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But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Christal deed, we do.
Lots of things happening here and around the world. We are, of course looking towards New Hampshire. Does anyone Niki Aeli or Ron Desantas have any shot at defeating Trump at this point? And in a sign that the answer is no, the beepstakes have already started. Yeah, So we'll get into all that. We're also going to take a look at the economy, little vibe check. How are people actually feeling about the economy as we head into the general election. There was an election in Taiwan that may have a
lot of broader implications for their relationship with China. For US, as well, so we'll take a look at that. We're also following big updates out of Israel where night Yaho is proclaiming this thing could last for years. Of course, as we've been discussing for a while now, he has every incentive to basically make this war on Gaza and on Hesbla and whoever else he wants to take on last indefinitely so he can maintain his grip on power.
And this comes as the Hufies are striking back after the US decided to redesignate them as a terror group. Also excited to have an Australian journalist in the show today, Anthony Lowenstein, who is taking a look at the way that Palestinians are used effectively as guinea pigs for testing out new weapons systems. So a lot to get to this morning.
Yeah, there's certainly so going to be interesting. I'm actually excited to talk to him. But before we get to that, we do have an election discount. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So we've got twenty five percent off on our yearly subscription. That's at breaking points. Dot Com, you guys can help us out. We've got the RFK Junior rescheduled focus group because of the weather that is coming up, and we've got all kinds of plans that we're going to be debuting very very to us,
you know, quickly, I guess, as the season continues. So if you can go ahead and help us out, sign up Breakingpoints dot Com. We've got a lot of fun things for this election season. We want you all to help us be a part of it. But let's go ahead and start, as we said, with the New Hampshire primary, and let's actually just check in, like what the hell is going on over here. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is just a sign of, I guess, the dwindling nature of the entire race.
CNN and ABC News have both pulled the plug on the GOP primary debates in New Hampshire after both Trump and Nicky Haley critically have bailed Crystal.
This is all part of Nicky Haley's bizarre.
Attempt to spin her third place finish in New Hampshire as a two person race. So she's like, I will no longer debate Ron DeSantis, I will only debate Trump. And obviously Trump has not participated in a single debate, and so she effectively withdrew from the debate. Now, I mean, I'm not quite so sure how much it matters. I mean, this is a five day basically last gasp at any
attempt to try and win. We did see a single poll conducted the day of the Iowa of Iowa which actually showed Nikki Haley, you know, within striking distance of Trump. Not don't know how much to even put in stock that, and obviously there's a lot of rapidly shifting and changing dynamics, but it does show her that like this is this is it for her last five days. I mean, yeah, Frankly DeSantis too, although I'm not quite so sure he realized it because he didn't have the same expectations of
New Hampshire. He may actually be shifting all his focus towards South Carolina, and I guess make that his last dance.
We'll have two last stands. I guess in South Carolina.
There's a lot of Pete Bootage edge energy here with Nikki Haley. You'll recall that he just like declared victory in Iowa and then pretended like he was the guy, and the media sort of went along with it, and you know, to be honest with you here with Nikki, like we can't say it's not working. The media is sort of going along with it. And to be a fair to her Ron, Desanta's put all his eggs in
the Iowa basket. I mean, this man spent tens of millions of dollars in that state, did a massive number of events, like they were broadcasting and telling the press that they were going to make their stand in Iowa. His surrogates were all declaring, you know, they're going to win Iowe et cetera, et cetera. So it is a bigger disappointment for him to finish such a distant second. Then Nikki has always put all of her eggs in the New Hampshire basket. So basically she's saying, look, I
did okay in Iowa. Let's just pretend that didn't happen, and let's move forward to the state that I actually care about, which is New Hampshire. You know, in terms of backing out of the debates, obviously, from a democracy standpoint, I think all of these candidates Trump included, Biden included, should have been required to do debates all along. I think it's disgusting that people feel like they can just you know, back ound of the democratic process. However, is
a tactical move. I think it's probably smart. I mean, number one, I don't think that it's kind of a waste of time at this point, not that many people are watching, not that many people care. But also, she's clearly versus Ron in the driver's seat in New Hampshire, and so why give him any oxygen and any chance to make up some ground and you know, the score some sort of a blow on her in that format. So I do think that again from a tactical perspective,
it's probably a clever move. And you know, while she's running out a runway. And I mean, as I said last time, I think this primary is basically over. But for Ron, the landscape is even more grim because you already lost the state that you put all your eggs in. There is no other state on the map where it appears, including your home state, where appears that you're going to perform better than you did in Iowa. So like, what's your plan here?
Yeah, I mean to that point about why the debate would probably hurt, it just opens her up. And then yeah, last time, actually because we had that parallel Trump town hall versus the debate.
The town hall got over double.
It had like four point four million people watching, and the debate had like two some millions.
And Ron had pretty decent in that last debate. That's right that they thought we won, right.
So why would she give him that now?
Again, I agree they should be required to debate period in the past. I mean, if you'll recall Mitt Romney and all them, they were debating all the way into South Carolina. That was some crazy stop. They had fifteen almost nineteen debates the Democratic debate. Even though Obama basically won after South Carolina, Hillary and him kept on going for a long time. So it's actually sad to see
like the total collapse of all this. To bolster your point about how some of the wagons are now circling within the GOP anti Trump direction, let's put this up there on the screen. The Wall Street Journal put an editorial board out on Tuesday saying that President Trump sweeping win in Iowa quote should push Governor DeSantis to drop out of the GOP presidential race and give former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley a chance at beating the former president.
Mister DeSantis faces no clear path to the nomination. He's well behind her in New Hampshire and South Carolina. If he believes, as he says, that Trump cannot win in November, he should leave the race and give her a chance to take on mister Trump one on one. So, I mean, to a certain extent, I kind of do see their point, Crystal, this is probably the only chance you have to have any meaningful blow. But DeSantis himself, I mean from a self interested point of view, like, why would he do that?
For him?
He's he did get second in Iowa. He has no reason that he necessarily has to drop out. I mean everyone's like, oh, you have no chance. I mean, you don't know until the votes are cast. It's one of those where it's up in the air. I don't think it's gonna work out for him, but you know, I guess we'll see. And then it all comes back to this. They say, they say things, do they really believe them.
Like for DeSantis, DeSantis raised his hand at every debate and he said that he would support the GOP nominee. So when Trump wins, is he going to endorse him? Yeah, he already said he would. NICKI Haley too, I mean, by all means, it seems as she's campaigning for a vice president. There's been actually, interestingly enough, I spotted an instance where Jason Miller, who works for Trump, the day before the Iowa Caucuses, he was asked, well, vag Ramaswami
ever vi president? He said no, I don't think So they said what about Nicki Haley? And he said, well, we'll see, So he kept it. He kept the door open. There's previous leaks and all that. I don't know, there's gonna be a big fight within Trump world. I wouldn't personally bet on it. But for this woman, I mean, ambition is everything like and she also doesn't believe anything
that she says. Like now she's against Trump. Previously she walked back her January sixth criticism, and then before that she was.
Against him for January six She's all over the place and.
She's like, I want to call my friend President Trump to clear the air. This is before she decides to run against him. So I wouldn't put it out that all of them are just in a self interested you know, like march towards us and they are just looking out
what's good for them. I'm not convinced that it would be the best thing for DeSantis to drop out, because then the Trump people would say, oh, well, he tried to help Nicki, you know, the Edmond He would only increase They don't believe what they're actually saying here.
So for Nicki and Ron, in terms of their self interest, there are two possible tracks to pursue. One is the try to stay good with the megabas track. I think Ron DeSantis is probably more likely to go in that direction because he even though he's been a little bit critical of Trump, like the Republican base still likes him. They don't see him as a never Trump figure. You know, he maintains a war. If Trump were to drop out of the race, I think Ron would you know, go
to prison, da whatever for whatever reason he disappears. I think Ron DeSantis would be way better positioned to pick up his support, certainly than Nikki Haley. So I think he's probably more likely to go in the direction of like, what am I going to do to make sure the Republican base still likes me, that I still have a future in Republican politics given that Donald Trump is still the man? How can I get back in Donald Trump's
good graces? So he's not just like, you know, being mean to me all the time and humiliating me all the times. I have some chance in the future in Republican politics. I think that is more likely the track that Ron DeSantis is going to go on. The other possible career track is the one that I think Nikki Haley is more likely to pursue, which is the let me be the darling of the media and the donor base and let me, you know, maybe on position for
more board seats and make it more money. Maybe on position for some future never Trump or anti Trump lane. Maybe on position for a CNN gig or other mainstream press gig. And she because she has taken on almost like an anti Trump Chris Christie vibe with the Republican base in this primary, in spite of her very conservative records bye the fact that she also was very gentle with Trump. That's the way she's beginning to be seen among Republicans. I think she is more likely to pursue
that track. Now, what does that mean exactly in terms of her calculation for when and how she gets out of this race. I think it's a real open question. You know, I hadn't really thought about this thought through
this until yesterday. But there is some chance that between even if she loses North New Hampshire and even if she loses South Carolina and even and she's going into Super Tuesday and she's way behind, there is some chance, you know, zero point five percent or whatever, that there is about black swan event and Trump is taken out of the race, and that there's some benefit to donors of having one of their representatives as like the last
persons standing point. So I think, you know, that may be a calculation that she makes where even though it's completely humiliating to get blown out in all of these races by like sixty percent, but she may stay in there even you know, and accept that level of humiliation just because that's what the donor class wants her to do, to be where they want her to be, just in case something unforeseen happens.
I mean, remember Hillary stayed in until June of what was it to June of two thousand and eight, months and months after it was clear that she wasn't going to win. I mean, I guess she was banking more on super delegates at that time, but you know, the same kind of case was there just in case, you might be able to know to do that, and that's something that Ted Cruz and John Kasick. As we all can recall, he stayed all the way until the end
of the primary. So if a vike Ramaswami, obviously we covered the news on Tuesday dropping out of the race on Monday night in Iowa after he only was able to get eight percent finished fourth, immediately not only endorse Trump, but is now actively joining the campaign. He campaigned with Trump in New Hampshire, now taking to the airwaves, mostly on Fox, calling on rohnd De Santis and Nikki Haley to drop out.
Let's take a listen to what he said.
I think that you guys may have seen some of the rally that we had and the response was overwhelmed. And I think it's very clear who the Republican primary electorate is saying that they want to be their nominee.
I ran to be that person. They sent me a very positive message.
But the very positive message they send to all of us is that Donald Trump needs to be the nominee of this party. And I think Ron Santas and Nikki Haley would actually at this point do this country and this party a service. By stepping aside to make sure that we're focused on not only nominating Donald Trump, but getting this country back and reviving those founding revolutionary ideals. And I think we do live in that seventeen seventy six moment right now. We need to win.
You're calling on Nikki Haley and Ron De Santis to drop out right now.
I am, and I do think that would be healthy for this country. And I think that, you know what, especially Ron De Santis, at least of the two of them, will have an important role to play in the future of this country and leading this nation. I do believe that. But I think that the right thing to do right now is the people of this country through the Iowa Caucus. It's the most grassroots process I've seen. I personally did over three hundred and ninety events, built great relationships and
good will, but the message they sent was clear. I think it's time to actually make sure we elect the right president.
So to underscore your points as well, Crystal, with that, let's put this up there on the screen. The Rhonda Santis super pac is actually having layoffs on the very same time that he would try to win in New Hampshire. They appear to be putting all of their efforts. As we said on South Carolina, they're basically writing off the state.
Nikki Haley's got much more, not only never Trump type Trump anti Trump sympathetic voters, but New Hampshire's got the open primary process, and since we don't have an active Democratic primary, or do we which we will get to just in a second, it's one of those where we could see some crossover voters who come in and support her as some sort of last ditch effort. So all of this is kind of pointing to the fact that it's do or die, you know, for Nicki Haley, and
Trump is basically treating it that way. He's not even really paying attention to Rondasantis. Let's put this up there after following on he had originally had a birth attack on Nicki.
Now he's going with this.
Anyone listening to Nicki Nimrada Haley, it's actually nim Ratha whacked out speech last night, would thinks she won the Iowa primary. She didn't, and she couldn't even beat a very flawed Rna Sanctimonius who's out of money and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant third. She said she would never run against me. He was a great president. She should have followed her own advice. She's now stuck with weak policies and a very strong MAGA base.
There's just nothing that she can do.
So look, he seems to be treating it as a one on one and actually the Trump people are on the ground in New Hampshire. They seem to be feeling good about it. Let's just underscore the one chance Niggi has, which is she's got a hell of a lot of money. She's got more money than Rond DeSantis right now, She's got the billionaire class behind her, and she's got the possibility. I mean, at this point, it's not even fair to call it a black swan event because it's totally predictable.
It's like a white swan. It's just like when is it going to flap its wings? And that's Trump's legal problems. To what extent are they going to be there? Nobody knows. Just to give everybody an idea, you know, Trump currently is fighting his second defamation case against Egene Carroll.
We can put that up there.
That's happening right now actually with a federal judge actually coming down on Trump. They're saying that you can be kicked out of this trial if you keep making disparaging comments that the jury could hear.
Then he's been putting.
Stuff out on truth Social as well. Previously, she'd already sought and won damages against him. Now she's going for it a second time after I believe it was a previous truth Social case that came out afterwards.
I mean, obviously you know her.
I believe her case is being bankrolled by what is his name, reed Hoffman, the Democratic billionaire. Regardless, it obviously worked already in terms of the defamation against him. Now we're getting to the second case that's against him. She's basically trying to bleed money from him and just keep him tied up in court.
But that's I mean, that's the least.
Of his problems. Money he at least has, or at least appears to have. Everything else Like, that's not necessarily one you can just pay your way out of. You've got the Georgia case, although you know we've got problems
there which we've covered. We've got but I mean, I mean, at the same time, I also have to come back to the documents, so I have to remind myself as you did the last time we were discussing, that that one is just open and shut, Like there's just no, there's no January sixth, like first en Men's Supreme Court, Like not even the court can save you on that one.
And that's why Trump his last truth actually just this morning, was about how the president should have total immunity while he's in office, because I think he does seem to understand. It's like, look, he's got a chance on jan six he's got it at the court. Not necessarily with the jury. He's got a chance ish, I guess with election law and free speech.
And all that.
But the Document's case, I mean, that's one where after he was president, so he no longer has the same level of immunity.
And given the fact that his.
Own administration argued against the same classification standards that he is trying to prop up for for like why he didn't do anything wrong, it's going to be a problem.
Yeah, I mean you just have to like, there's different factors in all these cases. The Florida one he does have going for him that it's not in DC. You know, we could get a more favorable jury pool. He seems to have a judge who is much more sympathetic towards him, So he had some things going for him there, not
really in terms of necessarily winning. But his whole strategy is to drag this out so that he has a chance to win at the ballot box and then get himself out of all of his legal trouble that way. The DC cases, you know, they are trickier from a legal perspective, but he has less friendly judges and you know, a potentially less friendly jury pool, and so I don't know, we'll see. I mean, the big question with all of
these things is the timeline. And the other question is when you have so much legal jeopardy in multiple states, multiple charges, what is it, like ninety one different charges, you're going to run the table on all of them. It seems unlikely. So that is the big thing that's hanging over all of this. But in terms of the Republican primary, it seems very unlikely that any of this
comes to a conclusion before he's the official Republican nominee. So, you know, perhaps some of these trials conclude before the general election, perhaps, but I think it's highly unlikely that there is such an expedited process that any of this comes to fruition before he is a officially the Republican nominee. And so you know, that's kind of where we are.
Yeah, as a Trump used to say, we'll see you see what happens. Let's move on to the next one. Christly, you flagged the story. I'll set it up a little bit.
I'm really curious to hear what you think about Biden both right, Biden and the DNC honestly writing off New Hampshire bypassing it, changing their process such as South Carolina comes first, basically to rig the primary because they know that Iowa and New Hampshire actually didn't choose Biden last time, and Iowa gave him the perfect excuse there, like, oh, well it was such a shit show last time, we
have to bypass it. But that didn't mean you had to bypass New Hampshire, where Biden conveniently got fifth place. But South Carolina, where we have a large elderly black population which votes very very differently than Iowa New Hampshire. Yeah, let's just throw it to them because of racism or whatever. Well, now, though it seems even though the New Hampshire primary will continue, let's put this Pollee up on the screen. The Biden team, I'm not gonna I mean, look, it seems to be
panic in a certain way. They are now instant voting after Dean Phillips has announced his candidacy, a quote weird ride in campaign where they want Biden to win New Hampshire, but they don't want to seem as if they are all that invested in him winning because Biden by trying to end the quote one hundred year reign as the nation's first in the primary and put South Carolina first. Now his allies are trying to make it so that he will have a ride in campaign on a shoestring
budget where his campaign is not technically involved. But they still really really want him to win because it would be embarrassing, which it would be embarrassing for you to lose to Dean Phillips, to Marian Williamson or previously RFK Junior, who had been vying for you know, I mean, if we would think about the RFK Junior case before he went independent, when he was on in the Democratic Party, his entire thing was New Hampshire because that was the one place where Biden's not competing.
He's literally not there.
And if RFKA was able to win for forty fifty or whatever percent, that would have been humiliating and the media would have.
Had to treat that as a story.
In this case, now we've got Dean Phillips, who's got i mean some momentum. It's unclear exact how much they seem to be pulling like a fast one, both trying to tell the media New Hampshire primary doesn't matter all this Biden challengers, they're fake. That's why they're rigging the whole election process and the rest of these states. But now they also do want to win to try and save face. Yeah, in terms of their headlines.
Basically, by being so heavy handed and trying to rig the Democratic primaries, they screwed themselves. They really screwed themselves. They thought New Hampshire would fold and would just get in line and then they would be able to have the exact state order that they want, that they thought
was ideal for Joe Biden. But they didn't think through the fact that I mean, number one, this is like a point of pride and source of identity and money, by the way, for the Democratic Party in New Hampshire. They didn't want to let this go easily. And the other thing is the New Hampshire constitution says that they go first in the nation, and New Hampshire is not run by Democrats, it's run by Republicans, so even if they wanted to change it, they're not in control to
change it. So they're saying, Okay, we have to abide by our state laws, so we're going forward with this primary, whether you're participating or not. So that's what put Joe Biden in this quandary of like, okay, well, since the DNC isn't sanctioning this thing, and in fact, they're penalizing the candidates in the state. If whoever wins the state isn't going to get any delegates, so Biden can't put his name on the ballot, so they have to do
this write in effort. But they're also worried that, you know, all of this anti Biden sentiment that is very clear within the Democratic Party where people really feel like they want another alternative, and which has been amplified and exacerbated by the fact that so many young people are disgusted with his unconditional support for Israel's all on assault on Gaza that has opened them up to very precarious situation. They don't want to be seen as spending any money
in New Hampshire. So the State Party, which is by the way, incredibly pissed at the DNC and incredibly pissed at Joe Biden, they've sort of begrudgingly taken up this effort. It's a very low dollar amount in terms of presidential politics that they've put into this right and effort, and it's a real wild card what's going to happen here because it's hard to pull right. How do you pull
what's going to happen in a writing campaign? You are are you asking people, Okay, here's your options that are on the ballot, Dean Phillips, Mary and Williamson or some other write in. Are you sort of like pushing them with the fact that you can write in Joe Biden? Are people going to be aware that that's the case.
I just think it's very even more difficult to predict what will happen here, and the irony and sager if they had just played this straight New Hampshire at the front of the line as it's you know, always been in terms of the first primary, Joe Biden was gonna win. He was going to win. He's winning in every other state. He would win in New Hampshire and even you know, maybe somebody would do a little bit better than they're
going to do in other states. But because they are so concerned and so nervous and so overly controlling of this process and so like so opposed to actually having real democracy and letting people have a say and like go to the ballot box and actually pick, they have opened themselves up to a vulnerability. So I genuinely don't know what's going to happen in New Hampshire for Democrats. We can put this next one up on the screen.
I mean there the polls have been again a little bit all over the map, I think in particular because it's very difficult to pull this write in situation. But there was a poll that had Dean Phillips at twenty six percent. That's not nothing. I think even that level of support is embarrassing for an incumbent president versus a guy. I mean, nobody knows who Dean Phillips is, right, I mean,
we've interviewed a mer. We know who he is, but he is a random congressman that the overwhelming majority of the country has no idea who he is, and the media has gone to great lengths to make sure nobody knows who he is. They've done the same thing obviously to Mary and Williamson. And then you couple that with there's also a new effort to write in just the word cease fire on the ballot to try to send
a message to Joe Biden. I mean, I think probably the more effective way to send a message to vote for one of his actual opponents who's on the ballot. I think Dean and Mary in at this point both support a ceasefire and have some differences from Joe Biden on their policy towards Israel. But that just adds another factor motivating young people to go out and send some sort of a signal against Joe Biden. So it makes
it a little more interesting than Iowa. Nothing happened for Democrats, but it makes it a little more interesting than some of the other states.
It's more interesting because we genuinely have no idea, and like you said, it's already difficult to pull a ride in number two. People are spending any money on polling the Democratic race.
We have one, maybe two.
Yeah, at this point, it's you know, super packs are the only ones with any cash. I mean, if we look to history and we think about you know, it's a competitive primary even as sitting president. The last time this happened was nineteen eighty election. Jimmy Carter only won forty seven percent in the New Hampshire primary. Ted Kennedy actually got thirty seven percent.
Of the vote.
So let's say that Dean Phillips gets twenty six thirty. I mean, that's a serious contender. But I could flip it and again just point to if Biden had any confidence in himself, he would do what Carter did, and you would try and crush your opponent in the primary. Yeah, Carter maintains he has some cope where he's like, well, Ted Kennedy really hurt me going into the election. I'm like, dude, Kennedy was at least your problems whenever it was going
into nineteen eighty election against Ronald Reagan. It's not that it didn't cost too much money. Money wasn't your problem. The thing is, I actually it helped him. Having read a little bit about it, he had to hone his message both in terms of getting people to come out for vote for him, and he was in fighting shape. If we'll remember, remember Obama's first debate against Romney disaster, and the reason why was, what did all the people around him say, He's out of practice. It doesn't run
for office in a long time. He's like, he kind of forgot that you need to make a case. His second debate was.
Very, very different.
He tried to reform his professorial tone and getting angried. That was the real Obama is the only time we ever really saw him was in that first debate, and then he put the mask back on. But the point is is that you know it's healthy, it's good for you, and it actually can make you better at overall running for office. There's also just a question about the media
in this primary. We talked and had looked previously. You know, I vike Ramaswami was saying like, oh, look, they're leading me out of polls and not putting my face on the screen. You and I are familiar with this, going back to the Gang Gang. How many times Andrew Yang was left off? You know, how many times he was either blackballed or not mentioned by the media. I mean, in the case of Dean Phillips. There's some crazy stuff. Actually,
let's put this up there. So Dean Phillips says that he has not been on MSNBC a single time since he has announced his candidacy. Phillips here. This was an interview with Politico. He says he may as well be calling in from the sidewalk outside of the Capitol Hill studio. He can watch fancy guests come and go, hoping in vain for Chris Hayes, Joy Reid or Jensaki to just bring him in for the from the cold. He says, quote,
right wing media has actually been more than invitational. By contrast, I don't think there's an MSNBC viewer that even knows I'm a congressman, because that is what is being portrayed in design to prevent that education. Now, look, let's be clear, he doesn't have a right to go on MSNBC. But then there's a question with MSNBC. They're not stupid. They know they run the table in terms of elitemocratic opinion.
You can't even have the guy on one time.
So according to them, the Phillips campaign, they said that they had two previously scheduled appearances. Then this was actually on CNN. Then both of them were subsequently canceled. Yeah, MSNBC has not even reached out to the man. You have interviewed him twice, and it's just like, it's not that hard. You can just text him people.
It's very available.
Let's to think about this.
You know, from their low rated shows even and all of that, Joy Reader and these other.
People, What the hell else are they covering on the show? Why pretend just have him on? You can even be confrontational.
As you were a dean. Look, I'm gonna give him credit. He sat there and he took it. You know, you went it back and forth with you guys. That's pretty rare actually for people who are running for president. I actually can't think of a better thing than to have somebody on like that, especially if you're Jen Zaki or someone challenge him to his face.
What's the issue with that?
They seem to be totally They seem to be terrified at even opening the door, which is a huge mistake. It's a lot of disdain for the viewer because a lot of these viewers they love Joe Biden, or if they don't love Joe Biden, they're going to be offended because they're much more institutionalist that anybody would even challenge him, So by airing him, they more likely would turn people towards the Biden campaign.
But at the very least, like you got to let people talk.
There's just no reason you shouldn't a guarantee. Calls went in from Biden World to MSNBC and to CNN, and I'm sure to other places as well. I mean, that's why he's getting booked on CNN and then canceled. That's why the invitation is not even getting extended to MSNBC. And the way this works is someone in Biden World calls the President Network and says, listen, we don't want this guy on your air. And if he does, you're
not getting your interviews with the President. You're not getting your interviews with Kamala Harris or whoever it is that they want access to. It's not happening. And so that's the way this game works. And you know, I saw it when I was at MSNBC and I did critical commentary of Hillary Clinton before she was going to run in twenty sixteen, and someone from Clinton World called the network and that's basically exactly the message that was sent in no uncertain terms. So that's the way that this
game is played. It's just, guys, it's not journalism. It's not you know, it's anti democratic, especially for these networks c and m SMEC that pretend they care so much about democracy and think about it on CNN too. They've done town halls with They did town halls with all of the Republican contenders, even the ones that were pulling at like three percent. They gave them plenty of air time,
they gave them plenty of exposure. So even if you look at the pull numbers here and you're like, oh, well, Marian's not pulling that high or Dean's not pulling that high, they're pulling high a lot higher than some of the people. They put on air for these town halls and gave them, you know, plenty of space and whatever. They've just decided to pretend there are no options on the Democratic side.
And I'll tell you, Soger, it's very clear from the way the Biden people have reacted they fear that his support is a house of cards. Now is it really a house of cards, I don't know, but they clearly are worried about that and there's a reason for them.
I'm not sure that they're wrong, I guess is what I'll say if you genuinely had Dean Phillips, who I think persents himself reasonably well in interviews, even in you know, a confrontational or like contentious interview like I had with him a couple of times, he comes across well, he's able to handle himself. And they're worried that if MSNBC viewers actually internalize there is another option here basically like generic democrat is actually on the table for me to choose.
That they may go ahead and choose that option. And I'm not one hundred percent short that they're incorrect about that.
They may look, I don't know.
I actually do think Biden probably would prevail in a quote unquote primary as it's currently constituted. Yes, because I think a lot of viewers are a lot of voters are comfortable, and.
You know, especially an incumbent is a huge advantage, huge advantage.
Yes, that's right.
That said, you know, there's no reason not to give him a shot. And I think the point that he made was fantastic is if frickin' Tim Scott gets a town hall Dean.
Phillips gets thank you. If Mike Pence, you can't.
Even drag his ask to the finish line in Iowa to actually run and go on the ballot, gets a town hall, well then I think Dean Phillips should be able to get a town hall.
It's pretty wild.
It's interesting to the Biden campaign to back up what you're saying. They were actually asked for comments on the story whether they were quashing, and all they responded was quote law in all caps.
It's like total disrespect at that.
You know, like very arrogant behavior for somebody who is terrified and is literally rigging the primary.
So look, anyways we can look at it.
We could say is a possible because New Hampshire is the one place where they don't have it entirely rigged to their benefit. One thing we also know is that the New Hampshire Attorney General and most New Hampshire Democrats are so furious with the DNC. Their New Hampshire Attorney General actually is threatening to take legal action against them because the DNC keeps saying that the New Hampshire primary is not real, and they're like, hey, you're violating state
law because you're denigrating or whatever our process. So there is some internal fight here, the DNC is throwing everything they are at this, but overall we just have to say this. This is really bad for the future because what it means is that if they're going to commit to South Carolina first, there will never be a Barack Obama type figure ever again.
Period.
There will always like new South Carolina and his political system are designed as machine politics. If that goes first, you deny the momentum stories that originally came out for Obama. And to put it back in history, if South Carolina was first, Barack Obama would.
Never be president.
Hillary one would have been the nominee, and who the hell knows we're gonna got freaking John mccainis break.
Can you imagine that if America wouldn't.
Even exist, We've been a nuclear wasteland something like that, it ever happened.
So let me ask you this, Sager, what do you think how do you think the media handles it? If if Dean Phillips actually beats Joe Biden in New Hampshire, they have to cover I mean I feel that way too, like they may want to do the Blackount whatever, But you can't just one hundred percent ignore. They may doubt, they will definitely doubt. They will give you all the context in the world for why this doesn't count. Joe Biden wasn't even competing, they didn't even spend any money there,
blah blah blah. But I don't think that they can avoid just completely pretending like it didn't open.
It looks like our I mean, everybody want to pretend you didn't exist. And they got, you know, some twenty six percent or whatever in a national poll, knock, all right, and we gotta do something on this. Even he gets to go on Fox News in all these other places, and what did he did in an interview with ABC? Yes, they edited it, they you know, sens or whatever, but the point is they still acknowledge that he was real. I think the same is going to happen with Dean
if he wins. But if he loses, which probably looks most likely, yeah, well then it's gonna be a problem. But I still think if he does crack twenty five, you still got.
To interview the man. You have to interview the man.
You have to give him like something, because twenty five percent is a non insignificant amount of people who came to the ballot box and are actually Democrats. You can downplay it all you want, low turnout, et cetera, but you know you have to at least acknowledge his presence.
We'll see, I mean, to his benefit.
Right now, he's got a lot of these vcs you know, currently backing him. He's got the All In podcast Jason had Jason Calcanis, he did a Twitter spaces with Elon Musk and with Bill Ackman and with Dean Philip.
Bill Ackman actually gave Dean Phillips a million dollars and then most ever off of it.
That's a whole other conversation, but it's very impressionable. It is not as if you know, he doesn't have powerful people behind him ready to help if he's able to capitalize. The only question is if you know if that if that even materializes as possible, which I don't know it.
Yeah, nobody knows.
Well, it'll be interesting.
At the same time, I wanted to take a look at the US economy, how exactly are things going not just for you, but how is it going to affect the overall election? So we have a lot of weird indicators. You could look at things a couple of different ways. First and foremost is probably this, let's put this up there. Inflation is going to be so massively determinative in the election and how people feel about where things are going.
As you guys can see from the chart in front of you, technical the CPI inflation, which peaked at over nine percent and mid twenty twenty two seems to be down, but it is down to what somewhere around three point five or so percent. And I think the big question though, is that even though it may be down to three or four percent depending on the month and things ticking up in December, it's still a hell of a lot higher even in the monthly and or annual rate than
where it was back in twenty twenty. We've had over twenty percent inflation or so that consumers have experienced in a very very short period of time, which is part of what is affecting the overall shock. At the same time, though, if you look at Americans pocketbooks, despite the fact that inflation is high, we do seem to be in a weird conundrum.
Let's put this up there.
This actually just came out a new survey which is called the Axios vibes Pole, which I love.
Fines Now I don't know, I actually like it kind of nails it.
It says Americans are actually pretty happy with their finances. So this is despite the fact that consumer sentiment is very weak. People in general are unhappy with the overall economy. But then if you ask them how do you feel about their overall prospects, They're like, yeah, I actually feel good about it. They say sixty three percent rate their current financial situation is being good. Nineteen percent actually say
quote it's very good. Neither number is very low. They're actually in line with the average result right now for the last twenty times at Harris Harvard. Harris has asked this poll and nationally representative of thousands of people. They say sixty six percent actually think twenty twenty four is going to be better than twenty twenty three, and eighty five percent say that they will change our financial personal situation for the better. So Gristal, I mean you can
put those two things together. I'm not quite sure I could see it. Like I said, a lot of different ways. We've got the inflation which is ticking up. People are still pissed off about the grocery store about gas, about the fact that they're spending more on personal household goods than they used to, but then in their personal lives
they seem to be kind of happy. I don't really know what to do with that, but it would make it makes it so that the question that the economy is on one hundred percent going to be bad for Joe Biden. It doesn't, you know, the data doesn't bear that out to make it a foregone conclusion. There's enough like sticky and noise stuff within there. It actually is more up in the air than I would have expected.
Especially when you consider that. I think the vibes were probably, you know, judging by people's self reported sense of the economy and how they were feeling, and also the real numbers about inflation, they were worse around the midterms, and we really thought, and a lot of analysts really thought that was going to be the determining factor for people casting ballots, and it wasn't. So I think there's two questions.
Number one is how are people actually feeling in their lives on a micro sense, like day to day, because there's you know, do I feel like I can pay the bills today and I'm okay today? And do I feel a sense of comfort about the future or do I feel a lot of precarity and a lot of fear for the future, because I suspect that's a lot of what's going on and why we get these like counter indications of how people are actually doing. And then you also have the question of is it still the
economy stupid when it comes to politics? And you know, as someone with sort of like democratic socialist leanings, it looks a lot at class and material analysis. I'm not sure that that's the case in American politics as much as it used to be. And the reason is because no one has any confidence that any of these politicians
are going to do anything for them. So it's like, why vote on material interests when the only thing I really expect to get out of them is to, like, you know, signal on whatever cultural fights that I care most about. And so that's the way that I'm going to think about politics, and that's the way I'm going to cast by ballot. I think that's increasingly the case in American politics. And you can see that in the fact that there's this is something that Matt carp has
tracked really closely. There isn't really a class realignment. If you look, working class voters are almost split fifty to fifty between the two parties. There's a class de alignment in American politics where perhaps the economy, which should be the center of a lot of concerns and traditionally is the center of a lot of concerns in terms of translating into voting preferences, just isn't the king that it used to be.
It's not the king that it used to be.
Twenty twenty two was the real one where you know, abortion activated so many voters and with such passion willing to overripe the interest. On top of that, you had Trump like cult of personality issues both ways that stemmed and had their issue if we take you know, just to look though, I think what we could say this it is determinative in some respects, but it's not, you know,
as predictive as it once was. It used to be that you know, if there was a bad, bad economy, there was just no question about what the economic wins are. So on that front, Biden has to hope for better economy if he wants to continue these fights on stop the steel, abortion and all of that. And look, as I said too, there's some leading indicators go in Biden's way.
Let's put this up there.
The US consumer actually propelled the economy forward in twenty twenty three. This is from the Wall Street Journal. That actually just happened yesterday. They say how American shoppers silenced doubters. The Commerce Department said retails retail rose actually by point six percent in December, putting them five point six percent higher than a year earlier, way stronger than a lot of economists had predicted. Previously. They had predicted not only recession,
which technically we were in a recession, but whatever. The whole point is, like are people spending money or not? And that on the consumer question, it seemed that consumer sentiment, while it remained low in terms of satisfaction, consumer spending remained high and high enough that actually we saw a record number for the S and P five hundred at the end of twenty twenty three. And you put together with that a couple of other things, like, well, can we expect rate cuts? We can expect a rate cut
to come sometime. That means that let's say rates drop to four five, four point five or so percent. There's two and a half years of locked up capital people who are ready to go. I was just reading this morning from the Journal there's some eight trillion dollars of consumer and institutional money in money market funds because they're
paying such high interest rates. Well, if you have an interest rate cut, then the prospect of actually spending that you know, that cash, some eight trillion bucks, either in housing or investing in business, whatever, something that you think is going to get a better return than when you're currently at basically completely safe in a money market. You could see that. Polling wise too, things are all over the place. So we have this, let's put it up there,
just the latest you gov poll. This is the first one we've actually seen in a while which shows Biden actually beating Trump. It says Biden at forty percent, Trump at thirty eight. This isn't the national and two percent is right around where you need to be if you actually want to pull off an electoral college victory for the Democrats. If you add in rfk Junior there, it's
Biden thirty four, Trump thirty three, Kennedy seventeen. Interesting to see that Kennedy actually appears to be pulling a decent amount, you know, from both sides quite equally, seven percent from Trump and six percent from Biden. This is, you know, in this poll, but you know, relatively kind of consistent. But you have to also remember that this is an
electoral college. And if we look at the electoral college and we see some of the must win states or the ones that if Biden wants to recreate his win from last time, things aren't nearly looking as good. So let's put this up there. You know, we have Georgia here, for example, in the state of Georgia, Trump is leading Biden by some you know, forty five to thirty seven percent.
It said that twenty percent of candidate of Georgians critically though, we're not yet ready to support either candidate as things are shifting in that direction. So with a large number of undecided voters, guests shows us a couple of things. Trump may be leading right now, but he still very much could you know, piss enough Georgians off that they
would come out and vote for them, saving Biden. Biden did barely win the election last time, but the special elections and Georgia politics since then have definitely trended in a non Trump direction. If you zoom that out, it's just funny because I really could make the case either way. I can easily sit here and make the case for Biden.
I can easily sit here and make the case for Trump, Which just makes me convince that it's not only unknown, but it's a lot closer than I think either side wants it to be.
Not to mention that just the chaos factor of not knowing what's going to happens between now an election day, like we had no idea October seventh was going to happen. We had no idea. You know, the way that Israel respond and this just absolutely brutal fashion, the way that would become a real center of gravity, especially in politics on the Democratic side, where the Democratic basis very much at odds with Joe Biden and young voters disgusted with
his response there. But we did have another election result. You know, this is where I was because I always look at these polls. You have a Georgia Poem'm like, oh my god, Joe Biden is completely toast, like this old man who can't formulate a sentence that is like, you know, lost any sort of potential moral high ground that he may have had at one time. How could he possibly beat anyone, let alone Donald Trump, who's a
very skilled charismatic performer. And then I see a result like this out of Florida where Democrats just flipped a Florida State House seat in a special election. It was a seat that Now, listen, this this cuts both ways, okay, because on the one hand, Joe Biden did win this seat by five points. On the other hand, Ron DeSantis
had won the seat by twelve points. So I guess you can say it's kind of a swing districts and Democrats just flipped it in spite of the fact that I was looking at some of the online analysis there was not a strong Democratic registered Democrat turnout so early in the day, all the Democratic like polling analysts and data gurus were freaking out like all Republicans. Definitely just
won the seat. But when the results came in, I guess because of strong independent performance showing up for the Democrats, they were able to pull it off. And you know, this is consistent with the trend that we have seen since the midterms of Democrats outperforming in almost every special election that's occurred. So in the politics of it, I do think, you know, I could I'm like you Sagar. It depends on the day and what data point I'm
looking at. I can see it happening either direction. Just to go back quickly to the economy and trying to like sort through how people are feeling, like, I want to be really clear, I think the macro picture for Americans in this economy is incredibly dire. Prices have gone up a lot, wages have not gone up a lot. You have massive inequality continuing and becoming, you know, further exacerbated.
You have critically the building blocks of middle class life, the things that make people feel like I'm going to be okay for the future, and you know what, my kids are probably going to be okay for the future. We're talking housing, healthcare, and education, all three wildly insanely unaffordable and have been skyrocketing in price for years. The things that previous generations were able to accomplish, the milestones they were able to achieve at earlier points in their life.
Millennials and now Gen Z are way behind and being able to achieve those milestones. In the big picture, America is going backwards in terms of like basic levels of economic achievement, prosperity, and lack of procarity, which I think is a really important term. So I don't want a ready to think that I'm saying, oh, actually, the economy is great and that's why Joe Biden's going to get re elected. I don't think that is accurate at all.
I just think that there is so much hopelessness around any of these politicians really delivering that people are evaluating their choices in the election through a different lens than perhaps they did in the past.
Very possible.
Like you said, I mean, maybe've they've given up. I agree completely. I mean, nobody should mistake this as us being like, yeah, the economy's great. No, structurally there's massive problems. People are very aware of them. Things that you're swimming against the tide in many respects, you know, whenever you're younger, and the deck is stacked in various different ways, regardless whether you're college educated or non college educated.
As we continue to like look for.
That, but as you said, people are also short term creatures in the way that they think and they evaluate, and as at twenty twenty two really did show us though that you can be materially really suffering and you will still vote sometimes in a different direction if you don't agree with another party.
That's a real X factor that comes in here.
So you know, the whole point of this is just to show you and prepare, since the Republican primary is effectively over now at this point, to just say, like, okay, what is actually going to impact this election? And we want to give everybody, as you know, round of a picture as we can to try and make sense of things, because twenty twenty two definitely caught me by surprise. You know, I think it did certainly a lot of people. Let's move on to China. This is a story that we've
been wanting saving for quite some time. Obviously we had domestic politics and our own elections to kind of think about, but this could end up being one of the most consequential elections of this year whenever we look back ten twenty years from now.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
There was a major election in Taiwan between a couple of parties. He had the KMT and you had the DPP. The DPP kind of being the party that the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese population and government was warning the Taiwanese you should not vote for them because they are not, as I wouldn't say, under our control, but it's more so that they don't They do not favor having as much of a relationship with Beijing on Beijing's term.
This new leader, I'm not going to try and say their name, but the party that China did not want to win did end up winning the election actually pretty decisively, and their new leader says that he is going to quote stick to the status quo. But as the Wall Street Journal says here, his past is what makes us nervous. So he's previously the mayor of Tainan, so he wanted
to quote move a section of railway underground. Residents for whose homes would have been demolished, blocked bulldozers with their bodies and accused them of selling them out to property developers. Opponents apparently called him a dictator. To quote, he was undeterred selling them that this was crucial for the future.
The reason that anecdote matters is that his quote resolved or stubbornness as his critics call it, has now taken on outside significance after he emerged victorious with some forty percent of the vote. So the reason why is that currently the current ascent of this man who is currently
serving as the vice president to the top job. Is what makes Americans nervous because they see him is that he is more likely to provoke Beijing with quote envelope pushing rhetoric and draw the US into a dangerous confrontation. Beijing obviously also doesn't like him because he has openly been, you know, kind of spiteful of Beijing.
He's kind of rallied the Taiwan.
He's populous as independent from Beijing's extension of foreign policy. And then the issue too is that, you know, our Taiwan policy is very complicated because it's one of those where it doesn't make any actual sense unless you like have to go back to the beginning where they call themselves the Republic of China, but then we recognize them as China at the UN until we have the Opening of China, and then we no longer recognize them as China.
So passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which says that we have relations with Taiwan, but we don't recognize Taiwan as its own country, and yet all of our diplomatic ships with Taiwan treat them as their own country. We have visa relations and all that. In terms of our defense, we have the strategic ambiguity posture as spelled out in the Taiwan Relations Act, where we do not support a change to the status quo, and all that means that we don't support Beijing taking over Taiwan, but we also
don't support Taiwani's independence. This was reiterated by President Biden in reaction to the election results. And the only reason that we're spending even a lot of time and so much on this on Taiwan twenty four million people, is that they are one of the largest trading partners of the United States. They make some ninety four percent of the world's semiconductors that are in the super advanced nature.
And if there was to be any conflict over Taiwan and a disruption to that, it would dramatically change the global supply chain and almost certainly would ignite into a regional war and possibly even a global global conflict ration. So this makes Beijing, a Beijing armed invasion of Taiwan
much more likely. That doesn't mean that it's going to happen, but you have a Xijingping who is spelled out in multiple party congresses and made it you know kind of a picture of national pride for the Communist Party that Taiwan reunification reunification as they call it, is something that is very important to the party, specifically as they come after the one hundred year anniversary of the Communist Party in China and as a way to try and bolster
kind of sagging Chinese nationalistic pride, which we're about to get to it a little bit.
I'm curious for reaction.
Yeah, So, I mean, the bottom line here is while the US may frame our concern over Taiwan about the international rules based order and democracy and sovereignty, blah blah blah, like I think if anyone believes that at this point, you have to have your head examine, because it is very clear we don't care about any of those things. What we care about is what you said, ninety percent
of the most advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan. Now, why we allowed that to happen is a whole other story, right, and basically points to the utter failure of neoliberalism, where it was just about, oh, where's it cheapest to produce and where can people make the most profits? And it's a global economy and the theory of that case, in part, was that this was also going to keep us safer, this was going to integrate the world, this was going
to allow peace to prevail. Instead, in this instance, you can see very very easily how it could push our you know, leaders who are clearly not afraid of starting wars in any place in the world, into a direct conflict with China, which no regular person in the United States of America actually wants. So this is all about those semiconductors. I mean, I'm over simplifying a little bit,
but that's basically the bottom line. That's why the Biden administration pushed through this Chips Act to try to spin up semiconductor production here in the United States so we would have at least some domestic production. That takes a long time, that's a very uncertain future. We are nowhere near for the far enough along that path to feel
comfortable about where we are at this point. And then at the same time, soager you've got to have China looking at the way that we are basically fools getting humiliated in every corner of the globe, and the way that we are completely overstretched and saying, hey, they don't look like they've got a real strong hand to play right now, So maybe now's the time to act. How
much have we overextended ourselves in Ukraine? Now we're shipping all this stuff to Israel and bypassing Congress, and you know, our foolish leaders and presidential candidates and contenders and top you know, Biden and Trump and everybody else. So oh, of course we could afford wars wherever we want. No problem, it's no big deal. It's complete and utter insanity. I have zero confidence that any of these psychopaths actually want
to avoid any sort of conflict. They seem to be totally happy to risk World War IIE and global conflagrations in every corner of the world. So, yes, this should make you extraordinarily nervous when you see these potential tensions ticking up.
Yeah, I'll put it this way.
Let's put this up there just again to bolster some of this, just to talk about how people across the globe are looking at this from Politico EU actually and say the China skeptic wins Taiwan's presidency.
In a snub to Beijing.
What they basically show is that this is going to lead to a series of kind of diplomatic interesting standoffs. The very first one actually just happened a couple of days ago, and I bear with me.
Please, let's put this next one up there.
The Pacific island nation of Nauru has severed ties with Taiwan in favor of China. Okay, why should we care? Most people don't even know that naw Ru is a nation, let alone should we care about their relations with Taiwan. Well, the reason that they did it is because Nauru is undersignificant ConTroll by Beijing, and they have major economic ties, and they are all They're a power in the Pacific,
not necessarily a big power. But what the Chinese are trying to do here is to set up a diplomatic case such that breaking off relations with Taiwan leads to either Chinese bases or mutual defense agreements, or such that the Chinese navy can move through.
And it's all about a chessboard, you know.
The way that they think about these things is decades and how they would want to make a move, And so what do you want to do? I want to make sure that all the other people in the region no longer are either invested in Taiwan, have any relationship with Taiwan and don't care about Taiwan or the very least have decided to decide with Beijing and to look
the other way. This is a whole part of why the South China Sea conflict is now mattered since the mid two thousands and why they've been moving in that direction.
Now.
As you said, this has nothing to do with democracy, and I would never make a case here about that, because I mean, let's be honest, this is about our eighth largest trading partner and probably the most critical trade the most critical piece of land in the entire world.
Because as you said, you can have the Chips Act, that's great, it takes five years from breaking ground until you can even begin to have a chip roll off of a fab based upon people I've spoken to in the US, because of regulation and because of lack of no how and all that, it's probably a decade. So that means that for the next decade we're an incredibly precarious situation. Then you look at America and if I have the Chinese dispassionately, and I'd be like, these idiots
are bogged down in Ukraine. These idiots, they don't have enough artillery to supply a third world nation in Eastern Europe let alone themselves, and.
Then they've got all this Israel stuff going on.
They got two carriers over there, like they're getting stumped by the hoo theyes in terms of their global trade. I mean, if you guys think of Red Sea matters to America, take a look at some of the global traffic through the Straits of Malacca, the Taiwan Straight and through the South China Sea.
This is ten fifteen times more important.
I'm just talking about shipping, and not even talking about the semiconductors. This would literally would reroute the entire globe in terms of how things would work. To mention that China's our third largest trading partner, Taiwan is number eight, the amount of economic damage and all that that would suffer as a result of this is just incalculable. My only point is that this level of precarity and some
sort of war in East Asia would be catastrophic. And what's even more interesting to me is I sent this actually I'm not sure if you got a chance to read it, is that Kim Jong un and North Korea also appears to be preparing for something happening in East Asia. They're changing their constitution to say that they're basically they're rechanging it so that currently their declared enemy as America,
they're changing it to South Korea. They actually have a huge influx of dollars into the North Korean economy right now because the Russians are buying so many weapons from them. They appear, according to some military analysts and others, to be preparing for some sort of war in the region. And the reason why that matters is that if there
was some sort of conflict with Taiwan. South Korea is one of the world's largest and most advanced militaries, and they make a lot of weapons weapons manufacturer for the United States, it could be possible that he's gotten either or not or some sort of edge from Beijing, which is their main partner. They're like, hey, you need to keep South Korea or whatever busy. They also can, you know,
cause major problems for Japan. Remember too, you know, we are the characters of security for Japan and for South Korea, which are also in that top ten trading partner list. So everything I'm listening here is like genuinely really terrifying. I think from an overall US perspective, and I think you're totally right, which is that America is distracted at home, America is overstretched abroad, and I mean it's a talking point, but it's also actually true. And then in terms of
our manufacturing base, I mean, they're not stupid. We lived through COVID, which is their fault, and they still are the ones who sold us our masks at all of the medicines and everything, it all came straight from them. So they even know and see our critical manufacturing deficit and it's not you know, in nine Team thirty nine and through Night forty one, there was a major debate in the Japanese war cabinet and they were like, well, if we attack them, can they really attack us?
And same with Hitler, you know the Nazis regime.
They wrote up an internal report, they gave it to Hitler and they're like, here's what we estimate what would happen if America came into the war, and he laughed at them.
He said, there's no way they can do this.
It ended up actually dramatically understating what US manufacturing capacity is. This time around, they've been able to battle test that more. You can look Crystal at the Ukraine situation, at the fact that there's a fire at a plant that makes artillery. We don't have any more artillery. We make one hundred thousand rounds in a month. We used to be able to make two million in a year. I mean, just look at the scale of that. It was only thirty years ago. You look at the way that we have cars.
I mean, do you know you had semiconductors shut down all new cars in America? And I've talked about here with the prospects all that stuff would look like if there was some some sort of conflagration, we could go back to rationing systems. They could take our laptops, our camera equipment away from us and dig all the chips out of this, just like the Russians have done. That's how Dyer thinks a goat and not that far you know,
for the time line. So anyway, we're preparing, we're preparing people just to say, the Taiwanese people have made.
Their choice, as is their right.
I support their right to do so, but you know, the results, the results of that election could certainly have big, big impacts on us well.
And the last thing I'll say on this particular topic is. You know, I don't think that the US is impotent with regards to Israel's government, given all the aid we send them and all that we do diplomatically to provide cover for them. However, the Biden administration has decided to adopt this posture of impotence, of feigned impotence on the global stage. Sure of like, sure we shift them all
this money, but they just won't listen to us. We're trying, et cetera, like we really want them to do things differently, but they just won't. So they are publicly declaring to the world that they can't. We can't even influence like this country that was like our client state that we fund to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every freaking year. So how does that look also on the global state. And by the way, like bottom line is,
these are delicate, complicated situations. The failures and the vulnerabilities were created over successive administrations, both bipartisan, Democrat and Republican. But we are led by moronic psychopaths and I have zero confidence in their ability to get us through this in any sort of a peaceful, non catastrophic manner. So that's the reason that you should feel terrified. You know, you can't have confidence in these people when you see the way that they operate around the globe.
The Israel situation is very analogous because obviously we gave a lot of money to Taiwan. Yeah, they only spend two point six percent of their GDP on national defense. They basically openly have said they're like, look, if we get into a problem, it's going to be America that's
going to save us. I mean, I had a lot of issues with that, and because it's like, hey, if you think you're imminiately going to get invaded and you're you're, you know, a Western style, developed, high tech democracy, you should spend a lot more money on West but to actually do something for yourself. But we never pressure them to do it. That's the Biden doctrine. He's like, yeah,
don't worry, we'll take care of it. But then you know, we're also sending some stuff that would be useful to Taiwan to Ukraine.
It's like we have major trade offs.
As you said, like there's the level of seriousness that would you would need to approach this conflict and get out properly. On the other side is one of confidence that we have not seen in this country in literally decades.
We are run by people who think it's a good idea to quote escalate to de escalate, who think that you can bomb the Huthies who have been bombed now for years and have not submitted, and that this is going to improve the situation on the Red Sea instead of just turning it into a war zone and further deterring trade, which was supposedly the whole goal of what
you're doing here. So, I mean, that's the reason why all of these things are so deeply concerning is there is just I have zero confidence in our leadership, whether it's Biden, whether it's Trump, or anybody else who's a potential contender, Nikki Haley right, God forbid, we'd be going to war with China tomorrow if it was up to her.
And Iran, by the way. So that's the reason why this is so concerning, is because you can see the way that US officials now and over years, every opportunity to make the wrong choice, they make the wrong choice.
Well said, there's a little bit more on China. Just to put this up there on the screen. This is a point that I know a lot of you been interested in Peter Zihon been talking about it for quite some time. I do gotta say it was one of the first people I ever talked I heard speak about this. I didn't really believe it at the time, but he was dead on. The Chinese population now has fallen for a second straight year, Bert's dropping even after the end
of the one child policy. The number of deaths in China rose by six hundred and ninety thousand to eleven point one million, which is more than double the last year increase.
Quote.
Demographers said that the rise was driven by the aging of the population as well as widespread COVID outbreaks from December twenty twenty two into February of last year. The total population of China at one point four billion, has now dropped to second place behind India according to the overall un estimate, and the major flashing red signal inside Chinese society is the falling birth rate and the long
term economic societal decline. Chinese economy was built on a major increasing consumer like market and sentiment, and if you don't have more consumers, then you can't have more of
a market. The problem that they have is that you have major middle class promises and others that were built upon demography overall increasing, and now the massive effects the tail end of the one child policy, the gender imbalance, the economic imbalance, and now their foreign policy plus COVID and all of that has made a significant impact to the point where this is probably the single biggest thing that they are thinking about about how to reverse the
effects of the one child policy. And just to show you, you know, the economic problems that they're facing are one and the same with their demography ones.
Let's put this up there.
So for example, the overall economy rebounded from three percent growth in twenty twenty two, which happened because of zero COVID China according to the official number. Remember the official number is five point two. But what they say is that other economic data shows that there's major weakening demand for Chinese products, which long term is a major problem
for them. On top of that, you have to remember property and home prices in China, which we covered a little bit during the whole evergrand thing, is a huge portion of their overall economy. They are rapidly declining with major bankruptcies and corruption investigations that are happening in the property sector, making the middle class dream, the Chinese dreams so quote unquote that most of the current generation and their parents really banked on not nearly as attainable. Corruption
is still widespread. Then you had zero COVID, which devastated a lot of the economy, actually called into question some confidence in the government who saw a few protests and all of that there, but still incredibly rare. And really what we saw is that g at every turn has chosen a their authoritarianism over capitalism, which probably good for him in the long run, but not necessarily good for the economy. And it makes it so that this just
a link back to Taiwan, which we were talking about earlier. Whenever, like nations, there's a common theory that like nations lash out and invade when they're on top, that happens sometimes kind of like America and the Gulf War.
We're like, listen, we can do whatever we want, like that happens.
But there's also a very likely story of when you're on the downswing, and you know you're on the downswing, you want to move when you're as close to where you're faltering as supposed when you're at the bottom, and it leads to an urgency and you're thinking where you're like, listen, our economies declining, our population, all of this, if we're going to reunify Taiwan, if we're going to set up this nation which they look at themselves as a two
thousand year old people for eternity and to move on forever and have this CCP like cemented in that same way that you would look at older Chinese empires.
Well, we need to do it right now.
They have a much longer time scale and the way they think of their own history and their own role in it. And for them, like they've seen this story many many times before. They don't want to repeat the century of humiliation of the eighteen hundreds, and this could be in their head.
The time when you want to act is now.
So all of this, you know, actually links back to the urgency of the international situation and kind of what they want to do to cement their own legacy as we look forward.
Yeah, that's right. I mean to overly simplify things. You know, the incredible growth story of China has been built on this, you know, massive industrialization, you know, building out all this factory capacity, building out massively all of this infrastructure to the point that it you know, became like some of the projects became sort of ridiculous. Then now you can go and look at like the number of airports in these towns that don't really need airports and things like that.
So fake villages, right, So that running away has sort of run out. And then the next piece was the property boom and you know, building out all of this residential real estate and not becoming like a real you know, part of like Chinese middle class identity, and that there's
that has sort of run out of runway. And now we've covered all these stories about Evergran and this property bust, and so you know, the next thing would be, all right, well, we're going to move into like the US consumer economy mode and focus on services, focus on you know, our own domestic economy, buying more crap basically, and they've sort
of rejected that direction. So I think there is a real awareness, both in terms of where they stand economically and in terms of where they stand from demography, that this could be very much be the peak of their you know, potential power and potential influence. So that again raises the risk that they may see it as like you know, they've made no secret about the fact that they want to reunify with Taiwan, that they.
Made a pledge that they will do it. That is yeah.
I mean, that's not like, you know, a secret wish. That's very much out there in the open and spoken publicly all the time. So the question is just a matter of timing. And you know, I can't get inside their has I have no idea what they're thinking, whether they feel like now is the right time or not, But there are some indications that it's possible. They look at this chessboard and they say, you know what, we could do worse than to act right now.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I mean, if I think about it from their perspective, when's the best time to go? When we're in the middle of an election and there's all kinds of craziness going on, We're stretched, you know, militarily abroad. We've got the Ukraine situation, the Israel situation.
All of that.
You've got multiple carriers, you know, in the Middle East, you have all of scentcom which is like focusing on international, hoothy targets.
That's exactly whenever.
You want in a country that's deeply, deeply divided, deeply, divided along like very hard partisan lines. So yeah, we'll see scary situation