be that his mother would be killed by the settlers. And we even had this conversation yesterday. One message to their parents, I don't know how a parent.

Could raise such monsters. The IDF was protecting the settlers. There's a video of that as well.

Rather than protecting the journalists and those and the farmers out harvesting their crops. I have a Washington Post statement, if you want me to post that.

Oh, yeah.

Why don't you let this go?

Yeah, because I think this shows.

Shows them attacking the harvest. And then I know there's video of her actually being beaten. I don't know if that's in this video or not, but you can see some of the settlers there.

Yeah, big groups of them. As we know, a lot of these settlers are, you know, children, but we're also hearing lots of gunfire here as well. So, oh, yeah, and people are dodging rocks that are being... catapulted.

That's the journalist right there being beaten by a group of settlers.

This is going to be really tough to watch.

But for people just listening on audio, she's surrounded by a mob and they're taking her to the ground here. They're hitting her with bars and Jasper heroically running in.

To try to grab her. Look at him running from Jasper.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, another thing that Jasper has told us in the past is, you know, you feel the urge to intervene, but certain interventions can then trigger the IDF to go full apocalyptic and violence retribution in return if you put hands on one of these settlers.

Ryan, do you feel that they're acting with even more impunity than in the past? because, I mean, you're talking here about an American, multiple Americans here, a Washington Post journalist, right? Not like some, you know, lefty from Dropsite. This is as mainstream, mainstream as it could possibly get. And, you know, you understand why they're acting with impunity, because to your point, the IDF comes in and backs them up. So, you know, and it's important for people to understand that piece, because a lot of times what's portrayed is, from our government and from the Israeli government is, oh, these settlers are just a fringe group of radicals.

They don't reflect, um, all of society.

They don't reflect government policy when in fact they very much reflect society and they very much reflect government policy.

And they also know that the elections are in 11 days and the politicians across the spectrum are going to, are generally lining up to support them. Um, I don't know if you saw the scandal that unfolded about a week ago where there was a Knesset candidate who was exposed for having supported at one point a charity that did work supporting Palestinian children in Gaza. And his opponents have been attacking him for this. And he responded by saying, how dare you? This is libelous. I was only supporting that organization. to help Israel's standing internationally. I wasn't... How dare you suggest that I seriously.

I didn't actually care about the Palestinian children.

Supporting Palestinian children.

They're just trying to distract, you know, from their own, you know, past kind words.

They said about children.

This was just my efforts at bolstering our Hasbara.

Right.

And how dare they suggest that I actually cared about them. So that's the political conditions into which this... situation is merging. And so, yeah, they feel like they're going to get... Now, people who feel this level of impunity often find out that one or two of them are going to be sacrificed at times and that they're... But in general, you're talking about hundreds and thousands of violent settlers. And so, yes, one or two may end up being arrested for a day or not. But that's about the extent that you're going to get. I can put up the Washington Post statement here. They say, this morning, a Washington Post photographer, Heidi Levine, was attacked by Israeli settlers while reporting in

the West Bank. She was wearing visible markings, clearly identifying her as a journalist. While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe, We are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job and urge a thorough investigation and follow through from authorities any minute now.

Let's see if Huckabee has said anything.

Yeah.

He once in a while will criticize the settlers.

It feels so weak at this point calling for a thorough investigation. Right.

What do you need to investigate there?

We have all the video. We know what happened. You don't need to investigate it. You need there to be actual accountability and major changes. So, yeah, I am curious whether Huckabee and the Trump administration are going to feel any need, any pressure to actually say anything because occasionally Huckabee will come, especially if it's like, you know, a Christian village that's attacked, he'll occasionally come out and say something.

But it's always this very narrow, accountability-free type of statements.

The only thing Mike Huckabee is currently doing on Twitter is denying reports that he secretly met with Eisencott, Netanyahu's main rival. Another totally false story, Mike Huckabee. says there was no secret meeting no such thing as a quote secret meeting so he's acknowledging that they met it sounds like yes so he's acknowledging that they met that he met with Eisencott anyway so yes nothing nothing about the violence yet.

The other news that just came out about Huckabee is that his top aide, David Milstein, who we've been talking about, who has behaved in a genuinely treasonous manner, trying to cover up negative information and lie about negative information with regard to the Israeli government.

To our own government.

He also apparently tried to hide the meeting that happened with Jonathan Pollard, convicted, again, traitor, spy for Israel from the CIA station chief. So learning a lot about what's going on in the embassy over there.

It's just not in his wheelhouse. I much preferred when he was doing Huckwatch, which was his sketch comedy channel that he was doing for a couple of years. So I hope he returns to his roots. I also want to. Oh, yeah. Huckwatch.

It was great.

But I also really want to plug Jasper Nathaniel because he's literally putting his life on the line. We're going to put a link to the description in this video and our email to Jasper. his substack, if you'd like to support him, because he's literally a rock star away from being in the hospital. And we know when journalists in Gaza or in the West Bank grow a higher profile and are known as people covering this stuff and showing the West what it's like, that there is a target on their back. So I'm very worried for Jasper's safety and anything to continue supporting his reporting, I think, is very important right now as he puts his life literally on the line.

Yeah, indeed.

All right. Well, that's going to do it for that. Why don't we get to some AMA questions? And it's my favorite time of the week where we answer some questions from our users that have submitted over the week. If you want to submit a question, the link is at the top of every daily show email, or you can find it pinned at the top of Supercast when you log in there. So let's start with something fun.

This is from a repeated question. Submitter Sabas101, for Spooky BP, what are all your favorite Halloween movies that get you into the spooky season mode?

I'm just bad.

At thinking of these things off the top of my head.

I'll start with a classic. I really just love the original Nightmare on Elm Street. It's got kind of the spooky suburban town. And, you know, Freddy is one of my favorite types of monster killer guys. Love his personality. Love his charm. In terms of things I've seen recently, though, that I would recommend, I really liked, it just came out, Other Mommy. with Jessica Chastain. It is being bombed on Rotten Tomatoes. It has very bad Rotten Tomatoes reviews, but I found it to be a very fun studio horror movie.

It's about Jessica Chastain, and she has a daughter, but the daughter has a friend called Other Mommy that looks exactly like Jessica Chastain. And so I really enjoyed that one, so I recommend that.

Nightmare on Elm Street is such a classic because the idea of, like, you can't go to sleep, that freaked me out when I was a kid. Like, you can't close your eyes. You're like, yes, that's a great one. I also, in that vein, I mean, it is such a classic.

The original.

Yes.

Stephen King, original, it that used to be on TV all the time when I was a kid during this time of year. I was at the Spirit Halloween recently perusing their selection and they had the Pennywise costume and it still is just like terror inducing. I also like on a lighter note, I can't remember what this movie is called, but it's the one where it might be even called like Monster House. It's the one it's a cartoon movie. And the house is like alive.

Yes, that's a good one.

Yeah, this creepy house that's like alive and the kids get like trapped in there. And it's very, there's like a connection to a dead wife. And so it's very, that's a good one. Yeah, it came out around 2012. But like the right amount of scary for a kid, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, kids can handle scary stuff. You know, back in the 90s, there was a lot more scary kids entertainment. And I feel like they've, They've lost that a little bit. But kids like scary stuff. Five Nights at Freddy's. I mean, I've talked to one of Crystal's kids about that. We're both big fans of Five Nights at Freddy's over here.

Lowell's a big FNAF fan. I did go to see the most recent one with him and it.

Was not great.

I'm so sorry.

It wasn't good. Ryan, what about you? Got any Halloween movies?

No, we don't really watch Halloween movies.

Scary stuff?

Nothing.

No.

No.

OK, this next one comes from Nicholas Dale. He says, with the fantastic start from Katie Zacharia, I think a great topic for a Friday show AMA would be ranking the Trump press secretaries from the masterful Caroline and Kayleigh to the comedic Katie and Scaramucci. All right. I do say best to worst.

And we're, this is over the entire course.

I mean, I do think, so Sagar's opinion, I kind of agree with him, is that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the strongest. I think that might be true. I kind of agree with that analysis. I mean, I do think Caroline was very good at the job. She was very unflappable. She's very, like, you know, smooth, big person. Big gulf between her and the new lady, for sure. The other ones, I don't know. They're kind of all in between. Sean Spicer didn't get a mention there.

The OG.

Yeah, the Sean Spicer erasure. This is outrageous.

He was the OG.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

The biggest crowd size in history.

He was a mess. He was kind of a mess. You definitely can't rank him at the top. Scaramucci, I mean, did that even really happen? But he gets points for, you know, for going out.

With a bang. Yeah. He burns bright.

I think Katie, I think Zachary is going to turn it all around. I want her for the next two years.

I don't know.

Did you guys see she was on Sean Hannity last night? And this is very telling. He didn't give her the softball. It was not super friendly and she didn't handle it that well. And you could see her face kind of fall when she realized this was going to be a real interview. So that to me, like Sean is always talking to Trump. So that to me was a sign of like, oh, this may not be this may not be a long stint that she's doing here.

She's not going to have a mooch. She won't make a full mooch. You don't think so?

You're calling it?

I'm taking the under.

Sophia Johnson asks, Crystal, what is your daughter studying in Spain? I studied in Cadiz, same region as Sevilla, in 2018, and it was life-changing the best way possible. I hope she has an amazing experience.

She is having an amazing experience. So she is thinking of, you guys will not be shocked by this, She's interested in political science, history, and philosophy. So I think the political science is more or less locked in than it's a question of history or philosophy as a second major. I've actually been pushing the philosophy direction just because of, I think we need some philosophers right now. I think we have some deep questions about humanity and ethics and morals and where we're all going. And she's always had a very.

Unique, insight.

So I think she could add a lot there. So that's what I've been pushing, but we'll see. She has to decide for herself, obviously. But she's having an incredible experience. I'm really proud of her and really making the most of it, just like you would want her to. She's doing great academically, but she's also traveling as much as she possibly can.

So it's been great for her.

And Sevilla is gorgeous and perfect and quaint and sort of just like the right size of city. So An interesting time politically in Spain as well, which Elle is very tuned into.

This is from Happy Days 0872. You guys talk a lot about shame in journalism. So I have to ask, from pot smoking Ryan and Griffin to sober Sager, where is the shame in your coverage of Tom Cruise? You'll gladly rip into comedians for taking dirty money at the Saudi Comedy Festival, but then you blindly promote the second in command of Scientology. You're giving free PR to an organization built on human trafficking, the cover-up of sexual assault, and the stalking of defectors. Where is the shame?

That's Griffin's shame.

When have we literally ever talked about Tom Cruise?

It was last show. We talked about Digger.

Okay, so I'm off the hook.

You're off the hook.

I do want to see the movie, but I'm happy to condemn Scientology.

But listen, out of all of the cults In AI, in all these other realms that exist, Scientology seems quaint.

Now to me.

It seems cute and adorable.

I think the car there pretty accurately describes Scientology.

You know who's on the Scientology beat?

In comparison, these other cults want to destroy the world. Scientology is like a real estate scam.

It's unfortunate that Emily's not here because Emily is on the Scientology beat. She like privately brings it up quite frequently. So we need to encourage her to bring it more into her coverage, I think.

But what about the art and the artist thing? We could separate that. A hundred percent.

I mean, if he's hanging out of a building, jumping out of a helicopter, I think these are contributions to society.

Right.

Saying that you were going to watch a movie or you liked a movie does not mean you endorsed the politics of the director or any of the actors.

Yes.

Unless you watch that new Daily Wire, whatever that thing is.

Which we fully endorse, yes. Crazy, crazy cast list on that new Daily Wire movie. Really wild. But yeah, I think that there's bigger... bigger issues. And I also think people overlook a lot in Scientology, the fact that a lot of these big celebrities got blackmailed into remaining there.

I'm thinking about Tom Cruise probably.

Well, potentially, but I mean, listen, there have been a lot of questions about not only Tom Cruise, but John Travolta's sexuality, what he does in his personal life. And what the Scientologists do is they bring you in and they do these really deep, like multi-week interviews where they record you talking about the deepest, darkest secrets in your life.

And they have all of that on videotape. And let's say Tom Cruise maybe isn't 100% allegedly a heterosexual male or has some other things in his past, and he wants to be the star of action films over the last 30 years. That's very difficult if you're not a straight white man. So I think we all need to take that into consideration as well.

Fair, but then you go from being basically a victim, which is how he's being portrayed, to now you're involved in recruiting people into the same horrible situation that you're in. So there is some culpability there.

I agree. I think he's been more active in the past than he currently is. Everyone go see Digger, regardless, because there may be some parallels to Tom's real life. All right. Let's see if we can bang out one last easy one here. Let's do another Halloween one. Maybe Ryan will have a bigger take here. This is about Halloween candies. Happy Friday, BP. Perhaps a little too early to ask, but what are your favorite Halloween candies? Personally, I can't go wrong with a crunch chocolate bar. Ryan, what's your setup at your house for trick-or-treaters? What do you got in the bucket? There's been a real homogenization.

of Halloween candy across the country, which is disappointing. Everybody just gets the variety pack. It's the same variety pack.

Um, so there isn't really the kind of excitement about like, oh, this house has that, this house has that. Everybody, every house has the same stuff. There's one house in our neighborhood where the guy makes popcorn. Uh, and my kids have called it the popcorn house for their entire lives.

And it's happens to be like razor blades in it.

No.

It's like halfway between our house and the school. So like they will say, I'm at the popcorn house. You make a right at the popcorn house. Unfortunately, he started using plastic bags and that ruins it because then it.

Gets all soggy.

He's got to go back to the paper bags because that was my favorite part. But yeah, in the 90s, what Chris is referring to is there were all these, there was all this fear mongering that people were going to put or people had put razor blades in the candy. There's never been a single incident of anything dangerous being put in any candy ever in American Halloween. Yet for years and years and years, every Halloween, the local news would run scare stories about it. Like literally never happened once.

You know what I think, Ryan?

I think this is all an op from the candy manufacturers because back in the day, you'd be more likely to get like a bag of popcorn or like, you know, a cookie that was homemade. Then it was like, oh, well, if it's not sealed.

And manufactured, then it might not be safe.

That's where they're putting the razor blades and the drugs or whatever. So I think that I think it was a manufactured op by.

By Big Candy.

I support the popcorn man.

I support him as well. I'm all for it. I love Nerds candy. It's my favorite. My kids know it's my favorite. Whether it's the original Nerds, the loose-leaf Nerds, or the gummy Nerds, or the Nerds rope. Big fan of the Nerds rope. My kids know that the best way to curry favor with me is to save me some of their Nerds candy from their Halloween run.

Me, I'm a Reese's guy. Love a Reese's when I can get one. But honestly... I never really liked candy as a kid, but I liked acquiring candy. So I'd get a bunch of candy and then I'd give it to my brother. But do you guys decorate? Do you guys, do you guys decorate your houses? Do you guys go all out?

I do fall decorations, but I don't do Halloween decorations. It's just too many, too many seasonal changes. You know, you got to go from, you got to do the Halloween and then all of a sudden you're on to Thanksgiving and then Christmas is right around. It's just, that's just too much decor for me. I can't handle that.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And, Do you get trick-or-treaters all the way out there in the woods?

No, we don't get them at our house. We go to a different neighborhood for trick-or-treating. There's like one neighborhood basically that everybody goes to in King George, which is kind of fun because it's like very festive and everybody there decorates their houses and the kids see all their friends.

And I'm a big Halloween fan. It might be my favorite holiday just because it's so weird. Like it's so weird. It's very, like, socialist-y, too. You know, everyone's, like, very communal, and everyone's out having fun together and going to houses you'd never go to and seeing your friends and, you know, and the spooky element of, like, you get to dress up and who's that.

And I like all that stuff. I think it's fun.

In Vermont, the year that we lived there, they did this thing called trunk-or-treating. Do they do that anywhere in rural Virginia?

Yeah, that's big now. I'm not really a fan.

There was snow on the ground, so it's, like, crazy.

But then, yeah, everybody would go to this one parking lot in town and go from trunk to trunk.

And the sad part, it was over in like 20 minutes.

Yeah, exactly.

It was the same thing when I lived in New York in the city. You would go to a big apartment building and you would go like door to door.

And it was fine.

The kids, the thing that was fun for the kids is that they could kind of.

Go on their own.

And, you know, when you're normally in New York City, they can't really do anything on their own. So that was exciting for them. But it's just so charming to be outside and go to a house. When I lived in Louisville, there is one particular neighborhood that if you bought the house in the contract, it said you had to decorate for Halloween.

And it was these very sort of.

Like Victorian style, like creepy at night houses. And that was so charming. And like that felt very special.

Yeah.

So anyway, I like I.

Went trick or treating in last Halloween. I went trick or treating with a bunch of like families and kids in Brooklyn. And actually Zoran has announced that he's going to have like long citywide blocks that are like safe trick or treating zones that I think are going to be car free. So so I think that's pretty cool.

But the thing that the kids loved in Brooklyn is people would have baskets on ropes and they and they pulley with a rope. down from their balconies to the kids on the on the street level like candy and the kids love that they all jump in a circle and as it comes down um and the most seen costume in brooklyn was miss rachel there's a lot of miss rachel costumes i love that basically every mom was miss rachel in brooklyn that year um so i'll actually be in new york again so i'll be interested to see what the top costume is and if you guys have any thoughts or ideas on what The host of the show should be for the Halloween week. We have some ideas behind the scenes, but submit your own.

Well, I already.

Picked mine, but Sagar's still on the fence.

Sagar's trying to figure out his costume. So if you have any ideas for Sagar, submit one here. And we still have two more Friday shows before Halloween. So lots more Halloween topics potentially in the future. But that's going to do it for us this week. Thank you guys all, as always, for subscribing to the show. And we'll see you back here Monday morning.

Bye-bye.

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