Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/20/26: Epstein Billionaire Wexner Drops BOMBSHELLS, Iran War LOOMS, Dem Tea Party Gains Steam
20 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What are the latest developments regarding Trump's potential strikes on Iran?
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It goes. Excellent. It goes. Yes, we got a really busy show today, don't we?
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Chapter 2: How is Les Wexner connected to Jeffrey Epstein's legal troubles?
You know, the largest amount since the Iraq war. So everyone can see that a bunch of the leaks to Barack Ravid and others were saying, hey, they're actually preparing for this to be much larger than the 12 days war, potentially weeks long war. engagement.
Iran also is in a place where they've kind of realized like, hey, we did the kind of choreographed like we're going to hit you back, but not really. That obviously didn't work because we're still being threatened. So they're in a very different place in terms of how they're tactically and strategically thinking about this.
And, you know, the problem with this, I mean, outside of obviously like any act of war is it legal, both by our own laws and by international law, etc. But the problem with this tactically, too, is if you think that some sort of tactical strike on Iran is going to help coerce them at the negotiating table, the reality is the exact opposite.
They're going to walk away from the negotiating table, which this report lays out, by the way, if you hit them in any way. They're hoping that attacks from the U.S.
are going to create some sort of rally around the flag, like nationalistic fervor to help re-glue a country that has in some ways, you know, come apart over the past two months and that they'll be in a stronger position in terms of like the government's solidity.
So this plan, like in my opinion, all of the other plans makes no sense, especially when I still don't even know what Trump is really actually trying to accomplish here. Yes, exactly.
And it's a miscalculation probably in the sense that the previous moderates who had urged the kind of little tit-for-tat that you talked about, them carrying out in both the 12-Day War and also back in January when they first struck, all the people who advocated that have either been pushed out or killed by the actual attacks. And so they've been replaced by people who were warning at the time
that if we don't hit hard, we're just inviting further and endless attacks. So if Trump comes in with what he thinks is like a little gentle tap to like nudge them to some, to nudge them at the negotiating table, which is like just an absurd concept to begin with, but let's say that Trump tries that. They don't know that this is just a love tap. You know, they expect this to be the, you know,
Emptying of the barrel from this massive unprecedented unprecedented since the Iraq war armada that's hanging out in the Middle East. They think this might be the end. The hardliners who have who have come to power by the fact that we have brought them there would then be arguing to just fire everything. Like we're probably going down at this point. Just, you know, empty the cabinet.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Julie Gonzalez provide about her campaign against Hickenlooper?
Wanting a ceasefire. And again, to Ryan's points about the moderates versus the more hardline approach, the hardliners said we shouldn't agree to the ceasefire. We should continue hitting them. We should extract some more pain and assert ourselves more because otherwise they're just going to come back and attack us again. And guess what? They've been completely vindicated.
The hardliners have been completely vindicated by the approach and by the continued threats that we're making now. Right, because they could argue right now, and I'm sure that they are arguing internally, if you had listened to us and you had hit Israel for another week or another two weeks or another three weeks, yeah, we would have taken on more damage. But they were depleted.
They were on their back foot. We would have caused them the kind of damage that they're not used to. which would then give them, you know, second thoughts about doing this next time. Now, they're doing it with, you know, many times more American resources in the region. And so it may be possible.
Now, you know, we'll see, but it may be possible that Iran just doesn't have the capacity to push through all of those resources. But if they aim at, you know, closer areas, you know, American-linked bases in Iraq or, you know, Qatar or Dubai or Abu Dhabi, It's a little more difficult for the U.S. to intercept and play defense around there.
You have to go further to get to Israel, so that just gives us more opportunity to knock stuff out of the air. But yeah, you're exactly right. They are saying right now, we told you so. We told you that the only language that the U.S. and Israel understand is violence. Anything else shows weakness to them.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Ryan, you want to talk about what you what you guys are reporting out today about the Democratic side of this equation? Tell us about our opposition party. How are they doing? Yeah. Opposition party in quotes.
You may have noticed that other than a handful of members of Congress, including Ro Khanna, who has teamed up with Thomas Massey to push for a war powers resolution vote, which should come to the floor next week. There's been very little said publicly by Democrats against this, even during the Iraq war.
You had Democrats that were for it, but you had a lot of Democrats that were, you know, outspokenly against the Iraq war. You're not seeing much of that this time. So back in June, and this is what we'll be reporting later today over at Dropsite.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Wexner's testimony in the Epstein case?
And that's why they're basically just not saying anything. Right. Because there's a there's a cold logic to it. Like that logic in a completely cynical way doesn't really have any holes in it other than that it's evil and it's going to lead to, you know, could lead to untold lives being lost and tens of millions of victims. people living in a country that's completely destroyed.
But that doesn't factor into the cost benefit, you know, political calculations. Like, would it be better for the midterms if this happens for Democrats? Probably. And also, a lot of Democrats want it to happen anyway. They just can't. They just know that they don't have the kind of political will or the political support to carry it out. Wow.
And how deep does this support for this approach go in Democratic caucus? Are we talking about like a handful of the most hawkish members or is this kind of the conventional wisdom? It's hard to say, but if you look at... I think if you look at a vote on, you know, sending offensive weapons to Israel, for instance, and you get like a pretty sizable majority of Democrats supporting it still.
Like, I think that that's a pretty useful kind of proxy for how much support that remains for something like this. Which is interesting, Ryan, because that's different. Hi, everyone. That's different than Venezuela, right? Not exactly. A lot of these Democrats are happy to go to war with Venezuela, too. But they made process complaints. Sure. And they'll make process complaints again.
And they'll pin it on Trump publicly. But privately, are they actually that upset? I don't think so. I mean, obviously, there's a serious, like, anti-war base. And they have their representatives in the Senate and the House. But outside of that, you know, there's not a whole lot of squeamishness when it comes to using American power violently around the world.
Yeah.
And the timing is a little ironic after all of the Democrats just came to Munich for their foreign policy debuts to all of a sudden be radio silent on foreign policy is very interesting. Now, I know you're talking about more of a moderate sort of centrist wing of the party who thinks about this. But where are people like AOC and others who are considered the progressive left of the party?
It also seems like a little bit of radio silence from them. Is that true?
So. Like we can we can assume that AOC, of course, is against war with Iran. I haven't heard. I think she did say something about it in Munich, maybe. I mean, she's certainly against. Yeah. Like you can count her as like in the no column on this. But I certainly haven't seen her out there. as a vocal opponent, somebody making this like a significant issue.
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Chapter 5: How does the Democratic Party's leadership affect progressive candidates?
First is that actually what the government calls Operation Midnight Hammer didn't cause nuclear escalation. And the second point would be that those were strikes on nuclear sites. And what's likely to happen now is strikes on, according to the journal, government buildings, military facilities, that sort of thing, not a nuclear strike in particular.
I think when you're listening to Tucker Carlson, a head of Operation Midnight Hammer. A lot of the concern was specifically about striking nuclear sites. So there's that. But also, I think, because Midnight Hammer and then Maduro were... quick and targeted, as people say, there's just a little bit more... People feel like they have maybe some egg on their face, probably.
Privately, they'll probably still say, listen, So if this what happens, if there are strikes in the next couple of weeks, then how successful really was, quote unquote, Operation Midnight Hammer? That's an obvious question.
Yeah, I thought we got rid of the nukes.
Yeah, the goalposts just keep getting shifted. So, yes, but I think people are wary of coming out so hard and saying this will lead to nuclear war. This is almost certain to lead to nuclear escalation. And I think that's a lot of what was happening earlier in June. Still think that was correct, by the way. It didn't turn out that way. But the argument is that the possibility was intolerably high.
And just because nobody said it was 100 percent possibility. Well, maybe somebody did, but most people weren't saying it was 100 percent possibility. So it Just because you have 10 percent or 20 percent that it won't lead to the end of the world. That's not sure I'm taking those odds. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know if you guys listen to Sager with with Andrew Schultz on this, but he was saying, look, basically the anti-war faction or the more restrained faction within the administration has been completely cowed. Like they've been you know, they're they've either given up or they're They're just on board at this point.
And the the fact that the 12 day war and the Venezuela strikes were seen as these like grand successes has basically led to them keeping their mouth shut. And then the other piece, I think, is, you know, one of the voices and I, you know, it's not someone I give a lot of credit to, but one of the voices leading up to the Iran war was. who was opposed to it was Charlie Kirk.
And, you know, he's been killed. He's taken off of the chessboard in terms of someone who had access, who could be pushing some of those messages and was, you know, was Radisson at least in the buildup to Iran. So. So, yeah, I think they've been effectively cowed.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does Senator Gonzalez face in her campaign?
We got a lot more that we can let you know about if, you know, your crazy president does attack us. How much credence do you put in that? Is that just bluster or do you think there could be some substance behind it? So Handala is the hacking group that originally got access to Ehud Barak's inbox.
It ended up getting leaked to this nonprofit, Distributed Denial of Secrets, which made it available to news organizations, including us. And we were able to do a significant amount of our early reporting based on that hack. It is often said that Handala is linked to the Iranian government.
It's never been proven, but it's like one of those things where like all of these ā there's like the hacker group that's associated with the U.S. There's a hacker group that's associated with Russia. There's a hacker group that's associated with the Israelis. This is the one that people think of as like associated with the Iranians.
So the Ayatollah may have been briefed that they did, if that's true, that they played a role in getting some of this information out. We also know, according to the warrant that was used to search John Bolton's house, according to that warrant, Iran hacked his AOL account like three times.
And one of the things, uh, and the reason that they were searching him is that he was keeping, according to this warrant, classified intelligence on his AOL account. Um, Many such cases. It's very easy to hack an AOL account. I mean, having an AOL account to begin with is embarrassing. Like forgot password. You know, done. You're in. You're in.
And so the Iranians, according to our own, you know, DOJ, are sitting on at least John Bolton's inbox. God only knows. This guy's been involved in every... you know, piece of American shenanigan for decades. Like, God only knows what's in there. So, and what else have they hacked?
Like, like what other, they have claimed to have, you know, all manner of like information about the Israeli government, Israeli politicians, American, like, so that, that, that's what they're alluding to. They are also like, A staggeringly kind of conservative country when it comes to their what they do.
Like if you look at the kind of conservative responses that they've had to the attacks every time that they had, they seem to have had that Barack inbox for a very long time before it was leaked, if it was them that had it. Interesting. Because like the time that it stops. There's many years before then, between the last email and when it finally gets made public. So why don't we have another?
According to the FBI, they have Bolton's inbox. Why have they not released that? I don't know. So that seems to be what... He's referring to there. Imagine being Trump, being the president of the United States, being in the Epstein files like a million times and that we know of. And then knowing that Israel has all of that information.
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Chapter 7: What strategies are being discussed for addressing immigration reform?
The big ones. I think it's Tylenol, isn't it? Tylenol. She wants her blood nice and thin.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
Well, if Iran or the Ayatollah have any info, Ryan at DropSiteNews.com.
No, I'm not soliciting any information from any designated terrorist organizations whatsoever, to be very clear. That's...
Maybe I'll start an AOL account. I'm starting a new AOL account. And everyone can access it from there.
Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America is at a breaking point.
Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.
to be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying.
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Chapter 8: How do the guests view the future of Democratic leadership in Colorado?
We've got a few clips from that right here, including one Ryan wanted to start with about a Roman embassy and an exchange with his lawyer. Let's take a listen.
Look at that pleather vest. I'd be walking out with forks and spoons. Gee, that's a good idea. We ought to have an inventory. There was a I hired a lady to be like the house manager who had run the U.S. Embassy in Rome and said, yeah, I know how to do this. And I said, well, why don't we keep inventories of stuff? And she said, yeah, I could do that. So she did that.
That's kind of a puny example, but I wouldn't have had the idea. But then all the things were inventoried. That wasn't work for me or Jeffrey. It was just regularly done.
And for those just listening on the podcast, Les Wexner's lawyer leans in and whispers in his ear, I will fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words.
I sort of appreciate Wexner's response to that, too, which is to laugh. Yeah. Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, but let this man cook. So that part of it went viral. What a lot of people didn't notice was what led into it. Let's unpack that for a second. If you are somebody who has even dipped your toes in...
history of the U.S., you know, post-World War II, or even ever seen a Jason Bourne movie. Like, what happens when you hear the words embassy in Rome? Like, that is the locusts Of the CIA's operations when it comes to working with organized crime, all of it's espionage. That's where it projects power to the Middle East. It's work with terrorist organizations.
It's work with drug trafficking, arms trafficking. Like, that embassy in Rome, that is the hub of, like, all of it. That is... like to hear like alarm bells are going off in everybody's mind. Who's like, here's the embassy of Rome.
So Jeffrey, according to Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein had the woman who ran the logistics for the U S embassy in Rome, which is also like, this is the CIA's hub of his operations in this entire region and moved her to Wexner's mansion to count his forks and knives. to do an inventory of his forks and knives. I see nothing wrong with this. I mean, you're not going to get anybody better at logistics.
It just feels like anti-Italian bias to me, to be honest with you, Ryan, this whole approach. It's so, like, try to think of who is doing logistics and operations for the U.S. embassy in Rome. Like, this is somebody who is read in on the deepest secrets of U.S. espionage. Like that's the person that Epstein suggested to Wexner run his operation. Yeah.
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