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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints dot com. All right, let's go now to the situation in Syria. Some absolutely stunning news just broken very nonchalantly by David Ignatius over at the Washington Post. Some might call him the CIA whisperer. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Syrian rebels had
help from Ukraine in humiliating Russia. Interesting the Syrian rebels otherwise known as al Qaeda, by the way, who swept to power and Damascus last weekend quote received drones and other support from Ukrainian intelligence operatives who sought to undermine
Russia and its Syrian allies. Quote. Ukrainian intelligence sent about twenty experienced drone operators and one hundred and fifty first person viewed drones to the rebel headquarters in Idlib four or five years ago to help Hayat takriir alsham hts
Aka al Qaeda, the leading rebel group there. Knowledgeable sources said the aid from Kiev played a modest role in overthrowing Bashar al Asad, but it was notable as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to strike covertly at Russian operations in the Middle East, Africa and inside Russia itself. And then he continues to say Ukraine's covert as assistance program in Syria has been an open secret. Biden officials said and repeatedly in answer to my questions that they
weren't aware of it. Though Biden Ukraine's motivation is obvious. Facing Russian slot, Ukrainian intelligence has looked for other fronts where it can bloody Russia's nose and undermine its clients.
The Ukrainians have even advertised their intentions. Kiev Post in June third quoted a source from Ukrainian intelligence said that since the beginning of the year, the rebels supported by Ukrainian operatives, have inflicted numerous strikes on Russian military facilities represented in the region Ryot.
Yeah, and the Africa point is key too, because you know, Russia is pretty as or at least as mercenaries and interests and that are active in Africa, and so Ukraine is messing with them there too.
But I think that they caught the car here.
I think what Ukraine was hoping to do here is to do what the US loves to do with Russia all over the place, which is to just cause it enough problems.
To like drain it of some of its energy.
And yes, and people just want to remember Nordstream, do you remember?
Nor to be them?
Even Davidgnatia says, it's them.
Interesting, But I don't think they meant to actually overthrow the entire government because now all the effort that right was investing in propping up asad they can they like all right.
Yeah, like okay, we're done.
Yeah cool.
Now we got a whole bunch of weapons and energy and time and resources that we can put.
Further apparently into there with with a lot of Western Front so he can pay off.
That's right, he's not gonna get the keys.
Barely loaded down with gold. It's lucky that plane was able to take for his lamp in Moscow. I'm sure it'll be fine sitting you know here. Moscow is a beautiful city. Uh, you're gonna enjoy it, I guess for your years. But you're exactly right. So now the Russians are like, okay, whatever, you know, our guy's gone, So okay, we now can focus one of our military resources here.
And uh so yeah, not not great for Ukraine necessarily, No, not not at all.
You know, another thing that I just saw is that this actually could could increase the It could increase Russian resolve in Ukraine. They could. They're like, well, now facing the facing a quote unquote humiliation or a setback of our major strategic objectives, and you know, the outer sphere of our geopolitical interests than in our own backyard of this war that we're engaged in. That means we must commit all resources and go all out in this war.
So it actually could end up backfiring on them. I mean, you know, I guess even the Ukrainians. Nobody in US intelligence anywhere had any idea that the entire war, a fourteen year civil war, result in thirteen days. Come out nobody, which is ironic though we pay how many billions of dollars a year for these intelligence assessments and others CIA, we.
Know our boy in South Korea is about to do martial laws, Like.
Come on, I think I sent a tweet to that. I'm like, you know, we probably spend twenty forty fifty eighty billion just on covert intelligence. Did anybody tap the guy's phone and say, hey, there's going to be a attempted coup in South Korea, which is, by the way, our sixth the largest trading partner, more than France. You know, we do several trillion dollars a year or sort one hundred billion dollars a year in bilateral trade. No, oh,
we just had no idea. And by the way, a massive air force base there as well under the United States. Same in Syria. I mean, you know, let's all be honest. We've had our fingers on that situation all over the place.
Thousands takeover.
Yeah, we have thousands of troops who are stationed illegally in the country who possibly could be at risk now from.
Well done, nine hundred I think, plus all the Marcions.
Okay, so that's what I was gonna say, nine hundred officially. But then all these contractors, yes, yeah, all these guys are rolling around the country on the US time. If they get killed. How about this, if they get killed or wounded, who's coming to save them? I think we all know the answer.
And more to your point on the geopolitics involved here, Turkey and Russia basically been.
Adversaries for hundreds.
Almost in this country in particular, of years, and so by taking l here it, like you said, it further incentivizes them to take on NATO in Ukraine, Turkey a member of NATO, and you know what a fulcrum of their competition is in Eastern Europe and in the Caucaus regions, and so all all of it bleeds together in a way that yeah, I don't think, you know, spells anything remotely good for the Ukrainian cause here.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Just looking through all of this, I just see, you know, for the Ukrainians it's like they're just grasping its straws. By the way, there's been just interesting development just this morning Donald Trump was officially named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. Something that you, as a child of the eighties will know ryan that he takes very serious. Absolutely, he takes it very very serious.
Yeah, you's gonna frame that sucker.
For people my age. I think this is his third time personally hear for people my age, Time Person of the Year will always be the YouTube two thousands X the mirror you cover, you are the Time person one. For absolutely nas it might be one of the dumbest stunts of all time for me. Time see Time has no cachet. You know, you read about it. It's kind of like Life magazine. You know it was once important. It means nothing to you. Time for kids is about as big as it gets, which I remember sitting in
the doctor's office or something like that. But Trump takes it very seriously. He did sit down with them for a long interview, so I can give an interesting quote here. He was asked about Ukraine and he says, quote, I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of I assume the president, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that's a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision.
But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that there would be very smart to do that. So he's asked twice by this idiot interviewer, would you abandon Ukraine? And he says some more interesting stuff. It makes it so bad. I had a meeting recently with the people from the government where they come in and brief me,
and I'm not talking out of turn. The numbers of dead soldiers that have been killed in the last month are the numbers that are staggering, both Russians and Ukrainians. And the amounts are fairly equal, you know. I know they like to say they weren't, but they're fairly equal. The numbers of dead young soldiers lying on fields all over the place are staggering. It's crazy what's taking place. I disagree vehemently with sending missiles, hundreds of missiles into Russia.
Why are they doing that. We are escalating the war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now are they doing not only missiles, but they're doing other types of weapons. Interesting. I think it's a very big mistake, very big mistake. But the level the number of people dying is number one not sustainable. And I'm talking on both sides. It's really an advantage to both sides to get this thing done. So interesting rhetoric, at least there from the president elect.
So we talk about we talk about Trump as one of the most clear examples of a narcissist ever in like a world history.
But I mean, yeah, I wouldn't go that far. Yeah, he's right, Well, yeah, I would say I would put him up there with all other presidents. A yeah, but he gets talked about in his own unique way.
I agree.
Yeah, Yet he talks so frequently about the number of killed in this conflict that it just feels like it has to come from somewhere genuine like.
Yeah, like I agree, I don't know where it comes from.
But I mean, good for him because like you know, well, it.
Goes to that famous Siana and Clapp remember where she's like, are you going to abandon Ukraine? And he said, I want to stop the dying. Yes, and she keeps saying like, do you want Ukraine to win? It's amazing to live again when you read these idiots, They're just like, will you abandon Ukraine? People around the world want to know, will you abandon Ukraine? So the question people want to know is will you abandon Ukraine? Will you commit to
protecting Ukrainian sovereignty? I mean, again, what does that mean? What is it? I mean the current government doesn't protect Ukrainian sovereignty?
Right?
The current United States government basically since Obama on is like, yeah, crimea, it's bad, but you know, what are you going to do about it?
Okay?
So is that what you're saying? Like these people have no idea what they're even talking about or the stakes. That's part of the way. Part Another reason I'm annoyed by it is that if you had asked it in a different way, how will you handle Ukraine in a more neutral way, we might have gotten some more interesting information. How about a real interview, you know what I would dig down on and be like, Okay, Plus Ukrainian presidents. Lenski says, seventy three thousand people have been killed in
the war. That what does that mean to you? Mister president who's dope, mister President elect, who's just received a classified briefing, Maybe you get something out of that, right, That's how you actually get some information out of your subject. Just reading through this is maddening, but it is clear at least you know right now he's talking in a interesting way. Also, before we get to your Israel thing, Ryan, he did say something interesting. They said, do you trust
bb net and Yahoo? He says, I don't trust anybody.
Yeah, you should.
And on the question of Israel being allowed to annex the West Bank, he says, what I'm doing, I want a long lasting piece. I'm not saying that's a very likely scenario, but I want a long lasting piece, a piece where you don't have October seventh. There are numerous ways you can do it. You can do a two state but there are numerous ways it can be done. And I'd like to see who can be happy. But I'd like to see everybody be happy, everybody go about
their lives, and people stop dying. That includes on many different fronts. I mean, we have some tremendous world problems that we didn't have when I was president. You know, when I had left, Iran was not very threatening. They had no money and they weren't giving it to Hamas or Hasbola. So not a no, not a yes. He says two state, but you can do it in many different ways. So maybe he's like a Peter Beinart and he wants to do a one state solution.
I mean, yes, that's the just solution. It's the only one on the table.
The one state Arab, the one Arab state that would happen.
It's in the Middle East.
Well, we all know that's not going to happen right under Donald Trump. It is interesting though, just reading through this, there's some skepticism there of Israel. He says that he wants he he told BB he does want the war to come to an end by the time that he does take the office. And apparently there were some meetings with between the Israeli government and Hamas in that just happened yesterday.
So that's a segue for you, right, yeah, No, to that point there, there is there is I think genuine hope that there will be some type of a deal. Hamas is backing off on some of its red lines now that now Hamas is saying that they would allow IDF troops to temporarily remain in Gaza as they as they worked through the prisoner exchange previously Hamas had said the exchange could only happen if the IDEF agreed to
completely withdraw from Gaza. What gives people the hope is that Trump is making it extremely clear to Israel that
he wants this deal done. The reason a deal hasn't gotten done over the last year is is quite clear Israel had and through net Yahoo, made a bet sometime around December January last year that Trump might win and that he had enough of a chance to win that it was worth completely bucking Biden, ignoring him, taking a few lumps here and there, a few few complaints from Matt Miller, you know, every couple of months after the latest atrocity or spread of famine, and then just bank
on Trump winning and then reset from there.
So that's over.
Trump has been very clear he wants a deal that is really public, desperately once the hostage is home.
And what else, What else is there.
To accomplish at this point in Gaza, the northern northern part where Israel's relentlessly assaulting Indonesian Hospital and Kamaladue Hospital, killing doctors, killing nurses, killing patients, killing their families, to.
Completely depopulate northern Gaza. It's flat flat, like what.
There was a survey that came out said half of the children in Gaza wish they were dead. And that's on top of the ten thousand plus.
That are dead from this. What more do you need to do? What more?
And if Trump wants is done, then that puts pressure on then. Yeah, the US has always been the one that can make this happen, period, So we'll see.
That's why I think people are hopeful.
That these these moves in Doha might actually amount to something. To your point, we also have this pretty fascinating story at drop site we can put up on the screen here by Sammy Vanderlip where he exposed this US nonprofit called Friends of Paratrooper Sniper.
Unit two to two. Okay, so this is a C three, so you can.
Make a nonprofit here exactly reductible contributions to the US and it purchases quote helmets, rain gear, barrels, vests, sniper stands, silencers, camouflage, et cetera.
Is egal it is raised.
Well, we're going to.
See because certainly complaints are going to be filed against this. So they raised, they raised in twenty twenty three, three hundred and four thousand dollars and bought equipment, sent it over there, and our correspondence over there obtained footage of this unit killing unarmed Palestinians and acknowledging it with so
US taxpayer subsidization. So not only are we buying their weapons, like buying the basic weapons, but if the sniper unit feels like it needs even higher tech to shoot and kill unarmed civilians, then they can get a taxi done.
Well, you have some photos of that. Can we put E three there on the screen? Please? We're not going to show some of them. They're extremely graphic, but we do have a slide show that we can put up there E three if you can, so Ryan can just tell us what works.
Yeah, and it's and it's from such a distance that at least it's not it's not graphic in a Hollywood sense. But the images and the videos that our reporters obtained, you know, show the sniper unit ending people's lives, and that's what's graphic, because you're watching a life be snuffed out, and unarmed civilian who one moment is alive, and through the squeeze of a trigger.
Of a gun paid for by the.
United States and with a scope paid for by US nonprofit that their life is over.
The next moment, and.
It's just too it's just horrifying. It's so horrifying you even contemplate.
Just going out to get a bag of flower.
I have to think it's illegal, though, because I remember that there was this congressional staffer here in Washington who in his spare time was like buying military equipment and flying it to Ukraine, which is classic, of course, and I think he got stopped. The only reason we know about this guy, he got stopped at the airport trying to transport military equipment and they were like, hey, man, you know this is illegal, Like, you know, you're not
allowed to be carrying weapons to a foreign military. I think you need an export license or something like that.
If they can get around it, it would be because it's accessories to weapons, like a it's a scope, it's night vision goggles.
It's yeah.
Even then, I'm pretty sure. I mean, I know the list. I think the list even includes bulletproof vests, like in terms of also.
But you also need a public interest purpose to be a nonprofit, so I guess they can argue that that, Well, the.
Law is crazy, as you know, in terms of what's allowed and what's not in terms of five oh one C three. But nobody will touch it because of the IRS scandal from back in the day under Obama, which I mean it was that was a crazy scandal. But you know, because of that, the leeway on five oh one C three, right has become so broad that people just don't want to touch it. I don't know, it's crazy story, I know, yeah, wild absolutely. Okay, let's go to the next part. We had to put this in
the show. Extraordinary video now coming out of Syria. CNN's Clarissa Ward purports to be in a former Aside prison. Whist she's in the prison, they discover a cell acella has not been open. The rebel quote unquote al Qaeda person who is her guard, shoots the door open, opens it, and they discover allegedly a prisoner who's been in there for four or five days without water, without food, who clings to her, sees the light and its supposed to be a very dramatic scene. It's a lot of questions
about this. We're gonna show it to you first. Yeah, it's very impactful if it's true, very impactful. But we'll talk about the questions. We're gonna show it to you first. I want to talk about afterwards.
I can't tell though.
It might just be a blanket, but it's the only cell that's locked.
Is he gonna shoot it?
The guard makes us turn the camera off while he shoots the lock off the cell door. We go in to get a closer look. It's still not clear if there is something under the blanket.
Is this someone?
There is someone there?
Hello, Okay, okay, it's water.
It's water, okay, okay.
After three months in a windowless cell, you can finally see the sky.
All right, I mean, so again, if it's real, very impactful. But there's a number of questions. So mediaites Charlie nash Uh has a lot of them, and he raises a few number one. In this new video, Ward are led by quote armed guard, a member of the New Islamist regime. They take CNN on tour through the complex. They quote soon stumble upon a locked cell in a prison which has been completely emptied and the prisoners are all free. The guard makes us turn off the camera while he
shoots the lock off the door. Viewers do not get to see the guard opening the door. After a fade to black. We see Ward and the camera crew enter the cell. From what we can see, the cell is clean. There is no waste, only a blanket, which Ward repeatedly calls out to see if anyone's underneath, receiving no response. The guard lifts the blanket, revealing a man who gets up and raises his hands in the air. He looks healthy, his clothes are clean, his hair and nails are trimmed.
He says he's been in a cell for three or four months, without food or water for four days. Presumably the man did he not hear the guard shooting the lock off of his door or the camera crew crawling out to him. A few feared away, But he appears to be and find enough condition. Again, Look, we're speculating on this. I don't know, but I mean a lot of this rings true. So I'll come to in a second.
Ryan.
They escort Forth the man outside, instead of taking him straight to the hospital. The doctor the logical thing to do with somebody who's been a windless sell for three months, without food or water for four days. They sit him in a chair and they interview him. Asked by Anderson Cooper, what is known about this man Ward admits, well, we don't know, because, as you can see from the report, he's in a deep state of shock. She says she knows nothing about the man or if any of the
statements are even true. Everything in the report is taking at face value, from the guard opening the door that quote they were not allowed to film, to the prisoner's claim. So that's what I would be a little bit skeptical of. It just seems too good to be true. Call you know, call me cynical or whatever. I look at that immediately I was like, I don't know about this went on. You know, it's just weird. It's weird. The videos of people being spontaneously freed, where you have dozens of people
pouring that's okay. I believe that, you know, and you can see some of that. It seems real. Again, Look, you know, who knows about what we're allowed to We're not.
We do we I mean, we definitely know that thousands of people were held in a side stone.
That's right.
And yeah, now those dungeons are it's been for a long time. Yeah right, that's that's absolutely real. This is like four days without water, that's a long Four days without food is one thing.
Isn't there a three rule? It's like three days without water, three weeks out food? Was it three seconds without oxygen or something? I forget what the number is, but yeah, I can hold my breath more.
Three second stuff.
There wasn't three minutes three maybe three minutes three minutes.
But so four days without water three or four days without water? Would your face would look different?
Your face would be parked, Yeah, yeah, you'd be sunk in.
You just your tongue would be completely.
Like they said, there's no wall, no bathroom. You know how where the butt was happening exactly?
Why do you not hear the gun?
Yeah? Well he didn't hear the gun.
Did he not notice that the entree was emptied out?
Because there's the previous there's cells everywhere around him.
The previous videos of people mean, so the moment that lock pops off, boom, they're all rushing out right and people are screaming, cheering, and they're so you know, happy to be freed, et cetera. Yeah, I don't this This one just doesn't seem right to me. I could be wrong, you know totally. Maybe somebody should find this guy and ask him and get his whole backstory that say, he's been three months to staves from the city of Homes. Let's go to Homeles because somebody go find this guy.
It's been who are you? You know, did you actually get a prisoner or was this all an act or maybe you were a legitimate prisoner and they told you to act this way. You know, Listen, they want the best media in the world right now. There's a fierce to eight here in Washington. Remember, their leader, al Jelani is a wanted ten million dollars bounty terrorists by the
United States State Department. The Brits are currently wondering whether they should take him off of their list, whether they can diplomatically recognize his government, and you know, against should mean, I mean, yeah, you know, I don't have a problem. Like, look, I'm a person who said, you know, I'm not pro Taliban, but they won the Civil Award. It's like, okay, you know, what are you gonna do?
Well?
I think what troubles me in this case is that this is a group which explicitly at one point was understood to be an al Qaeda backed regime, but then we decided that we hate assad more than we hate them, and so we're all just okay with them taking power, and we're not really asking a lot of questions about what the future of this country's going to look like and the potential fall out their own religious minorities. There's
just so much triumphalism. People hate USAD so much that they're not willing to wonder like, maybe it's way worse what comes next. And all of the reports are about Jolani and about HTS is that they're branding champions, they changed their name, they distanced themselves allegedly from al Qaeda. They've been reading books and studying the West and how to have good relations with them. So it seemed to me to fit with something like this, just me personally, That's what I thought.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think that she was in on it.
No, I agree, I don't think she was in Oh can you tell the context though about Clarisa Ward.
Oh, yeah, so the thing that was getting circulated. I think Glenn Greenwald had flagged it at some point earlier in the war. During so it would have been twenty sixteen, yes, or twenty fifteen. She did an interview with Mike Morell and said that she, well, I don't know what the interview was. But she said in that interview that she had sent a very harsh note to Ben Rhodes, who
was Obama's National security advisor. And the note said something like, you know, I hope that you are sleeping well tonight, Yes, while the free something like the freedom fighters of Siri are you know, being crushed.
By a side.
And she said, I cop to crossing the line on this, on this story on Cyria, where I have gone from a journalist to an activist. This is what she said to Michael morrelse hey guy, and interviewed him.
Uh So, if somebody.
Was going to be kind of blinkered into this, it would have to be somebody who feels a deep ideological commitment to supporting the this outcome.
You could understand it from our perspective. I'm not justifying it. I'm saying you can understand you cover him this probably for a decade. You've seen a lot of people get killed at Murderous Poodle. Yeah, You've seen a medical dictator. Yeah, you've seen people beheaded whatever.
Her driver was, her driver was killed.
That's right, her driver was killed. So a lot of these guys, you know, Richard Engel and a few or of those. They all have personal experience in this. Although the Angle thing, you know what I'm talking about, he was allegedly kidnapped. There's still a lot that's a weird story too. I gotta be.
Honest if you want to go.
And there was one with closerists in Sudan also, Oh really, is there questions about.
A weird pick, weird attention or something?
Anyways, And she's also very physically courageous. No, yeah, but no one is putting down. She puts herself all the time. She did a good job in Afghanistan. I thought, you know that good the Fall of.
Cobble stood the ground. She did really good interviews.
But you know, nobody's infallible. And uh, there's some potential questions here at CNN. To be honest, you know, if this turned out to be staged, this would be like a Brian Williams stole scandal. That's why I would like someone to go interview this guy. Glarissa should break it, Huh, should break break that new Yeah. The only way to redeem yourself is to then figure out who, figure out who he is, and to answer the questions just to you know, maintain your own story.
Because some people were specting. Oh, maybe it was a guard who just wanted to stay there. How they how they lock himself in?
Right, Yeah, that's anyway.
Weird stuff, weird stuff. All right, We've got independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne.
Let's get to.
Coming out of the November election, the Associated Press did an analysis we can put up on the screen here comparing senate Democratic candidates to Kamala Harris, and they found that one particular candidate, who was not in fact a Senate Democratic candidate, out performed all other Democrats across the country.
By more than any other.
And his name was Dan Osborne, who was running as an independent in Nebraska. It turned out not to be enough to overcome the partisan lean of Nebraska, but he came extremely close to being the next Senator from that state. And we're joined now by Dan Osborne, the independent Senate candidate.
Dan Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
Good to see you, sir, Thanks, thank thanks for having me on.
You're welcome. All right.
So down the stretch, it seemed like the partisan nature of our politics really started to lock itself into their race. And I actually wanted to ask you about something that I saw towards the very end, you had never said who you were going to caucus with or whether you were going to caucus with either party. You were going to be an independent and you were going to see
what was best for Nebraska. Down the stretch, Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, started saying publicly, go out and vote for Dan Osborne to help Democrats here in Washington. Meanwhile, as far as I could tell, Senate Democrats actually did nothing in the state of in the state of Nebraska to help you win. When he started saying that, did that get spread around Nebraska? And what was your reaction when you started seeing that from from kind of coastal Democrats?
Well, you know, I.
Don't believe that part of it got spread around. You know, that was that was deb Fisher's negative campaign right out of the gate. We turned in twelve thousand signatures from around the state to get on the ballot. We needed four and then the first independent poll came out that had Fisher at thirty nine and me at thirty eight, and so she went negative right out of the gate.
You know, you know that's what she had. She was calling me a radical leftist and saying spreading all these lies about immigration about me, and I suppose at the end of the day, unfortunately the lies won, but you know, we remained positive and just trying to tell the people in Nebraska what I wanted to do for them because I heard, you know, I did two hundred public events around the state and I listened to Nebraska's every single day, and what it is they want, and what it is
they want was, you know, first of all, they want to know that if you work hard in this country, that you can get ahead, that your paycheck matters, that you're going to be able to have, you know, houses, some property, cars, put money aside for Christmas and college, and then mostly they want to be left alone.
People don't want handouts for the most part.
They understand some folks need the handouts, of course, but that was it. So I kind of coined the term recently paycheck populism, because I was doing an interview similar to this and they said, well, you ran off an economic populism message, and I was like, oh, I don't really know what that means, because the economy is so broad and and you know deep by the point, you know, what people want to know is that their paycheck matters if you work hard.
Yeah, Dan, I'm curious for your reaction. You started a hybrid pack to talk about this, but there's been a lot of discourse here in Washington about what should the Democratic Party do to win back Trump voter. So you at least have some credibility. You won forty six point five percent of the vote in the deep red state
of Nebraska. So what's your advice to the Democratic Party or anybody who else who wants to challenge the current establishment GOP for how they can win a similar amount of votes to you?
Yeah, I think you know, you just got to be real.
I think candidate recruitment is so important, and that's what I'm doing right now with this Working Class Heroes pack. It's designed to emulate what we did here in Nebraska.
We're going to go out.
We've targeted multiple races, top of the ticket races all the way down ballot on the overperformance that we had if we were to you know, the targets designed it, if Osborne were to run in those areas, we would have won. So we're certainly going to target more races.
And it's all about candidate recruitment. We're hiring people we're starting the process on Monday, and we're going to go into different districts around the country and find working class people that you know, and pluck them out, because for me, that's the most important part. Less than two percent of our elected officials in both the House and Senate come from the working class, so it's a complete misrepresentation.
You know, some millionaires that work for billionaires, and we need a seat at the table. So that's what this is designed to do.
Yeah, there's an interesting view here in Washington. I think about that type of candidate recruitment where people say, well, okay, yeah, Dan Osborne did really well, but you got to think about it. You know, he he's a union organizer. He was a union leader in the state that led this successful strikes a. He's a veteran, he's he's well, he's well spoken, he comes across well, and you know, we
just can't find many people like that. But that's because from my perspective, they're sitting here in Washington, DC or the suburbs of Washington, d C. And they're looking around at their neighbors and yes, if that's your pool of candidates, then yeah, you're you're not going to find a lot of Dan Osborne's, but if you go outside of Washington,
then you just might. But I'm curious what the challenge has been for you as you've started to kind of look for other people around the country who can can fit the mold, so to speak, break break the mold, and fit and fit a new mold. Are there are Are there the people out there to run the kind of campaigns that you're talking about?
Yeah, and yeah.
The inherent challenge is it's it's probably easier to find a sell funder right that can step from their role at their fancy law firm or wherever they're coming from. No offense against lawyers, but you know, we need those folks as well.
But it's it's the challenge is.
Going to be having somebody be able to do what I did, is is step aside from your role, hopefully get a leave of absence from your job, and take the plunge and take that take that dive. So what it's going to what we're going to produce is we're going to produce people that are passionate about what they're doing and for all the right reasons, because they love this country just like I do.
They love their state and they want to make a difference. Uh, you know, the.
So but what what the pack again is designed to do hopefully take some of the ease off of that decision. For me, it was it was extremely difficult. We had no we had no framework to start. It was just an idea and we built. We were building the plane as we were learning how to fly it.
Uh.
So, you know, and we had very difficult time fundraising in the beginning, and right now we've raised.
Over six figures.
We're confident that we're going to be able to raise enough money to support candidates, uh, financially as they as they move forward, to give them a kind of a boost when when right out of the gate that we didn't have.
Yeah, and for people who don't know what you're talking about with it's good, it's easier to go kind of recruit a lawyer.
Uh.
The D Triple C, which recruits House candidates for instance, has a thing and this is not picking on the D tripleC. This is the Republicans and Democrats. They have a thing that they kind of called the phone test, which is when a candidate is thinking about running and meeting with party operatives here in Washington.
D C.
They'll say, take out your phone and scroll through this and tell tell us how you can find one hundred thousand dollars in the next you know, ten minutes. And she was supposed to go through your contact list and you're like, oh, Steve, he's good for five grand. You know, Kevin, he can do five, Diane he can do ten. Oh Jim, I bet he'd do half a billion to a super pack. And then d Triple C is like, okay, like you're our man because you can do our job for us.
You can go out and raise the money. Somebody who can't do that, which is ninety nine percent of people, has the challenge that you had at the beginning.
So how how did you overcome that? Like?
How do you go from all right, I'm going to run for senate statewide. I don't have a lot of rich friends, but I'm going to be taken seriously because that happened, Like how did you?
How do you? How do you break through that?
Yeah, that's that's funny. I did the exact same thing.
I went through my phone in my contacts and it's it's full of other.
Mechanics and we can gass people.
So I was able to get twenty five fifty bucks here, and you know, we had a lot of early angel investors that just believed that that you know, similar to myself, that just believed that this could turn into something. So it was a lot of local people that threw in one thousand dollars here and one thousand dollars there, and it really wasn't until we found a great digital firm, you know, that small dollars started to pour in and
that remained the basis of our campaign. You know, we raised close to fourteen million dollars and our average donation was I think like forty dollars at the end of everything. So the small dollars are extremely important and just being able to get that message out and that's that's how we were able to do it.
Well, Dan, what are your plans for what's next? Are you going to run for office again?
I would say there's a ninety nine percent chance that I'm going to find something to run for again.
We were keeping all the options open.
You know, Pete Ricketts seats up here in Nebraska, there's a couple other ones we're eyeballing, but yeah, I think, you know, we got a lot of momentum. We spent a tremendous amount of work getting name recognition and just getting our message out there, our core message that you know, we didn't take any corporate dollars.
We don't want to be a part of the problem.
We want to be a part of the solution and really just represent people the you know, the way the framers of the Constitution intended it to be a government buying for the people, so that that was our intention. We fell a little bit short, but I think I think in twenty twenty six we're going to turn that around.
All right, Well, we look forward to seeing it. We hope, we hope to see you again on the show, should that time come again. All right, so thank you so very much, sir. We appreciate you.
Thanks, guys, appreciate it.
Absolutely all right. That was Dan Osborne.
His new fund is Working Class Hero's Fund and you can find it at Workingclassheroes dot fund. Even if you just go on there and put your email in there, then you'll get updates when he's got somebody cool. So you don't want to give them money now because you don't know who's going to recruit. Fine, put your email in there and then he'll tell you when he's got somebody cool.
He's a very fascinating figure to me. Imagine if a guy like him one governor or Senate from the stave of re Church, it would scramble in instantly a presidential candidate. In my opinion, he would actually have a better shot going a good governor. Because this is interesting that the voters seem to actually distinguish. Yes, so like, for example, in Maryland is a key point. Yeah, this just happened in Maryland. Larry Hogan, he was the governor of Maryland's
a Republican. He was pretty popular, but he just got his ass kicked in Senate.
And the reason you notice on that chart that we just showed the Maryland Senate candidate was the greatest underperformer.
Yes, that's right. No, so I'm not saying he didn't do well, but he lost. And the reason why is even people who liked him in Maryland were like, yeah, I like you, Hogan, but you would be a vote for Mitch McConnell. And don't I don't like.
That Democrats ran against him.
Where all people saying I like him, there you go, but he's going to vote for missus.
So you have a better chance of not running nationally. That's why you have these guys. Who's that guy who's the Republican in Vermont? What's his name? Welch who was the governor? He was the governor of people. People loved him and is Vermont. This is blue haired liberals in Burlington. They still elected him because he's like a unique guy.
Or he was working class dude.
Who is the masters? He was like a motorcycle mechanical whom I thinking of the Republican government master Charlie Baker said his name O Brown. Yeah, they liked Scott Brown.
That.
I mean, there was a crazy circumstances. But my point is that I can give a better shot being governor and then Democrat. Yeah, Louis John Bell Edwards. I think that Democrats Kansas selects governor, so statewide you have a better chance of running for a non national seat and voters are much more willing to give you a little bit of leewal. So I were him, that's what.
I would do.
Democrats in Maryland are like, we want to be democratic nationally, but this guy says we're gonna have low taxes.
Yeah, okay, well you know, and now they have Wes Moore who's gonna bring alcohol to everybody in the state. It's just that's exactly what Maryland needed. Anyone who's ever encountered a Maryland driver says, you know what they need, more access alcohol. That's what they need in this state. Okay, all right, good luck, good luck to all of you. Uh, we had a great show for everybody today. Thank you all. Ryan's always great to see you and well, if anything
breaks over the weekend, will be with you. Otherwise, see you on Monday.