Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning everybody.
That's a joke at Sager's expense, because he scared the hell out of me yesterday with his good.
Morning, Happy Wednesday. How was it yesterday with Sager?
It was great?
It was great, And you're gonna be back with Sager tomorrow.
And so he said he was going to play the lefty yesterday.
He tried.
How'd that go?
He did his best.
He's got the populist mojo.
If he just you know, skips over a bunch of that other stuff.
Well, yeah, if you should go back and watch his monologue from yesterday.
Okay, was it a lefty one? What are you talking about?
All the opposite? It was on guns. You'll love it.
False advertising.
So we're back to normal hair, Yes, I'll be on with Sager tomorrow because Crystal is still on her honeymoon.
She'll be back next week. So what do we got today?
So we're going to talk about the obviously the Eden Carrol verdict. We got George Santos so the sealed indictment, and so we're going to play kind of George Santos bingo trying to guests which of the like thirty six different frauds he's committed in the last couple of weeks that the FEDS are going to indict him for. We're going to talk about the upcoming Ukrainian offensive. You've got Ukrainian officials worried that they may have overhyped what they're going to be able to accomplish.
What are you looking at?
Yeah, we also have the debt ceiling negotiations, big, big news and all of that. Yesterday as we were prepping the show, it was like it just kept coming. Yesterday afternoon, We're talking about new developments and Ronda Santis' potential bid for the presidency.
I'm going to talk about a story that.
Broke last night again as we were preparing the show, more revelations about the CIA's involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story. And then Congressman Rocana is here in studio. We're excited to talk to him about the Supreme Court.
So eg and Carol Victorious, if we can put this tear sheet of Victorious in her defamation suit against President Trump, the jury found that Trump was liable for sexual assault as well as defamation, adding together five million dollars in penalties tacked onto him. Trump then responded by immediately defaming her again. If we can put up his response to it, what do you say here? I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace, a
continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. And so what Trump was hit for when it came to defamation was a number of things, one saying basically calling her ugly and calling her a liar. And here he is again kind of calling her a liar. So it would be interesting if Egen Carroll goes back to Read Hoffman, who funded this first lawsuitent and says, you know what, he's still defaming me.
Read Hoffin's not out of money.
In fact, read Hoffins lawyer has probably got a little pay out here.
I mean five million dollars.
A five million dollar victory is pretty impressive in a case like this.
And again it's civil.
So sexual abuse is defined in New York State as quote, subjecting a person to sexual contact contact without consent. Carol did not win on the question of rape.
Rape is defined.
This is from New York state law, a sexual intercourse without consent, which involves any penetration of the penis in the vaginal opening. That would have been much given the allegations about a Burgdorf Goodman dressing room, I believe in the nineteen nineties, would have been really difficult to prove that said sexual abuse is Again, this is not a criminal case, so Donald Trump does not face jail time. That said he is now he has now lost on
the question specifically of sexual abuse. And yeah, this was she her accusation. She sues him for saying he kind of pushed her against the wall, shoved her against the wall, and raped her in that dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in the nineteen the mid nineteen nineties.
And not to get too graphic, but in Jean Carroll's testimony, you know, she talked about not being completely one hundred percent certain about everything that was going on while the assault was happening. And so I think that that's why the jury was like, well, we can't say with certainty precisely what happened in that dressing room, but we can say that there was a sexual.
Assault, right.
And what the jury said with that five million dollar verdict is that they felt that was a very serious assault.
Because sometimes a.
Jury will say, you know what, we do believe that the thing you say happened, and the damages were going to give you our one dollar like that's something that juries do sometimes, Yes it happened, but it wasn't that big of a This time, the jury said, know, it happened, and it was devastat and you're going to pay five million dollars for this.
Yeah.
And again, if it was a criminal trial, you would have a different standard for evidence. But in a civil trial, this is the judge had actually said to the jury before sending them back to deliberate quote, use the preponderance of the evidence standard, which is more.
Likely true than not true.
So again it's different than the criminal standard. If you're wondering, you know why this trial was sort of low key. It wasn't a huge fixture of media obsession over the last six months or however long it's been going on. But it is partially because of that standard. And I do want to say a little bit that the Egen Carrol episode is a strange one all around.
You mentioned Reid Hoffman.
She and her deposition said she didn't think about suing Trump until George Conway approached her. And I think it was actually at a party at like Mulli Jung's Malli Jung fast House in Manhattan. One thing that makes me uncomfortable about the Egen Carol case. People might remember that uncomfortable to use the word again. Interviews she had I think it was with Anderson Cooper shortly after she made these allegations. She says it was an episode, or this
is the New York Times. It was an episode. It was an action, It was a fight. It was not a crime. It was I had a struggle with a guy. I have not been raped, something has not been done to me.
I thought, that's the thing.
She said something similar on MSNBC. I would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border, who are being raped around the clock down there without any protection.
Very true.
It would just be really disrespectful. She also said mine was three minutes. I'm a mature woman. I can handle it. I can keep going. You know, my life has gone on. I'm a happy woman. The reason I use the word uncomfortable is that we do see sometimes in high profile media cases like this, partisan and especially men use women for political purposes and drag them through, I think, like really, or convince them to be dragged through, fund the dragging
through of just awful, awful media circuses. That's not to say if Egen Carroll wanted to try to see as absolutely powerful man Donald Trump, by all means keep the hold them to account for their actions. Is the allegations against Donald Trump here are not outside the scope of what seems plausible to me at all. That said, I don't I have not enjoyed the media cheerleading for this sort of painful I think process that Ing and Carrol has had to go through, whether the allegations are true
or not. She has seemed unwell at different points in this entire episode, and it's just always gross, I think to see these wealthy kind of political operatives swoop in and bankroll some of this stuff, Because I just doubt their motives. You know, her motives aside I doubt their motives.
And what's also true is that life doesn't all often imitate the kind of black and white understanding that we have of how these cases are supposed to unfold. And so what you know, there might may be something what you're saying, but at the same time, having covered a bunch of these different cases, what you often do see is people trying to minimize or rationalize what happened to them.
And so when you you know, Egene Carol's a a feminist who was felt that giving over the power of the word rape to him was then giving up some of her own power and some of her own dignity, a lot a lot of people don't want to acknowledge what happened to them because if they believe that.
You know, if they believe that, if they.
Can push it out of their of their mind and reject the fact that the experience happened, that somehow didn't happen, and that you can process it better that way. And certainly, as you know she's saying, a three minute experience relative to what was going on at the border at the time is a different thing, and she's she's trying to grapple with her own privilege at the same time.
Recognizing that that something.
Did, something horrific happened to her, as she alleged to the jury, and as importantly, I think the jury believed and the identities of the jury are fascinating. And not just the identities, but like the backgrounds, we have that element. Yeah, yeah, throw this one, throw this one up here. I mean the most interesting one, of course, being a Bronx security
guard who gets all his news from Tim Poole. Yes, So if like, if you're able to convince that guy that Trump was guilty of sexual assault and defamation here right, yeah, they put they made a good.
Case, probably did a good job.
And you go through the rest.
You could see a couple, a twenty something retail worker, all right, that person was probably not that difficult to convince of this if you're like, you know, thinking about your guests of the caricature of their politics. But a ton of the other ones are typical the kinds of people that Trump would be able to generally win over.
And might even vote for him.
You could have there was a one maga person on the jury, You could have several other people who end up voting for him and also find him guilty of this sexual assault.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's like, I mean, almost half of Alabama voters voted for Roy Moore in eighteen or twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. And if you talk to people down there at the time, they would say, listen, we're not saying that this is untrue, as some people certainly did. They're saying, we're voting a single issue on abortion. And if you made that choice in twenty sixteen. Obviously, ROVERSUS Wade was just overturned based on a court that Donald Trump appointed three justices too,
So that's where the logic comes from. And it's easily where the logic could come from. Again, I think what you said about EG and Carroll is really well said, you know, and I think obviously the jury was willing to have that conversation too, to the point where we just showed on the screen you even have, you know, kind of a tempool guy coming down on the side of.
Interesting week for Tim Poole, that's for sure.
Yes, that's for sure. Well, speaking of it people having interesting weeks.
Yes, And speaking of criminal frauds, George Santos is going to be what is going to be facing arraiement this week he's been indicted.
That's what it looks like.
They filed criminal charges against against George Santos, obviously New York representative, just yesterday. Ryan, you mentioned earlier we can play George Santos bingo here because the allegations against him.
Are so various, right.
So it think it's very hard to predict exactly what these charges are.
What's your best flock.
Or the easiest ones would be filing false paperwork in order to run for Congress. You know, there's that you can creatively produce a crime out of that without much difficulty because you are lying to the public and you're doing so on paperwork that you're attesting is accurate.
Now doesn't mean.
You can't make a mistake here and there about you know, the tenure you spent somewhere. But he just completely fabricated his entire background start to face.
So there's that. There's also campaign finance.
Stuff, like it does appear that he was using donor money to finance his lifestyle. There are basically two things that you can get busted for in the campaign finance world. Left, like there are no laws and we can talk about Ron DeSantis just moving eighty million dollars out of his state account into a federal super pack and being like, this is going, this is going to be fine. Nobody
prosecutes anything, which he's right. The only things that they do prosecute are straw donations, which is when an SBF appears who have done that. Sean macaw we made you know, is getting charged with or has been accused of doing that. Denshusa Basically, you get your your son or your daughter to max out to a candidate and then you reimburse them. Can't do that, They do prosecute it. The other thing is if you steal campaign funds and you use the
campaign funds for personal use. There's plenty of He was living, you know, in a place that was rented by the campaign. And then the other question is where did all this money come from? The dollars, Where did this money come from?
That's what he says.
He kind of three million dollars in income for one year, right that, And nobody really knows where that money came.
From, Where that money come from? And you know, Victor Wexelberg's name gets thrown around here through this intriotic guy who's like good doctor Seuss thing. Yes, oh yes, there's uh yeah, there's there's all sorts of weird kind of Russian connections that that might surface that that could be fascinating. Doesn't mean Russian government, but just could mean like corrupt Russian oligarchical folks in the in the New York area, which believe or not, there are some yes.
I mean the George Santos story, I think has always been somewhat frustrating because the lack of media coverage of his candidacy is why the people in his district right now have an absolute joke of a representative. They're not seriously represented in Congress because no, but he is going to take the one person who is meant to quote represent their interests seriously. He has zero credibility. And you know a lot of that came in the shadow of
the local media totally drying up. We talked about this in the fall, that when you just have fewer watchdogs on the ground in these given areas. One local media outlet did some really good due diligence on George Santos, but it wasn't really picked up by anyone else.
There weren't a lot of other people on the.
Case, and so now you have a situation where actually, interestingly enough, the CNN be cause CNN broke this story last night. They say the charges don't affect Santis's status as a member of Congress. So nothing in the constitution says that you're barred if you are under criminal indictment or a conviction for serving. Obviously we've seen that in different cases. Now, the fourteenth Amendment has prohibitions, as CNN says, for certain treason his conduct committed after a member has
taken the oath of office. But if he's convicted of a crime, he can get of two or more years in prison. He is instructed under the House rules to just sit out of floor votes and committing.
Votes, especially if you're in jail, if you're in behind boers, that would.
Make it tough.
They got rid of remote voting, you got rid of proxy voting, so something he can do. But that is an interesting kind of part of all this is that he actually can still be in Congress even if this ends up. I mean, obviously is a short term and I would doubt that this all gets litigated by the time he's up for re election, but he could technically still be in Congress, right.
And so right now it's two twenty two to thirteen, is that right? The House Republican majority. So if he is convicted, what they often do with corrupt officials is part of a plea.
Bargain involves you resigning from office.
So that was one reason that it was smart personally of him not to resign early on, because you want to be able to save that card. You'll often see that in like with Philadelphia politicians or other ones who have been like busted for some type of corruption. Not in Philly, New Jersey. Often you see this that in exchange for a lighter sentence, you say, I'm forfeiting my political career basically, and so he so you could see that Tom Swosey has expressed some interest the former member
of Congress in that area in running. You can imagine in a special election the kind of voters there trying to vote away some of the shame and putting Tom Swosey back in.
They did.
They were not head over heels for but he served there for a very long time as a popular mayor.
And you know he was who he said he was.
That's a big start.
So there's that that brings you down to two twenty one, two fourteen, and so then McCarthy only has three votes that he can lose on big issues like debt ceiling.
And Santos is held on. I mean, he just won't resign. He doesn't. I mean, he was giving reporters what Chick fil A in the hallway of the car.
He's got it. He's got the charm of a con artist.
Yeah, the ANNADELVI thing going for him.
I think there are some people who are like, this is such an amazing story.
We want to see, Like we want to see.
Yes.
See, that's the problem with the con artist charm is that once you realize it's a con, you can't see it. You know, it's just gets too it's too cheesy after a certain point, like him giving out Chick fil A in the Capitol. But yeah, if folks are expecting perhaps perhaps a resignation after this news, I mean, I'm not going to rule anything out. All I would say is that he has refused to do anything else so far other than stand his ground and be kind of coy about what actually happened and vote.
However McCarthy wants to vote.
Yeah, because I don't know if he still thinks he has a future or chance or whatever. But it's George Santa is not the member we need, but the member perhaps we deserve.
Indeed.
Yeah, and like any con artists, you're gonna you just live a day at a time.
Yeah, he's not a long term thinker.
And when they asked him, how did you think that you would get away with this twenty twenty so well I got away with it last time.
So again.
All right, now back over to the House of Representatives. We're talking right now about the debt ceiling negotiations, which had quite a moment yesterday with Kevin McCarthy obviously Speaker of the House, meeting with President Biden for the first time.
Since February face to face.
We have a video of Kevin McCarthy, if we go ahead and put B two up on the screen talking to reporters after his meeting with President Biden.
Unfortunately, the president has waited ninety seven days without ever meeting.
Every day.
I asked, could we meet, and he said no.
The House has raised the debt ceiling in a responsible manner, curve our spending at the same time bring us economic growth. I asked the president of this simple question. Does he not believe there's any place we could find savings?
All right, Mitch McConnell, if we put the next element up on the screen, said quote, the United States is not going to default. It never has, it never will. However, elections have consequences. We now have a divided government. Well, that's for sure.
We can then go ahead and put another Jake Sherman tweet up on the screen. The next element here, he says.
McCarthy says, the Big Four we'll meet with President Biden Friday. The staff is going to continue to meet in the interim, So that means Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Joe Biden will be meeting on Friday to hash some of
this out. Now, Ryan, I think the most important development as context for this in the last week is that forty three Mike Lee organized a letter where he gets forty three Republican senators to back the House bill which says raising the debt ceiling four point eight trillion dollars they will do. They will raise the debt selling one point five trillion dollars as a condition if Democrats agree to four point eight trillion in cuts, and some of
that is right at the Biden agenda. It's a student loan repayment, some of it is energy credits, that kind of stuff, sort of tiki taki to get to that big number there. But the Republican senators got completely behind that, forty three of them and saying, you know, this is a reasonable place to start negotiation from Joe Biden has continued to say, no, we are not negotiating.
Period.
We've seen cringe John Pierre talk about how this is essentially Republicans holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States and the economy in order to get some spending cuts passed.
So now that they have, i mean, how many days.
Left in the congressional schedule do they have, they're gonna have to cancel the recess.
It's I mean, they have to move quickly.
Yeah, yeah, before the June one, that's what. Because June one is the deadline for these negotiations, because Janet Yellen has said that's when.
Ish, it's the deadline.
Ish.
That's because which is the problem, because they don't they don't actually precisely know, you know, exactly when they're going to go to their bank account and find that they have insufficient funds.
Although putting June one as the deadline out there was speaking it into existence in some sense too, But that's yeah, to your point, it's an Janet Allen's like estimate of when things need to be settled by.
Yeah.
And if people remember our friend of the show, Rachel Bovart, occasional co host of the previous show and this one, she's over in the Senate now kind of setting strategy and organizing kind of for the right flank and the Senate.
I suspect that she had a lot.
To do with that that forty plus person letter, which once you get over forty, that's that's real because now they if they hold the line, you don't have sixty votes to overcome a filibuster. Chuck Schumer said yesterday afternoon there would be a bipartisan lifting of the of the debt limit. Kevin McCarthy, if you want to put up b one said he's not going to do kind of a short term thing. Now, everything that these people say at this point can mostly be discarded because who knows.
We'll see, if you know, if he has to do a short term thing, maybe he ends up doing a short term thing. This is all. This is all for positioning.
But speaking of positioning, to me, the biggest news that came out of the post meeting kind of back and forth was President Biden for the first time really kind of leaning into the fourteenth Amendment option, which is the one that says the full faith and credit of the
United States shall not be challenged. That's written into the fourteenth Amendment, this post Civil War language that was directed at kind of post Confederates who they were worried would come in take power and then basically refuse to pay the war debts as a way to kind of undermine the reconstruction and the kind of push toward bringing the Union back together after the Civil War.
And so you also have in the Constitution that Congress.
Has the power to authorize bonds and debt. So you have two conflicting pieces within the Constitution, and so when you have a contradiction in there, you do have to
have it worked out politically. And so you have people that are the normy mainstream Dems, like Lawrence Tribe, who used to be against the Fourteenth Amendment idea, coming out now with a column saying here's why I now support it that his argument basically is that the debt ceiling, the arbitrary limit, is giving Congress power that the Constitution never intended in order to kind of put a gun to the head of the president to then not enact
other laws that have dually been written into law. So you have all of this spending from the Bush, Obama and Trump era, and the bills are now coming due, so that spending was lawfully enacted. He's saying that it actually isn't constitutionally legit to say, well, actually, because of this destlinine, you can't spend some of these things.
No, that was already author was already appropriated.
It's the president's job to figure out how to meet those obligations.
Yeah, it's an interesting argument, And to your point about it being floated again by the Bian administration in the aftermath of the meeting yesterday, it reminds me of Dan Pfeiffer. He wrote for The New York Times, obviously former Obama officials, saying he doesn't think Biden should be negotiating with Kevin McCarthy at all because of the lessons from the Obama Bayner negotiations of the Tea Party years which got the
United States. I mean, that was what our first credit down there was, and it was at the twenty eleven one of the twenty thirteen one, after they were at loggerheads for a really long time, and everyone in DC was really convinced that something was going to work out because it kind of always does, right, We always have this expectation like it's fine, something always works out, and
then it didn't. It just didn't because in that case, you had the Tea Party movement with a whole lot of energy that had absolutely no political incentive or ideological motive to cooperate with Barack Obama. And so it was it blew up in everyone's face. Basically, Republicans fifers very correct to say their asses kicked and we're blamed completely by the media and by voters. And that's why he's saying,
why would Joe Biden negotiate with them? Now he's the one that has the upper hand, because we know there's no way the media is going to take the side of republic whether or not you think Republicans are right or wrong in an obstructionism of the debt sealing rays. The media is going to take the Biden administration side. Period, the public is already disinclined to like obstructionism, whether you're
Republican or Democrat or independent. People don't like to see generally that the things are just not working and that Republicans are kind of gumming up the machinery.
That doesn't play as well.
As like actually just doing things, getting things done from a purely sort of public relations standpoint. So they have the upper hand and fivers.
Like, well, then what are you doing.
You don't need to do anything because if this blows up in Republican spaces, they're going to come groveling back anyway.
Right, So, just to issue the debt or and to McConnell's point that election have consequences, we have divided government, as Democrats have been responding, well, the twenty eighteen elections should have had consequences too. We had divided government twenty nineteen and twenty twenty. Somehow we didn't manage to default. We were able to just raise the dead ceiling then, so we can raise the dead ceiling this time.
Biden even mentioned the coin. This is the platinum coin.
He said that the staff, his staff had not been studying it, but just bringing it up and entering it into the conversation, I think is, you know, changes the calculus a little bit if they do mint a platinum coin. By the way, so what you do basically, you mint a platinum coin, you say this thing is worth a trillion dollars, You deposit it with the New York Fed and now boom, you have a trillion dollars in your account, and then you can use that to pay bills while
you sort it out. You don't spend a whole trillion of it, but it's sitting there. Also, you'd have to put dark Brandon on the platinum coinin right, you'd have no show.
The lasers coming out of the eyes.
Oh I love it. That's absolutely what it would have to be. And so we'll see.
Yeah, nope, well we will see.
That's the stacking point with Kevin McCarthy saying in the meeting basically or after the meeting, does the president believe there's absolutely no spending that.
Can be cut buy and respond to that, he said, look, we saved one hundred and sixty billion dollars out of medicare you guys didn't seem to like that. We proposed ways that by taxing a bunch of the richest corporations and millionaires and billionaires. We could save hundreds of billions and more. How about that.
That's where you're getting It feels like twenty eleven again, right, Is there nowhere we can agree to cuts?
Well, of course there's somewhere.
We all believe there's something that can be cut in the government, but this process right now, it's too toxic to believe that they're going to on Friday say well, yeah, we can cut this, this and this, and it'll be a win for everybody. Kevin McCarthy's obviously on the tight rope of not being able to lose either the Freedom Caucus or the more centrist members of his own parties. So it's just insane and the economy is on the line.
So we'll obviously continue to follow this story as closely as possible from our vantage point here.
In Washington, d C.
On that note, let's talk about developments in Ukraine. The counter offensive, the much anticipated counter offensive is now having some cold water tossed on it in a Washington Post interview. You can, yeah, we put that right up on the screen there. Here's the headline. Senior Ukrainian officials, if your counter attack may not live up to hype.
This is a quote.
The expectation from our counter offensive campaign is overestimated in the world, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Resnikov said in an interview this past week. Most people are waiting for something huge, he added, which he fears may lead to emotional disappointment. The counter offensive obviously, it has not yet begun, although we've been hearing about it for a really long time. That is a comment to the Washington Post. But it's
not flippant. That's an interview that the generally stage managed Ukrainian government gave to one of the biggest newspapers in the world.
What did you make of that?
And it's more stage management, and it's it's the same thing that you see while you go into a debate where you have two candidates about to square off in the each side's telling the other, well, our guide didn't sleep well.
He's English is not his first language. You know, he's not the brightest bulb.
You know, if he can string together a couple of sentences, that ought to be a win. Everybody trying to set expectations as low as possible, and I think Ukraine is suffering from the fact that they exceeded expectations so wildly with the last surprise offensive that caught Russia off guard, steamrolled through town after town. But in those situations, the Russians were not not dug in and were less fortified and just simply fled. And it was it was, it
was a master stroke of military organizing. Following that, Russia has launched its kind of full scale conscription and has something three to five hundred thousand troops, has deep trenches, doug has you know, military hardware solidifying areas, and there's much more mud.
Than was expected.
And so these are all the things that the Ukrainian officials are saying that those are the reasons why people should not expect that they're going to be able to romp like they did last time. So setting expectations low it just makes sense. And as z Lensky said in this interview and has said before, the Ukrainians need victories in order to convince the West to continue financing their operation.
Speaking of which.
Just now, just yesterday, the US announced a one point two billion aid package to Ukraine.
You can see that up on the screen from CNN.
That is to bolster its air defenses and sustain its artillery ammunition needs for that counter offensive one hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery rounds, additional air defense systems, ammunitions, drone ammunition. That's all included in this package. So that brings the total to thirty seven point six billion in just military aid to Ukraine since the.
Beginning of the Biden administration.
And that includes thirty six point nine billions since the beginning of the war in February twenty twenty two, So basically thirty seven point nine billion. Basically thirty seven billion since the beginning of the war. Obviously a huge number, and for the counter offensive a piece of momentum, to
be sure. And I think, Ryan, you make such a good point that a lot of this has to do with convincing the West to give more money anyway, so they get the more money for the counter offensive, which probably feels to a lot of Americans like a merry go round, you know, every time you pass this, like more money to keep going. But that is part of all of this. We should also mention a couple of other things. First, that the British are hoping to supply
some long yeah, this is the next element. Longer rage missiles to Ukraine. And then the last thing I think is worth mentioning is that Vladimir Putin yesterday folks probably saw some of the headlines from their Victory Day parade. Putin said, once again, he made the argument that the West is driving a quote real war against Russia.
Here's the quote.
Today's civilization is once again at a decisive turning point. Putin said, Obviously they're celebrating the defeat of the Nazis after World War Two. He says, quote a real war has been unleashed against our motherland. Obviously this is coming before potential counter offensive. What did you make of these developments with the air supply? And then Putin at the Victory Day saying, continuing to pin it on the West, not surprising at all, but pointed the long.
Range missiles are similar to the to aircraft in the way that this is something that' Zelenski in the Ukrainian government has been pushing for from the very beginning, and that the US has been resisting, saying that long range missiles capable of going over one hundred and twenty kilometers, you know, could then be used to strike inside of Russia, which would then lead to greater escalation and so therefore involvement from potentially and then right because if if you
have that sort of escalation that then brings in Chinese weapons, then you know you're unable to keep up at some point, especially given the vicinity. So now the British are saying that they that they might be willing to supply these, as that article and others have pointed out if if the United States object is strenuously, the British are not going to do it kind of around our back or
against or against our wishes. Zelensky has made the argument that there are so many troop formations and other organizational apparatus is going on on the Russian side just out of their range, because the Russians know that they have a very limited The hymn Hai mars I think have a range of about forty seven kilometers, some other missiles I've ranged up to something like one hundred and twenty.
But and so they're just just out of reach.
And so he's that is a strong argument for these So is the argument that, well, we don't want to escalate this any further because at some point, if the sides are dug in, what the logical next step is okay, well, let's sort this out, like how are we going to
end this conflict? And you know, nobody on the Ukrainian side wants to allow a you know, a single piece of territory that was lost, including Crimea and including kind of the Russian Separatist Act, areas that were already held before February.
Of twenty twenty two.
But at some point that's that that becomes untenable, and then the question becomes what is Russia willing to give back in exchange for you know, some some sanctions getting lifted and some other you know, some other concessions.
It's profoundly depressing actually to mention these places that had really already been under the control of Russian separatists or Crimea actually since roughly twenty fourteen, because I think it bodes very poorly for the future of this war, and that we've talked about this many times. Soccer and Crystal
have talked about this many times. That there are people in the West for whom they are either ideologically or committed to this for corrupt reasons, This idea that everything is appeasement, everything short of you know, saving all of Ukrainian territory and agreeing that all of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is returned to Ukraine, which I think Brian, we would agree is probably like the ideal if we could just wave a magic wand and wish for something, maybe that's
that's where we would land. I don't know, but the idea that anything short of that is appeasement will drive
an incredibly long drawn out conflict. And I keep coming back to what you said a couple weeks ago, Ryan, about if there is a will to sit down and say we can And we've heard this from Nftelli Bennett, We've heard it from other people that there were conversations about this about a year ago, that there has been openings for some sort of concessions to be made that Ukraine would be willing to talk about that have been
scuttled by folks in the West. Why can't we do it before people have to die in a counter offensive? Why can't we do it before additional death and destruction and a counter offensive? Well, I think it's you know, the answer to that is we are still so heavily driven by people who say we cannot you give an inch an inch lest the world you know, once again fall to Hitler.
Essentially is the argument that they're making.
No doubt playing Putin is bad, but it is untenable to use your word.
So, speaking of warmongers, Liz Cheney is jumping into the twenty twenty four election.
That was a smooth transition.
As Ron Destantus is preparing to launch his own presidential bid.
He moved about eighty six million dollars.
So basically he did this quasi legal move where he's been raising tens of millions of dollars into his Florida state election campaign.
Florida allows you to do.
Whatever you want basically unlimited corporate contributions, et cetera, which is against federal law. And so in the past you have not been able to move that state money into your own federal pack. That just can't do that. Byron Donaldson kind of found a workaround. He said, well, what if I do it into a super pack. Went to the FEC. The FEC is deadlocked because they don't have enough officials to actually do anything to do their job, and it's like, oh, you guys didn't say it was wrong,
so therefore we're going to keep doing it. And so now Desantras is doing it on a much grander scale. Put this first one up, moving about eighty six million dollars. First he had to step off of his committee. Then the committee has its instructions of what they're going to do. They're going to be funny if they gave it to a Trump superpack, because he's not like, technically, these decisions have to be made independently of DeSantis or they are illegal, So it'd be just hilarious.
So they gave it to a Biden superpack or something. This is it's an independent, it's independent.
What are you upset about you saying that you were controlling this money? Because if so that was that's super illegal and you wouldn't You wouldn't have been involved in anything like that, would you. So this this sets him up to, you know, have a well financed run. He met with Steve Schwartzman this week. Did you see the billionaire uh, private equity dude who came out of the meeting and said he's not sold yet, he's wait and see, And I think that's gonna be a I'm curious for
taking this. This is going to be a big problem for DeSantis. Is that, Yes, I just think he doesn't sell in the in the rooms that he needs to, Like people have said, like his problem is a likability question that people get in the room with him, like is he putting with his fingers? You know what I'm I'm not
sure I'm gonna do the ten million dollars yet. So you know, whereas somebody like a Bill Clinton, and this is an a political argument, doesn't matter who you know, what your politics are, or even in Obama or even a Trump like who have a kind of charisma when they get into a room, Like when when Bill Clinton, what everybody says about Bill Clinton, he'd come into a room just absolutely light, that just dominate and everybody's attention
is on him. Bill Clinton gets in a room with Steve Schwartzman, He's walking away with tens of millions of dollars of Steve Schwartzman's money. Ronda Santis gets in a room with Steve Shortzman. Shwortsman's like, h that's not so sure about this.
So it doesn't bother me at all that Rhonda Santis is not well liked among billionaires and can't you know, quite get them to force their money over by charming them and lying to them because or maybe not lying to them, promising them all kinds of things and being very serious about those promises. So it shouldn't be a political handicap that he's not well liked among the billionaire class,
which I think is probably true. I mean, we saw Maggie Haberman reporting just last month that one billionaire was kind of icked out by the quote book bands and was rolling back potentially support for Ronda Santis, which is just classic because from my perspective and like a broader realignment perspective, it is just a perfect example of this kind of cultural tensions between elite coastal folks and what the rest of the country actually.
Wants it needs.
But all of that is to say, so I wish this wasn't a political handicap. And if somebody like made me and this bizarre hypothetical was like you have to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and rond De Santis, and you know, someone was like, you have to do it, I guess I would probably choose Disantus. I don't like politicians in general, but if someone was telling me I
had to pick, I would probably go with him. So I don't partially because of this because I don't think he's like completely this like your typical, like smooth talking politician. I think he like tries to just's he's kind.
Of a strange guy. He's a little bit of a weird guy.
Which is kind of you know, like that's it's your politicians should be weird.
You know, if they're too normal, they're.
They're doing some bad stuff. It doesn't mean the weird ones aren't going to do bad stuff too, but it's a really it's a big sign if if Bill Clinton is walking around room and everyone's throwing billions at him, so it doesn't necessarily bother me. He is going to Wisconsin, uh or I'm sorry. He went to Wisconsin last week. He talked to the Marathon County Republican Party out in central Wisconsin.
He's going to Iowa this weekend.
Like you said, he's been chatting with people like big donors. He's trying to say according to I think this is yea. According to Politico, he's saying that he can win Georgia and Arizona. It's talking to people in Iowa, big evangelical leader. So his announcement I think at this point is absolutely imminent, which is again interesting given that he's held out so long and there have been so many developments in Trump's own saga. So egan Carroll News yesterday, he was indicted a month ago.
It just hits, just.
Keep coming, and that gives Trump, you know, dominance over the news cycle. And for Rondasantis to stick his neck out and get into the primary, it's obviously a decision that affects his viability as a political candidate long, long, long, long into the future, because Donald Trump can wipe you out like that, given his popularity with some like thirty percent of Republican voters that are hardcore.
And so the path to two hundred and seventy electoral College votes if you assume, just for the sake of argument, that Biden or whoever the Democrats throw up is going to win Michigan and Pennsylvania, Like let's assume that and assume the Republican's going to walk away with Ohio. The Republicans then have to sweep and this goes to the point that you are making. They have to sweep Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona. If Democrats win a single one of those three,
then they win. And so destanta'sn't making the argument that he's the that Georgie and Arizona. He's keyed in there, and I think if he's if he's arguing that you can win in Iowa, he's obviously going to make the Wisconsin.
They like me up there too.
What's your sense in those three states in particular, who would have a better shot Trump or Desantus of winning those or do neither of them really have? Because that's why you have Democrats so confident that they've got a guy who has like a four percent approval rating and that they're still confident they're going to win because they because they look at those three states and like, we think we can.
Hold Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
In a general Yeah.
Yeah, Well, I think that's a super interesting question because we talked about this in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election
last month. The numbers in what's called the Wow counties where I grew up actually were a little bit like that's a really conservative voting block it always has been, But the numbers for the conservative justice candidate were fine, Like he won all the counties, but like it was lower than what you would expect the percentage to be and so I think it is true that super kind of maga e stuff has eaten away at enthusiasm in
the suburbs. And in a state like Georgia outside Atlanta, that's really important, in a state like Wisconsin outside Milwaukee,
that's really important. So I think there's a good argument to be made that DeSantis can appeal to the kind of rural Wisconsin and Georgia voters that Trump appealed to, that he can cling that they, he can hang on to that because he kind of gets the whole Trump thing in a way other people don't, gets the cultural stuff in the way other people don't, while also putting up better numbers in the suburbs and not allowing Democrats
to kind of eat away at them there. So I think there's there's an argument to we made that it
evens out in the primary. That's where it's really difficult, because if you have DeSantis and all of these other people and then Donald Trump in a place like these rural areas where Trump has very very high Republican support, even if Trump isn't at fifty percent Republican support, it's not just Trump versus DeSantis, it's Trump versus de Santas, Nikki Haley, et cetera, et cetera, and that splits the vote in a million different ways and Trump still emerges victorious.
So it just the path to even get to the general I think it's hard to see.
So what about this Steve Cortez character? So put this next element up.
So this is a former Trump advisor who flipped and is now working on this flush superpack that Desanta's. Maybe wouldn't it be hilarious if this is Trump's play and he's he's he actually hasn't flipped, and he's going to take these eighty.
Six million dollars and he's going to move it.
This is how Trump's going to keep that money, which would be totally legal.
There is to.
Reiterate, Desanta's is not allowed to have control over this money even though he raised it, all right, because if he does, it's illeal coordination.
To fine control exactly.
Well, right, let him let him fight for it. That'd be so funny.
If Steve Cortez is actually still a Trump guy and he played DeSantis.
You should do like campaign strategy, actually, you should advise people on how to.
Exploit these loopholes.
Yeah, So Cortez if you're watching this, just do it for the jokes, just because it would be so funny.
He's like like the stripper coming out of a birthday cake.
So is how how influential inoperative is he? And is this is this a win for DeSantis or is this just one more kind of Trump guy that is reading the writing on the wall.
I think it's probably the latter. I don't know much about Steve Cortez. I don't have a good sense for I mean, I don't know. I don't have a good sense for how powerfully might be in the conservative movement. But I do think it's an indication, at the very least to your point that a lot of kind of movement conservative people are in the Dysantis are on the
team and the distantas versus Trump fight. And I've written about this at the Federalists before that that is actually quite a handicap for rond De Santis, And I think Ronda Santis has started to recognize this, and people around him have started to recognize this, because if you are very online and if you're on Twitter, the DeSantis versus Trump influencer beefs have gotten insane, like they're just nauseating
and weird at this point. And so it's to have a bunch of like conservative media pundits on the DeSantis team and not the Trump team, I think just continues to make Donald Trump's point that there are forces in Washington, the Washington establishment, that are aligned against him and are aligning against him, which, by the way, is true because if you talk to people who were Trump supporters publicly behind closed doors, they would concede all of the different
problems with him. So given the choice in Ronda Santis, who many people on the right think is all of the good about Trump without the baggage, you know a lot of voters like what considered baggage here in Washington, d c.
Bag the fun.
Stuff, and you know, it's the fun stuff, but it's also like in some cases, not every case, we obviously talked about Adrien Carrol today, it's not the fun stuff, but in some cases it's also the important stuff and the good stuff, like him being like what are we doing with NATO?
What are we doing?
And the way that that's completely dramatically shifted the way the Republicans think about NATO and think about foreign policy. So if that's considered baggage. Then you know, that's a pretty open question for Republicans how to handle it.
And so Liz Cheney did jump into New Hampshire with this with an ad coming after Trump.
Let's roll this real quick.
Donald Trump is the only president in American history who has refused to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. He lost the election and he knew it.
To become the president.
He betrayed millions of Americans by telling them.
The election was stolen stop.
He ignored the rulings of dozens of courts. Rather than accept his defeat, he mobilized a mond to come to Washington and march on the Capitol. Then he watched on television while the mob attacked law enforcement, invaded the Capitol and hunted the Vice president. He refused for three hours to tell the mob to leave. There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president. Trump was warned repeatedly that his plans for January sixth were illegal.
He didn't care, and today he celebrates those who attacked our capital. Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office. Donald Trump is a risk America can never take again.
The Great Task is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Are there Republicans left in New Hampshire, for instance, that are going to be moved by a list Cheney ad.
Or has she been so thoroughly kind of.
Stomped out of the party that this only helps him. What's your sense?
It's a question because this is set to air actually tonight when Trump is doing a town hall with Caitlyn Collins of CNN, and I'm kind of confused. I mean, I feel like she probably does have money to throw around. I'm sure she has some benevolent backers and has plenty of her own money that running an ad like this during a CNN town hall.
One off, she.
Has war profiteering money from Haliburton. She inherited a ton of Haliburton wealth.
Yeah, she's good to go. She is good to go. I don't know.
I mean, I think with Liz Cheney, the January sixth stuff is I mean, maybe she wants to remind people that she's out there. She litigated the January sixth case in the public and she could be an option and she's just kind of feeling that out. I have no I mean, if you didn't have a lot of money, I don't know why you would do this because it just seems like the most obvious way for Liz Cheney to pitch herself. Everyone already knows her from January six.
Everyone has seen this January six footage over and over and over again, and everybody knows what she thinks about it. So to just purely remind people without trying to say anything new about yourself and just casting this as like, here's the unique thing that my unique criticism of Donald Trump from the vantage point of my January sixth committee perg. It's a weird move, I think, And I don't know
who the audience really is for it. I know who she thinks the audience is, but I don't know that it exists.
Certainly, No, her AD's not wrong, like he did all that stuff. It's like and it is it is dark in some ways to be reminded of it, like, oh wow, so yeah, this guy did actually do all of the things that this ad is saying, and he's still kind of the front runner to.
Run again, and here's seeing then, yeah, talking to him and you know, yucking it up with him.
So that's yeah, So that's kind.
Of I just don't know what it does real for her, you know, what I mean.
It's it's it's got her coming up at the end of a segment on counter points.
I mean, that's something I feel.
I feel indicted, but like I get like a leftist group, like a liberal dark money group, running an ad like this during a CNN toan hall. Sort of the jarring contrast between what Donald Trump is saying and joking around with on the stage and then the reality of January sixth. To pitch yourself as a candidate that way is just a strange. I think it's a weird move, but I guess at this point it's really all she has.
So anyway, what are you looking at?
All?
Right?
So I said this earlier as we were preparing the show. Yesterday news broke. Actually in The Federalist, my boss, Sean Davis, our CEO, had a really interesting story that some other outlets added additional details to. Is the night We're on about the CIA? The CIA. This is in Sean's writing both solicited signatures for, and eventually approved the infamous twenty twenty letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot. All Right, To be clear, this
is from a document that Senate Republicans. It's going to be released by the Select sum Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Obviously that's a Kevin McCarthy creation that's come from Jim Jordan is heading that up. But let's be very clear about what this shows. I know that it gets tired and it gets exhausting, exasperating to litigate the stupid Hunter Biden laptop letter again and again
and again. But what we have here is very clear evidence of the CIA interfering in an American election boom period, full stop. That's honestly all we need to say about this topic. I'll continue to flesh it out with details, but that's why I think Sean's important. Sewan's reporting is really worth talking about. In the same way, by the way that the left really hammered these issues during those the Church Committee years.
You can even go back.
A lot of people don't know that Barry Goldwater's campaign was spied on that Lyndon Johnson directed. I believe it was the CIA to spy on Barry Goldwater's campaign, not the FBI, but the CIA to spy.
On Barry Goldwater's campaign.
The left has covered these issues really well for a very long time, But I think it's extremely import that we recognize. I get all the Trump stuff, but it's still very important to recognize that this is unelected bureaucrats wielding enormous power and abusing it for the sake of partisan politics. And you know, as we get through this a little bit, you can see more clearly how it's definitely an abuse.
Despite what they say.
You have multiple former US intelligence officials, according to the report that's going to be testimony in a report that's going to be released today, but that Sean obviously reported it on yesterday, they testified under oath about the CIA's involvement in the distribution of the letter.
Quote. One signer of.
The statement for former CIA analyst David Kerion's disclosed the committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency's pre publication Classification Review Board informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it. The committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has
ignored the request to date. Okay, so let's just take that this is an email that you can read about it in trans report and obviously in the report that comes out today, that shows there is somebody acting on behalf of the CIA. They'll say that's not the case, of course, that'll be their defense of themselves. But somebody who is with the Pre Publication Classification Review Board, that is a board. These stupid acronyms are intentional to get us all mixed up and not be.
Able to follow the plot.
But that's a board that basically reviews things that former CIA folks put out into the universe.
And they were reviewing the letter.
You know, former CIA director Mike Morel, we now know is directed by Anthony Blincoln to put together this letter in his own words, as a sort of something that would be helpful to President Biden in the twenty twenty election, because obviously the New York Post story contained all kinds of things from Hunter Biden's laptop, not just the salacious things, not just the photographs, but a lot of evidence that the Biden fan family in the president himself that implicates
the president himself in influence peddling on a fairly grand scale and with some hostile foreign countries China included. This is happening within a month of the election, and the CIA knows that that laptop, They know this is they know that that laptop is not all Russian disinformation. I believe the FBI had had the laptop since like twenty nineteen, So keep all of that in mind when you recognize
they're mobilizing this letter. New emails show that who else but James Clapper is also involved in massaging the language of the letter. So the language is a bunch of former CIA people. But I think what's so important about this report is that you have someone one of those former CIA guys who signs the letter saying that somebody actively with the CIA asked for his signature. Boom that, even according to Morell's testimony in the report, is quote inappropriate.
Here's what Morell said, it's inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer, contractor to be in the political process. Here's what another former CIA guy said. If it's true, it would concern me for sure. But I just have a hard time believing that occurred. If it did, that's incredibly unprofessional. Their theory and their defense is going to be that someone or a couple of people went rogue. They should have sent this from their personal account. They should have
you know, separated business impersonal. When they were looking at this review of the letter, they should have just kept it to that and then emailed somebody from their personal or called someone from their personal and said.
Hey, you should maybe sign.
This letter or something like that, or that if your if your current CIA, you shouldn't have been involved at all. It was just a silly slip up and a mistake. But there is no mistake about this. This is the CIA, according to the email, actively actively asking someone to sign a partisan a letter that is being organized for a partisan election purpose. Boom, period, full stop. Again, that's really
all we need to know about this. I'm excited to continue learning more, but I just wanted to highlight this for everyone because, you know, somebody who grew up in that kind of post nine to eleven era, generally on the right, I was not the skepticism of what's now called the deep state or of like the CIA, the FBI, the intelligence apparatus was not high on my list of
ideological priorities. And I was not to make excuses for myself, but like a teenager, so I was kind of young and just following, you know, generally along with conservative priorities.
That's wrong. I mean, this should have always been a priority.
I mentioned Barry Goldwater, this should have been a priority for decades of the conservative movement, because if you're concerned about the power of an expansive government, you need look no further than the expansive intelligence apparatus for how much that can be abused.
Rand Paul Ron Paul have been good on these issues.
For a really, really long time, and I think Trump gives a lot of people on the left an excuse to ignore and wish away the amplification and the ratcheting up of these abuses of power. They're not this is not just what it used to be. It's getting worse and worse, and they're starting to justify this stuff openly and get away with it because folks in the media don't give a damn. So that's why I thought this story was worth highlighting. Ryan, You've covered this stuff for a.
Really long time.
There were some reports in the New York Posts and other places from what's going to be released today yesterday? What did you make of some of these revelations. Where do you think they're going to go from here?
I think the CIA ought to stay out of American elections. How about that?
I think stay out of elections in general elections. They're very good at.
This yes, and it is a coming home to roost type of thing. Like if you have an intelligence apparatus that is going to be monkeying around in the internal affairs of governments all over the world, then certainly they're going to feel like they can monkey around with this one. But I think that there needs to be a civic sense among CIA officials that they are.
Out of politics.
I think we've got to get these spies and these spy agencies just completely out of our politics.
Obviously, they can live in Virginia.
You can vote for the House of Delegates, vote for Virginia State Senate, and you can vote for president.
If they live in DC.
They cannot vote for House or Senate because they live in DC and we don't have House members or senators. But otherwise they should not be organizing on behalf of one candidate or another. And if the CIA believes that there is Russian disinformation, then the CIA should say so, like just publicly come out behind the mics with the press conference and give your evidence for why that is and say it like if that say it.
With your chest.
And in fact, the intelligence communities tried to do that. I think at twenty sixteen, and if I remember correctly, McConnell basically blocked them from doing doing that, and so then after that they played all these games, these kind
of behind the scenes games instead. But they should have just come out like say, like mcconnell'st agree with this, here's what like, and then the public can decide it is that the role we want the CIA playing here, but to do this secretly, behind the scenes, organize it as a former you know, intelligence officials letter.
And you know you know, so yeah, stay.
Out, yeah, I mean, and there's the point you make a lot that is like when you are you have this muscle memory of doing this wherever you're doing it around the world, You're going to use it in the United States eventually.
You know.
It's just you can't help yourself. You know how to do it, you think you know something needs to be done. It's inevitably going to bleed into your domestic operations, which you know, the CIA is really not supposed to have anyway. And in this case, it looks like taxpayer resources being used for the Democratic Party as like an kind contribution. You know, they're laundering their reputations, but they're also using
tax paramoney for election purposes, So I doubt anything. Will you know that any accountability will come to it, but it would be from I think this is something that everyone can agree on, whether your leftist or on the right. From a populist perspective, it'd be great if there was some accountability. But it's like trying to turn the Titanic around at this point. And maybe we'll continue to hear more from RFK Junior about his plans for the CIA when he's on the campaign trail.
There you go, that'll be interesting to see how they handle him. Yeah, sure, will stick around.
We're going to have Representative Rocana of California joining us now that the press is looking into Supreme Court corruption.
The hits keep coming.
The Senate is demanding a list from Harlan Crow of gifts that he has given to Supreme Court justices, specifically Clarence Thomas, but hey might as well ask what else he's given to whoever else. Joining us now to talk about this constitutional crisis that we're entering into is California Representative Rocanna Commerson Conna, thank you for joining.
Us, thanks for having me on.
And so my sense of this is that there was a social contract that existed for maybe half a century, where the public just basically let the Supreme Court do whatever it was doing behind the black robes and behind the kind.
Of the mystique of the legitimacy of the court.
And something has broken, and that now that people are starting to look, they're a little disturbed by what they're finding. What are you hearing from your colleagues on Capitol Hill about how they're thinking through this controversy around the court.
Well, one, there's a shock that Supreme Court justices are allowed to do this. I mean, most colleagues on the Hill, whatever you think of them, you go out for lunch and you end up picking up the tab us because you don't want to fill out all the paperwork of someone paying for the lunch. And it's mind boggling to me that you don't have similar regulations for Supreme Court justices.
You have them for the executive branch as well. And I think this has just blown open the fact that the Supreme Court justices have.
Not had many standards.
Now, my guess is, even though the Supreme Court has had some absolutely awful decisions, it hasn't just been a beacon for sort of democracy and liberalism. Then probably maybe I'm thinking in the past people weren't as venal and you didn't have that kind of egregiousness, and now you've got this egregious case, and I think it's really called into question why we don't have standards.
You know, it's been interesting from the perspective of someone on the right to watch a lot of these reports start snowballing. It does I mean, whether or not it's coordinated. It feels coordinated. And that's not to say it's not fair. It's not to say that there aren't some attacks that are not attacks, but there aren't some criticisms or revelations.
For instance, I would think about the private flight logs with Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow that stand out to me as something that obviously should have been disclosed and rules should be tightened so that we know what's happening. But it seems to be you know, it was left to like the Daily Wire to report that Sonya Soda Mayor, for instance, was hearing a case about Penguin Random House,
with obviously being in contract with Penguin Random House. Do you have concerns, Congressman about how this has been sort of piled on conservative justices by the American media, and then it seems that it's not as balanced when there comes to the media's concerns about justices on the left that may be running a foul of similar rules, but it just sort of tanks the credibility of conservative justices without also saying, well, hey, this is probably a broader problem.
The two reasons that the Supreme Court as a crisis of confidence. One has to do with the fact that they're just out of touch with the facts of modern life. That you have people appointed twenty thirty years ago, or taking away women's rights to an abortion pill, who are taking voting rights, and there is real anger in the country. And I would say not just among the left, but about many Americans to say, what is the Supreme Court doing?
And that's why I propose term limits. There's a separate issue about conflicts of interest and people getting gifts and presiding on cases where they may have a financial interest. Sometimes those two things can get conflated.
I agree with you that they should be separate.
We should make sure that the ethics conduct has separate reform. At the same time, I believe we need term limits, and I believe that the real crisis of this coort is that they're taking away basic liberties and rights, and that is only apart from even their financial conflicts.
And some of this, to me feels like a symptom of our second guilded Age, because if you go back and you think about the last Gilded age and you read some of the Supreme Court corrupt that was going on, then just gab smocking incredible stuff like you Supreme Court justices like literally on the payroll of railroads, writing into law laws that benefited the railroads, and busting the railroad unions and and so it feels like we're entering kind of a second territory like that. And the way that
that original corruption was eventually broken was was political. You know, you had FDR come in and give them a political check, say, you know, we're going to expand the court if you keep you know, this combination of corruption and moving against the will of the voters, and boom that that got that snapped them back into place, and he didn't have
to do the court packing scheme. Is there the political will on the on the democratic side to actually check them, because when when I think when voters see somebody like you just shared. Chairman Dick Durbin say, well, this is up to the Chief Justice, and we hope that he handles this. I think there's a lack of confidence that there is that will to check them in the way that they need to be checked to get them back on track.
Yeah, I don't think it's up to the Chief Justice. I think Congress should pass a law for a ethics code of conduct. It's not a violation of separation of powers. If it's a violation and separation of powers, how can we pass the laws requiring the president or the vice president to have financial disclosures? How can we pass the laws about conflicts for the executive branch? Of course, we
could pass the laws on the Supreme Court. And the real thing we need is term limits eighteen years and then you're out.
You don't the Constitution says you have to.
Be a judge for life, not that you have to be on the Supreme Court for life. But Ryan, and I know you're a student of history, I guess part of what happened. It seems to me is that there was, after a FDR, this move towards meritocrasy, this idea that now people are going to go and take tests and get into schools based on their own on merit. And you know a lot of these justice as have gone to Ida League schools and I went to an Ivy League school, and that somehow this is going to make
the process cleaner. And what we're now realizing is sort of a deeper point about the undervalue meritocracy, that it did not root out the corruption and may have made it much less blatant, but there's still a lot of conflicts of interest and people with capitals still have extraordinary influence in our democracy.
Yeah, and that's one of the difficult parts of this is even if there were stringent disclosures implemented, and then I want to ask you about that in a second, billionaires are still going to have plenty of access to
the people in the highest exul lens of power. And that isn't to say we should just throw up our hands, of course, it's just a note that even if I'm looking at some of the things, short of as you say, Congressman, term limits, which I would oppose, but like, even if you look at that stuff, it's like, gosh, there's just so much access no matter what.
And that gets to Ryan's.
Point about the Second Gilded Age, But what likelihood do you think there is of like actual, real ethical reform being passed and implemented in the Supreme Court? Because there obviously is a need for it when you look at some of the different things that we've learned in the last several weeks.
How likely do you think that is to happen.
I believe we need to your first question.
We need to make this not just ideological, and we need to make it broader that there have to be some common sense reforms.
You know, the way to get.
Congress to act is to say, it's unfear that Supreme Court justices aren't getting treated like members of Congress are. Why can't they be a subject to some of the same restrictions. If you make it about the conservative judges, obviously Republicans get defensive. But here's where I will make a partisan point. I think many Republicans are just fine with the Court because they've gotten what they wanted. They
got the Row Versus way to overturn. The Court is buy and large functioning on their ideological agenda, and so they're reluctant to do things to change a status quo that is working for them, and that's why I think it's going to be hard to get something passed with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives.
And just too quickly out a point to that.
It's funny because if you had, if maybe this push had happened when Elena Kagan didn't recuse herself from the Obamacare case, Republicans might have thought differently about it. But because in this case Republicans feel like they have control over and are happy with where the Supreme Court is, there's probably less political will.
But eighteen years seems good.
Do eighteen years of the Supreme Court and then you can go be a Circuit Court judge.
Yeah, that sounds that sounds that seems fair. Commers.
I also wanted to ask you about a letter that was led by Representative Veronic Ascobar that was calling out the kind of broken policy around sanctions as it relates to both Venezuela and Cuba and connecting it to the migration crisis. But there was this famous viral clip that during the State of the Union where you had President Biden coming up to Menendez and you can kind of you can hear him saying, Bob, Bob, Bob, we need
to talk about Cuba. And you see Bob Menendez's face kind of fall He's He's like, I do not want to talk about Cuba to the President, because I think Senator Menendez, the Juiciary Chair, quite fine with the sanctions regime and the kind of embargo that we've got currently.
But now that we're almost six months on from that, are you getting any sense that the administration is kind of rethinking its policy towards Cuba and Venezuela as we're seeing a flood of migrants come as a direct result of our own policies toward those countries.
Well, I appreciate Baronic Astovar's leadership on this, and I had joined the letter, and she obviously represents Alpaso, so she's feeling the brunt.
Of the challenge with migrants coming across.
There are many parts to solving this, but one of the things that will make it better is if we don't have draconian sanctions that are creating economic conditions and hardships that are leading to people leaving. I mean, the Republicans often say, well, it's not just all people coming for asylum from political persecution, They're coming because of economic deep deprivation. Well, one of the reasons that there's deep economic deprivation is because overly punitive sanctions that haven't worked.
Baduro is terrible, terrible human rights violations, terrible civil rights violations.
But our policy during.
The Trump administration and then others, we said, well, we'll figure out a way to topple them, get someone else installed.
None of that work, and now we've got these crippling sections that aren't doing much to weaken him, haven't led to any of the regime change because we usually aren't good at that, but are leading to morven Azuella is coming to our border, and I guess just common sense should mean we don't want to be aggravating the flow of refugees into this country, especially economic refugees, even if we're turning them away.
It's putting so much stress on our border patrol.
Again quickly on that point, if you are coming from Cuba or Venezuela, you actually have almost certainly whoever you are a legitimate case for political asylum, not even just economic.
Assigned according to US, if we're sanctioning here.
But not for the Biden administration shift in Cuba, which I think is incredibly unfortunate, and I do think the sanctions point is entirely fair.
And also so yesterday President Biden said that he was contemplating using the fourteenth Amendment to get out of this debt sealing crisis. Would you support that approach and how much support do you think there would be in the Democratic Caucus for a fourteenth Amendment and run around this.
I do support it.
I mean, basically, Congress has already authorized the payments, and we've told the executive ridge they need to pay this, and.
Now we're telling them don't pay it.
I mean, we're contradicting ourselves and the president as a fourteenth Amendment obligation to pay the debts that.
Congress has said he needs to pay.
I can understand the hesitation because I actually think if it goes to the coys, they'll be resolved in the President's.
Favor once and for all.
We would end this sort of gamesmanship of the debt ceiling.
But I do think that it may.
Temporarily spook the markets at a time that the economy is already fragile. So obviously it's not an ideal situation. And while I support it, I also understand why the President was desperately trying to avoid that situation so that we're not adding more uncertainty to the economy.
Well, hey, the Feds trying to undermine the economy anyway, So he can help him out there.
Connors and Connor, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Appreciate it. Always a pleasure.
We wanted to take a moment this morning to honor the memory of David Miranda, who was eulogized yesterday by his husband and all of our good friend Glenn Greenwald, who wrote on Twitter, David's life was extraordinary in all ways. His mother died when he was five, leaving him an orphan in Jaka Razine, which is a favela in Rio de Janeiro, but a beautiful and compassionate neighbor took him in,
despite four children of her own and deep poverty. Became his mom gave him a chance for a life that gave David the chance to live his full potential in a society that often suffocates it. He was key to the Snowden story, became the first gay man elected to Rio's city council, then Federal Congress at thirty two. He inspired so many with his biography, passion, and force of life. Glenn went on, because of how David grew up, there were always many assumptions.
Made by those who didn't know him.
Anyone who did will tell you there was nobody with a stronger will or life force. He was proud that he was named by time to be our next generation's leaders. But by far David's biggest dream, what gave him the greatest pride in purpose was being a father. He was the most dedicated and loving parent. He taught me how to be a father, and our truly exceptional boys, with their own difficult start to life, is his greatest legacy.
When David arrived at the hospital last August sixth, I was told there was little chance he'd survived the week. I heard the same three times since he refused, in classic David's style. The last four months gave our family the most beautiful moments together. Glenn goes on, David was singular the strongest, most passionate, most compassionate man I've known.
Nobody had a bad word for him. I can't describe the loss and pain.
I'll do my best to honor his legacy, our children and our NGOs, and I know so many will celebrate him and his impact now.
David's passing has produced an.
Outpouring of emotion in both Brazil and the United States, including from President Lula de Silva, who was freed from prison primarily as a result of reporting done by Glenn and the Intercept Brazil, which Glenn founded. Lula called David quote a young man with an extraordinary trajectory who left too soon, which is a sentiment that is at once profoundly.
True yet difficult to fully comprehend.
There was no limit to what David's life could have brought, not just to him, but to the people of Brazil, who may have lost a future president with his passing yesterday. What made David so unusual was the combination of his passion, his commitment to his democratic socialist politics, and his kindness, his magnanimity, and his ability to leave even his fiercest
opponents with little choice but to like him personally. Most people have the first of most people who have the first of those two things, they don't have the third. And when Glenn wrote that quote, nobody had a bad word for him. He really meant that, and it's at testament to the love they shared that the two of them found each other such a perfect compliment. What also separated David was his unusual courage, which he showed throughout
his life. Edward Snowden, learning of David's passing, said, of everyone who had a hand in the twenty thirteen revelations of global mass surveillance, my dear friend David Miranda was perhaps the most righteous and pure.
I will never forget that when the.
UK broke its own laws to detain David as a terrorist for daring to aid an active journalism and threatened to throw him in a dungeon for the rest of his life, he never faltered.
Instead, he dared them to do it.
It was that courage that set him free, that courage that moved the story forward, that will forever serve as the example of a man at his best. I will miss you, David, Stay free. Snowden here is referring to David's twenty thirteen detention by UK authorities, who did indeed threaten to lock him away for life, a threat David stared down in a way few of us might have been able to do. As Snowden said, it was the realization of the authorities that they had no chance to
break his will that set him free. Now three years later, in twenty sixteen, he ran with Mariel Franco, who also grew up in the city's favelas, for Rio City Council. Both were elected, becoming not just the first gay and lesbian city council members, but genuine radicals and threats to the status quo. In twenty eighteen, after leaving an event with Glenn and David, Mariel and her driver were gunned down by an assassin on a motorcycle. The murder was
credibly linked to the Bolsonaro family. Glenn and David continued crusading for justice for Maryell, and instead of shrinking from public life in the face of rising death threats, they pushed forward. Later that year, David ran for Congress, while Glenn pushed ahead with his investigation.
Into the networks around Bolsonaro.
Now, the way elections work in Brazil, candidates run as a slate, and depending on how high up you are on the slate, you win a seat if your party does well enough. David felt one slot short of making it into Congress, but then something remarkable happened. The only openly gay member of Congress at the time, was facing a wave of credible death threats, and he fled the country, seeking exile rather than what he understood to be certain assassination.
That meant that his seat opened up and it was David's if.
He wanted it.
He never flinched, stepping forward, knowing that every step could be his last. In Congress, he continued to pursue the assassins of Mariel Franco. Now, last summer, he was hospitalized for a GI infection, and it quickly spread to his bloodstream and major organs, producing sepsis, which is often fatal within hours. Yet David battled it for nine months, making remarkable progress at times coupled with gut punching setbacks, which
devastatingly included this final one. Now, Glenn doesn't often wax philosophical and public.
That's just not his style.
But a few times over the last nine months he wrote essays about this experience and how it had reshaped the way he thought about life and its meaning. And Martin Heideger's book Being in Time, which helped it define continental existentialism, took its title from from the notion that life, or what he called being, got its meaning from time or more to the point, the lack of time that we get. We all know that rationally, but it's so
easy to forget. In March, Glenn wrote, every day since two thousand and five that David and I woke up and went to sleep, and shared and built our lives and careers together, and then began raising our children together. We assumed, due to our age and health and hubris, that we would have that for decades to come, if it were a guarantee, as if the universe had provided us with some enforceable contract that entitled us to assume this belonged to us and could not be taken away.
And because we assumed it, we took it for granted. And because we took it for granted, we often ceased valuing it the way it deserved to be valued. What remains most astounding to me is that after all these years, these decades of running and chasing and striving and reaching and grabbing and struggling and pursuing everything that I actually need for core happiness, fulfillment, and gratitude are things I already have and have had for.
A long time.
He goes on, and the lack of permanence of those things that provide us the greatest happiness.
Does not make them less valuable. That is what makes them valuable.
Their impermanence is the reason to grab them, hold them, appreciate them, and honor them every day that we have
them and are thus able to do that. Glenn said that he had found solace and energy in a search for gratitude, and all of us should be grateful to have been privileged enough to share the world with a force as great as David, painfully short as that time was, and all of us here on the Breaking Points Channel are sending our love to his family as they grieve his loss, and think thinking back over David's life that moment in twenty eighteen, after their good friend was assassinated
and he instead of backing away from politics, he goes.
He pushes ahead and then winds up.
Remember when he ran for Congress, he wound up in this remarkable situation one seat short, and then to get the opportunity to go to Congress only because the only other openly gay person decides that it's a death sentence, and he just he's I don't care, I'm doing it, not afraid you're not going to scare me, And takes his seat in Congress, and as Lulas said, his trajectory knew no let like he was an extraordinarily popular, you know, uh force in Brazilian in Brazilian politics.
You know, that was exactly the point that stood out to me in the Courage, because how often in the United States do we you know, sometimes acknowledge really difficult stuff. And there are real risks of course to journalism and activism and politics in the United States. But to have your friend gunned down and then to have a seat open up because someone is being pushed out of the country by credible death threats for being gay, and then to say I'm going into it, I'm taking that seat.
I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, and I'm going to do it, you know, even even harder and better and with more strength. That's a testament to incredible authenticity and courage and is just what a lesson. And
I think your remembrance there's absolutely beautiful. It's so jarring when somebody who is such a force and I didn't know David, but to your point, amazing when somebody passes and there's not a bad word to be said about them, it's just jarring when somebody who does have so much vitality and strength is stopped short.
That's one of the strangest things that happens in life.
And today would have been his thirty ninth birthday, and you know, from all of us here we're wishing as much love and comfort to his family as possible.
Thank you all, as always for joining us.
And we'll be back next week.
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