Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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What do we have, Crystal.
Indeed, we do a lot to get into this morning. So first of all, the hunger war is becoming absolutely unbearable in Gaza, and this comes as Lloyd Austin was in Israel. Actually a whole parade of US officials are in Israel, and he has once again Israel to protect civilians.
So we'll get into all of that.
Also, this is a huge deal, not getting a lot of attention yet, but I think that it will US deal has sold to a Japanese company. Some politicians are already speaking out against this, as well as the labor union that represents those workers. So we will break all of that down for you. We also have a new bombshell report from pro Publica about once again Clarence Thomas, all the money that he's taken and some of the context for when and why that money began to flow.
So very interesting report there that we should dig into. There's also a new deep dive into the perplexing calm of the Biden campaign. Apparently, at least their public face.
They claim they're not worried.
I don't know how they could be not worried given the polling that we have seen, So we'll get into that. And also, most importantly, Sogren are going to tackle that very controversial map from the new Civil War movie.
So lots to talk about today.
I've been doing a lot of war games in my head, and you guys should get ready for some risk level analysis.
Yea, yes, then you've picked aside already.
I declared my allegiance. I declared my allegiance.
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All right, So let's go ahead and get to the news out of Israel, starting with as I mentioned, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was there yesterday and among other comments, once again warning Israel about civilians.
Let's take a listen.
Democracies are stronger and more secure when we uphold the law of war. And as I've said, acting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative. So we will continue to stand up for Israel's bedrock right to defend itself, and we will also continue to urge the protection of civilians during conflict and to increase
the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. That's important as Israel fights to dismantle the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, and it will also be crucial for our work with our allies and partners after the fighting stops.
This, of course, very similar to what any number parade of US officials have been saying, have been leaking to the press, et cetera as Israel cared. Have they listened to any of it. No, because there's no teeth behind it. Ultimately, it's just words. There has been no indication that there are actual red lines. In fact, they've said quite the opposite that there are no red lines for Israel's conduct in their assault on Gaza. So we can see throughout the region some of the fallout in terms of US
opinion of the US throughout the region. This was a pretty fascinating poll from Ara Barometer of Tunisia put this up on the screen.
This was flagged by doctor tree t to Parsi.
So before Gaza views of the US. This is again in Tunisia, which is kind of representative of a lot of the countries in the region, the Arab countries in the region. The view of the US was forty percent positive after Gaza ten percent. Positive, approval of Joe Biden pre Gaza twenty nine percent not great after Gaza six percent. And one of the things Saga that comes out here is that actually Israel views of Israel were already did.
They haven't really changed.
It's the views of the US that have absolutely fallen off the cliff. And on the other side, views of China. Oh, what's the favorability rating of China in Tunisia seventy five percent, Yeah, favorability rating of Russia in Tunisia fifty three. So countries that have taken a different approach to this conflict have
seen a boon to their ratings. And the US and anyone else really associated with the US, or like Saudi Arabia who had been approaching Israel and trying to normalize relations, their approval ratings have fallen off a cliff because of our association with Israel.
One of the reasons Tunisia is very important is that that was where the so called Arab Spring began, the Tunisian Revolution of course, back in twenty ten. And Trita is very correct here in terms of looking at the North Arab states like Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, any of these, Algeria, these countries largely because they're not democracies per se, but popular sentiment matters a lot more in terms of how it affects the government, and these are obviously larger Arab
populations in the region. As to why should we should care at all, well, not only does it affect overall US soft power, but it's also a pretty decent barometer for terrorism and for feelings of terrorism against the US. It also would highlight if we do get involved in some sort of broader war in the Middle East when Yemen, who is going to side with whom, Which governments can declare their allegiance, what level of support bases, whether US
trade troops will be safe if they're forward deployed. These are all the things that you got to think about about overall US support. And this actually fits with a broader point John Meerscheimer's been making on Israel now for basically decades, ever since he wrote his book in two thousand, I think it was two thousand and six somewhere around there was that by polarizing all US policy in the Middle East around two central subjects of the last twenty years,
but also the last seventy five Israel and Iraq. We have done ourselves a tremendous disservice because it is ignited a tremendous amount of popular sentiment against us. And at the same time we try to go around this by just making deals with dictators. And these dictators have control, but they're not absolute monarchs in the way that we might like to think.
So how these people.
Think about us matters a lot in terms of our mobility in the region, the safety of our troops, and also of terrorism generally.
Yeah, that's absolutely right and sort of exposes the lie of the idea that actually the thing that is in the interest of our security is to give blanket, unconditional support to Israel. So let's take a look at some of the actions that our government is currently co signing. Can put this up on the screen. These are images that just came out. This is from the ap of an AID truck being rated. You can see people running
after it, climbing on top of it. This comes as there is wide spread, critical levels of hunger throughout the Gaza strip. We can put this next piece up on the screen. Guy's Human Rights Watch just came out with a new report saying that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. They go on to say that this is based on not only the actions, the level of hunger also be stated intentions of Israeli officials.
Now you might say at this point, like, well, that's kind of obvious, but it was important for them to do an in depth investigation and see what people were experiencing on the ground. The UN World Food Program reported on December sixth that nine out of ten households in northern Gaza and two out of three households in Southern Gaza had spent at least one full day and night
without food. International humanitarian law, of course, they point out or the laws of war, prohibit the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that intentionally starving civilians by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeting
relief supplies, is a war crime. Criminal intent does not require the attackers admission, but can also be inferred from the totality of the circumstances of the military campaign.
Of course, we know that at the.
Very start of this war, Israeli officials announced they were launching a complete siege. We know that conditions have only continued to deteriorate, and there are now some scattered reports coming out of people actually starving to death, children in particular, though those haven't been completely confirmed. If this continues in this direction, though, you can certainly expect that will be an additional cost and toll on civilians of this war
and Sagar. In addition to this, the Washington Post, which we can put up on the screen, is taking a look at the spread of disease. This is actually something Rian has been highlighting from early on because recall, you got no fuel, you have no sanitation facilities. You have now one point nine million residents of Gazo been forcibly displaced, people living in crowded circumstances, in shelters, outside, in tents. So it is just a horrific situation in terms of
the spread of disease. And then you add to that the fact that so many hospitals have been attacked. There's very little in the way of medical supply, so things that should be easily treatable, there's no ability to treat them. Let me just read you a little bit of this, because this report was really heartbreaking to give you a sense of what this is like for people who are
living through this on the ground. One family, they talk about how is real Reilly strikes killed one of Tahani Abu Tema's sons and one of her brothers, but she fears a different killer is stalking what's left of her family.
Disease.
Abu Taima's two year old daughter is suffering from diarrhea, vomits, sneezes, and is shaking from the cold.
And lack of food.
The mother of six told The Washington Post, the child asks me for food all the time, but I am unable to provide, which forces me to give her anything even if it is contaminated. And once again, there is no ability to treat this child. So she's extremely concerned about her ability to survive. Staph infections, chicken pox, rashes, urinary tract infections, meningitis, momp scabies, measles, and food poisoning are all on the rise. The World Health Organization particularly
concerned about bloody diarrhea, jaundice, and respiratory infections. The UN is tracking fourteen different diseases with epidemic potential that is according to Reuters.
Yeah.
Actually, one of the stats that really jumped out to me is that currently above the one point three million Gosdens who live in shelters, there is an average of one toilet for every two hundred and twenty people in a shower for every four thousand and five hundred, so unsanitary conditions. Obviously, and already it was one of the more densely populated regions on planet Earth. And it demonstrates too about the humanitarian disaster of which will continue if
this is allowed. The real issue I think here is about something we continue to highlight, or at least I've been trying to make this point, which is really unfortunate.
They probably the worst has yet to come. This is bombing.
We have lawlessness, as we could saw with the aid convoys. Hamas doesn't care about the population. Israel doesn't really care about the population. They're basically offending for themselves. You've got the blockade and the Rafa crossing which continues to be completely closed both by the Egyptian government and the Israeli government on the other side.
So these people are really stuck.
And the issue I think is at the vacuum of where this is all going to emerge. We saw a lot of this play out in Iraq immediately after the so called liberation, where we had full blown looting across the city and similar you know, because we we were stupid and we fired the bath party and keepathifcation, we
didn't have civil and city services. They took well over a year to come back, and Iraq was frankly a far more developed place and you know, had more a lot more governance, and they at least access to some croc border trade and other things that were available to them afterwards. So this is a really, really bad situation, and I do think it demonstrates that a lot of the day after Gaza situation is going to come down
to genuine, crystal civil administration. The security situation will almost be a secondary concern because these amount of people living in these types of conditions. This is one where it's a powder keke not only of terrorism, but I mean, who knows, you could see a full blown run at the at the border to Egypt. You could see you know, a swarming of an ad truck today. Imagine six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, so that is where I think the big, the big
flashing red light on this is going to be. And I mean, look the USPID. That's why Lloyd Austin began with all of those comments. He can see it very clearly. The only question is what US policy is going to compel a change and a difference.
And of course that hasn't materialized yet.
Yeah, not whatsoever. There's another incident that has really shocked and horrified people, including the Pope. We can go and put this up on the screen. He spoke out and called terrorism. This incident where two people, a mother and her daughter were killed while they were at a Catholic parish. They one of them went out to go to the bathroom and they were targeted by the IDF. He says, some say this is terrorism, this is war.
Yes, it is war.
It is terrorism, going on to say that is why the scripture affirms that God stops wars, breaks the bow, splinters the spear.
Let us pray to the Lord for peace.
This is not the first time that the Pope has referred to to Israeli actions in Gaza as terror and has called for an end to the hostilities.
We can put up the.
Screen on the screen. The statement from the Latin Patriarchate. Let's put this up on the screen in Jerusalem on the shooting and killing of two women in that Catholic church in Gaza. So these are some of the details according to this local Catholic organization. Around noon today December twenty twenty three, sixteen, a sniper of the IDF murder two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families have taken refuge since
the start of the war. Nahita and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the sister's convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety. Seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside the church compound. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish. The spokesperson are top Aid or Bib Natanyahu was asked about
this attack, in particular asked to justify it. Let's take a listen to how he responded.
So I would reject the categorization of the words he used cold blooded killing that would indicate a deliberate targeting of civilians.
That's something we don't do. We don't shoot people who are going to church to pray. It just doesn't happen. That's not the way the IDF operates. That's against our rules of engagement. We don't know exactly what happened, and I would urge people not to jump to conclusions. They have been in the past all sorts of stories put out by Hamas and their supporters accusing Israel of all sorts of terrible deeds, and in the end they've proved
to be wrong. And we're talking about a combat area, there's exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Kamas terrorists. To say that Israel is deliberately targeting Christian worship is that's a terrible accusation that is unfounded.
Would you acknowledge, mister Egev, that the bullets that killed these women were fired by the Idea.
I did not know that to be true. Obviously, we're looking into it. Could they have been killed by Palestinian terrorists who were shooting at our people indiscriminately. I don't know, but we've got to be very careful. There been countless stories since this conflict began where reports out of Gaza. People are one hundred percent sure that Israel did something terrible or this, that or the other. And in the end it's been proven conclusively that that was not the case,
and people have had to retract their words. Unfortunately, some have refused he.
Is corrected as a terrible accusation, and if he cares about getting to the truth, he would allow an independent investigation.
But I wouldn't hold member right.
Well, actually, what's come out since then is that quote. The IDEF says that an initial review says that IDEF troops who were operating against Hamas Terras in the area operated against the threat that they identified in the area
of the church. The IDEA was conducting a thorough view of the incident, and the Catholic Cardinal Pizzabala, he wrote in his letter, actually not only identified them, but said Crystal, that seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside of the church compound.
No warning was given, no notification.
They were shot in cold blood, as you said, inside the premises of the parish. The letter was then re published completely in full by the Holy See, which is the Vatican News agency. So I mean, obviously this is representing a split. Now it shouldn't matter whether you're Christian, Muslim, or or whatever. But I think what it does highlight is that there are a lot of other constituencies who may not necessarily have said anything, but who are now
highlighting some of the situation inside of Gaza. And I actually saw a pretty significant crystal reaction by the Catholic community here in Washington, who are even in the Republican Party at this news. You'll remember too, when Justin Amash's relatives were also killed, you know, in this incident, because I think you know, and I hate to say this, but with a lot of these people, it's genuinely undeniable. Like they obviously have nothing to do with Hamas. You
can't even say that they're like sympathizers or anything. They're they're they're literal Catholics, right, And this is the Latin Patriarchate, as I understand it traces its roots in the region all the way back to the Crusade, So they've been operating in the area for hundreds and hundreds of years. And this goes to the delicate balance of the religions, and you know, it probably at its best with at a time when all three could live in the region
in peace. Obviously it also been warring now for some time.
But Gaza is not a monolith, you know, we.
Like to think of it, I think as a place where it's just like all Islamist and it's like some Muslim brotherhood has a Hamas and pij Palestini Islamic Jihad sanctuary.
It's just not.
It's it's a diverse society in the way that many you think of Syria, Druz, Christians and other ethnic groups that have lived in the region with thousands and thousands of years of history. I personally know actually some Palestinian Christians they trace their roots to back there just as long as everybody else. So it's a tragic incident, I think, and to me actually demonstrates again that the IDF and it's lack of discipl I.
Don't know if you saw this.
Just yesterday, I saw a girl idea of soldier who apparently participated in some dare where she stood in front of an artillery, a piece of artillery while it was fired as some sort of like TikTok dare and is now quote under investigation by the IDF. It just seems like people there are playing games and a lot of these people are their level of discipline, and that again you can even see. We've been contacted actually too by
people who served in Iraq. They're like, I did four tours in Iraq and they're like, I've never seen anything like this before.
The amount of the lack of discipline here.
And one of the reasons why I keep harping on discipline and training is that even our reservist guys who are police officers in the National Guard, they had a lot of training there, are held are very strict and rigid standards whenever they're deployed to Iraq, specifically for this region, because the consequences of a single band incident are obviously ridiculous. I mean, here you have two people who were al
you'd ly sniped, you know, by the IDF. They don't even appear to deny it honestly, you know, even though he suggested it was Hamas.
But you've now.
Gotten the freaking Pope calling you people act committing acts of terrorism. That's why you're supposed to And I understand, you know, bad things happen in war, but like we're looking at a pattern here of disciplinary issue after disciplinary issue, after lack of conduct issue, where the leadership both from Netanyahud all the way down to the taxical level of the IDF, they just don't seem to have a very good control of their soldiers. Yeah, which is you know,
and that's this is just a military judgment. You can put the morals and all that if you want to. The question is is like, are you accomplishing what you're set out to do?
Because it's clear if once you've lost, when you lost the pope, you.
Know, in a war against Islamic jihad, I don't know what's going on here.
Yeah, well you're right to lay out you know, why why highlight this incident when there have been now you know, ten thousand children alone killed by Israel in this conflict, and the vast majority of them of course Muslim children. It's because it is the war of words between the pope and you know, the spokesperson or top aid for Bibi Netanya who basically calling the Pope a liar or
calling into question what actually happened here. And it is the fact that you know, there's no way that you can smear these people as somehow aiding and abetting Hamas somehow being you know, legitimate military targets. Everything about it screams violation of international law. From the location where they were this Catholic parish, walking over to a literal convent, to the fact that they are women, to the fact
that they are Catholics. Everything about you know, this religious minority which has already been through quite a lot living in Gaza here. So everything about it screams outrage and there really is no justification for it whatsoever, And that's why it's caught so many people's attention. At the same time, you know, there are many other horrors. Is hard to pick which ones to cover. Every day, let's put up on the screen the UN is calling for an investigation
into yet another hospital raid. This one is at Camal Adwan Hospital. There were a number of patients still at this hospital. The doctors who were there said that a number of these patients died of dehydration because of the raid on this hospital the fact that they had been completely cut off from any supplies. A nurse who asked that her name not be used, didn't provide a specific number, but said that a number who had non fatal injuries
died of dehydration. There were also a number of infants who died when their incubators were shut off from a lack of fuel.
What really extra.
Horrified people, I suppose, is some of the images that came out afterwards. Let's go and put this up on the screen of bulldozers from the IDF coming through and plowing through the courtyard and buried under this rubble are dead bodies.
Some reports I.
Had seen indicated that these bulldozers had actually mowed down people who were alive. What the nurses and doctors on the scene are saying is that they had been forced to bury patients who had died in this courtyard, and that the bulldozers plowed over these already dead bodies. Of course, you know, one of the nurses there said they shoved them over without any respect of human dignity, into what looks like a pile of rubble. You can only imagine if it was your loved one who was there receiving
this treatment after they had died. And just as a reminder, you know the number of hospitals that have been targeted here. According to euromen Monitor, twenty three different hospitals around the Gaza Strip have been targeted and overall including those hospitals. One hundred and twenty six health facilities that includes ambulances, clinics, and hospitals have been targeted.
Yeah, and I think it's a tragic situation, obviously, And it's so the more that these spread, this is connects back to and why, you know, why are we structuring the show this way is I think all of it traces back to the level of animus against us. And this is the difficulty and kind of like how I like to look at things too. There's the Israel situation in which we're trying to keep abreast of. There's a bit broader geopolitical situation though, of which the powder keg. And
this is where I'm a little bit conflicted. On the one hand, I'm deeply annoyed that the entire sphere around it's like Israel right now is the sun and all of us are just orbiting around it. All of American politics. Our Defense secretary and National Security advisor are spending more time in Tel Aviv than they are here in Washington. So personally, I find that incredibly irksome because I'm like, hey,
you know, we actually have problems here. Have got a whole thing, We got to talk about with US deal At the same time, why do we and all these policymakers have to dedicate so much time to it, because a single instance can set the entire world on fire, and we have to find a way here. I think of trying at best to bring things to a way where we don't ignite Middle East region against us and just think about this purely in terms of interest. I tried to make people think about this too, in terms
of Ukraine and now here. The amount of blood, capital, treasure that we've already spent in this region and now continue to dedicate this region, not to mention, polarizing all of American politics on a third world ethnic conflict is insane. And yet the consequence is just simply because of the investment of so many of these global populations, means that it also is one which could decide the fate of our nation and Joe Biden's future too whenever it comes to the twenty twenty four election.
And for me, it's not only that, but it's the fact that you know, there are lots of horrors unfolding around the world at any given point in time, so people say, oh, why focus so much on this one like, why do you care so much about this one? It is unparalleled what Israel is doing right now in Gaza in terms of the level of civilian death and in terms of our direct complicity.
And you can just look.
At the comparisons to previous mass bombing campaigns. You can look at the comparisons to civilian death ratios in this war on Gaza versus previous conflicts. I mean, you made this point earlier, and you've made it for a long time, which is completely accurate.
They're making what we.
Did in Iraq and Afghanistan look like we were angels, and there was plenty to criticize there as well, which we did. This is on a whole other scale and level. And so to watch all of this unfolding and the number almost you know, very little dissent in Washington, even though the public is crying out for a cease fire and demanding an end to the hostilities and wanting to see humanitarian relief, come in to watch the number of people who can just justify things that I could never
imagine people being able to justify. That's the other reason to care about what is happening here. So let's go ahead and turn to you know what may happen next. Israel has been very cagey about even whether they even have a day after plan, insisting they're just focused on the current mission of quote unquote targeting or hunting humas, which they seem to have had relatively little success in much more success plowing down civilians and bulldozing hospital courtyards.
Let's put this up on the screen. This was a five step plan floated by this guy, Danny Dane, and he's a senior Lakud Kanesset member. He's also the former UN rep from Israel. And here's his Gaza the day after plan for what it's worth, which I think is.
Worth digging into.
Number One, demilitarized Gaza ensure the removal of all terror elements, including weapons, ammunition and rockets, and any other infrastructure connected to terror during and after the demilitarization period. The IDF will be granted full freedom of action, enabling Israel to respond to all security threats. He says the sole weaponry allowed into Gaz will be handguns for policing activities. So I suppose Israel has the right to defend themselves, but
Palestinians not so much. Establishment of a security buffer zone. This would be a three kilometer area. He says the length of no less than three kilometers. Entry to the buffer zone will be strictly prohibited to all parties. This is something the US has been against, by the way, because it constitutes a taking of additional Palestinian land, something in the US at least claims to oppose. Number three
is really presence at the Rafa crossing. The crossing on the Gazen side will be rebuilt with new technologies and capabilities, and it will serve as a crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. It will be overseen by Israel and international forces, so no longer will Egypt be solely responsible for patrolling the Rafa Crossing. Israel will be involved as well. This one really got a lot of people's attention. Quote
unquote voluntary immigration. Gazans who wish to immigrate voluntarily to countries that are ready to receive them will be given the opportunity to leave in an orderly manner to their destiny nation countries of choice.
This very consistent with.
What Natna who has reportedly said, which is his desire to quote unquote thin out the population of the Gaza Strip So the basic idea here is, after we render most of the Gaza strip completely unlivable, we will allow you to leave your home, and you know whether or not you return or not. We shall see number five economic rehabilitation. This one, in some ways was the most
dystopian to me. An international framework will include countries in the region to promote economic rehabilitation, management of all civilian aspects, special emphasis on the creation of a new educational system. So an international coalition to create a new re education system in Gaza, each and every area of Gaza. They say, the pace of investments we closely match the pace of
eradicating the culture of hate and incitement. So Saga, I wonder what you make of this plan and how significant it is.
Well, in terms of its significance, I think really what it highlights is that the Israelis want the best of both worlds. They want total freedom of maneuver and security over Gaza, but then they don't want to govern Gaza and they don't want to deal with the quote unquote economic rehabilitation. This drives me insane because as you can see, they're like the management of all civilian aspects, a new
educational system. It's like, Okay, you destroyed all of the infrastructure, and then you basically want to kill the people that you want and then leave and then just say hey, you win, and everybody else you guys come in and face it's like no, no, no, you're responsible for that, and you're paying for this shit.
Nobody else is going to be paying for it.
Especially so if you have such objections to their educational curriculum, go for it. You want to militarily occupy and compel the population and to try and work against a thousand years of hatred and all this other stuff. And if you if you think you're so good as an imperial power, be our guests.
There's no way they're going.
To do that.
They don't have the military capability, they don't have the economic capability. That's one thing that we should we keep highlighting here. But I don't think the audience may understand the ration. This war costs one hundred to two hundred million a day because of the reservists. The Israeli economy is really suffering right now. Their prime age working population is either in the IDF or in Gaza, and now they've got to pay all these death and health benefits.
I mean, this is this is serious business that you can't really move away from. And the backbone of the high tech economy and all that was built such that the Palestinians could serve and the Arab population as kind of the servant class would do, you know, a lot of the more lowly work.
Now, what what are you gonna do?
You're gonna import, you know, a mass amount of population at the same time you got these Palestinians here on your border. I think this demonstrates and I think you know, also in general, the misalignment of the israelis very rarely, at least more recently, I have just been saying in quiet part out loud, they're like, yeah, we'd prefer if people just left the US, Egypt, the Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE is Like, that's a non starter.
That's not going to happen.
Then the UN is obviously calling for a humanitarian thing, and they're going to try and administer some of this to the best of your ability. But look at Somalia, look at and I could go on Kosovo, all these other places that have been under semi UN administration has failed miserably.
So this is the worst of all worlds. Yeah, and we're going to end.
Up in that situation, some sort of gray zone, you know, period where we'll see, you know, governance is up in the air, and full blown collapse is probably the most likely scenario for all of this.
Yeah.
The thing that I see most consistently reiterated is framing as humanitarian the desire to push Gozans out of the Gaza strip. And you know, the US says they're opposed to this. Egypt says they're opposed to this, they say they're very opposed to this. Other countries and regions say they're very opposed to this. But you know, they've already rendered northern Gaza completely uninhabitable. They're working on doing the
same for much of southern Gaza. So then they say, oh, well, you know, you can have a much better life after we've completely destroyed your home and all the infrastructure and all of the hospitals and all of the schools, et cetera, if you just leave. And you know, there was this bipartisan plan that we saw that's being floated here.
In Washington, d C.
To use US AID dollars to compel various countries in the region to take in Palestinian refugees. Joe Biden a little noticed, asked for dollars for our country to resettle both Ukrainian and Palestinian refugees here as well. So the groundwork is being laid here both in terms of, you know, money's being appropriated, but also in terms of the sort of propaganda information war to try to get people to
see this as a humanitarian outcome. So the question remains, though, of course, what it was rallies actually want, what are their thoughts about the day after in Gaza? And you know, we've talked to a number of people I've talked now to. You know, we talked about poster. We I spoke with another analyst who you know, had really analyzed sort of Israeli public opinion. Both of them said, Israelis are mostly Jewish. Israelis are mostly not thinking about the day after. They're
thinking about the here and now. They're thinking about what's going on in Gaza right now today, the thing about October seventh. But to the extent that people are thinking about the day after, there's a new poll that just came out. Put this up on the screen. It was
written out by the Times of Israel. So more than half of Israelis actually oppose annexing the Gaza Strip and re establishing settlements that there were used to be there, which were uproaded during Israel's two thousand and five disengagement. This is a poll from Hebrew University published on Sunday. You can see here thirty three percent, so about a third of the population supports annexing the Gaza Strip and re establishing settlements, fifty six percent pose annexing Gaza, and
eleven percent are uncertain. I was also looking up, you know, how do people feel about like a two state solution, and the most recent poll finds majority opposition. Fifty two percent of Jewish Israelis oppose a two state solution and only thirty five percent support. So to me, Sager, it seems like there's a lot of sense of what people don't want, less of a consensus around what they do want.
And if you dig into these numbers further, they also asked about, you know, some more specifics of what they would like to see in terms of governance of Gaza. Twenty three percent, that's the largest number of Israeli support a coalition of moderate Arab states overseeing affairs in Gaza. Twenty two percent are in favor of Israeli military rules,
so those two solutions are basically tied. Eighteen percent would like to see an international force and a further eighteen percent lean toward that idea of Israel annexing Gaza outright. The least popular option is the one that the US has been pushing, which is the return of the Palestinian Authority.
Yeah, and realistically, only two of these are going to happen. You're either going to have the Israelis who are going to occupy it, or the Palestinian authority.
Most of them are very unrealistic. The Arab States will never do this. A.
They don't have the military capability and they don't want to deal with it.
Why would they. I wouldn't do it if I were them.
If I was the Jordanaian king and I watch how my country basically became Palestine, No way I would deal with that. Then you've got the eleven percent for return of the PA, which shows you the least popular option is the one that the general international consensus is around. And as part of why I'm so pessimistic here about the future, because you know, they even said, oh well, we're ready to turn over after twenty years of these morbund PA forces. They're going to roll into Gaza and
administer good luck. Who's going to pay them, who's going to give them weapons? Also, what authorities are they going to have? What are their rules of engagement. It's more likely they're going to turn into a full blown military style dictatorship.
Which I don't know. I mean, is that necessarily beneficial or not?
Will they even have the capability to oppress the population if they want to, And then if the Israelis are the ones who are paying them, then they're going to be looked at as stooges by the population. Not a single option or any of this looks good. But I am at least heartened that they don't want to annex it.
And I think one of the reasons why is because a lot of them lived through the you know, what is it, the deoccupation or whatever of Gaza, and a lot of them, you know, one of the things that's highlighted is that inside Israel is a very small country. And I just saw someone putting this out yesterday. Nearly every day the obituaries of fallen soldiers are in the newspapers and their photos are everywhere. This is going to climb day after people know what this would it take
from annexation and military occupation. So I think that you know, the reality of some of this is beginning to set in. So they may be opposed to two state solution, but the more that you move away and less support that you have for full blown annexation, then it becomes pretty obvious what the eventual next step is going to be.
Yeah, and just so people are clear on what that removal of Israeli forces from within Gaza men and this is doctor Norman Finkelstein compares it to it's like taking the prison wardens from out of the prison and placing them outside of the prison. So there's a lot of mythology around like, oh, we let them do whatever they want. This is complete nonsense. There is a complete blockade. Israeli Prime Minister has talked about quote unquote putting the Gaza
population on a diet. No control over their airspace, control over the borders, no control even over the sea. There are a lot of Gosms who made their living as fishermen.
That even was severely curtailed.
So that has been the reality now for more than a decade in Gaza at this point, and even before this war, that led to horrific conditions for the human beings who lived there in terms of a lack of clean water, in terms of a lack of sufficient food, massive unemployment, majority of the population unemployed. So even before the destruction of the Gaza Strip, things were very difficult for people there on the ground.
Yeah, that's right, Okay, let's move on to US Steel. This is a big in a major store.
US Steel, of course, probably one of the most important companies in history of the United States, and I don't really not exaggerating that has had.
Its ups and downs.
I think it's fair to say in this one hundred and two year history, but one hundred and twenty twenty one hundred and twenty two year history, but recently is really in the center of what I think will become a major political firestorm and highlights all of the perils I think of the international financial system.
So first, let's start with the news. Let's put this up there on the screen.
A surprise announcement yesterday that Nipoon Steel, which is a Japanese steel conglomerate, will acquire US Steel for fourteen to one point fourteen point one billion dollars in cash. It's an all cash deal that is being floated here.
Now.
The reason why this is important, Crystal is a US Steel has found itself in a couple of different problems and over the last couple of years. Just recently, they actually were offered a cash and a stock deal for half of this amount of some seven billion. So why does it make sense for this Japanese company to come in and pay fourteen billion. There's a couple of really interesting things about this number one Japanese Steel or Nipoon Steel. I think Nipoon is the word for Japan in Japanese.
Nippon Steel is a Japanese government backed steel company. It's basically a piece and a tool of Japanese industrial policy. What they have looked at is that US steal is set to benefit from Inflation Reduction Act infrastructure spending. So what this Japanese company says is our steel production is very low. We are competing against China, which is one of the number one steel producers in the world. The US government is about to hand a bunch of money to US steel, So what do we do?
We buy US steel at.
A premium, and we are going to reap all of the benefits economic benefits to the Japanese shareholders and government of US infrastructure spending. And at the same time, US steel, which is probably steel probably the single most critical national security industry, will now be directly controlled by a foreign government. Now, the the counter to what I'm saying is, what do
you care? Japan is one of our closest allies. I agree, but just because you're a close ally doesn't mean that you should be controlling the backbone of American steel industry and of American industrial policy, on top of some of the most important union jobs in the entire country. And it's not just me who is saying this. Senator John Fetterman, Senator Jdvance, and Senator Josh Holly have all now spoken out against a deal. Fetterman in particular, actually put this
in very good terms. Here's what he had to say.
And I just have to say, it's absolutely outrageous that they have sold themselves to a foreign nation and a company.
Can't do that.
Steel is always about security as well too, and I am permitted to doing anything I can do from using my platform or my position in order to block this, and I'm going to fight for the steel workers and their union way of life here as well too, and we cannot ever allow them to be screwed over or left behind.
He is highlighting an important point which we'll get to, is that the steel workers union was not consulted by Nippon Steel Management before the sale. Senator Vance also put out a statement, let's go and put this up on the screen. He says, a critical piece of America's dead defense industrial base was just opting off to foreigners for cash. I warned of this outcome months ago, rest assured I will interrogate the long term implications for the American people.
So this is going to go to President Biden and to the Treasury Department for approval of this deal through something of it's a review process where any company which is critical to national security gets to either veto or approve the sale to a foreign company. And last, but not least, here just to highlight again the workers, let's put this up there. The USW, the United steel Workers Union, put out a statement slamming it. Say say we're disappointed
in the deal is an understatement. It demonstrates the same greedy, short sighted attitude that guided US deal for far too long. We remain open throughout this process to working with US Steal to keep this iconic American company domestically owned and operated, and instead it chose to push aside the concerns of
its workforce and sell to a foreign owned company. Neither US or Nippon reached out to our union regarding the deal, which in itself is a violation of our partnership agreement and requires US Steel to notify US of.
A change in control or business conditions.
And I think that highlights it really for me is that they didn't consult the workers.
Clearly, this is a major national secure threat.
And I have again nothing against Japan, but you need to ask yourself why is the Japanese government willing to pay double what a US company is for their own national security implications? Because you know it's a small island and they want as much control of supply as possible. I don't blame them, I would do. I have to do the same thing if I were them. But we got to look out for our own interests. And I hope that this becomes a major thing here in Washington
with these three senators who are speaking out. I would expect people like Shared Brown and others, especially as union workers themselves. I mean, this is what destroyed the union wave of life is you know, Chinese, Mexican outsourcing and Japan. I mean, you know, turn the clock back to the nineteen eighties. This was what they were doing.
Back then.
We had the infiltration of Toyota and all these other companies that make great cars, but you know, nothing against them on a production level. But just in terms of US market share and US control, it's never been worse than ever than right now.
It makes sense that Fetterman, who a few consult yesterday's show you will see I have a lot of criticisms of the days, but that he has a sort of emotional connection to this company.
These workers, et cetera.
I used to live in the Greater Pittsburgh area and the steel industry is huge, I mean in terms of the sort of like cultural understanding of the place and how people see themselves, US steal being the most iconic of the American steel companies.
And now if this deal.
Goes through, which let's be clear, Biden should block this deal one hundred percent.
He should block this deal.
In the fact that you have some bipartisan support for blocking this deal, I would hope would encourage him to move in this direction. The number one steel maker in the world is China bao Wu Group. Number two is Arsler Mattal which is Indian, and then number three would be this Japanese steel company. So you know, it gets to the core of some of the problems with just the neoliberal view of shareholder value and and globalism over
and profits over literally anything else. That's the sort of thinking that would lead you to say, yes, this is acceptable, and it's fine for us to just you know, sell our defense industrial base off to the higher spider wherever that comes from. I am hoping that there's been somewhat of a shift within both of the parties where they
see the problems with that direction ultimately. But you know, for me, it's also actually very personal because I did used to live in this area, and you know, it used to be Sagury you were talking about, like the decline in the middle class and the end of the union way of life and all of those sorts of things. It used to be in this town that I lived in, there was a large steel mill. People could basically graduate high school walk across the street, get a good job
at the steel mill. I mean, this is tough work. Let's be clear, this was not like, you know, technic. It's very difficult, it's dangerous, et cetera.
But you could afford a house, you could afford a vacation, you.
Could afford to support a family on one income. And then you know, that basically went away, and that steel mill is all but shuttered at this point. It also, I believe was sold to a foreign buyer as well, and that area of the country has been thoroughly decimated by the outsourcing and destruction of those jobs. What also makes this noteworthy at this point is that you've had
now two successive administrations trying to rebuild American steel. So Trump imposed a twenty five percent tariff on most steel imports, trying to you know, it's a bit of a protectionist action to try to bolster American steel. Trump and Biden later renegotiated many of those tariffs into quota arrangements, in which foreign governments agreed to limit the amount of steel
they exported to the US. And as you pointed out, Sager, the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act both were meant to drive up steel demand and prices by limiting competition from foreign markets. But they clearly did not do enough to forestall this type of outcomefort from occurring.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And look, I mean the main thing that we need to prevent is that US steel doesn't go in the way of Bethlehem Steel. I'm actually visited Bethlehem Steel. My in laws are from the region. It's actually a fascinating thing. I hope that everybody goes to get to go and see the steel stacks. It was a huge part of the US industrial base at that time, and the story of it is really sad. I mean, this was,
you know, the ibeam that was very famous. I even have a T shirt with the ibeam on it, and you know, it was critical for World War one, world War two. It helped rebuild all of Europe. And then what happens. We rebuild Europe and Japan so well that by the nineteen seventies, US steel is actually too expensive. Bethlehem Steel and US based product produce steel is too
expensive to the overall global market. And that's when the era of neoliberalism and globalism comes in and we allow Bethlehem Steel to basically go under and you guys want to know when Bethlehem Steel is today, it's a freaking casino and it's like a casino end and a wedding venue. It's nice, by the way, it's actually really cool, especially the party area and all that.
But they've got markets and there's no steel.
The steel production facility is a place to you go and you take a photo of that's really sad that we've basically turned it into a place of gambling and financialization. Yeah, basically a museum as well as mac truck and some of the other things in the area, as opposed to a place would actually produce things. And the entire industry of that region, the history of it was deeply linked to production.
Production itself is so important.
And the original reason why Bethlehem Steel flourished in the first place was because we had it here. We could control it, we could use it whenever we got caught flat footed and we had to rebuild for World War two and we had to put all these tanks and all of stuff.
Where do you think it comes from?
We think too about the global supply chain, about what are we been covering here? All of this craziness going on in the Red Sea you and I were talking privately yesterday about the Straits in Malacca, the Taiwan Strait. I mean, the era of international conflict on the high seas seems to be back, and the level of precarity in it from conflict is something that people really don't appreciate. Like if any one of those were to close or
to pop off, not only would global inflation spike. I mean theoretically huge portions of the US economy would just go under overnight. That's because of globalization that we've allowed to occur. So whether the Japanese promised to keep the jobs here or any of that, it's about control, and it's about who actually is here in the US, and about critical decisions and relations with governments. And their government
wants to buy it for a reason. So we should think about that, and we should say maybe we're the ones who should control it in the first place.
Yeah, I mean, it's honestly about like the basics of statehood.
Yes, do you have control?
Do you have the capacity if you need to spin up production? And you know, we've been thinking about statehood in the context of Palestinians, and it's made me think a lot about like what are the components of actually having a real legitimate state and you know, having control over your own defense industrial base seems like a pretty critical component of that, especially for a wealthy, advanced nation such of ours, and one that we've obviously lost sight
of now for decades at this point. Yeah, Saga, I wonder if you have any insight into whether you think Biden will block this, because I actually think I actually think that there's a chance, just because you know, his own sort of personal self conception and the way that he has been framing his economic pitch, blocking it, to me would be consistent with some of the other elements of Biden.
I don't think he'll block it because it's an ally and because in the so, it's not just about Biden. It's about Sciphius, which is the actual board inside of the Treasury Department. We'll review all of this. The framework that you and I are talking about does not exist. The only framework that they have is oh threat, okay, that will nix that, and that actually took a decade to get to the point where we would block anything that's coming in from China. If it was Saudi Arabia
or any other country, we would probably block it. But Japan is just considered such a bedrock US ally, and they're they're saying all the right things. They're like, don't worry, we'll keep the jobs here. Hey, we're doing this because you guys are spending money. It's all good. We'll work with this, you know, the union, et cetera. That within the like new neoliberal view where we acknowled is that China is like on the outs, but everything else is allowed.
I don't see Jenny Yellen and others blocking this transaction.
On the other hand, even just from naked like cynical political calculation. As I said, I mean, this is such an important part of the identity of western Pennsylvani is in and around the Pittsburgh area, which obviously critical swing state. That area is in particular critical for democratic performance.
And you have, you know, the union that.
Is adamantly opposed and speaking out as forcefully as they possibly can, a union which I'm not sure if the steel workers have backed Biden yet for his re election bid, but they were certainly behind him last time around, and he has close ties with union leaders there in other unions as well. So that's why I don't put it totally off the table that he could make the right decision here.
It's possible, I would hope so.
And look, the more that we see this type of action, we need, you know, bipartisan actual We need people like Shared Brown to come out. We need many others Casey and others like if that, if it becomes mobiles and a few people actually make this known that you care about something like this, or you know somebody in the area, and the Union way of life, all these things depend on you not to mention, you know, the overall national security.
And we could get it done.
But I'm I am really not hopeful just because Capital wants this.
If you're a US.
Steel shareholder, this is the best thing that ever happened to You just got one hundred percent premium on your stock. And these people are about to make a lot of money. So if you think that they're going to allow seven billion in profits just to go idly buy because you know, some YouTubers and a couple of senators say something, they are going to fight, I think tooth and nail to make sure this guys.
Imagine if scrant and Joe is the one that allows the sale of US steel to a foreign country to go through all right, stranger.
Things have happened.
All right, let's talk about this new report from Pro Publica with regard to Justice Clarence Thomas. Let's put this
up on the screen. Pro Publica has of course been doing a deep dive into the many luxury vacations that he has taken that have been footed by various wealthy individuals Harlan Crowe, in particular, the funding of his mother's house, the payment of private school tuition, the offering of a generous loan which he maybe never had to repay for this luxury RV etc. Well, now we are getting some insight into when all of these perks and all of this cash began to flow. They say, here a delicate matter.
Put the tearshee back up the screen. A delicate matter. Clarence Thomas's private complaints about money sparked fears that he would resign. What they track here is a conversation that he had in the early two thousands in which he expressed concern to a Republican lawmaker that he didn't make enough money and then he might have to resign from the court so that he could go and earn sufficient cash. Le me read to you this first quote that we pulled.
Put it up on the screen. After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation. According to friends, he'd recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas's wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed two hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars from a friend to buy a high end RV. That is a fancy RV. And by the way, like we said, we don't know
if he ever actually paid back that money. Let's put the next piece up on the screen. Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Sterns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight where they were together, promising to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the Supreme Court. Put
the next piece up. Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major race, but in the years that followed, as republic As reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small, private
school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a co of ultra rich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and super yacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow. Just to give people a sense of, you know, how tough were things for Clarence Thomas and the other Supreme Court justices, which, in fairness, many of the other Supreme Court justices either they were
already wealthy or their spouse with wealthy. So he was legitimately one of the quote unquote poorest members of the court. But even in two thousand he was pulling in the Supreme Court salary.
It's not like it was nothing.
It was the inflation adjusted equivalent of roughly three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. So those were the poverty wages that were forcing him to potentially resign from the Court.
I see this with public officials all the time, and I think to really explain the phenomenon, you have to understand the water within they swim is on paper, they're important, but they make an upper middle class salary. Let's be real too, it's a pretty good salary compared to majority
of Americans. But the problem is is that they're dining and they're hanging out all the time with millionaires, multi millionaires and billionaires, and so your peer group becomes much richer than you are, and you start to ask yourself things like, Hey, my buddy's got a lake house over here, my other friends got a private jet, my other friend drives a range drover. I'm such an important guy. Why don't I get those things? But what they don't get is that you are welcome to any of that. You
just have to leave. But if you left, then you'd have to compete in the marketplace and buy your own business, or at the very least sell out and be corrupt, and you wouldn't have the same level of power.
The power so they want to have it both ways.
He wants to both be a household name and to be a Supreme Court justice and have all the accouterment of the super rich, to which, again I say, Clarence resign.
You can live a great life man.
By all accounts, he loves his RVs and the motorcycles and all that. He could quit today and he'd make ten times more money, you know, just on the speaking circuit, but he doesn't want to do it because he loves being on the Supreme Court. And this is what really annoys me about it is these guys just simply have to accept that being in public service means taking a huge cut to your lifestyle, so be it. I don't
even necessarily think it should be that way. I think that we could have come up with all kinds of different systems because my get you know, my want is to remove corruption entirely from the system. But I also just have such a hard time, you know, even explaining it this way, not sitting here and saying three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars in adjusted income.
That's a ton of money.
Yeah, that's enough.
You could make a mortgage, you could buy a house, and you could make your dumb you know payment on a less higher end RV. You could afford one hundred thousand dollars IV. Why do you need a two hundred and six thousand dollars RV. This is where I just think they want, like absolute limitless of the resources of you know what they swim in. And I'm sorry, that's just not how America works, or become rich first and then do it. That sounds like a tried and true strategy too.
There are a lot of middle class by blanc there who are able to afford a reasonably priced RV and Clarence Thomas three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, surely you would have been able to, you know, pursue your passions in that regard. I thought some of the quotes in this piece were remarkable. This congressman Florida Representative Cliff Sterns, who they describe as a vocal conservative who at that time in two thousand have been in Congress for eleven
years and occasionally socialized with Justice Thomas. He said that in an interview with Pro Publica about this exchange where Thomas is h might resigned from the Court because I'm just not making enough cash, he said, quote, his importance as a conservative was paramount. We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and was being paid properly. I mean, that's as much a direct acknowledgment of this
whole scheme as you could possibly get. At the same time, they track, they say, during his second decade on the court, after this conversation, Thomas's financial situation appears to have markedly improved with the help of his wealthy benefactors. I added that part in in two thousand and three, he received the first payments of a one point five million dollar advance for his memoir that was a record breaking sum for justices at the time. This is interesting to me,
Jinny Thomas. His wife, who had been a Congressional staffer, was by then working at the Heritage Foundation and was paid a salary in the low six figures. So his wife gets a nice gig as well, paying her well. He's getting these dozens of expensive gifts, most of which were never reported.
To the public.
And so it seems like this circle of conservative donors in order to ensure that he and apparently the other justice they were concerned about at the time was Scalia, didn't resign and stayed on the court because Clarence Thomas indicated like, oh, it's not just me, you know, it may be also at least one other justice who would resign, and Scalia was the other quote unquote least wealthy of the justices who were on the court, And so they ramped up their gifting, which all flew under the radar,
and yeah, you know, it also exposes the distance between public expectations for quote unquote public servants and the schemes that they you know, the ethical schemes that they actually operate in. I mean, you still have the court really blocking any sort of scrutiny, any sort of code of conduct that would have any teeth.
That's very different from the.
Entire rest of the Federal judiciary, and I do think at its court it reminds me of like Bob McDonald, very similar story where you know, he and his wife were accepting all of these luxury gifts from people who had business with the States just to benefit from state policy and lo and behome. That goes to something he's found guilty of corruption, goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says, nah, we don't think that's corruption. Interesting that they would side with him on that case.
It's a problem for them, it really is.
And my only hope is that these stories are setting up standard at least in the federal judiciary, who are of those who are you know, future Supreme Court nominees where you have to learn to at the very least, even if none of this is illegal.
It's like, what, you don't want to deal with this?
In all these stories, this will be one of the probably the most enduring things that people remember about Clarence Thomas was Anita what is it?
Anita Hill?
And now this, And I think, you know, why would you want to tire your legacy that way? It's just not something that you would want to deal with. So, you know, at least let shame be a part of the guiding thing. Although I generally think most of these people are too shameless to ever care.
We'll see.
Let's move on to Biden. There's some extraordinary things happening in the Biden campaign.
Pole just came out this morning.
Crystal from New York Times Sanna Trump is actually winning with young voters. Every poll that we look at shows Trump leading in swing states, shows Biden losing, shows Biden at the lowest level for approval ever in the modern American presidency, including Jimmy Carter, and yet his campaign is completely calm. Here is a journalist who embedded with the Biden campaign describing their state of mind.
Right now, Let's take a listen.
This central article of faith that I heard over and over for the last six months Really, as I've been asking this question, which is what is the plan here, is that voters just aren't really paying attention in the way that they're going to a year from now when it actually comes down to vote eleven months from now.
The point that they that I heard repeated over and over again is that once real Americans, real people who are currently not thinking about politics at all, once they lock into the fact that this is going to be another election where Donald Trump is on the ballot, everything is going to change. That's going to change for young voters, it's going to change, for voters of color, it's going to change for really the Biden coalition, Now I heard
this over and over while Biden's numbers were tanking. To make a long story short and not to sugarcoat it, but their argument is that if you look at poles, if you look at focus groups, real people who you know, are the people who vote in elections, simply aren't. It's not just that they're not paying attention yet, they don't even understand that Trump is going to come back in a year on the ballot and that the major threat
is there. So that's why the Biden campaign has started keying in on Trump more talking about what a second term would look like.
I questions about that. Real people don't realize Trump is going to come back. Really, I don't think that's true. It's like, have more faith in the American public. Maybe they know that they just don't care nearly as much as you do, and they're like, well, when they find out the stakes, it's maybe going to flip on a dime. That's a pretty big bet to make. It's certainly possible.
Let's put this one, please up on the screen. This is the actual profile that he wrote, The alarming calm of the Biden campaign Inside Reelection HQ, the President's aids feel confident the twenty twenty four race is totally under control.
What sticks out to me is just abortion. It is very clear to me, they say.
Beyond the economy and Trump's lean into fascism he declined to give, it is abortion that is most likely to play a fundamental role in shaping the electorate. Democrats have made it a centerpiece of their argument, and Trump was crowing about the end of row. Ron de Santis also asked about it, and they point to consistently the underperformance on the ballot of these abortion state measures. For the reason why they remain hopeful. I think again, that is
a good case. I think it remains probably the only case as to how Biden will get reelected. But then at the same time, Crystal, I look at a New York Times Siana pol which shows Donald J. Trump leading with young voters from eighteen to thirty four, and I see RFK Junior, who was sitting at this desk just last week, and he's leading amongst young voters, And I think about who he could take votes away from, and then level of chaos, and so I could see it
every single way. I could see a Trump blowout win, a Trump blowout loss. I could see a Biden, you know, a marginal edge. I could see Biden winning but not getting the popular vote or at least the smallest share because of someone like RFK. I just think this is a hell of a thing to gamble on. But it fits with Biden's career. He's stoic, and he's an egomaniac. He believes most in himself, and he's like the American people will come to me and to see, you know,
the benefits and why Trump is so so bad. But there's not a lot of data to support that right now.
It's wild to me.
They start this piece with a presentation that Biden campaign operatives were giving to some other political operatives who'd been associated with the Obama campaign. And these Obama campaign people were like, wait, you don't have like, you're not pushing the panic button. You don't have any more of a plan than this. I mean, part of their plan is literally just an assumption that Biden's numbers.
Are going to get better.
They say in this piece, the Biden strategy assumes that his poll numbers will get a cyclical improvement.
Why, like that just doesn't happen.
I mean maybe typically or usually or whatever, but you're not going to do anything to try to make that happen. And you're out here telling everybody like this is a profound threat to democracy and the whole reason Biden's running again is because of Trump and what a unique risky is, et cetera, et cetera. And then you're just like everybody, relax. All of these poll numbers one after another that show Biden losing in literally every single swing state and bleeding
support by the way from his own base. You're just cool with that. You think it's just naturally gonna revert.
Maybe yeah, maybe maybe the polls are wrong.
Maybe once people dial in on Trump or whatever, they're reminded of how obnoxious and chaotic he is.
Or maybe the criminal chart.
Maybe, but you're not doing anything really to try to effectuate that outcome.
I do think one thing that they.
Point to, which seems like a pretty obvious failure to me, is you know that Biden camp. I mean that Obama campaign back in twenty twelve against Mint Romney.
They actually ran a brilliant strategy. They got on extremely early. It was it.
Was risky because they blew a lot of cash early, defining Mitt Romney for the public as this out of touch billionaire.
And it worked.
It stuck, It worked. Romney's personality sort of played into that. He made a number of horrific gaps on the campaign trail, et cetera that really cemented that image. They've done very little to even remind people of. If your whole thing is like I'm better than the other guy, and you may not love me, but Trump is horrific, Like, why aren't you amplifying some of the things about Donald Trump
that you think are horrific? Why aren't you talking more about the criminal charges, the fact that this dude could very well be found guilty and be put in prison. You know, if that's your angle, if you're running on, you know, the lesser of two evils, and that's your whole thing, which has always been their whole thing, rather than an affirmative agenda, you better start leaning into that and making that case because people aren't feeling that in the way that they perhaps used to feel that. They
say in this piece of that. The campaign has an unofficial motto it might be quote unquote calm the f down, trust the process, and vote for Joe Biden one more time. Really inspiring stuff there, Guys really really dialed in on the American public.
Right now that ought to do it, I think, and again to highlight this is please the mommoth polling that we have, can we put it up there on the screen. The job approval rating is at an all time low thirty four percent approved, sixty one percent disapprove.
That's crazy.
And you know, on the issues, I really think this highlights a big discussion we had yesterday about immigration.
Can we put this up there please?
About the overall ones on infrastructure, forty two percent actually approve fifty two percent disapprove, Jobs, forty two percent approve, fifty three percent disapprove. Climate change thirty eight percent approve, fifty four percent disapproved. Go to the next one, and these are arguably the most important. Inflation twenty eight percent approve, sixty eight percent disapprove. Immigration twenty six percent approve sixty
nine percent. I mean, these are fatal numbers, inflation and immigration. Immigration is going to be the number one issue that Trump talks about that he's got the best ground on, and inflation's gonna be the number one thing that is on American's minds. Now, will abortion, where he does certainly hold a double digit lead, will that be able to trump everything else? It worked in twenty eighteen, Now will it work in twenty and twenty or sorry, twenty twenty two?
Will it work in twenty twenty four is just the most open question. And as you pointed out too on the Obama campaign, the reason the Obama people are a gast is, you know, they would never take this for granted, They would never believe it all on the line up until some you know, magic thing will carry you across the finish line the way that you really win and you do well. I think at really anything is that you attack it always as if the stakes are existential,
especially when you're in a one on one context. Should be working as hard as you are today, as hard as you can today as you would the day before the election, because you could win somebody over here.
You can win somebody over here.
You know.
It's like death by a thousand or winning by a thousand cuts, I guess you would say. But they just seem resigned to this, and that's just a tremendously risky strategy. It's just not the way that really high functioning and good people would operate anything a business, a campaign, or whatever that you're trying to do in life.
Yeah, and the big shift over the past two months has been among Democratic base voters, and in particular among young voters, who you know, have a lot of issues they're concerned about, but their view on Israel is diametrically opposed to the Biden policy on Israel. And so that's part of what is contributed to this New York Times Siana pol that just came out, which I think counterpoints
are probably covering depth tomorrow. But voters between eighteen and twenty nine, nearly three quarters of them disapprove of the way that Biden is handling the conflict tank Gaza. Among registered voters, they say they would vote for Trump by forty nine to forty three. That's young voters going for Trump by six points. And it's not like that's been that way forever. Back in July. Just over this summer, those same young voters were backing Biden by ten percentage points.
So we went from a ten percentage point lead with young voters to a six point loss among young voters. And you know, they interview some of these young voters in this piece, A number of them say, listen, I'm not going to vote for Trump, but I just may stay home. One of them was like, oh, which doesn't make a lot of sense, but they were like, I'm unhappy with Biden over Israel. I might vote for RFK Junior. Their positions are not actually apparently.
Different to promote.
Yeah, it's a protest, so you know, people aren't always paying attention to the ins and outs of what everybody's position is. They just feel like, this is disgusting what's unfolding right now. I may as well try something different. Even if the profess views are not all that, you know, not all that different, because the truth of the matter is, Trump, Biden, and RFK Junior are more or less lockstep in terms of Israel, with different sort of like rhetorical flourishes.
Perhaps, Yeah, I just think that this is the most precarious and crazy situation proceeding into election that we have seen since ninety two, and the stakes are so much higher today than they were in nineteen ninety two. At that time, Honestly, not all that much would have changed regardless whether Bush or Clinton or would have won, although.
Pro would have been Perau would have been different.
Honestly, Yeah, he was man, man, what.
A missed opportunity. He's block NAFTA.
He would have been a fantastic president, but it probably was never on the table. But I think that the stakes today have literally I mean, I know everybody says it in terms of why you should vote for me, when I say hi, just in terms of the tremendous uncertainty in the global system and for the American future and the variety of directions that we could go. And I just have no idea sitting here because of such a high number of like variable outcomes that actually.
Cold, Yeah, we're at a very chaotic pivot point. And that's why it really matters who the next leader is, and you know the direction they take to that. And yeah, it would be nice if we had some more aspiring choices than what we do.
There's a new movie coming out from a twenty four kind of an indie art house film called Civil War that will be hitting theaters ahead of the twenty twenty four election, with some troubling scenes trying to play on the strife in the American political system. Let's take a look at some of the trailer and then a particular map of how they think a civil war would play out in this country.
Let's take a list. Nineteen states have succeeded in the United States. Army rams of actimity, White House.
Issue warning to the way certain warses as well as the Florida Allian There's some kind of misunderstanding here, right, Well, you're American? Okay, okay, what kind of American are you?
You don't know, God bless America.
Civil war it's coming crystal according to them. And if you didn't catch that, that whole what kind of American? Now just think in your head. Let's say there was a civil war how would things divide? Would it be north and would it be south? Would it be west versus East? Here is how the foreign creator of this movie decided that a civil war in America would play out.
Let's put this up there on the screen. So here's the map that he's got.
According to him, the Second Republic of Texas and the Republic of California would be in an alliance together. The loyalist states would basically include every but the old Confederacy in something called the Florida Alliance, which includes Oklahoma to Florida, the Deep South, and Tennessee. Then the western forces would have Colorado looped in with Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho.
And so.
Here's the thing, Crystal, just looking at all.
This, this map doesn't make any goddamn sense, literally zero. It is hilarious that said, I'm declaring my allegiance to the Second Republic of Texas in the Republic of California.
So here's my case. I'm curious who you're sticking with.
Just let's even put aside, like what, like why and how this could happen politically obviously would be stupid. California and Texas are two of the only states in this country, which are more akin to nation states. So for Texas on its own, would be the eighth largest economy in the world. California, I believe, would be larger than the almost every other country inside of the G seven except
for Japan. If you combine them together, and I actually checked into this, it would be the equivalent of some five point nine trillion dollars in GDP, So it would be the second largest economy or the second largest economy in the entire G seven, behind the US. And then if it would be US, China, and it would be this whatever. This alliance is so a powerhouse. They've got huge populations one and two in terms of overall US density.
Then you consider the fact that you have Pacific port access, you've got Atlantic port access, You've got easily they would gobble up Arizona, New Mexico.
I don't know why those two were included in the loyal estates.
So they would control the vast majority of the border with Mexico.
So that's who I'm betting on in this so call.
Also, they have a lot of military aged males, infrastructure and bases and other things in this area.
But that's who I'm going to stick with in the so called Alliance.
Well, my reasons are much less tactical and much more emotional. Every state I've ever lived in is in the Loyalist Alliance. In the states where my parents are from is also in the Loyalist Alliance. So I've lived in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York. So I got to stick with the And also, I'm an American Patriots, so I'm gonna stay loyal to the American project. Here we do have, though, you know, a tremendous industrial base in the Loyalist Alliance.
The old industrial Midwest can get a new burst of energy with this with the Civil War apparently, you know, when I initially saw the map, let's put the map back up on the screen. When I initially saw it, I reacted negatively to the fact that it's so preposterous. But I'm actually kind of glad they made it preposterous, because otherwise you just turned the movie into some other like proxy war in our endless culture battles. If you had it more of like a red state versus Blue
state situation, it would be the move. It would make the movie like insufferable. And you have you know, blue state Democrats cheering for one side in the movie and red state Republicans cheering for another side. And even that wouldn't make a lot of sense because you think about a state like Georgia, So Georgia overall it's a swing state and there are incredibly conservative Trump loving Republicans and there are extremely pro Joe Biden, you know, democrats in
the urban areas. So because so much of our cultural divides now are more based on education, based on urban rural, it doesn't there wouldn't really be a map split that would make sense.
So I'm kind of.
Glad that they made it preposterous so that you don't get into these like weird cultural devices.
This is the thing.
There's a big thing online people like to talk about and play act and cosplay civil war. It just doesn't make any sense because our problems are not geographic anymore, and to the extent that they are, they are class based, and they are from a sorting of urban versus rural.
If you live in our area, far more likely to be a liberal, to be college educated, to be hire income, to have separate cultural tastes, and you could be I don't know, ten fifteen miles away from somebody who you would never interact with ever.
On a daily basis.
You know, the whole thing about the original North and South Civil War is that the dividing question of that time was slavery and the economic system of which it helped to perpetrate, which was industrial North and the slave owning South, and agrarian versus industrial economies. And it happened to divide amongst geography. But today that's not what our problems are. It's all based on education, it's all based on class, that's cultural taste, and it's just city versus urban.
So to that extent, it doesn't make any sense. Another reason, here's one reason though, to be doubtful of the loyal estates, the Western Forces or Western Alliance or whatever it's called. Within the map, they have I think a decent portion of the nuclear weapons, and they would have control on that, so I'm not so sure how much control there would be.
The question too here about this so called like civil war and Balkanization, is that any true Balkanization, if it were to ever come in America, would be rle versus urban. And that's also why it's just not going to come
because of the way that the governing authorities are. We are not even close to the levels of what things look like in the eighteen sixties, and people should actually read a ton more about how the actual country came apart between the eighteen thirties and all the way up until eighteen sixty one, the dividing questions of slavery, the way that it worked through the so called compromises.
We're not even close to that. So I agree with you.
The fact that the map is so dumb is to a benefit of the movie because it purely exists in the realm of fantasy and what it would look like.
It sort of reminds me of when mister Beast did the Olympics y and he just great world randomly solved all.
These different territorial disputes.
But because he did it in a non ideological way that was just totally.
Happy, wholes random, it was fine.
Right.
It's sort of like that, like the idea that Kentucky and West Virginia and New York would be an alliance together, and that you know, Colorado and Idaho or the only one that makes any sense is really the what are they called the Florida for whatever Florida Alliance.
But then why would Oklahoma not join Texas. Oklahoma's well this is Oklahoma' are gonna get upset, But you guys are basically Texas. So if you go and at least the way I was taught, we have, actually do they have in Virginia of Texas history like Virginia history. We have an entire year of curriculum dedicated to Texas history, which I've always thought is amazing. And the first thing they always teach you is that we were our own country once and we can be, which.
Is why we are allowed to fly our flag as high as the US flag, because we were once a republic. So so Texan.
I'm not sure. I'm not a big fan of Oklahoma.
I'm not sure I would really want to own Oklahoma.
Oh, I mean, I haven't spent much time there. It seems okay. It looks like some decent farmland, you know, some things out there. They can feed the capitol in Austin. That's what we'll get. A little Hunger Games action going. So anyway, Look, it's going to be a fun. It's going to be a fun.
Do you think it's going to be good? The movie?
If we were talking about this before. It's got high variants.
It's even going to be horrible or it's going to be a fantastic and there's no in between. The guy made X Makina, which is a great movie if I were to I mean the cast. I love Jesse Planmon's love him. His wife is Kirsten dun So they're both playing in there. Nick Offerman is he's a great actor. The other guy who played Pablo Escobar from Narcos, I've only ever seen him as esco Ar. I don't know much about him, so it's a big lift for him
to play such a leading role. The African American gentleman who is in there, I know him from the wire.
He's a very good actor. So we'll see.
I think it's probably going to code like capital L liberal, which means will probably be bad, but we'll see it is I will see, Sue, I.
Will watch I mean, you liked Barbie, which was the most capital L liberal movie of all times.
I watch a lot of movies. I love movies.
I'm an AMC A list member like I will basically watch almost anything as long as it's got a decent enough review just to go check it out.
So yeah, I'm the wrong person to ask.
Yeah, I'm gonna I want to see it, but I will do what I always do, which is let other people.
See it first and then if it's worth my time.
Right now on my list is Wanka, big shot head.
I'm praying. I'm hoping for him. He's our only chance at a next generation movie star. I needed to bulk up a little bit though. That's what we need from him. Anyway, Guys, you've heard enough of this commentary. We appreciate it. We're actually filming, as you said, one of those segments that will be releasing later, so that's why we're ending things a little bit earlier.
Today.
We're gonna have more that we'll be filming evergreen content on Thursday. Those Norm Finkeles scene and Tucker Carlson interviews exclusively released to our premium subscribers first before them being publicly, so if you can support us Breakingpoints dot Com otherwise, we will have a fantastic counterpoint show for all of you tomorrow, and we'll see you on Thursday.