Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the showing. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 3: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 3: we have, gristle.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of big things going on in
Speaker 1: all corners of the world. We have some big Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve decisions. What does it mean for now? What does
Speaker 1: it mean for the future? And also some new rankings
Speaker 1: about just how poorly the US fairs in terms of
Speaker 1: rights for workers, no big surprise. There also some new
Speaker 1: developments with regard to Ukraine. A lot of pressure being
Speaker 1: brought to bear on the Biden administration to lay out
Speaker 1: a specific path and timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO.
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but we'll
Speaker 1: talk about it. Also, some of the developments on the
Speaker 1: third party front both some polling and also Cornell West
Speaker 1: is switching to the Green Party, and the White House
Speaker 1: is looking to block a potential NOE label's bid. Excited
Speaker 1: to bring back the panel long awaited, going to be
Speaker 1: in studio. We've got two great gats, super excited to
Speaker 1: talk to them. One who is all in for Trump,
Speaker 1: one who is all in for DeSantis. We will respectfully
Speaker 1: hear their views and what they have out.
Speaker 3: Eric for the audience exactly.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of that, thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for the incredible comments and your excitement
Speaker 1: and enthusiasm about our new home here. We're still working
Speaker 1: everything out to make sure the shots are perfect and
Speaker 1: it looks exactly the way that we want to. But
Speaker 1: I have to say, looking watching back at some of
Speaker 1: the show, like it looks amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh, it looks amazing. It's already been such a massive improvement.
Speaker 2: We're doing a little tinkering here and there, a lot
Speaker 2: of fun out a little bit camera angles as you
Speaker 2: can see where to look, what to do, how to
Speaker 2: dial the lights, and that's kind of the fun part
Speaker 2: of all of this is that this is a completely
Speaker 2: built studio by you guys. You know our premium subscribers,
Speaker 2: you helped us out. We have a very small team
Speaker 2: relative to the hundreds of people who work on these
Speaker 2: over at the mainstream media, but luckily for us, that's
Speaker 2: the way we prefer it. So Breakingpoints dot Com, if
Speaker 2: you're able, you can help us out with our expansion
Speaker 2: and continue all that. Also, we've got our great new
Speaker 2: merch shelf on YouTube for our YouTube viewers. It should
Speaker 2: be right there below all of our videos. Everything that
Speaker 2: we sell is made in the USA and in a
Speaker 2: Union shop, which we're very, very proud of.
Speaker 3: So anyway, take a look we got.
Speaker 2: It's all being beautifully designed, our beautiful new logos which
Speaker 2: you can see everywhere. I'm told the bucket hat is
Speaker 2: selling very well as much for our consternation, Crystal.
Speaker 3: I did wear a bucket hat.
Speaker 2: I was in Lake Travis in Austin over the weekend
Speaker 2: and I got to be honest. You know, one hundred
Speaker 2: degree heat and you're in the middle of the lakes.
Speaker 2: It does have a fun, it does have a use.
Speaker 2: So I did wear the bucket hat. You know, even
Speaker 2: though I've crapped all over it here a lot of
Speaker 2: Breaking Points. I was like, Okay, you know. Look, it works,
Speaker 2: it works, all right. Let's talk about the Fed can
Speaker 2: argue with results, Dan, you can't.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's talk about big decision taken from
Speaker 1: the Fed yesterday. They decided to hold interest rates where
Speaker 1: they are, but there was a bit of a surprise
Speaker 1: in their announcement. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So they're going to hold rights steady for now, but
Speaker 1: they say two more are likely coming later this year.
Speaker 4: Let me read you a little bit of this.
Speaker 1: The market's apparently surprised a bit by the expectation of
Speaker 1: more rate increases. There's a quote here in the CNBC
Speaker 1: article from some trader analyst dude who says people expected
Speaker 1: a hawkish pause and they got a very hawkish pause.
Speaker 1: Given the strong labor market, the Fed has room to
Speaker 1: crush inflation and they don't want to miss their chance.
Speaker 1: Go and put the next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is part of what informed their decision making. So
Speaker 1: we got new numbers with regard to inflation rose at
Speaker 1: a four percent annual rate in May. That is the
Speaker 1: lowest in two years. So the top line number there
Speaker 1: looks pretty good. You dig into the numbers, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a mixed bag. Part of what
Speaker 1: led to this slackening, I guess slowing of the pace
Speaker 1: of inflation was a decrease in energy costs, but you
Speaker 1: still have significant increases in terms of housing that actually
Speaker 1: made up about one third of the indexes waiting. You
Speaker 1: had a point six percent increase in shelter prices. That
Speaker 1: was the biggest contributor to the increase for the all items.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere Where there was significant inflation. You had used vehicle
Speaker 1: prices that increase four point four percent. Transportation services were
Speaker 1: up point eight percent. There was a little bit sager
Speaker 1: of good news in this report for workers, which is
Speaker 1: for most workers, their wages have not been keeping up
Speaker 1: with inflation. There's you know, it's like a little bit
Speaker 1: mixed down at the lowest end of the spectrum. They
Speaker 1: actually have been keeping up with inflation. This was the
Speaker 1: first time that overall you had average hourly earnings adjusted
Speaker 1: for inflation rising point three percent on the month and
Speaker 1: on an annual basis re earnings zero point two percent,
Speaker 1: after running negative for much of the inflation search that
Speaker 1: began about two years ago. So why does all of
Speaker 1: this matter in the context of the Fed? They obviously
Speaker 1: are raising rates because they think that's going to be
Speaker 1: the solution for inflation. It hasn't worked all that well
Speaker 1: to this point, for reasons we've discussed, gre inflation, supply
Speaker 1: chain issues, these are all things that the FED can't
Speaker 1: really deal with. But if inflation starts to cool, they're
Speaker 1: going to feel less pressure to continue hiking rates.
Speaker 4: So that's where we are.
Speaker 1: We got a pause, but what is being described as
Speaker 1: a quote unquote very hawkish pause, which means they're not
Speaker 1: expecting any rate decreases and they are expecting to increase
Speaker 1: the rates in the monks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I always think it's you know, worth taking
Speaker 2: step back, like why are we even spending any time
Speaker 2: on this. It's because is the impact on the overall
Speaker 2: interest rates for credit cards, for mortgages, for car loans.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're seeing a record amount of debt. We've
Speaker 2: over a trillion dollars in credit card debt outstanding right
Speaker 2: now for the average American consumer, and in general, we
Speaker 2: have very rarely seen any sort of real wage increase,
Speaker 2: especially whenever you factor in over the last two years.
Speaker 2: So to me, the fact that the housing market, you know,
Speaker 2: we did see a cool as in it did not
Speaker 2: go up as much, but the price did not come
Speaker 2: down on the overall supply of housing. Crystal same whenever
Speaker 2: it comes to the credit card debt, I mean we expected,
Speaker 2: you know, especially everyone was like, oh, stimulus checks and
Speaker 2: all that, it did wipe it out for a time.
Speaker 2: But actually what's happened is a total resumption of a
Speaker 2: consumer finance patterns, and we have seen a record increase
Speaker 2: with people taking out the same amount of debt but
Speaker 2: also servicing it at much higher rates which are going broke. Also,
Speaker 2: as I understand it, student loan the pause that the
Speaker 2: Biden administration had agreed to in their debt that's going
Speaker 2: to expire now in two or three months. So you know,
Speaker 2: most some ninety five percent of people actually did not
Speaker 2: pay down some of their debt while the pandemic was there.
Speaker 2: Obviously was a lot of confusion over whether the debt
Speaker 2: was going to get canceled or not. Given where we
Speaker 2: are right now with the Supreme Court and the overall
Speaker 2: like administration of the project, it doesn't look like that's
Speaker 2: going to happen anytime soon. So resumption of debt payment
Speaker 2: is also coming back. I mean that's going to hit
Speaker 2: what forty something million households on average, so two or
Speaker 2: three hundred dollars or maybe even more per month that
Speaker 2: they weren't including in their overall household budget. So don't
Speaker 2: make this, you know, report out to seem like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is rosy and everything it was fantastic. Things are
Speaker 2: still bad, at least from what I can see in
Speaker 2: the overall you know, the core numbers. The only real
Speaker 2: reason that you know things are going down is yeah,
Speaker 2: gas prices have come down, but you know, let's be honest,
Speaker 2: like they still haven't come to a very comfortable place
Speaker 2: of where they were during the pandemic or even right
Speaker 2: before the pandemic. So we still have an overall increase
Speaker 2: in price pretty much across the board. It's just not
Speaker 2: going up as finantially as it was at some point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And the economy continues to be a very mixed bag.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've covered this week how there are a
Speaker 1: lot of signs of potential cracks in the economy. You've
Speaker 1: got foreclosure rates going up. You know, we continue to
Speaker 1: follow the housing market very carefully. We continue to follow
Speaker 1: the commercial real estate market real carefully because I think
Speaker 1: that is where the largest risks for the broader economy exist.
Speaker 1: And then we also can't forget like we just had
Speaker 1: a number of bank failures, of banks of fairly significant size,
Speaker 1: and maybe those are just complete outliers and anomalies because
Speaker 1: of the way that they haven't be structured and the
Speaker 1: types of clientele that they happen to focus on. But
Speaker 1: no one is really too sure about that. So that's
Speaker 1: why the feed is treading carefully here. Up to this point,
Speaker 1: there's really been unanimous agreement about this extremely hawkish, i mean,
Speaker 1: you know, very remarkably aggressive pace of rate hikes in
Speaker 1: recent history. There's been pretty much unanimity about it. Now
Speaker 1: there's starting to be a lot of divergent, divergent opinions
Speaker 1: on this panel in terms of what they should do
Speaker 1: going forward. The markets also responded in kind of a
Speaker 1: mixed way yesterday because again they were surprised by the
Speaker 1: fact they expected the pause.
Speaker 4: Okay, that the rates wouldn't change. They're keeping them.
Speaker 1: High, Okay, this is not like, Okay, they're backing off.
Speaker 1: They're keeping them high. That means mortgage rates and other
Speaker 1: things are going to continue to be high. That means
Speaker 1: money is going to continue to be expensive. That continues
Speaker 1: to put the brakes on the economy. But what they
Speaker 1: were surprised about is this trajectory that was laid out,
Speaker 1: the expectation that will be multiple increases in the future
Speaker 1: in this year when they had even floated before. Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe he starts to you know, maybe start to pull back,
Speaker 1: maybe they start to lower interest rates. There are some
Speaker 1: other significant economic news that we really wanted to bring
Speaker 1: us kind of an update in terms of working people,
Speaker 1: So I covered my monologue that you've got three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand UPS workers who are right now. They're
Speaker 1: organized under the Team Staves. This is the largest private
Speaker 1: sector union contract in the entire country, and they're right
Speaker 1: now voting on whether or not to authorize a strike. Now,
Speaker 1: authorizing a strike is different than going on strike, just
Speaker 1: to be totally clear, and it is expected that vote
Speaker 1: will pass because if you don't authorize a strike, you
Speaker 1: don't really have negotiating leverage in terms of your contract negotiations.
Speaker 1: But because they're organized as part of a union, they've
Speaker 1: already been able to win a significant concept.
Speaker 4: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Now, Let's be clear that it shouldn't take any fight
Speaker 1: for workers who are delivering our packages to get air
Speaker 1: conditioning and other heat protection in their trucks. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, thanks to the climate crisis, but
Speaker 1: thanks to just hot summers in Phoenix, Arizona as well,
Speaker 1: temperatures in those trucks were reaching up to one hundred.
Speaker 4: And fifty degrees.
Speaker 1: You literally had hundreds of workers UPS workers who were
Speaker 1: falling out from heat stroke having to be hospitalized. Yet
Speaker 1: some of your kidney failure had one who actually died.
Speaker 1: So the teamsters in negotiation with UPS have been able
Speaker 1: to secure air conditioning for the UPS fleet in a
Speaker 1: major what they're describing as tentative deal. This is from
Speaker 1: the team Stairs. They say they've agreed to tentative language
Speaker 1: to equip the delivery and logistics companies fleet of vehicles
Speaker 1: with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans.
Speaker 1: Just to give you some of the specific numbers here,
Speaker 1: this agreement would require in cab air conditioning in most
Speaker 1: US delivery vehicles purchased after January first, twenty twenty four. Two.
Speaker 1: Fans would also be installed in package cars, which the
Speaker 1: union said make up most of the company's ninety three
Speaker 1: thousand vehicle fleet. So They're not retro fitting the vehicles
Speaker 1: they already have, but new vehicles will have air conditioning,
Speaker 1: the old vehicles will have additional fans and other heat
Speaker 1: protection in it. The union and the workers consider this
Speaker 1: to be a huge win. And again, Sager, I mean
Speaker 1: to me, I just look at it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: thank God they're doing this. But also it's ridiculous that
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty thousand workers would have to threaten
Speaker 1: a strike and a total shutdown of the company in
Speaker 1: order just to get the basics of their day to
Speaker 1: day safety protected.
Speaker 2: It's really stupid, and it actually does come at a
Speaker 2: time when Americans are more supportive right now of better
Speaker 2: wages and protections for workers than at any time really
Speaker 2: in modern history. Let's go ahead and throw this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen, guys. We have here voters strongly
Speaker 2: supporting raising the minimum wage to twelve, seventeen and twenty
Speaker 2: dollars per hour. And this also shows that you were
Speaker 2: referencing Crystal that right now the US is the bottom
Speaker 2: in every.
Speaker 3: Category on labor policies.
Speaker 2: Currently quote, the wealthiest country in the world is near
Speaker 2: the bottom of every dimension of the index and the
Speaker 2: worst ranked amongst the thirty eight OECD countries on worker Protections.
Speaker 2: So look, I mean some of these are smaller European nations,
Speaker 2: but some of these are also like major dynamic economies
Speaker 2: as well. And so when you consider like went up
Speaker 2: against some massive, like some peer competitors which also have
Speaker 2: you know, pretty good dynamic market economies, that's something that
Speaker 2: everyone I think is genuinely aware of for these workers,
Speaker 2: like ups workers and others, whenever they're striking. We saw
Speaker 2: this in the railway unions. Even though the railway strike,
Speaker 2: the bipartisan consensus was to come in and basically crush
Speaker 2: them in the deal, the overall American people were with
Speaker 2: the railway workers, especially when they heard i mean, we
Speaker 2: play that famous clip of the newsweek the Newsmax anchor,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry whenever he was like oh, so, he's like,
Speaker 2: why are you striking? What's going on? And he's like, well,
Speaker 2: we literally don't get any sick leave. And he's like
Speaker 2: wait really, and he's like, oh, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like, imagine if this was like an
Speaker 1: airline pilot.
Speaker 2: When he heard feel about it, when he heard that,
Speaker 2: you know, live on the air, it was just a
Speaker 2: hilarious moment. You know, somebody predisposed to say this is
Speaker 2: totally ridiculous, then he heard the truth, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's He's like, you can't, you can't have that. But
Speaker 2: then of course the government just came in and crushing Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, that's I think a really key point because what
Speaker 1: you see here is a failure of democracy when you
Speaker 1: have the public overwhelming majorities, bipartisan majorities of the public
Speaker 1: who want one thing, and the actual policy implemented by
Speaker 1: elites is at the polar opposite end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: What can you call that other than a crisis and
Speaker 1: complete failure of democracy. So, in terms of that report
Speaker 1: of the US ranking last and basically every category with
Speaker 1: regard to labor rights, you know, there were a number
Speaker 1: of metrics they considered here. They considered wage policies like
Speaker 1: what's the minimum wage? What kind of unemployments is there?
Speaker 1: Can They consider worker protections, things like healthcare?
Speaker 4: Do you have paid leave?
Speaker 1: As you were discussing with the railroad workers, is their
Speaker 1: equal pay across genders and different identity classes? Is their
Speaker 1: childcare support? Are their pregnancy accommodations? All those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: They also considered the right to organize, So that's do
Speaker 1: you have sectoral bargaining? Do you have our workers really
Speaker 1: able to exercise their rights to collectively bargain? Are they
Speaker 1: really able to exercise their rights to join unions and
Speaker 1: organize within a union? And across literally at nearly every category,
Speaker 1: we were at the bottom, at the bottom. And again
Speaker 1: this is not because this is what the American people
Speaker 1: have decided. That's just we're going to have this rugged
Speaker 1: free market capitalism and sorry, workers like go out there
Speaker 1: and fend for yourself. Care more about low prices or
Speaker 1: quote unquote freedom or whatever.
Speaker 4: No, this is not what the American people want.
Speaker 1: Put the last element here up on the screen with
Speaker 1: regard to the minimum wage that Soccer was referencing, just
Speaker 1: so people can see the numbers. Sixty percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: support raising the minimum wage, not to twelve dollars an hour,
Speaker 1: not to fifteen dollars an hour, to.
Speaker 4: Twenty dollars an hour. Three quarters of.
Speaker 1: Americans support raising the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour,
Speaker 1: and understandably so. And we've been having the conversation about,
Speaker 1: you know, the fight for fifteen for over a decade now,
Speaker 1: prices have gone up, as y'all know, quite a bit. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty dollars per hour. If you're thinking about just being
Speaker 1: able to live and be able to afford the rent,
Speaker 1: be able to afford food prices, like just the basics
Speaker 1: of living, twenty dollars seems like the absolute minimum at
Speaker 1: this point. And that's certainly the way the American people feel.
Speaker 1: And then you can trust that with you know, the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. The Republicans forget about it. Many of them
Speaker 1: will say they don't even think there should be a
Speaker 1: minimum wage period lot right. At least Democrats will pretend
Speaker 1: that they support maybe a fifteen dollars minimum wage maybe
Speaker 1: over some time period, But do they fight for no,
Speaker 1: I mean, just to relive recent history for those who've
Speaker 1: forgotten all the slings and arrows of this. The one
Speaker 1: concession supposedly that Bernie got out of Biden when he conceded,
Speaker 1: he did this whole like hostage video and was like,
Speaker 1: do you support a fifteen dollars minimum wage?
Speaker 4: And Bud's like, yes, Bernie, I.
Speaker 1: Do they put it to, you know, to try to
Speaker 1: get it through a reconciliation parliamentarian says no, that's the
Speaker 1: less we've heard of it. That's it. They didn't say,
Speaker 1: you know what, screw this parliamentarian. We're going to get
Speaker 1: someone who is going to agree that the you know,
Speaker 1: this is okay with the American people. They didn't say,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to try to get this into
Speaker 1: these must pass bills, We're going to work it into
Speaker 1: our deal with a republic. And no, they just gave
Speaker 1: up on it. And so again, when I look at
Speaker 1: these numbers, what I really see is a complete hobbling
Speaker 1: and crisis of democracy. When you have seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of public saying here's where we are, and you have
Speaker 1: the entire political class say it, screw you, we don't care.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do anything about it other than
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes paid lip service to it. That's where you
Speaker 1: start to understand how faith in all our o institutions
Speaker 1: is crumbled, How people are so discussed with the political process,
Speaker 1: how they don't feel like their vote counts, how they
Speaker 1: don't feel like their vote matters, How they don't feel
Speaker 1: like it matters whether they show up to vote for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Ronda Santis or anybody else.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's astonishing that we're at a point
Speaker 1: we're just for workers to be able to get air
Speaker 1: conditioning in their trucks so they don't die. They basically
Speaker 1: have to threaten to shut down the entire economy.
Speaker 2: But that's where we are, and people forget they often
Speaker 2: look at this as a partisan issue. But you know,
Speaker 2: the Florida, Florida, the state of Florida, we talked a
Speaker 2: lot about this in twenty twenty on the night that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump won it by more than President and Obama
Speaker 2: did in twenty twelve. In twenty twenty, in the contested
Speaker 2: election Florida republic you know who went for Trump and
Speaker 2: then later on went for DeSantis. They passed a minimum
Speaker 2: wage by some sixty some percent. So there is a
Speaker 2: huge overlap between people who are willing to vote Trump
Speaker 2: Ron de Santis, who are willing to vote Republican, and
Speaker 2: who do support an overall minimum wage. And that's why
Speaker 2: it's also important to understand too, whenever you look at
Speaker 2: the minimum wage that is in many Republican states, you know,
Speaker 2: like in Alabama, and in Alabama, for example, it's seven
Speaker 2: to twenty five per hour, and that's actually the case
Speaker 2: across much of the industrial Midwest. In Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: which is the overall federal minimum wage Louisiana, I'm saying,
Speaker 2: federal minimum wage Mississippi, New Hampshire, even North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: And now look in some cases, you know we've talked
Speaker 2: before about the minimum way. We did a lot of
Speaker 2: discussion of this back on rising if I remember correctly,
Speaker 2: regional minimum wage and all the discussion around that. Actually
Speaker 2: think it's totally reasonable, but there is no saying that
Speaker 2: seven to twenty five is actually enough in most of
Speaker 2: these places where it doesn't even meet the poverty line.
Speaker 2: And the problem too is everyone's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: if it's the minimum wage, it's like, why should we
Speaker 2: spend so much time on that. Well, unfortunately, unfortunately, we
Speaker 2: do have millions of people who actually do make the
Speaker 2: overall minimum wage, and so it would have a genuinely
Speaker 2: big impact. Also been some discussion too around whether the
Speaker 2: corporations and some of them could absorbit everybody's talks about
Speaker 2: small businesses. I've even seen previous proposals and discussions around
Speaker 2: like phase in times for the level of employees and
Speaker 2: times that you have. So there are a lot of
Speaker 2: ways we can work all of those like, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of discussion that we can have about making sure
Speaker 2: you absolutely not only minimize but completely reduce any impact
Speaker 2: overall on small business and small firms to the corporations
Speaker 2: that can obviously afford to pay them, people like Walmart,
Speaker 2: Amazon and all these others. Even if Amazon is what
Speaker 2: is fifteen it might even be nineteen dollars an hour.
Speaker 2: It depends on where you are right now. But of
Speaker 2: course you know sometimes they will actually raise their minimum
Speaker 2: wage to also stop from having to do healthcare, to
Speaker 2: increase churn and remain and have total control over their
Speaker 2: overall hiring process.
Speaker 1: These are the fights that are most critical right now,
Speaker 1: given how our economy is, how it exists in the
Speaker 1: current moment.
Speaker 4: We have a tight labor market. That's a good thing
Speaker 4: for workers.
Speaker 1: That means that they're less afraid to take strike actions,
Speaker 1: they're less afraid to vote to unionize, they're less afraid
Speaker 1: to push on their bosses and individual cases because there
Speaker 1: are jobs out there. So the question isn't are there
Speaker 1: jobs available? The question is are there good jobs available?
Speaker 1: And that's where you know these fights over are right
Speaker 1: what's the floor going to be federally, what is the
Speaker 1: minimum wage going to be? What can you actually support
Speaker 1: yourself on at this point? I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: basics of the American what the American dream and the
Speaker 1: American bargain should be, that if you work hard and
Speaker 1: you play by the rules, you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1: And right now, millions of workers, I mean, they're so
Speaker 1: close to the edge. I can't remember the numbers off
Speaker 1: the top of my head, but we just got some
Speaker 1: dire numbers about the number of people who couldn't afford
Speaker 1: a four hundred dollars you know, emergency expense. It's just insanity.
Speaker 1: So in any case, I think to me, the biggest
Speaker 1: takeaway is the distance between the political class what they
Speaker 1: consider to be radical. I mean, I don't even know
Speaker 1: how many members of Congress, if any, have come out
Speaker 1: in favor of a twenty dollars minimum wage, even the
Speaker 1: furthest left right, and yet three quarters of American people,
Speaker 1: in sixty percent of their publican Republican base.
Speaker 2: Are there always a good reminder what the actual divides
Speaker 2: are in this country. It's not what you would think
Speaker 2: if you were watching any other news channel. Let's go
Speaker 2: to Ukraine. There's some really interesting stuff going on behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, which is absolutely going to explode into the
Speaker 2: top of the news. That's a debate inside of the
Speaker 2: NATO Alliance. Should Ukraine be put on a pathway to
Speaker 2: NATO membership or should it be just given an extended
Speaker 2: outright NATO membership right now? So let's go and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. This is kind of
Speaker 2: a New York Times TikTok behind the scenes of all
Speaker 2: the jockeying that's happening. What they say is, quote President
Speaker 2: Biden taken every opportunity over the past sixteen months to
Speaker 2: celebrate NATO's unity on Ukraine, but on one topic, he
Speaker 2: finds himself somewhat isolated within the alliance when and how
Speaker 2: Kiev would join. Mister Biden, who has been cautious about
Speaker 2: getting NATO into a direct fight with Moscow, has sought
Speaker 2: to maintain the status quote of more than a decade
Speaker 2: quote a vague promise that Ukraine now that are they
Speaker 2: say it now arguably the most powerful military force in Europe,
Speaker 2: will eventually join the Alliance, but with no set timetable.
Speaker 2: Now there is a huge debate among the allies, putting
Speaker 2: pressure on Biden to quote support a significantly faster and
Speaker 2: more certain path to membership for Ukraine. Much of this
Speaker 2: is actually coming from the Baltic states, including Estonia, Latvia,
Speaker 2: Poland and I'm forgetting one of them with Lithuania of course,
Speaker 2: Estonia Latvia, Lithuania and also the new you know naming
Speaker 2: members of the NATO Alliance as well, kind of weighing
Speaker 2: in trying to bring Ukraine into the overall into the
Speaker 2: actual formal alliance.
Speaker 3: Now why does this matter, Well, you.
Speaker 2: Know, depending on who you believe and what narrative and
Speaker 2: all that. Let's just say that the pretext given by
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin for invasion of Ukraine in the first place
Speaker 2: was that he could not extract a promise both from
Speaker 2: Ukraine or from the United States, so they would never
Speaker 2: become a member of the NATO Alliance. Now the La Latvia.
Speaker 2: The winning of the Baltic argument is that there is
Speaker 2: no way to guarantee long term peace to Ukraine without
Speaker 2: extending them membership and effectively saying that if the war
Speaker 2: in Ukraine does continue or we decide on some sort
Speaker 2: of line, that will escalate to some full blown nuclear conflict.
Speaker 3: The problem is is that Bristol a lot of people
Speaker 3: won't talk about this. It's not just Putin.
Speaker 2: Many Russians, at least according to some of the independent polls,
Speaker 2: that we have been able to get out of there,
Speaker 2: and nothing is perfect, but many Russians actually do agree
Speaker 2: with the overall with the overall idea that Ukraine should
Speaker 2: never be inside of NATO given their long history and
Speaker 2: the border and how they feel about collective security. I
Speaker 2: am not justifying that, I am only saying that is
Speaker 2: how Russians feel, including not only Putin but many of
Speaker 2: the people inside of the Russian government. So that sets
Speaker 2: up the question of like, is this an idea which
Speaker 2: could actually make things much worse? And what to me
Speaker 2: is so fascinating is that Biden is the only apparently
Speaker 2: it's Biden and the Germans right who are like, well,
Speaker 2: hold on a second here, maybe this might be a
Speaker 2: bad idea. This actually could get us into some sort
Speaker 2: of insane nuclear conflict. And also, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: an accident that the people pushing this the most are
Speaker 2: the people who are in the Baltic States already. This
Speaker 2: is where I get very frustrated, Crystal, these Baltic states,
Speaker 2: they have nothing to lose, like if there's some sort
Speaker 2: of conflict, it's game over for them anyway. In America, actually,
Speaker 2: it's a choice for us as to whether we're going
Speaker 2: to go nuclear over the Baltic States and whether we're
Speaker 2: basically going to you know, annihilate some of our world
Speaker 2: class cities, our economy, and all of that in a
Speaker 2: conflict which you know, may maybe not actually have something
Speaker 2: to do with us in effect, not only our economy,
Speaker 2: our people, and our overall strategic interest. So I get
Speaker 2: why the Baltics want to do this, but there's no
Speaker 2: reason why we would want to do this. And actually,
Speaker 2: if you consider or if you at least take it
Speaker 2: out their word the Russians that this had something to
Speaker 2: do with it, you know, not in the immediate invasion,
Speaker 2: but the two thousand and eight promise Ukraine will eventually
Speaker 2: go into NATO. Then why would you want to accelerate
Speaker 2: the timeline, especially when there's an ongoing, active war in
Speaker 2: the country right now?
Speaker 3: What does the trip wire even look like? Like?
Speaker 2: Where and when do you invoke Article five? Is it
Speaker 2: the current border? Is it if the Russians gain ten
Speaker 2: percent more territory right if you.
Speaker 3: Cross this river? But if you don't cross that river.
Speaker 2: It's like, this is where things get very very murky,
Speaker 2: and all of us, all of our lives, really are
Speaker 2: on the line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, what they would argue is, look,
Speaker 1: Russia hasn't invaded NATO allies, and there's a reason for
Speaker 1: that because they worry about that Article five protection and
Speaker 1: so this would be a way to prevent future wars.
Speaker 1: And so that's the case they would make. But I
Speaker 1: look at it and it's like, this is a way
Speaker 1: to guarantee that we actually go to World War three
Speaker 1: over Ukraine if this happens again. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration's position seems pretty reasonable. They're like, hey, we
Speaker 1: don't even know where the borders are right now that
Speaker 1: you like, you can't admit or even like set down
Speaker 1: a specific timeline for admission of any country when you
Speaker 1: don't have set borders, and when you're in the middle.
Speaker 4: Of a full scale war.
Speaker 1: So the fact that every other country except the US
Speaker 1: and Germany is like, let's do it anyway, it just
Speaker 1: kind of boggles my mind. But Sagara, I think to
Speaker 1: your point the fact that it's you know, the burden
Speaker 1: is overwhelmingly on the US.
Speaker 3: Yes, we pay all the bills.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's why they're for them. It's like a
Speaker 1: free rider situation. They're like, yeah, bring them in, no problem,
Speaker 1: let's do it for us. It's like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: what are we committing ourselves to exactly? And so some
Speaker 1: end characteristic restraint from the Biden administration. It looks like
Speaker 1: though they're under enough pressure that they feel like they
Speaker 1: have to take some sort of like a half measure here.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen from the
Speaker 1: Financial Times, they say Western allies plan to provide long
Speaker 1: term security assurances to Ukraine by lateral agreements to formalized
Speaker 1: level of military and financial support for Kiev, and of
Speaker 1: course Lensky is also pushing for that timeline for NATO members.
Speaker 1: So Biden in the White House under a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure here, and effectively what they are likely to do
Speaker 1: is to reach an overarching political declaration with Ukraine. They
Speaker 1: said that under the umbrella declaration, Ukraine would conclude bilateral
Speaker 1: agreements formalizing that current level of support and establish it
Speaker 1: on a more long term footing, with space to expand
Speaker 1: if deemed necessary. But neither the framework document nor the
Speaker 1: bilateral agreements would have the status of legal treaties, and
Speaker 1: they would be signed outside of the NATO Alliance. So
Speaker 1: this is like the and I don't want to say
Speaker 1: this is just like a bone they're thrown.
Speaker 4: This is significant in and.
Speaker 1: Of itself that they were pressured into making some sort
Speaker 1: of longer term security guarantee and commitment here, which I
Speaker 1: do think makes sense, some sort of a longer term
Speaker 1: security agreement, but I think it makes sense in the
Speaker 1: context of a resolution to the war, not before then.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, look, I actually I wouldn't even say. I
Speaker 2: would say it's way more up for debate because right now,
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we have no obligation to do anything
Speaker 2: inside of Ukraine, anything that we are doing right now
Speaker 2: in terms of aid and.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 2: In terms of formalized legal agreements, nothing, And that's why
Speaker 2: it's very important to understand we should not get into
Speaker 2: anything formal or legal about in the future.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about Senate ratified.
Speaker 2: Agreements without very very careful consideration, because it could literally
Speaker 2: lead to a nuclear exchange in the future. And I
Speaker 2: just think that argument that you laid out from the
Speaker 2: opponents are so foolish.
Speaker 3: Oh well, it hasn't happened yet. It's a sixteen month
Speaker 3: long war. You can't say rule anything in or out.
Speaker 2: Anything could happen in the you know, if you look
Speaker 2: at timelines in terms of the way that long drawn
Speaker 2: out conflicts like this go, it take years in order
Speaker 2: to see what the full spectrum of what the actual
Speaker 2: possibilities are.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, can't rule that out.
Speaker 2: Second, what they point to here is this quad agreement,
Speaker 2: which would be a non binding agreement which would be effectively,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of make aid to Ukraine. They would say, like, oh,
Speaker 2: the US and you know, the US and the other
Speaker 2: quad countries UK, Germany and France would you know, formalize
Speaker 2: a current level of aid. But you know, for the UK,
Speaker 2: Germany and France that's not much off their backs. They're
Speaker 2: not the one who are paying ninety five percent of
Speaker 2: the military expenses.
Speaker 3: It's the United States.
Speaker 2: So the current issue that we have overall is the
Speaker 2: free riding problem from all of the nations inside of
Speaker 2: NATO that are not the US and the UK, which
Speaker 2: are the only two like genuinely great great powers with
Speaker 2: military in terms of their military capabilities. France in Germany
Speaker 2: too are powers in their own right, but they're more
Speaker 2: like regional powers on the continent. Everyone gets mad when
Speaker 2: I say this, but you know, Poland's like, well, we
Speaker 2: pay two percent of our GDP. I'm like, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: you know, your GDP is literally like less than Alabama
Speaker 2: or something like that. It's just on absolute terms, it
Speaker 2: really doesn't matter. Same in terms of the Baltic States.
Speaker 2: And what drives me nuts is that those are actually
Speaker 2: the most hawkish nations who are trying to get us
Speaker 2: embroiled in the conflict. You know, if they care so much, okay,
Speaker 2: spend one hundred percent of your GDP on that if
Speaker 2: it's so existential to you. But they're not, and they
Speaker 2: literally don't even have the capability. They weren't Washington to
Speaker 2: go and pick up a slack for them.
Speaker 1: Well, we should also not lose sight of the fact.
Speaker 1: We have said a million times here and I'll say
Speaker 1: it again, the Russian invasion is horrific, it's unconsionable, it's illegal.
Speaker 4: We are completely opposed to Yes, the Russian.
Speaker 1: Position with regard to NATO is eminently correct and reasonable.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was an expectation, there was at least
Speaker 1: an understanding that NATO would not expand towards their borders.
Speaker 1: We did it anyway. I mean, we knew that we
Speaker 1: have the cables. Let's say, our diplomats knew that it
Speaker 1: was a red line to even talk about ukraine admission
Speaker 1: into NATO and.
Speaker 4: Georgia as well. We did it anyway.
Speaker 1: So it's not like there isn't a point here in
Speaker 1: terms of Russia's view of NATO. So, just to put
Speaker 1: this in the most simplistic terms, their public position, Russia's
Speaker 1: public position is that part of why they invaded Ukraine
Speaker 1: is over these tensions around NATO. And so our response
Speaker 1: to that is like, let's up the ante and make
Speaker 1: it even more concrete, like let's thumb or nose that
Speaker 1: you even more. I just think that is reckless and
Speaker 1: wildly dangerous. But to show you what kind of pressure
Speaker 1: the Biden administration is being put under here, there's a
Speaker 1: report in the Guardian that some NATO countries are talking
Speaker 1: about sending their own troops directly into this conflict. The
Speaker 1: polls in particular, they said, if NATO cannot agree on
Speaker 1: a clear pathward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility
Speaker 1: some countries.
Speaker 4: Individually might take action.
Speaker 1: He argued that the Poles would seriously consider going in
Speaker 1: among others.
Speaker 4: So that's why they've really.
Speaker 1: Put the screws to Biden and why they feel like
Speaker 1: they have to at least do something here at this
Speaker 1: next NATO meeting to you know, provide some kind of
Speaker 1: security assistance and guarantees Ukraine. Otherwise, I mean, this would be,
Speaker 1: this would be why.
Speaker 2: You know what my response is, go for it, sign
Speaker 2: away and say that if you incur any sort of
Speaker 2: problem as a result of that, then that's your issue.
Speaker 3: Guess what.
Speaker 2: They will never do it if that actually was the case,
Speaker 2: because they feel confident that we are going to back
Speaker 2: them up through our nuclear umbrella. That's again, it's like
Speaker 2: you need to make strategic of you need to make
Speaker 2: strategic decisions such that you are factoring in both risk
Speaker 2: and reward.
Speaker 3: They bear none of the risk. We're the ones.
Speaker 2: Who have to back up all and backstop all of it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, look, if you want to send your troops
Speaker 2: into Ukraine, literally that's on you. Go for it. You know,
Speaker 2: I wish you the best. But if things go south,
Speaker 2: then that's also on you. And should you know, escalate
Speaker 2: into some broader problem, you deal with it. That's not
Speaker 2: going to be up to us, unfortunately, though, that's not
Speaker 2: the way that Article five works, at least in terms
Speaker 2: of the way it can be in voke. So this
Speaker 2: is why we all have to spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time on this, and while we dedicated, you know, literally
Speaker 2: the top of this is because arguably this is ten
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand times more important than whatever is going
Speaker 2: on with the Ukraine counter offensive. Whatever village you know,
Speaker 2: changes hand here or there, whether they get NATO membership
Speaker 2: or not, which is what Lenski wants and, by the way,
Speaker 2: what most NATO countries want. Apparently that will decide whether
Speaker 2: we ever really do escalate into a broader war in
Speaker 2: my opinion, and I have absolutely I have very little
Speaker 2: doubt that we would get embroiled in some massive conflict
Speaker 2: if we were to ever confer genuine NATO membership on
Speaker 2: to me, and from everything we've seen so far, given
Speaker 2: that Putin literally invaded the country, it actually does look
Speaker 2: like an actual red line. So I guess everybody should
Speaker 2: decide you want to go to a full scale war
Speaker 2: for Ukraine or not.
Speaker 3: I personally don't. I don't think it's worth it at all.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go to the next part.
Speaker 2: This also gets to exactly why we should have some
Speaker 2: trepidation around these and let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there on police on the screen about Belarus. Belarus is
Speaker 2: currently taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons forward, deploying them
Speaker 2: much closer toward Ukraine. This is according to President Lukashenko
Speaker 2: himself says the country has been taking delivery of the
Speaker 2: tactical nuclear weapons, specifically some of which he said, quote
Speaker 2: were three times more powerful and the atomic bombs that
Speaker 2: the United States dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five. The deployment is actually Moscow's first move of
Speaker 2: such warheads, tactical nuclear weapons that could potentially be used
Speaker 2: on the battlefield outside of Russia since the fall of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. So that is why you know, this
Speaker 2: was downplayed really in the Western press. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: it hasn't had It's like, no, this is the first time,
Speaker 2: literally in thirty something years, they've ever moved nukes outside
Speaker 2: of Russia. It's a direct response to what's going on
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. They're moving them closer towards Ukraine. No, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they're going to use them, Yes, it does
Speaker 2: mean that, you know, things would change significantly but it
Speaker 2: also lets us return to something that we talked a
Speaker 2: lot about during the tactical nuclear weapon discussion, Crystal, there's
Speaker 2: no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Strategically, that
Speaker 2: escalates things to a whole other realm. And as Lukashenko
Speaker 2: and Ell said, even these quote tactical nukes that are yeah,
Speaker 2: they won't annihilate, you know, the entire globe in a
Speaker 2: single bomb, so three times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaker 3: That's that's where we're at. That's where that's what quote
Speaker 3: unquote tactical.
Speaker 1: Thing means so important for people to understand because you
Speaker 1: hear that term throw thrown around like oh, it's just
Speaker 1: a little nuke. No, It's like, no, We're talking about
Speaker 1: something that is extraordinarily powerful, dangerous, and puts us on
Speaker 1: a chain of escalation that nobody knows where it will
Speaker 1: ultimately go. I love the way that they downplay this too.
Speaker 1: I mean, even in this piece they say the US
Speaker 1: has criticized Putin's decision, but SETA has no intention of
Speaker 1: altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons. Has not
Speaker 1: seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon like don't you consider this a sign, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that may be considering use of nuclear weapons. They gone
Speaker 1: to say, the Russian stuff is nonetheless being watched closely
Speaker 1: by the US and its allies, as well as by China,
Speaker 1: which is repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: in the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: I do think that part is significant.
Speaker 1: But it also speaks to another lie that has been
Speaker 1: told in the press, which is that like, oh, we
Speaker 1: keep shipping you know, more advanced and longer range weapons,
Speaker 1: and the Russians they don't respond, they don't escalate, so
Speaker 1: all these fears of oh they're going to escalate are overblown.
Speaker 4: What do you call this? I call this an escalation.
Speaker 1: I mean I call a lot of what Russia has
Speaker 1: done an escalation, you know, in returning to attacks on Kiev,
Speaker 1: on drafting their own people, and up in the ante
Speaker 1: in terms of this war, A lot of that I
Speaker 1: think could very clearly be called an escalation and is
Speaker 1: in part in response to the actions that we have
Speaker 1: ourselves taken here as a country. So you know, this
Speaker 1: is the whole ballgame right here. Ultimately, will nukes ever
Speaker 1: be used in this conflict? Are we going to end
Speaker 1: up accidentally stumbling into World War three. The danger might
Speaker 1: be small, it might be, you know, one percent, it
Speaker 1: might be point one percent. If there is any risk
Speaker 1: of that at all, it should be the number one
Speaker 1: thing that we're concerned about here and around the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: And also the idea that NATO says that they're not
Speaker 2: worried is actually just completely wrong because what just happened
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen, literally the very
Speaker 2: same time that their Russians are moving nukes into Bellarros,
Speaker 2: NATO just held its largest air force drill ever in
Speaker 2: history to demonstrate alliance capabilities and quote solidarity against Russia.
Speaker 2: The wargames officially launched and are called the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three Air Defender Military Exercise, also included Finland as well
Speaker 2: as many other countries. Includes twelve days, two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty aircraft, ten thousand personnel, the largest deployment in the
Speaker 2: history of all of NATO. All that was happening such
Speaker 2: to make a very strong message towards them, And actually
Speaker 2: the funniest part to me, Crystal, is that if you
Speaker 2: look at the actual quotes of what they are saying,
Speaker 2: is the trigger for me was the capture in the
Speaker 2: annexation of Russia, and that since Russia's full scaled invasion
Speaker 2: of Ukraine last year, NATO member's Eastern flank want the
Speaker 2: assurance that they will defended should the Kremlin turn its
Speaker 2: sights on them. That was the German general who was
Speaker 2: in charge of the exercise himself and said, while he
Speaker 2: painted it quotely as purely defensive in nature, behind the
Speaker 2: scenes say that they hope it will show President Putin
Speaker 2: for that the Alliance is not backing down in support
Speaker 2: for Ukraine as Kiev begins it's counter offensive. So clearly
Speaker 2: this is in response to Russian not only the invasion
Speaker 2: of Ukraine, but also the deployment of these nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: and the increased fear that this could escalate into something.
Speaker 2: If they didn't have fear, then they wouldn't have the drill.
Speaker 2: The drill is quite literally being held as a response
Speaker 2: to what's going on right there. So once again you
Speaker 2: cannot say with a straight face that you are not
Speaker 2: worried about this escalating to anything. That's why we sent
Speaker 2: thousands of troops to NATO's Eastern flank in the first place.
Speaker 2: After this response, why we literally inducted two or tried
Speaker 2: to induct two new members, successfully inducted one into the Alliance,
Speaker 2: and then now having this ongoing you know air drill
Speaker 2: that's happening, and also literally at the same time you
Speaker 2: and I are talking, all NATO defense ministers are gathered
Speaker 2: right now in Brussels, hammering out more agreements, running over
Speaker 2: more types of exercises and things they can do. So
Speaker 2: it's not like strategically that things aren't moving and they
Speaker 2: aren't changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the whole point of this is just
Speaker 1: to underscore for people. You know, we can feel it
Speaker 1: can feel a little bit like the frog and the
Speaker 1: boiling water. You just keep hearing this news over and
Speaker 1: over again, and increase escalation and the next step on
Speaker 1: the ladder, and now we're sending US sixteens and now
Speaker 1: you know, the largest war games in NATO history, and
Speaker 1: now we're talking about a timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO,
Speaker 1: and now Russia is moving nukes and de Belarus. It
Speaker 1: can feel exhausting, It can be hard to hold on
Speaker 1: to that sense of alarm at where all of this
Speaker 1: is heading. But I think it's just really important for
Speaker 1: people to keep in the front of their minds what
Speaker 1: a dangerous volatile and unpredictable situation we continue to be
Speaker 1: in so long as this war continues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's well said.
Speaker 1: Okay, guys, let's get to some domestic politics here. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with what's a really interesting poll
Speaker 1: about how Americans feel about a potential third party effort.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that these numbers are not based on any specific third
Speaker 1: party candidate. They give people the option of Biden, Trump
Speaker 1: or third party, and Biden DeSantis or third party, So
Speaker 1: it can be like this is basically like the third
Speaker 1: party candidate of your dreams. Is the way that voters
Speaker 1: would interpret this. And this is from Suffolk University, USA today,
Speaker 1: you know, well respected pollsters.
Speaker 4: To the extent that such a thing exists anymore.
Speaker 1: Biden they have at thirty four over Trump at thirty two,
Speaker 1: third party taking twenty three percent of the vote. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: actually the margin is wider for Biden if he's against
Speaker 1: DeSantis thirty three over DeSantis's twenty six with a third
Speaker 1: party at twenty five percent.
Speaker 4: So you basically have in this.
Speaker 1: Poll a reflection of the fact that people are really
Speaker 1: not excited about any of these choices to be perfectly
Speaker 1: honest with you, And even though you have a lot
Speaker 1: of hard partisan loyalists in this country, you also have
Speaker 1: a lot of people who would theoretically be open to
Speaker 1: a third party candidate. Now, of course, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of barriers in the US to third party candidates
Speaker 1: running to them having success. It's not easy to obtain
Speaker 1: ballot access. There are only a few organizations that do.
Speaker 1: But as I said, I think this really reflects how
Speaker 1: you have higher interest in this election in third party
Speaker 1: efforts than I believe you did last time around. I
Speaker 1: think the levels are more consistent with the third party
Speaker 1: interest we saw in twenty sixteen when people were really
Speaker 1: not excited about Trump, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people really not excited about Hillary Clinton. And so you
Speaker 1: had Gary Johnson, you had Jill Stein in those elections. Now,
Speaker 1: liberals will tell you Jill Stein was a spoiler and
Speaker 1: she got enough et cetera to throw the election. I
Speaker 1: would personally say that Democrats should have done about a
Speaker 1: job appealing to voters if.
Speaker 4: They wanted to win that election.
Speaker 1: But there is no doubt that there is a heightened
Speaker 1: interest in a third party effort this time around. And
Speaker 1: so you see some burcheoning third party efforts. We've already
Speaker 1: covered here. How doctor Cornell West, who is on the left.
Speaker 1: He's really well respected, well known political thinker and academic.
Speaker 1: He initially announced that he was going to be running
Speaker 1: as a People's Party candidate, which people, including myself, found
Speaker 1: quite perplexing because they don't have ballot excess in most states,
Speaker 1: they don't have any track record of fielding a candidate
Speaker 1: or having success fielding a candidate, and so if you're
Speaker 1: running just as People's Party candidate, you're basically a glorified
Speaker 1: ride in which the limits of the efficacy of that
Speaker 1: is going to be quite limited. Well, he just announced
Speaker 1: that he is going to be actually pursuing the nomination
Speaker 1: of the Green Party. Put us up on the screen.
Speaker 1: I think Ryan and Emily covered this yesterday as well,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was important for us to.
Speaker 4: Chime in on this too.
Speaker 1: Cornell West says, in the spirit of a broad united
Speaker 1: front and coalition strategy, I'm pursuing the nomination of the
Speaker 1: Green Party for President of the United States. Go to
Speaker 1: Cornell West twenty four dot com for more information To
Speaker 1: continue to support this unprecedented effort to empower precious poor
Speaker 1: and working people here and abroad. I think the volunteers
Speaker 1: of the People's Party for the initial launch and Sagar,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I think this is a like
Speaker 1: I think the Biden administration should be pretty concerned about
Speaker 1: this because Cornell West, doctor West, is a powerful person.
Speaker 4: He's a powerful order.
Speaker 1: He has a voice of moral conscience and moral clarity
Speaker 1: that is incredibly compelling to people, even people who disagree
Speaker 1: with him on some of the issues. He's very effective
Speaker 1: at talking to people who don't agree with him exactly
Speaker 1: on the show. I mean, used to go on Fox Now,
Speaker 1: on his people, Fox News all the time. He's known for,
Speaker 1: you know, being willing to reach out to anyone who's
Speaker 1: willing to have any sort of legitimate or honest conversation,
Speaker 1: and even some people who aren't willing to have really
Speaker 1: a good faith conversation. He's a very compelling figure at
Speaker 1: a time when people are desperate for any sort of
Speaker 1: alternative to what is a really depressing choice between Biden
Speaker 1: and Trump. So I think this is quite significant that
Speaker 1: he's decided to pursue a Green Party effort because they
Speaker 1: do have ballot access in almost all of the states,
Speaker 1: so there's a much more serious organization that I'll be.
Speaker 2: Behind him exactly. So, now that he has ballot access
Speaker 2: at least in all fifty states, it will mean that, Look,
Speaker 2: he's got much higher name id, arguably than even Jill
Speaker 2: Stein did at that time. He's got a significant period
Speaker 2: in order to force the issue, force media coverage. All
Speaker 2: he really has to do is, you know, at least
Speaker 2: not even placed necessarily, but you know, gets some media attention,
Speaker 2: have some real events, and that's it, like game on,
Speaker 2: especially if you start showing up in the polls. I mean, overall,
Speaker 2: the Biden administration should be terrified. I was just reading
Speaker 2: this morning. Politically, yeah, RFK Junior is very likely going
Speaker 2: to win the first two states in the Democratic primary Iowa,
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, Iowa and New Hampshire because they are likely
Speaker 2: to go forward and not treat South Carolina as the
Speaker 2: first even though the DNC changed the rules. But Biden
Speaker 2: is likely not even to be able to contest in
Speaker 2: those states. Now, the media and everybody else will do
Speaker 2: their best to just downplay that and say didn't happen.
Speaker 2: A win is a way, okay, when you win something,
Speaker 2: you have to cover that. So you have two Kennedy
Speaker 2: wins in those first two states, going into South Carolina. Okay,
Speaker 2: Biden probably will do well in South Carolina. But guess what, Yeah, then, Chrystal,
Speaker 2: what are we We're right around the corner from Super Tuesday.
Speaker 2: And when you have got all that media attention, then
Speaker 2: you could have high third party initiative. You could have
Speaker 2: Kennedy literally winning the first two states. Yeah, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you're in a way weaker political position
Speaker 2: than probably any modern president since Jimmy Carter ran in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: And remember the drum beat from the media. Biden's opponents
Speaker 1: aren't serious, They're not qualified. I mean, they have done
Speaker 1: everything they can to just pretend like it's not happening.
Speaker 1: And that's necessary because otherwise, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: the DNC is saying we're absolutely not going to have
Speaker 1: any debates or any real like small de democratic process
Speaker 1: becomes completely unconscionable. You know, overwhelmingly voters, including voters in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, think there.
Speaker 4: Should be debates. There should be a real.
Speaker 1: Process here by which voters can evaluate Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: RFK Junior and Mary and Williamson and anyone else who
Speaker 1: gets into the Democratic primary race. So yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that you have the two early states, I mean, as
Speaker 1: much as they will want to ignore and just pretend
Speaker 1: like that didn't happen either, and there will be some chunk.
Speaker 4: Of the electorate that's like, yeah, you're right, that doesn't
Speaker 4: really count.
Speaker 1: You can't just completely dismiss out of hand if the
Speaker 1: guy who's in the White House loses the first two
Speaker 1: early states. And so to get back to doctor West
Speaker 1: and his role here. You know the reason I say that,
Speaker 1: I think it's a problem for Biden. These things can
Speaker 1: be complex about which party a third party.
Speaker 4: Candidate actually takes away from.
Speaker 1: But doctor West is clearly on the left, and Biden
Speaker 1: has a real weakness on his left at this point because,
Speaker 1: especially posts ron Klaan leaving as a chief of staff,
Speaker 1: their whole strategy has been to pivot towards the right.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, they crush the railway, where as one example,
Speaker 1: they structure the terrible situation with the debt ceiling and
Speaker 1: the deal that they end up striking with the Republicans.
Speaker 1: They've just done issue after issue, chosen to pivot to
Speaker 1: the right because I assume electorally they think, oh, this is.
Speaker 4: What we've got to do in order to appeal.
Speaker 1: To the quote unquote center for a general election. But
Speaker 1: now you've got an issue where you've pissed off environmentalists,
Speaker 1: You've pissed off a lot of your progressive base on
Speaker 1: the left. They're actively looking for other alternatives. And now
Speaker 1: you not only have some strong contenders in the Democratic primary,
Speaker 1: you've got a really powerful force.
Speaker 4: Coming at you in the general election as well.
Speaker 1: So listen, do I think a third party effort could succeed?
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, doctor West become President of the
Speaker 1: United States, No, because not because of any fault of
Speaker 1: his own, but because of structural barriers that exist in
Speaker 1: American politics. Could it really reshape the quality and tenor
Speaker 1: and direction of this election. There's no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: especially with him pivoting to a Green Party run, and
Speaker 1: with the fact that the Biden administration still even with
Speaker 1: they think they've crushed the left.
Speaker 4: They think that the left will show.
Speaker 1: Up, that they'll vote blue no matter who, because the
Speaker 1: alternative is so bad. I mean they this genuinely, I
Speaker 1: think is how they see it, that they don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything to win over the young voters who
Speaker 1: are disgusted with Joe Biden, who are on the left
Speaker 1: who are disgusted with Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: They think they don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1: And you know, we saw them make that calculation in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and we saw how it worked out for them.
Speaker 1: So there is a third party effort that they are
Speaker 1: concerned about, though, even though they haven't paid any mind
Speaker 1: apparently to doctor West or to any of Biden's primary competitors.
Speaker 1: So put this up on the screen. There's been this
Speaker 1: nascent effort from No Labels, which is this like grotesque
Speaker 1: corporate Wall Street monstrosity of an organization with really no
Speaker 1: popular support, but they have lots of money, so they
Speaker 1: hang around anyway, and they have been so sort of
Speaker 1: shopping around this idea, well, maybe will run a candidate,
Speaker 1: and you know, Jamie Diamonds gets floated here, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Chase JP Morgan, Chase Joe Mansion gets floated here.
Speaker 4: It's like for the people.
Speaker 1: Who think that Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren't pro
Speaker 1: Wall Street enough, this is like the candidate for them,
Speaker 1: which again I don't know, that's like, you know, people
Speaker 1: who work on Wall Street and no one else, but
Speaker 1: you have a kind of a panic from the White
Speaker 1: House about the possibility of a no Labels candidate running
Speaker 1: and splitting the quote unquote anti Trump coalition. The headline
Speaker 1: here from the Washington Post Michael Sheer Democrats meet with
Speaker 1: anti Trump conservatives to fight no Labels twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Bid Biden allies seek to undermine an effort they see
Speaker 1: as a threat to the President's reelection. You had a
Speaker 1: lot of high level Sager figures who were at this meeting,
Speaker 1: former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, DNC senior
Speaker 1: advisor Cedric Richmond, Stephanie Cutter, former campaign advisor of Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: They were joined by former Senators Doug Jones, a, Heidi
Speaker 1: Hike Camp, Claire mccaskell, along with representatives of the Anti
Speaker 1: Trump Lincoln Project, former Weekly Standard publisher Bill Crystal, and
Speaker 1: Lucy Caldwell for a Republican consultant who now advises the
Speaker 1: Independent Forward Party, according to people present at the event,
Speaker 1: who's book on the condition of anonymity. You also had
Speaker 1: their Dimitri Melhorne, who is a big donor advisor for
Speaker 1: Reed Hoffman and has really been very Gentral Ryan did
Speaker 1: a fantastic and very revealing interview with him that I
Speaker 1: encourage people to check out over.
Speaker 4: On Ryan's podcast.
Speaker 1: But their whole theory is that the way to win
Speaker 1: is not to deliver materially for the American people and
Speaker 1: do a good job as president so that you have
Speaker 1: a high approval rating and people actually want to re
Speaker 1: elect you. Their whole idea is, we're going to make
Speaker 1: it so all of the people who hate Donald Trump
Speaker 1: are united behind the same candidate. We don't really have
Speaker 1: to do anything other than not be Donald Trump, and
Speaker 1: that is our path to victory. Let's be honest. It
Speaker 1: worked in twenty twenty. Let's be honest, it basically worked
Speaker 1: again in midterms. But the margins are extremely thin and
Speaker 1: extreme narrow. So even though this no labels effort is
Speaker 1: not going to have a whole lot of popular support,
Speaker 1: if they draw even a tiny bit of support and
Speaker 1: split this theoretical quote unquote anti Trump coalition, the White
Speaker 1: House is very concerned about what it would all actually
Speaker 1: do to Biden's reelection chance.
Speaker 2: I feel like everybody is forgetting Biden only won the
Speaker 2: presidency by some one hundred and fifty thousand votes across
Speaker 2: three or across five states, and actually thirty thousand against
Speaker 2: three states. Yeah, I mean it literally arraigns a little
Speaker 2: bit in Georgia and things go very much differently. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you know, I don't know if it rains in
Speaker 2: Maricopa County, but let's say it did in Arizona.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, once again we're talking about like ten
Speaker 3: thousand votes.
Speaker 2: Or something like that. I mean, that's total madness. Whenever
Speaker 2: you have that low of a sliver. Sure things worked
Speaker 2: out in the midterms, who knows what things are going
Speaker 2: to look like in twenty twenty four come that election.
Speaker 2: No labels then the reason why they have to take
Speaker 2: it so seriously is because they're not strong's that's the issue.
Speaker 2: And my suspicion is is that should Cornell West campaign
Speaker 2: get some traction, then they are going to be pulling
Speaker 2: the knives of everything you've ever seen in order to
Speaker 2: get him off of the ballot in every single one
Speaker 2: of these states, suing them. That's why they're doing right now.
Speaker 2: The Arizona Democratic Party already sued to take no labels off.
Speaker 3: That's why they're freaking out.
Speaker 2: Yes, inside of the White House, they cannot take any
Speaker 2: third party, real contender whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yes, they don't.
Speaker 4: Actually believe in democracy. I mean, that's like really clear.
Speaker 1: They don't actually believe in democracy, because if you did.
Speaker 1: They're a very simple answer to this. It doesn't involve
Speaker 1: like suing them or you know. With regard to the
Speaker 1: corporate efforts, their play all nicey nights, they have them
Speaker 1: the White House, let's talk, let's work it out, let's negotiate.
Speaker 1: With regard to the left wing efforts, it will be
Speaker 1: like smear them as fascist enablers and Pudent's puppets and whatever.
Speaker 1: They'll be just like disgusting attacks against them. There's another strategy, though,
Speaker 1: which is to like actually do a good job as
Speaker 1: president and then people will want to re elect you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not that complicated. That's how it could work.
Speaker 1: In a democracy. You have a lot of power to
Speaker 1: do things that would be good for the American people.
Speaker 1: You've already missed a lot of chances at that, but
Speaker 1: it's not too late. He still got a shot to
Speaker 1: actually win people over and not have to go the
Speaker 1: path that ron Klan laid out, which is I've brought
Speaker 1: those up a million times, but this is their strategy.
Speaker 1: When Emmanuel Macrome won in France and he had like
Speaker 1: a thirty percent approval rating, and Ron Klain, former chief
Speaker 1: of Staff, tweets sound like, oh interesting.
Speaker 4: He was able to win.
Speaker 1: Because people are so disgusted by the alternative. That's their
Speaker 1: only play, and so anything that disrupts that whatsoever, they
Speaker 1: hit the panic button over because they have no They
Speaker 1: will do anything to win except actually deliver for the
Speaker 1: American people so that they want to re elect them
Speaker 1: affirmatively rather than just as an alternative to like a
Speaker 1: horrific choice.
Speaker 2: In Donald Trump. That's too difficult, Christians act true any work.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to the next topic. UFOs had
Speaker 2: to shove this one in there just because there's just
Speaker 2: it's too good and there's so many developments.
Speaker 3: So let's back up a little bit.
Speaker 2: As I outlined actually to RFK Junior when he was like,
Speaker 2: are you aware of this whistleblower or it was like, brother.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're Dave Grush.
Speaker 2: The whistleblower has come forward from the intelligence community alleging
Speaker 2: that there are multiple alien spacecraft inside the US government possession. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that interview has already come forward. There's been an
Speaker 2: over an hour long that's been released. I encourage everybody
Speaker 2: to go and watch it. That's on News Nation, It's
Speaker 2: on their YouTube channel as well. Many of the allegations
Speaker 2: in there are absolutely stunning. So the next question is
Speaker 2: how are Congress going to handle it. Part of what
Speaker 2: Dave Grush is saying is you guys were lied to,
Speaker 2: is that the Pentagon is quite literally lying to you
Speaker 2: about all of these existence of the programs about the
Speaker 2: developments inside of the building. Well, actually they've gone ahead
Speaker 2: and actually been asked about it. So let's put this
Speaker 2: up there with some really revealing quotes. These are all
Speaker 2: compiled by Matt lasla over at Wired, who asked some
Speaker 2: of these senators. Senator Warner quote, there's been a lot incoming. Frankly,
Speaker 2: I just need to find out more information on this.
Speaker 2: But here was the really interesting quote from Senator Holly quote,
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised by these latest allegations because it sounds
Speaker 2: pretty close to what they kind of a grudgingly admitted
Speaker 2: to us in the briefing. It's not good. None of
Speaker 2: it's good. We want to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 2: I think it's disturbing. Senator Jillibrand, also, who has been
Speaker 2: a real leader on the topic, says quote I have
Speaker 2: no idea. I'm going to do the work and analyze
Speaker 2: it and figure it out. We need to look at
Speaker 2: whether there are rogue special access programs that no one
Speaker 2: is providing oversight for. The goal for me will be
Speaker 2: having a hearing on that at some point so that
Speaker 2: we can assess if these special access programs actually exist.
Speaker 2: So are if there are special access programs out there
Speaker 2: that are somehow outside of the normal chain of command
Speaker 2: and outside the normal appropriations process, they have to divulge
Speaker 2: that to Congress.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The reason why that is so important is that one
Speaker 2: of the allegations here that's come forward Crystal is that
Speaker 2: there is actually basically rogue spending and budgeting going on
Speaker 2: outside of the normal system in order to cover up
Speaker 2: what Jillibrand is a legend. There which are unique special
Speaker 2: access programs that the American people have never been notified about,
Speaker 2: nor do they have any overside of including of Congress.
Speaker 2: This kind of gets to maybe why the Pentagon Path
Speaker 2: can't pass any audits. I'm not saying that this isn't
Speaker 2: just it's just UFOs like that's the entirety of it.
Speaker 2: I'm saying things are designed in such a way such
Speaker 2: that assessing and auditing and you know, taking it an
Speaker 2: an actual note of where the money is going. It's
Speaker 2: probably to the benefit of several black programs that are
Speaker 2: out there. And what really Dave Grush is alleging is
Speaker 2: that this thing is going on for decades, which would
Speaker 2: fit with a pattern of cover up of inside of
Speaker 2: the Pentagon. So that's number one that I wanted to
Speaker 2: bring everybody. Number two is an equally fascinating piece from
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair. Let's go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen and it gives a little bit of the background.
Speaker 2: Why did the New York Times, the Washington Post and
Speaker 2: Politico not publish the report that was brought forward outlining
Speaker 2: Dave Grush's allegations. So as they lay out, you know,
Speaker 2: Ralph Blumenthal spent forty five years on staff at the
Speaker 2: New York Times. Leslie Keene literally wrote with Ralph Bloomenthal
Speaker 2: the twenty seventeen story on UFOs that debuted the New
Speaker 2: York Times. Why did they turn it down? Well, according
Speaker 2: to Charlotte Clin, she's a media reporter over there who
Speaker 2: spoke with some people behind the scenes. The Times straight
Speaker 2: up decided not to publish this piece.
Speaker 3: Crystal. They just decided, Nope, we're not touching this. They
Speaker 3: tried to.
Speaker 2: Report it but weren't able to get to the bottom.
Speaker 2: The second thing is the Washington Post is denying. They're like,
Speaker 2: we didn't turn it down. They're like, what it is
Speaker 2: is that we were reporting it out, as in they
Speaker 2: had accepted the piece or not accepted it, but they'd
Speaker 2: looked at it and they were like, well, we want
Speaker 2: to hammer this out, we want to ask some more
Speaker 2: senators and stuff about it. Well, what Leslie Clean and
Speaker 2: Ralph Blumenthal are saying is that the reason why it
Speaker 2: ended up here in the debrief is that politico of
Speaker 2: the Washington and the Washington Post did not want to
Speaker 2: allow enough time or wanted to allow way more time
Speaker 2: to add more context and facts. The issue is that
Speaker 2: Grush's identity apparently was beginning to leak out in the
Speaker 2: UFO community and he was getting content acted by some
Speaker 2: interesting people who are out there, and so Leslie Keen
Speaker 2: and Rob Blumenthal said it was of the utmost importance
Speaker 2: to get this out as soon as humanly possible because
Speaker 2: his identity would otherwise leak, they would lose.
Speaker 3: You know, the scope of the story and the control
Speaker 3: on the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's ultimately why it ended up over there at
Speaker 2: the debrief, but it is clear the Times just just
Speaker 2: straight up turned it down, which you know, look, this
Speaker 2: could be the scoop of the century, you know, if
Speaker 2: it all ends up being true and for some reason,
Speaker 2: there's clearly a lot of squeamishness that's going on. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm in contact with people in the UFO community, researchers
Speaker 2: and others. I know that sounds funny, but these are
Speaker 2: very serious people, Okay. And what they've told me to
Speaker 2: Crystal is behind the scenes, a lot of media outlets,
Speaker 2: individual reporters, they're interested, but from the top down, they're like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't cover this. You can't have any real scrutiny
Speaker 2: of this at all, which you know, to me, I'm
Speaker 2: reading this quote from Holly, from Jillibrand and all this,
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems pretty real. It seems very real
Speaker 2: that they're taking not I mean, show me one of
Speaker 2: them that says this guy sounds like a crank.
Speaker 3: Every single one.
Speaker 2: Said, hey, we got to take this real seriously. I mean,
Speaker 2: they know they know cranks from non cranks.
Speaker 1: Whenever they have a lot of interaction with cranks their colleagues. Fact,
Speaker 1: my guess is that there's just there's such a so
Speaker 1: much like decorum and like appearance humping over at the
Speaker 1: New York Times, that they're just like afraid of looking ridiculous,
Speaker 1: you know. And so even though they could have reported
Speaker 1: it out, even though I mean, these are serious, credible reporters, yes,
Speaker 1: with a track record, who ended up reporting out this piece.
Speaker 1: So this isn't just like some you know, crank weirdo
Speaker 1: who's obsessed with UFOs Like these are you know, real
Speaker 1: legitimate journalists that The New York Times has experience working
Speaker 1: with too, by the way, And so that would be
Speaker 1: my guess is they just like they're afraid of looking ridiculous.
Speaker 1: They're saying, afraid of stepping outside of the bounds of
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to think and what you're supposed to.
Speaker 4: Say, so they just take a path.
Speaker 1: We they didn't even come up with an excuse the
Speaker 1: posting and political We're like, yeah, we totally would have
Speaker 1: done it, but it just didn't have the time.
Speaker 2: Here's another reason why it's so important, you know, Look,
Speaker 2: you cannot dismiss some things that are just straight up facts. Friend,
Speaker 2: Jeremy Corbel and George Knapp. They released actually one of
Speaker 2: the forms of the disclosure of urgent concerns and the
Speaker 2: complaint of reprisal actually from Dave Grush, which is signed
Speaker 2: by him, completely unclassified and also signed by his lawyer.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahe and put this police guys up on
Speaker 2: the screen. This is a screenshot from what Jeremy Corbel
Speaker 2: released over on the Weaponized podcast. And as you can
Speaker 2: see here, I mean read the allegations that Dave Grush
Speaker 2: says here. Mister Grush previously served as a fully cleared
Speaker 2: member of the United States Government UAP Task Force. He
Speaker 2: has direct knowledge that certain ICY elements have purposefully and
Speaker 2: intentionally withheld and concealed UAP related classified information from the
Speaker 2: US Congress. He has direct knowledge that this information has
Speaker 2: been withheld and concealed by the involved IC elements two
Speaker 2: purposefully and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP program.
Speaker 2: UAP is another way of saying UFO. And he said
Speaker 2: specifically that in July twenty twenty one, he constantly confidentially
Speaker 2: provided UAP related classified information to the Department of Defense
Speaker 2: Inspector General. This is literally almost over a two year
Speaker 2: process that has been playing out behind the scenes, and
Speaker 2: we have here his genuine signature by his lawyers that
Speaker 2: he's testifying before this, and that has been brought forward
Speaker 2: as part of a whistleblower complaint given to the Inspector General,
Speaker 2: which was then received and said that they were urgent
Speaker 2: and they needed to be looked into. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know what else we can really lay out for people.
Speaker 2: And yet behind the scenes, also what we have seen
Speaker 2: is the Pentagon is continuing basically to call him a
Speaker 2: straight up liar. The Pentagon and the UAP tasks for
Speaker 2: Susan go who is one of the spokespeople over there.
Speaker 2: She came out and she was just like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is totally untrue. There's no existence of any of these.
Speaker 2: United States Air Force came out with a statement just
Speaker 2: being like, yeah, look, ever since Project Blue Book and
Speaker 2: all of that closed the door, there's no reason that
Speaker 2: we should even be looking into this. I mean, the
Speaker 2: cover up is happening in plain sight. The only hope
Speaker 2: we have are these congressional representatives and whether they're actually
Speaker 2: going to get to the bottom of it. But I mean, really,
Speaker 2: what we're looking at here is a vast conspiracy of
Speaker 2: people who have been covering this up now for decades,
Speaker 2: special access programs or grushes, straight up psychotic. All these
Speaker 2: other people that have come forward to Michael Schellenberger and
Speaker 2: all of that. Look, yeah, maybe they're just stone cold crazy.
Speaker 2: It's very possible. It's certainly possible. But watch the interview.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe Look, I've seen hucksters out there before, but
Speaker 2: this many people, this level of seriousness, the testimony to
Speaker 2: his character and all of that, the fact that he
Speaker 2: was vetted by Jeremy Corbel, by Leslie Keen, by Ralph Blueman.
Speaker 2: These are all people who've been met a lot of
Speaker 2: crazy people out there, you know before, and they don't
Speaker 2: just bring these things forward without any recourse.
Speaker 3: I believe him. I believe him whenever he talks.
Speaker 1: So what do you say to Like in Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: they were like, Okay, you have a track record of
Speaker 1: a credible person. You have other people who are corroborating
Speaker 1: your claims. But where's the evidence, you know, where's the like,
Speaker 1: where's the photo, where's the material, where's the something? Because
Speaker 1: I do think it's reasonable for people to say, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is an unbelievable, Like it's a literally unbelievable claim.
Speaker 1: And so in order for us to take this seriously,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to give us a little something more
Speaker 1: than just some chitty chat.
Speaker 2: Well, guess what, it's classified. I don't think everybody keeps
Speaker 2: forgetting that. He has to come forward through the official
Speaker 2: whistleblower process. He can't just leak classified information. They're gonna
Speaker 2: lock him up. They're gonna throw him in jail.
Speaker 3: So he can't.
Speaker 2: First of all, he even said, I never saw anything.
Speaker 2: I just saw the existence of the program. That's not
Speaker 2: what he's alleging. What he's alleging is I know these
Speaker 2: programs exist. I'm not saying I saw it. He's never
Speaker 2: claimed to be some sort of eyewitness. He said, I've
Speaker 2: seen people would testify the forward. Okay, so we need
Speaker 2: those names and we need to get them under oath
Speaker 2: and bring them before Congress. But what he has claimed first,
Speaker 2: that's I'm glad that you brought that up. He has
Speaker 2: to deal with the US government and their classification regime.
Speaker 2: If he leaks something like that, it's the easiest pretext
Speaker 2: in the world to throw him in jail literally for
Speaker 2: the rest of his life. Look at Edward Snowden or
Speaker 2: Julian Assange about what's happening to them.
Speaker 3: Would you have confidence about bringing that forward? No, yeah,
Speaker 3: you absolutely can't.
Speaker 1: Sol So they could even go after him just for
Speaker 1: what he's already revealed.
Speaker 2: I mean, from what I've understood, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like they're making his life all that easy right now.
Speaker 3: So look, let's just keep all of this in.
Speaker 2: Mind, you know, as we move forward, and as we
Speaker 2: continue to ask our congressional representatives to actually take up
Speaker 2: the mantle and you know, maybe try and get to.
Speaker 3: The bottom of this.
Speaker 4: All right, Tager, what are you looking at?
Speaker 3: Well, if you were.
Speaker 2: To go back to the original days of the World
Speaker 2: Wide Web and the promise of the Internet and tell
Speaker 2: everyone what the world would look like today, they.
Speaker 3: Would be stunned. They would be dismayed.
Speaker 2: The Web, in its original conception, was to be a
Speaker 2: free marketplace of ideas and a tool for destroying established
Speaker 2: institutions to circumvent the center of power. At first, that
Speaker 2: was kind of true, but over time we saw that
Speaker 2: established institutions either co opted the Web or worse that.
Speaker 3: The new institutions of the Web.
Speaker 2: From the early days became their own centers of power.
Speaker 2: The Googles, the facebooks, the Microsofts, the Apples, the Amazons.
Speaker 2: They replaced the original major institutions. They became behemits in
Speaker 2: their own right, touching the lives of almost every American citizen,
Speaker 2: and often the lives of almost every citizen of every
Speaker 2: developed country on the globe.
Speaker 3: This isn't just a touch either.
Speaker 2: We're talking about our ability to communicate, to enter our homes,
Speaker 2: to remit payment, to use transportation.
Speaker 3: All of this it these days, relies.
Speaker 2: In some ways on these companies, and so these companies
Speaker 2: impartiality is vitally important. For the first two decades or
Speaker 2: so their existence, it really wasn't even an issue. It
Speaker 2: wasn't thought of. They seemed to just be utilities. Your
Speaker 2: ability to be a customer of Apple or Amazon or
Speaker 2: Google didn't have anything to do with your social or
Speaker 2: your political views. But then there was a great awokening.
Speaker 2: It happened everyone had to take a stand. The election
Speaker 2: of Trump only poured gasoline on that fire. Suddenly the
Speaker 2: companies themselves, they're not just utilities anymore. They started to
Speaker 2: kick people off their services for reasons that had nothing
Speaker 2: to do of whether they could pay or not, and
Speaker 2: this set up a new dystopia, an almost private social
Speaker 2: credit score system where at any time, for any reason,
Speaker 2: your ability to exist as a normal human being in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three can just be cut off for wrong
Speaker 2: think or even alleged wrongthink. The latest example is so
Speaker 2: crazy it is almost difficult to even wrap your head around.
Speaker 2: It revolves around a Baltimore man's recent experience with Amazon.
Speaker 2: Brandon Jackson. He's a Baltimore resident who on May twenty
Speaker 2: fifth found himself in a weird predicament. He couldn't log
Speaker 2: in to his Amazon account, and it wasn't just a nuisance.
Speaker 2: The issue was his Amazon account was linked to his
Speaker 2: smart home devices. It was run by the Alexis system.
Speaker 2: No Amazon, no smart home. So he did some digging.
Speaker 2: It appeared he had received an email the day before
Speaker 2: from Amazon from an executive asking him to call the company.
Speaker 2: He was mystified, since when do you need to call Amazon?
Speaker 2: It almost seemed like a prank or a phishing scam.
Speaker 2: After he gets on the phone with the Amazon executive,
Speaker 2: he discovers the delivery driver of a package on a
Speaker 2: day before reported hearing a quote racist remark As he
Speaker 2: dropped his package off at Jackson's home. Now, it's important
Speaker 2: to understand a few things here. Number One, Jackson himself
Speaker 2: is a black man. Number two, he was living in
Speaker 2: a Baltimore neighborhood, also predominantly black. Number three, most important
Speaker 2: of all, Jackson was literally not at home, nor was
Speaker 2: anyone else in his household at the time of the delivery,
Speaker 2: an alleged incident. Luckily, he was actually able to gain
Speaker 2: access through a third party to his smartphone smart home
Speaker 2: doorbell footage, and he verified that the automated response after
Speaker 2: delivery driver rang the bell was quote, excuse me, can
Speaker 2: I help you? The driver reported the remark was also
Speaker 2: wearing headphones at the time of the incident. Jackson believed
Speaker 2: that he somehow had misheard it while wearing those headphones.
Speaker 2: Jackson compiled multiple video angles from directions to verified had occurred,
Speaker 2: and he submitted this evidence to Amazon, but he had
Speaker 2: to wait days before his account was restored. All of
Speaker 2: this was verified by YouTuber Luis Rossman. Now, the company
Speaker 2: did not even apologize to him. They did not acknowledge
Speaker 2: any fault, quite literally rendering his entire system useless that
Speaker 2: he used to run his home. Now I know that
Speaker 2: people out there who can't even get into their house
Speaker 2: without Alexa or can't even use their TV, what would
Speaker 2: they do?
Speaker 3: And for what? The guy didn't say anything?
Speaker 2: The moronic delivery driver misheard an automated remark. Does that
Speaker 2: mean from now on all of us are literally at
Speaker 2: the mercy of hearing an Amazon delivery driver driver how
Speaker 2: what they might or may not hear onto whether our
Speaker 2: account can exist or not. It's easy to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy's an idiot, why is he relying entirely on
Speaker 2: Amazon for his house? But realistically, how many options do
Speaker 2: you really have out there?
Speaker 3: For a smart doorbell that's easy to use?
Speaker 2: Sure, you can use your own you can do your
Speaker 2: own research, you could rig everything up locally. Who has
Speaker 2: the expertise, in the time, the money to do that?
Speaker 2: Or take smart home an Amazon out of it? What
Speaker 2: is you about your I Message account for if you
Speaker 2: use an iPhone, your Gmail account or your Google Drive,
Speaker 2: were Microsoft account that you may use for your business.
Speaker 2: All of us, it seems, are simply one fake accusation
Speaker 2: away from being cut off from a vital part of
Speaker 2: our lives or our business. The world really saw how
Speaker 2: precarious this all was after January six.
Speaker 3: You can hate what happened.
Speaker 2: You can still be alarmed, though that parlor, a social
Speaker 2: media site we now know is not really central at
Speaker 2: all to planning the January six attack was simultaneously nuked
Speaker 2: from the Apple App Store and basically removed from Amazon
Speaker 2: Web Services. Prior to that incident, most people it didn't
Speaker 2: even know that was possible. Amazon Web Services was like
Speaker 2: a utility, but it's not a utility because it's not
Speaker 2: governed by any laws.
Speaker 3: It's a private company. It can do whatever it wants.
Speaker 2: Same with the way that our payment processing companies like
Speaker 2: Visa and MasterCard are. They can simply just not accept
Speaker 2: you as a customer if they don't want to, and
Speaker 2: right now their services have been pulled mostly from fringe actors.
Speaker 2: But that's just how starts the architecture for a private
Speaker 2: social credit score system.
Speaker 3: It's already here.
Speaker 2: You can be locked out of your phone and your
Speaker 2: smart home, your bank, and you will have no right
Speaker 2: or recourse to contest what happens to you. In many ways,
Speaker 2: you actually have more rights when you were accused by
Speaker 2: the government than you do when you're threatened by the
Speaker 2: might of corporate power.
Speaker 3: In this country.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, remember, anytime you willingly sign up for
Speaker 2: any of these services, you're signing up for something else too.
Speaker 2: That's the iron hand of fake justice. In the event,
Speaker 2: should you ever be accused, how crazy is this? He
Speaker 2: didn't even say anything.
Speaker 1: He did not And if you want to hear my
Speaker 1: reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: Chrissel, what are you taking to look at? Well?
Speaker 1: Guys? Once upon a time, student athletes at top colleges
Speaker 1: were treated more as indentured servants than as the remarkable
Speaker 1: competitors that they are. While their schools and TV networks
Speaker 1: all profited off their hard work and grueling schedules, the
Speaker 1: athletes themselves, they were denied any opportunity to share in
Speaker 1: the fruits of their labor.
Speaker 4: Then everything changed.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in
Speaker 1: favor of student athletes who were challenging limits on internships
Speaker 1: and other educational benefits that schools could use to lure them.
Speaker 1: And that decision opened the door for a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: As Justice Kavanaugh wrote at the time, traditions alone cannot
Speaker 1: justify the NCAA's decision to build a massive money raising
Speaker 1: enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not
Speaker 1: fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away
Speaker 1: with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market
Speaker 1: rate on the theory that their product is defined by
Speaker 1: not paying their workers a fair market rate.
Speaker 4: The NCAAA is not above the law.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: The NCAA, seeing the writing on the wall, decided that
Speaker 1: rather than being forced into actually directly compensating student athletes,
Speaker 1: they would change their rules and they would allow athletes
Speaker 1: to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. So
Speaker 1: athletes could nab sponsorship deal as they could monetize their
Speaker 1: social media, thereby enabling at least some of them to
Speaker 1: earn real money off of their prowess, including athletes and
Speaker 1: sports that don't have a sational league waiting to pay
Speaker 1: them big bucks after their college career, and they all
Speaker 1: lived happily ever.
Speaker 4: After, Right, Well not quite.
Speaker 1: Did you actually think capitalism was going to lead to
Speaker 1: some noble, perfect meritocracy. Come on, guys, this is America
Speaker 1: at the height of influencer culture, and sex sells a
Speaker 1: whole lot more than your.
Speaker 4: Actual athletic prowess. According to a new report from The Free.
Speaker 1: Press, the top female in particular college athlete earners are
Speaker 1: not the top in the sport.
Speaker 3: They are the.
Speaker 1: Hottest girls with the savviest social media presence. The reporter
Speaker 1: dubs this dynamic the NCAA's hot girl problem. In particular,
Speaker 1: they highlight the Cavender Twins lean blonde twin basketball players
Speaker 1: who transferred from Fresno State to University of Miami in
Speaker 1: order to be closer to the limelight just to become
Speaker 1: a Division one college athlete. Let's be clear, it's a
Speaker 1: really impressive accomplishment. So I'm not trying to take anything
Speaker 1: away from these ladies' ability, but they're clearly not being
Speaker 1: paid for their basketball skills so much as their skill
Speaker 1: at frolicking in a bikini on a beach. After all,
Speaker 1: as the article points out, top women's basketball players average
Speaker 1: and nearly thirty points per game. Now, Hayley Camder scored
Speaker 1: about twelve points per game. It was pretty impressive. Her
Speaker 1: last year at Miami, Hannah average about four points per game.
Speaker 1: Another top female earner, Olivia Dunn, is an excellent gymnast.
Speaker 1: It was distinguished herself at Louisiana State on the uneven
Speaker 1: bars in particular. But it's not like she's Olympian caliber
Speaker 1: good at the sport. She is, however, Olympian caliber good
Speaker 1: at Instagram, where she posts exactly like your typical Instagram
Speaker 1: model and has wrapped up over four million followers. The
Speaker 1: branding incentives on the men's side are apparently a little
Speaker 1: bit different, seemingly a bit more related to actual athletic performance,
Speaker 1: but even here ultimately all comes down to your ability
Speaker 1: to brand, and for the guys, having a famous last
Speaker 1: name that seems to be the ultimate trump card there.
Speaker 1: The top earners on the men's side are Lebron James's
Speaker 1: son Brownie, and Peyton Manning's nephew Arch.
Speaker 4: Of course, none of this should have been remotely.
Speaker 1: Surprising to anyone who actually thought it through. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember years ago there was kind of a similar
Speaker 1: panic about the fact that tennis player and A Kornakova
Speaker 1: was one of the best known and highest paid female
Speaker 1: athletes in the world, even though her tennis ranking topped
Speaker 1: out at eighth in the world and she never actually won.
Speaker 4: A singles title.
Speaker 1: But she was gorgeous, and she was blonde, and she
Speaker 1: knew how to work a camera, even though this was
Speaker 1: the pre social media age. No casual scroll through the
Speaker 1: list of top paid women's athletes today reveals a remarkably
Speaker 1: similar dynamic. Sponsorship deals aren't just about appearance, it's more
Speaker 1: about overall brand. But being hot certainly doesn't hurt. Just
Speaker 1: ask number three on the list freestyle skier Eileen Goo,
Speaker 1: who is both an incredible Olympic gold medalist and also
Speaker 1: exceptionally beautiful. Number one on the list actually in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two was tennis player Naomi Osaka, who has a
Speaker 1: look and a story that fashion mags fell all over
Speaker 1: themselves to feature. Brands aid it up completely. She's currently
Speaker 1: ranked in the four hundreds in tennis, but as of
Speaker 1: last year at least, she was the absolute top in
Speaker 1: terms of female earnings. Now, I don't think any of
Speaker 1: these people, not the covender twins or osccer or the
Speaker 1: cute gymnast girl Instagram model, I don't think they should
Speaker 1: feel bad about any of this. As they say, don't
Speaker 1: hate the player, hate the games. Haley and Hannah, they
Speaker 1: were asked about the fundamental unfairness of their fame and
Speaker 1: fortune as opposed to other superior, more impressive athletes, and
Speaker 1: they were appropriately apologetic about the system and about their privilege.
Speaker 4: Hannah told the Free Press quote, I mean.
Speaker 1: Obviously, yes, this is a touchy subject, but I think
Speaker 1: that we are privileged in a way. Obviously we don't
Speaker 1: deal with the same things that other women deal with
Speaker 1: or other people deal with, and that's just how our
Speaker 1: world is, and it's awful. They also don't expressed an
Speaker 1: awareness of how fleeting their Instagram model coom sports star
Speaker 1: celebrity might actually be. After all, they just graduated and
Speaker 1: they are not headed to the WNBA. So an uncertain
Speaker 1: future in a fickle capitalist marketplace where reblans can die
Speaker 1: in an instant that's already staring them right.
Speaker 4: In the face.
Speaker 1: To me, the whole situation is pretty revealing. Shows the
Speaker 1: distance between what we tell ourselves we value merit, hard work, excellence,
Speaker 1: and what we actually value. After all, these sponsors and
Speaker 1: these athletes, they're just responding to what the human beings
Speaker 1: who make up the market actually want. It also shows
Speaker 1: you the kind of twisted supposed meritocracies are actually built,
Speaker 1: even in the best of cases.
Speaker 4: In the free market.
Speaker 1: On Wall Street, for example, we would theoretically, an ideal
Speaker 1: world want to reward stability, ethics, competence. Instead, cheaters and
Speaker 1: reckless risk takers win the price. In corporate America, we
Speaker 1: want to reward innovation concern for employees, but instead we
Speaker 1: reward the biggest ladder climbing psychopaths who are best at
Speaker 1: ringing markets into monopolies. Don't be mad at these girls
Speaker 1: for getting their bag. Still better that at least some
Speaker 1: athletes can monetize their labor in some way. But let's
Speaker 1: not pretend this is anything approaching economic power for the
Speaker 1: vast majority of extraordinary student athletes.
Speaker 3: Sager.
Speaker 2: As you know, and if you want to hear my
Speaker 2: reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 2: breakingpoints dot com. We're very excited to have the panel
Speaker 2: back here on Breaking Points.
Speaker 4: We got too historic.
Speaker 3: He's an historic moment.
Speaker 2: Many people are saying, We've got two fantastic guests. Ryan
Speaker 2: Gerdosky's a political consultant and author, and we've got Sam
Speaker 2: Mangold Lennett.
Speaker 3: He is a staff editor over at the Federalists.
Speaker 2: Guys, we've been hyping this one up big, so we
Speaker 2: appreciate you. You're a first thing in studio, guests, I
Speaker 2: already think it looks pretty nice. Let's go and see
Speaker 2: that beautiful wide shot people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeahs operate than the old set one you would
Speaker 1: have guests on.
Speaker 3: I'm loving it a lot.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the reason you guys are here is we
Speaker 2: wanted to do a panel about America First, the case
Speaker 2: for Ron DeSantis and for Trump. And it's I think
Speaker 2: an interesting way to approach it because the way that
Speaker 2: most of the media talks about this, they leave kind
Speaker 2: of the policy out and then they just focus on
Speaker 2: the politics. We're actually going to put the politics second
Speaker 2: and focus a little bit on a policy. Ran I
Speaker 2: want to start with you. You're somebody who's been active
Speaker 2: in the movement now for quite a long time. You're
Speaker 2: somebody who no, you're not old, he's not old.
Speaker 3: It looks great here on the Capra.
Speaker 2: But Ryan, you were somebody who were making the case
Speaker 2: on America first, even very very early days twenty fifteen onwards,
Speaker 2: somebody who's voiced some support now for Governor Ron de Santis.
Speaker 3: So I think it'd be valuable to start with.
Speaker 2: You and kind of layout what is America first, and
Speaker 2: why does Ron Desant just kind of fit into that vision. Well.
Speaker 5: I think that we've had now several decades of the
Speaker 5: people running our government putting working class people last and
Speaker 5: oftentimes working for the idea for their own ideas and
Speaker 5: their own narratives about globalism or international organizations, international peace missions.
Speaker 5: And lost in that is the fact that working class
Speaker 5: people in this country, they have died earlier than they
Speaker 5: have in decades. They're poorer than they have been in decades.
Speaker 5: They don't have real material wealth as they had. A
Speaker 5: lot of their children who have famed these wars and
Speaker 5: are now coming back addicted to fedanol. I think that
Speaker 5: I think that Trump did a great job at breaking
Speaker 5: through the Republican narrative, the long standing Republican ARA and
Speaker 5: the dates back to Reagan. However, when he was president,
Speaker 5: he didn't do many of those things. He hired people
Speaker 5: that he either was related to or that was brought
Speaker 5: to him by the RNC, and that was really really
Speaker 5: bad for a lot of things. We never got a wall,
Speaker 5: we never got most of his immigration policies. The factories
Speaker 5: jobs that had come back, they didn't go to the Midwest.
Speaker 5: We didn't get infrastructure. I mean, Washington lovespent money, he
Speaker 5: couldn't even get them to spend money on infrastructure. And
Speaker 5: I think we need somebody more capable and more understanding
Speaker 5: of how to use the lovers of power in the
Speaker 5: direction we want to go.
Speaker 3: And I think that's Ron Desanta's.
Speaker 2: Sam, why don't you go ahead America first kind of
Speaker 2: how do you disagree with anything that Ryan just laid
Speaker 2: out there, and then give us the case for Trump
Speaker 2: within the America First framework.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I agree with what Ryan said about the
Speaker 6: left behind Americans. I think of it as a complete
Speaker 6: and utter prioritization of the people who really are the
Speaker 6: better rock of the nation. You know, working class Americans
Speaker 6: grow the food, They build the stuff here, or at
Speaker 6: least they used to build the stuff here before we
Speaker 6: stop building stuff here. I think there are valid concerns
Speaker 6: about staffing in the former Trump administration, and I think
Speaker 6: a lot of those concerns will be remedied moving forward
Speaker 6: should Trump be the forty seventh president. But I do
Speaker 6: understand the concern I think it's also imperative to note
Speaker 6: that the political moment we're in in the conservative movement
Speaker 6: is entirely because of the Mega movement. It's entirely Trump's
Speaker 6: paradigm that's built around his brand, or not his personal brand,
Speaker 6: but his political movement.
Speaker 1: So, Ryan, let me push you a little bit on
Speaker 1: DeSantis here, And obviously, like I don't really have a
Speaker 1: dog in this fight.
Speaker 4: You guys are on different team than me.
Speaker 1: But in terms of DeSantis, his legislative track record is
Speaker 1: very much of that standard no conservative. You know, he's
Speaker 1: many times talked about or he wants to cut so
Speaker 1: security and raise the age, he wants to cut Medicare
Speaker 1: and you know, debt and the deficit, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was very much in line with sort of the
Speaker 1: standard views on foreign policy, the kind of John McCain
Speaker 1: type neocon.
Speaker 4: Views on foreign policy.
Speaker 1: So and even now, it's not like what he's running
Speaker 1: on is a restoration of the working class. He's running
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to make Florida's the place where
Speaker 1: what goes to die. And he's fixated more on the
Speaker 1: cultural side of the conservative spectrum. So what makes you
Speaker 1: think that he fits with that working class vision that you.
Speaker 5: Had well when he was governor. One of the things
Speaker 5: that he did Forlorida is a very expensive state to
Speaker 5: live in. Now, there's a lot of people who moved
Speaker 5: there was. He did the hometown Heroes Law, which is
Speaker 5: if you're a nurse, or if you're a firefighter or
Speaker 5: a policeman or a teacher and you have to live
Speaker 5: close to the centative a very expensive place, the state
Speaker 5: helps paper your down payment of your house. He suspended
Speaker 5: sales taxes on baby items for working class mothers. They
Speaker 5: did a lot of stuff that was towards working class people.
Speaker 5: Is he running and messaging on it the correct way.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: I like to sit there and seem to do more.
Speaker 5: But I think that the intentions and the conversations that
Speaker 5: he's having, I think there's some in capable of actually
Speaker 5: executing that. It's going to be the Santas more so
Speaker 5: than Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Well, so that's Sam. Let's talk about the staffing that
Speaker 2: you were saying. Ryan and I were quite literally covering
Speaker 2: it a lot of it at the time. I personally
Speaker 2: observed interviewed Trump four sepperate times. He always seemed to
Speaker 2: care much more about his own personal issues than really
Speaker 2: kind of the movement issues that you're talking about. You
Speaker 2: described it his movement and not as personal. What makes
Speaker 2: you think that given the way the demands, loyalty tests
Speaker 2: and hiring his relatives who don't necessarily face the hemergrad
Speaker 2: but who don't close Crystal they are let's just let's yeah,
Speaker 2: I will let Riot say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But you know, I think that's a fair criticism.
Speaker 2: What gives you the confidence that Jared Kusher is not
Speaker 2: going to come right back into the White House Rice's
Speaker 2: previous won't be the chief of staff again? Why do
Speaker 2: you have such confidence in a second term rather than
Speaker 2: what happened in the first term and we all saw it.
Speaker 6: So in regard to Jerry Kushner, I think he's distanced
Speaker 6: himself pretty far from this go around, just for whatever
Speaker 6: personal reasons. There's also the whole, you know, punished Trump
Speaker 6: arc aspect of it. There's the whole drive for I
Speaker 6: don't say revenge, but the want for a comeback type thing.
Speaker 3: They are.
Speaker 6: He's surrounding himself, from my understanding, with people who are
Speaker 6: better able to sniff out the land mines, which frankly
Speaker 6: should have been from the get go, But being a
Speaker 6: political outsetter, there's a bit of naivity with that. So
Speaker 6: my understanding is that with a healthy dose dose of
Speaker 6: skepticism and cynicism, they'll be able to better replaced their
Speaker 6: feet and they were the first time around.
Speaker 3: Ryan, what's your pase totally disagree with that.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's got Christmas Slivida, who is the chief
Speaker 5: political person, the guy who was from Paul Ryan's campaign
Speaker 5: and he ran Tony Gonzalez for Congress and Ohio who
Speaker 5: voted for impeachment. It's his number one political guy right now.
Speaker 5: AFPI American Principal of America. Whatever the whole AFPI think
Speaker 5: tank is, they're going to staff the White House. They
Speaker 5: were created from Jared Kushner's number two in the White House.
Speaker 5: So it's all Jared Kushner people left and right. And
Speaker 5: Trump's demand for an arc for a redemption is not
Speaker 5: that he's going to finally give into his base. It's
Speaker 5: going to finally earn love from the media. That's who
Speaker 5: he's really appealing to. I mean, Trump would much more
Speaker 5: care about a positive headline from Maggie Haberman then from
Speaker 5: the Daytona Weekly, and like that's just the truth. So
Speaker 5: when he gets in there, I mean, what was he
Speaker 5: working on right before he left office?
Speaker 3: An amnesty?
Speaker 5: There's no evidence whatsoever that he wouldn't just do that
Speaker 5: because he's finally going to get the love from the morning,
Speaker 5: Joe will have a great segment on him saying, Wow,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, he finally did. He'll get all the love
Speaker 5: he finally wants from the people who hate him the most.
Speaker 3: Which is all he craves.
Speaker 5: And there's that sociopathic cynicism.
Speaker 3: That he just can't help himself.
Speaker 5: He can't control his his fingers on truth social he
Speaker 5: can't control his mouth in public. There's no evidence whatsoever
Speaker 5: he's gonna be able to control anything. And you know,
Speaker 5: and Jarald will be going to foreign countries, probably bribing
Speaker 5: them for more money like he did with the Kataris
Speaker 5: and the Saudies, so like he's Hunter Bider without the
Speaker 5: kids and the hookers. Like that is basically what you're
Speaker 5: looking at with the Trump family. And there's only so
Speaker 5: much more that we could sit there and say, no,
Speaker 5: this time, he's going to get it right. He's seventy seven.
Speaker 5: Now that's the magic number.
Speaker 3: What do you say, Sam, I mean, I totally understand
Speaker 3: the cynicism.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I would just highlight that I don't I
Speaker 6: mean not to you know, bring the personal personalities into it.
Speaker 3: I don't see how.
Speaker 6: Any Republican administration would be able to avoid any land
Speaker 6: mines put by bureaucrats or the deep state or whatever.
Speaker 6: I just don't see how it is Santis administration can
Speaker 6: back sniff things out.
Speaker 1: That actually kind of gets to the question I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask both of you guys, which is, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to see why you have any faith in
Speaker 1: either one of these guys to actually deliver for the
Speaker 1: working class when.
Speaker 4: You know we've seen post Trump.
Speaker 1: First of all, Trump's major accomplishment in office is a
Speaker 1: giant tax break, too, like the wealthiest Americans overwhelming.
Speaker 5: Well, he let criminals out of prison too. Don't forget
Speaker 5: that was a second.
Speaker 1: I support criminal justice reform, but I know you have
Speaker 1: a different position on that. But I mean, but that's
Speaker 1: his biggest accomplishment in office is a giant tax cut.
Speaker 1: Why because that's all the infrastructure that backs the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: You know, they had that tax cut. He's incompetent, but
Speaker 1: they had that tax cut locked and loaded, ready to go.
Speaker 1: And those are the still the institutions that run the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. And you see it with you know, the
Speaker 1: current House Republican Caucus. Yeah, they were sort of shamed
Speaker 1: into claiming, oh, we're not going to touch those security
Speaker 1: in Medicare state headline today, they're plotting like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: how can we actually cut social Security and medicare? The
Speaker 1: elites in the Republican Party have not changed. NA say
Speaker 1: this is backed by those elites. I mean his you know,
Speaker 1: he's very it's very much a donor play from Ronda Santis.
Speaker 1: Trump has more grassroots based support, but there's no track
Speaker 1: record for him actually delivering on any of the things
Speaker 1: that might help working class people. So it's just not
Speaker 1: clear to me why you would think either.
Speaker 4: Of these people would deliver it.
Speaker 5: But if it was a donor play, Desandas would not
Speaker 5: have done e verify. The donors are screaming, don't do it.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't have done the pro life thing.
Speaker 1: Folded on Ukraine, right, I mean he got pushed back
Speaker 1: on Ukraine. He was uncomfortable. Was that clearly was pressure
Speaker 1: from the drum. Just look where he gets his money.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I'm saying it's a donor play.
Speaker 1: Is just listen, we all know how Washington works, right,
Speaker 1: I guess you know that those are the people whose
Speaker 1: calls he will take. Those are the people calls they
Speaker 1: complains not even running on the things that you want
Speaker 1: him to run on. So what makes you.
Speaker 4: Think that he's gonna like, what makes you think.
Speaker 1: That if you're not even if you run on it,
Speaker 1: there's like a small chance you might do it when
Speaker 1: you're off, you're not even talking about it, like it's.
Speaker 4: Not gonna happen.
Speaker 5: Okay, there are three things that the donors said don't
Speaker 5: do this year Disney.
Speaker 3: He did it. He verified he did it. Abortion, he
Speaker 3: did it.
Speaker 5: So what evidence is there that he's going to cowtow
Speaker 5: to the donors? And Nikki Hilly's criticism to him was
Speaker 5: you got money from them, how could you possibly hurt them?
Speaker 5: Come to South Carolina Disney? That was her little like,
Speaker 5: how dare you defy the donors?
Speaker 3: That's her attack.
Speaker 5: So if he's balance the donors, he's doing a bad job.
Speaker 2: That's a fair point. He's kicked on some of their stuff.
Speaker 2: Crystal's right that he did fold a little bit on Ukraine,
Speaker 2: which was different.
Speaker 5: He doesn't have a very very well thought out policy,
Speaker 5: and he said point blank it might be over by
Speaker 5: the time it become president.
Speaker 3: So I.
Speaker 1: Liked that.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, so given that though Ryan, in terms of the
Speaker 2: donor support, it is on you know Ken Griffin, many
Speaker 2: of the other elites, billionaires in the Republican Party, they
Speaker 2: do support Rond DeSantis. How do you why do you
Speaker 2: have confidence that he will be better able to kick
Speaker 2: their influence than Trump did.
Speaker 5: If you look at what donors have said about him,
Speaker 5: it's the constant he doesn't take our phone calls he does.
Speaker 5: That's what the billionaire from New York, the Greek guy,
Speaker 5: he's like, I'm not giving him because he doesn't take
Speaker 5: my phone calls. It doesn't return of my phone calls.
Speaker 5: It's a constant complain about him. He's not personal. He
Speaker 5: doesn't show up at my events.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about him being like socially awkward basically.
Speaker 5: But it's not socially awkward. Well, that's the accusation I've been.
Speaker 5: I mean, it wasn't that socially awkward. I know people
Speaker 5: way wars, but go to the streets of Washington. Yes,
Speaker 5: that's true, but it's not that it's not social. It's
Speaker 5: not he's not owned by them. And if he was,
Speaker 5: I mean, he verified. Is one of the hardest things
Speaker 5: you could do in Flora. Between the agricultural lobby, the
Speaker 5: tourism lobby, and the construction industry, and he still managed
Speaker 5: to do it. And they were all pressuring him and
Speaker 5: the Florida GOP, and he did it and he was like, no,
Speaker 5: you can't have illegal stealing jobs from American workers. And
Speaker 5: I mean it got past amazingly because I didn't think
Speaker 5: it was going to right.
Speaker 2: So Sam, I think that's also a fair point though,
Speaker 2: is that while Trump was in office, Steve Schwartzman's on
Speaker 2: the phone, Rupert Murdock's on the phone, he loved getting
Speaker 2: the praise from all of the donor class, like while
Speaker 2: he was there. I actually person witnessed it whenever some
Speaker 2: of these guys were there, and the way you would
Speaker 2: suck up to them, the fortune five hundred CEOs.
Speaker 3: Why do you have confidence that's not going to happen
Speaker 3: this time around?
Speaker 6: Oh, I want to push back on something real quick.
Speaker 6: I think a major reason why DeSantis was able to
Speaker 6: accomplish a very successful and great legislative agenda was because
Speaker 6: he had a very ideologically aligned of Florida legislature. There's
Speaker 6: no guarantee that success would translate over to to Congress.
Speaker 6: That success was able to be achieved because Florida was
Speaker 6: aligned with him and coalesced around him. I am very
Speaker 6: skeptical that success could be achieved at the national level.
Speaker 6: I hope it could, but I don't think it would
Speaker 6: be as smooth as butter as it was in Florida.
Speaker 3: Absolutely true.
Speaker 5: But what you could do is you could do a
Speaker 5: schedule f and start firing people who are bureaucrats. There's
Speaker 5: things an executive actually can do that can fire bureaucrats.
Speaker 5: They can move agencies to different locations and let the
Speaker 5: bureaucrats not want to go to the Middle Omaha or whatever,
Speaker 5: for sure, and that's what Trump for that one I
Speaker 5: think was Interior or something the fear of land man,
Speaker 5: but yeah, that's what he did, and move them out
Speaker 5: of DC and people did not apply for their job.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's things that you could sit there and
Speaker 5: do as the executive. You could do schedule there's a
Speaker 5: couple of schedules you could do to sit there and
Speaker 5: get rid of bureaucrats who defy you and hold you back.
Speaker 3: That's totally possible.
Speaker 5: Is it possible every legislative agenda through with a sixty
Speaker 5: vote threshold? Probably not, But with a lot of the
Speaker 5: issues that I care about, immigration, trade, foreign policy, you
Speaker 5: don't need Congress.
Speaker 1: Let me just write the last thing Ryan on this part,
Speaker 1: and then I want to move to the horse race
Speaker 1: part and look at the poles and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: But I guess Ryan, when I look at DeSantis and
Speaker 1: try to take my own like ideological view out of it,
Speaker 1: I just see a guy who's trying to find the
Speaker 1: spot for like.
Speaker 4: He's twisting in the wind.
Speaker 1: I mean, when it was cool to be a Reagan
Speaker 1: Conservative and a Neocon, that's what he was. Now he
Speaker 1: sees the rise of Trump, He's like, Ah, that's that's the.
Speaker 4: Thing I need to get in on.
Speaker 1: So let me try to be that thing, and let
Speaker 1: me try to copycat Trump and even his mannerisms and
Speaker 1: whatever he would try to copy rhetorically. Okay, And so
Speaker 1: what gives you confidence that, if you know, the worm
Speaker 1: turns a little bit more and some of the issues
Speaker 1: that you care about fall out of fashion again, and
Speaker 1: he's under pressure from whoever, from the public, et cetera,
Speaker 1: that there's actually a core ideological commitment to any of this.
Speaker 5: Well, a lot of people try to be like Trump
Speaker 5: after twenty sixteen, and what they thought being Trump was
Speaker 5: was being an asshole on social media and being allowed
Speaker 5: and abrasive and still voting for tax cuts.
Speaker 3: And that's it.
Speaker 5: Like the Maga inc brand that some of the worst
Speaker 5: politicians in the country have on them is literally just
Speaker 5: Bushism with a different bumper sticker. What I and a
Speaker 5: lot of governors do the same thing too. Dessanta's didn't
Speaker 5: do that. Dsanda's really reformed education. It wasn't just about
Speaker 5: black and school choice and don't worry about it and whatever.
Speaker 3: He got into the policy weeds. I did.
Speaker 5: I do my school board elections. I have done over
Speaker 5: three hundred nationwide. The only two elected officials have ever
Speaker 5: called me to ask me about it, and one was
Speaker 5: de sand As.
Speaker 3: He was the first one.
Speaker 5: So he really does care about process and in depth
Speaker 5: things and he does not have to go as far
Speaker 5: as he has. When did we ever think, as in
Speaker 5: the two thousands, that Florida would be considered the free
Speaker 5: state in Texas would end?
Speaker 3: Yeah? That I think that's a.
Speaker 5: Massive change under one person's administration, only one person.
Speaker 2: That's round to say, Sam, I want to actually give
Speaker 2: you a similar version of that, which is with Trump.
Speaker 2: You know, like you said, we've all had experience with Trump.
Speaker 2: We've watched him change his mind constantly, both on the
Speaker 2: chorus issues to Republicans from like reagnite Republicans, but also
Speaker 2: even on trade, on many of these immigration, any of
Speaker 2: these issues, amnesty. Considering that, why do you have confidence
Speaker 2: that this man will actually do even some of what
Speaker 2: you want him to do when he's in office when
Speaker 2: we already had four years. We didn't accomplish much of it.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just staff. Much of it was also up
Speaker 2: to him personally.
Speaker 6: I think on trade in particular. In particular, it was
Speaker 6: one of the more consistent aspects. I think that's really
Speaker 6: his strong suit is the economic populism, and that's part
Speaker 6: of the reason why so many working class Americans are
Speaker 6: hopeful because of him. He actually represents, at least culturally,
Speaker 6: what they need, what they yearn for. You know, there
Speaker 6: is no obviously no guarantee in anything in politics. I'm
Speaker 6: not going to bet the house on anything, Yeah, but
Speaker 6: I think there is. That is his strength is going
Speaker 6: to war for the economic populism. We got the USMC
Speaker 6: trade deal out of him, and that renegotiated NAFTA, which
Speaker 6: gutted the Midwest. I think that's a major reason to
Speaker 6: be optimistic for a future Trump administration.
Speaker 1: All right, let's turn to the politics and control erm
Speaker 1: I actually want to start with.
Speaker 4: I think it's the third.
Speaker 1: Element showing Trump's losses in the midterms and how his
Speaker 1: candidates struggled, because for any of this to matter, your
Speaker 1: guys got to be able to win an election. And
Speaker 1: one of the cases that the Desantist team is trying
Speaker 1: to make is like, well, listen, we are the We
Speaker 1: don't have all of this ingrained hatred of more than
Speaker 1: half the country against us. We think we could win
Speaker 1: back some of the suburban voters or who whoever it
Speaker 1: is that we want back in the coalition, so we
Speaker 1: are a better bet for the fall. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there is some evidence of that, given the fact that
Speaker 1: in the midterms, the Trump bat candidates performed very poorly.
Speaker 4: The candidates who were you know.
Speaker 1: The most in un stop the steal that appeared to
Speaker 1: be a real albatross. And on the other hand, Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis one in Florida, which not so long ago was
Speaker 1: a swing state, and he won really easily, and actually
Speaker 1: all Florida Republicans did quite well. It was quite a
Speaker 1: standout as opposed to the rest of the country. So
Speaker 1: what makes you think that your guy, as he's facing
Speaker 1: multiple indictments and all of this other chaos that constantly
Speaker 1: swirls around him and makes a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: hate him, what makes you think he could even make
Speaker 1: it back to the White House.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, the midterms were very disappointing. I don't
Speaker 6: think anybody would deny that. I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 6: because of Trump himself. I think a lot of it
Speaker 6: is the political environment we were in. You know, you
Speaker 6: did have people who campaigned way too heavily on stop
Speaker 6: the steal, on it was stolen, things like that, And
Speaker 6: I do think Trump through punches he shouldn't have thrown
Speaker 6: like I think it was Dan Boddock in Uh I'm sure, yes,
Speaker 6: thank you. That was a fight that was totally unnecessary.
Speaker 6: But you know, that's just how things shook out. In
Speaker 6: the case of Arizona, you know, there was their funding
Speaker 6: issues in general, campaigning issues in Michigan, there was the
Speaker 6: abortion ballot referendum that really boosted Gretchen Whitmer and hurt
Speaker 6: Tutor Dixon. Yeah, and then there were just you know,
Speaker 6: quirky personalities on ballots across the country.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 6: A little too many memes on the official campaign pages.
Speaker 6: But I think the culture is a big driver for Trump.
Speaker 6: I think people are increasingly less motivated by actual nuanced
Speaker 6: political issues. I think they're more motivated by by vibes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I actually agree.
Speaker 6: There's a reason why he got a boost after the indictment,
Speaker 6: after every single negative news.
Speaker 1: Cycle boost the Republican primary, which general electorate.
Speaker 4: It's I think a very very different.
Speaker 2: Deal, right, yeah, right, And I see you want to
Speaker 2: tell me about the question. I don't know, Okay, it
Speaker 2: was just it was just I think on the Desantas
Speaker 2: front is I do think that his strongest case, at
Speaker 2: least somebody like me.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm a winner. You think you can call
Speaker 3: me whatever you want. But as you just said, he
Speaker 3: won Florida by twenty points. That's insane. Like within he
Speaker 3: won Florida by twenty points.
Speaker 5: He is never, in his entire political career ever underperformed
Speaker 5: an election cycle. So when the state, when the nation
Speaker 5: was a D plus way year in t eighteen, he
Speaker 5: won by less than one all right. In his congressional runs,
Speaker 5: he always outperformed the nation.
Speaker 4: So let's talk to you about the primary.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put the poll up on the
Speaker 1: screen of where things stand today.
Speaker 4: That's the first element. Donald Trump at fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Percent, and this is with the broader field, but it
Speaker 1: you know, still has him up over fifty percent. Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis at nineteen percent according to Morning consult Listen
Speaker 1: the polls, you know, they're take them with the grain
Speaker 1: of salt, but consistently the polls show Trump at this
Speaker 1: point with quite a sizeable lead. In fact, the polling
Speaker 1: looks pretty close to Biden versus RFK Junior at this
Speaker 1: point in terms of where Ron DeSantis stands. So one
Speaker 1: of the things we've talked about here is when Trump
Speaker 1: gets indicted, as Sam just pointed out, it really seems
Speaker 1: to harden and coalesce Republican Party around him. You know,
Speaker 1: they see him as under threat, they want to rally
Speaker 1: to his side. Sucks up all the media oxygen. DeSantis
Speaker 1: is put in impossible position of basically having to like,
Speaker 1: you know, bend the need to him on the indictment
Speaker 1: stuff and make it even more about him. So how
Speaker 1: do you actually win over the Republican Party and convince
Speaker 1: the base that they should want to move on from
Speaker 1: someone who they still really love and admire.
Speaker 5: Well, the polls show that Desanta's is not negatively viewed.
Speaker 5: He's very favorite with you, and he as everyone's second choice.
Speaker 5: I think that the electorate on both sides of the
Speaker 5: aisle is very reactionary. They love who the media tells
Speaker 5: them to hate and it is They're not telling them
Speaker 5: to hate dissantas anymore, and that I think part of it.
Speaker 5: And also time has healed the wounds of Trump's losing
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty two so badly. Yeah, people have just
Speaker 5: kind of forgotten.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: He nominated that insane man in Pennsylvania who said we
Speaker 5: should imprison women who want to get abortions and kick
Speaker 5: everyone off the voting rolls. That was the land was like,
Speaker 5: We're going to clear the whole voter rolls, and wed
Speaker 5: that crazy lady who vacuumed for him in Arizona as leadership.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I like, I mean, I didn't even see
Speaker 1: Carrie like vacuumed for.
Speaker 5: Before he walked on. She personally vacuumed. Oh, it's just
Speaker 5: and he just nominated the Wisconsin guy who was like
Speaker 5: drooling from the mouth and the lady. The lady ran
Speaker 5: for Secretary of State of Alabama who's now running this
Speaker 5: Michigan brother who's now running the state party, and she's
Speaker 5: completely insane, and yeah, the is all everyone's forgotten, like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, he lost and he lost bad, and he
Speaker 5: lost all these people and every state that he lost
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty, all of his canisl loss, with the
Speaker 5: exception of the Lieutenant Gonor of Georgia.
Speaker 3: Herschel Walker didn't even want to run for office. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was like, yeah, I'll do it. I guess.
Speaker 5: I mean, I got nothing going on a Wednesday. That's
Speaker 5: literally the team that he assembled. So I think that
Speaker 5: you have to. I think Desanta's should be taking more
Speaker 5: adversary interviews.
Speaker 1: How would you I think he has to because he has.
Speaker 4: To take risks.
Speaker 1: Yes, what do you think of like how he's handled
Speaker 1: the indict How would you advise him to handle these indictments?
Speaker 1: Because I do think it creates sort of an impossible
Speaker 1: situation for them because so much of the media focus
Speaker 1: is on it. It does I agree with you the
Speaker 1: base response to like, the media hates this guy, so
Speaker 1: we love him, and you know, not only does it
Speaker 1: suck up the oxygen, but if you're trying to defeat
Speaker 1: this person. But you're spending a lot of time having
Speaker 1: to bolster what they're the arguments that they're making.
Speaker 4: How do you get out of that?
Speaker 6: Bubby?
Speaker 5: I think the problem with the end, well, this indictment,
Speaker 5: the one in Florida is much of the one in
Speaker 5: New York. The New York one is a complete nonsense joke,
Speaker 5: but the one in Florida is.
Speaker 4: Very it's more progressed.
Speaker 5: Sixty sixty two and thirty thirty four of the indictment
Speaker 5: is literally I don't know how he's going to get.
Speaker 3: Out of it.
Speaker 5: But I think that having said that, I think that
Speaker 5: the one thing you said people are mad at the
Speaker 5: indictment not because they think Trump is a you know,
Speaker 5: a boy scout and he's so honorable and wouldn't do
Speaker 5: with this. It's that why isn't Hillary Clinton in jail?
Speaker 5: That's what frustrates them. I mean, just Sandon should sit
Speaker 5: there inside. Would press the intelligence. I'm intelligent, my FBI
Speaker 5: and my YEAH and my DOJ to reinvestigate Hillary Clinton
Speaker 5: breaking up information with hammers and also looking into Joe
Speaker 5: and Hunter Biden. If there was an equal level of justice,
Speaker 5: people would not be this upset.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, Ryan, So let's talk though, sam
Speaker 2: My last thing on politics of it.
Speaker 3: The indictment is a problem.
Speaker 2: As Ryan said, I mean you lay it out and look,
Speaker 2: both of us were very critical of the Manhattan indictment
Speaker 2: looking at all this being like, listen, this is bs,
Speaker 2: especially when you compare it to Florida and with the
Speaker 2: classified documents case in the general election. We have to
Speaker 2: admit there is still a lot of faith and you know,
Speaker 2: the rule of law, and you know when somebody's indeted,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh my gosh, you know, an alleged felon
Speaker 2: all this, how can Trump politically get past this specter?
Speaker 2: As we appointed previously, it's about movement, It shouldn't be
Speaker 2: about him, but almost all of the coverage is about
Speaker 2: him and his personal issues. How does he get past
Speaker 2: that to a general election to the suburban voters who
Speaker 2: he actually lost in twenty twenty and were ultimately the
Speaker 2: reason why he lost the election.
Speaker 6: I think it's going to rely on altern of the media. Brankly,
Speaker 6: I think it's going to rely on the Internet because
Speaker 6: obviously corporate media isn't going to cover it. It's not
Speaker 6: gonna You're not going to hear anything about you know,
Speaker 6: actual policy from CNN or MSNBCN.
Speaker 2: No arguments, but they exist, right, and a lot of people,
Speaker 2: a lot of Boomers specifically, watch and those are the
Speaker 2: people who vote. And so you know for those people,
Speaker 2: you know, the people who I forget what the district
Speaker 2: is called, the things like Omaha Nebraska two or something
Speaker 2: like that, which Trump ended up losing in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I mean, these were big stunarts because these were people
Speaker 2: who otherwise were also voting for republic or like Mitt
Speaker 2: Romney type Republicans who were willing to vote and cross
Speaker 2: for Biden for the first time in their lives.
Speaker 3: Those people, they get pissed off from that. I just
Speaker 3: say one things.
Speaker 5: From twenty ten to twenty sixteen, Republicans won the independent
Speaker 5: vote in every single election, and they have not won.
Speaker 5: Instance twenty sixteen, part of the reason Trump won was
Speaker 5: because America truly hated Hillary Clinton. Yes, and we have
Speaker 5: to just admit that that is part of it. They
Speaker 5: do not hate Biden the same. They think that he's
Speaker 5: too old, they think that he is too inefficient, they
Speaker 5: think that he is probably senile, and they have absolutely
Speaker 5: no love for Kamala Harris at all. She is you know,
Speaker 5: black Asian Hillary, So that.
Speaker 2: Is she's not anyway, we don't accept her daily week
Speaker 2: she's black raging.
Speaker 5: So she's Black Asian Hillary, and that is problematic. And
Speaker 5: if the election is about Joe Biden, he is not
Speaker 5: going to win reelection. The only person who could take
Speaker 5: the attention away from Joe Biden is Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: I think kind of circle back a little bit. I
Speaker 6: think a way for Desantist to major ly boot himself
Speaker 6: in the polls would be to, you know, offer a
Speaker 6: hypothetical pardon should Trump end up.
Speaker 5: He's already done that. Yeah, he said I will pardon
Speaker 5: Trump from this. And I mean, if we're going to
Speaker 5: give everyone the Richard Nixon status quo and say every
Speaker 5: president is not going to go to jail, we're not
Speaker 5: going to be like other countries even first of all
Speaker 5: countries where prisions go to jail, right, then that's then
Speaker 5: that's the standard. Then everyone just that's just cause we
Speaker 5: get out of jump free card.
Speaker 3: We don't.
Speaker 6: We haven't seen, at least I don't believe we've seen
Speaker 6: the ceiling of DeSantis is pulling. It's still very early
Speaker 6: on and uh, you know this this morning, Consopt Consopt
Speaker 6: consult jeez. Uh so this was near the bottom of
Speaker 6: where he was pulling since it started tracking. Yea, So
Speaker 6: the ceiling I think is far from being reached and
Speaker 6: it's still very early on, so interesting to see what happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's fair and this kind of gets
Speaker 2: ran in my last question to you, can we throw
Speaker 2: the second element up there, guys, please on the screen
Speaker 2: where they were talking about how whether DeSantis is the
Speaker 2: Wine Track candidate or not?
Speaker 3: What they get to here?
Speaker 2: And it's actually an intelligent point, Ryan is it's so
Speaker 2: far the vast majority of DeSantis support, or really of
Speaker 2: non Trump support, generally comes from college educated Republicans who
Speaker 2: are much more likely to vote for Romney. So, as
Speaker 2: someone who has worked on the side of wanting to
Speaker 2: push the Republican Party in a more working class direction,
Speaker 2: you don't work for the Chances campaign, what would your advice.
Speaker 3: To them be? How do they make sure that they
Speaker 3: don't have a one time I would say, we're not
Speaker 3: talking about Florida so much. Interesting. I'm so tired of
Speaker 3: hearing at Florida.
Speaker 5: Really a Florida I don't want to most if I
Speaker 5: was going to move there. It's a great tourism, to
Speaker 5: sit there and say how free Florida is, how DEI
Speaker 5: is dyeing Florida, whatever is is. I need a big
Speaker 5: national vision. It wasn't in his book, it wasn't in
Speaker 5: his campaign thus far. You need to sit there and
Speaker 5: say what are you going to do. You can't plant
Speaker 5: palm trees in Michigan, that's just not possibility. So what
Speaker 5: are you going to do for the rest of the
Speaker 5: country that doesn't want to live in Florida? The other
Speaker 5: forty nine states that has not been articulated that as well,
Speaker 5: And that vision has to include the fact that certain
Speaker 5: things have happened in the last eight years, including a
Speaker 5: Trump's president in four years, a violent crime up third
Speaker 5: for thirty years highs, and all deaths up thirty years highs.
Speaker 5: The cartel is still not being taken care of, the
Speaker 5: wall was never built, all these big things.
Speaker 3: That are really part of both.
Speaker 5: I mean, even Biden has now taken up a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, Trump stuff, which is like infrastructure whatever,
Speaker 5: But a lot of those jobs they're not going back
Speaker 5: to those places in eastern Ohio or western Pennsylvania or
Speaker 5: northern Michigan. Those towns are still decaying. They're going to
Speaker 5: you know, Atlanta, you know exactly, So it's gotta be
Speaker 5: some place something diffite like that.
Speaker 1: And Sam, similar question to you to close things out here.
Speaker 1: You know, if you were to give advice to the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign about you know, they're they're in a pretty
Speaker 1: strong position in terms of the primary, but how do
Speaker 1: you take the edge off for a general election so
Speaker 1: that you got a shot at winning the electoral college
Speaker 1: at least ideally winning the popular vote when you have
Speaker 1: emotions so hardened against him.
Speaker 6: Kind Of like what Ryan said, I think focusing on
Speaker 6: a national vision is imperative. You know, there's the agenda
Speaker 6: forty seven videos that he's been putting out that I
Speaker 6: think are pretty fascinating. They're pretty optimistic. Some of the
Speaker 6: things like flying cars, I don't think are quite achievable
Speaker 6: per se, But I think there's a lot of reason
Speaker 6: for hope in those videos. He was painting a vision
Speaker 6: for restoration, for renewal. I think giving people a reason
Speaker 6: to hope is part of the part of Trump's major appeal. Yeah,
Speaker 6: like you said, it's vibes necessarily, not policy nuance, and
Speaker 6: that's part of the reason why he was such a
Speaker 6: attractive alternative to Hillary in twenty sixteen, and I think
Speaker 6: continuing to juxtapose himself to decay, to such aggressive decay
Speaker 6: and presenting himself, as you know, the golden Tower of
Speaker 6: renewal hopefully not a Tower of battle, would be a
Speaker 6: great opportunity to do so.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, guys, we really appreciate you join us.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for your super appreciative to both of
Speaker 1: you guys for coming in, and really appreciate both your contributions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome back on the show any time, and I
Speaker 2: think the audience enjoyed the panel return. All right, that
Speaker 2: is it for us today here on Breaking Points. I
Speaker 2: hope you guys enjoyed it breaking Points dot com if
Speaker 2: you want to go ahead and help us out otherwise,
Speaker 2: we will see you all next week.
Speaker 4: Love y'all, See you next week,