Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 2: we have, Bristal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1: There is a lot to talk about this morning. So
Speaker 1: as we appreviewed for you last night a just utterly
Speaker 1: disastrous attempt to launch his presidential campaign for Rondo Santis
Speaker 1: last night on Twitter, had a bit of a better
Speaker 1: outing on Fox. We've got somebody the highlights of that,
Speaker 1: so we will bring you that as well and discuss
Speaker 1: the whole situation. We also have the reaction from Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who of course is not going to let him get
Speaker 1: off easy for any of the missteps and disastrous technical
Speaker 1: glitches that he suffered through. Along with Elon Musk, we
Speaker 1: also have some big updates this morning for you on
Speaker 1: debt ceiling negotiations, Kevin McCarthy saying they are getting close
Speaker 1: to a deal. We will see. We also wanted to
Speaker 1: take a look, you know, yourre a year out from Uvaldi,
Speaker 1: who has been held accountable. Very few, very few of
Speaker 1: the officers that stood by as kids were literally bleeding
Speaker 1: out in those classrooms, So we'll take a look at that.
Speaker 1: And also listen, you called it in particular, but we
Speaker 1: both called it in terms of who actually was behind
Speaker 1: those drone strikes in the Kremlin Lo and behold. Three
Speaker 1: weeks later, US intelligence agencies are saying, well, it was Ukraine.
Speaker 1: But Zillinske didn't you want to have any I yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just totally in the dark there about what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm also excited to have Skanda Emernath on to talk
Speaker 1: about the debt ceiling with the Treasury could do before
Speaker 1: we get to any of that, though, Thank you so
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Speaker 3: But let's go ahead and get to DeSantis.
Speaker 2: By the way, I also have sent a message to
Speaker 2: the Desantas campaign and still waiting on a callback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been in touch. It may be hard to
Speaker 1: get uh Ron, we'll see, but we put in our
Speaker 1: requests and his team is interested in coming on a
Speaker 1: panels and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, okay, so let's start with what exactly
Speaker 1: happened last night as we previewed for you, he made
Speaker 1: the unusual decision Ron DeSantis did to launch his campaign
Speaker 1: on Twitter spaces. Well apparently I never used Twitter spaces before,
Speaker 1: but apparently the platform is beset with issues. Under the
Speaker 1: best of circumstances, when you add in more than half
Speaker 1: a million people trying to join to listen to what
Speaker 1: the man had to say, it ended up being an
Speaker 1: utter catastrophe. They went twenty five minutes of the thing
Speaker 1: crashing and people not being able to get in, and
Speaker 1: no one being able to be heard and various like
Speaker 1: hushed whispers on a hot mic before they pulled the
Speaker 1: plug on the original spaces Ron Desanta's left altogether. They
Speaker 1: had to launch a new one before they could even
Speaker 1: get to the substance of what his campaign announcement was.
Speaker 1: We have a little taste of what that all sounded
Speaker 1: like last night.
Speaker 4: Take a listen, please introduced to individuals who've done more
Speaker 4: to loosen the All right, sorry about that. We've got
Speaker 4: so many people here that I think we are We
Speaker 4: are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.
Speaker 2: So I just keep crashing him.
Speaker 5: I think we've got just a massive number of people online,
Speaker 5: so it's serve as restraining somewhat, all right, We're just
Speaker 5: reallocating more service capability to be able to handle the
Speaker 5: load here. It's really going crazy.
Speaker 4: And I think we melted the internet there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was insane.
Speaker 6: Sorry.
Speaker 5: We actually doing this from David TeX's Twitter account because
Speaker 5: it looks like doing it from mine basically broke the
Speaker 5: Twitter system.
Speaker 4: Governor Santas can are you there?
Speaker 6: Can you hear us?
Speaker 1: I think you're baking right here.
Speaker 4: I know, I think I think you broke the internet there.
Speaker 4: We had over half a million people in one Twitter
Speaker 4: space and it was growing by like fifty thousand a minute.
Speaker 4: So congrats on I'm breaking the internet there.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, yeah, I mean he tries some you know,
Speaker 5: new things you're gonna does. It's adventurous, so.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So we did an entire twenty minute video
Speaker 2: yesterday breaking down not only the launch, but one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why I thought it was a huge mistake
Speaker 2: to actually do that as a launch, because it was plotting,
Speaker 2: it was long, it was scripted.
Speaker 3: There was no production to it.
Speaker 2: I just think he would have been ten times better
Speaker 2: off putting out a traditional Twitter video, which he did
Speaker 2: at exactly six pm Eastern last night, and then doing
Speaker 2: the damn rally, of which you control the optics, all
Speaker 2: of it. We would have covered it, The networks would
Speaker 2: have covered it. He gets to control the elements. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a produced piece of content which then could be
Speaker 2: rolling on every single screen this morning.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately for him, that's not what happened.
Speaker 2: And ironically, I hate being in the business of praising
Speaker 2: cable news, but you know, at the very least like
Speaker 2: their stuff doesn't break constantly. And DeSantis sat for a
Speaker 2: long interview live interview with former Congressman Trey Goudi on
Speaker 2: the Fox News Tonight Show yesterday around eight Eastern, and honestly,
Speaker 2: it was way better. Not only was it not the
Speaker 2: set of glitches, there was more of a pacing not
Speaker 2: only to his answers, but to the questions themselves.
Speaker 3: They delved into quite a bit of territory.
Speaker 2: The first and foremost was actually a question was begging
Speaker 2: them to ask on Twitter. I was like, hey, Electability,
Speaker 2: how are you going to beat Trump? DeSantis lays out
Speaker 2: his case of electability here. Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 7: Are there policy differences or is it more about electability
Speaker 7: and how you would implement those policies even if you
Speaker 7: agree on them.
Speaker 8: Well, why now? I think it's because the country's going
Speaker 8: in the wrong direction. We have another four years of
Speaker 8: the Biden administration. I think some of the damage is
Speaker 8: going to be irreversible. Why me, Well, I think what
Speaker 8: we've been able to do in Florida is two things. One,
Speaker 8: we've had mprecedented policy success. All the things that we
Speaker 8: believe as Republicans or as conservatives for many, many years,
Speaker 8: We've been able to take those values and those principal
Speaker 8: and actually turn them into reality.
Speaker 7: Do you plan all participating in all the debates and
Speaker 7: would you have a word of council for any candidates
Speaker 7: that were maybe equivocating on whether or not to participate
Speaker 7: in all the debates.
Speaker 8: I think we should debate. I think the people want
Speaker 8: to hear it. You know, I grew up blue collar,
Speaker 8: working minimum wage jobs and learned nobody's entitled to anything
Speaker 8: in this world trade. You've got to earn it, and
Speaker 8: I think all of us have to go out and
Speaker 8: earn it. That's exactly what I intend to do, and
Speaker 8: I think the debates are a big part.
Speaker 3: Of the process. A couple big takeaways.
Speaker 2: So on a meta level, his message to GOP primary
Speaker 2: voters is Trump said it, I will actually do it.
Speaker 2: Florida is booming open for business. Nobody has entitled to it.
Speaker 3: You have to earn it.
Speaker 2: So overall, I actually think those are you know, decent
Speaker 2: compelling points. The question is why is that compelling to
Speaker 2: enough of the GOPP.
Speaker 1: Very base well, and it's also an argument that sits
Speaker 1: very uneasily with the disastrous launch that he had because
Speaker 1: of your case, is he tweets about it, I get
Speaker 1: it done, and then you're unable to even effectively get
Speaker 1: done your own campaign launch. And not just the technical glitches,
Speaker 1: which you know he should have foreseen. They should have
Speaker 1: been asking some really hard questions to make sure this
Speaker 1: platform was up to snuff. But also, you know, audio
Speaker 1: sounds like crap on Twitter space. It always sounds like
Speaker 1: crap on Twitter spaces people. You know, I can say
Speaker 1: this as someone who people complain about my voice being annoying.
Speaker 1: His voice is annoying too. So if you just have
Speaker 1: the audio and you don't have music and staging and
Speaker 1: visuals and everything to back it up. It's a very
Speaker 1: hollow and sort of it really makes you appear smaller.
Speaker 1: He was like a panelist in this conversation and he
Speaker 1: just read his like standard stump speech.
Speaker 3: That's why it was a mistake.
Speaker 1: So you know, if your core pitch, which I think
Speaker 1: there are two problems with the electability and I'm the
Speaker 1: guy that can get it done pitch, which is number one,
Speaker 1: it's not clear to me that that's what the GOP
Speaker 1: base is really after. But number two, they also are
Speaker 1: already not convinced that you're more electable than Trump. And
Speaker 1: that Harvard Harris poll that came out just this week
Speaker 1: the voters were divided in the Republican primary about who
Speaker 1: was actually going to be more likely to defeat Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: So you already are not really having a strong case
Speaker 1: there on electability. And then when you have these kinds
Speaker 1: of disastrous issues on your campaign with your very first start,
Speaker 1: which were foreseeable, then you know that you're going to
Speaker 1: take a hit there. And by the way, you're up
Speaker 1: against the guy in Donald Trump, who was going to
Speaker 1: make you pay for every mistake. Honestly, if it was
Speaker 1: just the media being like, ah, you know, mocking DeSantis
Speaker 1: for this. I think he could overcome that because I
Speaker 1: think voters, especially in the Republican case Perry skeptic, they
Speaker 1: hate the media. If you're getting attacked by the media,
Speaker 1: maybe that's a good thing. Donald Trump is not going
Speaker 1: to let you get off easy. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that I would say, putting the technical glitches aside on
Speaker 1: the substance and the contrast between DeSantis and Trump. Trump
Speaker 1: is hitting DeSantis on wanting to raise taxes, on wanting
Speaker 1: to cut Social Security and Medicare. It is largely a
Speaker 1: very bread and butter focused attack DeSantis. It's no accident
Speaker 1: that his strongest base of support in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: is among college educated voters because he fixates on these
Speaker 1: you know ESG and DEI and the Chevron defense, these
Speaker 1: things that are important to some sliver of the Republican base,
Speaker 1: But most people are just trying to know, like what
Speaker 1: are my taxes going to be? And am I going
Speaker 1: to be able to survive? And are you going to
Speaker 1: get inflation under control? So I think Trump has also
Speaker 1: staked down a much more effective position in terms of
Speaker 1: the actual substance of the issue set that he's focused on.
Speaker 2: I agree, And that's another reason why I thought that
Speaker 2: the Fox interview was better is that here he actually
Speaker 2: did have an answer on the economy and specifically tried
Speaker 2: to speak to the bread and butter at the kitchen
Speaker 2: table issue.
Speaker 8: Here's what you have to say, So you need to
Speaker 8: spend less money. You also need to expand domestic energy production.
Speaker 8: Energy costs contribute to inflation. We have an abundance of
Speaker 8: resources here that this president doesn't want to use, so
Speaker 8: we will reverse Biden's energy policies very quickly. But we
Speaker 8: also need a federal reserve. It's going to focus on
Speaker 8: maintaining a stable dollar.
Speaker 2: So he's going after the Federal Reserve specifically for printing money,
Speaker 2: which is an interesting attack because that's the second time
Speaker 2: he brought it up at the very end of the
Speaker 2: Twitter spaces. I thought it was interesting to see this
Speaker 2: new political candidate come out specifically against the FED and
Speaker 2: kind of combining it with the Biden message.
Speaker 3: Now will that work?
Speaker 2: I'm actually not so sure. I don't think most people
Speaker 2: know how the FED works at all. It's corant, esoteric, yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, listen, we talk about it a
Speaker 1: lot here. So I'm not saying that that isn't an
Speaker 1: important issue. God knows it is is one of the
Speaker 1: most important issues in terms of how economy is actually doing.
Speaker 1: But you know, the way that you talk about that
Speaker 1: has to be accessible. And if you're going into esoteria
Speaker 1: about how the FED functions and you know, how they
Speaker 1: contribute to the stability of the dollar, and people are
Speaker 1: not directly connecting that to their lives and their ability
Speaker 1: to like make ends meet at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: And so again, I think it's no surprise that he
Speaker 1: has found his strongest base of support among college educated
Speaker 1: Republicans who have the luxury, who are more affluent and
Speaker 1: have the luxury of worrying about these niche concerns over
Speaker 1: you know, if there's ESG backing in their portfolio and
Speaker 1: what's going on with colleges and some of the sort
Speaker 1: of like super online lingo that Ron DeSantis casually threw
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency and these sorts of concerns that were casually thrown
Speaker 1: around in particular in the Twitter spaces. And Elon Musk
Speaker 1: also is like the patron saint of that part of
Speaker 1: the Republican base. So you know, I think you saw
Speaker 1: even putting the technical glitches aside, some of the challenges
Speaker 1: and hurdles that DeSantis has to overcome in this primary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: This is why it's difficult because I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: actually care a lot about those issues, but I'm not
Speaker 2: an idiot. I would never run on them if I
Speaker 2: was running from Congress, right.
Speaker 3: So it's one of those.
Speaker 2: Where we can both think that issues and areas are
Speaker 2: important and understand their siliens to overall voters and what
Speaker 2: they look at. And I think that is, in my estimation,
Speaker 2: one of the bigger miscalculations on what he chose his
Speaker 2: time to focus.
Speaker 1: On way too online.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the bottoms of the political interest now
Speaker 2: in terms of what political like may come for backlash
Speaker 2: of him, his answer on abortion will likely be one
Speaker 2: of the most important answers that he gave.
Speaker 3: So let's go ahead and roll this.
Speaker 2: Whenever he was asked about abortion on Fox, here's what
Speaker 2: he had to say.
Speaker 8: Well, I've been proud as governor to stand for a
Speaker 8: culture of life, and I think all Republicans need to
Speaker 8: do that. As you alluded to, we were able to
Speaker 8: sign legislation protecting onboard child with a detectable heartbeat, and
Speaker 8: we think that that's a humane thing to do. And
Speaker 8: it's similar to what Governor Reynolds did in Iowa, and I.
Speaker 3: Applaud her for that.
Speaker 8: Dobbs returned the issue to the elected representatives of the people,
Speaker 8: and so I think that there's role for both the
Speaker 8: federal and the states.
Speaker 3: Strategic shout out there to the governor of Iowa.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he just plucked her name out of the
Speaker 2: plucked her name out of Hattans this one, Governor.
Speaker 3: We're just gonna go to make sure. So not an
Speaker 3: idiot there.
Speaker 2: But overall, we have shown you here before in a
Speaker 2: primary it may not matter, it will certainly matter in
Speaker 2: the general election. The other answer we don't have. We're
Speaker 2: not going to play it for everybody. But was on Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and this actually kind of gets to you're what you're discussing, Crystal,
Speaker 2: and this is actually just more of a training issue.
Speaker 2: He was specifically asked by Trey Goudie, what are you
Speaker 2: going to do about Ukraine, and his answer was our
Speaker 2: military has become to politicize. We need to get away
Speaker 2: from focusing on woke issues back to commitment. I'm going
Speaker 2: to increase recruitment. Oh and in terms of what's going
Speaker 2: on in Eastern Europe, I would like to see a settlement.
Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, he asked you specifically about Ukraine, Like,
Speaker 2: what specifically do you think Trump? Look, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: certainly a talking point, but Trump is like, I want
Speaker 2: the dying to stop, and I'm going to try and
Speaker 2: bring it to an end within twenty or he says,
Speaker 2: I will bring it to an end within twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: He has absolutely floated negotiation and basically everything on the table.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with the leading candidate for president?
Speaker 2: Like, what is your differentiated do you have the same
Speaker 2: position on Ukraine, a different position on you.
Speaker 3: What do you think about what's going on right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the abortion answer you note there, He says, I
Speaker 1: think there's a role for state and federal, which I
Speaker 1: actually think. Listen, in a GOP primary, his abortion position
Speaker 1: is no problem with anything. It's an asset and he
Speaker 1: thinks that, you know, he can get to the right
Speaker 1: of Trump on a handful of issues. He also talked
Speaker 1: a lot about COVID in the Twitter spaces. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that came up as much in the Tree
Speaker 1: Goudy interview. But he's still trying to hang his hat
Speaker 1: on Florida's COVID policies, which of course are popular in
Speaker 1: a Republican primary. I just think people have really moved
Speaker 1: on from that issue. It had a lot more salience,
Speaker 1: you know, a year or a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: So that's one piece on abortion again. I think it's
Speaker 1: fine for him in a Republican primary. It does kind
Speaker 1: of dent his electability case, and it has made donors,
Speaker 1: some donors very uneasy about backing him, because, look, they
Speaker 1: don't care about the issue of abortion per se, but
Speaker 1: they do care about whether this man is going to
Speaker 1: be able to win the White House, and they've seen
Speaker 1: what a potent issue this has become for Democrats. Ukraine
Speaker 1: is sort of the same deal. He has a challenge
Speaker 1: here to navigate because what the donors want to hear
Speaker 1: on Ukraine is different from what the base wants to hear.
Speaker 1: That's why he instead of taking that question head on
Speaker 1: from Trey Goudi, he went into his side, you know,
Speaker 1: his pet issue of like wokeness, which she applies to
Speaker 1: literally everything, and then gives this one little sort of
Speaker 1: safe practice line at the end in order to actually
Speaker 1: answer the question that Trey Gowdy was asking, and it's
Speaker 1: because he's in a difficult position put it, trying to
Speaker 1: put together the coalition that he needs to be able
Speaker 1: to win, and Ukraine is one of the issues where
Speaker 1: that coalition is most divided.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: And also in terms of Fox, they were actually very
Speaker 2: salty about being snubbed by DeSantis because.
Speaker 3: He did his announcement there and not on Fox.
Speaker 2: Yet they took their opportunity to go after Elon pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: They said that they were aggressively hyping much high presidential DeSantis.
Speaker 2: A disaster on Twitter was the headline on Fox. And
Speaker 2: then go to a seven Games.
Speaker 1: They have a picture of Elon there, not even Rondo Santis,
Speaker 1: and the caption says amateur hour, So.
Speaker 3: Culture hour not good.
Speaker 2: Go to the next one and you can see that
Speaker 2: the banner that was actually on foxnews dot com during
Speaker 2: the Twitter spaces was if you want to hear what
Speaker 2: actually actually hear and see Ron Desanta's tune into Fox
Speaker 2: News at eight pm Eastern time. So look, I'm not
Speaker 2: in the business of cheering on cable news. I wish
Speaker 2: for their demise, but you know, if you're going to
Speaker 2: come at the King, you best not miss, and I
Speaker 2: think there certainly was a miss whenever it came to this. Overall,
Speaker 2: I think it's like you said, Crystal, it remains to
Speaker 2: be seen. So we are going to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about his plans and all that, But in terms
Speaker 2: of the headlines for the candidate, it was bungled, just
Speaker 2: simply because I've checked every single outlet save for the
Speaker 2: New York Post is talking about the issue with the
Speaker 2: launch and listen. You know, the way that I've heard
Speaker 2: some of the response from the pro DeSantis people is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you listen to his answers, like they're great
Speaker 2: on policy, It's like, what are you an Elizabeth Warren fan?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 2: Like this seriously, like this this is serious. Warren vibes
Speaker 2: like in terms of oh, but he's so listen. I
Speaker 2: care a lot about the pop like you said, I
Speaker 2: care a lot about YESG. I care a lot about
Speaker 2: di But I'm not going to say that I'm sitting
Speaker 2: here and I'm the prototypical Republican voter because I'm not
Speaker 2: out of touch. And I think that was the issue
Speaker 2: is that people are transposing like themselves into how this
Speaker 2: is going to play with people who have no they
Speaker 2: don't follow politics day in and day out the way
Speaker 2: you and I do. You or even frankly, if you
Speaker 2: listen to this show every day, you're in the top
Speaker 2: one percent of political media consumption. You know, the vast
Speaker 2: majority of people are just like, huh, just now that
Speaker 2: they could Florida guy. You know, it's like, that's just
Speaker 2: not really how it all lands. So for remember that
Speaker 2: things that may seem normal to you are really not
Speaker 2: normal at all whenever you hear them, you know, whenever
Speaker 2: you hear them outside of that vacuum of the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's a very wind track candidacy, and even putting the
Speaker 1: glitches aside, if you listen to the substance and the
Speaker 1: content of what they were focusing on, which was overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: not bread and butter issues. It was the culture war
Speaker 1: issues that you know, he has used to make a
Speaker 1: name for himself, no doubt. You can see why this
Speaker 1: has appealed to the audience that it does within the
Speaker 1: Republican base, and you can also see why that appeal
Speaker 1: has been limited.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 1: I think there continues to be a lot of affection
Speaker 1: for the man within the Republican base. I think no
Speaker 1: one hears like writing them off like it's over for
Speaker 1: him and that's the end of the story. You never know.
Speaker 1: These Republican primaries are long, but you only get one
Speaker 1: chance to have this focus on your campaign, and it's
Speaker 1: when you launch and you can control every aspect of it.
Speaker 1: And Canada's spend a lot of time and a lot
Speaker 1: of money thinking about what this is going to look like,
Speaker 1: what they're going to present to the public, exactly what
Speaker 1: they're going to say, how they're going to message it,
Speaker 1: and it was the whole thing was a terrific conception
Speaker 1: from the start, which does call in a question his judgment.
Speaker 1: I think there's no doubt about it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: on the sort of overall takeaway here, I think you
Speaker 1: don't get the bump in the polls that even a
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley got with her campaign launch. And there's also
Speaker 1: a lesson here maybe for all of us of you
Speaker 1: don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's a reason why
Speaker 1: Canada launched the way they do, because it's effective. He
Speaker 1: didn't raise nearly as much money as they, I'm sure
Speaker 1: thought he was going to raise.
Speaker 2: It was about a million dollars in an hour, which
Speaker 2: is not bad, but as you and I know, a
Speaker 2: lot of these are pre arranged donations.
Speaker 1: Right, he was, and this is also painful. He went
Speaker 1: straight from his various appearances to a fundraiser at the
Speaker 1: Four Seasons Hotel in Miami. Donors were sitting there listening
Speaker 1: to this whole thing unfold on audio before he shows
Speaker 1: up at the fundraiser. So yeah, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of this lined up for a top candidate like this,
Speaker 1: A million dollars is really not that impressive. And they
Speaker 1: went on Twitter spaces from having with the original one
Speaker 1: that they had to bail out of having over half
Speaker 1: a million people listening to having half of that at
Speaker 1: its peak when they were able to actually ramp it
Speaker 1: up and get the thing going again. You just don't
Speaker 1: get those chances over again. You don't get this moment
Speaker 1: where the media is completely focused on you and hanging
Speaker 1: on your every word and analyzing what you're doing. You
Speaker 1: just don't get those moments back. So is it a
Speaker 1: campaign endor?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Is this a real blow for him at a time
Speaker 1: when he was already kind of struggling in the polls.
Speaker 1: There's just no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: That's the way I would put it.
Speaker 2: So let's go to the second part here and just
Speaker 2: talk about like if he's going to rescue himself, how
Speaker 2: he's going to do it. Well, we've talked here before
Speaker 2: about the early ground game. Let's go and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. This is a peak very
Speaker 2: much into his overall plan. So the DeSantis pro DeSantis
Speaker 2: super pac is planning on spending two hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: in a voter outreach push all across New Hampshire, Nevada,
Speaker 2: South Carolina, and Iowa. And the reason why, Crystal is
Speaker 2: they believe that with the small number of voters in
Speaker 2: those states, those early primary states, that with the right
Speaker 2: amount of money recruiting the right number of people door knockers,
Speaker 2: that they can go and hire twenty six hundred field
Speaker 2: or organizers by Labor Day and knock on any potential
Speaker 2: DeSantis voter four or five times on the door door.
Speaker 2: So if you have anyway expressed this and you live
Speaker 2: in any of these states, good luck to.
Speaker 3: You buy a ring door or something. You're in for it.
Speaker 3: But it's your own fault though, because you expressed it.
Speaker 1: Rob is going to pass your door.
Speaker 3: A doorstep rob and.
Speaker 2: His people are going to be at your doorstep. But overall,
Speaker 2: I actually do think this is a smart play. So
Speaker 2: he's got what is DeSantis' core strength, He's got a
Speaker 2: ton of money, He's got more name ID than anybody else.
Speaker 2: If there is any person in this race who poses
Speaker 2: any threat to Trump at all, it is Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 3: So what does he need?
Speaker 2: He needs good earned media, great headlines to give voters
Speaker 2: post early states the permission to vote for him.
Speaker 3: He has to win Iowa or New Hampshire. I think
Speaker 3: there's no question.
Speaker 2: If he does not win either of those states, I
Speaker 2: think he's absolutely done for his plan. If there is
Speaker 2: such a thing that could work, is Iowa or New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: Maybe a number two finish or a number one finish
Speaker 2: in South Carolina, decent showing in Nevada, and then a
Speaker 2: forty fifty percent showing half and half and Super Tuesday
Speaker 2: where you steam into the Florida Primary. You give Floridian
Speaker 2: is the opportunity to put you up over the over
Speaker 2: Trump in both of your own home states. That gives
Speaker 2: you credibility going into the race, and it's going to
Speaker 2: be a race all the way to the convention.
Speaker 3: That's the only.
Speaker 2: Possible kind of map where that you can look at
Speaker 2: for a way this is going to work. But it's
Speaker 2: all predicated have to win one of those two first states,
Speaker 2: no question about it.
Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman is reporting, among others this morning he's planning
Speaker 1: a four day swaying through twelve cities in early States
Speaker 1: next week. You know, the part of the contrast they
Speaker 1: want to strike with both Trump and Biden is the generational.
Speaker 3: Contrast forty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is smart, but you know, even though Trump
Speaker 1: is no spring Chicken, there just aren't the same age
Speaker 1: concerns about him as there are with Biden. And you know,
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley has really tried to make this case as
Speaker 1: well with her whole like competency test for people who
Speaker 1: are at the age of seventy or whatever. Her line
Speaker 1: in the sand was there, and I just don't know
Speaker 1: that it lands in the Republican primary the way that
Speaker 1: it lands with overall voters in terms of concerns about
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, because people age in very different ways, and
Speaker 1: there's just no sign that Trump is really slowing down
Speaker 1: or any real demonstrated concerns about his energy level or
Speaker 1: just like technical competence to handle the job. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's as effective an attack on Trump as
Speaker 1: it is on Biden, or that those concerns exist in
Speaker 1: the same way. But this is the strategy you have
Speaker 1: to employ. I do think his you know, some of
Speaker 1: his cultural right positions, in particular on abortion. I think
Speaker 1: they help him in a state like Iowa. Iowa's very
Speaker 1: grass roots, it's very hands on. They expect to hear
Speaker 1: directly from the candidate and from the candidate surrogates. They
Speaker 1: are rolling out in operation. We'll see how effective it
Speaker 1: is after this Twitter launch, but they're rolling out a
Speaker 1: large operation to try to reach voters directly, and you know,
Speaker 1: potentially this is the way that if he's able to
Speaker 1: overcome the odds in Iowa and take that early state,
Speaker 1: maybe that does cause other voters nationwide to take another
Speaker 1: look at him and reconsider whether they're going to stick
Speaker 1: with Trump. We're going to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about Trump's response to DeSantis, but you know, he also
Speaker 1: continues in both the Twitter spaces and the interviews that
Speaker 1: he gave later on, he didn't say Trump's name, and
Speaker 1: I understand why. Right again, this is the prisoner's dilemma
Speaker 1: issue here. He takes these little jabs about you know,
Speaker 1: if any everybody's got to earn it there, no one
Speaker 1: should be entitled to anything in this world. He says
Speaker 1: to Trey Goudy about you know, the expectations. That's about
Speaker 1: Trump floating that he may not debate. But are you
Speaker 1: really giving people enough to move off of a guy
Speaker 1: that they really like, that they've put in office before.
Speaker 1: So yeah, some of them love him, are committed to him.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of the Republican base at least likes him
Speaker 1: and has affection for him, and likes generally his policy
Speaker 1: positions and his plans, et cetera. I don't think that
Speaker 1: he has given voters enough to move off of the
Speaker 1: guy that they already like. Now, maybe Chris Christy comes
Speaker 1: in as a torpedo or somebody else does the dirty
Speaker 1: work for him. That's probably the best thing that he
Speaker 1: and these other candets get home.
Speaker 3: That's why I think Trump's not going to go to
Speaker 3: the debate.
Speaker 2: If it was just DeSantis on his own, then it
Speaker 2: would it would actually look terrible for him not to come.
Speaker 2: But if DeSantis is on a stage with vike Ramaswamy,
Speaker 2: with Nicki Haley, with Chris Christy, with Christian Nunu, with
Speaker 2: Asa Hutchinson and all these other people.
Speaker 1: Then and they're going to be taking shots at him
Speaker 1: bingo and they already are shots at him.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean just last night I saw for a Viake
Speaker 2: Ramaswami going after DeSantis has scripted candidate Nicki Haley made
Speaker 2: fun of him for his failed launch. Tim Scott and
Speaker 2: all of them are absolutely taking notice. So if DeSantis
Speaker 2: looks like one of many against Trump, then he fails.
Speaker 2: When he looks like the only alternative to Trump, then
Speaker 2: he's going to see or he k has the possibility
Speaker 2: to succeed. Trump is having an absolute field day with
Speaker 2: this one. He's having the most fun online that he's
Speaker 2: probably had in a long time. His team put together,
Speaker 2: uh this video which shows a SpaceX rocket falling on
Speaker 2: its side and exploding with Aron DeSantis logo that has
Speaker 2: been rejiggered as a JEB logo.
Speaker 3: Here's what they put out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't even pick up on the JEB expoation.
Speaker 2: On first thing I saw, I was like, that's the
Speaker 2: JEB stroke. Look, you got to give it to Trump
Speaker 2: in him and his people they're good trolls. Let's put
Speaker 2: this next one. You and I did not like this
Speaker 2: particular one. This was his first reaction. Rob My red
Speaker 2: button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working truth Yours
Speaker 2: does not per my conversation with Kim John Goud of
Speaker 2: North Korea. He's referencing I guess his red button that
Speaker 2: was in reference to the fire and fury. But he
Speaker 2: has redeemed himself, I think with some pretty hilarious videos
Speaker 2: that have since been put out. They've got one that
Speaker 2: was distributed by the campaign. This is more of a
Speaker 2: policy focused one. Let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 10: Twenty sixteen. President Trump defeats the Liberals and heads to
Speaker 10: Washington to train the swamp, but swamp creature Ron DeSantis
Speaker 10: is about to start his third term in Congress, and
Speaker 10: he's already voted repeated to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 10: Twenty seventeen. Trump passes huge tax cuts for nearly everyone,
Speaker 10: and Ron DeSantis he's pushing a bill that would swap
Speaker 10: those tax cuts for a new twenty three percent national
Speaker 10: sales tax, making families paid more. Twenty eighteen, Trump is
Speaker 10: building the wall, securing the border, fighting the invasion, while
Speaker 10: Ron DeSantis is voting against funding for Trump's wall in Washington.
Speaker 10: One was a leader and one let us down.
Speaker 3: So what can you see from there? One was a leader,
Speaker 3: one let us down.
Speaker 2: They're having a much more policy case that they're prosecuting,
Speaker 2: and that's why I actually think their two pronged attack
Speaker 2: has been smart. They've both been trying to hit him
Speaker 2: on Trump is the real person on immigration. Also, this
Speaker 2: didn't escape some commentary, but it did not escape me.
Speaker 2: DeSantis actually pledged to finish the border wall in Fox
Speaker 2: interview last night. I was like, that's smart because it's
Speaker 2: one of the most common critiques that I hear from
Speaker 2: MAGA Republicans who support to Santans's like DeSantis actually believes
Speaker 2: and is going to do what Trump said he was
Speaker 2: going to do. But Trump is hitting DeSantis on a
Speaker 2: social security medicare case, on a immigration case, on a
Speaker 2: Ukraine case, and then also from a humorous trolling case
Speaker 2: like he did against Ted Cruz.
Speaker 1: And marcovi postercase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So those two things together, I actually think
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's pretty potent.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be effective.
Speaker 1: Trump's attacks and his issue said are in my view,
Speaker 1: much smarter and more strategic. You know, I mean Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: First of all, he won't even say Trump's name. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of the asymmetry of this dynamic is Trump
Speaker 1: throws everything at disantas. I mean, we've seen probably like
Speaker 1: fifty different types of attacks against DeSantis. Just throws everything
Speaker 1: against the wall, fair, unfair, in between, and sees what sticks.
Speaker 1: But the most consistent things they seem to be leaning
Speaker 1: into are Medicare and social Security maybe number one. I
Speaker 1: mean I hear that from Trump and from his team
Speaker 1: very often. And now we also have this new hit
Speaker 1: on DeSantis wanting to raise the sales tax. This is
Speaker 1: like the fair tax stuff that routinely comes up in
Speaker 1: Republican libertarian circles that would raise sales tax a massive
Speaker 1: amount across the board for everyone. So and they're hitting
Speaker 1: him on immigration, which DeSantis is trying to do, but
Speaker 1: he has to do it in this oblique, passive, aggressive
Speaker 1: way where you don't even mention Trump or your actual
Speaker 1: critique of him. And that's obviously a core issue for
Speaker 1: the Republican base as well. So it seems to me
Speaker 1: like Trump is focused on issues that are of much
Speaker 1: higher importance and resonance to a broader swath not just
Speaker 1: of the Republican base, but of the country at large
Speaker 1: than Ron DeSantis is. Who's running this more sort of
Speaker 1: like niche online campaign.
Speaker 2: And this is all reflected in the polling. Our team
Speaker 2: has made some graphics on this. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. This is from the latest poll
Speaker 2: that you can see just first choice amongst Republican primary
Speaker 2: voters in a multi candidate field. What can you see
Speaker 2: Trump at a majority fifty three percent, DeSantis only at
Speaker 2: twenty six percent. Let's go to the next one there, guys,
Speaker 2: because this one is important when it says Trump is
Speaker 2: my first choice, but I would consider then you have
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis as the overwhelming second choice candidate above Tim Scott,
Speaker 2: Nikki Haley, and Larry Elder.
Speaker 3: I always forget Larry Elders considering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forgot about it. It's the officially in Are
Speaker 1: you just considering I'm.
Speaker 2: Not sure I have a soft spot for Larry after
Speaker 2: the California recall. Let's go to the next one up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. Are you satisfied with the current
Speaker 2: field of Republican candidates? Seventy three percent say they are
Speaker 2: fairly satisfied, eighteen percent say very seven percent say not
Speaker 2: at all, So that as actually a very important figure.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of a ton of the analysis that
Speaker 2: we used to do back in the day on the
Speaker 2: Early Rising shows, where we were talking about Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 2: Voters second choices were usually Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 2: and Biden's second choices were often Bernie Sanders and then
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren. The key point was that being a number
Speaker 2: two second choice candidate is often just as powerful in
Speaker 2: a multi candidate field because it shows that you have
Speaker 2: lasting power and it means that you are really the
Speaker 2: only other alternative. At that time, in our opinion, it
Speaker 2: was really just a Biden and a Burnie race. He
Speaker 2: probably should have treated it that way if he wanted
Speaker 2: to win. But yeah, that's all spoiled.
Speaker 3: Milk out of the bridge.
Speaker 2: Now though, we're in a time where all candidates who
Speaker 2: are not named Rond de Santis, your target is Rond
Speaker 2: de Santis, including Trump and then everybody else. Then for
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis, your target is everybody else and Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It's a very very difficult Uh, it's a very difficult needle.
Speaker 3: To thread. The other problem is Trump.
Speaker 2: Is sitting at fifty three percent, that is a near
Speaker 2: outright majority. It once again just shows me like he
Speaker 2: has got to really prove himself in these early states,
Speaker 2: because otherwise, if he comes in second in all three
Speaker 2: of the or all four of the earlies before Super Tuesday,
Speaker 2: he's done. He's absolutely dead in the water. And I
Speaker 2: think that's the that's the problem. He's got to have
Speaker 2: great headlines and give the other fifty percent a reason
Speaker 2: to coalesce around him.
Speaker 3: It's the only way that this is going to work out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's another new Quinnipiac poll that's out just
Speaker 1: this morning that shows Trump expanding his lead over de
Speaker 1: Santis versus their last poll in the field. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's always important to look directionally where these
Speaker 1: poles are headed, because any one of them, I mean,
Speaker 1: they've been all over the map, they've been wrong in
Speaker 1: every direction, et cetera. So you should also always take
Speaker 1: them with a grain of salt. But when you see
Speaker 1: all of the polls moving in one direction, you can
Speaker 1: look at that and say, okay, there is some movement here.
Speaker 1: Do we know exactly what the absolute numbers are? So
Speaker 1: Trump now at fifty six percent support among Republican and
Speaker 1: Republican leaning voters. DeSantis second at twenty five percent. That
Speaker 1: is a significant improvement for Trump over the last time
Speaker 1: they took this poll back at the end of March,
Speaker 1: when he received forty seven percent and DeSantis received thirty
Speaker 1: three percent, So he has significantly widened his margin there.
Speaker 1: I also, you know, we were talking early about whether
Speaker 1: the age of candidates, whether it was the same hit
Speaker 1: on Trump as it is for Biden, and they actually
Speaker 1: ask that question this poll as well. So sixty five
Speaker 1: percent of all voters think Biden is too old to
Speaker 1: effectively serve. With Trump, the numbers are almost reversed. Fifty
Speaker 1: nine percent think Trump is not too old to effectively serve,
Speaker 1: only thirty six percent think that he is. And I
Speaker 1: would bet within the Republican primary those numbers are probably
Speaker 1: even further apart, like more Republicans feel that he is
Speaker 1: up to the task of serving the next term. So
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure that that generational contrast in the
Speaker 1: Republican primary is going to be an effective hit on him.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, DeSantis is going to have to find some
Speaker 1: way or hope that somebody else makes the case that
Speaker 1: is going to move people off of Donald Trump, because
Speaker 1: right now he has an outright majority. Even if everybody
Speaker 1: else dropped down, even if Obama in their version of
Speaker 1: Obama intervened and everybody dropped down at the right time, etc.
Speaker 1: Trump still has a majority of the vote. It's not
Speaker 1: particularly close right now. So you've got to find some
Speaker 1: way to pull people off of him. Maybe the answer
Speaker 1: is a strong showing in early states. I'm skeptical that
Speaker 1: that dynamic is going to work out for him, though
Speaker 1: we'll see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean this is also I think people need to
Speaker 2: understand we are not going to be talking mostly in
Speaker 2: general election terms till that time comes, because we have
Speaker 2: a narrow slice of the electorate whose opinion is what
Speaker 2: determines this. I don't think it should be that way,
Speaker 2: but it is. So that's the way that we'll have
Speaker 2: to tailor our now. And that's one of the ways
Speaker 2: I would think everybody who's listening to our show should
Speaker 2: always remember is not how am I internalizing this? How
Speaker 2: is somebody who votes unless you are a GOP primary
Speaker 2: voter who is older.
Speaker 1: In Iowa Newhampton, Iowa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who are the prototypical people?
Speaker 2: So just be honest also about where you follow in
Speaker 2: the typical demographic, and just be like, Okay, how are
Speaker 2: these people going to internalize what's happening here? And that's
Speaker 2: very important. Okay, let's go to that next one. We
Speaker 2: have to save our own segment for this, just because
Speaker 2: it is so funny the use of artificial intelligence already rearing
Speaker 2: its head in this race. Trump put together an AI
Speaker 2: ad or sorry, an AI attack on Ron de Sandas,
Speaker 2: making fun of the failed Twitter spaces launch.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen. It includes voices.
Speaker 2: From Elon, from Adolf Hitler, from all these other folks.
Speaker 3: Is somehow in there? Let's take a listen. Guys.
Speaker 5: Hi, everyone, welcome to our Ron Santas Twitter space.
Speaker 7: Hello?
Speaker 5: Is my microphone working correctly?
Speaker 6: George?
Speaker 5: Can you just wait while we know?
Speaker 10: Can you hear me?
Speaker 2: We can all hear you, George.
Speaker 5: Can you just hold on for a second.
Speaker 3: I don't think they can hear me.
Speaker 6: Speak.
Speaker 3: I don't think George knows how to use Twitter? Hello?
Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Now?
Speaker 8: Can I please make my big announcement now? Everyone?
Speaker 6: Just hello.
Speaker 3: George? Can somebody just mute George?
Speaker 2: Could you try not to cough on.
Speaker 10: The Okay, so how are we going to take out Trump?
Speaker 5: You guys, uh, guys from the FBI.
Speaker 6: This is not a private call.
Speaker 3: This is a public Twitter space.
Speaker 1: Everyone can listen in.
Speaker 10: God damn it.
Speaker 5: Anyway, guys, we invited everyone to this, uh this Twitter space.
Speaker 5: So Governor Ron DeSantis, could.
Speaker 8: Everyone just shut the hell up so I can make
Speaker 8: my announcement? Okay, you go, girl, it's gay?
Speaker 6: So what everyone in this call is gay?
Speaker 3: God? To be honest, it's good. What can you say? Also?
Speaker 2: I mean, I will I will say it's obvious that
Speaker 2: it's a I. But it's they're getting dangerously close there
Speaker 2: to work. It seems a voice is pretty I also
Speaker 2: love the you know, the problem the elon is very
Speaker 2: on the problem is they still can't match his bizarre
Speaker 2: pause cadence. That's actually the issue is like I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's actually two cojins of a way, and the way
Speaker 2: they speak. It'd be like for me, you have to
Speaker 2: factor in my swallows every like twelve whatever, or my
Speaker 2: inarticulate nature that I know everybody hates my in order
Speaker 2: to and all those other things.
Speaker 1: Do you know if did they make this or they
Speaker 1: just somebody else made it? And they posted it, so
Speaker 1: it was posted on his Instagram.
Speaker 3: It was posted on Instagram, and it was also posted
Speaker 3: on his Truth social.
Speaker 2: Page, which then migrated over to his campaign staff, which
Speaker 2: posted it on Twitter.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I do know that all of the campaigns are very
Speaker 2: interested in all this, given the fact that the GOP
Speaker 2: had that ai response to Joe Biden's to Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: initial launch, you had a couple of other AI ads
Speaker 2: that have already debuted, So this is just the first,
Speaker 2: the first of many likely.
Speaker 1: I just look at this and I'm like, how are
Speaker 1: you going to compete with this guy? Like he can
Speaker 1: just get away with things that no one else can.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine advising a candidate to post that video,
Speaker 1: but for Trump, not only isn't advisable, it works. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you can trust that okay, which is just scathing, and
Speaker 1: they got the FBI and they got the devil Adolph
Speaker 1: Hitler all in there, like backing Rondo Santis for president,
Speaker 1: and then you can contrast that with Rond DeSantis's little tepid,
Speaker 1: passive aggressive jabs, which is all that he feels comfortable
Speaker 1: to do against Trump. And again, I don't think he's
Speaker 1: wrong in making that decision because when he did take
Speaker 1: you know, more fulsome swing against Trump, which was still
Speaker 1: just kind of passive aggressive about like I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about hush money to porn stars. People freaked out
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, well, Trump can post this, he
Speaker 1: can call Ronda Santis a groomer, he can launch a
Speaker 1: thousand different, you know, policy attacks against him, smear him
Speaker 1: all day long, and everyone's just like, Eh, it's Trump.
Speaker 6: Ye.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. I just genuinely don't know how
Speaker 1: you compete against it, you know. I think that rond
Speaker 1: de Santis has tried to position himself in the most
Speaker 1: intelligent way that he can. I do think there are
Speaker 1: missteps there. I think his campaign is way too online.
Speaker 1: I think the issue said is way too niche. I
Speaker 1: think it's way too wine track. I think those vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: were on display last night. Obviously the Twitter spaces thing
Speaker 1: was a disaster. But I can't say he's mishandling all
Speaker 1: of these things. I just don't know that there is
Speaker 1: an ability, barring some unforeseen circumstances which absolutely could happen.
Speaker 1: I don't know that there is a lane to take
Speaker 1: out Donald Trump's election cycle. It's just very hard for
Speaker 1: me to imagine it.
Speaker 2: I've always believed that, and that's why. Look, I've always
Speaker 2: thought it's going to be it's going to be very difficult.
Speaker 2: And you know, look, let's let's present the best case
Speaker 2: for him, which we always do.
Speaker 3: Trump is old.
Speaker 2: He could literally die, he could go to prison. He
Speaker 2: could say something. I mean, I find it's hard to believe,
Speaker 2: given them I've covered him now for seven years, it's
Speaker 2: never happened before. But he could say something was legitimately
Speaker 2: disqualifies him in the eyes of the GOP electorate and
Speaker 2: of the entire country, which makes him completely unelectable. Again,
Speaker 2: I very much doubt that's case, but as possible there's
Speaker 2: That's basically it. I think he could self emilate politically.
Speaker 2: He could go to prison, although I still think they
Speaker 2: would make him stronger. But maybe that would also self
Speaker 2: emilate him.
Speaker 1: Maybe I would on the electability case, it would help
Speaker 1: the DeSantis electability case strong.
Speaker 2: I mean, at the very least, you can still run
Speaker 2: and can't do rally from prison, so you wouldn't have
Speaker 2: your eyes on them. Although I still think it would
Speaker 2: turn into a media circus.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: And then the third case is, like I said, Trump,
Speaker 2: somebody could happen to Trump. He could have a health
Speaker 2: event or something. He doesn't necessarily have to die. He
Speaker 2: could just drop out or whatever of the race. You know,
Speaker 2: he's old, so who knows. Those are basically the three
Speaker 2: cases crystal ware.
Speaker 1: So basically DeSantis's greatest hope is if Trump drops dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but here's the deal. I've said this, I've told
Speaker 3: the story before.
Speaker 2: Lynnon Johnson, you know, was one of the most powerful
Speaker 2: people in Washington when he's Senate Majority leader, and everyone
Speaker 2: was like, Lyndon, why would you want to be vice president?
Speaker 2: He said, and he literally looked at a reporter and
Speaker 2: he cited the number of presidents who had died in office,
Speaker 2: and he was like, twenty five percent.
Speaker 3: I'll take those odds, Darling something like that, and wow,
Speaker 3: heyst it worked out for him. So it's one of those.
Speaker 3: It's one of those. Sometimes Let's say maybe the chance
Speaker 3: is ten.
Speaker 2: He's only forty four years old. That's not bad. He'd
Speaker 2: be one of the youngest presidents. He'd be a youngest
Speaker 2: president a long time. Actually, I believe forty three is
Speaker 2: how old Kennedy was Albata. He was I would say,
Speaker 2: later forties, so yeah, he would be quite young to
Speaker 2: be president of the United States should he be inaugury,
Speaker 2: So you know why not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I still think, even as I have
Speaker 1: made the case pretty forcefully that I think it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to succeed. I think his circumstances are not totally
Speaker 1: under his control. I think something has to happen. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's as die or as Trump like
Speaker 1: literally dying, but something big has to happen to shake
Speaker 1: up the race in my opinion, for Ronda Santis to
Speaker 1: have a shot. But I still sort of agree with
Speaker 1: apparently what his wife told him, which is like, look,
Speaker 1: you get one moment, and this is it. What I
Speaker 1: just said, you know, this is when you're at your peak.
Speaker 1: And maybe if you perform well in the Republican primary,
Speaker 1: but you come up shore. Trump can only if he
Speaker 1: wins election again, he can only serve another term. So
Speaker 1: then maybe you're in the pole position for the next
Speaker 1: time around. You keep yourself live for that opportunity. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could just as easily see it going the other way.
Speaker 1: Where which is that youthly amount so disastrously or Trump
Speaker 1: torches you so disastrously that you're sort of dead to
Speaker 1: the GOP primary base. But I genuinely think that could
Speaker 1: go either way. So if I was in his shoes,
Speaker 1: I still think I'd run this time, even though the
Speaker 1: odds at this point are really clearly against him. And
Speaker 1: the last thing that I'll say about all of this is,
Speaker 1: I know people feel that the media treats, or some
Speaker 1: people feel the media treats are on DeSantis unfairly, but
Speaker 1: I actually think the media was They don't want this
Speaker 1: race to be over because it makes it less interesting, right,
Speaker 1: It makes it there's less cable news poddo, there's less
Speaker 1: to write about. It just makes it less sort of
Speaker 1: ratings and click driven if the thing is basically over
Speaker 1: before it began. And you could see in the articles
Speaker 1: that they were writing leading up to this launch, you know,
Speaker 1: like the one we covered about his two hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar plan to win, which was written before the disastrous launch.
Speaker 1: There were all these pieces about like, Okay, here's how
Speaker 1: he could do it, and here's what his aids are saying,
Speaker 1: and they're saying, don't worry about the early misteps, and
Speaker 1: all this stuff about him not having a real personality.
Speaker 1: This is all nonsense. Look at how effective he's been
Speaker 1: in Florida, et cetera. I think that they were ready
Speaker 1: to write his resurrection narrative just to keep this thing interesting.
Speaker 1: But now obviously that the option of writing the resurrection
Speaker 1: narrative is off the table for the moment. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it will come back around absolutely.
Speaker 3: Why are we talk about the debt ceiling?
Speaker 1: All right? So there is a movement this morning. Let
Speaker 1: me read to you the very latest. This is from
Speaker 1: Jake Sherman over at punch Bull, who posts up and
Speaker 1: always gets comments from McCarthy, etc. So he says, we
Speaker 1: don't have an element from those because it's just breaking
Speaker 1: this morning. Republicans feel very good about a deal to
Speaker 1: lift the debt limit. Ours expect the compromise will come
Speaker 1: together sometime in the next few days. Intense pressure to
Speaker 1: rap negotiations up as soon as possible in order to
Speaker 1: get a bill through in timely fashion. We anticipate the
Speaker 1: debt limit will be extended through twenty twenty four as
Speaker 1: part of any agreement, and the GOP leadership feels as
Speaker 1: if they will be able to win the support of
Speaker 1: the majority of the House Republican conferquence for this eventual package.
Speaker 1: Every negotiation needs its caveat. It could all fall apart,
Speaker 1: but we were getting very positive signals from the leadership
Speaker 1: until late last night. Also want to lay down a
Speaker 1: marker once again and tell you the anger in the
Speaker 1: House Deem Caucus right now is palpable. Many rank and
Speaker 1: file Democrats feel as if they're going to be asked
Speaker 1: to vote for a package that is slanted towards GOP
Speaker 1: demands with little for them in return. Biden is going
Speaker 1: to have to work hard to get this thing through,
Speaker 1: and it's a real test for Hakeem Jeffries and Catherine Clark.
Speaker 1: Let's say, for argument's sake that the agreement comes together tonight.
Speaker 1: It will still take roughly two days to convert any
Speaker 1: agreement into legislative text. And you've got in there that
Speaker 1: seventy two hour review of the bill that Republicans force
Speaker 1: through as part of their speaker negotiations. So happy talk
Speaker 1: from Republicans last night about we may be coming to
Speaker 1: a potential deal. I will just put in there as
Speaker 1: always that I'm skeptical until I actually see it come together,
Speaker 1: because I do think you have problems in the Republican
Speaker 1: caucus with the hardliners. I think you have big problems
Speaker 1: in the Democratic caucus, with people who don't want to
Speaker 1: vote for work requirements, who have drawn some redlines, who
Speaker 1: don't want to vote for, you know, stripping tax credits
Speaker 1: in the Inflation Reduction Act. So if this is a
Speaker 1: long way from being over, is my assessed continues to
Speaker 1: be minded?
Speaker 3: I agree?
Speaker 2: So I here, let's say the positive I guess positive side,
Speaker 2: which is, we appear to be coming closer to a deal.
Speaker 3: Now here's the problem.
Speaker 2: Even once we have said deals we've always warned about,
Speaker 2: we have defections.
Speaker 3: Not only in the House. I don't know why they're
Speaker 3: only talking about the House. There's also this chamber called
Speaker 3: the Senate.
Speaker 2: You would have to have part of the Democrats sign
Speaker 2: on to it, or at least some Democrats who sign on,
Speaker 2: because you know, this guy named Chuck Schumer is actually
Speaker 2: the one who has to bring into the floor. So
Speaker 2: if he doesn't support it, or if a huge portion
Speaker 2: of his caucus doesn't support it, then how exactly is
Speaker 2: he supposed to do that? There's that piece, But let's
Speaker 2: focus on the House already. There's a sizable portion of
Speaker 2: Republicans in the House who are not going to vote
Speaker 2: for this. They don't want to vote for a deal period. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and in fact, they want Democrats to have to come
Speaker 2: over the top and go ahead and vote for this. Then,
Speaker 2: so there's that now. Also, as you have pointed out,
Speaker 2: the AOC, J. Paul and all those people, they are
Speaker 2: going to be furious about this, and I'm probably going
Speaker 2: to try and do everything possibly can to not just them.
Speaker 1: The Congressional Black Caucus also very upset about the work
Speaker 1: requirements and those sorts of things. And it's not just
Speaker 1: like the Squad and squad adjacent members, it's like the
Speaker 1: entire Progressive Caucus, which aren't even really that progressive. And
Speaker 1: there's one hundred of them.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, that's about one hundred members, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I recall. So okay, so you already I would say
Speaker 2: rule that out. But it's gonna be tough. Now, what
Speaker 2: are the spending cuts gonna be? And this is also
Speaker 2: where the big question is, not only do they have
Speaker 2: to have nominal cuts, they also want to increase military spending.
Speaker 2: Then they also don't want to touch of discretionary spending.
Speaker 2: They don't want to touch veterans benefits, which is a
Speaker 2: huge portion. Ryan and I talked a lot about this.
Speaker 2: We're really talking about like one to two percent of
Speaker 2: the entire federal budget which is on the table here
Speaker 2: because we also refuse to raise any taxes, and that
Speaker 2: one really pisses me off because I'm like, look, guys,
Speaker 2: even if we agree on spending and all this, you
Speaker 2: have got the carry interest loophole prescription like give us
Speaker 2: something like just because on merits.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to raise money.
Speaker 2: There's no reason why medicare, the largest drug purchaser in
Speaker 2: the United States, should not be negotiating drug prices on
Speaker 2: all drug Literally no, if that is one of those
Speaker 2: where put your business hat on. Should a business be
Speaker 2: legally required not to negotiate? You can't do that. That's insane,
Speaker 2: except that the government here is the business. So that's
Speaker 2: why that actually could save a ton of money. Carrot
Speaker 2: interest loophole. We actually have no idea how much money
Speaker 2: that one would save. And then the same whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to pharmacy benefit managers. Yeah, I mean, these people
Speaker 2: print billions off of not just us, they're printing billions
Speaker 2: off of your grandmother.
Speaker 3: And that's why they are scummed.
Speaker 1: You still smiddle that, Oh yeah, all that they are.
Speaker 2: They really are going after like people like your parents
Speaker 2: or you know, my parents, like older folks, people who
Speaker 2: are on Medicare and who have private plans too, who
Speaker 2: are hitting caps that never should be in the first place.
Speaker 2: So like these Like everyone agrees that those people don't
Speaker 2: deserve to exist. Like everyone agrees these things are way
Speaker 2: way too expensive. So that is where I just wish
Speaker 2: they would cave, but they just refuse to do it.
Speaker 3: On the message.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what you think, because recent polls have come
Speaker 2: out which actually say a lot of people do agree
Speaker 2: with the GOP position. Here's a fascinating one that actually
Speaker 2: just broke this morning, Crystal, which is that the amount
Speaker 2: of people who say that they would blame Republicans is
Speaker 2: about forty five percent. The amount of people who say
Speaker 2: that they would blame Biden is forty seven percent.
Speaker 3: You're basically looking at an equal split, which is a
Speaker 3: disaster for Biden.
Speaker 2: Yes, because in twenty eleven Obama had a fifteen point
Speaker 2: lead on the debt stealing fight and on the government shutdown.
Speaker 2: When Bayner shut down the government, Bayner lost. I don't
Speaker 2: think people remember that Bayner took the blame and the
Speaker 2: Republicans did with They even called it like the Bayner shutdown.
Speaker 2: If I recall this time around, with negative partisanship and
Speaker 2: all of that, it's awash. If you're a Republican, you
Speaker 2: are not blaming Republicans. If you are a Democrat, you
Speaker 2: are not blaming you are not blaming Biden. So it's
Speaker 2: one of those where that only gives even more heft.
Speaker 2: There is no political incentive for the Republicans now to
Speaker 2: negotiate at all. Matt Gates even said this, He's like,
Speaker 2: why would we negotiate with the hostage Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was admitted to their hostage takers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that's I mean, at least he's honest. I always
Speaker 3: prefer honesty.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. I mean the difference is Obama, for
Speaker 1: his many faults, was a very effective communicator. Biden and
Speaker 1: they're not even saying anything. I mean, they're not even
Speaker 1: laying out their case. It's a muddled disaster. And it's
Speaker 1: not just me that's saying that. The Democratic normy elected
Speaker 1: Democrats who are super pro Biden are extremely frustrated with
Speaker 1: the lack of messaging. So he's lost the messaging battle.
Speaker 1: The strategic to the extent that there was a strategy,
Speaker 1: has been a complete disaster. Has handed Republicans one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the leverage, where the only metric is like, now,
Speaker 1: how badly do Democrats lose out in the final negotiations.
Speaker 1: It's just a catastrophe for Democrats all the way around,
Speaker 1: and an avoidable one also that they could have gotten
Speaker 1: rid of through reconciliation when they had power. And also
Speaker 1: even and if they failed on that front, the lack
Speaker 1: of a coherent plan, messaging strategy, and the willingness to
Speaker 1: take off the table immediately any of the workarounds that again,
Speaker 1: it just handed Republicans all of the leverage. It has
Speaker 1: been a worst of all worlds in terms of their approach,
Speaker 1: and I think for them it is it really is
Speaker 1: a catastrophe. The fact that opinion is divided on whose
Speaker 1: fault it is is such a failure. And then I
Speaker 1: also think, you know, to your point about some of
Speaker 1: the pulling and the polling has been kind of mixed
Speaker 1: because there was other pulling that showed that a majority
Speaker 1: people want a clean debt ceiling increase. I think it
Speaker 1: partly depends.
Speaker 3: Well, step don't know what the goddamn is right.
Speaker 1: And it partly time on how it's asked, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But also Biden has basically caved to the Republican messaging
Speaker 1: that we have a debt problem that we need to
Speaker 1: cut spending, when again in the markets, there's just there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that that's the case. So of course, when
Speaker 1: you have both the Democrats and the Republicans basically saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have an issue, we need to cut spending, then
Speaker 1: you're going to have a majority of Americans who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess we need to cut spending because everybody is
Speaker 1: saying that that is the case. Going back to the
Speaker 1: math that's needed here, put this political piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen. Biden is increasingly expecting that they're going to
Speaker 1: need a significant number of Democrats, probably around one hundred
Speaker 1: to actually vote for the eventual deal, because you have
Speaker 1: Republican hardliners who will never accept any sort of compromise
Speaker 1: on this. And so he's trying to figure out where
Speaker 1: am I going to get one hundred Democratic votes for
Speaker 1: what kind of a deal? Could we come together and
Speaker 1: get a majority of Republicans to vote along with one
Speaker 1: hundred Democrats. I will say, you know, for all the
Speaker 1: protestations from Jayapaul and the Congressional Black Caucus and everybody else,
Speaker 1: we've been to this show before and usually these people
Speaker 1: ultimately when Biden comes to them, is likely I really
Speaker 1: need you to do this. So, like all ri fin,
Speaker 1: I'll vote for it. So do I expect them to
Speaker 1: have a backbone in the situation. We have seen very
Speaker 1: little evidence of said backbone previously. Don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of confidence there. We also just to show you how
Speaker 1: tenuous and back and forth these deals are and the
Speaker 1: negotiations are. This next piece up this was Jake Sherman
Speaker 1: had a quote yesterday from one of the key negotiates,
Speaker 1: Patrick mckennery, who said, I understand the deadline. I'm not
Speaker 1: yet an optimist on getting this resolve. We are, in
Speaker 1: my view pass what is a responsible deadline. And that
Speaker 1: was why when the Speaker said let's figure out in February,
Speaker 1: he meant it. So that's like the polar opposite of
Speaker 1: what they're saying this morning. Yesterday they're like, I think
Speaker 1: it's over, We're going to default. This morning they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're super happy there might be a deal. So we
Speaker 1: can have a lot more roller coasters between now and
Speaker 1: however this gets resolved. Last piece that we have for
Speaker 1: you here is Bernie Sanders actually wrote an op ed
Speaker 1: for Foxnews dot Com, which I think he's penned a
Speaker 1: couple of Fox News op eds at this point, which
Speaker 1: is interesting in and of itself. He's making his case
Speaker 1: still for why the president should go the fourteenth Amendment route.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. His headline is, Biden
Speaker 1: must resist Republican debt ceiling demands. Here's what he needs
Speaker 1: to do instead. The key lines here he says, so
Speaker 1: where do we go from here? In my view, there's
Speaker 1: only one option. President Biden has the authority and responsibility
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution to avoid a default.
Speaker 1: The language in that amendment is quite clear. It says
Speaker 1: the validity of the public debt of the United States
Speaker 1: shall not be questioned. This is a constitutional guarantee the
Speaker 1: US will always pay its debts period. This is not
Speaker 1: a radical idea. And then he goes on to say,
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, then President Trump was correct when
Speaker 1: he said, quote this is the United States government. First
Speaker 1: of all, you never have to default because you print
Speaker 1: the money. So Bernie and others still pushing fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: Biden team hasn't totally taken it off the table, but
Speaker 1: they've really repeatedly poured cold water on it. They clearly
Speaker 1: preferred try to negotiate some type of a deal here
Speaker 1: and try to deal with it that way because Biden is,
Speaker 1: you know, the consummate institutionalists. He doesn't want to try
Speaker 1: out anything novel or different than what's been done in
Speaker 1: the past. So that's where we are effectively.
Speaker 3: Here we are.
Speaker 2: It does look very likely that a deal will happen,
Speaker 2: and it's like you say, people will complain, but the
Speaker 2: dams are going to vote for it. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: I think they are all just going to vote for it.
Speaker 2: The real question is how many publicans will actually vote
Speaker 2: for the deal. But if they can come through with
Speaker 2: something by the end of the day, I mean, how
Speaker 2: are them. I mean the markets seem to be like yesterday,
Speaker 2: things were not great.
Speaker 1: There was a crash yesterday on news that they were
Speaker 1: far apart and it wasn't going much.
Speaker 2: It looks like, yeah, so we're down by one percent
Speaker 2: just over the past five days.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's not terrible. So we still haven't.
Speaker 2: Seen a major market reaction. We'll see how it goes.
Speaker 2: If I do think the biggest forcing mechanism for a
Speaker 2: deal would be if they say there's a deal and
Speaker 2: it falls apart, then the markets will crash and then
Speaker 2: you'll have to start seeing some real compromise there, and
Speaker 2: then possibly we'll see something increase from that period. That
Speaker 2: would be the biggest forcing mechanism. But until then we'll
Speaker 2: see we remain.
Speaker 1: We're all in their hands and it was not a
Speaker 1: good feeling.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Let's go to Uvaldi here. This is one where we
Speaker 2: didn't want to drop. Look, you know, it's one of
Speaker 2: those where I know a lot of you were so
Speaker 2: you were so repulsed disgusted by the story. I think
Speaker 2: everyone was. That's why it became such a national outcry.
Speaker 2: We heard from so many of you. You know, this
Speaker 2: is one of those where our outrage and just focus
Speaker 2: on the story over the last several months has been
Speaker 2: so important to you, and so we didn't want to
Speaker 2: let the one year anniversary of this go by, which
Speaker 2: just happened yesterday. Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. It's just a perfect view crystal into
Speaker 2: what we all knew was going to happen, but it's
Speaker 2: just so still insane one year later to say that,
Speaker 2: you know, of the dozens of hours of body camera
Speaker 2: footage and all of that that shows these law enforcement agents,
Speaker 2: specifically the early arriving police officers on the scene who
Speaker 2: stood back and did nothing, dropped the momentum, dropped the action,
Speaker 2: and waited for Border patrol guys to basically.
Speaker 3: Come in and roll in.
Speaker 2: Almost all of them are still employed by the same
Speaker 2: agencies that they worked for on that very day. One
Speaker 2: actually even got a commendation for his actions. And the
Speaker 2: Valdi residents have been campaigning and asking for answers now
Speaker 2: for over a year. Really, the only person who faced
Speaker 2: any real accountability, if you can even call it, that
Speaker 2: was Pete Rodondo, the head the chief of police of
Speaker 2: the Uvaldi School District. And yeah, he left his school post,
Speaker 2: he left his police post because they disbanded that ISD
Speaker 2: police force, and he was kicked off of the city
Speaker 2: council after hiding for weeks and kicking reporters out from
Speaker 2: any investigation. The Texas Department of Public Safety to this
Speaker 2: day has officially cleared almost every officer that was involved
Speaker 2: in that remember that personal Colonel Steve McCraw who said
Speaker 2: that he would personally resign if his agency as an
Speaker 2: institution failed at Uvaldi, he insisted did not Who remembers
Speaker 2: McCraw the day after Uvaldi giving a press conference basically
Speaker 2: telling us BS about what happened.
Speaker 1: A great God they did the officers.
Speaker 2: Can you This is my other thing I've always thought about, Abbott,
Speaker 2: how they made you look like a fool. They told
Speaker 2: you lies, and you spouted those lies on television in
Speaker 2: front of the entire country. If anyone did that to me,
Speaker 2: I would not rest until every single one of them
Speaker 2: was fired, and I would prosecute.
Speaker 3: The hell out of them if I could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another thing I don't get about Ken Paxson
Speaker 2: and all these other Why are we protecting them? Everybody
Speaker 2: wants they want to see justice for these police officers,
Speaker 2: And just like in every case, there's a line here
Speaker 2: that really jumps out to me. One hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: federal officers were on hand. Those agencies have denied several
Speaker 2: public record requests by the media, from national to local
Speaker 2: Texas media for any information on their employment status. I mean,
Speaker 2: to this day, one year later, they are hoping that
Speaker 2: all of us forget about what they did.
Speaker 3: They failed those kids, They failed all of us. Those
Speaker 3: kids bled out.
Speaker 2: Who knows how many of them could have been saved,
Speaker 2: And if you can even just save one, they still,
Speaker 2: every single one of them deserves to be fired and
Speaker 2: to be prospected.
Speaker 1: They say in this piece, Law Enforcements, seventy seven minute
Speaker 1: delay did come with potentially deadly consequences. You had three
Speaker 1: victims emerge from the school with a pulse and later died,
Speaker 1: Teacher Ava Morales forty four, and Lopez ten. Critical resources
Speaker 1: were not available when medics expected they would be, delaying
Speaker 1: hospital treatment. Texas Tribune and Pro Publica and the Post
Speaker 1: all found last year another student, Kazaris, who was nine,
Speaker 1: likely survived for more than an hour after being shot
Speaker 1: and then died in ambulance because these cops were standing
Speaker 1: by doing nothing. And what they talk about in this
Speaker 1: piece is number one that for these parents and for
Speaker 1: the loved ones and friends and family members that have
Speaker 1: to still live in this community, these people who failed
Speaker 1: them and let their kids suffer and die in this
Speaker 1: tragic way, they still have to run into them at
Speaker 1: the supermarket. They still have to look at them on
Speaker 1: the street face to face. Some of them are related
Speaker 1: to them, and know that there was zero accountability for
Speaker 1: these horrific failures. They also talk that there were two
Speaker 1: hundred two hundred responding officers from state and local agencies,
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty still in law enforcement. Even that
Speaker 1: dude Erodondo who became you know, the real this scable,
Speaker 1: I mean deservedly, Like I'm not letting him off the hook,
Speaker 1: but there were failures all around. Let's be clear, he
Speaker 1: has had his like status shifted so that he's got
Speaker 1: a better shot at getting back into law enforcement himself.
Speaker 1: One of the people that was supposedly fired they is
Speaker 1: still somehow hanging around in law enforcement in the same
Speaker 1: job and hasn't actually been let go. They're hoping everybody
Speaker 1: just moves on. And you have to think about it
Speaker 1: from these parents' perspective, like the national focus on this
Speaker 1: across the board, horror, shock and outrage at the manifest
Speaker 1: failures of that day, what has it resulted in. I mean,
Speaker 1: if your claim is like okay, mental health pot okay,
Speaker 1: if mental health is the thing, like where's the mental
Speaker 1: health resources? Well, Texas has cut mental health resources. If
Speaker 1: you believe that gun control is the answer. Certainly you're
Speaker 1: not getting anything done there in terms of the Texas legislature.
Speaker 1: And then on the very basics of some sort of
Speaker 1: accountability for the wrongdoers who failed on that day, the
Speaker 1: people who failed to act, failed to intervene, failed to
Speaker 1: save these innocent children's lives, very little next to nothing
Speaker 1: in terms of results. So I cannot imagine because so
Speaker 1: many of these parents that they interviewed, they'd say, at
Speaker 1: least this tragedy could help prevent another one. At the
Speaker 1: very least, make it so that my daughter, so that
Speaker 1: my son's life actually meant something and nothing, just nothing.
Speaker 1: It's shocking to the conscience, it truly is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have a video of the courageous Uvaldi mom.
Speaker 2: That's the third element, if we can go ahead and
Speaker 2: play that. I always at my our live show, you
Speaker 2: came up with that great idea about superlatives like biggest hero.
Speaker 3: She'll always remain my biggest hero. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 9: Right the way as I parked us, Marshall started coming
Speaker 9: toward my car and saying that I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 9: be parked there, And he said, well, we're gonna have
Speaker 9: to arrest you because you're being very incoperative. I said, well,
Speaker 9: you're gonna have to arrest them because.
Speaker 1: I'm going in there.
Speaker 9: And I'm telling you right now, I don't see none
Speaker 9: of y'all in there. Y'all are standing with snipers, and
Speaker 9: y'all are far away. If y'all don't go in there,
Speaker 9: I'm going in there. He right, immediately put me in cuff, she.
Speaker 10: Says, after you've all the police officers told marshals to
Speaker 10: uncuff Gomez.
Speaker 1: She ran towards the school.
Speaker 9: As soon as they uncuffed me. I jumped that first
Speaker 9: gate fence, and once I jumped it, I went to
Speaker 9: my son's class.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, you know she's she If people don't remember,
Speaker 2: she was at work, heard about it, drove there for
Speaker 2: with like a thirty or forty minute drive, speeding, when
Speaker 2: was handcuffed, unhandcuffed, went into the school, got her kids,
Speaker 2: came out of the school, all before they actually stormed
Speaker 2: those classrooms. I remember reading those details at the time,
Speaker 2: and I was just absolutely stound and to.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement on blast and they harassed her.
Speaker 3: I heard the fact, that's the thing, because.
Speaker 1: Of our willingness to speak out against them and buy
Speaker 1: their you know, silence.
Speaker 3: She became a hero and they punished her for that.
Speaker 2: And I say, yeah, like you said, you know, people
Speaker 2: have moved on and the rest of the country, but
Speaker 2: they can't move on.
Speaker 3: They still have to live in this community.
Speaker 2: And I can't imagine and to look at police officers,
Speaker 2: you know, in the eye at the grocery store who
Speaker 2: and just know that they could have done something to
Speaker 2: save your child's life. So yeah, I mean, look, no accountability.
Speaker 2: I wish there was a hopeful end to this.
Speaker 3: There's not.
Speaker 2: There's literally nothing that any of us can do about it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's actually the most insane part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another really tragic tale of just like a broken
Speaker 1: society unable to protect the most vulnerable among us. All Right,
Speaker 1: we've got an update for you guys on what continues
Speaker 1: to be an important story, which is what exactly happened
Speaker 1: with those drone strikes on the Krumlin which appeared to
Speaker 1: be a potential out there, very effective but potential assassination
Speaker 1: attempt on Vladimir Putin. Of course, Ukraine immediately denied it.
Speaker 1: Russia blamed Ukraine. We put in, you know, a little
Speaker 1: note of caution. You never know it could be a
Speaker 1: press flag, but it looks very likely that this came
Speaker 1: from the Ukrainians, who have a track record of attacking
Speaker 1: on Russian soiling low and behold New York Times. Three
Speaker 1: weeks later, here we go, Ukrainians were likely behind Krumlin
Speaker 1: drone attack. US officials say they based this on some
Speaker 1: intelligence intercepts. Now this is according to US intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, they based this on some intelligence
Speaker 1: intercepts where they're listening into the Russians and the Russians
Speaker 1: are not like, yay for our false flag. And also
Speaker 1: this would be an embarrassing false flag for them to
Speaker 1: stage because it shows immense vulnerability and their failure of
Speaker 1: their own air defenses, which they would certainly not want
Speaker 1: to put on display. And then on the other side,
Speaker 1: you have they picked up Ukrainian chatter where the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: were like, yay, go, yes we did it. Now. The
Speaker 1: various caveat that they go at great length to put
Speaker 1: in here is that the American officials said they suspect
Speaker 1: mister Zelenskin and as top aids have set the broad
Speaker 1: parameters of the cover campaign, leaving decisions about who and
Speaker 1: wan to target to the security services and their operatives.
Speaker 1: In so doing, mister Zelenskin's top aids can deny knowing
Speaker 1: about them, so they go to great lengths to say Soelenski,
Speaker 1: he probably had no idea about this. He didn't know
Speaker 1: what's going on with any of this, which, if true,
Speaker 1: is actually very troubling too because it's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: these security agencies are just freelancing and doing whatever the
Speaker 1: hell they want without even permission from the top. Dude,
Speaker 1: here let alone with you us just standing back and
Speaker 1: wondering what hijinks they're going to pull next, like trying
Speaker 1: to assassinate the head of a nuclear arms superpower. So
Speaker 1: it just is, you know, it was. It was very predictable,
Speaker 1: and in fact, soccer, you did predict it. Yes, I
Speaker 1: actually want to take a little victory left.
Speaker 2: I will take it out because exactly on May third,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, which is at that time was twenty
Speaker 2: one days from the report I said New York Times,
Speaker 2: three weeks from now. US Intel believes Ukrainian group behind
Speaker 2: Putin attack, but Zelensky of course had no knowledge or involvement.
Speaker 2: That is literally what happened on the exact day, three
Speaker 2: weeks to the day they say USNTL believes Ukrainian group
Speaker 2: it's always a group, and that Zelenski had no So
Speaker 2: I will just say I'll take a little bit of
Speaker 2: Victor rev because I think it's hilarious, but I mean.
Speaker 3: I don't relish it. I think it's bad. Because what
Speaker 3: they also point to is they're like.
Speaker 2: US officials also say Ukrainian is responsible for the assassination
Speaker 2: of the prominent Russian nationalists, the killing of a pro
Speaker 2: Russian blogger, the number of attacks in Russian towns near
Speaker 2: the border with Ukraine, the most recent of which occurred
Speaker 2: on Monday, and the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Speaker 2: So like, in every single one of these, these are
Speaker 2: escalatory maneuvers. And I also want to get people like,
Speaker 2: what are they supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Sit back and not attack.
Speaker 2: They can do whatever they want they but then need
Speaker 2: to bear one hundred percent of the risk. Okay, so
Speaker 2: we should not have any Let's say, and you already
Speaker 2: know how this go. If they attack Russia and then
Speaker 2: Russia attacks back ten times more, what are people in
Speaker 2: America going to say, oh, well, we got to send
Speaker 2: more over there. It's like, well, you attack them, you know,
Speaker 2: why should we sign up for, you know, your collective
Speaker 2: defense if you are going to go and get yourself
Speaker 2: in even more trouble. Or let's say they get themselves
Speaker 2: in a situation where they're literally like it's existential for them.
Speaker 3: What are there everyone's going to.
Speaker 2: Say we should go to war to protect. No, they're
Speaker 2: the ones who got themselves in that situation. Yes, I
Speaker 2: can believe it is defense, but you are operating in
Speaker 2: an unfair dynamic where one side has nukes and you
Speaker 2: don't deal with it like you know, I personally I
Speaker 2: think it's a very impossible and difficult situation. So that's
Speaker 2: the situation that you find themselves there, you find yourself in,
Speaker 2: so be it. I'm not saying it's fair. Life is
Speaker 2: not fair, and that's why it's like, so it's so
Speaker 2: difficult to talk about this when people are like, well,
Speaker 2: I think you should be able to do whatever he wants.
Speaker 3: I agree with you, he can do whatever he wants,
Speaker 3: But if he's going to operate basically as a US
Speaker 3: client state, then no, you can't do whatever you want.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: You need to do what you're told, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: do what he's told.
Speaker 1: The problems when you're dealing with the nuclear power. You
Speaker 1: can cannot have one country that is assuming one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the risk because there's obviously like massive global implications.
Speaker 1: And even outside of the use of nukes, we've seen
Speaker 1: the way that the Ukrainian war has upended, you know,
Speaker 1: supply chains and made food more expensive and fed inflation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying that's anything like the devastation
Speaker 1: that Ukrainians have faced and the death toll, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But these are huge global costs that are being born.
Speaker 1: So it's not even feasible to say, Okay, well, if
Speaker 1: you all want to try to like drow and strike
Speaker 1: the Kremlin, it's.
Speaker 3: All on you.
Speaker 1: You bear the risk. That's just not even an option
Speaker 1: that's on the table. So you know, the context here
Speaker 1: is also that Biden has just greenlent F sixteens. We
Speaker 1: know from the leak documents that separate and apart from
Speaker 1: these attacks that we now you know, know with pretty
Speaker 1: high confidence that Ukrainians were behind that. Zelensky had even
Speaker 1: more wild ideas about pipelines to bomb and attacks to
Speaker 1: engage in within Russia. And it's just very hard to
Speaker 1: understand the risk calculus here. From the United States and
Speaker 1: swore when he you know, offered up training for Ukrainian
Speaker 1: pilots with F sixteens. Oh Zelenski told me that they
Speaker 1: won't use him in Russiah.
Speaker 3: Would you believe him?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 1: Like you can't, but there's just no way, You're.
Speaker 3: There's my way.
Speaker 2: They lied and said we didn't have anything to do
Speaker 2: with the prominent attack. They lied and said we have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the cross word. Like there's no
Speaker 2: reason to believe them none. You look, you can be
Speaker 2: in the right, you know, and you can also still
Speaker 2: be an untrustworthy liar. I don't know why that is
Speaker 2: so difficult. People in this you know, people in this
Speaker 2: country have lost their minds. It's like, you know, there's
Speaker 2: this I really believe that Twitter for this war has
Speaker 2: been a disaster. There is an entire portion of like
Speaker 2: mostly young disaffected men who like love call of duty,
Speaker 2: who are living through like vicariously effectively through Twitter by
Speaker 2: like posting maps, calling themselves like ocinth specialists, being like
Speaker 2: no actually the backmut feint like using technologies if they
Speaker 2: served in the military and are living as if they
Speaker 2: are essentially involved in this except the actually Ukrainian soldiers are,
Speaker 2: and these idiots online bear none of the risk, and
Speaker 2: they're the ones who are constantly.
Speaker 3: Being like, oh, you know, this is obviously a false flag.
Speaker 3: Well what do you morons look like?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's every single time they just jump they're like
Speaker 2: Zelensky mouthpieces.
Speaker 1: There was a huge backlash from my you know, assumption
Speaker 1: that this was probably. I always left the option open.
Speaker 1: You never know what Russia's going to do, but this
Speaker 1: was very likely the Ukrainians huge backlash to that of
Speaker 1: people who were like, no way, Like Zelenski denies it,
Speaker 1: Why do you think that the liar exact? Because we
Speaker 1: know that he's a liar, and we also know he
Speaker 1: has an interest in escalating this thing and forcing us
Speaker 1: more onto his side. That is where his interests. Because
Speaker 1: that's the other piece of this from a US military perspective,
Speaker 1: where like, these attacks aren't even smart, right, because you
Speaker 1: are galvanizing the Russian people behind the effort, and you're
Speaker 1: making it more likely that people are going to sign
Speaker 1: up for the Middle Militari when there's another draft, they're
Speaker 1: going to comply, they're going to be behind the regime.
Speaker 1: You are actually, in a way strengthening the Kremlin's hand
Speaker 1: in a certain respect, and so that's why our pentagon
Speaker 1: is like, why are you doing this? But the logic
Speaker 1: from these intelligence agencies and from Zelenski within Ukraine is
Speaker 1: that if they do get that escalation, that's not all
Speaker 1: bad for them, because then maybe that forces us, the
Speaker 1: world's superpower, fully and clearly onto their side in the effort,
Speaker 1: which is their best hope to fully win the war.
Speaker 1: Last thing I have to say about this, You and
Speaker 1: Ryan covered that attack within Russia that happened on Monday.
Speaker 1: I became a little bit obsessed with this because the
Speaker 1: leader Okay, so the guy guys, all Ukrainians are not Nazis.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but there is a contingent that
Speaker 1: it's like, how this is like dangerous that we're align
Speaker 1: with these people. This group, it's actually white nationalists, Russians
Speaker 1: who are further right than Putin, who have allied themselves
Speaker 1: with Ukraine even though they're Russian white nationalists, because they
Speaker 1: don't agree with the imperialist expansion project of Russia. They
Speaker 1: want Russia to focus on just being a smaller white
Speaker 1: nationalist state, and they're interested in toppling Putin, to put
Speaker 1: a more right wing, more fascistic authoritarian leader in Russia.
Speaker 1: So these are like out and out neo Nazis, this
Speaker 1: particular group. Again, I'm not saying this about all Ukraines,
Speaker 1: this particular group. And you know we've been to this
Speaker 1: rodeo before in terms of US arming and supplying less
Speaker 1: than savory characters in it coming back to bite all
Speaker 1: of us in the ass. So I think it's important
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind as well.
Speaker 2: It's almost like conflict ignites invites chaos, nuance and is
Speaker 2: not as clear cut.
Speaker 3: As everybody wants people to think. I think that's Shoker.
Speaker 2: It's almost like any reading of history would tell you that, Bristol,
Speaker 2: what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: Well, if you live in America, it will be no
Speaker 1: surprise to you that we are reckoning with a legitimate
Speaker 1: nationwide housing crisis. Since the nineteen nineties, housing prices have
Speaker 1: skyrocketed far out pacing that of overall inflation, making home
Speaker 1: ownership more and more out of reach for young Americans, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, mom and Dad can foot the bill. But
Speaker 1: it's not just home prices. It's also rents, which have
Speaker 1: gone up insane amounts, pushing the working class to the
Speaker 1: edge and the pore over the brink. Today, according to
Speaker 1: the Census Bureau, the median renter spends thirty percent of
Speaker 1: their income on shelter. That means that your typical renter
Speaker 1: in America is now cost burden, meaning that they are
Speaker 1: spending what's considered to be an unsustainable percentage of their
Speaker 1: income on rent, leaving very little for everything else. Just
Speaker 1: take a look at this map. So the darker the
Speaker 1: blue here, the more cost burden the renters are. You
Speaker 1: can see the whole map is pretty much a wash
Speaker 1: in blue, and some locales are in truly dire shape.
Speaker 1: In New York City, the rent to income ratio is
Speaker 1: sixty eight point five percent. In Miami it's forty one
Speaker 1: point six percent. How are you going to eat and
Speaker 1: drive and live when your whole paycheck is going to
Speaker 1: pay your rent. Since the seventies, rents have gone up
Speaker 1: faster than wages, and that trend shows no sign of
Speaker 1: slowing down. What if I told you there are places
Speaker 1: that have actually solved this problem, that have had the
Speaker 1: political will and imagination to escape our brutal urban housing healthscape.
Speaker 1: Turns out, the solution is really kind of simple. If
Speaker 1: your citizens need more quality, affordable housing, then you should
Speaker 1: build it. This is the lesson, drawn from an in
Speaker 1: depth profile by The New York Times of the City
Speaker 1: of Vienna's approach to housing. Here's that piece. You can
Speaker 1: take a look. It's titled Imagine a Renter's Utopia. It
Speaker 1: might look like Vienna. Prior to World War One, Vienna
Speaker 1: suffered with horrible housing conditions. Renters would sublet their beds
Speaker 1: out to day and night workers to try to cobble
Speaker 1: together enough money to make the rent. Conditions were absolutely atrocious.
Speaker 1: But in the twenties, during a time known as Red Vienna,
Speaker 1: when socialist led the City Council, Vienna embarked on a
Speaker 1: grand program of public housing construction. Now, these new apartments
Speaker 1: were modest by present standards, but they did inclin food,
Speaker 1: basic luxuries, things like indoor plumbing and private bathrooms. And
Speaker 1: while socialists don't run the joint anymore, the city has
Speaker 1: maintained its commitment to high quality social housing that it's
Speaker 1: available for poor, working class and middle class Viennese alike.
Speaker 1: Far from the round rundown image of American housing projects,
Speaker 1: these apartments actually look really nice, modern construction, beautiful amenities,
Speaker 1: like rooftop pools, idyllic courtyards, interiors bathed in natural light,
Speaker 1: balconies with lush greenery. They're available to most city residents,
Speaker 1: and plenty actually avail themselves of this option. The median
Speaker 1: income in Vienna is fifty seven thousand euros roughly, and
Speaker 1: anyone making less than seventy thousand euros can actually qualify
Speaker 1: for one of these apartments, and once you're in, they
Speaker 1: can't kick you out even if your income goes up
Speaker 1: and is above that limit. About two thirds of the
Speaker 1: rental market in Vienna is actually rent controlled, and about
Speaker 1: three fifths of city residents live in social housing. This
Speaker 1: huge investment in affordable housing has brought down costs for everyone,
Speaker 1: whether they live in social housing, rent in the private market,
Speaker 1: or actually own their own place. The Times profiled a
Speaker 1: couple who have lived in social housing for decades and
Speaker 1: so have benefited over years from regulations setting the maximum
Speaker 1: pace at which rent can increase. In reversal from US trends,
Speaker 1: this couple has had their wages far out pace rent
Speaker 1: growth over the course of their adult lives. Today, their
Speaker 1: rent is only two hundred and seventy euros per month.
Speaker 1: That makes up less than four percent of their total
Speaker 1: pre tax incomes. These aren't wealthy people either, one as
Speaker 1: a teacher, the others a city accountant. Yet rent is
Speaker 1: as insignificant a cost to them as meals out are
Speaker 1: to the average American. Can you imagine what trips you
Speaker 1: might take, investments you might make, interest you might indulge
Speaker 1: if your shelter cost only four percent of your pre
Speaker 1: tax income. Matt Brunick's People's Policy Project has done a
Speaker 1: lot of research on what exactly this could look like
Speaker 1: in an American context. They point not only to Vienna,
Speaker 1: but also Sweden and Finland as models to follow, and
Speaker 1: advocate for a buildout of ten mins million new units
Speaker 1: in ten years now. These units would be owned by
Speaker 1: the government, available to all, and rent would be based
Speaker 1: on a sliding income scale. Having multiple classes in one
Speaker 1: building is really key for avoiding the segregation and decay
Speaker 1: that characterizes our existing public housing stock. Now now might
Speaker 1: be a particularly auspicious time to act. Housing affordability, as
Speaker 1: you all know, is at an all time low, but
Speaker 1: also the abandonment of downtowns by office workers means that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of vacant space which will be vacant
Speaker 1: in the coming years, and those buildings will be turned over.
Speaker 1: Government could snatch up these locations at fire sale prices
Speaker 1: to convert into social housing, thereby solving the problems of
Speaker 1: housing affordability and vacant downtowns in one fell swoop. I
Speaker 1: am well aware of how fanciful this all sounds. It
Speaker 1: blows my mind that we ever had the ambition to
Speaker 1: build down any public housing an attempt to create quality,
Speaker 1: affordable housing for everyone. The optimism and confidence of such
Speaker 1: a project, it seems so far fetched now. This isn't
Speaker 1: an accident. The whole job of modern democratic and Republican
Speaker 1: politicians is to destroy our political imagination, to convince us
Speaker 1: that nothing is possible, Our problems are intractable. Incremental reform
Speaker 1: is the very best we can hope for. After all,
Speaker 1: if our political imaginations were not destroyed, we would certainly
Speaker 1: imagine a better politics for ourselves than these sorry losers
Speaker 1: and their raft of excuses and failures. We are living
Speaker 1: now in the wreckage of the neoliberal era, and one
Speaker 1: thing has become really clear. Just hoping that markets are
Speaker 1: going to solve our problems has not and will not work.
Speaker 1: Developers and other corporations are not interested in solving social problems.
Speaker 1: They're interested in making money. That's fine, but somebody's got
Speaker 1: to solve the social problems. That means we're going to
Speaker 1: have to rebuild the muscles of governance atrophied by neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to allow ourselves a little bit
Speaker 1: of political imagination, even if Cynisenism feels a lot safer,
Speaker 1: and actually expect our political system to make our lives better.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of mind blowing from an American content.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, sorry, are you looking at that?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: On Sunday, I did a monologue about the skyrocketing price
Speaker 2: of the average used car in the United States, some
Speaker 2: twenty eight thousand dollars nearly fifty thousand dollars for a
Speaker 2: new one. In it, I mentioned that the part of
Speaker 2: the problem that we have right now is inflation and
Speaker 2: financialization taking their toll on the lower end of the
Speaker 2: car market, and then large subsidies that exist for electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: which still remain prohibitively expensive for most consumers. However, one
Speaker 2: of the upsides I suppose in a big massive rise
Speaker 2: in the price of a new car is a new
Speaker 2: Tesla Model three, which is priced around forty seven forty
Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars, which is pretty average next up to
Speaker 2: any other car. EV proponents are actually pointing to this
Speaker 2: as the future where an entry level EV is priced
Speaker 2: right alongside an average new car. Now, this is obviously true,
Speaker 2: but I think it's true for the wrong reason that
Speaker 2: the overall price of cars is still way too high. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: I want to take a time today to again just
Speaker 2: warn about where these price drops are coming from, and
Speaker 2: the overwhelming amount of drop and EV price is coming
Speaker 2: from economy of scale. That's good if economies of scale
Speaker 2: exist in your country, But already you know the answer.
Speaker 2: We own less of the EV supply chain in the
Speaker 2: West and in North America than we do of normal cars.
Speaker 2: I have consistently tried to emphasize a dual narrative. I
Speaker 2: love electric cars. I believe that they could be the
Speaker 2: future with the right government policy, but that our current
Speaker 2: government policy is setting us up for indentured servitude to
Speaker 2: China for our dominant mode of transportation and without the
Speaker 2: adequate energy supply to power them. So go ahead and
Speaker 2: take a look at this graphic. This shows you the
Speaker 2: percent of minderroles that are coming from China. I feel
Speaker 2: especially vindicated now by the mainstream media because they're beginning
Speaker 2: to catch up and take notice.
Speaker 3: Look at this graphic.
Speaker 2: It shows in stark detail how much an electric vehicle
Speaker 2: battery is coming almost entirely from China or Chinese controlled entities.
Speaker 2: Cobalt mining, for example, is forty one percent controlled by China.
Speaker 2: Refining capacity is seventy three percent directly in China. Anodes
Speaker 2: of EEDV batteries are ninety two percent, seventy percent of cathodes,
Speaker 2: sixty percent of battery cells, fifty four percent of all
Speaker 2: electric cars China, China, China.
Speaker 3: You could just say, yeah, but we'll just build our
Speaker 3: own facilities here. I wish it was that easy.
Speaker 2: It takes years to build the refining processing facilities required
Speaker 2: to produce an EV battery.
Speaker 3: And even if we did that, we still don't have
Speaker 3: the staff or the technical know how on how to
Speaker 3: run them.
Speaker 2: Then if we did it, you may not like how
Speaker 2: much energy and how much filthy refining and processing abilities
Speaker 2: look like this is the dirty secret of almost all
Speaker 2: life in the West. All of these processes, refining, minerals,
Speaker 2: building solar panels. They are done in China to shield
Speaker 2: our population from reality of how filthy the byproduct is.
Speaker 2: Then we install it here and we pretend to we're
Speaker 2: green because we ignore the labor and environmental impact of
Speaker 2: what it really looks like. China has a nearly two
Speaker 2: decade head start in setting up these processes and has
Speaker 2: achieved massive economy of scale supply, and of course has
Speaker 2: ensnared our largest companies to just simply leave battery production
Speaker 2: up to them. We are rapidly approaching a moment where
Speaker 2: if you buy an electric vehicle anywhere outside of the
Speaker 2: United States, it is almost certainly just straight up made
Speaker 2: in China. In fact, just yesterday, Tesla confirmed its very
Speaker 2: first Shanghai made Tesla's are now being imported even to
Speaker 2: North America and will be sold in Canada. Both of
Speaker 2: those models for sale in Canada qualify for a government
Speaker 2: tax credit. Already, Tesla Shanghai makes up fifty percent of
Speaker 2: global production for the entire company. In fact, Chinese records
Speaker 2: tell USA Tesla has imported some one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: three exported some one hundred and thirty three thousand cars
Speaker 2: just this year out of Shanghai. The only thing keeping
Speaker 2: Elon and Tesla from making all cars. There are provisions
Speaker 2: in US law that require our evs to be US made,
Speaker 2: or at least somewhat US made. Of course, there is
Speaker 2: a trade off. It makes ours more expensive, and it
Speaker 2: shows the obvious cave of all time that we know
Speaker 2: is coming a decade from now from a Democratic or
Speaker 2: Republican president who will just say cost is too high
Speaker 2: for our evs. We should drop made in America provisions
Speaker 2: at the behest of the car companies. I can assure
Speaker 2: you that is probably what's going to happen, because it's
Speaker 2: exactly what happened to US automakers in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: when Asian competition came in. Cost is always king in America,
Speaker 2: and it should be especially though for them. Profits for
Speaker 2: big corporations are in play. For the politicians, the only
Speaker 2: way to solve any of this is to turn the
Speaker 2: clock back and start building factories. The other way is
Speaker 2: to try our best to stave off corporate pressure in
Speaker 2: the next twenty years while we catch up to where
Speaker 2: China is right now. Unfortunately, things are not looking good
Speaker 2: for that. The Biden administration has taken baby steps at
Speaker 2: best when it comes to EV's supply efforts. They recently
Speaker 2: signed an effort with a G seven in Australia where
Speaker 2: they acknowledge it is a problem that China controls the
Speaker 2: entire mineral supply chain, but they have not done anything
Speaker 2: else about it.
Speaker 3: They have signed agreements to come to a future agreement.
Speaker 3: She's not going to cut it. I've said it before.
Speaker 2: You need a Manhattan Project level of scale and effort
Speaker 2: to catch up to China just on EV minerals and
Speaker 2: supply chains. Then we need a separate Manhattan price to
Speaker 2: develop cheap and abundant renewable power to send cars once
Speaker 2: they are on the road. If you do not do
Speaker 2: both simultaneously, we will give the US consumer the worst deal.
Speaker 2: In the long run, you will have high prices or
Speaker 2: you will leave yourselves incredibly vulnerable. So I mean, I
Speaker 2: think we keep taking our eye off the ball.
Speaker 1: This is literally and if you want to hear my
Speaker 1: reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: breakingpoints dot Com join us now. We have the executive
Speaker 1: director of Employe America. Skanda em Ernath, Great to have you, Scanda.
Speaker 3: Welcome, good to see you man.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our pleasure. So you took a look at the
Speaker 1: debt sealing debacle from a different lens than what I
Speaker 1: had seen anyone else take. Talking about the role that
Speaker 1: Treasury could it should be playing here, just talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about why.
Speaker 6: You chose to focus on them, right, So, it seems
Speaker 6: as if Treasury has a pretty central role in shape
Speaker 6: being the negotiations for the White House. It seems like
Speaker 6: Secretary Yellen plays a pretty big role in this, but
Speaker 6: not just her. There are other people within Treasury. There
Speaker 6: are a couple of other people outside of Treasury too.
Speaker 6: But I would say, because ultimately it's about paying US debts,
Speaker 6: Treasury is inherently going to be central to all of this,
Speaker 6: And the Treasury itself seems to be thinking that by
Speaker 6: writing off all alternatives, they are somehow strengthening their negotiating position,
Speaker 6: which is to the I don't know, antithesis of any
Speaker 6: kind of logic irrationality about negotiation. You try to keep
Speaker 6: your options open to the best of your ability, and
Speaker 6: we just seem the complete opposite from Treasury so far,
Speaker 6: which is just baffling to me.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, can you explain a little bit about what
Speaker 2: you laid out there our audience. You know, they are
Speaker 2: going to know what the debt ceiling is, but debt
Speaker 2: servicing the level of treasury, what some of the missed
Speaker 2: opportunities that, in your opinion, have been lay that out
Speaker 2: for everybody.
Speaker 6: So obviously they're trying to Biden has talked about this,
Speaker 6: Yellow has talked about this, that it'd be great if Congress.
Speaker 6: We should have Congress raise the debt cealing like it
Speaker 6: always has and do it cleanly, because that's the way
Speaker 6: it should be done, because you shouldn't be bargaining over
Speaker 6: the full faith and credit of the United States, which,
Speaker 6: like I think is actually right. But the Treasury is
Speaker 6: not without options if Congress doesn't do that. Treasury has
Speaker 6: methods by which it can actually make sure the debt
Speaker 6: sealing isn't an issue for making sure we pay our
Speaker 6: debts on time and that we don't have a default.
Speaker 6: That's super dislocating or this notion of well, we could
Speaker 6: pay the bond holders, but then we can just make
Speaker 6: cuts elsewhere. Payment prioritization, all of these things are like
Speaker 6: deeply complicated, constitutionally very questionable, when in fact they could
Speaker 6: pursue fully lawful solutions if they actually were willing to say, Okay,
Speaker 6: ideally Congress can raise the debt ceiling, but if they
Speaker 6: don't do it, we will take matters into our own hands,
Speaker 6: and there are powers other than invoking the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 6: per se, which I'm still not sure what that means,
Speaker 6: that would add up to taking it, taking control of negotiations,
Speaker 6: and not letting yourself be held hostage in the manner
Speaker 6: that they basically have. They basically have let the Republicans
Speaker 6: control the show by saying, oh, we're not going to
Speaker 6: pursue any alternatives to you raising the debt ceiling, and
Speaker 6: therefore the price of raising the debt ceiling keeps going up.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought, I think it was Matt Brunnig
Speaker 1: who laid all of this out in a way that
Speaker 1: made sense to me, which is, like, Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: that Biden did absolutely nothing right. There's no deal, there's
Speaker 1: no debt sealing increase. He now has a conflicting set
Speaker 1: of instructions that he's received for the United States Congress
Speaker 1: that would almost inherently have to go through a legal
Speaker 1: process to resolve None of the options is particularly palatable.
Speaker 1: One is the sort of fourteenth Amendment route, where you're like, no,
Speaker 1: you said, we're going to spend this money and the
Speaker 1: debt shouldn't be called into questions, So we're going to
Speaker 1: take on the debt. We're going to do what we
Speaker 1: need to do, and that's, you know, what the constitution
Speaker 1: instructs us to do. Another one would be to do
Speaker 1: what I think Republicans have more floated, which is like,
Speaker 1: all right, well you prioritize payments and maybe the bondholders
Speaker 1: get paid but the veterans don't.
Speaker 3: Or whatever like.
Speaker 1: But then that is represents the executive taking on effectively
Speaker 1: the power of the purse, which is another constitutionally bad option.
Speaker 1: So you're left with all of these, you know, problematic
Speaker 1: issues if Biden doesn't act whatsoever. And thinking of that
Speaker 1: in that regard helped me to understand sort of like
Speaker 1: the crux of this issue that really you do kind
Speaker 1: of need some sort of legal judgment about these conflicting
Speaker 1: sets of instructions and the bizarre setup we have where
Speaker 1: you got one vote to spend the money and another
Speaker 1: one to do what it takes to actually make sure
Speaker 1: you fulfill your obligations.
Speaker 6: That's right, and so if you have I thought Matt
Speaker 6: Bruennigg's column was excellent and kind of speaks to this
Speaker 6: separation of powers problems that emerge, and so there is
Speaker 6: this sort of legal conflict that has to be resolved.
Speaker 6: And it'd be one thing if there was no solution
Speaker 6: to this problem, if you're Treasury like, oh, we have
Speaker 6: to get the debt ceiling up. But there are solutions
Speaker 6: available if they are willing to put their minds to it.
Speaker 6: And what has become very abundantly clear is they're not
Speaker 6: trying to put their minds to it. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 6: like it's pretty unwise to do that. If you want
Speaker 6: the debt ceiling to be increased, the worst thing you
Speaker 6: can say is, well, oh, I have no alternative except
Speaker 6: to just concede to everything that you possibly would want.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly the road they've chose to go down.
Speaker 6: And I think that is ultimately to the detriment of
Speaker 6: us default risk, to the detriment of actually paying our
Speaker 6: debts on time and make sure that the debt ceiling
Speaker 6: is not this kind of big sweepstakes issue that it
Speaker 6: always sends to be.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about so we've talked about the fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment here, we've talked about the you know, mint, the hashtegment,
Speaker 1: the coin.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the other one, which we've referenced but haven't really
Speaker 1: totally laid out, frankly because I don't one hundred percent
Speaker 1: understand it, is the idea of Treasury issuing callable perpetual bonds.
Speaker 1: You lay out the technicalities of this in your column,
Speaker 1: can you just explain as best you can and layman
Speaker 1: terms what this looks like and what it means.
Speaker 6: So, if you read the debt ceiling statute the law itself,
Speaker 6: it's pretty short, and it's quoted in terms of the
Speaker 6: face amount of the obligations. The face amount is the
Speaker 6: for a bond for which there is a principle repayment.
Speaker 6: So obviously, you like you pay back interest and principle
Speaker 6: most of the time with bonds, but there are bonds
Speaker 6: that exist where only the interest is guaranteed and there
Speaker 6: is no guaranteed principle. That would be a perpetuity effectively,
Speaker 6: so you would have regular interest payments and at some
Speaker 6: point the government may or may not decide I have
Speaker 6: the right to pay back to buy back this perpetuity
Speaker 6: from the bond holder, but it's my right flash option,
Speaker 6: but I don't have to do it. And we did
Speaker 6: this for financing something like the Panama Canal. These things
Speaker 6: existed in the nineteen hundred and nineteen thirty, so there's
Speaker 6: precedent for this. A perpetual bond is a real thing.
Speaker 6: You can look it up an Investipedia. These things are
Speaker 6: not like just purely for the sake of evading the
Speaker 6: debt ceiling. They are real instruments. I think that does
Speaker 6: matter for sort of how people perceive, like the viability
Speaker 6: like that passes the laugh test.
Speaker 3: I think obviously the.
Speaker 6: Coin I'm by the way, I'm like pro coin in
Speaker 6: the sense that I think it's legal, and so if
Speaker 6: it's legal, go for it. But this is probably going
Speaker 6: to win over more people, I suspect within the White House.
Speaker 6: But it's the kind of thing that they should be
Speaker 6: exploring in the here and now. They should have been
Speaker 6: exploring this like five months ago, and they've just written
Speaker 6: a lot of these ideas off the table. There's some
Speaker 6: other ideas also that can work in terms of making
Speaker 6: sure that we don't default under debts and we're not
Speaker 6: using the debt ceiling as this big ransom note of sorts.
Speaker 6: But the perpetual bond idea is one that has a
Speaker 6: lot of precedent rooted in it. So the government has
Speaker 6: done this, and if we're if you guarantee interests without
Speaker 6: guaranteeing principle, it's quite clear that one the government has
Speaker 6: a power to issue these instruments and two that it
Speaker 6: doesn't count towards the debt cealing. So that's like two
Speaker 6: things that has going for it that are kind of
Speaker 6: unique to the solution.
Speaker 1: And why do you think that they've taken these options
Speaker 1: off the table? Is it just Biden and yell In
Speaker 1: are real institutionalists. They don't want to engage in these
Speaker 1: novel arguments, Like what is they're thinking behind the scenes.
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of sort of norm abiding
Speaker 6: by sort of prior norms, not wanting to exert too
Speaker 6: much creativity. There's a fear of the unknown in terms
Speaker 6: of it being because it's novel and you're deviating from precedent,
Speaker 6: then you are there for doing something that is going.
Speaker 3: To be a political liability.
Speaker 6: So like it's like, oh, if we say for example,
Speaker 6: the coin example people bring up, it's if we say
Speaker 6: we're going to do the coin, Republicans are going to
Speaker 6: have a field day with this. They're going to mock us,
Speaker 6: They're going to say that we were doing something reckless,
Speaker 6: and like, obviously, like this is not kind of on
Speaker 6: googable until you actually go down that road. But I
Speaker 6: do think like it should be at least clear there
Speaker 6: are other options on the table, and I think it's
Speaker 6: actually to the benefit of some people to say, oh, well,
Speaker 6: if the only option is the coin, that seems worse,
Speaker 6: but then like there are other options too, like perpetual bonds.
Speaker 6: There are other things they could be doing in terms
Speaker 6: of Fed Treasury coordination if they really wanted to put
Speaker 6: the screws on the negotiation to make sure we are
Speaker 6: in some ways the best way to get to a
Speaker 6: clean debt sealing increase, you have to be open to
Speaker 6: other options. Otherwise, if you are not open to other options,
Speaker 6: you're not going to get clean debt sealing increase.
Speaker 3: You're going to get something that's pretty dirty. And that's
Speaker 3: exactly the road Brawn right now.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point because the thing that
Speaker 1: Republicans have going for them is they have people in
Speaker 1: the caucus that you feel like are genuinely crazy enough
Speaker 1: to push the country over the cliff, and so you
Speaker 1: have to have people on the other side who seem
Speaker 1: general at least crazy enough to like mint the coin,
Speaker 1: you know, to have some sort of semblance of leverage
Speaker 1: in the negotiations.
Speaker 6: That's right, And I guess the point I'd make is
Speaker 6: that even if you think the coin is somehow beyond
Speaker 6: the pale, and again I said, I'm not gonna I don't.
Speaker 6: I have nothing bad to say about the specifically, but
Speaker 6: there are other options on the table if you're willing
Speaker 6: to look for them. What's been obvious the last few
Speaker 6: weeks is that the Treasury has not done the homework
Speaker 6: to actually look through all these options. If they did
Speaker 6: and they're hiding in the background, great, but I don't
Speaker 6: see you.
Speaker 1: I don't see any evidence of that. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for breaking all of us down for me. I
Speaker 1: think I understand the bond option a lot better now,
Speaker 1: so I appreciate that, and it's always great to see
Speaker 1: you appreciate it.
Speaker 10: Great.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Yeah, our pleasure.
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Speaker 1: See y'all next week.