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 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 2: for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed we do, and that was fun. On the road,
Speaker 1: I was saying, it feels nice.
Speaker 3: It's been two weeks because of illness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you were travel we're on the road.
Speaker 1: Nice to be back to just row in the studio schedule.
Speaker 1: All right, So lot's to get to you this morning.
Speaker 1: It does look like Kamala is getting a bit of
Speaker 1: a post DNC bump. We will show you the polls
Speaker 1: as we have them in the indications there. We also
Speaker 1: had to share with you this quite amusing John Stewart
Speaker 1: take on the DNC.
Speaker 4: So we'll play that and react. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 4: good one.
Speaker 1: Also, this is big news RK Junior is four or
Speaker 1: less out of the presidential race and is backing for
Speaker 1: former President Trump. So we'll show you that and show
Speaker 1: you the transition that RFK Junior has gone through in
Speaker 1: terms of his attitude towards former President Trump. We're also
Speaker 1: taking a look at what is happening in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: Huge escalation between Israel and HESBLA. It does look like
Speaker 1: both sides are trying to back down, but obviously this
Speaker 1: continues to be an extremely volatile situation, and those ceasefire
Speaker 1: talks are allegedly supposedly ongoing, so we'll tell you what
Speaker 1: we can about the progress or lack thereof. There also
Speaker 1: huge additional overseas news the founder of Telegram arrested in France.
Speaker 1: Crazy story, still getting details on what exactly he was
Speaker 1: arrested for, why he was even in France, because he
Speaker 1: seemed to know that he could be in trouble if
Speaker 1: he landed there, yet he did land there, So we'll
Speaker 1: break all of that down for you. And also yet
Speaker 1: another just stunning embarrassing terror failure for Boeing. Their starliner
Speaker 1: has been deemed officially unsafe by NASA, be returning to
Speaker 1: Earth uncrewed leaving two American astronauts stranded at the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. They were originally supposed to be up for
Speaker 1: what eight days, Yes, and now they're going to be
Speaker 1: there for like nine months.
Speaker 4: Two thirds of a year.
Speaker 1: So it's a crazy situation and just yet another example
Speaker 1: of utter and complete Boeing company failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a Boeing story, it's a US government story.
Speaker 2: And the billions of dollars we found this company, the
Speaker 2: amount that we're propping it up, the failure after failure
Speaker 2: after failure, and it just should show all of us
Speaker 2: this is just a tip of the Iceberg.
Speaker 3: Space is where you know, even a minute, a tiny little.
Speaker 2: Mistake, because everybody learned in a poll of thirteen can
Speaker 2: lead to life threatening circumstances. And now just imagine how
Speaker 2: many of these problems are in the passenger jets that
Speaker 2: we all have to fly, in the military equipment that
Speaker 2: our service members rely on. So there's a lot to
Speaker 2: be said about this with this company and it's ties
Speaker 2: to the US government and inefficiencies.
Speaker 3: And more so, I'm excited to talk about that. Indeed,
Speaker 3: thank you to everybody who subscribed.
Speaker 2: Ye had our one month free trial, so we appreciate
Speaker 2: all of those people who did take advantage.
Speaker 3: If you didn't, if you missed it, it's okay.
Speaker 2: You could still become a premium member today right now
Speaker 2: Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: But other than that, let's get to the DNH.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got a lot coming up.
Speaker 1: Debates, Oh my god, you know, off to the races.
Speaker 1: We're Labor Day next week. So it's really getting down
Speaker 1: to the home stretch with this election condensed election season,
Speaker 1: which has been absolutely wild. All right, let's get to
Speaker 1: the news with regard to Kamala's potential post DNC bounce.
Speaker 1: So perhaps the most telling indicator is that Trump's poster
Speaker 1: is saying, Yeah, she's going to get a bounce, just
Speaker 1: hang in there. At first they were warning of she's
Speaker 1: going to get a honeymoon period. They were right about that,
Speaker 1: She's going to get a bounce. They were you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like they're going to be right about that too.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up on the screen. This is from media.
Speaker 1: It originally reported I think by the Washington Post. In
Speaker 1: any case, Trump's posters predicted she would see a temporary
Speaker 1: bounce in public pulling after she accepted her party's nomination.
Speaker 1: Quote post DNC, we will likely see another small, albeit
Speaker 1: temporary bounce for Harris and the public polls. Post convention
Speaker 1: bounces are a phenomenon that happens after most party conventions,
Speaker 1: although notably not after Yes their party convention because was
Speaker 1: like exactly erased by the fact that Biden dropped down.
Speaker 1: So don't be surprised to see Harris get a temporary
Speaker 1: two to three point bump, is what they're predicting. The
Speaker 1: other thing to keep in mind is that while the
Speaker 1: media is going to focus on the national polls, we
Speaker 1: need to keep our eye on the ball, that is,
Speaker 1: the polling in.
Speaker 4: Our target states.
Speaker 1: Our goal is to get to two seventy and winning
Speaker 1: these states is how we do it. We also had
Speaker 1: a new analysis from Nate Silver, also factoring what appears
Speaker 1: to be a Kamala Harris post DNC bump. We haven't
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of polling at all after that was taken,
Speaker 1: you know, during or after the convention, so we're still
Speaker 1: sort of reading the tea leaves here. But here's what
Speaker 1: Nate Silver has in his model. You can see they're
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 4: Tail end the.
Speaker 1: Percent for Kamala Harris ticking up just a bit. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's percentage ticking down just a bit. He says, we
Speaker 1: are already seeing a convention for Harris, and this is
Speaker 1: from data before her speech last night. Let's put the
Speaker 1: little bit of polling that we do have up on
Speaker 1: the screen. This is a hill Rite up of a
Speaker 1: Farley Dickinson University poll.
Speaker 4: No idea. How good of a polster this is.
Speaker 1: I'm not really that familiar with them, but in any case,
Speaker 1: in this poll, she holds a seven point edge nationally
Speaker 1: over former President Trump, making the largest gain for the
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential candidate as the general election approaches. This was
Speaker 1: released on Friday, and it found her leading fifty to
Speaker 1: forty three percent. Saga. I looked into this poll because
Speaker 1: they had this comment. They had some comments about like
Speaker 1: Harris's lead grows when people are asked to think about
Speaker 1: race or gender. They also made these this comment later
Speaker 1: in this article about like people who identify themselves with
Speaker 1: traditionally masculine characteristics Trump.
Speaker 4: So I looked in. I don't I don't know if.
Speaker 1: You looked at this, but this was just there was
Speaker 1: a weird question that they asked that I just wanted
Speaker 1: to take note of. They asked the men in the
Speaker 1: survey whether they would describe themselves as completely masculine, mostly masculine,
Speaker 1: slightly masculine, or in a number of feminine categories and anyway,
Speaker 1: the ones who put themselves in the completely masculine category
Speaker 1: favored Trump sixty four to thirty. All the other men
Speaker 1: so the mostly masculine, slightly masculine, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: favorite hairs by twenty point marchin fifty five to thirty five.
Speaker 4: Among the women, they asked.
Speaker 1: The similar like you know, completely feminine, mostly femine, et cetera.
Speaker 1: There wasn't much of a breakdown there, But anyway.
Speaker 4: It's a weird question. I don't know how whatever. It's
Speaker 4: a strange ware is.
Speaker 2: But a lot going on as right, Yeah, there is
Speaker 2: a lot we Maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow because
Speaker 2: there's whole daya bash clip about this about masculinity.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, I do you think.
Speaker 1: One of the key like the twenty sixteen election, coming
Speaker 1: off of Obama and as Democrats were moving into this
Speaker 1: very like you know, woke language phase, there was more
Speaker 1: of a sort of racial focus. Even the Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: obvious she's a black woman, she's also a woman. There
Speaker 1: feels to be more of like a battle of the
Speaker 1: sexes gender divide thing coming about here, which you know
Speaker 1: with Tim Walls and his version of masculinity versus Jade
Speaker 1: Vance and his like, and this sort of campy masculinity
Speaker 1: that Trump leaned into in his convention.
Speaker 4: So anyway, we'll put a pin in that. We can
Speaker 4: discuss that more later.
Speaker 2: But I just thought it was oh absolutely, I actually
Speaker 2: I would not put JD or Trump Trump maybe a
Speaker 2: little bit into that category. I think RFK is like
Speaker 2: the you know, like the emblem of what this like
Speaker 2: new online masculinity would kind of coalesce around. The reason
Speaker 2: why the traditional masculine question and all that stuff matters
Speaker 2: is I've talked about this for a long time. Gender
Speaker 2: is now one of the major divides up there with
Speaker 2: the education divide.
Speaker 3: And actually, if you look at all.
Speaker 2: Of the games that GOP has made over the last
Speaker 2: eight years, it's all in minority groups. It's all men,
Speaker 2: it's all it's like Hispanic men. Trump is winning fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty black men. Trump is winning not fifty, maybe
Speaker 2: twenty thirty percent at best white men. Actually, well it depends,
Speaker 2: so white men with a college degree are actually becoming
Speaker 2: a lot more democratic and have become almost majority democratic
Speaker 2: over the Trump years, the Trump era, Whereas if you
Speaker 2: look at white college educated men and then you would
Speaker 2: think about the cultural differences, the type of media those
Speaker 2: two groups are going to consume is vastly different. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: you've truly scratched something for me in this right now.
Speaker 4: I interest That's why I wanted to bring it out.
Speaker 2: In terms of the general election, Trump and Harris just
Speaker 2: interesting and looking at the RCP polling average, and I
Speaker 2: really like they have this day in history comparison. So
Speaker 2: this day in history August twenty six, twenty twenty, Biden
Speaker 2: seven point one percent lead, Clinton six percent lead. Right now,
Speaker 2: Harris one point five. Now, I mean, are the polls
Speaker 2: better today? Are they worse off today? Because if there
Speaker 2: are anything as bad as they were in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: or in twenty sixteen, then Trump is going to win
Speaker 2: by the four points. But yeah, if they're not, if
Speaker 2: there's been a little bit of a correction, if twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, you know, if abortion is a little bit
Speaker 2: more of a factor in this election, then maybe this
Speaker 2: is under waiting the comm law sample. So we always
Speaker 2: want to give people a sense of tremendous ambiguity when
Speaker 2: thinking about this.
Speaker 4: On that I saw this interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where this came from, but I saw
Speaker 1: people quoting it on all over the place on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Apparently the New York Times Siena poll, which is considered
Speaker 1: one of the best, but which was off quite you know,
Speaker 1: off by four sizeably in twenty twenty, which is you know,
Speaker 1: a decent miss. Being off by four points, and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously here would be would change this race dramatically in
Speaker 1: either direction. So at the time in twenty twenty, they
Speaker 1: would call people and they would get a number of
Speaker 1: respondents who were Trump supporters who would just say something
Speaker 1: like fu, I'm voting for Trump and hang up the phone. Yea.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't count those because they were incomplete, they
Speaker 1: were partial responses. So they decided like, well, those people
Speaker 1: are obviously voting for Trump, so we should mark them down.
Speaker 1: So this time they are including those types of responses.
Speaker 1: And apparently if they had just added in those responses,
Speaker 1: that would have accounted for half of the miss of
Speaker 1: the poll last time. So I did think that was
Speaker 1: interesting in terms of It's also funny to me that
Speaker 1: no one mentioned that last time, because remember there was
Speaker 1: a whole conversation about like why were the polls off,
Speaker 1: and there were all these different theories floated.
Speaker 4: How come no one brought this up at the time.
Speaker 4: But anyway, these lyrics.
Speaker 2: Of course true geniuses, and that's why they charged fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a poll. But and then this is part
Speaker 2: of the problem, is that what we all have to
Speaker 2: look to sampling has been off since the beginning, if
Speaker 2: you look at the very first polls, allthough we go
Speaker 2: back to the nineteen thirties, in terms of the overall
Speaker 2: snaphot that they give.
Speaker 3: I really have been enjoying reading.
Speaker 2: Nate Silver's analysis for how he like very prudently explains
Speaker 2: his models and how different weights and historical stuff that
Speaker 2: he goes into. And I just think it is a
Speaker 2: very very inexact science. Nobody should take this as a
Speaker 2: snapshot of exactly what is happening. It's about direction, and
Speaker 2: then we also have to consider fundamentals, recency biased, and
Speaker 2: I would just say, in general, you know, things are
Speaker 2: things are obviously better for the Democrats than they were
Speaker 2: whenever Biden was in the race. We could say that, yeah,
Speaker 2: with absolutely I think Trump also has a very fighting chance, yeah,
Speaker 2: probably better than he ever has had, you know, coming
Speaker 2: in to this election. So I would take those two things,
Speaker 2: and I would really consider that when we look at
Speaker 2: the polls, when we look also at the choices that
Speaker 2: these different campaigns are making and the analysis that there
Speaker 2: is internally. We know that so much of Hillary's hubris
Speaker 2: for why she lost was based on false polling. We
Speaker 2: know that a lot of Biden's inactivity back in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty was both born out of necessity because of their
Speaker 2: Biden Basement strategy, but also again out of an inflated
Speaker 2: false sense of hubris. Whereas this time around, the Republicans
Speaker 2: are really scrambling because I think they understand that they
Speaker 2: went from almost a seventy eighty ninety percent chance to
Speaker 2: pining an election right back down to fifty and now
Speaker 2: they have to throw everything at the wall.
Speaker 3: Trump is uncomfortable. They're making different moves.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow, we're going to talk about abortion and about how
Speaker 2: the GOP is really changing radically, like you know, at
Speaker 2: least publicly on their messaging around it, and what that
Speaker 2: is going to try and look at in terms of
Speaker 2: what their internal polls are.
Speaker 3: But overall everything I hear from the DNC.
Speaker 2: Democratic insiders were telling Politico and others They're like, hey,
Speaker 2: our polls are actually tighter than the national ones.
Speaker 3: Republicans are like, our polls are tighter than the national ones.
Speaker 2: So in general, I look at the choices those campaigns
Speaker 2: are making, and we see a toss up in the making.
Speaker 1: There's a Democratic polster that said, you know, they've been
Speaker 1: doing a lot of surveys over the past number of
Speaker 1: days and they're comparing it to twenty twenty and they said,
Speaker 1: according to their polls, Kamala Harris is doing one point
Speaker 1: better than Joe Biden was in their polls at this
Speaker 1: time last time around. However, again that's you know, you
Speaker 1: change a point in either direction and it totally switched.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about how close it was in Georgia,
Speaker 1: in Arizona, in Michigan, like in so many of these
Speaker 1: key states last time. And so even if the posters
Speaker 1: are pretty close to right, if they're a point off,
Speaker 1: then you could end up with a completely different result.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's listen, it's closely divided country.
Speaker 1: This is as cliche as it gets at this point.
Speaker 1: It's going to be extraordinarily close, and these little movements
Speaker 1: in either direction can make or break. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put the next one up on the screen. We do
Speaker 1: have one other poll that had some field work conducted
Speaker 1: after the DNC ended, which was on Friday.
Speaker 4: Most of it was during.
Speaker 1: The convention, however, So this poll Angus Reid found Harris
Speaker 1: forty seven Trump forty two, as compared to last time
Speaker 1: around it was Harris.
Speaker 4: Forty four Trump forty two.
Speaker 1: So Trump not really moving one way or another, but
Speaker 1: Harris picking up ground either from third parties or undecided.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's another thing that we've talked to
Speaker 1: some about here, is it does seem like it's hard
Speaker 1: for Trump to get higher than like forty three percent,
Speaker 1: you know, like he's kind of it depends, he's kind
Speaker 1: of stuck as a pretty hard ceiling. Now, does that persist?
Speaker 1: His approval ratings are also higher than they used to be. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris is a really skyrocket and she's basically even,
Speaker 1: which for a modern politician is kind of extraordinary. But
Speaker 1: Trump has also come up in terms of his approval ratings,
Speaker 1: So you know, is he able to break through what
Speaker 1: has been a difficult ceiling for him. That's another big question.
Speaker 1: One thing that's very clear at this point is there
Speaker 1: continues to be huge enthusiasm from the base of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party for the Harris Walls ticket. The fundraising, the
Speaker 1: amount of money that they're raising is astonishing. Put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. They celebrated that they had record fundraising.
Speaker 1: They've got huge volunteering momentum. They're going into Georgia for
Speaker 1: a bus tour. They had more than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: new volunteer shifts since the first day of the DNC.
Speaker 1: They've raised more than five hundred and forty million dollars
Speaker 1: in basically a month. In a month, they raised half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars.
Speaker 4: Crazy.
Speaker 1: Put the next one up on the screen. This also
Speaker 1: has some more details here about the fundraising. In particular,
Speaker 1: they raised eighty two million during the convention week alone.
Speaker 1: A third of those nations just from last week were
Speaker 1: first time contributors, and as I mentioned before, volunteer signing
Speaker 1: up for nearly two hundred thousand ships since Monday Monday.
Speaker 1: A lot of these donors were not Biden donors either
Speaker 1: this cycle or last cycles, so bringing in a lot
Speaker 1: of new time new first time donors, and in terms
Speaker 1: of the profession, continues to be heavily overrepresented by teachers,
Speaker 1: which makes sense with Walls on the ticket and also
Speaker 1: this time with nurses as well. So interesting demographics in
Speaker 1: terms of who is enthused here. But this, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's just undeniable, the pulling all backs this up. Democrats
Speaker 1: were dragging themselves to election day when it was Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Now they're excited, like they want to get out work,
Speaker 1: they want to volunteer, they want to donate, they realize
Speaker 1: they have a chance, they want to win, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So night and day in terms of the
Speaker 1: sentiment around the campaign.
Speaker 2: That is why I'm trying to inject a tremendousness of
Speaker 2: ambiguity because.
Speaker 3: But I am in general.
Speaker 2: Something I really know is that from eight and from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, when the Dems are fired up, they're
Speaker 2: playing to win, and not only playing to win. They
Speaker 2: have all elite institutions on their side. They have colleges,
Speaker 2: they have media, they have everybody you know mailing. They
Speaker 2: have money. They have more money than God. You know,
Speaker 2: if you put all the Democratic billionaires together on top
Speaker 2: of you have enthusiastic, engaged upper middle class base. That's
Speaker 2: just row your vote. I don't count these people out, man,
Speaker 2: They're very powerful. And that's something that I really have
Speaker 2: witnessed with the Kamala relaunched, the way that the favorabilities
Speaker 2: are where they are. I was watching a very funny
Speaker 2: clip of Quentin Tarantino and he's like, I don't care
Speaker 2: if she does any interviews. He's like, I'm gonna vote
Speaker 2: for anyway, so she shouldn't do any interviews. He's like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. He's like, we're playing to win, and
Speaker 2: he's like, that's what Republicans are always really good at.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wow, you know, it's a little different.
Speaker 2: I could see why a a a partisan Democrat would
Speaker 2: think that. My only point being that engagement was saw
Speaker 2: in Georgia in those two Senate races, engagement that we
Speaker 2: saw in Georgia back in twenty twenty two, and.
Speaker 3: The overwhelming at the overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Activism that has gone on the issue of abortion and
Speaker 2: as well as the high salience of those issues in
Speaker 2: battleground states.
Speaker 3: I think that spells trouble for Republicans.
Speaker 2: And that's just something that a lot of Republicans strategists
Speaker 2: others really are struggling with right now. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: it tomorrow in terms of the split in the pro
Speaker 2: life community as well. But Republicans really, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: if we always say it, it's like the dog that
Speaker 2: caught the car and they're like, now, what what do
Speaker 2: we do here? It's one of the most unpopular issues.
Speaker 2: You have a base pro life base. Some are threatening
Speaker 2: to come out and not vote. I don't really believe them,
Speaker 2: but I mean, you know, if it's about margins, if
Speaker 2: it's in Georgia or any of the Arizona there's a
Speaker 2: sizable evangelical populations, Catholic populations in both of those states.
Speaker 2: Maybe they won't vote for Trump or for Vans. I
Speaker 2: don't really believe them when they say it, but.
Speaker 4: They're going to form.
Speaker 3: But what if they don't vote.
Speaker 2: It, and what if they only vote a ninety percent
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent?
Speaker 4: You know that matters, right or they don't?
Speaker 1: You know, the really dedicated pro life activists, these are
Speaker 1: a key, yeah, base of the Republican Party. These are
Speaker 1: the people that aren't just voting Republican. They're in there
Speaker 1: doing the work right church, They're exactly. They're you know,
Speaker 1: they're talking to their neighbors. This is a whole like,
Speaker 1: you know, key sort of identity in their life, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And so if you dampen that enthusiasm, it could could
Speaker 1: make a difference on the margins when it's again going
Speaker 1: to be a very close race. So you know, we'll
Speaker 1: see where we go from here. It's already we're already
Speaker 1: coming up on Labor Day. So as much as the
Speaker 1: Trump people want to say it's a honeymoon and then
Speaker 1: it's going to be a temporary post convention bounce, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but y'all only got what ten weeks before election day
Speaker 1: roughly out. So on the one hand, especially given what
Speaker 1: we've seen and how the world has been turned upside
Speaker 1: down politically in just a month, that's an eternity. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it really isn't in the grandite scheme
Speaker 1: of things, a lot of time to turn around a
Speaker 1: campaign or to take the lead in a campaign that
Speaker 1: you know, right now, I do really.
Speaker 4: Think it's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: It's easy to have a sense of like, oh, Kamala
Speaker 1: is just romping because the picture so different from when
Speaker 1: Biden was in the race, but when you really look
Speaker 1: at the polls, it is as close to a toss
Speaker 1: up as it could possibly be. Maybe she has a
Speaker 1: little bit of an edge right now, but given the
Speaker 1: polling missus we've seen in the past when Trump has
Speaker 1: been on the ballot, I wouldn't count on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So previously, when RFK was still in the race, and
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about this, when he was drawing
Speaker 2: votes away from Trump is in the critical states like
Speaker 2: Michigan and elsewhere, I was at like fifty two, forty
Speaker 2: forty eight. Yeah, now like straight back with RFK gone,
Speaker 2: I think Trump is I'm not saying he's cruising, but
Speaker 2: he's got just as good as a shot right now
Speaker 2: as Kamala Harris. That's just a lesson that all of
Speaker 2: us would engage with Trump on the ballot, cannot underestimate
Speaker 2: his strength. The only difference is at this time around,
Speaker 2: I'm also not underestimated the Democrats, given the recent showing
Speaker 2: that they made in twenty twenty two. We're previously in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty I remember we used to talk about this.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, any poll which had Trump down by six,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, you need to add five you know,
Speaker 2: I'd always give the Republicans a plus five. This time around,
Speaker 2: I'm not quite there at a couple. On the Democrats.
Speaker 2: I'm always considering that this time around they also could
Speaker 2: be underestimated by four maybe five, just as they were
Speaker 2: underestimated in twenty twenty two. So you got to think
Speaker 2: about that. There's a high level of variance that goes
Speaker 2: going into this election.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's no longer you can just assume that it's undercounting
Speaker 1: Republicans because we had the miss in the other direction
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. So it really makes it one
Speaker 1: of these like you just have to be humble about
Speaker 1: what the polls say and your expectations of what is
Speaker 1: actually going to happen. All right, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: move on to John Stewart having some fun at the
Speaker 1: democrats expense with regard to his take on the DNC.
Speaker 4: Let's take a lism.
Speaker 5: They had Democratic Party icons and lifelong Republicans. They had
Speaker 5: a guy yelling screw the billionaires, followed immediately by a
Speaker 5: very happy billionaires. They had black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans,
Speaker 5: Gay Americans, Jewish Americans, Palestiniano well, oh, to be fair,
Speaker 5: it was only four nights, eight hours a night.
Speaker 6: But really it's best not to think about the consequences.
Speaker 5: Of our actions over there, especially given the theme of
Speaker 5: the week.
Speaker 1: I can feel the excitement in this arena. It's filled
Speaker 1: with energy and with joy, the air of joy joy.
Speaker 3: Joy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well done there by John Sewart, and I mean
Speaker 1: just pointing out, as he always does, in a very
Speaker 1: trenchant way, the utter distance between the joy vibe, the inclusivity.
Speaker 1: All we want, all these voices and something that you know,
Speaker 1: people were with the Uncommitted movement or just in general
Speaker 1: want to see, you know, peace and justice for Palestinians
Speaker 1: and for the onslaught and the atrocities to end.
Speaker 4: You had time.
Speaker 1: For every front bencher, backbencher, every like Republican, you know, prole,
Speaker 1: all these people you had time for. And trust me,
Speaker 1: as John Suropp points out, you probably only watched in primetime.
Speaker 1: Those speeches were going for a let you had, you know,
Speaker 1: some random friend Kamala Harris's from fourth grade or whatever.
Speaker 1: You had for all of these people, but you could
Speaker 1: not make room for a vetted, very safe, very frankly
Speaker 1: laudatory speech endorsing Kamala Harris and criticizing Donald Trump from
Speaker 1: a Palestinian American. So I mean, it's a glaring his hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: And you know, I do think that this is a
Speaker 1: risk for them because when you are running this all
Speaker 1: the joy and the inclusivity, and when you're running on
Speaker 1: vibes and when you're a lot of the gains that
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris has made hasn't been It hasn't been at
Speaker 1: all from Republicans. It has been somewhat from independance, but
Speaker 1: it's actually been a lot of getting the Democratic base
Speaker 1: to come back home. You do risk under mining the
Speaker 1: overwhelming enthusiasm excitement that you have from this campaign. And
Speaker 1: it also just onjust a purely like you know, how
Speaker 1: are you running your operation thing? The whole thing was
Speaker 1: handled so incompetently. It was such a mess. They try
Speaker 1: to lie to reporters and be like, well, actually we
Speaker 1: said yes, but they said no, bullshit, like you're just
Speaker 1: making stuff up. So it was haphazard. It was a
Speaker 1: foolish decision. It created a drama and a spectacle. It
Speaker 1: undermined all of their messaging, and you know, is it
Speaker 1: going to be the make or break? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but we do have a lot of polling to suggest
Speaker 1: that she would benefit. Number one, the more she can
Speaker 1: separate herself from Joe Biden, the more she benefits politically.
Speaker 1: And number two, there's a lot of polling at this
Speaker 1: point that voters are more likely to reward a candidate
Speaker 1: who was in favor of stopping the weaponship and stop
Speaker 1: shipping the bombs and really going hard for a ceasefire.
Speaker 1: So in any case, well, greatly think great commentary from
Speaker 1: John Stewart.
Speaker 2: You think half a billion dollars just raises itself. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's really where it comes down to. Look, we got
Speaker 2: to be honest about where the money is and also
Speaker 2: where what we saw when we were at the Democratic
Speaker 2: National Convention. I spoke with Michael Tracy, he attended the
Speaker 2: Jewish Democrats meeting with Doug Imhoffe speaking about the commitment
Speaker 2: to Israel. There was one of those little side panels
Speaker 2: which were on the outer rings where Philip Gordon, the
Speaker 2: Vice President's National security advisors, as we will never consider
Speaker 2: arms embargo. You have very strong language which is in there,
Speaker 2: and it makes people who are hawkish, like Democratic centrists,
Speaker 2: more Hillary Clinton type donors who were very very comfortable,
Speaker 2: you know, with this, and this is exactly what they want.
Speaker 2: So I think this was not a voter play. It
Speaker 2: was purely about consolidating a lot of the rich donors.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about all of those people who were
Speaker 2: donating to Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, all those other
Speaker 2: people were freaking out about activism.
Speaker 3: Everybody thinks it's Republicans.
Speaker 2: No, it was definitely fueled by Republican or right leaning
Speaker 2: outlets like the Free Beacon. But the people who are
Speaker 2: themselves are the If you're donating a billion dollars to
Speaker 2: you Pen, you're not a Republican, Okay, you're a Democrat.
Speaker 2: You're just one of those like old school Hillary people.
Speaker 2: Those are the people with the money, the powerbrokers, and
Speaker 2: I think Kamala is very comfortable in those spaces. That's
Speaker 2: something that we talked with David Sarota about the Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: She shouted out the founders. I mean, this lady's from California.
Speaker 2: She knows where the bread is buttered, if anything. You know,
Speaker 2: being a machine politician, you know that more than anybody.
Speaker 2: So for her, I don't I think she can benefit
Speaker 2: enough from the vibe from the media and all of
Speaker 2: that keep the donors happy, and she can go in
Speaker 2: and you know, if she has to inherit a problem, well,
Speaker 2: that's a whole other story.
Speaker 3: And that's why a.
Speaker 2: Few people I've been speaking to smart even who are
Speaker 2: on the left, kind of privately, they're like, oh, she'll
Speaker 2: never survive, you know, like she's going to be one
Speaker 2: of those people who she may be able to get
Speaker 2: herself elected, but when she actually has to deal with
Speaker 2: the problems. You can only run from the media and
Speaker 2: from governance for so long. One day, if you become president,
Speaker 2: just imagine, you know, you actually have to make a
Speaker 2: call here, put out a statement, are we going to
Speaker 2: do it or not?
Speaker 3: Are we going to Israel or not?
Speaker 2: You can't just boat size out of your mouth for
Speaker 2: four years straight. And so I think that eventually will
Speaker 2: catch up with her, as it does all people who
Speaker 2: are are ambiguous as candidates. But for right now, I
Speaker 2: just looked it up. She's got seventy one days. There
Speaker 2: weren't a lot of protesters that showed up to the DNC.
Speaker 2: The uncommitted people mostly rolled, you know, they're mostly you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're your support Kamala and all that, and so they
Speaker 2: think they can win, and I think they're right. I honestly,
Speaker 2: do you look at Gretchen Whitmer. She didn't even say
Speaker 2: anything right, and she's she's represented from Michigan. I just
Speaker 2: checked the timeline of a few Michigan people, elected officials
Speaker 2: and others who we've spoken to in the past. I
Speaker 2: don't see anything criticizing Kamala. They're stuck in a hard
Speaker 2: place too, they don't really know what to do.
Speaker 4: There's also a risk for her.
Speaker 1: I mean, colleges are about to be back and you
Speaker 1: know it should be yeah, I mean, depending on the school,
Speaker 1: they're going to be back in session very soon. So
Speaker 1: you could see reigniting of that college protest wave, which
Speaker 1: was really you know, the beating heart of a lot
Speaker 1: of this energy. And I think you're right about you know,
Speaker 1: how she's weighing things. And obviously, like the elite of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party has long just been you know, completely
Speaker 1: committed to Israel. Obama came the closest in recent times
Speaker 1: to bucking them at all with regard to the Iranian
Speaker 1: nuclear deal. But even there was you know, it's very tepid,
Speaker 1: it's very moderate in terms of descent. But I think
Speaker 1: the model is a little out dated because if you
Speaker 1: think about the bulk of the donations that are coming
Speaker 1: in from her, it's not from the billionaire donor class,
Speaker 1: it's from you know, ranking it like teachers, it's from nurses,
Speaker 1: it's these grassroots, first time donors. And so she's gonna
Speaker 1: have plenty of money. Right whether she does exactly what
Speaker 1: you know, Maria Maddelson or whoever, Bill Ackman, who were
Speaker 1: both Republicans giving to that side of the equation, whether
Speaker 1: she does exactly what they want her to do on
Speaker 1: this issue or not, I think politically she has an
Speaker 1: opportunity to benefit from showing distance from Biden, something she's
Speaker 1: unafraid to do on literally every other issue. On every
Speaker 1: other issue, she's trying to at least rhetorically distance herself
Speaker 1: from this president. But for some reason, when it comes
Speaker 1: to Israel, she's, you know, she wants to maintain exactly
Speaker 1: his posture.
Speaker 4: I also saw Sagara.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw this after we did our reaction
Speaker 1: to her DNC speech. She got all this praise online
Speaker 1: for what she said about Israel.
Speaker 4: Daz oh gosh, and I was like.
Speaker 1: This is literally just exactly what Joe Biden has been saying,
Speaker 1: and even she called for you know, like a justin
Speaker 1: lasting piece or something like that in a Twesday solution, and.
Speaker 4: She was loud and like brave for that. This has
Speaker 4: been the position of every president in modern.
Speaker 2: History, in the position of every United States president going
Speaker 2: back I think almost yeah, six or seven presidents.
Speaker 1: I was like, I just like, did we listen to
Speaker 1: the same speech. It was so confusing to be the
Speaker 1: desperate attempt to make this some sort of a like
Speaker 1: good moment. If you're someone who wants this horror to end,
Speaker 1: and you know, in all of the potential escalation and danger,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this later, that comes along
Speaker 1: with it, even if you do not care at all
Speaker 1: about Palestinian line.
Speaker 4: So in any case, I.
Speaker 1: Thought the whole approach was very disappointing, and not just
Speaker 1: on Palestine. I also think in terms of the way
Speaker 1: she oriented her speech, not leaning into more of the
Speaker 1: populace Deacon. She talks some about it, but it was
Speaker 1: a very light touch. I mean, I also think, again
Speaker 1: just putting my own politics aside.
Speaker 4: Electorally, there were some polls that just came out.
Speaker 1: It's like seventy percent of people support actual price controls,
Speaker 1: so she shouldn't be afraid of price gouging laws, which
Speaker 1: are on the books already in a majority of states.
Speaker 1: She should not be afraid of leaning into those pieces.
Speaker 1: And yet I feel the consultant class like taking hold.
Speaker 1: I see them getting a grip of the messaging. I
Speaker 1: see her reverting a lot back to the sort of
Speaker 1: you know, Clintonite instincts, both in terms of Hillary and
Speaker 1: Bill and the Obama type like triangulating instincts. And I
Speaker 1: think it's very much to her detriment, and I do
Speaker 1: think it's risk Well, come November.
Speaker 3: If she loses, we'll have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah she does.
Speaker 4: We'll have lots to talk about.
Speaker 2: Win me a lots to talk about. Either way, Let's
Speaker 2: go do a RFK. We got to talk about the
Speaker 2: big endorsement. RFK teased this, but it was basically confirmed
Speaker 2: by the time we brought everybody the news on our
Speaker 2: shows on Thursdays and Friday, where we talked about how
Speaker 2: he had filed paperwork across multiple states withdrawing himself from
Speaker 2: the ballot, indicating that he was going to endorse Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I watched his entire.
Speaker 2: Speech, and it was interesting because it's a little confused
Speaker 2: in terms of our dude, are you in the race
Speaker 2: or not? The TLDR is that he has suspended his
Speaker 2: campaign in all of the states where it is not competitive.
Speaker 2: He is explicitly withdrawing his ballot from all of the
Speaker 2: states where it is competitive and is urging people in
Speaker 2: those battleground states to vote for Donald Trump. After that speech,
Speaker 2: he joined Trump on the stage at a campaign event
Speaker 2: in Arizona.
Speaker 3: Here's what they all had to say.
Speaker 4: He is a brilliant I still think of him as young.
Speaker 3: He's not that young.
Speaker 4: I always call him young, but he's not that young.
Speaker 6: But he is a phenomenal person, a phenomenal man who
Speaker 6: loves the people of this country as much as anybody
Speaker 6: can love the people of this country.
Speaker 3: So Bobby, please say a few words, aculary.
Speaker 6: Or two hundred trillion or two hundred billion dollar wars
Speaker 6: in Ukraine, that we could use that money back here
Speaker 6: in the United States. The best way to build a
Speaker 6: safe America is to rebuild our industrial base and rebuild
Speaker 6: the middle class in this country. And don't you want
Speaker 6: a president who's going to get us out of the wars,
Speaker 6: and who's going to rebuild the middle class in this country? Oh,
Speaker 6: you want to know that the food that you're feeding
Speaker 6: them is not filled with chemicals that are going to
Speaker 6: give them cancer and chronic disease. And don't you want
Speaker 6: a president that's gonna make America healthy again?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: So that was the crux of the speech. He followed
Speaker 2: up with it in a tweet. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. What maga really means? The phrase
Speaker 2: is troubled liberals who think it's a call for return
Speaker 2: to America before civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights.
Speaker 2: But I have a more generous interpretation, one that is
Speaker 2: truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today.
Speaker 2: Make America Great Again recalls a nation brimming with vitality,
Speaker 2: with a can do spirit, with a hope and a
Speaker 2: belief in itself. It was an America that was beginning
Speaker 2: to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in
Speaker 2: his past and present a nation of broad prosperity, the
Speaker 2: world's most vibrant middle class, and idealistic belief. It was
Speaker 2: a nation that led an innovation, productivity of technology, and
Speaker 2: it was the healthiest country in the world. I have
Speaker 2: talked to many Trump supporters, I have talked with this
Speaker 2: inner circle. I have talked to the man himself. This
Speaker 2: is what this is the America they want to restore.
Speaker 2: So obviously it's quite a bit of a turn from
Speaker 2: how RFK previously used to talk about Donald Trump, previously,
Speaker 2: how he used to talk about endorsing Donald Trump here
Speaker 2: on this show by joining him on a ticket. And
Speaker 2: I'll just say, you know, the about face is certainly
Speaker 2: a little bit something to behold.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The justification that I have seen from RFK and from
Speaker 2: Nicole Shanahan is they're like, well, the Democrats, you know,
Speaker 2: sued to get us off the ballot.
Speaker 3: And I actually think we should point.
Speaker 2: To the words of like Jill Stein, where Jill Stein
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, he's right, the Democrats have been suing
Speaker 2: to get us off the ballot. She's like, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that I'm going to turn around and endorse Trump.
Speaker 2: She's like, that was the whole point of a third
Speaker 2: party campaign was to point out the rigged system. And
Speaker 2: it's not like RFK didn't face Republican pressure in Texas
Speaker 2: and elsewhere on the ballot as well. You know, it's
Speaker 2: one of those where clearly both sides were trying to
Speaker 2: keep him out. If anything, you watched how the in
Speaker 2: the midst of his independent run, how a lot of
Speaker 2: MAGA influencers who have been propping up RFK Junior whenever
Speaker 2: he was a Democrat running in the race against Biden,
Speaker 2: immediately turned on him whenever they thought that he was
Speaker 2: going to draw votes away from Trump, and I think
Speaker 2: empirically he was. And actually we see the acknowledgement from
Speaker 2: Nicole Shanahan. She's like, well, we don't want to help
Speaker 2: Kamala and Tim Walls, and in a lesser of two
Speaker 2: evils way, I think that's fine. I think the problem
Speaker 2: I have with it is there are a lot of
Speaker 2: people out there.
Speaker 3: I've met them.
Speaker 2: Probably no news show has really engaged at a professional
Speaker 2: level with rf CASE supporters more than we have, and
Speaker 2: they did not like Donald Trump. They don't want to
Speaker 2: vote for Donald Trump. I have had, you know, these
Speaker 2: boomers outside the Farmers Market where I live for almost
Speaker 2: eight weeks handing out Kennedy literature. I talked to them
Speaker 2: and they're like, yeah, we hate we're Democrats. We don't
Speaker 2: like Trump, but we also don't support Joe Biden or
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris for a variety of reasons. And so there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people out there. They knocked on doors,
Speaker 2: got ballots, raised money, you know, because they believed in
Speaker 2: an independent, you know, a third party run. And I
Speaker 2: actually think, you know, in terms of you know, everyone
Speaker 2: talks about leverage, I'm like, well, what did you realistically
Speaker 2: get because he's talking about this make America healthy again?
Speaker 2: Well he wanted to listen, Bro, you're never getting nominated
Speaker 2: in the United States Senate.
Speaker 3: Ever, Now could you get a ZAR position? Maybe?
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's been promised, you know, they
Speaker 2: haven't talked about it or any of that. But realistically,
Speaker 2: on the core issues, you know, you are endorsing Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: He's a guy who did Operation Warp Speed.
Speaker 2: I mean that was literally his number one critique originally
Speaker 2: on abortion. I mean, you and I remember here on
Speaker 2: this show how vociferously he talked about Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: Roe versus Weight on environmental issues. I mean, by the way,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm pro nuclear. RFK is very anti nuclear,
Speaker 2: so Trump is pro nuclear. So it's like there are
Speaker 2: a lot of issues ostensibly which he pretended to or
Speaker 2: at least said that he cared a lot about total
Speaker 2: non negotiables, and then he decided to turn around and
Speaker 2: endorse Trump. And it's like, dude, is this just about
Speaker 2: personal spite? Because if it is, I don't think that's
Speaker 2: a good look.
Speaker 3: For the third party movement.
Speaker 2: And I think there are a lot of voters out
Speaker 2: there who are quite disappointed. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: the ones I see who were cheering him, I think
Speaker 2: they're just Republicans anyways, and they were directionally aligned with him.
Speaker 2: But the real RFK people who we have met, we've
Speaker 2: talked to, done focus groups, etc.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're going to be so happy
Speaker 3: about this. I think a lot of them just won't vote.
Speaker 4: There was a reason they weren't supporting Donald Try yeh,
Speaker 4: that's right. He was there the whole time.
Speaker 1: They could be supporting him the entire time, and they
Speaker 1: did it right, and they were backing Rkay. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really gives a lot of gradence to just like
Speaker 1: the most cynical Resistance Lib interpretation of his run the
Speaker 1: entire time, which is he was a Democratic primary when
Speaker 1: he thought that would help hurt the Democrats. Then when
Speaker 1: he realized he could hurt Joe Biden by running third party.
Speaker 4: Then he does that.
Speaker 1: Then when Joe Biden drops out and all of those
Speaker 1: like disaffected Democratic voters come home, and now he's very
Speaker 1: clearly causing a problem for former President Trump. Then he
Speaker 1: drops out because he thinks that's the best way to
Speaker 1: help the Republicans.
Speaker 4: And Nicole Shanahan, I mean all but came out and said,
Speaker 4: I mean they said, she said that we like, we don't.
Speaker 1: Want to hurt Trump. We do not want a Harris
Speaker 1: Walls campaign. And so at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: your core goal was to hurt one side and help
Speaker 1: the other. It's very hard to come away with any
Speaker 1: other conclusion at this point. That and the fact that
Speaker 1: he wants to remain relevant. He's as all these people
Speaker 1: are an extreme narcissist, as is Kamla Ayers, as is Joe.
Speaker 3: Biden, as Alald Trump.
Speaker 1: All of them are right, and this is his only
Speaker 1: path to remain relevant. And if you think this is
Speaker 1: some principled stand consider that he also went to the
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris team and apparently begged them for some sort
Speaker 1: of a gig and took whatever the best offer was.
Speaker 1: So if you think this is about some kind of
Speaker 1: a principle. I mean, it's sort of preposterous. He decided
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to win. He wanted to maintain his relevance.
Speaker 1: This is where he could get you the best deal
Speaker 1: that was on the table. And so that's what he did.
Speaker 1: And just to your point, so we could put the
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen about the way he
Speaker 1: was talking about Donald Trump, just to call any speculation.
Speaker 1: Under no circumstances will I join Donald Trump on an
Speaker 1: electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches
Speaker 1: to governance, and our philosophies of leadership could not be
Speaker 1: further apart.
Speaker 4: Now, the coope I saw and this one was, well,
Speaker 4: he's not technically on the electoral ticket. Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: Well continue though you can toak go to the next one.
Speaker 1: This is maybe lays it out in even greater detail.
Speaker 1: I will read all of this, but it is a
Speaker 1: long screed about how terrible President Trump was. President Trump
Speaker 1: scammed American workers. President Trump let the Bush wing of
Speaker 1: the GOP run all his agencies. President Trump's opposed support
Speaker 1: for farmers all went to big agg conglomerates. We had
Speaker 1: the worst rioting eluding this country had seen since the sixties.
Speaker 1: Under President Trump, he bragged about arming Ukraine war than Obama.
Speaker 1: He appointed the worst neocons the highest positions of power.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind from that speech that we showed you
Speaker 1: now he was like, oh he's anti war.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, which is it?
Speaker 1: He goes on, he bombed Syria, Trump killed Marani in general,
Speaker 1: failed to fulfill his promise of ending the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: President Trump invented lockdowns. President Trump did nothing to solve
Speaker 1: the opioid crisis. And then he concludes, if you think
Speaker 1: a second Trump term would be any different, you are
Speaker 1: engaging in wishful thinking. All right, So listen, people can
Speaker 1: change their mind, but we're talking about in a very
Speaker 1: short time period and a complete evolution that just so
Speaker 1: happens to serve your own personal interests of like remaining
Speaker 1: relevant into the next administration.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I think it's sad because he had chance.
Speaker 2: I believe in actually shocking the system, you know, and
Speaker 2: really changing things up.
Speaker 3: And I think that RFK had a chance.
Speaker 2: He really had the name, had the money, the id,
Speaker 2: the ability. I think he still could have everyone, you know,
Speaker 2: our Nicole Shanan's like will then could have won five percent.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think he could have won more if he actually
Speaker 2: fought and wanted. I think he could have won maybe eight.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a lot, especially if you run it
Speaker 2: up in states like California and elsewhere, as she accurately
Speaker 2: points out about public funding, about the ability to build
Speaker 2: on top of something. If you really believe in these issues,
Speaker 2: you could force ballot referendums. You could chose a lot
Speaker 2: of different things, you know, from vaccines to whatever, to
Speaker 2: your food, et cetera. Like that's what you actually could
Speaker 2: try and do. I mean, I don't see any evidence
Speaker 2: currently you know, that he really extracted anything of true value.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe it did. I don't actually know. There hasn't
Speaker 2: been any confirmation. We'll find out if Trump wins. But
Speaker 2: you know, given this isn't some Jdvan said something in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen about Trump like this is that was from May.
Speaker 2: That was right, Let's go all right, So it's like, well, well,
Speaker 2: what are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: You know, about this whole vitality and all of that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't even disagree with you, But what
Speaker 2: I really more point to is on those issues all
Speaker 2: of which you laid out. I would say, for RFK,
Speaker 2: what's his number one issue? Probably free speech censorship. That's
Speaker 2: like in terms of what he's always said, Yeah, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well you know, sure, you know, there's definitely some Republicans
Speaker 2: that I've talked about that. But as he accurately had
Speaker 2: pointed out previously in many of his uh in many
Speaker 2: of his tweets and attacks on Trump, he's like, well,
Speaker 2: Trump wasn't perfect on that issue.
Speaker 3: Whenever he would ask him about Ukraine.
Speaker 4: The criminalized flag burning right now.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, or you look at what was it
Speaker 2: the second one Ukraine, he was like, well, Trump, you know,
Speaker 2: sent a lot of weapons. Tory you critsu Look, I
Speaker 2: don't support army Ukraine. I have no qualms that Trump
Speaker 2: will be perfect on the issue. The best you can
Speaker 2: hope for is like, yeah, maybe JD's voice will win
Speaker 2: out there. But anybody who is at any experience with
Speaker 2: Trump one point zero, the guy who told us wasn't
Speaker 2: get out of Afghanistan and then twenty seventeen cents more
Speaker 2: troops to Afghanistan, I got.
Speaker 3: Some news for you in terms of the man who
Speaker 3: keeps his work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what he said about if you think a
Speaker 1: second Trump term is going to be different, You're like,
Speaker 1: this is just delusional.
Speaker 2: Well that's right about that, yeahbe Look I don't I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's a false positive. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's right or not. It could go different. The Trump
Speaker 2: people always tell me it's different. They told me it
Speaker 2: was different in the first time round two, So why
Speaker 2: should I believe you? For me, it's all about the proof,
Speaker 2: like actually of what you do, and we'll find out,
Speaker 2: you know, whether that's true or not. But you know,
Speaker 2: forgive me, because I'm just as cynical as you are.
Speaker 2: I don't want one hundred percent believe you. And that
Speaker 2: was really what Bobby was running on. So anyways, I mean,
Speaker 2: he did do the third party movement in general. He
Speaker 2: has done a tremendous blow here because yes, Rospuro actually
Speaker 2: stayed on the ballot, came won a huge out, and
Speaker 2: people respected him for all time. People thought about how
Speaker 2: are we going to win those voters to our side?
Speaker 2: And now that you basically are using it as a
Speaker 2: bargaining chip, now you're more like an intra party figure,
Speaker 2: much more so than you actually are a real third
Speaker 2: party candidate. And in that vein, let's continue with rfk's
Speaker 2: running mate, Nicole Shanahan. She says, I'm not a Kamala Democrat,
Speaker 2: I'm not a Trump Republican. I'm an independent American who
Speaker 2: is endorsing ideas, not a person or a party. I
Speaker 2: will continue working to give a voice to the voiceless
Speaker 2: and bring power back to the people. And she also though,
Speaker 2: you know, at the beginning, she made a big deal
Speaker 2: out of being pro choice, about being a reformed Democrat.
Speaker 2: That's why she was sticking with RFK, believing above the
Speaker 2: big part two party systems. I'm just saying, you know,
Speaker 2: once again, you know, a lot of that is different.
Speaker 2: You can believe the whole like the Democrats had it
Speaker 2: out from them from the beginning. I don't even think
Speaker 2: any of that is untrue. But if it's just about punitive,
Speaker 2: like well they were mean to me and these people
Speaker 2: were kind of nice to me, well that doesn't just
Speaker 2: that just doesn't track with a movement which allegedly was
Speaker 2: supposed to be bigger than those ideals. It's fine if
Speaker 2: you want to follow RFK to Trump, no offense. You
Speaker 2: were probably going to vote for Trump anyway. I believe
Speaker 2: that I really do. I'm like, if you if that's
Speaker 2: really all it took, you were probably at the end
Speaker 2: of the day when it came down to it.
Speaker 3: Now, in terms of his do you want him to
Speaker 3: say anything before I move on to the y else.
Speaker 1: To talk just for a minute more about the third
Speaker 1: party thing and that the damage this truly does if
Speaker 1: you care about third party movements and independent candidate movements.
Speaker 1: A number of the states that RFK was able to
Speaker 1: get on the ballot line with, he took the ballot
Speaker 1: line of other smaller third entities and now those parties.
Speaker 4: Are like, really kind of screwed.
Speaker 1: So there's there's that dynamic, and then there's just always,
Speaker 1: like the whole conversation about Jill Stein Cornell was an
Speaker 1: RFK junior. Always that comes from the media and yes,
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Party in particular, is these are just
Speaker 1: right wing plans, and you gave a lot of credence
Speaker 1: to that. Now, you gave a lot of credence to
Speaker 1: that very you know, unfair and oftentimes untrue talking point.
Speaker 1: So I think he's done incredible damage. One other thing
Speaker 1: that I just want to want to mention here in
Speaker 1: terms of what he could have achieved. Dave Smith always
Speaker 1: talks about, you know, if he had truly been anti war,
Speaker 1: if he had truly been the guy who was against
Speaker 1: both arming Ukraine and continuing down this you know, no
Speaker 1: end insight path in Ukraine, and he had been the
Speaker 1: guy that was like, we got to get the ceasefire
Speaker 1: and we got the hell out of like what are
Speaker 1: we doing with this Israel Gaza situation. I think the
Speaker 1: ceiling on his support could have been much much higher.
Speaker 4: I think he could have had a lot more more
Speaker 4: energy and.
Speaker 1: Could have sustained something even after Joe Biden drops down
Speaker 1: and you have fewer double haters, so I you know,
Speaker 1: but he's either ideological or for whatever reason, he's very
Speaker 1: committed to that issue.
Speaker 4: So that was clearly not a path he was going
Speaker 4: to travel.
Speaker 1: But just speaking in terms of cynical political calculation, that
Speaker 1: was the lane that was and obviously he didn't take it.
Speaker 1: It's just one last thing to reflect on your comment
Speaker 1: about like this is just a value, like your bitterness
Speaker 1: towards the Democratic Party. It reminds me of when the
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren supporters who supposedly again are like, ah, we
Speaker 1: support Manicare for all, and we support all these progressive
Speaker 1: values when they decided many of them to back Joe
Speaker 1: Biden instead of Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 4: Because some people associate with.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, just like Rando online supporters had been mean
Speaker 1: to them. It's like, okay, well, is your personal hurt
Speaker 1: feelings more important.
Speaker 4: Now than getting people healthcare?
Speaker 1: Because that seems kind of absurd and extremely petty, and
Speaker 1: the vibes here are very similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. Let's look at the polling analysis.
Speaker 2: Nate Silver really recommend reading this is pretty interesting. It
Speaker 2: says we've removed RFK from our model, but it didn't
Speaker 2: hurt Kamala so far. Harris's convention bounce has offset any
Speaker 2: impacts so far. So if you look at the overall
Speaker 2: polling analysis, they had Harris roughly at forty eight, Trump
Speaker 2: around five, and then Kennedy, you know, now negligible if
Speaker 2: you continue to read it, though, it is kind of
Speaker 2: interesting in terms of her electoral chances where for now,
Speaker 2: at the very least like what we saw in terms
Speaker 2: of the polls that are coming out of the battleground states,
Speaker 2: RFK was just much more of a hindrance towards Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: But there is no like one hundred percent evidence right
Speaker 2: now that this will put Trump, let's say, over the
Speaker 2: finish line. Intuitively, though, I can't help but think it does.
Speaker 2: At the very least, it makes things easier for Trump,
Speaker 2: which in a fifty to fifty election, how can we
Speaker 2: discount that we had twelve thousand votes or whatever in Georgia,
Speaker 2: twenty thirty thousand votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you know,
Speaker 2: some sixty thousand votes swing when we think about Arizona
Speaker 2: and elsewhere, you know, when you don't have to contend
Speaker 2: with RFK also on the ballot, drawing it away from you,
Speaker 2: then I think it's you're in a better position. So really,
Speaker 2: what it does is it moves it from I was
Speaker 2: like I was saying when RFK was in the razor
Speaker 2: was like fifty two to forty eight. I'm just right
Speaker 2: back to fifty to fifty in general. Now it's just
Speaker 2: going to be about engagement, engagement, engagement, and turning out
Speaker 2: your base of voters and seeing, you know, let the
Speaker 2: independence kind of fall where they may.
Speaker 1: I think that analysis is very logical. Yeah, And if
Speaker 1: you're just purely looking at the numbers, hard to dispute. However,
Speaker 1: I think we would be remiss if we didn't point
Speaker 1: out RFK Junior comes with a lot of freaking baggage.
Speaker 1: Like there's a reason why the Kamala Harris people wanted
Speaker 1: nothing to do with them, because they don't want to
Speaker 1: have to answer for the next Like he chainsaw it
Speaker 1: off a whale's head and put it on the mini
Speaker 1: van and left a bar in Central Park. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, cheated on his wife thirty seven times
Speaker 1: and then she killed herself. Like there's a lot that
Speaker 1: comes with him, and Trump is already dealing with a
Speaker 1: fringe weirdo problem. I'm not sure that RFK Junior helps
Speaker 1: him in that regard. I mean, this is a man
Speaker 1: whose favorability is profoundly underwater. He has like people in
Speaker 1: general do not like him. He has a you know,
Speaker 1: a committed fan base, and I'm sure his approval ratings
Speaker 1: on the right now among actual committed Trump supporters are
Speaker 1: going to skyrocket at this point, so they're gonna like him.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at independance, he is not popular.
Speaker 1: That's why not many people were voting for him. So
Speaker 1: he comes with a lot of downside risk. Also, So
Speaker 1: if I mean my best prediction here, if I have
Speaker 1: to make one, is it probably just doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: because the vote totals that we're talking about are so small,
Speaker 1: the effect is so ambiguous. Many of his supporters who
Speaker 1: truly were committed to him are just either not going
Speaker 1: to vote or vote for a different third party or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think that there is some level of risk
Speaker 1: that comes with associating yourself. He says it himself, like
Speaker 1: the number of skeletons in my closet are like, there's
Speaker 1: no way that we can feel even like the amount
Speaker 1: that we know about him is the extent of what's
Speaker 1: gonna come out about him. So to have to associate
Speaker 1: that with your campaign and now having to be, you know,
Speaker 1: dodging all these stories and dealing with this because you've
Speaker 1: so directly tied yourself to this individual, it's not without risk.
Speaker 2: Absolutely no, very true. It could come out. I'm curious
Speaker 2: to see how that Trump people use him, whether he'll
Speaker 2: just can whether he'll just sit out, sit it out,
Speaker 2: hang out in California, or is he going to take
Speaker 2: on like a surrogate role and is he going to
Speaker 2: kind of hit the airwaves, you know, hit the rallies.
Speaker 2: Maybe he would hit the rallies in the states where
Speaker 2: he was pulling the best places like Michigan and elsewhere
Speaker 2: and just be like, hey, all you people who were
Speaker 2: here to see.
Speaker 3: Me, like you guys should come out to vote for Trump.
Speaker 2: That would be the smart way to use him, to
Speaker 2: put him strategically in those battleground states.
Speaker 3: But you do risk while you're talking about just.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they'll do because you have some
Speaker 1: like Benny Johnson, for example, who's like, this is the
Speaker 1: ticket and it's like, well, the JD vance is still
Speaker 1: a vice presidential on me. But there are some MAGA
Speaker 1: aligned figures who want him to almost assume that role
Speaker 1: of being that integral to the campaign. Do you think
Speaker 1: Trump is amenable to that direction or do you think
Speaker 1: it's more like, thank you for your.
Speaker 4: Endorsement, I'll see you, you know, I'll see you later.
Speaker 2: I think, look, ourk is a loose cannon. You can't
Speaker 2: control them. So I think he'll probably just continue to
Speaker 2: do what he wants to do. I think he'll probably
Speaker 2: just keep going on podcasts. I mean, he's good at it.
Speaker 2: They like him, he's a good guest, and he'll continue
Speaker 2: to talk about whatever wherever whenever somebody invites him from
Speaker 2: the Bustin Barstool podcast, you know, Tim Dill whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: those people are not going to stop the invites if
Speaker 2: anything is a little bit more interesting now and so
Speaker 2: now he's got something to kind of hook on for him.
Speaker 2: Maybe he'll write another book. The guy craiks out books
Speaker 2: like crazy, So maybe he'll write another book about the campaign.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't surprise me. Just to back that up.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen about his image.
Speaker 2: You know, right now, amongst quote high engagement voters, he's
Speaker 2: got a minus eighteen favorability rating. Amongst low and mid
Speaker 2: information voters, he's got a plus twelve.
Speaker 3: Now that he becomes more in the spotlight.
Speaker 2: If he does, that would be the risk of tracking
Speaker 2: you know, the people who know about the bay or
Speaker 2: the whale, all the personal stories, et cetera. That's certainly
Speaker 2: a risk. You know that he runs.
Speaker 1: So an externally dangerous situation continues to unfold in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, Israel conducting what they described as a preemptive
Speaker 1: strike on Hesbela military acids. We can put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen on one side. You can see some
Speaker 1: of the fallout from these air strikes. You had over
Speaker 1: one hundred Israeli Air Force jets.
Speaker 4: That were involved in this.
Speaker 1: And on the other side you see Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari,
Speaker 1: who was making an announcement here about those air force
Speaker 1: planes attacking targets across southern Lebanon. You can see the
Speaker 1: smoke rising here, et cetera. So they described this, like
Speaker 1: I said, as a preemptive strike. There is some fuzziness
Speaker 1: about what exactly happened here, how effective the Israeli strikes were.
Speaker 1: Hesbela did then announce that they conducted their own strikes
Speaker 1: inside of Israel. They claimed that those strikes were very effective.
Speaker 1: The Israeli say, no, no, we were able to deal
Speaker 1: with it and there was very minimal damage caused.
Speaker 4: One thing we know for sure is that this was the.
Speaker 1: Most explosive exchange we have had between Israel and HESBLA
Speaker 1: in quite some number of months. We also know that,
Speaker 1: you know, this region continues to really be on the brink,
Speaker 1: especially you know, because of Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza,
Speaker 1: but also because of the recent provocations. They assassinated a
Speaker 1: you know, senior military commander in they root in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and of course top hamas leader in Iran. We still
Speaker 1: have not had that Iranian response, so once again underscores
Speaker 1: that as long as the conflict continues, as long as
Speaker 1: the onslaught on Gaza continues, we have this very, very
Speaker 1: dangerous situation.
Speaker 4: The good news is soccer.
Speaker 1: It looks like both the Israelis and Hesbula are looking
Speaker 1: to sort of back down from the latest escalation at
Speaker 1: this point. But no one should feel good about where
Speaker 1: things are right now.
Speaker 3: No, you shouldn't feel good at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, we had over one hundred Israeli jets who
Speaker 2: participated in this operation. This is the biggest exchange of
Speaker 2: fire between Israel and Lebanon since two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: a devastating war for Israel and one that IDF planners
Speaker 2: were desperate to avoid this time around. But they have
Speaker 2: to deal with the same problems that all of us do,
Speaker 2: which is that Natanyahu and elements of his government they
Speaker 2: want a war with Lebanon. That's the best thing that
Speaker 2: could possibly happen for them. It's also maddening just because
Speaker 2: the people actually in Israel have much more descent around
Speaker 2: this war. They're like calling them warmongers. Like, we don't
Speaker 2: want this. Our kids died last time around. Whereas if
Speaker 2: you say any of that here, you're like, hey, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: you're a complete anti semi You know, I was just
Speaker 2: reading this morning that there are two aircraft carriers that
Speaker 2: are now station yet here. Pentagon says in a new statement,
Speaker 2: as part of its support for Israel, the Secretary of
Speaker 2: Defense will keep two aircraft carriers in the region for
Speaker 2: an undefined period of time, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and
Speaker 2: the USS Abraham Lincoln. Do you know how much money
Speaker 2: costs to keep those two aircraft carriers out there? You
Speaker 2: have any idea what it means for war plans, for force,
Speaker 2: for a cost for to be to deploy all of
Speaker 2: those people in the strike groups and all those other
Speaker 2: assets just to try and prevent a war between these two.
Speaker 2: The US taxpayer has probably spent at this point hundreds
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars just on this conflict in the last.
Speaker 3: Ten months for what like? For what like?
Speaker 2: People really need to ask themselves that question so we
Speaker 2: can be the world's policeman when Israel gets him self
Speaker 2: in trouble? Why am I paying to shoot down missiles
Speaker 2: so that whenever they're getting into problems with Hesbla. You
Speaker 2: blew up in Iranian embassy, and I'm supposed to pay to.
Speaker 3: For the different Why it's for what reason?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Somebody justify that to me? You're a numbrio.
Speaker 2: We do fifty something billion dollars a year of trade
Speaker 2: with you do have four times more of Brazil. If
Speaker 2: Argentina and Brazil were going to go to war, would
Speaker 2: anybody say that that's something that we should get involved in.
Speaker 2: By the way, you'd have a better case for that
Speaker 2: when you would, right now, That's what drives me crazy.
Speaker 1: True, true, Yeah, And you're right about the internal descent
Speaker 1: in Israel's reading some of the Israeli press, the English
Speaker 1: language Israeli press, and you know, keep in mind, northern Israel,
Speaker 1: near the Lebanese border is still evacuated. These people, it's empty.
Speaker 1: These people have not been in their homes since October seventh,
Speaker 1: and so the mayors and the representatives of those towns,
Speaker 1: they were actually pissed off about this because they're the
Speaker 1: ones who have to bear the brunt of the retaliation
Speaker 1: from Hesbola. So they say this is all about you know,
Speaker 1: you just caring about Tel Aviv. First, and foremost, you
Speaker 1: don't care about us, You don't care about actually making
Speaker 1: it secure so we can get back to our lives
Speaker 1: and to our homes here. I also did a monologue
Speaker 1: that was you know, I was surprised by how viral
Speaker 1: it went about a tremendous economic cost that Israel is varying.
Speaker 1: They had this huge intel plant that pulled out, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned just a moment ago, this huge region that's evacuated.
Speaker 1: You still have, you know, all these reservists getting called up.
Speaker 1: That's totally undercutting their tech sector. Air travel is consistently disrupted,
Speaker 1: Tourism is completely dead. The construction industry and many others
Speaker 1: are horrifically hobbled because they really relied on like Palestinian
Speaker 1: day labors as chief labor and they're not allowed to
Speaker 1: come in and work anymore so, and they haven't been
Speaker 1: able to fill those ranks with cheap foreign war and workers.
Speaker 1: So they're screwed and a lot of dimensions economically, and
Speaker 1: people are feeling the pain from that as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one clear solution to this, which is to for
Speaker 1: the US to force the ceasefire here. And it's not
Speaker 1: going to be from these bullshit talks that are happening
Speaker 1: right now, because clearly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are
Speaker 1: still unwilling to use any.
Speaker 4: Sort of actual pressure to force an end to the hostilities.
Speaker 1: And all of the tensions with Iran, and all the
Speaker 1: atensions with HESBLA, and all the tensions with the Iraqi militias,
Speaker 1: all of this is centered on what is happening in Goaza.
Speaker 1: Let me go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: The latest in terms of the ceasefire talks, most of
Speaker 1: the indications seem to be the this is really going nowhere.
Speaker 4: I mean, these have been gone going for weeks.
Speaker 1: The US officials are trying to paint a rosy picture
Speaker 1: about this. They're saying, oh, this is has been constructive.
Speaker 1: They were conducted in the spirit of reaching a final
Speaker 1: and implementable agreement, with all sides sharing that sentiment. However,
Speaker 1: in this Times of Israel report, they say notably, US
Speaker 1: officials appear to be the only party in the talks
Speaker 1: who sound hopeful about their trajectory. Despite the US officials
Speaker 1: optimistic framing, the Biden administration had last week indicated it
Speaker 1: was aiming to have a deal reached by now and
Speaker 1: we've discussed this before, so just to recall the timeline
Speaker 1: of events, not now who had agreed to more or
Speaker 1: less the ceasefire deal. That Biden announced that big speech
Speaker 1: and said, hey, is Israel's agreed to this. Now we
Speaker 1: need Hamas to come to the table and accept these terms,
Speaker 1: which you know he framed as being very generous, and
Speaker 1: Hamas kind of called their bluff. Okay, we accept, and
Speaker 1: then Bbe starts laying in his own officials. By the way,
Speaker 1: Israeli officials are the ones say.
Speaker 4: He's adding on.
Speaker 1: Bibe is adding on additional conditions to make it a
Speaker 1: poison pill that Hamas will never accept.
Speaker 4: But US officials never even call that out.
Speaker 1: They continue to insist on this framing that Hamas is
Speaker 1: the only problem here, when it's very clear and has
Speaker 1: been very clear Bib Detanya, who does not want to
Speaker 1: cease fire. He does not want an end to the deal.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that he has included as
Speaker 1: a condition that is unacceptable to Hamas here is we
Speaker 1: want to cease fire that's not actually a ceasefire where
Speaker 1: we to go back to prosecuting this war exactly in
Speaker 1: the way that we've been prosecuting it. So you know,
Speaker 1: I have very little I have no hope at this
Speaker 1: point that these particular ceasefire talks are going to come
Speaker 1: to any greater end than the previous rounds of ceasefire
Speaker 1: talks that we have seen.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but one of the things I do have
Speaker 3: a real worry about.
Speaker 2: Let's put the Financial Times please please up on the
Speaker 2: screen and what they talk about here. Yes, I said,
Speaker 2: the biggest exchange of fire since two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: sharp increase in hostilities.
Speaker 3: Nosrella is trying.
Speaker 2: I mean, he says, if the result is satisfactory and
Speaker 2: the intended goals achieved, we will consider the response operation
Speaker 2: has ended. If the result is not enough, we will
Speaker 2: reserve the right to respond at another time. But this
Speaker 2: has just been flaring up now for weeks, and you know,
Speaker 2: can he really he also has internal constituencies and things
Speaker 2: he has to manage. He's got a hundred guys under
Speaker 2: jets which just blew the crap out of a preemptive attack, allegedly,
Speaker 2: at least according to the IDF. And this is where
Speaker 2: stuff actually starts to get very real about the internal
Speaker 2: politics of Lebanon, about the in the use of force
Speaker 2: by US forces and remember, I mean, look, put them
Speaker 2: all out of this.
Speaker 3: I don't particularly care that much.
Speaker 2: What I care about is we got sit in duck
Speaker 2: troops in Iraq and Syria which are just waiting, you know,
Speaker 2: to be attacked by these same proxy groups. And then
Speaker 2: what's going to happen. And also this is where I
Speaker 2: got to bring Joe Biden in. So I just see
Speaker 2: this morning he's going to be spending the entire week
Speaker 2: in Delaware. He's coming from vacation in California. So it's like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing this nice gig?
Speaker 4: Yeah, presidency thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds nice, right, that sounds like a grade?
Speaker 2: Is the at the beach after it to go spend
Speaker 2: a week in California after DNC humiliation, and now I
Speaker 2: get to go spend a week at my beach house
Speaker 2: in Rehoboth. It's like, do you do anything, dude? Like
Speaker 2: what is happening right now? And every once in a
Speaker 2: while he'll pop up on a phone call for thirty
Speaker 2: minutes and then they leak that he's very concerned. I'm like,
Speaker 2: we have been a husk as president. The entire region
Speaker 2: is there's a power vacuum. We're obviously consumed by our
Speaker 2: own domestic politics. I mean, what I look at is
Speaker 2: the signs, and the signs are two US aircraft carriers,
Speaker 2: multiple US assets, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary
Speaker 2: of State basically living abroad in the Middle East. And
Speaker 2: I'm scared. I honestly am, you know, by the behavior
Speaker 2: that we see here.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a temporary reprieve, but we don't know, we
Speaker 3: have no idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a very simple answer here. Stop shipping
Speaker 1: the bombs. Stop ship That's it, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's a very simple answer. And sure Israel has
Speaker 1: a right to defend themselves, they do not have a
Speaker 1: right to use our weapons to do so.
Speaker 4: And so the impotence here.
Speaker 1: It's humiliating, it's immoral, it's disgusting. At this point, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Sager, Oh, we're still I honestly can't believe we're
Speaker 1: still getting these reports.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Biden had another tough phone call with bib Nagna. He
Speaker 1: urged him to get on board with the ceasfire deal.
Speaker 1: It's like, who is this for at this point? Like
Speaker 1: who is buying this at this point? I genuinely don't know,
Speaker 1: Like do they still think that this is a thing
Speaker 1: that anyone cares about, that anyone gives any credence to him,
Speaker 1: you know, weekly while he's sitting on the beach or whatever.
Speaker 7: Oh bb.
Speaker 4: Bbe doesn't care. That's very clear. And no one should.
Speaker 1: Be fooled by the idea that Joe Biden is taking
Speaker 1: any kind of a tough stance with bb Naannaho, because
Speaker 1: obviously his words do not matter to the extent that
Speaker 1: he's said anything tough to bb whatsoever. You have to
Speaker 1: pull the plot, you have to force the outcome. As
Speaker 1: still the American president of the world superpower.
Speaker 4: You have that power. You're just choosing not to use it.
Speaker 4: And it is utterly pathetic.
Speaker 1: And if you, Joe Biden, cares so much about your legacy,
Speaker 1: which I think you do, this is going to be
Speaker 1: one of the primary things people remember you for. This blood,
Speaker 1: this whore, this potential escalation, which is incredibly dangerous for
Speaker 1: American interests.
Speaker 4: All of that is on you.
Speaker 1: So if you actually want to be able to salvage
Speaker 1: any sort of a reputation coming out of this single
Speaker 1: term as the American president, this is what you need
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 4: You need to make this end now.
Speaker 2: Well, he's too busy on vacation. So anyway, we're in
Speaker 2: good hands. Folks, don't worry about it. Everything is cool.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to a very terrifying story and a
Speaker 2: very troubling situation. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Telegram Chief Pavel Durov has been arrested in France. So
Speaker 2: Pavel Durov is fascinating figure, very elusive billionaire who had
Speaker 2: dual French Russian citizen. He had a long time tech entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: had fled Russia actually for refusing to capitulate to Russian
Speaker 2: demands that he have censorship on their social media. He's
Speaker 2: been living in dubai now for quite some time. It's
Speaker 2: unclear exactly why he was in France, but he was
Speaker 2: there on a flight, private flight from Azerbaijan that landed
Speaker 2: in Paris, and it appears that he has been taken
Speaker 2: into custody by French authorities. Keep in mind he is
Speaker 2: a French citizen or a dual French Russian national. Now,
Speaker 2: according to French media, he has been detained by the
Speaker 2: Office which is quote Preventing violence against Miners, who had
Speaker 2: previously issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary
Speaker 2: investigation quote into alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying,
Speaker 2: organized crime, promotion of terrorism. He is accused of failing
Speaker 2: to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.
Speaker 2: The investigator said, quote enough of Telegram's impunity, adding that
Speaker 2: they were suppre he came to Paris knowing that he
Speaker 2: is a wanted man. Now this goes back to the
Speaker 2: very ethos of Telegram itself, which does not believe in censorship.
Speaker 2: Part of the reason that Durov has basically had to
Speaker 2: live in Dubai, had to flee Russia, had to basically
Speaker 2: flee the United States and any of these EU jurisdictions,
Speaker 2: is that all of these governments are begging him to
Speaker 2: censor content that they don't like. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the things I hate the most about the discourse on Telegram.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, it's pro Russian, Well, yeah, a lot
Speaker 2: of Russians use it. You know who else uses it?
Speaker 2: The Ukrainians. And that's why the Russians they also don't
Speaker 2: like Telegram. They want to penetrate Telegram. That's the other thing.
Speaker 2: The NSA and the US services they want to penetrate
Speaker 2: Telegram because they want to see what the Russians are
Speaker 2: up to. Everybody has a reason for hating Telegram, and
Speaker 2: that just tells me they're doing something right. And Durov
Speaker 2: himself is genuinely committed to the principles of free speech,
Speaker 2: not bowing to censorship, and his product works as a result.
Speaker 2: He has nine hundred million users on the platforms, one
Speaker 2: of the largest social networks in the world. You know,
Speaker 2: it may not be all that pos popular here, but
Speaker 2: for those of us who follow foreign stuff, I'm, you know,
Speaker 2: part of a couple telegram channels and others, I've never
Speaker 2: had any thought. I'm like that this at the very
Speaker 2: least is being spied on, you know, this channel and otherwise.
Speaker 2: And so when we see him blatantly get arrested, it's
Speaker 2: a very chilling effect. Again, I don't know why he
Speaker 2: was in Paris, and there's a lot of even the investigators,
Speaker 2: Leamon said, they're like, we don't even know why he
Speaker 2: would come, right when he has an a restaurant. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the you know, I mean, he is
Speaker 2: a French citizen. At the same time, he is a
Speaker 2: right to defend himself at least, you know, allegedly, but
Speaker 2: his detention has now been extended Crystal. Originally it was
Speaker 2: like a foty eight hour detention has now been extended
Speaker 2: to ninety six hours. We have heard nothing from him
Speaker 2: and he remains inside of French custody. Nonetheless, it's very
Speaker 2: chilling because it comes on the heels of a lot
Speaker 2: of the crackdown going on in the UK right now,
Speaker 2: where they're imprisoning a lot of people for you know, look,
Speaker 2: if you're a rioter and you're genuinely committing violence, fine,
Speaker 2: but in the UK they don't think that way. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you encourage rioting boom, you might as well have participated.
Speaker 2: You are going to jail for some is longer than
Speaker 2: they have so they also, by the way, one of
Speaker 2: the things against him in France is oh his telegram
Speaker 2: helped organize the.
Speaker 3: Far right protesters in the UK.
Speaker 2: So clearly there is a major chilling effect here and
Speaker 2: I'm very concerned about what happens with Pavel Doorov.
Speaker 1: It's a very concerning development, There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Telegram has become extremely important for you pointed out, you know,
Speaker 1: Russians like pro war military Russians organizing their the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: organizing their Some of the horrible atrocities that we've seen
Speaker 1: coming out of Gaza have come because IDF soldiers were
Speaker 1: posting them. And actually we learned that the Israeli government
Speaker 1: was behind some of those telegram channels that were posting
Speaker 1: some of these unbelievable horse So I mean, yeah, awful
Speaker 1: that they're posting this stuff, but also important that the
Speaker 1: world was able to gain an insight into what is
Speaker 1: going on there and the way these IDF soldiers were
Speaker 1: super proud of it.
Speaker 4: And those are just a couple of instances.
Speaker 1: So you know, anytime a country moves to block telegram,
Speaker 1: it's a very concerning development because it has become so
Speaker 1: important for these dissident channels. He's certainly, you know, is
Speaker 1: a I think it's fair to describe him as like
Speaker 1: a radical anti censorship activist. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: do want to sound a note of caution. I want
Speaker 1: to know more about the details of what they're alleging
Speaker 1: here and what he actually was arrested for. And I
Speaker 1: also will say, you know, I believe in the conception
Speaker 1: of free speech as embodied by you know, the American
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, which isn't totally unfettered, for like, posting
Speaker 1: threats not acceptable, Posting kiddie porn not acceptable, Posting revenge porn,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, not acceptable, And there have been times
Speaker 1: when Telegram has failed to moderate content like that, which
Speaker 1: I do think should be moderated. So I just want
Speaker 1: to add a little bit of nuance into the conversation
Speaker 1: of like, I don't actually support a platform where you
Speaker 1: literally can post literally anything, because again I think the
Speaker 1: child porn thing is like the most clear example, but
Speaker 1: I also would use those other ones as as instances
Speaker 1: like credible threats you shouldn't be posting as well. But
Speaker 1: the fact that he's been you know, targeted, arrested here
Speaker 1: is something that any one of us who was concerned
Speaker 1: about free speech, concerned about censorship should certainly be paying
Speaker 1: very close attention to.
Speaker 4: And I want to know a lot what details.
Speaker 3: Here's my thought.
Speaker 2: Look, if they had him on Kenny Porn, they would
Speaker 2: say it, all right, they would we would all know,
Speaker 2: all of us would know. Also, this channel has got
Speaker 2: news for us even saying those words out loud by
Speaker 2: the YouTube algorithm. So I guess everybody enjoyed this on
Speaker 2: the podcast but whatever, that's what we have to do here.
Speaker 3: If they had the proof, they would have released that.
Speaker 2: You know, everything that they are releasing so far is
Speaker 2: that they're taking steps to cut back disinformation, the sharing
Speaker 2: of links and bots. You know that they're looking at
Speaker 2: the exchange the office. Also, by the way, that that
Speaker 2: detained him, like I said, has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: child pornography allegedly, it has to do with you know,
Speaker 2: with tear and with criminal, criminal enterprises that are organizing
Speaker 2: there on the platform now.
Speaker 3: And this is the other problem. This is Europe.
Speaker 2: They don't have free speech in Europe. They literally don't Europe.
Speaker 2: They basically guilty before proven innocent. In France, they can
Speaker 2: take your citizenship away and throw your ass in jail
Speaker 2: if they want to. And they really don't have to
Speaker 2: prove anything in their judicial system, so they need to
Speaker 2: release the evidence at the very least. He has previously,
Speaker 2: it seems, traveled to Berlin, San Francisco, London, Singapore and
Speaker 2: other cities before making Dubai the headquarters. He actually gave
Speaker 2: it interesting interview with Tucker Carlson just a few months
Speaker 2: ago where he talked about one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: he had to leave the United States. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8: We got too much attention from the FBI, the security
Speaker 8: agencies wherever we came to the US. So to give
Speaker 8: you an example, last time I was in the US,
Speaker 8: I brought an engineer that is working for Telegram, and
Speaker 8: there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind
Speaker 8: my back by cybersecurity officers or agents where they are called.
Speaker 3: The US government should to hire your engineer, that's my understanding.
Speaker 3: That's what he told me to write code for them
Speaker 3: or to break into Telegram.
Speaker 8: They were curious to learn which open source libraries are
Speaker 8: integrated to the Telegram's app on the client side, and
Speaker 8: they were trying to persuade him to use certain open
Speaker 8: source tools that he would then integrate into the telegrams
Speaker 8: code that in my understanding, would serve as back.
Speaker 4: Doors, would allow the US government to spy on people
Speaker 4: who use Telegram.
Speaker 8: The US government to maybe any other government, because the
Speaker 8: backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using it.
Speaker 8: One time, I was having my breakfast at a nine
Speaker 8: am and the FBI showed up my house that I
Speaker 8: was renting, and that was quite surprising, and I thought,
Speaker 8: you know, We're getting too much attention here. It's probably
Speaker 8: not the best environment to run.
Speaker 3: Why would they had you committed a crime.
Speaker 8: No, they were interested to learn more about Telegram. They
Speaker 8: knew I, you know, left Russia. They knew what we're doing,
Speaker 8: but they wanted details. And my understanding is that they
Speaker 8: wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control
Speaker 8: Telegram better.
Speaker 2: See this is why Durav is very inconvenient for them
Speaker 2: because put this up there on the screen. He left
Speaker 2: Russia because the Russians wanted to pressure him to censor
Speaker 2: the social media network that he founded in the company,
Speaker 2: which is very popular. I think it's like their Facebook.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to try and pronounce it, but
Speaker 2: I know it exists. It starts with a V. The point, though,
Speaker 2: is that the guy has always been, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of standing up to governments trying to say no, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to sense what you want. Everything that we
Speaker 2: have right now is an indication, Crystal, not of the
Speaker 2: stuff that you're talking about, which I don't disagree, but
Speaker 2: is about the so called like criminal organizing. So the
Speaker 2: a representative of Alexei Navolney has come out and has
Speaker 2: defended Durov being like, just because criminals use telegram does
Speaker 2: not mean that he is liable for that. I mean,
Speaker 2: and you could obviously apply that same logic you know
Speaker 2: here in the US to WhatsApp or to any messaging service,
Speaker 2: like the whole idea of a platform and that and big.
Speaker 2: But though because France in particular, where Rumble one of
Speaker 2: the channels we post on, I think it's banned in
Speaker 2: France for this exact reason. They have a much more
Speaker 2: hardcore government censorship resime. So since he's a friend citizen,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's a problem. It's definitely gonna be
Speaker 2: a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and I definitely want to know a lot
Speaker 1: more details about what it is that they allege that
Speaker 1: he did. And it does get to some of these
Speaker 1: questions about like are you a publisher orre you a platform?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Like if you're are you just.
Speaker 1: Like you know, a telephone service like thisral neutral carrier
Speaker 1: or do you have some responsibility for what's posted on
Speaker 1: your platform? And if you do, how much responsibility and
Speaker 1: where are the lines about what's allowed to be posting?
Speaker 1: If there you know, if there's a failure in that is,
Speaker 1: how is that? How is that adjudicated? So it gets
Speaker 1: to some of those questions too. But again, we know
Speaker 1: very little about this, and I do think you are
Speaker 1: absolutely correct that it should be very troubling to people
Speaker 1: because telegram has pissed off so many governments around the world,
Speaker 1: including our own Russia, Ukraine. Like you know, if you
Speaker 1: are truly sort of radical free speech activist in favor
Speaker 1: of transparency, in favor of creating these neutral platforms, that
Speaker 1: is going to put you in a very dangerous position.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what.
Speaker 2: That's what happens here is unfolded, and that's why, you know,
Speaker 2: that's why he's always known this. He's very rarely does interviews,
Speaker 2: very kind of keeps up very very low profile, and
Speaker 2: I'm worried about him.
Speaker 3: And look, it's on the French government.
Speaker 2: They need to prove, you know, but they do what
Speaker 2: he allegedly did, because think about what the Europeans have done.
Speaker 2: You know, very recently the UK is locking up all
Speaker 2: these so called far right you know, provocateurs, even if
Speaker 2: they are it's not not a crime in this country,
Speaker 2: it is a crime in their country. You have the
Speaker 2: EU who sent that weird letter to Elon Musk telling
Speaker 2: him not to interview Donald Trump on X, which is
Speaker 2: like who fuck are you?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Sorry? You know what, what have you created lately?
Speaker 2: And now you have the French government who's arresting this
Speaker 2: telegram CEO basically for you know, for at least at
Speaker 2: the very least.
Speaker 3: Now they're extending his detention.
Speaker 2: They haven't released any of the charges, and it's the
Speaker 2: burden of proof is on them because their censorious regime
Speaker 2: is proven now to anybody who looks at these issues.
Speaker 2: So I guess for anybody out there, just stay away,
Speaker 2: stay away from France. Let's go to Boeing. This is
Speaker 2: a very concerning situation. I mean, have my eye on
Speaker 2: this now. For quite some time, we've been tracking this
Speaker 2: story of these astronauts who are stuck in space because
Speaker 2: of the failure of the Boeing Starliner Space to be
Speaker 2: able to safely return them to Earth. Well, it now
Speaker 2: turns out, according to the NASA administrator, that they are
Speaker 2: going to have to stay up there until February twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five because they do not trust that Boeing Starliner
Speaker 2: is safe enough to return them back to Earth. They're
Speaker 2: going to have to come back on a SpaceX vehicle.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen to what the NASA administrator had
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 7: NASA has decided that Butch and Sonny will return with
Speaker 7: Crew nine next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed,
Speaker 7: and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily.
Speaker 7: Spaceflight is risky, even at its safe safest and even
Speaker 7: at its most routine, and a test flight, by nature
Speaker 7: is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to
Speaker 7: keep Butch and Sunny aboard the International Space Station and
Speaker 7: bring the Boeing star Lineerer home uncrewed is the result
Speaker 7: of a commitment to safety. Our core value is safety,
Speaker 7: and it is our north Star.
Speaker 2: So just imagine you're these two astronauts. You're supposed to
Speaker 2: be up there for eight days. Now you're going to
Speaker 2: have to spend eight to nine months in space. Think
Speaker 2: about this. When they come back, the new president will
Speaker 2: be inaugurated. That's how far that they are going to
Speaker 2: be staying in space.
Speaker 1: Their health special loss and bone density loss.
Speaker 3: They didn't plan for it. I mean, it's kind of complicated.
Speaker 2: They're people who have spent I think they have spent
Speaker 2: this long in space. I'd have to go look it up.
Speaker 2: I think that there's a guy who's spent a year.
Speaker 2: But yes, I mean there are like they're probably be
Speaker 2: studied by scientists. There's like osteoporosis, and there's all these
Speaker 2: exercises and all these other things that they have to do.
Speaker 2: One of the most interesting things they did is like
Speaker 2: a twin study with Mark Kelly and his twin Scott,
Speaker 2: after one went to space, and they could literally compare
Speaker 2: them biologically and be like, oh, look, you know, is
Speaker 2: Jens changed a little bit or this change or is
Speaker 2: this level of radiation or you know, his height went
Speaker 2: down this amount of you know, I mean, look, being
Speaker 2: in space is it's not a natural environment, right, you
Speaker 2: know we're built for We're literally not built for it.
Speaker 2: Your bodily systems and everything. Nobody really knew how that
Speaker 2: was going to be affected. At the very least you
Speaker 2: could say it will certainly have an effect, you know,
Speaker 2: of some kind. So more importantly for their very lives.
Speaker 2: This is terrifying because this was a multi billion dollar
Speaker 2: now boondoggle by Boeing.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: So it all goes back to the fact that the
Speaker 2: star Liner vehicle has been literally in development for years
Speaker 2: and that transported those astronauts to the space station on
Speaker 2: June six. Now, during the flight to the station, several
Speaker 2: thrusters quote temporarily failed and engineers identified additional leaks within
Speaker 2: the propulsion system. Since then, NASA and Boeing have been
Speaker 2: trying to fix the problems, trying to determine if any
Speaker 2: of these threats, if the vehicle left the station carrying
Speaker 2: the astronauts, would have a safety problem for them in
Speaker 2: transport back. They've had almost three months now at this
Speaker 2: point to trying to fix this, and I think that's
Speaker 2: what's the most galling thing to me is, you know, spaceflight,
Speaker 2: American space program was like the pinnacle of American ingenuity.
Speaker 2: Everybody looks at a poll of thirteen because the miracle
Speaker 2: of Apollo thirteen is he had all these things go
Speaker 2: wrong and they came back safely, which is incredible. I
Speaker 2: mean literally putting the whole round peg was a square
Speaker 2: peg in a round hole. That's amazing. I mean it
Speaker 2: really is amazing. Not even just watch the movie. If
Speaker 2: you go read there's a book I like call it
Speaker 2: an Andrew Chaken. I forget the title anyway, read the
Speaker 2: history of it and you are astounded that this all
Speaker 2: happened in forty eight hour period. These people have had
Speaker 2: three months and they still can't figure out how to
Speaker 2: get these people back. And those are astronauts were going
Speaker 2: to the moon and we were able to get them back, yeah,
Speaker 2: in three days.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's there's a really there's several.
Speaker 1: Very important broader societal trends that are worth taking note of.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 4: One is when you're talking about Apaola thirteen. That wasn't
Speaker 4: some outsourced company.
Speaker 1: That was US government capability, that we had technical expertise,
Speaker 1: the best in the world. Okay, that gets stripped away
Speaker 1: over years from an ideological assault that you know occurred
Speaker 1: under both democratic and republican administrations.
Speaker 4: Under neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: Then you get to the point where you know, we're
Speaker 1: so inept that we're having to like bum rides with
Speaker 1: the Russians, and.
Speaker 3: That happened for in the two thousands.
Speaker 1: Of that happens in that early two thousands, then there's
Speaker 1: this decision basically like all right, this is too embarrassing.
Speaker 4: We know what we'll do.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll go with it, we'll outsource it to the
Speaker 1: private sector. And that's how you end up with, you know,
Speaker 1: this partnership with Boeing, which there's you know, other storylines
Speaker 1: here that are important too. I mean, part of why
Speaker 1: Boeing sucks is number one because they, you know, have
Speaker 1: massive market consolidation, so there aren't a lot of other alternatives.
Speaker 4: SpaceX is supposed to save.
Speaker 1: Their ass here in terms of getting these astronauts back
Speaker 1: home in February or whenever it is. But so you
Speaker 1: have the stripping of government capability, that's number one. You
Speaker 1: have the outsourcing to Boeing and their lack of competition
Speaker 1: in the space and the fact that they're like you know,
Speaker 1: government contractor and like literally everything, and they gouge a taxpayer.
Speaker 1: The amount of money that the American taxpayer gives this
Speaker 1: company is just disgusting and absurd. Then you have the trends,
Speaker 1: which Matt Stoller has also tracked very closely, perhaps better
Speaker 1: than anyone, of total financialization, where rather than your profits
Speaker 1: coming from oh, I don't know, creating a good and
Speaker 1: effect and safe product, it comes from a bunch of
Speaker 1: market manipulation. So all the technical expertise is stripped from
Speaker 1: the top of the country. You put on a bunch
Speaker 1: of like money managers at the top, and Nikki Haley
Speaker 1: sitting on the board and all of this nonsense, and
Speaker 1: you end up with a situation where the planes don't
Speaker 1: fly and their space shuttle doesn't work. And it was
Speaker 1: disgusting to me too to read about how Boeing has
Speaker 1: been arguing for weeks. I guess with NASA like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, coming sales, it's holly safe, it's cool, and
Speaker 1: it's like, Jesus Christ, can you imagine risking your life
Speaker 1: on this thing? The I think the propulsion system wasn't functioning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert. That seems pretty important. And when
Speaker 1: you consider the extremes that these space shuttles are subjected to,
Speaker 1: even the tiniest problem can turn into utter and complete catastrophe.
Speaker 1: So Bowling literally wanted to risk these two astronauts lives
Speaker 1: to cover their own corporate shame. That's basically what was
Speaker 1: going on here, and that is a disgusting testament to
Speaker 1: the state of corporate America.
Speaker 2: This star Liner is a decade long boondoggle. One point
Speaker 2: four billion dollars in losses on the program.
Speaker 3: That's not the amount that spent.
Speaker 2: One point four billion dollars in losses on the program
Speaker 2: now so far delays in software, sticky valves, the parachute system.
Speaker 2: All the leaders at NASA have said that they have
Speaker 2: had massive debates with Boeing and engineers over the thruster
Speaker 2: problems and the helium leaks.
Speaker 3: They didn't know if it was going to be one
Speaker 3: hundred percent fixed.
Speaker 2: And this is after the government actually had a quasi
Speaker 2: monopoly with Boeing. If we didn't have space actually be screwed.
Speaker 2: So Ashley Vance is a great writer. He's written a
Speaker 2: lot about space and previously wrote a biography of elon
Speaker 2: which I really recommend. It was twenty seventeen, so a
Speaker 2: lot of it is pre twitter. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. So he recently wrote this book
Speaker 2: on space, and he accurately has his timeline where he
Speaker 2: talks about how in twenty fourteen, NASA awarded Boeing a
Speaker 2: four point two billion dollar fixed price contract to develop Starliner,
Speaker 2: the reusable spacecraft that carry astronauts and cargo back and
Speaker 2: forth from the ISS. The contract includes once a year
Speaker 2: flights with crew of four twenty seventeen, the first crewed
Speaker 2: test flight was originally scheduled for that year. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: the first unmanned orbital flight took place on December twentieth.
Speaker 2: It is considered quote a partial failure. Boeing had to
Speaker 2: take one point six billion dollars in charges of the
Speaker 2: program after this flight, mostly due to the failure. Twenty
Speaker 2: twenty an investigation and a review takes place. Twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: another second investigation takes place that one was successful. Astronauts
Speaker 2: are then selected for a crude flight. Then the program
Speaker 2: is delayed indefinitely in July of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Boeing takes a two hundred.
Speaker 2: And eighty eight million dollar loss in twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: and including two hundred and fifty seven million in the
Speaker 2: next quarter and finally twenty twenty four, the very first
Speaker 2: crewed test flight launches June five, experiences thrust or malfunction
Speaker 2: on approach to the ISS, which is that precision, you know,
Speaker 2: the ability to actually dock. NASA concludes it is too
Speaker 2: risky to return. So look at that, we're looking at
Speaker 2: almost five billion dollars loss on Boeing. Meanwhile, Crew Dragon
Speaker 2: has not cost anywhere close to that. SAX, that's a
Speaker 2: SpaceX one. SpaceX does not cost anywhere close to that.
Speaker 2: They have had to pass all their safety inspections. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that they point out is that Boeing,
Speaker 2: because of its previous relationship with the US government sou
Speaker 2: who's you know, the government, and does everything in its
Speaker 2: power to stop them from even having alternatives to go
Speaker 2: with SpaceX. Imagine if they had been successful, then those
Speaker 2: guys would be stranded up there, or worse, they would
Speaker 2: actually say, got to roll the dice. You know, we'll
Speaker 2: figure it out. Let's say there's a five percent chance.
Speaker 2: Well five percent chance is a lot actually when you
Speaker 2: consider somebody's life. That's the really scary and terrifying part.
Speaker 2: So my only hope is that given all the mishaps
Speaker 2: giving you know, the door plug, all of the talk
Speaker 2: about financialization, and now this humiliating failure of a flagship
Speaker 2: American company which was supposed to be the beacon of innovation,
Speaker 2: that everyone here in Washington can wake up.
Speaker 3: But I'm not stupid. They got plenty of money, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Make a lot of good weapons programs in a lot
Speaker 2: of different government states. And you know, you and I
Speaker 2: were checking their stock yesterday was actually up.
Speaker 1: I know that was we were like, oh, is there
Speaker 1: a story here about the stock, you know, the Bowie
Speaker 1: stock crassroom and going look and it's like, nope, what
Speaker 1: was up on the day?
Speaker 3: Actually down there today it's there, you go.
Speaker 1: Their stock has gone through some things in general, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not where it once was.
Speaker 4: However, if you're.
Speaker 1: An investor and you're looking like you've got nowhere else
Speaker 1: to go, they're still going to get their guard They're
Speaker 1: still going to get their weapons contracts, they're still going
Speaker 1: to be you know, selling airplanes, they're still going to
Speaker 1: be part of the space shuttle program. So it makes
Speaker 1: sense actually that and that that shows you how broken
Speaker 1: this is. This is a catastrophic, humiliating failure. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've been meaning to cover it for a while because
Speaker 1: you were paying attention.
Speaker 3: For a while. My god, they're still straight up there's.
Speaker 1: Something that was it just there was so much going
Speaker 1: on it kept getting pushed off, but we kept looking
Speaker 1: at I mean, what a catastrophic core failure. And if
Speaker 1: the free market works in the way that it's supposed to,
Speaker 1: you know I and Randy and theoretically work yachm, this
Speaker 1: would be then Okay, their stock crashes, their executives are punished,
Speaker 1: they figure it out, they bring in people actually know
Speaker 1: what the fuck they're doing, and they write the ship.
Speaker 1: But guess what, that's not happening because this is a
Speaker 1: broken mark it because this is you know, a monopoly
Speaker 1: because they have so much market consolidation, because they have
Speaker 1: so much government capture. The revolving door, I'm sure between
Speaker 1: Boeing and the federal government is you know, would would
Speaker 1: turn your stomach. And so, yeah, they'll be fine. You
Speaker 1: might not be fine, right the commercial airplane form. And
Speaker 1: that's the other thing is I don't feel as confident
Speaker 1: getting on. I hadn't flown in a while, and you
Speaker 1: guys know, I hadn't went through whatever normal air travel
Speaker 1: issues trying to get to Chicago, and one of the
Speaker 1: issues was the plane we got on. First they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: minor mechanical issue.
Speaker 4: Immediately you're like, oh, yeah, this is going to be bad.
Speaker 4: And then it's oh, it's worse than we thought.
Speaker 1: You guys can deplane because it's gonna be a while,
Speaker 1: and then you really know that you're screwed. But that little,
Speaker 1: you know, that concern you have in your head, it
Speaker 1: is larger for me than it once was. I used
Speaker 1: to set a foot on an airplane. I never thought
Speaker 1: twice about whether i'd get there safely. Now it's like
Speaker 1: you got all this door plug and all these other
Speaker 1: issues that have been mounting over the past number of years,
Speaker 1: and the whistle blow testimony about how, hey, they don't
Speaker 1: really pay that so much attention to what they're doing here,
Speaker 1: they'll use non conforming parts. Safety is not the priority anymore,
Speaker 1: and that starts to seep into a lot of travelers
Speaker 1: heads and you're going to have a very ugly situation with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those Look, have I stopped flying? No,
Speaker 2: I fly out. In fact, I think I've got my
Speaker 2: most flights ever in a short period in the next
Speaker 2: two months. But you know, I'm going on an airbos
Speaker 2: in a couple of days. I'm happy about it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and I don't want to feel that way. That's
Speaker 2: a freaking French company. They barely work thirty five hours
Speaker 2: a week. I shouldn't be thinking about that, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's an air boss.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: And then every time you know, you get on, you
Speaker 2: get those little the maintenance thing. I never even thought twice,
Speaker 2: but now you know, recently you'd be an idiot, not
Speaker 2: too well, I stop flying. No, but if there's like
Speaker 2: maybe five six more incidents, maybe whenever you look, because
Speaker 2: they do tell you the aircraft, whenever you book the plane,
Speaker 2: maybe you book the Embryer plane. And that's a Brazilian company.
Speaker 2: I'm not supposed to think about that. But that's one
Speaker 2: of those where they created this reality for us, and
Speaker 2: I think that's actually really devastating. So anyways, it's such
Speaker 2: an important story, we'll continue on it. I mean, who knows.
Speaker 2: Also with Boeing corruption what they can try and force.
Speaker 2: Maybe they'll see the government and try and force NaSTA
Speaker 2: to bring these people back. I would not put it
Speaker 2: past them for.
Speaker 1: What Maybe they wanted these two astronauts to die on
Speaker 1: the return flight so they wouldn't be able to speak
Speaker 1: on again.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that's good. All right, guys. We appreciate you.
Speaker 2: It's been a fun, fun show finally back in the studio.
Speaker 2: We appreciate all of our premium subscribers and others Breakingpoints
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, we're gonna have a great show for all of
Speaker 3: you tomorrow and we'll see you then.