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Speaker 1: Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making

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Speaker 1: it impossible to function as a society and to know

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Speaker 1: what is true and what is false. The good news

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Speaker 1: is that they're failing and they know it. That is

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Speaker 1: why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier,

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Speaker 1: and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points Premium

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Speaker 1: member today at breakingpoints dot com. Your hard earned money

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Speaker 1: is going to help us build for the midterms and

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Speaker 1: the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage

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Speaker 1: of what is sure to be one of the most

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Speaker 1: pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for?

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Speaker 1: Go to Breakingpoints dot com to help us out. Andrew

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Speaker 1: Yang floating and interesting name for a potential president of

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Speaker 1: the United States in twenty twenty four, Go ahead and

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Speaker 1: throw this tear sheet up on the screen. This was

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Speaker 1: in his podcast which is called Forward, and he was

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Speaker 1: talking to comedian Shane Gillis. Remember Gillis was the one

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Speaker 1: who actually was supposed to be on CNN on SNL

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Speaker 1: rather and he got canceled because he is I love

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Speaker 1: it like slurred some I don't even remember exactly what

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Speaker 1: he said, but Andrew Yang was one of the people

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Speaker 1: that he like racially slurred, and then Yang came out

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Speaker 1: and was like, don't make this guy looking. I don't care.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, they had this whole sit down conversation. I

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Speaker 1: actually did listen to the whole thing yesterday. But the

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Speaker 1: part that's making headlines here is Andrew Yang trying to

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Speaker 1: draft Matthew McConaughey, one of your faiths sager, for president,

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Speaker 1: saying we need him to get us out of this mess.

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Speaker 1: Let me read you the transcript of what he says here.

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Speaker 1: His analysis of the Democratic and the Republican Party says,

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Speaker 1: you have the Democratic Party establishment who are like, hey,

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Speaker 1: you got to play by these rules, like we're going

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Speaker 1: to act a certain way. We're buttoned up, and we

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Speaker 1: have a certain way of presenting by the way I

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Speaker 1: ran for president and this career, Yang said, then you

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Speaker 1: have the Republican Party under Trump that's become this anti

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Speaker 1: institutional if everything burn it down kind of energy. He continued,

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Speaker 1: there's a Republican establishment within that that fought Trump and lost.

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Speaker 1: Now everyone's going along with it. You know, there has

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Speaker 1: to be a kind of this positive ex institutional energy

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Speaker 1: that comes up and ends up being a third force

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Speaker 1: in American politics. He lays out his plan for his

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Speaker 1: perfect ex institutional candidate. I'm not really sure what that means,

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Speaker 1: but anyway, my paragon example of this is someone like

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Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey. Like, so, McConaughey is from outside institutions, but

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Speaker 1: he's not an asshole in the same way Donald Trump is.

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Speaker 1: So I look at someone like that and think, God, like,

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Speaker 1: that's the kind of figure we need to get us

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Speaker 1: out of this mess. Gillis chimes in and says, I

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Speaker 1: can't believe that's where we're at. Imagine as the country

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Speaker 1: ten years ago. Hopefully Matthew McConaughey can get us out

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Speaker 1: of this mess. Yang goes on to say, so you

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Speaker 1: can fill in figures for Matthew McConaughey, Mark Cubans in

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Speaker 1: this category, the rocks in this category, some would say

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Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey, and then it goes on from there. But

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Speaker 1: what do you think of this? Since you've been a McConaughey,

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Speaker 1: you've had your McConaughey flirtations here. Yeah, I like Matthew McConaughey.

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Speaker 1: I just don't think Look, I think that what happened

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Speaker 1: with the gun thing actually shows that he can be

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Speaker 1: politically effective if he wants. But also he doesn't have

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Speaker 1: necessarily the best instincts because he effectively aligned himself with

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Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, which I think is fine, I mean,

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Speaker 1: because that's ultimately what he cared about, what he wanted

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Speaker 1: to do. But Andrew's not wrong. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: I just look a lot of the third party move

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Speaker 1: movement era and efforts that we would have right now

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Speaker 1: just don't seem to be working. Right now really is

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Speaker 1: just a time of like deep partisan political division, and

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Speaker 1: from what I've seen, you know, the guys who I've

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Speaker 1: looked to, like the Rock you know, is a good

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Speaker 1: example I pointed to I thought he would be in Ax,

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, this guy's unificering. I mean, he denounces

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Speaker 1: Rogan because of pressures from online wokes and you know,

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Speaker 1: during the whole N word thing. So it's like all

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Speaker 1: of them ultimately just have pressures on them which make

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Speaker 1: them unable to actually rise above what they need to.

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Speaker 1: Mark Cuban actually is not a bad example as somebody

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Speaker 1: who actually probably could do it of anybody and has

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Speaker 1: a decent story, but even then challenging the existing political

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Speaker 1: infrastructures is so difficult that I'm not sure it would work.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe in the future, maybe five six years

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Speaker 1: from now, when people are absolutely more disillusioned well with

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Speaker 1: the political system. The other part, it's not just the disillusionment,

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Speaker 1: like there's plenty. I think the level of disillusionment is sufficient.

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Speaker 1: It's just the actual structure of that's the exactly problem.

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Speaker 1: And so I think the efforts that Yang is pursuing

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Speaker 1: on things like rank choice voting and trying to reform

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Speaker 1: the electoral system so that there is a chance for

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Speaker 1: third parties to have a real shot or at least

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Speaker 1: have more of an impact on American politics. I support

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Speaker 1: that one hundred percent. I think that would be an

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Speaker 1: incredible improvement. I think the fact that we're facing down

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Speaker 1: this election where it's like Joe Biden versus Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: two people that everyone's like not this again, please anything

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Speaker 1: but this, and there's almost like no way out of

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Speaker 1: it because of the way that our system is structured.

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Speaker 1: I think dealing with that problem is actually really important.

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Speaker 1: But we haven't dealt with that problem yet, and so

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Speaker 1: at this point, the idea of any third party candidate

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Speaker 1: actually having a shot at being fully successful outside of

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Speaker 1: the two major parties. It's just fanciful. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: model is to come in from the outside and take

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Speaker 1: over one of the mainstream parties. That's what we've seen

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Speaker 1: work in the past, and in a way, the Reagan

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Speaker 1: Revolution was was that in the Republican Party, where you know,

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Speaker 1: prior to that, Republicans had been more or less in

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Speaker 1: acquiescence with major provisions of the New Deal. And then

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Speaker 1: Reagan comes in, he takes over the party apparatus that

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Speaker 1: had started with the Goldwater Revolution. He takes that and

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Speaker 1: he completely transforms and takes over the party. You see

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Speaker 1: that with Bill Clinton and the DLC in the Democratic

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Speaker 1: Party in the nineties. You see it sort of with

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Speaker 1: Trump and the Republican Party in recent years, even though

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Speaker 1: he ends up really governing more like a traditional Reagan

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Speaker 1: you know, Republican than he had sort of presented himself

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Speaker 1: in the campaign in twenty sixteen. But you know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I obviously have issues with all of these people that

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Speaker 1: he floats. They're all these sort of like you know,

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Speaker 1: enlightened centrist types that it's not even really clear what

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Speaker 1: they actually believe or stand for, would fight for, which

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Speaker 1: means that you're going to be buffeted by the wins

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Speaker 1: of like you know, this one says they're offended at that,

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Speaker 1: or that one says they're that you should be going

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Speaker 1: in this direction. To me, it's really important you have

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Speaker 1: candidates who are very clear on where they stand, what

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Speaker 1: they're going to fight for, and what their program and

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Speaker 1: agenda is. But yeah, so led politics are hard. Reagan

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Speaker 1: was an example actually of that because they had a

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Speaker 1: legitimate ideological agenda and he was former government in California,

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Speaker 1: so he was able to translate his like showman, his

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Speaker 1: showmanship with an actual like governing in practice. He had

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Speaker 1: a deep ideological, like right philosophy, thought out philosophy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's very interesting actually to kind of see it. So

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Speaker 1: I think if anybody was going to do it, they

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Speaker 1: have to do it in the way that Reagan did,

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Speaker 1: or even Trump. I mean, to his credit, Trump effectively

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Speaker 1: believed the same thing for like thirty five years for

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Speaker 1: the care of his campaign getting ripped off China, same

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Speaker 1: thing over. I mean, you could go back and watch

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Speaker 1: a clip of him for I think he was on

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Speaker 1: Oprah in like nineteen seventy nine and he was saying

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Speaker 1: the exact same thing. It was shocking really actually to

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Speaker 1: go ahead and watch. So it has to be somebody

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Speaker 1: like that. It's a very unique set of skills that

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Speaker 1: could get you there. Again, to be clear, I think

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Speaker 1: McConaughey could do it if he wanted to, but he

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Speaker 1: has to make different choices than the ones he's currently making.

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Speaker 1: Something we have been tracking very closely here is how

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Speaker 1: the housing market will respond to the FED raising interest rates.

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Speaker 1: And we already have brought to you how just these

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Speaker 1: small moves the FED has made so far have had

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Speaker 1: massive implications in terms of the cost of borrowing and

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Speaker 1: the mortgage interest rates, and that has a huge effect

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Speaker 1: on people's ability to ultimately purchase a home. We're now

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Speaker 1: starting to see the data that in the housing market,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there really is kind of an imminent collapse

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Speaker 1: coming and we're seeing the early warning sides. Go ahead

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Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. So home sale

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Speaker 1: cancelations jumped in June as buyers backed away. Sixty thousand

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Speaker 1: deals fell through, equal to fifteen percent of homes that

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Speaker 1: entered into contract. This is by far the highest number

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Speaker 1: that we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: when the entire economy collapsed and was shut down, and

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Speaker 1: at that point people said, who wo wo, I can't

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Speaker 1: go through with this because I'm not sure I'm going

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Speaker 1: to have a job. We are now back to approaching

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Speaker 1: those LEFS levels in terms of home sale cancelation. So again,

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Speaker 1: nearly eight about fifteen percent of homes that buyers you know,

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Speaker 1: are planning to buy, they enter into a contract, are

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Speaker 1: being canceled, and they're backing away from and directly directly

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Speaker 1: tied to the actions that the FED is taking here

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Speaker 1: cancel rate. Like I said, it hasn't been this high

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Speaker 1: basically since twenty twenty, like right after that, and it's

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Speaker 1: continuing to rise to precipitous rate. It's just going to

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Speaker 1: continue to rise, and if it gets to the twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five percent, it's just going to make the

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Speaker 1: housing market even more of a chaos. And something I've

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Speaker 1: been trying to point to is when high priced buyers

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Speaker 1: are pushed out of the home market. Let's be honest,

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Speaker 1: the home market is mostly for upper middle class people

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Speaker 1: at this point, just given what the poessionally, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the media, housing prices half a million dollars in sanity,

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Speaker 1: So you have the upper middle class just to be

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Speaker 1: able to get into it. Well, whenever the interest rates

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Speaker 1: get it so that not even the upper class can

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Speaker 1: only the basically the upper class can be the people

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Speaker 1: who afford it. Then the upper middle class are going

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Speaker 1: to turn to the renting market and they are going

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Speaker 1: to rent luxury property and squeeze everybody down the value chain,

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Speaker 1: which is going to increase the price of the rent.

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Speaker 1: We're seeing this all ready in how doest housing markets

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Speaker 1: across the country, which was a response to rising rates.

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Speaker 1: So where the rates are where they are right now,

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Speaker 1: it's a total disaster because it pushes people into a

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Speaker 1: place where they have to be able to choose between

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know why anyone would basically choose

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Speaker 1: to have a six percent mortgage rate. Is what I

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Speaker 1: was also looking at. And another thing that makes this

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Speaker 1: more dangerous, I didn't realize this. When rates go up

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Speaker 1: to like six percent, it no longer is necessarily to

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Speaker 1: your benefit to take the fixed rate mortgage, which creates

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Speaker 1: all Again I'm not a mortgage expert, but there are

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Speaker 1: all other kinds of like wonky adjustable rate type mortgages

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Speaker 1: that you can go for where you might be able

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Speaker 1: to pay less at least in the long term. But

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Speaker 1: those are much more subject to market conditions that are

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Speaker 1: not as locked in and friendly as the consumer more

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Speaker 1: subject to financialization. So what I was reading is that

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Speaker 1: by increasing their mortgage rate and going away from the

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Speaker 1: low fixed rate mortgages typical of the last ten to

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Speaker 1: fifteen years, or yeah, I guess the last ten years

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Speaker 1: of low interest rates from the FED, it changes the

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Speaker 1: whole dynamics of all of us housing, which is just

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Speaker 1: not good. Yes, interesting, Well, the dustible rate mortgages were

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Speaker 1: part of the story in terms of the housing collapse,

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Speaker 1: because you remember they had the ballooning payments that consumers

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Speaker 1: didn't understand what they were getting into at the beginning,

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Speaker 1: and then their payment jumps and escalates to a point

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Speaker 1: where immediately they can't afford it, and they're being pushed down,

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Speaker 1: essentially because they were tricked into signing onto something that

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Speaker 1: was well outside of what their actual means were. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is what we're saying, Like, I think it's really

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Speaker 1: important that you understand. This is the goal of our

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Speaker 1: policymakers is to make it impossible for you to buy

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Speaker 1: a house. To tank the housing market with follow on effects,

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Speaker 1: as you're pointing out in the rental market as well.

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Speaker 1: This is their goal because they are unable because of

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Speaker 1: political gridlock and lack of political imagination to deal with

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Speaker 1: the supply side issues that are fueling inflation. So the

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Speaker 1: only thing they can do is like take a hammer

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Speaker 1: to the American consumer, and the housing market is the

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Speaker 1: area that is most sensitive typically to these FED rate increases.

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Speaker 1: The other thing that you pointed to before, which is

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Speaker 1: a part of this picture, Americans have never paid higher

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Speaker 1: interest rates to finance car purchases, so also in terms

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Speaker 1: of being able to afford a vehicle to be able

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Speaker 1: to get to and from work, consumers are already being

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Speaker 1: hit really, really hard, and we are just at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of what the FED is ultimately planning to do.

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Speaker 1: So you know, it's a real warning sign that this

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Speaker 1: early on you're seeing these kind of dire numbers in

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Speaker 1: terms of home sale cancelations. People who thought they were

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Speaker 1: going to be able to, you know, to purchase a

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Speaker 1: home maybe for the first time, you know, maybe be

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Speaker 1: able to move somewhere that was better for them for

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Speaker 1: their family, and they're having to say, I just can't

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Speaker 1: do it right now for these rates yeah. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you could delay it for ten years. Who knows whenever

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Speaker 1: these things are going to come back, and then you're

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Speaker 1: going to be what like forty five fifty in your

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Speaker 1: own house. Yeah, not good. Not good. Nina Jankowitz is

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Speaker 1: the person who just simply will not disappears the gift

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Speaker 1: gifts she keeps on giving, at least to us. She's

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Speaker 1: been recently appeared on the Brian Stelter program over at

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Speaker 1: CNN to deny that she ever herself spread disinformation while

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Speaker 1: she was the head of the Disinformation Governance Board. Let's

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Speaker 1: take a listen. I, you know, did not post disinformation.

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Speaker 1: The folks that are honing in on tweets that I

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Speaker 1: sent in twenty sixteen when I had fewer than a

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Speaker 1: thousand Twitter followers that you know, I was just sharing

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Speaker 1: information about a presidential election as it was happening, as

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Speaker 1: millions of other Americans were doing, using their right to

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Speaker 1: freedom of speech. That wasn't disinformation, right, it was just

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Speaker 1: sharing news. Other people honed in on tweets that were

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Speaker 1: they completely stripped of context. The one that the conservatives

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Speaker 1: loved to really amplify was a tweet that they claimed

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Speaker 1: that that made me seem like I was calling the

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Speaker 1: Hunter Biden laptop disinformation, when in fact I was just

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Speaker 1: live tweeting a debate, you know, saying the exact words

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Speaker 1: that then candidate Biden and President Trump were saying during

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Speaker 1: a debate, totally stripped of context. So you still think

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Speaker 1: further into the context, so you still think you were right. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I was the right. Hire Also that's not true what

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Speaker 1: she was saying. She was live tweeting it, and also

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Speaker 1: trying to add the context about how the laptop which

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Speaker 1: she was calling disinformation, she's spreading a little bit of

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Speaker 1: just spreading disinformation. Disinformation there about what you go on

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Speaker 1: forever at the number of things that this lady said

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Speaker 1: which were straight up false. She was promoting the Hunter

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Speaker 1: Biden conspiracy that it was some Russian plant. I mean,

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Speaker 1: she was even an election truther twenty sixteen with Hillary,

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Speaker 1: I mean, on COVID, was spreading all kinds of insanity.

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Speaker 1: She literally tweeted please lock us down in like March

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Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. So listen, it's very clear that she

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Speaker 1: was not the right person of any authority to be

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Speaker 1: the arbiter or not. I also think it is a

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Speaker 1: ludicrous interview because he didn't even push back, He didn't

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Speaker 1: ask her about any of the specifics, and he's just

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Speaker 1: let her be like, yeah, I was the right person. No,

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Speaker 1: I didn't spread any any untruths or misinformation. What is that? Also,

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Speaker 1: why don't you here's the other thing? If his show

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Speaker 1: is called Really Sources, So you're talking to a former

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Speaker 1: government official who was trying to decide what's true and

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Speaker 1: what's not and was actively pushing meetings with social media

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Speaker 1: companies like Twitter, including the person who actually sends her

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Speaker 1: the Hunter Byden laptop story over Twitter. Why don't you

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Speaker 1: ask her about that's open source information that's available right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know why they are incapable of doing this. Even

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Speaker 1: some of his colleagues at CNN were uncomfortable with and

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Speaker 1: asked hard questions, Remember about dash was exactly Yeah, difficult

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Speaker 1: questions of the DHS secretary about what exactly this board

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Speaker 1: is and what exactly this board does, which you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean as cringe as Nina Jankowitz is. That's really

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Speaker 1: the bigger problem is that it would not be better,

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Speaker 1: it would not be a good outcome if they put

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Speaker 1: a less cringe person as the head of this board.

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Speaker 1: This board just should not exist. That's really the bottom

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Speaker 1: line here. Ultimately, Now, in a way, they kind of

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Speaker 1: did us a favor by picking someone who was so

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Speaker 1: clearly not a neutral actor, who had, you know, herself's

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Speaker 1: spreading great questionable and outright false information, because it made

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Speaker 1: it much easier for people to be able to sort

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Speaker 1: of go on the offense and say this idea is

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Speaker 1: ludicrous and this is really not something that the government

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Speaker 1: should be doing whatsoever. And we literally never got a

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Speaker 1: straight answer about what this board was meant to do.

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Speaker 1: They would, on one hand, be like, stop warrant, like

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Speaker 1: this is no big deal. This board is barely a thing,

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Speaker 1: like it barely is going to do anything. And on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, they'd be like, this is an attack

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Speaker 1: on our ability to deal with misinformation, and this is

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Speaker 1: so super important that you let us have our truth

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Speaker 1: board here at at the DHS. So anyway, it's interesting

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Speaker 1: all around. I wonder how long Brian Stelter is going

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Speaker 1: to continue to have a show. I would love that, listen.

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Speaker 1: I would love a lot of rumors that he might

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Speaker 1: be on the shopping block is part of the new

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Speaker 1: regime at CNN, So we'll see totally, absolutely all right

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Speaker 1: more for you. Ell lator, Hey everyone, this is Ken Clippenstein,

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Speaker 1: investigative reporter with the intercept. I'm doing Breaking Points Intersect edition.

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Speaker 1: Joined with me here is Jonathan Geyer, senior foreign policy

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Speaker 1: writer for Vox. Thanks for having me. Ken, good to

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Speaker 1: talk to you. We'll be talking to you about a

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Speaker 1: story that he had about Saudi Arabia in which I

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Speaker 1: think the title very succinctly captures what exactly is going

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Speaker 1: on here, which is Biden distanced himself from Sauda Arabia

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Speaker 1: until gas prices got bad, and so I think one

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Speaker 1: of the most important parts of this story is how

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Speaker 1: you are able to get at the tension between what

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Speaker 1: Biden said was going to be a human rights centered

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Speaker 1: foreign policy and a foreign policy for the middle class,

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Speaker 1: that is, one in which he holds the Saudi Crown

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Speaker 1: Prince Mohammed Bencelman or MBS as he's called accountable for,

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Speaker 1: you know, his murder, of his role in the murder

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Speaker 1: of Jamal Kashogi, Washington Post journalist, and the fact that

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Speaker 1: gas prices are you know, soaring, and that that's something

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Speaker 1: that's you know, hurting, is political approval rating. So could

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Speaker 1: you explain that a little bit. Yeah. So I would

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Speaker 1: say there are kind of two bumper stickers of Biden's

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Speaker 1: foreign policy. One is, as you say, centering human rights. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: he called Saudi Arabia Paria on the campaign trail. There

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Speaker 1: seem to be real hope from human rights defenders that

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Speaker 1: there would be a different US policy towards Saudi Arabia.

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Speaker 1: But you have the other bumper sticker, which is a

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Speaker 1: foreign policy for the middle class. And I think as

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Speaker 1: inflation is soaring, as the economy is in a tight

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Speaker 1: spot right now, that really means dealing with gas prices

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Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia, big energy producer. Now, the experts I

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Speaker 1: spoke to think the changes, as you probably know well,

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Speaker 1: will be pretty marginal in terms of more gas on

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Speaker 1: the market and lower prices. But I think the president

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Speaker 1: wants to look like he's doing everything he can possibly

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Speaker 1: do and lead up to the midterms. But this means

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Speaker 1: these two bumper stickers are kind of in a collision,

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Speaker 1: and it looks really awkward, very awkward. And for example,

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Speaker 1: Biden actually penned an op ed in the Washington Post,

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Speaker 1: which again that was the paper that Jamal Kashogi wrote for,

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Speaker 1: in which he just addresses the public and says why

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Speaker 1: I'm going to Saudi Arabia because recall, during the presidential primary,

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Speaker 1: he vowed to make sat Arabia and nbsa quote pariah,

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Speaker 1: and that's language that there doesn't leave much room for interpretation.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty plain spoken language, and now he's

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Speaker 1: you know, abrogating that because of I just wish that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you read that op ed that the

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Speaker 1: president wrote, it's kind of interesting itself. I search for

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Speaker 1: the word oil, you know, which is your piece suggests

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Speaker 1: is clearly a big factor in what's going on here.

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Speaker 1: That word appears one time in the entire op ed.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, it seems like the trip started

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Speaker 1: being about oil, right, and now it's kind of about security.

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Speaker 1: It's about all these other things. So that's what's interesting.

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Speaker 1: You search that that piece that he wrote, the word

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Speaker 1: Israel comes up like a dozen times, and exactly to

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Speaker 1: some extent, he's sort of hiding behind this. Oh you know,

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Speaker 1: we're going to have this normalization. This is what you

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Speaker 1: like the israelis, right, guys. So don't worry about, you know,

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Speaker 1: what I said about making Saturabia pariah, because I've got

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Speaker 1: this other thing that you care about that we're doing,

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Speaker 1: and so I mean, and that's I think that's sort

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Speaker 1: of going to be the messaging going forward. I think

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Speaker 1: there's an open question as to, as you say, whether

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Speaker 1: the middle class is going to be getting anything out

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Speaker 1: of that. Well, come on, Jamal Hashoji was a Virginia resident.

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Speaker 1: He was writing for the local paper of Washington d C.

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Speaker 1: I mean, maybe a foreign policy for the middle class

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Speaker 1: would address, you know, the heinous assassination and dismemberment of

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Speaker 1: one of our own a columnist, a journalist. And I

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Speaker 1: spoke with a human rights defender from Saudi Arabia this morning,

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Speaker 1: and you know what she told me is, this is

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Speaker 1: a police state. There's all these superficial changes that MBS,

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Speaker 1: the Saudi crum prince has put forward. You have movie theaters,

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Speaker 1: you have some women driving, you have concerts that there

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Speaker 1: has been opening up on some level culturally. But there's

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Speaker 1: been a huge backsliding on his own promises. There's been

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Speaker 1: capital punishment of miners in Saudi Arabia, there's you know,

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Speaker 1: continued to be a crackdown on free speech. There is

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Speaker 1: no free speech. Then they jailed some of the women

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Speaker 1: that were demonstrating for women in women's rights, women's driving.

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Speaker 1: So there's huge contradictions, just a bundle of contradictions with

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Speaker 1: all this this kind of picture of him kind of

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Speaker 1: modernizing the society, which you know, there there's there's something

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Speaker 1: to that. I'm not saying there's nothing, but but yeah,

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Speaker 1: as as as you point out, there's all sorts of

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Speaker 1: ways that he's backsled. I just think that there's a

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Speaker 1: lack of candor in this town for a variety of reasons,

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Speaker 1: and and from the president. I wish the President would

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Speaker 1: just come out and talk about the you know, economic

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Speaker 1: consequences of this. The American people are adults. They can

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Speaker 1: understand the situation we're in in which not not just

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Speaker 1: our economy internally, but then the Russians are enjoying a

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Speaker 1: bonanza of profits in their war of aggression against the

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Speaker 1: Ukrainians because they're working with Russia. The two these are

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Speaker 1: the two biggest oil producers in Opek and keeping production low,

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Speaker 1: which has the effect of driving prices up and and

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Speaker 1: financing this government that's doing this UH horrible invasion uh

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Speaker 1: and and undercutting the sanctions that we're putting on them

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Speaker 1: to try to prevent them from proceeding with all this.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm very worried about the optics of this

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Speaker 1: trip because you know, President Biden is going to be

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00:21:11,240 --> 00:21:15,000
Speaker 1: shaking hands or in a meeting with MBS. Now what

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00:21:15,119 --> 00:21:18,439
Speaker 1: messages that send who's the superpower here. It's a major

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00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:21,479
Speaker 1: about face and climb down for Biden. And you know

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00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:23,679
Speaker 1: Biden has said for the past eighteen months, I'm not

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00:21:23,720 --> 00:21:26,480
Speaker 1: going to meet with MBS. My technical counterpart is the king,

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00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:30,240
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to interact with NBS's father. Everyone

436
00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:33,719
Speaker 1: knows NBS is effectively, you know, the CEO of the country.

437
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 1: He's running everything. But maybe this was a bad policy

438
00:21:37,320 --> 00:21:40,560
Speaker 1: because now this incredible u turn. Maybe it would have

439
00:21:40,560 --> 00:21:44,240
Speaker 1: been better to deliver that intelligence report about Hashoji's killing,

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00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:46,720
Speaker 1: you know, from the President to MBS in that first

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00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 1: meeting eighteen months ago, and say, look, this has got

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00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:54,120
Speaker 1: to change. We need some accountability here. The relationship has

443
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: just totally gone off the rails. Saudi Arabia was always

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00:21:57,320 --> 00:22:00,679
Speaker 1: a conservative kingdom, but it was a consultative king The

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00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:03,720
Speaker 1: royal family had a role, it was it was governed

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00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 1: by consensus. Now you have this guy who many many

447
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:10,920
Speaker 1: experts have compared to Saddam Hussein, who's in his thirties.

448
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,000
Speaker 1: He could be running the country for another half century,

449
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:17,119
Speaker 1: and he started this brutal war in Yemen that is

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00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: just probably you know, the biggest human rights disaster in

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00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:23,400
Speaker 1: the world right now. And thankfully there is a ceasefire

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00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:27,200
Speaker 1: right now in Yemen. But you know, that's small pittance

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00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:30,359
Speaker 1: for just total recklessness. Yeah, I want to go back

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00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 1: to something you said. You talked about what message is

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00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:34,399
Speaker 1: going to send, and that's really important. This is not

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00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:39,720
Speaker 1: just abstract human rights concerns. For example, a prominent Saudi

457
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:42,640
Speaker 1: dissident and Lebanon was killed recently. We don't know details about,

458
00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: you know, who is behind it, what happened, but you know,

459
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,800
Speaker 1: you can guess. And then in addition to that, there

460
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:49,960
Speaker 1: was a case of a Saudi national in the United

461
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: States being harassed for her and threatened for just you know,

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00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,400
Speaker 1: voicing concerns about her government. And so when you talk

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00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:00,440
Speaker 1: to the Saudi diaspora community, in particularly Saudi dissident community,

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00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:02,160
Speaker 1: as I have for a lot of stories that I've

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00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 1: done recently, they say that they have very concrete fears

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00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 1: that this is telling MBS that he has a green

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00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: light or maybe a yellow light to go ahead and

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00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 1: continue to do some of those things. Because the president's

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00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 1: going to normalize with you. What does he have to

470
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:19,160
Speaker 1: lose if the primary sort of sanction that we placed

471
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,200
Speaker 1: on him, since we didn't put you know, little economic

472
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: sanctions or really suspend much in the way of weapons,

473
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: was the president not meeting with him and dignifying, which

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00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:28,639
Speaker 1: I do think matters if you're in a kingdom and

475
00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:31,800
Speaker 1: you're jockeying for power, you want the legitimacy of the

476
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 1: you know, president of the most powerful country meeting with you.

477
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:36,439
Speaker 1: That doesn't matter to him. If you withdraw that, remove that,

478
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:38,240
Speaker 1: What message is MBS going to take from that? In

479
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:41,359
Speaker 1: terms of the transnational repression that he is engaged in.

480
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:44,720
Speaker 1: That that perhaps is most you know, vividly captured by

481
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 1: MBS's assassination, but takes the form of all kinds of

482
00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 1: bullying and you know, just other dissidents have been killed.

483
00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:56,119
Speaker 1: To give you another example of Saudi spies were working

484
00:23:56,119 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: in Twitter Justice Department alleges in passing and onto the

485
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: Saudi regime about dissidence in the United States. So this

486
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 1: is a very concrete threat to US residence and continues

487
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:08,919
Speaker 1: to be. I don't think the koshogi thing is is

488
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,959
Speaker 1: a historical artifact in any sense, right. I mean you

489
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: start to see a lot of parallels between how President

490
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:17,120
Speaker 1: Trump dealt with Saudi Arabia and Biden. I mean, Biden's

491
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: rhetoric has the word human rights in it, but that

492
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: doesn't mean human rights are at its center. I mean,

493
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 1: you've done incredible reporting on Jared Kushner, Trump's brother in law,

494
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 1: kind of really profiting off, you know, getting major billions

495
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: off of his relationship with with Saudi and through his

496
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:37,160
Speaker 1: investment fund. That is, you know, that's a different kind

497
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:38,879
Speaker 1: of corruption. But I think what we're talking about here

498
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 1: is a moral corruption where you have a leader like

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00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:46,120
Speaker 1: NBS who intelligence agencies determined killed a US resident. Yeah,

500
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 1: you know, is there going to be a meeting of

501
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 1: President Biden with Arab journalists on this trip? I would

502
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,119
Speaker 1: really like to see that. Yeah, yeah, Okay, We're going

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00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: to leave it there. Once again, that's Jonathan Geyer. Where

504
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 1: can people find your work? Voxt dot com. Thanks for

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00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: having me, Ken, thank you for joining me. There is

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Speaker 1: another edition of Breaking Points Intercept