2/21/23: Putin Suspends Nuclear Treaty, EPA Corporate Tests in Ohio, Rich McHugh in Ohio, SCOTUS Big Tech, Project Veritas, MTG National Divorce, Fox News Texts, Trump's Primary Strategy, Government vs New Media, Dave Weigel Interview on GOP Primary

Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. Emily is back in the house with us. Welcome again, Emily, thanks for having me. A big shout out to Sager for getting engaged making engagement news there. Yes, congratulations Saga. Enjoy your time off and he will be back here on Thursday, though we have very much enjoyed having Emily sitting in for him. There is a lot going on this morning to get to a big speech from Putin. It's his life,

State of the nation. Things that will break all of that down for you. Also what I consider to be blockbuster news, bombshell news out of Ohio that the water testing that was used to tell residents that the water was safe and clean for them to drink. It was conducted by consultants paid by the railroad company themselves. This is what the EPA is basing their assessment on. I don't know how you can do that, so we'll talk

about that. We also have someone on the ground, Richmond Q, fantastic reporter too, tell us what he is seeing their big Supreme Court cases, oral arguments being heard this week about the future of tech and the Internet project. Veritas founder and sort of the figurehead there, James o'keith is officially out Marjorie Taylor Green calling for a national divorce really going there. Let's talk about that one. Yeah, why not?

And then we've got some crazy texts that were revealed from Fox News stars, people like Tucker Carls and Sean Hannity, Laura ingram I kind of reveal how they think about their job, how they think about their audience, how they think about Donald Trump. And we also have news that all of the January sixth video is going to be released to Tucker Carlson, So what does that ultimately mean. First time on the show, we've got Dave Weigel, political

reporter for Semaphore. He's going to break down what he is seeing so far in the GOP primary. But we wanted to start with breaking news this morning, Vladimir Putin delivering his State of the Nation address. This is very closely watched. This comes. The context here is that the war this Friday will hear hit its one year anniversary when Russia invaded Ukraine. We of course covered yesterday President Biden making a surprise trip into the active war zone,

meeting with Selenski himself in Kiev. He is in Poland today he is expected to give his own address, so the White House trying to go for sort of like a split screen moment here. In terms of what Putin actually said, most of it was retreading ground that we've heard before. He once again was talking about, you know, if we're sending longer range missiles, that they're going to have to respond in kind, So this sort of like inflammatory rhetoric. There were a few veiled nuclear threats involved

in there. But the biggest news I think out of this that actually has real world policy implications is Russia is officially withdrawing from the New Start Arms Controlled Treaty. This was like the final remaining arms control treaty that we were still involved with. Now inspections with regards that had been paused since the pandemic, but still obviously a negative sign and development that Russia is now officially withdrawing.

Was it surprising to you, Uh, not in particular, but no surprising that he rolled it out in the speech at this time. Also, I don't think it's particularly surprising, but it is an interesting bit of timing. Yeah, to me, I guess I was actually surprised that the speech didn't contain more new rhetoric aggressive. Yeah, I mean I think a lot of people, myself included, were kind of watching

this closely. Saga. Actually, my gosh, I'm away. It was like, you know, if he's on a different time zone, so he's of like live texting us like updates of the speech. So this was very closely watched. So the fact that ultimately it was a very kind of status quo speech from Putin in terms of rhetoric that we've heard before.

He blames the West for the war, says said something like, you know, we're enforcing the peace with force or something that doesn't make any sense like that, and he you know, used the same type of rhetoric about responding in kind if there's escalation, but beyond that, there was no real new ground tread here. He did refer to it as a war, which is kind of, you know, new and different,

but not all that shocking either. So I think the other thing to watch will be, of course, today when President Biden gives his speech later today in Poland, to see what he announces, if there's additional military aid or any revelations about his conversation with Selenski, et cetera. So

we'll definitely keep an eye on that. Yeah, super interesting, and on the one year anniversary both sides to watch the split screen as you said, Biden and Poland Zelensky as he's been talking about the one year anniversary too. Just a big week. Yeah. The other news that I saw this morning is you already had a number of voices out of the UK calling for the shipment of fighter jets, which of course would be a dramatic escalation far beyond what was contemplated in the early days of

this war from the US and NATO allies. Liz Trusts, the former Prime minister briefly, very briefly in office. Famously, it did not outlast ahead of Lettuce anyway. She is now adding her voice to those who want fighter jets to be shipped to Ukraine. So there's continued escalatory pressure from voices in the UK, certainly voices in the US. Yesterday I mentioned Lindsay Grahams and er Lindsay Graham, who was sort of famously hawkish, has been calling for the same,

So those pressures continue. This comes in the wake of really getting confirmation of how the US acted directly along with their Needo allies early roughly a year ago, to circumvent any sort of peace process from ultimately unfolding. And so that's where we are now. Russia is started a spring offensive. Zelensky has been traveling around Europe and obviously was here in the US as well making his case

for additional weapons shipment. So we'll see what Biden has to say about all of this today, and we'll certainly keep an eye on it. Yeah, I'm excited to hear what Sager has to say on Thursday. Absolutely all right, So let's get to some domestic affairs here, because the news out of Ohio with this horrific train derailment just continues to get worse and worse. Let's go and put this up on the screen. This from Stephen Donziger tweeted this out, but this is a huffing and post article.

He says, breaking the EPA claim that water in Ohio is safe to drink is based on only a few tainted lab samples funded by the very rail company that caused the disaster. The EPA apparently never tested the water themselves. He asks, why does the polluter get to do the testing? I think that is something all of us would wonder. If you click through to the piece here, they give a lot of details about exactly how this testing went down and just why this is so troubling. Because they've

been telling residents it's all clear, it's all good. You could go back to your homes, you could drink the water, no problem, We've tested it's safe, trust US, et cetera. And then the news breaks that they're basing that on rail company paid consultants doing testing. And not only that, it's not only the fact that the source of the testing is questionable at best, but the actual samples that were taken there's some indications that they were contaminated and

not handled according to EPA standards. So let me go ahead and read a little bit of this article to you guys, so you can get a sense of it. So they start with the news that the state used preliminary results from railroad funded sampling to declare that the drinking water was safe in the wake of the toxic spill. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who's Republican, on Wednesday afternoon announced that new testing from five wells that supplied the town's

municipal drinking water showed no evidence of contamination. With these results, he says, Ohio EPA is confident that the municipal water is safe to drink, But on its web page about the derailment, the Ohio EPA links only to railroad funded preliminary test results. That's the basis that they used for this press statement from Mike DeWine that it's all good.

The municipal water is safe to drink. The Colombiana County, which is the county that East Palestine is located in, their general Health district, they separately sampled East Palestine's public water system last week, but at least as of when this article was written a few days ago, the county's testing results had not been made public, so the only results that have been made public are these railroad funded

water testing results. The lab report on the railroad funded sampling indicates the samples were not handled in accordance with federal EPA standards. Sam Bickley, who's an aquatic ecologist of Virginia Scientist, Community Interface and Advocacy focused coalition of scientists and engineers, he's the one who alerted huff Post to the sampling errors. He called the report extremely concerning. Quote their results that claimed there were no contaminants is not

a reliable find. I find this extremely concerning because these results would not be used in most scientific applications because the samples were not preserved properly. And this is the same data they are now relying on to say the

drinking water is not contaminated. To be clear, the federal EPA has not done its own sampling of municipal water and needs Palestine, during a press call with reporters Friday, and official and the Biden administration said all the sambling that has been done in Ohio has been jointed, not Norfolk Southern alone. It's been with the Columbiaana County Health Department collecting samples along with Northfolk Southern and sending those

a split samples to do different labs for verification. So that is their defense here, and Emily, this comes as actually the EPA administrator, Michael Reagan is finally in Ohio today to visit with residents there, long overdue. But this follows a playbook of cover up that we have seen so many times before, and it's something that a lot

of social media users were actually warning about. When you see these sort of catastrophes, industrial accidents, et cetera, there is a common playbook that plays out where first the company is relied on for analysis of what's going on, the politicians echo whatever the company is saying, and then the media just echoes whatever the politicians are saying. So the whole narrative comes from the person and the group that are most interested in downplaying the severity of what

exactly is going on. Right, the media will then repeat claims that have been sort of falsely baked together with just credulty, don't worry about it. We've looked into this. Now. Here's another, I think extremely disturbing quote from the huff Post article, which is a great piece of journalism. James Lee, a spokesman for Ohio EPA, acknowledged the samples were not properly preserved or acidified, but said they were quote acceptable

due to the next day processing at the laboratory. There is also a spokesperson from Norfolk Southern quoted in the article saying that the initial data was valid, we wanted to ensure it compliance with EPA standards and proactively asked the lab to rerun the samples with the remaining preserved vile from each sample. So again, these are the players who are sort of barely admitting that this is not

an ideal set of samples. The Ohio government was not at all upfront about potential problems with these samples might to wine. I mean, it's incredible people should know if they're making the decision to drink this water exactly who tested the results, Who came to the conclusion that said it was okay to do that. I bet a whole lot of people would have made different decisions based on that information. Well, and the question remains, okay, if the

county did their own testing, where are those results? We still do those being made public? So this is deeply troubling because these residents deserve, you know, every level of scrutiny to the situation in order to protect their health,

both in the near and the long term. And you know, the government pretends like, oh that we really know what's going on here in the media just parents this line, we're taking a look or the week in the New York Times wrote this piece that made me so mad about basically trying to frame everybody who was concerned about this ongoing crisis as you have residents continuing to say nausea, skin rashes, headaches, dizziness, trying to frame everybody who's concerned

about that as a quote unquote right wing conspiracy theorist. And if you read through that article, you know there was a way to write an article about people who were going way too far spinning conspiracies where there's no evidence, etc. But they didn't do that. Instead, they just smear in everyone who was concerned of this, and they completely regurgitated the government official line about what was going on with zero skepticism about issues exactly like this, Like where is

this journalism in the New York Times? And if you're going to pairent the government line, I mean, you're supposed to be journalists holding power to account. You don't have many questions for government. Your message to the public is just like, no, accept exactly what they're saying, and if you don't, you're a right wing conspiracy theorist, absolute garbage. At the same time, continue to be a lot of questions. So we just talked about the water. There's continue to

be a lot of questions about the air quality. There are lawsuits that are being filed left and right. Here, let's go and put this up on the screen. The sixth lawsuit claims quote controlled chemical release worsened the East Palestine situation. The suit alleges that burning vinyl chloride creates phose gene gas, a chemical warfare agent used in World War One. By the way, this isn't like wild speculation. That is what is created when you burn vital chloride.

So the question is, you know, the government claims ow, it's all dispersed, everything's fine now, residents continue to have health impacts and very worried about the future. The details here are. The complaint was filed on Wednesday in the US District Court by an injury firm. They alleged the railroad dump more than one point one million pounds of

vinyl chloride into the environment during the incident. They claim that amount of that emission of the toxic chemical was more than two times the total amount of vinyl chloride that is released by all US industries over an entire year, and they alleged that burning vinyl chloride creates phosgene gas, a chemical warfare agent used in World War One that

was banned by the Geneva Connection Convention. Sorry quote from the attorney here, I'm not sure Norfolk Southern could have come up with a worse plan to address this disaster. Residents exposed to vital chloride may already be undergoing DNA mutations that can linger for years or even decades before manifesting as terrible and deadly cancers. The lawsuit allegis in Norfolk Southern made it worse by essentially blasting the town with chemicals as they focused on restoring train service and

protecting their shareholders. Authlready say they undertook what they called a quote controlled release of unstable chemicals to prevent a possible explosion at the derailment scene. And of course, vinyl chloride is a known carcinogen, and as was previously stated, this type of gas was banned by the gene Convention because of its toxic nature well, and this is something

that gets to the water as well. And a lot of people probably remember this with nine to eleven, for responders and people that were around the crisis, seen around ground zero on nine to eleven and the weeks and months afterwards. Is that we don't know. We really don't know the scope of the tragedy until years later. We don't know the scope of the effects of some of these cancer causing chemicals, of some of the chemicals in general,

whether they're in the air or the water. Yes, So for the confidence to be projected by Mike de Wine, the Ohio EPA, Norfolk Southern, which of course their interest in this is obvious. You understand why they would be doing that, But for that confluence between the government and the private company here to be projecting that level of confidence instead of meeting people where they are, which is terrified that they're going to have effects from this down

the road years from now. That can't even be calculated right now or understood right now. I think it's just on a political level, purely political level, big swing in a miss, an obvious mistake, but even on a moral level, I mean, we have no idea truly no idea, what's going to happen. Yes, that's exactly right. And I can't imagine being a resident of this town wondering if you can go back to your home, wondering if it's safe to drink the water and breathe the air your pet. Yeah, exactly.

We played for you guys last week, Jordan Chariton. They've been on the ground and status kup our partners and he interviewed a foxkeeper who one of his foxes had already died and all the others were sickened. Another one has now passed away. So people and these you know, you guys know how people feel about their pets. I'm

sure you feel the same way about your pets. I mean, these are important parts parts of your family and to watch them be killed by this incident and just to hand wave away, Oh it's safe now and don't worry about it. It's just it's a disgrace. It's an absolute betrayal. And you know, there's a couple other things to say about this. One is we now, with this horrific accident, have kind of tracked where the corruption started. You know, back in the year the Obama administration, at least with

regards to this specific tale. Okay, the Obama administration wanted to institute more safety regulations. That was great, but then industry comes in to sort of curtail and undermine what the NTSB had said what the restriction should ultimately be. So there's a curtailing of the initial ambition under the Obama administration be more industry friendly. Under the Trump administration, you see that go even further. They roll back some of the REGs that were put in place in the

Obama administration. Under the Biden administration, you actually see rail workers really rising up saying calling attention to major potential safety issues, not only in terms of their own lives, but in terms of the potential impacts on these communities. And you see a bipartisan effort, but led by Democrats to crush this movement and silence their warnings and side

ultimately with the railroad executives and the shareholders. And you also see they don't do anything to put back in place the regulations that had been curtailed by Obama and rolled back by Trump. So you can see this tale of how industry shaped the shape the landscape to make it friendly for them. But what you realize in looking at this is god, how many other instances throughout our country, you know, where this is going on, where whether it's big oil or big chemicals, or big pharma or big

agg or whatever. I mean, this is happening every single day with our government and the people who are supposed to be keeping us safe, who are more interested about you know, campaign contribution or more interested in what their next job is going to be aft they leave the EPA or whatever their agency they're at, instead of making

sure that people are kept safe today. And I think for you know, broader picture zooming out from Ohio, that's what is so incredibly incredibly troubling about this story is because you realize that this is really just scratching the surface of the way that the whole system has been rigged to generate profits for a few over the health

and safety of communities across the country. And by the way, final thought on this, that's why the media is I think the same biggest problem in American politics because business, industry government can't get away with that level of collusion when you have a healthy fourth estate that's going forth

the state. And so when people kind of roll their eyes about media bashing, actually Without a strong media, you don't get this level of corruption and collusion because the media creates an incentive for the industry and the government partner with the industry not to behave badly. So to your point about where we might know this, where we might not know this is happening. What we didn't know this was happening for years because the corporate press wasn't

covering it. I mean, seriously, we have no idea how many other places in the like you were saying, whether it's big a big pharma. Where should media be looking right now to create disincentives for people to behave badly and to give public the public information they need to vote wisely, to shop wisely, all of these different things.

When you don't have that, you don't have a functioning system. Yeah, and Insteady of the New York Times literally running cover for the government and saying that anyone who questions them is a whack job, is outrageous. We want to stay with this story. We've got Rich mcchey is a fantastic investigative reporter. He's with News Nation now. He is on the ground in East Palestine. Let's get to it. Rich, is so great to see you welcome. Hey, thanks for

having me on. Good to see you. Yeah, our pleasure. So you've been there on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio, just give us a sense of how residents are feeling and what you're hearing from them. Residents are angry, you know, they feel like the people that I've spoken to at least feel like they've been forgotten. They you know, here we are, we're approaching three weeks and they say help

is finally just coming. And you know, walking around and talking to folks here, there's a lot of talk that like Fema is here and people are here and like, but but that's not we haven't seen that. There's people hanging out water in townspeople helping town, the other people in town. But like in terms of actual help, it's it's not everywhere, not like a normal disaster, you know, setting like where you go in and you see all

these all these stations and people helping. I'm outside of a church right now where they're just opening this morning a health clinic and people are starting to file in nurses and toxicologists, and then apparently there's twenty at least twenty people signed up to come here this morning and get themselves checked out. So it's you know, the residents I've talked to you are angry. They say they're just

not getting helped, their homes are not getting tested. They are saying, this is Norfolks, so other is handling this the wrong way and they need help. Well, on that note, Rich, you've been tweeting us some really I think disturbing images. We have one that we can put up on the street and the screen here just tracking what people are saying the effects this may have had on their bodies.

It's it's very early to know exactly the extent of all of that, but can you share with us more, you know, examples like this, what are you hearing about people's health? What examples have you encountered of how this might have affected people's health? You know, I went to, uh, there's a church set up where Norfolk Southern is set up to kind of try and reimburse people for hotels and assistants like that, and I went there to interview

people on that and one guy stopped me. He's like, listen, his eyes were bloodshot and red, and like He's like, I my eyes feel like they're going to pop out of my head. He's like every time I sneeze, it's like bloody. He's like, I'm like, have you gone to the hospitals? Had a time? We don't have time to do this. So I interviewed this other woman last week. She called me and she said, look, I just went

back to my house. They'd been a vacuu that I just went back to my house to move something around. And she's like, I was there for thirty minutes. And I walked and I went to go take a shower, and that's the picture that you that you should that you have. Her face and her neck was all covered in rashes. And so I went over there and she asked me if I wanted to go into that part of the house that where she feels like she was exposed.

I was like, I'm not going in there, Like, nobody's tested there, nobody knows what's residing in It was a low level part of the house where she was in the direct line of the smoke the night that they kind of did the chemical release. So a lot of these houses have not been tested. Nobody really knows what is actually in them and if their houses are safe.

There's just a lot of questions you had. I think an important story for News Nation about how East Palestine residents were asked by Norfolk Southern to sign an indemnity form, a whole harmless form. Your lead here, you say, just weeks after a training caring toxic chemicals derailed these Palestine, Ohio. Some residents say they're being asked to sign contracts they

fear could prevent them from suing later on. So basically Norfolk Southern here trying to do a little cya and convince residents to sign this contract that could prevent them from suing the company. What does the companies line on this? And what are residents saying about it? So the residents say,

like we spokes do say. Initially they came around, they said we want to test your house, and they said, well, who's this And it was like apparently the EPA was there, but representatives like aligned with Norfolk Southern were there, and so in order to have your house tested, you had to sign this form. And one woman who was you know, kind of smart legally and said, I'm not signing this form.

What is this? Can I have it? And it wouldn't give it sor so she took a picture, she gave it to me and basically it's a whole harmless agreement saying you, if you agree to this testing, you'll hold us harmless as we enter your property and for any like basically future litigation. We asked Norfolk Southern about this and they said, no, some of those were sent out by mistake. Those that language indemnity language should not have

been included going forward. It was a mistake. And so they basically said it was a mistake and any any people who did sign this will have not waived their right to future litigation. So you just touched on something really interesting is this was mistakenly sent out by the state, et cetera, et cetera. And we know the Ohio EPA, as you mentioned earlier, and FEMA. There are people who are down there at least attempting to look like they're

helping out, and maybe helping out to some extent. But when you're talking to people rich you mentioned they're frustrated at Norfolk Southern. Are they also frustrated at the government. Are they frustrated at the governor? Are they frustrated at the EPA? What are people sentiments towards their own government right now? I think they're frustrated at everybody. They're they're like, you know, one gentleman I interviewed called me this morning and asked me, like, where do I go for this

health screen? How do I how do I get tested? There's just there's not a really centralized kind of blast out to this community, like here's where they can go for your health screenings, here's where you can go to for this. Like they're having to hunt and gather this information in a way that when you kind of cover other disasters or tornado rips through a town, it's all centralized and people have access to this information. Here, it doesn't feel like that to me, that's my impression. And

people are upset. They're upset at the governor, they're upset at the EPA. They're just like this is totally bungled from the start, and here we are three weeks later and we're kind of in the same scenario. These people are like, look, the only people that have come to

my house are the mailman. So it's pappling and finally Rich Early on in this crisis, one of your colleagues at News Nation was trying to do his job and ended up getting arrested during a press conference that Mike DeWine, Governor, was giving at that time. Have you had any trouble or roadblocks to doing your job as a journalist while you're on the ground there. I can't say that I have since that, you know, look the video speak for itself on that with Evan and my colleague, I think

you handled himself well. From my experience here in town, No, I've been. There's been no hindrances. There's been nothing to say that I can't continue my job, although we are you know, we have our guard up because of what happened. Yeah, absolutely, well, Rich, thank you for spending some time with us today, and most importantly, thank you so much for being there on the ground, dooing real reporting about exactly what is going on.

Thank you appreciate having me on our pleasure today. Tuesday, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in a major case. It's called Gonzales. The Gonzalez and at stake is Section two thirty itself. You've probably heard a lot about Section two thirty in recent years. It basically shields internet companies from liability for harmful content that gets posted on their platform.

Now here's the Washington Post's quick summary of the case quote in November twenty fifteen, three rifle wielding isis gunman open fire at a restaurant in Paris, killing twenty three year old Nohemi Gonzalez, a college exchange student. Almost eight years later, her family is seeking justice for her death, targeting not the gunman but the tech giant YouTube, in

a landmark case that could shift the foundations of internet law. Now, Chris, So, there is something important and about Section two thirty I think to recognize, which is that a lot of these big tech giants at this point, Facebook, for instance, has been running ads like in axios for a year saying we're okay with Section two thirty reform because they now know that they have the financial resources to kind of handle it. They've had a long time to figure out

where to go with it. There's no question it would hurt them, but they're also sort of prepared for what might happen with Section two thirty now, any regulatory changes happening through a court decision. On the other hand, there's nothing they can do to lobby the Supreme Court. There's really nothing that they can do to predict what might come out of this case, what might come out of the arguments. The arguments today should give us some indication

of how this case will unfold. Obviously, it's a pretty business friendly Supreme Court, so Google has that going for it. But Section two thirty. Clarence Thomas has come out against basically Section two thirty. He said that maybe we should have a different approach, We should maybe be treating them

like common carriers. These tech giants, like common carriers Google, Facebook, Twitter, they want in general to not be considered publishers, even though they do all kinds of publishing, whether it's on the search engine itself, whether it's through YouTube. What they're doing fundamentally is publishing, and Section two thirty allows them to do that without the liabilities that news outlets have

when they publish hard, full information. This is a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating case because we're talking about life and death right, well, we're also it's also one of these weird, interesting horseshoe issues because there's a critique of Section two thirty from the right, and there's a critique of Section two thirty

from the left. Oftentimes the right focuses on and I think these concerns, by the way, are justified on the ability of platforms like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or Google to discriminate against creators and against content based on political ideology. The reality is they have cart blotch to do whatever they want with their recommendation algorithms. And so the critique from a lot of liberals and democrats is that they aren't doing enough to combat harmful content, misinformation, etc. Etc.

And so the context here in terms of when this little provision was originally enacted, this was in the early days of the Internet. It was kind of before these companies had become gigantic monopolies. It was before recommendation algorithms began to drive literally everything in terms of content distribution

on the web, really before social media too correct. So this was really more they were thinking about these message boards for those of you who are old like me, like this is where you just post and it's there, and somebody else posts and it's there. And so they really were aimed more at a concern that if these companies had total liability as publishers placed on their heads, then it would stifle innovation. I think those concerns, by

the way, we're justified. And in the wake of this provision being enacted, there was, in fact an explosion of innovation, but it also then enabled the giant monopolization of the entire tech sector space. And so now you have critics of Section two thirty from both the left and the right, who are saying this should not have been interpreted as

carte blanche. You can do whatever you want. You can manipulate this algorithm however you want and serve up whatever content you want and push whatever content you want without having any sort of responsibility as a publisher. So the question I think that's in front of the Supreme Court as I understand it, is are there any limiting principles here? And basically what you know what some people who have

been thinking about this and proposing reforms. One direction you could go is, okay, there's still an opportunity to be held harmless of the type of content that's posted on your platform. I think that, you know, under certain circumstances, that makes a lot of sense. But you have to meet certain guidelines. You have to be regular, you have to meet certain standards that we want in terms of having a neutral platform that serves as really kind of the a public utility at this point in terms of

how we communicate with one another. So that's what's at stake here. I have no idea what this court is going to ultimately find, if they courtailed us at all, if they send it back to Congress. I really don't know what direction this will ultimately go in, but the implications of it could be hugely profound. Yes, and I'm glad this is going to be. I mean, it's actually hard to overstate how important this is the oral arguments today, because we're really going to get a glimpse into how

justices are grappling with these huge questions. And one thing that our government has struggled with in the past, understandably so, is that new technologies for older generations it's harder to sort of be in full contact with and understand exactly how profoundly they have changed human existence if they're not as central to your existence because you grew up without them and you don't sort of have the level of

tech fluency. So I'm really curious about that. But on the other hand, this is fundamentally about publishing, and that the insight into how the Court is thinking about publishing. Clarence Thomas in particular, not the most vocal questioner, but someone who has said the public utility point that you made common carrier, the common carrier framework, treating these companies more like phone companies than their own little independent businesses

is probably the best way to go. So I would expect to hear that argument fleshed out from who I considered one of the most important legal thinkers. I mean, whether or not you agree with him, he definitely is. So this is a huge day. This is really big implications.

And this is more from the Washington Post. They say the gonzaz family's lawyers say that applying Section two thirty two algorithmic recommendations incentivizes promoting harmful content and that it denies victims an opportunity to seek redress when they can show those recommendations caused injuries or even death. And that's the publisher point that you're making this argument about how they serve up things with their algorithms. They also put

headlines on news stories. They decide which news stories to promote in which stories not to promote. That is a huge job if people have ever worked in news, even if you haven't, one of the biggest things that people don't see behind the scenes is headline writing. It is a huge part of publishing. Story selection is a huge part of publishing, and from the perspective of journalists, these

companies are doing all of that. They just don't have any of the liabilities that other journalists have, and they act like it's not journalism, so they don't take it seriously. They just serve up the dumbest stuff, and they well, what they serve is whatever is going to keep you agitated and staring at their platform the longest, so that they can serve up the ads that are the real core of the business model. It's a slot machine, it is.

And so I mean, if you think about it and you ask yourself, okay, should there be any limiting principle on section two thirty, imagine a theoretical platform where the recommendation algorithm is tuned so that the only stories that get amplified and recommended and served to people are left wing stories. It's only about, you know, whatever is going on. Everything that's on the right is, you know, is sort of hidden. It's not banned or totally censored, although they

could do that as well. And right now, the idea is it doesn't matter. You're still not a publisher. You still have no liability, or imagine it the other direction, where you recommendation algorithm is designed so that it only pumps and promotes right wing content about how great Trump is or whatever is going on there right pizza Gate or QAnon, whatever's hot at the moment. Can you really look at that with a straight face and say, oh, these are just you know, neutral common carrier platform. No,

you can't, you can't. And so then the question becomes, Okay, what is the limiting principle? What are the rules you have to follow? What is the business model that you have to engage in in order to get the benefit of what is based a giant gift and giveaway to

these companies. So I think that most people would look at the situation and say, you know, if you think about Fox News versus MSNBC, part of the way that they present their very one sided views of the world is through the type of commentators they have on the opinion sayespros, et cetera. But a big part of how they do it is through story selection. That's like their own recommendation algorithm. What are they going to promote as like the biggest problems in the world. What are they

just not going to talk about. On Fox, you're going to get a lot of stories about, Oh, there's a crime spike, there's an immigrant caravan, there's government spending gone wild. Whatever. They're going to have their list, and if you're just consuming their content, the impression you're getting of the world is these are the core issues, these are the big

things going on in society. If you're watching MSNBC, you're being presented a very different slate of issues to focus on as like the biggest threats to society, the most important issues ultimately in the world. That story selection is really really critical to their propaganda efforts. And so we've basically said that social media companies can do the same thing.

They can have these recommendation algorithms that there are their own form of story selection that are dramatically much more so than cable news at this point, shaping the way people perceive the world and yet be totally held harmless for any harms that come to pass from those choices that they're ultimately making. And I think most people would look at that and say, that's really that's ridiculous. Yes, in my opinion, there should be an availability of you know,

section two thirty where you can avoid liability. I believe in free speech. I believe in people being able to post all kinds of content. But when you get into the manipulation of what gets seen and what doesn't, that's I think where you run into a problem where Okay, now you really are serving as a publisher and not just sort of a neutral platform. Well, and they've also

entered the fact checking space, and that's hugely, hugely important. Again, it's another act of journalism, and they try try to outsource it to journalistic outlets, nonsense fact checking outlets that have so little credibility except for the fact that Facebook contracts with them or whatever, and that's their kind of fig leaf to get away with this. So they're absolutely acting as publishers, there's no question about it. This case is huge, especially because we also, as we mentioned these

the Gonzales family wants opportunities to seek redress. They're saying those opportunities don't exist properly because of Section two thirty. Tech has come to terms with the fact that maybe they should be lobbying for Section two thirty reform because it hurts any potential competitors to the extent that it's even possible to compete with them way more. They can shape what the legislation would look like, they can lobby to make it friendly to them, and they can weather

the regulatory burden way better than any potential competitors can. So, but you can't do that in the court. You can't shape the regulation that might come out of the Supreme Court. So just a fascinating, fascinating day and a really important one for the future of the Internet, and not one that I think many people are paying attention to, but it is unfolding today to day here in Washington. Yeah. At the same time, there is some other sort of

media news that I think is significant. I mean Project Veritas. Whatever you think of them, which I have a lot of mixed feelings about them, They've been really important in terms of you know, political sort of right leaning or right wing investigations. They certainly have huge cultural impact. Anytime they drop one of their videos, it's major, major, It gets a lot of attention on social media, whether the mainstream news covers it or not. And James O'Keefe is

the founder of Project Veritas. He has been their figurehead. He is really he is this entity and now he is officially out Charlie Kirk actually had the kind of broke this news a little bit, got a little bit the inside scoop on the fact he was stepping down or be even forced out as CEO. Let's take a listen to a little bit though, of what James himself

had to say about it. A board member reached out to one of our journalists and stated, quote, you get a raise if there was a restructure without James O'Keeffe at Project Barreitas. I have a copy of the text message and I'll give it to all of you. I've redacted the name of the journalists. The board member deleted the message, but not before our journalist took screenshots. So I'm announcing to you all that today on President's Day,

unpacking up my personal belongings. I don't have the answers to why they've been doing this or why board members were going directly to employees to collect grievances. So you will recall we reported here and others covered as well, that there were some rumors this may ultimately come to pass. There were a lot of which you get from this that little stippit, as well a lot of internal grievances. James O'Keeffe, I think comes off as a very difficult boss.

It's probably the diplomatic way to put it, very difficult person to work for. There were reports that like he was hungry and about it. He stole some like eight month pregnant lady sandwich, things of that nature. A lot of accounts of him, you know, really seeking to humiliate publicly humiliate his staff members in front of other staffers. Some donors very displeased with some of his behavior and choices.

And one thing that caught our attention, and I think a lot of people's attention is going to put this up on the screen. Apparently they acknowledged Project Veritas acknowledged improperly giving James O'Keefe twenty thousand dollars in excess benefits to pay for staff members to accompany him to Virginia as he performed a lead role in the production of

the musical Oklahoma. Surprising one there theater kid, theater kid gone off the rails, And there were also some reports in the Daily Beast here that you know, people were like the donors think that this theater stuff is weird in a distraction, et cetera. So I don't know all the ins and outs of exactly what was going on there, but it seems like a lot of staff member drama. You know, I said it the top. I have mixed

feelings about Project Veritas. I mean, I mostly think that they are they have done themselves a disservice by you know, they've gotten caught selectively editing things, making people sound like they're saying totally the opposite of what they're saying. And

the fact that they're a partisan outfit. That doesn't necessarily bother me because there are plenty of investigations of Democrats that deserve to be done or you know, left ideas or thinkers or what out institutions whatever, Like that's all fine. I don't have an issue with that. But they really went above and beyond to sort of manipulate these videos to give the most negative impression and at times completely

false and misleading impression. In instance, certain instances they've had, you know, really impactful revelations like Amy Roebach on Jeffrey Epstein in the fact that her news outlet like held a story on it because they wanted to be access and maintain access to the royal family. Like that was very impactful. It was real journalism, but oftentimes they have gone too far in the direction of just right manufacturing things and propaganda, so that when they put something out

like you can't trust what they're ultimately revealing. So that's my gripe with them. I'm sure James O'Keeffe is a difficult person to work with, but it is kind of an end of an era because he really is this organization. I think without him, I can't imagine that they amount

to much. I'll imagine. I imagine that he will continue doing exactly what he was doing at Project Veritas, just in another new organization, right different name, because to your point, it is him, like James o'keef is Project Veritized, and so wherever James O'Keefe goes, it'll be Project Veritas, but just with a different name and maybe a different board in different resources. But I think two things can be true. First, it can be absolutely true that he is eccentric and

very difficult to work for. And it can also be true that his board used that as an excuse to oust him for some reason. We don't totally have a good idea, weut Yeah, he has invoked the fact that this is all coming to pass right after the big Pfizer revelation video. Do you remember the one where he was, Yeah, he's kind of invoked. He said, this is our biggest investigation of all time. So it's not a coincidence that

this is happening. This is all unfolding right now. I want to bring up maybe maybe right, we don't know, we don't know, And I want to bring up a tweet though. I thought it was really interesting from Ben Dominic who said James O'Keefe out at Project Veritas as yet another example of how right media and the donor class have a deep intolerance for creative genius. If Andrew Breibert had lived, they'd have found a way to ditch him.

To conservative media is a wash with medium talent who pay their bills, unforgettable churn that changes nothing and has a half life measured in hours. Creatives rise up, make a lot of noise, give a lot of enemies, thin get taken out it by their own Then donors turned to the mids. I think it's an interesting point because, especially coming from somebody in sort of conservative media, there

is you know, the donor class is different. It's not you don't have any like Hollywood people in the conservative donor class. You don't have many art artistic people in the conservative donor class. And I don't think I would go so far as to say James o'keef is a creative genius. And I do think there is a different level of tolerance for that level of activism. And I you know, I think journalism can be activism, but I think he leaned way more heavily on the side of

activism than journalism. Yeah, I mean, I think I buy

that he's creative, you know, but does in Oklahoma? I guess, Like I said, just to reiterate, I don't think that he did himself any favors by leaning so heavily in the direction of manipulation and propaganda, because he could have had a lot more impact with what he put out if they played it a little more straight and didn't edit the videos deceptively and ultimately get caught in things of that nature, so that when you do put out something that is legit and real and deserves news coverage,

it becomes very easy for everyone to dismiss it as just more James o'keef project veritas propaganda. And I feel the same way. I mean, on the Fizer. You guys very reluctant to cover that because I don't know. I don't know who this dude is that they interviewed. I don't know how they edit it. I don't know what that like given his track record. Yeah, it makes me very very wary of trusting what they're ultimately putting out

to the public. And you know, I'm someone who is very open to, you know, uncomfortable conversations exposing companies like Pfizer, Like I have no issue with any of that. We try to do that here all the time. But when you've made proven yourself to be so untrustworthy so many times, it gives your ideological adversaries very easy grounds to just dismiss out of hand everything you ultimately put out. And the Fizer investigation is also a really good example of that.

In the same way o'keef season is an example of

sort of the pinnacle of Project Veritasa's work. It's also a great example of how easy it was for the media completely to dismiss it and not cover it, and if they did cover it, only cover it to the extent that they're almost like mocking O'Keefe and criticizing O'Keefe, and there is a different world in which that investigation happens and has more credibility because James O'Keefe, you know, in the thirteen years since he founded Project Veritas, all

the way back in the Obama years twenty ten, you know, was putting They do sometimes dump the raw footage out, but not all the time, and we have seen that go wrong in the past. And so there is a world in which they're doing these investigations just dumping raw video out and everyone can sort of judge for themselves, and they get Pfizer in an impossible situation where they can't wriggle out of the media coverage because other people take it and run with it. But that's not the

world that we live in. Ye, it's not the world James o'keeff created. Yeah, absolutely, I have some more news from that side of the aisle. You want to set this one up, Emily, Yeah, absolutely, Well. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green has called for a national divorce using that exact language. She was sort of mocked for this tweet yesterday. This is the quote, we need a national divorce. We need to separate by red state and blue states and shrink

of the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this from the sick. It's like Trump Bratten. Many people are saying in this sick and discussing woke culture issues, shoved down our throats to the Democrats, traitorous America, last policies, we are done. We are done, all right. So obviously somebody with now as much clout in the Republican Party as Marjorie Taylor Green actually does have. You know, she

is in a position right now. I wouldn't have predicted this maybe a couple of years ago, but she is in a position right now where she does genuinely have some clout in the Republican Party. And here she is calling outright for a national divorce. That's why we're covering it here because it is worth talking about. There have been on the right, especially, some rumblings of this. There always are, by the way, you probably remember this, like

going back years, there's always that conversation. There's an interesting there's an interesting point to be made about the fact that we have sort of come apart, to borrow the language from the book, coming apart in socioeconomic ways, and that people who are at very different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum are basically living in different worlds within our own country at this point. But that said, Marjor Tailler

Green's argument falls apart because of her own state. What do you do with Georgia, right, Seriously, you live in a blue state exactly exactly, And are your neighbors who you might get along with fine and who voted for Warnock or who voted for us off? What do you think of them? Do you think they should live in a different country? Do you think that they do live

in a different country? And it's just it hasn't been formally determined at this point, and so I think it's an opportunity, I think to really consider the impracticality, not just I don't mean that like logistically, just like actually philosophically, it makes no sense. It's an incoherent kind of idea. I mean, there's a few things to say about this.

To me, it feels like a sort of of throwing up of your hands, an abandonment of any idea of a democratic, small d democratic nation where Okay, you disagree with whatever the Biden administration's doing, there's going to be another election, Like that's the whole idea is Okay, we have this push and pull, and yeah, the country has

different ideas about exactly how we should accomplish it. That's why we have a democracy where you appoint representatives and where you elect representatives, and where you run on a platform and you make your case for your ideas. That made the best ideas win. That's the whole idea of

what we're doing here. That's number one. Number two is I mean, part of why I wanted to cover this, because we don't cover the utterances of Marjorie Taylor Green all that often on this show, is because it's really the polar opposite of the view of the country that we believe in and are trying to promote with this show. I mean, you know, I'm sitting here with you. We have some different ideas about things sober and have some different ideas about things and in no world am I

like this is your reconcile. We must get a national divorce. And I think that the reason the show, I think has been successful is because that is much more reflective of how people actually live in their normal lives than this like bizarrely fringe ultra online take of Marjorie Taylor Green. It is ultra online. It's only if you're like the old Okay, she says, Like everybody I talk to you says this, Are you only talking to the worst people

on Twitter? Because that's what the view of the world you would get is if you spend way too much time down a rabbit hole on like Twitter or Getter or true Social or par or whatever your social media of choice happens to be. But if you're actually like existing in the world and living with your neighbors, many of whom may have different ideologies and vote for different politicians than you, like, this is not the experience of the country that most people have on a day to

day basis. I live in Accounting that is quite conservative and has been for a long time. Voted for Donald Trump. I mean, this is where I was born and raised. And again, at no moment have I been like, this is irreconcilable. We need to give up on democracy and just split at you know, split at the seams. It's so it's a very I think it's a very sad

and very pessimistic view of the country. Ultimately, yeah, and again it is true that we are having a hard time agreeing on like, very very very fundamental questions about, for instance, what is gender, what is truth, what is disinformation? What is democracy? We actually are having a hard time coming to terms with those questions. That is not unprecedented in American history. We have had a very hard time

determining the value of human beings. There are people who disagreed on that perhaps the most fundamental question in human existence in this country. And that's not to say that we've handled it perfectly. It's not to say that everything is just peachy and that the United States is the perfect example of how to sort of work through these questions.

But it is to say, the whole point of what we do, as opposed to what other countries have done in human history, is work through these things and use this tool of constitutional democracy to create a more peaceful existence to the best of our ability. Best of our ability is not always going to be perfect, and it is going to be sadly tragic, violent, all of those things. Human existence is tragic and violent in all of those things. But we're working towards a better form of it. And

to give up on that, yeah, that's really sad. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of people out there who like this is treasons whatever. She can say what she wants to say, but I do think it's kind of a I would say that the sentiment at the core of it is kind of anti American because of exactly the reasons that you're laying out. It goes against the core of the best notions of what America is supposed to be. Not that we've lived up to it,

not that we live up to it today. But again, I just I find the comments profoundly sad that you would just sort of like give up on the country in this way. And I wasn't the only one. There were lots of Republicans who were not impressed with what she had to say. Here, this Spencer Cox, who is the governor of Utah, Republican in case you are surprised by that in Utah, obviously it's a Republican And what he said in response to this is this rhetoric. We

can put this up on the screen. Media. I had had a kind of round up of some of the criticism here. They say she was roundly condemned after calling for a national divorce on Twitter. Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, said this rhetoric is destructive and wrong and honestly evil. We don't need a divert force. We need marriage counseling, and we need elected leaders that don't profit by tearing us apart. We can disagree without hate. Healthy

conflict was critical to our nations founding and survival. He has a little Reagan quote there, But then I liked what he said here. He said that he doesn't mean just civility and kindness, although we definitely need more of that too. I mean passionate disagreement that does not destroy our souls and our country. Healthy conflict is good and foundational, but we must be Americans first, in partisans second or last.

And I like the way he phrased that because sometimes these things get just like bound up in decorum and civility politics, which I think is silly. There should be fierce debates, it should be raw, it should be passionate. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But you know the idea that, oh, we're just going to give up on the other half of the country that disagrees with me, frankly,

I think it's disgusting. No, And that's such an important distinction because the nonsense respectability theater that our politicians want to drag us into which is like, you can't how dare you say anything that so critical of the American media or the American government, or you can't criticize our institutions because you're going to sow institutional distrust. Well, first of all, our institutions deserve to be distrusted, and so

that's I think a distraction. But we should be able to For instance, I have this longstanding disagreement with most people when they look at the John Stewart clip of him laying into Tucker Carlson and Paul Bagala on Crossfire. Yeah, I forget what year, it was, like two thousand and

four or somewhere around there, somewhere in there. I don't think that was a great moment because I think what we lose when we take away that sort of public example of debate, heated debate, intense debate, but where you have two representatives and it's important that they do actually represent both sides of the argument and they do it well. Butting heads in public on television. I think that's a cathartic and important thing for Americans to be able to

do and for Americans to be able to see. It's part of why this show works so well, and that even Sager have always worked so well. It's because people do need to be able to see that, because we

can all do that with each other. And when you lose that, and when the corporate press, as they do now, tries to push us away from that and tries to say, no, purveyors of disinformation or hate or whatever deserve to breathe the same oxygen in our green rooms, yeah, or get any room in our pages, then you're getting This is how you set the stage for the national divorce conversation, because people no longer think they can talk through these

things because they don't see it happening. Yeah, And it's about I can't control these other people, so I just have to. Like it's an almost totalitarian instinct. Honestly. On the John Stewart point, I think what people are reacting to is how inauthentic that particular debate, How is just theater cartoonish, cartoonish exactly, But the core point of having people disagree and like genuinely going at it and battling it out, I think that's the core of what we

should all be about, all right. On that note, Yeah, on that note, we want to talk about a story that's sort of in a slow motion train wreck. Over the course of the last week, huge revelations from Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News. We have learned, because of some of the disclosures in this lawsuit, that Tucker Carls and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram were on a group text. First of all, Big News, Yeah, that's true us. You never know how these people feel about each other behind

the scenes, and might hate each other's guts. That's kind of common. Actually. Well, in fact, we find out through the revelations in this lawsuit that they were talking about their colleagues. They were talking about not just Sidney Powell, not just Rudy Giuliani, but also other hosts, including Neil Cavudo. They were talking about Jackie Heinrich, who had taken the step.

This is probably the revelation from the filings that has gotten the most I would say airtime is that they were concerned when Jackie Heinrich sort of went into a correct fact check of something Donald Trump said about voting machines or something like that fact checked him. They were upset because they were saying privately, our viewers are so few they're going to flee to an alternative source like Newsmax. This is in the wake of that Chris stiwald decision

to call Arizona really early. That just infuriated many many Trump supporters, many many Fox News viewers and did send them actually away from Fox News at least for a period of time to places like Newsmax. And they were talking behind the scenes and saying basically like this is killing the network stock, this is a problem. They were also saying some things about Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. As I've mentioned, this is Laura Ingram quote, Sidney is

a complete not No one will work with her. Dido with Rudy. This is from Tucker. Sidney Powell is lying by by way, I caught her. It's insane. I think it's really important to note that Tucker actually did have Sidney Powell on and gave her a like he gave her a tough interview at the time, and was actually pretty publicly skeptical of Sidney Powell. Tucker also texts our viewers are good people and they believe it, which is

really interesting. Talking about the lies surrounding the twenty twenty election, So Crystal, there's just it's an overwhelming, I think amount of information, like an info dump that just boggles the mind.

But what do you make of it? Well, and this comes in the context of a dominion lawsuit, which you know, this is part of the discovery process where they're trying to show like these people knew that this stuff was all garbage and they still promoted it because they have a very high bar to meet in terms of defamation. I have no ideam not a legal analyst, but you know,

oftentimes it's very difficult to meet that bar. But I think the picture that emerges is of a group of people who unsurprisingly are most concerned about their ratings, the stock price, and the business bottom line. Like that's clearly their priority above and beyond you know, Karen, concern for their audience, Karen, concern for the truth or their own integrity or anything else you might come up with. The bottom line was the bottom line, which you know, that's

not surprising. That's the way that CNN operates, That's the way i'm that's that is definitionally what corporate media is all about, right, And so I think that's one takeaway, and just to underscore that with regards to trying to get this woman fired. I don't know how do you know her, Jackie, not personally. She's a white House. Okay, so I don't know anything about her. But anyway, Carlson

told Hannity about Jackie Heinrich, please get her fired. Seriously, what the F I'm actually shocked this is with regards to some tweet she sent out fact checking Trump. It needs to stop immediately, Like tonight, it's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke. Tucker added, I just went crazy on need over it. Hannity said, he I don't know who it is. He had quote already sent to Suzanne with a really Suzanne's got being the person who runs Fox News. He then added, I'm

three strikes, wall is shit. Debate, Election night a disaster now this BS Nope, not gonna fly. Did I mention? Kavudo? And they were all very concerned about, you know what the time like Newsmax and let's thea oan. They were like willing to go harder into the election conspiracies, and there was a sense of betrayal among some of the Fox News watching audience that they had called Arizona early and that they had called the election for Joe Biden

instead of engaging with all of this stuff. And there was also a pivot point that came out with regards to Suzanne Scott, where Rupert Murdoch had initially been trying to tamp down some of the conspiracy indulgence that was happening on the network. He put out in one of his papers like an editorial and made sure that it got widely distributed at the network. That was the day that it gets called for that the network calls the

election officially for Biden. Ratings fall off a cliff, and there's messages from Suzanne Scott to that effect of like, well, this was terrible in a disaster, and after that they didn't really try to tamp down any of the speculations. So you also see from the highest levels how these were all business decisions, and again they didn't really care about like what was accurate or what they should be presenting to their audience. They no longer had control of

the beast. They were riding the wave of what people already thought. So I think it also shows them as a lot more impotent than they are sometimes portrayed, which becomes relevant as you look at now like the Dessanta's Trump matchup Fox News, and all the Murdock properties are clearly on team DeSantis, and they've been doing what they can to promote him, pump him up. That New York Post interview with Rod DeSantis, there's just like the most

embarrassing puff piece I've ever seen from Selena Zito. But how much will that really have an impact when clearly like they're not fully in control of what's going on here. Yeah, and again, like they actually canceled an episode of Janine Piro's show because they're of what the guests were going to say about the election. And so you see that they are trying. They are trying because they're using words like myth there that's from Rupert Murdoch. Actually, like that's

a word that Rupert Murdoch himself used. One of the biggest things I thought actually to come out of this was Rupert Murdoch saying if we go all in on Arizona coverage that it might help the network or it sounded like even he wanted to kind of help Trump in Arizona coverage. And so that's interesting because you see Rupert Rupert Murdoch himself directly weighing in on editorial decisions at Fox News. That's a good insight into the network's operation,

especially on sensitive stories like this. But I think there's a there's a way to look at it in which, to your point, Fox is trying to control the beast. They're trying to control lou Dabs, They're trying to control Janine Piro, They're trying to rein in something that I mean, in some extent, did they help foment the voting stuff is tough because they obviously didn't with Trump? Or are these opinion hosts We're mostly not talking about news hosts.

We're mostly talking about their opinion hosts. They're upset internally with Trump. And that's a huge question, by the way, in the conservative movement in general, It's like, how much is it worth it to rebut everything that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth when the rest of the media exists to do exactly that and is going to spend every breath that they have rebutting everything that comes out of Trump's mouth. So what is the sort of cost

benefit to fact checking everything Trump said? Like the Jackie Heinrich tweet, when all it does is sort of push your audience away and repeat what the rest of the media is doing. That is a huge question that people debate all the time, especially behind the scenes in the conservative movement. And I think that is a fair question to debate. What I don't think is fair to debate. And I know you, I'm sure you know people like this. I know people like this Zogerno's, people like this who

knew what they were saying was garbage. They felt like their career and their paycheck dependent on saying it. Anyway, I don't think there is any greater contempt that you can show for a group of people and for your audience than to knowingly lie to them. I think that is the greatest form of contempt that you can show for somebody, to think that they're dumb enough that you can lie to them and just feed them what you know, you think they want to hear, and that that's what

your job is. So there were a bunch of other little revelations we can put up here. Good to E three. We can show some of these specific quotes just so you get a sense of a little bit. This is uh Will Summer, who was with the is with the Daily beast Tucker of how Trump described him as a demonic force, a destroyer, but quote, He's not going to destroy us. He also said, uh, we are not going to follow them. What Trump's good at is destroying things.

He's the undisputed world champions that he could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. So Tucker's kind of true feelings about Trump and what he's all about come out there. Let's kind of put this next one up on the screen. He also is freaking out after the election, hearing from anger viewers, worrying that Fox calling Arizona for Biden will kill his golden goose. That's the characterization of Will Summer, while also afraid of quote effing bitch, Sidney

Palell has gone too far. He said directly that he told his producer Sidney Powell is lying, effing bitch. That's the quote. There. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. You've got Fox brass and top hosts really not impressed with Rudy Giuliani. Hannity called him an insane person. Laura Ingram said he's such an idiot. Murdoch said really crazy stuff. So you kind of get the sense of the behind the scenes characterization, and they fought hard to, by the way, to keep these messages

from coming out. And I think it was a New York Times lawsuit that ultimately led to them lifting the seal so that we all have access to this one last piece. Put this up on the screen, because this again gets to like the business model, and I think this is really important, Like whatever side of the political spectrum you are on, the business model is the thing driving all of the news and coverage at all three of the cable news networks. They are a business first.

And so Lindell had made some negative comments about Fox over on Newsmax, and Lindell is not only like an important guest for Fox, but much more importantly, he spends

a lot of money advertising on their network. And so the Fox's executives after we made those comments, they exchanged worried emails about alienating him, and then they sent him a gift along with a handwritten note from Suzanne Scott, and the filing goes on to say that they had a strong motive to welcome him back on air and avoid any sort of conflicts because of the advertising dollars

that he was shipping to the network. Well, and imagine what this does to their relationship now, and imagine what is doing a lot of relationships at Fox News right now as this entire story has unfolded. And the probably most contentious point, or the one that probably the least popular with other people that I would make is Tucker I think emerges from this looking like somebody who was saying Donald Trump is being disrespectful to his own voters, and he was the one that like publicly did grill

Sidney Powell, and he was trying. I think it's interesting that he's ended up getting so much of the heat because he is the top host at Fox that it's like all coming on him. Media hates like few people more than Tucker Carlson, so he's getting a lot of

the flak for this. But it is an interesting like that in this broader context, at the point you made about like trying to then control the beast is a really really important one, and we are going to see Fox News continue grappling with that post, all of them knowing what each other, what they're saying about each other in this really difficult like six month period for them. Yeah. One, we have one more Tucker piece of news here that

just came out yesterday as well, big news. Yeah, forty one thousand hours of January sixth footage was provided to Tucker Carlson by Kevin McCarthy. Democrats like Jamie Raskin are beside themselves with us. They said, it's sort of outrageous that Kevin McCarthy would turn over all of this footage to a quote pro putin journalist. Is what Jamie Raskin said. I think it's incredibly absurd, Yeah, to call Tucker Carlson

pro putin. But forty one thousand hours of January six footage going to Tucker from Kevin McCarthy, we don't know what's going to happen to it yet, I'm curious. I think the government has been a little bit ridiculous with the January six footage because they want to promote a very particular narrative, and there are important facts to get right about January six. There are some big facts that people, especially conspiratorial people, get wrong about January six. But honestly,

the more transparency the better. And I know I understand why people don't trust an opinion host to be the best steward of that footage. So I get it. I'm so curious. Listen, the answer to a lack of transparency or a one sided narrative isn't to hand the footage over to another person who's going to spin a one sided narrative. No, I agree. If you're interested in transparency,

put the whole footage on to WikiLeaks. I mean absolutely put it all out there and let citizen journalists or you know, official draw whoever sifts through it and pull out parts that are new or different or relevant and like do that rather than all right, they had their partisan turn at this, We're going to have our partisan turn at it that only one side is going to ultimately pay attention to and listen to. So in that way, I think it's a disservice to accuracy in fact finding.

And January sixth has become like basically the ultimate crystallization of how we're doing this on both sides. It's not both sides. Is and to say, because it's become this like weird tit for tat just on the congressional level with the committees. So then the reason you end up getting ilhan Omar booted from her committee and other people put it from their committee is because partially Republicans House Republicans.

I talked to Kevin McCarthy about this hate the way that Nancy Pelosi treated them after January sixth, and so now they're getting into this back and forth and then giving the tapes to Tucker after the January sixth committee was so selective about the information that it released. It's again just the tit for tat, and you can see how it all comes together in January sixth is like the best shining example of how ridiculous our politics are

right now. Yeah, I think that's all said. All right, Crystal, what's on your mind today? Well, the Republican twenty twenty four primary is just getting started, and already it's actually way more interesting than I initially expected. What do I mean by that? Well? I assumed Trump would just continue with his twenty twenty election conspiracies, which it seemed to be an all consuming focus after his loss, and that

strategy it did have some logic to it. Trump had pretty successfully made stop this deal the key dividing line and GOP primaries for seats up and down the ballot.

Where you stood on this array of conspiracies defined whether you were a real one or a rhino, and of course no one would be willing to go as far on the issue as Trump himself would, and that would force the other twenty twenty four contenders to make a choice between preserving some shred of their dignity but signing up for sure fire defeat, or abandoning their dignity and

still probably losing. But of course, as we saw in twenty twenty two, while fully embracing all the crazy might have helped candidates to win in a GOP primary, it also turned out to be the best way to get yourself destroyed when it came to the general election. Perhaps Trump actually learned something from the twenty twenty two election results, because he certainly still spouts off about election nonsense, but he's drown some very different battle lines for the twenty

twenty four primary. Trump is launching a GOP civil war right now over two issues, entitlements and US policy on the Ukraine War. Both of these issues have some echoes in twenty sixteen now, if you'll recall, in that election, Trump successfully identified a set of key issues where the

Republican base and GOP elites were directly at odds. In fact, his defense of social security and Medicare is pulled straight from that twenty sixteen playbook, and his move on Ukraine echoes his stance on the Iraq War at the time. Both were pretty astonishing. After all, the previous nominee was literally met Romney with boy wonder Paul Ryan. Romney and Ryan leaned into ideas to both cut Social Security and Medicare.

Ryan's entire rise to prominence in the party was enabled by elite swooning over his austerity politics, including vaucherizing Medicare. The commentariat just sort of assumed that the GOP base actually wanted a dismantling of both of those programs, but they didn't like the rest of America. They liked Medicare and they liked Social Security, and guess what they still

do this time. Trump is not the only one in the GOP who wants to keep Social Security in Medicare as they are, but the overwhelming majority of party elites are still either actively pushing for cuts or trying desperately to run away from their long track records of embracing Paul Ryan's style cuts. And that overwhelming majority includes every single Republican who's planning to run against Trump in twenty twenty four, Nikki Haley confirmed in her presidential launch weeek

that she is still committed to entitlement cuts. Trump hit her for this stance in his campaign's reaction to her launch, writing that quote, Haley supported Paul Ryan's plan for entitlement reforms threatening Medicare and Social Security. He also knocked her there for something nice she once said about Hillary Clinton. It's kind of funny Mike Pence, who's widely expected to run, he has insanely come out for a social security privatization scheme similar to the one that George W. Bush tried

and utterly failed with. I actually sort of respect the honesty from Pence, even if it is a political death wish. Now it remains to be seen what Ron DeSantis is going to say on the issue, but he's got a record. Trump is already using to attack him. In just one instance, here's DeSantis, while he was running for Congress as a Tea Party Republican, backing Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare while also pushing similar cuts to Social Security by increasing the

eligibility age. So I would embrace proposals, you know, like Paul Ryan offered, and other people have offered that are going to you know, provide some market forces in there, more or choice, and make it so that it's not just basically a system that's gonna that's going to be bankrupt when you have new people coming into it. Social Security, you know, I would do the same thing. Social Security is actually not as as as bad as medicare in the sense that you know, it had been running surpluses

for a long time. Now it's running a deficit. So there's nothing left in Social Security. It's guys like me pay into it, and then people who are on Social Security that check immediately goes out to them. We're now taking in less than the checks are going out, and so that's problem is gonna get worse. But I think for people in my generation, you know, my life expectancy, and again I wouldn't change it for people who are on it now. But my life expectancy is, I mean,

it's it's improved. I was born in seventy eight, and I mean it's probably improved five or six years just on average. That that tends to annoy people when I tell them I'm going to be around for a few more years later, but it's it's true and so you know, me, get any social Security at sixty five or sixty seven if I'm gonna live, you know, for in the my eighties is probably not sustainable. Now. Trump has issued a series of truths this week about the man he swears

he definitely does not call me Paul Ron. Every one of his comments goes after DeSantis for wanting to cut Social Security and wanting to cut Medicare. Here's a little taste of some of those he said. Ronda Sanctimonius wants to cut your social Security and Medicare, closed up Flora and speeches loves Rhinos, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Carl Rove disasters all is backed by Globalist Club for No Growth, Lincoln Pervert Project, and quote uninspired coke. And it only

gets worse from there. He is a rhino in disguise whose pull numbers are dropping like a rock. Good luck Ron. In another one, he writes support for Desanta's cools and latest goopee pole from the Washington Times. Of course it cools, he wants to cut social Security and Medicare. Loves throw them over the cliff. Paul Ryan, who is destroying Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, pig lit Carl Rove and Jeb You get the point. There's a lot like this.

Does the Santis stick with his previous position even though it's politically toxic, or does he flip flop in the face of the attacks and potentially look weak. It's not an easy one for him ultimately to navigate. We're getting a first glimpse though, of how he is going to handle the other issue Trump is making central to his twenty twenty four pitch, and that is limiting support for Ukraine or cutting aid altogether to push them for a deal.

DeSantis was on Fox and Friends yesterday sounding much more like the Ukraine's skeptical side of the GOP. Thanks first on the presidents un announced visitor. Is this a good move for you? Know, Brian? I'm reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing leath the

laid to Ukraine during those years. Then I'm also reminded that I don't think any of this would have happened but for the weakness that the President showed during his first year in office, culminating of course, and the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think while he's over there. I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, Okay, he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world.

He's not done anything to secure our own border. Here at home, We've had millions and millions of people pour in, tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fence at all. And then, of course we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon year across the continental United States. So we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country that he is neglecting.

So Desantas has a good can line there for the GOP base about why does Biden cares so much about Ukrainian borders when he's not doing enough for our own borders.

It allows him to virtue signals to the Ukraine skeptics without actually saying whether he would really do anything differently, But one wonders what ground he will actually stake out when head to head against a guy and Donald Trump who's willing to come out and say things very directly like this, first come the tanks, then come the nukes. Get this crazy war ended now? So easy to do now the politics on Ukraine with the GOP base, they've

actually become pretty clearcut. Skepticism of further aid is already the majority position, and it only seems to be growing. But Trump is not out of step with the broader public either. Take a look at this. Fifty seven percent of Americans, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, would like to see diplomatic negotiations even if they lead to Ukrainian concessions, and only thirty two percent oppose those sorts of negotiations. Now,

the remainders say they're not sure. This is from September two, and all indications are that support for the endless blank check has only deteriorated from there. Across the board now, Trump has been all over the place on his views on the Ukraine War since Russia first invaded. At times he's pushed for a more hawkish approach, but he seems to sniff down the position he now believes will be a political winner, and everyone else is being forced to react.

DeSantis is hoping that the cultural ground he is staked down on issues like trans kids, CRT tech, He's hoping those will be the driving factors of the GOP primary. And listen after Trump thoroughly abandoned many of his populist economic positions as president. There is a good chance a Republican base has been trained to respond more viscerally to these type of cultural fights that DeSantis has engaged in. It has certainly served him well as governor thus far.

But it appears to me that Trump is already doing what he does best, shaping the battlefield, forcing everyone else to fight on the terrain of his choosing with the issues that he wants to focus on. Is Trump's world, and for better or worse, we are all still living in it. Been surprised by the all right, Emily, what are you looking at? All? Right? Well? On Monday, the National Endowment for Democracy announced it was parting ways with

the Global Disinformation Index. Most Americans have never heard of those two groups, but they've surely felt their influence. The NED is actually mostly funded by the State Department. The GDI is a British organization that purports to police disinfo. It has recently received hundreds of thousands of American taxpayer dollars from the ND and other entities. And that's all according to a deep investigation published last week in The

Washington Examiner. Now I want to give a quick shout out to my former intern Gab Kaminski for this deeply reported series over at The Examiner, without which the powerbrokers involved here would have continued with their quiet grift. Gabe series resulted in Microsoft and the NED both severing ties with the GDI the Global Disinformation Index amid pressure to deplatform alleged disinformation. Microsoft's Zander and the State Department funded

the GDI. In turn, the GDI developed a blacklist of anti establishment conservative websites that, to quote The Examiner, were fed to advertisers. GDI's list of the top ten most and least risky news outlets is still on its website. On the left, literally you can see all the liberal sites, and on the right literally you can see all all of the conservative sites, including, of course my employer, the Federalist now former States Department official Mike Bens explained to

The Examiner why that GDI exclusion list matters. It's devastating, he said. The implementation of ad revenue crushing sentinels like NewsGuard, Global Disinformation Index and the like have completely crippled the potential of alternative news sources to compete on an even economic playing field with approved media outlets like CNN and

The New York Times. That's absolutely true. No publication is perfect, but much of conservative media correctly reported on major stories that corporate media, with all of their resources, utterly botched in recent years. Sometimes they lied, other times they lacked the objectivity to CBN ideology. But they were often wrong, and honestly, we were often right. More importantly, their errors all served the political establishment, while our accuracies all challenged

the political establishment. We'll get fact checked and then suppressed like crazy for reporting completely accurate information about say Pete mooda judge. Well, the New York Times gets Yulitzer Prizes for reporting inaccurate information. That's just just how it works, so you can understand why the state Department and a powerful corporation like Microsoft might turn to a group like GDI. Basically, taxpayer money was used to misinform taxpayers and disempower critics

of the government. This helped major corporations feel better about their advertisements and effectively defunded anti establishment conservatives who like it or not. We're reporting information much closer to the truth on several major stories. Remember, the disinformation label is not and will not only be used to silence the right.

Matt Tayebi's reporting on Hamilton sixty eight showed clearly that powerful people were happy to categorize leftist journalism as the product of Russian influence operations so long as it threatened elites. People are largely familiar with the corporate media media's failures on twenty sixteen, Hunter Biden, Russiagate, and much more. Many understand our elites are eagerly flinging charges of disinformation at

their opponents to shut them down. But it's important we realize they are laundering the credibility of our government and using public money to undermine the free press. They are intentionally using your money to empower journalists who are lying to you. And GDI is not alone. Other groups are engaged in similar efforts, and other corporations are taking debate. The entire operation is complex and tangled. It's full of these alphabet soup organizations, powerful boards, and long money trails.

But the bottom line is that the serious issue of disinformation, and it is a serious issue, is being weaponized to silence critics of corrupt elites, and it's happening right under our noses. Wow, that list National political reporter Dave Weigel has been on the ground in a lot of the early primary states, tracking in particular the Republican primary field, and he joins us now from some ofph Welcome Dave,

good to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely, so we covered last week and I know you've been eleve in person with Nicki Haley, one of the first to jump into the race against Alan Trump. Let's gott and put your piece up on the screen so people can get a sense of what you're writing over there.

You say, Nicki Haley's pitch conservative policies minus the trumpy chaos, which, in a sense, it's kind of impressive that you're able to define Nicky Haley's pitch, because I'm not sure she has done that well defining her own pitch in multiple media appearances. Yeah, it was a matter of listening to the public facing part of her campaign. The interviews she selected to do. She didn't do gaggles as much as she kind of pulled a sized local media and the

speeches she gave. The town hall question she took, she had this format. Starting in Charleston. She had a longer speech that laid out everything. This is where she introduced, I'd say, is it fair to say the most the best known part of her campaigns so far is this idea of making every politician over seventy five take a mental acuity test. Right, That was where she launched that

got applause in New Hampshire. The rest of it was the sort of a rundown of things that are wrong with America and how with young, new generation leadership we

can fix it. Fairly light on detail and especially the most interesting back and forth I saw was in New Hampshire where a teacher who was pretty skeptical Hailey to start with, asked what she would do to end the harassment of teachers, the context being Florida to Santus all that, and Haley's answer was, well, the people don't hate teachers, they hate your school board. And then she kind of gave her boiler plate ants about that and start talking

about school of choice. So so far she has not been pushed off this box of issues that she prepared to run on in eighties. Which is which is? Which is a skill? I mean sometimes remember Joe Biden to two thousand and seven, his very first year he was a candidate with my colleague Ben Smith. That's where he

calls Obama articulate. She didn't do that. She didn't make him in a a state in the first week, but she didn't lay a lot of a lot of substance out about how she would govern well and just zooming in on the headline itself, just those two words conservative policies and as you mentioned, Dave, that box of issues Nicki Haley is planning to run on. That in and of

itself is a huge question. You know, Nikki Haley pivoting to school choice, which is a sort of old conservative issue and an old conservative favorite, a very sweet spot, a comfort spot for so many conservatives. So can you just tell us more about what that box of issues looks like. Haley herself has come out and disagreed with a lot of populist economic policies Republicans like JD. Vance

or Donald Trump themselves have proposed. Is she being aggressive of in rebutting those policies off the bat, or is she more just trying to present the issues that she does want to run on. Basically, what does that box look like? I'd say where she's distinguished herself most from the field and the field at this point is her Donald Trump and a couple other people who are not very well known. Is being very supportive of US support for the war Inine for Ukraine's defense against Russian invasion.

She brought that up kind of unbidden. She said that we didn't need a blank jack, but we need the support them. We need to win that war. It was a fight for freedom. I thought that that was interesting because part of the reason Haley is relevant is that there are people running for president. There are people one art president who don't have great donor access. She has terrific access to donor that she's built up for years,

especially since leaving the UN in twenty nineteen. I mean Neuram Madleson as a fan like the conservative donor network that doesn't like Donald Trump and that maybe has a couple of questions about the answers of lictability, they love her, and so she's very in line with that sort of that that way of the Republican Party that the peace through strength but also occasionally were peace through proxy wars. That part of the party she's very comfortable with. And

the rest of the issues. I'm not trying to about trying to diminish what she's running out just it's just when when you listen to it, there are candidates talking about specific ways to you know, example, cut the budgeter, get to a balanced budget, get to an episode she has. She talked a little bit about about how we need to end wasteful spending, but not what. And I try to list a lot of Republicans. You know, the stimulus bills happened under Trump, under Biden, it's very easy to

say Washington's been spending too much. Well, I mean, we saw Washington spend a lot, but it's not tooking head anymore. We're not seeing more stimulus spending. Now. You didn't get very in the weeds about what it was going to do. It was. It really was a lot about changing the person. Reminds you of something that Obama said, and he was running in two thousand and eight. You know, he would ask he'd be asked, why is the world going to

look at this differently if if you're her president? He said, well, I'm I represent the change you need to say look at me. But that's what he maan I'd be the first black president. A lot of this is I am I am a Generation X woman of color who would be president who wins every fight that she's in. So you just give me the ball and let me run with it. Trust me, it's a lot more of I have the character and the experience for the job. Less.

I'm going to pick an issue and distinguish myself with the exception of Ukraine, where you know, she's not doing any of what Trump's doing and in saying that we should have peace negotiations right negotiations right now or anything like that. Yeah, I noted that on Ukraine in terms of a core difference. And the other issue that Trump seems to want to make central to the campaign is a defensive social security and who's on what side was that? And Haley has also come out and said she still

believes we should take a look at entitlements. I mean basically every other Republication who don't have it yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know that's always their line, Dave, That's always It still means cuts ultimately, and basically every Republican who Trump is going to be up against either is currently like Nicki Haley or like Mike Pence who still says like we should privatize it out on the record saying there should be cuts, or they have like Ronda Santis a long track record of backing, for example, Paul Ryan's plan

on Medicare and other cuts to social security. Who are going to have to navigate where they stand on those issues today with Nicki Haley, I mean, it is funny because, like you said, a lot of what she's leaning into here is bio. It's like born in a small town and immigrant experience and her age. We can all debate whether she's quote unquote prime age, but let's not do that. That doesn't go well from shows with one guy on

a panel. You're an independent media, You're good, Dave. But it is funny because conservatives do love their identity politics ultimately here as well, even as she insists like, oh, I hate identity politics, but here's ten pieces of my bio that are the reasons that you should vote for me. Yeah. I think I was circling that point. But that's how she starts every set of remarks, and she talks about a family that was neither black nor white, that you

can't tell her this is a racist country. When she was elected to the first non white female governor of the state until in twenty ten. That's a big part of the appeal to and the Champian has actually done less than I thought it could have, because every time, every time a non white Republican gets ahead of steam, you start to see this panicky criticism from people liberals, i'd say more than on the left, that are just annoyed that she is saying conservative things. But she should

be on our team. So you saw this. I think you saw, I think more less offensively from some of the AAAAPI groups that exist that are mostly democratic. You saw from pundits that have said silly things about her. She's not made that a huge part of her Kennon. She's definitely kind of dunked on people when she's had the chance to, but she's not. You made the point about social Security. Yeah, Pence has been stuck out much

further on that issue than he has. He is actually talked specifically about going back to what he voted for as a congressman or reported because it didn't go to vote of the kind of Bush design private accounts, so reform of social Security. He's into that, but not gotten specific I honestly just as a not as a theater critic, as somebody who's covered this a lot, and that's just

engaging performances. It makes sense for me at the moment because you have in polling in early states and nationally Donald Trump at forty percent or so, a little bit higher, a little bit lower. It is not bad to be the Republican who a lot of Republicans consider a strong second choice or a strong potential vice president. That hasn't happened yet. Via that conversation, but she's not saying anything that defends any fact to the party, with the exception

of Ukraine stuff. Where she is I wouldn't say out on a limb. But if you look at the Pew pole and look at the nose AP sorry AP polling most recently that said, most Republicans just want to stop the funding. They don't want this. Apart from that, it is there is no faction the party that she's willing to offend. It's even one thing. My colleague Shelby taught that noticed and I noticed it, and I asked her in a double checks that pick. In Iowa, she never

talks about the Confederate flag takedown in twenty fifteen. She talks very generally about the shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church. These are events. Had she run for president in twenty twenty or twenty sixteen that she decided to run off that those would have been I think much more central

in the campaign. She doesn't talk about them now. I think she's still kind of finding about finding her way into how do we discuss race and gun violence and things that do not bring up this this moment where a lot of where some conservatives, I don't think most would say she did she buckle to the left wing pressure. She just hasn't. By the conversation, I was struck one she got a question to answer about the Second Amendment.

I thought, you know, I'm not ready for speeches. For some politicians would have said, well, actually, as governor, I presided over this, this shooting that you heard about. Tim Kane doesn't like a lot of governors who have shooting in their backyard do this. He didn't mention it at all. He kind of talk went back generally to why she

supports the Second Amendment. So it's interesting that probably the most famous thing about her before she started running for president not really part of the mix when she's she's giving speeches. And Dave, you also have a piece of about New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunu let's put that up on the screen. You say he could carry the moderate banner in twenty twenty four. First of all, this is a guy who's very popular in New Hampshire, and obviously

New Hampshire is an important early state. I think he maybe doesn't have as much national name recognition. But ultimately, do you think that Not to ask this in like a mean way, but do you think that anybody in this race really matters other than Donald Trump and nikkiy Haley? I think Ran DeSantis will matter and everyone else, Sorry, I met Ron santas Donald chart of the question, because

the only two running right now this matters. I think that the rest of the field at the moment, Like I was saying with Haley, it's good for her to be a popular second choice or Republican to go in the booth and say, well, Biden was this relied Democrats in twenty nineteen, Like, well, he's my second or third choice. But I like Obama. I like him, fine, whatever. I think no one else in the field has enough support from rank and file Republican voters to be relevant yet,

and they are. If you look at quinip X pulling this week is pretty good. Illustration to this. You know, Trump leads DeSantis by six points. If you ask people about everyone who might run, it's two points. If you ask about just them and Haley, and everyone who's not a Trump voter in the Republican Party wants somebody else once may be DeSantis. That's also I was struck in that bowl. Moderates Mond Republicans prefer DeSantis, which tells you, I think they're the way we in the media kind

of compromentalize people. It's usually accurate, but Desantras is getting momented by doing things that the party's I think hardest right faction wants to do, really taking on the left, Marxian institutions in academia, business, in the media, all of that. And but for moderate it's just, well, he's not Trump and he's not to do silly things and loses an election.

I think, so, yeah, yeah, I'm not seeing what I saw on twenty nineteen, which was franked a lot of fun to cover, which is a lot of Democrats really thinking one the elector was a shoe in whoever whoever they nominated, which I mean, by the end they didn't think that, but the start of a campaign they thought, surely anyone can beat Trump. And they also had policy asks. They were, who are you going to take this stance on Medicare for all? Are you going to take the

stands on jobs guarantee? That's not really happened in this race yet. And so Snunu, when I talked to him, he talked to a lot of people. He doesn't use the phrase monitor. He just thinks there's a different version of publican party that doesn't care about culture war stuff. I'm not trying to that's for him, him dismissing it

than me. Uh, and that what people want is a competent government that's smaller, they cut spending, that's responsive to them, stay away from the fights with Disney, things like that. But not a huge difference in talking to him. I didn't imagine he to point radically different people to like the under secretaries of Education than Ron DeSantis would. I think he just he's less the not knock on Sunu,

but kind of the rep so has is. He's just a naturally talented politician who doesn't get very deep into the details, doesn't try to dig in and have the party. He doesn't try dis mantle democratic power the way that DeSantis does. So if you're paying close attention to the Desantas model is working terrifically. I mean, it's it's probably the most progress the governor has made in undermining the opposition party since since Scott Walker. Probably more than that.

That's not that the new way sow is just in a very George H. W. Bush way. I'm a confident guy who you can get along with, and I'd run the government officially unlike these these goofy Democrats. That's more than a policy difference. That has been the dispute inside the party. What we lose some voters if we come off as kind of mean and we're kind of obsessed with Fox News things. We all agree that we can

just run as like Biden screwed things up. That's there's a lot more I think concord agreement inside this public conversation. Then you'd think from how many people are just trashing

Trump whenever they get interesting? Yeah, I mean, to me, the biggest relevance for Sununu is the fact that he does have high popularity in New Hampshire, probably do well there, and you know if he does run in a primary, and that could serve as a block to someone like DeSantis or another Republican who's trying to gain some early momentum in some of those early states. Dave, great to have you, welcome and thank you so much. Congrats on the new job over at Semaphore. It's a lot of

fun independent media. Let's go, let's do it. And thank you guys for watching. Thank you to the wonderful Emily for sitting in for soccer. Just a reminder, no counterpoints this week because Ryan is also out. Do you want to know where Ryan is viewers. He's in Mexico at a four day fish concert. I didn't even know I that's hilarious. Yeah, it's peak, it's peak, Ryan Grove. There's a lot of layers to this man. Anyway, Sacer will be back here on Thursday, at least that is the plan, so I will see you