2/01/23 Counter Points: Biden Meets w/McCarthy, US Rejects Ukraine Jets, UK Threatened By Putin, General Predicts War With China, Abortion Emergency, Santos Polling Immigration Reform & MORE!

Breakingpoints dot com. Well, hello everyone, welcome to Counterpoints. Ryan, how are you doing? Wonderful? Happy Wednesday to you, Happy Wednesday to you. Now there's a lot going on here because House I was just going to say a House minority leader, but now Speaker of the House, Kevin McArthur, Kevin McCarthy is set to meet with President Biden today and they're going to talk about whether we will default basically on our debt, and what the path might look

like to get there. Right, And there was one thing you wanted to mention at the top of the show. In interesting development and some of the biggest news of the last week. Oh yeah, a couple of things actually. So first of all, tonight in Memphis, the funeral for Tyree Nichols will be held. Kamala Harris has told the family that she will be there to speak. Reverend Al

Sharpton is going to lead the event. Organizers said they expect something like twenty five hundred people to go, even though Memphis is under an ice storm at the moment, it'll be right in downtown Memphis. We're also coming up to the culmination of the fight over lan Omar's seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. You had Matt Gates come out and say that he's undecided, and I'm curious what your sense from House Republicans is, are there people like Gates?

I think Gates might in principle, like I think it's a bad idea to just start kicking people off committees for on a partisan vote because you disagree with something they said, because you know who would be one of the first people that would be kicked often reverse him. What's your sense of whether or not McCarthy's going to have the votes, because he's it looks it looks like he's wobbly. But he said today or he said on Tuesday when asked in the hallway, that yes, I have

the votes. You know this is an interesting case study because there's a huge distinction between Ilhan Omar and what happened with Eric Swawall and Adam Schiff on intelligence committees, because they have both i think, demonstrated really poor judgment in that arena. And you can look at Adam Schiff. I'll talk about this a little in my monologue. Just being utterly unqualified and making it egregious doesn't even begin to describe the lapses in judgment that he's had over

the last several years. Whereas they're upset with Ilhan Omar over this interpretation of what constitutes anti Semitism. Whether or not they believe that Ilhan and Omar, as she said over the weekend, did not understand the tropes and was sort of unintentionally offensive with her language, or if she's genuinely harbor some anti Semitic beliefs and is willing to publicly say them. That's a different case study than lacking

a qualification. So when Gates and ken Buck, who we've had on Crystal and Sager had on, say I don't believe in punting people just to get even with Democrats on this case, but not the others, that is really interesting you know, and Republicans will say, well, Democrats started it. They had because you know, they kicked Gosar and mar Martha Taylor Green off. That was a bipartisan vote, which means it's a slightly different precedent than kicking people off

by a partisan vote. The Intelligence Committee is a separate is a separate precedent because the speaker can kind of unilaterally decide who goes on there. When it comes to Omar, it just really does seem like, like you said, they don't like her. Well, yeah, and listen to I mean, this is one of the biggest suspeaks in politics right now is how we define bigotry, How will we define racism,

how we define anti semitism? And I think Republicans have had a sort of experience over the last several years that shows them very clearly how easily those definitions can be inflated against them and their voters, because it happens all of the time. How do they square in their minds this They're driven by this anti wokeness, like that's the thing that gets them out of bed in the morning.

It's fighting the Wokes and they're going to cancel somebody for something they said off of a committee that like in their heads, is that something that conflicts or in their minds, there's just there's a Palestinian exception to all of this, and it doesn't even kind of raise the level of something that they need to work out in

their own minds. I think there are case studies, especially on campuses, in which proponents or opponents of cancel culture have been hypocritical when it comes to, as you say, like a Palestinian exception. I do, however, think that the standards for members of Congress are reasonably different, even if you're an opponent of cancel culture. It's entirely fair to say members of Congress should be hold to a different held do a different standard than a comedian or an actor,

an actor or something like that. And if it's you know, you can then talk about whether they what they think about everything that Trump has said. Hypocrisy in that too. I wish Republicans got out of bed every morning and you know, actually wanted to do something and not just whine about what they see as wokeness or cancel culture. But we generally just have to settle for the whinings. That's a good point. These are all Trump supporters, at

least they were in the last election cycle. And Trump probably says more things, more anti Semitic things in a single day than Omar has said in her lifetime. But he's like, Israel controls Congress, and like he did say that, yeah, they're so good with money, and like he's just constantly saying explicitly anti Semitic things. And of course he has Jewish grandchildren, his daughters, right, and he's like, they're going

to be great with money. But this is an example of where Republicans, I think, understand how those definitions, Like I don't think anybody would say that Donald Trump, a man's whose daughter who he loves is Jewish as anti Semitic by their definition. But if you're inflating that definition, it's going to get uncomfortable when you have to look

at certain people who you would not consider. And so we just have inflated these definitions to the point where the political football is you toss it around and it's cheapened. I think the actual definitions to the point where we can't agree anymore on like what actually is very much objectionable rhetoric. And that's a really sad state of affairs. We'll probably have to cut that into a separate box because it just went on. But on that note, Kevin McCarthy is going to meet with Joe Biden to talk

about a really big yeah, a one. Put that up on the screen. And actually, so this is a headline from Cnnwards says Biden's message to McCarthy ahead of critical White House meeting, which is today. By the way, show me your plan. Why don't we actually hear those words from the man himself, President Joe Biden. Let's rull a two pend. You want to negotiate, you tell me your budget. I'll start your mind. What is your message? What is your message to leader McCarthy, the speaker McCarthy, Sorry, sir,

what will be your message? Put show me your budget. I'll show your mind. Show me your budget, and I'll show you mine. Kevin McCarthy responded on Twitter to some of what was coming out of the Biden White House. We can put a three up on the screen, he said, mister President, I received your staff's memo, space Enter. I'm not interested in political games, space Enter. I'm coming to

negotiate for the American people. A very short, but very poignant piece of poetry looking at it out of his green He did it in Stanza form, which I think was even a high coup if he worked on it a little more, right, he was almost there, certainly a choice. Ryan, they're going back and forth. McCarthy said this Sunday, we're taking Medicare and Social Security off the table, and that was always going to be a non starter for the

Biden administration. I do, however, have a quote from Kevin McCarthy where he says, if you read our commitment to America, all we talk about is strengthening Medicare and Social Security. I know the President doesn't want to look at it, but we have to make sure we strengthen those seemingly in conflict. If you want to really do anything about the debt, there's there's not much you can do without tinkering with entitlement programs. So on that note, or with

that in mind, they're kind of at an impasse. Right, we can pause this and ask the class of question here. Does everybody here know what people in Washington mean when they say we're going to strengthen social Security? How do you make it stronger? It's one of the greatest lies that is that is like dropped on the heads of the American people. I do technically think it's true that a solvent social security system would be a strengthen social

security system. But that is mutually exclusive with cutting. When they say strengthen, they mean they mean they mean cut, they mean cut. And so in other words, think of

it this way. If everybody's social security benefits were dropped down to a dollar, that would be the strongest program ever, right, because it's soft, Because it's so soft, because you can all you're very comfortable that the trust fund is going to have the money in it that it can pay that dollar every single month, and you have then strengthened

the programs. What they're saying romantics, right, and what they're saying the fund runs out in a certain amount of time, and so in order to make it go longer, we're going to pay you less, and that strengthens social security. Most people when they hear the words strength and social security, they think, oh, I'm gonna get a nice little extra cola little another fifty bucks in my check is a

stronger check. It's about it isn't like just bs political length, right, And so for Macarthy to say we're taking Medicare and social security off the table, and we're just going back to what we said in our Commitment to America. And then you go back and you read the Commitment to America and as you said, the Commitment America says strength

and sold security and Medicare. So it's cut, that's cut benefits for both so that you can supposedly prolong the actuarial and like the different tables will work out a little bit better for them, right. And one thing I think it just gets lost in this entire conversation because you know, even Republicans now are talking about the Pentagon,

even Kevin I forget if it was Kevin mccarthur. There's a Republican who said, and many Republicans would agree with this, that maybe there are some cuts that need to happen to the Pentagon so that it's more efficient and effective and can pass, for instance, an audit like any business with that much money, and it would have to. But the other point that I wanted to make is all of all of you could put up the next element there, which is right, yeah, yea talking about that, yep, yep, exactly.

So Manu Raja is reporting, he's saying that some have floated really stiff cut some Republicans to domestic programs and to trim the defense budget. But Brian read all Over at the Manhattan Institute has crunched the numbers on this, and it's truly astounding how many things you could cut without really making a debt and the national debt, so you could actually eliminate the entire Pentagon and you still don't make a dent in the debt because those programs

are overloaded with boomer benefits right now. They weren't designed particularly well, we haven't been managing them responsibly. But whether it's humane to let's say, strengthen strengthened by a cuts to those programs, I mean, I think at this moment time absolutely not the answer. That is absolutely not unless you have some political imagination that we're not cueued into

yet that does this in a humane way. I think we can all agree solvent social security would be better, but there's literally no plan for that other than yanking benefits out from under people's feet. Well, no, there's a plan. Raise the cap. So they're currently oh, sure, you're capped on the amount of self security taxes and Medicare taxes that you paid I think it's one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars or something like that. After that, you don't

pay into Social Security anymore. And so what the left says is just get rid of the cap you pay your self, Security, Medicare, taxes on everything. What folks like Bernie and are saying is okay, will allow a grace from like one sixteen. I think it's up to two fifty, he says, Others say up to four hundred. So you're not going to see an increase in your taxes if you're making between one sixteen and two fifty or four hundred, but over four hundred you would then continue to pay

into Social Security and Medicare. Yeah, boom, guess what all of a sudden those numbers start to add up and you have strengthened programs. Yes, the numbers start to add up until we have ballooning costs of healthcare that continue to create an in time. And so like single pair can handle that, we'll get to that unless they can come up with a way to do it. I mean, it's just such This is like the crux of it. It's such bs where they're selling out people's lives for

political purposes again and again. Whether it's on the left or the right, it's like, well, we'll just keep doing X, Y and Z without tackling this because we'll get booted out of Congress again. Whether you're on the left or the right, we'll worry about it later. We'll worry about

it later. Well, at some point, and you can make an argument right now that the inflation crisis is partially because in some part, maybe it's a small part, but in some part, the average American is their bank account is worse off because of the incredible amount of debt that we have. And maybe the solution is meant the coin, maybe the solection is MMPT, but the bottom line is that it's not a solvent program. But cuts are also absolutely not a humane thing on the table right now.

Even Republicans know that. So it's they're just going to be They're going to end up passing a cr because that's the way that they can sort of get themselves through the summer, because you would likely default if you don't do anything on this around, and they'll raise the debt ceiling. You think without a fight, I think goes you could put that. Manu Roger tweet back up again.

That's what Manu says in there. He says, but there are ours who are no votes, no matter what I think that that's what you are sort of implying there. He can only lose like two or three votes, depending on what's going on. He's gonna bind is Santo's still going to be in office by then. We'll see. Well,

and here's Thomas Massey, he said. One idea, according to CNN, he has been advocating for, is passing a cr quote as soon as possible that funds the government at ninety nine percent of its current levels and pairs it with a debt ceiling increase, just so that they have a backup plan in case they're unable to come to an agreement on the debt ceiling or funding the government. One reason that's important is because I think they're just going to end up going back and forth tiki taky over

discretionary spending. That will be the inch that Biden gives, and it'll be the inch, you know McCarthy gets, is that you get some cuts to some woke program, A program McCarthy can say is woke here and there, and Biden will give on that, and they'll do their cr and that's how they'll avoid everything. Well, see, and we tease the McConnell one, we can put a five back up, right if people got an early look at that, it's fascinating to watch the Senate just be like this, mo

Ning is Paul, this is between y'all. You guys, just work this out. Let us know when you get to something. If you remember the last suck, yes, if you remember last time McConnell allowed for the first time, you said it, this will be the only time, and nobody believed it was going to be the only time a fifty vote threshold to get the debt ceiling through. So, in other words, there was Republican cooperation, but it didn't show up on

the Senate floor, which is all they want. And McConnell has consistently said there is not going to be a debt ceiling crisis. We're going to raise the debt limit. Every time he says that, it undercuts McCarthy a little bit. Yeah, and then he says, I'm deferring to Kevin over there. Good luck Kevin, but we're not going to have a debt ceiling crisis. Right, So they're both in incredibly tight spots. Republicans are incredibly tight spots on this, and the Biden

administration politically at least, isn't a great position. I mean, it's hard for them to lose on these negotiations because a default looks bad for Republicans. Prolonging inch and closer

to a debt crisis looks bad for Republicans. You know, I think a lot of people, there are some people and there this is a huge part of the Tea Party movement, for instance, back in the day, but really wanted to see strengthening of Social Security and Medicare because people are worried about what their kids end up getting out of it. And I get that. I think that is very real, but it's a much harder sell and it works much effectively on a political level than protecting

those programs. And even Donald Trump knows that. JD. Vance knows that, because they've both come out in support of getting the hell off the table before Democrats use it to tank the Republican Party and before Republicans use it to pull the rug out from under average Americans. The way to keep those programs solvent those to keep the economy strong, which goes to immigration, which I think we'll talk about later. We will, we can go to Ukraine first.

So this is again the tanks were sent last week. Germany and the United States sort of agreed on the Leopard tanks. B one here, Yeah, if we put up B one. This is a headline from Fox News. Biden says no to F sixteen fighter juts for Ukraine. France considers sending warplanes now. Basically what happened in the France situation is that Macron along with the Dutch Prime minister both said that they wouldn't rule it out, basically sending fighter juts to Ukraine. Biden and Schultz in Germany have

both said no to this. Biden replied with a simple no. This is from Fox. When asked if the US would send the sophisticated war planes to Kiev, Schultz has said, quote he says, NATO is not at war. NATO is not at war a Russia and quote, we will not

allow such an escalation. Brian, what do you make of the difference between not Krone and the United States and Germany there, Well, it suggests that we might be entering the pattern that we're getting familiar with, which is Ukraine makes a demand for something Germany in the US say no, we're not going to do that. That's going to escalate the war. They ask again a couple of times, We're like, okay, you know what, actually fine, you can have that, which,

you know, which is what happened with the tanks. Now with Germany and now the US also sending tanks over there, and it feels like Schultz himself is exasperated and recognizes this pattern. There's this great quote from him in there where he says the fact we've only just made a decision on sending tanks and the next debate is fire up in Germany, that just seems frivolous. Well, so he's like,

I just gave you tanks, is it? Do you think though, then them saying no is theater they know they ultimately have to give on this or are they saying please stop? I think it's them seeing where the line is. I think they're gonna And you know, then the Biden administration has been resistant to sending jets since you know, February March of twenty twenty two with front at the time of the initial invasion, and Ukraine has been asking it

since then. If you remember, that was the thing that the White House Press Corps was like, you know, banging the war jumps for for for weeks that they're only when are you going to send the planes? What are you going to send the fighter jets? About that fourteen one of the sixteenes and so they have held firm on that, but you know that ask was up here. Meanwhile, they've got the other asks up here and now here,

the tanks and the lepers and the abrams. So it feels like Germany saying no, but wondering like are we going to get steamrolled on this too? And I think some of it depends on what happens with this upcoming Russian offensive that is being telegraphed. So I was just going to ask you to talk a little bit about that. How do you interpret they're gaining momentum post tanks for f sixteens in light of the Russian offensive that they've

been telegraphing. That's the thing that kind of uncorked the tanks from the West is this sense that Russia's gaining some ground here and there and is going to launch this going to launch this offensive. It feels like each side looking to the other for more permission to escalate further,

just making the situation that much more dangerous. You occasionally hear people saying, well, what this will do is this will help Ukraine when it eventually gets the negotiating table, But nobody in positions of power or anywhere near positions of power will lay out a roadmap for what it would take to get to that place where they are

actually negotiations going on. What do you make of the argument that if the United States, in Germany and NATO partners did more right now so increase spending handed over for instance of F sixteen's right now, and gave Ukraine a big jump in its capacity, that Russia wouldn't be able to withstand that level of pressure and this would end sooner than trying to sort of do tif for tight de escalation. I question whether or not there is

the capacity to do that. Like you talk about their moving twelve tanks, you know, from Germany and movement in a couple of dozen or whatever from the United States, It's going to take weeks and months to make that happen.

People need to be trained up. Like that argument really only works if you're talking about overwhelming force, like some type of Powell doctrine type of thing, which means, you know, American boots on the ground and like actually bringing the full weight of the US military to bear on the situation, because there are going to be constraints if you're dealing with the Ukrainian army, Like the Ukrainian army can only it can only do so much. So it just that

to me seems dangerous. This this like idea that you're going to get peace through annihilation the other right, and that's where I was going to go with it. My response to that argument would be, I'm not sure that we're in a position where we want to be testing

vironment Putin's tolerance escalation at that. Let are nuclear weapons involved, right, there are nuclear weapons involved, and the importance of Ukraine to Putin or let's say even he let's say his end goal is just some sort of maybe he has to use tactical nukes in his perspective to to seize

what he wants from Donbos? Is that more important to him than it is to NATO and to the military budgets of other countries and the people of other countries that have supported this war effort rightfully up until this point. I think the answer to that question is very much up in the air. How far Vladimir Putin is willing to take his country to unlawfully seize that territory, how much blood he's willing to shed to unlawfully seize that

territory feel like an enormous amount. Because his survival, his political survival, requires him not to lose this war. It's been framed as basically an existential test for Russia, and it doesn't require and I think that one mistake people make is it doesn't require in order for him to stay in power. He doesn't need to win. He just needs to not lose. And so to not lose, all he has to do is continue to feed Russian lives into the maw of Ukraine, just destroying Ukraine and destroying

Ukrainian lives in the process. And so as long as he's doing that on some scale, he can continue to claim that he's he hasn't lost the war. And so what capacity does Ukraine have to prevent Russia from ever doing that? Because that's such it's such a low bar for Russia to do. Are Americans willing to put boots on the ground? They answered that question absolutely not, No, absolutely not. Despite the funding the war at such a high level, which American people aren't really asked if they

wanted to do that. We never asked anymore. Yeah, it was a decision that was made and then once and then once Republicans took over, they funded it, you know, for the next six months or whatever through the lame duck. Yeah. And on that note, this question of how far Putin is willing to push things. Boris Johnson, I don't mean to chuckle there, but you have to see this clip of Boris Johnson because it's Boris Johnson being very Boris Johnson. Let's roll that clip of him talking about a quote

extraordinary phone call he had with Putin. He said, you say that Ukraine is not getting to on NATO anytime soon? He said in English anytime soon? What is anytime soon? And I said, well, it's not going to join a NATO for the foreseeable future, you know that perfectly. Well, he fundamentally wasn't about you know, he sort of he threatened me at one point and said, you know, Boris, I don't want to hurt you, but with a missile it would only take a minute or something like that,

you know, Johnny. But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have. He was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate. First of all, perhaps to Boris Johnson for giving up on the accent after the first word he started to retell, I've done it myself. He's started to like retell the story in Putin's voice, but just gave up on it right after the word Bori. Second, the Kremlin says this

is a lie. It is worth I think zeroing in on what Johnson himself said, where he says it was a very relaxed tone, there's this Arab detachment, and he was just playing along with my attempts to get him negotiate, just some casual missile jokes to further to sort of grease the wheels on the negotiations. Also, the evidence that it might be a lie is that we do know that the other part is a lot. He was not

trying to negotiate. He was if you remember, there was a reporting that he went to Kiev and pressured Zelenski not to try to negotiate. That's right with Putin, so Boris Johnson was on the other side of that question, Boris Johnson was trying to stop negotiations, not produce negotiations. That's a good question. I look forward to his memoir in which he says the exact opposite, and these interviews where he's yeah, I was trying to negotiate an end

to it, and he threatened me with a missile. Yeah, surely the memoir is forthcoming. But would he have made that up, the line about it will only take him? No, it's a missile. I don't know. No, it's very I think it's is very specific. And to put it out in public. If anything Putin likes that, I mean that. I can't imagine Putin is upset if people think he's tough enough to joke around with the Prime Minister about hitting him with a missile. I mean, it makes him

look like he's the stronger one in that negotiation. He's got the upper hand there if he's going to joke about that. Yeah, And there was some reporting that Russia has said that London would be the first place they'd hit if they went, if they went ham there you go. Now, speaking of our Pentagon defence budget and all of that wonderful stuff, this is a really big story that I think has gotten buried in the news cycle, and we can put the first tear sheet up for this block

elaked memo. Here's the headline from the Hill. US general predicts country will be at war with China and twenty twenty five. Now where that news comes from is elaked memo two troops from a four star Air Force general, Mike Minahan. He's the head of the Air Mobility Command. That's like fifty thousand service members, some five hundred planes. They do transport, they do refueling. According to press reports, this moment got leaked. I think it was first to NBC.

He said that he believes the country will be at war with China by twenty twenty five. So that is a four star Air Force general putting in writing in a memo to everyone under his command that he thinks the US is going to be at war with China

by twenty twenty five. His reasoning is that because both Taiwan and the US have presidential elections coming up in twenty twenty four, the US will be quote distractive, and Shujinping will have an opportunity to move on Taiwan in the shadow of American attention that's devoted to the presidential election. It's addressed to all of the air win commanders in the AMC and other Air Force operational commanders. Here's the

other part. It orders them to report all major efforts to prepare for the China fight to Minihan by February twenty eighth. That's from NBC orders them to report all major efforts to prep for the China fight by February twenty eighth. So the word of caution that I I would offer there is that there are about seven hundred four star generals out there, and so think about it, there are four hundred and thirty five members of the House of Representatives, and we would not put stock in

the word of every one of those bozos. We sure wouldn't. So out of that seven hundred, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna get a few that are might might be a little bit, a little bit off the reservation when it comes to some of this stuff eccentric. But it's not just the Kookie thing he said. I mean he put it in writing an AMMO and asked for actions.

Kookie too. Now, so the Pentagon was asked about this and said that this guy's note to his airman does not represent the thinking of the United States Army or Air Force or Peagon or anybody else other than him. However, we can take the question on it on the merits, like is it reasonable that this could happen? Of course

it is. You know, China is is closely watching. I think, you know, how the world responds to to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and whether or not they kind of you know, backchannel financial systems that they've built up to try to get around United States sanctions to try to continue to have a robust economy, you know, with sanctions in place,

whether whether whether that's enough. They're they're looking at the capabilities that the West has and whether or not that's it's gonna be enough to kind of, you know, if to succeed in an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. The Taiwanese say that they don't, they're not worried. Everything's fine. What else would they say? In some ways, so it's it's certainly possible. But and the fact that I think the guys four stars give him a little more credibility than

maybe his argument deserves. Yeah, although to your point is it possible. Is it plausible? I think clearly the answer to that question is yes. And one thing I would look at in particular is the semiconductor trips, which we've talked about a lot on the show, and I know Soger and Crystal have talked about it as well. That's really one of the key issues when it comes to Taiwan, because you said amphibious invasion, So only real way for

China to invade Taiwan or the military incursion. Couldn't they send, like slowly send twenty thousand people and they all changed into their uniforms there. I don't want to give anybody ideas just gu I mean, you can travel back and forth, so like, why do you would you have to do it in like an invasion at gunpoint? I mean, I might figure that one out what's going on suddenly, but gosh, now it's going to happen. Well, if it's peaceful, it's

one country anyway, according to our policy. That's right, according to our policy. And again the semiconductors, we had this big piece of legislation that I would argue was probably way more croneistic than was appropriate, but it it takes some by estimates like some three to four years for that process to really complete itself. For the United States to open semiconductor factories and start manufacturing the stuff that is essential to modern life for the American people and

for our military. That's a process to get these factors up and running takes several years. And that's one of the biggest things that concerns me about the timeline here because as we're going about that process, as we're trying to reshure the essential sort of critical parts of our supply chain post COVID, we all learned that with various parts of protective equipment and everything. China knows that and they know that once we get the capacity to do

those things, the calculus shifts a little bit. And relevant to the Dutch Prime Minister was here in the middle of January, and while there there was a lot of news reporting about this. Biden pressured him, like to stop exporting these semiconductors ups to to China. They're apparently they're the makers of a certain type of chip that is the only factor that makes it, like you know, top

of the world essential to the semiconductor supply chains. They have not agreed to that yet, but the fact that the US is applying so much pressure to a country like the Netherlands to get to get in line with this attempted semiconductor isolation of China is extraordinary. It's it's unlike anything that the US has done before on on kind of trade and nial security and foreign foreign policy. And so if if anything that could uh, you know,

push push things to the brink. So on. On that note, speaking of things that from the Chinese perspective they're projecting might push them to the brink. This is from the Foreign A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Monday at a news briefing said, quote, we urge certain individuals in the US to earnestly abide by the one China China Prince, and they should quote stop doing anything that violates the basic

norms and international relations. Now on its own, that might that quote might seem very vague in general, but as Fox reports, quote Mao is responding. That's the spokeswoman to a question about a report last week that Kevin McCarthy was planning a trip to Taiwan, something he said he would do should he be elected House Speaker, after saying

he supported the August trip by Nancy Pelosi. Now Mao, the spokeswoman, according to Fox Quote, later reaffirmed her government would never promise to give up the use of force to unify Taiwan and China, and said the Chinese government hoped to resolve the situation peacefully. You think McCarthy goes. How long does he last as speaker? That's entirely fair. He tries to wait it out. Actually, I think if he lasts a speaker, then then then he'll probably go.

It'll be able to become a new tradition, bipartisan tradition in America to like attempt a world war get when you get the gavel. I think this makes it more likely that he goes, if anything, Having the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign ministry talk in terms like that basically dare him to go. I think now that he said he would go just if China says no, that makes it all the more likely that he has to do it.

I mean, it basically forces his hand. Well, I mean, he's not forced to like walk us closer to a nuclear war from a political perspective. From a purely political perspective, I guess. But I just don't think the public cares that much like that. I mean, they don't want a nuclear war, but I mean I don't think they're following along.

I do think the Taiwanese and Chinese and American relations enough to be able to answer basic kind of trivia questions about it, let alone have a firm opinion or even understand why him traveling directly to Taiwan would even be that offensive. And like, I feel like it's, you know, it's an internal like it's kind of an insider politics

thing rather than something that matters more broadly to people. Well, but except for the broad China question, which is really important to Republican voters that Kevin mccarthyen again, he's in a really tight spot with his own caucus because there are these divisions within the voter base, or these demands in this atmosphere within the Republican voter base. So it's the if it's tied into this broader China narrative, it makes him look weak and makes Republicans look weak against China. Again.

That's why I think politically it's sort of unfeasible for him to now back away from what he said he would do because China warned him like, don't do it. Kevin, He's just saying. He just kept keeps saying on planning the trip. I'm gonna do it. Don't don't you worry. It's coming up. It's just around the corner anything now. So moving on. There's a new report in Axios actually

that came out on Tuesday. They say the Biden administration quote is weighing a plan to declare a public health emergency that would free up resources to help people access abortions. That's the first tear sheet we have. We can put that up on the screen. You know. There's some debate even within the Biden administration because they're kind of noncommittal in this axious thing. Basically, they're saying that the administration is saying. This is from Javier Bessera. He told Axios

this on Monday. There are discussions on a wide range of measures that we can take to try to protect people's rights. It would allow the administration, according to Axios, to help support states that protect abortion, deploy public health services core teams, and give the government quote the ability

to accelerate access to new medications authorized for abortion. But there's debate within the administration itself, which has been getting pressure from Democrats who say and in abortion groups who say, this is a necessary step, this is a public health emergency post row, and the White House has an obligation to do it. But there's debate within the administration as to whether this would do much, if it would free up enough resource, enough resources to make a difference to

be worth it. I think you know again, yeah, we were talking earlier. It doesn't do a whole lot, or it depends on how you interpret it. Yeah, it's exactly and I think that's the thing they said the Biden administration over the summer said basically, they went back and

talked to experts and experts. After they'd consulted with experts, they realized it would free up a pool that amounted to quote tens of thousands of dollars as opposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars. And they weren't confident it would do a lot on the other fronts that people claim it would do a lot on.

So what is your take on that? Do you do you think there's evidence that suggests a public health emergency in this case, I mean one thing that I see this article from NBC News. Under the PREP Act, the HHS Secretary can issue a declaration that a countermeasure, a drug, device, or biological product is needed to respond to quote a disease or other health condition or other threat to health

that constitutes a public health emergency. So then the article mentions the Health Secretary would define the countermeasure and population that needs it, but that federal declaration declaration would pre empt any state law that is in conflict with it. So the public health emergency can basically say, hey, this

over the counter abortion not over the counter. This prescription abortion pill for first trendmester, which is a very common use of that pill is qualifies under the public Health emergency.

So states that ban it you can go around. I don't think they need that though, to allow legal access to abortion medication, reclassify it in the same sense as like Plan B. Is that what you'd say, Well, yeah, there, I mean, as long as it's FDA approved, then my understanding is that states cannot come in and ban FDA approve drugs that that federal law preempts when it when it when it comes to whether or not that can happen,

so they wouldn't. I don't think they would need a public health emergency for that, but they would need the FDA to come in. The FDA has alread approved it, but states have banned it, have they not? But they but but they can't ban it by mail, right, Yes, yes, you can ban like the selling of it in a right, so would And I think then the question is whether this would would it stand up in court? Would it

hold up in court this court? Right, I mean, well in lower courts even it would it hold up in court? And then is it sort of legally constitutionally allowed to preempt those laws because it's if he's declared it a public health emergency, has defined that access to abortion being curtailed in the wake of Dobbs has constituted a public

health emergency. He's defined it as such. Thus, this would have to qualify because it's a drug that would treat right, It's it just depends on who wins the elections and is able to appoint the justices because like before Republicans had the majority on the court, it would have been obvious that yes, like it was obvious like there's there's a constitutional right to abortion that was the law of the land. Now they've reinterpreted the constitutions say that there's

no constitutional right right to abortion. So I'm sure that they would say I have no doubt that Alito right comes to down and tries to nuke something like this if it actually does anything effective. Yeah, no, absolutely, But though it raises the question for me of why politically the Biden administration wouldn't just do this. It just seems to me like it's an obvious thing to do if

it's going to be from their perspective, inconsequential. I mean, I don't think they're that worried about setting dangerous precedent

at this point. So just from a sheerly, like nakedly political perspective, I don't understand why they're not just doing it unless they consulted sort of constitutional legal experts and those experts told them this could create a legal nightmare because it would open up things that perhaps the Biden administration is worried would be used against Democrats, would be

called radical et cetera, et cetera. But I actually, I mean I could see it in the case of the abortion by mail drugs being used that way by Republicans to say they just mandated access to this, you know, they undercut the Supreme Court. But if that, if that interpretation wouldn't even fly, it seems to me like politically

it would be a winner for them. Yeah. The bigger win to me would be getting abortion access on federal property, on federal land, so in any state, if it's federal property, Yeah, so right exactly. And so if you can then get abortion medication through the mail, and you can get abortion services in federal property, then you know, then you're going to have you know, access restored in a substantial way.

I think the interesting thing also from my perspective is the Biden administration has recently said the COVID emergency is ending in May. Right, So it's just I hate to be cynical here, but it's just these things are just being used as political footballs, right Like Biden says the pandemic is over, and then he gets hit by some people who are still cleaning to the idea that the pandemic is very much raging and he has to take it back. And then we're in a public health emergency

right now. And you look around, obviously there's still suffering and tragedy from COVID, it's it's still real, it's still happening. But the public health emergency level, I think that's a pretty open debate. And so when these distinctions just get tossed around like political footballs, I don't actually even blame either party for doing it at this point, because they becomes so meaningless that it's like a winner for your side to cling to one side because it's all been

blurred anyway. The importance has bred. And if you remember Ted Cruz, back when Trump was declaring a national emergency to build his wall when he couldn't get Walt money through Congress, Ted Cruz was saying, be careful, because you're going to have a Democratic president who's going to declare a climate emergency and implement communism Green New Deal via

a climate emergency. Right. He didn't realize at the time that he would so quickly get to see Row overturned, but he probably would have said, look, they're going to do something like this if you so, you're right both you know, both parties when they get into office are

having a hard time getting an agenda through Congress. Voters are demanding, yes that they do something, so they're just going to find ways to do things, or Republicans are probably a little bit better at that than than Democrats. That's why they're still having and hauling over doing a

thing that isn't even obviously going to do anything. I remember talking to Ted Cruz back in like twenty eighteen about his position on the legislative philibuster, which has obviously been a huge debate on the left and even on the right too, even though the right is basically against overtraining the filibuster, and at the time, Ted Cruz is like, it's actually a really serious question as to whether because it's like a done deal. His perspective at the time

is it's basically a done deal. Democrats retake the Senate, they get rid of the filibuster immediately, so why would Republicans not do it? Like he's talking about how his perspective has shifted on that, but it's like we're still in this period where we're totally unable to actually like Congress is totally unable to do everything. We funneled it all to the executive branch into the wider bureaucracy, but we still haven't quite dispensed with the pretense and just

kind of opened up the floodgates yet. Yeah. So speaking of George Santos, I was so happy, I was so hoping that you would take the top of this block. Please update us on George Santos. George Santos, Well, first of all, there was some CNN reporting from his ex boyfriend. You can go find I think it was CNN. You go find that. That's some if you want a little scandalous drama. His ex boyfriend is appalled at his psycho

psychopathic lying. But over here in Washington, Santos has told Republicans you can put up the first one here that he's going to voluntarily step off of the Committee Sciences. He was given three panels by by Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy, you know, needed every single vote to become speaker and did not want to hear word one about not seating George Santos or kicking George Santos out until he was through. He now has to govern. We talked earlier in the show.

He needs George Santos's vote to kick ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs which is rather incredible to think about that you're going to have a member in good standing elected three times by her district, sent to Washington to be a voice for the people of Minneapolis, and George Santos is going to cast the tie breaking vote to

kick her off of the committee, just utterly appalling. He said he felt like his appearance there was on these committees was a distraction, which maybe maybe there would have been more ratings for them. I'd like to see George

Santos kind of interrogating some of these guys. And then we also had we could put the second one up here from Sahill, a poll from his district showing that basically everybody wants him to step down except what was it, thirteen percent, like some some funny number of people who are like no, I'm good with it said and say they don't know, like this is too entertaining, stick it out. Then, yes,

come on, this is good stuff. Well, obviously he won a swing district, so Republicans are very hesitant to do anything that could damage them holding that seat or that could jeopardize them holding that seat, especially with such a

slim majority in Congress. Now, what continues to infuriate me about the story, and we talked about it last week to your point about ilhan Omar is that first of all, what's did Republicans know about whether this man was qualified to hold the office, whether he would completely embarrass his constituents, their party, and the whole embarrass and bring shame to the Institution of Congress to the extent that is still possible to do that. What did they know about that

when they were doing their vulnerability studies? And why did Democrats not have the resources to come up with the oppo research on this? And why did local media pay no attention to it. The owner of the publisher of a really small paper on Long Island said it was because everyone was distracted. He broke some stories about Santos before the election and said everyone else was started distracted

by bigger races. Well, when you have poultry at local media presence, that's what happens, and it's not what voters deserve, honestly, and the Santos voters should have had the appropriate information that we expect to have as voters, that you and I expect to have in front of us as voters. As journalists, you and I can't look into every member of Congress and every single story, and so we expect that other people are covering these bases and local races,

et cetera, et cetera. People deserve to have that information before he was elected. And the big questions for me when we're looking at the fact, I mean the investigations into him, the fact that these are happening after this guy's elected to Congress, not during his campaign or not during before he even decides to become a public figure. I mean, this stuff is horrible. The FEC stuff makes sense that it's after the election because obviously it's campaign

finance stuff. But he's now allegedly involved in this Harbor City Capital ponzis game. Have you looked at this? The SEC is looking into it. Shocking. Have you heard about this a little bit? Yeah, He's like the SEC is now asking people basically, you know what he told them when he was pitching them on Harbor City Capital, the campaign finance finance stuff that the FEC is looking into. This is a quote. This is from the Washington Post.

Over the past few years, FEC analysts have repeatedly identified problems with Santos's filings with the regular sending regulators sending multiple letters seeking care, clarification or correction of apparent issues, including accepting contributions beyond the allowable limit, omitting required donor information, and filling to fill out required performs to report details with the loans Santos claims to have made to his campaign.

Did he think he was going to win? I feel like he didn't even think he was going to win, so he just winged it. Yeah, he's he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that has a long term plan. You're what's just one lie after another, cover up the last one. Yeah, and problems with its expenses, like people going through like his disbursements are just making absolutely no sense, not adding up, and again to linger on the point again for a second. The Houses Republicans are going to

vote because it'll be a party line. I assume unless Josh Gottheimer like does something weird, will vote. Will vote on whether or not ilhan Omar should be booted off of the House Foreign Affairs Committee for her alleged anti Semitism.

The tie breaking vote could be cast by a guy who got elected by saying that his grandmother died in the Holocaust and his mother died in the Twin Towers in nine to eleven, and that's and who faked being Jewish and then said no, no, no no, no, I meant that I was jew Ish, right, And he's going to cast the tie breaking vote to kick Omar off the committee because of concerns around anti Semitism. That's the situation that we find ourselves in right now, you know it is.

And Republicans feel like if you talk to like Freedom Caucus people, or even if you talk to you know, leadership people. At this point, they were so exasperated by what happened after January sixth, the whin Pelosi transformed the powers of leadership in Congress, and by the sort of escalation in media corruption and media the media corruption, particularly as it pertains to Republicans and Conservatives have been so exasperated by it. They say, our voters want us to

demonstrate raw political power right now. So George Santos might be a horrible human being, and we could probably all agree on that might be, you know, we maybe we can all agree on it. The evidence suggests he is. But he's a vote, and he's a vote to advance your interests. You saw this all the time over the conversation about Roy Moore, for instance, you had all these voters in Alabama, everyone in Washington. D C was like, Heeah,

this guy out of here. This is embarrassment. But there are a lot of voters in Alabama and this shows you where the Republican base is. Obviously, he ultimately lost, but there were a lot of people saying, we want to overturn Row. We believe this is a matter of life and death in the same way that people on the left believe climate as a matter of urgent life and death. And that's I think speaks to the I

think confluence of different emergencies that we're facing. Again, whether you're conservative or whether you're liberal, the stakes just feel incredibly high right now, and that's driving these sentiments among voters, and it's translating into our politics now too, and that we're seeing leadership take, you know, the most overused word in politics, unprecedented steps in different directions and start breaking the norms, breaking the norms, breaking the norms. Because all

of the norms have been broken in the culture. People are just really fed up and they want raw political power, and I think in the case of Santo's it's really unfortunate. Santos juxappose with Omar the Omar question about allegeddancy semitism. That is really important and really unfortunate in a sad statement as where we are. So and that's why I

think that Republicans probably won't force him out. Although interesting to note that this decision came a day after he met with McCarthy and he was asked, did McCarthy tell you to do this? Why do you ask George Santos anything? Such a good point, it such a good source of information, like did you see he's been leaving out Duncan and Chick fil A for reporters. Yeah, I did see, I did see that. Did you take any of it? No? No, I have not gone by there yet. Actually, would you

have taken it? Yeah, you shouldn't, but I probably you don't. I probably would have. But real quickly, we can put up the second stile that the third element here Santos voters say, this goes to your point that Santo's voters say sixty three percent to thirty one percent, it means it's a third element for the blog. So one out of three Santos voters, Yeah, look at what he's said since then, and they're like, yeah, I'd still vote for him. And I think those are probably the most rational ones

in some ways. Yeah, I agree, because they're the ones who are, like, principle, well, what do you want to do? Vote for the Democrat? Exactly right, Like it's a matter of ideological consistency. And I think you can disagree with the ethics of actually taking that vote on the question of character, the question of reliability and responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. But that's one hundred percent where we are.

The stakes are that high. I don't blame people for making that calculation in their own head, even though I disagree with it. It's just hard to argue back. You know, again, I disagree with it, but it's hard to argue that people aren't coming from a legitimate place of desperation, and Santus is from a given where he's from in that district, they're probably a handful of sort of independent. They're probably

a lot of independent. Maybe some Democratic voters who cast their votes for him, maybe they liked where he stood on cultural social issues, which there's a lot of eyes going on there. There's a whole lot of that going down there anywhere is like Jewish, yes, yes, So anyway, it's just just pathetic that none of those came out before, but hopefully some justice will be sare now one last

point on that. Cuomo gets some blame for this, and guess how so because his conservative Democratic judges throughout the Democratic app that had gone through the commission and then kicked it over to some like guy in Pittsburgh to

a Republican Pittsburgh to like redraw it. That delayed the primaries in New York until if you remember, like close to mid September, interesting, really really late, so you didn't know who the Republican candidate was until after well after Labor Day, slim window first, right, So, and now you're into you're done with house races, like you're down with that portion of the House races at that point, but at that point you're looking at control of the Senate.

You know you still have a time, you'd still have time to vet a handful of them, but you know, at that point you're nine weeks away from the election or less. That's a great point. I've forgotten about them. So thanks Cuomo. I'm always willing to so Santos is Cuomo's fault sounds good to me. What's your points today? Though? Yeah, you know, I want to talk about a sad story. I'll start with the sad story that they don't teach

you in most history classes. And Ryan, you probably know about the story of Jean Seberg, an actress that was familiar to many people. Pulling this out of the Cointel profiles familiar to many people back in the sixties and seventies. This is from fifty three years ago. I'm going to read a quote from a report and we can put the graphic up on the screen in The Independent after a movie was made about Jean Sieberg's life in twenty twenty. Quote.

I should preface this by saying she ultimately took her own life and independent rights. Days after her suicide, the FBI admitted that its agents had plotted to ruin her reputation as part of their counter intelligence program Cointel pro authorized by Jaeger Hoover himself. Seeburg's crime, in Hoover's eyes was her involvement in political causes and her support of

the Black Panther Party. In particular, they were suspicious of her close links with Black Power leader Hakim Jamal In nineteen seventy, The Independent continues, the FBI planted the false rumor that Sieberg was pregnant by a Black Panther party member in order to quote cause her embarrassment and quote cheapen her image with the American public, and their plan worked. It was dispiriting but inevitable that some gossip columnists followed the false leads that the FBI dangled in front of them.

From the FBI's point of view, the Independent continues, she was involved in radical politics, had contributed financially to the Black Panthers, and was therefore fair game. You can just sort of see the wheels turning in Hoover's head. The story was picked up by gossip colmnist Joyce Haber, who referred obliquely to it in the Los Angeles Times. Newsweek

also wrote about it, and they named Sieburg. After that story came out, Sieberg was so distressed by the attention that it had brought to her by the false story. By the way, the FBI that was trying to exploit racist animates, animus about interracial relationships at that point, just completely disgusting and cynical. Moved by jaredgar Hoover. She lost her baby. She was so stressed. She lost her baby. She was depressed about that for the rest of her life.

She would attempt suicide in every anniversary that she lost the baby until she took her own life. Unfortunately, and again the stress is downstream of the FBI deciding that within its scope of authority and just a moral use of state power is to create a completely false story

and plant it in the press. And guess what. In this case, two journalists played ball with them, granted their gossip columnists, but they're still putting stuff in print, serious stuff that affects people's lives, and that is coming to them from powerful people in the FBI. Again, we're not talking about small little publications. We're talking about at the time Newsweek, which actually named her in the Los Angeles Times. So what does any of this have to do with

the case of Hamilton sixty eight. Well, that's what we're going to talk about. Matt Taibi had an excellent report and turned into a series of report series of reports in the Twitter files that was published last Friday about Hamilton sixty eight. You might remember that name. It's sort of in those hazy days of the early Trump administration when the Russia collusion narrative was in full blast and there was just frenzied media coverage from wall to wall.

Hamilton sixty eight was a dashboard that was a project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which is of itself a project of the German Marshall Fund. Hamilton sixty eight was created by Clint Watts. He's an MSNBC and NBC News contributor. You'll be shocked to learn he also happens to be a former FBI special agent who has still consulted with the FBI. I don't know how recently, but he has consulted with the FBI in the past, and

of course he's an ex FBI special agent. Twitter disproved the results of the Hamilton sixty eight dashboard in October twenty seventeen. According to emails that Matt uncovered when he was digging through the Twitter files, Hamilton sixty eight would not make public as I reported in the Federalists here, They just would not make public their data. They went to the MET and said trust us, They went to think tanks, they went to elite universities and said trust us.

This data is real and it shows that Russian bots are pushing all of these fake trends on Twitter, and Twitter is allowing it to happen. It was just a total panic. But of course, again journalists took the bait. They took the bait. Elite universities my alma Manter, Sager's alma Monter, GW and NYU, Harvard and Princeton, they all boosted junk science that Hamilton's sixty eight was promoting. And

Twitter realized back in October of twenty seventeen. Yolol Roth himself is the one who reverse engineered Hamilton's sixty eighth methodology and came up with the full list of alleged Russian bots they said were wreaking havoc on Twitter, and we're evidence. They used this of evidence of Russia collusion and the hoax, and it was built into was basically use so much that it was baked into the broader

media coverage of the Russia collusion saga. They knew that this was Most of the people on this list were neither Russian nor bots. They were for the most part, just regular Americans. There were some accounts like RT and Sputnik that were Russian, but for the most part it was regular people. And by the way, some anti establishment leftists got caught up in all this being called Russian bots.

Twitter knew that. Hamilton's sixty eight knew that, and Clint Watts goes out and talks about this on MSNBC, and MSNBC lets him, NBC lets him. Every major news network basically had stories on this. It's incredible how much coverage Hamilton sixty eight got and it was based on junk science. There was no reason for it to ever get any

coverage because it was always dubious. The fact that they wouldn't reveal what the accounts were for the excuse that, well, if they did that, Russia would automatically take the accounts down. Isn't that your goal? Isn't that your goal? They used it as a cudgel against Twitter. They're trying to attract attack Twitter and Facebook, and Twitter, by the way, let it go on. They let it go on despite knowing in October of twenty seventeen that they had reverse engineered

at yell ross shared at Google doc. If you look at the emails Matt polled that reverse engineered, it showed that it was all BS. Ever, and at Twitter you can see in these emails from Matt's report knows that it's BS. They're talking about it. They're frustrated that they aren't going public with the information you all raw. It just suggests at one point giving Hamilton sixty eight an ultimatum saying, either you publish the list or we do. But they never told Hamilton sixty eight or the media

publicly that they had the list. When Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff asked Twitter, they sent a letter to Twitter and Facebook saying, you have to start investigating these Russian bots. This Hamilton sixty eight. They found so much body activity, you have to start investigating it. Twitter responded in a letter saying, you know, we don't have the list. It's not public. The list isn't public, so we can't do

anything about this. That raises questions about whether Twitter was briefing people in private, because the emails show that their communications people were briefing people in private. They said reporters were chafing at the information that they were sharing about Hamilton sixty eight not being true, but they had to be careful until Twitter said something publicly without revealing the extent of what they really knew, which is that all

of this was nonsense. Their employees were internally debating all of that I mean, it's just these Russia collusion stories. I always hesitate to continue covering them. Not that I wouldn't, but every time I'm was just like, do we have to go through this again? Because they're so convoluted and some of them are really inaccessible, because it's just like you have to remember so many different details about this elaborate conspiracy theory. But in this case, it's so simple.

They're really following the Hoover playbook, right, Create junk science and I get hiss x FBI. But create junk science, tease it to the press, create junk story, a false story, tease it to the press, and just let them go wild with it. And in certain cases in the past, for instance MLKA wiretaps, whether you belie those are real

or not, journalists didn't run with them. Whether you believe the results of those are real or not, I should say, obviously we know the wiretaps are real, but what we the FBI says they obtained from them, journalists resisted publishing. There was a famous case where it was Howard Hunt.

It's in his memoir American Spy talks about how Chuck Colson had him forge cables about JFK and Vietnam, and they tried to get him in Life magazine, and Life Magazine wouldn't publish it because they couldn't prove that the cables were authentic. Why did no journalists try to prove

that the Hamilton sixty eight data was authentic. They just went and took the word of all of these ex intelligence people who had access to grind against the political enemy that were completely obvious, and that is completely pathetic. It's just another really sad statement on where we are right now as a country that you have this pan

institutional rot. Academia falls for it, journalists, journalists fall for it, and the intelligence community because the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Security Democracy are stocked with ex Intel people, with ex State Department people, with government officials, all of these people who supported this Hamilton's sixty eight work despite never being able to see these accounts that were implicated Tayibi. We have a graphic here of all the media coverage

that generated. Look at that. That doesn't even encapsulate the full scope of it, doesn't encapsulate all the cable news segments. It was so baked into the cake of Russia collusion that you can't separate the two. It was one of the big pieces of evidence that Russia was hacking our elections. So again, this is not Historically, there's some precedent for

the intelligence community acting in this completely reprehensible way. Now we don't know that Watts was consulting for the FBI with any of this, there's no evidence to suggest that, but we know that he is former FBI, a former consultant, and former special agent. This is straight out of a

playbook that has happened before. And you'd think, given the shame with which we look back now on that era in American history and some of what happened during that American era in American history, that the media would maybe have some basic journalistic standards and check this shit out with before running it. But of course that's not what happened. Ryan the fourth estate. In the absence of a fourth estate that's going to check this stuff out before running

with it, the FBI can get away with anything. What's what's your point today? Some people say that's overly hostile. I think it works. Yes, I don't really have a point. I'm more just because I was I was on the road, so I didn't really write anything sophisticated this week, just just got back, but I did want to talk about the situation of Haiti and elevate some really, really incredible reporting done by the Associated Press. If we could put this first one up here and let me pull this

up since I don't have my glasses on. But so the AP center quarter around with a guy named Barbecue. If you guys haven't followed this clothes, that's Jimmy Chevalier, Jimmy Sharazier, who is one of the leading gang leaders at this point in Haiti. And just to back people up who haven't been following this, but I think a lot of our viewers have been. The former Haitian president, Jovenil Moyes was assassinated in what was at the summer of twenty twenty one, and it appears that the current

Prime Minister Arilnrie was involved in that assassination. We know for a fact that Henri was had a number of phone calls with people involved with the assassination right around the time of the assassination. We also know that in a power struggle that ensued afterwards, he only became Prime Minister officially because the United States and five other countries put out a press release saying that we recognize Ariel Honrie the Prime minister. That is literally how he became

the de facto prime minister. Now, in January, the final terms of the remaining Haitian senators expired. That was the last and the Haitian Senate doesn't have a whole lot of power anyway, but that was the last bastion of any body in Haiti that had any connection to the

citizenship to being democratically put into place. So all you have left is Arilnrie, who was not elected and it was basically just appointed to this role by the United States, and after evidence of his complicity in the assassination of the president came about, and underneath him kind of a skeleton government. And so what's happening now, and that's where

this ap story comes in. What's happening now is that so called gangs are taking over basically all of the country and moving into places where that that previously had been safe. And I say so called gangs because they're actually now looking to rebrand themselves. And we have a couple of great quotes that that Barbecue Sharazier gave to the gave to the Associated Press reporter here. Well, one of them actually comes from one of his bodyguards who says to kind of a video editor that was going

along with the AP reporters. She said, he said to her, we're not the bad bad guys. We're just the bad guys. So that's there. That's how they're easing into this. But here's here's Sharazier describing himself as a quote revolutionary. He says, I'm not a thief, I'm not involved in kidnapping, I'm not a rapist. I'm just carrying out a social fight.

He says, I'm a threat to the system. So what Sharazier did several months ago is that when ariel on Re under pressure from the United States and others, removed subsidies from gas prices, jacking up the price of gas and everything else on the Haitian Island, shiraz organized a blockade for two months of gas coming into the into the island and and since then has kind of saying that he was protest protesting, and you and you had

genuine outrage in the streets people protesting. Since then, he has expanded his control and you know what you're seeing now is this kind of people theoretically talk about state formation as being the gangs who won a monopoly on violence eventually implementing a state like there if you talk about you know, state craft and the creation of governments like that, that's this one theory that people kick around,

like where did governments come from? Well, they came from people who had power and took power violently and then had a monopoly on that violence, and then they and then they went through and produced some mechanisms by which they would continue to rule with the consent of the government rather than strictly through violence. And so Henri does not want that process to unfold. Of course, he's asking for the UN to authorize some type of invasion, armed invasion.

So far, none of the kind of western countries have taken up his invitation yet to invade, although there's been so many invasions of Haiti over the years. So as of now, the question is how long will the rest of the world kind of allow Haitians to actually sort this out themselves or are we just going to let it fester and then invade the country. We're joined now by Todd Benzman, his new book out February twenty first is called Overrun, How Joe Biden unleashed the greatest border

crisis in US history. He's also a senior national security Fellow at the Conservative Center for him Greation Studies. Todd, thanks so much for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you absolutely. You wrote a newsweek op ed that I think we can get into, and Ryan might even have some points of debate to bring up last week called I liked the title of it too. It was basically I think it was called Joe Biden's magic trick.

You right, and the American public will indeed see sharp declines in the monthly illegal apprehension statistics following Biden's new moves on the border, starting with the January report which comes out next month, and the Biden administration will tut these is evidence of vastly improved border security thanks to new quote enforcement system that it had just expanded. But this claim of enforcement success is founded on a purposeful

accounting cheat. The illusion would impress Harry Houdini, So Todd

tell us what the accounting cheat is. In this case, the Biden administration has really shifted gears on its border policy in January by creating us the cornerstone, the new cornerstone of its policy to start diverting people who were going to be crossing illegally into a sort of quasi legalized system where they are being granted humanitarian parole, which is an authority that doesn't exist the way they're using it on the Mexican side and south of the border,

where thousands and hundreds of thousands of people will be given these permission slips on that side and then transported into the United States across ports of entry by land and also by air, flying from airport to airport by

the hundreds of thousands each year. And what this will do is it will have the effect of reducing the terrible optics of apprehensions illegal apprehensions at the border, but it will do nothing to prevent all of these foreign nationals from still entering the country and becoming illegal in about a year or two. So they're all going to still be here. They're just moving them from one accounting column to a different accounting column which is not even public.

And also these people will be moved through ports of entrigue, which are inside buildings, so you can't fly Fox News drones over it and see thousands and thousands of people, and you won't be able to look it up in the CBP website to see what the numbers are. We still haven't figured out how they're going to produce those statistics of how many people are they're letting in this way.

So if we can increase the amount of transparency involved in this process, and if we can we can write legal guidelines around it through through Congress or through whatever other executive means that you would find appropriate, would you then find yourself saying that, Okay, this is better than the current system. Well, for one thing, the legal admission systems that are in place now, the visas, the student visas, the immigration applications, and all of the legal ways to

enter the country have been approved duly by Congress. This is an admission program that they've created outside of Congress with no approval whatsoever. They've kind of cobbled this together without the approval of the American people, so that over the next couple of years you may very well have you know, a couple million more people enter the country this way outside of an approved system. Now, if Congress came back and approved it, then you know, who is

anybody to complain about it? But Congress has not to prove this system, and they're using an authority known as humanitarian parole. Remember that humanitarian parole. It's going to be important in the next months. Humanitarian parole is in the ISNA for a case by case somebody's wounded or hurt and climbing up the riverbank or whatever it may be, and we're going to let that one person in to get medical treatment and then send them back when it's over.

And what they're doing is applying this one off, case by case thing to hundreds of thousands of people at a time. There's litigation. Now twenty different states, most of them are Republican states, have sued saying that you're misusing this authority, and it's probably going to win because they put it in the Fifth Circuit Court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a conservative court, and then

it'll go to the Supreme Court at some point. But all of this is outside of any kind of normal admissions program in the United States. And Ryan's point is a good and interesting one. Todd because Biden has recently started sending, for instance, Cubans back because there's so many Cubans who are fleeing up through Central America and into Mexico. And that is like the asylum system. If there is a humane asylum system in the United States, my goodness.

I mean, some of these people from Cuba and Venezuela should not be getting sent back. But we don't have a humane asylum system. We don't have a logical, sensical, coherent asylum system because the system is clogged up by so many of these different places, the humanitarian parole while people their asylum cases penned. And one thing I want to ask you about Todd is you do you have done a lot of like wrenching, vivid reporting from Central America on things like the Darien Gap, and these numbers

under Biden are different. You know, we have seen a steady uptick over the course of a really long time, but what we're seeing now just flatly pales. The restles stuff pales into comparison to what we're seeing now. So as somebody who's been down that's sort of the road that the super highway that goes up through the c the Darian Gaps, the Panama Canal and into Mexico and then into places like Alpaso and Brownsville. What is happening down south, further down south, and then further down south

from that, and then further done south from that. What is bringing people up right now in these big numbers. Right, So, when you talk to the immigrants, as I frequently do, you know, and you ask them, you know, why are you coming, what they'll tell you is all of my relatives got let in when they showed up at the border.

All of my friends got in, and they sent us the selfias and they're like this, and you know, when we are seeing all of our friends and neighbors get across, we're borrowing our money, selling everything we own, and paying the smugglers to go over to why not they're letting us in. That really is the snowball effect that has led to this avalanche of a historic migration crisis. We've never seen any kind of numbers like this, not even close, in the history of the United States. And it's really

not a very complicated calculus. When you talk to them, they're like, everybody I know got in, so we're getting into Well, to complicate it just a little bit, let's you don't see and you know, back in the what nineteenth century and also then in the nineteen sixties again, when Democrats did immigration reform, then there was a bipart

as an immigration reform. Sure you know this story that you know, they expected that there would then be this flood of immigration from Europe into the United States and a lot of the kind of racist lawmakers were and frustrated that actually instead a lot of these quotas were made up by people coming from Third world countries over over to the United States. And so to complicate the point a little bit, people don't, I think, want to uproot their entire lives. You know, people have a sense

of connection to place. Place. Place matters to people. You know, their their you know their their their mother and father live there, their grandparents live there, their great grandparents live there. You have to be driven, uh, you know, to some type of desperation to want to to want to leave from the place where you are from to go to another place where you don't even speak the language. Now I I I suspect you probably would even agree with that, right. Well, yeah,

there's really no place like the United States. It's a storied land. Uh, it's got a reputation that precedes it as a land of milk and honey. Most of the people that are crossing in are getting you know, a media assistance. Nobody's starving or going hungry. Everybody's taken care of. Everybody's getting on on the rolls. You know, they're in four star hotels in New York. So now everybody wants to go to New York and they send that home. And it is true that, you know, a lot of

these countries are less livable than the United States. You know, I certainly can empathize with anybody who wants to upgrade their lifestyle. But most of the for example, Venezuelans who are coming in right now are not living in Venezuela and haven't for many years. They've been living in relative

safety and prosperity in seventeen different Latin American countries. Colombia has the largest share of them, and they've been there for years and years, and they decided not to go during the Trump administration because if you lay down ten thousand dollars to cross the US border under Trump, you would end up back in Mexico with no return on

your investment. But under the Biden administration, they were happily ensconced in these other countries and they saw that the that there was a chance to upgrade, to move up a few notches and live with relatives, or just have a better shot at prosperity. And so that's why they came. Most of the Haitians. It's the same thing with most of the Haitians. None of them were living in Haiti. I was in Chilean. I was just gonna say, Todd, you just use a really important phrase, a better shot.

I remember in Monta Moros talking to a group of Haitians who would freely say we weren't in like necessarily dire straits. The economy had gotten bad in Brazil or Argentina or whatever. They would say that, but they said, this is like sticks with me. It was very poignant. They said, we want. They were trying to sort of talk and and translate their Spanish, translate their French, I should say, into Spanish and then into English. But I

always like filled in their sentence. At one point I was like, you're trying to say the American dream, and they just were like, yes, the American dream. We want the American dream. And on that note, we were talking earlier the show about the news that four more people have been charged in the assassination attempt against now deceased because he was assassinated a former president of Haiti, Jobnel

Luiz and Todd. Haiti has played a really big role in this recent wave, this mass of human suffering, where as you've reported, people are dying crossing through the Darien Gap, They're being threatened, they're being abused by cartels who are profiting, you know, in the to the tune of millions and millions of dollars every single year because of this. What role has has Haiti played, particularly the situation in Haiti since twenty ten, as people have gone to different parts

of Latin America. What is unique about the Haitian situation during this last several years, as we've seen big peaks. Sure, Haiti is a terrible place to live. I don't blame anybody for trying to flee that country. It's simply unlivable Haiti. Having said that, the vast majority of the Haitians that managed to leave were living in all of these other

countries for years in relative prosperity. Just like you said, they had a shot briefly in twenty twenty one at national elections they were going to have they were scheduled for November seventh, the first round, they were finally going to be able to elect a parliament, they haven't had a parliament in years, and then they were going to get a chance to elect a president. And then we had the Haitian encampment crisis in Rio under the bridge,

fifteen thousand Haitians down there. And it gets a little bit complicated here about what happened was the Biden administration felt like it had to shut down that camp. It was really too big of an iore and they said about deporting people from that camp, not back to Chile where they've been living happily for years, but to actual Haiti itself. They rioted. But when the Biden administration did that, they needed a leader there who would be willing to

accept them at the tarmac. And so the Biden administration ordered that Haiti canceled its elections and they bestowed dictatorship on this guy Ariel and robbed Haiti completely of its democracy. It's one shot of democracy, canceled both elections, and that guy still running the country to this day. And as Ryan has to get rid of a camp that was a political problem for the right terms right, and the void of Haiti resigned in protests over that very decision.

So then what would be so wrong with if implement instead going back and implementing this new policy, this humanitarian relief. You got this big camp. Okay, sit down, interview people, process them, move them, move them through the system. So you know, if Congress could agree on it, well that's the thing. Congress isn't going to agree on it. So we the three of us, can try to agree on something here. I mean, let's take let's take a look

at it from a broader perspective. Since nineteen fifty or so, right, the US birth rate has been on a very steady decline.

And I think the twenty first century is really going to be marked by eventually when people get around to it, a competition for immigrants, a competition for people in the West, I think, all over the world, all over the world, because you're you're you're seeing declining birth rates, you know, you know, essentially everywhere everywhere that starts to develop even a little bit, you start to see birth birth rates decline. And if you're going to have you know, and I'm

biased here, I'm going to be old pretty soon. And if you have a top heavy elderly population without enough young people to grow that economy to do the work that the old people can no longer, do countries collapse?

So why shouldn't we be worried about that? Why shouldn't we look back at what's happened, you know, throughout American history and seeing the contributions that immigrants have made and say, you know what, all right, if the Biden administration is figuring out a better system, that's that's shutting out the cartels, let's do that. Well. I think you make a good point, and I think that there's a definite Those issues that you raise about are declining birth rate, those are perfectly debatable.

They're worthy of debate as a matter of public policy. The issue that I am a lot of people have with it is that the current laws require the president to stop, block, deter, detain, and deport immediately anybody who illegally crosses the border. And as last I checked the law as it stands, the INA that requires those things are still in place. Like we haven't treated, we haven't dismissed the INA, like we've dismissed the federal marijuana law.

We may be moving in the direction of dismissing the INA. Like we have the marijuana law, but the law requires that everybody who illegally enters the border without permission is to be detained and deported. Even if they apply for asylum, they still have to remain in detention for the duration

of their asylum claim until it's adjudicated. What the administration is doing is they created a new kind of extra legal process that's based on an interpretation of a piece of the law that most minds greater than mine legal minds anyway, say it is not legal. You can't just go outside of Congress and create a thing where anybody in the world who wants to come across the border

can come across the border. What you're talking about is a legal system that is debatable and then has to be implemented by Congress with an executive signing the law, and then we go from there. But to just create extra channels that, you know, just oh, let's do this with this and that and get as many people in as want to come in. That's not the intent of Congress. And that's the problem with this issue. Seems to have

a lot of extra legal stuff going on. If you remember, Donald Trump shut down the government in order to kind of pressure Congress to give him money for his wall. He failed. He caved well, Ris refused and he's like, you know what, I'm going to build the wall anyway. And there was the Doug Doocey situation where the shipping containers is yeah, yeah, and so yes, it's a lot

of it. But I think that's to Todd's point, like a problem with the absence of legal congressional activity on this issue is that it ends up becoming ad hoc, and the victims of that are humans who don't have a clear path and because of that, cartel's prey on them and say we'll smuggle you across the border, we'll turn you into humanitarian parole, and then you can have this existence that DACA kids have had for such a long time, where there's just illegal limbo because Congress can't

agree on a damn thing. Todd Benzman, thank you so much for joining us, for being willing to have this discussion. We appreciate it so much. Happy to be here. Thank you. Of course, will continue to obviously cover the situation on our southern border and the humanitarian crisis that's absolutely unfolding there as development's unfold I have a great Wednesday, everybody