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Dot Com Premium membership twenty five percent off. Right now ran so much breaking news. The House voted actually to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro my Orchis last night with time they got him, They got him. This time, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the breaking news out of New York's third District where election results are.
New George Santos.
The new George Santos isn't there. We will go to.
The up We'll start by going to the Upper Chamber where the bill on Ukraine Israel AID is pending could go over the House. We're not sure exactly how that's going to work out, but we do have some breaking updates on that story. We're going to talk about updates out of Israel yesterday. We're going to talk about inflation as well, and we have a very interesting guess.
Yes.
So we've been covering the drama in Pakistan a lot on this show, as you guys know, the elections were held last week and today we're going to be joined by the former Chief of Staff to Imran Khan, whose party resoundingly won those elections, but the United States and cahoots with its generals over there, is busy trying to trying to steal it. Shabbaz Gil is the kind of chief representative for I Roan Khan's party here in the
United States. He's here on asylum because he was the subjects of some absolutely brutal torture under the current regime.
We won't get into the.
Details of that, but we'll get into, you know, where this heads from now. Because it is very clear that I Ron Khan's party one a mandate to govern. It is also equally clear that the military establishment there is going to do everything they can to stop him from being able to govern and keep him in jail.
I'm really looking forward to the interview. Yeah, very interesting stuff.
Let's start in the Senate though, where again it passed that Ukraine Israel Aid bill.
If we get Taiwan.
It's really funny that we're spending eight billion dollars to help facilitate a war with China over Taiwan.
Well also, and it just.
Kind of even in my own article on this the internestip I put in parentheses, but it's eight billion dollars just a meer sum for potentially conflict with China.
Yeah, I mean kind of warrants.
I should have taken those parentheses out. So that's why mentioning it here.
Ryan's editing himself on air. Well, let's go ahead and put a one up on the screen. So Mitch McConnell just yesterday urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to take up that bill because obviously, after passing Senate you have to go to the House. But McConnell of course said he would not be quote so presumptuous as to tell him
how to do it. It's Ryan amazing because this means that Mike Johnson, who just lost but Democrats actually gained a seats, and he loses how many people that he can have in his book down to now so he can afford to lose two people on every vote, and he lost three on the Mayorkas people which passed yesterday. We'll get to that in just a moment, but this
is actually pretty amazing. You have now Mike Johnson, who doesn't have the margins to pass this bill because there's no border funding attached to it.
Congressman his own insistence, Yeah.
Well absolutely, But also the insistence of their voters. The Republican voters do not want them to pass a bill. And actually that's a problem with Democratic voters to increase, which is that not just a to Ukraine but aid to Israel feels to a lot of people like this bigot has been turned on and it's sort of like
half the country things that we've sent in polling. The numbers specifically are different in every poll obviously, but polling broadly funds that people around half the country things we spent too much money or sent too much money to Ukraine already.
So Democrats are just plowing through with aid to Ukraine.
But I think can we even have if we can put a two up on the screen here you can see this is the quote from Reuters. After months of negotiations and political infighting, the lawmakers approved the measure in a seventy to twenty nine vote that comfortably exceeded the chambers sixty vote threshold for passage and sent the legislation onto the House. Twenty two Republicans joined most Democrats to.
Support the bill.
Now you're not going to get that level of support on the House side. It tore Republicans in the Senate side apart. Ryan, it's remarkable the what's the best way to put it, the explosion of a lot of these tensions that have been simmering under the surface. So, for example, some ten Senate Republicans we don't actually even know who, because it was a secret vote, voted against McConnell for
Minority leader last time around. And this exploded those tensions to the surface in a way that I think has been a threat that McConnell hasn't seen in a very very long time.
If ever, probably.
The backlash to McConnell and the Senate side was huge, not enough to tank.
The bill, but enough that it's the House.
Republicans are going to follow along with those Senate Republicans that were extremely frustrated by McConnell.
Ye, And briefly, let's talk about a little bit. What's in this bill.
SO eight put up a three here. SOBS is a ninety five billion dollar aid package. Sixty billion dollars of it is set aside for the Ukraine War effort, fourteen point one billion dollars to Israel, eight billion dollars to Taiwan, four hundred million for other stuff. Now within that is roughly ten billion dollars in humanitarian aid which is dispersed between the West Bank, Gaza, Ukraine also and also Sudan.
You had some Democrats who.
Were opposed to the Israel war money but supported the Ukraine money.
So, like Chris van Holland, who Crystal.
Talked about yesterday, he also cited the aid that was that was in there. So this is one of those packages where they put lots of things together and that way, if a member of Congress opposes, like one of the three, they end up voting for it. And that's how you can get through things that most people are against. However, the Ukraine aid is interesting because if you did put it up as a standalone, it would pass. Who was one of the House republicans said that just quite simply,
or said this whole package would pass. Actually if you just get it onto the House floor.
There's much more resistance.
Among Republicans at this point to that ukraineate war money than Democrats.
It's been quite a kind of a stea change.
You would not have expected that, say, ten fifteen years ago.
Yeah, you know, and it was a smart move constituent wise, actually for Republicans in Washington to say, to demand you know, say, wait, listen, we have a majority in the House, and you know Democrats don't have all that big of a majority in the Senate. But with a majority in the House, we should actually be throwing our weight around a little bit. And that's where they got the idea, say, if you are going to continue funding the Ukrainian military effort humanitarian aid to Ukraine, then.
You're going to attached to it border security.
And what it meant by that was not you know, millions and millions of dollars to customs and border patrol protection.
It was to actually reform the system.
And James Langford basically the bipartisan quote unquote deal that has been talked about over and over again was brokeer basically by James Langford and Mitch McConnell and didn't even have support. Those are like the two people in the Senate who supported it. Other Senate Republicans in leadership couldn't even get behind the deal that these two members worked out with Chuck Schumer essentially, so that it's kind of
like the way the media is covering it. I saw you just now as I was reading some of the coverage that the far right tanked the border deal, But really was the establishment right that tanked the border deal by knowingly brokering that was going absolutely nowhere, that was going to be done on arrival because it was so opposite to what was being demanded by mainstream conservatives, knowing that they were going to have to go defend it
in their district where people are demanding something completely different.
Ryans.
So the discharge petition is now what is being talked about, which would allow Democrats, if they could get enough votes, to circumvent Republican leadership and get the bill to the floor for a vote, because when you have a majority in the House, even if it's a slim majority, you control the votes. And if Mike Johnson doesn't even want to bring this bill to a floor for the vote, which he doesn't, and it could actually be a problem.
I'm curious for your take on this with Justice Dems squad members who don't want to get behind this either. In Dems actually the sort of coalition of the political establishment.
They need Justice Dems to get a built like.
This, or they need a handful of Republicans right, because if they lose some Democrats on the left, they need to pick up some Republicans, so which they could I mean, obviously rashieta tale, but alhon Omar like they're not voting for, and a lot of decent number of other demos. Well, we should start a whipcount to see aren't you know, aren't ready to support this fourteen billion dollars for Israel while and this is the this is very important context
that we'll get to late later in the show. While Israel is planning an invasion of Rafa, which is an enclave of somewhere between one point three one point five million hudding and starving people. The population of Rafa before the war was something like three thousand, four hundred thousand.
Now it's quintupled because Israel has over the last four months repeatedly told people you have to leave this area for your safety, and so they've moved them all down to Rafa, and now they're saying that, well, actually we have to bomb and invade Rafa as well. The US has called the State's Apartment has called it a potential disaster if it happens. Even John Kirby said it would be a disaster if it happened. But the latest reporting is that we're not doing anything.
To stop it.
So at the same time you're going to then give them fourteen billion dollars, You're going to have a lot of.
A handful of Democrats on the left.
We're going to say no, we're not doing that right now, which to your point right means you're going to need Republicans then to join with Democrats to implement this discharge petition. Two and eighteen is the number that I think it's never been done successfully. There have been threats of a discharge petition in the past, but I don't think there's ever been when it's actually been implemented.
If the House of Representatives.
Ever does successfully do a discharge petition, it will be two fund wars shot the exception on the Republican side that proves the rule actually is sort of not even Republican anymore.
Mitt Romney, we can.
Play his his assessment of the vote this week.
The vote we will soon take to provide military weapons for Ukraine is the most important vote we will ever take as United States senators.
Oh, it just makes me gag to listen to that. It's unbelievably stupid.
It's it's a really instructive window into how he sees it. Right, it's true wild like that he sees this as the there's something about this war in Ukraine that the mitt Romneys of the world have decided represents a kind.
Of it's the Cold War.
To Chris van Holland called it a hinge moment in history.
Yes, it's very These are not stupid people, but it's very hard to understand what on earth they mean by this as a hinge point.
And Mitch McConnell speaks in the sort of lofty rhetoric about Ukraine as well, And obviously he's been the engine for so much Republican support towards Ukrain thus far. And this is a quote when they were talking about the vote a couple of days back, he said to lament the commitment that has underpinned the longest draft of great power conflict in human history. This is idle work for idle minds, and it has no place in the United States Senate and this chamber. We must face the world
as it is. We must reject the dimmest and most short sighted view of our obligations and grapple instead with actual problems.
This is really his quote as they come in the harsh light of day and today The questions facing.
This body are quite simple. Will we give those who wish us more harm or harm more reason to question our resolve? Or will we recommit to exercising American strength. Will we give those who crave our leadership more reason to wonder if it's in decline? Or will we invest in the credibility that underpins our entire way of life? I mean, give me a break, talk about that. And this is where a lot of constituents would.
Say eighteen seventy eight or something and get yeah, and Russians under the bed.
A great yes, exactly, and a great point that za Jalani made about Mitch McConnell recent on twitters. This guy represents one of the poorest states in the country. And this is where if you see rhetoric like this that Mitch McConnell gets so excited to express on the Senate floor, you wonder why you don't hear him talking like this about you know, for example, to a lot of his constituents in Kentucky, they say, what about the border? Why don't you talk like this about the border? Why don't
you talk like this about crime? Why don't you talk like this about X, Y and Z? They cannot help themselves, but wax poetic about Ukraine because in their mind it is still like you said, Russians under the bed.
It is, you know, Mitch McConnell's role in you know, because Mitch McConnell also was instrumental in getting through the last aid package, yes, which which got through before you know, Republicans took over that House of Representatives and he made sure that there was enough money that would.
Get us to this point.
Right.
And for a lot of people who were watching, who let's say there, I think I actually pretty much everybody watching is sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, like the Ukrainians were invaded, Yes, and it's horrifying to watch, but realistically, the way that this war is going to end is through some sort of negotiations. The more money that you continue to throw at it, the more weapons you continue to throw, it just delays the time when this can actually get to a negotiated end.
You know.
Vladimir Bun talked in his interview with Tucker Carlson, which we're going to get to later, a lot about the negotiations that were unfolding a year and a half ago in Istanbul, which were scuttled by the West. And what does Ukraine have the show for the last year and a half of fighting compared to what was potentially on the table in Istanbul Just hundreds of thousands of dead
and more territory loss. So if there was some idea that Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer had that with enough money, yes, they were going to push all of the Russians back to of every inch of Ukrainian territory. I still wouldn't want to see that many people die over over territory.
But okay, at least that's a strategy.
There's a strategy.
Least I understand you know what you're doing here.
But Diego Kotkin, who we've interviewed before, Russian socialist over there commentator, the way he put it was, you know, it either ends now in a negotiation because Ukraine runs out of money, or it ends in two years because Ukraine runs out of people.
Yes, well they've already run.
They're now drafting people up into their sixties and there's so what's what do you do? Like, what's your long term plan for two years from now?
According to Wall Street Journal, reports are actually like pressuring people into conscription. They're conscription people in ways that seem to be illegal.
They're trying to find people overseas and get them to come back.
Yeah, so yeah, no planet.
Senator around Paul, one of the voices in the Senate that has always been a staunch opponent of Mitch McConnell and the sort of war hungry political establishment. Here's what he had to say. I believe this is a clip from yesterday.
Support what he's doing here, and I'm very outspoken that he's made a mistake. He's siding with Schumer and Biden. But after the election he said there's a vote aftergot which you foot bridge when we can I can say right now, he doesn't represent me or conservatives in Kentucky or conservatives across the United States. He's doing the bidding of Schumer and Biden.
We're only here because of just one prick, and he decides that the rest of all of our schedules in our lives and holding up this bill to the getting to the House for all of this aid. It's incredibly frustrating and there's no work being done. It's just bad performance art.
So that was also Senator John Fetterman reading off his phone and calling Mitch McConnell a prick, which, by the way, fact check, they're all, well, I.
Think he reads the questions off his phone. He reads the right because he has he still has the auditory processing issues, so that his phone translates the questions that he hears into words and then and then he responds with his.
Hawkish Colinmage McConnell A prick, was it?
I think it was called Rand paula prick there?
That was Rand Paul.
Yeah, because uh Paul for holding the bill.
Up, for holding the bill. Okay, that makes.
Me saying he just wants to be out of town and be done with this. Okay, So but Paul's forcing them to stick around.
Okay, thank you for the correction on that. And either way, though, the fact.
Check is about McConnell too.
Let's they're all, if you're in the United States Senate odds are good, then you have some prickishness in you. So let's also go now to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was asked about the dispart just discharge petition maneuver just yesterday by Chad Pergram.
Is there any.
Trans of the discharge petition?
Is that something you oppose.
I certainly oppose it, and I hope that it would not be considered. How has to work its will on this. There's a deliberty process and we're engaged in that, and we'll see how it goes.
But as I said many times, national security.
Begins with their own work and.
Across the building will determine that as soon as it has.
So no discharge position and no vote on the bill on the House floor. Meanwhile, let's put a seven up on the screen. This is one of my favorite tweets in a long time. David from He says Putin's last hope is speaker Mike Johnson, which is an echo of the Ruthless follows the McConnell hacks over at the Ruthless podcast saying that Mike Lee's only the only thing he cares about is protecting Hamas when he opposed the spending bill last week.
Just some real incredible takes.
Here, and the flaw here in the thinking again is that if we pass this sixty billion dollars in aid and all that those weapons and AMMO gets over to Ukraine, that Ukraine is then going to launch a counter offensive that is going to turn the war around and be the undoing of Putin like That's the only way you
can understand the logic of a post like that. But he does not explain why this sixty billion dollars in weapons is going to lead to a successful counter offensive that reclaims all this territory when the last sixty plus billion dollars didn't do it, when they had hundreds of thousands of younger people who were still alive.
Right right, yes, no, absolutely, I completely agree with that. And just as a a sort of glimpse into the pressure that Republicans are facing on this, we put eight up on the screen.
This is the.
Comm strategy for Senate Republicans, and I'm sure we'll see some of this from warhawks in general over the next.
Couple of days.
McConnell I read that quote earlier, calling people dim and short sighted. Are in their perspectives, dim and short sighted if they object to the bill. But Senator Tom tell Us, very close with Mitch McConnell had just a hell of a quote one for the books. He said, our base cannot possibly know what's at stake at the level that any well briefed US senator should know about what's at stake.
If putin wins.
So basically, you were too dumb and ill informed to understand why we need to rubber stamp another sixty billion dollars to Ukraine, which, by the way, as Ryan pointed out, you could probably get it to pass if you attached some border security that mainstream conservative Republican voters were happy with. But why we should rabber stamp sixty billion dollars to Ukraine without any of that.
You're simply too dumb and ill informed.
You can't possibly have the knowledge and understanding of the United States Senator if.
You oppose this bill, hell of a way to.
Sell it, Ryan, Yeah, and from say, let's say, a kind of liberal humanitarian global perspective. If you had the Ukrainian population, you know, rushing to the front lines, yes, and you know, urging the entire world to be you know, to support their war effort and armed and to arm them so that they could continue this fight, you know, that would be one thing the Ukrainian population has made
very clear with their feet. Yes, now that that does that doesn't take anything away from the Ukrainians who are fighting bravely at the front lines, many of them forced to do so, some of them by choice. But the vast majority of people who have had the opportunity to flee have gone to other countries because they don't want to go to the front lines.
There are there are so few men left in Ukraine.
Like in the beginning, lots of families left Ukraine during the invasion, but then a lot of the women came back, but the men stayed abroad because they did not want to fight in this war, which I respect. But if they don't want to fight in the war, why are we trying to force them to?
Yeah? Well again, Ryan spoken.
Like negotiations were on the table. This could be again.
Spoken like somebody sort of dim and short sighted and who couldn't possibly understand you.
Have you been briefed in the US?
I guess I guess I haven't gotten the classified briefing about how important it is. But it's also something that as a as an old man, like I'm in my fit mid forties now, and when you get in your mid forties, you're like, all right, I'm done with the time that I'm a fighting age military male that's over in Ukraine. That is not the case, not at all. You are dead set in the middle of that bell curve when.
People report walking down the streets and just being conscripted by force.
Yes, I know people who have friends over in Ukraine who are have the men older than me getting dragged to the front lines. It's like trying to imagine myself at the front lines.
Yeah, and barely get out of bed in the morning.
Reports I'm going to walk through a frozen trench, dodging shells, trying to work a drone with my frozen fingers.
And there are.
Reports that based on your sort of wealth and social status, you're able to escape conscription and.
Get the hell out of there.
So again, yeah, it's just why we're saying that this is the most in the words oft Ronney, the most important vote that you'll ever take.
Is idiotic.
It's idiotic, it's insulting, and they continue to sort of just openly insault people who oppose it, which I don't think is actually helping their cause. I don't think it's going to help them pass anything through the House that they so badly want to. The math doesn't look good for them at all on this, But you know, they'll pull out all of the stops to make sure it gets funded.
So we'll see where it goes.
So there was We'll move on quickly.
Somebody had a in Pakistan, one of the winners, one of the of the the recent election from Imran Khan's party, said that what he was going to do when he got into power was take all of the cops who'd been raiding unarmed, just polling workers homes and engaging in like a crackdown on the civilian population throughout these regions of Pakistan, locking up old women. He's like, that's very brave of you to, you know, smash down the door of an old woman and throw her in prison.
For trying to vote.
I'm going to send you instead to fight terrorism of in the west of the country. So all the cops who are involved in this, guess what you're going over there. So if people really, you know, I want to show some bravery, there's there are opportunities for them to go to the trenches. But if like Malcolm Nance, there you go, right, didn't he go there for a little while?
Oh yeah, yeah, now he's back. And if he's back, then.
What are we doing. It's the Malcolm Nance rule?
There you go.
So, speaking of the difficult math ahead, last night, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcus. And it sounds like, you know, I'm almost sort of numb to this. It doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal. It actually is that big of a deal, Ryan, because this is the first time that a cabinet secretary had been impeached since the nineteenth century, since actually pretty shortly after the Civil War.
This is not a normal thing.
Even though it feels like we've got there, how many impeachments in the last five plus years or impeachment inquiries, two.
Impeachments of Trump.
You had the Biden impeachment inquiry opened, and now this impeachment into all one hundred Mayorcus was successful. After last week we talked to Representative Greg Kasar about this.
Al Green was wheeled in from.
The hospital to take a vote that tanked House Republicans' efforts. They thought they had enough votes to impeach Mayorcus last week, brought the vote to the floor and did not by one vote. The special election in New York, which we'll do a full block on later, affects these numbers. Because last night the vote was two hundred and fourteen to two hundred and.
Thirteen California Democrat had COVID yes, So that's what doomed may Orcus apparently.
So, and they were constantly counting who would be able to vote, like physically would be able to vote or not, And that's what you know. That's how they ended up bringing this to the floor last night. But they lost three Republicans and now in the future, because there's a new Democrat replacing George Santos, they can only lose to
Republicans on these votes. So the math for Republicans going forward, just on this may Orcus question, where you had the vast majority of their conference willing to go ahead and take this vote, they had three people who weren't, and that was just enough to tank it last week. One person last week voted against it so they could bring it to the floor again this week. But they squeaked this out with a one vote margin.
And now it dies.
Yes, yeah, it's going to go to the Senate.
Nothing's happening in the Senate.
Yes, there's no way that this is going to make anything.
Well, they have do they have to have an actual trial or can they just know they can just table it?
Can they We went through this with Trump.
They had a motion of the table.
Yes, I think they can just table that failed they but so, but either way, they actually still have to do that, which is an important enough vote for Senate Republicans because there if you're voting on the motion table, that's still going to be a question of how you vote on that, which for Senate Republicans will be you know, again interesting to see where they go and they can have a fun question. Yeah, yeah, they and you know they will have fun, that's for sure. We can put
up this next element on the screen. This is from Politico. This is what the vote totals looked like. So yeah, the first time that this happened, by the way, was eighteen seventy six, so first time in nearly one hundred and fifty years.
I don't know where.
They go from here, Ryan, in terms of future bills that could possibly be passed if they have an agenda that they're able to get through.
It looks like basically that's that on arrival.
That would have been Democrats, right, because then Democrats sweep the mid terms of eighteen seventy four.
In eighteen seventy no, that was eighteen ninety two. Democrats did not.
Democrats were not backing power to eighteen ninety two, eighteen seventy four, Republics were still riding high in reconstruction.
We have Rea Ryan Grim that would have been, that.
Would have been a Grant Cabinet secretary that they were angry at.
In all seriousness, the you know, I don't think either of us we will be differ.
Somebody tell us in the comments, was it radical Republicans upset with some like Grant person not engaged, not like pursuing reconstruction hard enough?
I think it was legitimately, Like, was it criminal? I think it was.
It was one of those. Yeah, it was his big corruption scandal.
One of the reasons people watch Counterpoints is to hear us speculate blindly about historical events. So if that's what you tune in, and I know it's a lot.
Of it PD, you can go find it.
You're welcome, Happy Valentine's Day.
But in all seriousness, I know we differ obviously on the solutions, like Crystal and Sager do. But this is no question humanitarian crisis at the border that Congress is utterly incapable of landing on a solution to the executive branch has been utterly incapable of landing on a solution to I think you Remain in Mexico. Under Donald Trump, which was an executive branch solution to the problem, was
hugely powerful. Biden has not implemented Remain in Mexico at the levels A court basically forced him to reinforce Remain in Mexico, and he's been enforcing at very low levels. That said, reports in Mexican media suggest that a deal that was struck from the Biden administration with AMLO in late December and early January has actually stopped in the last month a whole lot.
Because we accused him of being funded by terrorists and give him a narco terrorists.
And agreed to give him a lot of money basically too for border enforcement. So even like Labistia, the train that was carrying so many migrants, they've been stopping that. They've been stopping people at Tapachula, They've been stopping people all over the country in Mexico enforcing.
Their own immigration laws.
Because it seems like we actually there's been no transparency on what really happened. It seems like though we offered to give AMLO a whole lot of money in return for this enforcement, which honestly is great news. I know it's not great news for Republicans in a political year. I think they have plenty to run on the border period. I don't give a damn really about whatever they're saying in terms of their electoral success. But it's great news for people who are not going to be kidnapped and
raped and sexually abused. And will you know, reconsider whether to take those trips if it's not a legitimate asylum claim. Again, I know Ryan and I differ on the solution on some of this, but you know this is there's no question millions of people have flooded over the Biden administration. It's understandable why my work is is up for impeachment because it's it truly is a crisis.
In every single way.
And Ryan, you know, another thought I had yesterday is we are debating border security and Ukraine aid and not debating aid to all of these countries that get a lot of aid from the United States, but are if we're concerned about border security because so many people are fleeing countries in South and Central America and coming up to the United States. If it's a security question by Republicans' own logic, you could could could secure the border with some humanitarians.
Have any idea what you could do with ninety five billion dollars in Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador, like all of these countries that are that are, you know, sending migrants absolutely up to our border. But no, we're gonna send it.
We're gonna send it elsewhere anyway.
It's just amazing that these two conversations are happening completely separate arenas, like nobody even.
Thinks to put them together.
Yeah, if it's about security because people are flooding to the.
United States, I'm glad that they don't because I've said before, the second they do start putting them together, they'll realize that Ukraine's manpower problem can be solved with the US migration crisis, and I don't want them to go anywhere near that.
Well, it already happened with Cuban migrants.
Whatuld they do there?
They were going to fight for Russia.
Oh good look, Oh that's right they did.
Yeah, yes, and Cuba said that they had nothing to do with it and it's been stopped. But yes, the less opportunity they have to put two and two together, maybe the better for now, and.
So truce talks have collapsed between that were broken by Cutter, between Israel and Hamas as Israel makes clear that even in the face of global opposition, it intends to launch its invasion of Rafa. This is a city of some three hundred thousand people at the start of the war, is now a city of some let's say, one point three one point four million people. It's impossible to know precisely. People are packed on top of each other in there was it was said to be kind of one of
the last and only safe places in Gaza. Of course, it has been hit by IDF air strikes since the very beginning, sporadically, just recently more than one hundred people were killed in air strikes there. From the podium, the State Department has said it would be a disaster if Israel went in. John Kirby has said it will be a disaster. But at the same time, and you can put up the first element here about the true sALS
ending inconclusively. But at the same time, the new reporting is that the United States has not only gotten basically no concessions from the Israelis, but Is and relatedly is suggesting there will be no consequences if Israel completely rejects our insistence that they not engage in this assault. And so John Kirby was asked about what the US position was on the Israeli assault Rafa.
Here he is, Oh, we never said that they can't go into Rafa to remove from US as remains a viable threat to the Israeli people, and Israelis and the IDEF absolutely are going to continue operations against their leadership and their infrastructure as they should. We don't want to see another October seventh. What we said is we don't believe that it's advisable to go in in a major way in Rafa without a proper, executable, effective, and credible plan for the safety of the more than a million
Palestinians that are taking refuge in Rafa. They've they've left the north and they certainly went south out of con units to try to get out of the fighting. So Israel as an obligation to make sure that they can protect them.
What's what's crazy is that, you know, John Curry was recently given a promotion. He's now overseeing all comms for basically the entire kind of I forget exactly his title, but uh, it was it was a it was a it was a signal that the White House is pleased with how he's been doing at the podium.
But but what he says from the podium.
About what Israel to do is as useful as what I say from right here about what Israel ought to do. He's like, Israel has obligations not to kill civilians, to give them an opportunity to find me save passage.
I hope that they do this. I say the same thing.
Well, it's very useful, right, they're listening to neither of us. But yet he is one of the most powerful people in the world, representing the most powerful government in world history. Yet he can't get even the most basic concessions from a country of ten plus million people.
Well, Joe Biden, who like, actually, this is not a cheap shot in a speech where he's trying to prove how great and competent he is.
Confused.
The president of Mexico, the president of Egyptian is the one basically the commander in chief. He's the one, ultimately at the end of the day, that's broker in these negotiations. Obviously they've sent Burns from the CIA, and they have other people who are doing the day to day negotiations, but it's his decisions at the end of the day,
and he's not all there. So you have to also wonder how much that's affecting the dialogue and the decisions that are being made when you have negotiations like this happening. Obviously they're happening between the US, Egypt, Israel and cutter as you mentioned, But you know, Joe Biden's not there, but he's ultimately the buck stops with him, and they know they're negotiating on his behalf. But what does anyone know about what he thinks should happen in those negotiations.
Everything we hear about the decision making in the White House is that this is a very Biden driven policy. Yeah, and you know, Biden is not senile like if he mix us things up, He's he's not as sharp as he used to be, but you know he's he is. He still has his faculties in the sense that he is a as he says, a committed Zionist, and he is a committed supporter of Israel, you know, basically unconditionally to the end, and I think he's kind of the last of this breed of of kind of liberal Democrats
who are going to feel this way. It's Vetterman erasure, but sure if maybe Fetterman's a whole nother thing.
But if you had a Gavin Newsom, JB.
Pritzker or Whitmer as president right now, or even Kamala Harris right now, I think there would be a more balanced approach where from Biden, the signal down to his people is that there is nothing that the US is going to do to restrain Israel.
But I think his sinility on talk.
But that's where I think his sinility is affecting this because yes, it's sort of it's all downstream of that,
but nobody knows what implementing that looks like. When he's saying other things too for public relations purposes, when you're sending people to Dearborn to have these conversations, I mean, it's just I don't know what's going on behind closed doors, but it's I do think that what he actually wants to happen for political purposes and what he wants to happen for moral purposes, there's a lot of muddied water in between those things, which is leading to completely muddy.
Yes, I don't think we need sinility to explain it, because the White House has true been clear that what their strategy is. They called it the bear Hug. They laid it out very clearly. We're going to be super friendly to Israel in public. That's going to bias the credibility with the Israeli leadership and with the Israeli public to then be critical behind the scenes, and that is
going to give us the maximum amount of influence. Like that was the strategy that they have laid out, and we've seen them execute it.
Every day we.
Get multiple articles from sources familiar saying that Joe Biden called Yahu some other name.
Yes, it's a Dodo face or.
Like you know, a jerk, and all the different things. He's very frustrated, increasingly frustrated. In fact, every single day he gets increasingly frustrated, and so that allows news organizations to continue saying that he's increasingly frustrated because he's more frustrated than he was the day before. And so that's not stanility. That's an expression of this bear hug strategy.
It's the White House is expression of the Parahud track.
Well, it's it's what it would look like if you were going to do this. It also isn't working like it has been signaled to net Yahu.
That's what that's what we were going to do.
So he he hears it, and he just last week went on ABC Sunday Morning and said, Okay, I appreciate Biden's money, I appreciate what he has to say about this, but we're going to do.
What we're going to do.
Yeah, like he and and he and his party have consistently said we're going to do what we're going to do.
And in the face of that, you can either.
Try a new strategy which uses actual leverage, which you have the money, or you can just continue to get increasingly frustrated and come up with new names that you're going to lead to The New York Times that you called net and Yahoo, and I wish you could pin that on sinility. I think that that's it's just what Biden wants to do and and he must be comfortable with the outcome, otherwise he would do something different.
I agree with that completely.
I think the sinility leads to some bad I guess like I think the sinility affects the strategy and the expression of the strategy.
But I think it makes a bad.
Strategy worse essentially, But I think is rigid.
I think his brain might be stuck in time, like he might not be able to adapt to the new political realities of twenty twenty four, possibly because he keeps talking about Gold of my Air and like that. He seems very rooted, like in that under that liberal Zionist understanding of.
The project.
Yes, in the sort of car era which.
Doesn't really exist anymore, and so there is no Gold of my Air wing anymore.
To your point, the thing John Kirby just said, they're about having an operation. You know, he's saying, we don't want a large scale, something massive basically in RAFA, but we also don't want another October seven. So that's actually a pretty interesting quote. It's totally unsurprising, but it's actually a pretty important glimpse into what the strategy is, or distillation of what the strategy is, which is that to prevent October seventh, to prevent another October seventh, these operations
have to continue. And obvitually they just rescued two hostages from RAFA, So that's a powerful sort of bargaining chip in their selling of their strategy. But if this is preventing another October seventh, it goes back to this question. Biden fundamentally believes they disagree on one state solution, two state solution, but they fundamentally agree that they can eradicate Hamas. And that is the evidence for that crumbles every single day, Right, even if you're rescuing hostages.
Yeah, and Hamas reported that in that operation, which involved these devastating air strikes that killed more than one hundred civilians, hamasa's telegram channel reported they also injured eight hostages.
Three of them died from their injuries. And so that's why you the hostage.
The families of the hostages have been urging them to accept a deal that involves exchanging hostages rather than barreling guns blazing guns blazing into RAFA, because the chance that you kill the hostages in the process of trying to rescue them is very high.
And then having to wait on tenter hooks to find out whether the Hamas propaganda that three hostages were killed is true, right, it's just unimaginable, torturous, Uncertainly.
They don't say who for those families right.
So right, so now you know your you don't know if your family member is still alive period. Now you don't know if they lived this hell of four months in captivity, that then they died in an aerial bombardment by the IDF or not.
Yeah, So let's put b three up on the screen. This is tear Street Scoop is really Minister blocking Flower bb promised Biden would be allowed into Gaza. That is a picture of besilosmochurch and he is Israelly Minister in question.
Here Ryan tell us about what's happening with this.
So the US negotiated a deal whereby they would send in an enormous amount of flour into.
Into Gaza.
That Matt Miller State Department yesterday said it would be enough flour I think for like one point five million Palestinians for five months. Now, how you turn that flour into bread or or anything else is an open question for people in Gaza.
If you talk to.
Them, it's very difficult for them to find wood to burn to cook. It's almost impossible to find you know, electricity or you know a stove or like all the bakeries have been destroyed, like so and also clean water which you need for you know, flour as well.
All of that is is a challenge.
However, getting enormous amounts of flour into into Gaza would be it would be a godsend for the starving people there. Chris van Holland in his in his speech the other day is said that on Sunday he for the first time was hearing reports of people actually dying of starvation, which is which is a step beyond you know, being on the brink of starvation and famine. He texted Cindy McCain, who's the head of the World Food Program, and she said, yes, I can confirm that like this is this is happening.
There's not enough food getting in. Famine is imminent. People are people are actually dying at this point. So and the people who are not dying are going to suffer, particularly the children, lifelong kind of physical not just not just the obvious trauma, but physical problems for the rest of their life from from the lack of nutrition for this extended period of time is going to retard their
their their physical, physical and emotional development. Lots of kids in a way, yeah, hundreds of thousands of children because gods is two million, two million plus people and half are children.
And in Rafa right now, which before was in Rafa, yeah, had three hundred thousand people in off Now you're just have multiplied that, you know, incalculably.
And so Smotrich, who's one of the hardest right members of the Israeli cabinet, has the capacity to install this from getting in. And so now the US is going to have to put some pressure on him and have stern conversations privately until he gets out of the way and lets it in. Not letting in flower to starving people is a war crime, like this guy should be in prison for the rest of his life for just for this one act. Meanwhile, there there are now raves being hosted, and we can we can put this up
here out outside of of Gaza. You've had for weeks now, and we're if you're listening on the podcast, we're showing this is an actual rave at pretty pathetic looking rave, pretty pathetic looking rave, but a rave nonetheless by the border, by the fence where AID trucks are trying to get into Gaza there for weeks now is really civilians, clearly with the cooperation of.
The military like the military. This is deep into the desert.
The military could you block civilians from getting down here if they wanted to? Have been protesting and blocking aid from getting in. So it's not just the government that is using all the tools at its disposal to prevent humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza, but civilians themselves are going down there and now they're dancing to electronic music while while they're doing it. It's one of the more
obscene things I think I've ever seen. At the same time, South Africa has gone back to the Hague and asked for an emergency in junction to try to stop them stop Israel from going into Rafa. It's not as if they could even enforce that, if they could get it, if they could get it implemented. But every single day, people like Smotrich are are producing more and more evidence for the Hague.
So let's roll.
John Kirby being asked about some of the tactics of the IDF and making a hell of a comparison, totally unprompted by the ways be five.
Yeah, let's will be five.
We have seen them take actions, sometimes actions that even I'm not sure our own military would take in terms of informing civilian populations ahead of operations where to go, where not to go. They have taken steps. Now obviously those steps, while noteworthy, haven't been enough to reduce the civilian casualties, which is why the President spoke so forthrightly about it yesterday and why we're going to continue to do everything we can to press these railies to be more careful spectfully.
He's been talking forcefully about it for a long time, and these reelings are no have homored people into this tiny corner in the south west, got tied up against the Egyptian border where people think they're remain catastrophe. Shouldn't there be more forceful action than just work.
We are working very very closely with our Israeli counterparts. We've made clear our concerns that we would not support a Rafa operation that did not properly count account for the more than million refugees that are down in Rafa.
We've been very very clear and consistent about that.
So Randa is that the first time we've heard that comparison. But what was interesting that in that line is that nobody was asking him to compare the UNS and the IDF.
It's the first time, we've heard it from Democrats.
If you remember, Ted Cruz made that exact comparison when we interviewed him and after and you may have, well, you.
Pushed him on it because he had said it earlier, and you pushed him to sort of explain it.
Yeah, and so you may have had the same experience.
But afterwards, I got a ton of messages, emails from the current and former service members, American service members who were appalled to hear him say that, saying that, you know, for instance, we'd have a high value target, let's say in Baghdad in how somebody like an as of spades, you know, somebody that they'd been gunning for, you know, four months, and there was one potential civilian nearby, and the whole thing would be called off. The idea that Israel is doing that does not scan at all.
The New York Times did in depth comparison of the US military and the IDFs operations. Now this was more than a month ago at this point, so obviously some of these numbers may have changed because the type of war basically changed when the calendar year changed under pressure from the US. We still don't actually know exactly how all of that transpired.
But so maybe these ratios are different.
But when the New York Times looked into it a little more than a month ago, the numbers did not suggest that John Kirby was right to make that comparison in terms of civilian casualties.
You know, you know, the actual comparison that you can make. It was with Hamas on ten seven, which was a I think what two to one no civilian to military casualties, which we would all consider horrific, horrifying. Does John Kirby think that Hamas's proportionality on ten to seven was appropriate? I mean, that's insane, except that, like the numbers are
roughly it's the same. The proportionality between the number of Hamas figures that Israel claims to have killed in the number of women and children that we know it has killed, versus on ten to seven, the number of soldiers and security forces Hamas killed versus the number of civilians who were killed.
And obviously, Hamas argues that that was a defensive action, even though I think most of most observers in the West would say it was offensive, at least in terms of the question of the actual military operation. Hammas argues that it's resistance that it's defensive, I think.
But either way it's military versus civilian. It's like one for every two. And Kirby's suggesting that that's equivalent somehow to how the US would operate.
Well, him offering the comparison of his insane like he didn't nobody was asking him, nobody was confronting him with numbers about the US.
He just volunteered.
You seeing the clip that he's just kind of things like and actually and he's been in comms. Never mind, I don't want to get into Kirby, but it's ridiculous, utterly like ridiculous nuns. And also he's forcing me to sit here and defend the US military, which.
Probably you don't want to do.
That killed like four million people in the last twenty years. So like, it's not it's not as if we're we're like, you know, some angels out here. And the absolute scale and power.
His administration, the way they got out of Afghanistan was a massive civilian casualty incident.
The massive amount of power that we projected around the globe has meant that the scale of our slaughter has been, you know, significantly greater than what's happened in the last four months in Gaza, but by proportion and by the by execution, it's it's absolutely not even close. Like the US military has also setting aside the absolute collapse of discipline. If if you pretend that what the Israeli soldiers are doing on TikTok is is undisciplined and is outside of
the strategy, it might be. I think at this point you have to say it's part of the strategy because they're so it's so rampant, and so many soldiers are allowed to just post their war crimes on uh, you know, on TikTok you see that, like they were they raided a woman's house in the West Bank the other day, and we're holding up her lingerie and posting photos of
themselves with it. How Retz just did an article about how they're they're cooking with all of the like Palestinians like like spices and using their kitchens to like cook their meals. Anyway, Uh, it's it's bad stuff. And to compare that for John Kirby to like actively dent great the US military in service of what more than a dozen countries have already concluded as a genocide is just beyond the pale, like I can't. I didn't think I'd wind up here.
It should be a bigger story from yesterday that he offered that up. So let's move up to New York, where a special election yesterday actually could tell us a lot, even though it's just one district.
And is Georgets' seat.
So this is George Santos's seat. They the results are in, we can put this first element up on the screen. And actually a former Congressman, Tom Swosey, won this race by eight points from what we have now with most of the votes actually being counted. If you're up in the New York area, as producer Griffin is, you got slacked with a snowstorm yesterday on election day, and Ryan, you actually have some thoughts on that they have affected
the voting. But Mazzi Pillop, who was the Republican running in this race, a.
Lot of people are going to look back at a former soldier.
He's a former IDF soldier exactly, yes, verse.
A very very committed Israel supporter. So like it's not as if there was a divide between the two right.
Yes, absolutely, Ethiopian who I think was able to flee to Israel as a refugee and then ultimately came over to the United States. This was the Democrats, it should be noted outspent Republicans like basically two to one. It was a fourteen million versus eighteen million overall in spending. A lot of the heavy issues here were abortion and immigration.
But Swosey supported the quote unquote bipartisan immigration deal that Chuck Schumer had brokeered with James Langford and Mitch McConnell, and there's some analysis that that allowed him to cover on the question of immigration. But either way, Ryan an eight point race here. Flipping now, Joe Biden won this district by eight points in twenty twenty. The reason that this district is interesting is because it's long sort of
been a swing area. It's Nassau County, a little bit of Queen's actual in it, but it's been a.
District that helps us sort of gauge the sort of barometer.
It's a barometer of political sentiments in the suburbs. And it looks like Democrats used abortion, blunted the Republican tax and immigration effectively and won this one pretty handily.
And also the voting Republicans have put themselves at a structural disadvantage by refusing to vote by mail, which then puts themselves at the whims of the weather. And if there's something crazy like a snowstorm on election day, you're going to be in trouble.
Yeah.
Like middle of the day, I posted that Republicans refusing to vote by mail is going to cost them this House seat. It wasn't a hard prediction to make because this is by the morning and there was so much snow that the polling locations were empty. We actually have a clip here from America's mayor outside of his own It looks like elementary school talking about the weather a little bit.
Let's roll some Eric Adams here.
Outing queens p one my whole public school, checking out the roads, and clearly you see that DS and wise out flow on the streets doing what they're doing best.
So, just as a visual if if you're listening to this, Eric Adams is wearing this seven hundred dollars friendy scarf that he wore to a briefing about I think it was about migrants last week, and the New York Post like Daily Mail wrote it up. And he is holding firm standing on his principle and refuses to give up the seven hundred dollars.
Friend, he probably his favorite scarf.
Well, if you spent seven hundred dollars on a scarf, I would.
Hope it's your that feels like, must be must be nice.
Yes, must be nice. Hell of a flex there, Eric Adams.
But righting, your point is one that a lot of people who are on the right are starting to internalize and realizing, especially that if you're sort of if the margins that you're trying to make up maybe with the white working class are not energized by a particular candidate, and are not energized to get out the vote when there's a snowstorm. If you're not doing the mill in voting ahead, you are going to be screwed when there is a snowstorm. And you reminded us of this yesterday.
You had a funny conversation about Reno. Yes, tell us because it's a perfect anecdote.
Yes, during the twenty twenty election or twenty twenty two, I think it's twenty two, right, when there was a Nevada Senate race up, Yeah, yeah, Republican Senate strategist, I was talking to him in the morning and how you look, and he's like, we're looking great things.
Things are looking good for us.
As long as there's not a blizzard in Reno on election day, and sure enough, blizzard in Reno, Reno, Reno, turnout collapses. It also sets up Republicans to get screwed by their opponents. So in Arizona, remember there were some like Maricopa voting problems that slowed voting down for a couple of hours. Now, yeah, hey, you know sometimes you
have problems. But think about it. If one party is voting ahead of time at a huge proportion, and the other party is waiting until election day to vote, but the party that does all of its early voting also controls all the cities and therefore controls the voting yes in those cities. Not that they would do this, but it does allow them the opportunity to forget a printer cartridge, or if somebody forgot a password, and you know what, we got to reboot the computers. Real shame, Sorry about this.
Voting is going to be a little bit of a pain here at this center. You might have to vote provisionally over here. Don't worry, we'll take care of it. Not that anybody would do that, but it does set you up for a situation where you're you're putting your entire fate in the hands of the good Lord and his good weather, or the good Democrats and their willingness to run smooth elections for you because all of their
voters have already voted. It's the level of short term thinking is incredible, and it's happening at the same time that the realignment is making it so Republicans have a lot more attenemant voters.
Yeah, if you're a suburban your suburban now sort of upper middle class, how are.
Your polling places, you're a homeowner, or you get.
Your ballot in the mail and you will return it early.
You're going to vote, like you can put up all the voter suppression tools in front of that you have
at your disposal, those people are going to vote. That was the theory for Republicans through the eighties and nineties and way before that too, that Democratic voters, if you put in universal voter suppression efforts like forcing people to jump through a bunch of different hoops, that Democratic voters were poor, more working class, it was going to be harder for them to get through those hoops, and it would be an advantage to Republicans.
That's now flipped.
And if you put up hurdles for everybody, Democratic voters are now going to be able to get through those hoops more than the Republican voters who might jump through hoops and hoops on fire for Donald Trump, but other than him. And I'm like it's snowing, I'm like showing up today.
Just from a conservative perspective, this was a raging debate. It still is a debate, but it was a raging debate for a while as to whether you just adapt vote by mail or you basically try to convince your candidates to have plans that would totally tighten up elections. And personally, I detest mail in voting. I think it's very I think it's an insecure voting method and it's
easily manipulated. That said, if you are not coupling all of this with some strategy to actually limit mail in voting and make it so that people have to go to the polls on election day, I'm like one of the people that leaves.
It should just be a day.
You should give people off, you should make it a holiday and vote that day. Unless you're you know, in the military or disabled, or have some like obvious mitigating circumstance.
I think that's the best way to do it.
But but if that's not happening, which is just hard to see how that's happening, we're like, we're not moving towards that on a policy level. And Republicans, I think to some extent, are going to put their heads and be baring their heads in the sand. If they think that's coming and that's doable on any type of mass scale, then you're really going to be screwed when this type of thing happens. Now, ryan to be fair, the Sposey would have won won this race, no storm or not.
It looks like it does look like that because the polls had him up by a cup between one and three, and I think the eight point when you could maybe contribute half that to poor Republican turnout on election day. People can sort through the numbers more. But yes, it does look like regardless, he would have won. But when control of the House is hinges on a couple of seats, and you always have dozens of seats that hinge on just a couple thousand votes, then.
It will it will end up mattering.
Pillip is actually, by the way, still a registered Democrat. And so when you want to get high Republican turnout and enthusiasm for somebody who's being pushed on why she hasn't changed her registration from being a Democrat. She got questions from local journalists about this. That's going to be very difficult.
She said.
The Democratic Party left her, which can be a persuasive and convincing message if you had.
Changed your voter registration.
May so, I think there's going to be a lot of speculation just that she was really not a good candidate. She didn't seem to want to campaign. A lot of people said she was kind of Mia from the campaign trail. They were relying very heavily on surrogates. One of the interesting things is that Santos got money and acclaim when he was running for the checking off a lot of
the identity politics boxes. This is suburban area, so he's a gay minority Republican and was able to sort of be Mago without being Mago.
Money just by swiping people's credit.
Well he did that too, but money from like the Republican Party.
They were like.
Excited about him and pill Up by the way I think probably excited Republicans for similar reasons, which is fascinating because it shows just the utter stupidity of Republicans who think, you know, if we can just check off the identity politics boxes, we'll convince everybody that we're cool.
Like, yeah, you guys are doing it.
One funny point on her voter registration. You know how everybody always says I didn't leave my party. My party left me. She literally didn't leave her party.
She didn't.
She meant that literally, like I didn't leave my party. So right before we were well they're all still registered Democrats too, She's like, well, I thought they left.
Yeah, I thought they were gone.
So let's actually roll this clip of protesters at Swazi's election victory party, basically.
Where Democrats go.
Notice his protesting, yeah, robotic, Like he actually looks like an animatronic guy at Disney World when they're protesting, and he just keeps fist pumping. So take a close look at that, and I'm going to ask grand his thoughts on how Swazi will govern.
Okay, the very end, you step protests just like thrown off the stage.
So I turned from a normal protest to hope that person's okay pretty quickly.
Yes, And you made the point that Swazi, first of all, he did her attack to the center on immigration, and you made the point about not a lot of daylight between him and pill Up on Israel.
Like and everything else, Like he's a very kind of center right standard like he's not even actually today's standard Democrat is more like a center left one where he's more of an old school kind of blue dog center right, suburban suburban democrat. In his in his victory speech, he kind of went after the squad a little bit and also said he's going to make sure that your state and local taxes can be deducted from her like that. That was in his victory speech, and I got a big cheer also.
That does always does it for those blue dog down.
Yeah, these are so if you make a bunch of money in Long Island, what he's basically telling you is that you're going to get a nice tax break.
Sounds good.
Sounds good for those people in Long Island and make a lot of money.
And Republicans were hoping definitely that the sort of general Biden malaise would bring Swazi down. And if that's the case, if that brought Swazi down. He's still won by eight points.
That's not the district where it's going to bring him down.
So actually, on that point, let's talk about new inflation numbers. Because Paul Kregman is out with a column that says Biden should be running on the election. This is a repeat of what New York Times columnists. And he's won a Pulitzer, hasn't he?
Krugman a Nobut Pulitzy definitely want a Nobel.
Bro He want a Nobel Prize as well, one of them. But yes, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has repeatedly in the pages of the New York Times been telling people that the economy they sense as bad is actually fine, and from his vantage point in Manhattan, they're wrong about how they feel in the economy, and right, I think some of these inflation numbers we can put this first element up on the screen.
I think some of these.
Inflation numbers explain why both Biden and Krugman are having a hard time making that case. When we got the January inflation data, consumer prices rose three point one percent in January twenty twenty four from a year before. According to the Wall Street Journal. They rose the fastest for frozen non carbonated juices and drinks. That's a very specific place where inflection saw. It was a change from twenty nine percent of twenty nine percent from prices a year ago.
This month had the largest drop. They fell from twenty eight point six percent. Let's roll this clip. Let's roll this clip on inflation. This was actually posted by the RNC, and you can sort of see why they might have posted it.
Let's roll it.
Headline number expected to be up two tenths of a percent, is up three tens of percent. That's the hottest SINCEEP of twenty three, when it was up.
Four tenths of percent.
Strip out food and energy even hotter, up four tenths of a percent. Also one tenth hotter than expected, up four tens of percent. Well, you equal that going to May of last year. You surpassed it going to April of last year when it was up point five. The year over year numbers also hotter three point one. On headline year over year, we're expecting two point nine, but did make progress versus the rear view mirror, which stands at three point four.
Now, if you consider three point.
One we've already been there. We were there in November of last year, and we were at three point oh in June of last year. Finally, CPI year over year core. I think one of the ones I'm paying most attention to three point nine percent exactly is the recent month December three point nine, two tenths hotter than expected.
So let's also run this clip of Jillian Michaels on Bill Maher. She actually specifically mentions the price of eggs, which, as we saw, just had the biggest job. But she sort of went to totel with Bill Maher on his show about inflation.
Let's roll that up.
But this is an amazing to you, Like it was in the paper today about this country came out of the pandemic way better than we just fucked. We won the pandemic economically, I mean, America, I don't feel that way.
Explain it to me. I feel like inflation's insane number.
Every inflation is not insane, bil I hope there's numbers. I understand things.
But it has tripled here. Look, I get that.
People buy some fucking eggs, feelings, and then there's the numbers. Ok, then the numbers, well, the numbers have come down a lot in the last six months. Of course they were. It was inevitable when we gave six trillion dollars so that everybody could hide under the bed from the forever flu that was never going to end.
Well, it was taken by the richest people ever, and it was.
A lot of it was stolen. It was it was we agree on that too. It was like it was there some response needed. Of course, you don't want the hospitals overrun, but it was just a massive overreaction and that did cause some of the inflation.
What do you make of that, Ryan, because I think when you look at the inflation numbers, and you and I were talking a little bit about this, Uh, they have gone down, but they've gone down from such a high that they're still high. So saying that they've gone down is not enough to say. And also, by the way, if you're experiencing like, for example, vehicle insurance, car insurance is one of those things that is like extremely high right now, so for different people experience.
Because of carjackings and breakings exactly. Also actually significantly because of severe weather like storms, and this is so a significant This is I'm glad you brought this up. A significant driver of the overall inflation number, believe it or not, is the price of car insurance, and a significant driver the price of car insurance is not just the theft, but more more precisely the number of storms, floods, hurricanes, just damage being done by extreme weather events to cars.
And so it's it's a way that kind of climate change is creeping into our kind of just our just general life in a way beyond kind of the obvious of like oh wow, it's a whole lot warmer, and and like there's droughts everywhere.
If you don't find yourself buying car insurance, then you know, especially if you're really urban and you don't have a car, youly in public transportation, then this is a part of inflation that you're just not experiencing.
It's totally out of your mind, out side, out of mind.
You can and for everybody else who is experiencing it, you see it, you see your numbers go up.
But the way you feel is you.
Just have less money in your bank account because you know you're probably doing automatic withdrawal.
It's like, wait, why do I what's going on here?
And so it's just a it just contributes to this kind of overall sense that you're running faster and like in a dream and just not being able to move as.
Quickly, And depending on where you are, gas prices for example, are really really bad or okay.
So there are a lot of different.
Parts of the economy that if you're experiencing this different person, well, you can look at, you know, maybe the overall basket down over the last couple of years. You can see where a lot of Americans don't feel good about it. And yes, to the point that we were talking about earlier, it was so bad that dropping from it being so bad to just being bad is not.
A great line for Biden to run on.
I think you've got some precise numbers there, But since Biden was sworn in, and I think this is the key thing that people like Krugman need to keep in mind, Inflation has run it roughly since I think seventeen is seventeen percent. Things are seventeen percent more expensive now than they were when Biden was sworn in, and hourly wages are up like thirteen or fourteen percent, which means that your purchasing power is down, like your standard of living is down.
You're poorer than you were when.
He was torn in Yes, and people don't people watch gas prices moving day to day. But I think the way that they understand prices is on a longer timeline, thinking back a couple of years. And you also remember kind of the best moments more than you remember and you remember the worst moment, but you don't remember the ones in between as much. So it's easy to think like there was that brutal period of inflation and things
have not really come down. And yes, wages are up for a lot of people, but wage gains are not distributed evenly. Wage gains are distributed to people who switch jobs. You get some you know, you know, some colas at the end of the year if you stay in your job, but oftentimes you have to switch jobs to get that raise. And so when we say that you know, hourly wages are up thirteen percent, it doesn't mean everybody's wages are
up thirteen percent. Psychologically, also, people understand price increases as not their fault, somebody else's fault, actually the president's fault, Like that's that's his problem, that's his fault.
Why I'm paying more for these things?
If your wages go up unless you're an effective communicator like an FDR or somebody, and you're seeing like a mass kind of labor movement. Most people are going to say, my wages are up because I'm a good worker and because I deserve those wages. And you are a good worker, and you do deserve those wages. But your wages are also up because of macroeconomic policies that have given workers
more power. But so that's why I think the economy is so tough in this moment, because people are not going to give credit for their wages to bidens.
They feel like they did that.
But they are going to blame Biden for the fact that things are more expensive. And then you layer on top of that the most important thing, which is housing. Housing is now so expensive and gobbling up everybody's income that if that, even if your wages are up in this core inflation minus shelter is coming down, you're still suffering from that.
And if you're already own your house, then you're not experiencing that.
But three percent unemployment and wages growing faster than inflation, which we have now is good and I think people should not forget that. And also to defend Bill Maher's point there, compared to the rest of the world, if he's going to say we won the pandemic, we're doing better than anywhere else in the world. Everywhere else in the world has worse unemployment and higher inflation, So that that does deserve to be underlined.
So one of the things Biden started early in his administration, first of all comparing himself to FDR and having John Meacham tell him, you know, how comfortable he was the FDR in the Oval Office, but also talking about how he was going to tackle corporate greed because corporate greed was a huge driver of inflation. That talk is basically absent from the White House right now. It seems like they've decided on the strategy to just ignore consumer prices
and wage growth and not talk about it. You see them every few weeks like try to trot out Bidenomics, but they've largely kind of given it up, and they talked in these sort of broad sweeping terms about how Americans are all better off.
But it seems like their.
New strategy is just to ignore inflation altogether rather than pinning it on corporate greed. Because Biden came in office pledging to hackle corporate greed and pledging to make uh.
You know, by some estimates it's more.
Than it accounts for more than half of inflation, and people can dispute that, but it accounts for a significant trunk of inflation, the corporate price bouging.
Essentially, he said he was going to He said he was going to tackle it.
And that's probably the FTC.
Leana Khan and the FTC and the anti trust folks at the d J are suing everybody all over the place and winning some serious cases. But yeah, it's not it hasn't. It hasn't been rhetorically uh, front, front and center.
But it is one of the strongest parts I think of the the of the Biden administration that you know, Trump is really happy to see these numbers because I think Trump's huge fear is that between now and the election there will be an interest rate cut, which which would then you know, you know, spur another stock market boom, which people will say, well, you know, only half the country has hold stocks. But it also does produce vibes,
infects the mood. Yeah, and also it will it will it would push down interest rates on mortgages and so people then would be able to start to say, you know, right now, people are just locked in, like people who people who own a home are locked in with with their like awesome little three percent interest rates that they that they refinance during during the pandemic, and if you don't have a home, you're staring at, you know, something like seven or eight percent interest rates on a on
a mortgage, which means that the kind of house you can afford is doesn't meet what you need. And so everybody's locked out. It's like a game of musical chairs that music just stopped. When interest rates come back down, that's the music coming back on you. And you're going to see kind of a lot of wealth flow into the economy because finally people will be able to sell their houses and you know, there's a lot of pent up demand for people to move, and people will be
able to buy houses. Finally if you get interest rates mortgage let's you say you get mortgage rates back down to like stay five percent or something. This eight percent stuff. You know people say in the eighties it was you got up to sixteen twenty percent, which is insane, but also houses cost like twenty thousand dollars when it houses like five hundred thousand dollars. That is a whole different can of worms.
All right, Ryan, we have a really interesting guest that you brought in. I'm excited to get to Shaba's gill right after this. Well, that does it for today's edition of Counterpoints, Ryan, Shabbaz is a very busy man.
As people may have heard.
We said we had Shabaz Gil. It was a lie. We did not have did not have Shabaz Gil.
Although he although he was booked, he's in the US operating on Pakistan time.
I suspect he might not be awake. Yeah, but we will. We will rebook him again.
Shabbaz Is was I Ron Khan's chief of staff while I Ron Khan was Prime Minister, and he's now kind of his American representative.
These are.
In tense days for anybody involved in Pakistani politics, for sure, because right now also, and maybe we can add this in posts, but Korean Jean Pierre was asked about the Pakistan elections recently and what she said actually maybe unintentionally mirrors what Imran Khan's party has been saying lately. She says, we need to respect the will of the election, respect the will of the people.
In the election and a lot of the state departments.
Thing that members of Congress have been saying that the phrase PTI in Ron Khan's party has been using is respect the mandate. I don't even know if they know that they're almost mirroring the messaging from Imran Khan's party, because what Imran Khan means by respect the mandate is that they can prove with documentation given to them by polling locations, that they won one hundred and eighty seats in the National Assembly, which is a majority and means
they can form a government. The military establishment there has gutted that and changed the numbers and is claiming that they have something like a ninety seat victory, which is still more than anybody else, including Nawaz Sharif's party, who is the military backed candidate Connis saying respect the mandate give us one hundred and eighty seats.
Is it fair to say he's also the US backed candidate Nuwaj Sharif.
Absolutely yes, the US and military back candidates Nawaj Shreef. Here's what's hilarious. The documents also show that Nowaz Sharif himself lost his own race in the National Assembly by something like fifty thousand votes to a woman who's in.
Prison right now.
But they changed all the numbers so that he can win, because actually, if he loses, he can't become prime minister because you have to be in the National Assembly to become prime minister. Now, there could be some workarounds because there are some set aside seats for people who win, so they could give him one of the set aside seats, but it would be an absolute complete humiliation for him
to lose his own race. It's like when the when the Democratic Speaker of the House lost in like the nineteen eighties, lost his race, but he didn't lose it in the nineteen eighties to a woman in prison.
That his own kind of force is imprisoned and her.
Defeat of him from prison is symbolic of the refusal of Pakistani people to be intimidated by this, the intense amount of violence and suppression dealt out by the US backed military.
There just a hell of a week in Pakistan. Your coverage of it has been fascinating to watch.
And we'll get we'll get Shabaz on some other time.
Yeah, we forgive him, and it's calmer for all of the interviews that I have missed over the years.
Like you people being like, hey you doing this, I'm like, did I agree to that? Sorry?
Amazing?
Well, we'll be back with more kind of points next week. And once again, remember if you go to Breaking points dot com right now, there's a special twenty five percent off you get to see those RFK Junior focus group interviews early, amazing interviews. I'm so glad that Crystal and Sagar and Maca Griffin have set those up. They're very, very helpful, so you get them early and you get
the full counterpoint showed. You're inbox if you subscribe to premium, which is now twenty five percent off at Breakingpoints dot com. We'll be back next Monday, Wednesday.
That's also a lie.
I'll be back on Monday, that's right with Sager, and then I'm going to Mexico. Don't worry about it, Cristal will be here. Be a ladies show on Wednesday.
Yeah.
It will be a lot of fun. Not as fun as you'll be having in Mexico at your fish concert, but fun. Nonetheless, it'll be.
A good time down there. I'll be thinking of you. See you later.