Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 1: There has been quite a political drama playing out in
Speaker 1: the state of Nebraska with regard to their electoral college votes.
Speaker 1: So if you're not a total political geek, you may
Speaker 1: not know. Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral college votes
Speaker 1: in a different way than I think any other state.
Speaker 1: Instead of doing it as Twitter take all, like you
Speaker 1: win the state, you get the electoral college votes, end
Speaker 1: of story, they do it by congressional district. That means
Speaker 1: that there is a district in Nebraska which is a
Speaker 1: perennial swing congressional district that is worth one electoral college vote.
Speaker 1: So there was an effort in the Nebraska legislature to
Speaker 1: try to change the way that they did their electoral
Speaker 1: college vote allocation to put it in line with all
Speaker 1: of the other states that just do win or take all.
Speaker 1: To put this up on the screen, this is very signific.
Speaker 1: I'll get into this. It could actually end up being
Speaker 1: the difference between who wins and who loses. But you
Speaker 1: had one Republican senator who was a kind of a
Speaker 1: holdout who yesterday finally issued a statement saying he would
Speaker 1: not vote for this proposed winner take all system for
Speaker 1: Nebraska's electoral college votes. He said quote, elections should be
Speaker 1: an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter
Speaker 1: who they are, where they live, or what party they support.
Speaker 1: For decades, Nebraska's try to live up to that ideal
Speaker 1: by allocating our electoral college votes in a way that
Speaker 1: gives all Nebraskans an equal voice in choosing our president.
Speaker 1: For Omaha, the city I love and have called home
Speaker 1: for fifty eight years, it brings tremendous national attention, is
Speaker 1: impactful on our local economy, and forces presidential candidates to
Speaker 1: make their case to all Nebraskans instead of just flying
Speaker 1: over and disregarding us. In recent weeks, a conversation about
Speaker 1: whether to change how we allocate our votes has returned
Speaker 1: to the forefront. I respect the desire to have this discussion,
Speaker 1: and I have taken time to listen carefully. After deep consideration,
Speaker 1: it is clear to me that right now, forty three
Speaker 1: days from election day, is not the moment to make
Speaker 1: this change. And Sara, you can kind of understand his perspective, because, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if Nebraska didn't allocate their electoral college votes this way,
Speaker 1: no politician would ever care about campaigning in Nebraska again,
Speaker 1: which also just sort of serves to underscore what an
Speaker 1: absurd system the electoral college system is to begin with,
Speaker 1: that you only really matter in this election coming up
Speaker 1: if you live in a handful seven specifically of different
Speaker 1: swing states plus one district in Maine and one district
Speaker 1: in Nebraska.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually kind of my hot take. I kind
Speaker 2: of like the congressional allocation. You know, I don't hate
Speaker 2: the system.
Speaker 1: I like it better than the way they do it
Speaker 1: now because that makes you forces you to campaign work.
Speaker 2: I like that idea, especially in Nebraska. Nobody thinks about
Speaker 2: it's definition of a flyover state. This is basically all
Speaker 2: they got going for him, So that's what they're taking.
Speaker 2: Obviously Trump wanted to remove it, but I mean, the
Speaker 2: main reason, let's go ahead and put C two please
Speaker 2: up on the screen. Is because of that path to
Speaker 2: democratic victory. So what you see in front of you
Speaker 2: is the potential potential If Kamalaw were to win Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 2: and Pennsylvania, but lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, with that
Speaker 2: single electoral vote from Nebraska, she would win two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight electoral votes.
Speaker 3: That would be this is this nail biting as this
Speaker 3: is zilbiery.
Speaker 2: That's very possible scenario, very possible scenario, and so that
Speaker 2: the polling average is actually is the most possible scenario.
Speaker 4: That's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, that one.
Speaker 1: That's why people have paid so much attention to this,
Speaker 1: because that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which right
Speaker 1: now it is a swing district, but it favors Democrats
Speaker 1: and the polling that we've seen at this point. You
Speaker 1: add that to just the three quote unquote blue wall
Speaker 1: states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where her poles have tended
Speaker 1: to be decent, Pennsylvania being the most tenuous of them,
Speaker 1: she could lose all the Sun Belt states and still
Speaker 1: win the narrowest of victories. And obviously, like you know,
Speaker 1: doing the math here, if they changed it was winner
Speaker 1: take all.
Speaker 4: You could end up if you had.
Speaker 1: This same map, but it's winner take all in Nebraska,
Speaker 1: you end up with a two sixty nine and two
Speaker 1: sixty nine tigh and then as a contingent election, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Scager, what even happened that goes.
Speaker 3: To the House.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it was Tuesday nine twenty nine, it it's
Speaker 2: contingent election, it would go to the House representatives.
Speaker 3: Basically hasn't had.
Speaker 1: Nightmare, total nightmare nime of scenario for.
Speaker 4: The whole country, but there is will be interesting.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have been right.
Speaker 2: Actually, I saw Dana bash Now just wrote a book
Speaker 2: audible for some reason was trying to force it down
Speaker 2: my throat. But prior to this year, when RFK was
Speaker 2: in the race, I was doing a lot of eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy six election righting. And that's the one where the
Speaker 2: close election in American history. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: people do forget if because Harry Enton has been talking
Speaker 2: about this, this could end up being close selection since
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty and that is probably more analogus to where
Speaker 2: we'll end up. A lot of people don't remember, but
Speaker 2: the margin between Kennedy and Nixon was razor tight, and
Speaker 2: there were allegations of cheating. Nineteen sixties also where the
Speaker 2: whole alternate elector scheme came up with.
Speaker 3: That's what they did in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: So there's some parallels to where we are today for
Speaker 2: the polling average and where the eventual the eventual result
Speaker 2: may end up.
Speaker 3: Kennedy, it was this close, this close for him to
Speaker 3: end up.
Speaker 5: In the White House.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's very unlikely that you have
Speaker 1: a popular vote blowout, you know. I mean it could
Speaker 1: be like three four points would be the most that
Speaker 1: would separate the popular vote. But then you know, the
Speaker 1: electoral college oftentimes all the swing states go in one
Speaker 1: direction or the other direction. But you'll recall we covered
Speaker 1: yesterday these New New York Times Siena polls, which are
Speaker 1: considered very highly rated coming out of the Sun Belt states,
Speaker 1: and they were not good for Kamala Harris. They showed
Speaker 1: a lot of try strength. So this that's which is
Speaker 1: why that makes this Nebraska move even more sign potentially signial.
Speaker 2: To your point, Crystal, I mean, just this morning, you know,
Speaker 2: we were talking about that, and the Time's actually put out
Speaker 2: a really interesting analysis of its own Arizona polling, and
Speaker 2: they find that in Arizona that there is a significant
Speaker 2: split for people who are Diego Trump, so people who
Speaker 2: don't like Carry Lake but who want to vote for
Speaker 2: Trump and will vote for a Democrat in the US Senate.
Speaker 2: They say Trump gets a lyft from Arizona ticket splitters
Speaker 2: backing a Democrat for Senate. Diego leads in the contest
Speaker 2: while Kamala Harris trails Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And they point.
Speaker 2: Specifically to the fact that Diego is leading Carry Lake
Speaker 2: by six whereas quote Trump has opened up a five
Speaker 2: point lead. That means there's an eleven percent electorate somewhere
Speaker 2: that is Diego Trump. Remember too, split ticket Maybe it's
Speaker 2: more common in the age of bad candidates, Like there
Speaker 2: were a decent number of Oz Shapiro voters, which is
Speaker 2: kind of a crazy thing to say, But in the
Speaker 2: state of North Carolina, you could certainly envision that there
Speaker 2: will be a lot of who is it Josh Stein
Speaker 2: is that rning aainst him? Yeah, there will be a
Speaker 2: lot of Stein Trump voters. You could see that, certainly.
Speaker 3: There would definitely be some but I'm saying the universe
Speaker 3: huge Trump could win and Stein could also win. That
Speaker 3: would be nuts.
Speaker 2: I mean, that would mean tens of thousands of people
Speaker 2: go to the polls and vote for Democrat and Republican.
Speaker 2: Very rare in my opinion, in these days. But if
Speaker 2: you know, crazier things have happened in terms of look
Speaker 2: in general, just modern politics. I just don't really believe
Speaker 2: in eleven pointswing, but it is theoretically possible. That's where
Speaker 2: the polls show. Nobody's really voted that way since two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. People don't really vote that way anymore.
Speaker 2: But you know, I guess you know, rules are meant
Speaker 2: to be broken.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the real clear politics averages right now,
Speaker 1: which take all of the polls into account, even some
Speaker 1: you know, it's controversial. There's been this rise of like
Speaker 1: right leaning polls that are meant to be almost like
Speaker 1: messaging polls, and some Polster averages include them and some don't.
Speaker 4: RCP includes all of them.
Speaker 1: And as of right now, Harris has a very narrow
Speaker 1: lead in Nevada point four. She's got also a narrow
Speaker 1: lead in Pennsylvania point six, Michigan one point eight, and
Speaker 1: Wisconsin one point, and Trump has narrow leads in the
Speaker 1: three of the sun Belt states Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Speaker 1: But the you know, the closest margin here for Harris
Speaker 1: is in that fourth Sun Belt state of Nevada. So
Speaker 1: again underscoring why this could be such a we could
Speaker 1: look back at this and be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that was such a consequential decision that ended up happening
Speaker 1: with regards to Nebraska.
Speaker 4: Puts the three up on the screen.
Speaker 1: That's the latest poll we got out of Wisconsin, which
Speaker 1: showed some pretty significant Harris's strength there. It has her
Speaker 1: up fifty one to forty five when you include all
Speaker 1: of the candidates fifty three forty six in a two
Speaker 1: way Tammy Baldwin with a similar margin in the Senate
Speaker 1: race there.
Speaker 4: Fifty two to forty four.
Speaker 1: This is the same pole polling outfit mass Inc. That
Speaker 1: had a Pennsylvania pole that also was good for Harris
Speaker 1: last week had her up fifty to forty six.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 1: You know, this ties in with the sense that okay,
Speaker 1: she's doing a little bit better in those industrial Midwestern
Speaker 1: states than she is doing in the Sun Belt states
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. And one other piece of news with
Speaker 1: regard to the Sun Belt, though, as we covered in
Speaker 1: depth the new revelations about Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson
Speaker 1: aka Black Nazi, and we can put C four up
Speaker 1: on the screen. So the Republican Governor's Association has officially
Speaker 1: called it quits and thrown in the towel on North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Adviys and RGA spox says, we don't comment on internal
Speaker 1: strategy or investment decisions, but we can confirm what's public.
Speaker 1: Our current media buy in North Carolina expires tomorrow and
Speaker 1: no further placements have been made. Could be some effect
Speaker 1: on Trump in North Carolina? Maybe, I mean very hard
Speaker 1: to say. I don't know that reverse coattails are all
Speaker 1: that common. But when we talked to Logan Phillips yesterday,
Speaker 1: it's like election forecast or prognosticator runs one of these,
Speaker 1: you know, comprehensive election models. He was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just Mark Robinson, it's the fact that the
Speaker 1: North Carolina Republican Party in general, which now has a
Speaker 1: supermajority there in their legislature, has been governing morelike it's
Speaker 1: like an Alabama or Mississippi party versus a party in
Speaker 1: a state that is a swing state, and specifically on
Speaker 1: the issue of abortion, they've adopted fringe positions and past
Speaker 1: fringe legislation.
Speaker 4: So when you put.
Speaker 1: All of that together, does that depress the vote for
Speaker 1: Republicans a little bit? Does not move a few suburban
Speaker 1: voters towards Democrats a little bit, question mark. But the
Speaker 1: fact you've got RGA calling it quits also just means
Speaker 1: there's going to be less Republican ad dollars going to
Speaker 1: promote that ticket less coordinated campaign in the state that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is a beneficiarrea zero dollars.
Speaker 2: They basically have pulled out Democratic they are looking right
Speaker 2: now the analysis, it's like basically zero of currently being
Speaker 2: reserved for him through television, no ads on Facebook or Google.
Speaker 2: Dems meanwhile have twelve point five million reserved in the
Speaker 2: state through November. The next forty something days are going
Speaker 2: to be a real doozy. If you lived in North
Speaker 2: carolina're about to get bombarded. There will be nothing counter
Speaker 2: on the Democratic side. And you just can't tell me
Speaker 2: that that's not a problem for Trump. It's obviously for
Speaker 2: the only question is a degree, It could be a point,
Speaker 2: and that's basically the.
Speaker 3: Margin of what you won last night.
Speaker 1: Well, to your point, there's actually a new poll that
Speaker 1: just came out that I just saw minutes before this segment.
Speaker 1: That it's a Elon University poll out of North Carolina
Speaker 1: rated B plus. Polster has come up by a point
Speaker 1: a single point in the state of North Carolina and
Speaker 1: has Josh Stein up by fourteen points forty nine to
Speaker 1: thirty five over Mark Robinson. And I don't know when
Speaker 1: the polling sample. What this could have predated, Actually the
Speaker 1: revelation of the whole Black Nazi. I wish I was
Speaker 1: in the KKK. I wish slavery of slavery's good. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'd like to own some slaves comment revelation, so it
Speaker 1: could it could sink even lower than that.
Speaker 2: Actually, that's honestly nuts, But it does track its tracks
Speaker 2: a lot. What is Trump doing? How is he combating this?
Speaker 2: Is he in it to win it? Well, maybe let's
Speaker 2: go and put this up there on the screen. Trump
Speaker 2: is now quote holding far fewer rallies than in past runs,
Speaker 2: and this data, honestly, that's pretty shocking, especially if you're
Speaker 2: comparing it to the twenty sixteen campaign. So by the numbers,
Speaker 2: Trump had seventy two rallies between June and September of
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. He has held twenty four in this period
Speaker 2: this year, with another on the calendar for today. So
Speaker 2: he will soon ramp up a schedule, quote with multiple
Speaker 2: rallies per week in the final stretch of the campaign.
Speaker 2: That's according to his own advisors. But look, in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: he had sixty nine in the entire month of October
Speaker 2: and in early November, taking the stage as many as
Speaker 2: five times a day in the stretch.
Speaker 3: That is crazy.
Speaker 2: And honestly, look, he had did the same thing in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, even though it was even though it was
Speaker 2: literally during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: He had forty three in the five weeks leading up
Speaker 3: to election day.
Speaker 2: You and I remember those because what they were is
Speaker 2: they had that thing where he would arrive in an
Speaker 2: airplane hangar and he would just get off the plane
Speaker 2: and he would immediately go to the stage because they
Speaker 2: would have the stage inside of an airplane hanger. That's
Speaker 2: probably what they'll continue to do, But the current schedule
Speaker 2: does not indicate any of that, and that is a
Speaker 2: real issue now. Of course, he's certainly had a lot
Speaker 2: more energy back in twenty sixteen because he's coming off
Speaker 2: of a successful primary run, but he fought for it
Speaker 2: and he barely won in twenty sixteen. So that is
Speaker 2: what that is an indication to me. At the same time,
Speaker 2: his fundraising, it's a problem now versus Kamala Harris. Remember
Speaker 2: he had a major edge over Joe Biden, but now
Speaker 2: the Kamala's in the race. Let's put this in there.
Speaker 2: What we see right now is that there's some one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollar shortfall versus Kamala in just
Speaker 2: the month of August.
Speaker 3: I mean, Kamala.
Speaker 2: The big money on the Democratic side this time is insane.
Speaker 2: It's like Obama four million in a single night out
Speaker 2: of Hollywood. Kamala twenty something million, twenty five million dollar
Speaker 2: fundraisers were like unheard of, like what five years to
Speaker 2: go nowther the norm.
Speaker 3: They happen all the time.
Speaker 2: And she is raising just an absolute ton one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty nine million in August, while Trump raises just
Speaker 2: forty four point five million. Harris shook up was previously
Speaker 2: a more evenly matched cash raise, where both Biden Biden
Speaker 2: had two eighty four Trump had two seventeen. At the
Speaker 2: end of the month in June. That was the totals
Speaker 2: and the coffers, not what they were fundraising. But he's
Speaker 2: always been a major fundraising juggernaut online. But come on,
Speaker 2: she's got a lot of money. There's a ton of
Speaker 2: major Democratic elite enthusiasm. She will not want for anything
Speaker 2: going into this, and it might just be the you know,
Speaker 2: the difference whenever it comes down to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she's also had much more success crossrooms fundraising
Speaker 1: than Biden. That's been one of the primary differences between
Speaker 1: their fundraising. In particular, It's possible that this is less
Speaker 1: reflective of a true overall cash disparity and more reflective
Speaker 1: of a different campaign strategies. So increasingly campaigns are outsourcing
Speaker 1: a lot of their even field work paid community patients,
Speaker 1: like what used to be seen as sort of core
Speaker 1: campaign functions, to outside entities that face fewer restrictions and
Speaker 1: on you know, the use of their money, and some
Speaker 1: of them, if they don't directly advocate for a canonic
Speaker 1: even taken you know, dark money, don't have to.
Speaker 4: Disclose it, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And the Trump campaign seems to have outsource some of
Speaker 1: those key functions it's actually the strategy remember Ronda Santis
Speaker 1: used in primary campaign didn't work out that well for him,
Speaker 1: but could certainly work out fine for Trump, who has
Speaker 1: demonstrated no issues certainly turning out his folks consistently when
Speaker 1: it is time for them to show up and pull
Speaker 1: the lever for Donald Trump. So I just I would
Speaker 1: take this with a grain of salt. I think it
Speaker 1: does show I think Kamala Harris is probably doing more fundraisers,
Speaker 1: working this a little bit harder to me, it's more
Speaker 1: an indication of Trump kind of you know, he's not
Speaker 1: doing as much of the work that he used to do.
Speaker 1: But it's also going back to the rallies point. It
Speaker 1: was interesting to me the excuses that the campaign gave
Speaker 1: of the rationale the campaign gave for why he was
Speaker 1: doing few rallies. They gave three reasons, three primary reasons
Speaker 1: that he's doing fewer rallies. Number one, they said, he's
Speaker 1: a known quantity. Campaign feels less need to define him
Speaker 1: or his candidacy for voters this time around.
Speaker 4: True, he is a known quantity. That is true. The
Speaker 4: Harris people feel, I.
Speaker 1: Think the same way about you know, Okay, people already
Speaker 1: know maybe we need to remind people of who he
Speaker 1: is and some of those worst laws that they didn't like.
Speaker 1: But in general, you're not really going to move people
Speaker 1: that much on what they think about Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: it ignores the fact that you also have a chance
Speaker 1: at these rallies to define Kamala Harris and Tim Walls
Speaker 1: in a way that you have so far failed to do.
Speaker 1: And you know, part of the magic of his twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen strategy is that the rallies fed into a media
Speaker 1: strategy that allowed him to grab hold of narratives time
Speaker 1: and time again in a way that ended up being
Speaker 1: favorable for him, and that drove a message that was,
Speaker 1: you know, very critical of Hillary, and that really took
Speaker 1: hold and really landed with the American public.
Speaker 4: So that's one.
Speaker 1: The second reason they give is that rallies are expensive,
Speaker 1: which true, but I mean kind of reminds me of
Speaker 1: remember back in twenty sixteen soccer there was a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism of the Trump rally strategy and they said
Speaker 1: things like, oh, rallies are really expensive, and oh crowd sized,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, et cetera, et cetera, And so I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, obviously you sort of proved that this
Speaker 1: strategy works for you before now getting cause conscious about it.
Speaker 4: That was interesting to me.
Speaker 2: There's a human element too, Yeah, everybody, I mean, we're
Speaker 2: all ignoring Trump has literally been shot at. He got
Speaker 2: shot in the head also somebody before that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't doing it would.
Speaker 3: Be weird not to be afraid to do a rally.
Speaker 2: He's doing a rally what is on October fifth and
Speaker 2: Butler on the site of where the attempted assassination happened.
Speaker 2: But a lot of people keep pointing that out for
Speaker 2: the criticisms. They're like, hey, people are shooting at him.
Speaker 3: He's are like, I mean, look.
Speaker 2: I would be a Frank too, absolutely kill me. And
Speaker 2: so I mean he can't really put that aside. So
Speaker 2: that's certainly part of it. I mean, I guess the
Speaker 2: other one would be.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing they say is he's older and
Speaker 1: more inclined bast time at mar A Lago, which I
Speaker 1: think is probably true too, Like he just doesn't want
Speaker 1: to do it anymore. He doesn't want to do the debate,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to do as many rallies.
Speaker 4: It's exhausting, and.
Speaker 2: The famous reality own body even in twenty sixteen, So
Speaker 2: he would have a rally in Nevada, and while any
Speaker 2: other candidate would just pass out in Nevada, he'd get
Speaker 2: on the jet and go home to New York just
Speaker 2: to sleep in his own bed.
Speaker 3: I sympathize with that. I totally get it.
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes being on the campaign trail, that's
Speaker 2: not always the most practical thing. And he burned a
Speaker 2: lot of jet fuel doing that. I remember of reading
Speaker 2: so many articles about it because people are like, it's
Speaker 2: just such a crazy way to do business. But really
Speaker 2: what it means I think this time around he's prioritizing himself.
Speaker 2: I think he feels a little bit more comfortable per
Speaker 2: se this time around, more set in his own ways,
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like he has to fight as much. And look,
Speaker 2: he may be right, you know, right now, he's got
Speaker 2: a fifty to fifty shot, and if he does end
Speaker 2: up winning, then all of his condo will really have
Speaker 2: been for not and he would have had a pretty
Speaker 2: comfortable run, so to speak, I guess, you know, putting
Speaker 2: aside him literally getting shot, but putting all that aside,
Speaker 2: like he would not have had to have worked as
Speaker 2: hard for the president's as most people have to their
Speaker 2: first time around, so I'm actually curious.
Speaker 3: I really don't know where it's going to go.
Speaker 1: There was one other piece that's been interesting, Oh the Millennia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is Milania is absence. She's totally a campaign she
Speaker 1: They wanted her.
Speaker 4: To speak at the R and C. Apparently they tried
Speaker 4: to die.
Speaker 1: She's like, no, the most I'll do is show up
Speaker 1: and like, you're lucky I'm doing that. Basically, she's not
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail at all. She's writing a new
Speaker 1: memoir about just about herself. She just did this really
Speaker 1: on a left field video about how like responding to
Speaker 1: criticism of her nude modeling, which I haven't heard any
Speaker 1: criticism of her nude modeling in like a decade, but it.
Speaker 4: Came out of nowhere. Yeah, and one news cycle she
Speaker 4: just wrote a book.
Speaker 3: Somebody listen.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it all feels very like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: about her and her life and her journey, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure is interesting in its own regard, but it's very
Speaker 1: much not really about her husband or his for the
Speaker 1: White House, et cetera. And there was this news item
Speaker 1: that is quite curious. So she was apparently paid almost
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million dollars to speak to the
Speaker 1: log Cabin Republicans, which is a group of gay Republicans.
Speaker 1: She delivered speeches at two fundraisers, which is noteworthy in
Speaker 1: and of itself because again, she's really not doing anything
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail for her husband. The log Cabin
Speaker 1: Republican president told CNN his group wasn't the one that
Speaker 1: paid for her appearance, and the form that revealed this
Speaker 1: payment to her didn't provide details on the payments, so
Speaker 1: we actually don't know who put up the cash, which
Speaker 1: is you know, noteworthy and important in and of itself
Speaker 1: in terms of transparency, sunlight all of that, but it's
Speaker 1: also just you know, another interesting look.
Speaker 4: I do feel like if you had.
Speaker 1: Any other politician out there right, if Kamala Harris's husband,
Speaker 1: or if Joe Biden's wife or whatever were like pretty
Speaker 1: clearly didn't actually care that much whether their spouse won
Speaker 1: or lost, I think it would be more of a conversation.
Speaker 1: But with Trump, again, it's just one of these things
Speaker 1: that people are like, Eh, that's just what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, look, I think
Speaker 2: it's definitely weird, but you know, it's not like Trump
Speaker 2: is always at the most normal personal life.
Speaker 3: So uh, she look, I covered her. She's an enigma.
Speaker 2: That's the only way, Tea. She tried her hand at
Speaker 2: being a more traditional first lady the whole be Best campaign,
Speaker 2: which I'll never forget.
Speaker 5: I was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow, wild moment.
Speaker 4: Remember when she wore that jacket.
Speaker 3: I really don't care, do you?
Speaker 2: Is that what it's said? Yeah, something like I really
Speaker 2: don't care, do you? Yeah, that was a big moment.
Speaker 2: And she eventually just basically retreated into herself and she's like,
Speaker 2: I don't care about any.
Speaker 3: Of this anymore. I can't really blame her.
Speaker 2: I mean, in a certain sense, a lot of these politicians' wives,
Speaker 2: you get dragged to a life that you never wanted.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's really sure.
Speaker 1: She thought did not think when she was marrying Donald
Speaker 1: Trump that this was her future.
Speaker 4: She thought, I get to be trophy wife.
Speaker 1: I get to hang on it, have my dual life
Speaker 1: mar A Lago and in New York City.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Like my son in peace and whatever, and do the
Speaker 1: little things that I want to do. But that's it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well a lot of them.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's honestly sad. If you read between
Speaker 2: the lines of Obama's book and Michelle Obama's book, there's
Speaker 2: some pretty brutal admissions of Obama being like I'm running
Speaker 2: for office, and Michelle's like begging him, like please, don't
Speaker 2: do it, want him, and he just did it, He
Speaker 2: just and she was like, Okay, then my mom has
Speaker 2: to live with us. And he's like, no, I don't
Speaker 2: want that, and she's and she has, she has to
Speaker 2: lay down the law. She hated being first Lady by
Speaker 2: most by most accounts.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: Look, that's between them, you know, in terms of the
Speaker 2: way that they conduct business. But yeah, it's not all
Speaker 2: that uncommon, I guess to fall into something like this,
Speaker 2: but it is noteworthy. I mean, I feel bad for
Speaker 2: her in a certain stance. It's clearly she doesn't want
Speaker 2: she does not want this life. She doesn't want this
Speaker 2: life at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that has been made very abundant.
Speaker 3: Yes there, let's move on to the credit card. This.
Speaker 2: This is interesting, This is enjoyable and actually kind of fun. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: So this all, this debate kicked off in elite circles
Speaker 2: after Trump floated an idea at his rallies. So what
Speaker 2: he said this was in September eighteenth, quote, while working
Speaker 2: Americans catch up, we are going to put a temporary
Speaker 2: cap on credit card interest rates.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: We are going to cap it at around ten percent.
Speaker 2: We can't let them make twenty five and thirty percent.
Speaker 2: So this is up there with some OG twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: kind of Trump populous stuff, things like everybody will have
Speaker 2: the best healthcare. In the more recent era, we have
Speaker 2: seen three, I think proposals that really count in this regard.
Speaker 2: One is saying no tax on tips. That was quickly
Speaker 2: a proposal also adopted by Kamala Harris. Second is arguably
Speaker 2: the most consequential for the federal deficit and for the irs,
Speaker 2: which is that America will not tax Social Security benefits.
Speaker 2: Third is now this idea that you should cap credit
Speaker 2: card interest rates. Now the reason why it doesn't sound
Speaker 2: that crazy and I actually totally agree with the policy,
Speaker 2: but it would fundamentally change the entire credit card industry overnight,
Speaker 2: and definitely not to my benefit as one of those
Speaker 2: guys who plays of the points game. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. So for example, Lawrence Wright,
Speaker 2: of course, says quote or sorry. Laurence Summers says, a
Speaker 2: cap on credit card interest rates is a far more
Speaker 2: egregious price control than anything democrats have suggested. I am
Speaker 2: not enthusiastic, to put it mildly, but democratic anti gouging
Speaker 2: ideas none hold prices more than a few percent away
Speaker 2: from market levels. That Trump plan would, in many cases
Speaker 2: constrain credit costs to be seventy percent or more away
Speaker 2: from market levels. I do not understand with all of
Speaker 2: his tariffs, price controls, and arbitrary tracks provisions, Candidate Trump
Speaker 2: is supported by market oriented conservatives. And that is kind
Speaker 2: of the fun debate here is that even when Trump
Speaker 2: floats this price control on credit card is that look,
Speaker 2: we're all, let's all be real.
Speaker 3: Like, is this really going to pass to GOP Congress?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: All right, but you know the idea I think it
Speaker 2: is It was actually a decent one, I think, didn't
Speaker 2: you say?
Speaker 3: Is like Bernie Sanders AOC or.
Speaker 1: AOC they actually believe they proposed capping at fifteen percent
Speaker 1: right getting to the left of their proposals.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean this is the way for us to
Speaker 3: explain too.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, and you know that's interesting, right, So wait,
Speaker 2: how could they not make any money through ten percent? Well,
Speaker 2: they could, they wouldn't just make as much money as
Speaker 2: they can at twenty five or thirty percent. And in fact,
Speaker 2: and this is the sad admission from people like me
Speaker 2: who take advantage of the points game, the vast majority
Speaker 2: of these points are paid for by people who are
Speaker 2: terribly in debt. As in, if you look at the
Speaker 2: bottom line profits, and they're very open about it, American
Speaker 2: Express and all these other companies, the vast, vast majority
Speaker 2: of their income does not come from the two or
Speaker 2: the three percent processing fee. It comes from balance with
Speaker 2: high interest rates they're charging twenty five thirty percent. So
Speaker 2: the reason and the argument from them is that the
Speaker 2: way that we make credit widely available to the US
Speaker 2: public is by charging exorbitant and interest rates because we
Speaker 2: that means that we can eat it to give Sager
Speaker 2: free flights to Europe whenever another person is doing this. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, look, I can't change the system, so I'm
Speaker 2: going to take advantage of it. But if it could
Speaker 2: change the system, and you could cap it a ten percent,
Speaker 2: that's not the worst thing in the world, because you've
Speaker 2: got horrible amounts of credit card balances in debt at
Speaker 2: an all time high level in twenty twenty four. People
Speaker 2: are running up balances with very little financial literacy. These
Speaker 2: credit card companies are also so predatory. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: about you. I get offers in my email and in
Speaker 2: my mail every day.
Speaker 3: You've been prequalified for ten thousand dollars. What I didn't qualify?
Speaker 3: I didn't apply for a damn loan.
Speaker 1: When you go to shop at a store and they're
Speaker 1: always trying to sign up to the store credit card
Speaker 1: and whatever, and yeah, I mean this is like one
Speaker 1: of the top ways and by the way, credit card
Speaker 1: debt has sword.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all the time right now, one of the top.
Speaker 1: Ways that people get behind and cannot catch up.
Speaker 3: If you're down thirty already, it's like, what do you
Speaker 3: can do?
Speaker 4: It's brutal. It's absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we both agree this is not happening,
Speaker 1: but let's imagine it did.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the debate is fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, debate is I mean, let's live in the theoretical reality,
Speaker 1: right I think you would have an outcome immediately where
Speaker 1: a lot of people lost access to the you know,
Speaker 1: the availability of credit card debt that they have now,
Speaker 1: And I do think it would be you would have
Speaker 1: to have some sort of transition, because I do think
Speaker 1: that there would be a difficult transition period if you've
Speaker 1: got people who have basically, you know, relied on credit
Speaker 1: cards to be able just to like live their life
Speaker 1: and get groceries and you know, be able to like
Speaker 1: afford to if they have a flat tire or some
Speaker 1: kind of car trouble or whatever. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the long run, do I think it would be
Speaker 1: better if credit card companies were not able to gouge
Speaker 1: consumers the way that they do now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the same way.
Speaker 1: This is the same argument, by the way that the
Speaker 1: like free market argument that's being made here by Larry
Speaker 1: Summers and others. It's the same one that's used to
Speaker 1: justify payday lenders, Yes, which are some of the most
Speaker 1: predatory exploited. It like the percentage of you know, the APR,
Speaker 1: the rate that you pay on that is just loan
Speaker 1: shark stuff. I mean, it really is insane and so
Speaker 1: predator and they'll yeah, but people wouldn't use it if
Speaker 1: they did. Any we're providing a service for you know,
Speaker 1: for low income and working class consumers, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: which you know, I mean, it's just a deeply dystopian
Speaker 1: system debts throughout history. Not to go too deep here,
Speaker 1: but it's used, you know, effectively as a tool of
Speaker 1: like social control and compliance. It forces you if you
Speaker 1: once you get behind, like you'll do anything to be able.
Speaker 1: You'll work that second job, you'll work that third job,
Speaker 1: you'll take the crap from your boss or whatever. Because
Speaker 1: the alternative of bankruptcy and failure and public shame and
Speaker 1: all of that is just so immense.
Speaker 4: So I support it.
Speaker 1: The The interesting thing that Larry Summers points to that,
Speaker 1: you know, the one piece of that tweet that he's
Speaker 1: right about is that you do have a lot of
Speaker 1: quote unquote free mark conservatives who if this was.
Speaker 4: Floated by Commed, they would totally lose their minds.
Speaker 1: But they're betting that on this, on tariffs, on any
Speaker 1: number of those ones in particular are on immigration, they're
Speaker 1: betting he's they're betting the only part of the Trump
Speaker 1: economically and that's actually serious is extending the Tax Cutting
Speaker 1: Jobs Act.
Speaker 4: And then, by the way, they're probably right, No.
Speaker 3: They're definitely right, except about tariffs.
Speaker 2: That's the one thing I'll push back on this because
Speaker 2: the Commerce Department does have broadly way under.
Speaker 3: I forget that was sectioned something I would have to
Speaker 3: go back and look.
Speaker 2: But what Trump was able to do, I mean, effectively
Speaker 2: imposed almost two hundred fifty billion dollars in tariffs on
Speaker 2: the Chinese economy with no congressional action. That Congress was
Speaker 2: definitely pissed about it. They've tried to change the law,
Speaker 2: they haven't done it. On the rest of it, things
Speaker 2: like not taxing Social Security. Remember this, it's literally in
Speaker 2: the constitution. Anything with tax has to come through the
Speaker 2: US Congress. So that tells us the idea that we
Speaker 2: would not pass that a GOP Congress of each kind
Speaker 2: would pass no tax on tips insane.
Speaker 3: Almost certainly not going to happen.
Speaker 2: And if they did, they would offset it with something
Speaker 2: in terms of a way to pay for it, which
Speaker 2: should probably be way.
Speaker 3: Worse for people.
Speaker 2: Second, there is no way in hell, deficit hawks will
Speaker 2: ever vote to not tax social Security because that is.
Speaker 3: Hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Think about how many old people are in this country
Speaker 2: they get Social Security benefits, Then do the math for
Speaker 2: the irs for the coffers not gonna happen again. They
Speaker 2: would have to make that up, would probably very onerous
Speaker 2: taxes on regular working people, and that would set up
Speaker 2: a whole contrast between people who are already paying for Social
Speaker 2: Security and they're not getting any tax, even though I
Speaker 2: think that's pretty unfair. But then on the price control
Speaker 2: thing with the credit cards, it would take an act
Speaker 2: of Congress, and in fact, some of my friends who
Speaker 2: work in Congress tell me one of the most the
Speaker 2: piece of legislation they get lobbied on the most is
Speaker 2: called like the Credit Card Fairness Act. And it doesn't
Speaker 2: even cap interest rates or any of that. It injects,
Speaker 2: I leave a little bit more competition into the system.
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure, but it so dramatically threatens the
Speaker 2: bottom line of Amax, Visa, and MasterCard. They will throw
Speaker 2: anything at this to protect their monopoly. And that is
Speaker 2: something where again, look, we have a quasi private system
Speaker 2: where Visa, MasterCard and American Express not only can hold
Speaker 2: retailers hostage for the processing fee that they get, they
Speaker 2: have the payment network of the entire world. They process
Speaker 2: like billions of dollars of transactions per second, and then
Speaker 2: on top of that, with all of these reward systems
Speaker 2: and like you're saying, with shops and all that, people
Speaker 2: are duped basically into financial contracts that they have no
Speaker 2: understanding of. So I believe in personal responsibility and all
Speaker 2: of this, but that presumes financial education. We have zero
Speaker 2: financial education in America.
Speaker 3: Do the math?
Speaker 2: Can people do basic math on what thirty percent interest means?
Speaker 2: Like you were talking about about what financing groceries are?
Speaker 2: What are you actually agreeing to if you take a
Speaker 2: personal loan on your American Express card?
Speaker 3: Like people don't know.
Speaker 2: And so when you have that power and balance the people,
Speaker 2: we are supposed to advocate for the government, the consumer
Speaker 2: is supposed to be the government in this case, and
Speaker 2: that's where what Trump is proposing. It's not a terrible idea,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it would shrink credit a lot. But again,
Speaker 2: if you believe in personal responsibility, maybe that's not the
Speaker 2: worst thing in the world. People shouldn't be floating their
Speaker 2: entire lives on credit cards.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like those people want to be
Speaker 1: in that position.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a very convenient thing.
Speaker 1: What happens is wages have not kept up, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about right now with inflation,
Speaker 1: which is obviously really put a hit on people's real
Speaker 1: like real earnings and what they can actually buy with
Speaker 1: their dollar.
Speaker 4: But I'm talking over forty years, four years where.
Speaker 1: Wages have not kept up with increases in productivity, have
Speaker 1: not kept up with key you know, the key basics
Speaker 1: of a middle class life. I'm talking housing, I'm talking education,
Speaker 1: I'm talking healthcare. And so instead of wages keeping up,
Speaker 1: instead people have been pushed into this like usury economy,
Speaker 1: where the only way that they can you know, really
Speaker 1: make it month to month is by relying on these
Speaker 1: exploitative credit card issuers. And so yeah, if you if
Speaker 1: you disrupt that, I mean it is. It is a
Speaker 1: gigantic disruption, There's no doubt about it. And so in
Speaker 1: any case, again it's you know, it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about how this would play out. It's interesting to think of.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's the credit card issues where.
Speaker 4: Lose their minds.
Speaker 1: They would move heaven and earth to make sure that
Speaker 1: this never saw the light of day. There would be
Speaker 1: plenty of Republicans and Democrats who would go along with it.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has shown no desire or willingness to stand
Speaker 1: up to the you know, billionaire Glass or Wall Street
Speaker 1: or whatever. So it's not like we actually expect this
Speaker 1: to happen, but it is interesting him trying to sound
Speaker 1: some of those populous notes. But going back to the
Speaker 1: disparate reaction between when Kamala Harris proposed an anti price
Speaker 1: gouging law which was left relatively vague.
Speaker 3: Which not even relatively quite meg entirely vague detail.
Speaker 1: You know, in theory it was supposed to like, you know,
Speaker 1: mirror some legislation Elizabeth Warren to put together, but the
Speaker 1: details were never really firmly established. Looks to be very
Speaker 1: similar to legislation that already exists in something like thirty
Speaker 1: eight states across the country.
Speaker 4: Like not a radical proposal whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The level of freak out about that from the Trump
Speaker 1: side of the equation, including Donald Trump himself, quite different.
Speaker 6: Price controls that's been tried in many times, the former
Speaker 6: Soviet Union Venezuela, even in this country in the seventies
Speaker 6: was a disaster every time it's been tried, no matter
Speaker 6: over hundreds of years, not just over hundreds of years,
Speaker 6: price controls, you end up with no product, you end
Speaker 6: up with massive inflation, and you end up with the
Speaker 6: destruction of a How is this and her only idea
Speaker 6: for solving inflation is to impose Communists inspired price controls
Speaker 6: which have never worked.
Speaker 1: So there you have Trump himself of ag Ramaswami also
Speaker 1: sounding similar notes, let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 7: But their grand economic idea that she unveiled, the Nobel
Speaker 7: prize winning plan perhaps to control price gouging in the
Speaker 7: grocery market with price controls. She didn't get a great
Speaker 7: response to that. That was actually the first thing that
Speaker 7: burst the bubble of the honeymoon period that Kamala Harris
Speaker 7: has been in. And so the reality is she kind
Speaker 7: of learned her lesson. It's like a Pavlovian training teaching
Speaker 7: her that, Okay, the more you talk about policy, the
Speaker 7: dog bites back.
Speaker 4: You say, you don't want to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Interesting commentary there too, because actually, if you pull the
Speaker 1: American people there overwhelmingly and supported the plan. But it
Speaker 1: is true she did get some donor pushback and has
Speaker 1: not talked much about it since that moment. Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: also weighed in on the Kamala price gouging proposal. He
Speaker 1: could put his tweet up on the screen he says,
Speaker 1: Kamala's campaign is basically joy and free money and price
Speaker 1: controls and no questions if Americans vote for this. Well,
Speaker 1: Mankin was right, to my sees the theory that the
Speaker 1: common people know what they want and deserve to get
Speaker 1: it good and hard. And again her proposal is so
Speaker 1: modest and very much non revolutionary compared to cap on
Speaker 1: credit card interest rates.
Speaker 4: But you know it really for.
Speaker 1: Me, Sager exposes the fact that it's such a damn
Speaker 1: shame that Trump isn't who he said he was in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, because all of these partisan hacks will go
Speaker 1: along with whatever he says, like they Ben Shapiro and
Speaker 1: Vivek Ramaswami and.
Speaker 4: You know, Bill Ackman whatever.
Speaker 1: The billionaires are behind him at this point, Like if
Speaker 1: he gets behind a policy, somedly they forget all their
Speaker 1: like price control bles because it is a cult of personality,
Speaker 1: and the downside of the culture personality is that no
Speaker 1: one dessends. And the upside of the cult of personality
Speaker 1: is that you can force through things that otherwise would
Speaker 1: not be possible. But he shows zero interest in actually
Speaker 1: effectuating most of their you know, a few exceptions that
Speaker 1: I will grant you, but the overwhelming majority of the
Speaker 1: populist leanings that he gave voice to in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: that's not what is sitting on the shelf. That's not
Speaker 1: what's easy to get through Congress. That's not what's easy
Speaker 1: to pass muster with the donor set and so buy
Speaker 1: and large. These just get floated at a rally and
Speaker 1: then just like how you're going to have great universal
Speaker 1: health care, never end up actually having.
Speaker 2: The lesson is really about what your priority is when
Speaker 2: fighting with Congress, And in twenty seventeen you just didn't fight, basically,
Speaker 2: just did whatever they wanted to do, and that's how
Speaker 2: you got TCJA. Now, whenever he had full authority, like
Speaker 2: on something you really believed in, like tariffs, it was
Speaker 2: a different story. And that's why you know on immigrations
Speaker 2: a few other places where you have it's a full
Speaker 2: executive authority, or in foreign policy, yeah, you should really
Speaker 2: pay attention and listen because that's what you actually can do.
Speaker 2: But whenever it comes to this, anything to do with tax,
Speaker 2: anything to do with a capping credit card interest in
Speaker 2: all that, the president basically is it's impossible to unilaterally
Speaker 2: act and the lobbyist and all that know that. Because listen,
Speaker 2: if Visa, MasterCard and all of them were really taking
Speaker 2: this seriously, you would see a hell of all oh
Speaker 2: yeah donations. But they're laughing all the way to the
Speaker 2: bank because they know how to work the CongressI Like
Speaker 2: I said, if you can't even get whatever the Credit
Speaker 2: Card Fairness Act through Congress, good luck getting a ten
Speaker 2: percent cap on interest rates.
Speaker 3: It would never happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would have to make this the fight of
Speaker 1: your for your life life.
Speaker 2: By the way, it would also be like ninety percent popular.
Speaker 2: I would guarantee you if you were to be like eighty.
Speaker 4: Nine hugely popular. That's the you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the interesting thing about the American
Speaker 1: public is when you ask them about these people, they're like, socialism,
Speaker 1: let's do it.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't call that socialism.
Speaker 4: There's been many print controls. Then let's do it.
Speaker 2: Credit card interest rates are by this is the other woo.
Speaker 2: Let the free market decide. Do you know how highly
Speaker 2: regulated credit card interest rates are? And about all the
Speaker 2: number of consumer protection the Bureau and the Treasury Department,
Speaker 2: and the way the government subsidies and all these companies
Speaker 2: get so I just cut me break whenever we're talking
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: All right, Let's get to our guest. Seth harp is
Speaker 3: great standing.
Speaker 2: By joining us now is Seth Harpy is a contributing
Speaker 2: editor at Rolling Stone and is the author of the
Speaker 2: forthcoming book The Fort Bragg Kartel in July of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five.
Speaker 3: We're excited to see him. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
Speaker 2: The reason we booked you is not only because of
Speaker 2: your forthcoming book subject, but because of a graph that
Speaker 2: really caught our eye. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. A lot of perhaps counterintuitive depending on what
Speaker 2: you thought about the US presence in Afghanistan, but according
Speaker 2: to the Financial Times, poppy in poppy growing in Hellman Province,
Speaker 2: Afghanistan has fallen ninety nine percent since the US withdrawal. So, Seth,
Speaker 2: considering the title of your book, considering a lot of
Speaker 2: discussion over the last twenty years about opium and the
Speaker 2: US role and cultivation poppy and heroin, what do you
Speaker 2: make of that graph and considering what you're writing about,
Speaker 2: what can you shed light on some of the background
Speaker 2: of why that is?
Speaker 5: Well, it's really stunning and it's only now that the
Speaker 5: Taliban has been in control of Afghanistan for several years
Speaker 5: that were able to fully judge what the true history
Speaker 5: of the heroin trade in Afghanistan really was. In its
Speaker 5: significance from two thousand and one to twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: during the twenty years of US occupation, before the Taliban
Speaker 5: took over and completely eradicated the country's entire poppy prop
Speaker 5: it was kind of difficult to say who was responsible
Speaker 5: for that drug production. But actually what the Taliban have
Speaker 5: just done in twenty twenty two was an exact repeat
Speaker 5: of something that they did in two thousand and one,
Speaker 5: which was to eradicate all drug production from Afghanistan, poppy
Speaker 5: cultivation and the synthesis of heroin laboratories. And in the
Speaker 5: process of writing the book, I learned a lot about
Speaker 5: the heroin trade in Afghanistan and compiled basically of facts
Speaker 5: that I think every American citizen should know about their
Speaker 5: government support for international drug cartels, which actually goes back
Speaker 5: to the nineteen eighties. So I'd be happy to run
Speaker 5: down or if you guys just want to ask questions
Speaker 5: in general about.
Speaker 4: The subject any us what you got.
Speaker 5: Like, I said, us intervention. Excuse me. US support for
Speaker 5: drug traffickers in Afghanistan goes back to the nineteen eighties
Speaker 5: when the Soviet Army occupied Afghanistan, and a lot of
Speaker 5: people are familiar with the so called Charlie Wilson's War,
Speaker 5: the America's covert war in Afghanistan to drive out the
Speaker 5: Soviet occupiers by arming and bunding certain warlords to wage
Speaker 5: guerrilla war in that country against the Russians. And it's
Speaker 5: also pretty well known that a lot of these people
Speaker 5: were radical Islamis and that this covert program led to
Speaker 5: the formation of al Qaeda and the events that led
Speaker 5: to nine to eleven are contributed to it. That was
Speaker 5: in the background of it. But it's less well known
Speaker 5: that those same Mujahadeen as are often called, many of
Speaker 5: them were deeply involved in the drug trade. This is
Speaker 5: something that we don't hear much about, although it is
Speaker 5: out there in the open. I think that Steve Cole,
Speaker 5: writing for the Washington Posts in the early nineties, was
Speaker 5: one of the first to describe this googleding. Heck Winzar
Speaker 5: and nasieing Akrunzada were two of the biggest recipients of
Speaker 5: CIA cash and arms and both of them were two
Speaker 5: of the biggest narcos in Afghanistan. And once the Russians
Speaker 5: had successfully been driven out, they set about transforming Afghanistan
Speaker 5: essentially into the world's largest poppy plantation, because the geography
Speaker 5: and climate of Afghanistan are very advantageous for the cultivation
Speaker 5: of poppy, and through their brutal methods, they forced a
Speaker 5: lot of Afghanistans peasantry into conditions of essentially narco serfdom
Speaker 5: and allated people to plant poppy when in the past
Speaker 5: they've been planting food crops or fruit. And so the
Speaker 5: nineteen nineties in Afghanistan is a kind of forgotten interlude.
Speaker 5: But there was a drug war there essentially the same
Speaker 5: as there was a drug war in Columbia and there
Speaker 5: is one in Mexico today. And the Taliban actually emerged
Speaker 5: as a reaction to the infighting between these warlords. And
Speaker 5: you know, we hear a lot about the Taliban's wicked
Speaker 5: ideology and their refreshion of women and how they don't
Speaker 5: allow music and kites and things like that, but we
Speaker 5: never hear about their anti narcotics agenda. But that was
Speaker 5: actually fundamental to their ideological identity from the very beginning.
Speaker 5: The Taliban, as you might imagine, being such a conservative movement,
Speaker 5: didn't look kindly upon the production of drugs or the
Speaker 5: consumption of drugs either. And as I alluded to a
Speaker 5: moment ago, once they had consolidated control of Afghanistan's major
Speaker 5: population centers after a civil war or in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 5: they completely eradicated all of the heroin production that was
Speaker 5: taking place in Afghanistan in two thousand and one, that was.
Speaker 5: That eradication effort was completed in the summer of two
Speaker 5: thousand and one, and some experts at the time described
Speaker 5: it as the most dramatic event in the history of
Speaker 5: drugs markets. They completely had the history of illegal drug markets.
Speaker 5: They completely decimated the world supply of heroin, eliminated something
Speaker 5: like ninety five percent of heroin from the global black market.
Speaker 5: That was, as I said, in the summer of two
Speaker 5: thousand and one.
Speaker 1: That's let me pause you for one second, because I
Speaker 1: have a question about that piece that also connects with today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what sort of tactics did they use to have this
Speaker 1: level of complete eradication.
Speaker 5: That's a good question. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 5: they just went around telling people hey, you can't do
Speaker 5: that anymore. They didn't, really, they didn't don't pesticide from airplanes.
Speaker 5: They didn't use any of the be handed eradication methods
Speaker 5: that the US and proxy forces or client states that
Speaker 5: use in countries like Columbia for example, you know, very
Speaker 5: low tech methods using sticks to beat down the plants
Speaker 5: or tractors to uproot fields.
Speaker 1: And were people just afraid of the consequences of not
Speaker 1: listening to the Taliban?
Speaker 5: That's a good question. I'm not sure, I suppose so.
Speaker 5: I mean, the obvious answer is yes, the Talibans the
Speaker 5: government has monopoly on the use of force there, and
Speaker 5: people didn't disobey when told to stop growing poppy. So sure,
Speaker 5: here the consequences. But I'm not able to find very
Speaker 5: many reports of violence in this latest eradication campaign. A
Speaker 5: few sporadic shootings between you know, traffickers that resisted, but
Speaker 5: for the most part, yeah, they seem to have just
Speaker 5: asked people nicely.
Speaker 1: And so when we invade Afghanistan, what is our relationship
Speaker 1: to the cultivation of poppy?
Speaker 5: Well, so the US invaded Afghanistan just five months after
Speaker 5: they completely eradicated poppy from Afghanistan, and that invasion force
Speaker 5: was led by the CIA, backed by Jasog and Delta Force,
Speaker 5: and they immediately teamed up with many of the same
Speaker 5: narco warlords that had taken refuge in the north of
Speaker 5: the country, which was the only part of Afghanistan where
Speaker 5: heroin productions was still taking place. And we called that
Speaker 5: group of militias and warlords the Northern Alliance. And not
Speaker 5: all of that. I don't want to say that every
Speaker 5: single one of the individuals that was part of the
Speaker 5: effort was involved in drug trafficking, but many of them,
Speaker 5: especially the Tajik and Uzbek warlords, you know Rashi Dost them,
Speaker 5: I think chief among them, were deeply involved in the
Speaker 5: international heroin trade, and the CIA knew it. And when
Speaker 5: they installed the new Afghan government led by Hamed Karzai,
Speaker 5: one of the government's first actions was to legalize poppy cultivations,
Speaker 5: the fact that went almost entirely unremarked in the American press.
Speaker 5: Within a single year, heroin production in Afghanistan was back
Speaker 5: to pre Taliban highs of production. There were known narcotics
Speaker 5: traffickers in control of all of Afghanistan's major heroin producing areas,
Speaker 5: including the Helman Narangahar, Condahar, Jalalabad, all these areas where
Speaker 5: either poppy was cultivated or heroin was traffick internationally, and
Speaker 5: within eight years Afghanistan was producing ten times more heroin
Speaker 5: than the rest of the world combined. It was the
Speaker 5: largest drug output. It was the largest production of heroin
Speaker 5: or any drug in world history. I mean, I really
Speaker 5: want to emphasize the scale of this heroin in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: The production of it was around topped out and stayed
Speaker 5: at the level of about one thousand metric tons of
Speaker 5: pure heroin per year for almost fifteen to twenty years on.
Speaker 5: And that's double the global demand for heroin. So they're
Speaker 5: producing twice as much heroin as the entire world can absorb.
Speaker 5: Mexico is the second place producer, only puts out about
Speaker 5: fifty tons of heroin a year, Colombia twenty tons of heroin.
Speaker 5: The only other country that's even on the map is
Speaker 5: me and more and I think they produced like one
Speaker 5: or two tons.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: And again Afghanistan producing one thousand tons of pure heroin
Speaker 5: per year.
Speaker 2: So seth to stick with then the title of your book,
Speaker 2: what is the ren role of our own government in
Speaker 2: not only the cultivation. I know at one point we
Speaker 2: were actively wanting to create cultivation of poppy. In fact,
Speaker 2: in preparation for the segment, I found criticism of the
Speaker 2: Taliban from the US Institute of Peace by some Afghan
Speaker 2: scholar who was like, why the Taliban shutting down opium
Speaker 2: production is bad for Afghanistan. I was like, what, I mean,
Speaker 2: this seems a little bit too naked here, So is
Speaker 2: the cynical take correct? I mean, what exactly was going
Speaker 2: on in terms of our own government, our military in
Speaker 2: helping stoke this production.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to understand what these people were thinking
Speaker 5: in allowing this. They didn't talk about it very much
Speaker 5: during the war, and to the extent they did, it
Speaker 5: was very much in line with that article that you
Speaker 5: just referenced by the US Institute for Peace, basically implicitly saying, hey,
Speaker 5: this is good for the economy. This is a wave REPP.
Speaker 4: Like a jobs program.
Speaker 5: Yeah exactly. Yeah. But at the same time, we always
Speaker 5: heard during the war that the Taliban were responsible for this,
Speaker 5: and that the insurgency and all the drug production were
Speaker 5: really two sides of the same coin, from our politicians,
Speaker 5: from our most prestigious and trusted institutions. In media, we
Speaker 5: always heard that the Taliban were basically where narco terrorists
Speaker 5: was the term that I think was invented in the
Speaker 5: early two thousands to describe this. And anytime we heard
Speaker 5: about the drug production that was going on in Afghanistan,
Speaker 5: which was very much soft pedaled, very much not in
Speaker 5: the new but to the extent it was, we always
Speaker 5: heard the Taliban were responsible. Now and looking into this,
Speaker 5: I found that there's no evidence to support it at all.
Speaker 5: And I don't claim that my research skills are exhaustive,
Speaker 5: but if there's anyone out there who can find a
Speaker 5: case of a named Taliban individual who was as are
Speaker 5: apprehended or convicted, or it was otherwise shown for a
Speaker 5: fact that they were producing or trafficking drugs, please get
Speaker 5: in touch, because I wasn't able to find a single
Speaker 5: case of that. And you know, you don't have to
Speaker 5: take my word for it, because in twenty eighteen, the
Speaker 5: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction SIDEGARD, they put out
Speaker 5: a report, a Retrospective on Narcotics in Afghanistan. And this
Speaker 5: is a US government publication, so you know, they kind
Speaker 5: of couch it in delicate terms, but It's very clear
Speaker 5: from reading that report that their conclusion that they came
Speaker 5: to was that there was never any evidence at all
Speaker 5: to back up the idea that the Taliban were either
Speaker 5: profiting from the direct participation in drug production or we're
Speaker 5: even taxing it as we sometimes heard. The best I
Speaker 5: think you could say is that at times some groups
Speaker 5: that were called Taliban, which is actually more diverse coalition
Speaker 5: than we realize, some of those groups at times in
Speaker 5: certain places may have levied attacked on other drug traffickers.
Speaker 5: But that's beyond that. There's no reason to think that
Speaker 5: the Taliban participated in the drug trade. It also goes
Speaker 5: against you know there, as I mentioned before, their original
Speaker 5: ideological identity of being a force, it was against narcotics.
Speaker 5: The Taliban would occasionally put out edicts that that bans
Speaker 5: their own fighters from using drugs or or participating at
Speaker 5: all in the drug trade. We never gave them any
Speaker 5: credit for that, but in fact it seems to be
Speaker 5: pretty consistent on their part now and was response.
Speaker 4: To the economic point.
Speaker 1: Afghanistan obviously a poor country under sanctions by the US,
Speaker 1: that we also withheld a significant chunk of their central
Speaker 1: bank reserves, you know, post after we left, there was
Speaker 1: a sort of economic free fall, at least for a
Speaker 1: certain period of time. So what has been the economic
Speaker 1: impact of the total eradication of poppy production when it
Speaker 1: was so central to the agricultural economy.
Speaker 5: Well, it's hard to say. Probably not good for the
Speaker 5: farmers that have immediately lost out on their poppy revenue
Speaker 5: that they were making. But Afghanistan has really serious economic
Speaker 5: problems as a result of the krushing international sanctions that
Speaker 5: are on them and the fact that the US basically
Speaker 5: just stole all the money that was in their bank
Speaker 5: by freezing it. So Afghanistan is in the terrible economic
Speaker 5: situation right now, which makes it all more remarkable that
Speaker 5: the Taliban was willing to eliminate what had been the majority,
Speaker 5: you know, their genep. It really shows that they were
Speaker 5: determined to eliminate this trade from Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think what's shocking about this is
Speaker 2: that it turns a lot of stuff on its head.
Speaker 2: Like you said, Seth, I worked in that space for
Speaker 2: a long time, covered the Pentagon during the Afghan War.
Speaker 2: We heard constantly narco terrorists that these people were involved
Speaker 2: in drug production, that they were much more drug lords
Speaker 2: and they were this, But then it's a little bit
Speaker 2: counter if all of that gets shut down the moment
Speaker 2: that they actually take over the country, you would presume
Speaker 2: that the inverse would happen. That when you have total
Speaker 2: control over state resources, you would ramp opium production up.
Speaker 2: So then if they weren't producing the opium, somebody was,
Speaker 2: and somebody was profiting. I've been sure you don't want
Speaker 2: to give away too much, but to what role can
Speaker 2: you speak about from your own book to the deep
Speaker 2: involvement of the US military forces and perhaps not only
Speaker 2: officially sanctioning this, but getting involved in the actual like
Speaker 2: moving and selling of drugs.
Speaker 5: Well, that's same Sigar report that I mentioned a moment
Speaker 5: ago is unequivocal about this. The US backed Afghan government,
Speaker 5: at every level and at every every geographic region of
Speaker 5: Afghanistan was either directly involved in producing drugs or was
Speaker 5: profiting from it uh in the form of bribes or taxation.
Speaker 5: All of the major warlords who comprised the US client state,
Speaker 5: you know, under Ahmad Karzai originally and under Ashraf Ghani
Speaker 5: later were known narcotics traffickers. You know, Fahim Khan was
Speaker 5: Humid Karzai's defense minister. He was a big time drug trafficker.
Speaker 5: Humid Karzai's half brother, Ahmed Wali. Ahmed Wali Karzai was
Speaker 5: the kingpin of Kandahar who had this, as they would
Speaker 5: say in Mexico, the direcho episo over the entire helman
Speaker 5: the ability to charge drug traffickers, the commission to move
Speaker 5: drugs through Kandahar. I mentioned Rashi Roshid DoSM Rashid Dosum
Speaker 5: a moment ago up on the border of Afghanis, Uzbekistan
Speaker 5: and Tajikistan. He was in major drug lord. The CIA
Speaker 5: worked closely with him. Hazarat Ali and Jalalabad another big
Speaker 5: time drug trafficker controlling the drug trade from Afghanistan to India,
Speaker 5: which was sorbed a lot of the heroine during this time.
Speaker 5: And these are all people who have names, whose role
Speaker 5: is known, and the way that it was done out
Speaker 5: in the open, it is really kind of jaw dropping.
Speaker 5: And it's not just the people at the top. It's
Speaker 5: as the Saga report said, people at every single level
Speaker 5: and every department of the Afghan government were directly involved
Speaker 5: in the drug trade. And if you ask any grunt
Speaker 5: who served in Afghanistan Marine whatever. They'll tell you that
Speaker 5: the security forces of these people under these four lords,
Speaker 5: they use drugs constantly and were often too stoned on
Speaker 5: hashish or opium to even go out and patrol. So
Speaker 5: the Afghan client state was the world's biggest drug cartel,
Speaker 5: and it was directly backed at all times by JASAG,
Speaker 5: the CIA, and the whole of the US government. And
Speaker 5: past instance is like CIA complicity in the drug trade
Speaker 5: that we're familiar with, pale in comparison, you know, there's
Speaker 5: the whole Dark Alliance thing. The reporter Gary Webb revealed
Speaker 5: in the nineties that the CIA knew that the Nicaraguent
Speaker 5: contras or trafficking cocaine from Columbia through Mexico into the
Speaker 5: United States at the time of the Crack Room. I mean,
Speaker 5: that was significant, but there's just no comparing the scale
Speaker 5: of this. As I mentioned before, for twenty years, Afghanistan
Speaker 5: innovated the entire world with extremely cheap, extremely potent, and
Speaker 5: extremely high quality heroin. It was available everywhere, and that changed.
Speaker 5: I mean, that had a huge impact on history, an
Speaker 5: extremely deleterious effect on the social fabric of many countries
Speaker 5: that directly surround Afghanistan, including Iran, had a terrible heroin
Speaker 5: quiet crisis during this time. China as well had to
Speaker 5: really crack down on heroin trafficking through g and Jang,
Speaker 5: if I'm pronouncing that correctly, in the WEE or occupied
Speaker 5: part of the part of China. Russia suffered a terrible
Speaker 5: heroin crisis during this time, all of Europe and of
Speaker 5: course America, and it was all the result of having
Speaker 5: a huge glut of very high quality and very cheap
Speaker 5: product it was available.
Speaker 1: That's my last question for you, is intentionally naive one.
Speaker 1: How does this square with the US's relatively draconian anti
Speaker 1: drug policies.
Speaker 5: Well, when you say relatively draconian anti drug policies, I
Speaker 5: guess you're referring to the criminal penalties that are available
Speaker 5: to punish traffickers that are caught here in the US. Well,
Speaker 5: it just goes to show that, you know, the government
Speaker 5: really kind of instead of fighting a drug war, it's
Speaker 5: more that they pick winners and losers in the game
Speaker 5: and say who can who is allowed to traffic drugs internationally.
Speaker 5: If the DA at any point had wanted to look
Speaker 5: Afghanistan and say, you know, sometimes when they say describe
Speaker 5: a drug trafficking organization in Mexico, Let's say and create
Speaker 5: like an organization chart and put this guy at the
Speaker 5: top and say these guys are as lieutenants. A lot
Speaker 5: of that, there's there's some you know, there's some artistic
Speaker 5: license that goes into that these groups are not as
Speaker 5: coherent as you might think. My point is that if
Speaker 5: if at any point they had wanted to look at
Speaker 5: Afghanistan and describe what was going on there as a
Speaker 5: cartel and create like an organization chart, they it easily
Speaker 5: could have been portrayed as you know, this is the
Speaker 5: most uh, this is the most profitable, productive, and dangerous
Speaker 5: drug trafficking organization in the entire world. And it's it's
Speaker 5: inundating the United States with heroin because the heroin crisis
Speaker 5: of the United States perfectly coincided with this time period.
Speaker 5: And there's endless reports from the early two thousands from
Speaker 5: medical professionals and others, especially county sheriffs, talking about how
Speaker 5: they were seeing a much increased supply of heroin in
Speaker 5: the most remote rural counties in the United States. It's
Speaker 5: not just the cities. The whole country was saturated by
Speaker 5: heroin that was white, in color, high quality, high potency.
Speaker 5: Now as a caveat, the DEA says that none of
Speaker 5: this came from Afghanistan. They say that the United States,
Speaker 5: alone in the world, is the only country untouched by
Speaker 5: Afghan heroin. And that's a claim that you see sometimes
Speaker 5: repeated in mainstream media accounts during this time, and in
Speaker 5: my book I'm going to go into all the reasons
Speaker 5: why I don't think that's true at all. I think
Speaker 5: that that all of that supply, or the great majority
Speaker 5: of that supply that directly caused the heroin crisis in
Speaker 5: America was the consequence of the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that Yeah, We're going to let you now
Speaker 1: get back to writing that book because we're now all
Speaker 1: dying to read it and see what else you have
Speaker 1: to say. And I hope you'll come back on when
Speaker 1: the book is published, if not before, and explain in
Speaker 1: detail your additional findings there. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us today though it's been eye opening, absolutely eye opening.
Speaker 2: Thanks man, appreciate it definitely, Thanks for having me our pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for watching, guys, We appreciate it. If
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Speaker 2: everybody tomorrow