Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Counterpoints. I'm joined today, of course by Ryan Grimm,
Speaker 4: who's looking love actually not. Ryan's out for one more week,
Speaker 4: and Crystal is filling in. Thank you so much, Chrystal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys are stuck with me all week, so
Speaker 1: apologies for that. But we have a lot of good
Speaker 1: stuff to talk about today. We've got big developments with
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling. Emily has some inside scoop about what
Speaker 1: the Freedom Caucus is thinking.
Speaker 5: Right, that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: Right, I think so, a little insight, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we'll get into that big day for whether
Speaker 1: that is going to pass or not. We also have
Speaker 1: some escalations in terms of US Chinese tensions, including sort
Speaker 1: of interaction between two fighter jets that we have some
Speaker 1: video of we can show you. Also, this is perfect
Speaker 1: for Emily deep dive into what is going on in
Speaker 1: the state of Wisconsin, especially Republicans sort of despairing there
Speaker 1: about whether they're going to be able to win back
Speaker 1: the state, especially with the politics of abortion.
Speaker 5: So we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Some new numbers about how millennials are doing in terms
Speaker 1: of their finances and the factors that you know, to
Speaker 1: have student loan debt weighs into all of that. Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz getting in some hot water, I guess with his
Speaker 1: own base over some comments he made about that horrific
Speaker 1: law that was just passed against LGBTQ people in Uganda, So.
Speaker 5: We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 1: But we did want to start with the very latest
Speaker 1: in terms of the debt sealing.
Speaker 5: Emily.
Speaker 4: That's right because it continues to change on a minute
Speaker 4: by minute basis. As obviously, the House is expected to
Speaker 4: vote today. Kevin McCarthy now reportedly wants to get to
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty Republican votes for this deal that
Speaker 4: was brokeered by the Republican Speaker of the House out
Speaker 4: of two hundred and twenty two Republicans, So.
Speaker 3: That means he's expecting or hoping at.
Speaker 4: Best, to lose some seventy members of his own conference.
Speaker 4: We're going to get into in a little bit why
Speaker 4: so many members of the Freedom Caucus and of Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 4: not even just Freedom Caucus members, but people like Nancy
Speaker 4: Mace are upset with this deal. But for now, let's
Speaker 4: start with Jake Sherman. You can put up a one here.
Speaker 4: He's saying, this is Thomas Massey. He's a libertarian member
Speaker 4: of the Freedom Caucus. He's saying, quote, he anticipates voting
Speaker 4: for this rule. That is, as Jake Sherman says, big
Speaker 4: for Republican leadership, because Kevin McCarthy needs Thomas Massey, needs
Speaker 4: people like Thomas Massey to kind of fall in line
Speaker 4: on this vote in order to potentially get to that
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty number. Obviously, if you've been following
Speaker 4: this story, Republicans were feeling good about it. They passed
Speaker 4: their budget earlier this year. They felt really good about
Speaker 4: that budget. Obviously, it was a non starter with the
Speaker 4: White House. The White House said we're not negotiating at all,
Speaker 4: ended up negotiating.
Speaker 3: Democrats are unhappy about that.
Speaker 4: It's now on the floor of the House today and
Speaker 4: the Biden administration actually isn't that upset about what is
Speaker 4: going to be passed.
Speaker 3: We can use a two here. This is from Lauren Fox.
Speaker 4: Now in the Senate, John Thune here has said this
Speaker 4: is this is also a really big quote. He's confident
Speaker 4: there will be at least nine Republican Senators who support
Speaker 4: the debt selling bill assuming it comes to the Senate.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Doom told CNN when pressed on if there
Speaker 4: would be enough GOP votes to clear a sixty vote
Speaker 4: threshold in the chamber. All right, so not only does
Speaker 4: the math then check out in the House, the math
Speaker 4: checks out in the Senate, and President Biden is.
Speaker 3: Cool with the deal.
Speaker 4: Let's actually roll or we'll take one look. Actually here
Speaker 4: at what Speaker McCarthy, this is a you can put up.
Speaker 3: The next element A three.
Speaker 4: We have a lot of like rapid fire reactions that
Speaker 4: have been coming out over the course of the last
Speaker 4: day as there's been.
Speaker 3: A little bit of a revolt.
Speaker 4: This is Kevin McCarthy kind of taking a w here,
Speaker 4: saying President Biden claimed he'd never negotiate. Leader Schumer insisted
Speaker 4: there'd be a quote clean debt increase, they were wrong.
Speaker 4: Republicans fought to spend less, block Biden's new tax proposals,
Speaker 4: clawback unspent COVID money, and fully offend our Veteran Fund,
Speaker 4: our veterans and defense priorities. Okay, So there you have
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy saying expectations were low and Republicans met them essentially,
Speaker 4: is what he's saying. And one thing I've heard from
Speaker 4: some folks is that it's one thing to say, listen,
Speaker 4: we have little leverage. We don't want to play default chicken,
Speaker 4: so this is the best we could do working with
Speaker 4: the president. On the other hand, trying to sell this
Speaker 4: deal as a big win is a totally different choice,
Speaker 4: and that I think is definitely what's rankling some folks.
Speaker 5: So a couple things.
Speaker 1: First, on the mechanics, they passed the first hurdle through
Speaker 1: that Rules committee. That was the Thomas Massey situation. He
Speaker 1: was like the swing vote there and it passed out
Speaker 1: of the Rules Committee seven to six.
Speaker 5: That was the first hurdle.
Speaker 1: Now they're looking to have an actual vote on the
Speaker 1: House floor, and I don't think anyone doubts that there's
Speaker 1: a of House members, both Republicans and Democrats. If you
Speaker 1: put him together, who would vote for this debt sealing
Speaker 1: deal in grease situation. The challenge for McCarthy is that
Speaker 1: he has to have a majority of his caucus, and
Speaker 1: as you're pointing out, Emily, he's actually setting the bar
Speaker 1: a little bit higher than that. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: just barely have a majority of his caucus. He wants
Speaker 1: to have the bulk of his caucus, something like two
Speaker 1: thirds of the caucus behind this deal for him to
Speaker 1: feel comfortable. Why because, as we're about to talk about,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't, his speakership could be in jeopardy. You
Speaker 1: already have rumblings and more than rumblings from some members
Speaker 1: of the House Freedom Caucus about being very unhappy and
Speaker 1: upset with this deal.
Speaker 5: So that's the mechanics of it. Those are the big hurdles.
Speaker 1: Still remains to be seen how many Republicans go along
Speaker 1: with this, given the fact that you have not just
Speaker 1: the House Freedom Caucus, other members as you point out,
Speaker 1: like Nancy Mace, and also a lot of conservative media
Speaker 1: and people like Ron de Santis, Mike Pence, a number
Speaker 1: of mainstream Republican figures and a lot of conservative media
Speaker 1: that have come out against this steal. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of the lay of the land. Do I think it's
Speaker 1: going to pass? Do I think he's going to get
Speaker 1: the numbers fight to bad? I'd tell you yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's at all, like one hundred
Speaker 1: percent certain. So that's kind of where things stand. What
Speaker 1: I'm interested to get from you is, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it was a mistake the way that Biden and
Speaker 1: the Democrats played this from the beginning. I think it
Speaker 1: was a mistake to say we won't negotiate and then
Speaker 1: to cave. I think it was a mistake to take
Speaker 1: off the table things like the fourteenth Amendment and other workarounds,
Speaker 1: because that completely stripped the White House of their leverage. Like,
Speaker 1: it became very clear Biden was determined to get a deal,
Speaker 1: and that's why Democrats and people like me expected there
Speaker 1: to be a lot more extracted out of his side
Speaker 1: of the bargain than ultimately was. I still think this
Speaker 1: deal is bad, have all kinds of issues with it,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot less bad from my perspective than
Speaker 1: what I expected. So what do you think happened here?
Speaker 1: Like didn't maccon seriously? Like is McCarthy close to Wall
Speaker 1: Street and they were freaked down about what going over
Speaker 1: the cliff might mean.
Speaker 5: Did he just you know, was he like charmed by Biden?
Speaker 1: And Biden's really that great of a negotiat or some
Speaker 1: like what is the explanation for why the deal ended
Speaker 1: up being a lot less than what I expected and
Speaker 1: what a lot of Republicans expected they might be able
Speaker 1: to extract down of this situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's not wanting to play default chicken.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day. Kevin McCarthy, I think
Speaker 4: understands that the media is going to take Biden's side.
Speaker 4: It's not going to take his side if an actual
Speaker 4: default looms. And that's this is all happening in the
Speaker 4: context of the X date, right, which Janet Yellen first
Speaker 4: pegged to June one, which would be what is that Thursday.
Speaker 3: So coming right up borrow so tomorrow.
Speaker 4: That's why the vote is happening today because there's the city.
Speaker 3: She then sort of said it might be more like
Speaker 3: June fifth.
Speaker 4: It's sort of a subjective figure, but that's not wanting
Speaker 4: to play default chicken. Learning or looking back on the
Speaker 4: Tea Party years and all of the times where that
Speaker 4: did not go well for Republicans, either with voters or
Speaker 4: with the media.
Speaker 3: Probably because of the media and.
Speaker 4: Some in some sense, I think is what made everything
Speaker 4: become a rushed urgent and put the ball in Biden
Speaker 4: and the Democrats court. And we see clearly that Biden
Speaker 4: and the Democrats know the ball is in their court.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some sound we're going to play in a bit.
Speaker 4: But it's been very interesting to see Republicans spreading all
Speaker 4: of these messages from kind of establishment Dems saying how
Speaker 4: happy they are with the deal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You see two very different stratu communication strategies. Biden even
Speaker 1: came out and said, we played this with Saugury yesterday.
Speaker 1: He even came out and said, do you really think
Speaker 1: it would help get this deal through if I was
Speaker 1: out there like singing its praises and how great it
Speaker 1: was and like growing about what a great deal Democrats
Speaker 1: were able to achieve. So the White House has made
Speaker 1: a strategic decision to keep things kind of quiet and
Speaker 1: not rub Republicans' noses in the fact that they didn't
Speaker 1: get everything that they wanted. Again, I think the deal
Speaker 1: is bad and have issues with it, but it's not
Speaker 1: as bad as I thought it was going.
Speaker 5: To be Republicans.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, Kevin McCarthy, we showed his comments earlier.
Speaker 1: He's really out there trying to sell like, oh, we
Speaker 1: really showed the Democrats and they didn't get anything, and
Speaker 1: here's all the great cuts that we.
Speaker 5: Were able to achieve.
Speaker 1: So even that is kind of a tell of which
Speaker 1: side really feels like they got the better end of
Speaker 1: these negotiations.
Speaker 3: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: End.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, let's put up a four because to Crystal's point,
Speaker 4: Newt Gingrich is out there sort of trumpeting the what
Speaker 4: does Nancy Pelosi call herself a master legislator, the master
Speaker 4: legislation legislating of Kevin McCarthy. He said, the debt limit
Speaker 4: deal is a dramatic victory for Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans.
Speaker 4: Before they passed their history changing bill, no one would
Speaker 4: have believed it possible to cut spending, re establish work requirements,
Speaker 4: reform permitting for energy and infrastructure.
Speaker 3: And more.
Speaker 4: There's some truth to that, which I think some people
Speaker 4: in this moment there's a little bit of negotiation theater,
Speaker 4: which is inevitable in any type of deal like this.
Speaker 3: That's happening on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: Or even if you're trying to buy a used car,
Speaker 4: or if you're playing poker, right, you have to have
Speaker 4: your poker place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, vote your poker face. There's some measure of theater
Speaker 3: that's happening.
Speaker 4: And so there is some part of the Freedom Caucus
Speaker 4: guys that they're saying, like, listen, we're go back to
Speaker 4: the negotiating table. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin
Speaker 4: Roberts said, go back to the negotiating table.
Speaker 3: This is unacceptable.
Speaker 4: To see if they can get Kevin McCarthy back to
Speaker 4: the negotiating table.
Speaker 3: But he does not have much leverage.
Speaker 4: He has never had much leverage, and so the likelihood
Speaker 4: of something like this being.
Speaker 3: The deal was always pretty high.
Speaker 4: Now, could it have been better? I think absolutely yes.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody is wrong to be upset about
Speaker 4: this deal. There is no truth to the fact that
Speaker 4: when you don't want to play default chicken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you don't want to be blamed.
Speaker 4: For that because you know the media is going to
Speaker 4: say it was those dang Republicans, then.
Speaker 3: Hey, you don't have it. Let like, you have no
Speaker 3: leverage at all.
Speaker 4: Basically, when you don't control two thirds of the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so McCarthy, I guess in the end wasn't able
Speaker 1: to posture as being as crazy as like the Freedom
Speaker 1: Gaucus types.
Speaker 5: Truly.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a one frequent tactic in negotiations
Speaker 1: that's very effective.
Speaker 5: I mean Trump uses sometimes.
Speaker 1: Where you had to appear like you're crazy enough to
Speaker 1: actually take the thing over the cliff. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess he decided that for political reasons, or for
Speaker 1: Wall Street reasons, or whatever reasons, he wasn't really willing
Speaker 1: to be as wild eyed and as crazy as you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the Lauren Boberts and the Marjorie Taylor Greens and
Speaker 1: the Matt Gates of the world would want him to be.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, as I said before, the Biden White
Speaker 1: House has tried to sort of be a little quiet,
Speaker 1: just let this thing all roll out. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of Democrats too who have been expressing like
Speaker 1: their dissatisfaction with the deal, especially the cuts to the I.
Speaker 5: R US, some of the work requirements stuff.
Speaker 1: Although it just came out that on the SNAP that's
Speaker 1: the Food Stamp Program Work Requirements edition. Once you net
Speaker 1: out all the changes that were made to SNAP, you're
Speaker 1: actually going to have an increase of seventy eight thousand
Speaker 1: additional recipients on SNAP. So I don't think Democrats can
Speaker 1: be too mad about the changes that were made there.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because while they're increasing work requirements
Speaker 1: on single men between fifty and fifty four, they are
Speaker 1: eliminating work requirements for veterans and homeless people. So that's
Speaker 1: why you have this net increase. In any case, you
Speaker 1: did have a Biden economic advisor who went on CNN
Speaker 1: to sell this deal a little bit.
Speaker 5: Let's listen to how he's speaking to it, and.
Speaker 6: We're confident that it'll get to the President's desk. I
Speaker 6: want to emphasize that it accomplishes three main things. Number One,
Speaker 6: it takes the possibility of a default off the table,
Speaker 6: which means we avoid on almost certain recession because of
Speaker 6: a first ever debt default. Number Two, it protects all
Speaker 6: of the key pieces of the legislation that the President's
Speaker 6: signed into law in the last two years, new investments
Speaker 6: in clean energy, new investments in semiconductor manufacturing, new infrastructure
Speaker 6: investments that are being seen across the country. And third
Speaker 6: of all, it protects social security, protects Medicare, it protects
Speaker 6: medicate all these important programs that Americans rely on. What
Speaker 6: we are trying to do is reserve those investments, preserve
Speaker 6: the progress that we have made, and we've done that
Speaker 6: by essentially locking in the wins that we've gotten over
Speaker 6: the last two years.
Speaker 1: So a big piece of the negotiations Republicans in their
Speaker 1: bill that they passed originally from the House had really
Speaker 1: taken an ax that the Inflation Reduction Act, which has
Speaker 1: a lot of tax credits to move towards clean energy transition,
Speaker 1: none of that was touched. And I do think that
Speaker 1: that was an important win for the White House, given
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, I think their whole approach
Speaker 1: to the White House from the beginning was really stupid
Speaker 1: and ill and advice, etc.
Speaker 3: Agree.
Speaker 1: But given that they put themselves in a really bad position,
Speaker 1: the fact they were able to protect all of the
Speaker 1: Inflation Production Act, which is the signature achievement of President
Speaker 1: Biden and of some of the more progressive folks in Congress,
Speaker 1: I do think that was an important.
Speaker 4: Part, absolutely, and that's one of the big things that
Speaker 4: Freedom Caucus members are looking at and saying, we passed
Speaker 4: this budget, this was important to us, and here we are,
Speaker 4: we're at a place where none.
Speaker 3: Of that was touched the IRS.
Speaker 4: What this bill does with the I mean ever sends
Speaker 4: one point for a billion and IRS funding, But that's
Speaker 4: really like, that's not what people wanted, because that was
Speaker 4: also a huge cornersett of Biden's agenda. When you're adding
Speaker 4: eighty seven thousand new employees at the IRS, some of
Speaker 4: whom will be agents, not all eighty seven thousand will
Speaker 4: be agents. But that was a huge, huge Republican talking point,
Speaker 4: and most of it didn't happen, and most of it
Speaker 4: I don't think they're seeing Kevin McCarthy fight for and
Speaker 4: I think that's probably what's upsetting them, because not only
Speaker 4: are they they're not seeing him fight for it, they're
Speaker 4: also not seeing him say listen, this is the best
Speaker 4: we can do and sort of be kind of blatant
Speaker 4: and obvious about the problems. He's really trying to act
Speaker 4: like this is a great deal to you know, Nut Gingrich,
Speaker 4: who's is an ally of Kevin McCarthy, to the point
Speaker 4: that he tweeted that out.
Speaker 3: I think that tells you kind of what the problem is.
Speaker 4: Acting like this is a huge win as opposed to
Speaker 4: saying this is the best we can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, let's transition to talking about the House Freedom
Speaker 1: Caucus and some of their reaction, because you know, they're
Speaker 1: two questions. First of all, were they going to vote
Speaker 1: for the deal? Most of them are not going to
Speaker 1: vote for the deal. But McCarthy doesn't need them either.
Speaker 1: If most of the rust of the Republican Caucus hangs
Speaker 1: in there, then he'll be good in terms of getting
Speaker 1: it passed. But one of the provisions that was in
Speaker 1: that original deal to make Kevin McCarthy speaker was to
Speaker 1: make it easier.
Speaker 5: To kick his butt out if they didn't like what
Speaker 5: he did.
Speaker 1: And so you're starting to hear a few of them
Speaker 1: float this idea of, hey, maybe McCarthy's not the guy,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to get him out in there. Go
Speaker 1: ahead and speak to a little bit of that, Emily,
Speaker 1: And what the dynamics are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really interesting. It's some of the same
Speaker 4: dynamics from the speakership battle. Folks will remember from January
Speaker 4: when it took what nineteen rounds to finally elect Kevin
Speaker 4: McCarthy a speaker, in which he had to ring concession
Speaker 4: after concession or they run concession after concession out of
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy, including the motion of a Kate, which is
Speaker 4: something that Nancy Pelosi torpedoed after she saw what happened
Speaker 4: to John Bayner back in the Tea Party years and now.
Speaker 4: That is a very real threat for Kevin McCarthy, because
Speaker 4: when you have most of the Freedom Caucus really upset
Speaker 4: up about this, that's more than enough people to call
Speaker 4: for a motion to vacate the chair, which would oust
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker and put Republicans back in
Speaker 4: another pickle where they don't really have a consensus candidate.
Speaker 4: They don't really have anybody that could unite enough votes
Speaker 4: to become the next speaker. So this threatens the entire
Speaker 4: House Republican Conference, not just the bill itself. To a Crystal's point,
Speaker 4: I think the math is pretty safe for Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 4: He wants to put up more, you know, he wants
Speaker 4: to get at least one hundred and fifty of the
Speaker 4: two hundred and twenty two House Republicans. That means he's
Speaker 4: expecting possibly to lose more than seventy members of his
Speaker 4: own conference. So we'll see what the math actually works
Speaker 4: out to. But I think that's important context for this
Speaker 4: next clip, we can go ahead and play a six
Speaker 4: because you see how serious this is getting for Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 7: Here, how much I mean, how much confidence do you
Speaker 7: have in a speaker right now?
Speaker 3: None?
Speaker 2: Zero?
Speaker 5: What basis is there for confidence?
Speaker 6: You cannot forfeit the tool of Republican unity. It was
Speaker 6: not necessary to do just speak of lying about the
Speaker 6: way he's characterizing this bill.
Speaker 7: Yes, he's a lot, but the bill is chock full
Speaker 7: of things that are cosmetic and artificial.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 4: So that's a motion of a kape threat. And we've
Speaker 4: seen that come from several members of the Freedom Caucus
Speaker 4: of the last like twenty four hours. Again, it seems
Speaker 4: like it's one of those things that every hour you're
Speaker 4: seeing a new Freedom Caucus remember, threaten the motion to vacate.
Speaker 4: Let's go ahead and play this SoundBite from Chip Roy,
Speaker 4: who has emerged. He certainly emerged during the speakership battle.
Speaker 4: He's actually a former Hill staffer himself. He yeah, he
Speaker 4: worked for Ted Cruz actually, and he really emerged as
Speaker 4: a leader of the Freedom Caucus folks and in the
Speaker 4: Republican Party during the speakership battle and has taken up
Speaker 4: the same sort of role in these negotiations. Here's what
Speaker 4: he said yesterday outside the Capitol.
Speaker 7: Hi, colleagues, be very clear, not one Republican should vote
Speaker 7: for this deal. It is a bad deal. No one
Speaker 7: sent us here to borrow an additional four trillion dollars,
Speaker 7: so you get abs absolutely nothing in return. But at best,
Speaker 7: if I'm being really generous, a spending freeze for a
Speaker 7: couple of years. That's it. That's about what you get.
Speaker 7: And frankly, you're going to make things worse. And my
Speaker 7: Democratic colleagues know it. That's why they're supporting it. That's
Speaker 7: why they're going around gleeful.
Speaker 4: All right, I have a quote that I want to
Speaker 4: read from a senior Senate staff for this is exclusive
Speaker 4: to breaking points.
Speaker 3: It's a great quote.
Speaker 4: McCarthy had historic unity, a massive leverage to demand a deal.
Speaker 3: He fucked it up bigly. The bill is horrible. My
Speaker 3: fear was that we.
Speaker 4: Would get a bad deal. This is an objectably horrible one.
Speaker 4: And so not only if you take that expectation right
Speaker 4: like there's not a lot of average it's probably going
Speaker 4: to be a bad deal, but then you take what
Speaker 4: chip Roy just said, which is it's basically just all
Speaker 4: you're getting here is a spending freeze, and you try
Speaker 4: it for like a year, and then you have a
Speaker 4: one percent increase the next fiscal year. About when you
Speaker 4: take that and try to sell it as a huge win, man,
Speaker 4: are you losing with the people that you really can't
Speaker 4: afford to lose? And this could turn out to be
Speaker 4: sort of the best of both worlds for the Freedom
Speaker 4: Caucus because they get to vote against the bill. They
Speaker 4: get covered for that because there's enough Democrats to vote
Speaker 4: this and pass it and avoid it a fault. So
Speaker 4: they get to vote against it. They get to go
Speaker 4: out and hammer McCarthy. Now where it becomes a potential
Speaker 4: l is when if they oust Kevin McCarthy, it's possible
Speaker 4: you have someone much much worse than Kevin McCarthy for
Speaker 4: the Freedom Caucus folks in that position because McCarthy listens
Speaker 4: to them and takes them seriously. If ousting McCarthy ends
Speaker 4: up with another establishment person taking that seat, you're in
Speaker 4: big trouble too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a few things there.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you know, if I'm putting myself
Speaker 1: in the shoes attempting to put myself in the shoes
Speaker 1: of a Chip Roy or a Dan bishop or.
Speaker 5: Your Senate staffer who thinks they fked up.
Speaker 1: Vaguely, part of this deal is not just we're going
Speaker 1: to lift the debt dealing until you know, after if
Speaker 1: Joe Biden gets re elected, so pushes us out past
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four elections.
Speaker 5: That's one part.
Speaker 1: There's also provisions in here about how the budget process
Speaker 1: will unfold that basically says, if we can't come to
Speaker 1: a deal on the budget appropriations, then we have, you know,
Speaker 1: an automatic freeze. And this was the Thomas Massey thing,
Speaker 1: a one penny cut that's actually not that bad of
Speaker 1: a deal for Democrats, and it denies Republicans leverage on
Speaker 1: the next budget fight going forward. So if I was
Speaker 1: you know, these individuals and had the worldview that they have,
Speaker 1: that probably would be the piece I'd be most upset about,
Speaker 1: because it's like, Okay, not only did you kind of
Speaker 1: cave here and not extract everything that Biden left himself
Speaker 1: open to being extracted foolishly in my opinion, but he
Speaker 1: left himself open to having a lot more extracted. You
Speaker 1: also have made it so that in the normal budgeting
Speaker 1: process we have no leverage.
Speaker 5: They're not going to.
Speaker 1: Negotiate, We're not going to be able to get any
Speaker 1: of our priorities here. And that's the other part of
Speaker 1: this that is just so perplexing is effectively everything they
Speaker 1: got they could have gotten through the normal budgeting process
Speaker 1: and it didn't require this whole like theatrical threatening the
Speaker 1: entire global financial system to achieve it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that, from my view, is probably part of
Speaker 1: why they are so upset. But my other question, Emily
Speaker 1: is like, how much of this is theater, because, as
Speaker 1: you said, McCarthy is probably going to be able to
Speaker 1: get together enough of the Caucus combined with the Democrats
Speaker 1: to get this thing through. Yes, they're saying they're very upset,
Speaker 1: and they're sending out tweets calling it like a turd
Speaker 1: sandwich and whatever, and having press conferences, etc. But even
Speaker 1: if they were to call motion fakate, they probably don't
Speaker 1: have the numbers to Alice McCarthy. There's no other alternative really,
Speaker 1: and this is a group of people who have made
Speaker 1: it their political brand to be, you know, in there
Speaker 1: railing against leadership and at least having the esthetics of
Speaker 1: fighting and bucking the Republican establishment.
Speaker 5: So they get to do.
Speaker 1: That they get to like posture, they that their base
Speaker 1: wants to see them position themselves, But do they actually
Speaker 1: have any teeth here?
Speaker 5: Really?
Speaker 4: I think, well, the messaging in and of itself is
Speaker 4: really important because we've seen this happening happen with John Bayner,
Speaker 4: with Paul Ryan, none of whom were necessarily like tea
Speaker 4: party darlings.
Speaker 3: Of course they never really were.
Speaker 4: But when the Freedom Coccus folks and sort of grassroots
Speaker 4: activist type Republicans turned against them, it became a movement.
Speaker 4: It became like an anti Bayner, anti Paul Ryan, and
Speaker 4: Republicans have been Freedom Coccus folks have been very good
Speaker 4: at mobilizing the grassroots and conservative media in particular to
Speaker 4: take down somebody who's like a symbol, an avatar of
Speaker 4: the swamp the political establishment, which is really interesting to
Speaker 4: see being used against Kevin McCarthy, who has had a
Speaker 4: very close relationship with people like Jim Jordan because he
Speaker 4: takes the time. I mean, when I interviewed him back
Speaker 4: in September, he was emphatic and very detailed about all
Speaker 4: the time that he's taken to woo Jim Jordan and
Speaker 4: to develop really sincere relationships with those guys and how
Speaker 4: he sees that not just as the right thing to do,
Speaker 4: but as a strategic win.
Speaker 3: And that's been true.
Speaker 4: So if this is a real break with those folks,
Speaker 4: his ability, I mean, he's made maybe it's sincere, but
Speaker 4: he's made a lot of concessions in the way that
Speaker 4: he talks about the FBI, the way that he talks
Speaker 4: about a lot of different issues now, and for all
Speaker 4: of that to go out the window over this debt
Speaker 4: ceiling fight, if he's not able to kind of get
Speaker 4: them back on his team, give them something, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe there's something that he can do after the debt
Speaker 4: ceiling fight to placate them, to appeal, appease them, to
Speaker 4: appeal to them to avoid a motion of vkate. But
Speaker 4: I think once that sort of genie's out of the
Speaker 4: bottle and you have signaled to the Republican base that
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy is a swamp creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how you put that back in
Speaker 3: the bottle.
Speaker 1: I think that's well said, because if he becomes a
Speaker 1: villain to the base, then whether the sentiment against him
Speaker 1: is genuine or not genuine among this handful of Republican
Speaker 1: House members, it becomes to their individual political benefit to
Speaker 1: try to oust him, to try to fight with him,
Speaker 1: to try to buck him at every turn, and make
Speaker 1: his life miserable, whether they're able to oust him a
Speaker 1: speaker or not. As another question, So when you have
Speaker 1: that political incentive in place, and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of ambitious people who are elective members of Congress, someone
Speaker 1: is going to seize the opportunity to be his primary
Speaker 1: antagonist if he comes to be seen as this just
Speaker 1: like thoroughly swamp like villain to the Republican base.
Speaker 4: Right, your average Republican voter doesn't give a damn about
Speaker 4: this procedural specifics and the detailed breakdown of negotiations on
Speaker 4: Capitol Hill. Yeah, because first of all, that stuff is
Speaker 4: extremely hard to understand, even if you cover it and
Speaker 4: you follow it. And secondly, it's your team or my team, right,
Speaker 4: and it gets broken down in that really easy way.
Speaker 4: And the last thing I want to say before we
Speaker 4: move on is just a comment that I heard from
Speaker 4: somebody on the left, baffled by the hills Republicans chose
Speaker 4: to die on in this fight, saying why not go
Speaker 4: after the Pentagon? Why not go after X Y and
Speaker 4: z and Chris Are you're talking about the Pentagon, Like
Speaker 4: some of that stuff is ripe.
Speaker 3: It would have been such a.
Speaker 4: Target rich environment to make Biden defend his surveillance programs
Speaker 4: at the Pentagon, defend some of the obviously ridiculous items
Speaker 4: in his budget or federal spending that anyone can go
Speaker 4: to the federal budget left or right and look at
Speaker 4: some of the spending agenda and be like, what the
Speaker 4: hell is this?
Speaker 3: Like this is insane.
Speaker 4: Make Biden defend that stuff, like the excessive like what
Speaker 4: people would call like the excesses of woke ideology that's
Speaker 4: become baked into the federal budget.
Speaker 3: Why are they not fighting over that stuff? Why are
Speaker 3: they not fighting over.
Speaker 4: These new things that Ken Clippenstein reports on every week
Speaker 4: that are popping up at the Pentagon that are surveilling
Speaker 4: average Americans and said they're increased the defense budget. So
Speaker 4: it's just been a very strange, not strange for how
Speaker 4: the Republican Party operates, but post Trump, to see the
Speaker 4: Republican Party dying on the hill of work requirements that's
Speaker 4: and freezes to the federal budget without talking about very
Speaker 4: specific things increasing defense spending is just strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and last question for you, Emily is Trump has
Speaker 1: been notably quiet about this deal and cyberth theorized, and
Speaker 1: I think this is correct.
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy probably called him and begged him to.
Speaker 1: Keep stuff because a Trump's not an idiot. He can
Speaker 1: see where the winds are blowing. He can see that
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be on the right side of
Speaker 1: the Republican base, like DeSantis and Pence and the other
Speaker 1: in vivek Ramswami and the others who have come out
Speaker 1: against it who are running for president, they're on the
Speaker 1: correct side of this issue in terms of like the
Speaker 1: vibes and the sentiment of the base. So notable that
Speaker 1: he has stayed quiet, and clearly he and Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: are allies. Mike Kevin, you know, and he helped Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy get across the line in terms of his speakracy.
Speaker 5: How much does it matter.
Speaker 1: That McCarthy has the sort of tacit backing of Trump.
Speaker 4: That's a great question, because Trump can make life hard
Speaker 4: for basically anyone, although I think in a primary his
Speaker 4: power to do that is going to wane because if
Speaker 4: you're splitting off, you know, the kind of maga folks
Speaker 4: into DeSantis and Trump. I think Trump doesn't lose his
Speaker 4: thirty percent grip on the Republican your average Republican primary base.
Speaker 3: He's got thirty percent grip.
Speaker 4: If he can make that, if he can make life
Speaker 4: difficult for Kevin McCarthy with that thirty percent.
Speaker 3: That's definitely meaningful.
Speaker 4: On top of Zager's theory, something you said that he
Speaker 4: sort of senses where the wind is blowing.
Speaker 3: Trump wants to be on the side of the winner.
Speaker 4: So he's not necessarily ideologically going to say this is
Speaker 4: right or wrong.
Speaker 5: Oh, he doesn't care about the details.
Speaker 4: No, He's waiting in the wings and he's going to
Speaker 4: see where the winds blow.
Speaker 3: And I think it's up in the air.
Speaker 4: It's been up in the air for the last week
Speaker 4: or so as Republicans like the Freedom CROC has felt
Speaker 4: really good about their relationship with Kevin McCarthy until.
Speaker 3: Like a week ago. Oh really yeah, it was like.
Speaker 4: They felt like they were things were moving along well.
Speaker 4: And then he settled on this deal with Biden over
Speaker 4: the weekend, and really, like that is really really bad
Speaker 4: and really quick.
Speaker 3: And so I think Trump was waiting in the wings
Speaker 3: seeing what was going.
Speaker 4: To be the winning side of this argument, and I
Speaker 4: think when that becomes clear to him, he'll jump in
Speaker 4: and say something.
Speaker 1: So it's your assessment that the anger and the upset
Speaker 1: that is being portrayed coming from the Freedom Caucus is genuine,
Speaker 1: that they feel they actually feel betrayed here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a little both.
Speaker 4: I think it's there's a broad, genuine upset over being
Speaker 4: left behind by Kevin McCarthy, But then there's a layer
Speaker 4: of you know, that that becomes an opportunity. So feeling
Speaker 4: genuinely sold out by McCarthy can then become an opportunity
Speaker 4: for some a negotiating theater and be you know, broader
Speaker 4: like political theater.
Speaker 1: So they could play up their genuine emotions for a receptive.
Speaker 5: And willing audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, today's going to be a big
Speaker 1: day for the debt ceiling, so we'll keep an eye
Speaker 1: on it. Because this supposed to pass through the House.
Speaker 1: We will see what happens. It will be very interesting
Speaker 1: not only whether or not it passes, but what the
Speaker 1: numbers are in terms of the future for McCarthy.
Speaker 5: So we'll keep an eye on that.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we had some significant updates with regards
Speaker 1: to our relationship with China.
Speaker 5: Number of different pieces here, so the very latest, let's
Speaker 5: put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You had a Chinese J sixteen jet fighter which flew
Speaker 1: directly in front of an American surveillance plane that was
Speaker 1: flying an international airspace over the South China Sea last Friday.
Speaker 1: That forced the US Air Force plane to fly through
Speaker 1: the fighters wake turbulence and caused the US aircraft to shake.
Speaker 1: The Pentagons felt so strongly about the aggressive nature of
Speaker 1: this incident that they actually released the video, which we have.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and take a look at this. I'll
Speaker 1: just do my best to narrate. You see the jet,
Speaker 1: you see it very close to the American jet. It
Speaker 1: comes through. You can see since the cameras in the
Speaker 1: cockpit of the American jet, you can see the way
Speaker 1: that it is shaking as it goes through the fighter's
Speaker 1: wake turbulence.
Speaker 5: So that is the incident. That is a question.
Speaker 1: This comes at a particularly fraught time in US Chinese relations.
Speaker 1: Things have been going sideways ever since that whole like
Speaker 1: spy balloon situation. So here's the latest on that. Got
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen from the wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal. They report that China rebuffed the Pentagon chief
Speaker 1: blunting push for reproachment. US had proposed a meeting. China
Speaker 1: accused the US of insincerity. Here are the details here.
Speaker 1: They say they rebuff that US request for a meeting
Speaker 1: between their two defense chiefs on the sidelines of an
Speaker 1: annual security form in Singapore this coming weekend, showing the
Speaker 1: limits of that tentative reproachment. The decision by China formally
Speaker 1: to inform the Pentagon shuts the door for now on
Speaker 1: a meeting between those two defense secretaries, which the US
Speaker 1: had proposed. They also said China's dismissal of the proposal
Speaker 1: was termed in unusually blunt, in an unusually blunt way.
Speaker 1: These like diplomats have you know, this like the way
Speaker 1: we communicate these things, and this is the fashion we
Speaker 1: communicate and they felt that this broke typical decorum apparently
Speaker 1: and was unusually blunt. And this was an interesting comment
Speaker 1: here from a think tank official about their assumption of
Speaker 1: how the Chinese were viewing things.
Speaker 5: They said, the Chinese believe they.
Speaker 1: Have the most leverage when dealing with officials who handle
Speaker 1: economic issues, so they are prioritizing those engagements over ones
Speaker 1: involving national security. I also pulled for US the South
Speaker 1: China Morning Post to give the sort of Chinese version
Speaker 1: of these events and why they rebuffed this meeting.
Speaker 5: They said, put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: China says the US must correct its mistaken actions before
Speaker 1: top defense chiefs can meet. This is part of their
Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. They say Washington should earnestly respect the sovereignty, security,
Speaker 1: and interests of China and immediately correct its mistaken actions
Speaker 1: to show its sincerity to talk. And they pointed emily
Speaker 1: in particular to the fact that their defense chief is
Speaker 1: actually under US sanctions, which the US doesn't have any
Speaker 1: intention of lifting.
Speaker 5: But I also think that's kind.
Speaker 1: Of an excuse for them to, you know, have some
Speaker 1: justification for why they didn't want this meeting to go forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know the I think it's the journal
Speaker 4: that notes that they still haven't rescheduled that Beijing trip
Speaker 4: that Blincoln was supposed to take during that initial spy
Speaker 4: balloon upheaval that was supposed to coincide with a trip
Speaker 4: by our Secretary of State to Beijing, right, And they said,
Speaker 4: you know, we're going to table this and reschedule it,
Speaker 4: and that was our move. The United States made that
Speaker 4: decision because the Biden administration was taking so much flak
Speaker 4: for not shooting down this by balloon. And they still
Speaker 4: haven't rescheduled it and it's months later. And it's interesting
Speaker 4: also the spy balloon started drifting over the United States
Speaker 4: in another situation where there was a planned meeting. That's
Speaker 4: also obviously echoed by what just happened this week. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I think worth noting too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a real shame that that meeting
Speaker 1: didn't go through. I think it's a real shame that
Speaker 1: they pulled the plug on this meeting as well. And
Speaker 1: within the Biden administration, the reporting is that you do
Speaker 1: have sort of dueling views of how to approach the
Speaker 1: relationship with China. Obviously, some of Biden's signature initiatives have
Speaker 1: been designed to try to claw back some productive capacity here,
Speaker 1: especially with regard to semiconductor chips, and so they've taken
Speaker 1: that approach from an economic perspective, and you have certain
Speaker 1: folks within the administration, those who are more focused on
Speaker 1: the economy or more focused on climate, who say, listen,
Speaker 1: we're going to tackle these challenges especially around the climate crisis.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to work with China, and so
Speaker 1: we need to have these open lines of communication. You
Speaker 1: also have you know, Pentagon and military press who just
Speaker 1: feel like, all right, in order to avoid any real,
Speaker 1: you know, dire mishaps or under misunderstandings, we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that we're in communication. But you also have
Speaker 1: thinking within the Biden White House that you know, wants
Speaker 1: to take a more sort of hawkish and aggressive and
Speaker 1: adversarial relationship with China. And so you see them kind
Speaker 1: of oscillating between these two approaches. I think back and forth,
Speaker 1: and you know, China now at this point, I guess
Speaker 1: over this by balloon situation and just wanting to assert
Speaker 1: themselves here sort of thumbing their noses at the US.
Speaker 4: That's so interesting about the internal dynamics of the Biden
Speaker 4: administration because you know, you see it in just a
Speaker 4: very i.
Speaker 3: Think confused policy towards China.
Speaker 4: And to your point, if that's reflective of internal debate
Speaker 4: about what the right course of action is, I mean,
Speaker 4: maybe this puts the Biden administration, maybe this forces their hand,
Speaker 4: Maybe it puts them in a position where the people
Speaker 4: internally who are fighting to take a more hawkish stance
Speaker 4: on China inevitably are winning out.
Speaker 3: Because it definitely break it's their hand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you hit that brick wall and diplomatic relations
Speaker 4: are strained to the point where you can't have these
Speaker 4: meetings anymore, then that's when you start to get to
Speaker 4: a I mean, I would say a dangerous place. And
Speaker 4: I think there's obviously good reasons to have the hawkish
Speaker 4: instincts towards China, especially when you look at you know
Speaker 4: exactly what the video c that you just showed. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's understandable, but at the same time, that puts US
Speaker 4: closer and closer to a.
Speaker 1: Hot war, Yeah, which you know would be a disaster
Speaker 1: for us, for them, for a lot of people around
Speaker 1: the world. And China has long taken this approach. That's
Speaker 1: why I found that comment so interesting about how they're
Speaker 1: most interested in dealing with officials who handle economic issues.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really sort of understand our society and
Speaker 1: how much it is driven by like capitalism and by
Speaker 1: capital and so this was noteworthy. Elon musk Is actually
Speaker 1: just visited China. Go ahead and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen, and we have some notes here from the
Speaker 1: Financial times about that meaning, China calls for stable ties
Speaker 1: with the US.
Speaker 5: And meeting with Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Billionaire's audience with the Foreign Minster highlights complex relationship with Beijing.
Speaker 1: So the fact that this meaning is coming at this time,
Speaker 1: I think it's also noteworthy and fits with this idea
Speaker 1: of you know, they feel like the way they can
Speaker 1: pull our strings is through economics, and it's not just
Speaker 1: us too. I mean, this is why they're with their
Speaker 1: initiatives in Africa, you know, lending a lot of money
Speaker 1: into build out ports and roads and bridges and fund
Speaker 1: their infrastructure. Also, by the way, loading them up with
Speaker 1: debt as their own sort of version of imperialism. So
Speaker 1: they're very skilled and adept at using their own economic
Speaker 1: power and might as a sort of power play, both
Speaker 1: with US and with some of our leading entrepreneurs, but
Speaker 1: also with countries around the world. Here are some of
Speaker 1: the details from that meeting. In addition to calling for
Speaker 1: that stable and constructive ties, in a statement, the Chinese
Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry quoted Musk as comparing US trying to interest
Speaker 1: to conjoin twins, saying Tesla opposed decoupling of the world's
Speaker 1: two biggest economies. They faced some internal concern about Musk's
Speaker 1: relationship and Tesla's penetration within their market because they saw,
Speaker 1: in particular the way that SpaceX satellites using Starlink were
Speaker 1: utilized in the Ukraine War. And so in the same way,
Speaker 1: like we're having this whole conversation here about TikTok and
Speaker 1: a is China would like Chinese are doing with our.
Speaker 5: Data and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: They're worried that his satellites could be used to spy
Speaker 1: on Chinese citizens, and so there are defense hawks within
Speaker 1: China who are not comfortable with, you know, the level
Speaker 1: of interaction and the level of market penetration that Musk
Speaker 1: has through through Tesla. But this was a reaffirmation that
Speaker 1: at the highest levels the government embraces you know, Musk
Speaker 1: and Tesla and uh has it has also been really
Speaker 1: useful for them in terms of shifting their economy towards
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, which has been phenomenally successful.
Speaker 5: By all accounts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm sure the audience will be shocked to
Speaker 4: guess who else is in China this week, None other
Speaker 4: than of course, our real Treasury Secretary Jamie Diamond. We've
Speaker 4: seen over the course of the last six or so
Speaker 4: months all of the real president, I would say, the President,
Speaker 4: Jamie Diamond and our real Secretary of State Elon Musk
Speaker 4: together and China at the same time. No, I think
Speaker 4: we've seen, you know, business leaders. We've definitely seen business
Speaker 4: leaders flocking back to China post pandam This is both
Speaker 4: I believe it's Elon Musk and Diamond's first trip to
Speaker 4: China post pandemic. China, by the way, facing another wave
Speaker 4: of an outbreak and not locking down, which is another
Speaker 4: kind of interesting piece of context, and the broader geopolitical conversation.
Speaker 4: So it goes to show exactly what you said, Crystal,
Speaker 4: that there's.
Speaker 3: Something very telling, accurate.
Speaker 4: And maybe a little bit sad about China's recognition that
Speaker 4: dealing with economic people and people in positions of economic
Speaker 4: power in the United States and economic diplomacy with the
Speaker 4: United States is probably their best bet to make inroads.
Speaker 1: And they're like, you know, who really holds the keys
Speaker 1: to the kingdom in your country?
Speaker 5: Well, they're not wrong.
Speaker 3: I learned that from WTO and everything after that.
Speaker 4: And it's still you know, there's still people who refuse
Speaker 4: to learn the lessons. Well, they know the lessons, They've
Speaker 4: just benefited from everyone else's misery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the same time, you know, so Musk is
Speaker 1: tying in the muskpiece. He had commented previously about the
Speaker 1: Chinese space program, saying that it was far more advanced
Speaker 1: than a lot of people realized. Put this last piece
Speaker 1: up on the screen, and we just got an announcement
Speaker 1: China launching a.
Speaker 5: New crew for Space station.
Speaker 1: They are planning to land people on the Moon by
Speaker 1: the end of this decade. You know, this is classic
Speaker 1: like sort of national projection of power and prestige. So
Speaker 1: China officially, you know, really going into the space game,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of competition. You know, we're used
Speaker 1: to talking about like the economic competition between the US
Speaker 1: and China and potential military competition between US and China.
Speaker 1: Part of that military projection of power is increasingly in space.
Speaker 1: So this is also kind of a bold statement to
Speaker 1: the world and to us in particular about their ambitions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 4: And what we're seeing happen in space is it's really
Speaker 4: reminiscent of the race during the Cold War. You know,
Speaker 4: it's obviously China has more than echoes. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: actually kind of eerie of how much the not just space,
Speaker 4: I mean space in particular is a very on the
Speaker 4: nose echo. But there are obviously so many other things
Speaker 4: that happened between the United States and China, the West
Speaker 4: and China in general that feel just ripped from the
Speaker 4: fifties sixties. And we'll see if anyone has taken to
Speaker 4: heart the lessons of those very painful and deadly years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, indeed, all right.
Speaker 1: At the same time, back here at home, a lot
Speaker 1: going on. Wisconsin Republicans really in a.
Speaker 5: State of angst. Emily, they sure are, They're really in
Speaker 5: their feelings right now.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're so flag this long Politico magazine reported piece
Speaker 4: from Wisconsin. We can go ahead and see one up
Speaker 4: on the screen. The headline from Politico is quote numbers,
Speaker 4: nobody has ever seen how the JP lost Wisconsin. Now,
Speaker 4: it's a very interesting glance into the dynamics in a
Speaker 4: state where a lot of people were surprised to see
Speaker 4: the liberal Supreme Court justice win that election. Not too
Speaker 4: long ago, when Wisconsin Republicans and the meat really took
Speaker 4: this narrative from Wisconsin, Republicans were riding high for more
Speaker 4: than a decade after Act ten in twenty eleven, the
Speaker 4: election of Scott Walker in twenty ten, twenty eleven, you
Speaker 4: have Act ten, the recall that was one, and then
Speaker 4: this really this presage the Trump era in general. You
Speaker 4: had people like Sean Duffy winning Wisconsin seventh district, which
Speaker 4: had been David Obie's district.
Speaker 3: For forty years.
Speaker 4: You had a Democrat in that district for forty years,
Speaker 4: super rural, you had you know, paper mills that were
Speaker 4: shut down because of all bad trade deals and all
Speaker 4: of that stuff, problems with opioids, drugs, addiction.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 4: And in twenty ten that district flip Republican, so six
Speaker 4: years before Donald Trump. So Wisconsin Republicans had been making
Speaker 4: those kinds of gains for years, and then it culminated
Speaker 4: in Trump's narrow victory in the state of Wisconsin and
Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton sort of famously not going to Wisconsin, and
Speaker 4: now you have a really difficul situation for Wisconsin Republicans.
Speaker 4: Ron Johnson barely eked out a win ye over someone a.
Speaker 4: Republicans saw it as eminently beatable.
Speaker 1: Well, and Democrats kind of gave up on that race.
Speaker 1: And if they hadn't, it might have actually gone in
Speaker 1: the other direction because they stopped focusing on it.
Speaker 5: They thought it was a lost cause.
Speaker 1: And then Ron Johnson barely squeaked through a victory.
Speaker 4: Right, And so Politico is looking at how you have Potasswitz,
Speaker 4: the liberal Supreme Court justice, how does she win? And
Speaker 4: Politico is coming down the side and saying, you know,
Speaker 4: actually quoting state democrats. This is from the Democratic Party
Speaker 4: chairman in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 4: He referred to an internal Democratic pool conducted after the
Speaker 4: election shared with me later by a Democratic operative in
Speaker 4: the state, that showed abortion, while slightly more resident and
Speaker 4: issue for voters in the Democratic leaning media markets around Madison, Milwaukee,
Speaker 4: and Claire Lacrosse, was the main vote driver for Potassa
Speaker 4: Wits in every market in the state. It was an
Speaker 4: issue that wasn't just working for Democrats in big cities,
Speaker 4: but in rural areas too. That is really important because
Speaker 4: for Wisconsin Democrats, you need to have huge turnout in
Speaker 4: Milwaukee Madison basically because that's where the population Wisconsin is.
Speaker 4: The rest of the state is pretty scattered in rural
Speaker 4: But if you can also bring rural voters into that coalition,
Speaker 4: you're taking away the Republican voters who were brought to
Speaker 4: the party.
Speaker 3: In some cases, this is lifetime union Democrats. People have
Speaker 3: voted for David Obie for forty years.
Speaker 4: If you can't get them, maybe they actually vote them,
Speaker 4: but maybe they just don't vote. If you can't get them,
Speaker 4: you're in big trouble.
Speaker 1: Well, and all you have to do is en into
Speaker 1: the margins. You know, you don't have to win rural
Speaker 1: counties if you're Democrats and you're you know, driving up
Speaker 1: the numbers in the suburbs and you're pulling in huge
Speaker 1: numbers in the cities. If you just eat into the
Speaker 1: Republican margin a little bit in rural America, then you're
Speaker 1: really in business here. And I did think that was
Speaker 1: the most interesting piece. There were two parts of this
Speaker 1: article that I found most interesting. First of all, Democrats
Speaker 1: have really bet on this like new growing demographic. That's
Speaker 1: why they've focused, you know, they've sort of given up
Speaker 1: on Iowa. Instead, they're like, we're going to win Georgia
Speaker 1: and we're going to win Arizona. We're going to go
Speaker 1: places that are really diverse and that have a large
Speaker 1: college educated population because that's where we're having our easiest
Speaker 1: time sort of growing our base.
Speaker 5: Wisconsin is a different model.
Speaker 1: Though, and this was one of the places that you know,
Speaker 1: some of the sort of lazy assumptions of oh, well,
Speaker 1: if things are headed in this direction, they're going to
Speaker 1: keep heading in this direction. Was first it's Wisconsin and Michigan,
Speaker 1: and then it's going to be Minnesota, and you're going
Speaker 1: to all these blue wall like traditional Midwestern industrial states,
Speaker 1: they're all going to become solidly Republican.
Speaker 5: That was kind of the assumption because.
Speaker 1: You have a population that has a lower percentage, that's
Speaker 1: college educated, more white, and so it looked like it
Speaker 1: was a place that would be right for the picking
Speaker 1: for Republicans, not just in twenty sixteen, but it would
Speaker 1: kind of continue to trend in that direction. And it
Speaker 1: looks like, you know, first of all, that didn't turn
Speaker 1: out to be true. You know, Biden ends up winning
Speaker 1: Wisconsin in twenty twenty, even before Roe versus Weight is overturned.
Speaker 1: But with abortion, you've actually significantly push things back in
Speaker 1: the other direction. And so what was shocking about the
Speaker 1: win of that liberal Supreme Court justice was not just
Speaker 1: that she won in Wisconsin's closely divided states so that's
Speaker 1: not crazy, is that she won by eleven points and
Speaker 1: the issue of abortion. It's not like they can just
Speaker 1: sort of ride it out and hope this thing goes away.
Speaker 1: It's continued to show real salience as more horror stories
Speaker 1: comes down, as more laws are passed across the country,
Speaker 1: as it's a hot topic of debate within Republican presidential
Speaker 1: politics about are we going to do a national abortion ban?
Speaker 5: And I thought it was really.
Speaker 1: Interesting because there was actually a polling memo that put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen that somebody accidentally left behind
Speaker 1: from a Republican group. They say left behind polling memos
Speaker 1: shows abortion hurting outlook for the GOP.
Speaker 4: At the Greenbrier. Someone put this in the trash at
Speaker 4: the Greenbrier.
Speaker 1: Which is this West Virginia resort that Republicans. It's owned
Speaker 1: by Jim Justice, by the way, who is currently governor
Speaker 1: and gonna run for Senate against Joe Mansion.
Speaker 3: By the way.
Speaker 1: I saw that has them out by like twenty points
Speaker 1: on mansions, So we can talk about that another time.
Speaker 3: It's swanky, it's very.
Speaker 1: Swing, it's very dice, it's beautiful there. So anyway, they
Speaker 1: left it in the trash there, and the numbers here are
Speaker 1: quite dire. They say there's been a six point swing
Speaker 1: in just the last year on the generic Senate ballot
Speaker 1: from R plus three to D plus three. This movement
Speaker 1: is led overwhelmingly by independent and new voters that identify abortion.
Speaker 5: As one of their top issues.
Speaker 1: So according to a national issue study by Coefficient, which
Speaker 1: was in the news recently, so they found similar findings
Speaker 1: on the House side ten point swing in just the
Speaker 1: last year on the generic House ballot, where previously Republicans
Speaker 1: were winning on the generic ballot by six points, now
Speaker 1: Democrats winning by four points.
Speaker 5: And they say reproductive freedom is the.
Speaker 1: Number one issue among those that did not vote in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. So this has been an incredibly activating issue
Speaker 1: on Wisconsin. On election day with that liberal Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justice winning, there were all these sorts of anecdotal reports
Speaker 1: about how strong the voting had been in college like
Speaker 1: university towns there, and after the fact we've gotten the
Speaker 1: numbers that that has in fact been the case. You know,
Speaker 1: young people very like classically unreliable in terms of their
Speaker 1: voting behavior. But that's what they're finding is not just
Speaker 1: in the college towns, but across the state and in
Speaker 1: all the states where this issue is super relevant.
Speaker 5: New voters are turning out.
Speaker 1: It's really motivating independent voters, and it is a significant
Speaker 1: problem for Republicans.
Speaker 3: It's a huge problem for Republicans.
Speaker 4: And I've actually been skeptical of the theory that abortion
Speaker 4: was what killed certain candidacies in the last election, but
Speaker 4: this is the more this evidence emerges, I mean, you
Speaker 4: have to keep an open mind with this stuff. And
Speaker 4: I think this evidence, this polling evidence, has really really
Speaker 4: shifted the weight of the argument to the fact that
Speaker 4: abortion is genuinely dragging down Republicans. If even Republican polsters
Speaker 4: are finding this these like six point.
Speaker 3: Swings, I mean, that's significance.
Speaker 4: And I think that's not to say that I think
Speaker 4: it's necessarily a losing issue for Republicans.
Speaker 3: I think there's the old Ronald Reagan mantra.
Speaker 4: He talks about painting with bold colors, not pale pastels,
Speaker 4: which is really like, that's how he ends up winning
Speaker 4: the youth vote in huge numbers. And there are a
Speaker 4: lot of people who didn't agree with everything that Ronald
Speaker 4: Reagan said. He was seen as this like movement conservative
Speaker 4: activist type Republican in idiologue for sure, and yet people.
Speaker 3: Voted for him.
Speaker 4: So I think there's a way for Republicans to talk
Speaker 4: about abortion more honestly. That may drag them downe in
Speaker 4: certain areas, but in other areas maybe helpful. If you
Speaker 4: have a like, a certain kind of candidate. You know,
Speaker 4: Ron de Santis puts up big numbers in Florida, you know,
Speaker 4: with people who haven't always voted Republican, And I think
Speaker 4: partially that's because he doesn't shy away from the issue,
Speaker 4: he doesn't try to hide the issue and like be
Speaker 4: apologetic about his.
Speaker 3: Beliefs on abortion.
Speaker 4: So if I were a like consultant for Republicans, I
Speaker 4: would say, you just need to.
Speaker 3: Be honest about what you think.
Speaker 4: That said, it is absolutely true that if you can't match,
Speaker 4: if you can't put up higher numbers with the as
Speaker 4: opposed to the ones the new voters coming in, if
Speaker 4: you can't motivate, for instance, in Wisconsin, we were all
Speaker 4: sitting here on election night not too long ago, looking
Speaker 4: at the numbers in Wisconsin, and we were seeing, for instance,
Speaker 4: in what's called the Wow Counties, Waukesha azaki in Washington
Speaker 4: always like a bastion of like hard Republican.
Speaker 5: Voting suburban areas, right, suburban Milwaukee.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, and the numbers were obviously Republicans were winning
Speaker 4: those areas, but the numbers were down, the margins were down,
Speaker 4: and that's because millennials are now moving to the suburbs
Speaker 4: and they're sure as hell not voting Republican in the
Speaker 4: same numbers as other people were.
Speaker 3: So it's a it's a real, real problem.
Speaker 1: But you know, even with the DeSantis example, so before
Speaker 1: he gets re elected, he's signed what it was either
Speaker 1: a twelve or fifteen week abortion ban into law, and
Speaker 1: he felt pretty comfy with that. The six week abortion
Speaker 1: ban that they just passed through, he clearly felt like
Speaker 1: politically you had to do it. Passed it like on
Speaker 1: a Friday, did the press conference like literally at midnight.
Speaker 1: It was like, let's not talk about this, let's just
Speaker 1: try to move forward.
Speaker 5: And I think that's that illustrates the.
Speaker 1: Problem that Republicans have right now is they have won
Speaker 1: on this issue in the past when they've successfully First
Speaker 1: of all, their base was super motivated to get Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justice on an overturn Row versus wad Okay.
Speaker 5: Well, that energizing factor is now gone for them.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that they did which was successful
Speaker 1: for them is they would paint the Democrats as the extremists,
Speaker 1: you know, partial birth abortion and you know the latest
Speaker 1: what's the one the aft that they claim that like
Speaker 1: after the babies delivered that Democrats wanted.
Speaker 5: They just claim Democrats are like really.
Speaker 1: Extreme on the issue, and they put the focus there
Speaker 1: on the most sort of fringe examples that Democrats will support.
Speaker 5: Very effective politically.
Speaker 1: Well now given the way that the landscape has changed,
Speaker 1: necessarily because Roe versus WAD was already kind of the
Speaker 1: compromise position, So the compromise position has gone, so now
Speaker 1: necessarily all the fronts that they're fighting on are extreme
Speaker 1: and are fringe. So you know, a six week abortion
Speaker 1: ban or the heartwheat beat or the personhood stuff like
Speaker 1: these are very these are very have very limited popularity.
Speaker 1: It's a very small part even of the Republican base
Speaker 1: that supports some of the most stringent restrictions here. Certainly,
Speaker 1: a nationwide ban is like wildly unpopular. It's like less
Speaker 1: popular than defund the police, which is famously, you know
Speaker 1: as a slogan, very unpopular. But that's the only ground
Speaker 1: that's left to fight on, and the pro life base
Speaker 1: is very organized. They are not content with Roe versus
Speaker 1: way being overturned. So it's sort of like necessarily the
Speaker 1: turf that's being fought on is very extreme in terms
Speaker 1: of Republicans, it makes it a lot easier. I know
Speaker 1: they've been trying to pivot to like let's talk about
Speaker 1: partial birds abortion again, but it's hard when the current
Speaker 1: stories that are coming out of you know, women who
Speaker 1: are like being told go bleed out in the parking
Speaker 1: lot and when you're on desk door that maybe we'll
Speaker 1: treat you.
Speaker 5: Those are the sorts of.
Speaker 1: Things that are now happening of every day because of
Speaker 1: the restrictions that are being passed into law in these states.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how you get out of that
Speaker 1: without you know, just like shifting your stance on the issue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're right, I mean that is absolutely the
Speaker 4: strategy because and by the way, people like Ralph Northam
Speaker 4: and Andrew Cuomo make it really easy for Republicans to
Speaker 4: point to examples of like listen, this is this is
Speaker 4: a so called like moderate centrist Democrat who has some
Speaker 4: some pretty unpopular positions on third term abortion, and that
Speaker 4: though we've seen.
Speaker 3: First of all, you have to talk about that proactively.
Speaker 4: You can't wait for the media to start like jumping
Speaker 4: on you, you have to like actually be be going after that,
Speaker 4: want to talk about abortion and want to say X,
Speaker 4: Y and Z, which most Republicans don't like. Ryan and
Speaker 4: I were on air together when Roe v. Wade the
Speaker 4: decision or the Dobbs decision was handed down. Yeah, first
Speaker 4: thing I said was the Republican people over at the
Speaker 4: RNC right now are.
Speaker 3: Scared out of their minds.
Speaker 4: They hate this, Like they're not happy about this at all,
Speaker 4: because to your point, that was always the thing that
Speaker 4: they could say, I support you know this, this is
Speaker 4: like right, and when you lose that, you have to
Speaker 4: go on offense.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you're going to look terrible.
Speaker 4: You're going to look like you're hiding from the issue,
Speaker 4: like you're a secret extremist, and.
Speaker 3: That's what we've seen Republicans do.
Speaker 4: So the pro life movement right now is really trying
Speaker 4: to get Republicans to rally around that Lindsay Grahamville the
Speaker 4: twelve week thing, and there's a lot of hesitancy on
Speaker 4: that because some people want to go further, some people
Speaker 4: think it goes too far, and it's a huge albatross
Speaker 4: I think right now because nobody knows how to talk
Speaker 4: about it, and nobody knows what they actually believe because
Speaker 4: for a long time, and I think this is still true,
Speaker 4: those people at the RNC, they don't know what they
Speaker 4: believe on abortion, and if they do.
Speaker 3: Know, they probably wish Roe we're still in place.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean Trump picked up on this right away. Yes, reportedly,
Speaker 1: he said right away, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: major problem for us, and you can see, you know,
Speaker 1: he's pissed off a lot of the pro life groups
Speaker 1: by being like, listen, I'm going to sell what I
Speaker 1: did when I was in office by putting these justices
Speaker 1: on there.
Speaker 5: But am I going to commit to anything else?
Speaker 1: No, because politically this is incredibly toxic, and it's part
Speaker 1: of why, you know, in the twenty twenty four race,
Speaker 1: there's this assumption like, oh Ron De Santis would be
Speaker 1: more electable than Trump, and maybe, but I'm not even
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure about that, because this issue has
Speaker 1: become so potent and so toxic, and he now has
Speaker 1: this six week ban hung around his neck and has
Speaker 1: taken a more like aggressively overtly right wing stance in
Speaker 1: terms of abortion. I do think that'll make it more
Speaker 1: difficult for him if he makes it to a general
Speaker 1: election and cuts into his electability case. And actually, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's related to this or not, but
Speaker 1: I actually just saw some numbers that the Republican base
Speaker 1: thinks Trump is a stronger candidate to win in a
Speaker 1: general election. So this central pitch from DeSantis. Maybe he
Speaker 1: still is able to make it land with the base.
Speaker 1: Maybe that becomes the thing that they're most concerned about
Speaker 1: and they're persuaded by his argument, but as.
Speaker 5: Of today, he hasn't been able to win that debate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then there's you know, there's some evidence on that
Speaker 4: side which that Donald Trump was always able to pick
Speaker 4: up voters that Republicans never were and those are people
Speaker 4: that are probably not going to vote for just your
Speaker 4: average Republican career politician.
Speaker 3: And you know, the the last thing I'd say.
Speaker 4: Is actually Trump's one of Trump's best political moments is
Speaker 4: when he went on offense in a debate against Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 3: And whether or not you agree.
Speaker 4: If anyone agrees with what he said about abortion, he
Speaker 4: was he painted a very vivid picture and just went
Speaker 4: in on Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 3: And that is I think an.
Speaker 4: Example of where going on offense from a strategic messaging perspective,
Speaker 4: for Republicans can be really strong.
Speaker 3: And really valuable.
Speaker 4: But then if you have six week bans, for instance,
Speaker 4: it makes it much harder.
Speaker 3: Like that takes some of the power away from doing that.
Speaker 5: So there's no question makes it much harder to ship
Speaker 5: the focus.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always said Americans, I think on this issue,
Speaker 1: you obviously have you know, you have your id logus
Speaker 1: who this is their number one issue when they're clustered
Speaker 1: at the extremes and they drive most of the debate.
Speaker 1: Most Americans overwhelmingly, you know, they see it as a
Speaker 1: moral issue, they see it as a difficult and tricky issue,
Speaker 1: and they have these sort of like mixed and moderate
Speaker 1: stances on it which I really relate to and I
Speaker 1: think agree with actually. And so whichever party seems to
Speaker 1: be embracing the most like fringe part of this argument,
Speaker 1: they're going to be losing on this issue. And Democrats
Speaker 1: have been in that position where they've been effectively painted
Speaker 1: as the extremists on the issue, and now Republicans, given
Speaker 1: the new landscape, I think it's just very hard for
Speaker 1: them to escape that box. And clearly it is very motivating,
Speaker 1: so interesting data.
Speaker 5: They're out of your home state of Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: That's right. And Chris CHRISTI, by the way, he's in.
Speaker 5: It's happening New News.
Speaker 4: So while we're talking about politics and elections, Chris Christie's
Speaker 4: super pac has been formed. He has actually set to
Speaker 4: announce his candidacy in New Hampshire next week. I mean,
Speaker 4: the details from Axios about how he wants to be
Speaker 4: his pitch to voters.
Speaker 3: I think it's laughable.
Speaker 5: What are the details? What is his pitch to voters
Speaker 5: that he wants to be.
Speaker 3: I think the word they used was jolly.
Speaker 5: Okay, that all right? I like jolly yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, but Christie, I just think it's hard yet
Speaker 3: hear it is.
Speaker 4: That Christy thinks I can't take this seriously. Being joyfully,
Speaker 4: being joyful and a hopeful note aimed at America's quote
Speaker 4: exhausted majority, being authentic, a happy warrior who speaks his mind,
Speaker 4: and running a national race a quote non traditional campaign
Speaker 4: that is highly focused on earned media, mixing up the
Speaker 4: news cycle, and engaging Trump. That is code for we
Speaker 4: don't have any freaking money because nobody's gonna put money
Speaker 4: buying Chris Christy because he flamed out obviously in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: and it has even more, way more issues with a
Speaker 4: Republican voter base right now in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: This is also bad news for any.
Speaker 4: Republican who helps to have a binary Trump versus Destantus race.
Speaker 5: That ship is sailed a who long time ago.
Speaker 4: People will still say, for instance, you know, we want
Speaker 4: we expect that folks will learn from twenty sixteen and
Speaker 4: dip out of the race earlier when they realized that
Speaker 4: their candidacy doesn't have any wings, and they'll stop, you know,
Speaker 4: stop the bleeding so that they can you know, if
Speaker 4: it's Trump versus pen so Trump versus DeSantis, which is
Speaker 4: probably more likely outcome, it can just be Trump versus DeSantis,
Speaker 4: and it's more of like a Hillary Bernie race where
Speaker 4: those votes aren't split up in so many different ways.
Speaker 4: But the more people you have entering, the less chance
Speaker 4: of that happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a sign of DeSantis's weakness that so
Speaker 1: many people decided to jump in the race to be
Speaker 1: the Trump alternative, because if he had really appeared like
Speaker 1: a juggernaut, like all this guy, there's no way he
Speaker 1: could be knocked off. Then you would have discouraged some
Speaker 1: of these folks from getting in the race. And also
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, the donors didn't like some
Speaker 1: of his answers on Ukraine, they didn't like the six
Speaker 1: week abortion band to our comments previously. And so I
Speaker 1: actually do think Christy will have at least some funding
Speaker 1: behind him. He's set up some of his aides have
Speaker 1: set up a super pack to back him and his pitch. Previously,
Speaker 1: now he's leaning into like, oh, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the joyful, happy warrior national campaign and etc. Previously, I
Speaker 1: think he had a more honest assessment of what his
Speaker 1: goal was, which is like, I'm going to do to
Speaker 1: Trump what I did to Marco last time around. I'm
Speaker 1: good at being the pugilist. I'm good at fighting. I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid of the bully, Like I'll go in there
Speaker 1: and I'll mess him up, and that'll give an opportunity
Speaker 1: for other people to be able to succeed, whether it's
Speaker 1: Christi or DeSantis or someone else.
Speaker 5: Do I think that's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Do I think Christy has like that kind of traction
Speaker 1: with the Republican base.
Speaker 5: No, not necessarily, but I do.
Speaker 1: Think that that is an appealing and sensible enough pitch
Speaker 1: that he's going to get some funders. And definitely, if
Speaker 1: he's launching, he already has some funders behind him. You
Speaker 1: only need one billionaire to like float your super pack
Speaker 1: in order for you to be able to get in
Speaker 1: there and do your thing. Now, part of the problem
Speaker 1: for him is that, you know, unlike what he was
Speaker 1: able to do with Marco Number one, Trump is much
Speaker 1: more skilled political player on a debate stage than Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio is.
Speaker 5: But also, I don't think Trump's going to debate, so
Speaker 5: not likely to have that.
Speaker 1: Moment where you can make him look foolish in real time.
Speaker 1: And that is what Chris Christie I mean, you guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, but when he was
Speaker 1: coming to prominence and when Republicans were absolutely loving this
Speaker 1: guy is he would do these town halls and were
Speaker 1: like yell at teachers and you know, very like he
Speaker 1: embodied some of that like we just want someone who's
Speaker 1: going to fight energy before Trump came along. And part
Speaker 1: of what went wrong for him in the twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: race is that Trump sort of stole his spotlight in
Speaker 1: terms of the abrasive lane that he was planning to occupy,
Speaker 1: so he is I've always thought Chris Christy is genuinely
Speaker 1: politically talented. I just don't think he has credibility with
Speaker 1: the Republican base at this point. But you know, one
Speaker 1: of his allies who started this super pack, he says,
Speaker 1: mister CHRISTI is willing to confront the hard truths that
Speaker 1: currently threaten the future of the Republican Party now more
Speaker 1: than Averurwen need leaders that have the courage to say
Speaker 1: not what we want to hear, but what we need
Speaker 1: to hear. So he's almost on like a kamikaze mission,
Speaker 1: I think, to try to bloody Trump and make it
Speaker 1: possible that someone else could succeed. He's also been though
Speaker 1: article of Rod DeSantis, so it's not like he's in
Speaker 1: there just to do the dirty work of Rod DeSantis either.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he criticized Rond de Santis from his left on
Speaker 4: Disney or from his like libertarian side on Disney, which
Speaker 4: is just I don't know why Republicans think, from from
Speaker 4: Nicky Haley to Chris Christie to what like Asa Hudgens,
Speaker 4: I don't know why anybody thinks, yeah, Trump, that's right,
Speaker 4: that's the elephant.
Speaker 3: In the room.
Speaker 4: I don't know why anybody thinks that's a winning campaign strategy.
Speaker 4: But I think with Chris Christie, New Hampshire is actually
Speaker 4: where he had that moment against Marco Rubio.
Speaker 3: Oh it's eat stage.
Speaker 5: Remember that.
Speaker 4: You can see how Yeah, the pugilism and the more
Speaker 4: centrism of somebody like Chris Christie new Hampshire really should
Speaker 4: be his bread and butter. But that point about courage, yeah,
Speaker 4: I agree, this is a common Coze mission. I don't
Speaker 4: think he thinks he's going to be president. I think
Speaker 4: he probably thinks maybe there's a chance, so it might
Speaker 4: as well run take down Trump in the process and
Speaker 4: have fun on TV, which is the earned media aspect.
Speaker 5: Of his campaign strategy he enjoys.
Speaker 3: He's got a former Romney staffer.
Speaker 4: I mean, it just it's not a recipe for success
Speaker 4: with today's Republican Party and his courage message, he is
Speaker 4: going to have a hell of a time making that
Speaker 4: pitch when I think he has really covered himself in
Speaker 4: not so much glory. It's more embarrassing the way he
Speaker 4: what does that media report about how he went to
Speaker 4: like get Trump's McDonald's orders for.
Speaker 5: Him, Well, he's kind of pleased nobody exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got, you know, the Liz Cheney's of
Speaker 1: the world, like there's a constituency for them, you know,
Speaker 1: become the resistance hero and be consistent and strident in
Speaker 1: your opposition to Trump.
Speaker 5: Christy's been all over the map, you know Afrey.
Speaker 1: After he nuked Rubio, which was much to Trump's benefit,
Speaker 1: he then drops out and endorses Trump.
Speaker 5: He gets the McDonald's, does that dance for a while?
Speaker 3: Sucks up.
Speaker 1: I actually think the breaking point was breaking fack to
Speaker 1: do that anyway, was when Trump was using Christy for
Speaker 1: debate prep and they were in like a hotel room
Speaker 1: together and whatever. And it turns out Trump, which he
Speaker 1: probably knew at the time, had COVID, and Chris Christy
Speaker 1: got COVID from Trump from helping him with his debate prep.
Speaker 1: At that time, Chris Christie almost died from COVID. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, he's overweight, he was in the hospital. He
Speaker 1: really it was very serious and very grave. And reportedly,
Speaker 1: Trump when he called him, it wasn't like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: are you okay, I'm so sorry. It was like, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna tell anyone that I gave it to you, right,
Speaker 1: it seems like that was the real, like personal breaking
Speaker 1: point for Chris Christy. But even if you're gonna but
Speaker 1: he's not the resistance hero that Liz Cheney is, because
Speaker 1: he was backing Trump all the way up until that
Speaker 1: moment and carrying water for him and apparently getting his
Speaker 1: McDonald's and whatever else was required. And now he's completely
Speaker 1: lost the Republican base because he's been willing to criticize
Speaker 1: Trump and made, you know, a hard break from him.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to see what his constituency really is,
Speaker 1: even though again I do think that the man, you know,
Speaker 1: just on like raw political talent level, I've always thought
Speaker 1: he's very talented. I think if he had been the
Speaker 1: Republican nominee in twenty twelve, I think they would have
Speaker 1: had a much better shot against Barack Obama. But it's
Speaker 1: hard to see what his lane is here.
Speaker 5: Emily.
Speaker 1: One question I have for you is, like, do you
Speaker 1: see a vulnerability for Trump, Like if you were advising
Speaker 1: DeSantis or any of these other cast of characters, is
Speaker 1: there an area where the Republican basis Like I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that you could press on that you could potentially,
Speaker 1: you know, move them off of him, or is he
Speaker 1: just still the sort of beating heart of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party and very hard to supplant barring some sort of
Speaker 1: like external factor that you have no control over.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was talking to someone about this yesterday, because every
Speaker 4: little attack I think other Republicans the DeSantis camp included
Speaker 4: things that they end up having on Donald Trump. It's like, well, listen,
Speaker 4: the guy isn't running on policy. He does run on
Speaker 4: some of these really broad policy issues. You know, on
Speaker 4: Ukraine for instance, that's you know that sort of like
Speaker 4: fits with his broad narratives. On foreign policy, he runs
Speaker 4: in one position on immigration, he runs in one position
Speaker 4: on the media. And you know those are like kind
Speaker 4: of policy flanks, but they're not specific. And so yeah, Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, getting attacked on specific policies or things. He
Speaker 4: may have said like you never have him. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: but like you just you never have him. It's never
Speaker 4: going to happen. But I think he does come in
Speaker 4: with one serious disadvantage, which is having been president of
Speaker 4: the United States and losing. That takes the win out
Speaker 4: of his sales of the kind of winner argument, which
Speaker 4: is why he clings to the election fraud argument. The
Speaker 4: lie about stolen, a stolen election. I think that's why,
Speaker 4: which is not stolen. I think that's why, you know,
Speaker 4: he I think that's why he really clings to that
Speaker 4: narrative in particulars because being a loser is toxic for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, and then also coming into office.
Speaker 3: Not building the wall, you know, not he has a
Speaker 3: lot of things that he said he was going to do.
Speaker 4: He'll say it was because you know, he was taken
Speaker 4: out of office by his stolen election. But I still
Speaker 4: think that's you know, even if you think the election
Speaker 4: was rigged, not stolen, I think that's a really tough
Speaker 4: argument to make for Trump. So that's definitely a disadvantage.
Speaker 4: And that's one thing he's never had as a presidential
Speaker 4: candidate before, is that he lost and this is the
Speaker 4: time to test it out.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean he's made it very difficult because unfortunately,
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of the Republican base believes the stop the
Speaker 1: steal stuff, so they don't see him as a loser.
Speaker 5: They think he was robbed.
Speaker 1: But I do see DeSantis trying to sort of like
Speaker 1: gesture at that when he's talking about, hey, we should
Speaker 1: have done maybe we should have done mail in voting.
Speaker 1: Maybe that would have worked out for you better what
Speaker 1: actually happened, which is just like indisputably true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's where Republicans are on this. Most publics,
Speaker 4: most like activist Republicans or people in DC, agree with that.
Speaker 4: At this point, Crystal, let's move on to millennials.
Speaker 3: We're both millennials, aren'tly?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm barely barely. I'm like an old millennial.
Speaker 3: You're an elder millennia.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am a senior millennial.
Speaker 4: Well, this article caught our eye because it crunches some
Speaker 4: new numbers on how millennials are faring. And I know
Speaker 4: a lot of our audience is definitely in the millennial camp.
Speaker 3: Take a look at this tear shady. It's d one.
Speaker 4: This headline in particular, people were circulating it on Twitter because.
Speaker 3: It seems shocking.
Speaker 4: The headline from Business Insider here is meet the average
Speaker 4: American millennial who's a parent and homeowner with a net
Speaker 4: worth of one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars and
Speaker 4: hoping for student debt relief, the article says, and here's
Speaker 4: where some of the numbers get interesting. As of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: the median millennial household income when adjusted for inflation, was
Speaker 4: roughly ten thousand higher than the ten thousand dollars higher
Speaker 4: than those of medium Gen X and Boomer households at
Speaker 4: the same age. So this is comparing millennials, a snapshot
Speaker 4: of millennials right now to the same snapshots of Gen
Speaker 4: X and Boomer households at the same nay, at the
Speaker 4: same time. They say it's taken millennials some time to
Speaker 4: catch up to prior generation. And when it comes to wealth,
Speaker 4: the FED in Saint Louis, they did an analysis of
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen data found that families of older millennials had
Speaker 4: a median wealth of about thirty percent lower than people
Speaker 4: of prior generations at the same age, but by the
Speaker 4: time twenty nineteen data was available, that gap had shrunk
Speaker 4: to eleven percent. And then an analysis of twenty twenty
Speaker 4: two data found that quote young Americans, so that's people
Speaker 4: from about thirty three to thirty four millennials had roughly
Speaker 4: the same average wealth adjusted for inflation as jen X
Speaker 4: did at the same age. Now that's a very specific
Speaker 4: cohort thirty three to thirty four, that's not millennials more broadly,
Speaker 4: and I think that's some of the problems with this number.
Speaker 4: With these numbers is that you can find numbers that
Speaker 4: are very specific to like thirty three to thirty four
Speaker 4: as opposed to millennials that are like twenty seven to
Speaker 4: forty at this point, and jump in in a specific
Speaker 4: period of time, pull that number out and say, listen,
Speaker 4: millennials are fine, but homeownership millennials hit the majority homeownership rate.
Speaker 3: Actually, according to rent.
Speaker 4: Cafe, that was what was that last year and apparently
Speaker 4: so the average millennial was thirty four years old. When
Speaker 4: the generation reached that milestone, Gen X and Boomers were
Speaker 4: thirty two and thirty three. So again you have a
Speaker 4: business insiders saying they weren't.
Speaker 3: That far behind.
Speaker 4: But again that's actually not accurate either, because we don't
Speaker 4: know until millennials are like we actually don't know until
Speaker 4: we have a clear information on like the twenty seven
Speaker 4: year olds, right like by the time they've reached the age,
Speaker 4: they're not thirty four yet, they're not necessarily at the
Speaker 4: average yet.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I think this is all really premature.
Speaker 4: And I had to include this National Review article.
Speaker 3: We can put the next element up on the screen.
Speaker 4: Because this to me playing semantics with the word crisis,
Speaker 4: saying the student debt crisis doesn't actually exist, saying it's bad,
Speaker 4: but it's not a crisis because Americans have all kinds
Speaker 4: of other debt that we don't call it crisis.
Speaker 5: It's just an maybe we should call that debt a crisis.
Speaker 5: Certainly a medical debt is a crasis exactly.
Speaker 4: And here's the line that really I thought was such
Speaker 4: a tell and just incredible quote. The vast majority of
Speaker 4: student loan borrowers have manageable debt burdens of five thousand
Speaker 4: of forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, mayl manageable forty thousand dollars in debt, super manageable.
Speaker 3: I don't care if you're.
Speaker 4: Going to be a doctor coming into your which is
Speaker 4: not the case with most of those people.
Speaker 3: And by the way, there are a lot.
Speaker 4: Of outliers and millennial among millennials who have like crazy
Speaker 4: amounts of debt, like pushing six figures. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 4: those are for degrees that are not going to make
Speaker 4: it easy to pay it off. But even if you're
Speaker 4: talking about an average from five to forty thousand, the average,
Speaker 4: I think graduates with closer.
Speaker 3: To forty thousand.
Speaker 4: So whether or not it's five or forty thousand right
Speaker 4: now is a different question. We've seen poll after pollstal
Speaker 4: millennials saying that has made them put off marriage, it
Speaker 4: has made them put off home ownership, It's made them
Speaker 4: put off all kinds of different normal milestones, and so
Speaker 4: yet having to scrape by for years and years and
Speaker 4: years where you are for instance, Lime and Stone at
Speaker 4: the has crunch numbers over and over again showing women
Speaker 4: have fewer children than they say they want. Yes, that's
Speaker 4: really freaking sad, and that is a consequence in some
Speaker 4: ways of putting off marriage, of putting off home ownership,
Speaker 4: and all of these different milestones because you were bogged
Speaker 4: down in debt student loan debt in particular. The polling
Speaker 4: has found that it is an influence on this, and
Speaker 4: the same thing goes for like you're saying, medical debt
Speaker 4: and all those other things. It is a crisis, whether
Speaker 4: student loans or medical debt or anything else. It's absolutely
Speaker 4: a crisis, and it does prevent people from having lives
Speaker 4: that they wanted to see themselves have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is part of First of all,
Speaker 1: let's think about the framing of this article, that's like
Speaker 1: older millennials, it's not even all millennials.
Speaker 5: Older millennials have maybe started to catch up to boomers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that our standard for a country that like,
Speaker 1: younger generations may possibly at some point in their lives
Speaker 1: be able to achieve the same level of success as
Speaker 1: older generations. It is always in the opposite, always been
Speaker 1: the aspiration. Of course, you want your kids to do
Speaker 1: better than you do. So the very fact that we've
Speaker 1: lowered our goals to be like maybe one day, by
Speaker 1: the age of like forty five, you'll have a shot
Speaker 1: of achieving what your boomer.
Speaker 5: Parents and grandparents were able to achieve.
Speaker 1: Like, that's a sad statement in and of itself, but
Speaker 1: I also think, you know, part of what is missed
Speaker 1: in this analysis is how much the landscape has changed
Speaker 1: in terms of as you're pointing to Emily, like housing
Speaker 1: is wildly unaffordable. So those milestones in terms of home
Speaker 1: ownership get pushed back, which means that you have many
Speaker 1: fewer years of like building wealth as a homeowner, So
Speaker 1: that gets pushed back. Since you don't have that ability
Speaker 1: to own a home and be financially stable and secure,
Speaker 1: you wait to get married, you wait to have kids.
Speaker 1: Healthcare has become wildly more unaffordable, education wildly more unaffordable.
Speaker 1: So all of those sort of bedrock pieces of a
Speaker 1: middle class life life have become so much more expensive
Speaker 1: way before we started talking about inflation, and some of
Speaker 1: those pieces are not really reflected in this analysis that
Speaker 1: make up like how do you just have a stable
Speaker 1: middle class life? So I also think, you know, the
Speaker 1: picture is very different for younger millennials versus older millennials,
Speaker 1: and so the data is also a little.
Speaker 5: Bit cherry picked.
Speaker 1: They say the typical millennial earns between fifty two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixty two thousand a year, but again that really
Speaker 1: depends on whether you are at the upper end of
Speaker 1: that age spectrum or the lower end. And overall, I
Speaker 1: think you have a generation that has just been made
Speaker 1: so much more precarious by the fact that some of
Speaker 1: these core pieces of a stable and thriving life have
Speaker 1: become so unattainable. And we see the way that the
Speaker 1: life milestones get pushed back and back and back, and
Speaker 1: sometimes that get sold to us as like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just the way the kids want to live these days.
Speaker 1: But then you go and ask women like, okay, but
Speaker 1: how many kids did you actually want to have? And
Speaker 1: it's more than they were able to have. And you
Speaker 1: can see this isn't because of some life choice, it's
Speaker 1: because of the economic circumstances that were forced on them.
Speaker 1: I will say, though, they point to data from twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen that showed millennials way further behind where boomers and
Speaker 1: Gen X were at their age, and there seems to
Speaker 1: have been some catch up over the years. And I
Speaker 1: do think part of what happened with the pandemic recovery
Speaker 1: programs is it did really help. It helped a lot
Speaker 1: of millennials. It helped a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: at the lower end of the income spectrum. They were
Speaker 1: able to save a little bit of money, they were
Speaker 1: able to.
Speaker 5: Change jobs, move locations.
Speaker 1: Remote work has made it possible to live in more
Speaker 1: affordable locales so that they can also save more money
Speaker 1: or have just better quality and balance of life. So
Speaker 1: I do think that some of those programs have continued
Speaker 1: to contribute positively to the life trajectory, particularly of young people.
Speaker 4: And I think that speaks to where some of this
Speaker 4: is very polarized.
Speaker 3: Like the pandemic economy.
Speaker 4: Was great for some people overall millennials included, and really
Speaker 4: bad for some people overall millennials included.
Speaker 3: And that's similar.
Speaker 4: I mean, the article talks about obviously millennials, many of
Speaker 4: whom graduated as the Great Recession was either about to
Speaker 4: happen or had just happened, and that's I mean, that
Speaker 4: put a lot of people off on a very bad foot,
Speaker 4: and they've been trying to And that's also Americans in general.
Speaker 4: Net worth has not recovered from the Great Recession. Still,
Speaker 4: it is still not where it was before, which is
Speaker 4: I think a huge factor underestimated and why people are like, listen,
Speaker 4: the economy is fine, right, Well, maybe it's fine for
Speaker 4: Jamie Diamond and his friends, but it's not as.
Speaker 3: Good as it was. People are not in as good
Speaker 3: of a position as it was.
Speaker 4: To your point about like why we're celebrating millennials catching
Speaker 4: up as opposed to exceeding where everyone else was. And
Speaker 4: I think it's really interesting to see libertarians downplay the
Speaker 4: level of student debt people graduate with, because so much
Speaker 4: of that has to do with government subsidies putting the
Speaker 4: price of our college educations wildly out of whack. So
Speaker 4: it's not even just that people are in debt for
Speaker 4: a one wonderful, fantastic, great education. It's that because the
Speaker 4: government subsidies have flooded, you were going forty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: in debt on average for a terrible education that is
Speaker 4: like led by all of these bureaucrats that now outnumbered
Speaker 4: teachers on college campuses.
Speaker 3: So it's just rich to see that.
Speaker 4: Downplaying happen because that's never ever been how we approach generational.
Speaker 3: Growth in the United States.
Speaker 4: And it's just sad to see us cheerleading and picking
Speaker 4: numbers where you say, oh, the average millennial is married
Speaker 4: and they have kids, and it's like they probably got
Speaker 4: married way later than they wanted to, and they may
Speaker 4: have had a whole lot of emotional scarring on the way.
Speaker 4: They probably wanted to have more kids on average. We
Speaker 4: know that's true of women than they ended up having,
Speaker 4: and even if they own a house, they might not
Speaker 4: be really happy with the house that they owned.
Speaker 3: That did happen.
Speaker 4: With the pandemic, you had housing prices go down. A
Speaker 4: lot of millennials take advantage of it. But now those
Speaker 4: millennials who didn't take advantage of it because they were
Speaker 4: you know, twenty three or whatever. I guess maybe twenty five.
Speaker 3: Good luck, good luck to them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: And just to wrap this up from the libertarian perspective,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're in that kind of debt, like
Speaker 1: you're not free, like talk about like freedom and ability
Speaker 1: to chart your own course and make your own path.
Speaker 1: And that's reflected in the numbers of young people who
Speaker 1: say that that debt burden, specifically from student debt, keeps
Speaker 1: them from launching the businesses and becoming the entrepreneurs that
Speaker 1: they want to be because they got to have that
Speaker 1: steady check to be able to make sure they're still
Speaker 1: servicing that debt. So in a very real way, it
Speaker 1: really limits people's choices and what they're able to do
Speaker 1: with their lives. So to listen, I certainly support debt cancelation.
Speaker 1: You don't have to support that, but you can't pretend
Speaker 1: that this isn't a crisis and you know, just wish
Speaker 1: your way out of it and not have some sort
Speaker 1: of a solution for what is hobbling now gen z
Speaker 1: and millennials.
Speaker 3: And what a waste of energy to play semantics with the.
Speaker 1: Word absolutely yeah, absolutely can't deny reality.
Speaker 5: So this is an.
Speaker 1: Interesting one I wanted to get Emily's take on, so
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz got himself in some water for what what
Speaker 1: I considered to be a rare w here.
Speaker 5: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: He tweeted out about this anti gay Uganda law that
Speaker 1: is incredibly just brutally punitive. He says, this Uganda law
Speaker 1: is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing
Speaker 1: the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque.
Speaker 5: And an abomination.
Speaker 1: All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human
Speaker 1: rights abuse hashtag LGBTQ.
Speaker 5: He took a.
Speaker 1: Lot of heat over this from you know, fellow conservatives
Speaker 1: and from some of his base, but he stuck to
Speaker 1: his guns. Put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: from media to say Ted Cruz doubles down on condemnation
Speaker 1: of barbaric ugand in law criminalizing homosexuality after being compared
Speaker 1: to bud Light on Memorial Day. They say that he
Speaker 1: tweeted that New York Times article with the tweet that
Speaker 1: I read to you before. One of Cruz's harsh critics
Speaker 1: was Jenna Ellis, who they described, I think accurately, as
Speaker 1: the disgraced attorney who assisted Trump in his attempt to
Speaker 1: overturn the results of the twenty.
Speaker 5: Twenty presidential election.
Speaker 1: She says, you can condemn a law that imposes the
Speaker 1: death penalty for homosexuality without being pro or LGBTQ.
Speaker 5: Like bud Light.
Speaker 1: You should have just said nothing, not this, she continued,
Speaker 1: for the commenters, I stand with Uganda on this because
Speaker 1: the definition of aggravated homosexuality subject to the death penalty
Speaker 1: is raping children. Why would Cruz be against this anyway?
Speaker 1: He replies, Jenna, Not sure why you're defending this barbaric law.
Speaker 1: It imposes life imprisonment for consenting adults who engage in
Speaker 1: gay sex. That is insane, That's ridiculous. I may not
Speaker 1: agree with their choices, but consenting adults should not go
Speaker 1: to jail for what they do in their own bedrooms.
Speaker 1: One thing that this brought to mind for me, Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz is no hero of like the gay community. He
Speaker 1: still opposes the a bergafele To vision which made gay
Speaker 1: marriage legal. He's still opposed to gay marriage. He thinks
Speaker 1: that decision was wrongly decided. So this is not some
Speaker 1: like you know, Pride Month, gay ally or champion. He
Speaker 1: is a gay icon now he is, apparently, but it
Speaker 1: demonstrated to me, Emily, and I wanted to get your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this, on how much the landscape had shifted
Speaker 1: within the Republican Party, because you'll recall back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Trump ran and he was okay with gay marriage, and
Speaker 1: they actually didn't just like, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: push that under the rug. They actually sort of celebrated.
Speaker 1: I remember doing segments with some of his targets who'd
Speaker 1: be like, this is the most pre pro gay president
Speaker 1: ever elected. He's the first and this is technically true,
Speaker 1: the first president to run for the first time supporting
Speaker 1: gay marriage, because when Obama ran, he was against gay marriage.
Speaker 5: So they sort of celebrated that.
Speaker 1: I even saw someone passing around I'm not one hundred
Speaker 1: percent sure whether this was real or not, but Make
Speaker 1: America Great Again hats that were like rainbow colors to celebrate,
Speaker 1: you know, pride. And now if you even come out
Speaker 1: against a law that is just like insanely horrifically barbaric,
Speaker 1: you get a huge pile on from the Republican base.
Speaker 1: So to me, demonstrated the way that the Republican Party
Speaker 1: has sort of regressed on these issues. And it's no
Speaker 1: longer okay to even just be fine with like the
Speaker 1: gay marriage status quo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually so, this is sort of a stupid
Speaker 4: conflict because I think it was mostly like media. I
Speaker 4: picked up on it because Jenna Ellis, who I don't
Speaker 4: think is super popular among the Republican base, started going
Speaker 4: in on Ted Cruz. I don't think she even knew
Speaker 4: that the law was broader than this aggregate aggravated homosexuality question,
Speaker 4: which is why Cruz comes back and says it calls
Speaker 4: for life imprisonment. This is per the New York Times,
Speaker 4: for anyone who engages in gay sex. Anyone who tries
Speaker 4: to have same sex relations could be liable for up
Speaker 4: to a decade in prison. The aggravated homosexuality thing is
Speaker 4: in the bill. It decrees the death penalty for anyone
Speaker 4: convicted of it, and that is defined as acts of
Speaker 4: same sex relations with children or disabled people, those carried
Speaker 4: out under threat or while someone is unconscious, and the
Speaker 4: offensive attempt at aggravated homosexuality. That is a hell of
Speaker 4: a law carries a sentence of up to fourteen years.
Speaker 4: They added they went back and added language to make
Speaker 4: it clear that anyone suspected of being a homosexual would
Speaker 4: not be punished unless they engaged in same sex relations.
Speaker 4: The New York Times continued, and again, here's what's really
Speaker 4: interesting about that is Jenna Ellis says, you can support
Speaker 4: or you can oppose.
Speaker 3: The Uganda law without coming out and talking about it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's so interesting because I think post Trump conservatives and
Speaker 4: even non conservatives, this like the kind of backlash people
Speaker 4: who find themselves in this like anti woke base, they
Speaker 4: feel as though it's like a it's a signal. Like
Speaker 4: people are really sensitive to these signals now, because if
Speaker 4: you signal opposition to it's like, why are you bothering
Speaker 4: spending your time on this when you know you could
Speaker 4: have sent a tweet You used the time you spent
Speaker 4: on this sending a tweet about bud Light or sending
Speaker 4: a tweet about the radical parts of the transgender agenda
Speaker 4: in the United States. Why would you weigh in on this?
Speaker 4: And it'say, well, this is like the United States actually
Speaker 4: does have leverage on these questions of human rights. Yeah,
Speaker 4: sitting Senator, it's a law that calls for life imprisonment
Speaker 4: for anyone who engages engage that exit. It's it's a
Speaker 4: serious thing. And so for Jenna Ellis, I think to
Speaker 4: kind of reflexively where she didn't even seem to know
Speaker 4: the contours of the law. Kick back, I think speaks
Speaker 4: to how bisceral this stuff has gotten for Republicans where
Speaker 4: you and for conservatives where you are, like, just to
Speaker 4: see somebody way in and use the hashtag LGBTQ feels
Speaker 4: like a betrayal because they're so sensitive now.
Speaker 3: To being betrayed.
Speaker 4: Doesn't make it right as an explanation whatsoever, but I
Speaker 4: think people should be aware this is going to be
Speaker 4: a driving influence in our politics. It's why I think
Speaker 4: the boycott's of Tar and bud Light have worked, because
Speaker 4: bud Light was about like one dumb influencer can and
Speaker 4: what the marketing executive had said on like zoom calls
Speaker 4: and all of that stuff. It feels like a betrayal
Speaker 4: of people who always thought bud Light was like, you know,
Speaker 4: something that you could drink in Middle America, be fine
Speaker 4: with and they didn't hate you. But as soon as
Speaker 4: you know you just have one little signal, it's just
Speaker 4: really visceral.
Speaker 1: Now, well, they're going after Chick fil A for having
Speaker 1: a diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 3: Years old, years old news about.
Speaker 1: Chick fil a right, and apparently Ford they dug up
Speaker 1: some like two year old pride related Ford commercial.
Speaker 5: And this is why I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying like it feels, I don't think it just feels.
Speaker 1: It is a regression because these ads, this corporate virtue
Speaker 1: signaling stuff went largely unnoticed and uncommented on and was
Speaker 1: no big deal, and people were generally like accepted that
Speaker 1: gay marriage was the law of land. And still I
Speaker 1: think if you if you pull Americans, overwhelmingly people are comfortable.
Speaker 5: With gay marriage. So for a really like banal.
Speaker 1: Tweet about it, just like objectively horrific law in Uganda,
Speaker 1: to spark this kind of conservative backlash, I think it's
Speaker 1: really telling.
Speaker 5: And we talked last.
Speaker 1: Time about you know, there was a sort of revelation
Speaker 1: that there's this The way conservatives have frame their concerns
Speaker 1: around trans issues has primarily been around like kids.
Speaker 5: You know. Even the target thing.
Speaker 1: Was like, oh, these bathing suits, so the tuck friendly
Speaker 1: bathing suits are close to kids stuff, So this is
Speaker 1: really all about protecting the kids.
Speaker 5: But when you see this kind of backlash to.
Speaker 1: Even just like people being gay and living their lives
Speaker 1: and being okay with that. You can see it has
Speaker 1: gone much further than wherever the original locus of concern
Speaker 1: ultimately was. And I think it ties in also with
Speaker 1: abortion conversation because there's also more sensitivity now to with
Speaker 1: row being overturned, to rights that have been sort of
Speaker 1: taken for granted being taken away, and Rowe explicitly in
Speaker 1: some of the language of the decision that Dobb's decision
Speaker 1: opened the door for, Hey, maybe we should take another
Speaker 1: look at Obergefel. Maybe some of these things that were
Speaker 1: decided should be rolled back. And Ted Cruz was on
Speaker 1: the side of, yes, they should be. But I think
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, Conservatis feel more sensitive about
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 5: It feels like a betrayal.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of not just like Democrats
Speaker 1: or liberals or just like normal Americans. The specter of
Speaker 1: things that we took for granted may regress, may roll back.
Speaker 1: I think that feels very visceral, and there's a real
Speaker 1: heightened sensitivity to that as well.
Speaker 4: I think it's pushing a button that's going to be critical,
Speaker 4: that's going to be like a fault line. Scager has
Speaker 4: been really smart in I think outlining the kind of
Speaker 4: barstool conservative faction of Republican voters. And when I was
Speaker 4: doing reporting out in loud In County talking to parents
Speaker 4: that were part of the like Youngkin Revolution Virginia.
Speaker 1: So it's very funny to think of that guy as
Speaker 1: a revolutionary like.
Speaker 4: Mister gunnvest in my ad Equity Carlisle group, just a
Speaker 4: real revolutionary but radical. A lot of those folks never
Speaker 4: vote a Republican, didn't usually vote, definitely would fall into like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe the barstool conservative camp, like people
Speaker 4: who were brought over because of the excess of some
Speaker 4: of these cultural issues. That means they're going to be
Speaker 4: intention with the moral crusaders, the real conservative moral crusaders
Speaker 4: that they have made, you know, an alliance with at
Speaker 4: the moment to sort of get Glenn Younkin elected or
Speaker 4: maybe even to get Ron DeSantis elected. But when push
Speaker 4: comes to shoves, specifically that question of like same sex
Speaker 4: marriage was going to be a huge dividing point. Abortion,
Speaker 4: same sex marriage, those are going to be huge dividing
Speaker 4: points ultimately.
Speaker 3: I think if.
Speaker 4: Republicans keep winning elections like Younkin and DeSantis, because that
Speaker 4: is a very bitter dividing line between those two camps,
Speaker 4: and I think, I mean, I mostly just saw John
Speaker 4: Ellis weigh in on this.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I saw other people pilot Ted Cruz,
Speaker 4: although I think people were, like.
Speaker 5: I saw a lot in the comments. I saw a
Speaker 5: lot in the comments.
Speaker 4: That's interesting because I think it speaks to being visceral
Speaker 4: like and that might not be productive politically for Republicans
Speaker 4: to like start boycotting Chick fil A and to poll
Speaker 4: on Ted Cruz and all of this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 4: people were even going after the show The Chosen, which
Speaker 4: is hugely popular Christian sort of brings to life and
Speaker 4: the sort of prestige TV model, the story of the
Speaker 4: Gospels and is by uh, the son of the guy
Speaker 4: who did left behind and all of that.
Speaker 3: It really like.
Speaker 4: People going after that because I think, like reportedly somebody
Speaker 4: had a Pride flag on set, and it just speaks
Speaker 4: to like people do not Republicans feel betrayed by bringing
Speaker 4: it full circle Kevin McCarthy. They feel betrayed by the
Speaker 4: corporate class, they who used to be their allies and
Speaker 4: tax cut fights, and so it's just going to become really,
Speaker 4: really reflexive and visceral, and that may not be productive ultimately.
Speaker 1: Well, I know a lot of Republicans, chiefly Ronda stand
Speaker 1: as they talk about the woke mind virus. Me, this
Speaker 1: is representative of the anti woke mind virus where even
Speaker 1: someone you know, something that should not be controversial of
Speaker 1: even just signaling any kind of support for yeah, it's
Speaker 1: okay for people to be gay, triggers this intense reaction.
Speaker 1: Or a pride display at a department store, or a
Speaker 1: two year old pride commercial, or a diversity officer at
Speaker 1: some major corporation, it becomes like, oh my god, and
Speaker 1: you start engaging in this like goofy, over the top
Speaker 1: like behavior with regard to it, which is the polar
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the mirror image of the people
Speaker 1: who go way too far in the woke direction are
Speaker 1: constantly policing. It's a similar form of sort of like
Speaker 1: desire to censor and desire to control everything, and tendency
Speaker 1: towards authoritarian behavior that leads to, you know, we got
Speaker 1: to get in there and ban the books. We got
Speaker 1: to pass laws against protest. We got to make sure
Speaker 1: that you know, we have it legislated what things are
Speaker 1: allowed to be said, and what things are not allowed
Speaker 1: to be said. So I think there's sort of like
Speaker 1: mirror images of the same general like instinct and impulse
Speaker 1: in politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and tribalism.
Speaker 4: I agree with that totally, and I think we'll see
Speaker 4: only more of it in the future.
Speaker 5: All right, Emily, what are you looking at?
Speaker 4: Renown novelist James Comy responded to some questions about the
Speaker 4: Durham Report on MSNBC Tuesday, and yes, I said renowned novelists.
Speaker 4: He was out promoting his new novel and in the
Speaker 4: course of this promotion he was interrupted by some tough
Speaker 4: questions that should have been probably much tougher by Jonathan
Speaker 4: Lamire and Willie geist Over on Morning Joe. It's pretty interesting,
Speaker 4: actually how he responded to these questions because Comy, remember,
Speaker 4: actually declined to cooperate with the Durham Report. He was
Speaker 4: not interviewed by John Durham. And he gets some questions
Speaker 4: from Geiston Lamire that push a little bit on this
Speaker 4: and says right off the bat here that Republican calls
Speaker 4: to defund the FBI or take a sledgehammer or blowtors
Speaker 4: whatever as they say to the FBI. Quote just a
Speaker 4: continuing series of attacks on the rule of law. They're
Speaker 4: taking a flamethrower to the FBI and DOJ because it's
Speaker 4: a threat. That's really rich coming from James Comy. And
Speaker 4: this is exactly why I wanted to talk about it today,
Speaker 4: because the more anti populists criticize populists for legitimate points
Speaker 4: of argumentation and legitimate gripes with the political establishment, the more.
Speaker 3: Populism they're going to get.
Speaker 4: It's remarkably counterproductive and self serving and also just plainly stupid,
Speaker 4: bad for the country.
Speaker 3: But to hear James.
Speaker 4: Comy say that the FBI and DOJ is a threat,
Speaker 4: It's like, yes, absolutely, that is a threat to a
Speaker 4: duly elected president.
Speaker 3: Of the United States. That would be Donald.
Speaker 4: Trump, who you targeted by breaking the rule of law,
Speaker 4: as the Durham Report clearly showed. And that's the value
Speaker 4: in talking about this. I said a couple of weeks
Speaker 4: ago that when people start going deep on the Durham
Speaker 4: Report and the FBI and the CIA and dan Chenko,
Speaker 4: when all of this, my eyes will sometimes glaze over
Speaker 4: because it's intentional, convoluted. It was intentionally involving all of
Speaker 4: these shell groups.
Speaker 3: And you have to know Faisa law, and you have to.
Speaker 4: Know everything about Carter Page and George Poppadopolis and all
Speaker 4: of these names. It's Watergate esque and even more complicated
Speaker 4: to fully understand the scheme that was perpetrated. But the
Speaker 4: more you dive into it, the more like disgusting it looks.
Speaker 4: And I think just this surface level comment by Comy,
Speaker 4: in contrast with what the Durham Report has from emails
Speaker 4: and all of that stuff on Comy himself, is a
Speaker 4: really perfect reason to focus in on the broad takeaway
Speaker 4: of the Durham Report, which is that no policy. You know,
Speaker 4: there may be some tweaks you can make to the FBI,
Speaker 4: But Durham concludes, and this is like a lifetime respected.
Speaker 4: I mean that even Chris Murphy from Connecticut, where Durham
Speaker 4: was working when he was appointed to do this investigation
Speaker 4: and then made special counsel, said was respected, someone that had,
Speaker 4: you know, pretty bipartisan appeal. Durham says, short of basically
Speaker 4: a overhaul of FBI personnel suddenly rediscovering their sense of integrity,
Speaker 4: you're going to continue having problems at this institution that
Speaker 4: has vast powers, extra constitutional powers over the average American,
Speaker 4: and you get back to the John Adams quote, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, our Constitution was made holly for a moral
Speaker 4: I think he said also in Religious People, there are
Speaker 4: all kinds of quotes from the founders talking about how
Speaker 4: the small are republicanism. Constitutional republic only works when you
Speaker 4: have like a moral consensus and a good moral consensus.
Speaker 4: And James Comy his idea of what rule constitute's rule
Speaker 4: of law is laughable. It fails on its face. And
Speaker 4: we can get into a little bit more of why.
Speaker 4: Comy continued to say in this interview, I think Trump
Speaker 4: poses a near existential threat to the rule of law.
Speaker 4: He will do everything he can in a new term
Speaker 4: to try to tear down the institutions that he sees
Speaker 4: hiss threats and to dismantle them and the people who
Speaker 4: occupy them, the a political people who occupy them a
Speaker 4: political Okay, So there's a lot on the ballot in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four if he is a candidate, But the
Speaker 4: rule of law, in my view, is.
Speaker 3: At the top of the list. Okay.
Speaker 4: So you get Chuck Ross over at the Washington Free Beacon,
Speaker 4: who's covered this stuff really effectively, who says in response,
Speaker 4: in reality, the Durham Report revealed extensive evidence that Comy
Speaker 4: was far more involved in Crossfire Hurricane, that was, the
Speaker 4: investigation into Russian collusion and the push for the phony
Speaker 4: FISA than he has previously claimed. That's the FISA into
Speaker 4: carter Page. The report also revealed that Comy refused.
Speaker 3: To cooperate with Durham. Okay, don't let your eyes.
Speaker 4: Glaze over yet, because we can go even more to
Speaker 4: the thirty thousand foot level and just put this really simply,
Speaker 4: Durham found that Comy had a very different standard for
Speaker 4: how he treated the Clinton investigation and how he treated
Speaker 4: the Trump investigation. That is to say, the FBI, under
Speaker 4: Comy and including Comy, checked a lot of more boxes
Speaker 4: in investigating Hillary Clinton than they did in Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Comy was repeatedly asking where's the PISA, Where's the FISA
Speaker 4: to Andrew McCabe when it came to carter Page. We know,
Speaker 4: I mean someone was actually convicted of fudging an email,
Speaker 4: that would be Kevin Klinsmith in order to illegally surveil
Speaker 4: an American citizen carter Page.
Speaker 3: But there you have the rule of.
Speaker 4: Law right in itself. Rule of law means equal enforcement
Speaker 4: of the law. That is part of our legal and
Speaker 4: cultural understanding of what the rule of law is. So
Speaker 4: when Durham shows pretty persuasively that James Comy and the
Speaker 4: entire FBI under his leadership had provided very different and
Speaker 4: unequal treatment to Hillary Clinton, one presidential candidate, Democratic presidential candidate,
Speaker 4: and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, that in and
Speaker 4: of itself shows that he violated the rule of law.
Speaker 4: He basically just shattered it in pursuit of this. And
Speaker 4: then you can add how the FBI under his watch
Speaker 4: illegally surveiled an American citizen and violated the spirit of
Speaker 4: vice a law, if not the actual law itself. And
Speaker 4: there you have the rule of law out the window.
Speaker 4: So when Donald Trump comes in and says I'm going
Speaker 4: to take a flame thrower to the FBI and DJ
Speaker 4: that's called me lamented. It's because of you, it's because
Speaker 4: you broke, you violated the rule of law. That populists
Speaker 4: are now saying there needs to be a flamethrower taken
Speaker 4: to the FBI and DOJ.
Speaker 3: And guess what, they're not wrong.
Speaker 4: They're not wrong that the FBI and DOJ are fundamentally
Speaker 4: broken institutions. Even again, John Durham came to that conclusion
Speaker 4: after years of investigation, somebody who had pretty bipartisan incentsive
Speaker 4: respect has worked around the FBI for a long time.
Speaker 4: If you have even that, and if you have persuasive
Speaker 4: evidence that you Dreams Coy violated the rule of law,
Speaker 4: that your staff.
Speaker 3: Violated the rule of law, and you are the.
Speaker 4: Ones you're griping about Populace coming in and saying the
Speaker 4: institution that you led and that conclusively persuaded like it
Speaker 4: conclusively failed to uphold the rule of law. For you
Speaker 4: to come in and say that Donald Trump poses an
Speaker 4: existential threat to it when you have already been the
Speaker 4: biggest threat to the rule of law because you actually,
Speaker 4: in a position of power.
Speaker 3: Violated it.
Speaker 4: People are of course going to start to want to
Speaker 4: fight fire with fire. You know, they're going to start
Speaker 4: justifying violations of the rule of law in order to
Speaker 4: get back to a position where we can uphold the
Speaker 4: rule of law. And that's wrong. But it's because of you,
Speaker 4: James Comy. It's because you violated the rule of law first.
Speaker 3: So if you're worried about it, be better.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what John Durham prescribed in the Durham Report,
Speaker 4: and that's the scariest part of all of it. He
Speaker 4: concluded that, you know, those tweaks can be made, but
Speaker 4: no policy alone is going to fix the FBI. It
Speaker 4: actually needs to be full of people who wield their
Speaker 4: power responsibly. So long as you have James Comy out
Speaker 4: there talking about he you know, he made a couple
Speaker 4: mistakes and you know some boxes weren't checked that they
Speaker 4: should have been. That's not the full picture because when
Speaker 4: you compare it as Durham did to what they did
Speaker 4: for Hillary Clinton versus what they did to Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: you see very clearly where they fit to uphold the
Speaker 4: rule of law. And I just think this is worth
Speaker 4: talking about because that one big takeaway from the Durham
Speaker 4: Report from John Durham himself. You know, somebody who's been
Speaker 4: a career in this type of position, a serious person says,
Speaker 4: short of having you know, an integrity revolution at the FBI,
Speaker 4: these problems are not going to go away. That matters
Speaker 4: for the average person because the FBI wields enormous power
Speaker 4: over your life, and they're out here saying basically that
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump is the only threat to the rule
Speaker 4: of law, not them even though it's pretty clear that
Speaker 4: they violate the rule of law.
Speaker 3: All right, Chris Soll, what have you got for us
Speaker 3: this week?
Speaker 1: While we were just talking about somehow the you know,
Speaker 1: cutting the FBI, but it didn't come up in the
Speaker 1: dead ceiling deal.
Speaker 5: Not a thing that didn't come up, And actually the
Speaker 5: opposite of came up was defense cuts.
Speaker 1: You may recall at the beginning of the House Republican
Speaker 1: Caucus when there was the speakership fight, put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen the first element. There were actually some
Speaker 1: members I think Jim Jordan among them, who were floating,
Speaker 1: you know, as part of this debt ceiling hostage taking,
Speaker 1: one of the things we want to extract is actually
Speaker 1: cutting the Pentagon budget. They say they're from responsible state
Speaker 1: crap McCarthy wang seventy five billion dollar defense budget cut
Speaker 1: in quest for speakership, And so this was like a
Speaker 1: genuine live issue that was being debated.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of.
Speaker 1: Freak out from some of the defense hawks, some of
Speaker 1: the typical characters, but there was actually this idea that
Speaker 1: was taken seriously by the media of like, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: they actually want to cut the Pentagon budget. Well and behold,
Speaker 1: when the deal actually comes down. Not only do they
Speaker 1: not cut the Pentagon budget, they actually increased the Pentagon
Speaker 1: budget by quite a significant amount. And this is not
Speaker 1: a story about the Republicans being bad and evil. This
Speaker 1: is a story about the uniparty in Washington, Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans always having no issue inflating the Pentagon budget to
Speaker 1: astronomical record breaking levels.
Speaker 5: Literally, no matter what.
Speaker 1: Jud leg m Over at Popular Information his substack had
Speaker 1: a good piece on this. Put this up on the screen, guys.
Speaker 1: He talks about the numbers here. The compromise reach Sunday
Speaker 1: includes a small decrease in domestic discretionary spending and a
Speaker 1: record eight hundred and eighty six billion dollars for defense,
Speaker 1: a three point three percent increase over the current year.
Speaker 1: The money allocated for the defense budget is exactly what
Speaker 1: Biden requested in the twenty twenty four budget. Notably, half
Speaker 1: of that money will go to defense contractors. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: just for comparison, the US spent five hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: five billion on its military.
Speaker 5: The US has added more.
Speaker 1: Than three hundred billion dollars in military spending in less
Speaker 1: than a decade. Okay, really take that in, So all
Speaker 1: the people who are out there. We're so concerned about
Speaker 1: the debt, We're so concerned about the deficit, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Guess what, they don't blink an eye when
Speaker 1: you increase the military budget by three hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: in less than a decade. That apparently doesn't count somehow.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the Pentagon has been making incredible
Speaker 1: use of these these funds to keep us all safe.
Speaker 1: First of all, just the amount, sheer volume of the
Speaker 1: dollars compared to other countries. Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This was also from jud Legens report. We literally spend
Speaker 1: more on defense than the next ten countries combined, so
Speaker 1: it's not even close between us and everybody else. But
Speaker 1: also we know from recent reporting that they are getting
Speaker 1: price gouge. By that, I mean we the taxpayer are
Speaker 1: getting price gouge by these military industrial complex defense contractors
Speaker 1: in an insane way. Like you can't even wrap your
Speaker 1: head around this. Put this report up from sixty minutes
Speaker 1: that has some of the details.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: They did a long report. I really recommend you watch
Speaker 1: all of it. If we played some of it, they
Speaker 1: would hit us for copyright.
Speaker 5: So that's why.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read a portion here, but they
Speaker 1: say how the Pentagon falls victims to price gouging by
Speaker 1: military contractors. Just one example here in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: there used to be more competition for military contracts. There
Speaker 1: was a wider array of defense contractors. They had to
Speaker 1: genuinely compete against each other, and lo and behold, the
Speaker 1: cost of one shoulder fired Stinger missile was twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Current cost for that very same idle item,
Speaker 1: which has become very relevant in the Ukraine fight four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars, even when you account for inflation. They
Speaker 1: point out, that is a sevenfold increase. The amount of
Speaker 1: slush fund cash we are rooting to these defense contractors
Speaker 1: is truly disgusting. So this is not getting us more
Speaker 1: national security, it's not keeping us safer. It's just lining
Speaker 1: the pockets of a bunch of astronomically wealthy executives. You
Speaker 1: wonder why wash in VC is one of the richest
Speaker 1: places in.
Speaker 5: The entire world.
Speaker 1: And by the way, these companies, what are they doing
Speaker 1: with these astronomical profit margins that they're able to reap
Speaker 1: at this point on the back of the US taxpayer.
Speaker 1: Are they investing in research and development or are they
Speaker 1: hiring even more workers or paying the workers they have better? No,
Speaker 1: you know what, they're doing stock buybacks to increase their
Speaker 1: share prices.
Speaker 5: They actually have more.
Speaker 1: Of their money, more of their profit margin, going to
Speaker 1: stock buybacks than to research and development or capital expenditures.
Speaker 1: So it is a truly disgusting state of affairs. The
Speaker 1: last piece of evidence I'll offer for you here, which
Speaker 1: I think just says it all. Put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen from responsible state craft. We just recently got
Speaker 1: the news, which we covered here. This was a few
Speaker 1: months ago the Pentagon, for the fifth time in a row,
Speaker 1: failed their congressionally mandated audit. Congress passed a law that
Speaker 1: said every federal agency has to go through an audit.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon fails theirs every single year. And let me
Speaker 1: tell you something, it's not even close. It's not like
Speaker 1: they're a few dollars off. They only managed to account
Speaker 1: for thirty nine percent of their three and a half
Speaker 1: trillion dollars in assets. They can account for less than
Speaker 1: half of their four trillion dollars roughly in assets. And
Speaker 1: yet Congress, Democrats, Republicans, they all look at this situation.
Speaker 1: They're like, you deserve a raise, let's up your budget
Speaker 1: to even more historic record breaking levels.
Speaker 5: And Emily is just such a tale as little time.
Speaker 3: Crystal.
Speaker 4: It's been wonderful to have you here in counterpoints the
Speaker 4: last couple of weeks, especially as we part ways and
Speaker 4: say goodbye to the brick prison.
Speaker 1: Listen, don't besmirch our brick walls. Emily, all right, it's
Speaker 1: too soon, too soon, but I haven't enjoyed the vibe here.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed my time with you, and I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: be doing it again. Thanks to Ryan for asking me
Speaker 1: and give me the opportunity, and hope you enjoyed your
Speaker 1: day doing whatever.
Speaker 5: I don't actually even remember what he told me he
Speaker 5: had to.
Speaker 3: Do, but it's important to ask.
Speaker 1: So hopefully something nice with this family and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So thank you guys for watching. Listen if you haven't
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Speaker 3: Sounds good to see you guys then,