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All right, good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints, where you got a big Super Tuesday show.
We're going to be joined by some hot shot hot shot YouTubers in a second.
We're going to talk, but let's talk about State of Union first.
Yeah, the State of the Union. Speaking of those hot shot YouTubers, yes, they're joining us for the Super Tuesday breakdown. But Sager, Crystal, Ryan and myself we'll be here for the State of the Union pre show starting tomorrow at eight thirty pm, then live. Sager's not happy about the starting at ten pm, way past this bedtime to take questions from premium subscribers, so make sure or you stay tuned for that. Get a premium subscription if you want to watch. On that note, it.
Basically a private screening after the State of the Union. Yes, we can Saga Crystal manual.
So that we can translate by Breakingpoints dot Com. Go there now, Breakingpoints dot Com. Let's bring those hot new YouTubers in. Sager and Crystal, thank you so much for joining us for Super Tuesday show.
Thank you, Thank you, guys.
I can't tell you how nice it is not to have to set up the show myself.
This is great.
I can't tell you how nice it is not to have someone shouting good morning at.
By the way, for the record, ten pm. Also way past my bedtime. I'm just as much of a whimp about it as is.
You guys are between people, guys between the bedtime and daylight savings.
This is just like my Vietnam.
But these are the sacrifices that you're willing to make for the viewers, and we deeply appreciate it. After Crystal and Saga leave, we're going to talk about the cartoon Bill and Victoria Newland giving it a rest, which suggests probably a big strategic change Ukraine policy is on the horizon. The other cartoon villain, Kirsten Sama, also leaving, like the world desperately needed some good news, and both of these women gave us some of that, so we really appreciate that.
And of course we'll have some updates on the latest in the war in Gaza.
So I don't want to keep going on the cartoon villain trend, but I will because the big news this morning is that Nicki Haley has dropped out of the presidential race after getting clabberd clabberd in every state with the exception of Ryan's favorite state, Vermont yesterday by double digits. Nicki Haley ended up winning Vermont with about its three point margins so far as we can tell, but in other states, I think the closest was Utah, and she
lost to Utah by eighteen points. So if you're watching, you can see the delegate count here. Overall, nine hundred and ninety five delegates for Donald Trump, nine eighty nine delegates for Nicki Haley. Trump needs twelve hundred, so actually twelve hundred and fifteen to win the nomination. Precisely, he's already at nine hundred and ninety five, and he has healthy leads basically in most of the polls across the country.
On this one, I'll start with you Sagar reaction to your favorite, your personal hero, Nicki Haley dropping out of the race. And I'll say she had a lot of money. She was dropping some money, some donors were dropping her, but she could have kept going. So just your thoughts on her dropping out, I mean.
It's just about the credible case.
It's been a long time coming now for Nicki Haley dropping out. I guess it is a tough day for the brown ceiling here of Indian American GOP politicians who.
Are running out.
But overall, I think whenever we look at her candidacy, we're seeing a couple of things.
I will give her at least some credit.
As low as I am, she did win, you know, twenty thirty percent of the vote in a lot of the primaries that happened last night. She certainly did get the DC primary, I guess, and she proved her constituency. And I think some of the themes that we'll be talking about today have less to do with the Nicki Haley candidacy than what that type of voter who even craves something like that, what are they going to do
in November. So I think that's the big question on the Republican side, And I think the theme of today's show is that both of these candidates have critical parts of their coalition where there are big question marks as to what they're actually going to do whenever it does come to the general election.
Crystal, on that note, we can put a two up on the screen. This is the margin in Vermont, so everyone can see exactly how well nik they did in Vermont. So she prevents Trump from getting that fifty state sweep, just barely. But Crystal, it is true. Soccer is absolutely right that Nicki Haley came away in some of these states.
She spent a lot of money, outspent a lot of her competition along the way, but she did come around thirty to forty percent in some of these contests, even in swing states, critical states like a South Carolina, something to that effect. So whether or not she endorses Trump is a huge question. What do you expect to see from Niki Haley on that front?
Well, let me say first all that I do want to give credit where credit is due. At the beginning of this contest, if you had told me Nikki Haley would be the last person standing with Trump, if you told me she was gonna win a single state in the country, I would have said not a chance. So in a sense, I do think she was sort of vindicated. But her decision to stay in this long was kind of vindicated by the fact that she did win a state, she did perform reasonably well in some of these other
states that went on Super Tuesday. It makes the overall performance a little bit less embarrassing, a little bit less humiliating. Prove the point that there is some constituency for her. We know that is not a majority constituency in the Republican Party.
It's largely like highly educated people.
Who kind of like Joe Biden and are you very possibly going to vote for him in the fall. But you know, she demonstrated there was something there in terms of her pitch, and so she did outperform what I expected of her, for whatever that is worth. In terms of her dropout speech today, the reporting is she is not gonna she is not going to endorse tr She's saying he needs to basically win over independence and moderates
like herself who were backing her. I also want to say, you know, I think the political framing of Nicky Haley really demonstrates some of the oddities and perversions of the Trump era that she's considered the quote unquote moderate, when if you just look at the ideology, you know, head to head, you cannot put her in any sort of
moderate ideological lane. But the one thing that really came out in all of the exit polling in every single state that's voted so far is actually the biggest dividing line in the Republican Party is whether or not they bought him to stop the steal, you know, the nicky Haley voters. Overwhelmingly she won people who said, you know what, Joe Biden actually won Overwhelmingly. Donald Trump wins people who say, no, it was you know, it was rigged, stop the steal, etcetera, etcetera.
So Trump really.
Did successfully make that the litmus test and the dividing line in the Republican Party. And you know, if you were on the wrong side of that question, then you basically had no hope in this primary.
And by the way, one interesting point, I think you're going to end up having sixty or seventy thousand voters in Vermont total deciding this Republican primary, and Vermont is an open primary state. There's a very close election, Like the chance that a bunch of Democrats.
You know.
I'm not saying by any means a majority, but a non trivial number of Democrats I think showed up and we're like, what's the point of voting in the Democratic primary? I'm going to jump in here and vote against and vote against Trump. I think a lot of Republicans actually did that in West Virginia in twenty sixteen, for instance, and went in and voted for Bernie against Hillary Clinton.
But we do have Trump's wh moved to that.
We knew Trump's speech last night, in which he did not mention Nicki Haley just went right at Joe Biden.
Let's play some Trump here.
November fifth is going to go down as the single most important day in the history.
Of our country.
We're going to take it and we're going to make it like it should be respected. Right now, we're not respected right now. Our country is known as a joke. It's a joke. Other leaders who I speak to, other leaders can't believe what happened to us, because three years ago we were the most respected country anywhere in the world by far. We were doing things that nobody could believe. China was paying us billions and billions of dollars in twenty five years. I paid us nothing, zero, not ten cents.
I was getting billions of dollars. And they were happy about it, as happy as you can be. Of course, maybe there's reasons for things having happened, but they were not. They were not so happy with certain things. I guess based on things that took place, but they were. We were getting along with everybody. We were getting along, and we were respected by everybody, and.
We had no wars.
Remember when I had the debate with Hillary Clinton, she said, look look at him, look at that personality. He's going to cause wars, wars. I said, no, my personality is going to keep us out of wars.
And that's what happened.
So Ryan is losing it. He started riffing at one point about the military's goggles. I don't know if anyone else gone.
And the gold just selling gold along the side, just so perfect.
That's great. No, that's Republican Party.
So there's a lot of sort of.
Well, I just think, you know, this is the frame. It's Trump is the cult of personality. I want to pick up on where Crystal left off. He has successfully I meant talked about this ad nauseum during the Trump era of people want to go back and watch. He successfully defined MAGA as a complete litms test on him and him alone, on impeachment, on stop the steal, on allegiance to him as a party figure, instead of really
defining it along any sort of policy line. Actually, you can see a lot of that in some of the primary results that happened last night, because remember, it wasn't just what was going on with the presidential election in down in Texas. We saw several judges, for example, face serious problems in their primaries who had ruled against Ken Paxton for example, on election lawsuits. That actually shows me that it's not just the Trump top line, you know, versus him and Nikki Haley.
It's his successful.
Takeover and whenever he does push certain things like stop the Steal, he says, this is the dividing line. Voters are not willing to just come out for him. They're also willing to come out for anybody who appeared to have wronged him. And then, look, these are not national races,
you know, per se. But the Texas GOP successfully was able to argue that any judge, even if their typical and cut Bush style Republicans that ruled to limit the ability of Ken Paxton to try and to you know, whatever whatever he was doing with the twenty twenty election, that that was enough in order to make sure that
they were to face challenges. And we saw that in some of the other primary challenges all really across the entire country last night for the specific type of America first, you know, as in Trump type person blowing it out, and then a more traditional type like Dan Crenshaw. I believe you highlighted this Emily, you know, not doing nearly as well as you did last time around.
His margin is down by quite a bit actually, and this is probably a good point to put these Laddin County results up on the screen, So control room, I'm going to go and start with a five here. Lodden County, Virginia was hyped in the media. This is from by the way, if you're looking at this, this is the
results from twenty sixteen. Lodden County is really hyped by the media as one of the key swing counties, as sort of a Bellweather county that you can take a look at here for how the mood Is and Marco Rubio cleaned up pretty handily. Back in twenty sixteen, forty percent of the vote. Ted Cruz himself had about fifteen percent of the vote. Even John kase It got about eleven percent of the vote and Trump was only at
twenty eight percent of the vote vote back then. Now, contrast that, I don't know if we have this image. We can put it up if we do. But contrast
that with what happened last night twenty twenty four. Trump won Louden County really clearly, very wealthy county, and it's outside of Washington, d C. Northern Virginia, so you wouldn't necessarily you would think, actually, Nikki Haley, with all the defense contractors out there, as Trump said he didn't start any new wars, that Nicki Haley might be really popular in loud In County. She wasn't. Even though she had been able to pick up big chunks of the vote,
it just hasn't been quite enough. There's something about Trump Crystal that Republican voters will not shake. And maybe it's to Soccer's point, it does remind me a little bit of the Tea Party years. It's sort of this binary establishment and anti establishment. And if you're someone who's uncomfortable with the anti establishment, maybe you gravitate towards Nicki Haley.
But if you're uncomfortable with the establishment, even if Trump says the craziest thing, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, you still prefer him.
Yeah, I mean, just to reflect specifically on the Lodden County results, some of those people who voted.
For Marca Ruby or John Kasik, they're.
Just Democrats now right, They're not voting in a Republican primary. So you can't necessarily say, like Nicki Haley underperform what they did, because probably a lot of those people that voted for Marca Ruby were like showing up to you know, stay strong for Joe Biden last night in Louden County or whatever. Actually, Mary and Williamson, if memory survice, did quite well in Louden County last night for whatever reason.
But you know, the other thing about the Trump domination of the Republican Party is, obviously it works out well for Trump, just like the Obama domination the Democratic Party that worked out very well for Barack Obama. It doesn't work out very well for the rest of the Republican Party because the things that Donald Trump can get away with the shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, or whatever wacky crap comes out of his mouth or his legal problems or whatever other candidates can't get away with.
And so that's a big part.
Of the story of why twenty twenty two was such an underperformance for Republicans, because, Yeah, a bunch of these like Trump fringe weirdos who were absolutely repellent to just normal people won the primary and then lo and behold, got blown out in a state like Pennsylvania where they're losing by double digits when they should have, you know, basically been a lock to win in that year. And that's both the governor's level and you know with uh Fetterman and os.
Which is that's a whole other story.
But in North Carolina is an example of this. Last night, the Republican nominee for governor there is apparently really wacky. You know, I haven't looked into all of these statements, but people are circulating online all kinds of things that you've said that are really out there. In North Carolina.
I mean, that's a state where Republicans should easily win the governorship, but at the state level they will voters will pick a Democrat, you know, especially when you're talking about a state race and not a federal race, so they very likely handed Democrats, you know, potential victory in that state when that was completely unnecessary because of how fringe some of these candidates have become, you know, following in the quote unquote anti establishment mold of Donald Trump,
which I you know at this point that framing, to me is not really accurate, given this is the guy who served the establishment quite handily when he was in office.
You could see a lot of Wall Street.
You've seen people like Jamie Diamond and others saying like, yeah, it wouldn't be so bad to have him again, sort of reconciling themselves to him. The Davos said, perfectly fine with another Trump presidency. So the vibe is anti establishment, the reality is very different.
Let's get video because for the control room, just the heads up, I'm gonna do a four and a nine here, because these are two videos that Nikki Haley got of Nikki Haley. Nikkoie was out there talking to voters, filming herself. No MSNBC got of Nicki Haley voters, and these are somewhat amusing clips. Let's start with a four. This is actually a Trump voter, Republican voter, Let's roll.
That Nikki Haley is irrelevant?
Why irrelevant?
Because it's obvious that she's just there representing the rhino part of the Republican Party and she has no chance and she knows it, and everyone knows it.
It's self evident. Did you vote for Trump in twenty twenty?
I did it?
And what made you switch from Trump to Nicki Haley? The man is a lunatic and I think he's terrible for the country. What are you thinking about when you say that? Just that he lies.
He's bankrupted millions of businesses and people, and I don't see anything good about him.
Let me ask, if Donald Trump is the nominee in November, do you support Joe Biden over Donald Trump? No, what do you do?
I don't know.
It will be a hard decision too.
North Carolina voters, there, Ryan, what do you make of it?
We didn't do.
The one who told Sanana the reason he isn't going to vote for Nicki Haley is because she doesn't have balls to scratch, which is apparently a prerequisite for being a good president. According to according to this guy, a good female president, any president, it's a universal requirement.
So yeah, we have more on this. So if we put a seven up on the screen, there's some really interesting exit poll results. This is California. Will you vote for the Republican nominee regardless of who it is? Trump voters answered yes seventy one percent, twenty two percent said no. Haley voters only twenty six percent said yes, sixty nine percent said no. And then we can go to a eight as well for some more exit polling results. This
is North Carolina Republican primary voters. Hailey voters. Biden job approval forty eight forty eight percent of Nikki Haley voters North Carolina approve of Joe Biden, fifty two percent disapproved. Now you go to Trump voters two percent approve of Joe Biden, ninety six percent disapprove. I'd love to know, Sager, who those two percent of approving voters are.
Hey, they exist.
You know, we covered actually in our show yesterday that ten percent or so of Biden voters are actually going to be voting for Trump this time around, if we look at some of the swing data that Nate Silver dug into. But you know, look, I think again, the theme of our show for today and for next with the Democratic block, is that there are parts of these coalitions where they're genuinely up for grabs across either from
the other or in terms of taking votes away. I would also be remiss if I didn't say that RFK Junior appears to have qualified for the ballot in Nevada or he at least attained enough signatures yesterday. So that's another critical battleground state that kind of throws everything into whack gears. So what are these people going to do or are they going to come out to vote for Biden? That lady, for example, she's like, I don't know, it's going to be a hard decision.
She may just not vote.
A lot of people don't vote actually, or they just don't vote at the top of the ticket.
They could go third party.
So there's a significant amount of chaos factor that I think goes into this election.
And I've been continuing.
I've been doing a lot more research on the nineteen ninety two presidential election.
Just to look at how things worked out. Well, you have to write, you.
Know, yesterday by my shouted out the ninety two Bill Clinton nominee speech.
It's on YouTube.
I've been going back and watching some of the debates with Ross Perro, who, by the way.
Was unfairly maligned at the time.
But the point is is that Bill Clinton only won the popular vote some forty two percent. He did won some three hundred votes three hundred some electrical College votes, but the puro candidacy and also the ability to strip some of it away from HW Bush was critical actually
in getting Clinton across the finish line. So I mean increasingly I am seeing enough chaos in there that you could see either of these president or either of these candidates, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, actually win the electoral College and the presidential election with not even close to like a majority of the overall popular vote, because you have so many of these different constituencies that are upward grabs, and you have multitudes of third party candidacies and record
high dissatisfaction with both of these incumbents. So it's a very very different dynamic than twenty twenty.
And one of the key differences you just hit on it, it's the level of factions dissatisfaction. So in nineteen ninety two, what's interesting is that I think the public kind of was.
Okay with George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Like the people who voted for Ross Purou, they didn't like the syst they didn't trust the whole thing. They thought the country was going off the rails. But personally when it came to Bush and Clinton, they're like, I mean, they didn't think that they were going to destroy the country, that their election to the White House would be the end of the American experiment. Like, none of them really
thought that. Today, you have significant portions of both electorates that think if the other person wins, it's the end of the world. And I don't know what that does to third party voting, Like it has some I think influence on how people think about third parties, but I'm not quite sure yet how that works out.
Yeah, well, that's basically what you just lay down is what the Biden campaign in particular is counting on. They're hoping that that revulsion and that sense of existentialism. I mean, this is what Biden and were telling the New Yorker in that interview that got a lot of attention, and basically like, yeah, they're mad. Now, they'll come around when they really think about Donald Trump being back in office, and maybe and certainly for a large proportion of the elector and the Democratic base.
That's certainly true.
I'm just not sure that it holds as strongly as it did in twenty twenty, as or even as strongly as in twenty sixteen, when it was a real question mark of what a Trump presidency would even look like, and it was a little, you know, potentially more terrifying because it was just completely unknown. Now you have people like, well, it wasn't grat but we got through four years, so maybe this maybe this.
World isn't literally going to end.
You know.
I wanted to just react to you because it's a big media conversation, understandably so about Nicki Haley voters saying they're not necessarily.
Going to vote for Donald Trump in the fall.
I think the fact that you have such high approval rating for Joe Biden among Nicki Haley voters tells you something about who her electorate actually was. Like who was voting for Nicki Haley? And I think it was mostly
not Republicans, even the independents who voted for her. There are a lot of people call themselves independence, but really when it comes down to it, they're either every election voting d or every election voting r and since there wasn't much of a contest on the Democratic side, I do think you had overwhelmingly those types of independence saying well, you know, I really think Trump's so maniac, So let me cross over and try to boost my girl Dicky
for the primary. And you know, at the end of the day, I'm probably coming back home to Joe Biden. So you know, I think it's a warning sign. I think it's something to pay attention to. But my guess is the you know, suburban college educated people who were going to be horrified by Trump and vote for Democrats because of it, Like that ship has probably already sailed. We've probably already seen that realignment occur over the years that he has been in public office.
Totally agree, Crystal.
And let's just wrap up this block by noting that turnout was down. I mean, that's extremely important to all of this, to the nineteen ninety two factor and to the nineteen ninety two factor as well. This is our transition to our next block, or we're going to talk about the results in the Democratic Party primary, but that third arty factor is looming very large. We have no idea what's going to happen. We know. No Labels has
said that they'll think about this after Super Tuesday. Nikki Haley has said she's a conservative Republican, she's not interested in the No Labels ticket. Kirsten Cinema just conspicuously dropped out of her Senate race in Arizona and retired yesterday. Nikkia Haley said she couldn't do No Labels because that would mean running with a Democrat. Well, Kirsten Cinema is an independent, so we will see where all of that goes.
RFK Junior still pulls enough to be more than a factor than Jill Stein was in twenty sixteen, So there's so much to talk about with that. Ryan, Let's talk about what happened in the Democratic primary last night, because some of these results were really interesting. Huge shout out to American Samoa.
Yes, Americans.
Joe Biden lost American Samoa to a guy who's extraordinarily famous.
Here in the mainland.
On the mainland, but otherwise he was embarrassed in.
A lot of states by the uncommitted vote basically across the country. We do not have a speech to show you from Joe Biden because even though he is running for reelection. He did not give a super Tuesday victory speech. Instead, he kind of stared blankly out at a crowd after mumbling that he would get in trouble if he took questions.
It's almost too painful of video to even subject you guys too, So we're not even not even going to show it because it would that would make us complicit in the elder abuse that is being dealt out to Joe Biden. Not that I have any sympathy for him, given you know what he's doing in Gaza right now.
So kind kind of guess what he has comeing to him.
Yet it's still kind of painful and sad to watch, that's for sure, all right. So let's get to what the voters are doing to him, and we start in Minnesota's this put this first one up here, kind of a shocking to the establishment result in Minnesota with close to twenty percent of the electorate.
Voting uncommitted. This is a campaign that had about a week to organize itself. And that's on top.
Of eight percent for Dean Phillips, by the way, so almost thirty percent just between the two of those against Biden.
People were saying, so they spent about five thousand.
Dollars over the course of a week something like that to organize this campaign. Organizers for that campaign were telling me over the course of the week that they actually expected to outperform Michigan because the phone banking that they were doing was just landing on voter after voter after voter who was telling them, yeah, we're already uncommitted. Basically, it was an it was organic that it spread from New Hampshire over.
To Michigan and then into Minnesota.
In ilin Omar's district, which is number five in Minnesota, they'll they'll win at least a delegate, they may win three delegates at least across the state. That means the party process in Minnesota is going to send at least three people to Minnesota who will be representing kind of a free Palestine.
It ceasefire and the war in Gaza vote.
Huge smiling Muslim population obviously outside Minneapolis, but.
There was also this, you know, the correlation between age and support for uncommitted was basically one to one.
The younger a precinct was the stronger the support was.
There was one precinct that had something like eighty percent for uncommitted.
That must be a fun neighborhood.
So the governor addressed this. We have a clip of that. Let's roll Tim Waltz, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz.
At forty thousand votes right now, twenty percent of the vote going to uncommitted and we've seen that already in this primary in Michigan. What message are voters in your state trying to send to President Biden and what do you want to see President Biden do in response?
Yeah, Look, they're engaged. We're really proud Minnesota civic responsibility. We have some of the highest voter turnouts. These are voters that are deeply concerned, as we all are. The situation in Gaza is intolerable, and I think trying to find a solutional asking two state solutions, certainly the president's move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to a cease fire. That's what they're asking to be heard, and that's what they should be doing. We've gone through
this before and we know that. Now we make sure we've got eight months, we start bringing these folks back in. We listen to what they're saying. That's a healthy thing that's happening here, but I would note that the former president lost twice as many votes here in Minnesota to Nikki Haley. And I've seen some of these exit polls out of North Carolina and O there's eighty percent of folks said they're not voting for him who voted for Nikki Haley. We'll get these folks back. I think it's
take them seriously. Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more. And I think the president's hearing that.
All right, let's bring back Crystal and Saga into the conversation, Cristal, What do you make of it? Not only in Minnesota and North Carolina, Colorado, around the country. Minnesota had the strongest performance for uncommitted, but around the country it was clear that there is like widespread dissatisfaction with Biden and with his war effort.
What did you make of it?
Yeah, when you combine uncommitted and keep in mind that not all of these states had uncommitted on the ballot, which is why you should consider the votes for Maryanne and the votes for Dean and the votes for uncommitted, I think you should count all of those as basically Biden protests votes, and also whatever other candidates Jank and the other like unknown candidates that popped up on some of these ballots, so quite significant. The Minnesota performance is
nothing short of astonishing. And I heard this talking point over and over again on CNN, like, oh, sure Biden lost a few votes, but look at Nikki Haley eating into Trump. It is a very different deal to vote for an actual candidate, and also, by the way, for it to be a lot of Democrats and independences who are voting for that actual candidate than to have voters taking the time out of their day to show up to directly say screw you and your disgusting, immoral policy
visa vigaza. I mean that is extraordinary.
With no money, think of how much money Nikki Haley spent.
There was almost literally no money spent on this effort in Minnesota.
It popped up.
In a week's time and outperformed by percentages what was done in Michigan. So I think it is absolutely extraordinary. And I do think that you have seen a rhetorical shift from the Biden administration directly because of this uncommitted protest vote. So you saw Kamala Harris with some more strenuous language backing basically the same policy, but you also see all of the dem flax out there instead of going back to while Israel has a right to defend itself.
Now the line is, well, Biden is working day and night to try to secure this ceasefire, and he hears them and he agrees with that, so basically trying to gaslight. But you can see there has been an impact and that they are feeling pressure. You couple that with you just abject horror of the Flower massacre, and I think you do see that they are feeling some kind of pressure from this movement, which will only continue and grow post Super Tuesday. And once again the results show this
is not just a problem with Arab Americans. This isn't just a problem with Muslim Americans or some other narrow demographic group. If you are a Democrat and you want to win the presidency of the United States once again, you need young people to show up for you and not to stay home. And young people are sending you as loud and clear a message as they possibly can that this current posture visa the Israel and Gaza is utterly unacceptable.
And Biden wouldn't have won without a pretty decent surge from young voters in twenty twenty, and in.
His margin, you wouldn't have the Senate either.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And one second, Ryan, can you break down the other states for everybody the uncommitted?
Yes, because I know that we have all the other states there.
Do we have the element that we can put up for sure? All right? So yeah, let's run through these quickly.
So there we've got North Carolina knocking in it at thirteen percent, which is, you know, pretty pretty strong performance, at least as strong as Michigan.
Move moved to the next one.
We got Massachusetts coming in at almost ten percent, with another nearly five percent for Dean Phillips.
Move on to the.
Colorado primary, what eight almost nine percent plus then a handful you know, so you're looking at almost twenty percent kind of protest votes with about ten percent there, and then the Oklahoma primary almost ten percent of Oklahoma Democrats, I'm saying uncommitted, like end end this war and.
If you know, if the Democratic Party was.
But also nine and nine for Dean Phillips and Marion Williamson, Yes, right right, which is also a protest vote.
At this point, yes, and you know, so if the party was an actual like power seeking operation that ran rationally, somebody like the guy who just saw the Minnesota governor Tim Walls, would he'd be the nominee, you know, by Waltz, you know, into the into the White House instead joke.
Yeah, do you like that one?
No?
You loved it instead.
To Crystal's point, all we're getting is this kind of change in rhetoric, and if you boil down, what they're change in rhetoric is it's we are not complicit in this evil. We are just too weak and incompetent to stop it, which is okay. I guess that makes us feel better about it maybe, but that's not much of a selling point at all.
Well, actually, this is interesting because in California, here's establishment Darling Adam Schiff. If we put B six up on the screen the primary, this is a huge primary election in California. People know the high profile candidates Katie Porter, Barbara Lee. Now Steve Garvey actually did better than Katie Porter and Barbara Lee's margins here or they're percentages here put together. So this goes to the jungle primary runoff type situation. Adam Shift secured thirty three percent of the vote.
I'm just curious, Ryan, Crystal Sager, what you take is on, you know, with the Middle East weighing so heavily on Democratic voter's minds Adam Schiff is a Biden establishment ally, also a conspiracy bonger and weirdo. But that aside, I mean, that's a it.
Did not weigh in here in this in this California primary. It's very it's very interesting. Barbara Lee, you know, faring faring terribly. I was actually in California over over the weekend talking to a voter who is his primary issue was anti Warren. Later in the conversation he said, I hope Barbara Lee wins her re election. I was like, actually, you know, she's running for Senate. He's like what, He's like,
no way, That's awesome. That's that's that's so cool. It's like, barbar Lee is so screwed, like this is like this is like her base. And he didn't even know that she was running, which goes to the problem for anybody running in California that it's just so insanely expensive.
But Sager, what do you make of that?
Well, California obviously basically a rigged, you know, electoral systems like that. I'll be honest around that, especially with the dynamics that you just highlighted. Also, just to pick up on that, we have a stot here. Some of these protesters were interrupting Adam Shift and this goes to the question of how that will play out in the actual general election.
Let's take a list to that so as everybody could see.
I mean, this is just going to be an ever present problem I think for many of these establishment Democratic politicians. We covered previously on our show about how Joe Biden is going to like extensive lengths not to campaign and college campuses, pretty humiliating the.
Sitting Democratic president.
You can't go to a college campus, honestly, Ryan, that may be why he didn't do a victory speech last night. And they're just terrified. As I understand it, they've been contracting some third party security service to try and screen people before you go in.
I mean, what we've gotten to that point. You know, things are.
Not looking good for you, and it is humiliating because you've not only got the votes in terms of uncommitted, but you've also got the physical manifestation of that at every public appearance that you make from here on thus
far so overall. I mean, I'm just coming back to the same Trump issue where Christal is right, many of those people who voted in the primary are just probably Democrats here though, you know, we have a probably a bigger problem just given the gap between like the policy that would actually have to happen to even get maybe half of these people back in the door.
It's very likely that he could.
If there is a fatal blow in November, there will be many, many reasons as to why that happened, but it's very likely we can trace a lot of it back to here and to this right now.
A Democrat not being able to go to a college campus is like a Republican who couldn't campaign in the village's Florida. And underscoring that point, if we could put up the three and then Chris, all want to get your response to this the element B three.
This polling that shows that.
Even among Republicans, thirty percent of Republicans want arms shipments blocked to Israel, but sixty two percent of voters who supported Biden in twenty twenty want the US to block weapons shipments to Israel. Ceasefire and blocking weapons shipments is not a divisive or controversial position. It is the overwhelming majority position of Democratic voters. Yet it is in stark contrast to what the president is actually doing.
Crystal, Yeah, that's exactly right, and I continue to bring this up, but I am struck by the poll that found that a majority of Joe Biden twenty twenty voters say Israel is committing a genocide. And you just cannot possibly overstate the sea change in American politics that has occurred, viz. A VI the view of Israel and the view of
our relationship with regards to Israel. And so when you see, you know, the actions of someone like Joe Biden, who's been in DC for fifty years and has this view of Israel that dates back, you know, hasn't progressed since nineteen seventy and whatever he thought of it at the time. The other thing is that, you know, one of his ironclad like rules of the road in politics is you never lose by being too pro Israel, because you know there's much more funding on that side. I'm not trying
to be an anti Submitic comment. It's a statement of reality given the funding behind APAC and how influential that has been and how comparatively. I mean, there's basically no funding benefit to be gained on the Palestinian side of the equation.
And also typically the people who.
Vote on that issue are the people who are most vociferously lockstep for whatever it is that Israel wants to do, that particular dynamic may well be changing. I think that's the piece that is different that Biden and many other Democratic politicians really haven't accounted for that. Now you have this very very impassioned and frankly radicalized group of predominantly but not exclusively, young voters who are voting directly on
this issue. And so I think that's part of, you know, where the disconnect and why they've been so slow to even change the rhetoric with regards to Israel and Palestine let alone. They still haven't changed the policies. So this is a massive issue that you know, there are videos every day coming out of Kierson Gillibrand's town hall. You know, so many protesters there, AOC gett chased out of a movie theater because you won't call it a genocide. Adam
Schiff getting shouted down at his own victory speech. Every single Democrat is being held to account for this monstrous, abhorrent policy that again a majority of their own party says makes them complicit in a genocide. So I think the political landscape has completely flipped in a way that many of these politicians haven't accounted for. Just to throw on a couple things typically about California, don't claim to be a political expert in the ins and outs of
California politics. I do want to mention Adam shiff spent I think more money propping up the Republican candidate than he did even on his own campaign because he wanted to make sure he wasn't up against another Democrat in the fall, because he feels very confident, of course in California can be a Republican. It wasn't so confident he could beat say Katie Porter, Barbara Lee had to head.
The other thing is my understanding, based on you know, what I've seen of the messaging in that race, is that none of them really put Gaza at the core
of their messaging. And yes, Barbara Lee is seen as like you know, generally anti war, but she hasn't been leading the charge in the way that Saya Rashida Talebor like an ilhan omar Has and California also their uncommitted vote, you know, protests vote on Super Tuesday was one of the lower ones of the states that actually went for whatever reason, I'm not really sure why.
And I think it's also worth mentioning while we're in California that both George Gascone and la and Jose Garza and Travis ca Any which soccer you're obviously very familiar with, held onto their seats and these pretty competitive Democratic primaries not super close either, And that contrasts with the mood of the country back in twenty twenty two, where it was sort of like, oh, you know, Democrats are going to have to do attack to the center in order
to make up from this backlash of twenty twenty. Well then Dobbs came down and now we're here and Israel happened. So I think there's just there's so much going on with young voters, in particular for Democrats, that if there's going to be a wake up call, you would think the results that are coming in showing you know, some seriously alarming drops and enthusiasm for Joe Biden that could affect turnout. It could affect his margins could affect third parties.
These would be those red flags, those warning signs. But Ryan, there was a glaring red flag last night in American Samoa in the form of Jason Palmer.
Jason Palmer ran what is I think it's got to be the coolest campaign ever. So he beat Biden for the delegates from American Samoa. Congratulations to yes, Jason Palmer, very very well known here in the here in the mainland. Let's let's play a little bit of the case that he made to American Samoan voters.
I'm asking for your support and vote and would love to talk to you about why I believe I'm the best candidate for American Samoan, a beautiful and diverse territory that needs much more attention and support from our federal government. You're probably wondering, who is this Jason Palmer. I've never heard of him before. Well, in the mainland, I'm actually very well known.
I can I can vouch for that, right, that is the man. As soon as I saw I'm like Jason Palmer the man.
And I don't know who saw Fox News call the race for Jason Palmer, but Brett Behar was really confused in the video. He was like, I don't know who that is.
He's out of touch. He's out of touch. Jason Palmer's huge and.
Jason and Palmer looks like he's a realtor in you know, suburban Minneapolis or something. He's got the Martin Luther King's American speech in the background. It's just like if if you were watching the video, he really had a frame picture of Martin Luther King giving his American giving his I have a dream speech behind him. I mean, it was just perfect in so many ways.
Ryan, Yeah, incredible. Congratulations to Jason Palmer.
Kristin Sager. Are you voting for him?
Oh yeah, maybe absolutely in the fall.
He's a very well known figure. You know about him for years.
He's big on TikTok. I think I don't know zoomers.
Love him too, good for the kids, love them so good for Jason Palmer.
Very very exciting. Love love love to see it.
Well, Sager. I want to test this last element to you in the block. This is more results out of Texas again. I think the theme of this block when it comes to how Biden performed last night on Super Tuesday, we can go ahead and put b ten up on the screen, just some really some of the signs from the polling that's found and starting to flag with Hispanic voters, Black voters, young voters started to show up in the returns yesterday. Talked to us a little bit about these results from Cameron County.
Yeah, I had big eyes in South Texas just because that was such a big flip that we saw that happened in twenty twenty in some cases moving like forty to fifty percent of the vote from Hillary Clinton to Trump.
What you saw last night was actually pretty fascinating.
It's not just Cameron County, but what we try to highlight there is a lot of the results all across South Texas where you actually saw a pretty significant, st significant protest vote for Armando Perez Serrato.
Who is a Democrat.
He's kind of an all over the play, all over the place gentleman, but critically was somebody who came out very hard against Joe Biden, said that he was too old, disagreed with him on the Israel policy, went after a lot of the establishment Democrats. That showed me that he
was one of the most polling protest vote candidates. But it was localized to South Texas, where he spent a lot of the time actually campaigning on And I think what it kind of highlights for us here on show is that regardless of where people are, you know, in Minnesota, we saw some Dean Phillips voters and noncommitted voters. Maryanne actually did quite well here in Virginia where Krystal and I are, you know, in certain places where there were
younger voters. South Texas, everyone is localizing some of their descent against Biden, and then that comes down to how
are they actually going to come out and vote. And if you couple discent of the existing Democrats and then the Republican like surge of twenty twenty and really in twenty twenty two as well in South Texas, I think that it will fundamentally change the electoral map of Texas such that the Republican suburbs will vote Democrat, but they will make up for it with a lot of non, non college educated voters.
And I found that really interesting in the results last night.
Yeah, and my understanding from what's going on around there is that a lot of this just feels kind of cultural, like the area has just become and culturally Republican, like it's just in the water like it used to be culturally democrat, Like you're you're a Democrat because you live in this area.
Uh, now is the Florida.
It's the Flora.
I mean I think some some of it is the is the media, like the Spanish language take takeover by the right wing of the media.
Uh that that is dominant there?
I think is where kind of you get that in the water, Like that's that's kind of what makes the water is what you consume on Facebook and also then uh through the Spanish language television.
But yeah, is that is that.
Your read Soger and Emily that it's just becoming just like you're just you just are a Republican, Like I think this is going to go from a Democratic stronghold to pretty soon being just Republican territory.
Like I don't think the labels are useful.
It's just like the Tejano kind of libertarian identity has been there for a long time, in some cases longer than even many people who have lived in Texas who are white. So my point is just that I kind to apply like national like it's the right right would take over to the media and all that I just don't really think it's accurate.
I think a lot of it just comes.
Back to the fact that they truly felt screwed by they felt abandoned by Democrats on a couple of key issues. Inflation was a huge one actually in twenty twenty I believe, if I remember, gas and COVID checks were a huge reason why people voted for Trump back then. But when you continue into twenty twenty two, immigration had become a massive, massive, massive issue down there. I mean not just there, really
across the entire country. I think last night we saw it was one of the number one things that people were said that they were voting on or was their top priority, especially in the Republican Party. So my point is just that it doesn't come back to media. It comes down to, I think actually genuinely local conditions and to a broader, more like libertarian aesthetic identity combined with some cultural conservatism that has existed there for, you know,
on more than one hundred years now. At this point, it's a very unique part of the country. I encourage everybody to.
Go if you can. It's pretty fascinating place.
And there's just a ghoulish segment on MSNBC last night. I don't know how I saw this, but about it was Jensaki, Rachel Mattaw, Joy and Reid laughing about how Yes exit polls found Republican voters in Virginia were very concerned about immigration, and Jen Psaki was like, I live in Virginia, come on, And then I think one of them, Rachel Mattow was like, well, it's very close to West
Virginia in this just completely obnoxious way. And you know, it's worth noting that just a few days ago a Venezuelan migrant who was here illegally was charged with sexual assault against a fourteen year old in Virginia. So wherever you stand on the immigration issue, it has changed communities all over the country. So I think that was another I mean, Jensaki is still close with Biden World and representative of Biden World, and that's sort of sticking your
head in the sand. You guys, have any final thoughts on this before we kick you out and talk about Victoria Newland, I'll like, Crystal.
Go you open the can of worms with those immigrant comments. I'll just say that, you know, I do think that a lot of the concern which we see spike around election time times fed by right wing media is a sort of like.
Gindaup moral panic.
Not to say that it's not a legitimate issue, and to respond to the MSNBC people treating voters with contempt is always the wrong moves. Yeah, hotshall say us unifying comments rather than starting a shit storm.
Here.
Last two thoughts with regards to the democratic results. Number one just wanted to flag that the dude in California, David Mann I believe is his name, who is running to replace Katie Porter in her seat.
He had four and a.
Half million dollars of a PAC money spent against him in that primary and he still was able to succeed and was the top finishing Democrat and will go on to the general election. And one other note about him, this guy is not where I am on Gaza and.
Israel's very pro Israel. But he was like mildly.
Critical of Benjamin net Yahoo, which by the way, overwhelmingly Israelis are extremely critical of Benjamin net Yahoo. But that's the reason they poured all these millions into that raze. He was able to overcome that. That is somewhat encouraging. So when I put that out there and then the last note with regards to the revolt among young people in a number of these special elections where the result really turned on access to abortion and outrage over the overturning of Roe versus Way.
It was a surge in.
Young people, an unexpected surge in young people in those special elections that help Democrats.
Democrats secure those victories.
If you are dismissing the concerns of these young people, if you were thinking they're just going to get over what they see and what I see as a genocide, you have another thing coming.
Shifting your rhetoric is not going to be enough. They see right through it.
And that was I think very clear in the results last night, especially in the state of Minnesota.
Yeah, Da've min race was fascinating because nobody could really understand why APAC was spending millions of dollars against this guy who's not even that critical of Israel. The only thing people could land on his campaign concluded that they're just trying to soften him up for the general election against the Republican in a swing district, which suggests that a PAK is moving very much like the NRA did.
The n RA was a bipartisan organization for decades, and then as there became some criticism within the Democratic Party, the NRA decided we're not gonna be bipartisan anymore because we're just gonna, you know, be a republican organization. And doesn't matter if a Democrat says they support us. We just feel safer over here with Republicans that well, you know, we saw how that worked out for the NRA.
But when it comes to a PAK yesterday, we're going to talk about this later later in the show. Benny Gans was here in is here in Washington, d C. Mike Johnson declined to meet with him.
YEA, so fascinating, careful, careful with this, like alliance with the Magah of the party here Israel.
I'm not not exactly sure this is so well thought out.
I'm excited to hear you guys segment on that because I saw some of your analysis, Ryan, and I thought it was really as dude, I think on the APAC side, it's just like the joke er quote.
It's about sending the message.
And I think they've got unlimited amounts of money now at this point. I mean, they're more cash flushed, I think than they've ever been, probably at the peak of their spending powers, and you know, in certain ways, like their entire organization was dedicated and exists specifically for a moment like this where even if public opinion is turning, that they can flex their weight, you know, in such
a way that they can try and enforce what they want. So, you know, in a certain way, like they're they're really fulfilling their mandate.
I think, yeah, you know, they certainly are.
So Again, on Thursday, we'll be here, the four of us. Well, I don't know if all four of us are starting at eight thirty. We'll figure it out.
Be here at eight thirty while.
We preview the state of the Union, and then at ten o'clock there will be for premium subscribers Q and a analysis, and we'll do that as long as soccer can stay awake.
Yeah, I'll try it. I'm gonna try my best.
All right.
Thank you guys for having us, Thank you for having us.
Take your tie off, Take it easy.
Seismic news coming out of Ukraine.
Victoria Newland, who has overseen effectively America's strategy in Ukraine and with regards to Russia for more than ten years. You would argue is stepping down signaling we can put this element up, signaling a likely strategic shift coming forward if we could put up this second element here this is a post on Twitter that was going around. I think second not terribly unfair. The guy wrote big news,
likely signaling a major policy shift. Newland has run point on our Russia Europe policy ever since we helped engineer the made on Kudeta. The results after ten years are in Ukraine is destroyed and has permanently lost Crimea in its main industrial region Europe. The industrializing Russia permanently alienated and tighter than ever with China, India, and Iran.
Much of the world.
Refused to isolate Russia and suffered no consequences. Institution central to US dollar hegemony no longer viewed as neutral. Nordstream We're going to talk about this later when we talk when we get to the Huthis and the cables, the fiber optic cables. Nord Stream broke the steal on sabotaging international infrastructure. Russian military capabilities significantly increased, not decreased.
Countries like Iron, North Korea, etc.
Seen that short of total war, NATO conventional capabilities are quite limited, she writes, Still Nolan is won, he writes, still, Nolan is one of those undead creatures in Washington who has only ever failed upwards. So her resignation probably indicates her usefulness has finally run out. You know, this is one of those posts where you look at you like, no lies detected.
Basically, and you know, Ryan this I don't know if this was a Freudian slip, but I thought it was really funny when you opened this block you said big news out of Ukraine, when technically it really is big news out of Ukraine. Though she is a US diplomat. There's a quote here from Secretary of State Tony Blincoln who said it's Toria's leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of Foreign Pol he will study for years to come. This he's what he said in a written statement. No
lies detected there either. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin's full scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and that's where the lies are sort of starting to be detected. But it's absolutely true that she will be studied for years to come.
And I would also just add to this Ryan, I think Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden himself, remember who was point man on Ukraine for the Obama administration and obviously had different family ties through a hunter to the Ukrainian economy, although I set that aside for the moment because I don't even think it matters entirely in this context, because I think Joe Biden would be utterly committed to Ukraine and to Zelenski and to their sort
of goal to remain as a bull work against Putinism as they see it, no matter what. And there is the reading of this as a seismic shift that I genuinely wonder about, because, for example, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, and Tony Blincoln are still running policy.
And it's rare that a diplomat can become so influential that she becomes kind of like a figure and a power center in her own right, and Newland did that with regard to Ukraine, Europe and Russia. Brett McGirk is getting there when it comes to kind of Mid East policy. We'll see if he survives this particular moment.
Don Leu a.
State Department official in South Asia, if he has another five ten years as he's been doing there ineffectively, but effectively for you know, American imperial interests. You know, he could rise to the level of a Newland, But she is kind of in a league of her own and in something that does not bode necessarily well for Ukrainians who are hoping that, you know, the American policy is
going to stay the course. Put up this next element here, This is from the Associated Press, says Newland will be replaced temporarily as Under Secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan who oversaw.
The US withdrawal from the country.
Everything's fine, yeah, right, yes, you're good hands.
Right.
It's like you work at a major corporation and they introduced these new consultants who are going to help us right size the place, and they're going to be meeting with each of you for fifteen minutes, and it's it's just gonna pop up on your calendar and don't worry about it.
Don't worry.
Yeah, it's going to be fine.
Big yeah. The huge vibes with that comparison here, I actually want to skip ahead to our last element. This is C five because I think it's This is from the All In podcast. It's David Sachs talking about Victoria Newland, and I think this is super relevant and well put. He actually you're going to hear him compare Newland to being what Fauci was to COVID to Ukraine, and his co hosts are sort of laughing and enjoying this. It is amusing. But I think it's amusing because it's it's
a really good way to look at it. Let's roll see five here.
Newland is the Fauci of this situation. Okay, the same way that Fauci was supposed to be protecting us go from viruses and then fund it in a function research Victoria.
Label let me tell us or misinformation?
Victoria Newland was supposed to be our chief diplomat with respect to Russia and Eastern Europe. And what did she do? Instead? She jinned up this conflict.
How jinned up?
We backed in insurrection in Ukraine in twenty fourteen, Jason. If you didn't like the insurrection of January sixth, let me tell you aren't going to like the insurrection that she staged in Ukraine because they brought in these Ukrainian far right nationalists as the muscle. She was the State Department official who was responsible for backing this insurrection of a democratically elected leader in Ukraine in twenty fourteen named Yanikovich.
Okay, and you know what it's it's really actually pretty hard in America to talk about the Maydon uprising accurately and honestly without sounding like a lunaticy. And so for instance, and so we're gonna play a documentary that that like gets into Newland's role and the role of John McCain and Chris Murphy and this as well as she showed up and started handing out basically baked goods and symbolically and a gesture that was covered a lot by Western media in the Maydon Square to show show us.
Support for this operation.
And why why I say it's very hard to talk about it honestly without sounding like a total crank is because uh, there there there was a massacre in in the Maydon Square that led to the far right basically taking over. There were then allegations that it was a false flag, that the that it was actually the far right themselves, uh, that that open fire on mayde on
protesters in order to instigate this entire thing. There was then a huge internal invent mistigation done by the subsequent Ukrainian governments, and that investigation has never been published, like it's completed, and we just don't have it very serious credible people who have looked very closely at this do
not dismiss that out of hand. And the far far right figures, the most far right figures who were involved in that uprising, hijacked the entire thing, and you know, with direct kind of neo Nazi connections went right into the government that Victorian Newland helped to facilitate.
So let's roll a little bit of the history of that moment.
And this, by the way, is from Oliver Stone's documentary, which I really reckonize.
Like I said, everybody thinks Oliver Stone's a crank, but this is based on actual history, like these things really happened. You can hate Oliver Stone, you can think he's a crank, but this is what happened.
It's called The Ukraine on Fire. It was released in twenty sixteen, and here he's actually talking to Victor Yanikovic, who David Sachs obviously just mentioned that was intercepted.
It was a call between the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Newland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt.
Questions of credibility are being raised after a private chat between two top US diplomats was leaked online.
I think Yachts is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience.
He's the guy.
You know, what he needs is Cleech and Tony Book on the outside. I just think Cleech going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yachts and yuk It's just not going to work.
Yeah, So I think that. I think that's right.
Okay, good.
Would you want us to try to show up a call with him?
There's your next Jeff Sullivan's come back to me VFR saying you need Biden, and I said probably tomorrow for an ATA boy and to get the deeds to stick. So Biden's willing.
So you had this remarkable phone call where you have these two senior officials of the US government apparently talking about a coup or how they were played to restructure the government of Ukraine.
So just a heads up that was not the clip where he was with the Nakovich Shi that was my bad. But he does extensive interviews with Yanikovich in this documentary.
Right and just be transparenting on Akovich to Russian leaning guy.
So, but that's what's interesting is he seemed like he was trying to make overtures to the EU. And people remember the lobbying scheme that Paul Manifort got caught up in when he was at Mercury Public Affairs, a huge, powerful lobbying firm and the Podesta Group. Tony Podesta ended up having to retroactively file as a registered lobbyist on behalf of Ukraine because he was representing And again, you sound like a crank when you talk about this, but
it's true. The Party of Regions, Yanikovich's party, they set up a shell think tank called the European Center for a Modern Ukraine in order to avoid registering on behalf of Ferra. Now, eventually, through really great reporting by Ken Vogel and others, it came to be completely apparent that this was a shell think tank representing a political party in Ukraine and they were trying basically to help Yanikovich get closer to the West. They were talking extensively to
Hillary Clinton's State Department. You can see that in their retroactive filings. So this was all super tangled with Western interests. It's the same thing when you go down the Barisma rabbit hole and you realize how connected to sort of political power Barisma was, and then Hunter Biden was, and then Joe Biden was just sort of by association. Western interests in Ukraine have been pushing in making money off
of Ukrainian politics in really disgusting ways. And I think one of the things, and Ryan, I'm curious because you probably remember this covering this when it happened with Madan, and when the Newland phone call came out, people were shocked, although they shouldn't have been by her tone of voice, where she just looking at Ukraine and Dambas like a chessboard.
Right right, and because our media sucks.
Like the thing that made a ton of news out of that call, which presumably was intercepted by Russia by the way, and then and it leaked, was when she said f the EU. It's like, do we want to go to the who? Do we want to go to? EO C euh And she's like, F the EU and because she said it like that, and she said that that became the big piece of news out of it. And the German Chancellor said, you know, how dare she say that, like, you know, the EU like actually like legitimately,
like how dare she say that? Like the EU has much more ought to have much more say over what's going on with regard to Ukraine than the United States would never setting aside the idea that either of them should be dictating kind of who runs who runs Ukraine.
But I think that the the Biden, the Hunter Biden, the Barisma, the lobbying, the man Afford stuff, like, I think that's all like interesting, But I also think it's it's peripheral because like when you have these kind of global power struggles, you've got, on the one hand, the kind of foundational chess playing between you know, major powers that are driven by geopolitics between kind of the EU, the United States and and and Russia.
You've got those main forces.
Then you've got parasites that just kind of feed off of the host that is this, that is this thing. You've got people like Manaphort just they none of them care Hunter Biden, like they don't don't care they're just like, oh, there's there's a clash of interests here.
Anytime there's a clash of interest there's.
Gonna be money that's that's moving around, and we're going to try to make some of that money. And so you can think whatever you want to think about the peripheral stuff and go ahead and lock all the people up as far as far as I'm concerned. But the actual power play, the actual geopolitics under underway are what they.
Appear to be.
Like Victoria Newland did uh, you know, come up with the structure of the new Ukrainian government like she she like kicked around the names. This is who were who we should put in, this is who should be on the outside, And that is in fact what ended up happening like that, that that's that's what happened. That the guy that you're talking about ole tiny book is a is it basically a neo Nazi Like.
McCain met with him. The Newland is propping.
Him up there, yes, and Nazi here by the way, Like.
I said, we sound crazy, but like no, no, like just just google this, just google this guy. Like it's a it's a hard right neo Nazi party that we kind of pushed into power. And then Russia responded immediately by that that little quiet little Green Men thing where they sent in all these folks into Crimea and they just popped up and they're like, Crimea is ours now, yes, and uh, the new far right government was you know, hyper hyper nationalist, and the you know, Eastern Ukraine was
supportive was mor Yanikovich country and more Russian speaking. This new far right government came in and you know, effectively, you know, ban speaking Russian in public, and a war breaks out in the Domebos in the Eastern Ukraine region, and ten years later, you know, here we are. So we go back to that guy's original point. Even if you take her at her own goals, Yes, like her goal.
You can agree or disagree with it. You can think it's cynical, you can think it's evil, you can think it's you.
Know, imperialism. It didn't it also didn't work, Nope, but she lost. She's losing.
That's why I loved the Fauci comparison, because it's like him saying, our goal is to enhance the pathogens, to protect us from the pathogens, stop pandemics. Yeah, exactly. So his goal was public health. Her goal was peace, and by those very standards.
He certainly didn't stop the pandemic.
That's the funny thing, even if you believe that it did not come out of the lab in Wuhan. The lab in Wuhan's goal was to detect a pandemic before it goes global. Well done, and either way it started either in the lab or within a couple miles of the lab, and they didn't stop it.
So just a great work, all run, everyone work all around. Yanikovich did end up fleeing to take shelter in Russia after a scuttled EU deal.
Basically, and a lot of people thought that when Russia, when Putin came back to Kiev, he was going to try to put some Yanokovich or somebody like him back on top of a puppet government.
And then again it's this argument about Victoria Newland by her own standards, and so often with US policy still treating everything like it's the Cold War. But even during the Cold War, you end up pushing people who may have been amenable to making deals with the EU further into the hands of Putin, which was not your goal, but countertudibly to you, but intuitively to everyone else is like,
very obviously going to be the outcomes. Sometimes I do have one question before we wrap to you, right, we.
Also got to talk about her husband before we wrap, but go ahead.
Yes, my question was going to be, actually, this is perfect. My question was going to be the CIA report New York Times comes out last week about the sort of deep, long standing CIA operations in Ukraine, which we knew about
from other reporting. But I think this was very clearly a coordinated leak by people in the intelligence community to get the New York Times to report that the American intelligence community had been trying to steer the Ukrainian intelligence in the right direction over all these years, but Ukrainian intelligence just kept going rogue and doing their own thing. It sort of felt like a caverr ass leak. And then the next week Victoria Newland has gone, I'm not
tying those together in any conspiratorial way. I'm genuinely curious what you think, Grian, if Victoria Newland is leaving because she lost clout because her argument started to look more obviously like it had failed. But then at the same time, that brings us back to Jake Sullivan and Tony Blanket and Joe Biden themselves.
I mean, I would assume that she stepped aside in protest of her her own, you know, policy objectives, not not no.
Longer carrying the day.
I would guess that she's whatever she was arguing for is no longer the thing that's going to happen.
This is not that.
This is not the type of person who whose will to power just has them stepping away at any key moments, right So so that so that's my suspicion, and that's and that's why universally, people who watch this are saying this is likely to signal a significant strategic shift regarding American policy in Ukraine.
Now, let's talk about the husband.
Robert Kaplan.
That's a Real Housewives quote, by the way, you should should we talk about the husband. It's the nine year anniversary of the Amsterdam dinner from the Real Housewives above, we didn't even celebrate.
We should talk about the husband's talk about the husband.
Real Housewives of Foggy Bottom. So Robert Kaplan is one of the leading kind of neo cons and she too has been in the neo cons circle.
So it would if this was like.
One of these marriages where the people are, you know, have divergent politics then who cares who she's married to, But like her, her politics and Robert Caplan's politics pretty clearly overlapped. Now we don't have as much public writing, you know, from Newland because she's been an internal operator basically.
Her her entire career.
But we do have it from Robert Kaplan, who was you know, found, you know, co founder basically of the neoconservative movement in the nineteen nineties.
That that that orchestrated the.
Invasion of Iraq and the rest of the rest of that disastrous kind of American you know, aggressively imperial policy, rather than the kind of Newland attempts to do imperialism, which is color revolutions and manipulating behind the scenes, but both towards the same end, spreading democracy working great.
Yeah, it's just synergy all just across the board. I actually liked the Real House was a foggy bottom reference because it's basically how this is operating. Not I don't mean that in like a sexist way, because obviously Victoria Newland is not a housewife, and that's sort of the joke about the housewives and solf.
Now she's the brains of that family.
I mean, but it's it's just how DC works. That's the swamp for you in a nutshell. All right, let's move on to the huge news out of Arizona. Kirsten Cinema shocked the political world yesterday by announcing she was stepping down. She was retiring. I think we have some video that we can roll of Kirsten Cinema queued up. She gave a what sounded sort of conspicuously like a Nobel no Labels thing, but she's also said that she
is not interested in the no labels ticket. Just listen to what Kirsten Cinema said in this video.
The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word. We've arrived at that crossroad and we chose anger and division. I believe in my approach, but it's not what America wants right now. I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we've delivered because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done. I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.
So she didn't want to run against Kerry lakeron Yeah and So polls half her under ten percent in the election. Reuben Diego said that he would challenge her if she didn't support Biden's kind of domestic policy agenda. She thwarted Biden's domestic pologies agenda, so Diego did jump into the race.
Diego is a couple points.
Behind Lake and Poles, I think in general, but with Cinema gobbling up single digits but non trivial single digits, that was making it a tough race for him.
Probably not a ton of carry Lake and Kirson.
Cinema CRUs no, but a lot of Cinema and Diego crossover vote or so.
She was an independent technically, but.
Right last, right exactly.
But I think that this makes Diego, you know, if we were doing the counterpoints needle and lean them at this point in the in the Arizona Senate race, as a result of her dropping out of this, you know, the thing that might have been kind of peak Kirsten Cinema came during the fifteen dollars a minimum wage vote, and if we can play this here, I think what drove people nuts is that here she is coming out on the Senate floor in her just gen X costume
and giving the thumbs down like this, like kind of enthusiastic thumbs down to a fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage. I asked somebody on Twitter when that happened to come up with a nice edit of it with the four non Blonde What's Up song?
Yes, it's so good.
We're not going to play it here because we don't want this video to get taken down because they want to hide the truth from you that that was. That was a four Bland's moment right there. It's just so incredible to see. You know, these these are the leading lights of my generation.
It's the two sides of the gen X coin, right, Like you either end up being Ryan Grimmer Custon Cinema.
Yeah, so she started out like me, basically like a fringe anti war protest weak in.
Yeah. She was. She was working with Code Pink.
She went she protested the two thousand and four convention either whichever whichever convention was down in Miami.
She was. She was out there in the streets protesting it.
She was elected as a basically a progressive in the in the in the Arizona legislature and then she was just on grease skids from from left to right. She was elected to the House, still somewhat normy dem gets. She wins in twenty eighteen in the Senate, fairly standard Democratic line at that point, but very quickly became kind of the biggest thorn in the left side. If she wanted, she could have held that seat, you know, indefinitely. You no, she it was hers. It'll be interesting to see where
where her corporate payout comes from. I think speaches will be lucrative for her, Like she can show up at associations and get twenty thirty grand of pop just to like, maybe even more than that, you know, to speak to like the dental Association, so that they can like say, like,
oh look we've got Kirsten Kirsten Cinema here. She could do some consulting, I think, on for some corporations, just so that like she could be like a rain maker somebody who like meets with clients and helps bring them on. She's very charming personally. She loves to, like, you know, have nice dinners, drink nice wine. She interned at a private equity owned vineyard winery while she was a senator. She likes the good life, good for her, and so
she can get that financed. I think, and rain making is almost more important than kind of doing this the strategy like bringing in those big clients so she could do that. She's not gonna be able to lobby a lot of Democrats, that's for sure, nobody. They're not going to want to take her calls. But she can call a lot of these Republicans. I think they really they really like her personally.
Yeah yeah, And it's not like Republican voters like her personally, but Republicans or powerful Republicans do it.
Got their cell numbers. She knows what's going on, and I.
Should say her committee assignments in terms of where that payout might come from. She was on Homeland Security, she's on commerce, Science and transportation, she was on appropriations. There's plenty of money to be made for Kirsten Cinema. Now, I do think that it's interesting No Labels said they're going to decide within the week after Super Tuesday. There are tons of leaks coming out of No Labels and places like Politico that it's an absolute disaster. Behind the scenes.
Of course, big donors feel like they NO Labels missed their moment that they should have had someone jump in. They should have begged a Joe Manchin or Kirsten Cinema to jump into the right spot Larry Hogan, but they should have done it successfully and gotten them to jump into the race. Mansion obviously said he didn't want to be a spoiler. But Kirson Cinema is an independent. She actually left the Democratic Party. She came out and gave
this address about how compromised is a dirty word. That is one of the great misleading lines of no labels, that if we just compromised more, which is a total code for if we just grifted more, if we just got those centrist members from wealthy districts to agree to spend more money for their friends, than everything would work out. It's like, that is absolutely true. We could pass tons of legislation if we got these populists out of Washington,
whether they're on the left or the right. I remember when we had not too long ago, Sam Goodldegg and his colleague on the show to talk about how actually the wealthiest districts on the House side tend to be the most centrist districts and the poorest districts tend to be the populist districts, and that's what the no Labels
conversation is really about. They think, of course, it all trickles down and helps the poor when you spend money, which is the argument they've been making for Ukraine, that we're just we're rebuilding America's industrial belt because of this Ukraine spending, which is also.
Not even true.
Yeah.
I think Mike Williams and Sam good Older when they came on and talked about that report, if I remember correctly, and you guys watch that's so you might remember, the richest caucus in the country is the No Labels caucuses, which is the Problems No Labels sponsored the Problem Solvers Caucus.
And so.
This no labels theory has been tried, like Cinema tried it, Like said, she very closely hwed to the demands of the private equity industry and the way that they think of the Congress ought to legislate, and she.
Wound up at like eight percent.
Yeah, then that's actually doing better than she ought to have because the private equity world is less.
Than eight percent. Yeah.
Just while we're talking about Kristensen, m I need to make an important correction she was not herself Wickan. This is reading from in front of the show. Philip Legman, who wrote this article back in October twenty eighteen. He broke a story of and I just got to read the pros here.
Rep.
Kirston Cinema, the Democratic nominee for you a Senate, is not a witch, but she has been known to hang out with witches. It was during the height of the Iraq War when Cinema then afar.
It was the nineties, man, everybody was wicked.
Everyone was dabbling. Then a far left protest organizermered some in supernatural help to help stop the Iraq War. Emails obtained the Washington Examiner show Cinema inviting a prominent cup and of feminist witches in Arizona called Pagan Cluster to celebrate International Women's Day and protest the war in March of two thousand and three. The arc of Kirsten Cinema is that.
She basically lived my life in the nineties.
I was gonna say it's a fascinating arc, but I also feel like it's you go in one of two directions, right, Like you either think that and that's what drives me crazy about no labels. Is they spend so much money trying to convince normal Americans that what's super edgy is their idea of like compromise, and it's bullshit. It's just a code word for corporatism. There's nothing edgy about it. It's it's not like the like even the category no labels,
even the name no labels. They're trying to make it sound hip and cool, even though it's basically like the Dad Tennis shoes of politics. Sorry that that was.
My pet theory on on Cinnamon.
I'd love to maybe we can get her on after she's no longer a senator and just put this tour.
So I'm curious.
I used to talk to her decent amount when she was in the House of Representatives before she made her
her right wing turn. And so my pet theory is that the far left that she was a that she was a significant, like daily part of back in the nineties two thousands, I can testify, can be a pretty toxic and unpleasant place, and I wonder if she mistook that the top the individual toxicity that you have to put up with in the service of the gend of the mission, the common good for what the left represents because she has a visceral kind of personal hatred for
the Left that really can't, as far as I believe, be explained any other way. She talks about, you know that all we want to do is like, you know, go after you know, each other's opponent's like, you know, nobody goes after anybody harder than Cinema goes after the left. Yeah, and there's got to be something there. Maybe she'll tell us, well, I'll put on my calendar a year from now, we'll have her on. We'll have her on, and we'll we'll just put her on the couch and figure out, like what happened.
I think it's deeply personal.
As the four non blondes would ask exactly.
But I think to Kirsen, Cinema and Tulsa Gabbard, there's something people like that, there's something that is very personal because there's this feeling and I'm sure actually a lot of our viewers feel the party, the Democratic Party that you were used to supporting. It feels like if you look at certain issues went crazy and if you don't like the squad and you're still like an anti corporate, anti establishment democrat, you're gonna be like well, what the
hell am I going to do? And then Kirsen suddenly gets some money thrown at her. She isn't in a Bennett. So again, I think it's both sides of the gen x coin representative.
And for people curious about what I'm talking about, if you've ever done and let's say, organizing with the Green Party, you know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, then you don't.
He almost sold T shirts at What's Stuck ninety nine? Fun, Ryan Grim.
Fact I did sell natter T shirts at Madison Square Garden when he was running for office.
All right, let's move on to the Middle East. Hesbola fired rockets at Israel yesterday, Ryan, do you want to tee up basically some of the developments that just happened in the last twenty four hours.
Yeah, and we can put this first vo up.
This is a pretty significant launching of missiles from Hesbola into Israel.
This is an escalation.
You can see the Iron Dome there intercepting most of these business and from what we understand, the Iron Dome either successfully intercepted every launch or or they fell harmlessly elsewhere. Like we we don't, we don't, we don't. Have word of any Israeli casualties.
Uh.
Put of this next element.
Uh.
The Israel says it's it's put, it's preparing how it's going going to respond, It's going through military options. You know, there has been you know, the talk of opening up a second front between Israel Lebanon up up in the north has been as much a topic of conversation in the Israeli media practically as as the war down in the south that Israel is waging against against gaz with
the you know, it's hard. You know, basically an Israel in the government now you've got the far right and the right and so you have a strong faction that is is basically making the case just do it all now, like it's time to seize you fully sees go on high and and lock that down like that you're Seria, forget about it.
You're never touching this again.
And to go back into Lebanon and seize territory there in a buffer zone between between them and Hesbla. The one of the problems domestically that the Israeli population has been facing it has been shortage of housing, basically housing housing prices over the years, and that that partly explains all of the West Bank settlements.
It's like, if you.
Got nimbi over here, well, we got how about yes, in somebody else's backyard. So you go in and you and you build all these settlements and you and you subsidize settlers to to live there and then commute just to half an hour to Tel Aviv or whatever on these you know, just free roads that go right right through, whereas if you're palacinting, you can't can't drive in those roads. It takes six hours to get anywhere. Now you can't go anywhere at all.
Uh.
Since October seventh, a lot of a lot of Israelis in the north and south have kind of pushed back into the into the middle of the country, staying with friends or and otherwise like getting apartments or houses and further driving up the housing housing crunch there. And so one of the kind of one of the missions of the Israeli government is to push push north and south so that people can return to their homes there, because if they don't, they've got this extraordinarily difficult, you know,
pressure cooker situation going on. Problem of course, as it has always been for the Israeli project is that there are already people there, and so working that out means either expelling those people or killing them. And to start a second front, it's sort of serious second front, let's say, in retaliation for for this UH when they're already at such a low point in global opinion and end the.
War not going great with.
And this this RAFA incursion expected at any point, is it is a moment of like uh top you know, heightened heightened risk because at the same time, and then I'll shut up. In the West Bank, you've got you know, complete economic meltdown from Israel withholding payments that you know, keeping Palestinians money from the Palestinians and banning Palestinians from going from the West Bank to their jobs you know elsewhere in Israel.
So that's so that's a pressure cooker.
So it's at the same time that you have net outward migration you know from Israel UH and and a collapsing economy.
And I actually don't want you to shut up because I want to get your take on the fiber optic cables. We can put this next element up on the screen from Forbes. Four fiber optic cables damaged in red Sea. Here's what we know. That's the way Forbes put it. But I'm actually more curious Ryan about what you know?
Right, these are the right. So the hohu Thies, uh, you know, have been saying that not only are are they going to you know, stop shipping through the Red Sea, that is, you know, headed to an Israeli port or a ship is associated with either Israel or the coalition that is arming Israel, like, so that's they're doing that, but there they also have you know, threatened you know, global infrastructures such as you know, targeting these these fiber
optic cables. We talked earlier in the program about the blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, kind of breaking the seal on the idea that you know, countries as part of their geopolitics are going to go around and destroy massive pieces of civilian infrastructure that connect you know, that connect countries together.
You know.
So the Red Sea blockade is driving up is driving the Israeli economy into the ground like massively, It's hurting the European economy significantly. It's driving up prices somewhat.
Here like it is it is a contributor to inflation.
But not as much as it you know, will be as if it if it can continues on. But this is, yes, another another escalation here, all four just the continuation of a war that the entire world just wants to see Israel stop.
And you tease this earlier in the show. But the next element here's from a report from Pablo Manricez, who says a source familiar with the speaker's priorities, So Speaker Mike Johnson, we can confirm continue to be a real person his priorities this week tells Uh told Mike Johnson that he is too busy to meet with Benny Gant. Now Benny Gantz is Israel's Minister of Defense. That is right.
He met with some right, he met with members of the House for Him Faires Committee. So he's here in the United States genning up support for Israel's war effort. There is a famous quote. I forget which Israeli Prime minister said it, but I think it was about George W.
Bush.
He was like, look, I wanted to get Bush on the phone. They told me he's giving a speech in Philadelphia. He's like, I don't care what the President's doing.
I want to talk to him.
Now and they went on stage, pulled the President of the United States off the stage and put him on the phone with the Israeli Prime Minister. And his point was, that is the access that we have to American corridors of power at the very top. Now Bennigants at the height of his war can't get a meeting with the Speaker of the House of Representative.
It's pretty interesting, long time supporter of Israel.
Too, right, And this is after the APAK has made this strategic decision to wage war with significant elements of the Democratic Coalition, go after they've men in California, even though he's not even that critical of Israel, just because it seems like they prefer a Republican if you have if you have a Democrat and a Republican and both of them are supportive of Israel.
APAC used to stay out of that.
Now it is Dave min Race that's breaking a new steal of being a kind of almost hyper part as an organization. Even as they continue to support Hakeem Jeffery Standi Hoyer. You know Democratic, they still have tight relationships with Democratic leadership. They're really putting all their eggs in the GOP basket, while the GOP is putting its eggs in the mega basket and the MAGA and a pack might not be the most long lasting relationship for I think pretty obvious reasons.
And you know, I know, shutdown coverage gets repetitive because it is and it feels like we're all just in a holding pattern. But the government is set to shut down on Saturday if the House of Representatives doesn't pass spending bills. So Mike Johnson genuinely may have been it's possible too busy to meet with Benny Gantz, although Ryan and your book writes your book shows us about Democrats,
but even with Republicans. Of course, with Republicans, basically you clear your schedule if you need to talk with is the Israeli Minister of Defense. But Mike Johnson is hurtling towards a shutdown, and part of that is because there's disagreement on Ukraine funding, which Democrats and centrist Republicans have insisted on tying to Israel funding. And so john is now the bill the sort of two tiered mini bus. You know, the Republicans said we're not going to govern
by omnibus anymore. They've continued to govern by omnibus. So now Mike Johnson's plan was to try to not trick the Freedom Caucus but appease the Freedom Caucus by saying we're going to do two tiers, so two minibuses. They released the text of those. The Freedom Caucus is wildly unhappy with it. Ukraine and Israel funding is on the table because the government is hurtling towards potential shutdown if
there isn't a deal agreed to. Freedom Caucus doesn't have a lot of incentive because they represent districts that don't care if the government shuts down. And normally that's okay, but Mike Johnson has such a thin margin that not only could the government shutdown, but then he could be vacated from his chair. So he may genuinely not have
a lot of time to meet with Benny Gantz. But you know why Benny Gantz wanted to meet with him, and that's because the Ukraine and Israel funding has been tied together, and that in and of itself is tied to this shutdown conversation.
And I'm curious where you think some of this skepticism of Israel is coming from from the magaside is it is it the isolationism? Is it some of the you know, there's some there's some genuine anti Semitism out there among some in the base, or is it?
Is it something else?
Like?
What is.
What's going on here?
Like how you know you're normally the Republican House speaker is going to take any call, take any meeting from from an Israeli official who's here in the United States.
To not do that is seismic. Uh, what's your what's your read?
You know, there's a lot of opposition in Israel among young Democrats obviously, as we've covered many times on the show. I mean, you can't really overstate that. But Israel still polls relatively well in the whole country. Now, polling is different. It depends on what questions you're asking, It depends on how you're asking the questions. But Republican voters in general
are supportive of Israel. That said, I've seen cracks and that found as I'm sure many people have, and you especially hear that from sort of the hardcore magawing and usually when you see that rhetoric, at least in my experience, it's been tied to domestic affairs. So basically the line that we have so many problems here, we have so many people struggling to get by here, And actually used to hear that a lot from the left. You've heard it from both left and right. Isolation of swings over
the course of American history. It's not a new argument, but it does seem like it's gaining traction, especially now that the Ukrainian Israel funding is tied together. It's just the same thing with Ukraine. You know, we're spending billions of dollars on this war that doesn't directly affect the everyday lives of your average, every day life of your average American as people see it. So it gets harder to sell foreign conflicts when people feel like they're being
left behind in their own country. And a lot of those people are voting Republican now. So I don't think it's huge, but I do think it exists, and I think it's growing.
I also saw I think I think it was certain of Mike Cernovich that was talking about this. I'm curious that how much attraction is on the right for this. I saw some criticism of Israel connected to both its attempted expulsion of a lot of Armenian Christians from the Armenian Quarter who they have been there for thousands of years continuously, not this like you know, we were here twenty twenty five hundred years ago and then no, YadA, YadA, YadA,
we're back. It's like no, the the Armenian Quarter has been the Armenian Quarter like practically since the beginning of time all.
And then also.
That you know, Israel was arming and equipping a basic ethnic cleansing against Armenian Christians and Nigorno Karabak.
So that's become and that's also become almost a similar in the Ukraine War that if you know, you have the expulsion of Armenian Christians from there, and you know you have the sort of a Aris on one side, the Russians on one side, and you feel like a lot of Americans, I think Tucker has talked about this before. Tucker Cross has talked about this before. It looks like
we're protecting foreign interests over like this. This a weird prioritization of different foreign interests in a way that a lot of Americans, this was the argument, would be upset to if the media covered it and to see what had happened to the Armenian Christians.
And uh yeah, like that's people want a background on that. I did a deconstructed episode on that maybe six months or a year ago. Just google like deconstructed Niguano Kira back and you'll get that'll give you the whole background of this really fascinating and disturbing situation that is Israel Is played a key role in arming and equipping the kind of the bad guys in this story.
Yeah, the Nigora careback thing has gotten, it's.
Gotten starting to get some tractions.
Yeah, absolutely, and you're starting to hear people talk about it, and I think specifically because of Ukraine, but the Armenian Christian Quarter in Jerusalem. You combine those two things, it could get more and more traction. I haven't seen the damn break yet. But again, when people feel like domestically they're getting screwed over and over again, that's those arguments get very very powerful.
Yeah, and I wouldn't I wouldn't feel too bad for Israeli strategists who who who blew it on this one, because their entire kind of thinking was, oh, let's let's team up with these Christian Zionists because they they seem to believe that, you know, they need to support Israel because we're somehow going to bring about a second Coming through our own annihilation. Yeah, that that'll be a good like, that'll be a well thought out alliance they had they had.
I forget, who's who's that crazy guy who spoke at the the the march for Israel or.
I don't even know his name and I'm in a White Evangelicals.
He's an He's an abject anti Semitic lunatic. Yeah, and they and they hitched their wagon to them, right, so if that wagon goes off the cliff, that they really only have themselves to blame.
Yeah, yes, And I maintain that that's you know, there are some really big voices in that space. I don't think a lot of I don't know broadly, I don't think it has a ton of clout in the movement anymore. It was I feel like I heard a lot about it's more of the origin.
Then it's kind of like people like, oh, really, what's going on.
But obviously a lot of Christians do feel very tied to that land, and you feel like it's important for America to be involved in protecting it and keeping it safe. And that you know, these people are support Israel.
But the other reason that they felt like they had a good alliance there was there was this islamophobic overlap between between It's they're like, hey, the enemy of enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But if you link up.
With another religious group because that religious group is bigoted towards other religious groups, don't be shocked when they turn on you next.
It's a crazy tangled set of different interests. That does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. But don't worry because we'll be back on the channel tomorrow for the State of the Unions tomorrow.
Goodness, I know it's tomorrow.
The City of the Union. This is one of the biggest news weeks of the year. The City of the Union is going to The pre show is going to start at eight thirty. The State of the Union starts at nine pm. We will be back at ten thirty or I'm sorry, at ten pm taking questions from premium subscribers. So now's your chance to become a premium subscriber. You
get the full Counterpoint show totally uncut. You get to see all of the segments as opposed to the few weeks is to put up on YouTube, So if you're not a premium subscriber, we certainly would appreciate and hope that we provide enough premium content behind the scenes. I think questions are going to be super fun tomorrow after the Day of the Union.
Looking forward to it. We'll see you guys tomorrow.
Question