Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have Crystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do big day here in DC where we
Speaker 1: are expecting the former president Trump to appear in a
Speaker 1: courthouse right here, not too far from the studios to
Speaker 1: give you all of the details that about that and
Speaker 1: everything that we know thus far.
Speaker 3: Also some big economic news one of.
Speaker 1: The major credit rating agencies downgrading the credit of the
Speaker 1: United States of America. Will tell you about that, and
Speaker 1: also about the Biden White House's reaction. We have reporting
Speaker 1: on an interesting meeting between former President Obama and current
Speaker 1: President Biden, with Obama apparently sounding the alarm that Trump
Speaker 1: is a lot politically stronger than Democrats have maybe been thinking.
Speaker 1: So we will take you inside all of that. And
Speaker 1: we also have MSNBC kind of freaking out about the
Speaker 1: Cornell West presidential bid and how black voters will do
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party, what they will do, who they will.
Speaker 3: Vote for this year.
Speaker 1: We've got some news from the New York Times even
Speaker 1: they are admitting that the Ukraine counter offensive not going well.
Speaker 1: And big sit down interview between Devin Archer. That's that
Speaker 1: dude who was Hunter Biden's former business partner. He sat
Speaker 1: down with Tucker Carlson. Very interesting stuff there and very
Speaker 1: excited to have a panel joining us this morning. Both
Speaker 1: sides of the case in terms of the Trump indictments.
Speaker 1: We've got someone who says this is a violation of
Speaker 1: free speech. They're going after him for wrong thing. We've
Speaker 1: got someone who says, no, this is justified. So we'll
Speaker 1: get into all of that and attempt to have a
Speaker 1: very nuanced conversation about the legal analysis of these latest
Speaker 1: Trump in Diamondcycer Before we get to any of that, though,
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Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, so let's get to the big news today, which,
Speaker 1: as I said, former President Trump appearing in court once
Speaker 1: again here in DC. Expectation is that we'll start at
Speaker 1: four pm today. Let's put this up on the screen
Speaker 1: from the Guardian headline here Donald Trump to appear in
Speaker 1: court over attempt to overturn twenty twenty US election. They
Speaker 1: give you a sense in this article. Let's go to
Speaker 1: the next piece of exactly what to expect. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are mostly perfunctory. We probably won't get anything particularly
Speaker 1: new here.
Speaker 3: They say. Prosecutors in Washington will outline.
Speaker 1: For conspiracy and obstruction counts and a judge will set
Speaker 1: bail conditions in the latest criminal case involving the ex
Speaker 1: president weeks after he was charged with putting government secrets
Speaker 1: at risk.
Speaker 3: They also say, of course, this.
Speaker 1: Is Trump's third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant,
Speaker 1: and in a possible preview of Trump's defense, his lawyer
Speaker 1: John Laura has called the indictment quote an attack on
Speaker 1: free speech and political advocacy, implying Trump's lies about election
Speaker 1: fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, we are going to have a
Speaker 1: panel on to debate the legal piece of this, and
Speaker 1: one of the individuals we're going to have on is
Speaker 1: certainly going to be making that case that this was
Speaker 1: all about free speech, and we've got someone on to make.
Speaker 3: The other side of that as well.
Speaker 1: The judge in the case has gotten a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: This is an Obama appointee who has handed down some
Speaker 1: pretty harsh sentences in terms of January sixth defendants. She
Speaker 1: also actually ruled against Trump in a separate January sixth case.
Speaker 1: She refused to his request to block the release of
Speaker 1: documents to a House committee investigating the January sixth attack.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you all remember following that and
Speaker 1: in what the Guardian describes as a memorable line from
Speaker 1: her ruling. The judge wrote, presidents are not kings, and
Speaker 1: plaintiff is not presidents. So, like I said, Sager, not
Speaker 1: expecting anything super traumatic today. It's not even one hundred
Speaker 1: percent certain that Trump is actually going to appear in court.
Speaker 3: There is some possibility.
Speaker 1: That it'll be via zoom, but DC seems to be
Speaker 1: certainly preparing for him to be here.
Speaker 2: They are prepping for it. I can tell you the
Speaker 2: city's been kind of on edge. I keep hearing people,
Speaker 2: especially neighbor if anyone uses the ring app like neighbors
Speaker 2: people are always like there's helicopters down in downtown. Yeah.
Speaker 2: People are always on watch, And I'm like, relaxed everyone.
Speaker 2: I think we'll know whenever we know. It's Washington, it's
Speaker 2: not like we don't have presidence for presidents. Of all
Speaker 2: those people rolling around here. I actually found it's not
Speaker 2: the immediate court proceedings, but now the current timeline of
Speaker 2: Trump's legal drama to be one of the most insane
Speaker 2: things on a political level. Let's put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. This was assembled by Fox News, so
Speaker 2: as you can see Thursday, that's today. We've got the
Speaker 2: jan six court appearance. August twenty third is the first
Speaker 2: GOP debate, which current indication seem he's going to skip it.
Speaker 2: October two, then you've got the Trump Organization civil suit
Speaker 2: that will proceed in court. Then January fifteenth, you have
Speaker 2: the Iowa Caucuses. The exact same day, there's a civil
Speaker 2: defamation suit, the continuing suit of Egene Carroll. Then a
Speaker 2: pyramid scheme class action.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know about that one, So that.
Speaker 2: One I also did not know about. March fifth, I've
Speaker 2: heard of this one, it's called Super Tuesday. Then March
Speaker 2: twenty fifth the New York State criminal hush money lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Then March twentieth, the classified documents trial, then July fifteenth,
Speaker 2: the Republican National Convention and election day November fifth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. And this just underscores what is going to
Speaker 2: be with the biggest element all of this is the
Speaker 2: political drama layered on top of the legal problems. We
Speaker 2: don't yet have a trial date set for this, so
Speaker 2: remember this is going to be somewhere in that timeline, Crystal,
Speaker 2: and just the true insanity. I mean, you and I
Speaker 2: have said this on the documents. Listen. I think it
Speaker 2: was charged relatively in a timely manner with this one.
Speaker 2: They took two and a half years, almost three years
Speaker 2: to bring this case now against Trump, and now we're
Speaker 2: thrown into this insane situation where, you know, very likely
Speaker 2: the most legal jeopardy really that he faces here on
Speaker 2: this case just because of the you know, not exactly
Speaker 2: friendly judge and not exactly a friendly jury in terms
Speaker 2: of facing jail time. When are we gonna find this out?
Speaker 2: Are we gonna find out before Super Tuesday or not?
Speaker 2: Because that seems pretty damn relevant if it happens after
Speaker 2: Super Tuesday. Look, current indications he's gonna wrap this thing
Speaker 2: up on that day in terms of at least look,
Speaker 2: everybody always usually knows by that time whether you're on
Speaker 2: the path to the nomination or not, unless it's a
Speaker 2: very very tightly held election. I'm going to try to
Speaker 2: think in modern memory, I think the last time that
Speaker 2: things really got clenched up post Super Tuesday was probably
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety. So let's just put that there.
Speaker 2: If we know then he's on a dramatic path, then
Speaker 2: we are on the collision course to one of those
Speaker 2: most insane outcomes where he gets convicted, then we have
Speaker 2: what an immediate kick of the case to Scotus. Imagine
Speaker 2: in the final days of the election, you know, ahead
Speaker 2: Trump gets convicted, Scotis vacates it like it vacates a
Speaker 2: conviction or upholds a conviction. Either is an insane outcome
Speaker 2: that could lead to who the hell knows what. In
Speaker 2: terms of the argument pre election, it looks like it
Speaker 2: makes a comy press conference and all that look like
Speaker 2: like the total JV squad compared to the drama we
Speaker 2: are setting ourselves up for, is just absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1: I mean, any hope that not that I had any
Speaker 1: hope that this election was going to be about policy issues.
Speaker 1: It's because neither Biden or Trump is really running on
Speaker 1: any policy issues. So it's not going to be about that.
Speaker 1: It's going to be about this timeline. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the whole of what this election season is going to
Speaker 1: be about. I mean, in my opinion, Trump's already all
Speaker 1: but sewn up the Republican nominy. It's going to be
Speaker 1: very difficult to come from behind for any of these candidates,
Speaker 1: and you know, for him, as a non incumbent, to
Speaker 1: have the sizeable lead he has at this point, it's
Speaker 1: just hard to see how how anyone makes that come back.
Speaker 1: And you know, keep in mind with this timeline too,
Speaker 1: this is not fully fleshed down, like we still have
Speaker 1: the trial for these January six related charges, We still
Speaker 1: have whatever is going to happen in Georgia and whenever
Speaker 1: that trial is going to be scheduled, So between now
Speaker 1: an election day, there is going to just be a
Speaker 1: lot of legal news about.
Speaker 2: All of this.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was thinking about the timeline piece
Speaker 1: on the document's part. That makes sense to me how
Speaker 1: the timeline unfolded. They were trying to get the documents back.
Speaker 1: They were actually trying not to use the criminal you know,
Speaker 1: justice process, but he was so uncooperative that ultimately their
Speaker 1: hand was forced that one.
Speaker 3: This one.
Speaker 1: I don't know why Merrick Garland doesn't appoint a special
Speaker 1: council on day one.
Speaker 3: Now, since Jack if.
Speaker 2: He believed it right, if he believed that this was
Speaker 2: worth a criminal.
Speaker 1: So Jack Smith, since he was handed the case, that
Speaker 1: timeline from when he got it to this outcome is
Speaker 1: you know, relatively expeditious. I don't know what Merret Garland
Speaker 1: was doing for the first like year and a half
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration. I really genuinely don't understand, and
Speaker 1: to me, you know this that really doesn't serve anyone,
Speaker 1: regardless of how you feel about President. I saw Chris
Speaker 1: Hayes on I'm SMBC saying the same thing, like, you
Speaker 1: had enough time for the Senate to come up with
Speaker 1: their whole thing and you know, make their whole presentation,
Speaker 1: and for Congress to at least have some you know,
Speaker 1: assembling of the facts. What took so long to launch
Speaker 1: this investigation when we all saw January sixth unfold, Like
Speaker 1: there was enough already on the public record to say
Speaker 1: this at least bears some investigating. So I do think
Speaker 1: that it was a disservice to the American people to
Speaker 1: wait so long. Now, that doesn't mean that I think
Speaker 1: the I personally, from my analysis as a non legal
Speaker 1: person looking at the charges, I think they're appropriate. I
Speaker 1: think just Trump deserves to be held accountable for trying
Speaker 1: to steal the election. I think it is a horrible
Speaker 1: look to see all of the people who like stormed
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January six go in to prison and
Speaker 1: the guy who fomented and created the conditions that led
Speaker 1: to that whole situation getting off Scott free.
Speaker 3: So I don't oppose the charges.
Speaker 1: But I am confused and do think that the timeline,
Speaker 1: you know, has created a even more fraught, chaotic, tense
Speaker 1: situation than we had to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, and I think that's what I
Speaker 2: would try to say. I still have a lot of
Speaker 2: questions around the free speech one. I genuinely do want
Speaker 2: to see it adjudicated because I want to see how
Speaker 2: that actually how it matters in terms of elected officials
Speaker 2: and in terms of like what you can and cannot
Speaker 2: say and what it means whenever terms the criminal law.
Speaker 2: And I think it is a legitimate and important point.
Speaker 2: So I'm luckily because it's Trump, we will actually get
Speaker 2: that dunicated in terms of court. Now on the political side,
Speaker 2: I just can't get over it. It's like, you can't
Speaker 2: wait two and a half almost three years after the
Speaker 2: event to charge somebody. You can't decide not to charge
Speaker 2: the guy. Effectively, what's been coming out Crystal is they
Speaker 2: decided not to try argin kind of by Merrick Garland.
Speaker 2: Then he kicks the case in some weird way to
Speaker 2: Jack Smith, even though Jack Smith was a point for
Speaker 2: the document's case but like anything Trump related will just
Speaker 2: kick it to you and then Jack Smith suddenly like
Speaker 2: expeditionally puts it. If you read the indictment, all of
Speaker 2: the evidence that was to gather before there has been
Speaker 2: available for what three months, six months or whatever after
Speaker 2: the fact, all the emails, everything is actually a pre
Speaker 2: January six, twenty twenty one. So I mean, look, if
Speaker 2: you look at that and then check the timeline, there
Speaker 2: is just no question that if you're a Republican, you
Speaker 2: can't look at this and be like this is the
Speaker 2: most politically convenient timing ever, like right whenever he's surging.
Speaker 2: How about during the Biden situation. I mean, look, these
Speaker 2: I think these are legitimate points. I will say, like
Speaker 2: on our show, we've got both, We've got Trump and
Speaker 2: Archer here, but you know you and I know this,
Speaker 2: like Fox is not going to be talking about both,
Speaker 2: and neither is MSNBCO. So that vast majority of people
Speaker 2: in this country are going to be imbibing like kind
Speaker 2: of one narrative on this, and I can I can
Speaker 2: actually understand really for specifically a lot of these Trump
Speaker 2: voters are like, hey, this is BS, this is political,
Speaker 2: this isn't real. There's a reason they don't really use
Speaker 2: that on the document's case because it's so indefensible. But
Speaker 2: I think they've actually opened themselves up for where's all,
Speaker 2: like you said, for people who do believe that Trump
Speaker 2: should be charged and criminally liable for January sixth, to
Speaker 2: use that political attack against the genuine merits of the
Speaker 2: case because they didn't conduct themselves in a timely enough manner.
Speaker 2: And actually Trump could possibly argue that much of this
Speaker 2: in court as well, like what exactly took so long?
Speaker 1: I don't see how that's a I don't see how
Speaker 1: that's a valid defense.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing from what I read is that because
Speaker 2: he's going to have the impaneled defense and the ability
Speaker 2: to subpoena, he will you be able to use subpoena
Speaker 2: power to actually subpoena some of the investigators and other
Speaker 2: folks if you can use and mount a defense around
Speaker 2: the political timing and around the free speech aspect to
Speaker 2: his defense in order terms of getting people like a deposition.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I don't the timing of it.
Speaker 1: I don't really see how that works as a defense
Speaker 1: other than in the political realm. And look, I think
Speaker 1: that that definitely sells with Republicans. They don't think that
Speaker 1: these charges are justified anyway. Does it sell with independence
Speaker 1: and any.
Speaker 3: Sort of persuadable voters.
Speaker 1: I don't really think so, because this does get to
Speaker 1: the core of what people really despise about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But if they were you thinking of not voting for him,
Speaker 1: like this is this is one of the core reasons
Speaker 1: why the chaos, the willingness. One thing that comes across
Speaker 1: in this indictment is just like the casual approach to
Speaker 1: creating total mayhem. You've got this Justice Department official who's
Speaker 1: like casually like, yeah, there'll be riots in every city
Speaker 1: in the country if we do this, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what the Insurrection Act is for it. So I personally
Speaker 1: don't know that the timing piece really sells as a
Speaker 1: political argument for Trump that's going to be persuadable. People
Speaker 1: can hold two thoughts in their head, and this is
Speaker 1: what the polling has showed thus far with the Document's case,
Speaker 1: with the Alvin Bragg case, they both feel like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of political these charges. Also we think he
Speaker 1: did it and we think it's serious is real, So
Speaker 1: you know, I think that they're the overwhelm based on
Speaker 1: pulling the overwhelming majority people feel like Donald Trump committed
Speaker 1: crimes with regards to trying to overturn the election, and
Speaker 1: just on the free speech part.
Speaker 3: Jack Smith goes out.
Speaker 1: Of his way in this indictment to say, listen, he's
Speaker 1: allowed to say the election is stolen. I'm not going
Speaker 1: after him for that. He is allowed to take these
Speaker 1: claims to court, which he did, okay, and basically you know,
Speaker 1: didn't have any success there whatsoever because there was no
Speaker 1: there there. But he was allowed to do that. None
Speaker 1: of that is criminal. What you can't do is then
Speaker 1: use those lies to perpetrate a fraud that involves you know,
Speaker 1: these seven states of fake elector schemes and you pressuring
Speaker 1: Mike Pence to try to overturn the results and obstruct
Speaker 1: quote unquote official government proceeding. That's what you can't do.
Speaker 1: And that is the case that we're going to make
Speaker 1: in court. So listen, we're going to have both sides
Speaker 1: of that coin argued in our panel today. So look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing what the legal experts have to say
Speaker 1: about that. But to me, the idea that the Republican
Speaker 1: talking point about, oh this violet's free speech, it almost
Speaker 1: seems pre baked and like they had this locked and
Speaker 1: loaded before they really absorbed the details of the indictment.
Speaker 1: Most just my humble opinion. Let's go ahead and get
Speaker 1: to one of the other interesting was kind of a mystery,
Speaker 1: but maybe not so much of a mystery anymore pieces
Speaker 1: of this indictment, which is, who are these six unindicted
Speaker 1: co conspirators. Let's put this up on the screen. From
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, they say six co conspirators described Trump's
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election indictment. Descriptions in the document indicate that
Speaker 1: they are former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump
Speaker 1: lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesbro, and former
Speaker 1: Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. They at this point said
Speaker 1: a sixth person has described as a political consultant whose
Speaker 1: identity is unclear. Well, I think we now know who
Speaker 1: that political consultant actually was. We got some reporting from
Speaker 1: the New York Times, go and put a four up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Looks like the political consultant was Boris Epstein,
Speaker 1: based on some emails that he sent back and forth.
Speaker 1: I think with Rudy Giuliani and the role that he
Speaker 1: is known to have played in terms of the fake
Speaker 1: elector's scheme and election conspiracy. So looks like we have
Speaker 1: all six of the unindicted co conspirators sort of identified
Speaker 1: in terms of their roles matches up with what's already
Speaker 1: been publicly reported. Just to remind you some of the
Speaker 1: you know, some of what was going on with these
Speaker 1: folks at the time. We played this sound recently because
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani is actually being sued for defamation of two
Speaker 1: election workers that he just out and lied about.
Speaker 3: And I can say that, you know, flatly as.
Speaker 1: A statement of fact at this point, because even Rudy
Speaker 1: Giuliani at this point has admitted that he lied about
Speaker 1: these two election workers down in Georgia. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to some of what he was saying about them.
Speaker 4: Quite obviously surreptitiously passing around us B ports as if
Speaker 4: their vials of heroino cookee day. I mean, it's obvious
Speaker 4: to anyone who's a criminal investigator or prosecutor they are
Speaker 4: engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again that day, and that's
Speaker 4: a week ago, and they're still walking around Georgia.
Speaker 1: Why he repeated this crap over and over. They were
Speaker 1: passing mints back and forth. It was like immediately debunked.
Speaker 1: And he has now admitted that he was just out
Speaker 1: and outlying about these regular people who were trying to
Speaker 1: like do their civic duty. Many of you will recall
Speaker 1: some of the comments and interviews of Trump lawyer former
Speaker 1: Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. This particular instance was at a
Speaker 1: press conference where she was laying out some fairly wild
Speaker 1: claims that turned out to be obviously not true about
Speaker 1: the way that this alleged fraud was all perpetrated on.
Speaker 3: The America public. Let's say to listen to that.
Speaker 5: What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more
Speaker 5: by the day, is the massive influence of communist money
Speaker 5: through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China in the interference with
Speaker 5: our elections here in the United States.
Speaker 1: So the Venezuela theory of the case with the indictments, yes,
Speaker 1: according to the indictment, even Trump said, sounded crazy.
Speaker 2: Venezuelan Chinese dominions. My personal favorite theories of stop disci.
Speaker 3: I liked the bamboo ballots.
Speaker 2: I guess that, yeah, that's from Arizona. That one that
Speaker 2: one's actually quite excellent. Yeah, there's there's many schools of
Speaker 2: stop the steal. These are all my personal favorites because
Speaker 2: they're real, that's what actual voters in Trump. Maybe Trump
Speaker 2: didn't believe per se at least from what we see
Speaker 2: in the indictment, but he's certainly made other people believe it.
Speaker 2: I can tell you that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what comes through in the co
Speaker 2: Conspirators is there has actually been a lot of regal
Speaker 2: legal wrangling, specifically around John Eastman and whether he was
Speaker 2: responsible or whether he should be criminally charged or disbarred
Speaker 2: for like this scheme, but more troubling, I think the
Speaker 2: most worst one to me was actually Jeffrey Clark, the
Speaker 2: acting Attorney General, around the actual push by Trump and
Speaker 2: by Jeffrey Clark to try and use the power of
Speaker 2: the federal government in order to try and take this
Speaker 2: to a whole other step, which would have been the
Speaker 2: actual intervention of the DOJ in like seizing ballot boxes
Speaker 2: and trying to like officially like spark investigations based though
Speaker 2: on completely spurious claims. So if you put those together,
Speaker 2: Epstein and Juliani, sorry Juliani, Eastman and Jeffrey Clark all
Speaker 2: seem to be like the three centers of the most
Speaker 2: nefarious plot. Sidney Powell. I mean, she comes across in
Speaker 2: the indictment and also at the time it's just completely nuts,
Speaker 2: like out of her mind, so much so that even
Speaker 2: the people in the room were like, what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? And it's funny because even Mike Pence took
Speaker 2: a shot at Sidney Powell after the indictment came out.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, the President surrounded himself by all these
Speaker 2: crackpot lawyers. Yeah, I think we all know exactly who
Speaker 2: he was referring to. So the other final thing mentioned
Speaker 2: this in our immediate breakdown in the indictment press conference
Speaker 2: by Jack Smith, he said, this will not stop our
Speaker 2: co andtuing and investigation of individuals. So these are not
Speaker 2: necessarily the last of the co conspirators. Yes, there are
Speaker 2: others who may still be. I still think Mike Lindell. Look,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't wish this on Mike Lindell, but
Speaker 2: I'm like, the man has had his hands in so
Speaker 2: many things and be in funding so many types of things.
Speaker 2: Him and then the Overstock CEO guy I forget is
Speaker 2: Patrick something those two because they were funding different schemes
Speaker 2: and things like this. They might have put themselves on
Speaker 2: some serious legal jeopardy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is true.
Speaker 1: The other question people are asking is why isn't Mark
Speaker 1: Meadows anywhere? Its incitement and you know, one of the
Speaker 1: theories about him is he may have already flipped.
Speaker 3: That might be why he is not president.
Speaker 1: In this indictment, there's also a lot of speculation about
Speaker 1: why these particular individuals were in there. Perhaps it's put
Speaker 1: pressure on them to try to cooperate.
Speaker 3: Try to strike some sort of deal.
Speaker 1: This is all just speculation, but those are the sorts
Speaker 1: of tactics that could be used. You know. With regard
Speaker 1: to Sidney Powell, her claims were so wild that after
Speaker 1: I think it was pretty close after that press conference
Speaker 1: that I just showed you where she was an official
Speaker 1: part of the team, she got pulled from being an
Speaker 1: official part of the team. And we know from the
Speaker 1: indictment that Trump was even saying privately like she sounds crazy.
Speaker 1: But she continued to be really central and certainly was
Speaker 1: publicly making the case, but also was deeply involved in
Speaker 1: a bunch of the meetings that were happening at the
Speaker 1: White House. And there's a whole bunch of reporting about
Speaker 1: how wild things were then, where some of the aids
Speaker 1: were trying to keep people like Sidney.
Speaker 3: Powell and Mike Lindell or whatever out of.
Speaker 1: The White House and Trump was having them in anyway,
Speaker 1: and there were, you know, a bunch of battles over
Speaker 1: what was going on there. But you know this is
Speaker 1: these are the folks that the government has at this
Speaker 1: point identified as.
Speaker 3: Sort of central to the plot.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure they are all in a very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: position right now based on their.
Speaker 2: Ac certainly, that's right. All right, let's talk about credit.
Speaker 2: A pretty crazy story going on with this, Actually, Crystal
Speaker 2: was all happening at the exact same moment as the indictment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when it broke, it kind of was overshadowed, But if
Speaker 2: you've been following the business press, yeah, interestingly enough. That's
Speaker 2: a good point. So let's go ahead and actually put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen about the actual downgrading
Speaker 2: of the US debt by Fitch. Their credit rating was
Speaker 2: downgraded at the exact moment actually of the overall indictment,
Speaker 2: from triple A down to double A plus. You might
Speaker 2: be asking, like, why does that matter, But it's the
Speaker 2: outlook for the twenty five trillion dollar treasury markets. And
Speaker 2: actually a representative from Fitch appeared on Business TV in
Speaker 2: order to break all of this down. Here's what he said.
Speaker 7: When it comes to the argument about governance and responsibility,
Speaker 7: government responsibility, why not I know you referenced January sixth
Speaker 7: as part of this call. Why not do this a
Speaker 7: couple of years ago?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I think again, like the debt and
Speaker 8: the fiscal burden, we've seen a pretty steady deterioration and
Speaker 8: governance over the last couple of decades, and I think
Speaker 8: that you can highlight a few key elements. One would
Speaker 8: be the January six But secondly, I think important importantly
Speaker 8: for US is the constant greatmanship surrounding the debt ceiling.
Speaker 8: The debt ceiling to be the fact that the government
Speaker 8: both sides, Republicans and Democrats haven't been able to come
Speaker 8: up with kind of meaningful long term solutions to deal
Speaker 8: with growing fiscal issues, especially around in title.
Speaker 9: And program so security and medicare.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think these are the talget things that
Speaker 8: highlight the importance of the governments and also the inability
Speaker 8: of the government.
Speaker 9: In both parties to come up with some kind of solution.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting, Crystal, This is the first downgrade of
Speaker 2: US debt since twenty eleven during the debt ceiling standoffs,
Speaker 2: where standards and poors actually knocked us one knob down
Speaker 2: below top grade. And the point that you actual she
Speaker 2: just made is very important is that the pitch, I mean,
Speaker 2: he's framing it in terms of fiscal but at the
Speaker 2: core of what they said in their statement around the
Speaker 2: downgroad of US debt was we feel like the American
Speaker 2: governance system is brittle and will allow things to fall
Speaker 2: through the cracks such that we cannot rely entirely and
Speaker 2: fully upon the American political system to be one hundred
Speaker 2: percent behind its debts. While I don't think that as
Speaker 2: true in practice, as in like with the debt ceilings standoff,
Speaker 2: eventually we did figure something out, we got something pass
Speaker 2: like whatever, and we always do seem to have it happen.
Speaker 2: In the end. We are still playing chicken though with
Speaker 2: our full faith credit and debt. But beyond that, they
Speaker 2: don't just point to the debt ceiling. They point to
Speaker 2: the overall system of like can you deal with irreconcilable
Speaker 2: issues or not even irreconcilable. Can you deal with like
Speaker 2: very tough, long standing problems coalitions sit down and actually
Speaker 2: talk to each other when that has broken down so
Speaker 2: much that they look at it that they feel like
Speaker 2: that can't be evolved, not only now, but long time
Speaker 2: in the future. They're onto something there. They're not wrong, they.
Speaker 1: Are not wrong, and and they point to January sixth
Speaker 1: as I think the foremost symbol of those reconcilable difference
Speaker 1: is the fact that you have, you know, a significant
Speaker 1: part of the population that doesn't even accept the results
Speaker 1: of this election, that you have the interests of the
Speaker 1: two political parties are you know, have very much diverged,
Speaker 1: and that there is so little ability even just to
Speaker 1: do like the basics of government at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't say that they're wrong. And then the other
Speaker 1: piece that I would say, and of course the Biden
Speaker 1: administration is very offended by this downgrade.
Speaker 3: It does make them look terrible.
Speaker 1: And look, it's not all their fault, like the Republicans
Speaker 1: are the assholes that took the country hostage to start with,
Speaker 1: But the Biden administration decided instead of taking the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling off the table forever that they were going to
Speaker 1: play this game, and so that means that we are
Speaker 1: set up for indefinite taking situations from here on out.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Sure, in the past, at the very last minute, these
Speaker 1: things have.
Speaker 3: Always been resolved.
Speaker 1: They've always figured out some way to avoid completely going
Speaker 1: over the cliff. But it only takes one time a
Speaker 1: failing to do that, a playing chicken, and you know,
Speaker 1: one side taking a little too seriously and actually pushing
Speaker 1: us over the edge for.
Speaker 3: It to be a complete catastrophe.
Speaker 1: So you know, I mean knocking it down a notch,
Speaker 1: saying listen, we still have a lot of faith in
Speaker 1: the US government to stand behind its debt, but we
Speaker 1: don't have one hundred percent faith.
Speaker 3: I think that's pretty reasonable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you referenced Biden's the Biden statements. Put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. Here was the statement from
Speaker 2: Karijian Pierre quote. We strongly disagree with this decision. The
Speaker 2: ratings model used by Fitch declined under President Trump and
Speaker 2: then improved under President Biden. It defies reality to downgrade
Speaker 2: the United States at a time when President Biden has
Speaker 2: delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.
Speaker 2: And it's clear that extremes by Republican officials, from cheerleading
Speaker 2: default to undermining government's democracy. Just seeking to extend deficit
Speaker 2: busting tax giveaways for the wealthy is continuing to threaten
Speaker 2: our economy. I mean the part that begs belief here
Speaker 2: is the whole President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery
Speaker 2: of any major economy in the world. You know, they're
Speaker 2: continuing to stick with this freaking Bidenomics narrative. And listen.
Speaker 2: I mean, they can try and point their finger at
Speaker 2: the Republicans all they want, here's the truth. They have
Speaker 2: just as much of a you know, as a role
Speaker 2: in systemic problems in the US economy as in the
Speaker 2: Republican officials. If you listen to what Fitch and them said,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just about the debt ceiling and about January
Speaker 2: sixth or any of that. Really what it was is
Speaker 2: that it comes down to the actual fundamentals of our
Speaker 2: economy and something that we talked a lot about everything
Speaker 2: about this a lot. What went wrong for Biden and
Speaker 2: the entire first year of his presidency is just one
Speaker 2: of the biggest own goals in my opinion, and like
Speaker 2: modern presidential history, he was elected for one simple reason,
Speaker 2: which was to be normal and to not be Trump.
Speaker 2: And then one of the things that he almost immediately
Speaker 2: did was continue to go down not only mask mandates,
Speaker 2: vaccine mandates, but finally the problem of inflation was not
Speaker 2: a problem that he tried to tackle until almost eighteen
Speaker 2: months into his presidency. We had shipping problems. Almost immediately,
Speaker 2: the economy was going haywire. That's actually whenever things start
Speaker 2: to win to go negative for him. It was pushed
Speaker 2: fully over the cliff on Afghanistan because it was like
Speaker 2: a physical manifestation of failures. But I think that all
Speaker 2: came down from a vibe of like things are falling apart.
Speaker 2: And then eventually we get to the invasion of Ukraine
Speaker 2: and that's where things really take a dive for him.
Speaker 2: But on the economic piece, totally, you could view it
Speaker 2: from many different angles, but he didn't make it a
Speaker 2: priority of his administration those first nine months, and by
Speaker 2: doing that, he lost the whole country. And look, you know,
Speaker 2: you can say, oh, well, the masks in the back,
Speaker 2: I'm saying when you combine all of that together, it
Speaker 2: clearly eventually came to October of twenty twenty one, where
Speaker 2: things went off a cliff for him, approval rating wise,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that's an accident. I really think
Speaker 2: that it all comes back to the economy, and he
Speaker 2: has lost people since then. And actually, you know, he
Speaker 2: could have put himself in a position imagine how popular
Speaker 2: he would be if he had actually gotten something done.
Speaker 2: If he'd the lower gas prices, you know, in those
Speaker 2: first nine months, if he'd actually attacked inflation, if he'd
Speaker 2: done tried to do something around wages, both either on
Speaker 2: the you know, legislation front or in terms of using
Speaker 2: his administration. But many of these initiatives were dropped, and
Speaker 2: now it's like, what do you you know, what what
Speaker 2: have you done for me? Yeah, in the last three.
Speaker 3: Years, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Biden had his highest approval rating the beginning.
Speaker 2: Of his sinisteration something percent. It was crazy, yes, and very.
Speaker 1: High among young people, who now are major impediment to
Speaker 1: him being re elected. And we'll get to some of
Speaker 1: the White House fears about that. But you know, the
Speaker 1: beginning part of his presidency was actually very active. You know,
Speaker 1: there were lots of executive orders coming out. There was
Speaker 1: you know, a pandemic relief being passed. There were efforts
Speaker 1: to pass you know, bipartisan legislation. There was a lot
Speaker 1: going on, and some of the things that went through,
Speaker 1: like I always use the example of the child tax credit,
Speaker 1: they really worked, They really helped people, They really insulated
Speaker 1: a lot of people from the worst parts of the
Speaker 1: COVID economy in the post COVID economy, and then inflation
Speaker 1: starts to creep in, and there was no sense of
Speaker 1: urgency from the White House in tackling that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of sort of hand waving it away.
Speaker 1: And I genuinely think that the American people do not
Speaker 1: expect the President to be a magician. I don't think
Speaker 1: they have unrealistic expectations of what they want this individual
Speaker 1: to be able to accomplish.
Speaker 3: But they at least wanted to see him trying to fight.
Speaker 3: And now we know.
Speaker 1: Because we can see, okay, if inflation's coming down, even
Speaker 1: though it doesn't really look like it had that much
Speaker 1: to do with the Federal Reserve policy, has more to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that these supply chain kings got
Speaker 1: worked down, and you know the fact that we've sort
Speaker 1: of moved forward into post pandemic and it's made it
Speaker 1: more difficult for corporations to engage in the type of
Speaker 1: price gouging that they were, But there was no fight
Speaker 1: from him in terms of calling on the carpet people
Speaker 1: who were just out and out gouging American consumers.
Speaker 3: And it was very listless.
Speaker 1: And since then, you know, whatever programs were put in
Speaker 1: place that were really helpful to people, one after another,
Speaker 1: those have expired. So what's the experience of most people
Speaker 1: over the course of the Biden administration. It's their economic
Speaker 1: situation getting a little bit worse, and a little bit
Speaker 1: worse and a little bit worse. I just saw this
Speaker 1: morning pull from CNN that you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of commentary on. I'm sure much of
Speaker 1: it extremely annoying about how half of the country thinks
Speaker 1: the economy is getting worse in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that the Biden administration will go out and to all
Speaker 1: this top line number is great, and that topline number
Speaker 1: is great, and actually the economy is wonderful. People just
Speaker 1: don't really understand it. They need to read the New
Speaker 1: York Times more. I guess the reality is for most people,
Speaker 1: those top line numbers do not reflect their reality because
Speaker 1: you have such vast gulfs between you know, the people
Speaker 1: have so much wealth and income on one side and
Speaker 1: the vast bulk of America.
Speaker 3: You can have those top line.
Speaker 1: Numbers look very different than the actual lived reality of
Speaker 1: so many Americans.
Speaker 3: And so listen, this is a long.
Speaker 1: Way to get around back to like the Fitch credit
Speaker 1: rating decision here. But they're not wrong to look at
Speaker 1: the American political system and say this is completely dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: They're courting disaster. There seems to be We're about to
Speaker 1: face an election where it's not even about policy, where
Speaker 1: it's just about you know, Trump's legal issues, which are
Speaker 1: quite significant and quite important. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: sidetrack at all, But how can you look at that
Speaker 1: landscape and say, yes, I've got full, full belief in
Speaker 1: the American political system that it's going to be aoka.
Speaker 2: Yes, well said, all right, why don't we talk about Obama?
Speaker 1: Okay, so this kind of ties in. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from the Washington Post. Apparently former
Speaker 1: President Obama was recently here in DC, meeting with current
Speaker 1: President Biden and warning him that Trump has a lot
Speaker 1: more political strength than Democrats may think. Here are the
Speaker 1: specifics from that article, they said former President Obama out
Speaker 1: of private lunch with President Biden earlier the Summer Voice,
Speaker 1: concern about Donald Trump's political strengths, including an intensely loyal following,
Speaker 1: a Trump friendly conservative mediate ecosystem, and a polarized country,
Speaker 1: underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable
Speaker 1: candidate than many Democrats realize. They go on to say
Speaker 1: that during their lunch, Obama made it clear Saga that
Speaker 1: his concerns weren't about Biden's political ability. Right, of course,
Speaker 1: of course Biden's great. It has nothing to do with him,
Speaker 1: but rather a recognition of Trump's iron grip on the
Speaker 1: Republican Party.
Speaker 3: According to the People.
Speaker 1: It's funny too because in this article they go to
Speaker 1: great links to report out and NBC News confirmed and
Speaker 1: whatever that Obama says He's going to do everything he
Speaker 1: can for Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Is that news?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: I mean, I just assumed that that would be the case,
Speaker 1: But I guess, I guess after the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty sixte to Obama actively pushed Biden out of
Speaker 1: that primary and you know, tried to anoint Hillary. We
Speaker 1: all know how that turned out. And then in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Obama sat on his hands until it was clear that
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to be able to get Pete or
Speaker 1: someone else. And there's a bunch of reporting too about
Speaker 1: how even when they were together in the White House,
Speaker 1: Obama and his brainiac side of the team basically had
Speaker 1: contempt for Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: So I guess there was some.
Speaker 1: Question about how hard Obama would go for Joe in
Speaker 1: this election. But anyway, you can put your fears to rest.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama will be fully engaged in this campaign.
Speaker 2: Good. Yeah, good for him. I'm sure it'll work out.
Speaker 2: It always does, right. Look, the thing is a too
Speaker 2: about Obama. You and I also know how these stories go.
Speaker 2: This was such a well planned like execution by their teams.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, we'll have the lunch and then afterwards,
Speaker 2: we'll call friendly reporters of the Washington Post and we'll
Speaker 2: read out, you know, like a press release effect, and
Speaker 2: then they can bill it as a scoop around it's
Speaker 2: not a scoop whenever somebody literally dictates to you on
Speaker 2: the phone. It's also ridiculous because there are only two
Speaker 2: people presumably inside the room, so obviously one of them
Speaker 2: leaked it. It's not like it was made and saw
Speaker 2: what is it. It's not exactly done in such a
Speaker 2: way that is supposed to be like anonymous anyway. So
Speaker 2: you look at this and what becomes clear Obama is
Speaker 2: trying to telegraph two things. I'm going to help Biden,
Speaker 2: so you can't blame me for not but also he
Speaker 2: is trying to telegraph his you know, political genius, his
Speaker 2: above it all almost approach where he still believes, I
Speaker 2: think rightfully that he's a better politician than Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: And he kind of wants to put it across. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not the one underestimating Trump. I'm pushing Biden to
Speaker 2: do everything he can. I want to dispel with any
Speaker 2: narrative that you know, this thing isn't as in a
Speaker 2: tight race. And it's interesting too that actually came on
Speaker 2: the heels of the New York Times, Paul, which showed
Speaker 2: them completely neck and neck. And you know, Obama's political
Speaker 2: analysis too is not wrong, but it's also just funny
Speaker 2: coming from the guy who in many ways is the
Speaker 2: most responsible for Donald Trump's presidence. If he did a
Speaker 2: better job as president than Trump would never be president.
Speaker 2: It's simple, you know, and it's like, in many ways,
Speaker 2: like Trump didn't just beat Hillary, he destroyed the Obama
Speaker 2: consensus and really all the obamaization of politics was basically dead,
Speaker 2: you know, all of his ideas and both on the
Speaker 2: left and the right in terms of how everything was
Speaker 2: supposed to work. That's where Trump really kind of came
Speaker 2: in and blew up. So, I don't know, I found
Speaker 2: it interesting, like on a very meta level, about how
Speaker 2: Obama is still trying to because he's a young man,
Speaker 2: he can't still yet be seen to be he can't
Speaker 2: be shown yet to be kind of the political fool
Speaker 2: that he is in turn, and what I mean by
Speaker 2: that is he's turned himself effectively into a lifestyle brand.
Speaker 2: He's ceased being an actual human being a very long
Speaker 2: time ago, him and Michelle, and so he's got to
Speaker 2: keep his political bona fides by calling up the Washington
Speaker 2: Post reporter and giving his analysis. So there's actually quite
Speaker 2: a bit going on here.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, there are a lot of layers to this.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's also there's a lot of like democratic
Speaker 1: freak ount porn in the media right now of like'
Speaker 1: worry about this group, worry about that group. We're going
Speaker 1: to play you a little bit of that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But also there was an article about how Democrats have
Speaker 1: reassessed they did think that Ron DeSantis would be a
Speaker 1: more formidable candidate than Trump, and now they've kind of
Speaker 1: decided Trump may actually be harder to beat. And I
Speaker 1: understand that for a while the polls showed that DeSantis
Speaker 1: would be a tougher general election candidate. But I always
Speaker 1: thought there was major reason for skepticism of that analysis,
Speaker 1: at least, you know, to be sort of like agnostic
Speaker 1: on that analysis, because we know Donald Trump has won before,
Speaker 1: so we know he can, and we know the fervent
Speaker 1: support that he inspires. We know the way he brings
Speaker 1: people out on the woodwork who don't answer polls but
Speaker 1: then show up and vote for Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: no matter what. So you know, I always thought it
Speaker 1: was remember all those articles of Democrats like delighting in
Speaker 1: the idea that Republicans were going to nominate Donald Trump again,
Speaker 1: like you people have learned absolutely nothing. So apparently relatedly, allegedly,
Speaker 1: according to what being leaked to the Washington Post, they're
Speaker 1: finally starting to realize that this is no slam dunk,
Speaker 1: even with and I do think Trump's legal issues, I
Speaker 1: do think those are a problem for him with normy voters.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if he's found guilty, if he's
Speaker 1: facing some sort of prison sentence or whatever, I think
Speaker 1: that is a real issue for him in terms of
Speaker 1: getting reelected. But you also can't deny the reality that
Speaker 1: his polling versus Biden right now is way better than
Speaker 1: his polling versus Biden was last time around. It's also
Speaker 1: better than his polling was versus Hillary Clinton, an election
Speaker 1: that he obviously went on to actually win back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. So, you know, they're kind of waking up
Speaker 1: to the fact that they have a genuine political fight
Speaker 1: on their hands and could be once again responsible for
Speaker 1: handing the country over to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And they're willing to do anything.
Speaker 1: Leak to any reporter, you know, wring their hands in
Speaker 1: the media, shame voters.
Speaker 3: They're willing to do anything except.
Speaker 1: Actually deliver a real reason for voters to be excited
Speaker 1: about voting for Joe Biden and Christol.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have you know, U offers a CNN
Speaker 2: poll here now the approval rating here of June and
Speaker 2: July of the third year of presidents. Here's the rankings
Speaker 2: for the last like what sixty or so years, Eisenhower
Speaker 2: seventy two percent, Bush ninety one, seventy percent. He of
Speaker 2: course went on to be defeated Kennedy sixty one, Bush
Speaker 2: oh three fifty eight, Obama fifty one, Nixon fifty Clinton
Speaker 2: forty six, Trump forty three, Reagan forty two, Biden forty one,
Speaker 2: Carter twenty nine. Joe Biden is the second least popular
Speaker 2: president in modern times in the third July or whatever
Speaker 2: of his presidency. That does not bode well. I mean, listen,
Speaker 2: Obama barely won reelection in twenty twelve, and then if
Speaker 2: you're looking at this, Clinton won reelection, you know, I
Speaker 2: guess with forty six percent went on to win in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. But it wasn't all that easy going,
Speaker 2: and you know, there were a lot of Dole kind
Speaker 2: of screw up that campaign. There's a lot of interesting
Speaker 2: stuff actually about how things could have gone differently. But
Speaker 2: Biden is lower than all of them. And then of
Speaker 2: course Carter, we all know how that worked out. So
Speaker 2: he's not in Jimmy Carter territory yet, but he's getting
Speaker 2: pretty damn close. You don't want to be next to
Speaker 2: his name there. When you're running for reelection, there's a.
Speaker 1: Lot of hope about these kind of numbers that like, well,
Speaker 1: it's just different now. People are so polarized, you're just
Speaker 1: every president is going to have basically a low approval rating.
Speaker 1: But Biden's own presidency disproves that because this is not
Speaker 1: what what his ratings look like at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the presidency. And you know, Obama wasn't so long ago
Speaker 1: that he had a fifty one percent, and at times
Speaker 1: during his presidency he had much higher approval rating than that,
Speaker 1: especially at the beginning and kind of the honeymoon period.
Speaker 1: So even within the very recent memory, we see that
Speaker 1: that is not the case. It's just if you want
Speaker 1: to play the political game as it exists now and
Speaker 1: deliver very little for people except for you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like emotional sucker and cultural signaling and the yeah,
Speaker 1: you might not.
Speaker 3: Like me that much, but the other guy is worse.
Speaker 1: If that's the political game you want to play, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably get me in the forties.
Speaker 3: That is true. If that is, if you're.
Speaker 1: Accepting like the mode of politics as it has existed
Speaker 1: for many years now, Yes, that is true. You will
Speaker 1: probably be in forty percent no matter what. But there
Speaker 1: is a different possibility, which is like, you could actually
Speaker 1: make people's lives better and actually fight for them and
Speaker 1: make it clearer of fighting for them and by the way,
Speaker 1: not be eighty million years old and able to form
Speaker 1: a coherent sentence. And I have a feeling based even
Speaker 1: with this guy Joe Biden, who you know is not
Speaker 1: in his prime, even with him, he had a much
Speaker 1: higher approval rating at a different time because people felt
Speaker 1: like he was really doing something for them and fighting
Speaker 1: for them. So let's move on to some interesting analysis
Speaker 1: over at MSNBC. There have been a number of pieces
Speaker 1: now recently, and I think justifiably so, about Democratic concerns
Speaker 1: that black voters and black men in particular may not
Speaker 1: show up for them in twenty twenty four. And they're
Speaker 1: looking at the numbers. They're looking at the fact that
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, in a lot of demographics, particularly
Speaker 1: among like suburban white women and white men, that there
Speaker 1: was a surge for the Democratic ticket and that's what
Speaker 1: forestalled the Red Wave. But if you dig into those numbers,
Speaker 1: there were some troubling signs among black men in the cities.
Speaker 1: It's not that they showed up and voted for Republicans.
Speaker 1: It's that they just didn't show up. There was a
Speaker 1: fall off in the vote vote for black men, in
Speaker 1: particular in urban areas, so AMAS NBC decided to do
Speaker 1: some reporting on this. There's also a lot of hand
Speaker 1: ringing here about Cornell West of course running as the
Speaker 1: Green part on the Green Party line, so they're concerned
Speaker 1: about what he might do in terms of voters overall,
Speaker 1: but black voters in particular. Let's take a listen to
Speaker 1: what they had to say.
Speaker 10: Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win a presidential
Speaker 10: election in Georgia since nineteen ninety two when he won
Speaker 10: in twenty twenty, and just to show how crucial black
Speaker 10: voters were to that win. By our calculations, if less
Speaker 10: than one percent of black voters stayed home or voted
Speaker 10: for Trump, the outcome of this election could have been
Speaker 10: very different. And basically something that we heard on the
Speaker 10: ground from the director of organizer from the New Georgia Project,
Speaker 10: which is easily pushing the largest voters registration efforts in
Speaker 10: the state. They registered about thirty thousand people alone this year.
Speaker 10: He said, people are just frankly not running and jumping
Speaker 10: about another term of President Biden, and they're frankly keeping
Speaker 10: their options open. And that's something that I heard from
Speaker 10: voters consistently, is that while they're aware that Joe Biden
Speaker 10: could be the default, they're still wanting to see who
Speaker 10: else could potentially get in this race. At least one
Speaker 10: voter told me they were considering Portell West, but the
Speaker 10: majority of people here said even though they may just
Speaker 10: be voting for Joe Biden in the end of this
Speaker 10: their big concerns right now is the economy. They're still
Speaker 10: feeling the stress of inflation, and jobs are drying up
Speaker 10: in the state. Even though we've seen some of this
Speaker 10: good economic data, we just haven't seen those perceptions seem
Speaker 10: to catch up yet. And as you mentioned, these unfulfilled promises.
Speaker 10: Student debt was something that we heard consistently from voters
Speaker 10: that they really wanted to see that policy come to fruition.
Speaker 2: But obviously after the Supreme Court.
Speaker 10: Struck it down, you know, Biden is trying again, but
Speaker 10: they were really disappointed that hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 8: And you mentioned Correll West, who bi any measure is
Speaker 8: a pretty fringe candidate, but we all remember Jill Stein
Speaker 8: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 9: If West even pulls off.
Speaker 2: A liver of voters Black voters in particular, that could be.
Speaker 9: The difference in some of these states.
Speaker 2: So tell us what's the Biden campaigns.
Speaker 11: Are they aware of this potential issue, and what's their
Speaker 11: plan to try to make sure they keep those.
Speaker 9: Voters in line.
Speaker 10: Certainly, strategists have raised concerns about third party candidate's not
Speaker 10: just Cornell West, but also this no labels candidates that
Speaker 10: we're hearing about. But I think the thing that the
Speaker 10: Biden world is banking on.
Speaker 2: Is Donald Trump.
Speaker 10: Their hope is that if he is in fact the nominee,
Speaker 10: that will galvanize people in the same way that it
Speaker 10: did in twenty twenty. There is voters who purely cast
Speaker 10: a vote against Donald Trump, and they're hoping that threats
Speaker 10: to democracy and him being on the ballot again will
Speaker 10: have the same effect that it did.
Speaker 1: Then there's so much to unpack that no wild right,
Speaker 1: there's so much impact there. First of all, so what
Speaker 1: if voters tell this reporter that they're concerned about First
Speaker 1: of all, they're like, what are my.
Speaker 3: Other options here? Because I'm not sold on Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is a network that like studiously avoids
Speaker 1: covering the fact that Joe Biden actually has opponents of
Speaker 1: the primary.
Speaker 3: These voters do have other choy is that they can evaluate.
Speaker 1: So there's that the voters told this reporter, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: my Number one is the economy.
Speaker 3: I'm worried about the economy.
Speaker 1: And by the way, you know, pretty disappointed about how
Speaker 1: this whole student debt thing has gone down. And what
Speaker 1: is the White House's theory of the case. It's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we're not going to really do anything on that, but
Speaker 1: we're hoping that Donald Trump is enough to, in the
Speaker 1: words of that host, keep these voters in line, as
Speaker 1: if anyone is entitled to anyone's vote and doesn't have
Speaker 1: to go out there and earn it. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's the you know, Spurriys analysis that ows Jill
Speaker 1: Stein's fault that the Democrats screwed up twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: that you know, if they lose this time, it won't
Speaker 1: be their fault again. It'll be the fault of Cordell
Speaker 1: West or the fault of potentially Joe Mansion, no labels
Speaker 1: ticket whatever.
Speaker 2: It's not anybody's fault except yours for not getting people
Speaker 2: to want to vote for you. You know, even in
Speaker 2: the latest New York Times poll, they have a really
Speaker 2: interesting graphic. Let's go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, which even shows you that quote. Trump has
Speaker 2: made gains amongst men, black, Hispanic, low income, less educated voters.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why it's a tighter race
Speaker 2: is mainly it seems to do because of these additional
Speaker 2: Trump gains. So Crystal Trump has made gains amongst all
Speaker 2: of the demographics which Democrats take for granted. And now
Speaker 2: whenever she as she said, oh, we can only lose
Speaker 2: less than one percent and something like that would still
Speaker 2: have an impact, It's like, well, get you know, it's
Speaker 2: not difficult. Do something for these people and maybe they'll
Speaker 2: vote for you. But you can't be blaming Cornell West.
Speaker 2: There's also something very racist about that. I just I
Speaker 2: will never stop thinking. It's like, what, because he's a
Speaker 2: black guy, you think black people are going to vote
Speaker 2: for him? Is that it It's like that where you're
Speaker 2: reducing people to yes, people is so stupid.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is what they're.
Speaker 2: How can you say that? I mean, it's outraged. You know,
Speaker 2: imagine if people were like, oh, vivig rumswamp Sagar's gonnauppor
Speaker 2: him right, because this Indian guy. I'm like, what, Like,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? That's how people, most normal
Speaker 2: people are like, Oh, he's a white guy. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go vote for somebody because he's white. What are we saying?
Speaker 2: But apparently like whenever it's black people when we're talking
Speaker 2: about it, that it's okay to just reduce people down
Speaker 2: to that funcus ridiculous. It's deeply racist.
Speaker 1: It's so funny you say that because I was just
Speaker 1: reading this more. I think it was in Politico that
Speaker 1: this similar like type of concern about what's going on,
Speaker 1: how are they going to win, how are we gonna
Speaker 1: how are we going to convince black voters that it's
Speaker 1: worth it to come out and vote, even though they
Speaker 1: feel like their lives have not gotten better under Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in the same way they didn't feel their lives
Speaker 1: got better under Republican presidents as well. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, very understandable apathy there. And all of the
Speaker 1: Democratic spokespeople leaders DNC types that they interviewed were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we know what's going to get black voters to the polls.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that we have Kamala Harris on the ticket.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that we put Tanji Brown Jackson on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. It's the fact this one, really, this
Speaker 1: one really made me chuckle, that we have Hakeem Jeffries
Speaker 1: as Minority leader. Do you think there is a single
Speaker 1: person in the entire country that is going to change
Speaker 1: their vote based on the fact that Hakim Jeffries is
Speaker 1: in a position of power, And like, listen, representation is important.
Speaker 1: It's not nothing, but when you're talking about what actually matters,
Speaker 1: like these voters are telling you what is important to them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take rocket science to figure out the way
Speaker 1: to message to people and not just a message to
Speaker 1: actually deliver for people. So they feel like they have
Speaker 1: some sort of freaking stake in this election. Washington Post
Speaker 1: had a piece with a lot of this very similar analysis.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They say Democrats worry their most loyal voters, that would
Speaker 1: be black voters, won't turn out for Biden. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, they got a quote here, let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from a founder of the Blackmail
Speaker 1: Voter Project, guy named w Mondale.
Speaker 3: Robinson. He says, quote, the.
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic
Speaker 1: of black men, and that's sad to say black men
Speaker 1: are your second most stable based overwhelmingly and you can't
Speaker 1: reach them in a way that makes your work easier.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the way that he frames that, because so
Speaker 1: much of the analysis of this it's almost like blaming
Speaker 1: black men and.
Speaker 3: Like that host set, he's like, how do we get
Speaker 3: them in line?
Speaker 1: Like I just find that framing so disgusting. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate the way that he's framing this as Listen, the
Speaker 1: onus is on you all to explain why people should
Speaker 1: bother to show up and vote for you. And most
Speaker 1: of what comes out in this piece is the Democratic
Speaker 1: strategy is just like, oh, we need a new field program,
Speaker 1: we need to put some more money into like voter
Speaker 1: outreach and whatever, and like, okay, sure, but if you're
Speaker 1: not selling something that is compelling to people, although voter
Speaker 1: outreach in the world isn't going to do a damn thing.
Speaker 1: They also side a poll here Washing Post ipsos pull
Speaker 1: Black Americans back in May found what they describe as
Speaker 1: a tepid reaction to Biden's reelection, something that I'm sure
Speaker 1: many people can relate to.
Speaker 3: Out there.
Speaker 1: Only seventeen percent of Black Americans said they would be
Speaker 1: enthusiastic if he wins, Forty eight percent said they'd be
Speaker 1: satisfied but not enthusiastic, twenty five percent said they would
Speaker 1: be dissatisfied but not angry, and eight percent said they
Speaker 1: would be angry about another Biden term. So just keep
Speaker 1: in mind some of these shifts might be small, few
Speaker 1: percentage points, few percentage points there. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: the last time these two men went up against each other,
Speaker 1: it was razors it.
Speaker 2: Well, you're just talking about just loses the state of Georgia.
Speaker 2: That's it. Ten thousand votes. Boo, you just lost.
Speaker 3: That's where these interviews were taking place, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of people. You know, you switch things up
Speaker 2: a little bit in terms of voter turnout in inner
Speaker 2: city Philadelphia, the whole things goes a whole of another way.
Speaker 2: Same thing Wisconsin, Milwaukee, many of these other cities with
Speaker 2: large black populations. You know, if the rain is a
Speaker 2: little bit there, if there's a little vibe in the
Speaker 2: city that actually don't like Biden that much. Well, Trump
Speaker 2: just won the presidency and I can I mean every
Speaker 2: single one of these places. That was Wisconsin, Michigan as well, Detroit.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of those where it's very clear
Speaker 2: here that you barely won the presidency and then they
Speaker 2: don't act like it by either doing anything. And then
Speaker 2: whenever it does cime Tom to come time to vote,
Speaker 2: you come and you scold these people because a black
Speaker 2: guy is on the ticket and they think so little
Speaker 2: of them that they're going to go and vote for them.
Speaker 2: I always think about this story, but you know, the
Speaker 2: majority of black voters supported Hillary Clinton in the two
Speaker 2: thousand and a primary until Obama actually started winning votes.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those where it's like, yeah, they
Speaker 2: knew the black guy was running, it was not enough
Speaker 2: for them. How many times would it go over the
Speaker 2: fact that Kamala didn't win a lot of black votes
Speaker 2: in South Carolina. It's one of the reasons that she
Speaker 2: dropped out. Same with Corey Booker. The two black candidates
Speaker 2: in the race actually had to drop out or didn't
Speaker 2: even make it because they were getting so low. They
Speaker 2: ended up voting for Biden. And for Bernie because they don't.
Speaker 2: People don't think that way, and we never learned that,
Speaker 2: and apparently it's permissible. And even there are race obsessed media,
Speaker 2: I don't know why they don't get called out on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think that they are correct that
Speaker 1: they have a problem with Cornell West. I do think
Speaker 1: it is a problem for them. It is a problem
Speaker 1: entirely of their own making. And to the extent I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are going to be black voters among many
Speaker 1: other voters, or particular young voters, who cast their ballots
Speaker 1: for Cornell West. It doesn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: the color of skin. It has to do with the
Speaker 1: ideas that he's pushing and the fact that he is
Speaker 1: has demonstrated over his life a commitment to working class
Speaker 1: people and making sure that their material lives are improved. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they need to reflect if they actually want to win,
Speaker 1: they need to reflect on what voters are actually telling
Speaker 1: them and not what they imagine voters want to hear
Speaker 1: or to see from the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree with that. All right, let's talk
Speaker 2: about Ukraine. And this is always it's always just fun
Speaker 2: because of the information deficit, with Ukraine. We're getting propagandized
Speaker 2: by the Ukraine, getting propagandized by the government, and they're
Speaker 2: getting propagandized by the Russians. Who the hell knows what
Speaker 2: actually is going on. Even number dead and all of
Speaker 2: that is completely you know, every once in a while,
Speaker 2: some game or leaks something on discord and we all
Speaker 2: actually find out the truth. But every once in a while,
Speaker 2: you know, you still have to rely on like what's
Speaker 2: going there, and you hear one guy who's on the ground,
Speaker 2: and you hear another guy, but always getting paid by
Speaker 2: this and that. But it's always important to try and
Speaker 2: read the tea leaves, even within side the propaganda. So
Speaker 2: whenever the propagandasts can no longer spin something in a
Speaker 2: way because the facts don't match up with it, that's
Speaker 2: when real turning points start to come and you start
Speaker 2: to get a little bit of a glimmer of the truth.
Speaker 2: This was in the New York Times just yesterday morning,
Speaker 2: and this is a pretty damn good insight into what
Speaker 2: is happening in terms of the clear shift where even
Speaker 2: they have to admit what's going on. They say, quote
Speaker 2: Ukrainian troops trained by the West stumble in battle. Ukraine's
Speaker 2: army has for now set aside US fighting methods and
Speaker 2: reverted to tactics that it knows best. They say that
Speaker 2: the first several weeks of Ukraine's long waited counter offensive
Speaker 2: have not been kind to troops who were trained and
Speaker 2: armed by the United States and its allies. Equipped with
Speaker 2: advanced American weapons heralded the vanguard of a major assault,
Speaker 2: the troops became bogged down in dense Russian mindfields under
Speaker 2: constant fire from artillery, helicopter gunships. Units got lost. One
Speaker 2: unit delayed a nighttime attack till down, losing advantage. Another
Speaker 2: fared so badly commanders yanked it off the battlefield altogether. Now,
Speaker 2: the Western training, Western trained Ukrainian brigades are trying to
Speaker 2: turn things around by changing tactics, focusing instead on wearing
Speaker 2: down Russian forces with artillery and long range missiles instead
Speaker 2: of plunging into minefields under fire. A troop surge is
Speaker 2: now underway in the country south, second wave of Western
Speaker 2: train forces launching mostly small scale attacks to punch through
Speaker 2: Russian lines. There's a lot to actually think about this.
Speaker 2: Number one, they have just admitted something very basic that
Speaker 2: US aid outside of sheer bullets and of artillery, which
Speaker 2: is the most basic form of aid that we've basically
Speaker 2: been You know, you can go read books from eighteen nineties.
Speaker 2: We were providing militaries with that, all of the advanced weaponry,
Speaker 2: all that other stuff that was supposed to turn the tide.
Speaker 2: It just didn't work. And this is a testament for Look,
Speaker 2: are there a lot of people who watch the show
Speaker 2: in the US military. I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever,
Speaker 2: because this is never a denigration of the actual service
Speaker 2: members I'm seeing as an institution. Let's look at the
Speaker 2: track record of training and equipping Iraq. How did that go?
Speaker 2: That was great? Right, it was awesome, so much so
Speaker 2: that they threw their weapons down. They flew a fleet
Speaker 2: whenever IIS takes over the city of Mosul Okay. So
Speaker 2: that costs two trillion. Now let's talk about Afghanistan. We
Speaker 2: spent let's say seven hundred billion training and equipping the
Speaker 2: Afghan National Security Forces. Oh that was great. The moment
Speaker 2: that these guys getting into the city of kabbl the
Speaker 2: guy who salary paying gets on a plane laden with gold,
Speaker 2: He's like, peace, I'm out. And then the US military
Speaker 2: has to lock down an airport to try and get
Speaker 2: down interpreters out, even though we just prop these people
Speaker 2: up for the last twenty years. Syria, anyone want to
Speaker 2: remember that one, I mean, whether or not. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: my personal favorite is that the current Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 2: Lloyd Austin, I will never forget this covering it at
Speaker 2: the time is whenever he was testifying before the Senate
Speaker 2: and they're like, so, how many people have you actually
Speaker 2: successfully trained and equipped for five hundred million or whatever?
Speaker 2: And they're like, oh, you know, like a dozen. They're like, wait,
Speaker 2: what so that that's what ended up happening.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't and they were like al Qaeda here.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And then the only way we've ever been
Speaker 2: able to turn the tide in any of these conflicts
Speaker 2: is actually just putting direct US military boots on the ground.
Speaker 2: So in the Syrian context, well, we had a couple
Speaker 2: thousand people, we started arming and equipping the YPG. But
Speaker 2: then even then it was a deeply like US influence.
Speaker 2: We're basically running all the ops. When you think about
Speaker 2: a Rock, a Rock had some phenomenal counter terrorism forces.
Speaker 2: Let's all be honest here, they were not only trained
Speaker 2: by the Navy Seals. They were deeply embedded like green Berets,
Speaker 2: Navy Seals and all these other guy special operators within
Speaker 2: that when they were at their most combat effective. And
Speaker 2: then same whenever it comes to yeah, sorry Siria and
Speaker 2: then Afghanistan, same thing. The moment that the US Special
Speaker 2: Operators and the USISR and all that other stuff either
Speaker 2: got pulled or wasn't as robust, they fell apart completely.
Speaker 2: And so I mean again, I mean as an institution,
Speaker 2: it is clear here we don't know how to do
Speaker 2: this very well. We know how to do one thing
Speaker 2: we're good at, like the office management part of war,
Speaker 2: as in with the Ukrainians, we're like, yeah, the Russian
Speaker 2: ship is over there to take dismissal, go fire it.
Speaker 2: But in terms of being like here's the weapons, here's
Speaker 2: how you train, combined to our tactics all this, and
Speaker 2: how do you use ELSA, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2: And so whenever they also point to here reverting to
Speaker 2: the tactics of simply trying to wear down the Russians. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: on A, We've tried this battle a million times throughout history.
Speaker 2: The person who wins is the one who can last
Speaker 2: out the longest. How are you going to last out
Speaker 2: the longest. You don't make any shells, You only rely
Speaker 2: on charity from Western nations. Why do you think that
Speaker 2: you're going to beat a nation which has a genuine industry,
Speaker 2: which is Russia. They have oil which they can sell
Speaker 2: to people who aren't in the West, and they have
Speaker 2: a populace which is relatively untouched completely by the war.
Speaker 2: I mean, the thing is is that the nation who
Speaker 2: folds is usually the one after many years of bloody
Speaker 2: and horrific conflict, is the one that just can no
Speaker 2: longer sustain itself from the home front. And this is
Speaker 2: deeply sad, and already we're actually getting in indications just
Speaker 2: about how brutal this war is from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: They actually talk about how the number of people inside
Speaker 2: of Ukraine who appear to have lost limbs, this is
Speaker 2: based on prosthetic prosthetic limb like data inside is now,
Speaker 2: at least by some estimations, equivalent to the number of
Speaker 2: Britons who lost limbs in all of the First World War,
Speaker 2: nearly equivalent to the number of Germans that lost limbs
Speaker 2: in the First World War. I don't need you know listen,
Speaker 2: if you have the stomach for it, I actually encourage
Speaker 2: you to go look at what some of those wounds
Speaker 2: and all those look like, because they have a profound
Speaker 2: impact on me personally. Just to see, like, you know,
Speaker 2: before the invention of a lot of prosthetic surgery and
Speaker 2: stuff like, that's what the actual face of war looked like.
Speaker 2: Is somebody's nose gone because a shell hit them right
Speaker 2: in the face. Luckily, we've gotten to the point where things,
Speaker 2: you know, look better, I guess, but you can't take
Speaker 2: away the psychological damage, the trauma, the generational impact that
Speaker 2: that has on the people that they interact with and
Speaker 2: on a day to day basis. So I mean, all
Speaker 2: of this is just a very long way of saying like, look, obviously,
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians, I mean, it takes a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of guts to march into a minefield, to lose
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of limbs, and to still live to
Speaker 2: fight another day. We have to look at this from
Speaker 2: a geopolitical level and be like, what are we doing here?
Speaker 2: What are we getting? And I also was thinking about this.
Speaker 2: One of the most common talking points in Washington is
Speaker 2: you know, this is the best money we've ever spent.
Speaker 2: We're wearing down the Russians. That is like looking at
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians as ponds. You know, it's literally thinking of
Speaker 2: these people be like, oh, yeah, they lose a couple
Speaker 2: of limbs here and there, whatever. You know, I know
Speaker 2: some people who have lost limbs in combat. It's no joke.
Speaker 2: I mean, it stays with you forever, and they think
Speaker 2: about it and they talk about it, not even in
Speaker 2: a shame level, just you know, there's of course it's
Speaker 2: going to impact your life. It's a physical representation of
Speaker 2: what was lost and what you gave and family, and
Speaker 2: there's so much impact that happens there. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean I just think it's one of
Speaker 2: those where and come back to and you're reading things
Speaker 2: like this. It's just so clear what is happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and yet nobody wants to grapple or face with reality.
Speaker 2: The only response Crystal By why christ By Washington, is
Speaker 2: let's give them five hundred million.
Speaker 3: I guess we better give them more. I guess we
Speaker 3: better give them more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, I just look at this and
Speaker 1: I feel like reality is taking hold.
Speaker 3: I mean, the Ukrainians really defied the odds.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, get incredible, dramatically outperformed what anyone possibly could
Speaker 1: have expected. But much of that came when they were
Speaker 1: much more effective in defense than we thought that they
Speaker 1: could be. But you know, reality, the laws of gravity
Speaker 1: eventually take hold, and you are up against an adversary
Speaker 1: that made all kinds of mistakes. But some of they've
Speaker 1: learned from. They seem to be in Russia moving towards
Speaker 1: a more full scale mobilization. They certainly are gearing up
Speaker 1: to be on war footing for.
Speaker 3: A long time.
Speaker 1: And you know when it came to okay, now it's
Speaker 1: time to try to employ these more complicated battlefield tactics.
Speaker 3: And retake the territory that's been lost. Like they're not miracle.
Speaker 1: Workers, right, So, so, yes, reality has taken hold.
Speaker 3: It looks like.
Speaker 1: This is a very very difficult situation for the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: to be able to, you know, push forward. And I
Speaker 1: just think there was such I just think the US
Speaker 1: government has had such blinders on the whole time, even
Speaker 1: the idea that oh, this is such great money spent
Speaker 1: because we're weakening Russia, Like are we do we know
Speaker 1: that for a fact, Because I mean, honestly, actually their
Speaker 1: GDP numbers look just fine and dandy. Economically, you know,
Speaker 1: the all out economic war that we attempted to wage
Speaker 1: on them has basically completely failed, So that hasn't worked out.
Speaker 1: You know, we had the whole progosion situation. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of cheerleading of like, you know, cheerleading on
Speaker 1: this maniac to try to take control of Russia, which
Speaker 1: could have been really disastrous and very chaotic.
Speaker 3: Not that it's great having Putin there.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's no imminent sign of Putin's government collapsing,
Speaker 1: nor is it clear that that would be a good
Speaker 1: thing for anyone. By the way, when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: such a volative situation in nuclearum superpowers. So I just
Speaker 1: all I want is a straight answer from Joe Biden
Speaker 1: of how this ends, Like how do you see.
Speaker 3: This playing out?
Speaker 1: It seems increasingly clear to me that the moment when
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians and the Western Coalition probably had the greatest
Speaker 1: leverage was very early in this conflict, when we were
Speaker 1: going out of our way to try to scuttle any
Speaker 1: potential diplomatic resolution, that was probably the best time to settle.
Speaker 1: And you know, before tens of thousands of Ukrainians lost
Speaker 1: limbs and many lost their lives as as well.
Speaker 2: That's right, Okay, let's go to the next part here,
Speaker 2: Devin Archer sitting down with Tucker Carlson. So we cut
Speaker 2: together some of the most important parts of the interview.
Speaker 2: There will be a second part apparently of the longer
Speaker 2: form conversation between the two. The clip that was put
Speaker 2: out was only about eleven minutes. Devin Archer, for context,
Speaker 2: was Hunter Biden's business partner, wrote in BHD Holdings, which
Speaker 2: is one of the holding companies that Hunter Biden was
Speaker 2: a part of. They had business dealings with Moscow, they
Speaker 2: had business dealings with China. He was also at to
Speaker 2: the center of a lot of the Beisma dealings. New
Speaker 2: Hunter for over a decade and says here in this
Speaker 2: interview that he heard at least on twenty occasions President
Speaker 2: Biden actually with then Vice President Biden phone into business
Speaker 2: meetings with Hunter Biden. Here, let's take a listen.
Speaker 12: Our partnership started in two thousand and eight, two thousand
Speaker 12: and nine ish conversations started. That's when I re met
Speaker 12: Hunter and actually had a you know, sit down and
Speaker 12: meal with him, talked about the transition from lobbying into
Speaker 12: strategic advisory and then kind of, you know, some type
Speaker 12: of coalescence around having a private equity fund that would
Speaker 12: have this unique access and understanding of a regulatory environment.
Speaker 6: Again, Joe Biden, then the sitting vice president, knew that
Speaker 6: there were Hunter's business associates.
Speaker 9: In the room.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think I can. I could definitively say at
Speaker 12: particular dinners or meetings, he knew there were business associates,
Speaker 12: and he you know, we or if I was there,
Speaker 12: I was a business associate too. I don't know if
Speaker 12: it was an orchestrated call in or not. It certainly
Speaker 12: was powerful though, because you know, if you're sitting with
Speaker 12: a foreign business person and you hear the vice president's voice,
Speaker 12: that's prize enough. I mean, that's that's that's pretty impactful
Speaker 12: stuff for anyone.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 12: It's just the president you have to be I mean,
Speaker 12: you understand DC, right, So the power to have that
Speaker 12: access in that conversation and it's not in a scheduled
Speaker 12: conference call, and that's a part of your family. That's
Speaker 12: that's like the pinnacle of power in DC.
Speaker 6: You're taking a call from the vice president and you
Speaker 6: put it on speaker it's not just hey dad, I'm
Speaker 6: in a meeting with some buddies, right, it's.
Speaker 2: Let me put my dad the present speaker.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yep. In the rear view, it's it's an abusive
Speaker 12: soft power.
Speaker 6: I'd say, an abuse of soft power.
Speaker 2: Abusive soft power. I got to be honest, pr So
Speaker 2: I found an Archer incredibly slimy. Throughout this interview. There
Speaker 2: was a level fact. I think the reason why is
Speaker 2: there was this intense self awareness from Archer. He's like, listen,
Speaker 2: you know how Washington works. You get the guy. He
Speaker 2: had a lot of connections. He's like Hunter, he was
Speaker 2: the regulation guy. And Hunter and Tucker would be like, well,
Speaker 2: what do you mean. He'd be like, you know how
Speaker 2: Washington where he didn't want to say it really out loud,
Speaker 2: and he kept kind of smiling around the truth. But
Speaker 2: the truth enough about calling in twenty times and that
Speaker 2: real moment that stuck out to me. He's like, look,
Speaker 2: it's the pinnacle of power in Washington. You're in a
Speaker 2: meeting with some Ukrainian guys who are paying you eighty
Speaker 2: three thousand dollars a month, and you put the guy
Speaker 2: on speaker. And Tucker even he was like he's like, look,
Speaker 2: I love my kids. I talk to him every day.
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't. And he has adult children. He's like,
Speaker 2: I don't call them into business meetings. It's super weird.
Speaker 2: And if they did that to me vice versa, what
Speaker 2: the hell is going on? So clearly something was happening
Speaker 2: to the extent where Biden knew he was calling into
Speaker 2: a business meeting because he literally would put him on
Speaker 2: and that, you know, Dan Goldman, the Democratic representative, His
Speaker 2: defense was, well, they didn't really talk about business. They
Speaker 2: were talking the illusion of access. As Archer says, the
Speaker 2: mere fact that the man is on the phone was
Speaker 2: clearly worth millions of dollars two Hunter's foreign business partners.
Speaker 2: At the very least, it was part of the sales
Speaker 2: pitch that he was able to monetize his last name.
Speaker 2: There's no denying it now, Like looking through this and
Speaker 2: in this interview, and of course we were talking about this sport,
Speaker 2: it's hilarious. One Tucker taught that this interview is not
Speaker 2: allowed to be covered on Fox News, apparently because Tucker's
Speaker 2: in it and he's fired and he's persona on Grado now.
Speaker 2: But also the actual allegations here are completely ignored by
Speaker 2: the Dan Goldmans and all of them, the type, all
Speaker 2: the spin around. It was obviously wrong when from the
Speaker 2: horse's mouth, he's like, yeah, the mere fact that he
Speaker 2: was on the phone was worth a lot of money
Speaker 2: to us. Yeah, He's like, that's what we paid him for.
Speaker 2: That's why I was in business with Hunter. It's obvious,
Speaker 2: I know it.
Speaker 1: And we talk a lot about the problem of just
Speaker 1: the appearance of corruption and what that does in terms
Speaker 1: of the public trust, because then, how do you know
Speaker 1: when Joe Biden is acting as vice president, or Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is acting as president, or Joe Biden's you know,
Speaker 1: a powerful member of the Senate, how do you know
Speaker 1: that he's not influenced at all by what he knows
Speaker 1: his son is up to and his business dealings and
Speaker 1: his associates. Do we really have confidence that, listen, human
Speaker 1: beings are human beings, that you're not impacted by that
Speaker 1: at all when you're making decisions on, you know, supposedly
Speaker 1: on behalf of the American people. And you know, we
Speaker 1: talk about this with regard to Trump and Kushner and
Speaker 1: the Saudi money and all of that stuff as well,
Speaker 1: like the fact that you're getting those funds in the
Speaker 1: fact that you know your son's livelihood is dependent on
Speaker 1: his access to you, his last name, his affiliation, this,
Speaker 1: you know, group of sketchy foreign businessmen, and we're expected
Speaker 1: to believe that you remain pure as the driven snow
Speaker 1: in terms of your business, in terms of your doing
Speaker 1: the business of the American people. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that. And then the other piece
Speaker 1: of this is just astonishing to me. It kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of the defense that's being mounted for Trump
Speaker 1: of like, oh, this guy's so dumb that he actually
Speaker 1: believed that the emission was stolen. It's sort of the same.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, Joe Biden is so dumb that
Speaker 1: he actually didn't realize Hunter Biden was calling him into
Speaker 1: these business meetings to trade on his name. Like I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that. I do not believe that whatsoever,
Speaker 1: because Joe Biden has been in DC for longer than
Speaker 1: we have been alive, way longer than you've been alive,
Speaker 1: and we're expected to believe he doesn't also have some
Speaker 1: basic understanding of how DC works.
Speaker 3: Come on, get out of here.
Speaker 2: Totally agree and it's actually you know. I was in
Speaker 2: a meeting once with this guy who's a very sketchy guy,
Speaker 2: and he was trying to prove to me that he
Speaker 2: knew a lot of very powerful people in the White House,
Speaker 2: and I was skept. I was like, yeah, I prove
Speaker 2: and he's like, all right, stay quiet. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: And he started calling people in the White House on
Speaker 2: the phone and put him on speakerphone and was talking
Speaker 2: to him well while I was in the room, which
Speaker 2: is pretty scummy actually on his behalf. But I remember
Speaker 2: it was like, it's like a power move. And I
Speaker 2: was like, whoa. I was like, all right, guy knows
Speaker 2: a guy. He's like, I'll listen to him. I'll hear
Speaker 2: what the person has to say. Is this is like
Speaker 2: a this is like a power move. I think that
Speaker 2: was it's a flex in front of these business guys.
Speaker 2: And that's what they're paying for. That's what they're paying
Speaker 2: in eighty three thousand a month.
Speaker 1: The currency in DC isn't in Tucker gets with those
Speaker 1: isn't money, it's power.
Speaker 3: It's access to power.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, if you're able to put your dad
Speaker 1: on speakerphone and your dad as a president Vice President
Speaker 1: of the United States, Hunter was monetizing that. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not illegal, is it gross?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Did Joe Biden lie about what was going on?
Speaker 3: I think that's pretty undinized, and that's actually the key.
Speaker 3: All right, Sorry, what are you looking at?
Speaker 2: Well, if he took a snapshot and showed it to
Speaker 2: people one hundred years from now of today, you would
Speaker 2: think that they would be deeply sympathetic to us. What
Speaker 2: an awful time two geriatrics running for president Trump, indictment,
Speaker 2: Bidenomics and all its glory, awful housing shortages. But as
Speaker 2: possible though, they may not remember any of that. In fact,
Speaker 2: all of that may be a footnote to what is
Speaker 2: happening right now with possibly one of the most important
Speaker 2: scientific breakthroughs of the twenty first century. It has captured
Speaker 2: the minds of engineers, venture capitalists, and technologists everywhere. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the LK ninety nine superconductor. Luckily, my dad
Speaker 2: is a professor of electrical engineering, and he's able to
Speaker 2: translate the implications of this technology for my fellow and
Speaker 2: uninitiated through me. Basically, it matters because our current infrastructure
Speaker 2: that supplies power to devices, our homes, our cars, our
Speaker 2: data centers and more have a central enemy. Heat. When
Speaker 2: electrons flow through with current conductors, they create resistance. This
Speaker 2: causes two problems. It reduces the flow of the overall
Speaker 2: electrical current, and it creates heat, which degrades the infrastructure
Speaker 2: around it is conductivity. Thus, a so called superconductor is
Speaker 2: a conductor of electricity that functions without this heat. The
Speaker 2: problem is that achieving superconductivity requires using liquid nitrogen to
Speaker 2: cool materials down to minus three hundred degrees or so fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: It can only function at certain artificial pressures, and this
Speaker 2: poses a lot of problems from an engineering point of view.
Speaker 2: You've got to make space for cooling. You need temperature control,
Speaker 2: you need atmosphere control. You need materials that can withstand
Speaker 2: both of these things. It can be done, but it's tricky.
Speaker 2: That's why engineers make the big bucks. Now, if you
Speaker 2: think about these principles, it starts to make sense. It's
Speaker 2: why data centers have to stay cool. This is why
Speaker 2: your laptop or computer has a fan built inside of it.
Speaker 2: It's why electronics can get hot whenever they're charging or not.
Speaker 2: In s's heat is the enemy of two things. It
Speaker 2: is inefficient and it's hard to build around whenever you're
Speaker 2: making real products. Thus, the holy grail has always been
Speaker 2: what if we don't have to worry about all this
Speaker 2: pesky heat and pressure? And this is where the hype
Speaker 2: of recent days is come from. A team of scientists
Speaker 2: in South Korea have published the preprint of a paper
Speaker 2: in which they claim to have developed a superconductor which
Speaker 2: functions at temperatures above two hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 2: and with ambient pressure, so basically doesn't need to be
Speaker 2: cold anymore. You don't need some crazy atmospheric pressures. The
Speaker 2: thing just works in normal temperature, normal climate. The team
Speaker 2: claims to have replicated a genuine superconductor status in a
Speaker 2: video that they published showing a magnetic effect that is
Speaker 2: supposed to be the hallmark of superconductivity. So why are
Speaker 2: we not popping champagne and celebrating. Well, some people are
Speaker 2: still very skeptical of all of this and are reiterating
Speaker 2: a scientific principle. Sounds great, can you replicate it? As
Speaker 2: Scientific American notes in nineteen eighty seven, there was actually
Speaker 2: a similar hype around a compound that was discovered. The
Speaker 2: confunction is a superconductor but after closer inspection it ended
Speaker 2: up fizzling out. Apparently, these claims do pop up every
Speaker 2: once in a while in academia and then they fizzle out.
Speaker 2: It's just that this time Twitter exists and people are
Speaker 2: getting seriously hypened. So at the same time, we still
Speaker 2: shouldn't pour water on the entire thing. Chinese researchers at
Speaker 2: Wazong University they've claimed to replicate the superconductor manufacturing process
Speaker 2: and post it as proof the magnetic effect that I
Speaker 2: reference by cooking up the same materials as published by
Speaker 2: the South Korean team. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at
Speaker 2: the University of California system also claimed that it had
Speaker 2: simulated the South Korean team's findings and believed that it
Speaker 2: was theoretically possible, and they were joined in that by
Speaker 2: the Shenyang National Lab in China. So we're in the
Speaker 2: weight and see mode. It's kind of like the lottery,
Speaker 2: though the best part it's not the drawing itself. It's
Speaker 2: that part, the three hours or so before the drawing
Speaker 2: when you get to sit back and you imagine what
Speaker 2: life could be like with a small chance that actually
Speaker 2: it will be that way if this works what does
Speaker 2: it mean. It means smaller electronics. It means abundantly cheap
Speaker 2: energy because so much will no longer be lost in transmission.
Speaker 2: It means a revolution in cars, frictionless technology, and it
Speaker 2: means massive advancements in quantum computing. But I think more importantly,
Speaker 2: it means that we are no longer living in a
Speaker 2: stagnant technological era. One of the most important quotes about
Speaker 2: technology was said by venture capitalist Peter Teel almost a
Speaker 2: decade ago. We were promised flying cars. All we got
Speaker 2: was one hundred and forty characters. There's something profoundly true
Speaker 2: about this. In our last scientific advancement in the last
Speaker 2: two decades, watch a movie from the nineteen nineties, Other
Speaker 2: than the cell phone, what's really all that different from
Speaker 2: their life and yours. The only advancement that we've made
Speaker 2: is consumer electronics. And while we think that and the
Speaker 2: Internet are incredible in their own right, put it up
Speaker 2: against previous eras of scientific discovery, they pale in comparison.
Speaker 2: For those who have watched the movie Oppenheimer, one of
Speaker 2: the most exciting parts of the film is the first
Speaker 2: hour and a half or so, as they show Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: traversing through the universities of Europe, meeting some of the
Speaker 2: most important scientific minds in the world and collaborating. In
Speaker 2: those days, it seemed as if world changing Nobel Prize
Speaker 2: winning discoveries were being made on a near daily basis,
Speaker 2: and then accelerated by things like the Manhattan Project. And
Speaker 2: the crazy thing is it really didn't even stop there.
Speaker 2: We went from President Kennedy's wish to a man on
Speaker 2: the Moon within a decade, and then along the way
Speaker 2: accelerated the development of technologies computers, micro proceressors. These never
Speaker 2: would have taken off without the funding that these programs
Speaker 2: provided and the scientific inquiry. But then it all came
Speaker 2: crashing down sometime around nineteen seventy one, As Teel himself
Speaker 2: has said, we stopped going to space. We became a
Speaker 2: financialized and consumer obsessed economy. Life got easier, Americans got
Speaker 2: fatter and richer on paper, but our pace of advancement
Speaker 2: basically kind of stopped. Even now, consider two countries that
Speaker 2: were at the forefront of this, South Korea and China.
Speaker 2: While we're apparently only in the replication game, not the
Speaker 2: advancement game. If there's any hope to LK ninety nine.
Speaker 2: It said it could give us the world another shot
Speaker 2: of greatness and we can actually ditch one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty characters or whatever the hell. The limit is now
Speaker 2: on X for real flying cars. So I want flying cars, Crystal.
Speaker 2: That's what I've always wanted.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Crystal, what do you take a look at?
Speaker 3: Have I got a story for you?
Speaker 1: It's about greed, corruption, mismanagement, and the way workers get
Speaker 1: smeared and screwed. You see, this week, tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of workers organized by the Teamsters are likely out of
Speaker 1: work after Yellow Trucking Company went under. Now, the company
Speaker 1: was quick to blame supposedly unreasonable demands from workers for
Speaker 1: their woes, but the true story of their demise goes
Speaker 1: back decades with mismanagement so egregious that even a massive
Speaker 1: taxpayer bailout gifted to them basically by Jared Kushner and
Speaker 1: certainly the Trump administration, could not rescue the company. And
Speaker 1: the end result, my friends, is that American taxpayers now
Speaker 1: the proud owners of a massive steak in a company
Speaker 1: that just went belly up.
Speaker 3: Let me unpack all of this for you.
Speaker 1: So Yellow's desperate financial straits really begin in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. They placed a massive bet on a one
Speaker 1: point one billion dollar merger with a top competitor called
Speaker 1: Roadway Corps Bold bet, I guess, But instead of benefiting
Speaker 1: from their new dominant market position, Yellow struggled under that
Speaker 1: massive debt load after they failed to effectively navigate the merger.
Speaker 1: This debt almost pushed them over the edge after the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crash, but they managed to
Speaker 1: narrowly escape bankruptcy by wiping out their shareholders and forcing
Speaker 1: their workers to take a huge pay cut. At that time,
Speaker 1: the teamsters agreed to billions of dollars in painful worker
Speaker 1: concessions in order to try to keep the company afloat,
Speaker 1: but it still wasn't enough to write the ship. And
Speaker 1: then when COVID hit, Yellow was once again facing financial collapse.
Speaker 1: But unlike you, or maybe the vast majority of workers
Speaker 1: and small business owners in the country, Yellow had an
Speaker 1: ace up their sleeve by the name of Jared Kushner.
Speaker 1: You see in one of their attempts to refinance that
Speaker 1: giant debt burden. Yellow had refinanced through private equity giant
Speaker 1: Apollo Global, which kept the company going with a massive
Speaker 1: six hundred million dollar loan back in twenty nineteen. So
Speaker 1: Paulo Global then had a big interest in keeping Yellow afloat,
Speaker 1: and they also had a big favor to call in
Speaker 1: from the White House because a few years before rescuing Yellow,
Speaker 1: they had also rescued the presidential fail son in law
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner, with a big old loan on a Chicago
Speaker 1: skyscraper that his company had foolishly purchased at the height
Speaker 1: of the real estate bubble. Given what commercial real estate
Speaker 1: valuations look like today, I can only imagine how screwed
Speaker 1: that loan and investment is at this point. That Apollo
Speaker 1: loan to Kushner was fishy as hell to start with,
Speaker 1: coming as it did after Kushner brought Apollo into advice
Speaker 1: on infrastructure and even discussed a White House job with
Speaker 1: an Apollo founder. So when the pandemic shutter businesses and
Speaker 1: pushed millions into unemployment, Yellow, thanks to their high level
Speaker 1: government connections, they were able to secure a sweetheart deal
Speaker 1: from none other than you and I, and it was
Speaker 1: a doozy seven hundred million dollars authorized under the CARES Act.
Speaker 1: Even though that legislation was supposedly for relatively small loans
Speaker 1: to small businesses. That loan to Yellow was so gigantic
Speaker 1: that at the time it was authorized, it represented ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of all the funds that had been dispersed
Speaker 1: through the program. If you owned or were employed by
Speaker 1: a small business, you probably remember how tough it was
Speaker 1: to get the paperwork done and prove them and the
Speaker 1: money release. All of that was a mess. Not so
Speaker 1: for the chronically mismanaged but politically connected Yellow. With the
Speaker 1: administration access provided by Apollo, they argued that the company
Speaker 1: was critical to national defense and therefore deserved to be
Speaker 1: part of a special carbount program within CARES.
Speaker 3: This was complete bullshit.
Speaker 1: In fact, in twenty twenty two, the House issued a
Speaker 1: scathing report to denouncing the decision as politically driven, including
Speaker 1: direct intervention that may have gone all the way to
Speaker 1: the big guy, Donald Trump himself. What made this massive
Speaker 1: bailance even more extraordinary is that Yellow was actually being
Speaker 1: sued by the government for overcharging the Department of Defense
Speaker 1: for trucking services, a suit that was eventually settled for
Speaker 1: millions of dollars.
Speaker 3: So you see how this works.
Speaker 1: Kushner used White House access to help out Apollo. Apollo
Speaker 1: returns the favor with a big loan to Kushner. Kushner
Speaker 1: returns that favor with a massive bailant to an Apollo company,
Speaker 1: and round and round the favor, trading for elites who
Speaker 1: can fail and screw up in every way possible, but
Speaker 1: still somehow secure the sweetheart.
Speaker 3: Deal they need when they needed.
Speaker 1: And you know what, if the company had actually been
Speaker 1: able to turn itself around keep those workers employed, that
Speaker 1: would be one thing. But even with tax payers bailing
Speaker 1: their asses out, they still were not able to turn around.
Speaker 1: And now about thirty thousand workers are facing unemployment and
Speaker 1: we are stuck with the bill. To add insult to injury,
Speaker 1: the company and some in the media have had the
Speaker 1: temerity to blame Yellow Workers for this disgraceful state of affairs,
Speaker 1: blaming the union strike notice for the company's failure. Words
Speaker 1: cannot describe how misleading this is. Yes, negotiations between the
Speaker 1: union and the company were increasingly acrimonious as the company
Speaker 1: entered its death rattle phase, but the workers.
Speaker 3: Had every reason to be pissed off.
Speaker 1: Under self inflicted financial pressure combined with a post pandemic
Speaker 1: freight slowdown, the company decided to skip required payments for
Speaker 1: worker pensions and healthcare. What that meant is that workers
Speaker 1: were facing expulsion from their pension plans and complete loss
Speaker 1: of the healthcare that they had been promised as part
Speaker 1: of their employment.
Speaker 3: I suspect you.
Speaker 1: Would probably be pretty pissed off too, but no, As always,
Speaker 1: workers were expected to just take this quietly, along with taxpayers,
Speaker 1: eat the losses forged by decades of failed company management,
Speaker 1: and when they didn't, they got blamed for not sitting
Speaker 1: down and taking it on the chin and bailing the
Speaker 1: company out once again. They're like eighteen elements of the
Speaker 1: story that are just absolutely classic American capitalism, favor trading,
Speaker 1: sweetheart deals, scapegoating workers and unions for daring to speak
Speaker 1: up while they are getting screwed, socializing the losses to
Speaker 1: taxpayers while privatizing any potential gains. But yeah, let's just
Speaker 1: pretend this country is a free market meritocracy where the
Speaker 1: brilliant and deserving succeed instead of the connected and the craven,
Speaker 1: where the elites can never fail, they can only be failed.
Speaker 1: And by the way, where corruption gets a pass if
Speaker 1: it's corruption from your own side of the aisle. But hey,
Speaker 1: Lee Kushner got a skyscraper loan. This one was really
Speaker 1: when I started reading into the details.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: So very excited to be joined by two gentlemen who
Speaker 1: make the case for and against these latest Trump indictments.
Speaker 1: We've got Ben Weingarten. He is a senior contributor to
Speaker 1: the Federalists. And we also have Bradley Moss rejoining us
Speaker 1: on the show. He is a national security lawyer. Super
Speaker 1: grateful to both of you for joining us this morning.
Speaker 2: Good to see you guys.
Speaker 9: Absolutely happy to be here.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's just start by sort of laying
Speaker 1: on our positions here. Brad explained to us your thoughts
Speaker 1: on these led us side of Trump and Dimonds.
Speaker 11: Sure, so, the new indictment is sort of what we
Speaker 11: always expected was going to come out of the January
Speaker 11: sixth investigation, given where the grand jury testimony we were
Speaker 11: hearing about and all this various media reporting was going
Speaker 11: quite simply it's a very clear cut, in direct indictmed
Speaker 11: It doesn't get into issues about insurrection, doesn't get in
Speaker 11: issues about seditious conspiracy TI to they'll keep first in
Speaker 11: the first amendmentsues. All it does is just very simply
Speaker 11: the idea of Donald Trump was told by every one
Speaker 11: of the government, told by every one of the White House,
Speaker 11: told BYO his own campaign advisors, told by his own
Speaker 11: personal lawyers. You lost the election. These fraud allegations have
Speaker 11: no merit. There's certainly nothing to warrant overturning anything, or
Speaker 11: to believe is there going to be any merit to
Speaker 11: the lawsuits.
Speaker 9: He said, that's nice. I don't care.
Speaker 11: I'm going to go find some other lawyers who are
Speaker 11: going to tell me something otherwise, give you some fantasies
Speaker 11: that I'm going to start conspiring with them to try
Speaker 11: to get fake electors.
Speaker 9: Coordinated, to submit paperwork.
Speaker 11: To get Jeffrey Clark installed, to use the power of
Speaker 11: the DOJ and then to try to leverage that power
Speaker 11: against Mike Pence to stop it from doing his duty
Speaker 11: on January sixth. That is the crux of the case.
Speaker 11: It's not about speech, it's about conduct.
Speaker 2: Ben give us the counter case.
Speaker 13: Well, first, I think it's notable that jack Smith kind
Speaker 13: of wants to have it both ways. He wants to
Speaker 13: create the appearance that Trump insided an insurrection, are engaged
Speaker 13: in seditious conspiracy, but doesn't charge him accordingly, which I
Speaker 13: think points to the political nature of the indictment. Of course,
Speaker 13: on top of the timing that just so happens to
Speaker 13: drop as arguably impeachable or pointing towards impeachable conduct continues
Speaker 13: to filter out around the bidens. Set aside the political
Speaker 13: aspect for a moment, I'll address the merits. So to
Speaker 13: some extent, I agree with Bradley, except that I.
Speaker 2: Do believe that this is, at the end of the day.
Speaker 13: About speech, because in addition to the political aspect of
Speaker 13: the indictment, there's the fact that Special Counsel Jacksmith also
Speaker 13: apparently is a mind reader, and what he is arguing
Speaker 13: here is that all of these people, many of them
Speaker 13: by the way, who were not Trump allies in any way.
Speaker 13: But set that aside for a moment, like as if
Speaker 13: some government bureaucrat tells Donald Trump something that's going to
Speaker 13: sway him, and he must have known, essentially what the
Speaker 13: case boils down to is Trump knew he lost but
Speaker 13: claim that he won, and so everything that he tried
Speaker 13: to do to pursue every single possible remedy, Pleading to
Speaker 13: state legislatures, assembling alternate slates of electors, debating with Vice
Speaker 13: President Pence and others about what could be done with
Speaker 13: respect to certification, etc. All of that is evidence of
Speaker 13: a fraudulent conspiracy because he really knew that he lost.
Speaker 13: And so jack Smith is going to have to prove
Speaker 13: that he can get inside Donald Trump's mind, know what
Speaker 13: he truly believed in his heart, that all the advisors
Speaker 13: around him conspired to defraud the American people, and that
Speaker 13: there was this malign intent.
Speaker 2: Associated with it as well.
Speaker 13: And I think it's very telling by the way that
Speaker 13: in addition to the case boiling down to Trump knew
Speaker 13: he lost but claimed he won, and then everything that
Speaker 13: he did after that was fraudulent. There's also the aspect
Speaker 13: of the fact that Jacksmith had to twist and contort
Speaker 13: these statutes to try and fit the case. These shoehorn
Speaker 13: these charges that have really never been applied in any
Speaker 13: sort of analogous situation.
Speaker 9: A couple of them being, first, this invocation.
Speaker 13: Of this charge, which is usually used for law enforcement
Speaker 13: abuses or hate crimes, for example, which I think is
Speaker 13: attempted in part to smear President Trump, but which really
Speaker 13: has no relevance to this idea of depriving people of
Speaker 13: their right to vote somehow. And then the substruction of
Speaker 13: an official preceding charge, which had never been applied previously
Speaker 13: to political protests but then was applied for the first
Speaker 13: time in a novel way with respect to the Gen
Speaker 13: Six protests. This is a Sarbins Oxley slash Enron driven law,
Speaker 13: and it's probably going to come before the Supreme Court
Speaker 13: whether or not that could even be applied to protests.
Speaker 13: But it's not as if Jack Smith has even necessarily
Speaker 13: drawing a direct line to Donald Trump led these protests,
Speaker 13: in cited them, led a riot, etc. So from my
Speaker 13: vantage point, this is trying to fit statue to meet
Speaker 13: what are in effect thought crimes, even if the idea
Speaker 13: is they're fraudulent actions, because the actions are made fraudulent
Speaker 13: by the fact that Donald Trump really knew he lost
Speaker 13: but claimed he won.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let me.
Speaker 1: Focus on that part and then I'll get Broadley to
Speaker 1: respond on the peace regarding the charges themselves, and whether
Speaker 1: these are the appropriate things to have been charged. But
Speaker 1: on this idea that Trump or any reasonable person with
Speaker 1: the information that Trump had knew that what he was
Speaker 1: saying was bogus, let me go ahead and put G
Speaker 1: two up on the screen. Here, we've got a list
Speaker 1: of all the people who told Trump that he was wrong.
Speaker 3: Most of these are Republicans.
Speaker 1: You've got Mike Pence, senior leaders of the Justice Department,
Speaker 1: Director of National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and
Speaker 1: Infrastructure Security Agency, senior White House attorneys. Go on to
Speaker 1: the next page here as well, guys, I've got an
Speaker 1: additional list here, senior staffers on the reelection campaign, state
Speaker 1: legislators and officials, state and federal courts. And in addition,
Speaker 1: actually put the next piece up on the screen as well.
Speaker 1: You have a part that I think relates to Sidney
Speaker 1: Powell with regard to one of the key swing states here, Georgia.
Speaker 1: They say in the indictment that on November twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: co conspirator three, which everyone thinks of Sidney Powell, filed
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the governor of Georgia, falsely alleging massive election
Speaker 1: fraud accomplished through the voting machine companies, election software and hardware.
Speaker 1: Before the lawsuit was even filed, Trump retweeted a post
Speaker 1: promoting it.
Speaker 3: Trump did this.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that when he had discussed Sidney Pal's
Speaker 1: far fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company. I
Speaker 1: presume this is dominion in private with advisors, Trump had
Speaker 1: conceded they were unsupported and that co conspirator three sounded crazy.
Speaker 1: Co conspirator Georgia lawsuit was dismissed on December seventh. So, Bradley,
Speaker 1: can you explain from your perspective, how central to this
Speaker 1: case is it that they're able to prove that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump actually knew that the things that he was saying
Speaker 1: were complete and utter nonsense.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 11: No, it's very significant, and a lot of the evidence
Speaker 11: that we will presumably see if this gets to trial
Speaker 11: will be part and parcel what Donald Trump said to
Speaker 11: people in private, what he was telling people in these
Speaker 11: various meetings when they were discussing the Crackpot lawsuit. Sidney
Speaker 11: Powell was bringing the Crackpot lawsuits. Rudy Giuliani, who was
Speaker 11: trying to bring the insane idea is being provided by
Speaker 11: Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, all these things combined showing
Speaker 11: that not only had he been told by not just
Speaker 11: some random bureaucrat, his own appointees in government, there is
Speaker 11: no truth to this, his own lawyers in the White House,
Speaker 11: there is no truth to this. His own paid campaign
Speaker 11: staff let Jason Miller telling him there is no truth
Speaker 11: to this, and he privately says, yeah, these people are
Speaker 11: all nuts and crazy. But then he keeps going forward
Speaker 11: with it. He's signing verified complaints in states and submitting
Speaker 11: paperwork saying, yeah, these allegations are actually drew in the
Speaker 11: courts of order ruled at least in one of those
Speaker 11: instances that was not accurate.
Speaker 9: He knew these were false.
Speaker 11: He did not care because he wanted to hold on
Speaker 11: to power and to address you know, kind of Ben's
Speaker 11: point of will, Jacksmith had to be a mind reader. No,
Speaker 11: this is what prosecutors have to do all the time
Speaker 11: in intent cases. Juries can infer intent based off conduct
Speaker 11: in private, separate remarks made by the person to other individuals.
Speaker 11: This will be stuff that obviously, Donald Trump lawyers will
Speaker 11: try to fight and pretrial motions, they'll try.
Speaker 9: To attack the sufficiency sufficiency of.
Speaker 11: It at trial. If needs be, but this is not novel.
Speaker 11: Prosecutors do this every single day.
Speaker 2: So Ben, I want to get into kind of what
Speaker 2: you were talking over there about statute and in terms
Speaker 2: of the application of statute here, both on civil rights
Speaker 2: law the deprivation of the right to vote. I've heard
Speaker 2: this discussed a lot in conservative circles. I'd like for
Speaker 2: you to explain it a little bit more specifically on
Speaker 2: the civil rights piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Well, I mean, what the indictment itself says is that
Speaker 13: he was trying to effectively invalidate people's votes. And I
Speaker 13: think you know very clearly what the Trump response would
Speaker 13: be is, actually, I wanted to make sure that people's
Speaker 13: votes weren't deluded by the fact that there may have
Speaker 13: been unlawfully cast ballots, or ballots that were accepted after
Speaker 13: the time they should have been, or the fact that
Speaker 13: masses of ballots might never have even gone through the
Speaker 13: wire had changes to election rules and law not been
Speaker 13: made by state executives rather than legislators. And you know,
Speaker 13: of course, the government is going to make the case,
Speaker 13: and it's worth noting that all of the assertions in
Speaker 13: the indictment, of course, are going to present the worst
Speaker 13: possible case for Trump, and Trump is going to marshal
Speaker 13: a substantial amount of evidence on the other side and
Speaker 13: maybe get into discovery, and we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 13: But I think that that argument can be probably pretty
Speaker 13: quickly dispensed with. In addition to the fact that, again
Speaker 13: if you just go on the Department of Justices Civil
Speaker 13: Rights Divisis website, they lay out what this I believe
Speaker 13: it's eighteen in the US Code two forty one. If
Speaker 13: you look at what it's applied for, it has nothing
Speaker 13: to do with one's vote. And even if it does
Speaker 13: get to dealing with the idea of Trump was trying
Speaker 13: to invalidate pete lawful votes on the merits, I think
Speaker 13: that argument probably fails on.
Speaker 2: The legal merits.
Speaker 13: But all of that said, the politics here is obviously integral.
Speaker 13: Who knows to the extent this actually does go to
Speaker 13: trial how long the case goes, and Jack Smith obviously has.
Speaker 2: Said he wants to expedite it.
Speaker 13: But I think at the end of the day, Donald
Speaker 13: Trump is going up against probably the most inhospitable and
Speaker 13: hostile judge he could possibly find in a January sixth
Speaker 13: related case, and a jury pool that's almost one hundred
Speaker 13: percent Democrat and certainly anti Trump. So I think it'll
Speaker 13: be a huge uphill battle within that case. And what'll
Speaker 13: be interesting to see is to the extent it does
Speaker 13: go to trial again, what comes it out in that discovery.
Speaker 3: Those are all great points.
Speaker 1: Bradley, Can you respond to this piece that Ben has
Speaker 1: raised about the specific charges, not only the civil rights charge,
Speaker 1: but the appropriateness that you see to the charges that
Speaker 1: have been laid out in the indictment, and also talk
Speaker 1: to us a little bit about how some of them
Speaker 1: have been used against other January sixth definances as well.
Speaker 11: Sure to go to Ben's point about the Civil Rights Statute,
Speaker 11: it's been used in recent years against anyone who's tried
Speaker 11: to dilute or tried to deprive someone else of having
Speaker 11: their lawful ballot being counted. So in the context of
Speaker 11: Donald Trump, where they're going with this is the efforts
Speaker 11: to have ballots thrown out in Detroit, the efforts to
Speaker 11: have ballots thrown out in Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Speaker 9: The idea is.
Speaker 11: That it's not just saying we want to make sure
Speaker 11: this was done properly. You could have speech along those lines,
Speaker 11: that's fine, but that he was told again by his
Speaker 11: own government, by his own lawyers, there is no merit
Speaker 11: to these claims that the ballots weren't properly cast, or
Speaker 11: there was fraudulent ballots thrown into boxes, or Rudi Giuliani's
Speaker 11: you know, crackpot ideas about the two workers in Atlanta.
Speaker 11: He was told there's no merit to this, and he's
Speaker 11: still pushing the Georgia Secretary of State saying I need
Speaker 11: to get eleven thousand votes to dilute the votes of
Speaker 11: those who were lawfully cast.
Speaker 9: And I'm sorry that it hurts.
Speaker 2: His feelings, but he lost in Georgia.
Speaker 9: They didn't vote for him. That's the reality, you know.
Speaker 9: And it goes to the whole point with these.
Speaker 11: Other charges conspiracy to defraud that's been brought up throughout
Speaker 11: the January sixth stuff, and every time it's come up
Speaker 11: on appeal, it's been upheld in terms of the government's
Speaker 11: indication of it to conspiracy to defraud or conspiracy to
Speaker 11: obstruct official proceedings. I'm sorry it applies to this concept.
Speaker 11: It applies to these efforts, you know, not just January
Speaker 11: six rioters.
Speaker 9: But to Donald Trump.
Speaker 11: You tried to stop the lawful certification of the Electoral
Speaker 11: College votes.
Speaker 9: End of discussion, you did, It's done.
Speaker 13: I don't know that at the end of discussion on
Speaker 13: the obstruction of an official proceeding aspect of it, because
Speaker 13: again I think you would concede. This has never been
Speaker 13: applied before in this sort of instance. Until January sixth.
Speaker 13: We've never had this applied before in terms of other
Speaker 13: protests or riots outside a proceeding or that disrupted a proceeding.
Speaker 13: And not every appeals court judge when this did go
Speaker 13: to a.
Speaker 2: Higher court, did agree with that assertion. And there's a.
Speaker 13: Reason why there's an application right now at least one
Speaker 13: or two for the Supreme Court to hear this argument.
Speaker 13: So I don't think that we have the final word
Speaker 13: on the obstruction of an official proceeding. But to your
Speaker 13: point about all of these different individuals, experts, authority is
Speaker 13: telling Donald Trump one thing, and he zagged where they zigged.
Speaker 13: I mean, first of all, that's pretty common in the
Speaker 13: Donald Trump White House. Second of all, if you're talking
Speaker 13: about a president and you're charging a president, and this
Speaker 13: is for conduct when he was a president, and yes,
Speaker 13: we are, of course in the middle of an election
Speaker 13: where his successor and chief opponent, his DOJ is the
Speaker 13: one bringing this case. The bar has to be really
Speaker 13: high and really clear cut. Now, Brad, you're making the case.
Speaker 13: It is really clear cut here. But what I would
Speaker 13: say is these are political questions at the end of
Speaker 13: the day. They have not been dealt with, typically in
Speaker 13: a court of law, and in fact, the political system
Speaker 13: and the legal system did check Donald Trump during twenty twenty.
Speaker 13: So why is this indictment being dropped now when to
Speaker 13: some extent this was already dealt with in an impeachment
Speaker 13: proceeding where he was acquitted in the Senate. Well, I
Speaker 13: think the thing speaks for itself it being in the
Speaker 13: middle of an election, and I think there are many
Speaker 13: political aims to this. One of them is I think
Speaker 13: the left and Democrats believe that making Republicans have to
Speaker 13: grapple with January sixth or quote unquote election denialism is
Speaker 13: going to be a winning political argument's say.
Speaker 2: Another aspect is that.
Speaker 1: The politics of it I want to kind of put aside,
Speaker 1: because the piece that you guys are really experts on
Speaker 1: that we want your analysis on is that the legal
Speaker 1: piece of this been. One of the things I'm curious
Speaker 1: for you about is number one, what do you think
Speaker 1: is the most difficult piece of this indictment for Trump?
Speaker 1: The evidence that's proffered here that looks the worst. And
Speaker 1: number two, if you think that there was no there
Speaker 1: there and these offenses really weren't chargeable, and these weren't
Speaker 1: the right charges, et cetera, et cetera, where would be
Speaker 1: the line, like, what would Trump have had to have
Speaker 1: done for you to say, naw, he crossed the line,
Speaker 1: this was actually criminal, He should be charged, there should
Speaker 1: be accountability.
Speaker 13: Well, I think on the second point, and I'll have
Speaker 13: to think through a specific to it, but it has
Speaker 13: to be incredibly clear that someone actually had intent, they knew,
Speaker 13: they had proven data in front of them, and it
Speaker 13: was clear beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. And obviously you're
Speaker 13: gonna have jurors who are going to have to make
Speaker 13: this call sure that what was being done was obviously
Speaker 13: an intent to pull the wool over people's eyes. Setting aside,
Speaker 13: you know that there weren't millions of people who had
Speaker 13: questions about an unprecedented election with unprecedented the rule and
Speaker 13: law changes as.
Speaker 3: Questions because of what Trump was saying.
Speaker 2: But go on, Well, I think.
Speaker 9: Questions are not approved.
Speaker 13: Okay, well, let me just say this is the first
Speaker 13: I think we'd all we'd all acknowledge this is the
Speaker 13: first mass mail in ballot general election we ever had
Speaker 13: in our lifetime. And I think we can all agree
Speaker 13: also that executives made changes to laws down the stretch
Speaker 13: of a campaign that we have not seen historically. But
Speaker 13: even if you dispute that, if you're asking me, what
Speaker 13: do I think is that the most difficult aspects of
Speaker 13: the indictment to defend? I think you have aspects of
Speaker 13: For example, I think that there's some insinuation or allegation
Speaker 13: that Trump asserted or he signed off and verified certain
Speaker 13: information that Jack Smith claims, and I think this might
Speaker 13: have been I don't know if this was respect to
Speaker 13: certification with respect to electors. He signed off on the
Speaker 13: fact that something was true as he understood it, but
Speaker 13: at the time there is knowledge or there was indication
Speaker 13: in correspondence that he knew it was not true. You know,
Speaker 13: certainly to the extent you signed off on a document
Speaker 13: to a court or another official body, and there's going
Speaker 13: to be evidence presented to show that actually you did
Speaker 13: know what was true and you signed off on something
Speaker 13: that was false. Obviously that's going to be a challenge
Speaker 13: in court. Jonathan Turley has raised the point though, that
Speaker 13: you're going to be able to argue, well.
Speaker 2: This is what lawyers advised me, et cetera.
Speaker 9: So got it.
Speaker 13: You know, lawyers are obviously going to be able to
Speaker 13: craft great arguments on both sides. But I would point
Speaker 13: to that as probably one aspect that would be a challenge.
Speaker 1: And Brad a similar sort of in reverse question for
Speaker 1: you if you were advising Trump, if you were his lawyer,
Speaker 1: stepped up to the plate, what sort of a defense
Speaker 1: would you try to mount? What do you think is
Speaker 1: his strongest argument to try to combat these charges.
Speaker 11: I would throw every single one of his former lawyers
Speaker 11: under the bus and put all the blame on them.
Speaker 11: Now here's the problem. They're his listed co conspirators. It's
Speaker 11: Rudy Julie, It's Sidney pollit's Johnny he's been Jeff Clark, Kenchee's.
Speaker 11: I would throw them all into the bus, say these
Speaker 11: people led him astray. Yes he had this other information
Speaker 11: from the government. Yes, his own campaign was coming to
Speaker 11: him and saying this is all garbage, and these people
Speaker 11: have conspiracies being down from the mothership. But I would
Speaker 11: throw these folks under the bus, saying he believed in
Speaker 11: good faith, he understood that their allegations on his mind,
Speaker 11: had credibility. Sidney Powell, this grand lawyer, had these affidavits
Speaker 11: from Spider and all these other people who claim they
Speaker 11: had proof of these voting fraud issues, and so that
Speaker 11: was the basis on which he moved forward with things.
Speaker 11: I would chuck every single one of these people under
Speaker 11: the bus in a desperate attempt to save the client.
Speaker 9: It won't work.
Speaker 11: You can't conspire with your lawyer to commit a new crime.
Speaker 11: But that's what I would try to do in some
Speaker 11: bid to basically push off blame, which is what every
Speaker 11: good head of a criminal enterprise does, to blame it
Speaker 11: on the lawyers.
Speaker 9: First.
Speaker 1: Interesting, gentlemen, really appreciate both of you taking the time.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back and join us again as
Speaker 1: this case unfolds.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys, appreciate it.
Speaker 9: Have a good one.
Speaker 3: It's our pleasure, all right.
Speaker 2: We'll see you guys later. We appreciate it. Thanks to
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