Speaker 1: I'm Soger and Jenny. Welcome to Breaking Points. Every week
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Speaker 1: dot com. With that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Krystal? Indeed, we do lots of
Speaker 1: interesting stories this morning. Of course, we have all the
Speaker 1: latest from balloon gate. The latest response is the back
Speaker 1: and forth what Trump is saying now, all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff to get into there, even in a UFO tie in. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we had to. We've got it all for you.
Speaker 1: Also a new twenty twenty four pole that boy, oh boy,
Speaker 1: does it look bad for Joe Biden. Looks bad for
Speaker 1: him with regards to the Democratic base, looks bad for
Speaker 1: him with regards the general election. He's even losing to
Speaker 1: Trump now, so we'll give you all of those details.
Speaker 1: We also have on the Republican side of the equation,
Speaker 1: the Coke Network looking to jump in behind one candidate
Speaker 1: that could, of course, reshape that race dramatically. We also
Speaker 1: have other news from the Democratic primary. They are already
Speaker 1: aggressively trying to rig it to make sure that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden does become the nominee. And as you guys may know,
Speaker 1: we were on the One and Only Joe Rogan podcast
Speaker 1: last week. Yes, a lot of fun, very always very
Speaker 1: intense experience, but we have a few of those highlights
Speaker 1: for you this morning. Here we go. Before we get
Speaker 1: to any of that, though, Tomorrow is the State of
Speaker 1: the Union address and we will be covering it here
Speaker 1: live for you. Our friends Kyle Marshall will both join
Speaker 1: us as well. Are we getting Ryan and Emily and
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see. We're starting it all out, guys,
Speaker 1: but that is going to start at eight pm tomorrow night,
Speaker 1: so make sure you join us here for all of
Speaker 1: the covers that you are looking for. That's right, we
Speaker 1: all live stream here on the channel. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a hell of a lot of fun. We'll watch
Speaker 1: it all together and then we'll break it out down
Speaker 1: for you afterwards. So pre and postgame analysis for all
Speaker 1: of you who are out there. But let's start with
Speaker 1: balloon Gates so we won't bore you all with the
Speaker 1: old news now at this point, although we do got
Speaker 1: to watch it just for amusement's sake. Let's put it
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. Where's the balloon. It's floating
Speaker 1: over American territorial waters off of the coast of the Carolinas,
Speaker 1: popped right there by a fighter pilot, an air to
Speaker 1: air kill, the first in quite a long time in
Speaker 1: the history of the US Air Force. So congratulations to
Speaker 1: that pilot. I know that's a big one in the
Speaker 1: annals of the US Air Force. However, there has been
Speaker 1: opened up a lot of questions about this balloon. I'm
Speaker 1: doing a monologue today about our own use of balloons,
Speaker 1: balloons used through history. Balloons are awesome, so it's glad
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But it raises the question of, well,
Speaker 1: how many times has this happened before? Because, of course,
Speaker 1: there's been a major partisan break that's come out many
Speaker 1: Republicans accusing the Biden administration of being soft on China
Speaker 1: for not shooting down the balloon after its initial detection
Speaker 1: over the Aleutian Islands. But then secondary questions being asked stuff, well, hey,
Speaker 1: hold on a second, how many times has this actually
Speaker 1: happened before. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: Lucas Thomlinson. He's the Pentagon correspondent for Fox News, So
Speaker 1: Republicans should at least you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: doubt somebody, this is a Fox News reporter just saying that,
Speaker 1: putting it out there. He says a Chinese spy balloon
Speaker 1: crashed into the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii four
Speaker 1: months ago. US officials say Fox News has also learned
Speaker 1: at least one Chinese spy balloon flew over portions of
Speaker 1: Texas and Florida during the Trump administration. So that is
Speaker 1: an especially important detail because basically all through the weekend
Speaker 1: before those revelations came out, Republicans were smashing Joe Biden
Speaker 1: for being soft on China. We have little bit of
Speaker 1: a taste of some GOP officials exactly talking about that.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. This entire episode telegraphed weakness to
Speaker 1: she and the Chinese government. And to illustrate why, I
Speaker 1: would just ask one hypothetical question. Imagine how this would
Speaker 1: have played out if nobody had to get any pictures
Speaker 1: of the balloon, if nobody in Montana had looked up
Speaker 1: and noticed this giant balloon. If it wasn't in the news.
Speaker 1: We know that when the Biden administration knew about the balloon,
Speaker 1: they said nothing, They did nothing, They didn't shoot it down,
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, I think the
Speaker 1: only reason they shot it down is because it made
Speaker 1: it into the news and they felt forced to as
Speaker 1: a matter of politics rather than national security. That the
Speaker 1: Pentagon says that they know of the Chinese doing this
Speaker 1: at least four other times previously, once at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration, three times during the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: It seems to be you're saying, oh, you're saying no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. But in any case, is the no,
Speaker 1: it's the different things, Okay, Well, the difference is this,
Speaker 1: are we aware Have we seen the Chinese fly these
Speaker 1: balloons in the past. Yes, I think there's even Twitter
Speaker 1: pictures of it flying at one point off the coast
Speaker 1: of the US down south somewhere. That the existence of
Speaker 1: the balloons is not a mystery to people in that field.
Speaker 1: What we've never seen what is unprecedented, and whoever the
Speaker 1: source was at the Department of Defense would have to
Speaker 1: anowledge that what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that
Speaker 1: entered over Idaho and flow over Montana over all these
Speaker 1: sensitive military installations, air Force baces, ICBM fields right across
Speaker 1: the middle of the country. That has never happened before.
Speaker 1: That is unprecedented. That it flew bri over some part
Speaker 1: of the US or kind of in the US, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But what we saw this week some precedented,
Speaker 1: and that's why everyone's reacting the way they're reacting. We've
Speaker 1: never seen this, so this is no comparison to anything
Speaker 1: that may have happened up to this point. So lots
Speaker 1: of jockeying in the press. Would Trump has shot it down?
Speaker 1: You know, Trump would have shot it down, although some
Speaker 1: may have flown over at this point. Okay, here's what
Speaker 1: we can say. It does seem based on what Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio said. You should remember he's one of the members
Speaker 1: on the Intelligence Committee. He's been very involved in the
Speaker 1: UFO report. He is accepting as fact that a balloon
Speaker 1: did overfly the United States at least once during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. That's opening up all this discussion. Well, would
Speaker 1: Trump have shot it down? And honestly, I just wish
Speaker 1: we would take a step back and be like, well, yeah, wait,
Speaker 1: how many times has this happened before? That's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty valid question. And to be fair, the intelligence officials
Speaker 1: who were in charge during the Trump administration, they say
Speaker 1: it is totally not true that the balloon did fly,
Speaker 1: although you know, many people who are privy to the
Speaker 1: current intelligence are saying it is. So. We have some
Speaker 1: clips of them saying that this was the DNI. Ratcliffe,
Speaker 1: the Director of National Intelligence under the Trump for a
Speaker 1: portion he says that he never learned about this balloon
Speaker 1: flight while he was in the administration. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 1: The Department of Defense is claiming that there were three
Speaker 1: balloons Chinese spy balloons that entered the United Space airspace
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration and that they were not shot
Speaker 1: down and they were not disclosed. Can you please tell
Speaker 1: us the truth and if that's true, well, it's not true.
Speaker 1: I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
Speaker 1: refuted it. Yesterday, a sec former Secretary of State and
Speaker 1: CIA director Mike Pompeo has refuted it. Who's lying, Crystal,
Speaker 1: I really don't know. I mean, we got a lot
Speaker 1: of untrustworthy characters. We got all the Trump intelligence and
Speaker 1: then he also got the pentagon. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like you necessarily want to take those people at their
Speaker 1: word and Trump himself. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 1: the screen for the I guess the final word from
Speaker 1: the man, he says eight quote never happened and it
Speaker 1: is fake disinformation. So did the balloon fly over the
Speaker 1: United States or not. It remains a mystery as to
Speaker 1: whether that is true, but it is of course opening
Speaker 1: up all sorts of partisan charges. I personally just found
Speaker 1: that very amusing that people. I think Fox and Friends
Speaker 1: did a panel where they said that Biden wasn't going
Speaker 1: to shoot down the balloon the morning that the balloon
Speaker 1: was actually shot down because of the Hunter Biden laptop, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, that's a that's that's that's
Speaker 1: certainly you take. Let's go with that. And then of
Speaker 1: course hours later had to be shot down the crow
Speaker 1: when he actually get shut shoot down the blue I mean, okay, So,
Speaker 1: first of all, there is some reporting this morning that
Speaker 1: tries to square the circle between like balloons probably overflew
Speaker 1: the US from the Chinese during the Trump administration and
Speaker 1: we didn't know about it. And Trump officials are insisting like, no,
Speaker 1: this didn't happen, which is that it did happen, but
Speaker 1: they didn't become aware of it during the trap. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: I still have so many questions about this, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: another thing that I will say is I just despise
Speaker 1: whether it was under the Obama administration, whether it was
Speaker 1: under the Trump administration, or now what Republicans are saying.
Speaker 1: I hate this like weakness discourse when it comes to
Speaker 1: foreign policy, which is so squishy, it's so meaningless. It's just,
Speaker 1: you know, foreign powers are not pursuing their aims, Like
Speaker 1: China is not deciding whether or not to invade Taiwan
Speaker 1: based on what the hell we did with the stupid balloon. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's number one. So that whole discourse really really irritates me.
Speaker 1: Irritates me, you know when it was under Trump and
Speaker 1: there was all this discourse about his weakness with regards
Speaker 1: to Russia and Vladimir Putinen, et cetera. So that's one piece.
Speaker 1: Another question I still have is like was this intentional
Speaker 1: from the Chinese because there is huge and significant, I
Speaker 1: think diplomatic you know, fallout over this. Blincoln was scheduled
Speaker 1: for a sort of long overdue business trip. This is
Speaker 1: this trip was kind of designed it. They didn't have
Speaker 1: any big deliverables or goals on this trip, but one
Speaker 1: of the goals was actually to try to have lines
Speaker 1: of communication so that if you had some sort of
Speaker 1: like domestic mishap or some sort of like weird international
Speaker 1: diplomatic crisis as the one that is unfolding right now,
Speaker 1: that it could be more easily diffused. The loss of
Speaker 1: that trip is actually a real loss. So you're going, okay,
Speaker 1: Was this intentional on the part of the Chinese? Did
Speaker 1: they mean to float something over Montana that people could
Speaker 1: visibly see with their eyes? Was this incompetence? Was this
Speaker 1: hawkish hardliners in the Chinese government trying to undermine the trip?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's still a lot of quiet.
Speaker 1: They say this was a weather balloon that went off course.
Speaker 1: You can make it read into that what you will,
Speaker 1: But I think there's a lot of questions here over
Speaker 1: whether this was like an intentional provocation from the Chinese
Speaker 1: or whether this was just a dumb mishap. Well, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where now actually all of that matters,
Speaker 1: and it's actually on the Biden administration to tell us
Speaker 1: as much as possible, because if you're going to cause
Speaker 1: a major diplomatic conflagration over this, then you at least
Speaker 1: owe us what the intent certainly was. Now here's what
Speaker 1: we know. The balloon was spotted over Montana, over one
Speaker 1: of the three bases in the United States where we
Speaker 1: keep intercontinental ballistic missiles. Little teas from my monologue. I
Speaker 1: actually learned this for research, which is that we also
Speaker 1: are investing heavily in spy balloons. Many other nations are
Speaker 1: as well. They're able to remain static over the target.
Speaker 1: And actually our balloon program is specifically designed around hypersonic missiles.
Speaker 1: So I know that the United States is currently developing
Speaker 1: hypersonic missiles in response to hypersonic missile development with China
Speaker 1: and Russia. So it's possible that they are trying to
Speaker 1: use balloons for the exact same reason, and that case
Speaker 1: it certainly would be pretty provocative. On the other hand, look,
Speaker 1: it's very possible that they've done this a couple of
Speaker 1: times before. Many nations have spy balloons that are floating
Speaker 1: around the world, mostly the great power nations, and how
Speaker 1: many Maybe we just learned about it because in this
Speaker 1: particular case, it was spotted by a commercial jetliner. So
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, what is that? Well, people in
Speaker 1: Montana can see it with their naked eyes, right right,
Speaker 1: So I mean that again, if that's intentional, this is
Speaker 1: some gall right ahead of important diplomatic visit that you know,
Speaker 1: they'd been long in preparations for the piece of information.
Speaker 1: That makes me feel like this was more probably some
Speaker 1: incompetence or dumb mishap, or somebody trying to subvert this trip.
Speaker 1: The more hawkish elements is the fact that when the
Speaker 1: existence of the balloon was first report, the first thing
Speaker 1: they did was deny it. But then once they acknowledged
Speaker 1: it and you know, spun their story about oh it's
Speaker 1: a weather balloon and fear enough of course whatever, it
Speaker 1: was notable to me that they apologized, and that indicated
Speaker 1: I mean, if I was leaning in one direction, that
Speaker 1: sort of indicated to me that, all right, they didn't
Speaker 1: really this went awry. This was not the way that
Speaker 1: they wanted things to go. Now. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: it wasn't a spy balloon. It obviously was. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that they didn't intend to float it over Montana,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But I don't think that they perhaps meant
Speaker 1: for it to be this blatant and this obvious, because look,
Speaker 1: the one thing Ted Cruz said here that I do
Speaker 1: actually agree with is this does all come down to politics,
Speaker 1: and it does all come down to optics, because it's
Speaker 1: no mystery that China spying on us and we're spying
Speaker 1: on them. We know that they have these spy satellites
Speaker 1: that are probably able to gather just as much data
Speaker 1: as as freaking balloon was. The problem is when it's
Speaker 1: so in your faith that it prompts an entire nation
Speaker 1: to focus on it and say, okay, guys, what are
Speaker 1: you doing about this? And what is this? Ultimately, well,
Speaker 1: it is a motive. I mean, can we not help
Speaker 1: but say, look, I don't know why there's a difference
Speaker 1: there just is between a spot a satellite that's up
Speaker 1: in international space and one that's literally sixty thousand feet
Speaker 1: up barely in the stratosphere right over an ICBM site
Speaker 1: that's overflying America. I mean, if you think back to
Speaker 1: the spot Nick moment and what that feeling was like
Speaker 1: for a lot of Americans, I think it comes down
Speaker 1: to a fundamental nation of security and especially the fact
Speaker 1: that it is our country. On whether though it was
Speaker 1: intentional or not, I don't know, because actually I was
Speaker 1: thinking back to the nineteen sixty U two incident. So
Speaker 1: if we get back to that, when Francis Scurity Powers
Speaker 1: was shot down over the Soviet Union, he actually was
Speaker 1: shot down at seventy thousand feet, what did we say.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, it is a routine geographic mission, geological
Speaker 1: survey that went off course into the Soviet Union. But
Speaker 1: it was unmanned. There was nobody on it because I
Speaker 1: thought it was dead, and then he was alive and
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah it was. It was a spy flight,
Speaker 1: and then we had to the whole bridge of spies
Speaker 1: things to eventually get back Yes, Eyes and krush Jev.
Speaker 1: It actually sets some bad relations going into the Cuban
Speaker 1: missile crisis a year later, okay, so or a couple
Speaker 1: of years later. So the point is is that sometimes
Speaker 1: these are routine military missions, and then what happens on
Speaker 1: routine military missions, stuff goes wrong. As to whether it
Speaker 1: was drifting off course, the more of research into this,
Speaker 1: I don't believe it for a second. So I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why Crystal our own balloons and as I understand
Speaker 1: over the high text by balloons that now exists in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. They have a high rate of maneuverability.
Speaker 1: They actually have software on board that incorporates wind patterns
Speaker 1: so that they're able to determine their course and all that.
Speaker 1: The idea that it was blown off course is ludicrous.
Speaker 1: It has actual like, it has the ability to maneuver
Speaker 1: and its own engine on board the balloon itself. So
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, since you've gone deeper into
Speaker 1: the spy balloon, the history and anals and current capabilities
Speaker 1: that I have, what about the alta Because what strikes
Speaker 1: me as so brazen about this is that random people
Speaker 1: standing on the ground in Montana could see this thing
Speaker 1: like would it normally be at such a high altitude
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't be able to So that's the part
Speaker 1: that to me, I'm like, maybe that was unintentional, because
Speaker 1: I do think that if they had done a better
Speaker 1: job sort of like covering their ass and like they
Speaker 1: did in the Trump administration flying the balloons, but nobody
Speaker 1: really notices whatever, you wouldn't have this whole diplomatic fault.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is determinative weather. But again, our
Speaker 1: own balloons fly at the exact same altitude. Our balloons
Speaker 1: fly at sixty to ninety thousand feet. This balloon was
Speaker 1: reportedly detected right at sixty thousand feet, which you know,
Speaker 1: if you're taking photos, probably better to be lower so
Speaker 1: you can get as high resolution as possible. A lot
Speaker 1: of the visibility from the naked eye, that more has
Speaker 1: to do with weather conditions on the particular day from
Speaker 1: what I understand, especially also if you consider even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't visible from the naked eye from the ground,
Speaker 1: which it was in some cases this time, commercial jetliner
Speaker 1: is a whole other one. And that's where my question
Speaker 1: and to everybody who operates these balloons, which is, you
Speaker 1: know commercial airline are flies at what thirty five thousand,
Speaker 1: forty thousand feet? It's only twenty thousand feet away from
Speaker 1: this balloon, like obviously they're going to be able to see,
Speaker 1: and visibility up there is totally different than visibility from
Speaker 1: the ground. I know aviators are probably rolling their eyes
Speaker 1: at me. I'm sorry. You know, it's based on my
Speaker 1: limited research from what I can tell, But the idea
Speaker 1: or that it was brazen to fly at sixty thousand
Speaker 1: from what I can tell that's actually a normal altitude
Speaker 1: for a spy balloon. So really I think they got
Speaker 1: caught and that's it's really just like the U two
Speaker 1: incident where it was a routine mission. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason why they probably didn't think it was brazen is
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, we do it all the time. Who
Speaker 1: knows how many balloons? Also, this is what we're about
Speaker 1: to get to, how these are just the ones that
Speaker 1: we know about how many flew over that we have
Speaker 1: no idea because something I take away and have taken
Speaker 1: away from a lot of my UFO research and reading
Speaker 1: as not only that but also on missile technology, the
Speaker 1: idea that we have a perfect clue of what's happening
Speaker 1: outside of commercial space. It's just completely not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's an It's as much as we like the
Speaker 1: idea of technology, you know, it's a big country and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Arab sky up there. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that to me is maybe the most likely
Speaker 1: explanation is like they do these things all the time,
Speaker 1: and so they didn't think to, you know, to break
Speaker 1: up the routine, given that we had this visit with
Speaker 1: Blincoln coming. They just kept doing the thing. That they
Speaker 1: normally do. It just so happens this time for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it was so obvious that they got caught. That's the
Speaker 1: best I can figure out with here. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there's a couple other pieces to comment on. Number One,
Speaker 1: you know, within the Biden administration, there is kind of
Speaker 1: a tug of war between various factions in terms of
Speaker 1: how they want to approach China, a more collaborative approach.
Speaker 1: You know, this diplomatic mission from Blincoln sort of reflective
Speaker 1: of that desire to work together, especially on issues like
Speaker 1: the climate crisis. Is there are others who are more hawkish,
Speaker 1: and you know, this sort of like strengthens their hand
Speaker 1: within the administration. That's one thing to say and then
Speaker 1: the other thing to say here, which frankly I think
Speaker 1: is unfortunate, is I mean, this is Cold War two
Speaker 1: point zero. It has the exact same vibes of some
Speaker 1: you know, a spy mission gone off course, major diplomatic
Speaker 1: blow up, potential, you know, long term fallout, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a real sign of the times
Speaker 1: that we're living in. It's possible. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: more hopeful stuff like this happens. You know I've talked
Speaker 1: here about for the April two thousand and one hen
Speaker 1: Island incident where a US Navy spy plane actually collided
Speaker 1: with the Chinese plane in the middle of the air.
Speaker 1: The Navy blames the Chinese, the Chinese blame US. I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened anyway, the plane itself was forced
Speaker 1: it down che on Chinese airspace. It caused a big,
Speaker 1: major diplomatic incident. But you know, people got over it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well this is back in what two thousands,
Speaker 1: that was two thousand and one has actually happed right
Speaker 1: before nine to eleven. It caused a huge crisis with China.
Speaker 1: The pilots, they wanted him to apologize. We were like, no,
Speaker 1: they're not going to apologize because you're a pilot is
Speaker 1: the one who our guide guide It was all time
Speaker 1: in terms of Chinese development and our relationship fees of it. Look, also,
Speaker 1: this is a choice on them, like if they want
Speaker 1: to make this into a whole thing about the look,
Speaker 1: you know that they would shoot down one of ours
Speaker 1: if they detected it and it became a domestic incident too, Like,
Speaker 1: don't get all higher holier than that. The whole point
Speaker 1: is with these things, as they found out with Hinan
Speaker 1: Island why they were buzzing our aircraft. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can see it and if you
Speaker 1: can detect it, you're going to be aggressive towards it
Speaker 1: whenever it's your airspace. So I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess the best hope, as you're pointing out,
Speaker 1: is that everybody is sort of like acting out their
Speaker 1: part of what they feel like they need to do
Speaker 1: to appease their own domestic populace. Right the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: ultimately they bring this thing down, you know, over the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: they're able to collect whatever they're able to collect and
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, posture their way they have to
Speaker 1: for the mess pot We're tough and we're not going
Speaker 1: to let this happen, et cetera, et cetera. And the
Speaker 1: Chinese put out their statement sort of Bellico statement, like
Speaker 1: being upset about the fact that we shot it down,
Speaker 1: but us. The hope is that everybody behind the scenes
Speaker 1: kind of knows this is the part they have to
Speaker 1: play and they don't really have another joy. And the
Speaker 1: real test is when the visit happens, how does that
Speaker 1: visit go, are they going to snub Anthony Blincoln like
Speaker 1: they snub President Obama in two thousand and eight. Are
Speaker 1: we going to have engagement or are we going to
Speaker 1: have a stuff that actually matters? Probably even more so,
Speaker 1: although of course, you know, we can't deny that this
Speaker 1: isn't going to play a part. Yeah, it's a lot. This,
Speaker 1: the uh circumventing of this, the undermining of this particular
Speaker 1: visit is a loss. Hopefully they're able to get it
Speaker 1: rescheduled a not too distant future. Absolutely, Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: to the next one here and let's put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. So we had to have a
Speaker 1: little UFO tie in, and a lot of my UFO
Speaker 1: friends were talking quite a bit about this, which is
Speaker 1: that the previous UFO report actually specifically pointed to foreign
Speaker 1: powers who are aerial spying, and specifically the possibility of
Speaker 1: Chinese and Russian balloons which had previously entered the United States. However,
Speaker 1: I do want to kind of break this down and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about it because some people were saying, actually,
Speaker 1: this vindicates the fact that all these UFO incidents are
Speaker 1: really just Chinese spy balloons or Russian spy balloons or
Speaker 1: you know, spy aircraft or drones or whatever of some kind.
Speaker 1: First of all, many of the incidents that have occurred
Speaker 1: and happened on camera are ones which don't appear to
Speaker 1: have nearly the same let's just say propulsion as a
Speaker 1: normal balloon, not necessarily propulsion known to humankind. That also, though,
Speaker 1: what many people were talking about is they were pointing
Speaker 1: to the fact that when they know that it's a
Speaker 1: Chinese balloon, very they can say when they know it's Chinese,
Speaker 1: compared to when they pretend that it's something else, it
Speaker 1: gets wall to wall coverage, it gets a statement of condemnation,
Speaker 1: the cancelation of the visits, and a clear identification, where
Speaker 1: in the past what they have pointed to is they're like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's Chinese or maybe it's Russian. Well, clearly, what
Speaker 1: do we learn from this balloon. It has Chinese letters
Speaker 1: on the side, so you know it's at sixty thousand feet,
Speaker 1: So clearly, if it's a Chinese balloon, it's not that
Speaker 1: hard to figure out that it's a Chinese balloon. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna presume the same Russia, and probably the same with
Speaker 1: American spy balloon. So kind of the UFO takeaway that
Speaker 1: my friend Jeremy Corbel highlighted was that if you think
Speaker 1: about what it's like when an actual spy balloon overflies
Speaker 1: the United States and our ability to clearly and almost
Speaker 1: immediately identify it, if they were able to do that
Speaker 1: in the past with respect to hundreds now of UFO incidents,
Speaker 1: they would because it's actually not that hard to attribute
Speaker 1: whether these things are or not. And I think the
Speaker 1: second part to this is, and this gets to what
Speaker 1: I alluded to earlier, I think one of the only
Speaker 1: reasons that we even know about the last couple of
Speaker 1: balloons is because of a lot of interest in the
Speaker 1: UFO phenomenon UAPs, and because the whole push for transparency was, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we have all this data, but nobody's analyzing it. Nobody's
Speaker 1: really looking on at what's going on up there. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of pilots over the years who have reported
Speaker 1: sketchy things going on. Most of the time they were
Speaker 1: encouraged to just sit down and to not talk about it.
Speaker 1: And so one of the reasons why we're able to say, oh,
Speaker 1: one crash four months ago, or it happened during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, well, two thousand seventeen is when this whole
Speaker 1: thing even broke open. That's whenever we were even trying
Speaker 1: to start paying attention to this guys. And actually part
Speaker 1: of the push for the whole transparency was you don't
Speaker 1: know what else you're gonna find up there. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what a lot Marco Rubio and other UFO transparency figures
Speaker 1: who've been pushing for it. Their whole case has been
Speaker 1: this is a matter of national security, as we just
Speaker 1: found out. I really do believe, and I look, I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of evidence, as just a hunch
Speaker 1: based on what I've read on this and everything. I
Speaker 1: think if this happens in twenty fifteen, this thing flies
Speaker 1: over and we have no idea, I really do, it's
Speaker 1: possible not, but I think I think not, just because
Speaker 1: people on the ground in Montana were like, what the
Speaker 1: hell is this? And there was the ground stop at
Speaker 1: the airport in Montana, But who knows. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have the numbers here. Since twenty twenty one, the Pentagon
Speaker 1: has examined three hundred and sixty six incidents that were
Speaker 1: initially unexplained and said one hundred and sixty three were balloons.
Speaker 1: So not anywhere closed to all of those, and they
Speaker 1: say a handful of those involved events surveillance balloons, but
Speaker 1: none of them were conducting persistent reconnaissance of the US
Speaker 1: militi Harry Basis. They also say, though that a lot
Speaker 1: of times if the US government immediately identifies this as
Speaker 1: a spy balloon, well of course that's not included in
Speaker 1: the Unidentified Aerial phenomenon tracking, So it does this report
Speaker 1: does raise a lot of questions of like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: learning about like this incident now and maybe like three
Speaker 1: max incidents during the Trump administration, but this report suggests
Speaker 1: that there was a lot more going on than even
Speaker 1: what is being reported at this point. Happened during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration and happened now. They also say that of
Speaker 1: the one hundred and seventy one reports that were not
Speaker 1: attributed to balloon's, drones or airborne trash some quote, appear
Speaker 1: to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and
Speaker 1: require further analysis. To your point, Soccer, of like when
Speaker 1: it's a balloon, they can tell it's a freaking balloon.
Speaker 1: It's not that hard for them to be able to
Speaker 1: figure it out. Maybe someone who's untrained initially is like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is that? Right, but then once they
Speaker 1: actually do the research, it was not particularly difficult for
Speaker 1: them to figure out it was a weather balloon, is
Speaker 1: spy balloon? Whatever. There you go. So there's the UFO
Speaker 1: Ale had to get that in. Yeah, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: we have some new polling here that is fairly devastating
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden and for the Democrats. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. This is from
Speaker 1: the Washington Post in ABC News. You have now, in
Speaker 1: a theoretical general election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: something almost no one actually wants. Donald Trump now beating
Speaker 1: Joe Biden by three points. Now, that is within the
Speaker 1: margin of error, but a significant move towards Trump. Five
Speaker 1: point swing towards Trump since just September. The numbers among
Speaker 1: independents are particularly bad. There you have Trump over Biden
Speaker 1: by nine points. The DC wisdom, conventional wisdom after the
Speaker 1: midterm election was that Trump is extremely weak. Biden has
Speaker 1: really strengthened his hand. He outperformed expectations. Yes, Republicans took
Speaker 1: the House, but Democrats were able to not only hold
Speaker 1: onto the Senate, but actually pick up the seat. This
Speaker 1: defied recent history. So he is in a great position
Speaker 1: to get re elected. This poll, among others, says otherwise.
Speaker 1: And Trump even with January sixth, fake electors and investigations
Speaker 1: into his business, going back to investigations in the stormy
Speaker 1: Daniels again and the whole classified documents scandal, which of
Speaker 1: course now Biden having some similar problems as kind of
Speaker 1: muddy the waters on. Still, you cannot write this man off.
Speaker 1: If there's one thing we have learned over the years,
Speaker 1: is that you just cannot write off Donald Trump and Biden.
Speaker 1: In spite of that conventional wisdom saying that he is
Speaker 1: in a much stronger position, he actually is in a
Speaker 1: weaker position according to this pole and according to some
Speaker 1: other numbers, than he was before the general election. There
Speaker 1: are some other numbers in here too soccer that are
Speaker 1: just damning. So I mentioned that basically no one wants
Speaker 1: the Trump Biden rematch, even though we look very likely
Speaker 1: to head to the Trump Biden rematch, though a lot
Speaker 1: of things could happen between now and then. You've got
Speaker 1: only fewer than two in ten who are enthusiastic about Trump.
Speaker 1: That's seventeen percent of the overall electorate. Just seven percent
Speaker 1: of the overall electorate enthusiastic about Biden. If you drill
Speaker 1: down to just the Democratic Party, Okay, Democrats, who almost
Speaker 1: all say they would did vote for him, will vote
Speaker 1: for him whatever. You know, what percent are enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Sixteen percent of Democrats are like, let's go
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. This is incredible weakness from the incoming president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tough one to read, because what do you
Speaker 1: take away from this? Most Republicans don't want Trump, most
Speaker 1: Democrats don't want Biden. Most people will vote for both
Speaker 1: of those candidates if they're nominated, and majority of people
Speaker 1: say they would actually be pretty dissatisfied or angry if
Speaker 1: Biden were reelected, and a lot of the same people
Speaker 1: say the exact same thing about Trump. This is as
Speaker 1: clear of a broken political system as you can possibly get.
Speaker 1: There's hours of discussions that we could have about this,
Speaker 1: about the move to party primaries, about what different types
Speaker 1: of elections and all that look like. But let's all
Speaker 1: be real that ain't any gonna happen in the next
Speaker 1: two years. This is what we got. Most likely, it
Speaker 1: is the result that we have, and you know, I
Speaker 1: just can't help but look at the nine point margin
Speaker 1: that Trump has with independence and say, you better be worried.
Speaker 1: What did we point to in the GOP? In the
Speaker 1: GOP performance in November, Sure, it was skinny in the House,
Speaker 1: didn't work out in the Senate. They still won the
Speaker 1: popular vote. Guys, that doesn't happen all that often. In fact,
Speaker 1: the last time that the Republicans had won the popular vote,
Speaker 1: I believe, was like two thousand and four. And then,
Speaker 1: even if you think about a presidential election, four remains
Speaker 1: the only popular vote election that a Republican president has
Speaker 1: had since the year two thousand and that's the last
Speaker 1: twenty three years. We'll see how exactly it goes in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. So what does this mean? I would
Speaker 1: look at this, and again I just come back to
Speaker 1: I don't know why this apparently is a controversial point.
Speaker 1: Don't underestimate the guy who got elected the president and
Speaker 1: almost run reelection. Yeah, Like, why is that such a
Speaker 1: Everybody's like, oh, old Donnie, he's got what do we
Speaker 1: always say? Look, he was dead to rights, indicted, gun
Speaker 1: to his head, he was done. And then the Biden
Speaker 1: classified documents say happen. You can never underestimate this man,
Speaker 1: not even in terms of his own doing, but in
Speaker 1: the way circumstances always come about and make things a
Speaker 1: lot more nuanced and complicated than before. So I look
Speaker 1: at that and remember this. Look. It's also hard because
Speaker 1: the polls were so significantly off in the Republican direction
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, But if you were to look
Speaker 1: at a statistical average of Trump's appearance on the ballot,
Speaker 1: it would tell you that in general he overperforms rather
Speaker 1: than underformed. Yes, maybe stop the steel changes that, as
Speaker 1: we saw in twenty twenty two, certainly could maybe lower
Speaker 1: inflation and better jobs numbers for Joe Biden to a
Speaker 1: year or and a half or so from now. Maybe
Speaker 1: that changes it. I have, you know, maybe a war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine ans. We have no clue as to what
Speaker 1: the major factors are as things stand right now. I
Speaker 1: just take away, don't underestimate Trump. It is anybody's ballgame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's what you have to look at this,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, there's only so much we can
Speaker 1: read into polls at this point because we did sort
Speaker 1: of have this consistent rule of thumb up until these
Speaker 1: midterm elections of like, yeah, they tend to lean more
Speaker 1: Democratic than what the actual reality is. We had a
Speaker 1: reversal of that in the midterms. One theory you could
Speaker 1: put forward, though, I mean, Donald Trump was not on
Speaker 1: the ballot technically in twenty twenty two, and his core base,
Speaker 1: even if you look at how he's doing within the
Speaker 1: Republican primary, continues to be with non college educated, white
Speaker 1: working class voters. And there is one polling theory that
Speaker 1: those are exactly the people who tend to be reflected
Speaker 1: the least in the polling data. Now is that's still
Speaker 1: the case. I just really literally don't know at this point.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to write out a theory of
Speaker 1: why Trump may be stronger than what the poll numbers reflect,
Speaker 1: I think that's where you would start. Just digging into
Speaker 1: these numbers. Little go and put this next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen. This the Washington Post right up. They
Speaker 1: It was kind of funny what they chose to highlight,
Speaker 1: but anyway, their headline as few Americans are excited about
Speaker 1: a Biden Trump rematch post ABC poll fines, and they
Speaker 1: dig into exactly how Biden is doing which with which
Speaker 1: demographics in the Democratic Party, and they say he's weakest
Speaker 1: among Democrats and Democratic leaning independents who are under forty
Speaker 1: years old, So he's weakest with young Democrats, sixty nine
Speaker 1: percent of whom say the party should nominate someone else.
Speaker 1: Black Democrats just narrowly prefer nominating Biden forty seven percent
Speaker 1: over someone else forty one percent, which, you know, this
Speaker 1: continues to be one of his stronger constituencies. But even
Speaker 1: with this group that is supposed to be the core
Speaker 1: of his base, they're kind of split fairly close to
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty about whether they want this dude again,
Speaker 1: And sixty four percent of white Democrats want someone other
Speaker 1: than Biden. The point I really want to underscore here, Sager,
Speaker 1: is that the disenchantment with Biden on the Democratic base
Speaker 1: goes much further than just progressives, who of course have
Speaker 1: never been particularly excite about or enthusiastic about abiden presidency.
Speaker 1: It goes much further than just young Democrats, who again
Speaker 1: have been his some of his biggest critics and were
Speaker 1: certainly deeply skeptical of him during the Democratic primary in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. This is across the board, a lot of
Speaker 1: normy Lib Democrats of all races, ages, demographic groups, etc.
Speaker 1: Who I think have this instinct of like, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't hate the guy, but they're like, I just
Speaker 1: you're going to be old. Yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're up to it. I think that's the bottom line. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're going to be the guy
Speaker 1: to beat Trump. I don't know if you're really capable
Speaker 1: of handling this thing for another four years. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, we've seen your vice president Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: and we don't have a lot of confidence in her
Speaker 1: ability either to win or to be able to effectively
Speaker 1: govern if you don't end up making it through the
Speaker 1: next term. Absolutely right, Okay, So this has all led
Speaker 1: to an interesting moment from our Secretary of Transportation, the
Speaker 1: one and only Mayor Pete Budajeg, who was pressed on
Speaker 1: some of these numbers and how the Democratic base is
Speaker 1: feeling about Joe Biden. He got a little testy about
Speaker 1: some of this. Let's take a listen soon. Do you
Speaker 1: expect the president to announce he's running for reelection? That's
Speaker 1: out of my lane and above my pay grade. At
Speaker 1: the same time, what I know is that whether we're
Speaker 1: ting you want him to run, do you want him
Speaker 1: to run again. I mean, you saw our poll gave
Speaker 1: the large number of Democrats say they don't want him
Speaker 1: to run again. He is an absolutely historically successful president,
Speaker 1: and I want to see that continue again. I do
Speaker 1: want him to run again. When I'm appearing in this capacity,
Speaker 1: I can't talk campaigns and elections, but let me say this,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly proud to be part of this team that
Speaker 1: he has built. So little testing, you're really selling it there,
Speaker 1: absolutely historic president. I mean no secret that this dude
Speaker 1: wants to make another run. So you know what he
Speaker 1: would like to see is either I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think he really cares whether Biden wins again or whether
Speaker 1: he loses, because ultimately he's setting himself up to run
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty eight. One side drama with Pete is
Speaker 1: the fact that, no secret, he struggled with voters of
Speaker 1: color throughout the Democratic primary. So the rearranging of the
Speaker 1: Democratic primary stations we're going to get to in a
Speaker 1: little bit, putting South Carolina first, it's actually really bad
Speaker 1: for Pete to tennis. I mean, he did well in Iowa,
Speaker 1: he did well in New Hampshire. That lineup for him
Speaker 1: last time around was kind of the best possible scenario
Speaker 1: for him to be able to get off the ground.
Speaker 1: Putting South Carolina first is kind of devastating to his
Speaker 1: chances for the future, no question. Actually think I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about that a lot. Just I think that this
Speaker 1: really rigs things in an establishment direction for all time
Speaker 1: to come. For the Democratic primary, if you consider Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders and his major over performances in Iowa and in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, he never did particularly well in South Carolina,
Speaker 1: although he probably did better than if he had gone
Speaker 1: up first Obama. There's very little evidence to show that
Speaker 1: Obama ever would have won the Democratic nomination if they
Speaker 1: had started in South Carolina and he hadn't proven that
Speaker 1: he could win in Iowa and at least comes second
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire. Even if I go back to Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton very likely would not have one in the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two Democratic primary. So this basically makes it
Speaker 1: whoever the establishment rubber stamps, they're almost certainly going to win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly. And we'll get to more of that
Speaker 1: and the dynamics there in a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 1: Pete's comments to me are reflective of the fact that
Speaker 1: before the midterm election, you had some wavering among even
Speaker 1: Democratic elected officials. We played a bunch of them here,
Speaker 1: of even people like Jerry Nadler, who's like longtime senior
Speaker 1: House Democrat, as establishment as they come, expressing reservations. You
Speaker 1: had people out and out saying that they thought they
Speaker 1: should go with a different candidate. That was a pretty
Speaker 1: wild break in terms of an incumbent president and the
Speaker 1: amount of elected Democratic officials you had who either wouldn't
Speaker 1: say or actually went out there and were like, let's
Speaker 1: go in another direction. The midterm election results have clearly
Speaker 1: shored up Biden's support among Democratic elected officials and Democratic
Speaker 1: Party elites, no doubt about it. But they did nothing
Speaker 1: for him with the base. They did nothing for him
Speaker 1: with the general electorate. So you now have this kind
Speaker 1: of disconnect where no one is going to challenge Biden
Speaker 1: in terms of establish elected Democratic officials. There were some
Speaker 1: that were kind of sniffing around a little bit before
Speaker 1: the midterms. I don't think they were ever going to
Speaker 1: actually jump in against him. Now that is completely closed off.
Speaker 1: They have completely closed ranks, and yet you still have vast,
Speaker 1: vast disaffection both within the Democratic base and with the
Speaker 1: nation at large. So he's heading into this should be
Speaker 1: some of the strongest times for him. You know, after
Speaker 1: he did defy history with his midterm results, this should
Speaker 1: be you know, he got a few things accomplished in
Speaker 1: the first two years. He should have about the strongest
Speaker 1: hand that he could play. And this is what it
Speaker 1: ultimately looks like. Approval rating hasn't budged. Losing to Donald
Speaker 1: Trump after all of this, it's really pathetic. Oh, certainly Trump,
Speaker 1: he's not going down without a fight, and he's basically
Speaker 1: reverting right back to the twenty sixteen playbook. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to the next one here, and let's put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. Trump will not commit to
Speaker 1: backing the GOP nominee in twenty twenty four. This was
Speaker 1: from an interview that he gave with radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Speaker 1: He said, Hugh Hewitt ask him, will you support whoever
Speaker 1: wins the party's nomination? Trump announced, he said, quote it
Speaker 1: would depend. It would have to depend on who the
Speaker 1: nominee was. Now, obviously it's not an unprecedented situation. I
Speaker 1: would say for mister Trump, it really is more of
Speaker 1: a return to probably one of the most iconic moments
Speaker 1: of the twenty sixteen presidential primary, which it couldn't help
Speaker 1: remind me of. Let's take a listen and relive that.
Speaker 1: Is there anyone on stage and can I see Hans
Speaker 1: who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the
Speaker 1: eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge to not
Speaker 1: run an independent campaign against that person. We're looking for
Speaker 1: you to raise your hand, now, raise your hand now
Speaker 1: if you won't make that pledge tonight, mister Trump, So
Speaker 1: I cannot say I have to respect the person that
Speaker 1: if it's not me, the person that wins. If I
Speaker 1: do win, and I'm leading bike quite a bit, that's
Speaker 1: what I want to do. I can totally make that pledge.
Speaker 1: If I'm the nominee, I will pledge I will not
Speaker 1: run as an independent. But and I am discussing it
Speaker 1: with everybody, but I'm talking about a lot of leverage.
Speaker 1: We want to win, and we will win, but I
Speaker 1: want to win as the Republican. I want to run
Speaker 1: as the Republican nominee. God, I feel like that was
Speaker 1: literally yesterday. I know, iconic. If you bake it into
Speaker 1: the overall GOP primary and what that's all going to
Speaker 1: look like. We haven't even been on the air since
Speaker 1: this happened. But allegedly Nikki Haley is supposedly going to
Speaker 1: announce that she's going to run against Trump on February fifteenth.
Speaker 1: We'll see. I think she's a born loser candidate. We'll
Speaker 1: see how that exactly works out for her. But the
Speaker 1: real threat is going to be Rohn DeSantis, of course,
Speaker 1: which you've been covering a lot. And even if DeSantis
Speaker 1: is not firing at Trump, Trump is just absolutely unloading
Speaker 1: on him any chance that he gets. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. This is my personal favorite.
Speaker 1: Also from the Hugh Hewett interview, he said that DeSantis
Speaker 1: had tears in his eyes as he begged for an endorsement. Quote,
Speaker 1: he was dead, he was leaving the race. He came
Speaker 1: over and he begged me, begged me for an endorsement.
Speaker 1: He said, if you endorse me, I'll win. There were
Speaker 1: tears coming down from his eyes. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: I say, Trump is not wrong. DeSantis was down in
Speaker 1: the GOP presidential primary. As I think I've told this
Speaker 1: story many times, but I interviewed Trump the day after
Speaker 1: the midterm elections in twenty and eighteen or maybe like
Speaker 1: two days after something like that, and he all he
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about was DeSantis. He's like, look at
Speaker 1: this guy. He's like, he's nothing without me. He was
Speaker 1: down by this, he was up by thirty one points
Speaker 1: when Trump endorses him, because it's all about Trump, and
Speaker 1: you know, that is kind of a potent attack that
Speaker 1: he has Againsttis. DeSantis continues to deflect. Old friend Henry
Speaker 1: Rodgers asked him a question about this over at the
Speaker 1: press conference down in Florida, and DeSantis was like, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting firing from all sides and people
Speaker 1: are criticizing, but enough with the politics. We're all just
Speaker 1: move on and ultimately that's up to the voters. And
Speaker 1: he talks about again his resounding win in the state
Speaker 1: of Florida, which is also going to be a very
Speaker 1: potent feather in his cap but Ron, the sanctimonious attacks
Speaker 1: and all of that on Trump's truth have continued and
Speaker 1: continue up until this day, all throughout this even when
Speaker 1: the man hasn't even announced he's running with Nikki Haley.
Speaker 1: He also talked about her, essentially branding her as disloyal.
Speaker 1: He was like, she said that she wouldn't run against
Speaker 1: me again. I don't think that this woman has a
Speaker 1: chance in hell. But good luck, I guess enjoy the
Speaker 1: one day of good press that you're going to get
Speaker 1: if he made some similar comments about Mike Pence, about
Speaker 1: how he made Mike and he does nothing before him, etc. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is definitely Trump getting back into fighting
Speaker 1: form here, no doubt about it. The comments about him
Speaker 1: being unwilling to commit to backing the nominee in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, the gopnum me in twenty twenty four, there's
Speaker 1: a few things to say about. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: what a bind Republicans are in, because clearly the establishment
Speaker 1: of the party and a lot of other folks you know,
Speaker 1: in the party are ready to move on for Trump.
Speaker 1: They see Ron DeSantis as a better electoral prospect, you know,
Speaker 1: they see him as just sort of like easier to
Speaker 1: deal with altogether, and so they would love to move
Speaker 1: on to Ron DeSantis or someone else. But you've got
Speaker 1: this threat out there. Of There was a poll that
Speaker 1: was done by Bulwark, which is like an anti Trump
Speaker 1: news website. They asked, okay, if you had Trump running
Speaker 1: as a third party and the Republican nominee, who would
Speaker 1: you back? Twenty eight percent of Republican voters say they
Speaker 1: would back Trump if he ran as an independent. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's automatically handing the election to Democrats. So in a way,
Speaker 1: even though they feel like, okay, if you just had
Speaker 1: DeSantis versus Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is, that
Speaker 1: would be a stronger hand to play, it may actually
Speaker 1: end up being for them a much worse electoral prospect,
Speaker 1: especially because even if Trump doesn't mount an independent bid,
Speaker 1: I just cannot imagine him bending the knee going around
Speaker 1: campaigning for Ronda Santis saying this is my guy, or
Speaker 1: we should get behind him. He won a Farren square
Speaker 1: and you know he's the better man, and let's all
Speaker 1: get after it to beat the dev I just I
Speaker 1: cannot see that ultimately happening. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: a disaster waiting to happen ultimately for the Republicans. And
Speaker 1: why does that matter? Because in a GOP primary, for example,
Speaker 1: Brian Kemp I believe he won his primary like sixty
Speaker 1: thirty or something like that. Well, that matters whenever it's
Speaker 1: head to head, and then you eventually become the nominee.
Speaker 1: But in a general election, if you get people to
Speaker 1: not if you get let's say, one third of people
Speaker 1: not to vote for you, well, if one third of
Speaker 1: Republicans don't vote, we all know forget how that works.
Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush, till his dying day, believed that
Speaker 1: Ross Perot is the one who cost him the election
Speaker 1: by splitting the vote people forget. I think Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: only won like forty three percent of the popular vote
Speaker 1: whenever he was elected the president, but because of the
Speaker 1: way electoral college and Ross Perro on the ballot in
Speaker 1: many of these states. HW maintained for a long time
Speaker 1: that it was Ross Proe's fault. I think it was
Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush's fault for not appealing to those people.
Speaker 1: But hey, the point is is that when you have
Speaker 1: a third party candidate on the ballot, of course it
Speaker 1: can screw things up. You know. The Gore people always
Speaker 1: blamed Ralph Nader as if it's his fault that Gorgram
Speaker 1: a bad campaign for me more than Merrier, I guess
Speaker 1: whenever it comes at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 1: just about winning people's votes over But it shows the
Speaker 1: danger that Trump could pose to a hypothetical DeSantis candidacy.
Speaker 1: In the event that a Bruise DeSantis does actually emerge
Speaker 1: victorious from the primary, we'll see. At the same time,
Speaker 1: let's put this up there on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: a major piece of political news. This is about the
Speaker 1: Coke Network, kind of a name that we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about with GOP politics for some time. But we should
Speaker 1: not forget these people are multi billionaires. They remain some
Speaker 1: of the biggest spenders in the entire Republican Party. They
Speaker 1: are Libertarians. They were essentially overthrown by the Trump apparatus
Speaker 1: while Trump was in power, but they are not just
Speaker 1: going down without a fight, and they are saying that
Speaker 1: they are willing to throw money and weight behind a
Speaker 1: single Republican candidate in the twenty twenty four presidential primary.
Speaker 1: But they have refused to name Donald Trump as that
Speaker 1: potential candidate, so we don't exactly know what this means.
Speaker 1: It very likely, in my estimation, is a bid to
Speaker 1: show DeSantis that he has the money if he wants
Speaker 1: to run. And because it's not just about Coke, it's
Speaker 1: we've got Ken Griffin as well, who I've talked about,
Speaker 1: the Citadel billionaire. Some people remember from GameStop fame. I
Speaker 1: think he's worth like thirty billion. He's already said he's
Speaker 1: like I would pack DeSantis. Last time around that we
Speaker 1: did a segment about DeSantis, we talked about Miriam Adelson.
Speaker 1: I believe she has some forty or fifty billion to
Speaker 1: play with the Cokes Is, you know, one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollar slush fund. So I think that this is one
Speaker 1: of those signals to somebody who would be much more
Speaker 1: friendly to more economic libertarianism even than Trump, even though
Speaker 1: Trump was really only doing it in rhetoric. The Cookes
Speaker 1: love a DeSantis type figure. Remember there are also the
Speaker 1: people who funded me much of the initial Tea party
Speaker 1: wave back in twenty ten. So I think that this
Speaker 1: is a big signal to Dessandis. They're like, hey, money's there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to do it. You're going to have an
Speaker 1: unlimited pocketbook. Money is not going to be the issue
Speaker 1: for Ron DeSantis. Yeah, of course, even you know, without
Speaker 1: the Coke network, he's got a number of billionaires lined up.
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of Republicans who are
Speaker 1: you well positioned to donate to him, well positioned to
Speaker 1: raise money for him, who would back his candidacy, So
Speaker 1: that is not going to be the issue. I mean,
Speaker 1: they have not come out and said it would be DeSantis.
Speaker 1: I do think that that is the most likely direction
Speaker 1: that they would ultimately go in. But it's worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that there are some deep ties between other potential Republican
Speaker 1: contenders and the Coke Network, especially former Vice President Mike Pence. Yes,
Speaker 1: his former chief of staff and longtime aid Mark Short,
Speaker 1: who we interviewed number of times over when we were
Speaker 1: at Rising. He once oversaw the entire entire political operation
Speaker 1: over at the Coke Network. So you have sort of
Speaker 1: deep tie ins there and you could see like an
Speaker 1: ideological affinity there as well. You'll have some times with
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeio Nikki Haley. But I agree with you it
Speaker 1: is most likely that they would get behind Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just about the presidential election. They also
Speaker 1: are signaling they want to play more heavily in terms
Speaker 1: of Republican primaries to try to reclaim the entirety of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party and make sure that they're back under
Speaker 1: their thumb in the more consistent way that they ultimately
Speaker 1: used to be and go all right, So we were
Speaker 1: mentioning before a lot going on on the Democratic side
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, Biden is weaker than he
Speaker 1: should be with the general electorate, but also extraordinary weak,
Speaker 1: extraordinary weakness with the Democratic base, and they want to
Speaker 1: try to short circuit any potential challenge to Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in a Democratic primary. So they are basically sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be a scandal when the
Speaker 1: DNC would like rig primaries in favor of like Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: for example. Now it's just all out in the open, apparently,
Speaker 1: so a goad and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, they past a new primary calendar. They're making
Speaker 1: South Carolina first, and they are booting Iowa entirely. Now,
Speaker 1: in fairness, I have to say, after the way that
Speaker 1: Iowa caucaes went last time, you can hardly really fault
Speaker 1: them for moving Iowa out of the front of the line.
Speaker 1: But what you're going to have now is the party's
Speaker 1: vote on Saturday replaces Iowa caucuses as the first of
Speaker 1: the nation with South Carolina, a state they sate with
Speaker 1: significantly more black voters, one that saved Biden's twenty twenty
Speaker 1: presidential campaign. That's what it's really about. It really doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with the demographics. Would then be
Speaker 1: followed by New Hampshire and Nevada one week later, and
Speaker 1: then by primaries in Georgia and Michigan. So the big
Speaker 1: winners here South Carolina, obviously, Georgia and Michigan. These are
Speaker 1: three states that Joe Biden feels confident about that he
Speaker 1: sort of takes for granted. You will recall he did
Speaker 1: abysmally in both Iowa and in New Hampshire. I mean
Speaker 1: place so poor. I think he got what fifth in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire he placed, so he didn't even stay through
Speaker 1: election night. He just went ahead and flew onto South Carolina,
Speaker 1: which then is the state that completely resuscitates him. However,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of backlash to this move from
Speaker 1: certainly party officials in Iowa, but especially officials in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Now New Hampshire has a Republican governor, and this becomes
Speaker 1: relevant because they actually have a state law that says
Speaker 1: their primary is supposed to be the first in the nation.
Speaker 1: So they're saying, hey, we can't just get rid of
Speaker 1: the state law. We're going to move forward. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, all of the party officials there, like
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party apparatus there. Their entire national relevance and
Speaker 1: power comes from being the first in the nation. So
Speaker 1: this is like an existential threat. Now, what the DNC
Speaker 1: is saying is they're going to face penalties if they
Speaker 1: disobeyed the party. They might ban candidates from campaigning in
Speaker 1: the state, they might have them lose delegates. But this
Speaker 1: is a real sort of intra party fight that is
Speaker 1: brewing here, and people in New Hampshire are furious about
Speaker 1: the attempt to sideline them. And also soccer, as you
Speaker 1: were referencing earlier, this really remakes the Democratic primary and
Speaker 1: what type of candidates are likely to be successful. This
Speaker 1: means that if you are a big money national candidate,
Speaker 1: you are going to have with the establishment stamp of approval,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a much better chance. Iowa New
Speaker 1: Hampshire were about grossroots politics. They were about being able
Speaker 1: to come in with a tiny amount of money, be
Speaker 1: able to do shoe leather and go around all the
Speaker 1: local Democratic Party affairs and meet people and win them
Speaker 1: over face to face. If you don't have Iowa going first,
Speaker 1: you don't have Barack Obama. This means that they are
Speaker 1: getting rid of that sort of retail politics dynamic in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party almost completely. Oh absolutely, well. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: should two incredibly white states really be the goal, you know,
Speaker 1: the making grounds for in a party base which has
Speaker 1: a lot of black voters. That's the argument for South Carolina,
Speaker 1: a lot of Hispanic voters as well, increasingly is getting split,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of union participation. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we have a bunch of BS
Speaker 1: ethanol standards in this country is specifically because I biow
Speaker 1: up our like obesity politics. He yeah, exactly, like not
Speaker 1: much like high frutose corn syrup Americans are pumped into
Speaker 1: just because of the Iowa caucuses. So maybe we can
Speaker 1: fix that. That'd be a fun thing. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, in terms of the South Carolina, there
Speaker 1: was a good argument in that case, if anything, for
Speaker 1: making Nevada the first one me I think Michigan. I
Speaker 1: think Michigan would have been a great first in the nation,
Speaker 1: white working class voters. It's got a large population of
Speaker 1: people of color for the Democrats, it's got an actual
Speaker 1: swing status in twenty sixteen, and if anything, like the
Speaker 1: point of the primary is to prove that you can
Speaker 1: do the job or that you can win the election.
Speaker 1: So that's where I would have put the actual votes.
Speaker 1: But I understand exactly why they did it this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I think your point about the base
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party and wanting to have states that
Speaker 1: are reflect to that base, I think that is completely reasonable.
Speaker 1: But let's be clear, that's not well I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: They are doing this entirely because these are the states
Speaker 1: where Joe Venn did well, and that's where they want
Speaker 1: to ultimately start. If your real concern was about having
Speaker 1: a demographic diversity, Nevada would be a much better choice
Speaker 1: because you do have a more even more diverse electorate
Speaker 1: in Nevada. Then you could maintain because much of the
Speaker 1: population is sort of centered in and around Clark County,
Speaker 1: so you maintain that ability to have that sort of
Speaker 1: retail politics, the ability of a grassroots cannon to be
Speaker 1: able to catch fire somewhere and then go on across
Speaker 1: the nation. If that was really what you were concerned about,
Speaker 1: there was a much better case to be made for Nevada.
Speaker 1: Now I agree with you. Listen, Iowa, they blew it.
Speaker 1: They've blown it like a number of times at this point.
Speaker 1: And also, Democrats don't win in Iowa anymore. That's true.
Speaker 1: Iowa used to be a critical swing state. Barack Obama
Speaker 1: won it. It is not a swing state anymore. It
Speaker 1: is a red state. And you know, Democrats might be
Speaker 1: able to win it back, but they showed no interest
Speaker 1: in doing that ultimately. So New Hampshire, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know the fact that you are and people in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire are taking this very personally. I'll show you
Speaker 1: a sot in a minute that reflects exactly that New
Speaker 1: Hampshire is a swing state. New Hampshire's a state that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump came close to winning. So the fact that
Speaker 1: you are snubbing them so brazenly and so publicly that
Speaker 1: could actually endanger your general election chances in this state.
Speaker 1: You are certainly not doing yourself any favors with the
Speaker 1: electorate there. Let's just say, And as I referenced before,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire Democrats are furious. They have two Democratic senators,
Speaker 1: one of whom in particular is very you know, sort
Speaker 1: of high up and senior and whatever. They have been
Speaker 1: furious and sort of snubbing the White House over their
Speaker 1: decision to demote New Hampshire, and Jake Tapper played a
Speaker 1: video of the former New Hampshire House Speaker, who was
Speaker 1: a Biden delegate last time around, who says he's looking
Speaker 1: for another candidate. Let's take a listen. One of Biden's
Speaker 1: delegates from twenty twenty, Steve shirt Left, talking about this
Speaker 1: new proposal. I'll look for another candidate before I'd support
Speaker 1: Joe Biden if you should go so far as to
Speaker 1: take away the first of the nation primary. He says
Speaker 1: he will look for another candidate before he supports Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: This is not just any DNC delegate either, the former
Speaker 1: New Hampshire House speaker. You don't think this guy carries
Speaker 1: a lot of weight in the state. He certainly does.
Speaker 1: So you had the former the chair of the New
Speaker 1: Hampshire Democrats saying that this could open up a lane
Speaker 1: for an insurgent candidate, candidate who camps out in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and takes advantage of this split and this snub ultimately,
Speaker 1: so this is really a big deal in terms of
Speaker 1: how they run these primaries and caucuses going forward. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's a game changer. That's why we're
Speaker 1: covering it so much. And I don't think it's just
Speaker 1: relevant to this This is relevant for all time to come,
Speaker 1: like for Kamala in twenty twenty eight, if it ever
Speaker 1: comes to that. For Buddha j Edge, this is a
Speaker 1: massive blow to any future that he has. But he
Speaker 1: can't say anything because he'll get called racist, which I love.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the past, things turn out
Speaker 1: very differently. I think Hillary Clinton becomes president in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight if South Carolina is first, they had
Speaker 1: a nobody remembers his history. But Obama did not win
Speaker 1: in South Carolina until he could prove essentially that he
Speaker 1: could win in Iowa and in New Hampshire. Many many
Speaker 1: such cases going back, I think, all the way to
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. So it's a big problem for the future.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I like change. I like the
Speaker 1: fact that we're shaking things up so we can get
Speaker 1: rid of some of these stupid shibbolts that we have
Speaker 1: in politics. I actually think there should also be some
Speaker 1: more West Coast representation. Part of the reason why I'm
Speaker 1: in favor of Nevada. You know, like more than half
Speaker 1: the country also lives there and they don't even get
Speaker 1: represent what representation until Super Tuesday. That's not right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the Democrats like Latino voters are sort of
Speaker 1: the new swing voters. Democrats really want to bring them
Speaker 1: into their can like think about how to appeal to
Speaker 1: them whatever. I mean. That's why Bernie Sanders was able
Speaker 1: to do so well in the Nevada caucuses is because
Speaker 1: they really spent a lot of time and effort and
Speaker 1: money boots on the ground trying to appeal to that electorate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just let's just make it clear all
Speaker 1: of their stuff about oh the demographics and we want
Speaker 1: to diverse it. What I know, this is the power play,
Speaker 1: pure and simple. That's one hundred percent what it's about.
Speaker 1: Very true. All right, let's talk about Joe Rogan. We
Speaker 1: were on the Joe Rogan Experience. We had a fantastic time.
Speaker 1: I think it was it three hours in some minutes. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: it really does experience. It's intense, but it also goes
Speaker 1: by it. It was fun. It was a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: for sure. We really enjoyed it. We put together a
Speaker 1: little bit of a highlight reel for everybody. As we
Speaker 1: reminded everybody on our podcast. We got a special discount
Speaker 1: going on right now for new JRI listeners. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people found us through Joe Rogan so
Speaker 1: Breaking Points dot com. We got ten percent off right
Speaker 1: now on our yearly subscription if we like what we're
Speaker 1: all about. But with that, here's little highlight reel we
Speaker 1: put together from our appearance, all the stuff that we loved.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. We did this video. It is
Speaker 1: like the problems of boys and men with an author
Speaker 1: Richard Reeves, who's actually fantastic. He wrote a great book
Speaker 1: on this. You have a great cone, super actually viral,
Speaker 1: and he talks a lot. He's like, look, I understand.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm not an anti feminist. He's like, what
Speaker 1: we are talking about, though, is in the last two
Speaker 1: decades we've had a crisis amongst young men. And something
Speaker 1: we talk about on the show is what Chrystal's getting
Speaker 1: out with the decline of the American dream, like the
Speaker 1: idea that you were going to do better than your parents,
Speaker 1: and that's just not really true anymore. Depend even if
Speaker 1: you went to school and you have a shit ton
Speaker 1: of student debt, even if you're working class. In terms
Speaker 1: of wage growth, upward mobility. People who are graduating from
Speaker 1: high school how are having who are men and working class,
Speaker 1: having much more trouble actually finding a mate. So there's
Speaker 1: a big college imbalance right now where a lot of
Speaker 1: men are dropping out of college. They no longer feel accepted,
Speaker 1: and you're reaching almost sixty forty splits of women and
Speaker 1: men in college especially who are graduating a lot of
Speaker 1: women who have college degrees. Don't you want to date
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't have a college degree, And so there's
Speaker 1: this big imbalance in the dating market. And then also
Speaker 1: amongst single men, you see a big decline in lifetime wages.
Speaker 1: But what really makes me really sad is the drug
Speaker 1: overdose numbers. And they die much earlier, They're much less
Speaker 1: likely to exercise, much less likely to fulfill a more
Speaker 1: like a stronger life. And that's what gets to the
Speaker 1: charlatanism of like being able to buy into the charlatan
Speaker 1: signing up for some MLN scheme that you might see online,
Speaker 1: buying crypto and by the way, you're looking at a
Speaker 1: crypto victim, I lost five thousand dollars on Block five.
Speaker 1: Got fucked out that there's a lot of men that
Speaker 1: feel by their very existence, that they're bad. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big thought of toxic masculinity and the things
Speaker 1: that they're attracted to. They think they've been told or stupid,
Speaker 1: or you know, that they're evil or you know. There's
Speaker 1: a thing about being a man in this world today
Speaker 1: that I think we have to look at all human
Speaker 1: beings is just human beings, and you don't you can't
Speaker 1: help that you were born a man, and you can't
Speaker 1: help the things that you enjoy, like if you enjoy
Speaker 1: going to football games, you enjoy getting loud with your friends.
Speaker 1: This idea of toxic masculinity, it's like, yeah, there's toxic
Speaker 1: aspects of men, and that's real. That's a reality of
Speaker 1: being a male human being. If you look at a
Speaker 1: history of war, it's all started by men. Men did
Speaker 1: all of it. Men do all the raping. I had
Speaker 1: this guy on the podcast once. It was hilarious. He goes, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, statistically speaking, men get raped more than women
Speaker 1: do it. I go, yeah, by other men, You fucking idiot.
Speaker 1: I go, it's not packs of cheerleaders rape and football players.
Speaker 1: The fuck is wrong with you. The problem is men.
Speaker 1: That's the problem with manosphere, is that there's grifters in
Speaker 1: the manosphere that aren't actual real men. And by real men,
Speaker 1: I mean they don't have resolve. They like if you
Speaker 1: took them on a hike, they would get tired, they
Speaker 1: would sit down, you would have to leave them behind.
Speaker 1: They're not The word tough is a word, but it's
Speaker 1: like like, oh, you're tove No. Mental toughness is fucking important.
Speaker 1: It's a really important quality of life, and it's been
Speaker 1: diminished to this thing that's like a part of toxic
Speaker 1: masculinity ideology. Well, and this is where you know, the
Speaker 1: andrew Tates of the world come in and they like
Speaker 1: perform this just like caricaturist, ridiculous masculine, whatever they're doing.
Speaker 1: And then also maybe as a sex trafficker. We'll find out,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens there. But it again speaks to
Speaker 1: the fact there used to be a really clear sort
Speaker 1: of cultural narrative, right or wrong about what it was
Speaker 1: to be a man, and at the core of that
Speaker 1: was being a provider. Right for women, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's other things, being like a mother and
Speaker 1: a nurture and like the way you look for men,
Speaker 1: it's like about the wallet, right, the pocket book. And
Speaker 1: then so I think when we've had an assault on
Speaker 1: the middle class, on the working class, where it becomes
Speaker 1: so much harder to be able to fulfill that cultural
Speaker 1: narrative of what it is supposed to be to be
Speaker 1: a man, I think that's been this is a woman.
Speaker 1: But you know, from my external perspective, I think that's
Speaker 1: been really really devastating. Look, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: systems can change if enough people actually want to do
Speaker 1: something about it. We've talked a lot about the stock
Speaker 1: market ban. I think that's actually probably step one. If
Speaker 1: we get to the point where we can just ban
Speaker 1: members of Congress from trading stocks, the institutional trust, I
Speaker 1: think that we could all then have within the system,
Speaker 1: just at a baseline level, it would help a lot.
Speaker 1: It would help a lot to be able to get that.
Speaker 1: But of course Nancy Pelosi is the speaker. She first
Speaker 1: she says, what was we live in a free market economy.
Speaker 1: We're allowed to participate. Watch that locked off the stage
Speaker 1: pretty good. That was wild when she just walked off
Speaker 1: the stage. That is wild. I mean she's not the
Speaker 1: only one, though, I mean there's some of it's a
Speaker 1: completely bipartisan Is you yeah, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: guys and you know, they'll claim they're like, look, I
Speaker 1: don't have any inside information. I'm like, look, motherfucker, you're guilted.
Speaker 1: Like you got to prove you know, honestly, I mean
Speaker 1: weather listen they do, and like, obviously they're not geniuses
Speaker 1: and they're all like beating the market and beating people
Speaker 1: who are expert at this and what are the sorrows?
Speaker 1: And Warren Buffett are not as good as Paul Pelosi.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, he's better. He's better at trading. He's just
Speaker 1: amazing just to do it right before the anti trust
Speaker 1: suit was filed, it sold like three million dollars. And
Speaker 1: once again, you're just never going to convince me that
Speaker 1: you didn't know about that. Like you're just not going, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you knew. Okay, let's theoretically say, all right, we
Speaker 1: believe it, like they didn't use their inside information. It
Speaker 1: almost doesn't matter. It doesn't because ultimately the bottom line
Speaker 1: is people fucking think that you use your information and
Speaker 1: you know, are benefiting from it. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when you look overall, like you could look at any
Speaker 1: individual trade and be like, oh maybe maybe not, who knows.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the numbers overall and you're like,
Speaker 1: all you motherfuckers are beating the market. No fucking how
Speaker 1: unusual the actual speculation, the actual the trade sales trades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they fucking knows. He knows something and they're not doing
Speaker 1: anything about it. Unusual whales. Shout out to him. He's
Speaker 1: really one of the guys who sparked this whole movement
Speaker 1: because he was an unusual whale. He's like an anonymous
Speaker 1: Twitter account, and he's one of the first people who
Speaker 1: actually published Journalist. He published the first trading and this
Speaker 1: was like twenty twenty one, whenever, maybe twenty twenty. Actually
Speaker 1: we're some of the first people who actually picked it
Speaker 1: up originally about the congressional trading numbers, and we went
Speaker 1: through the exact scentate. He loops it all together as
Speaker 1: an institution and the way that it was able to
Speaker 1: beat the market consistently year after year after and this
Speaker 1: is all publicly available data. Shout out to him. Yeah, great, dude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely give him a follow. He's really he does really
Speaker 1: good work and you can actually see it all right
Speaker 1: there the full Trading Report on Politicians in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and again totally bipartisan. Debbie Wasserman, Schaals, Patrick Fallen, Susi Lee,
Speaker 1: David Joyce, Gary Peters all look at the blue and
Speaker 1: the red there all within graph and you can even
Speaker 1: see like, look, it's uh, it's everybody like from all
Speaker 1: across the board. People who are supposedly against the system,
Speaker 1: people who are totally within the system. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes it so disgusting. We have gotten to ban this,
Speaker 1: like with nineteen point eight percent, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Well that she was down down percent. Well, and that's
Speaker 1: the other thing with Paul Pelosi. The guy's extraordinarily leveraged,
Speaker 1: Like he's always trading options. He's not even just buying
Speaker 1: and selling individual stocks. He's making much larger bets on
Speaker 1: these things. I mean, he's got one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: and access to shit you and I don't have. But
Speaker 1: Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the top, she's gonna do it
Speaker 1: fifty one percent on a year over year in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. Crazy. I mean, if you compare that to
Speaker 1: the S and P five hundred, actually be curious, or
Speaker 1: with the twenty twenty two s and yeah, there you go,
Speaker 1: So eight S and P five hundred is down eighteen percent.
Speaker 1: Look at every single one of these individual members who
Speaker 1: are able to have portfolios which are beating the total market.
Speaker 1: It's outrage. She's actually forget exactly, that's my partisan one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. Well, this is and this is like a
Speaker 1: story of like hope. And it's very depressing because there
Speaker 1: was a whole grassroots movement to be like bipartisan. You know,
Speaker 1: the Republicans were pissed off about Pelosi and Democrats were
Speaker 1: pissed off about the Republicans. Like everybody's like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is fucked up. Right, any thinking person who cares
Speaker 1: about the country be like, this is fucked up. Why
Speaker 1: are we doing this? And so then because there's this
Speaker 1: organic movement, you see actually some people in the mainstream
Speaker 1: press start to cover it. There was actually a reporter
Speaker 1: at Insider. They started digging into the details of these
Speaker 1: trades and compiling reports. That leads to that when you're
Speaker 1: talking about Nancy Pelosi at that press conference, that leads
Speaker 1: to her actually getting asked a question about it, and
Speaker 1: wasn't it incredibly revealing her response in that moment that
Speaker 1: leads to a backlash. Kevin McCarthy, if he sees an
Speaker 1: opportunity with Republicans about to take it. He starts possu like, oh,
Speaker 1: Republicans take the house. We're going to do the stock band.
Speaker 1: Of course they haven't said shit about that since then,
Speaker 1: Pelosi actually feels some pressure like, all right, we're going
Speaker 1: to do We're going to try a thing, and they
Speaker 1: sort of like poison pill. That's to make sure it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen too. And that's where the you know, it's
Speaker 1: a mixed bag because you're like, all right, we got
Speaker 1: it on the menu. There was a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: Politicians heard it. They had to do something, but then
Speaker 1: both parties again found ways to just completely you know,
Speaker 1: let the issue slide and not actually have to change anything.
Speaker 1: That is an independent media story though, because that's one
Speaker 1: of those where that guy published it, we started talking
Speaker 1: this is not just us, This is a lot of people,
Speaker 1: Dave Portnoy. There's a lot of other people out there
Speaker 1: who've talked about it. A lot of independent media people
Speaker 1: like you have also brought it up that kind of
Speaker 1: put it in the cultural pop culture conversation. You got
Speaker 1: TikTokers out there doing Pelosi trades like they have huge
Speaker 1: accounts where Gen z and millennials are totally bought into
Speaker 1: how corrupt the system is. That floats upward with the
Speaker 1: outrage insider picks it up. And President Biden actually originally
Speaker 1: had a line in the State of the Union just
Speaker 1: last year where he was going to endorse a congressional
Speaker 1: stock breeding ban. The line was pulled at the very
Speaker 1: last minute. Of all the things. You know, you listen
Speaker 1: to those State of thing, it's like a laundry list.
Speaker 1: Check it check in the box on every fucking thing,
Speaker 1: twenty five checkboxes and that's the line. That's the line
Speaker 1: that gets pulled. It's amazing, right, and whose request? I
Speaker 1: don't think people understand that cable is a fake business model.
Speaker 1: So for example, we talk a lot about the failing ratings.
Speaker 1: The key demo numbers on all three of these channels
Speaker 1: is a joke. I always like to say, like Chris
Speaker 1: and I would be starving in a ditch if any
Speaker 1: of these if we were getting the same numbers as
Speaker 1: these people. So how do they survive? It's because they're
Speaker 1: part of something called the cable bundle. And so like
Speaker 1: when you buy cable, like Cox Communications or whatever, they
Speaker 1: pay a Comcast, for example, they pay CNN and MSNBC
Speaker 1: and Fox to be a part of the bundle. The
Speaker 1: vast majority of the profit of these cable channels comes
Speaker 1: from the bundle. So CNN made a billion in profit
Speaker 1: just last year, all propped up by the bundle because
Speaker 1: they're going to paid just to exist. I mean, can
Speaker 1: you imagine if we were getting paid to exist, not
Speaker 1: based upon our actual numbers like you make, you can
Speaker 1: actually reach less people and make more money. And so
Speaker 1: it's all part of this fake system. But I mean
Speaker 1: the benefit is is that with the rise of independent media,
Speaker 1: more and more advertisers are waking up. The less eyeballs,
Speaker 1: the less of an incentive for the bundle to actually
Speaker 1: pay them to be a part of it. And that's
Speaker 1: why I was actually really excited by Amazon striking that
Speaker 1: deal with the NFL, because I'm like, yes, get the
Speaker 1: rights away from these people, because that is what props
Speaker 1: up all kinds of bullshit that we don't have like
Speaker 1: a small d democratic input with our eyeballs on CNN
Speaker 1: or any of these places. They can exist just find
Speaker 1: without us, like to really kill them. We have to
Speaker 1: get away from live news on TV. That's that's the
Speaker 1: number one thing still propping them up today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a zombie business model. But I will
Speaker 1: tell you, I mean, I have a lot of optimism
Speaker 1: certainly about what we're doing, about the response to what
Speaker 1: we're doing about the independent media eCos system. But you
Speaker 1: and I were talking the other day, Joe about I
Speaker 1: do think it's a dangerous moment for people. And one
Speaker 1: thing we've been covering a lot on the show is
Speaker 1: you have a kind of breakdown in previous national stories
Speaker 1: and narratives, and people are very like story driven. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a breakdown. And I'm not a religious person,
Speaker 1: so this is like not my bag, but you have
Speaker 1: a breakdown in religion. So some of the stories that
Speaker 1: have kind of like held the country together and that
Speaker 1: people helped use to make sense of their life, or
Speaker 1: even the story about the American Dream, a lot of
Speaker 1: these things are kind of breaking down. Now that's a
Speaker 1: good thing because it creates a possibility for a new,
Speaker 1: more beneficial story. But in the meantime, it is just
Speaker 1: a like heyday for con artists and Charlatan's and you know,
Speaker 1: people who are willing to sell a narrative to you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks who feel kind of lost, kind
Speaker 1: of a drift and don't like existing in that chaos.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, whether they're being scammed by
Speaker 1: like SBF or this like Congressman George Santos like made
Speaker 1: up every aspect of his life with him. I just
Speaker 1: find him a disgrace. So there you go. Oh god,
Speaker 1: it really I hate listening. I actually listened back through
Speaker 1: the entire three three hours of yourself. Even when you're
Speaker 1: listening in three and a half speed is not altogether pleasant.
Speaker 1: Though it was very pleasant to be there with you
Speaker 1: and with Joe. I thought, you know it was. It
Speaker 1: was just a lot, a lot of fun to be
Speaker 1: with Rogan, and the fun of Rogan is on one
Speaker 1: moment you're talking about Ukraine and the next you're talking
Speaker 1: about bears and bear hunting in your jersey. So yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean this was this was our third time going on.
Speaker 1: First time. I was nervous as hell. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was also it was a very fraught moment and it
Speaker 1: was public life. It was like George Floyd was there
Speaker 1: were right that was in La at that point. There
Speaker 1: were like riots going on right there. So that was
Speaker 1: like very intense experience. Last time it was right after
Speaker 1: we had launched, so it was in the milieu of
Speaker 1: like launch, yeah, which was also very sort of like
Speaker 1: nerve wracking. We didn't know how it was all going
Speaker 1: to go. At that point, I was looking good, but
Speaker 1: we were still sort of like in the like really
Speaker 1: building up phase. This time, being that it's our third
Speaker 1: time and we spend more time with him, it felt
Speaker 1: a little bit more relaxed and conversational and like we
Speaker 1: could just kind of let the conversation flow. So was
Speaker 1: really excited about some of the topics that we got
Speaker 1: to get into. Things that we cover a lot here
Speaker 1: on the show. The scam economy is something I'm talking
Speaker 1: about in my monologue today. Chat GPT, the freaking Chinese balloon,
Speaker 1: Ukraine media of course, So it was really really grateful
Speaker 1: to have the opportunity to raise some of those subjects
Speaker 1: on a show. Definitely, So if you guys enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: as we said, we got the discount going on, but
Speaker 1: we'll leave you with that, all right, Sager, are you
Speaker 1: looking at as everyone here knows, there's nothing I love
Speaker 1: more than a good history lesson. So when I saw
Speaker 1: the Chinese balloon, I could not help but get excited,
Speaker 1: but always had a weird fascination with large balloons, and
Speaker 1: they're used by mankind over the years. Might be the
Speaker 1: only guy said that the Hindenburg blew up and killed
Speaker 1: the chances of balloon t Who gets nostalgic of how
Speaker 1: awesome it looked in Indiana Jones. So with that said,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be fun to take a trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane and look at how balloons have been
Speaker 1: used in war and for spying throughout history. Before the air.
Speaker 1: Before the aeroplane became ubiquitous in war, the balloon was
Speaker 1: the go to for aerial surveillance. Surveillance from the air
Speaker 1: is obviously useful for understanding position of enemy forces without
Speaker 1: having to send ground forces to determine where they are.
Speaker 1: Doesn't take a genius to figure it out. It's the
Speaker 1: technology that has always been the limiting factor. The French
Speaker 1: were the leaders in balloon technology and with aviation in
Speaker 1: general in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: so it's not surprise they were actually the first to
Speaker 1: use balloons in war. The first recorded use of a
Speaker 1: balloon took place in seventeen ninety four by French forces
Speaker 1: in the Battle against Austria. Balloon was considered critical to
Speaker 1: French victory in the battle, and it was so important
Speaker 1: it led to the establishment of a French military department,
Speaker 1: which roughly translates to a company of aeronauts. The original
Speaker 1: balloon itself was tethered to the ground with ropes and
Speaker 1: cables and quote unicate with the ground with flag signals
Speaker 1: or by placing written messages in sandbags fitted with rings
Speaker 1: that would be slid down the cables. The first use
Speaker 1: reportedly stunned the French because it allowed them to see
Speaker 1: a distance of eighteen miles through the use of a
Speaker 1: telescope and let them get a clearer picture of the
Speaker 1: battlefield before the attack. In fact, one of the commanding
Speaker 1: generals at the Battle of Fleurs stayed in the air
Speaker 1: for the entire battle and directed it with messages sent
Speaker 1: down from the balloon for ten hours. The balloon also
Speaker 1: had a significant moral effect on the Austrian enemy, who
Speaker 1: quote feared the balloon and looked upon it as an
Speaker 1: agent of the devil. Allied to the French Republic. The
Speaker 1: balloon was then quickly noticed as a critical tool in warfare.
Speaker 1: It appeared next in major conflagration here in the United
Speaker 1: States the American Civil War. It saw the next major
Speaker 1: organized deployment of recon balloons by the Union Army after
Speaker 1: a balloon technician personally convinced President Lincoln of their utility.
Speaker 1: Seven balloons in total were deployed by the Union during
Speaker 1: the war. None were ever shot down, though the general
Speaker 1: utility was questioned by eighteen sixty three. They were more
Speaker 1: nice novelty than a critical military necessity. They didn't really
Speaker 1: explode on the scene again until World War One, when
Speaker 1: the great European powers were all fascinated by big developments
Speaker 1: in man flight. Balloons by this point were able to
Speaker 1: reach some three to six thousand feet and were much
Speaker 1: more useful at being able to spot enemy artillery positions,
Speaker 1: and in fact, what's reminiscent of today, some of the
Speaker 1: first use of planes were actually used to shoot down
Speaker 1: enemy balloons. Balloon operator was considered a very dangerous job
Speaker 1: because enemy fire was able to reach them and they
Speaker 1: were equipped with parachutes. But it was World War Two
Speaker 1: where things got really interesting. In one of those sins
Speaker 1: forgotten but extraordinary moments, the only people to die in
Speaker 1: the continental United States during the Second World War was
Speaker 1: from an attack were six citizens of Oregon on a picnic,
Speaker 1: including some children, who encountered a Japanese balloon laden with bombs.
Speaker 1: The Japanese sent up nearly nine thousand balloons to drift
Speaker 1: over the US in the hopes that they would cause
Speaker 1: mass panic and casualties. They were largely unsuccessful, luckily, so
Speaker 1: you might think that was the last of balloons, but
Speaker 1: actually they have been used by great powers since then
Speaker 1: in all conflicts, including by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Afghanistan they became such a potent symbol
Speaker 1: of American oppression by villagers who found the idea of
Speaker 1: constantly being spied on very obtrusive. So you might ask
Speaker 1: why even use a balloon in the age of satellites,
Speaker 1: While the US Air Force put out a paper in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine that described why balloons are still used.
Speaker 1: They can stay above a target for much longer than
Speaker 1: a satellite. They're easier to retrieve orders of magnitude, cheaper
Speaker 1: to launch, they can scan more territory from a lower altitude.
Speaker 1: In fact, balloons are seen as so critical even today
Speaker 1: that the US Air Force just a few months ago
Speaker 1: established a new program to use them against China and Russia.
Speaker 1: The new program, which is known as cold Star or
Speaker 1: the Covert Long dwell Stratospheric Architecture Program, is similar to
Speaker 1: the Chinese one. It deploys stratospheric balloons between sixty and
Speaker 1: ninety thousand feet for global surveillance. In twenty twenty five three,
Speaker 1: we are scheduled to spend some thirty million dollars on
Speaker 1: balloon technology. Balloons are seen as one of the first
Speaker 1: lines of defense against hypersonic missiles, which move in an
Speaker 1: irregular manner and have posed a nightmare to missile defense
Speaker 1: planning capabilities, So this actually gives us an insight into
Speaker 1: the Chinese spy balloon. Many have asked, why is this
Speaker 1: balloon being used in the first place In the age
Speaker 1: of spy satellites. It especially makes sense that the Chinese
Speaker 1: balloon was deployed over one of those three US bases
Speaker 1: which house intercontinental ballistic missile programs, and in a time
Speaker 1: when we are looking to compete with Russia and China
Speaker 1: in the development of hypersonic missiles. In fact, my biggest
Speaker 1: takeaway in research for this piece is that the balloon
Speaker 1: isn't nearly as crazy or as rudimentary as our first
Speaker 1: initial impression may be, my bigger takeaway is a joyful one.
Speaker 1: For all the advances that we have made a society,
Speaker 1: sometimes the simplest technology is the best and the most reliable.
Speaker 1: Nothing better than putting gas in a balloon and going up.
Speaker 1: Maybe my dreams of balloon travel are not dead after all.
Speaker 1: So pretty crazy And if you want to hear my
Speaker 1: reaction to Sagres's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: breakingpoints dot com. What are you taking a look at? Well? Guys.
Speaker 1: About two weeks ago, a short seller known for exposing
Speaker 1: corporate fraud dropped this little cryptic message on Twitter quote
Speaker 1: soon we will release a report on what we strongly
Speaker 1: suspect to be the largest corporate fraud in history. And
Speaker 1: they did kind of deliver. Hindenburg Research Funding ERGS talking
Speaker 1: about the balloons posted a one hundred page detailed report
Speaker 1: along with a lengthy Twitter thread claiming that one of
Speaker 1: the richest men on the entire planet was actually a
Speaker 1: massive fraud, using a network of shell companies to manipulate
Speaker 1: the valuation of his corporate Empire stock and to falsify
Speaker 1: his balance sheets. The fallout has been swift, and it
Speaker 1: has been dramatic, erasing one hundred billion dollars in corporate
Speaker 1: value in just a matter of days and shaking the
Speaker 1: economy of an entire nation. All right, so here are
Speaker 1: the details. Gata Montani is not only the richest man
Speaker 1: in India but in all of Asia. His rise was
Speaker 1: intertwined with the rise of Prime Minister Modi. Both hailed
Speaker 1: from the Indian state of Gujrat. Donni guaranteed Mody's longtime
Speaker 1: loyalty when he broke from the Indian business community consensus
Speaker 1: and defended Mody over the deadly anti Muslim rise which
Speaker 1: unfolded under Mody's watch. As he rose to power, a
Speaker 1: Donnie also rose to vast wealth, with enterprises deeply intertwined
Speaker 1: with and critical to the Indian state. Now today A
Speaker 1: Donnie's empire spans coal, green energy, ports, airports, and a
Speaker 1: whole lot more. He is, in large part the industrialists
Speaker 1: building the nation state that Mody envisions. The state backs
Speaker 1: him and he backs the state. Now this has led
Speaker 1: to the accumulation of vast wealth on the scale of
Speaker 1: household name titans, people like Bezos, Musk and Gates. But
Speaker 1: according to Hindenburg Research, this fantastic journey to world dominance
Speaker 1: is being propped up by fakery and outright fraud. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they claimed that a Donnie used dozens of shell companies,
Speaker 1: most in the notorious tax haven of Mauritius, to pump
Speaker 1: up their stock price and launder their balance sheets, inflating
Speaker 1: asset prices so that their financial health would appear much
Speaker 1: better than it actually is. Many of these shell companies
Speaker 1: seemingly only business was holding a Donnie stock. As one
Speaker 1: former shell company employee put it, quote, I think this
Speaker 1: stock is definitely held by the Adanni Group because nobody
Speaker 1: else would want to buy it. As any investor, why
Speaker 1: would you invest with the Adanni group? You know the
Speaker 1: stock is inflated and they cannot be trusted and looking
Speaker 1: at the business, it is a house of cards. It's
Speaker 1: all fueled on debt, and if the Modi government goes
Speaker 1: out of power, maybe the whole thing comes crashing down.
Speaker 1: This phony picture of financial health and inflated stock prices
Speaker 1: allowed a Donnie to borrow vast amounts of money, loading
Speaker 1: all of their companies up with debt and further imperiling
Speaker 1: their financial health, but also enabling them to pursue some
Speaker 1: of those big infrastructure projects to build up the Indian economy.
Speaker 1: Hindenberg's report reveals not only details of those alleged crimes,
Speaker 1: but also of the cover up. The shell businesses were
Speaker 1: set up with phony websites describing businessinesses that are nonsensical.
Speaker 1: They use stock photos. Many of them had no employees.
Speaker 1: The Adotting corporate empire is closely controlled by family members,
Speaker 1: which of course would be a good way to keep
Speaker 1: prying outside eyes from raising objections to potential fraud. Financial
Speaker 1: officers of the conglomerate come and go in rapid succession.
Speaker 1: Hindenberg also documents a series of sketchy characters with prior
Speaker 1: history of stock manipulation and fraud who are involved in
Speaker 1: this whole enterprise, and the outside auditors who would be
Speaker 1: responsible for revealing these schemes are wildly inexperienced and appear
Speaker 1: wholly unable to actually audit complex enterprises. So there you go,
Speaker 1: a global empire intertwined with the Indian state, pumped up
Speaker 1: by fake stock prices, balance sheet manipulation, and allowed to
Speaker 1: get away with it due to their symbiotic relationship with
Speaker 1: the Indian government. Hindenberg itself has a pretty good track
Speaker 1: record of exposing real fraud. For example, they exposed lies
Speaker 1: at electric truckmaker Nicola, which eventually led to the CEO
Speaker 1: of that company being found guilty of fraud. But as
Speaker 1: we weigh the merit of these allegations, it's of course
Speaker 1: important and keep in mind Hindenberg is ultimately a short seller.
Speaker 1: Their entire business model does rely on leveling allegations of
Speaker 1: fraud and then profiting off of the resulting stock decline
Speaker 1: in value. So although they do have a very good
Speaker 1: track record, they are also not a disinterested party. Just
Speaker 1: want to put that out there. As for a Donnie,
Speaker 1: in their response, they leaned heavily into Indian nationalism. They
Speaker 1: claimed Hindenberg's research was an attack on the Indian state itself,
Speaker 1: but they actually answered few of the substantive questions which
Speaker 1: were raised. They do, though fully deny any wrongdoing. The
Speaker 1: fallout for this report has been truly astonishing. A Dotting
Speaker 1: Company's plummeted in the stock market. They lost one hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars in value in a single week. A Donnie's
Speaker 1: fortune has similarly collapses, estimated to have lost half his
Speaker 1: net worth since the report's release. It's been such a
Speaker 1: catastrophe that he actually had to abruptly pull a two
Speaker 1: point five billion dollar stock sale, saying it would not
Speaker 1: be morally correct to go through with it at this time.
Speaker 1: The collapse in the company's stock price meant that any
Speaker 1: investor in the new stock sale would be immediately signing
Speaker 1: up for a big loss. Economist Adam Two's recently spoke
Speaker 1: about the likely fallout in India and how this is
Speaker 1: all being interpreted by the domestic audience. Here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say. There's really an element of culture clash here.
Speaker 1: I mean, there aren't many players in the Indian financial
Speaker 1: markets who imagine that the value of the Adani Group
Speaker 1: is determined in a conventionally free and fair way, because
Speaker 1: people aren't naive about the way in which India's political
Speaker 1: economy operates. And the sophisticated rationale for what's going on
Speaker 1: in India is that Indian financial investors know that it
Speaker 1: is indeed the impunity if you like the ability of
Speaker 1: the Adani Group too if necessary, you know, produce rather
Speaker 1: high valuations of its assets to sustain large amounts of credit.
Speaker 1: That is part of their business plan. And with the
Speaker 1: backing that they enjoy in political circles. They are not
Speaker 1: just too big to fail, but essentially essentially identified with
Speaker 1: the Modi I project. So long as that is hedgemon
Speaker 1: in Indian politics, these businesses cannot fail. So there is
Speaker 1: in fact very little risks that you won't get paid back.
Speaker 1: And there is some prospect and in fact no prospect
Speaker 1: any other way, of this major infrastructure in India actually
Speaker 1: getting built because they are the last resort, if you like,
Speaker 1: of the Indian state machine. And to that extent, no harm,
Speaker 1: no foul. Look to his point, it'd be one thing
Speaker 1: if this was just an India only story, state aligned
Speaker 1: enterprise propped up by state affiliated capital and state subsidies.
Speaker 1: It's basically a tale as old as time. But while
Speaker 1: the reverberations will be felt most acutely in India, no doubt,
Speaker 1: we're talking about sophisticated global investors in titanic banks or
Speaker 1: snookered by the fake stock prices and rigged balance sheets
Speaker 1: allegedly who forked over gigantic loans to fund this conglomerate
Speaker 1: based on alleged fraud, which taken together, as Haandenburg quotes,
Speaker 1: it would amount to the largest corporate con in history,
Speaker 1: City Group, credit, Swees, Barclays, and more, all scrambling to
Speaker 1: figure out what their exposure is on this whole house
Speaker 1: of cards. Yet another illustration of how easy it is,
Speaker 1: apparently to rig the game, pull the wool over the
Speaker 1: eyes of the supposedly most brilliant, sophisticated people in the world,
Speaker 1: the scam economy with a massive global reach. And you
Speaker 1: know it's funny because he's not a household name here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh there, you made this point. And if you want
Speaker 1: to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium
Speaker 1: subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. All right, guys, thanks
Speaker 1: for sticking with us. It's a fun show to be back. Reminder,
Speaker 1: we got the State of the Union live stream tomorrow
Speaker 1: starting at eight pm. We'll have great coverage for you
Speaker 1: before and after the State of the Union. Welcome to
Speaker 1: our new JRI listeners and all of you. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate some of your support and it's going to be
Speaker 1: a fun ride as we go into the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election. But with that, we'll see you all tomorrow Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: We guys, see you tomorrow evening eight pm. It's going
Speaker 1: to be fun,