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Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Crystal is unfortunately at home, but she will be joining us remote. Don't you worry. She's waiting right there in the wings. There's a big snow day there closing the schools in her area. But of course we've got Ryan and Emily here at the desk, the full Counterpoints crew. We're going to be going over all of the results from the Iowa caucuses. Vivek Ramaswami he's out,
he's dropped out of the race. Does he have a future? You can already guess who he's endorsed for president. We will get into some of that New Hampshire. What the hell is going to happen? Is this the best possible result for Donald Trump. Nicki Haley, she came in third now officially a little bit of a plot twist.
And then the three of us are going to be going over some of.
The Israel updates in terms of Iranian strikes in the region, very troubling, possibly escalatory, and then some questions about Israeli strategy and retreat. Congressman Rocanna is going to be joining us at the end of the show.
We're going to talk.
About the War Powers Resolution, whether those Yemen strikes themselves were illegal or not. And we've Ryan and I got a couple questions from on UFOs. He's a he's just received a highly classified briefing on the subject, and so is it real or is it not?
What can he tell us? We will get into.
All of that, but of course we got to start with the Iowa caucuses. Krystal and I brought everybody the breaking news just last night of Donald Trump officially won mere thirty six minutes. The Associated Press made the call. And so the question whenever we woke up this morning was, Okay, so who came in second?
And I guess we certainly have those results.
Let's going to put it up there on the screen as you can all see there the official results now with over ninety five percent of the votes. Now votes now counted fifty one percent over the fifty percent threshold for Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis coming in at twenty one point two percent, or a narrow second there, but still thirty some odd points behind Donald Trump, and then nineteen point one for Nicky Haley.
A disappointing finish, if we could say.
And then finally, Donald Trump also was able to give us a victory speech.
Let's take a listen to what he said.
Well, I want to thank everybody. This has been some period of time, and most importantly, we want to thank the great people of Iowa. Thank you, We love you all. I want a turnout, what a crowd, and I really think this is time now for everybody our country to come together. We want to come together, whether it's Republican or a Democrat, or liberal or conservative. It would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems, and straighten out
all of the death and destruction that we're witnessing. That's practically never been like this. It's just so important and I want to make that a very big part of our message. We're going to come together. It's going to happen soon too, going to happen. So we congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together. We're all having a good time together. And I think they both actually did very well.
I really do.
I think they both did very well. We don't even know what the outcome of second place is. And I see carry Lake, congratulations.
Character I spotted her. I have to.
Announce because she's terrific. She's going to be a senator, a great senator, I predict right, going to be a great senator. And I also want to congratulate Vivek because he did a hell of a job. He came from zero and he's got a big percent, probably eight percent, almost eight percent, and that's an amazing job. They all there are very smart, very smart people, very capable people.
So Crystal, he said congratulations to Nicki and to Ron DeSantis for having a good time together the most petty way possible that he can.
What's your initial reaction after we broke the news for everybody last night.
I mean, it's a classic Trump moment there, right, He gets to appear very magnanimous, congratulating Ron who he used his actual name, not you know, meetball Run or.
Daysanctus or whatever.
He uses his actual name, congratulates them, congratulates for Vake Ramaswami. It's effectively like a little pat on the head. Good job, guys, nice work. Now it's time to get serious. We all know where this is headed. And he's not wrong. I mean, this is in a lot of ways the best possible outcome that Donald Trump could have hoped for. He won all but one county, Johnson County, which is like a college town is where Iowa City is.
Nicky Haley won it by one vote.
It's the same county, by the way, that Elizabeth Warren was the only county she won in the state as well in her third place bid two. A lot of parallels there, but you know, there's no clear like dominant second place winner Ron de Santis gets second, Nicki gets third.
But she's right on his heels.
Ron really doesn't have a single state going forward where he has a shot to win. Nicki has one state going forward where maybe possibly she could mount some sort of you know, comeback, overcome the odds type of win in that one state.
But that's it this thing is over.
You know, he got over fifty percent of the vote. He's made it so that his opponents are probably Ron and NICKI going to stay in and fight another day. He's asserted his complete dominance among basically every demographic of the Republican Party save for the ones with like advanced degrees, and so he can afford to be completely magnanimous in that message.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right, Emily. I want to come to you on this.
Let's put this up there on the screen, just to show everybody some of the entrance polls we saw, you know, just the absolute dominance of Trump consistently amongst every demographic. He's running pluralities amongst men, amongst women, amongst, as Crystal said, every college group except for the total advanced degree holders.
I mean, you know, even amongst people who are young voters, from what we can see, possibly in the seventeenth category, exept, what is the vaunted seventeen to twenty four year old category for Republicans of always a big turnout group there. But what do you make then of the demographic breakdown from what we can see in the exit polls for
Trumps support. I was even stunned by it, even though you know everybody expected to win, but to win so handedly amongst every single group is I mean, that's a message. That's a message about what the Republican Party is now.
Yes, and I think there are a couple of things there. First, he also crossed the fifty percent threshold, and that's a really big deal because he was you could tell his team was a little concerned he was going to be in the forties. But once you crossed the fifty percent threshold in Iowa, that brings me to the second point. Iowa is a place where his opponents spent millions of dollars,
spent tons of time and energy trying to undercut him. Primarily, you know, you had Desantas and Haley and for a while Tim Scott sort of sniping about who was better amongst each other. But the bottom line is they were all spending that money and that time to unseat Donald Trump as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination. And still still you had Trump running up these margins. Now this isn't even an exit poll. This is from the
New York Times. They said in lower income areas, so they're just actually analyzing the demo, Trump won by forty three percent. He was up by forty three points in lower income areas. So let's go over to higher income areas. Trump won by eight point three points. Areas with fewer college graduates, huge margin fifty one, with more areas with more college graduates seven point four. Rural areas thirty nine points up, suburban areas twenty two points up. And in
urban areas, who's twenty eight points up. I mean, these are just gargantuan margins. It's across the board and you can see it. Not only is he winning in these these lower income areas rural areas, he also put up massive numbers. I mean, it was just to Crystal's point, this is just a routing. It is the Republican voters preferre Donald Trump. National polls have him around sixty percent. He's up by double digits over everyone else. Republican voters just preferred Trump.
They do at this point, right, What do you think, Ryan?
You know, I saw some liberal commentators referring to it as kind of a wake up call, which is like,
what you for that? How deep of a slumber did you have to be for this to be a wake up call, but the fact that he got over fifty percent meant that you had to have people on MSNBC saying, look, there was almost half of the Republican electorate that voted for somebody other than Donald Trump, and Crystal, I'm curious for your take on how Democrats were responding to this, because it does seem like they were living in some parallel universe where either the Republican electorate was going to
somehow derail him, like it's what it's that one? Then question mark three kind of men like, we weren't sure how this was going to happen, but somehow he was going.
To get stopped.
Maybe he'd be in prison by the time that the electures started. None of that is happening. So what did you make of the kind of democratic response last night?
Well, I mean, I didn't really watch that much of the Democratic response last night, to be perfectly honest with you, but there is a level of delusion there. They're kind of in a quandary because on the one hand, obviously they despise Donald Trump. He is the center of gravity in our politics, period, end of story. He clearly is
the center of gravity in terms of Republican politics. You know, Republican voters, they've decided Nikki Haley is like a liberal if you just look at the issue set, She's actually more right wing in a lot of ways than Donald Trump is. But the only metric of where people exist on an ideological spectrum is how do you feel about Donald Trump. That's in the Republican Party and it's in the Democratic Party as well, So on the one hand,
you have this burning hatred of the man. On the other hand, he's probably the only Republican candidate that Joe Biden has a shot at actually beating, so it's a
little complicated for them. I think the thing that I would like to comment on is the level of delusion that existed among these Republican challengers to Donald Trump, who spent the whole campaign squabbling amongst themselves, never really mounted any sort of a serious effort outside of Chris Christy, to actually make a case against the man who still is the center of gravity in all of our politics,
and especially in Republican politics. And you know, to be fair to them, like, look at what happened to Chris Christy. He didn't even make it to the first votes. So I don't think that there was ever a path for any of these people to dislodge Donald Trump. I don't think that there was an argument that they could have made. I don't think there was an ad buy that they
could have placed that would have moved the needle. Ronde Santa spent over one hundred million dollars in Iowa and visited like almost every county and it didn't move the needle for him. But Vake Ramaswami did travel to every county in the state of Iowa, and I didn't move
the needle for him. So all of these people, in some sense were counting on something else, outside external to the electoral process to knock Donald Trump out of contention magically and make them the guy or make them the gal, and ultimately it's ended up to be a complete fantasy.
Yeah, Christal, I mean, I'm just did some quick back in the Napkin math here, and Ron Destant is one hundred million dollars. He won twenty three thousan four hundred votes. That's almost four two hundred dollars per vote that he spent in the state. Nicky Hayley's got some similar maths going on there.
When you start to put it that way, things are pretty out of control.
Going and Trump's dollar per voter is way lower, but significantly lower according to early analyzes. And that's fascinating, right, Well, it's not fascinating to the extent that's surprising. It's not surprising at all. But it's interesting because he had to put so little effort into all of this. Because if you look at and Ryan described this once as the crocodile jaws, if you look at the RCP polling averages just in Iowa, you see what happened over time when
the indictment started to hit Trump, he just rocketed. It made him even like it emphasized him as the center of gravity to Bros. Crystal borrow Crystal's point. I do have one more point, though, sure, just because it's something I think I disagree with Crystal on, which is that I wonder actually the extent to which DeSantis making the indictments part of his campaign was a problem for him. His numbers started to go down when the indictments happened.
He kind of immediately did start using them. He clearly didn't want to. He sort of had to be dragged kicking and screaming to talk about the indictments and the problems there. But Jonathan Swann reported on a memo back in September from David McIntosh is the founder of Club for Growth, and he was running an anti Trump pack and they found in this memo that I have a
quote right here. Broadly, acceptable messages against President Trump with Republican primary voters that do not produce a meaningful backlash include sharing concerns about his ability to beat President Biden, experis expressions of Trump fatigue to the distractions he creates and the polarization of the country, as well as his
patterns of attacking conservative leaders. But then its ads, it is essential to disarm the viewer at the opening of the ad by establishing that the person interviewed on camera in an ad is a Republican who previously supported President Trump. Otherwise the viewer will automatically put their guard up, assuming the messengers just another Trump Peter whose opinion should be summarily dismissed. And actually, christ I don't even know. I
don't know this. This is even a disagreement. I think actually we agree on this because that shows there's basically never a path, and what can you do if your only option is to be that specific and that precise every time you talk about the front runner in the race, lest you get tuned out.
Basically, Well, and here's the thing, right with that memo talking about oh well, one effective argument is electability. Who is going to believe at this point that Donald Trump can't beat Joe Biden?
Right, yeah, look at the polls.
Right.
So, yeah, it's not an accident that when ron De Santis was performing at his highest peak was right after the midterms.
Right.
You had this stunning contrast of Ronda Santis romps in Florida while all of the Trump back candidates are flailing around the country, and so you know, he even at that point though he wasn't beating Donald Trump, but you know, there was a compelling electability argument to be made at that moment, and it was very visceral that faded very quickly, you know, assisted by the indictments and other things that were happening, and also, let's be frank, assisted by the
fact that once people got to look at Ronda Santis, they were like, this guy is kind of awkward and hard to listen to and makes weird faces, and I'm not sure that he's really up for prime time.
So he needed to be a different person. It needed to be a different country. Donald Trump needed to be a different person.
Like I just I have never thought that there was actually a path for Rond de Santis, that there was any sort of needle that he could theoretically thread. I'll tell you when Republicans lost this nomination, When the Republican challenges to Trump lost this nomination, it was right after January sixth, when there was an open that was the
only opening you had to dislodge Donald Trump. If you had a concerted, unified effort maybe among Republicans at that moment, you could dislodged him as the head of the party. When they decided not to even really try and instead to cover for him on January sixth and come up with all these alternate theories of what really went down on that day, et cetera, et cetera, it was effectively over at that moment.
Yeah, I think you're probably right, Crystal, just because that would have meant he was genuinely disqualified from office, although you know that probably would have opened up a whole other can of worms. So the thing is, Emily, I want to spend some time this and we all just were dancing around. It is that the death of retail politics and even money now at this point is one of those where I mean we've talked about it quite
a bit on the show, but it is sad. I mean, at the end of the day, Vivek did more events combined than everybody else. Ron de sant Is, even he did eventually visit all ninety nine counties, didn't matter, Nikki Haley, all of these people, they spent tons of money.
I was just looking this morning.
Ron de Santis racked up the state governor's endorsement, a huge portion of the state legislature, all of these so called like important local men who cares. Not a single instance did this end up mattering?
Ryan?
I mean, Trump visited the state less than every single other one of his challenges, and he got over fifty percent. I mean, at a certain point, we're not even playing in an inner arena anymore.
It's just all earned media all the time. From what we can.
See, right, we might as well just get rid of this entire like first we do one state, then we do another, then we do another. Just have a national election, I mean national primary, because we are now a national public where a national elector it's not an original observation, but it's been it's been coming over the last ten to fifteen years, and we've arrived at a place where people don't have the same kind of Iowa identities that
they have anymore. They have they have a lot of different identities, but that's way down there, and so going to their living rooms is just, you know, not going to.
Do it, just doesn't do it anymore. The whole like, you know, what is it? The egg? No, the egg thing is new Hampshire. I apologize. We're only getting a taste soon if.
Somebody tomb are, because that's true, it's going to be history. It doesn't matter.
Let's spend some time on the exit polls too, because we have some issue by issue ones which are pretty important. Let's put this up there on the screen from CNN. What we could see here is do you think that Biden legitimately won the election? So amongst DeSantis voters and only Haley voters, is there a majority of voters who say that Biden legitimately won? It's still only fifty four percent. Now amongst Trump voters that number is nine percent. Do
you think Biden legitimately won? In twenty twenty no. Amongst Trump voters is sixty nine percent. Is Trump fit for the presidency if convicted of a crime? Here is where I think it's really interesting. Again, only a majority will say no in the Nikki Haley category amongst DeSantis, Hutchison,
Ramaswami and Trump voters. Of course, you just see like tiny, tiny percentages who are willing to say no, and seventy one percent of Trump voters there say he's yes, He's fit for the presidency even if he is convicted of a crime. Keep in mind these are Iowa caucus voters. Let's go to the next one here, please, what we can see here is and actually this was fascinating to me, as you can always see the way that people think about abortion, even within the Republican Party is very much
on display here. So a view on banning most or all abortion nationwide now top line, fifty nine percent say that they do support a ban. Amongst DeSantis voters, they say twenty seven percent favor of ban, fifteen percent of pose, Haley eleven percent, thirty seven percent of pose. But amongst Trump, you actually have the highest number of people who oppose
banning national abortion. Now, don't get me wrong, fifty three percent still say that they would favor a ban, but forty two percent do not, So a little bit more socially liberal there, I think when compared to the rest of the GOP electorate. Interesting here also they have about decided on a candidate. But the abortion thing brings to mind, Emily, something are running to get with you today is about
these evangelical voters. Because Desanta's entire strategy was I gotta win over these ted Cruz counties.
And in the very.
First moments, less than one percent of the vote, we were seeing counties that Ted Crews were Ted Crews won and Trump place fourth in twenty sixteen where he's getting seventy.
Two percent of the vote.
I mean the flip on that is one of the biggest flips in realignments within the GOP electorate, and that very few people actually are talking about. So what what's your kind of reaction to the fact that the evangelical voters and or block, both either self identified or actual church goers, these people all support Trump by overwhelming margins to a point where he can't really be dislodged amongst that group.
Yeah, and the New York Times, the last couple of years hired their evangelical whisper as David French, somebody who lives in one of the wealthiest pockets of the country but pretends that he doesn't because it's outside of Nashville, and is the person who translate what evangelic translates what evangelicals think to the elite, and of course it's never what evangelicals actually think. It reminds me a lot of when the entire media was asking this question over and
over again. In what year was Roy Moore twenty eighteen eighteen? Why would somebody in Alabama vote for Roy Moore? If he went down there and you talked to Alabama voters, they would look you right in the face and they'd say, because Doug Jones is pro abortion. Yeah, that was it. That was like that simple. And the media could never understand it. This or never Trump Republicans that could never understand it. They didn't like Roymore, they were not happy
with Roy Moore. There were some people that just don't trust the media and didn't trust the allegations of serious sexual misconduct against him. But for other people, they believed the allegations. And we're still voting for Roy Moore. Yes, because they believe that abortion is murder. And again, if we could put the element back up on the screen, because they were just this last one, there's something super
fascinating in it. Look at nikkiy Haley's numbers. They're the only ones that are anywhere in the ballpark of Trump. And that's in like, look at that DeSantis opposed ban fifteen percent, Haley oppose a national abortion ban thirty seven percent. It doubles, it jumps and doubles, and you get with Trump forty two percent. So Trump and Haley, this is what's super interesting. Trump and Haley have those demos that actually are closer to opposing a nationwide abortion ban, and
it's two sides of that coin. Trump brings in the sort of Obama with Trump Russ Bell voters who are white evangelicals in some cases that don't even go to church. Yes, that's another misunderstood thing about why the white evangelical vote. They think these are the people that are in the pews every single week, and it's not necessarily the case, especially in rural areas. People have written a lot of
social science about that. But you have these people that might be socially a little bit more liberal but culturally, culturally they're not because they hate political correctness, they hate the media. And Nikki Haley, then, on the other hand, just gets the people who are more socially liberal, and some exit polling found that too people describe themselves as liberal and independent went for Haley and higher numbers.
Yeah, go ahead.
Let me say something about the Gatari really quick, which is that it seems to me that with Row being overturned, abortion has become a central issue in democratic politics in a way that it really wasn't before. I mean not to say voters didn't care on the Democratic side, but it has become a real center of gravity on the Democratic side, and I don't know that it is as
much on the Republican side anymore. Because you had Mike Pence and you had Tim Scott, and in a certain extent you had Rond de Sandis, who were really betting in Iowa, a state that is famous for its religious conservatism and for you know, that block of voters really being kingmakers. They really kind of bet the farm, especially Pence and Tim Scott, on being the most pro life candidates, and they didn't even.
Make it to the starting line.
So I think the centrality of that issue and the strength of that voting block that existed in the past, I think it may just not be there anymore. And I think that's you know, evident in these Iowa results where remember and not only you can attest this better than anyone I know, you were following this closely, like a lot of the pro life groups were coming out. They were very upset with Donald Trump. He said something critical about the six week abortion band that DeSantis passing.
Effectively, it went too far, it was too much.
They were putting out statements demming him, and you know, looking for someone who was going to be more consistently on their side.
But clearly that didn't win the day.
Super quick thought, because I'm looking at an exit poll right now, fifty one percent of DeSantis voters said abortion was the issue that mattered the most in deciding whom to support today. And that gets to the point that Sager was making that traditionally. And I'm curious what Ryan thinks about this. If you had run the campaign that DeSantis ran, he hired, he put all of his eggs in the Iowa basket. He hired Jeff ro the guy who did it for Ted Cruz. I'm hiring a guy
who helped Ted Cruz lose the nomination. That's a really reallyiant idea. And because he knew Iowa really well, he was all over Iowa, constantly blanketing it, and they thought they had traditionally all of the makings of a great Iowa campaign. This is what you do, textbook Iowa campaign, and it shows up in some of these exit polls. Fifty one percent said abortion. This why they decided to support Dsantis. But doesn't matter anymore because the Trump factor.
Because they've always been met pragmatic voters. Yeah, like he got it done, He's going to win. Let's let's keep with the guy. But I don't want to linger for one second on that legitimately elected question Hu, because on the way into the studio this morning, I was had NPR on and they had Scott Walker as what does They had Scott Walker and so they had a very long interview with him, and the entire interview was just pressing him about how Trump thinks the election was stolen
and isn't that gonna art him? At the very end they said, isn't he an electoral handicap? But otherwise, like the entire interview was just about this question. If you came from outside of the country and we're listening to that interview, you'd have no idea which side of the spectrum Trump was on, like what positions he stood for, what he was going to do as president, what people were concerned about.
Just about that one question.
But I'm the wording of that was interesting, and I'm curious how you guys would answer, because if you're forced to answer this a like Poles, force you to say either yes or no, was Biden legitimately elected? I think if you guys are asked, were more legal votes cast for Biden?
Yes? But was he legitimately elected?
Given everything I've come to understand about the conservative criticisms of the mail in balloting and the pandemic and what.
Did the CIA step in and collude with Facebook and Twitter in October.
To fill that stuff?
I mean, this is an easy one because I as I've understood now, there's an entire media apparatus that has been built to say exactly what you're saying, Emily, which is like, well, yeah, it's not actually Bamboo back, you got more votes there were Hunter Biden and Facebook unfair legitimate. I think both of those things are separate questions of.
Which I so that's why so many people answer yes to that.
I'm not so sure, though, because I bet you if you were to ask, if you were to ask whether Trump Biden won more votes than Trump, I still think.
That's the same number.
I won't say. I would say it's Marshall, Crystal, go ahead, do you have a last dot?
I agree with Zager. I think the all those various like.
Sort of like copes around why it's okay to still be a thinking person and say that Biden did not legitimately win. I think those are basically like DC designed fates. And most of the people who are saying no, Biden did not legitimately win, like they believe there was you know, ten thousand mules and bamboo ballots, and that there was out voter broad not like oh, tech companies did things I didn't like.
They think that too, but I think the.
Vast majority genuinely believes are like overbroad. Last thing that I wanted to say is on this metric that we had at before about you know, what would it mean if Trump is criminally if he actually has found guilty, is that a problem? Does that make him unfit for office? And I just I don't put a lot of stock in those metrics because on the one hand, you look you say, oh, well, the overall majority, more than sixty percent say, you know, they'd still vote for me, he's
still fit for office. So you might look at that and be like, well, that's terrible. If somebody is, you know, criminally guilty, maybe they should be reconsidering. On the other hand, if you look at it from another perspective, you're like, well, even a third of Republicans are basically saying no, he wouldn't be fit for office. I just wouldn't put a lot of stock in any of those metrics because I think people are very bad at predicting what they might
do if some future event is too unfold. So I just I'm very skeptical of any of those numbers.
You know, whatever direction they cut in, I.
Could not agree with you more. And I also just want to remind people about who voters are.
The CNN as a caucus opened yesterday, Chris I said this to you where a guy was like, yeah, I.
Voted for Trump.
Of twenty twenty, I was in between NICKI Haley and Revike Ramis Swami.
I think I'll go with NICKI. He's like, what what is happening here? And she's like, yeah, you know, she seems nice or something like that. I forget exactly the reason he gave.
That's that's how people are.
And I'm not even putting the man down.
That's okay, he's living his life like that's that's how it goes. But you know, for all the prognostication and crystal as you said, of people's self predicting about how people will vote, who knows. I mean at that point we could go way beyond and it's like, well, what even is it?
Emily? As you're talking about what even is a crime? Is it a New York State crime? Is it Georgia crime?
If you if you pull people and you ask them if on Saturday night you have four drinks we drive home?
But of course not absolutely not. There are people on the road.
Yeah yeah, that's right, yeah, bing go.
Yeah. It's like whenever the time comes and the.
Keys are jingling in your pocket, you're like, well, maybe five dollars. I do not endorse this, by the way, I was just thinking, that's how it happens. Just a few felonies, that's right, let's get now to the second question. This is a This was a big one amongst the Dysantis crew. Crystal Ine talked a little bit about it yesterday. I genuinely don't know what you guys think, so I'm
excited to talk with you all. There was a big kerfuffle by the Dysantis team, who were very upset that the media, the Associated Press and all the networks called the race within thirty five minutes of the holes opening. Now, let's be clear though about what happened. To actually enter the Iowa caucaus you had to enter at seven pm Central time, so the doors were closed, no more people can come in, and the phone effect turnout exactly, it
cannot affect turnout. But people were still casting ballots inside of the room. People were still giving speeches whenever the AP and all the other networks called the race. So CNN's Jake Tapper, I believe CNN was actually the first media organization to call the race. And even he he was like, look, I'm not used to calling things at this hour. Let's take a listen and then we'll talk about Desanta's reaction. Let's let's take a look.
CNN projects that Donald Trump will win the Iowa Caucasus. CNN can make this projection based on his overwhelming lead in our entrance pull of Iowa caucus goers and some initial votes that are coming in the former president pulling off a huge early victory in his bid to return to the White House. Trump easily defeating his top opponents, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are now in a high stakes fight for second place.
So, Crystal, what we had there?
Les you said?
Thirty minutes or so into the election, the Dssanta's campaign immediately put out a statement, Let's put it up there on the screen. They say, it is absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of islands even had.
A chance to vote.
The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet. And there were some further comments that he made there on cable news. So Christal, first, I want your reaction. What do you think about the point that they're making of Like, listen, you guys called this race when people are still counting ball. It's like, yeah, you know, you're not stopping anybody from entering the polls.
But the people have their phones.
They can look down and see the race called literally before they have even called a vote. What do you think I mean?
I actually agree with Ron DeSantis and his team on that. Now, there's two separate questions. Number one, as a matter of principle, was it the wrong thing to do to go ahead and call this race when there were still people who hadn't even started causing yet. Yes, they were in the
but they had not been able to cast their votes yet. Yes, I think as a matter of principle, that was the wrong thing to do because you could imagine, Look, it's not fun being out there listen to like the ASA Hutchinson representative give their spiel on why the Arkansas governor should be the next president the United States.
You're like, I gotta get home.
It's cole out there, Like my kids are with my neighbor or whatever.
You get the message on your phone. Trump one. You're a Desanta support, You're like, what am I even doing here? At this point?
Like it's over, I'm getting out of here. So I do think, as a matter of principle, it's wrong. I do think it interferes with the election. Do I think it paid any sort of measurable difference in terms of these numbers. No, And in fact, actually the later counties that came in were a little better for Ron DeSantis than they were for Nicki Haley because early in the night Nikki looked like she was going to get second.
Then more votes came in for Ron. He ends up getting second.
So I doubt that it really had a big impact, especially given the margins that we're talking about here. But yeah, as a matter of principle, I don't think it.
Was the right thing to do.
I think that's fair. Emily. What's your reaction. What do you think?
Yeah, I mean it's against their own policies as far we have the policy.
If we want to put it up there on the screen, please. This is according to the Associated.
Press, and again we can actually kind of dig into what it means. Their policies do not call the winner of a race before all the polls are scheduled to close. Now, again, the difference here is that the polls were technically closed, but people were still voting tonight, APCNN and etc. Called the race after the caucus doors closed, but before all votes for cast. People could see on their phones that Trump had won before voting.
So with that in mind, Emily, what do you think.
Yeah, No, I mean, I think that's a policy that's written not for caucuses because it's like literally the one caucus that everyone cares about in the entire caucus. I think it is. But either way, it's I mean, this is like there aren't that many caucuses, so it makes sense that their policy word isn't tailored towards a caucus.
But all that to say, I think also the Desants team is using this as a major cope, and I'm not sure that's super helpful for them at this point because and they probably know that internally something that really scares me is as valid as I think their concerns are in this case. You know, people are on their phone said it's going to affect the way people see things. Ron DeSantis ended at twenty one percent of the vote, think Nikka Hayley was down at nineteen percent. I doubt
that it had any significant effect on the turnout. Crystal just had a really helpful point on that. At the same time, the Desanta's campaign immediately used the words election interference, and I think that's really cynical and scary, because when you start to get into and listen. This is downstream of Donald Trump. But this is downstream of not just January sixth, but all of the rhetoric that Donald Trump
used after he lost the election. And I'm one of those people that thinks there was a lot of funny business going on, not with ballots but with the intelligence community and other places. Who knows what it would have done. But even all that said, election interference because people call the race that you were going to lose by double digits and did lose by double digits, jumping to election interference. I think the fact that that happened so quickly from
and naturally from the Dysantas campaign. That's a phrase that used to mean something significant.
Yeah, that's a good point and be in the rhetoric.
Well, and we've lost sort of a consensus on what that means. And that's really banana Republic territory.
Yeah, I mean, I.
Don't know I can split the difference where I just have trouble taking their concerns seriously because I'm like, guys, you're gonna lose by thirty points. I mean, sure, it's marginal at the same Yeah, look, I don't want anyone to be disenfranchised, like you still won by I mean, you still got second, as Chrystal said, like people did come out. Now are we talking about a marginal difference of how many votes?
Fifty to one hundred depending on the It.
Was very close to the polling, the results were very exactly.
So I'm like, well, you know, how much of an impact did this really have? That said, I mean, we can't all remember remember when Fox News called Arizona what like the day of the election, and not everybody else called it for another week. I think in retrospect we could say they called it too early. They ended up
getting right the right call. Yeah, but they you know, they called it way too early, like I mean, I think six days before everybody else, and they're genuinely were still ballots to be cast, and that's something that Tuesday the Trump people are sorry, yeah, ballast to be counted. To this day that Trump people will not shut up about Fox News called Arizona. So almost to a certain point, this is uh. I wouldn't call it even like election interference per se, but media org should think.
About it whenever they're making a call.
So what do you think Ryan, the principals, I think Crystal's right on the principle.
They should change their policy. They should make sure that.
They don't announce anything until the Coxes are closed. The only only thing I'd say, though, to Ronda Santis's complaint, every single caucus goer who walked into a gym anywhere in Iowa knew ahead of time.
Trump was gonna win. That's right, that's right.
So they got a breaking news alert that Trump had won. They knew already, right it was. It was a fight for second.
Place, and they were already in there, they could even see. I mean, this is you have to stand go ahead, Crystal.
I disagree. I disagree.
I think you underestimate the level of delusion that people can have. I mean, there were like supporters on Twitter yesterday who thought he was going to come from behind, the polls were underestimating him and whatever. Sure, so right, I only you can get in the voter's heads and say they knew going in.
And we have to think.
The reason it matters to talk about the principle and rather than you know, did it affect this particular outcome is because if this is now the standard that they can call it the minute that they think they know even before the votes are cast. Well, there are going to be other Iowa caucuses in the future, and they're going to have the same incentive to be you know, the first out with their calls that media organizations always have. And so maybe it didn't make the difference here, but
it could in the future. And let me also make the case sort of against what I just said earlier about I don't think it really mattered. Donald Trump barely got over fifty percent, and that was an important metric for him.
He wanted to be over fifty percent.
That enables him to say, listen, even if every other candidate, you know, even if there was one other candidate and all the other voters consolidated on their side, I still would have won. So it is possible that that early call enables him to meet that fifty one percent threshold that gives him that, you know, that additional strength going into New Hampshire and beyond. So that's why principles matter. It's not because you can predict did it make a
difference here or there or wherever. It's Okay, well, if this is going to be the standard going forward, what do we want that standard to be? And I think that this was the wrong precedent to set.
So I think that's a fantastic point, Crystal, because as we all saw during the Buddhage edge like madness to twenty twenty, like, it was a genuine question of like, well, what the hell do you say?
We still don't know. Yeah, it's right, we still actually don't really.
Out claim victory.
And then we all just move past I believe if we go and we look, some media orgs did eventually call it for him, but of course that is contested, and then that raises the question too, Ran, you probably have more insight into this than I do.
How are they able to call a vote?
Is it just based on their elect like their exit polls, plus their initial stuff that they feed into a computer. And this is where it's a genuine question of like, well, okay, well who designs an audits these models? I mean, like what is the actual econometric software whatever that's being.
Used on this one?
They matched they matched polling, yeah, in the weeks ahead with entrance polling. So they had people at a bunch of caucuses asking people on the way in, who are you going to caucus for?
Trump? Trump? Trump? They sent that into the central.
Headquarters and they're like, all right, we got eight precincts here, eight caucus sits here, every single one of them is like fifty percent plus for Trump. That matches the polling. Boom we're calling this when it comes to a primary. If they have the polling and it's like up by fifty points, it's Oklahoma. Like the second polls closed, they
call it without him waiting for a single precinct. If it's like a twenty thirty point margin, they'll wait for a couple precincts, And as long as the precincts that are coming in match the polling, they're like, all right, call it.
The only other question I'd wonder.
About the like the VVA people who are like certain he's going to win. Why are they less certain just because the AP has called it? Who's the AP to them?
Yeah?
I mean, look, and that's the problem is that they're both like the media doesn't matter, and they're like, the media is the only.
Thing that matters. Well, well, you don't believe that. You gotta pick one?
Yeah, But I mean, yeah, I mean I think I'm coming around to it. At first, I was a little bit dismissive, but the more we talk at out the implications like look, as Crystal said, forty nine to fifty one actually is a big.
Difference because we're all, what is the first thing? I said?
One fifty percent? So you know, clearly it could maybe it have something back.
I don't know.
We're talking about a marginal difference at the end of the day, but margins matter. The only county that Nikki Haley won is by a single vote. Who knows whether that had some sort of impact here, like what if she was able to get five more votes.
Than Donald Trump?
And I wouldn't say a single All of these things do have some sort of downstream impact here, and so I guess the reason we should all be hopeful is we don't want questions going into twenty twenty four as we all were, Like Fox News called Arizona that is still I, like I said, a wound that is the deepest for some of these Trump people, even though you know Biden did it Fox, Yeah, yea for Fox legitimately stopped watching, Yes, like thousands of people.
Now you know, there's enough boomers they don't know how to change the channel. But that's a whole lot of conversation. I'm not kidding By the way.
Somebody actually told me that that some of their viewers are so old that they don't have to change.
They won't be able tofect just the least.
There's two separate issues that we were talking about. One is the principal and the other is whether or not this had an effect last night. I think everyone, like I agree completely on the principal question. Whether or not it had an effect last night, I don't know, But I also think we can all agree that the DeSantis campaign has none using it as a cope.
Yes, yeah, definitely.
Let me one and one last thing on that part of this statement. He said, you know, it's another sign the media is in the tank for Donald Trump, which I think is kind of hilarious. And no, the media is not in the tank for Donald Trump. They just like to be first out with the call and break the news and so they have the incentive to do that.
And uh, you know, I think it's uh sort of preposterous to imagine, after all of these years of media coverage of Donald Trump that they're quote unquote in the tank for him to win.
That's real.
Yeah, that's that's sort of some like the vague level conspiracy like vote for me to say to support Trump.
Vake Ramaswami making news around midnight last night he is officially dropping out of the race after I wouldn't say underperforming expectations, but coming in right along with his vote total or with his poll totals, which is exactly where he didn't want to be, hence the reason why he dropped out. He gave a speech last night in Iowa. Let's take a listen to what he said.
We are going to suspend this presidential campaign, and this is going to have to be. There is no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don't want to see happen in this country. And I think that I am very worried for our country. I think we are skating on thin ice as a nation.
As I've said since the beginning, there are two America First candidates in this race, and earlier tonight I called Donald Trump to tell him that I congratulated him on his victory and now going forward, he will have my full endorsement for the presidency, and I think.
We're going to do the right thing for this country.
He will have my full endorsement.
He also made the news immediately after coming off the stage he will be joining Trump for a rally in Iowa or sorry in New Hampshire in the coming days.
So I don't know. Probably it was inevitable.
Anyways, he did eventually he did just drop out immediately after Iowa, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis not pulling that. I guess to be fair, they did double his overall vote totals. One of the reasons we wanted to do this was to actually just spend some time in terms of Internet candidacy and what it means. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, please, just so we can again look at the overall results.
Fifty one percent for Trump, twenty one point two percent for DeSantis, nineteen point one for Haley, seven point seven for Vivek Ramaswami, and then I don't know who Ryan Binkley is, but he got point seven.
Apparently he's in Iowa business.
It's Ryan's alter. He goes by Ryan Binkley in Iowa.
There's something to be said here.
So Vivek Ramaswami got seven point seven, all right, So that actually sounds better in my opinion than when you look at the.
Actual total vote total.
He only got eighty four and forty nine votes in the state of Iowa. He did approximately over two hundred and fifty events in the state. He visited all ninety nine counties in the state. He spent upwards of ten to fifteen million dollars I believe of his own money in the race. On top of all the money that he didn't end up spending, he spent inordinate amounts of time on our show, on podcast, Tim Poole's show, all of Patrick Bett David, I mean, almost every big YouTube show you can imagine.
He made an appearance.
He made a policy of saying yes, he got more earned media in the internet space than probably any other single candidate, and made an effort to reach out to them, and let's all be on it. It didn't matter at all. That said, amongst the age group. Amongst the age group, this is the only place where I think I could make the counter case. Let's put this up there before we get Crystal's reaction. If you take a look here
at which age group are you. You see that between thirty and thirty nine year olds, Vivek is getting twenty four percent of that vote, but the drop off from forty to forty nine, he gets eight percent. There, from fifty to sixty four he gets five. And then from sixty five or over, which is the majority of the plurality of the people who are voting in here, he gets its marginal.
It's like one or maybe two percent.
And I think this is a media story more than anything I said yesterday. But the fact is is that if you're over forty five fifty or so, you're just living in a different universe on average, not everybody. We have many great septagenarian viewers here breaking points and boomers who like to remind me of that whenever I talk about boomers.
But let's be really, I can see our data.
The vast majority of people who watch our show are, you know, somewhere in the millennial generation or in Gen Z. And I think, then if you're consume a show like this to live your life on Twitter or online, on Instagram wherever, for that to be the primary way that you get your news as compared to the cable news environment, it's obvious to me then why Vivek Ramaswami would not
do all that well amongst that demo. And then clearly that's something I think he really realized in his second debate performance where he's like, I know I come off a little bit too ambitious, and I know I'm just who's this.
Kid with the funny name and all of that.
So to me, you know, the Vik's candidacy is like, you can see it two ways.
You can see it hopefully.
Where you can be literally nobody and just rich and then you can become and win seven point seven percent of the vote in Iowa and outlash people like Mike Pence and Tim Scott sitting senators, a former vice president and actually get to this point. Or you can just see it as like look the Internet and all that, we still have a long way to go in terms of like actual real impact on the election.
So Christal, what's your initial reaction.
To all this.
Yeah, I mean, the media landscape is shifting dramatically, but legacy media, even in the Republican Party is still king. And I think that that transition is even further behind in the Democratic Party because Democrats have a lot more trust for mainstream press than Republicans do. So, you know, especially when you look at this fact, yes, he did better among young voters, but he still didn't win young voters.
So it just shows you how much legacy media still dominates and how much Donald Trump still dominates, you know. With Veg himself, obviously, I'm not surprised that his vote against Trump to support Trump argument didn't win the day.
I suspect when he launched his campaign, I suspect he wanted to just like build a national brand, which he did mission accomplished, to have additional media visibility, and to be able to you know, go at a variety of directions for potentially media this direction in the future.
He accomplished that.
I do think that there was probably a moment early on in his campaign when he seemed to be getting traction and right after the first debate, when there was all this interest, in all this focus and attention on him, that he may have actually thought to himself, I think
I could actually pull this off. And then when the polls come back after that first debate where he's so aggressive and he's so dominant, and people basically like recoiled from that, where to me, all the air goes on in the Vivak balloon and it's like, all right, if that didn't work for me, like me being my full self and being aggressive and sort of dominating the way that I feel like Trump dominates.
If that doesn't work out, then.
You're kind of back to the how do I make this into a media brand and a media career stuff. How do I make sure that I'm in Trump's good graces at the end of this so that maybe I end up in his cabinet or at least in his favor at the end of the day. So it's a very unsurprising end for him. I fully expected him to drop out after his Iowa performance. But yeah, it is a very clear crystallation and crystallization or DISTI leasure.
Where the hell I'm trying to say here of the fact that if you are just.
Like the internet candidate, there is a very very low ceiling on your support and how far you're going to get with that.
Yeah, both Andrew Yang and Tilsea Gabbard found that out the hard way back in twenty twenty.
What were your thoughts from me?
He did finish second among what you would call our viewers, like, yeah, the YouTube podcast majority of our viewers. But I mean he is like, right, yes, exactly, But among the demographic of watches forty and under, he finished second. He beat the Santas and beat Nikki Haley, and if you compare him, he's sort of like a Buddha Judge, a guy who came from absolutely nowhere as a funny name, annoys a lot of people, but impresses a lot of other people,
and then Buddha Judge winds up a captain secretary. But buddaj just did it through MSNBC, the New York Times and that element of the party really loving him, yes, whereas whereas Vivek had to go kind of around it here. But it shows that there is a path to national relevance. I think he's very happy that he ran. Now he's going to get to be a Fox commentator or.
You know, he's going to get to give speech because he's going to get a job under Trump.
What do you think, Emily, I think he's lined himself up pretty well.
I don't think he could get confirmed through the Senate, so I don't think it'd be a cabinet level secretary.
But he could work in the White House.
Honestly, he could work as a comms aid like whatever Anthony Scaremoutier was supposed to be. I don't think he would want being pressitectory is a terrible.
Yeah, that's right.
If you're Trump, you bought a woman.
Very hot woman.
So because he needs to find it pleasing to watch, because I mean, let's be honest, it's the vast majority of what he does whenever he's president. But what do you think Trump will what do you think Viveke will end up as within Trump? He's obviously gonna be a big curgate. He's gonna be all over TV defending Trump, I think for the next what nine ten months odd
until the election. But do you think he'll get rewarded or is Trump going to forgive him, you know, for running against him and having to attack him.
That's the question.
Well, and this is actually I think one of the things that's very interesting about Vivic's candidacy. So if you look at these numbers a little bit when we had this graphic on the screen, so Viveke getting seven point seven percent of the vote in Iowa, you know, it's sad for someone who went did so many events in Iowa, truly an eye popping number of events in Iowa, spent a lot of his own money. At the same time, Asa Hutchinson was a governor of a deep red state.
Mike President Mike President, Mike pent was the vice president of the United States, and they dropped out because they wouldn't have even gotten around seven percent of the vote. And so yes, I mean, you spend a lot of money to get seven percent of the vote. But when you then go into New Hampshire, you see he has
about he's pulling it around five percent. If all of those voters go to Trump, and there's a good argument that most of those voters go to Trump, that puts Trump around the fifty percent threshold in New Hampshire, a state that is not super favorable to Donald Trump. And everyone's now talking about Niki Haley potentially winning. She's down double digits to Trump. So if you take Vivikes five percent, or if you take his seven percent in Iowa and you put it on too Donald Trump, you're almost out.
What the national polling looks like, which is a mirror image of what it looked like in twenty sixteen when you had about I pulled these numbers. Actually last night I went to RCP from twenty sixteen. You had about sixty five percent of voters saying that they would cast their ballots against Trump at this point in the race in twenty sixteen. Now you have about sixty five percent of voters, especially if you predict you're shifting Vivek's voters
over to Trump. You have about the same thing saying that they're going to cast their ballots, they would cast their ballots for Donald Trump. So I think this is where will Viveke get rewarded? Absolutely, and that's why we're numb to this. Trump attacked Vivike on Twitter twice in the last week. He broke this long spell of not saying anything about Viveke attacked him twice on Twitter because he wanted to probably get over that fifty percent threshold.
He was saying, a vote for you know, Viveke is not a vote for Trump, et cetera, et cetera. That is then he pivots on election night and embraces Viveke, goes to New Hampshire, is now doing event with Viveke. Why is all of that, because at the end of the day, the Vike was a great surrogate for Donald Trump.
That's a good point.
He was a great surrogate for Donald Trump. He said he's the most he was the best president of his lifetime.
Yeah, one thing we do want to spend time on is just there was I think out of any candidate, this is what all online and maybe this speaks through my age, you know, in terms of the people that I follow and consume.
To say just one young voters in Iowa.
But that's a great point. Yes, that's I should I think that was amongst seventeen, seventeen to twenty nine, right, so seventeen.
To twenty nine year old voters.
One thing we should flag and this is a crystal and I it's why we pulled this video is there was an attempt to buy Vivake to actually kind of lean into this MAGA influencer, like he had Candice Owens with him that was on the road, and something they kept telling us is like watch out, guys, he's going to massively overperform because he's done the work. Doing the
work is the most important thing. We have a video here from one of his campaign events where they're like, look at this packed house Candace Owns and Vivike RAMASLAMI didn't end up mattering all that much for the final vote totals, so as we could see you and put it up there on screen they say packed house for real, candas o of a Bake Ramaswami in Cedar.
Rapids, Iowa.
If you believe the polls showing Nicki Haley is the one show surging in Iowa, you are not operating in reality. This surge is with America first, as you could see in a hotel conference room. This is you know, I mean, I will say it is sad because one of the in general, there was always this barometer of like, crowd sizes do matter, and you know, there is an element sometimes to things that you can miss from energy on
the ground and surging and all that. But to a certain extent, the retail politics, just to reiterate, did not end up really mattering at all in this race, and in fact, there was generally an inverse relationship to Santas and Nikki Haley did roughly, you know, the same amount of events, they both spent an equal ton of money, didn't end up mattering. Trump barely set foot in like ten counties in Iowa. He only even arrived in Iowa for the caucus like the night before, and then he
flew out immediately after he won. So anyway, I think there is a cautionary internet to tail here. Christal, if you have any last thoughts on this or any of you guys. Chrystal, you first, I do.
I just want to say, going back to something that Emily said, the person I'm actually most fascinated by at this point is Asa Hutchins.
I'm not even kidding this man. Think about this.
You were a governor of a state, like you were an important person. You got elected, you know, you got to go to these meetings with all these people, and now you're barely beating Chris christ who's not even on the ballot anymore. Like, I genuinely want to understand the mentality that leads you not just to get in the race and see, okay, what's going to happen, but to stay in and persist in what you think that you're up to, what your goals are.
Like I am genuinely fascinated by it.
And then the other person that I don't want to let this end without mentioning is Doug Bergram. You did drop out and who after really, you know, kind of trashing Trump and saying he would never hire him, etcetera, etcetera, endorse him for president and was and I went backing him last night, which is both humiliating but also a sign that with Trump. You know, as long as at the end of the day you say you're right, sir, I'm sorry, you're the best, you're the greatest, I'm here
for you, et cetera, all can be forgiven. So you know, he was there last night and Trump made an interesting comment about Doug Burgham. He was like, he's so solid. He doesn't attract any controversy, and sometimes you need some controversy to be able to catch on. And I was like, that is actually an incredible window the way that Trump thinks about politics.
Yeah, absolutely accurate.
Final thoughts, guys, wasn't Asa Hutchinson just basically like a messaging campaign for country club Republican.
I wouldn't even call a country club. I don't know what the hell it was.
If people want to watch Crystal and I interviewed him, I don't even I don't remember.
You guys did what it was?
It was?
Actually I actually kind of enjoyed it. I thought he was a nice man.
Yes, I like talking.
He's a very nice man.
Terrible, it's terrible on drug He's like a da if you go into like the Cold War trafficking star.
That's right. Yeah, he's the good friend. Terrible. Now all vote Fred.
I'm putting putting aside all his policy I don't agree with any of these people basically on policies, very rarely, so putting all of that aside, he seems like a perfectly nice, normal, lovely man. We gave him a tough interview because that's what you know, that's what we do, especially with something that's wanting someone that's running for president. But yeah, I just can't really wrap my head around the calculation that's going on there, and I'm genuinely fascinated by it.
Yeah, we'll see. I don't know if he's going to drop out or not. I don't know if anybody really cares. He can't raise money, that's yeah, so we'll say. I mean, I think he's personally wealthy. That's kind of the vibe I got whenever he was in here. Not as personally wealthy as billionaire bug Doug Bergham. But that's a whole other story. Let's go to New Hampshire. This is the final electoral block that we're going to do here, just in terms of some of our predictions what we think
is going to shake out. So let's go put the RCP average up there on the screen. This is where things stand as of right now. So Donald Trump currently forty three point five percent, Nikki Haley twenty nine point three. Chris Christy Obviously you could discount that he's been dropped out eleven point three. Desanti's was six point five in Vake Ramaswami at five. So if a vakes five, I think we would probably safely say either going to peter out or majority of those going to go over to Trump.
Chris Christy, who the hell knows? I mean, the question here is, and this is I put this out last night, but I really do believe it is that I think this outcome Crystal was the best possible one for Trump. DeSantis has no path to victory in New Hampshire.
Nikki did so.
Her coming in third and not having the number two narrative that she needed and wanted coming out of Iowa is the only thing that could have put her over the edge in New Hampshire and made that a contested race. DeSantis has no chance of winning New Hampshire, and now they're more likely to equally split the so called Nicki surge in New Now, Listen, of course things can happen. It's only a week away, etc. But you know, this is just my overall like kind of prediction of way
things go. This just seems to me more likely that Trump then consolidates that vote for vike Ramaswami voters. The Chris Christie voter is so anti Trump they may not even come out to vote because they just feel discouraged by the results.
May would have depressed turnout.
You know, majority of people backing Trump anyway, and it just seems like He's going to tie even more of a bow on it post New Hampshire than if Nicki Haley had come in second in this race.
I think it would be living in.
A different world, only because the media would make it such a big deal that matters a lot to these New Hampshire college educated voters.
What do you think I agree with all of that.
You know, even with Chris Christie dropping out of the race and Nikki getting a good bit of his support, it's not like the polls showed her winning in New Hampshire. And there is no state in the Union, including her on home state, that is better for Nicki Haley than New Hampshire.
So when I look at the Iowa results last.
Night, and I see that she wasn't even winning among college educated voters, which is you know, she's a total wine track like Elizabeth Wore kind of a candidate. I find it very doubtful that she could pull off a victory even in New Hampshire. And let's be real, even if she did, I don't think it would really matter because then you go on from there and you're gonna lose everything else. To me, last night's results proved how limited her appeal and her support is within the Republican Party.
She has come to be seen and Emily, I'm be curious if you agree with this. She has come to be seen almost like a Chris Christi anti Trump figure, even though she was much more gentle with Donald Trump in terms of her critique. But her favorability rating with Republicans has been falling off a cliff. So, you know, people who said they were very conservative didn't vote for her. People who said they were somewhat conservative didn't vote for her.
The only groups she did well with were moderates and liberals, which was a tiny sliver of the electorate last night. So yeah, she doesn't have momentum going into New I'm sure Ronda Santis is still hanging around.
She needed absolutely.
Everything to go completely perfectly, plus some things to be revealed that weren't being revealed in the polls, and none of that happened. So, you know, to go back to how we started this whole thing with Trump, basically like giving Nikki and giving Ron a little pat on the head and but bag as well. That's appropriate because this
thing is effectively over. I just barring something totally external to electoral politics, which was that you'd ever know, But barring that, yeah, black swan event, barring that, it's it's done, it's a wrap, it's over. Donald Trump is still the man in the Republican Party. If you didn't know that yesterday, you definitely know it now.
Bo time, What do you think, Yeah, I mean, I think if Nikki Haley had had a surprisingly good showing yesterday or Ronda Santis, I mean, honestly, the second place was okay for DeSantis, but if either of them had come close to Trump for some reason, they had gotten you know, forty percent of the vote, something like that, even thirty percent of the vote, they just totally blew the poles out of the water. And we didn't know, you know, if the polling had proven to be pretty
inaccurate yesterday, and one of them overperformed the poles. Then, especially Nicki Haley, could have gone into New Hampshire with some momentum. She's now third place and a distant, distant third place to Trump. She's already down by double digits in New Hampshire. So in the media you're hearing all of this chatter about how Nicky Haley is heading into New Hampshire with the wind at her back. In fact,
people were making that argument in Iowa. They were saying, you know, Nikki Haley didn't put that much money in Iowa. She only focused there in the last couple of weeks. It's kind of true, but not really. I mean, she's been in Iowa for a while. She wasn't doing exactly what Disants was doing, but she was doing more than Trump. And so if she's going into New Hampshire with the wind at her back and is down double digits and just came in a distant third, this race is over.
Barring a black Swan event, this race is over, and Nikki Haley is the media's last ditch effort to make this narrative appealing and to drive ratings and not sell
papers because seriously, this race is over. Is a potential track if she had done well, that they would have done what happened in twenty twenty with Pete and Amy right, that Republican donors would have gotten together behind closed doors and said, listen, she's a she just got thirty five percent of the vote without you know, really focusing on Yeah, you can't do.
It, you can't do it Ryan, Yeah, And it undermines this gimmick that Democrats were going to try to pull, where they were going to you know, a bunch of Democrats just going to go out and.
Vote for Dicky Haley. That's right. I forgot about it because you can switch, Yeah, you can take whatever valot you want. But if if you're a Democrat at this point, like, is that how you're going to spend your evening?
Like what's what's your day? Like, what's even the point like if you thought there was a path? And I disagree with this strategy from Democrats because I think the Halee is more right wing as we talked about that's right, more pro war, yes, But setting that aside, they genuinely like that she speaks in like compolite, complete sentences, and like they feel like she's not a threat to democracy and on our right.
So if they thought there was a chance.
That gaining the New Hampshire primary would give her a boost and give her, you know, the jolt that she needed to win the Republican nomination, then maybe they go enough of them go through with that gimmick.
But watching what happened in.
Iowa, I don't I don't see how that incentivizes a Democrat to play games.
So just to throw something on the fire, it's so, you know, I don't really understand how she does this.
She's put out this morning. We've had five great debates. Unfortunately Trump is ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I will do either be Trump or with Joe Biden.
I look forward to it. So she's trying to be like, the race is over.
It's me versus Trump.
Say the race is over.
You're not even in this equation.
Actually, quote from her last night, she said this, I would just made this a two percent race because she's going in New Hampshire and the RCP average she's at about twenty two percent in the polls and RCP, DeSantis is at eleven percent. Put those two numbers together and you're still nowhere near Trump's fifty two percent. So you could try to do what Pete and Amy did in twenty twenty, and you're still gonna lose, still gonna lose
because Trump in New Hampshire's at fifty two percent. If he takes Ramaswami's three point three, you're putting him at something like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm South Carolina. Thank you're Ryan, you're reading the screen for me. Okay, So in New Hampshire, Trump's at forty three percent, Haley's at twenty nine point three percent. Chris Christie in the polls, was at eleven point three percent to Santa's is at six point five percent.
So if you take Chris Christie's eleven point three percent from that RCP average, I don't think all of that goes to Haley. I think you probably get half to Haley half to DeSantis. So that still puts Haley double digits behind Donald Trump.
Yeah, and just so we're all clear, I even have South Carolina here in front of me. She's leading. She's losing Trump by thirty points in her own home exactly.
That's what I want to say.
It's like, what what are we doing here, lady?
I mean, listen, you want to burn some billionaire cash on private jets, be my guest.
But then you have to go into Super Tuesday.
Yeah, in March.
It was the March fifth, and so again they're down like so much in the national point Trump's at over sixty percent.
Now California, don't forget California's part of Super Tuesday. Now Trump is winning by sixty points. We could probably go on ad nauseium, but the point has probably.
Been made here.
Christal, I know you're going to drop off, So any final electoral thoughts before we before we depart.
Yeah, I was just going to say last thought with regard to Nikki Haley number one, when that Iowa to Wine Register poll came out and it had her in second. But even the polster A Selzer is very well known and sort of respected in this and that's the gold
Tenner polling. And by the way, that Pole did come very close to nailing the actual outcome when she made sure to say in the copy, like it is jaw dropping, how little Nikki Haley supporters actually support her, Like how not enthusiastic they are, and was basically saying about her own poll, I don't think that Nikki Haley is going to perform where this is showing her performing. I you know, I really took that to her, which is why to give us pats on the back, Soger.
We're pretty close with our.
Predicted predictions yesterday, including the ultimate outcome of what was going to happen. I will also say, if you're a Republican and your strategy depends on and getting Democrats to come to the polls for you to vote like, that's not going to work out. And even you know, they talk about this every time, Republicans are going to cross over and cause chaos. Democrats are going to cross over and cause chaos. I've never seen it happen in really
serious numbers. They could have done it in the Iowa Coccus last night, also when it was still you know, going concerning that potentially they could beat Trump and it didn't happen. So NICKI needed for there to be some secret group of voters out there not reflected in the polling who really wants to move on from Donald Trump
and needed a permission structure to do it. I think we can say definitively after last night that group of voters does not exist, and her campaign, whether she does okay in New Hampshire or not, is also effectively over.
Yeah, well said Crystal, and we appreciate you, Thank you, enjoy your snow day with the kiddos, keep them all safe.
We'll carry on.
From here, so we'll see you later, bye guys. At the same time, there's some major news in the internet national sphere. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Middle East was an absolute chaos yesterday, as rightfully summed up here. There was an attack on a US ship by Yemen's Houthis. The US intercepted two attacks in the Red Sea. Israel had strikes in Gaza. There was a stabbing and a car rabbing near Tel Aviv
and a terrorist attack. There was an IRGC attack in Iraq, an IRGC attack in Syria, the IRGC being a paramilitary organization under the control of the Iranian Ayatola. And they say even for Middle East, this is beyond the usual instability, which I think is actually a pretty good way of putting it.
Let's start with the first part.
Let's put this up there on the screen, the Houthi rebels struck a US flagged ship off of the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden that was directly actor the strikes by the Biden administration on Houthi infrastructure. Sentcom, which is the US military command in charge of the region,
elaborated a little bit on this. If we can go to the next one, and they say that the Iranian fact who the militants fired an anti ship ballistic missile from who the controlled areas of Yemen and struck the Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands flagged US owned and operated container ship. The ship reported no injuries or significant damage.
But ryan to me, the big headline out of that is they still attacked US flagship after they attacked the US Navy ship with the you know, pretty significant military technology.
That's a signal.
And it's a signal too because this is to my knowledge, one of the first US flag or at least US owned and operated ships that's actually come under attack, not some Panamanian vessel or an Israeli vessel like they had previously gone after. So what's your initial reaction and the.
Who thise, who really are that de facto though not legally recognized government Yemen have said that they are going to continue this blockade until Israel stops. That's a bombing campaign and its incursion into Gaza like that. Those are the conditions that they have put out. US responded by bombing Yemen. In response, I saw somebody, and I think we have this element, later saying, I guess the hoothies haven't gotten the message.
The hoolies have gotten the message, like Yemen has gotten the message.
Even next we can put it up there.
People want the United States. That's Admiral Straritis.
Just everybody knows who's actually the former commander commander of NATO forces. He says that the good news is that no one was injured in this attack by the who these The bad news is they probably have not gotten the message to see some desist, probably going to require additional military strikes to discourage them.
I never thought of that, yeah, more cow bell.
So the Obama administration spent most of its time drone striking Yemen. Yes, for years after the war broke out, the US gave every weapon that the United Arab Emirates or Saudi could ask for in their war against the hoo Thies that lasted about seven years. Basically they've been bombing them for years and years and years and years. The Hoothies have only gotten stronger and the Whothias have their own kind of regional and also domestic interests at
play here. Some people portray this like what do you guys think that these are? Like this is good and evil and these are the boy scouts? No, like there they have had you know, a couple uh, you know, more than a year of cessation of hostilities right with the Saudis, which has meant that they have had to govern, and governing is is much easier sometimes when you're when you have kind of the civilian population behind you involved in some type of external conflict. So it actually helps
them domestically, helps them regionally if you like. The polls around the entire Middle East show the who these are now like by far the most popular you know force in the in the area. So yeah, are a few more military struture in the US and they're not going to get the message they understand what we want.
What concerns me Emily is that the story this comes after the tragic incident involving navy seals that we are getting actually some more detail curioustory reaction just literally came
out this morning. It appears the US military is finally confirmed that there were Iranian warheads that were on route to Yemen and American military personnel, including US Navy seals, boarded in a shipboarding mission off the coast of Somalia last week, sought to disrupt that weapons resupply of Yemen, of which was specifically then being used in this war. Crystal and I have described this as kind of the first actual US I want to I don't want to
say casualties out of respect to the families. These guys, you know, remain missing lost its scene now for three full days.
When the Ikraine posted on his Facebook last night if you saw this, No, I didn't rest in peace, brothers, and he's a former Navy seal himself, member member of Congress.
They have not they have not confirmed, but well we'll let the Pentagon speak to what the official The case.
Sources I'm hearing is that everyone in that world understands them too.
It's very sad, you know.
So anyway, we've got two US Navy seals officially missing in action at sea right now, currently involved in this in this mission. John Kirby sopp at distance if he said this has nothing to do with the strikes in Yemen, even though they were literally involved, you know, here in Yemen. So this could be you know, kind of a jump off point for at least for the US p Like anytime to US Navy seals end up missing in some
sort of daring raid in the middle. From what I'm reading here, we're talking about boarding like some unstable dow in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of warheads.
And all this other stuff on it.
Obviously they trained for this all the time, but it's recognized as an extraordinarily risky mission. Do you think this could raise you know, possibly like anti war energy because this is one of those where it's really the first time not only in terms of military action on Yemen, but now we've got US military personnel service members actually directly involved in combat here.
This might seem like a weird word to use. I find it creepy though how little media coverage there. I totally agree these casual Yes, I mean, is it is creepy how serious and substantive of an issue it is, and how quiet the media has been about what happened.
And I'm not saying they should be out there banging the war drums, but I think actually we're starting to feel an echo of how the Biden administration has prosecuted the war in Ukraine in the Middle East, which is that publicly and then they're posturing they're all in Ukraine. Is the battle for civilization is the most important thing in the world. And you know, you have a lot of sentiment in United States that doesn't reflect that. And so what they try to do is just sort of
slow walk the war. So they'll give you, you know, the weapons, but they'll really hem and haul about it, and they'll pretend that this is a giant sacrifice for the Biden administration. Oh we went to the mat we got you more weapons. And then in the Middle East. You know, this is from doctor Parsi. Trae to Parsi, he says, all the Hoothies need to do is try that is enough to sustain a de fact of shipping blockade.
Western commercial vessels will simply not risk moving their ships of those waters, not in spite of President Joe Biden's military strikes, but because of them. And so again, if your strategy in the Middle East Is to do these strikes, and we all know that the Houthis, to Ryan's point, have got the message. We don't know that. So what are you going to do? Are you going to half asset?
You're get a full asset. The Biden administration is just kind of in between both of those options, trying to bide time until they can, you know, sort of massage the public and figure out what they're doing. In Ukraine. They've been doing this literally for years now.
Yeah, this is very dangerous.
You know.
In terms of the Hoothy statement, we have some of this that we can put up there. They say that, you know, their very long and loquacious. I guess is an easy way to say it. The TLDR of this very very long statement is the Yemeny armed forces continue to carry out their military operations and impose the decision to prevent is really navigation in the Arab and Red Sea until the aggression stops in the siege of the
Palatinian people in the Gaza strip is lifted. So basically the center of gravity for this cup particular conflict and more is going to be what the hell is going on in Gaza not anywhere else? There is though a bleeding out continuing of the conflict. There was a major panic here in Washington just yesterday evening as strikes were being reported in the city of Airbil in Iraqi. Airbil is one of actually the safest cities in Iraq ITTs in the northern part in Kurdistan, and we saw Iranian
ballistic missiles rain down on the city. Initial reports, Ryan, were that the US consulate was actually targeted. It appears that it is not true. US officials are no confirmed that no US actual facility was targeted, but it appears that it might have actually been a MOSAD facility. So we have some video that we can play here showing some of the strikes. I mean, this is some crazy
stuff there, people. I mean it's the middle of the night there, and you could see there were other you know, things coming out of missiles just coming through the sky, you know, flying there and then blowing up right in the middle of the city. Some casualties initially reported. Obviously though if it was a spy agency at the Israelis there,
they're not exactly going to confirm anything. But what did you make of this, Ryan, Because to me, it's escalatory only in this the Masad place surprisingly very close to the US consulate. People were afraid that the US consulate itself wasn't going to get blown up. But Arabel is not a city at war. I mean, they're not used to ballistic missiles coming from Iran directly acknowledged plopping down in the middle. Imagine if that happened.
Well, it'sager. We are not a country at war either. Keep that in mind.
Unfortunately, Iraq has recalled its ambassador from Iran, and yeah, because they're like, hey, look, I know that this is not about us, but yeah, you can't just bomb it.
Yes, And the way that Parsi and others have said it is that going after.
Let's say, let's say the reports are accurate that it was a Massad facility, they know that this is right near the US consulate, and the.
Shockwaves hit, you know, were felt over there like it was.
They initially thought it was an attempted to strike on the content.
It was that close, and.
It's extraordinarily risky because if you're off by a couple hundred meters or whatever.
You know, then you've hit the US consulate.
Uh.
And so it is, you know, Commani has understood to be extraordinarily risk averse.
Uh.
Yet the bombing at Solemani's funeral, coupled with the killing of the IRGC general in Syria, coupled with the attacks on that you know, Hamas and heads blow leaders route have created so much domestic pressure that even even risk averse comane is saying the sees that he needs to do something aggressive. And so the shot at the Masad building so close to the consulate, you know, is a ratcheting up when they attacked Syria, that was going after ISIS.
And the risk a version comes in there too, because there's two ways to go after ISIS. Afghanistan, which is where you know, probably a lot of the strike was planned from or in Syria.
Syria is the more passive way because that's further away.
You go after Afghanistan, you might unleash a little bit more of a response from ISIS or even the Taliban that that come in.
He doesn't want.
But you've seen the State Department and kind of its allies saying, oh boy, looks like it's we're being you know, we're getting closer to being drawn into another war.
As if it's just this passive, gravitational whole thing it's like worst of both worlds. This is when they attacked Yemen.
Everybody could forecast that Iran is then going to respond, either through its militias or directly through the IRGC.
That's what's going to happen.
So this attempt to like de escalate through escalating is absurd but also not working.
I would put it this way if it was just let's say the who they's out of nowhere, starts shooting at ships, Okay, bomb them, right, But that's not what's happening here.
This is about Israel. So it's like, well, we got to deal with the situation in Israel.
Otherwise we're just gonna keep going in some tit for tat and now lo and behold.
As you know, you put it very well creepy.
In terms of the story, It's kind of like when those four was it Green Berets got killed in Niger.
Everyone was like, wait, what the hell is going on in Niger? They're like, what happened here?
And then the Pentagon story came out and it was let me say you this bullshit, it was complete bs. The families of those involved continue to press there's video that directly undercuts what they said.
There.
It was a boondoggle of apic proportions that probably goes all the way up to the pedagon for denied air support and all this suther stuff. There's YouTube videos and all that stuff that can go watch about it. I suspect something similar is happening here. We don't even get the official narrative about guys lost at sea until days later. And then we have to think about the strategic mission. You got a pivoty little dou in the middle of
the ocean. They're shipping weapons from Iran to Yemen. This is not something that we ever particularly cared about, like we did you know, yeah, maybe we blockade, et cetera, but you don't put American lives at risk. And then all of a sudden, somebody somewhere, probably the White House, green lights and they say, yeah, let's disrupt it a little bit. And now what, how do you look these people's families in the face and be like, what do they give their lives?
If they.
Pray that they were they were they were found.
I pray that that said, let's accept reality about where things are right now, and let's you know, just think about that counterfactual in which they may eventually be declared missing or dad.
How do you look them at the family and say for what?
So that Israel continues this out on Gaza, It's like I thought that, you know, no wars for Israel used to be a meme and now it's reality. It seems to literally be reality anyway, So we wanted to, you know, lay out some of the chaos that's happened in the Middle East there at the same time, turn to Israel all eyes there. There's some video actually going viral in right wing circles in Israel calling out the government for
allegedly retreating. So this is some video that emerged from inside of Gaza, and it shows the Golani Brigade, it's kind of a famous military unit inside of the IDF, cheering as they're.
Actually leaving Gaza.
And the interesting part about it is it's a major question about what the actual plans for post war occupation look like, how exactly.
They're going to spin this inside of the country.
So, for example, guys, we can go to the next part already, which is an Israeli news outlet.
It's Wynett.
We've used them before, excellent news outlet outside of Israel, and their headline here is that the IDF's thirty six Division ends Gaza deployment in a major troop reduction. Military is saying that the division, including the brigade the Golani Brigade, will leave for a period of training before then deciding whether it should resume operating in Gaza.
So I'm curious that's what we make of this, Ryan. Is it a sign of things going badly or a sign of things going well?
Is it trying to get the hell out of Dodge so you don't have to get stuck with occupation. You can stick big old Uncle Sam with that job. What did you make of something like this in the context of the broader military environment.
Yeah, it was announced, you know, Israel announced earlier that they were going to be withdrawing some some troops so that they could be sent back into the Israeli economy and others, so that they could train and then potentially return. It is a signal that, you know, the ground invasion is not going as quickly and smoothly.
As they would like.
But it also is a reflection of just the material limits to you know, seven million people going at war with seven million people, Like if you are Israel you're trying to, you know, run an entire economy and country which requires a civilian population, and so a mass mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people is not sustainable over the long term, not even sustainable kind of over the
medium term. Plus, look look at what has become of gaz It's this dystopian kind of uh, you know, just miles long piles of rubble.
If you look at the videos that the Casambragades puts.
Out, this is the this is the has military place video, you can see how difficult an invasion would be. You are sitting ducks as you're walking through these areas, whereas hamas can go in and out of the different buildings, go into their tunnels and out of them. You can drop as many two thousand bombs as you want on
civilian populations. But if it only takes a couple of guys with an RPG against the tank or against a troop concentration, you're going to be taking losses that are unacceptable to the Israeli public and unsustainable to an Israeli con We.
Found that look Battle of Mosol, Syrian Democratic Forces, Battle of what is it whatever their capital was, Fallujah, Almadi. I mean we've spoken, you know, with about this ad nauseum in terms of urban combat.
You can see every video.
That isis couldn't take from the Kurds.
That's I forget exactly and it was.
And that's the question Fortyahu and the IDEF and the Israeli people as we're testing right here, is do you want that?
Yeah?
And does it make you safer? So it's one thing for the United States to do that in Fallujah or Mosul, it's another thing for Israel to do that right next door. And when you're looking at these videos of Gaza right now, and Israel says that they're they're actually not even on the same page. They're government's not on the same page about what their end goal is in this war. They're not on page on the same page with the government
that they are relying on to prosecute this wark. Joe Biden says his end goal is a two state solution, not in Yahoo, and the people he relies on in his coalition say absolutely not, no two state solution. So this is the rubber meeting the road, because do the Israeli people think that it makes them safer? And do they want to in mass. Does the Israeli, the population of Israel in mass do they want to sacrifice as many young Israelis as would take to do a full
scale invasion of Gaza? And then what does that accomplish? What is their consensus about why they sacrificed all of those fighters to do a full scale invasion of Gaza. The fact of the matter is nobody knows. Nobody can get to the same page about what the goal would be. Is it to eradicate Hamas? Okay, what is the metric for eradicated.
Rescue the hostages.
That's a good point.
That's a good because this is very important.
Let's put this up there because there was a news announcement just yesterday that actually three of the Israeli hostages, according to Hamas, have been killed by the IDF in air strikes. Now, look, we don't know whether that's true or not. They are shown videos of them previously. You know, whether and how they were killed is going to be you know, unless we eventually their bodies are recovered. The only thing I think we could take from this is that at this point we saw a major rally Israel.
We played some of the video yesterday for the hostages. Hostage are very emotional, very important issue inside Israel. The fact is they haven't saved to single one and that's a problem for them. I mean, I can't imagine.
Rescued hostages have said that they felt as the Yeah exactly. Yeah.
So I mean, you know, look, when Hamas says it, it's easy to discount it, but when I hear and I wouldn't even necessarily, you know, you don't take anything at face value. But when those people have been released are like I literally heard the bombs above my head. You're like, well, that's that's a pretty dicey situation. And to this point, and this kind of gets exactly what you're saying, Emily, put this up there, please. The Defense Minister of the War Cabinet actually stormed out of a
meeting with Netsa Yahu. This is something Crystal actually flagged for us because the reason why it's hilarious is that he apparently stormed out over some petty issue where he was told his aides could not come in the room. But then Netson Yah who brought like five of his aids. The most classic like bureaucratic situation ever. But it's just like when you're fighting like that in the middle of the war and for war cabin near like personality conflicts
and all of that come to the fort. Then you're not united in a goal, both in the immediate and theish medium and the long term, because they all hate each other and this is just who breeds just general instability in the country.
And they're they're huge internal rivals. So this, this is that bubbling to the surface. Yes, it goes to how.
Deeply unsustainable all of this is. Obviously Israel's tourism economy. It's completely shot in the toilet. The blockade has meant that the port of a Lot has basically no ships in it, and the civilian populations that we're living down in the south and the Negev and in the north up by Lemanon are now basically like internal refugees living with family friends and found.
Huge internal displacement in apartments in Israeli am and you hear from net Yahoo this is going to go for many, many months because Yahoo needs it to continue going because politically and legally he faces potential prosecution if if he leaves office, and so.
It's in his interest and his interest only to continue this. Everyone else is like is suffering from this.
Yeah, well, I mean again to your point, he has a coalition that he has to keep happy, and so they actually it's the opposite for them. You have a lot of discontent with hownt Nahu has proceeded in the war, but they want him to go harder and further and that becomes untenable.
Yeah, and this final thing I'll mention here.
We got the Congressman Rokanna and stand by outside, but we wanted to just wrap with this. Unfortunately, there's actually been a terrorist attack inside of Israel just yesterday, kind of reinforcing some of the future problems that might await them. Put that up there on the screen. A woman who was killed seventeen others were hurt in a suspected car
ramming attack. This was, you know, two Palestindians who were actually from the West Bank arrested in a city about twelve miles or so north of Tel Aviv in the capitol. Don't forget there's a significant Palestinian population inside of Israel.
What do they think about it? There's a lot, definitely a lot of it.
Yeah, they can't say anything, but you know, every once in a while, people gonna act out so it's not you know, the things are in more of a powder keg. I think right now, both regionally and inside the country, they're trying to make major decisions about their military strategy. So lots of things that are up in the air. As I said, we got the Congressman Rocanna who is here on standby. We're going to talk to him about Yemen,
UFOs and more. Emily, Ryan just want to say thank you guys so much for joining us.
So it was so fun to do this. I guess we'll see you in a week.
After New Hampshire.
But you see Counterpoints tomorrow.
That's oh, I'm sorry. You'll have a counterfifer.
Of course, Counterpoints rate subscribe five stars into your families and your grandma. So Crystal and I are not going to do an AMA this week. We had so much scheduling stuff going on yesterday. Counterpoints will be handling AMA. So for the questions, submit premium questions specifically for Ryan and Emily as you would normally, and they will record it tomorrow and we'll put it out for premium subs. I know some of you guys have been asking that now for quite some time. Next let's get to the
congressman now as Congressman Rocanna. Great friend of the show.
We are always happy to welcome him.
Yeah, we love it.
You know hit like I said with the Capitol Police. In fact, they appreciated my shout out, oh did they? So let's stop the and said, you know we're hearing I have a.
Couple of comments in the Capitol Police.
But we'll leave.
We'll keep it in court today.
Thank you.
We appreciate all of our viewers. Let's put the tweet that you put out on the screen. This was very important.
We wanted to talk with you about it.
It came immediately after the President Biden ordered strikes on Yemen. You said, quote, the President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against Huth. He's in Yemen, involving US in another Middle East conflict. This is Article one of the Constitution. I will stand up for that, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican.
Is in the White House.
You clarify that of the War Powers Act, it is clear POTUS may only introduce the US into hostilities after congressional authorization or in a national emergency when the US is under imminent attack. Reporting is not a substitute. This is a retaliatory offensive strike. So Congressman, you know, first of all, why is this important to you? You were one of maybe I want to say, maybe a handful who actually spoke out about this, both Democrat and Republican.
But what why are you not buying the explanation of the administration. This is a defensive undercovered under the War Powers Act.
Well, this is not a laughing man, It is a serious thing. I mean, you have the world's strongest, most powerful country bombing one of the world's poorest countries. Now, the Hutis are not good at actors. I mean they're obviously disrupting the ships in the Red Sea, and they certainly committed human rights violations in the war in Yemen. And some folks know that I was very very involved in Yemen, yes, and trying to stop that war.
But here's the situation.
You've had these reports with the administration from early December. They've been going to the UN. The President's been talking to the leaders of Canada, the leaders of Australia, the leaders of Britain.
They can't talk to Congress.
I mean, this is not some situation where HUTI is firing at some ship and the President saying, Okay, you have a defensive moment, and let's attack Kuti or defend us our. This is a month and a half where they've been making the case, so they need to come to Congress and say why they think that attacking the Huties will actually make the situation better.
So far it has it opened up the Red Sea.
Yeah, and based on a misreading of the War Powers Resolution, you saw a number of commentators pushing back and saying, well, actually, president can do whatever he wants, just as long as he tells Congress within.
Forty eight hours.
Setting aside the kind of I don't want to elevate community notes to like like a place where we're actually like discussing their opinion as that's merit. But I'm curious inside Congress how fluent are people with the War Powers Resolution. Do they buy that argument or do members of Congress understand Okay, yes, he actually does need congressional authorization to go to war against other countries.
I think there's a lot of confusion, And unfortunately the comments were coming from quote unquote experts and pundits and they were saying, oh, it doesn't know what he's talking about. Of course, Bernie Sanders and I are the only two people who've ever passed a Warpowers Resolution Act in the history of the United States. There are a lot of things I may not know about. I do know the
war powers, and what they were doing is citing the exception. Yes, there is an exception where you can notify Congress within forty eight hours if it's immin in self defense. If the hoodies were shooting at our ships, President says, no, I've got to have an anti missile strike or take those out. He can come to Congress. He must come to Congress within forty eight hours. That exception doesn't apply
when there's not an imminent self defense national emergency. It's hard for me to understand how they're claiming it's imminent national emergency when they're going to the United Nations and making the case when they're talking to international leaders. But it's created this sense of confusion. The funniest thing is the biggest request I was getting is can you text
Elon to take community notes off? I was like, just because I've had conversations with Elon, no, I can't text him to intervene in community notes.
I would save your text for something far more important. The question I think that it all comes down to is both in terms of law and in terms of strategies. Let's say that they did come to you for authorization, what would you vote have been or what questions would you have had for the administration? We've had just talked about it in our show earlier. Who The's fired on a US owned operated vestival They actually also fired after the strikes on a US Navy vessel.
I mean, what do you make then of the fallout of that?
And was the Biden administration them grappling with a so called defensive strike that's supposed to be something that is deterrent and yet we've still seen some action afterwards.
Before giving them authorization, and I would have been open to what their strategy is. I would have asked, what is the strategy? Why is this going to be different than seven years of bombing that the Saudis undertook with the Yemenies. Have they talked to their golf allies? Have they talked to you a Why is it that there's only one golf country, Bahrain, that is on board with this? And I don't doubt that the Hutis are an not acting in good faith, But is this going to actually
make the Red Sea safer? Is it going to actually have our ships not be disrupted because the Hutis just have to have the threat of that, which they've continued for commercial ships to be avoiding the Red Sea. So you've seen the price of oil increase, You've seen the Red Sea continue to be disrupted, and then the question
is how long does this continue? And I think none of those questions were asked, and that's why you have now this creep towards escalation, because what are we going to do if Huti continues to threaten?
Now?
Are we going to back away? And we've not pursued a diplomatic regional solution. I would get the Saudis involved, I would get UAE involved, And of course the elephant in the room is Gaza and what can we do to de escalate there.
I did want to get your reaction one second rhyme.
We were just talking about this morning, but a story about two US Navy seals were missing in the ocean after a daring raid on a vessel that was an Iranian warheads bound Yemen. So this again falls in my card. We're talking about actual US service members what's the authorization here? I haven't seen much outcry reporting. I know you're on the House Armed Services Committee. Have they given you a briefing or any of you monitored the situation because it's
very in a very tragic situation. As far as what we know right now, just want to get your reactions, because we learned some more than emails this morning.
Well far as all my thoughts are with the families of these two brave Navy seals, I mean, they do extraordinary work for our country, and I hope we start to learn more, but I want to understand exactly what the mission was. I mean, is it interdicting the arms going to the Houtis, which is something that we have done in the past, and maybe the administration strategy could be, well, we want to make sure that the arms aren't getting to the UTIs and that's one of the reasons they
need to come to Congress. You know, the irony with these things is a lot of times they may actually get three hundred votes of Congress, but you're actually going to have a much more unified stance for the other countries. And this argument, well, Congress is so broken, Congress is unpopular all of that is true, doesn't mean you could just bypass it and getting a vote and up, down or down vote on a privileged resolution is much easier
than getting a budget. And so you know, in these situations, I actually think it's in the President's strategic interest to come to Congress.
And if you were following the story of the strikes on Yemen through the mainstream media, I don't think you would really have any idea what was going on. You would assume that this is some kind of just random piracy, basically Somali pirates that have wound up somehow in Yemen and now we're going to stop them from doing their piracy.
Whereas that you know, the facto Yemen government has.
Been very clear that this is in direct response to Israel's attack on Gaza and that second that that stops, they will they will lift this blockade. So that brings into question the validity of that argument. And South Africa has brought, you know, has brought genocide charges at the Hague.
I'm curious if you've read South Africa's charging. She did you watch some of the hearings, either South Africa's prosecution or Israel's defense, and what you make of their claims that an imminent genocide is being carried out.
Well, I have read parts of it, I haven't read the whole thing, and what I would say is I would describe it as a humanitarian catastrophe. I mean, what you have there in Gaza is twenty three thousand or so civilians killed according to the Ministry of Health and other UN reports. Most of those are women and children, or almost forty to fifty percent. You have seventy percent of the houses that have been destroyed, and certainly the loss of human life is too much, and we don't
have humanitarian aid going in there. It could be a potential starvation. I'll leave it to the legal system and legal experts to figure out what to call it. I call it in a humanitary cantestrap, and my interest is to make sure that all the hostages are released and that we have a cease fire and humanitarian aid there.
France has said that they also are willing to leave it to the legal process, and if the court rules that it is a genocide, that France will support that ruling. Do you think the United States should do the same that leave it to the process and if the court rules, whatever way the court rules.
The United States should support that ruling.
I think we have to have our State Department involved. I have respect for the ICJ, but I wouldn't outsource all American foreign policy to the ICJ. So I do think that, But I think our State Department needs to take a hard look at what has gone on, and we need to look at what the legal analysis is. But I think that the issue ad myview, I mean, let the history is, legal experts figure out the terminology
for all this. Right now, it's how do we save lives, how do we stop the bobbing, how do we release all the hostages, how do we get humanitarian and ate in and that to me should be the focus.
Yeah, well you called for ceas fire, and I've done previously here on the show. I do want to move on to pet topic. Very hard turn, but it's UFOs. I know you've spoken about it, you have received as I understand it. Maybe tell us a little bit about the circumstances of the briefing. Was it in a secure facility or not? Was it classified? You don't have to get into the details necessarily what you learned.
If I want this to be my last show. Oh yeah, just an undisclosed location.
One of the things the process problem that we had heard was that members of Congress were denied a secure, compartmentalized intelligen facility to actually look at information rot by whistleblowers, by David Grush and by others. Have you been able to receive, then a classified briefing specifically about his claims and to what extent have they been willing to share information with you on the UFO subject.
I've had a classified briefing on the subject of the whistleblowers complaint.
Okay, it left me with more questions.
I have.
Not had a classified briefing on anything about the actual substance of the existence or not of UFOs. But I think that there are more questions that need to be asked about people in general coming forward with whistleblowing complaints.
So my question it comes down to this, which is like you have been involved, now you're involved war power solutioning more on the UFO subject.
There's two kind of strains of thought.
One is that there's an active cover up going on by members of Congress and others who are tied to the intelligce community. One is that this is just about lack of transparency for the sake of it, simply because they don't want. You know, who knows what you would
learn if we were to continue to push. And then one is that this is all just like bureaucratic snafoo and we're overthinking it in your involvement, you know on the House arm Services, commed in more your general observation, You've always been honest with us in terms of what you think. What do you see when you're with your involvement here on the topic amongst your colleagues. Is there
an unwillingness to look at it? Is it disbelief? People just think that this is crank and kind of a crazy subject some genuine interest, Like what's your assessment of the kind of the landscape now that you've at least you dipped your tone in a little bit.
Well, first, all members of Congress are incompetent to keep some kind of secret for more than two hours before Ryan will be tweeting about it. I mean, we can't keep a secret about it like a some staff person is leaving our office, let alone a topic like this. But the question is, so I don't think it's at the issue of Congress. I mean, el the Rushie one said, in democracy, there are no secrets that applies to Congress. Now, whether there are other agencies that have been fully transparent
on the matter, I have more questions. I don't what I don't know this is not talking about anything classified. This is just me as a member of Congress and citizen. What I don't know is is the reluctance potentially to be fully transparent because there are things overt operations that look like UFOs that we are reluctant to share information or if there's actually any evidence of extraterrestrial life, and I think that that has led to a lack of
full transparency. What I will say is that there are members on both sides who are now pushing for more transparency, and it could be one of the few things the Oversight Committee actually gets bipartisan consensus over.
How would you describe your position on this question back when you were just a guy before you came to Congress, just a normal.
Maria A question Ryan compared to how you are.
To access to classified briefings, though of course not access to the kinds of classified briefings that would be at the very very highest levels. But it has there been a shift in your thinking or understanding of this issue.
I think there's been a shift, not because I'm a member of Congress, but I was probably candidly on the more skeptical camp growing up in a till.
Now.
And I think it's been more of the public reporting of whistleblower complaints, which the public has in and these are credible people bringing forth these complaints, and certainly that raises issues that has there been a challenge on transparency and why is that? And regardless of whether it's actual UFOs or something else, the transparency should be a concern to American citizens.
I've said that for it. Look, we could be totally wrong. Who knows it's better to find out rather than to keep it, you know, be a secret. So there's millions of people who certainly want to look into the subject. We appreciate your joining us and really willing to talk about it, sir, and we always welcome you back.
So thank you.
Always enjoying going.
Thank you.
We'll see you guys later.