Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 4: All right, good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints, where you
Speaker 4: got a big Super Tuesday show.
Speaker 5: We're going to be joined by some hot shot hot
Speaker 5: shot YouTubers in a second.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk, but let's talk about State of
Speaker 4: Union first.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the State of the Union. Speaking of those hot
Speaker 6: shot YouTubers, yes, they're joining us for the Super Tuesday breakdown.
Speaker 6: But Sager, Crystal, Ryan and myself we'll be here for
Speaker 6: the State of the Union pre show starting tomorrow at
Speaker 6: eight thirty pm, then live. Sager's not happy about the
Speaker 6: starting at ten pm, way past this bedtime to take
Speaker 6: questions from premium subscribers, so make sure or you stay
Speaker 6: tuned for that. Get a premium subscription if you want
Speaker 6: to watch. On that note, it.
Speaker 5: Basically a private screening after the State of the Union. Yes,
Speaker 5: we can Saga Crystal manual.
Speaker 6: So that we can translate by Breakingpoints dot Com. Go
Speaker 6: there now, Breakingpoints dot Com. Let's bring those hot new
Speaker 6: YouTubers in. Sager and Crystal, thank you so much for
Speaker 6: joining us for Super Tuesday show.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Thank you, guys.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how nice it is not to
Speaker 2: have to set up the show myself.
Speaker 4: This is great.
Speaker 6: I can't tell you how nice it is not to
Speaker 6: have someone shouting good morning at.
Speaker 1: By the way, for the record, ten pm. Also way
Speaker 1: past my bedtime. I'm just as much of a whimp
Speaker 1: about it as is.
Speaker 2: You guys are between people, guys between the bedtime and
Speaker 2: daylight savings.
Speaker 3: This is just like my Vietnam.
Speaker 5: But these are the sacrifices that you're willing to make
Speaker 5: for the viewers, and we deeply appreciate it. After Crystal
Speaker 5: and Saga leave, we're going to talk about the cartoon
Speaker 5: Bill and Victoria Newland giving it a rest, which suggests
Speaker 5: probably a big strategic change Ukraine policy is on the horizon.
Speaker 5: The other cartoon villain, Kirsten Sama, also leaving, like the
Speaker 5: world desperately needed some good news, and both of these
Speaker 5: women gave us some of that, so we really appreciate that.
Speaker 5: And of course we'll have some updates on the latest
Speaker 5: in the war in Gaza.
Speaker 6: So I don't want to keep going on the cartoon
Speaker 6: villain trend, but I will because the big news this
Speaker 6: morning is that Nicki Haley has dropped out of the
Speaker 6: presidential race after getting clabberd clabberd in every state with
Speaker 6: the exception of Ryan's favorite state, Vermont yesterday by double digits.
Speaker 6: Nicki Haley ended up winning Vermont with about its three
Speaker 6: point margins so far as we can tell, but in
Speaker 6: other states, I think the closest was Utah, and she
Speaker 6: lost to Utah by eighteen points. So if you're watching,
Speaker 6: you can see the delegate count here. Overall, nine hundred
Speaker 6: and ninety five delegates for Donald Trump, nine eighty nine
Speaker 6: delegates for Nicki Haley. Trump needs twelve hundred, so actually
Speaker 6: twelve hundred and fifteen to win the nomination. Precisely, he's
Speaker 6: already at nine hundred and ninety five, and he has
Speaker 6: healthy leads basically in most of the polls across the country.
Speaker 6: On this one, I'll start with you Sagar reaction to
Speaker 6: your favorite, your personal hero, Nicki Haley dropping out of
Speaker 6: the race. And I'll say she had a lot of money.
Speaker 6: She was dropping some money, some donors were dropping her,
Speaker 6: but she could have kept going. So just your thoughts
Speaker 6: on her dropping out, I mean.
Speaker 3: It's just about the credible case.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time coming now for Nicki Haley
Speaker 2: dropping out. I guess it is a tough day for
Speaker 2: the brown ceiling here of Indian American GOP politicians who.
Speaker 3: Are running out.
Speaker 2: But overall, I think whenever we look at her candidacy,
Speaker 2: we're seeing a couple of things.
Speaker 3: I will give her at least some credit.
Speaker 2: As low as I am, she did win, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty thirty percent of the vote in a lot of
Speaker 2: the primaries that happened last night. She certainly did get
Speaker 2: the DC primary, I guess, and she proved her constituency.
Speaker 2: And I think some of the themes that we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about today have less to do with the Nicki
Speaker 2: Haley candidacy than what that type of voter who even
Speaker 2: craves something like that, what are they going to do
Speaker 2: in November. So I think that's the big question on
Speaker 2: the Republican side, And I think the theme of today's
Speaker 2: show is that both of these candidates have critical parts
Speaker 2: of their coalition where there are big question marks as
Speaker 2: to what they're actually going to do whenever it does
Speaker 2: come to the general election.
Speaker 6: Crystal, on that note, we can put a two up
Speaker 6: on the screen. This is the margin in Vermont, so
Speaker 6: everyone can see exactly how well nik they did in Vermont.
Speaker 6: So she prevents Trump from getting that fifty state sweep,
Speaker 6: just barely. But Crystal, it is true. Soccer is absolutely
Speaker 6: right that Nicki Haley came away in some of these states.
Speaker 6: She spent a lot of money, outspent a lot of
Speaker 6: her competition along the way, but she did come around
Speaker 6: thirty to forty percent in some of these contests, even
Speaker 6: in swing states, critical states like a South Carolina, something
Speaker 6: to that effect. So whether or not she endorses Trump
Speaker 6: is a huge question. What do you expect to see
Speaker 6: from Niki Haley on that front?
Speaker 1: Well, let me say first all that I do want
Speaker 1: to give credit where credit is due. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of this contest, if you had told me Nikki Haley
Speaker 1: would be the last person standing with Trump, if you
Speaker 1: told me she was gonna win a single state in
Speaker 1: the country, I would have said not a chance. So
Speaker 1: in a sense, I do think she was sort of vindicated.
Speaker 1: But her decision to stay in this long was kind
Speaker 1: of vindicated by the fact that she did win a state,
Speaker 1: she did perform reasonably well in some of these other
Speaker 1: states that went on Super Tuesday. It makes the overall
Speaker 1: performance a little bit less embarrassing, a little bit less humiliating.
Speaker 1: Prove the point that there is some constituency for her.
Speaker 1: We know that is not a majority constituency in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party.
Speaker 7: It's largely like highly educated people.
Speaker 1: Who kind of like Joe Biden and are you very
Speaker 1: possibly going to vote for him in the fall. But
Speaker 1: you know, she demonstrated there was something there in terms
Speaker 1: of her pitch, and so she did outperform what I
Speaker 1: expected of her, for whatever that is worth. In terms
Speaker 1: of her dropout speech today, the reporting is she is
Speaker 1: not gonna she is not going to endorse tr She's
Speaker 1: saying he needs to basically win over independence and moderates
Speaker 1: like herself who were backing her. I also want to say,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the political framing of Nicky Haley
Speaker 1: really demonstrates some of the oddities and perversions of the
Speaker 1: Trump era that she's considered the quote unquote moderate, when
Speaker 1: if you just look at the ideology, you know, head
Speaker 1: to head, you cannot put her in any sort of
Speaker 1: moderate ideological lane. But the one thing that really came
Speaker 1: out in all of the exit polling in every single
Speaker 1: state that's voted so far is actually the biggest dividing
Speaker 1: line in the Republican Party is whether or not they
Speaker 1: bought him to stop the steal, you know, the nicky
Speaker 1: Haley voters. Overwhelmingly she won people who said, you know what,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden actually won Overwhelmingly. Donald Trump wins people who say, no,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was rigged, stop the steal, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 7: So Trump really.
Speaker 1: Did successfully make that the litmus test and the dividing
Speaker 1: line in the Republican Party. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: were on the wrong side of that question, then you
Speaker 1: basically had no hope in this primary.
Speaker 5: And by the way, one interesting point, I think you're
Speaker 5: going to end up having sixty or seventy thousand voters
Speaker 5: in Vermont total deciding this Republican primary, and Vermont is
Speaker 5: an open primary state. There's a very close election, Like
Speaker 5: the chance that a bunch of Democrats.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying by any means a majority, but a
Speaker 5: non trivial number of Democrats I think showed up and
Speaker 5: we're like, what's the point of voting in the Democratic primary?
Speaker 5: I'm going to jump in here and vote against and
Speaker 5: vote against Trump. I think a lot of Republicans actually
Speaker 5: did that in West Virginia in twenty sixteen, for instance,
Speaker 5: and went in and voted for Bernie against Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 4: But we do have Trump's wh moved to that.
Speaker 5: We knew Trump's speech last night, in which he did
Speaker 5: not mention Nicki Haley just went right at Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Let's play some Trump here.
Speaker 8: November fifth is going to go down as the single
Speaker 8: most important day in the history.
Speaker 9: Of our country.
Speaker 8: We're going to take it and we're going to make
Speaker 8: it like it should be respected. Right now, we're not
Speaker 8: respected right now. Our country is known as a joke.
Speaker 8: It's a joke. Other leaders who I speak to, other
Speaker 8: leaders can't believe what happened to us, because three years
Speaker 8: ago we were the most respected country anywhere in the
Speaker 8: world by far. We were doing things that nobody could believe.
Speaker 8: China was paying us billions and billions of dollars in
Speaker 8: twenty five years. I paid us nothing, zero, not ten cents.
Speaker 8: I was getting billions of dollars. And they were happy
Speaker 8: about it, as happy as you can be. Of course,
Speaker 8: maybe there's reasons for things having happened, but they were not.
Speaker 8: They were not so happy with certain things. I guess
Speaker 8: based on things that took place, but they were. We
Speaker 8: were getting along with everybody. We were getting along, and
Speaker 8: we were respected by everybody, and.
Speaker 9: We had no wars.
Speaker 8: Remember when I had the debate with Hillary Clinton, she said,
Speaker 8: look look at him, look at that personality. He's going
Speaker 8: to cause wars, wars. I said, no, my personality is
Speaker 8: going to keep us out of wars.
Speaker 9: And that's what happened.
Speaker 6: So Ryan is losing it. He started riffing at one
Speaker 6: point about the military's goggles. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 6: else gone.
Speaker 4: And the gold just selling gold along the side, just
Speaker 4: so perfect.
Speaker 3: That's great. No, that's Republican Party.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of sort of.
Speaker 2: Well, I just think, you know, this is the frame.
Speaker 2: It's Trump is the cult of personality. I want to
Speaker 2: pick up on where Crystal left off. He has successfully
Speaker 2: I meant talked about this ad nauseum during the Trump
Speaker 2: era of people want to go back and watch. He
Speaker 2: successfully defined MAGA as a complete litms test on him
Speaker 2: and him alone, on impeachment, on stop the steal, on
Speaker 2: allegiance to him as a party figure, instead of really
Speaker 2: defining it along any sort of policy line. Actually, you
Speaker 2: can see a lot of that in some of the
Speaker 2: primary results that happened last night, because remember, it wasn't
Speaker 2: just what was going on with the presidential election in
Speaker 2: down in Texas. We saw several judges, for example, face
Speaker 2: serious problems in their primaries who had ruled against Ken
Speaker 2: Paxton for example, on election lawsuits. That actually shows me
Speaker 2: that it's not just the Trump top line, you know,
Speaker 2: versus him and Nikki Haley.
Speaker 3: It's his successful.
Speaker 2: Takeover and whenever he does push certain things like stop
Speaker 2: the Steal, he says, this is the dividing line. Voters
Speaker 2: are not willing to just come out for him. They're
Speaker 2: also willing to come out for anybody who appeared to
Speaker 2: have wronged him. And then, look, these are not national races,
Speaker 2: you know, per se. But the Texas GOP successfully was
Speaker 2: able to argue that any judge, even if their typical
Speaker 2: and cut Bush style Republicans that ruled to limit the
Speaker 2: ability of Ken Paxton to try and to you know,
Speaker 2: whatever whatever he was doing with the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 2: that that was enough in order to make sure that
Speaker 2: they were to face challenges. And we saw that in
Speaker 2: some of the other primary challenges all really across the
Speaker 2: entire country last night for the specific type of America first,
Speaker 2: you know, as in Trump type person blowing it out,
Speaker 2: and then a more traditional type like Dan Crenshaw. I
Speaker 2: believe you highlighted this Emily, you know, not doing nearly
Speaker 2: as well as you did last time around.
Speaker 6: His margin is down by quite a bit actually, and
Speaker 6: this is probably a good point to put these Laddin
Speaker 6: County results up on the screen, So control room, I'm
Speaker 6: going to go and start with a five here. Lodden County,
Speaker 6: Virginia was hyped in the media. This is from by
Speaker 6: the way, if you're looking at this, this is the
Speaker 6: results from twenty sixteen. Lodden County is really hyped by
Speaker 6: the media as one of the key swing counties, as
Speaker 6: sort of a Bellweather county that you can take a
Speaker 6: look at here for how the mood Is and Marco
Speaker 6: Rubio cleaned up pretty handily. Back in twenty sixteen, forty
Speaker 6: percent of the vote. Ted Cruz himself had about fifteen
Speaker 6: percent of the vote. Even John kase It got about
Speaker 6: eleven percent of the vote and Trump was only at
Speaker 6: twenty eight percent of the vote vote back then. Now,
Speaker 6: contrast that, I don't know if we have this image.
Speaker 6: We can put it up if we do. But contrast
Speaker 6: that with what happened last night twenty twenty four. Trump
Speaker 6: won Louden County really clearly, very wealthy county, and it's
Speaker 6: outside of Washington, d C. Northern Virginia, so you wouldn't
Speaker 6: necessarily you would think, actually, Nikki Haley, with all the
Speaker 6: defense contractors out there, as Trump said he didn't start
Speaker 6: any new wars, that Nicki Haley might be really popular
Speaker 6: in loud In County. She wasn't. Even though she had
Speaker 6: been able to pick up big chunks of the vote,
Speaker 6: it just hasn't been quite enough. There's something about Trump
Speaker 6: Crystal that Republican voters will not shake. And maybe it's
Speaker 6: to Soccer's point, it does remind me a little bit
Speaker 6: of the Tea Party years. It's sort of this binary
Speaker 6: establishment and anti establishment. And if you're someone who's uncomfortable
Speaker 6: with the anti establishment, maybe you gravitate towards Nicki Haley.
Speaker 6: But if you're uncomfortable with the establishment, even if Trump
Speaker 6: says the craziest thing, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, you
Speaker 6: still prefer him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just to reflect specifically on the Lodden
Speaker 1: County results, some of those people who voted.
Speaker 7: For Marca Ruby or John Kasik, they're.
Speaker 1: Just Democrats now right, They're not voting in a Republican primary.
Speaker 1: So you can't necessarily say, like Nicki Haley underperform what
Speaker 1: they did, because probably a lot of those people that
Speaker 1: voted for Marca Ruby were like showing up to you know,
Speaker 1: stay strong for Joe Biden last night in Louden County
Speaker 1: or whatever. Actually, Mary and Williamson, if memory survice, did
Speaker 1: quite well in Louden County last night for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: But you know, the other thing about the Trump domination
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party is, obviously it works out well
Speaker 1: for Trump, just like the Obama domination the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: that worked out very well for Barack Obama. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work out very well for the rest of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party because the things that Donald Trump can get away
Speaker 1: with the shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, or whatever wacky
Speaker 1: crap comes out of his mouth or his legal problems
Speaker 1: or whatever other candidates can't get away with.
Speaker 7: And so that's a big part.
Speaker 1: Of the story of why twenty twenty two was such
Speaker 1: an underperformance for Republicans, because, Yeah, a bunch of these
Speaker 1: like Trump fringe weirdos who were absolutely repellent to just
Speaker 1: normal people won the primary and then lo and behold,
Speaker 1: got blown out in a state like Pennsylvania where they're
Speaker 1: losing by double digits when they should have, you know,
Speaker 1: basically been a lock to win in that year. And
Speaker 1: that's both the governor's level and you know with uh
Speaker 1: Fetterman and os.
Speaker 7: Which is that's a whole other story.
Speaker 1: But in North Carolina is an example of this. Last night,
Speaker 1: the Republican nominee for governor there is apparently really wacky.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't looked into all of these statements,
Speaker 1: but people are circulating online all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: you've said that are really out there. In North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a state where Republicans should easily win
Speaker 1: the governorship, but at the state level they will voters
Speaker 1: will pick a Democrat, you know, especially when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a state race and not a federal race, so
Speaker 1: they very likely handed Democrats, you know, potential victory in
Speaker 1: that state when that was completely unnecessary because of how
Speaker 1: fringe some of these candidates have become, you know, following
Speaker 1: in the quote unquote anti establishment mold of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: which I you know at this point that framing, to
Speaker 1: me is not really accurate, given this is the guy
Speaker 1: who served the establishment quite handily when he was in office.
Speaker 7: You could see a lot of Wall Street.
Speaker 1: You've seen people like Jamie Diamond and others saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be so bad to have him again, sort
Speaker 1: of reconciling themselves to him. The Davos said, perfectly fine
Speaker 1: with another Trump presidency. So the vibe is anti establishment,
Speaker 1: the reality is very different.
Speaker 6: Let's get video because for the control room, just the
Speaker 6: heads up, I'm gonna do a four and a nine here,
Speaker 6: because these are two videos that Nikki Haley got of
Speaker 6: Nikki Haley. Nikkoie was out there talking to voters, filming herself.
Speaker 6: No MSNBC got of Nicki Haley voters, and these are
Speaker 6: somewhat amusing clips. Let's start with a four. This is
Speaker 6: actually a Trump voter, Republican voter, Let's roll.
Speaker 10: That Nikki Haley is irrelevant?
Speaker 11: Why irrelevant?
Speaker 10: Because it's obvious that she's just there representing the rhino
Speaker 10: part of the Republican Party and she has no chance
Speaker 10: and she knows it, and everyone knows it.
Speaker 11: It's self evident. Did you vote for Trump in twenty twenty?
Speaker 1: I did it?
Speaker 11: And what made you switch from Trump to Nicki Haley?
Speaker 11: The man is a lunatic and I think he's terrible
Speaker 11: for the country. What are you thinking about when you
Speaker 11: say that? Just that he lies.
Speaker 12: He's bankrupted millions of businesses and people, and I don't
Speaker 12: see anything good about him.
Speaker 11: Let me ask, if Donald Trump is the nominee in November,
Speaker 11: do you support Joe Biden over Donald Trump? No, what
Speaker 11: do you do?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 11: It will be a hard decision too.
Speaker 6: North Carolina voters, there, Ryan, what do you make of it?
Speaker 4: We didn't do.
Speaker 5: The one who told Sanana the reason he isn't going
Speaker 5: to vote for Nicki Haley is because she doesn't have
Speaker 5: balls to scratch, which is apparently a prerequisite for being
Speaker 5: a good president. According to according to this guy, a
Speaker 5: good female president, any president, it's a universal requirement.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we have more on this. So if we
Speaker 6: put a seven up on the screen, there's some really
Speaker 6: interesting exit poll results. This is California. Will you vote
Speaker 6: for the Republican nominee regardless of who it is? Trump
Speaker 6: voters answered yes seventy one percent, twenty two percent said no.
Speaker 6: Haley voters only twenty six percent said yes, sixty nine
Speaker 6: percent said no. And then we can go to a
Speaker 6: eight as well for some more exit polling results. This
Speaker 6: is North Carolina Republican primary voters. Hailey voters. Biden job
Speaker 6: approval forty eight forty eight percent of Nikki Haley voters
Speaker 6: North Carolina approve of Joe Biden, fifty two percent disapproved.
Speaker 6: Now you go to Trump voters two percent approve of
Speaker 6: Joe Biden, ninety six percent disapprove. I'd love to know, Sager,
Speaker 6: who those two percent of approving voters are.
Speaker 3: Hey, they exist.
Speaker 2: You know, we covered actually in our show yesterday that
Speaker 2: ten percent or so of Biden voters are actually going
Speaker 2: to be voting for Trump this time around, if we
Speaker 2: look at some of the swing data that Nate Silver
Speaker 2: dug into. But you know, look, I think again, the
Speaker 2: theme of our show for today and for next with
Speaker 2: the Democratic block, is that there are parts of these
Speaker 2: coalitions where they're genuinely up for grabs across either from
Speaker 2: the other or in terms of taking votes away. I
Speaker 2: would also be remiss if I didn't say that RFK
Speaker 2: Junior appears to have qualified for the ballot in Nevada
Speaker 2: or he at least attained enough signatures yesterday. So that's
Speaker 2: another critical battleground state that kind of throws everything into
Speaker 2: whack gears. So what are these people going to do
Speaker 2: or are they going to come out to vote for Biden?
Speaker 2: That lady, for example, she's like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: going to be a hard decision.
Speaker 3: She may just not vote.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't vote actually, or they just
Speaker 2: don't vote at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 3: They could go third party.
Speaker 2: So there's a significant amount of chaos factor that I
Speaker 2: think goes into this election.
Speaker 3: And I've been continuing.
Speaker 2: I've been doing a lot more research on the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two presidential election.
Speaker 3: Just to look at how things worked out. Well, you
Speaker 3: have to write, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yesterday by my shouted out the ninety two Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton nominee speech.
Speaker 3: It's on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I've been going back and watching some of the debates
Speaker 2: with Ross Perro, who, by the way.
Speaker 3: Was unfairly maligned at the time.
Speaker 2: But the point is is that Bill Clinton only won
Speaker 2: the popular vote some forty two percent. He did won
Speaker 2: some three hundred votes three hundred some electrical College votes,
Speaker 2: but the puro candidacy and also the ability to strip
Speaker 2: some of it away from HW Bush was critical actually
Speaker 2: in getting Clinton across the finish line. So I mean
Speaker 2: increasingly I am seeing enough chaos in there that you
Speaker 2: could see either of these president or either of these candidates,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump or Joe Biden, actually win the electoral College
Speaker 2: and the presidential election with not even close to like
Speaker 2: a majority of the overall popular vote, because you have
Speaker 2: so many of these different constituencies that are upward grabs,
Speaker 2: and you have multitudes of third party candidacies and record
Speaker 2: high dissatisfaction with both of these incumbents. So it's a
Speaker 2: very very different dynamic than twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: And one of the key differences you just hit on it,
Speaker 5: it's the level of factions dissatisfaction. So in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 5: what's interesting is that I think the public kind of was.
Speaker 4: Okay with George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Speaker 5: Like the people who voted for Ross Purou, they didn't
Speaker 5: like the syst they didn't trust the whole thing. They
Speaker 5: thought the country was going off the rails. But personally
Speaker 5: when it came to Bush and Clinton, they're like, I mean,
Speaker 5: they didn't think that they were going to destroy the country,
Speaker 5: that their election to the White House would be the
Speaker 5: end of the American experiment. Like, none of them really
Speaker 5: thought that. Today, you have significant portions of both electorates
Speaker 5: that think if the other person wins, it's the end
Speaker 5: of the world. And I don't know what that does
Speaker 5: to third party voting, Like it has some I think
Speaker 5: influence on how people think about third parties, but I'm
Speaker 5: not quite sure yet how that works out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's basically what you just lay down is
Speaker 1: what the Biden campaign in particular is counting on. They're
Speaker 1: hoping that that revulsion and that sense of existentialism. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what Biden and were telling the New Yorker
Speaker 1: in that interview that got a lot of attention, and
Speaker 1: basically like, yeah, they're mad. Now, they'll come around when
Speaker 1: they really think about Donald Trump being back in office,
Speaker 1: and maybe and certainly for a large proportion of the
Speaker 1: elector and the Democratic base.
Speaker 7: That's certainly true.
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure that it holds as strongly as
Speaker 1: it did in twenty twenty, as or even as strongly
Speaker 1: as in twenty sixteen, when it was a real question
Speaker 1: mark of what a Trump presidency would even look like,
Speaker 1: and it was a little, you know, potentially more terrifying
Speaker 1: because it was just completely unknown. Now you have people like, well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't grat but we got through four years, so
Speaker 1: maybe this maybe this.
Speaker 7: World isn't literally going to end.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just react to you because it's a
Speaker 1: big media conversation, understandably so about Nicki Haley voters saying
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily.
Speaker 7: Going to vote for Donald Trump in the fall.
Speaker 1: I think the fact that you have such high approval
Speaker 1: rating for Joe Biden among Nicki Haley voters tells you
Speaker 1: something about who her electorate actually was. Like who was
Speaker 1: voting for Nicki Haley? And I think it was mostly
Speaker 1: not Republicans, even the independents who voted for her. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people call themselves independence, but really
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, they're either every election
Speaker 1: voting d or every election voting r and since there
Speaker 1: wasn't much of a contest on the Democratic side, I
Speaker 1: do think you had overwhelmingly those types of independence saying well,
Speaker 1: you know, I really think Trump's so maniac, So let
Speaker 1: me cross over and try to boost my girl Dicky
Speaker 1: for the primary. And you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I'm probably coming back home to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think it's a warning sign. I
Speaker 1: think it's something to pay attention to. But my guess
Speaker 1: is the you know, suburban college educated people who were
Speaker 1: going to be horrified by Trump and vote for Democrats
Speaker 1: because of it, Like that ship has probably already sailed.
Speaker 1: We've probably already seen that realignment occur over the years
Speaker 1: that he has been in public office.
Speaker 3: Totally agree, Crystal.
Speaker 6: And let's just wrap up this block by noting that
Speaker 6: turnout was down. I mean, that's extremely important to all
Speaker 6: of this, to the nineteen ninety two factor and to
Speaker 6: the nineteen ninety two factor as well. This is our
Speaker 6: transition to our next block, or we're going to talk
Speaker 6: about the results in the Democratic Party primary, but that
Speaker 6: third arty factor is looming very large. We have no
Speaker 6: idea what's going to happen. We know. No Labels has
Speaker 6: said that they'll think about this after Super Tuesday. Nikki
Speaker 6: Haley has said she's a conservative Republican, she's not interested
Speaker 6: in the No Labels ticket. Kirsten Cinema just conspicuously dropped
Speaker 6: out of her Senate race in Arizona and retired yesterday.
Speaker 6: Nikkia Haley said she couldn't do No Labels because that
Speaker 6: would mean running with a Democrat. Well, Kirsten Cinema is
Speaker 6: an independent, so we will see where all of that goes.
Speaker 6: RFK Junior still pulls enough to be more than a
Speaker 6: factor than Jill Stein was in twenty sixteen, So there's
Speaker 6: so much to talk about with that. Ryan, Let's talk
Speaker 6: about what happened in the Democratic primary last night, because
Speaker 6: some of these results were really interesting. Huge shout out
Speaker 6: to American Samoa.
Speaker 4: Yes, Americans.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden lost American Samoa to a guy who's extraordinarily famous.
Speaker 6: Here in the mainland.
Speaker 4: On the mainland, but otherwise he was embarrassed in.
Speaker 5: A lot of states by the uncommitted vote basically across
Speaker 5: the country. We do not have a speech to show
Speaker 5: you from Joe Biden because even though he is running
Speaker 5: for reelection. He did not give a super Tuesday victory speech. Instead,
Speaker 5: he kind of stared blankly out at a crowd after
Speaker 5: mumbling that he would get in trouble if he took questions.
Speaker 5: It's almost too painful of video to even subject you
Speaker 5: guys too, So we're not even not even going to
Speaker 5: show it because it would that would make us complicit
Speaker 5: in the elder abuse that is being dealt out to
Speaker 5: Joe Biden. Not that I have any sympathy for him,
Speaker 5: given you know what he's doing in Gaza right now.
Speaker 4: So kind kind of guess what he has comeing to him.
Speaker 5: Yet it's still kind of painful and sad to watch,
Speaker 5: that's for sure, all right. So let's get to what
Speaker 5: the voters are doing to him, and we start in
Speaker 5: Minnesota's this put this first one up here, kind of
Speaker 5: a shocking to the establishment result in Minnesota with close
Speaker 5: to twenty percent of the electorate.
Speaker 4: Voting uncommitted. This is a campaign that had about a
Speaker 4: week to organize itself. And that's on top.
Speaker 5: Of eight percent for Dean Phillips, by the way, so
Speaker 5: almost thirty percent just between the two of those against Biden.
Speaker 4: People were saying, so they spent about five thousand.
Speaker 5: Dollars over the course of a week something like that
Speaker 5: to organize this campaign. Organizers for that campaign were telling
Speaker 5: me over the course of the week that they actually
Speaker 5: expected to outperform Michigan because the phone banking that they
Speaker 5: were doing was just landing on voter after voter after
Speaker 5: voter who was telling them, yeah, we're already uncommitted. Basically,
Speaker 5: it was an it was organic that it spread from
Speaker 5: New Hampshire over.
Speaker 4: To Michigan and then into Minnesota.
Speaker 5: In ilin Omar's district, which is number five in Minnesota,
Speaker 5: they'll they'll win at least a delegate, they may win
Speaker 5: three delegates at least across the state. That means the
Speaker 5: party process in Minnesota is going to send at least
Speaker 5: three people to Minnesota who will be representing kind of
Speaker 5: a free Palestine.
Speaker 4: It ceasefire and the war in Gaza vote.
Speaker 6: Huge smiling Muslim population obviously outside Minneapolis, but.
Speaker 5: There was also this, you know, the correlation between age
Speaker 5: and support for uncommitted was basically one to one.
Speaker 4: The younger a precinct was the stronger the support was.
Speaker 5: There was one precinct that had something like eighty percent
Speaker 5: for uncommitted.
Speaker 4: That must be a fun neighborhood.
Speaker 6: So the governor addressed this. We have a clip of that.
Speaker 6: Let's roll Tim Waltz, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz.
Speaker 14: At forty thousand votes right now, twenty percent of the
Speaker 14: vote going to uncommitted and we've seen that already in
Speaker 14: this primary in Michigan. What message are voters in your
Speaker 14: state trying to send to President Biden and what do
Speaker 14: you want to see President Biden do in response?
Speaker 13: Yeah, Look, they're engaged. We're really proud Minnesota civic responsibility.
Speaker 13: We have some of the highest voter turnouts. These are
Speaker 13: voters that are deeply concerned, as we all are. The
Speaker 13: situation in Gaza is intolerable, and I think trying to
Speaker 13: find a solutional asking two state solutions, certainly the president's
Speaker 13: move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to
Speaker 13: a cease fire. That's what they're asking to be heard,
Speaker 13: and that's what they should be doing. We've gone through
Speaker 13: this before and we know that. Now we make sure
Speaker 13: we've got eight months, we start bringing these folks back in.
Speaker 13: We listen to what they're saying. That's a healthy thing
Speaker 13: that's happening here, but I would note that the former
Speaker 13: president lost twice as many votes here in Minnesota to
Speaker 13: Nikki Haley. And I've seen some of these exit polls
Speaker 13: out of North Carolina and O there's eighty percent of
Speaker 13: folks said they're not voting for him who voted for
Speaker 13: Nikki Haley. We'll get these folks back. I think it's
Speaker 13: take them seriously. Their message is clear that they think
Speaker 13: this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more.
Speaker 13: And I think the president's hearing that.
Speaker 5: All right, let's bring back Crystal and Saga into the conversation, Cristal,
Speaker 5: What do you make of it? Not only in Minnesota
Speaker 5: and North Carolina, Colorado, around the country. Minnesota had the
Speaker 5: strongest performance for uncommitted, but around the country it was
Speaker 5: clear that there is like widespread dissatisfaction with Biden and
Speaker 5: with his war effort.
Speaker 4: What did you make of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you combine uncommitted and keep in mind that
Speaker 1: not all of these states had uncommitted on the ballot,
Speaker 1: which is why you should consider the votes for Maryanne
Speaker 1: and the votes for Dean and the votes for uncommitted,
Speaker 1: I think you should count all of those as basically
Speaker 1: Biden protests votes, and also whatever other candidates Jank and
Speaker 1: the other like unknown candidates that popped up on some
Speaker 1: of these ballots, so quite significant. The Minnesota performance is
Speaker 1: nothing short of astonishing. And I heard this talking point
Speaker 1: over and over again on CNN, like, oh, sure Biden
Speaker 1: lost a few votes, but look at Nikki Haley eating
Speaker 1: into Trump. It is a very different deal to vote
Speaker 1: for an actual candidate, and also, by the way, for
Speaker 1: it to be a lot of Democrats and independences who
Speaker 1: are voting for that actual candidate than to have voters
Speaker 1: taking the time out of their day to show up
Speaker 1: to directly say screw you and your disgusting, immoral policy
Speaker 1: visa vigaza. I mean that is extraordinary.
Speaker 7: With no money, think of how much money Nikki Haley spent.
Speaker 1: There was almost literally no money spent on this effort
Speaker 1: in Minnesota.
Speaker 7: It popped up.
Speaker 1: In a week's time and outperformed by percentages what was
Speaker 1: done in Michigan. So I think it is absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And I do think that you have seen a rhetorical
Speaker 1: shift from the Biden administration directly because of this uncommitted
Speaker 1: protest vote. So you saw Kamala Harris with some more
Speaker 1: strenuous language backing basically the same policy, but you also
Speaker 1: see all of the dem flax out there instead of
Speaker 1: going back to while Israel has a right to defend itself.
Speaker 1: Now the line is, well, Biden is working day and
Speaker 1: night to try to secure this ceasefire, and he hears
Speaker 1: them and he agrees with that, so basically trying to gaslight.
Speaker 1: But you can see there has been an impact and
Speaker 1: that they are feeling pressure. You couple that with you
Speaker 1: just abject horror of the Flower massacre, and I think
Speaker 1: you do see that they are feeling some kind of
Speaker 1: pressure from this movement, which will only continue and grow
Speaker 1: post Super Tuesday. And once again the results show this
Speaker 1: is not just a problem with Arab Americans. This isn't
Speaker 1: just a problem with Muslim Americans or some other narrow
Speaker 1: demographic group. If you are a Democrat and you want
Speaker 1: to win the presidency of the United States once again,
Speaker 1: you need young people to show up for you and
Speaker 1: not to stay home. And young people are sending you
Speaker 1: as loud and clear a message as they possibly can
Speaker 1: that this current posture visa the Israel and Gaza is
Speaker 1: utterly unacceptable.
Speaker 6: And Biden wouldn't have won without a pretty decent surge
Speaker 6: from young voters in twenty twenty, and in.
Speaker 4: His margin, you wouldn't have the Senate either.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And one second, Ryan, can you break down the other
Speaker 2: states for everybody the uncommitted?
Speaker 3: Yes, because I know that we have all the other
Speaker 3: states there.
Speaker 4: Do we have the element that we can put up
Speaker 4: for sure? All right? So yeah, let's run through these quickly.
Speaker 5: So there we've got North Carolina knocking in it at
Speaker 5: thirteen percent, which is, you know, pretty pretty strong performance,
Speaker 5: at least as strong as Michigan.
Speaker 4: Move moved to the next one.
Speaker 5: We got Massachusetts coming in at almost ten percent, with
Speaker 5: another nearly five percent for Dean Phillips.
Speaker 4: Move on to the.
Speaker 5: Colorado primary, what eight almost nine percent plus then a
Speaker 5: handful you know, so you're looking at almost twenty percent
Speaker 5: kind of protest votes with about ten percent there, and
Speaker 5: then the Oklahoma primary almost ten percent of Oklahoma Democrats,
Speaker 5: I'm saying uncommitted, like end end this war and.
Speaker 4: If you know, if the Democratic Party was.
Speaker 6: But also nine and nine for Dean Phillips and Marion Williamson, Yes,
Speaker 6: right right, which is also a protest vote.
Speaker 5: At this point, yes, and you know, so if the
Speaker 5: party was an actual like power seeking operation that ran rationally,
Speaker 5: somebody like the guy who just saw the Minnesota governor
Speaker 5: Tim Walls, would he'd be the nominee, you know, by Waltz,
Speaker 5: you know, into the into the White House instead joke.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you like that one?
Speaker 15: No?
Speaker 4: You loved it instead.
Speaker 5: To Crystal's point, all we're getting is this kind of
Speaker 5: change in rhetoric, and if you boil down, what they're
Speaker 5: change in rhetoric is it's we are not complicit in
Speaker 5: this evil. We are just too weak and incompetent to
Speaker 5: stop it, which is okay. I guess that makes us
Speaker 5: feel better about it maybe, but that's not much of
Speaker 5: a selling point at all.
Speaker 6: Well, actually, this is interesting because in California, here's establishment
Speaker 6: Darling Adam Schiff. If we put B six up on
Speaker 6: the screen the primary, this is a huge primary election
Speaker 6: in California. People know the high profile candidates Katie Porter,
Speaker 6: Barbara Lee. Now Steve Garvey actually did better than Katie
Speaker 6: Porter and Barbara Lee's margins here or they're percentages here
Speaker 6: put together. So this goes to the jungle primary runoff
Speaker 6: type situation. Adam Shift secured thirty three percent of the vote.
Speaker 6: I'm just curious, Ryan, Crystal Sager, what you take is on,
Speaker 6: you know, with the Middle East weighing so heavily on
Speaker 6: Democratic voter's minds Adam Schiff is a Biden establishment ally,
Speaker 6: also a conspiracy bonger and weirdo. But that aside, I mean,
Speaker 6: that's a it.
Speaker 5: Did not weigh in here in this in this California primary.
Speaker 5: It's very it's very interesting. Barbara Lee, you know, faring
Speaker 5: faring terribly. I was actually in California over over the
Speaker 5: weekend talking to a voter who is his primary issue
Speaker 5: was anti Warren. Later in the conversation he said, I
Speaker 5: hope Barbara Lee wins her re election. I was like, actually,
Speaker 5: you know, she's running for Senate. He's like what, He's like,
Speaker 5: no way, That's awesome. That's that's that's so cool. It's like,
Speaker 5: barbar Lee is so screwed, like this is like this
Speaker 5: is like her base. And he didn't even know that
Speaker 5: she was running, which goes to the problem for anybody
Speaker 5: running in California that it's just so insanely expensive.
Speaker 4: But Sager, what do you make of that?
Speaker 2: Well, California obviously basically a rigged, you know, electoral systems
Speaker 2: like that. I'll be honest around that, especially with the
Speaker 2: dynamics that you just highlighted. Also, just to pick up
Speaker 2: on that, we have a stot here. Some of these
Speaker 2: protesters were interrupting Adam Shift and this goes to the
Speaker 2: question of how that will play out in the actual
Speaker 2: general election.
Speaker 3: Let's take a list to that so as everybody could see.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is just going to be an ever
Speaker 2: present problem I think for many of these establishment Democratic politicians.
Speaker 2: We covered previously on our show about how Joe Biden
Speaker 2: is going to like extensive lengths not to campaign and
Speaker 2: college campuses, pretty humiliating the.
Speaker 3: Sitting Democratic president.
Speaker 2: You can't go to a college campus, honestly, Ryan, that
Speaker 2: may be why he didn't do a victory speech last night.
Speaker 2: And they're just terrified. As I understand it, they've been
Speaker 2: contracting some third party security service to try and screen
Speaker 2: people before you go in.
Speaker 3: I mean, what we've gotten to that point. You know,
Speaker 3: things are.
Speaker 2: Not looking good for you, and it is humiliating because
Speaker 2: you've not only got the votes in terms of uncommitted,
Speaker 2: but you've also got the physical manifestation of that at
Speaker 2: every public appearance that you make from here on thus
Speaker 2: far so overall. I mean, I'm just coming back to
Speaker 2: the same Trump issue where Christal is right, many of
Speaker 2: those people who voted in the primary are just probably
Speaker 2: Democrats here though, you know, we have a probably a
Speaker 2: bigger problem just given the gap between like the policy
Speaker 2: that would actually have to happen to even get maybe
Speaker 2: half of these people back in the door.
Speaker 3: It's very likely that he could.
Speaker 2: If there is a fatal blow in November, there will
Speaker 2: be many, many reasons as to why that happened, but
Speaker 2: it's very likely we can trace a lot of it
Speaker 2: back to here and to this right now.
Speaker 5: A Democrat not being able to go to a college
Speaker 5: campus is like a Republican who couldn't campaign in the
Speaker 5: village's Florida. And underscoring that point, if we could put
Speaker 5: up the three and then Chris, all want to get
Speaker 5: your response to this the element B three.
Speaker 4: This polling that shows that.
Speaker 5: Even among Republicans, thirty percent of Republicans want arms shipments
Speaker 5: blocked to Israel, but sixty two percent of voters who
Speaker 5: supported Biden in twenty twenty want the US to block
Speaker 5: weapons shipments to Israel. Ceasefire and blocking weapons shipments is
Speaker 5: not a divisive or controversial position. It is the overwhelming
Speaker 5: majority position of Democratic voters. Yet it is in stark
Speaker 5: contrast to what the president is actually doing.
Speaker 1: Crystal, Yeah, that's exactly right, and I continue to bring
Speaker 1: this up, but I am struck by the poll that
Speaker 1: found that a majority of Joe Biden twenty twenty voters
Speaker 1: say Israel is committing a genocide. And you just cannot
Speaker 1: possibly overstate the sea change in American politics that has occurred, viz.
Speaker 1: A VI the view of Israel and the view of
Speaker 1: our relationship with regards to Israel. And so when you see,
Speaker 1: you know, the actions of someone like Joe Biden, who's
Speaker 1: been in DC for fifty years and has this view
Speaker 1: of Israel that dates back, you know, hasn't progressed since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and whatever he thought of it at the time.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that, you know, one of his
Speaker 1: ironclad like rules of the road in politics is you
Speaker 1: never lose by being too pro Israel, because you know
Speaker 1: there's much more funding on that side. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be an anti Submitic comment. It's a statement of
Speaker 1: reality given the funding behind APAC and how influential that
Speaker 1: has been and how comparatively. I mean, there's basically no
Speaker 1: funding benefit to be gained on the Palestinian side of
Speaker 1: the equation.
Speaker 7: And also typically the people who.
Speaker 1: Vote on that issue are the people who are most
Speaker 1: vociferously lockstep for whatever it is that Israel wants to do,
Speaker 1: that particular dynamic may well be changing. I think that's
Speaker 1: the piece that is different that Biden and many other
Speaker 1: Democratic politicians really haven't accounted for that. Now you have
Speaker 1: this very very impassioned and frankly radicalized group of predominantly
Speaker 1: but not exclusively, young voters who are voting directly on
Speaker 1: this issue. And so I think that's part of, you know,
Speaker 1: where the disconnect and why they've been so slow to
Speaker 1: even change the rhetoric with regards to Israel and Palestine
Speaker 1: let alone. They still haven't changed the policies. So this
Speaker 1: is a massive issue that you know, there are videos
Speaker 1: every day coming out of Kierson Gillibrand's town hall. You know,
Speaker 1: so many protesters there, AOC gett chased out of a
Speaker 1: movie theater because you won't call it a genocide. Adam
Speaker 1: Schiff getting shouted down at his own victory speech. Every
Speaker 1: single Democrat is being held to account for this monstrous,
Speaker 1: abhorrent policy that again a majority of their own party
Speaker 1: says makes them complicit in a genocide. So I think
Speaker 1: the political landscape has completely flipped in a way that
Speaker 1: many of these politicians haven't accounted for. Just to throw
Speaker 1: on a couple things typically about California, don't claim to
Speaker 1: be a political expert in the ins and outs of
Speaker 1: California politics. I do want to mention Adam shiff spent
Speaker 1: I think more money propping up the Republican candidate than
Speaker 1: he did even on his own campaign because he wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure he wasn't up against another Democrat in
Speaker 1: the fall, because he feels very confident, of course in
Speaker 1: California can be a Republican. It wasn't so confident he
Speaker 1: could beat say Katie Porter, Barbara Lee had to head.
Speaker 1: The other thing is my understanding, based on you know,
Speaker 1: what I've seen of the messaging in that race, is
Speaker 1: that none of them really put Gaza at the core
Speaker 1: of their messaging. And yes, Barbara Lee is seen as
Speaker 1: like you know, generally anti war, but she hasn't been
Speaker 1: leading the charge in the way that Saya Rashida Talebor
Speaker 1: like an ilhan omar Has and California also their uncommitted vote,
Speaker 1: you know, protests vote on Super Tuesday was one of
Speaker 1: the lower ones of the states that actually went for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I'm not really sure why.
Speaker 6: And I think it's also worth mentioning while we're in
Speaker 6: California that both George Gascone and la and Jose Garza
Speaker 6: and Travis ca Any which soccer you're obviously very familiar with,
Speaker 6: held onto their seats and these pretty competitive Democratic primaries
Speaker 6: not super close either, And that contrasts with the mood
Speaker 6: of the country back in twenty twenty two, where it
Speaker 6: was sort of like, oh, you know, Democrats are going
Speaker 6: to have to do attack to the center in order
Speaker 6: to make up from this backlash of twenty twenty. Well
Speaker 6: then Dobbs came down and now we're here and Israel happened.
Speaker 6: So I think there's just there's so much going on
Speaker 6: with young voters, in particular for Democrats, that if there's
Speaker 6: going to be a wake up call, you would think
Speaker 6: the results that are coming in showing you know, some
Speaker 6: seriously alarming drops and enthusiasm for Joe Biden that could
Speaker 6: affect turnout. It could affect his margins could affect third parties.
Speaker 6: These would be those red flags, those warning signs. But Ryan,
Speaker 6: there was a glaring red flag last night in American
Speaker 6: Samoa in the form of Jason Palmer.
Speaker 5: Jason Palmer ran what is I think it's got to
Speaker 5: be the coolest campaign ever. So he beat Biden for
Speaker 5: the delegates from American Samoa. Congratulations to yes, Jason Palmer,
Speaker 5: very very well known here in the here in the mainland.
Speaker 5: Let's let's play a little bit of the case that
Speaker 5: he made to American Samoan voters.
Speaker 15: I'm asking for your support and vote and would love
Speaker 15: to talk to you about why I believe I'm the
Speaker 15: best candidate for American Samoan, a beautiful and diverse territory
Speaker 15: that needs much more attention and support from our federal government.
Speaker 15: You're probably wondering, who is this Jason Palmer. I've never
Speaker 15: heard of him before. Well, in the mainland, I'm actually
Speaker 15: very well known.
Speaker 5: I can I can vouch for that, right, that is
Speaker 5: the man. As soon as I saw I'm like Jason
Speaker 5: Palmer the man.
Speaker 6: And I don't know who saw Fox News call the
Speaker 6: race for Jason Palmer, but Brett Behar was really confused
Speaker 6: in the video. He was like, I don't know who
Speaker 6: that is.
Speaker 4: He's out of touch. He's out of touch. Jason Palmer's
Speaker 4: huge and.
Speaker 6: Jason and Palmer looks like he's a realtor in you know,
Speaker 6: suburban Minneapolis or something. He's got the Martin Luther King's
Speaker 6: American speech in the background. It's just like if if
Speaker 6: you were watching the video, he really had a frame
Speaker 6: picture of Martin Luther King giving his American giving his
Speaker 6: I have a dream speech behind him. I mean, it
Speaker 6: was just perfect in so many ways.
Speaker 5: Ryan, Yeah, incredible. Congratulations to Jason Palmer.
Speaker 6: Kristin Sager. Are you voting for him?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, maybe absolutely in the fall.
Speaker 3: He's a very well known figure. You know about him
Speaker 3: for years.
Speaker 7: He's big on TikTok. I think I don't know zoomers.
Speaker 5: Love him too, good for the kids, love them so
Speaker 5: good for Jason Palmer.
Speaker 4: Very very exciting. Love love love to see it.
Speaker 6: Well, Sager. I want to test this last element to
Speaker 6: you in the block. This is more results out of
Speaker 6: Texas again. I think the theme of this block when
Speaker 6: it comes to how Biden performed last night on Super Tuesday,
Speaker 6: we can go ahead and put b ten up on
Speaker 6: the screen, just some really some of the signs from
Speaker 6: the polling that's found and starting to flag with Hispanic voters,
Speaker 6: Black voters, young voters started to show up in the
Speaker 6: returns yesterday. Talked to us a little bit about these
Speaker 6: results from Cameron County.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had big eyes in South Texas just because
Speaker 2: that was such a big flip that we saw that
Speaker 2: happened in twenty twenty in some cases moving like forty
Speaker 2: to fifty percent of the vote from Hillary Clinton to Trump.
Speaker 3: What you saw last night was actually pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: It's not just Cameron County, but what we try to
Speaker 2: highlight there is a lot of the results all across
Speaker 2: South Texas where you actually saw a pretty significant, st
Speaker 2: significant protest vote for Armando Perez Serrato.
Speaker 3: Who is a Democrat.
Speaker 2: He's kind of an all over the play, all over
Speaker 2: the place gentleman, but critically was somebody who came out
Speaker 2: very hard against Joe Biden, said that he was too old,
Speaker 2: disagreed with him on the Israel policy, went after a
Speaker 2: lot of the establishment Democrats. That showed me that he
Speaker 2: was one of the most polling protest vote candidates. But
Speaker 2: it was localized to South Texas, where he spent a
Speaker 2: lot of the time actually campaigning on And I think
Speaker 2: what it kind of highlights for us here on show
Speaker 2: is that regardless of where people are, you know, in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: we saw some Dean Phillips voters and noncommitted voters. Maryanne
Speaker 2: actually did quite well here in Virginia where Krystal and
Speaker 2: I are, you know, in certain places where there were
Speaker 2: younger voters. South Texas, everyone is localizing some of their
Speaker 2: descent against Biden, and then that comes down to how
Speaker 2: are they actually going to come out and vote. And
Speaker 2: if you couple discent of the existing Democrats and then
Speaker 2: the Republican like surge of twenty twenty and really in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two as well in South Texas, I think
Speaker 2: that it will fundamentally change the electoral map of Texas
Speaker 2: such that the Republican suburbs will vote Democrat, but they
Speaker 2: will make up for it with a lot of non,
Speaker 2: non college educated voters.
Speaker 3: And I found that really interesting in the results last night.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and my understanding from what's going on around there
Speaker 5: is that a lot of this just feels kind of cultural,
Speaker 5: like the area has just become and culturally Republican, like
Speaker 5: it's just in the water like it used to be
Speaker 5: culturally democrat, Like you're you're a Democrat because you live
Speaker 5: in this area.
Speaker 6: Uh, now is the Florida.
Speaker 4: It's the Flora.
Speaker 5: I mean I think some some of it is the
Speaker 5: is the media, like the Spanish language take takeover by
Speaker 5: the right wing of the media.
Speaker 4: Uh that that is dominant there?
Speaker 5: I think is where kind of you get that in
Speaker 5: the water, Like that's that's kind of what makes the
Speaker 5: water is what you consume on Facebook and also then
Speaker 5: uh through the Spanish language television.
Speaker 4: But yeah, is that is that.
Speaker 5: Your read Soger and Emily that it's just becoming just
Speaker 5: like you're just you just are a Republican, Like I
Speaker 5: think this is going to go from a Democratic stronghold
Speaker 5: to pretty soon being just Republican territory.
Speaker 3: Like I don't think the labels are useful.
Speaker 2: It's just like the Tejano kind of libertarian identity has
Speaker 2: been there for a long time, in some cases longer
Speaker 2: than even many people who have lived in Texas who
Speaker 2: are white. So my point is just that I kind
Speaker 2: to apply like national like it's the right right would
Speaker 2: take over to the media and all that I just
Speaker 2: don't really think it's accurate.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it just comes.
Speaker 2: Back to the fact that they truly felt screwed by
Speaker 2: they felt abandoned by Democrats on a couple of key issues.
Speaker 2: Inflation was a huge one actually in twenty twenty I believe,
Speaker 2: if I remember, gas and COVID checks were a huge
Speaker 2: reason why people voted for Trump back then. But when
Speaker 2: you continue into twenty twenty two, immigration had become a massive, massive,
Speaker 2: massive issue down there. I mean not just there, really
Speaker 2: across the entire country. I think last night we saw
Speaker 2: it was one of the number one things that people
Speaker 2: were said that they were voting on or was their
Speaker 2: top priority, especially in the Republican Party. So my point
Speaker 2: is just that it doesn't come back to media. It
Speaker 2: comes down to, I think actually genuinely local conditions and
Speaker 2: to a broader, more like libertarian aesthetic identity combined with
Speaker 2: some cultural conservatism that has existed there for, you know,
Speaker 2: on more than one hundred years now. At this point,
Speaker 2: it's a very unique part of the country. I encourage
Speaker 2: everybody to.
Speaker 3: Go if you can. It's pretty fascinating place.
Speaker 6: And there's just a ghoulish segment on MSNBC last night.
Speaker 6: I don't know how I saw this, but about it
Speaker 6: was Jensaki, Rachel Mattaw, Joy and Reid laughing about how
Speaker 6: Yes exit polls found Republican voters in Virginia were very
Speaker 6: concerned about immigration, and Jen Psaki was like, I live
Speaker 6: in Virginia, come on, And then I think one of them,
Speaker 6: Rachel Mattow was like, well, it's very close to West
Speaker 6: Virginia in this just completely obnoxious way. And you know,
Speaker 6: it's worth noting that just a few days ago a
Speaker 6: Venezuelan migrant who was here illegally was charged with sexual
Speaker 6: assault against a fourteen year old in Virginia. So wherever
Speaker 6: you stand on the immigration issue, it has changed communities
Speaker 6: all over the country. So I think that was another
Speaker 6: I mean, Jensaki is still close with Biden World and
Speaker 6: representative of Biden World, and that's sort of sticking your
Speaker 6: head in the sand. You guys, have any final thoughts
Speaker 6: on this before we kick you out and talk about
Speaker 6: Victoria Newland, I'll like, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Go you open the can of worms with those immigrant comments.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that, you know, I do think that
Speaker 1: a lot of the concern which we see spike around
Speaker 1: election time times fed by right wing media is a
Speaker 1: sort of like.
Speaker 7: Gindaup moral panic.
Speaker 1: Not to say that it's not a legitimate issue, and
Speaker 1: to respond to the MSNBC people treating voters with contempt
Speaker 1: is always the wrong moves. Yeah, hotshall say us unifying
Speaker 1: comments rather than starting a shit storm.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 1: Last two thoughts with regards to the democratic results. Number
Speaker 1: one just wanted to flag that the dude in California,
Speaker 1: David Mann I believe is his name, who is running
Speaker 1: to replace Katie Porter in her seat.
Speaker 7: He had four and a.
Speaker 1: Half million dollars of a PAC money spent against him
Speaker 1: in that primary and he still was able to succeed
Speaker 1: and was the top finishing Democrat and will go on
Speaker 1: to the general election. And one other note about him,
Speaker 1: this guy is not where I am on Gaza and.
Speaker 7: Israel's very pro Israel. But he was like mildly.
Speaker 1: Critical of Benjamin net Yahoo, which by the way, overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: Israelis are extremely critical of Benjamin net Yahoo. But that's
Speaker 1: the reason they poured all these millions into that raze.
Speaker 1: He was able to overcome that. That is somewhat encouraging.
Speaker 1: So when I put that out there and then the
Speaker 1: last note with regards to the revolt among young people
Speaker 1: in a number of these special elections where the result
Speaker 1: really turned on access to abortion and outrage over the
Speaker 1: overturning of Roe versus Way.
Speaker 7: It was a surge in.
Speaker 1: Young people, an unexpected surge in young people in those
Speaker 1: special elections that help Democrats.
Speaker 7: Democrats secure those victories.
Speaker 1: If you are dismissing the concerns of these young people,
Speaker 1: if you were thinking they're just going to get over
Speaker 1: what they see and what I see as a genocide,
Speaker 1: you have another thing coming.
Speaker 7: Shifting your rhetoric is not going to be enough. They
Speaker 7: see right through it.
Speaker 1: And that was I think very clear in the results
Speaker 1: last night, especially in the state of Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Da've min race was fascinating because nobody could really
Speaker 5: understand why APAC was spending millions of dollars against this
Speaker 5: guy who's not even that critical of Israel. The only
Speaker 5: thing people could land on his campaign concluded that they're
Speaker 5: just trying to soften him up for the general election
Speaker 5: against the Republican in a swing district, which suggests that
Speaker 5: a PAK is moving very much like the NRA did.
Speaker 5: The n RA was a bipartisan organization for decades, and
Speaker 5: then as there became some criticism within the Democratic Party,
Speaker 5: the NRA decided we're not gonna be bipartisan anymore because
Speaker 5: we're just gonna, you know, be a republican organization. And
Speaker 5: doesn't matter if a Democrat says they support us. We
Speaker 5: just feel safer over here with Republicans that well, you know,
Speaker 5: we saw how that worked out for the NRA.
Speaker 4: But when it comes to a PAK yesterday, we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about this later later in the show. Benny
Speaker 4: Gans was here in is here in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson declined to meet with him.
Speaker 5: YEA, so fascinating, careful, careful with this, like alliance with
Speaker 5: the Magah of the party here Israel.
Speaker 4: I'm not not exactly sure this is so well thought out.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to hear you guys segment on that because
Speaker 2: I saw some of your analysis, Ryan, and I thought
Speaker 2: it was really as dude, I think on the APAC side,
Speaker 2: it's just like the joke er quote.
Speaker 3: It's about sending the message.
Speaker 2: And I think they've got unlimited amounts of money now
Speaker 2: at this point. I mean, they're more cash flushed, I
Speaker 2: think than they've ever been, probably at the peak of
Speaker 2: their spending powers, and you know, in certain ways, like
Speaker 2: their entire organization was dedicated and exists specifically for a
Speaker 2: moment like this where even if public opinion is turning,
Speaker 2: that they can flex their weight, you know, in such
Speaker 2: a way that they can try and enforce what they want. So,
Speaker 2: you know, in a certain way, like they're they're really
Speaker 2: fulfilling their mandate.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, you know, they certainly are.
Speaker 5: So Again, on Thursday, we'll be here, the four of us. Well,
Speaker 5: I don't know if all four of us are starting
Speaker 5: at eight thirty. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 4: Be here at eight thirty while.
Speaker 5: We preview the state of the Union, and then at
Speaker 5: ten o'clock there will be for premium subscribers Q and
Speaker 5: a analysis, and we'll do that as long as soccer
Speaker 5: can stay awake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll try it. I'm gonna try my best.
Speaker 9: All right.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys for having us, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 6: Take your tie off, Take it easy.
Speaker 4: Seismic news coming out of Ukraine.
Speaker 5: Victoria Newland, who has overseen effectively America's strategy in Ukraine
Speaker 5: and with regards to Russia for more than ten years.
Speaker 5: You would argue is stepping down signaling we can put
Speaker 5: this element up, signaling a likely strategic shift coming forward
Speaker 5: if we could put up this second element here this
Speaker 5: is a post on Twitter that was going around. I
Speaker 5: think second not terribly unfair. The guy wrote big news,
Speaker 5: likely signaling a major policy shift. Newland has run point
Speaker 5: on our Russia Europe policy ever since we helped engineer
Speaker 5: the made on Kudeta. The results after ten years are
Speaker 5: in Ukraine is destroyed and has permanently lost Crimea in
Speaker 5: its main industrial region Europe. The industrializing Russia permanently alienated
Speaker 5: and tighter than ever with China, India, and Iran.
Speaker 4: Much of the world.
Speaker 5: Refused to isolate Russia and suffered no consequences. Institution central
Speaker 5: to US dollar hegemony no longer viewed as neutral. Nordstream
Speaker 5: We're going to talk about this later when we talk
Speaker 5: when we get to the Huthis and the cables, the
Speaker 5: fiber optic cables. Nord Stream broke the steal on sabotaging
Speaker 5: international infrastructure. Russian military capabilities significantly increased, not decreased.
Speaker 4: Countries like Iron, North Korea, etc.
Speaker 5: Seen that short of total war, NATO conventional capabilities are
Speaker 5: quite limited, she writes, Still Nolan is won, he writes, still,
Speaker 5: Nolan is one of those undead creatures in Washington who
Speaker 5: has only ever failed upwards. So her resignation probably indicates
Speaker 5: her usefulness has finally run out. You know, this is
Speaker 5: one of those posts where you look at you like,
Speaker 5: no lies detected.
Speaker 6: Basically, and you know, Ryan this I don't know if
Speaker 6: this was a Freudian slip, but I thought it was
Speaker 6: really funny when you opened this block you said big
Speaker 6: news out of Ukraine, when technically it really is big
Speaker 6: news out of Ukraine. Though she is a US diplomat.
Speaker 6: There's a quote here from Secretary of State Tony Blincoln
Speaker 6: who said it's Toria's leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and
Speaker 6: students of Foreign Pol he will study for years to come.
Speaker 6: This he's what he said in a written statement. No
Speaker 6: lies detected there either. Her efforts have been indispensable to
Speaker 6: confronting Putin's full scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global
Speaker 6: coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and that's where the
Speaker 6: lies are sort of starting to be detected. But it's
Speaker 6: absolutely true that she will be studied for years to come.
Speaker 6: And I would also just add to this Ryan, I
Speaker 6: think Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden himself, remember
Speaker 6: who was point man on Ukraine for the Obama administration
Speaker 6: and obviously had different family ties through a hunter to
Speaker 6: the Ukrainian economy, although I set that aside for the
Speaker 6: moment because I don't even think it matters entirely in
Speaker 6: this context, because I think Joe Biden would be utterly
Speaker 6: committed to Ukraine and to Zelenski and to their sort
Speaker 6: of goal to remain as a bull work against Putinism
Speaker 6: as they see it, no matter what. And there is
Speaker 6: the reading of this as a seismic shift that I
Speaker 6: genuinely wonder about, because, for example, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden,
Speaker 6: and Tony Blincoln are still running policy.
Speaker 5: And it's rare that a diplomat can become so influential
Speaker 5: that she becomes kind of like a figure and a
Speaker 5: power center in her own right, and Newland did that
Speaker 5: with regard to Ukraine, Europe and Russia. Brett McGirk is
Speaker 5: getting there when it comes to kind of Mid East policy.
Speaker 5: We'll see if he survives this particular moment.
Speaker 4: Don Leu a.
Speaker 5: State Department official in South Asia, if he has another
Speaker 5: five ten years as he's been doing there ineffectively, but
Speaker 5: effectively for you know, American imperial interests. You know, he
Speaker 5: could rise to the level of a Newland, But she
Speaker 5: is kind of in a league of her own and
Speaker 5: in something that does not bode necessarily well for Ukrainians
Speaker 5: who are hoping that, you know, the American policy is
Speaker 5: going to stay the course. Put up this next element here,
Speaker 5: This is from the Associated Press, says Newland will be
Speaker 5: replaced temporarily as Under Secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass,
Speaker 5: a former ambassador to Afghanistan who oversaw.
Speaker 4: The US withdrawal from the country.
Speaker 6: Everything's fine, yeah, right, yes, you're good hands.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 5: It's like you work at a major corporation and they
Speaker 5: introduced these new consultants who are going to help us
Speaker 5: right size the place, and they're going to be meeting
Speaker 5: with each of you for fifteen minutes, and it's it's
Speaker 5: just gonna pop up on your calendar and don't worry
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 6: Don't worry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to be fine.
Speaker 6: Big yeah. The huge vibes with that comparison here, I
Speaker 6: actually want to skip ahead to our last element. This
Speaker 6: is C five because I think it's This is from
Speaker 6: the All In podcast. It's David Sachs talking about Victoria Newland,
Speaker 6: and I think this is super relevant and well put.
Speaker 6: He actually you're going to hear him compare Newland to
Speaker 6: being what Fauci was to COVID to Ukraine, and his
Speaker 6: co hosts are sort of laughing and enjoying this. It
Speaker 6: is amusing. But I think it's amusing because it's it's
Speaker 6: a really good way to look at it. Let's roll
Speaker 6: see five here.
Speaker 16: Newland is the Fauci of this situation. Okay, the same
Speaker 16: way that Fauci was supposed to be protecting us go
Speaker 16: from viruses and then fund it in a function research Victoria.
Speaker 3: Label let me tell us or misinformation?
Speaker 16: Victoria Newland was supposed to be our chief diplomat with
Speaker 16: respect to Russia and Eastern Europe. And what did she do? Instead?
Speaker 16: She jinned up this conflict.
Speaker 3: How jinned up?
Speaker 16: We backed in insurrection in Ukraine in twenty fourteen, Jason.
Speaker 16: If you didn't like the insurrection of January sixth, let
Speaker 16: me tell you aren't going to like the insurrection that
Speaker 16: she staged in Ukraine because they brought in these Ukrainian
Speaker 16: far right nationalists as the muscle. She was the State
Speaker 16: Department official who was responsible for backing this insurrection of
Speaker 16: a democratically elected leader in Ukraine in twenty fourteen named Yanikovich.
Speaker 5: Okay, and you know what it's it's really actually pretty
Speaker 5: hard in America to talk about the Maydon uprising accurately
Speaker 5: and honestly without sounding like a lunaticy. And so for instance,
Speaker 5: and so we're gonna play a documentary that that like
Speaker 5: gets into Newland's role and the role of John McCain
Speaker 5: and Chris Murphy and this as well as she showed
Speaker 5: up and started handing out basically baked goods and symbolically
Speaker 5: and a gesture that was covered a lot by Western
Speaker 5: media in the Maydon Square to show show us.
Speaker 4: Support for this operation.
Speaker 5: And why why I say it's very hard to talk
Speaker 5: about it honestly without sounding like a total crank is
Speaker 5: because uh, there there there was a massacre in in
Speaker 5: the Maydon Square that led to the far right basically
Speaker 5: taking over. There were then allegations that it was a
Speaker 5: false flag, that the that it was actually the far
Speaker 5: right themselves, uh, that that open fire on mayde on
Speaker 5: protesters in order to instigate this entire thing. There was
Speaker 5: then a huge internal invent mistigation done by the subsequent
Speaker 5: Ukrainian governments, and that investigation has never been published, like
Speaker 5: it's completed, and we just don't have it very serious
Speaker 5: credible people who have looked very closely at this do
Speaker 5: not dismiss that out of hand. And the far far
Speaker 5: right figures, the most far right figures who were involved
Speaker 5: in that uprising, hijacked the entire thing, and you know,
Speaker 5: with direct kind of neo Nazi connections went right into
Speaker 5: the government that Victorian Newland helped to facilitate.
Speaker 4: So let's roll a little bit of the history of
Speaker 4: that moment.
Speaker 6: And this, by the way, is from Oliver Stone's documentary,
Speaker 6: which I really reckonize.
Speaker 5: Like I said, everybody thinks Oliver Stone's a crank, but
Speaker 5: this is based on actual history, like these things really happened.
Speaker 5: You can hate Oliver Stone, you can think he's a crank,
Speaker 5: but this is what happened.
Speaker 6: It's called The Ukraine on Fire. It was released in
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen, and here he's actually talking to Victor Yanikovic,
Speaker 6: who David Sachs obviously just mentioned that was intercepted.
Speaker 17: It was a call between the Assistant Secretary of State
Speaker 17: for European Affairs, Victoria Newland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine,
Speaker 17: Jeffrey Pyatt.
Speaker 1: Questions of credibility are being raised after a private chat
Speaker 1: between two top US diplomats was leaked online.
Speaker 18: I think Yachts is the guy who's got the economic experience,
Speaker 18: the governing experience.
Speaker 6: He's the guy.
Speaker 18: You know, what he needs is Cleech and Tony Book
Speaker 18: on the outside. I just think Cleech going in, he's
Speaker 18: going to be at that level working for Yachts and
Speaker 18: yuk It's just not going to work.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So I think that. I think that's right.
Speaker 13: Okay, good.
Speaker 11: Would you want us to try to show up a
Speaker 11: call with him?
Speaker 18: There's your next Jeff Sullivan's come back to me VFR
Speaker 18: saying you need Biden, and I said probably tomorrow for
Speaker 18: an ATA boy and to get the deeds to stick.
Speaker 18: So Biden's willing.
Speaker 17: So you had this remarkable phone call where you have
Speaker 17: these two senior officials of the US government apparently talking
Speaker 17: about a coup or how they were played to restructure
Speaker 17: the government of Ukraine.
Speaker 6: So just a heads up that was not the clip
Speaker 6: where he was with the Nakovich Shi that was my bad.
Speaker 6: But he does extensive interviews with Yanikovich in this documentary.
Speaker 4: Right and just be transparenting on Akovich to Russian leaning guy.
Speaker 6: So, but that's what's interesting is he seemed like he
Speaker 6: was trying to make overtures to the EU. And people
Speaker 6: remember the lobbying scheme that Paul Manifort got caught up
Speaker 6: in when he was at Mercury Public Affairs, a huge,
Speaker 6: powerful lobbying firm and the Podesta Group. Tony Podesta ended
Speaker 6: up having to retroactively file as a registered lobbyist on
Speaker 6: behalf of Ukraine because he was representing And again, you
Speaker 6: sound like a crank when you talk about this, but
Speaker 6: it's true. The Party of Regions, Yanikovich's party, they set
Speaker 6: up a shell think tank called the European Center for
Speaker 6: a Modern Ukraine in order to avoid registering on behalf
Speaker 6: of Ferra. Now, eventually, through really great reporting by Ken
Speaker 6: Vogel and others, it came to be completely apparent that
Speaker 6: this was a shell think tank representing a political party
Speaker 6: in Ukraine and they were trying basically to help Yanikovich
Speaker 6: get closer to the West. They were talking extensively to
Speaker 6: Hillary Clinton's State Department. You can see that in their
Speaker 6: retroactive filings. So this was all super tangled with Western interests.
Speaker 6: It's the same thing when you go down the Barisma
Speaker 6: rabbit hole and you realize how connected to sort of
Speaker 6: political power Barisma was, and then Hunter Biden was, and
Speaker 6: then Joe Biden was just sort of by association. Western
Speaker 6: interests in Ukraine have been pushing in making money off
Speaker 6: of Ukrainian politics in really disgusting ways. And I think
Speaker 6: one of the things, and Ryan, I'm curious because you
Speaker 6: probably remember this covering this when it happened with Madan,
Speaker 6: and when the Newland phone call came out, people were shocked,
Speaker 6: although they shouldn't have been by her tone of voice,
Speaker 6: where she just looking at Ukraine and Dambas like a chessboard.
Speaker 4: Right right, and because our media sucks.
Speaker 5: Like the thing that made a ton of news out
Speaker 5: of that call, which presumably was intercepted by Russia by
Speaker 5: the way, and then and it leaked, was when she
Speaker 5: said f the EU. It's like, do we want to
Speaker 5: go to the who? Do we want to go to?
Speaker 5: EO C euh And she's like, F the EU and
Speaker 5: because she said it like that, and she said that
Speaker 5: that became the big piece of news out of it.
Speaker 5: And the German Chancellor said, you know, how dare she
Speaker 5: say that, like, you know, the EU like actually like legitimately,
Speaker 5: like how dare she say that? Like the EU has
Speaker 5: much more ought to have much more say over what's
Speaker 5: going on with regard to Ukraine than the United States
Speaker 5: would never setting aside the idea that either of them
Speaker 5: should be dictating kind of who runs who runs Ukraine.
Speaker 5: But I think that the the Biden, the Hunter Biden,
Speaker 5: the Barisma, the lobbying, the man Afford stuff, like, I
Speaker 5: think that's all like interesting, But I also think it's
Speaker 5: it's peripheral because like when you have these kind of
Speaker 5: global power struggles, you've got, on the one hand, the
Speaker 5: kind of foundational chess playing between you know, major powers
Speaker 5: that are driven by geopolitics between kind of the EU,
Speaker 5: the United States and and and Russia.
Speaker 4: You've got those main forces.
Speaker 5: Then you've got parasites that just kind of feed off
Speaker 5: of the host that is this, that is this thing.
Speaker 5: You've got people like Manaphort just they none of them
Speaker 5: care Hunter Biden, like they don't don't care they're just like, oh,
Speaker 5: there's there's a clash of interests here.
Speaker 4: Anytime there's a clash of interest there's.
Speaker 5: Gonna be money that's that's moving around, and we're going
Speaker 5: to try to make some of that money. And so
Speaker 5: you can think whatever you want to think about the
Speaker 5: peripheral stuff and go ahead and lock all the people
Speaker 5: up as far as far as I'm concerned. But the
Speaker 5: actual power play, the actual geopolitics under underway are what they.
Speaker 4: Appear to be.
Speaker 5: Like Victoria Newland did uh, you know, come up with
Speaker 5: the structure of the new Ukrainian government like she she
Speaker 5: like kicked around the names. This is who were who
Speaker 5: we should put in, this is who should be on
Speaker 5: the outside, And that is in fact what ended up
Speaker 5: happening like that, that that's that's what happened. That the
Speaker 5: guy that you're talking about ole tiny book is a
Speaker 5: is it basically a neo Nazi Like.
Speaker 4: McCain met with him. The Newland is propping.
Speaker 6: Him up there, yes, and Nazi here by the way, Like.
Speaker 5: I said, we sound crazy, but like no, no, like
Speaker 5: just just google this, just google this guy. Like it's
Speaker 5: a it's a hard right neo Nazi party that we
Speaker 5: kind of pushed into power. And then Russia responded immediately
Speaker 5: by that that little quiet little Green Men thing where
Speaker 5: they sent in all these folks into Crimea and they
Speaker 5: just popped up and they're like, Crimea is ours now, yes,
Speaker 5: and uh, the new far right government was you know,
Speaker 5: hyper hyper nationalist, and the you know, Eastern Ukraine was
Speaker 5: supportive was mor Yanikovich country and more Russian speaking. This
Speaker 5: new far right government came in and you know, effectively,
Speaker 5: you know, ban speaking Russian in public, and a war
Speaker 5: breaks out in the Domebos in the Eastern Ukraine region,
Speaker 5: and ten years later, you know, here we are. So
Speaker 5: we go back to that guy's original point. Even if
Speaker 5: you take her at her own goals, Yes, like her goal.
Speaker 4: You can agree or disagree with it. You can think
Speaker 4: it's cynical, you can think it's evil, you can think
Speaker 4: it's you.
Speaker 5: Know, imperialism. It didn't it also didn't work, Nope, but
Speaker 5: she lost. She's losing.
Speaker 6: That's why I loved the Fauci comparison, because it's like
Speaker 6: him saying, our goal is to enhance the pathogens, to
Speaker 6: protect us from the pathogens, stop pandemics. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 6: his goal was public health. Her goal was peace, and
Speaker 6: by those very standards.
Speaker 4: He certainly didn't stop the pandemic.
Speaker 5: That's the funny thing, even if you believe that it
Speaker 5: did not come out of the lab in Wuhan. The
Speaker 5: lab in Wuhan's goal was to detect a pandemic before
Speaker 5: it goes global. Well done, and either way it started
Speaker 5: either in the lab or within a couple miles of
Speaker 5: the lab, and they didn't stop it.
Speaker 6: So just a great work, all run, everyone work all around.
Speaker 6: Yanikovich did end up fleeing to take shelter in Russia
Speaker 6: after a scuttled EU deal.
Speaker 5: Basically, and a lot of people thought that when Russia,
Speaker 5: when Putin came back to Kiev, he was going to
Speaker 5: try to put some Yanokovich or somebody like him back
Speaker 5: on top of a puppet government.
Speaker 6: And then again it's this argument about Victoria Newland by
Speaker 6: her own standards, and so often with US policy still
Speaker 6: treating everything like it's the Cold War. But even during
Speaker 6: the Cold War, you end up pushing people who may
Speaker 6: have been amenable to making deals with the EU further
Speaker 6: into the hands of Putin, which was not your goal,
Speaker 6: but countertudibly to you, but intuitively to everyone else is like,
Speaker 6: very obviously going to be the outcomes. Sometimes I do
Speaker 6: have one question before we wrap to you, right, we.
Speaker 4: Also got to talk about her husband before we wrap,
Speaker 4: but go ahead.
Speaker 6: Yes, my question was going to be, actually, this is perfect.
Speaker 6: My question was going to be the CIA report New
Speaker 6: York Times comes out last week about the sort of deep,
Speaker 6: long standing CIA operations in Ukraine, which we knew about
Speaker 6: from other reporting. But I think this was very clearly
Speaker 6: a coordinated leak by people in the intelligence community to
Speaker 6: get the New York Times to report that the American
Speaker 6: intelligence community had been trying to steer the Ukrainian intelligence
Speaker 6: in the right direction over all these years, but Ukrainian
Speaker 6: intelligence just kept going rogue and doing their own thing.
Speaker 6: It sort of felt like a caverr ass leak. And
Speaker 6: then the next week Victoria Newland has gone, I'm not
Speaker 6: tying those together in any conspiratorial way. I'm genuinely curious
Speaker 6: what you think, Grian, if Victoria Newland is leaving because
Speaker 6: she lost clout because her argument started to look more
Speaker 6: obviously like it had failed. But then at the same time,
Speaker 6: that brings us back to Jake Sullivan and Tony Blanket
Speaker 6: and Joe Biden themselves.
Speaker 5: I mean, I would assume that she stepped aside in
Speaker 5: protest of her her own, you know, policy objectives, not
Speaker 5: not no.
Speaker 4: Longer carrying the day.
Speaker 5: I would guess that she's whatever she was arguing for
Speaker 5: is no longer the thing that's going to happen.
Speaker 4: This is not that.
Speaker 5: This is not the type of person who whose will
Speaker 5: to power just has them stepping away at any key moments,
Speaker 5: right So so that so that's my suspicion, and that's
Speaker 5: and that's why universally, people who watch this are saying
Speaker 5: this is likely to signal a significant strategic shift regarding
Speaker 5: American policy in Ukraine.
Speaker 6: Now, let's talk about the husband.
Speaker 4: Robert Kaplan.
Speaker 6: That's a Real Housewives quote, by the way, you should
Speaker 6: should we talk about the husband. It's the nine year
Speaker 6: anniversary of the Amsterdam dinner from the Real Housewives above,
Speaker 6: we didn't even celebrate.
Speaker 4: We should talk about the husband's talk about the husband.
Speaker 5: Real Housewives of Foggy Bottom. So Robert Kaplan is one
Speaker 5: of the leading kind of neo cons and she too
Speaker 5: has been in the neo cons circle.
Speaker 4: So it would if this was like.
Speaker 5: One of these marriages where the people are, you know,
Speaker 5: have divergent politics then who cares who she's married to,
Speaker 5: But like her, her politics and Robert Caplan's politics pretty
Speaker 5: clearly overlapped. Now we don't have as much public writing,
Speaker 5: you know, from Newland because she's been an internal operator basically.
Speaker 4: Her her entire career.
Speaker 5: But we do have it from Robert Kaplan, who was
Speaker 5: you know, found, you know, co founder basically of the
Speaker 5: neoconservative movement in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 4: That that that orchestrated the.
Speaker 5: Invasion of Iraq and the rest of the rest of
Speaker 5: that disastrous kind of American you know, aggressively imperial policy,
Speaker 5: rather than the kind of Newland attempts to do imperialism,
Speaker 5: which is color revolutions and manipulating behind the scenes, but
Speaker 5: both towards the same end, spreading democracy working great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just synergy all just across the board. I
Speaker 6: actually liked the Real House was a foggy bottom reference
Speaker 6: because it's basically how this is operating. Not I don't
Speaker 6: mean that in like a sexist way, because obviously Victoria
Speaker 6: Newland is not a housewife, and that's sort of the
Speaker 6: joke about the housewives and solf.
Speaker 4: Now she's the brains of that family.
Speaker 6: I mean, but it's it's just how DC works. That's
Speaker 6: the swamp for you in a nutshell. All right, let's
Speaker 6: move on to the huge news out of Arizona. Kirsten
Speaker 6: Cinema shocked the political world yesterday by announcing she was
Speaker 6: stepping down. She was retiring. I think we have some
Speaker 6: video that we can roll of Kirsten Cinema queued up.
Speaker 6: She gave a what sounded sort of conspicuously like a
Speaker 6: Nobel no Labels thing, but she's also said that she
Speaker 6: is not interested in the no labels ticket. Just listen
Speaker 6: to what Kirsten Cinema said in this video.
Speaker 12: The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic
Speaker 12: attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise
Speaker 12: is a dirty word. We've arrived at that crossroad and
Speaker 12: we chose anger and division. I believe in my approach,
Speaker 12: but it's not what America wants right now. I love
Speaker 12: Arizona and I am so proud of what we've delivered
Speaker 12: because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get
Speaker 12: stuff done. I will leave the Senate at the end
Speaker 12: of this year.
Speaker 5: So she didn't want to run against Kerry lakeron Yeah
Speaker 5: and So polls half her under ten percent in the election.
Speaker 5: Reuben Diego said that he would challenge her if she
Speaker 5: didn't support Biden's kind of domestic policy agenda. She thwarted
Speaker 5: Biden's domestic pologies agenda, so Diego did jump into the race.
Speaker 4: Diego is a couple points.
Speaker 5: Behind Lake and Poles, I think in general, but with
Speaker 5: Cinema gobbling up single digits but non trivial single digits,
Speaker 5: that was making it a tough race for him.
Speaker 6: Probably not a ton of carry Lake and Kirson.
Speaker 5: Cinema CRUs no, but a lot of Cinema and Diego
Speaker 5: crossover vote or so.
Speaker 6: She was an independent technically, but.
Speaker 4: Right last, right exactly.
Speaker 5: But I think that this makes Diego, you know, if
Speaker 5: we were doing the counterpoints needle and lean them at
Speaker 5: this point in the in the Arizona Senate race, as
Speaker 5: a result of her dropping out of this, you know,
Speaker 5: the thing that might have been kind of peak Kirsten
Speaker 5: Cinema came during the fifteen dollars a minimum wage vote,
Speaker 5: and if we can play this here, I think what
Speaker 5: drove people nuts is that here she is coming out
Speaker 5: on the Senate floor in her just gen X costume
Speaker 5: and giving the thumbs down like this, like kind of
Speaker 5: enthusiastic thumbs down to a fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage.
Speaker 5: I asked somebody on Twitter when that happened to come
Speaker 5: up with a nice edit of it with the four
Speaker 5: non Blonde What's Up song?
Speaker 4: Yes, it's so good.
Speaker 5: We're not going to play it here because we don't
Speaker 5: want this video to get taken down because they want
Speaker 5: to hide the truth from you that that was. That
Speaker 5: was a four Bland's moment right there. It's just so
Speaker 5: incredible to see. You know, these these are the leading
Speaker 5: lights of my generation.
Speaker 6: It's the two sides of the gen X coin, right,
Speaker 6: Like you either end up being Ryan Grimmer Custon Cinema.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so she started out like me, basically like a
Speaker 5: fringe anti war protest weak in.
Speaker 4: Yeah. She was. She was working with Code Pink.
Speaker 5: She went she protested the two thousand and four convention
Speaker 5: either whichever whichever convention was down in Miami.
Speaker 4: She was. She was out there in the streets protesting it.
Speaker 5: She was elected as a basically a progressive in the
Speaker 5: in the in the Arizona legislature and then she was
Speaker 5: just on grease skids from from left to right. She
Speaker 5: was elected to the House, still somewhat normy dem gets.
Speaker 5: She wins in twenty eighteen in the Senate, fairly standard
Speaker 5: Democratic line at that point, but very quickly became kind
Speaker 5: of the biggest thorn in the left side. If she wanted,
Speaker 5: she could have held that seat, you know, indefinitely. You no,
Speaker 5: she it was hers. It'll be interesting to see where
Speaker 5: where her corporate payout comes from. I think speaches will
Speaker 5: be lucrative for her, Like she can show up at
Speaker 5: associations and get twenty thirty grand of pop just to like,
Speaker 5: maybe even more than that, you know, to speak to
Speaker 5: like the dental Association, so that they can like say, like,
Speaker 5: oh look we've got Kirsten Kirsten Cinema here. She could
Speaker 5: do some consulting, I think, on for some corporations, just
Speaker 5: so that like she could be like a rain maker
Speaker 5: somebody who like meets with clients and helps bring them on.
Speaker 5: She's very charming personally. She loves to, like, you know,
Speaker 5: have nice dinners, drink nice wine. She interned at a
Speaker 5: private equity owned vineyard winery while she was a senator.
Speaker 5: She likes the good life, good for her, and so
Speaker 5: she can get that financed. I think, and rain making
Speaker 5: is almost more important than kind of doing this the
Speaker 5: strategy like bringing in those big clients so she could
Speaker 5: do that. She's not gonna be able to lobby a
Speaker 5: lot of Democrats, that's for sure, nobody. They're not going
Speaker 5: to want to take her calls. But she can call
Speaker 5: a lot of these Republicans. I think they really they
Speaker 5: really like her personally.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, And it's not like Republican voters like her personally,
Speaker 6: but Republicans or powerful Republicans do it.
Speaker 4: Got their cell numbers. She knows what's going on, and I.
Speaker 6: Should say her committee assignments in terms of where that
Speaker 6: payout might come from. She was on Homeland Security, she's
Speaker 6: on commerce, Science and transportation, she was on appropriations. There's
Speaker 6: plenty of money to be made for Kirsten Cinema. Now,
Speaker 6: I do think that it's interesting No Labels said they're
Speaker 6: going to decide within the week after Super Tuesday. There
Speaker 6: are tons of leaks coming out of No Labels and
Speaker 6: places like Politico that it's an absolute disaster. Behind the scenes.
Speaker 6: Of course, big donors feel like they NO Labels missed
Speaker 6: their moment that they should have had someone jump in.
Speaker 6: They should have begged a Joe Manchin or Kirsten Cinema
Speaker 6: to jump into the right spot Larry Hogan, but they
Speaker 6: should have done it successfully and gotten them to jump
Speaker 6: into the race. Mansion obviously said he didn't want to
Speaker 6: be a spoiler. But Kirson Cinema is an independent. She
Speaker 6: actually left the Democratic Party. She came out and gave
Speaker 6: this address about how compromised is a dirty word. That
Speaker 6: is one of the great misleading lines of no labels,
Speaker 6: that if we just compromised more, which is a total
Speaker 6: code for if we just grifted more, if we just
Speaker 6: got those centrist members from wealthy districts to agree to
Speaker 6: spend more money for their friends, than everything would work out.
Speaker 6: It's like, that is absolutely true. We could pass tons
Speaker 6: of legislation if we got these populists out of Washington,
Speaker 6: whether they're on the left or the right. I remember
Speaker 6: when we had not too long ago, Sam Goodldegg and
Speaker 6: his colleague on the show to talk about how actually
Speaker 6: the wealthiest districts on the House side tend to be
Speaker 6: the most centrist districts and the poorest districts tend to
Speaker 6: be the populist districts, and that's what the no Labels
Speaker 6: conversation is really about. They think, of course, it all
Speaker 6: trickles down and helps the poor when you spend money,
Speaker 6: which is the argument they've been making for Ukraine, that
Speaker 6: we're just we're rebuilding America's industrial belt because of this
Speaker 6: Ukraine spending, which is also.
Speaker 3: Not even true.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think Mike Williams and Sam good Older when they
Speaker 5: came on and talked about that report, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 5: and you guys watch that's so you might remember, the
Speaker 5: richest caucus in the country is the No Labels caucuses,
Speaker 5: which is the Problems No Labels sponsored the Problem Solvers Caucus.
Speaker 11: And so.
Speaker 5: This no labels theory has been tried, like Cinema tried it,
Speaker 5: Like said, she very closely hwed to the demands of
Speaker 5: the private equity industry and the way that they think
Speaker 5: of the Congress ought to legislate, and she.
Speaker 4: Wound up at like eight percent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, then that's actually doing better than she ought to
Speaker 5: have because the private equity world is less.
Speaker 4: Than eight percent. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Just while we're talking about Kristensen, m I need to
Speaker 6: make an important correction she was not herself Wickan. This
Speaker 6: is reading from in front of the show. Philip Legman,
Speaker 6: who wrote this article back in October twenty eighteen. He
Speaker 6: broke a story of and I just got to read
Speaker 6: the pros here.
Speaker 7: Rep.
Speaker 6: Kirston Cinema, the Democratic nominee for you a Senate, is
Speaker 6: not a witch, but she has been known to hang
Speaker 6: out with witches. It was during the height of the
Speaker 6: Iraq War when Cinema then afar.
Speaker 4: It was the nineties, man, everybody was wicked.
Speaker 6: Everyone was dabbling. Then a far left protest organizermered some
Speaker 6: in supernatural help to help stop the Iraq War. Emails
Speaker 6: obtained the Washington Examiner show Cinema inviting a prominent cup
Speaker 6: and of feminist witches in Arizona called Pagan Cluster to
Speaker 6: celebrate International Women's Day and protest the war in March
Speaker 6: of two thousand and three. The arc of Kirsten Cinema
Speaker 6: is that.
Speaker 4: She basically lived my life in the nineties.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say it's a fascinating arc, but I
Speaker 6: also feel like it's you go in one of two directions, right,
Speaker 6: Like you either think that and that's what drives me
Speaker 6: crazy about no labels. Is they spend so much money
Speaker 6: trying to convince normal Americans that what's super edgy is
Speaker 6: their idea of like compromise, and it's bullshit. It's just
Speaker 6: a code word for corporatism. There's nothing edgy about it.
Speaker 6: It's it's not like the like even the category no labels,
Speaker 6: even the name no labels. They're trying to make it
Speaker 6: sound hip and cool, even though it's basically like the
Speaker 6: Dad Tennis shoes of politics. Sorry that that was.
Speaker 4: My pet theory on on Cinnamon.
Speaker 5: I'd love to maybe we can get her on after
Speaker 5: she's no longer a senator and just put this tour.
Speaker 4: So I'm curious.
Speaker 5: I used to talk to her decent amount when she
Speaker 5: was in the House of Representatives before she made her
Speaker 5: her right wing turn. And so my pet theory is
Speaker 5: that the far left that she was a that she
Speaker 5: was a significant, like daily part of back in the
Speaker 5: nineties two thousands, I can testify, can be a pretty
Speaker 5: toxic and unpleasant place, and I wonder if she mistook
Speaker 5: that the top the individual toxicity that you have to
Speaker 5: put up with in the service of the gend of
Speaker 5: the mission, the common good for what the left represents
Speaker 5: because she has a visceral kind of personal hatred for
Speaker 5: the Left that really can't, as far as I believe,
Speaker 5: be explained any other way. She talks about, you know
Speaker 5: that all we want to do is like, you know,
Speaker 5: go after you know, each other's opponent's like, you know,
Speaker 5: nobody goes after anybody harder than Cinema goes after the left. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and there's got to be something there. Maybe she'll tell us, well,
Speaker 5: I'll put on my calendar a year from now, we'll
Speaker 5: have her on. We'll have her on, and we'll we'll
Speaker 5: just put her on the couch and figure out, like
Speaker 5: what happened.
Speaker 6: I think it's deeply personal.
Speaker 4: As the four non blondes would ask exactly.
Speaker 6: But I think to Kirsen, Cinema and Tulsa Gabbard, there's
Speaker 6: something people like that, there's something that is very personal
Speaker 6: because there's this feeling and I'm sure actually a lot
Speaker 6: of our viewers feel the party, the Democratic Party that
Speaker 6: you were used to supporting. It feels like if you
Speaker 6: look at certain issues went crazy and if you don't
Speaker 6: like the squad and you're still like an anti corporate,
Speaker 6: anti establishment democrat, you're gonna be like well, what the
Speaker 6: hell am I going to do? And then Kirsen suddenly
Speaker 6: gets some money thrown at her. She isn't in a Bennett.
Speaker 6: So again, I think it's both sides of the gen
Speaker 6: x coin representative.
Speaker 5: And for people curious about what I'm talking about, if
Speaker 5: you've ever done and let's say, organizing with the Green Party,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: If you haven't, then you don't.
Speaker 6: He almost sold T shirts at What's Stuck ninety nine? Fun,
Speaker 6: Ryan Grim.
Speaker 5: Fact I did sell natter T shirts at Madison Square
Speaker 5: Garden when he was running for office.
Speaker 6: All right, let's move on to the Middle East. Hesbola
Speaker 6: fired rockets at Israel yesterday, Ryan, do you want to
Speaker 6: tee up basically some of the developments that just happened
Speaker 6: in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we can put this first vo up.
Speaker 5: This is a pretty significant launching of missiles from Hesbola
Speaker 5: into Israel.
Speaker 4: This is an escalation.
Speaker 5: You can see the Iron Dome there intercepting most of
Speaker 5: these business and from what we understand, the Iron Dome
Speaker 5: either successfully intercepted every launch or or they fell harmlessly elsewhere.
Speaker 5: Like we we don't, we don't, we don't. Have word
Speaker 5: of any Israeli casualties.
Speaker 17: Uh.
Speaker 4: Put of this next element.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: The Israel says it's it's put, it's preparing how it's
Speaker 5: going going to respond, It's going through military options. You know,
Speaker 5: there has been you know, the talk of opening up
Speaker 5: a second front between Israel Lebanon up up in the
Speaker 5: north has been as much a topic of conversation in
Speaker 5: the Israeli media practically as as the war down in
Speaker 5: the south that Israel is waging against against gaz with
Speaker 5: the you know, it's hard. You know, basically an Israel
Speaker 5: in the government now you've got the far right and
Speaker 5: the right and so you have a strong faction that
Speaker 5: is is basically making the case just do it all now,
Speaker 5: like it's time to seize you fully sees go on
Speaker 5: high and and lock that down like that you're Seria,
Speaker 5: forget about it.
Speaker 4: You're never touching this again.
Speaker 5: And to go back into Lebanon and seize territory there
Speaker 5: in a buffer zone between between them and Hesbla. The
Speaker 5: one of the problems domestically that the Israeli population has
Speaker 5: been facing it has been shortage of housing, basically housing
Speaker 5: housing prices over the years, and that that partly explains
Speaker 5: all of the West Bank settlements.
Speaker 4: It's like, if you.
Speaker 5: Got nimbi over here, well, we got how about yes,
Speaker 5: in somebody else's backyard. So you go in and you
Speaker 5: and you build all these settlements and you and you
Speaker 5: subsidize settlers to to live there and then commute just
Speaker 5: to half an hour to Tel Aviv or whatever on
Speaker 5: these you know, just free roads that go right right through,
Speaker 5: whereas if you're palacinting, you can't can't drive in those roads.
Speaker 5: It takes six hours to get anywhere. Now you can't
Speaker 5: go anywhere at all.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 5: Since October seventh, a lot of a lot of Israelis
Speaker 5: in the north and south have kind of pushed back
Speaker 5: into the into the middle of the country, staying with
Speaker 5: friends or and otherwise like getting apartments or houses and
Speaker 5: further driving up the housing housing crunch there. And so
Speaker 5: one of the kind of one of the missions of
Speaker 5: the Israeli government is to push push north and south
Speaker 5: so that people can return to their homes there, because
Speaker 5: if they don't, they've got this extraordinarily difficult, you know,
Speaker 5: pressure cooker situation going on. Problem of course, as it
Speaker 5: has always been for the Israeli project is that there
Speaker 5: are already people there, and so working that out means
Speaker 5: either expelling those people or killing them. And to start
Speaker 5: a second front, it's sort of serious second front, let's say,
Speaker 5: in retaliation for for this UH when they're already at
Speaker 5: such a low point in global opinion and end the.
Speaker 4: War not going great with.
Speaker 5: And this this RAFA incursion expected at any point, is
Speaker 5: it is a moment of like uh top you know,
Speaker 5: heightened heightened risk because at the same time, and then
Speaker 5: I'll shut up. In the West Bank, you've got you know,
Speaker 5: complete economic meltdown from Israel withholding payments that you know,
Speaker 5: keeping Palestinians money from the Palestinians and banning Palestinians from
Speaker 5: going from the West Bank to their jobs you know
Speaker 5: elsewhere in Israel.
Speaker 4: So that's so that's a pressure cooker.
Speaker 5: So it's at the same time that you have net
Speaker 5: outward migration you know from Israel UH and and a
Speaker 5: collapsing economy.
Speaker 6: And I actually don't want you to shut up because
Speaker 6: I want to get your take on the fiber optic cables.
Speaker 6: We can put this next element up on the screen
Speaker 6: from Forbes. Four fiber optic cables damaged in red Sea.
Speaker 6: Here's what we know. That's the way Forbes put it.
Speaker 6: But I'm actually more curious Ryan about what you know?
Speaker 5: Right, these are the right. So the hohu Thies, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, have been saying that not only are are
Speaker 5: they going to you know, stop shipping through the Red Sea,
Speaker 5: that is, you know, headed to an Israeli port or
Speaker 5: a ship is associated with either Israel or the coalition
Speaker 5: that is arming Israel, like, so that's they're doing that,
Speaker 5: but there they also have you know, threatened you know,
Speaker 5: global infrastructures such as you know, targeting these these fiber
Speaker 5: optic cables. We talked earlier in the program about the
Speaker 5: blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, kind of breaking the
Speaker 5: seal on the idea that you know, countries as part
Speaker 5: of their geopolitics are going to go around and destroy
Speaker 5: massive pieces of civilian infrastructure that connect you know, that
Speaker 5: connect countries together.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So the Red Sea blockade is driving up is driving
Speaker 5: the Israeli economy into the ground like massively, It's hurting
Speaker 5: the European economy significantly. It's driving up prices somewhat.
Speaker 4: Here like it is it is a contributor to inflation.
Speaker 5: But not as much as it you know, will be
Speaker 5: as if it if it can continues on. But this is, yes,
Speaker 5: another another escalation here, all four just the continuation of
Speaker 5: a war that the entire world just wants to see
Speaker 5: Israel stop.
Speaker 6: And you tease this earlier in the show. But the
Speaker 6: next element here's from a report from Pablo Manricez, who
Speaker 6: says a source familiar with the speaker's priorities, So Speaker
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson, we can confirm continue to be a real
Speaker 6: person his priorities this week tells Uh told Mike Johnson
Speaker 6: that he is too busy to meet with Benny Gant.
Speaker 6: Now Benny Gantz is Israel's Minister of Defense. That is right.
Speaker 5: He met with some right, he met with members of
Speaker 5: the House for Him Faires Committee. So he's here in
Speaker 5: the United States genning up support for Israel's war effort.
Speaker 5: There is a famous quote. I forget which Israeli Prime
Speaker 5: minister said it, but I think it was about George W.
Speaker 4: Bush.
Speaker 5: He was like, look, I wanted to get Bush on
Speaker 5: the phone. They told me he's giving a speech in Philadelphia.
Speaker 5: He's like, I don't care what the President's doing.
Speaker 4: I want to talk to him.
Speaker 5: Now and they went on stage, pulled the President of
Speaker 5: the United States off the stage and put him on
Speaker 5: the phone with the Israeli Prime Minister. And his point was,
Speaker 5: that is the access that we have to American corridors
Speaker 5: of power at the very top. Now Bennigants at the
Speaker 5: height of his war can't get a meeting with the
Speaker 5: Speaker of the House of Representative.
Speaker 6: It's pretty interesting, long time supporter of Israel.
Speaker 5: Too, right, And this is after the APAK has made
Speaker 5: this strategic decision to wage war with significant elements of
Speaker 5: the Democratic Coalition, go after they've men in California, even
Speaker 5: though he's not even that critical of Israel, just because
Speaker 5: it seems like they prefer a Republican if you have
Speaker 5: if you have a Democrat and a Republican and both
Speaker 5: of them are supportive of Israel.
Speaker 4: APAC used to stay out of that.
Speaker 5: Now it is Dave min Race that's breaking a new
Speaker 5: steal of being a kind of almost hyper part as
Speaker 5: an organization. Even as they continue to support Hakeem Jeffery
Speaker 5: Standi Hoyer. You know Democratic, they still have tight relationships
Speaker 5: with Democratic leadership. They're really putting all their eggs in
Speaker 5: the GOP basket, while the GOP is putting its eggs
Speaker 5: in the mega basket and the MAGA and a pack
Speaker 5: might not be the most long lasting relationship for I
Speaker 5: think pretty obvious reasons.
Speaker 6: And you know, I know, shutdown coverage gets repetitive because
Speaker 6: it is and it feels like we're all just in
Speaker 6: a holding pattern. But the government is set to shut
Speaker 6: down on Saturday if the House of Representatives doesn't pass
Speaker 6: spending bills. So Mike Johnson genuinely may have been it's
Speaker 6: possible too busy to meet with Benny Gantz, although Ryan
Speaker 6: and your book writes your book shows us about Democrats,
Speaker 6: but even with Republicans. Of course, with Republicans, basically you
Speaker 6: clear your schedule if you need to talk with is
Speaker 6: the Israeli Minister of Defense. But Mike Johnson is hurtling
Speaker 6: towards a shutdown, and part of that is because there's
Speaker 6: disagreement on Ukraine funding, which Democrats and centrist Republicans have
Speaker 6: insisted on tying to Israel funding. And so john is
Speaker 6: now the bill the sort of two tiered mini bus.
Speaker 6: You know, the Republicans said we're not going to govern
Speaker 6: by omnibus anymore. They've continued to govern by omnibus. So
Speaker 6: now Mike Johnson's plan was to try to not trick
Speaker 6: the Freedom Caucus but appease the Freedom Caucus by saying
Speaker 6: we're going to do two tiers, so two minibuses. They
Speaker 6: released the text of those. The Freedom Caucus is wildly
Speaker 6: unhappy with it. Ukraine and Israel funding is on the
Speaker 6: table because the government is hurtling towards potential shutdown if
Speaker 6: there isn't a deal agreed to. Freedom Caucus doesn't have
Speaker 6: a lot of incentive because they represent districts that don't
Speaker 6: care if the government shuts down. And normally that's okay,
Speaker 6: but Mike Johnson has such a thin margin that not
Speaker 6: only could the government shutdown, but then he could be
Speaker 6: vacated from his chair. So he may genuinely not have
Speaker 6: a lot of time to meet with Benny Gantz. But
Speaker 6: you know why Benny Gantz wanted to meet with him,
Speaker 6: and that's because the Ukraine and Israel funding has been
Speaker 6: tied together, and that in and of itself is tied
Speaker 6: to this shutdown conversation.
Speaker 5: And I'm curious where you think some of this skepticism
Speaker 5: of Israel is coming from from the magaside is it
Speaker 5: is it the isolationism? Is it some of the you know,
Speaker 5: there's some there's some genuine anti Semitism out there among
Speaker 5: some in the base, or is it?
Speaker 4: Is it something else?
Speaker 17: Like?
Speaker 18: What is.
Speaker 4: What's going on here?
Speaker 5: Like how you know you're normally the Republican House speaker
Speaker 5: is going to take any call, take any meeting from
Speaker 5: from an Israeli official who's here in the United States.
Speaker 4: To not do that is seismic. Uh, what's your what's
Speaker 4: your read?
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of opposition in Israel among
Speaker 6: young Democrats obviously, as we've covered many times on the show.
Speaker 6: I mean, you can't really overstate that. But Israel still
Speaker 6: polls relatively well in the whole country. Now, polling is different.
Speaker 6: It depends on what questions you're asking, It depends on
Speaker 6: how you're asking the questions. But Republican voters in general
Speaker 6: are supportive of Israel. That said, I've seen cracks and
Speaker 6: that found as I'm sure many people have, and you
Speaker 6: especially hear that from sort of the hardcore magawing and
Speaker 6: usually when you see that rhetoric, at least in my experience,
Speaker 6: it's been tied to domestic affairs. So basically the line
Speaker 6: that we have so many problems here, we have so
Speaker 6: many people struggling to get by here, And actually used
Speaker 6: to hear that a lot from the left. You've heard
Speaker 6: it from both left and right. Isolation of swings over
Speaker 6: the course of American history. It's not a new argument,
Speaker 6: but it does seem like it's gaining traction, especially now
Speaker 6: that the Ukrainian Israel funding is tied together. It's just
Speaker 6: the same thing with Ukraine. You know, we're spending billions
Speaker 6: of dollars on this war that doesn't directly affect the
Speaker 6: everyday lives of your average, every day life of your
Speaker 6: average American as people see it. So it gets harder
Speaker 6: to sell foreign conflicts when people feel like they're being
Speaker 6: left behind in their own country. And a lot of
Speaker 6: those people are voting Republican now. So I don't think
Speaker 6: it's huge, but I do think it exists, and I
Speaker 6: think it's growing.
Speaker 5: I also saw I think I think it was certain
Speaker 5: of Mike Cernovich that was talking about this. I'm curious
Speaker 5: that how much attraction is on the right for this.
Speaker 5: I saw some criticism of Israel connected to both its
Speaker 5: attempted expulsion of a lot of Armenian Christians from the
Speaker 5: Armenian Quarter who they have been there for thousands of
Speaker 5: years continuously, not this like you know, we were here
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five hundred years ago and then no, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 5: we're back. It's like no, the the Armenian Quarter has
Speaker 5: been the Armenian Quarter like practically since the beginning of
Speaker 5: time all.
Speaker 4: And then also.
Speaker 5: That you know, Israel was arming and equipping a basic
Speaker 5: ethnic cleansing against Armenian Christians and Nigorno Karabak.
Speaker 6: So that's become and that's also become almost a similar
Speaker 6: in the Ukraine War that if you know, you have
Speaker 6: the expulsion of Armenian Christians from there, and you know
Speaker 6: you have the sort of a Aris on one side,
Speaker 6: the Russians on one side, and you feel like a
Speaker 6: lot of Americans, I think Tucker has talked about this before.
Speaker 6: Tucker Cross has talked about this before. It looks like
Speaker 6: we're protecting foreign interests over like this. This a weird
Speaker 6: prioritization of different foreign interests in a way that a
Speaker 6: lot of Americans, this was the argument, would be upset
Speaker 6: to if the media covered it and to see what
Speaker 6: had happened to the Armenian Christians.
Speaker 5: And uh yeah, like that's people want a background on that.
Speaker 5: I did a deconstructed episode on that maybe six months
Speaker 5: or a year ago. Just google like deconstructed Niguano Kira
Speaker 5: back and you'll get that'll give you the whole background
Speaker 5: of this really fascinating and disturbing situation that is Israel
Speaker 5: Is played a key role in arming and equipping the
Speaker 5: kind of the bad guys in this story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Nigora careback thing has gotten, it's.
Speaker 4: Gotten starting to get some tractions.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, and you're starting to hear people talk about it,
Speaker 6: and I think specifically because of Ukraine, but the Armenian
Speaker 6: Christian Quarter in Jerusalem. You combine those two things, it
Speaker 6: could get more and more traction. I haven't seen the
Speaker 6: damn break yet. But again, when people feel like domestically
Speaker 6: they're getting screwed over and over again, that's those arguments
Speaker 6: get very very powerful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I wouldn't I wouldn't feel too bad for
Speaker 5: Israeli strategists who who who blew it on this one,
Speaker 5: because their entire kind of thinking was, oh, let's let's
Speaker 5: team up with these Christian Zionists because they they seem
Speaker 5: to believe that, you know, they need to support Israel
Speaker 5: because we're somehow going to bring about a second Coming
Speaker 5: through our own annihilation. Yeah, that that'll be a good like,
Speaker 5: that'll be a well thought out alliance they had they had.
Speaker 5: I forget, who's who's that crazy guy who spoke at
Speaker 5: the the the march for Israel or.
Speaker 6: I don't even know his name and I'm in a
Speaker 6: White Evangelicals.
Speaker 5: He's an He's an abject anti Semitic lunatic. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: they and they hitched their wagon to them, right, so
Speaker 5: if that wagon goes off the cliff, that they really
Speaker 5: only have themselves to blame.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, And I maintain that that's you know, there
Speaker 6: are some really big voices in that space. I don't
Speaker 6: think a lot of I don't know broadly, I don't
Speaker 6: think it has a ton of clout in the movement anymore.
Speaker 6: It was I feel like I heard a lot about
Speaker 6: it's more of the origin.
Speaker 3: Then it's kind of like people like, oh, really, what's
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 6: But obviously a lot of Christians do feel very tied
Speaker 6: to that land, and you feel like it's important for
Speaker 6: America to be involved in protecting it and keeping it safe.
Speaker 6: And that you know, these people are support Israel.
Speaker 5: But the other reason that they felt like they had
Speaker 5: a good alliance there was there was this islamophobic overlap
Speaker 5: between between It's they're like, hey, the enemy of enemy
Speaker 5: of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 4: But if you link up.
Speaker 5: With another religious group because that religious group is bigoted
Speaker 5: towards other religious groups, don't be shocked when they turn
Speaker 5: on you next.
Speaker 6: It's a crazy tangled set of different interests. That does
Speaker 6: it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. But don't
Speaker 6: worry because we'll be back on the channel tomorrow for
Speaker 6: the State of the Unions tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Goodness, I know it's tomorrow.
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Speaker 4: Looking forward to it. We'll see you guys tomorrow.
Speaker 9: Question