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.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
We have an amazing show for everybody today. Ryan Grimm is in for Crystal Wall. It's great to see you, man.
And to make this show even more amazing, what we decided to do is stack a live audience that's Tripe supporters.
We're going to all show long. It's gonna be amazing.
It's gonna be incredible.
Ryan is referenceding a CNN town hall last night of which we have the best and the greatest moments from all of that multiple different avenues that we're going to be talking about.
So everybody, please don't worry. It's not just about Trump.
We have some of the more insane moments about Stopless Deal, Egen Carroll and all of that. Then we're actually going to talk about policy, but the debt ceiling, and we're
going to talk about abortion. Then finally his answer on Ukraine, before we do some segments about Title forty two, about the ending today at the US Mexico border and the migrant crisis and everything that we know about that, and then finally a little bit of updates on the Tucker Carlson media empire, but also some Elon Musk invitations to
Don Lemon, I'm actually doing a monologue about mammograms. I decided that since Crystal is gone, it's the Bro show, you might as well do a monologue by a male.
About breast cancer.
Will be shocked by the way about some of things that I've uncovered.
Thank you.
Shout out to doctor Vane Persod actually for flagging this to me. Some of you will be very very interested in this. It's a big story about big pharma and all of that. And then I have Senator jd Vance actually who's going to be joining us here in the studio.
I always do have the need to do this full disclosure.
Van's longtime personal friend that said he is joining the show. We will be talking to him about the railway safety Act that he introduced about East Palestine, Ohio, and we will be getting all the details from that in which he will be talking about the Republicans in the Senate Caucus who do not support that bill, and we'll get into it.
But I always do feel the need to do the disclosure Ryan, and that.
Actually gets us before we get to all of the Trump insanity from last night over at CNN. I just want to say once again, thank you all so much for the premium subscribers who've been signing up helping us out as we're rebuilding our studio, getting to a point where CNN is not the only place that has to do a town hall with the former president, has that capacity.
If you want to see the ability to do things.
Like that, you can sign up Breakingpoints dot com to become a premium subscriber. Next week, we're very excited we'll very likely have RFK Junior here live in the studio of which we will be able to do a long interview. And this is exactly the level up of what we want to get to. That's why we're getting the new studio.
That's where our building out our infrastructure, getting amazing partners like Ryan Ken Klippstein who broke that incredible story, so many other people that were proud and able to support because of all of you.
So once again, monthly, yearly.
Take a good look, take a good look at these bricks, because yeah, this might be it for them.
That's right, you're not listen.
I love the bricks, actually crystal more than anybody loves the bricks. But the bricks are gone. Most likely, we'll see, maybe they'll make a comeback. I actually fought for them, but we'll see. All right, let's go ahead and get to Trump. What do we have, Ryan A moment of complete insanity, seventy straight minutes of Trump, almost live on CNN, the clashes, the fact checking, to stop the steal.
So much happened.
So we decided to start and break it down by I guess, not only the timeline of how it began, but really in terms of content. First, we are going to start with stop the Steal, and with January sixth. Obviously, stop the steal in January sixth, noose around the wreck neck of the Republican Party on the general election. But as I have always said, with Trump, you get exactly what you see.
And here's the thing.
He's not going to change his mind no matter how many times you ask him whether the election was not stolen or not know how many times you want to fact check him live And as you can see, not only from his answers, he believes this stuff in terms of every possible conspiracy theory. But second, the Republicans who are in the audience, they believe him too.
Take a listen.
I actually say we did far better in that election, got the most that anybody's ever gotten as a president of the United States. I think that when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you're a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people, a lot of the people in this audience and proad maybe a couple that don't, but most people understand what happened. That was a rigged election.
That, by the way, just everyone knows. That was the very first answer to the very first question. Now I do want to say, we'll bring this up later.
With the focus groups. Everybody was like, oh, he immediately listen.
They're the ones who asked him about stop the steel and they spent the first half an hour on all of Trump's personal problems, which I think is a huge programming mistake. That said, once again, if you do ask him about it, which of course the media will be asking him about.
It, Ryan, he hasn't changed his mind.
He doesn't think he did anything wrong on January sixth at all. There was a famous cinematic moment where he's like, you want me to see the tweets and he literally pulls out the time stamp of his tweets, which actually just vindicate the timeline that the CNN interviewer.
But it doesn't matter because to the audience, they were eating it up. They loved it.
And I actually thought Ryan that the stop the Steel answer and how it was supposedly repulsing Republicans. Again, I am not talking here about independent voters or Democrats who do genuinely hate stop the Steal and find it like repulsive and abhorrent, at least electorically.
As we can see in twenty twenty.
Two, what is the very second question that is asked at the town hall? Will you pardon the January sixth riders? We have some of that, let's listen.
My question to you is, will you pardon the January six rioters who were convicted of federal offenses.
I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can say for every single one, because a couple of them probably they got out of control.
So probably they got out of a couple of them.
One, two, Okay, stop the steal in January sixth, So far, what are you making of it? So, by the way, we know that most of you did not watch the town hall. We did our best to compile some of this stuff together. But if you do have the time, go watch the seventy minutes. We're going to try our best year, you know, to put as much of a narrative and all that. But I do encourage you if you have the time to go and watch the full thing for yourself.
So like, yeah, on the one hand, I understand the criticism of the media here and the focus group called out ye see, and like, why does he keep talking about twenty twenty? Well, your first question was about twenty twenty or second questions about January six so gee, I don't know why does he keep talking?
That's true.
Yeah, However, on the other hand, the guy gives those answers, so you're like, wow, And I think it's important for the American public.
To see that, Oh, I thought it was great. That's that is who he is.
He is the by far the front runner for the Republican nomination, likely to be on the ballot, yes against sitting president. He's the former president of the United States. He's not just celebrity apprentice guy at this point. He's a former president. And if he's going to say that, he is going to probably pardon most of the January sixth rioters.
That is newsworthy.
No, not only newsworthy.
But I think what it gets to is there is a level of high brow stop the steal which drives me insane, which Senator Holly is absolutely guilty of many of these other people Ted cruised.
They're like, well, you know the commission, my commission, idea.
Commission, not just the commission.
Ryan.
They'll be like, but did you know that the Hunter Biden laptop story. And we're like, yeah, of course we knew that. And by the way, you know who has covered that more than we have here. We did an entire segment about it, and in fact, that the Trump town hall hadn't.
Happened, we would have done an entire nose about it.
Where I'm very happy to and we will be covering it on our Monday show, Congratulations. The point is is that he doesn't believe that because the Hunter Biden laptop story, that the election was stolen and that is election interference, we can absolutely say that.
But he believes that the votes.
Were specifically rigged and changed in multiple different states, and that's what really hit.
From the town.
Hall, he'd be like, well, in Milwaukee in particular, you know, every city he has a story, and Georgia he has a story. Milwaukee has a story. In what Philadelphia he has a story. And I already know the magabots are gonna be in the comments being like, well did you see this one video? It's like, well, okay, prove it in court, you know, and guess what, as they brought up last night, correctly they lost every single court case. If you had such compelling evidence, then presumably one judge.
You can't even if a pro live people can get some crank judge in Texas to take down the uh what is it? The abortionous hill for like a week and you can't get one judge to.
Go, not one, not even a state guy to go along with your nonsense. What does that tell you about you?
And this could be a good moment to do something for the YouTube censors here.
Well, I'll say it's Lindsay Graham.
I'm sorry.
Lindsay Graham made the point that this was not stolen the night of January sixth or early January seventh.
Go watch his speech. It was incredible. He's saying.
What Sager is saying is like, you guys say ten thousand dead people voted in Georgia.
I asked for five. I got none.
You guys say that sixty thousand like Mexicans voted in Arizona, Show me four. You said one hundred thousand people in Milwaukee turned out, you know that voted twice, Like, show me ten of them and I got zero.
So that's Lindsay Graham.
And so to your point, right, he doesn't believe that it was unfair because the CIA, like coordinated with Hunter Biden and persuaded people to vote a different way exactly. He thinks that Jugo Chaves his ghost came in.
Yeah, heally believes.
And so and by the way, if you believe that, I think you know, I mean, I think you need help, but and I think you're wrong. But I guess at least you're honest you're more honest or as honest as Trump. You're dishonest though, if you're a Republican senator here in this town and you're singing a different tune about why the election was stolen, but not in the way that Trump says. And actually you brought up a good point,
just so everybody knows. Every single time that we air a clip where Trump says that the election was stolen, we, according to YouTube guidance, have to make sure that we also say that the election was not stolen.
Now, frankly, I mean, I don't.
Think I should have to do that because even though I do don't believe that the election was stolen, but I still have to say it because apparently that's what the content policy is.
They think that viewers as long as you and I say, and the viewers like, oh right, well, okay, never mind that.
It's not like you're smart enough to figure it out for yourself.
That's what I think anyway, that's the YouTube policy.
And also become a premium member because that's why this is why things are precarious as they are. Let's go to the final clip here, probably honestly the most shocking moment. Trump not only talks about January sixth, not only defends Ashley Babbitt, the protester who shot dead at the Capitol, calls the cop who shot her quote a thug.
Let's take a listen.
Over one hundred and forty officers were injured that day.
And a person named Ashley Babbitt was killed. Yes, you know what, she was killed and she shouldn't have been killed. And that thug that killed her there was no reason to shoot her at blank range, cold blank range. A shot her.
Wo Ryan, That's uh, that's something.
And what you can see from Trump there not only defending Ashley Babbitt, he said that protesters at January sixth had quote love.
In their hearts whenever they arrived.
Look, I mean, in terms of litigating all of this, I do think it is a little interesting that the Republicans around the Ashley Babbitt case basically become the level of like BLM activists whenever it comes to Ashley Babbitt, but not so whenever it's like any sort of cop shooting.
I do think we should be consistent, and I actually think it's totally legitimate.
I was gonna I think it's actually totally the legitimate to be like, hey, was this a legitimate use of force? Like you have this so she broke through whatever, she broke through the window, right, and he immediately shot through the windows.
And then you know, when we're talking about self defense and.
All that, I actually think it's a legitimate conversation just about how we should handle these things. What do riot situations look like, what are the breaching rules and all that that said, I mean, I think there's a lot of inconsistency here and we're basically playing, like I caughp, identity politics in terms of when protesters it's okay and
what's not. But I mean, regardless of that, media wise, you know that this is probably that's probably triggered them more than anything else from the night.
You make a really good point because if you compare it to other police shooting videos where you will have ten officers surrounding one unarmed person, right, and the unarmed person is kind of freaking out because they're like getting conflicting orders.
Put your hands behind your back, put your hands behind your.
Head, get on your knees, don't move, no move, and then they move a little bit, and then they all shoot them down, shot them down, and they say, well, we were all in fear of our life because we saw.
Him reach for his waist band.
Ashley Babbitt was part of a mob that was kicking its way.
Through the doors into the speaker's lobby. There the idea that.
The person who saw somebody reach for their waistband was totally justified in ending somebody's life, but that this person should have de escalated this situation in a different way. I might agree that maybe it would be nice if there was a way to de escalate that, but I think that's a really good point to compare it to other police shootings where the same types of people.
Are like, that was justified.
Yes, you know, you know, play stupid games, win stupid prize acts.
Yeah, well listen, I think that's actually why I get so. This is why I think the discourse around this is so poisonous. It's like we're all criminal justice reform advocates whenever it comes for Chance six protester, which I do think many of them were very unjustly treated. But you know, at the same time, it's like some lock them up thing for any crime that they don't like. Not to be consistent, that's how the law works, right, and finally Mike Pence moment.
This is shocking too.
He still truly believes that Mike Pence had the ability to change the election results on January sixth, even though he had no absolutely zero capacity to do so.
Here's what he had to say.
One person who was at the Capitol that day is, you know, was your Vice president Mike Pence, who says that you endangered his life on that day. I don't think he was danger mister president. Do you feel that you owe him an apology?
No, because he did something wrong. He should have put the votes back to the state legislatures, and I think we would have had a different outcome.
Should have put the votes back to the state once I had he doesn't have the capacity. I also do love Trump's his explanation for why he could have done so. He's like, well, he could have done so because they tried to pass the Electoral Count Act afterwards, and as he.
Was like, oh, they strengthened it.
Well real they took out is any shred of legal ambiguity around it, So you know, it is just one of those where he believes that people. That's the biggest takeaway. He believes the election was stolen that Hugo Shavis's ghost and Chinese dominions and all these other people individually conspired and acted together, while Mike Lindell apparently he's the only guy who's ever been able to find out about it
to go in and change election results. And if you sign on to that, this is what you're signing on to. This is why I actually think this is a great service for all of us.
This is it.
This is Trump. He's not going to change. He will never ever ever change. And that's probably the most evergreen thing that we learned about him. So anyway, let's go to the second part here, because it's not like we couldn't get enough from Trump.
They also had to ask him, of course.
But you guys did a great job, by the way, talking about the EG and Carroll verdict what it was, what it wasn't all this a bit complicated because what was it? They found him liable of defamation, liable sexual abuse, but not liable of rape, which I'm still personally trying to wrap my head around.
Trump also had his response to that.
There's a rather graphic answer to that. Yeah, just yeah, yeah.
The good point if you're watching this with children, you should you know ear muffs.
All right, let's take a listen just.
So you understand. Ready, I never met this woman. I never saw this woman. This woman said. I met her at the front door of Bergdorf good Room, which I rarely go into other than for a couple of charities. I met her in the front door. She was about sixty years old. And this is like twenty two, twenty three years ago. I met her in the front door at Bergdorff Goodman. I was immediately attracted to her. She was immediately attracted to me. And we had this great chemistry.
We'll walk in into a crowded department, so we had this great chemistry. And a few minutes later we end up in a room, a dressing room a Burgdoff Goodman, right near the cash register. And then she found out there are locks in the door. So she said, I found one that was open. She found one. She learned this a trial. She found one that was open. What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings him up and with ad minutes you're playing hanky panky in addressing room.
Okay, crowd was eating it up there, Ryan crowd was eating it up.
Everybody was like, oh, Trump you knows.
I'm like, yeah, you first.
Time, like first time I ever heard Trump.
They also tried to get him on the what was it the answer that he gave in his deposition about when you grab him, you know, they let you do it, and he's like, well, you know, it's fortunate or unfortunately or fortunately, and he's like, well, you know, that's something that has always been kind of the case for famous people.
What did you make of his response?
What do you think what was interesting that he wanted to relitigate the access Holly, He is, yeah, that's how to reltigate everything.
And he wanted to zero in on the word let because what.
He was trying to say it seemed like, was that let implies consenth okay, okay, and that unfortunately or fortunately, powerful, rich, famous people are able to get consent like that. That was the whole riff that he was going in on. But it's just bizarre that he wants to relitigate that. But it's very Trump and to me, it was disturbing to watch the crowd hooting to his like mockery of
Egene Carroll. That was the part where I was like, oh, this is just That was the part where I thought CNN was like really getting now maybe what they wanted because it's going to be ratings, but it was just.
Horrifying.
But it's like to think of an entire crowd of people like mocking that that moment while he's mocking it on stage. It's just it does not kind of portray the world that I wish that we lived in.
Well, it's certainly not. Unfortunately.
You know, in the eyes a lot of these people, everything is politicized, and everything is like, if you're going to turn this into politicization, that this is going to be a joke, and I'm going to treat it like a joke.
I think.
Unfortunately, that's how a lot of people.
I think that's how people who are I'm sure against sexual assault rape in their in their daily life. They they think it's all right politicized and so therefore, but a lot of people watching it, I think, don't have not don't do not have the same twit or brain.
That's that is genuinely a Ruschack test on Hi. I don't judge anybody who feels either way. You also got a point to uh, just the crowd and the level of which they were They're loving the that is a vintage classic Trump right. Well, another one was going after the moderator, Caitline Collins at CNN, calling her quote a nasty person.
And again the crowd is eating this up. Take a listen.
That's the question that investigators have, I think, is why you held onto those documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then it'd given you a subpoena to return.
Are you ready?
Can I talk?
Yeah?
What's the answer?
Can you mind?
I would like for you dance the Bookay, it's very simple, That's why I asked it.
It's very simple that you're a nasty person.
I'll tell you you're a nasty person.
Okay. And again, crowd they can cheer. I mean, this is.
Also where you know it kind of get to your point, Ryan, which no offense, but there's a lot of pearl clutching going on where people are like, I can't believe the crowd.
Which here I'm like, here's what you got. People need to understand. They hate you.
They hate you so much, they hate you so much. The reason that they vote for this this.
Like vulgar weird?
Uh?
You know, famous billionaire from New York is because of.
Moments like that, and they will never understand it.
I think you were intellectually capable of that, and that's why watching that I couldn't help but almost just because.
I'm like, wow, like that right there.
That is why since what seventy something million people voted for him in twenty two, they can never get enough of Trump via the media because the only person less popular than him is them.
But also we say Trump can't change. But that was woke Trump. No, I didn't. Oh he said a nasty person, not nasty, right, Hillary Clinton was nasty? It was Hillary Clinton, Hillary. Yeah, yeah, he's going that's good. He's like, this is not a gendered insult that I am leveling here. I like that.
I like so well. I want him to start. Yeah, he got to.
We need to stop him from saying things like the dumbest man on TELEIGENI say, the dumbest person on television.
Nasty person, not a nasty woman. But yeah, that's Trump.
Trump. Trump is Trump.
And that's just really my maybe because I covered him for so long, you know, it was in in all this literally watched this play out on a day to day, but not a single thing that happened last night surprised me or shocked me at all. It just seemed like right back, return to where things are. Lots of media, like I said, Pearl clutching around this. But I think that the fundamental question for everybody to ask, for everyone who is involved and finds this repugnant.
Is how do we get here?
How do we get to a point where people are laughing at the Egen Carroll thing? How do you get to a point where people are cheering whenever you call a nasty person. I remember some of the biggest cheers that he used to get is at his rallies is when he would look at the back.
You'd be like, you see those red lights and they're turning away then not showing the crowd. He's like, there's fake news CNN is the crowd would go wild.
If you've ever been to a Trump rally and you've seen the press, you know, at the barricade in the back, and they became I mean, by the way, they love this too. Just so everybody knows, Jim Acosta would be there, he'd be like, look at the way that these people are trying. It's a bi directional thing. The crowd loves hating you and he loves me hated by the crowd.
It helps him sell books.
So don't act also like there's not a lot going on here but self perpetuating cancer.
I was, I was at the dawn of this.
Were you at Sarah Palin's speech? It was electric in a kind of terrifying way. Yeah, this way because McCain gets his acceptance speech, it's like a normal political speech.
You know, the rest of the Republicans.
Throughout that convintry first, normal stuff. When Sarah Palin hit that stage and she started coming out, I forget what she called us. It wasn't fake news, it was something else.
But like you're talking about, she called out the whole whole.
Press area and you could feel the energy of that room turned toward the press.
Remember, like, whoa this is?
This is something else, this is a different thing, Like these people hate me.
Right.
There's another good clip if anybody wants to go watch it of Newt Gingrich going after the media in twenty twelve, similar time period. So if it's twenty twelve in the primary, ging Rich, it's like the CNN actually town hall or debate or something like that, and they opened it up by asking him whether he wants to apologize to his ex wife or something like that.
For anyway me doing scummy things, like very scummy.
I remember that, y yes, And he was like, well, I think, how dare you?
And the biggest threat to this country is.
And the crowd on their feet went wild.
And gang Rich actually popped in the polls after that. That was one of the biggest precursors to what would eventually happen in the twenty fifteen primary. So all of the all of the breadcrumbs were there. The Sarah Palin hockey mom speech, if you remember that, it's like, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick in the crowd is like absolutely losing it. Gingrich, Well,
that's how we got of negativity. Yes, that's a good that's a good you know, people should go read about that too.
That's that's some good stuff.
All right.
Part three here, So we have alluded to this media figures. Democratic politicians, some of them named Alexandro Casio Cortez losing their minds at this CNN Trump Paul not for any of substantive reason, because to them, platforming it was anti democratic and uh, the anti democracy of all of this was just so irresponsible. AOC appeared on MSNBC as if they love democracy so much to denounce the CNN town hall.
Here's what she had to say.
I know you said earlier that you will not comment on the platforming of such atrocious disinformation, but I would. I think it was a profoundly irresponsible decision.
I don't think that it would.
I would be doing my job if I did not say that. And what we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk, that put that person at risk in front of a national audience. And I could not have disagreed with it more. It was shameful.
It was shameful.
Ryan Well, she's referencing she was on the Stephanie Rules Show, and actually Stephanie Ruld opened it be like, we will not be discussing or talking about this at all, really, because you're in the news business. Why not if you think it was shameful air the clip, Eric Forever, that's what we just did. You make up your mind, You make up your mind. Why don't we have enough trust in people that if Trump says that Venezuelan Chinese dominions stole the election.
They go, yeah, you know, I don't think. I don't think that that happened.
And then come voting time, whenever he gets a bunch of Republicans who endorse that on the ballot, they're like, yeah, you know, I really hate Joe Biden. And even though I live in Arizona and I hate the Democrats, I'm just going to vote for one.
Anyway. Democracy works. It works, you let people make up their own mind.
I think, right, I think have more faith in the American public that Democrats I think ought to have been saying thank you for this.
Yes, yeah, you're right. The smart ones we're saying that.
Actually right, because it did a couple of things. One, it continued to scare away a bunch of independence and kind of democratic leaners.
The ones who may come out may not come out.
That didn't play well at all to them. I don't think we'll find out. But secondly, Trump thinks it played great, and Trump's base thinks that played so they're.
Going to lean in.
They're gonna be like, oh, we needed to make fun of EG and Carroll Moore. We make that a regular part of my stump speech. I need to continue talking about pardoning the January sixth rioders, I need to continue questioning the election results because that all worked for me, not realizing that yes it worked to fire up your base, excellent,
but it's only going to bury you further. And so have faith that if Trump lets his freak flag fly, that enough of the American publics and be like, you know what, we don't I'm not sure we want the sleepy Joe guy, but this is if this is the choice, we're going with sleepy Joe.
Which is literally what happened in the twenty twenty two election. Actually thought Biden had the best response. You know what he tweeted. It's simple, folks, do you want four more years of that? If you don't pitch into our campaign? Perfect, perfect response instead of oh democracy, democracy is being destroyed.
One Rick Wilson, who you will remember from the Grifting Lincoln Project, has taken a break from the grift off of their Democratic boomer donors and has instead decided to come on the air and just on Twitter and denounce with almost tears in his eyes about what happened.
Here's what we had to say.
We're in a break now from the presidential town hall with CNN, Caitlin Collins and whatever the fuck they thought they were going to get out of this, they instead have set a match to democracy once again. You are letting an insane person stand there and make people giggle and laugh, and he jokes about rape. You make people giggle and laugh when he jokes about abortion, when he calls an African American police officer a thug. This insanity should be pulled off the fucking air.
Chris licked.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
He should be ashamed of yourself. Morning Joe was on This Morning Ryan. Here's what jo Scarborough has to say. CNN's town hall was disgraceful on every level. The most shocking part was seeing the audience lapping it up. What I saw last night was as chilling as anything that I've seen on TV since January sixth. So if seeing Republicans love Trump is as triggering as jan six then you're in for it, my man.
Our politics are actually disgusting.
Yeah, yeah, welcome to America and shameful.
And so what is the other option? Yeah, exactly like we can't make it.
Yeah, you and I can try as much as we can to make a better policies or should we.
Have the power to do so, because no one person or two people or whatever ever have the power.
Right. It's weird because what do they think their role is like?
If you don't use the word platform, if you don't platform the Republican basically nominee for president, he's still on the ballot exactly, So what are you accomplishing exactly? If you think that people can't handle his views. What if then they get a distorted idea about what he believes and they think that he's actually moved on for act and he's not going to pardon the January sixth riders,
then they vote for him. He gets in and does all the things that you were keeping him from sharing with the public that he was going to do.
How does that serve democracy?
So tell me about this. There was a huge debate. Let's put this on there on the screen. Though, by the way, the CNN actually cut their town hall short. It was scheduled for ninety minutes. The actual event was to go as long as seventy five. They stopped less than seventy minutes in. They could have gone longer if they wanted, which is usually what executives do with big
rating straw. I think they personally thought it was a disaster. So, according to the commentariat online, the biggest mistake that Caitline Collins made is she didn't fact fact check him enough. Now, I want to know what you think about this. I've interviewed Trump four times. Guess what, every time you fact check him off derails the conversation. You don't get it. If you keep doing it longer, he'll just cut it off,
so you're not going to get information. But in general, when I interview politicians, I let him talk and if they say a lie, we can talk about it afterwards. Maybe we can gently be like, hey, you know, this isn't another opposing view. What utility is there to the constant fact checking to somebody's face? And just so people know, I do this with Democrats and Republicans I've interviewed, doesn't Primelajaia Paul.
I've interviewed all.
These Democrats who I don't agree with it all, who in many cases I find like repugnant at least on a policy level. But I'm not going to sit there and like show my disdain to their face. I'm just gonna ask them a good faith question. I'll do the same thing with Republicans when anybody really is because I enjoy letting people talk and I believe in letting people judge for themselves. You know, I can try and add some context whatever, and I don't think I'm going to change anybody's mind.
What do you think about the whole fact checking cons.
I'm kind of with you on that because to me, it goes to what is the role of media? And we are interlocutors here, right if we have strong opinions about it's something that somebody's saying, and how the country we can run for office, right, Like, that's good, That's a path that is open to us. And so if a person is running for office, I think it's our job to question.
Them, probe at their views.
But setting yourself up like you're in a debate with them on a debate stage like one on one, you're in different roles, so that doesn't quite make sense you And then to your point, pragmatically and tactically, it just doesn't work. Like the whole fifty two mile thing was just so exhausting.
Said this last night.
She goes, we can't let you say that, and I said, really, did somebody elect CNN, Like, who what CNN's air is more powerful than the president's YouTube or something?
Yeah, exactly what do you want on YouTube?
Because we actually can't literally, Yeah, But the point is is like, you know who elected you?
Nobody?
Like your job is to get info from Trump? And you know another thing I'm gonna know because we're going to spend the rest of our show on policy on Ukraine. The audience members asked the best damn questions the entire night. The best questions that came from Trump were about January sixth, like you said, they were also about the stolen election. They it sounded like those people didn't want to ask questions. What else did they ask about? Ryan Dead, ceiling, Ukraine abortion?
Every single one of their questions was fantastic because the audience members want to get to what's really going on here. They're asking about, Hey, I'm having trouble.
Paying my bills. And these are Republicans just so everyone knows.
But even normal Republicans like they don't want to sit admire in this twenty twenty like election stuff.
They want to be like, what are you going to do for me? What's going to even happen?
Even they're like backward looking. January sixth, question was forward exactly are you going to party?
Are you gonna party?
Rather than what did you think of like the way that they ransacked the capitol or can you know, would you like to apologize to Mike Pence?
It's like what forward about?
Yeah, because these people, you know, who are the people in the audience, were smart. They're smarter than us because we're probably still two in it right.
We live in breed Polk. They are living their lives.
They're the ones who actually vote at the end of the day, and they're the ones who picked their own president and their nominee, and they had better questions that served all of us. So we will be spending the bulk and the majority of the rest of the time actually talking about that. But we could not let this final thing go, which is as everybody at breaking points now.
Chrystal and I we love a good focus.
Group, especially with the focus group basically just slaps the media in the face. Here we had CNN, a bunch of Republican voters who were with the CNN with CNN after the town hall in which they stunned the actual interviewees because they didn't give them the answers they expected.
Let's take a listen.
Is it bother you that it keeps talking about twenty twenty and not twenty twenty four? I'll ask you for first. This is Jonathan Leslie's forty Republican voter for Trump twice? How do you feel about those lines?
So I feel like part of it's also a media narrative, as you guys.
Asking the first question at the time all about the twenty twenty election rather than turns up.
So you may think it say it's time for me to start talking about twenty twenty four, and that lies there.
I'm true.
Couldn't the media ask him a question about twenty nine four?
Well there were questions, but you're right that was the first thing that that's something that was on oline and that's why I was asked first. What I want to ask you first of all is do you think show of hands? Anybody think Donald Trump looks better after this town hall? And if you think it looks works and if you think the same thing about him as you did when you walked in, so all, do you feel that way?
There you go, They're like, they're like, why was you kept saying all this tiff about twenty twenty. It's like, well, you asked them about twenty twenty and they're like if they're like, shouldn't you talk about twenty twenty four?
They're like, but why don't you ask you? That's a great question. That's a great question. As usual they are they know so much better than we do.
And that my personal favorite at the end there like raise your hand if you feel better about him, raise your hand to feel for real worse about him, raise your hand if you feel the same.
I've talked about it here before. Debates and these types of things.
Statistically, political science data we have like sixty years to tell us us have a zero impact on the election.
Zero.
It's almost always about more structural factors, personal stuff. It can matter, it can it's difficult to predict. But this also gets to my whole thing around the fact checking. What is the point of constantly being like, no, actually, sir, this is you know, fifty two miles of wall, not.
Four hundred five.
And guess what, the people who believe that Trump built the wall are never going to change their minds even if he didn't build a scrap a wall. And then also people who believe that there was not a single mile of wall built. We are not going to change their minds after you were like, well, actually there were fifty two.
What you feel about Trump is baked in.
He's been on the national stage now since twenty fifteen, almost ten years. We were coming up on a decade of the Trump era in American politics.
It's all here at this point.
And the limits of fact checking were so exposed by that exchange too, because they were so obviously talking past.
Exactly thank you what he was saying.
He's like, look, I rehabbed a bunch of like rusty, old crappy fence, right, And they wouldn't count that in my fifty two miles, And she would say, well you did fifty two miles.
Yes.
Secondly, it's like they're both right, Actually they are both right. But then secondly it's like, well, you guys don't want that wall anyway, So why are you kind of criticizing him for not building enough of the thing that you don't want him to build any of? Yes, So the whole thing, because when you get into fact checking, it takes the kind of ideology and ideas out of it.
I don't believe in vindral fact checks.
I actually think that outside of like literal math like two plus two or whatever physics, I don't think that there is such thing as a fact check. Everything is relative,
Everything is basically up for debate. Everything is like everything is at the level of argumentation, you know, even you know, whenever, like we were talking about the stolen election, it's like, yeah, well, if you just put it that way, then you know, somebody can say about this, you know, if you put it the way Trump doesn't, Okay, like you can get in that. But even then, it's like, the point is
is that about changing people's minds? And I think that the news at best what I like to do when we meet people out in the wild, like what's the most edifying thing they say, say, make me answer sense of the world. Hate help help my relationship with my parents, because I felt like we were talking past each other, and instead we watch your show together and we come away with different takeaways, and we sit down and we're like, well, here's what I agree with Sager said or Chrystal said it,
Ryan said, or Emily said it. But I realized that because they could talk together afterwards, that you and I can talk now as well. I mean that the point is is that you can even start from the same show and come away with two completely different opinions.
That's humanity.
And I think you worry about getting too rigid.
When Trump said, well, why did I make that call to Georgia, Yeah, because I was questioning the results of the election, He's just says it out right, yeah, And Democrats are going to be like, well, that's insane.
You should go to prison for that.
But I also think Democrats are going to regret in the future setting a standard by which it is wrong to question the results of elections. What if Republicans in Arizona or Wisconsin, Alabama democrats. Democrats are kind of in conflict here because on the one hand, they're always accusing Republicans of voter suppression and trying to steal elections, and then at the same time.
Saying that you can never question the results of an election.
So I bet in our lifetimes we're going to have a point where Republicans are going to straight up steal some elections somewhere, and Democrats are then going to be handcuffed a little bit in the way that they're able to point to the ways.
Look at Stacey Abras.
Stacy Abrams was allowed to do it in twenty eighteen, but then immediately after the Trump think they're like, hey, Stacy, shut up. Yes, Stacy, if you want to be able to continue selling books and you know, grifting off my killing us with all these other people in the eighteen things, you got to you gotta shut up. You got to accept it and just kind of walk away after you lost a couple more times. Anyway, I thought that these are our big like personality I guess takeaways. We're going
to go ahead into the policy. Now, let's get to it. This Ryan, in my estimation, was some of the best that came out of this because Trump took a position in the debt ceiling fight, which is going to have massive ramifications in terms of how Republican voters and also the actual Republican policy makers respond to everything that's going
on here right now. Let's look take a listen to this question about how the Republican should handle the debt ceiling, how Trump feels about the debt, and also about what Republicans should do in said defaulse type scenario.
Let's take a listen.
What do you think about the United States current debt situation and how can we move forward. Such an important question. So we're at thirty three trinllion dollars, a number that nobody ever thought simile. When we had our economy rocking and rolling just prior to COVID coming and like literally we were making a fortune and oil We're going to make so much money from, well, we're going to start paying off debt. But then with COVID coming in, we had to do other things. We had to keep this
country alive because it was so serious. But we have to get the country back. We have to lower energy prices, we have to lower interest rates. Interest rates are through the roof. Energy has to come down. It all has to come down, and we have to start paying off debt.
You once said that using the using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You You said that when you were in the office, So why is it different now that you're out.
Of office, now I'm not president.
They couldn't get enough, Brian, I loved it.
That's hilarious. I mean.
That is you know what this is again?
Why part of his appeal because he'll just when other politicians are inconsistent, they're like, well, technically things were different.
He's like, no, I just not. He's like, I'm inconsistent, and because I'm a ruthless politician, position has changed.
Yeah, okay, Now cynically, what I thought is like coming away from that exchange, was that Trump actually would appreciate a default because it will hurt Biden, of course, and hurt the economy and guarantee his election, right if he uh, you know, if there's enough of a hit. So for Trump, it's like he gets to talk tough and then all.
But he also wants the car crash in this game.
Of chicken, because if the car cars crash and you get unemployment back up to six percent by November twenty twenty four, Biden has a very difficult time getting reelected.
Yeah, I mean, listen, this is part of why this entire conversation drives me nuts.
Trump.
Under Trump, the national debt increased by seven point eight trillion from twenty He thought it was possible. He started, He started the administration with twenty trillion dollars in debt after the Obama years. That was in twenty seventeen. That was after an increase from ten to twenty trillion. So then it went from twenty to twenty eight trillion after the end of the Trump presidency. Now, I guess, to be fair to him, only five trillion of that was
pre COVID, so half of it was post COVID. I mean, I mean, and listen, you're looking at two people who don't have that a lot, who don't have that many objections to deficit spending, or who probably have very very different views on default and or on default and debt, deaficit spending and debt, on national debt specifically, as in it's not the same thing as a household balance sheet because we're the world's superpower, so there's a little bit of a difference. You know, We're not like Bosnia or
something like that. But if we were going to speak the language of what he's talking about, we have to get to national debt under control, you know all this other stuff. Well then uh, you know, it's a little hypocritical whenever you're going to sign one of the largest corporate tax cuts.
And actually that's part of why as.
Much as I enjoyed the hit the moment where Caitlan was said, you know, well, you said, as president, it's actually better to hit them with the genuine policy hypocrisy here to be like, listen, you literally signed the largest corporate tax in hit cuts in history, which he talked about, in which he talked and bragged about, and the case that you made was going to boom the economy, and
I mean it kind of did. It also increases deficit, so and that's fine in my opinion a lot of people's opinion too, as the voters who are mostly were okay with that. But you know, you can't then say that we got to get our big or whatever out of control. Actually, the most effective tactic that I've heard yet is not objected to the spending overall. It's when people said, you're spending money on X, Y and Z, like spending money on an unpopular program like the I
R S for example. Right, That is actually a way to get people to be like, yeah, hold on a second, maybe we shouldn't spend so much money on the IRS. And even that, you know, I think is up for debate. So, yeah, what do you make about his answer there on the default?
Right?
I think you're right that the way you go after him is to hit that wedge in between the kind of Paul Ryan Republicans who wrote that tax cut and Trump who kind of signed that tax cut right into law, because how can you on the one hand, you know, brag about this gigantic tax cut and then on the other hand say, isn't it isn't it such a shame that we now have thirty three trillion dollars.
It's a great clip actually of Trump back in the day talking about real estate and he's like, I'm a real estate guy.
I love debt, debt.
You know, debt.
But you know he's right, yeah, early on in his presidency, like the one the one thing that he really does understand his interest rates, because his whole real estate scheme was just skimming cash flow off off.
Cash flow refinance, you know, refinance this property by this property, take this property, cash out, refinance on this madness. I don't really know how those people sleep at night, but just like from a stress level perspective, because that sounds insane to me, but I guess it worked out for him. The thing, though, is on the interest rates. It again, Trump has these savant moments where he understands consumer economics I think better than a lot of people who do
this for a professional living. And in that answer, he specifically targeted interest rates, and while he was president. I don't know if a lot of people remember this, he would ruthlessly hammered Jerome Powell and the Frett Fedcher.
It was like doing constantly on Twitter.
He was like, he needs to bring down the rates. And that was when rates were like what like one point.
Or something like that.
He's like, bring him now more, make it zero, make it negative, make it hid exactly. Yeah, he had this again savant like not knowledge of the way that Americans interact with the economy, which at the end of the day is basically gas prices and ability to buy stuff, and not just that ability to buy stuff downstream from the ability of large corporations to also take out large amounts of debt for debt financing.
Unfortunately in some cases stock buybacks.
But you know, at least hopefully at least in some cases it trickles down and some way by letting people hire them and at least floating your payroll. That's what we see, right, And that again is where he displayed his ability to target in on what a lot of voters really care about whenever it comes to the economy. It reminds me of a very famous answer that Bill Clinton gave in nineteen ninety two in the presidential debate, a black woman asked him, well, how do you think
about the national debt? Or something about the national debt? Clinton intuited. He's like, this answer is not about the debt. You're asking about the economy, and he goes, I know people have lost their jobs this administration. We've had twelve years of failed trickle down economics. It's a failed economic theory. We're going to get people back to work again. Remember
it's in my hand. Because one of the best political debate moments I think ever that's ever happened, because it's about taking what somebody is asking about and not answering it on the face and getting to the core of how the voter really thinks about it. In that, I actually thought he did a good job. But now in terms of the policy and what it means, here's what matters.
Trump endorsement of the McCarthy position gives McCarthy tremendous more leverage within the Republican caucus because he can go and say, why are you going against Trump on this? Trump endorsed me last night. He strengthened his negotiating hand whenever it came to Biden because this is the leader of the Republican Party, the former president of the United States, the most popular Republican in the entire country. Here's what he thinks we need to do in this specific instance. So
it could actually help him from getting people to walk away. Now, at the same time, some of the people who would walk away are coming from like Biden plus five plus ten districts, so it's not like they need to hold down the fort, you know, for the general election.
But anytime you have Trump on on your side in a debate like this is.
Going to be better than not whenever you're in an entry GOP file, which to me is more reason for Biden to just walk away from the whole thing and do the fourteenth Amendment and.
Say, right, say forget this because point or meant the.
Coin, do whatever, say we're not playing these games, and just just say look Trump, Trump called for a default. Trump wants you guys to default with me, and I'm not playing that game.
I'm done, I'm moving on.
Okay, let's go to the next part here.
Abortion.
This again was a very important moment during the town hall. The reason to me, Ryan before we even play the clip watch here how rambling, nonspecific, and how twisted and knots Trump is whenever it comes to the subject of abortion.
Let's take a listen.
If you are reelected and you're back in the Oval office and you get legislation to your desk, would you sign a federal abortion band into law?
What I'll do is negotiate so that people are happy. But the fact that we were able, I was able. I'm so proud of it to put three great justices on the Supreme Court. We have almost three hundred federal judges owners are tame for.
So you exactly are just toy claims resident, you would sign a federal abortion ban.
I said this.
I said this.
I want to do what's right, and we're looking and we want to do what's.
Right for everybody, what's right.
But now, for the first time, the people that are pro life have negotiating capability because you didn't have it before. They could kill the baby in the ninth month or after the baby was born.
Now they won't be able to.
I think this is a really important question for you to answer because this is something every Republican, including those who are running against you for the nomination, are being asked about is would you sign a federal abortion ban into law?
And many of them are going to give you the same answers. I am, first of all, I am honored to have done what I did. And a lot of people said, they said in one hundred and fifty years, he's now the most consequential president because he saved so many lives, and I'm honored.
To have got honored to have done it.
Ryan, come into a Democratic ad near you.
You will watch them.
At over and over and over and over again. And that is exactly why he's in a real bind. Do you appease the pro lifers who want more? Frankly, they want way more. They want the abortion ban, they want to go you know, six week and all these states and all that, which are not politically popular at all. And then he's he's not an idiot. And look, I don't I will never psy psychoanalyze anyone. I'm just gonna say, personally, I don't believe that Trump is actually pro life.
Me personally, I don't think. I don't think that yet.
I don't think that he had some crazy change of heart in his sixties.
I mean, I guess it's technically possible. Anyway.
The point is that it is hard of hearts, at least the political one. He knows people hate this, which is why he's twisted himself like a pretzel, being like, well, I believe in the exceptions. And then the Democrats and the late term abortion and a mon or two have done Roe versus Wade.
But now it's up to the States.
It was two and a half minutes almost just I didn't settle on anything, and she was like, well, what are you gonna do? Like are you sure? Like what about the band? Would you sign a band? He's like, well, we'll see. Some people have good ideas. I haven't made up my mind yet.
What does that mean?
You've had what?
When did row happen?
June?
Right, it's been almost a year.
It's been literally eleven months since this, uh maybe something like that, since this has all come down.
How have you not made up your mind yet? You know why?
Because he has made up his mind and he knows privately it's an electoral disaster anyway. So I saw that and I was like, man, Trump, he knows this is his kryptonite.
And for twenty twenty four, and not even that privately he was fairly open you know, during this oh midterms, saying like, look, this is not going to be great for us, even though he plays such a significant role.
And then he blamed abortion for the election.
Blamed abortion, which he was right. Yeah, so that's why he has to he's trying. Susan B.
Anthony came out recently saying that they would miss endorsed any candidate.
You know, very powerful organs that wouldn't do you explain that to people?
So, yeah, Susan B.
Anthony maybe the most powerful kind of pro life group, the pro pro life group in the country, and they want a national abortion band. And they said after Trump refused to commit.
To one like the Planned Parenthood pro lifers and.
So, and they came out publicly and said, we will not work for, we will not endorse, We'll not support any candidate who refuses.
To stop killing babies.
And so that's who's in Trump's head when he's celebrating his overturning of Roe v.
Wade.
But then the polls are in his head when he's refusing to kind of commit to a national ban. Later in that clip, he says, you know, Lindsay Graham has a nice bill and Lindsay fifteen weeks or something, because that polls a little bit better, but it's still.
Not fifteen weeks ironic.
A Ryan was actually much more popular pre Row and now is less popular Row.
Actually, well, it kind of gets to something.
One of my core beliefs in politics is just don't take anything away from people. Like it was, you take some away, like it's not going to be good for you. I remember that, you know, like Obama. Obama was like, well, we're going to take away your healthcare, but everybody's gonna get better health care. I'm like, yeah, but you shouldn't
screw with my healthcare man, because I hate it. And that was you know, he paid a huge electoral price for it, even though you know, by the numbers, technically more people got health care, but it was a mess even I you know how many Obamacare plans you saw. My current plan is like I have like a nineteen thousand dollars inductor or something. I'm like, well, I guess
I hope I don't get hit by a bus. But point with that being that a lot of people like their healthcare plan the whole Like if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Wasn't true.
Well, I think that the very much the same thing kind of came with our abortion policy. Everyone's like, yeah, it's icky, but you know, it's relatively whatever it's done, and we'll just keep it that.
Way, right, And if the fifteen week ban was it was national in the sense that you could get an abortion up to fifteen weeks anywhere in the country, then you might have a little bit more support for it. But what fifteen weeks says? No, that this is that's the cat's the cat's right.
But but sorry, that's the ceiling, not the floor, right, So.
Other states can then make it six weeks or or ban it completely. And so then.
Democrats and abortion rights advocates are like, well, we don't need that because we like all you're doing then is putting a fifteen week abortion band in New York and California.
Exactly why would a Democrat vote for that? In a lot of culture like here in Washington, d C. I'm pretty sure that you can get late term abortion like basically whenever you want.
Now, you know, I think.
That's I don't agree with that, But my point is like, why would somebody who lives in a state who has like late term abortion sign a fifteen week band, Like, no, I'm gonna campaign against this because you're basically making it so that everybody can go under if they want to,
but not over if they want to. I actually kind of do believe in the whole leave it up to the states thing, because if you genuinely did leave it up to the states, quote unquote, like genuine no, abortion would really only exist in like four states in the whole maybe five, like in the whole country. After the democratic process, what kind of works its way out, I think, you know, at the end of the day, ironically, this is what I've said.
I've told this to my own pro life friends.
We probably will end up with more contraception and more abortion access in the United States post ROW, let's say ten years from now, just given.
The way that look at what just happened with the FDA.
The FDA just approved over the counter birth control that has never happened that in no way that happens without ROW versus WEAD.
Although there's been pretty successful effort to close abortion clinics and people forget about people think about it just on a policy level and a legal level, but there's also a kind of structural operational level that you have to have doctors who are trained to perform abortion services, and then you have to have clinics that are able to
actually serve clients. And as you have the laws in all of these different states constricting them, they're closing and that doesn't and then you lose a lot of legacy expertise, and so for that reason you may end up with much less depending on how things go. But yes, in twenty twenty four, this is going to be a huge It's gonna be a huge issue.
This is the in my opinion, this is the issue because and I don't want it to be. I never wanted to. I think the more you argue about guns and abortion, the more I feel like I'm five years old living in Texas again.
But you're the ones who overturned.
It, so you got it.
Defend it, you know, for the American people.
And I think that that is one where we have seen now state after state, referenda after referenda, election after election, abortion mattered so much more, frankly than I ever thought possible, more than Crystal thought possible. Maybe you two, going into twenty twenty when we were all here at the desk, who thought that when the midterm results were happening.
And throughout Trump's first term, whenever he was in a jam, if you noticed, he would turn to the evangelical movement.
Absolutely, those were his people at his back.
And because he loves nothing more than loyalty, whether he agrees with you or not, I think he has complete contempt for them, but he loves the fact that they're loyal right to him, and so they became his favorit people. Now I think he's bothered. He's like, what is going on here? Like, why are these people not loyal to
me anymore? I gave them everything they want because he can't get in their minds that they are just ideologically and religiously driven movement that is not stopping because it doesn't poll.
Well, look, it's gonna be It's gonna be a bind.
Been saying it now ever since the twenty twenty two election results and Trump's and I you know why I find this so interesting. I respect Trump as a politician, So when I see him floundering like that, I'm like, man, you got eleven months and that's the best he could come up with, because there is no not gonna be good for you.
Because he can he can either do the politically smart damned if you do, and damned if you, which is to.
Be for abortion rights. But he can't do that.
He can't do that, he can't totally disavout what he did.
So yeah, he's it's gonna be tough, jam tough gig. All right, let's go to Ukraine. This again was actually one of the best moments of the entire night, policy wise, and possibly the most consequential should Trump ever become president again. It started with a voter. It's interesting how that works. He was very concerned about the amount of money going to Ukraine and wanted to know what President Trump thought
about it. And then Kitlin decided to insert herself into some sort of win lose situation for Trump's policy whenever it came to diplomacy.
Here's the full exchange. Let's take a listen.
The current administration has made it clear that we should continue to provide military equipment to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves. Do you support this decision and how would you deal with the increasing threat posed by Vladimir Puvin.
First of all, thank you very much. It's really nice and it's an important question, so important because we're giving away so much equipment. We don't have ammunition for ourselves right now, we don't have ammunition for ourselves. We're giving away so much.
Absolutely, do you want Ukraine to win this war?
I don't think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled. So we stopped killing all these people and break you down is subject?
Well, what do you can I just follow up on that?
And you said you.
Have to get you to follow up on that because.
That's a really important. Let me just follow in there.
Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war?
I want everybody to stop dying. They're dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I wanted to stop dying. And I'll have that done. I'll have that done in twenty four hours.
I'll have it done.
And it comes to what's happening there. When you were in office, you said that you respected President Putin? Do you still respect him today?
He made a tremendous mistake he made. He's a smart guy, you know, I remember I said he was smart. She was smart. Putin made a bad mistake. In my opinion.
What was his.
Mistake was going in. He would have never gone in.
If I was president, we used to talk about it there.
Okay, so uh, he made a mistake. He's not endorsing the Russian position by going in. Well, first, he's like he never should have done it and never would have happened if I had been there, of course, so that's the starting boy.
Second, he made a huge mistake.
Third, this was the most thoughtful answer I've seen a US politician make yet.
There is no winning.
I want people to stop dying whenever he says the other you know, funny thing is is that if you say, quote, I want Ukraine to win this war, well, what does that mean?
Do you want Ukraine to invade Russia?
Do you want Ukraine to fully take back all of its territory pre twenty twenty two or pre twenty and twelve, because those are actually or yeah, or which borders?
You know what it's like talking about Israel like settlements.
I'm like, well, sixty seven forty five whatever, and it's like boufour declaration. There's a lot of different ways that we can talk about it, right, and that's why it's a nuanced answer. It was the best answer I've heard yet. I want everyone to stop dying. I want to bring
the conflict to an end. And actually the admission by the press and by the freak out over this is that any thing that you say where I want the war to end and not necessarily one hundred percent of the the terms that Ukraine wants is some sort of capitulation towards Russia. That's the ludicrous part of the reaction.
Yeah, to say I don't think in terms of winning and losing is a genuinely kind of nuanced, enlightened way to think about war and peace. Taking a controversial anti death position, right, he wants that he wants people to stop dying. If you went back to the Vietnam era, you would you would see you would see the media coming after a president saying who is against the war, saying what, you don't want South Vietnam to win?
Well, what does that mean South Vietnam to win?
Does it mean we're gonna take over all of South Vietnam and run out.
All of the grills.
I mean we're gonna take over North Vietnam and unify the country. If you said at the time, I don't think in terms in Vietnam of winning and losing, I think of stopping the death and you accomplished that policy agenda, there would be millions, millions of Vietnamese that were that.
Were still alive as a result of that.
Yeah, or think about the Korean War or any of these others. These are messy conflicts the borders.
South Korea never won, Yeah, exactly.
Well, I mean my opinion, they did.
They ended the war and they became one of the most prosperous nations and developed nations on Earth. They literally sell us cell phones and cars. I mean, I've worked out for them.
I feel a whole bunch of military dictatorships and yeah squads, but true, Okay, but.
I'm just gonna say, like, you know, at the end of the day, like if they first and they gave me k pop, all right, so they gave me bts.
So at the very least, they absolutely did.
When people, you know, in North Korea, I'm pretty sure they're cracking down on K pop because they viewed as some sort of cultural My point being that like when Lou, if you talk to people in South Korea today, they're like, yeah, absolutely, we're glad that.
Again, it's also into the conclusion that if you go to Vietnam today, yeah, they.
Don't even care about us. They don't think about there.
There's gigantic Coca Cola billboards.
You're like, what was this war over? We lost, but doesn't look much different than it would.
Have we won.
And you know, I think the most gracious thing about the Vietnamese is that they really don't hold it that very much against you, which I think is not you know, having spent.
Some time two million people, I personally could.
Not imagine you know, having yeah exactly and not that long ago. I mean, you know, life not for example, when I when you watch the Ken Burns documentary and you're watching the people who fought in the Vietnamese War, both on the American side but on the Vietnamese side, and.
You're like, wow, they're they're just they're talking like the boom right.
Yeah, they don't even exactly they're literally but they probably got twenty thirty years left. I know, I actually have well future family members who fought in Vietnam, And you know, it's actually kind of interesting for me because I'm like, Hey, tell me, what was that like in nineteen sixty eight, Like what was America like and life like kind of
at that time. But the fact that I could do that about that conflict, and then you know, fifty something years later, still being a place where those people who you know were descendants, maybe fathers, even grandfathers, who were shot, killed, named, burned to death, whatever, don't you know, hold it against the I think really what we're trying to say is these are messy making policy on herministic statements like win lose.
Miss the point unless.
You're Ukrainian, and I think that's where I can have some sympathy.
That's absolutely You're right, Ukrainient. You are free to do whatever you want. And if I were you, by the way, I would think the.
Exact same thing.
But I'm not you. You know, we're us.
We could decide, like to the extent that this marginal conflict matters at all to our lives, to our national policy, to these billions of dollars into our own national security, how and what we treat that, And that's you know, people don't like to hear that, but sorry, I don't know what to say.
Ukraine really doesn't matter to.
The fate of America either way, and it's nice when you help them, but that's pretty much it.
I think if Biden, if Biden can get the war to a resolution over the course of the next year. So that's just from a crass, cynical electoral perspective.
He'd be in better shape strike if he can strike.
After whatever this counter offensive is.
Everyone can breathe a little bit, be like okay, yeah.
And we don't know how it's going. It doesn't mean there won't be another war in ten years mm hmm.
Yeah, then another.
But you know, you can't stop that anything.
To the point about the freak out, we probably should have put this up there earlier, put this up there on this but we're having such a good time. We're talking Adam Kinzinger, you know. The freak out on the Republican side. For Trump not to say he wants Ukraine to win is insane. Chris Christie calling him Putin's puppet. Donald Trump says he would end the war in Ukraine in twenty four hours. Despite how ridiculous this is to say.
I suspect he would try to do it by turning Ukraine over to Putin and Russia.
Hashtag Putin's puppet.
Chris Christy taking a little bit of a book out of boomer Mom's resistance Twitter, How's that going to work out? In a Republican primary.
Interesting, right, that struck me as his signal that either he's not definitely not running for president uh huh, or thinks that there's.
Some lane that doesn't exist. What did you make of that Putin's puppet?
Oh?
I just thought it was so foolish or outrageous, ridiculous both on his face and politically. I think Chris Christy loves the one thing that he's always been pretty good at, and that's called attention. And guess what we're talking about it, And so was all of the major networks. So now he gets to go on ABC as a contributor, and CNN and everywhere else and they all get to do
segments about how Chris Christy called Trump Putin's puppet. And I think that's really the only currency he's ever cared about. So I guess, congratulations to Chris. You know, congratulations Enough of Trump. Let's talk about the news and Title forty two. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The United States is currently finalizing asylum restrictions to ramp up bordered deportations. After Title forty two collapses, let's spend some time Ryan first on Title forty two.
What is Title forty two.
Title forty two was the emergency quote unquote emergency policy that has been effect now for three years at the southern border, which gives the United States, based on pandemic CDC related guidance to expel migrants who crossed the US Mexico border, regardless of their asylum status, return them to Mexico.
Basically a pre biden.
We were at a status quo during COVID of the Remain in Mexico policy combined with Title forty two, which significantly reduced the number of border crossings. Now, what is remain in Mexico because this is also something that we
need to discuss. Remain in Mexico is a policy through which Central American migrants or really migrants from anywhere who travel through Mexico to the United States to claim safe harbor status must instead of applying for asylum in the United States as previous law and policy dictated, where they would remain again remain in America. Eventually through some sort of catch and release program, were basically released into the wild and said show up at a court in four
years something like that. A lot of them didn't show up, or a lot of them would show up to one hearing, but then when they found out that the asylum hearing wasn't gonna take it, then they wouldn't show up at all. And it was basically backdoor illegal immigration, all right.
So that was the previous policy. Remain in Mexico was instituted.
By the Trump administration that said, apply for asylum in America. You have to remain in Mexico. While you do so, US asylum officers and others would hear your claim, it would be adjudicated in the United States, and whether you got asylum or not, would it happen in America, and post asylum status, if granted, you were allowed to remain. If not, otherwise you return to your country of origin.
All right.
So Biden came into office and said one thing, I'm going to end remain in Mexico, but I'm going to keep Title forty two. Title forty two, in my opinion, was a political blessing to him because he didn't have to deal with it for something two and a half years. He basically got to continue the policy of expulsion of not as much.
Cash and release and all that.
Then what happened in the latest congressional session, there was an official end to the pandemic. By ending the pandemic the emergency Pandemic, you also end and sunset Title forty two. Now, with the end of Title forty two, tens of thousands of migrants from across Central America and even South America.
A lot of these people are coming from Venezuela now at this point have transferred via Central America via Mexico and are on the other side of the border waiting for today because they know that they can no longer be expelled under pandemic authority. Now, a flood of migrants was predicted. The reason why is because we were going to previously, if this change had not come into place, returned to catch and release policy, where these people would come to the United States, they would be given a
court date. They'd be like, I fear for my life or something like that, and they were like, Okay, show up at court in four years.
And by the way, here's a work license and you can go do whatever you want.
Now, what Biden has done is the one thing Ryan
he promised not to do. He has effectively brought back the remain in Mexico policy by using the asylum restriction that we just showed you where the new restriction will ramp up swift deportation of migrants who come across the US Mexico order by deploying US asylum officers and saying that they will have to basically go to Mexico and request refugee status quote in another country on their journey to the southern border before they will be heard their
asylum case in the US. So Biden promised on the campaign trail not to do this. He tried every which way to get out of it, to get this.
Way, that way, and all that, and now.
We're basically right back to where we started after three years of Biden saying he's not going to do anything that Trump did at the border. And on top of that, Ryan, he's deploying fifteen hundred active US.
Duty military troops to the southern border.
Can you imagine the freak out if Trump was president, if that was happening, so that anyway.
We don't have to imagine it.
Your reaction there was.
A freak out, like heay appropriately, So I think one tweak, not one hundred percent sure on this. People could maybe correct on correct me in the comments. Sure, I don't think you can get a work visa when you get released. So maybe we can figure that. Maybe we can figure this action release. I mean, it depends on the it's like a work permit.
Just that, just clear.
So here is the investigation, the most dis the ones it will be harmed. Basically, the Biden administration denies it is granting employment authorization or However, recent articles suggests that at least some of migrants are being issued work documents at the time that they're being released from CBP custody.
I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Under Section two thirty five B the Immigration and Nationality Act, DHS is required to detain all aliens from the point at which they are encountered to the time that they were removed or granted status in the United States. However, with the increase of the border emergency catch and release policy, it has led to some instances through which work permits and work authorization is permitted on a case by case basis.
That's where we'rerat and to me, if somebody is in the country, they should have work authorization, like it's bizarre.
Otherwise, well, it depends if you're here illegally. I don't know.
About that, right, because then that's basically is the incentive is like as long as you can get here and then you get to work and you get to pay some security and all that.
I mean, personally, I have a problem with that in terms of our immigration law.
Yeah.
I was going to do my monologue today on sanctions on Cuba and break down, which we dumped it for so that we could talk more about the town hall from last night. But so there was a letter and we talked about this briefly with Rocana yesterday. Who signed this letter, so Veronica Escobar, who is the congresswoman from El Paso, so one of the border towns that deals.
With this basically in a state of emergency.
Yeah, yeah, So she led this letter and it comes after a report by the Center for Economic Policy and Research that expansively studied the consequences of sanctions and found that they do not perform the political function that people are that claiming that they're going to perform, which is to pressure a government into you know, bending its will to the United States. But they do miserate economically the population of the country.
They don't really hurt the elites.
They only ensconced the elites Venezuela is envoy Venezuela's opposition envoy. So this is the pro us dude who's here in Washington trying to, you know, rally support for you know whoever, the next Gui Juan Guido is who we're going to like back in whatever coup attempt we try again in
the future. He came out and said, I really do not think that is a good idea if these sanctions on Venezuela continue, because what you're going to do is you're going to create a political issue for Florida politicians, and you're going to ensconce the Venezuelan elite and leadership
in power. The claim is that you're going to be hurting Venezuela and political leadership with these sanctions, but in fact, it just stunts the economy uh and it and it stunts any ability for the for that economy to grow, which is kind of a prerequisite for producing an opposition uh. And it otherwise creates a calcified situation. If sanctions and embargoes we're going to do anything, you would not have the same government in power in Cuba that you had
seventy years ago. And so what we're and Ben Ben Rhodes, who was Obama's Obama's National Squitrey advisor, now a posse bro who the the posse Bros have been on a roll lately, on a bunch of stuff, and he made it. He made a great point. He's like and and he gets listened to in the Biden administration, so it's important
what he says. He was like, so, we currently have a policy of producing economic catastrophes in Cuba and Venezuela that then produce out migration flows, and then we're going to close the border and punt them back to Mexico. It's like, what what I mean? Now, I'm sure some viewers like, we don't close the border, it's wide open.
Whatever.
The policy is that they're not opening the border and granting asylum to every Cuban in Venezuelan, yet we're also producing migration crises out of those countries.
He's like, do one or the other.
So his argument is like, enough with these sanctions, Like I think these countries.
I agree with that.
The only reason why I do think it is cope, at least on the part of a lot of liberals, is this comes to the heart of the idea that we are solely responsible for, like whatever is going on in Central and South America, to which I just fundamentally reject. Chris A don't have about this debate a million times, but like listen, you know, it's like the Cia San Denista ku was like it was like fifty years ago
or what forty years ago? Actually maybe more now that I think about it, I just don't think that is the major cause of migration to the United States. Like El Salvador being drug infested is its own problem. Like that's a problem that, yes, America has contributed to somewhat, but democratically they.
Have decided to come up with a solution.
You may not like that solution, but they have it certainly in place right now with what's going on there, and I look at it multifaceted.
I don't even disagree.
I actually do think we should probably remove these sanctions if that is what's contributing. At the same time, though, to me, it's ludicrous that we don't have something called a safe third country agreement with Mexico. So what people don't understand is if you we were to traverse the United States and go to Canada to request asylum, they would reject your asylum claim because America is a safe third country as in under UN the UN Refugee Asylum
Law or whatever. If you are declared a safe third country and we have an agreement in between states, they would say, no, we're not accepting your asylum claim in Canada because you should have applied in America.
Well, the reason why people are able to traverse.
Mexico and enter America is that Mexico is not a declared safe third country. Now, unfortunately for our PRIs this is for to get Mexico become a safe third country agreement, we would have to get them to agree they're a safe third country.
And why would they agree to that.
They don't want to deal with all the asylum down on their Guatemalan border, just as much as we don't want to deal with what's going on down there too.
So I would look at it two things.
Agree, we should reduce migration, but I also think the idea that these people are quote unquote fleeing for their lives is ludicrous, because here's the truth. Ask them yourselves. They're coming here for economic migration, and that's jitimate. That's fine by saying my parents came here for economic for economic reasons, but they had to go through a legal process. And my point is that you don't get to just decide you want to come to America.
You have to apply.
It's onerous and now you can just debate whether it should be easier or not. I think that the way we do immigration is stupid because it's mostly family base called chain migration. It should be more based on skills and on merit. But my point is that we all need to be more honest here. They're coming here for economic reasons that you're not. You know, like if people
are like, oh, we're fleeing violence, fleeing domestic abuse. By that standard, any person who's ever been in a domestically violent situation would qualify for asylum in the United States. That's like a billion people, right, I mean, it's it's just not going to work. It's not practicable for having a genuine system.
Right, And if that's true, then we should just lift the sanctions, like because what it's with them?
Yeah?
Right, And I'm sure you've had this argument a thousand times, like you said with Crystal, but I would just add, like the Hillary Clinton's basically you know, coup in Honduras with two thousand and nine. The guatemal And Dirty War didn't end until the nineteen nineties. L Salvador's gang problem comes from the mass deportation of gang members from Yeah.
But they were here illegally, like we're.
Not, We're not.
Why were they here? Why were they here illegally?
Because we backed the Dirty War in the nineteen eighties, that's I mean we.
Also they had their own problems Ryan, they had big earthquakes and all these other nats. They had disasters which crashed it. I'm just saying it's not all America's fault. First, this is why I always point to why is Costa Rica doing so well?
We had didn't We didn't cool them, and we mine created.
Dirtstory because in the same place geographically they have the same uh you know, they have no military, they have no problems.
Exactly, no US backed military.
Well, I mean, to be fair, we basically guarantee their security, so it's not like America doesn't happen, So let's.
Do that everywhere.
Yeah, Well, I don't know if I wanted to guarantee security for all these places.
Well, yeah, you're you're you don't get anything for free, like yeah, and This is also the coming coming to roost of our hollowing out of our middle class, because the deal that we made with our middle class and our manufacturing base was that we're going to destroy our capacity to like produce here in the United States, but in exchange, you're going to get a lot of cheap crap,
cheap toys, cheap bananas. She's mostly made in Mexico, and it's going to be made in Mexico, and then once that gets too expensive, it's going to be made in Central America. And in order to make it in Central America, we're going to have to prop up vicious right wing dictators who are going to you know, who are going to run desk squads, They're going to kill union organizers, and we're going to make sure that unions and leftists cannot gain power in these countries because that would raise
the price of consumer goods. And if consumer goods are more expensive, then we can't hollow out our industrial core. And so the result of that is these kind of desiccated Central American and South American countries which are now sending people flooding north.
Certainly, yeah, look, I'm not going to deny that America to never roll. I don't think we're the will cause
of all their problems. But I also think here's the other issue, and I always think about this, by the idea that America, if it was America's fault that Central American nations are all this way, then why is it fair for Central Americans to be able to come here and get asylum just because they can walk here and not Iraq I mean, by that standard, every Iraqi should be able to get asylum in the United They've got way more right to it, I think than anybody else.
I'm not I'm not saying I agree with that.
I'm saying though, by that standard, it's not really fair because Iraqis can't just walk here.
And they probably would come if they could.
Actually some people at the border actually from the Middle East, ironically enough, So anyway, I think that ideologically, I understand where people are coming from. Nobody's saying you don't have compassion, like a compassion for anybody who wants to come to this country. I've been all over this world and everybody you know, anytime you meet somebody, and especially in developing situation that I was like, Wow, America, I would love to go there. Sometime, and I think that's great, I
really do. But that doesn't mean, though that everybody does have the right to come here. And I think that is where a lot of people have the presumption and if we have the standard of which, well, if you're fleeing you know, third world status. I mean that's there's what four billion people or whatever who live in that bleom.
So we got to have a law.
You gotta have a standard, and then we get to decide what that standard is. We did so in nineteen sixty five. That's the last time that we really had a wholesale change of our US immigration system. And I think everything should be up for debate, you know, everything they were talking about here. So I appreciate the conversation though, Ryan, it actually was I think was thoughtful and.
People, well, we can agree on lifting the sanctions.
Sure absolutely.
I think actually a lot of my swingers outside of the Florida people and.
You guys are done because it's not a swing state anymore. So we don't want to hear from you.
Leave us a comment and let us know what we think. Okay, let's go to the second one here.
You're from Florida. Not interesting that you're from Florida.
Although they trust me, though my dms get very full of Cubans every time we talk about this. All right, let's go ahead to the last part here and talk about Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Elon Musk, and everything that's happening there. We don't want to make it all just about CNN, did we?
So?
Ironically, after Tucker announced that he's coming to Twitter, I did that breaking news segment for everybody. Elon actually is now inviting Don Lemon onto the platform. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Elon invites XCNN anchor Don Lemon to host a show on Twitter. He replied to one of his tweets, have you considered doing your show on this platform?
May be worth a try. Audience is much bigger.
And this all comes amid questions around how the Tucker Show is going to work and Elon making Twitter into a place for long form video and podcasting.
Cards on the table.
I am personally skeptical that this is going to work out, and I listen. I think Elon is a legendary engineer and all of that. Here's the if anybody you could do it, maybe it could be him. Here are the reasons why it would be trepidacious. Number one, they already tried video on Twitter and Facebook.
It was called the pivot to Video. I actually lived through it and watched it fail.
There was a show called Am two DM, which was by BuzzFeed News that was on Twitter. It was like a morning show on Twitter. It was a horrendous failure. It was a disaster.
Now that said, those.
Hosts were not talented, and Tucker is you know, but look, you can hate the man, but you can you can very very least. You have to agree he's good at what he does. So generational talent much better at what he does. Built an audience, built in elite interest, right, that's going to be there. Not in the same way. My question is about the long term sustainability. You know, the hot news around launching that only lasts. I mean,
how long did it last year? Breaking points? Maybe two weeks before we were into you know, kind of a rhythm. You got to have the tools and the platform, the ability to be able to watch long form content and consume long form content. And my concern around Twitter is is that when you're scrolling, especially Twitter video, like if you watch Twitter video, What's what are the videos you watch on Twitter?
For me, it's news clips.
And then like brawls in the middle of randomly.
A bunch of brawls, like so and so smacks so and so in the face, a camel walking across the sport or camel or like a turtle, or if my fiance is dving me cat videos as I'm watching these. But here's something universal I've noticed with my Twitter video consumption.
I very rarely listen to the clip.
I hover over it, I watch what happens, a grin, and then I keep scrolling. That's not really what's happening here on YouTube. The vast majority of people who are watching this clip clicked on it and are doing so intentionally.
A lot of them are watching it on their phone.
They've got their earbuds in, they're sitting there, and they're locked into what you and I are saying. They're locked into a long form thing. They don't even have the ability really to scroll if they don't want to, unless I guess if you have YouTube Premium or whatever. The point being that, whenever you are watching a YouTube clip, the platform is designed around watching and retention. Twitter is designed for something else, not saying again he can't do it.
Just that Facebook tried this too, their whole pivot to video.
They had the mic dot com.
You remember this, Yes, all those shows when I worked at the Daily Caller.
Oh my god, guys.
Were shower money on news outlets.
We were going all in on Facebook and then overnight they decided to just drop it and nuked a bunch of companies.
So what do you make of it? Because you let you lived through all of.
This, just like I did.
Yes, it's it goes the question of first screen second screen, and so YouTube is like a first screen where or and your television is like a first screen. It's like that's the thing that you're primarily watching. Your second second screen app is something that you're messing with on the side. Twitter is a second screen app. It is fed content, which Tucker knows because he said that, yes, he said in his video recently that cable produces the material.
Then we then talk about on Twitter.
So it raises the question, if you're watching Tucker on Twitter, how do you tweet? You got to And people's fingers are going to be like shaking, because because as people are watching on YouTube right now, if they have thoughts about what we're saying. They go over to Twitter and they'll be like, can you believe what Ryan said? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
Yes, and people do it all the time.
But if you are watching it on Twitter, then you have to leave what you're watching in order to tweet. And people's I think impulse to post is so strong in this in this distracted, scattered time that we live in that they're not gonna be able to maintain their attention through a ten minute Tucker monologue because they want to comment on.
Here's a good point too to who we just made. Eighty percent of all Twitter users are on a mobile device. So then you got to think about whenever you're in the Twitter experience in the app, I'm watching a video, but I also have tweets going by. Maybe underneath do I have a comments? Am I able to tweet underneath as a comment? How does the comment system work? Can we upvote, downvote, you know, retweet, you know, reapply and all that.
We have all that.
Figured out on YouTube, on Rumble, on Odyssey, any of these video platforms. And the thing is they're designed for video, so it's just it just looks different to me once again. I'm not saying it can't be done, right, I'm just raising all of the engineering like problems at a very first principles level. That raised my mind end of like, hmm, I don't know about this. Like my immediate reaction is, wow,
that's a gamble. A lot of some people contacted me though it's not a gamble like Elon knows what he's doing. I'm like, I'm not even saying that. I'm just like, it doesn't exist yet, right, so by definition, so stance, come on, I'm willing to see I mean, right now, I'll tell you what. The main thing that annoys me is I can't speed up the clips. Drives me nuts. I never watched a YouTube video one x unless it's you.
Oh, I'm just like, oh my time.
I have so many other things they could be doing at this moment, but I'm one of those freaks who listens to three point five speed.
So what do I know?
Not on YouTube on Spotify because thanks to them for giving me that ability.
And soccer speaks in two points two do speak in two x?
People have told me that before I speak in like point five x, well then.
We balance out.
So that means you should listen to us at one point five and then you'll get it at a very good, very good speed. Let's go to the second part here, which is important. Put it up there on the screen there, guys, please semaphore inside Tucker Carlson's new media plan.
So this is pretty interesting, really.
It gets one of the biggest questions, which is why did Tucker go.
To Twitter in the first place.
And there's actually a fascinating contract piece which debuts inside of this. Inside of Tucker's contract with Fox. According to his people who leaked this to Semaphorex, he had a provision of his contract Ryan where he was allowed to have personal control over his Twitter on. So because of that, they have a better argument as to why a show on Twitter is not a breach of contract or non compete.
And so what do we come to the conclusion of this is a major reason why not on top of the free speech and all this suff that he talked about in his relationship with Elon, why he might have chosen to go with Twitter in the first place was specifically because they believed that a they could sue Fox for violation of contract, but b that Fox would have a harder time in court with some sort of c to desist if they were to debut on Twitter.
It's first place. It actually makes perfect sense whenever you think about.
It, right, And whenever Fox signed that contract, A they didn't think they'd be firing A Tucker. But see, they didn't think Elon would be buying Twitter, because Elon buying Twitter opens.
Up the possibility for this to happen.
Even if it's true, which I don't necessarily believe that they don't have a deal. Even if that's true, the old Twitter would probably be like throttling him. Oh of course, yeah, it would take him down de platform, and so it wouldn't it wouldn't be the kind of avenue that it is for him now. And they also didn't see Elon's kind of pivot to video coming because they didn't se
Elon coming. So, with all that we said about the problems with Twitter as as a first screen kind of video platform, if that's all you got because of this loophole in your contract, then yeah, by all means go, it'll produce viral clips, which question which perhaps is all he needs in order to stay relevant until he can get back on.
Here's whatever that they say, Tucker prioritize influence. Tucker on Twitter allows him to not just be another podcaster, to get in front of a large, influential audience, he could get back to talking about the news quickly there. So that is, frankly the only piece I totally disagree with. And I am not saying that we have any influence. I wish we had more influence. I would love that if I did. But my thing is that it's like Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan seeks no influence, but because of
his audience size, he has influence. So saying just another podcaster, in my opinion, is a little bit a little bit to Robbintry.
Not at us.
I'm talking about at the podcasters who do have I mean Charlomagne that God is technically a podcaster. I mean, guess what, He's an influential figure and his clips go viral no matter what. So I think what he's getting at is Republican politics. But here once again I want to quibble, Matt Walsh is a podcaster. In my opinion, he is probably the single most important person in the GOP outside of elected officials today.
That's not an endorsement. I'm saying, like if you think.
Like libs of TikTok is like account associated with Matt walsh'sm Walsh with what is a Woman documentary? With his Twitter account, he basically single handedly kind of started the bud Light thing.
You can't deny the results.
So that would be like me, that would be like saying that Matt Walsh is just a podcaster and has no influence. No, I mean influence is not you know, being a podcaster has nothing to do with influencer. Not influence itself does Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is one of the most influential people in Republican politics today. There's no question in terms of the amount of young Republicans and others who consume his content. It's off the chain, Tim Poole,
all these other people. And the way I know that Tim Poole is influential is I see Republican politicians on a show.
Guess what.
They wouldn't be going on a show if they didn't think that it mattered. If I see Matt Gates on a show, I'm like, yeah, he's influential. Steve Bannon is a podcaster. Do you believe that Steve Bannon doesn't have any influence Jaded Vance who was on our show, he was on War Room yesterday. Why because of influence, That's the reason. So influences what you make of it, not what you whether you're a podcast or not.
That's my only major quibble with this.
It is maybe a date it is.
It is exposing I think Tucker's somewhat dated. Like newsview, He's a Washington creature. And that's not a criticism or or not, because I'm creature too, But so he has a little Washington brain there. That and he still thinks of Twitter as the place where you know, pundit's politicians and the elites are gathering.
Even's interesting to hear him kind of still want.
That, even what he said in his video, Remember when when you you brought up where he said, Twitter is the place we talk about cable news. It's also the place that we talk about Matt Walsh. It's also the place that we talk about at Shapiro. It's a place where clips of all kinds go viral. Right, our clips have gone viral before on Twitter, not always for the best reasons, but they go, but they go viral.
Can't control that.
People often actually will react to most of the time when elites are reacting to our show, it's because of some stuff that went viral on Twitter.
No, but none of them actually would watch the show.
But my point is that Twitter is just a place to debate and to distribute into It's not just about cable.
Sometimes it's about cable.
Cable is fun, you know, to dunk on, but people dunk on, you know, YouTubers are dunking on each.
Other on Twitter all the time.
And my point is that it's just more about the function of the medium more than the clip itself. Also worth noting Elon, According to Elon's put us up there on the screen says he wants to be clear. Quote, we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules and rewards of
all content creators. Rewards means subscriptions and advertising revenue share quote coming soon, which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising views associated with the content that actually gets to something. We were just talking about Ryan building out the ad shares that YouTube I mean, the YouTube ad program is what ten years in the making maybe more, And the algorithm and the cut and the way you think about all of that is very difficult.
I would also say if I were Tucker, I ever would want to be in a situation where I'm reliant on advertising revenue. Ever, again, given the amount of advertisers, a boycott at a show, so you know, how do you know the advertsarivisors I'm going to boycott on Twitter or going to be like, don't you dare serve my content on the Tucker Punt.
Now you're in the exact same boat.
I mean, hopefully he has enough money he doesn't have to worry about this, but it is a concern.
His show is kind of the peak example of the thing that advertisers are scared of, and foxes out there claiming that they're now getting all this extra advertising revenue into.
The eight o'clock hour.
Broadly, politics in general is advertising kryptonite?
Correct, And as we see this on YouTube for examples all the time, I'll take people inside when I talk to YouTubers who work in tech, their average CPM as in the amount of costs that they get paid per video, not so that's RPM revenue per millionaire whatever. See their average CPM on advertising in terms of the dollar amount that they're allowed to sell is double and sometimes triple what we sell here on breaking points. We don't sell anything YouTube obviously does. And you know why is ours
is less politics. Politics is toxic. This is a reason we don't rely on advertisers because you know, the only advertisers who care about politics, who are they? Ryan people who want to influential the political process. I ain't taking any big pharma process. Won't be taking a dime from them either in terms of our support for counterpoints. So yeah, the point is that that's not the way we run our business.
Hence we have a subscription revenue.
Why there are pitfalls in this all in the first place, And uh yeah, it's a very very interesting time. I've often said here COVID opened my eyes to the corruption of the medical system before the pandemic. I thought some doctors organizations were acting like idiots whenever it came to the culture war, like gender ideology. But but you know, on most other areas they could buy and large be trusted, right.
I knew pharma was corrupt on the drug front, but my eyes were not open to the totality of corruption in the entire field. Doctors both socially and financially doing what's in their best interests, medical journals being used as tools of the establishment, abandoning real science, and most important of all, the pervasion of money into the very root of the system.
Since then, my eyes are now open.
My default position now for doctors is when you make a recommendation to me, prove it. Why do I actually need something? Why is it not part of a larger money making scheme. And it's with that orientation that I
saw an interesting piece of news pop up yesterday. From five years ago, I never would have thought anything about quote new draft recommendations by the US Preventive Services Task Force that state that women who are between the ages of forty and seventy four should have screening mammograms every two years. The guidance is a big deal because previously biennial screening was not suggested for the age of forty, while those between the age of forty and fifty were
considered on a case by case basis. Now, according to them, because of increasing rates of breast cancer in the forty to fifty year old demographic, they're increasing screening recommendations for everyone. Pre COVID Zaga would have been like, okay, whatever sounds reasonable on its face. Post COVID, though immediately I'm thinking this sounds like a multi billion dollar gift to the mammogram industry, and the doctors and the nurses have performed
these procedures, so am I right. Let's think about it a little bit, shall we. It only took me like ten minutes to find that, not even ten years ago, doctors involved women's health. We're singing a very different tune about mammogram screening. In twenty fifteen, a major study in Health Affairs analyzed seven hundred thousand women from twenty eleven to twenty thirteen between the ages of forty to fifty
nine who had routine mammograms. Eleven percent of these women had quote suspicious manograms and were subjected to further testing, including repeat mammograms, ultrasounds, and needle biopsies.
Quote.
For nearly all these women ninety eight points experts ninety eight point six percent cancer was not confirmed in further testing. Now that's crazy, right, but actually gets crazier. The study authors found that false alarms for women for the entire female population over forty was costing the United States two point eight billion dollars each year on follow up test results for suspicious results that were not cancer and that's just the dollars. Over treatment was actually even more of
a concern. They said that even when cancer was detected, those tumors might be of low risk to the patient, but that once we're suspicious, suspicions were raised. Over treatment was the result, including misectomy, chemotherapy, radiation in women who may not have needed any medical treatment at all otherwise. A similar finding actually occurred in a major study of
Danish and Norwegian women just last year. They found that quote, the advantages of breast cancer screenings have steadily diminished.
To the point where they are no longer outweighed by.
The costs associated with overdiagnosis and overtreatment. The study reason that quote, one in five women receive a superflorous diagnosis because of screening that they would never have noticed or felt that they had breast can answer during their entire lifetime, which leads to painful overtreatment and higher costs of tests. In fact, the Breast Cancer Action Network is a group based in the US which is entirely premise on providing women with an average chance of breast cancer with facts
like this. Consider this graphic that they actually produce. If a group of one thousand and fifty year old women is screened over the next ten years, one hundred will get a false positive, twenty three will get breast cancer, five will die with or without screening, one will die without screening, but five will be diagnosed with cancer that
will never be life threatening or require treatment. To be clear, the group and people who are raising awareness about this actually do care a lot though about preventing breast cancer, but instead they want people to focus on what prevention will actually look like and stop it in the first place. That will be less toxic and more affordable, both for them and for all of us. That's the final and
most important point. The average cost of a mamorant in the United States is somewhere around five hundred dollars now considering the biennial recommendation. That's two hundred and fifty dollars a year for women from the age of forty onwards. That is tens of billions of dollars a year paid in fat insurance premiums to the health insurance companies who give it away to the healthcare industry, and none of it makes the difference that they say that it will make.
That's the issue with our medical system in a nutshell, we're don't even focus on real prevention, everything ranging from exercise, obese proper diet, a myriad of prevention techniques with other doctors like doctor vannaperside can tell you about reducing all cos mortality all cos mortality on cancer specifically and instead, though we're spending billions on programs supposedly to help but may do mess just as much harm instead. This is
a common theme these days. What's so called screening practices recommended by doctors reminds me of colonoscopes. That practice was recommended to millions of men now for years as massively effective.
It didn't really work that well though at all.
When it had a goal standard trial, it only reduced their colon cancer risk by one to fifth below the previous estimates of the test efficacy and quote didn't provide any significant reduction and colon cancer mortality. Modern medicine is premised on the idea that technology has conquered biology. It's what justifies their secret knowledge and their primacy in society. In some cases that is true, but it's not always true, and this.
Case highlights why all the US and all.
Of us must take back responsibility for our own health. Doctors and medical associations do not get to make decisions for us.
We do.
It is on everyone do research, ask questions, because if you don't, we are going to keep getting swindled in the name of keeping us all healthier. What did you make of this, Ryan, It's something that I had never thought about it.
And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Let's get to our interview with Senator jd.
Vance.
I do want to say this because I believe that this is ethical. I have a previous, prior relationship with Senator Vance. I think that anybody who sees me interviewed and should know that we're personal friends years before he ever ran for the Senate. That being said, I tried my best in this interview, and Ryan Grimm was there to help me be accountable. Let's get to it. Joining us now, our guest, Senator jd Vance of Ohio. It's great to see you, sir. Thanks for joining to you.
Yeah, so we're going to talk about the Railway Safety Act.
We're actually going to talk about some policy on television it's a shopping thing that's going to put it up there on the screen. Senator President Trump actually endorsed the bill, he said, Crooked Joe Biden has still not visited the incredible patriots of East Palestine.
Our movement will be their voice. We will never forget them.
JD.
Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make sure something like this never happens again. That's why it's so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act.
So JD.
Tell us a little bit about this bill that has now been uniquely endorsed by President Trump and President Biden.
Never seen anything like it.
Yes, First of all, it's one of the weird ways in which President Trump has sort of re oriented the Republican Party. It's hard to imagine a Republican president ten years ago coming out and endorsing a legislation like this.
But it's pretty simple and straight forward.
So Number one, East Palestine had this terrible problem, the terrible train crash and a chemical fire afterwards, and the firefighters had no idea what they were dealing with as they went in to fight the fire. Right changes the notice requirement to change that. The second thing is it enhances the safety and inspection requirement, so hopefully the next
East Palestine doesn't happen in the first place. And of course this has caused the railway lobby and the usual suspects in Washington, DC had come.
Out against it in a lot of ways.
I think it illustrates a broader fight that's happening within the conservative movement right now, which is do we stand up for the people who sent us to Washington, or do we stand up for the special interests who have dominated conservative politics for so long. I'm very gratified that we've got a lot of good bipartisan in support. I think we're going to get it out of the Senate and then of course onto the House.
Okay, well, what I'm interested in is the intra Republican fight.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Please.
We've got Ted Cruz coming out saying he will not be Oh, he's going to oppose the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act. I know that there was some discussion in markup in which it called what he was saying ridiculous. Talk and break down a little bit about why what he was saying was ridiculous.
Well, look, Ted CRU's a friend.
Right, he's one of the few people that I knew in the Senate before I got to Washington. But I think the fundamental argument here that Ted made is he doesn't like the fact that the bill gives any discretion or any authority to the Biden administration. Right, Well, the Biden administration forces the laws. So I've been saying for the past three months, and a lot of Republicans have been echoing me, the Biden administration needs to do more. So here's a piece of legislation that forces the Biden
administration to do more. You can't, on the one hand, say they're not doing enough and on the other hand fight a piece of legislation that forces them to actually take action. There's a deeper problem here, which is if you think that we're going to have to fight back against corporate America, against big tech, against the pharmaceutical industry, if you think we have to do these things, well,
the government's pretty much the only path in town. That is the representation of the people, That is the entity that has the actual authority and the power to go after something like a big tech or like the railway industry. So you've got to be willing to use the power that the people gave us under this constitutional system. And I understand people are reactive and look, sometimes, of course the government. Oftentimes the government does things that shouldn't do.
Sometimes it fights progressive battles that it shouldn't fight. But if we're going to win the argument, we have to be willing to actually use the levers of power and use what the people gave us.
That's what this fight is all about.
And I'm wondering about the partisan politics a little bit because about six years ago, Rob Portman, former senator from Ohio, was working with Democrats on an opioid treatment bill, and Democratic leadership really did not want Democrats working with him on this because they didn't.
Want him to get a win in an election year.
Sure, and I'm wondering if Shared Brown is one of your co sponsors on this bill, he's up for reelection. Have you gotten any pressure from kind of Republican establishment for us as saying what are you doing, You're just going to help You're going to help Democrats get elected here?
No, not at all.
Actually I've wondered about that, but everybody's pretty much given me the line of look, you have to serve your constituents. This is a very very important issue to the people of Ohio, and so you have to work on it. And so I've gotten no pressure on that front. I mean, look, I'm a Republican Shared and I have worked on this, but I'm gonna endorse Shared's opponent. I'm going to try to work to get that Republican elected. Nobody doubts that. But at the same time, you have to do the
business that the people sent you to do. You can't use parties in politics as an excuse to not do your job every election cycle, because I mean, hell, we're an election cycle pretty much every year in this town.
So I have seen some opposition in the House that We've looked a little bit about Troy Neil's and the other committee members, and this is where the bill probably will face most of its opposition from, again inside the Republican Party. Now that President Trump has endorsed that, do you think that will make a difference in the way that you can try and move this bill through.
Well, it definitely makes a difference.
The question is whether you know, three months down the road, after we've already had the debt ceiling fight and hopefully successfully resolved it.
Where are we actually at on railway safety?
The one thing I've realized about this town I'm a new guy, right, I've been here for five months, is that it's very important to get things done when the town's energy is focused on a particular issue. We were really focused on East Palestine two months ago.
Yeah, that's right.
We're a little focused on East Palestine today. I'm very focused on it, but the town is focused a little bit on it. Where are we at in three months? That to me is going to be the biggest hang up. Trump gave us a lot of momentum. The question is where we actually land in a few months.
There will be another kind of union railroad executive contract struggle in a couple of years from now. You just missed right the last vote by a couple couple of weeks. I'm curious, but there was some hint that there might be some Republican support for the youth for the rail workers.
Are you sensing any more?
Would and would you do you think you would if you were in the Senate at the time, Would you have voted with the with the workers? You think you would in the future if the contract fight comes to the Senate.
So one.
I would have voted with unions too.
To his credit, Ted Cruz, Josh Hall, a few others actually actually aligned with the unions there, which is what was exactly the right thing to do. Look, whether you're you like the unions or you don't like the unions, it is not the job of the US Senate to do a bail out of the rail industry by settling their labor dispute. It is between the union and the
rail industry. Let them settle it. And this is one of the arguments I've actually made about this particular bill, is if you're going to as a US Senate, as a US Congress, bail the railways out of their labor disputes, you can't then come to me and cry free market when we try to force those unit or first the railways, to observe some proper safety standards. The other crazy thing about this is I can't think of any industry that has such a socialized risk.
Loss business model.
If the rail industry crashes a train or sets off a chemical bomb in a place like East Palestine, the taxpayers pick up a huge amount of that tab. If we're going to pick up the tab, we can demand some common sense safety standards.
Well, pharma would give them a run for their money. So we're talking here about railway. Here is a bigger question, I think, and kind of gets to the philosophy. You reference the debt ceiling fight and whether we're going to get through it before we walk in here, President Trump actually endorse saying if we don't cut spending and default, how do you, as a Republican who is you know, I would say divorced at least some what from previous
conservative orthodoxy? How do you think about the debt ceiling and how do you think about spending?
Well, look, I mean, you know, I'm one of the few Republicans who during my campaign, you know, I endorsed critical parts of the social Safety Net. I've endorsed the idea that every American should have healthcare, though I may disagree with Bernie Sanders on how we actually get that done. But we do have a massive problem of way too much money going into the economy, which is inflating the prices of a lot of things, and that's actually emiserating a lot of people at the lower end middle income.
So I actually do think that we have to get some control of the federal budget here, and I think, look, Joe Biden doesn't like what McCarthy has done. Okay, I guarantee you the two hundred and seventeen House Republicans who voted for what for McCarthy's package, every single one of them could have picked something that they didn't like about that package, but they at least have advanced a solution here.
The thing that really.
Bothers me about the President's posture is he sort of stepped back and say said, my way the highway. Well, you can't do that. You have to negotiate with these guys. I think we have to cut spending. I think we basically. The way that I think about it is twenty nineteen, the federal government spent four point four trillion dollars. Now
we're talking about spending six to seven trillion dollars. We can get back to pre COVID spending levels or something like it without causing emisiration of the poor.
And that should be the goal.
And Biden's response to Kevin McCarthy saying, isn't there anything we can cut was like, hey, look, we can do more on Medicare, prescription drug negotiation. There's corporate tax cuts. I mean there's corporate tax cuts we could roll back. There's tax cuts for the wealthy we could roll back.
Where do you come down on that?
Well, look, I think everything should be on the table here. We have to pay the country's debts, and everything should be on the table. Though, I think it's interesting President Trump during the town hall last night, endorsed a negotiating posture which is fundamentally.
Rooted in reality.
I think the headline is President Trump gives financial advice. He's telling everybody, just go ahead and drive things off the cliff, allow the default. I didn't take that as what he was saying at all. He's talking about the negotiating posture here. You have to be willing to go right to the end if you're in a game of chicken, and so that was sort of how I took that.
But look, I mean, if McCarthy and Biden come.
Up with a deal, that is the deal that's going to work for the American people. The one thing that the Senate is, at least Senate Republicans have been pretty consistent on is, look, we don't control the system.
Right, we are the minority party in the Senate.
This fundamentally has to be negotiating negotiation between McCarthy and Biden. The deal they come up with is fundamentally the deal. It's going to pay the country's debts.
Final question for me jd. President Trump. The big town Hall. We're spending a bunch of our show on it. There's a lot of hand ringing in this Washington, in Washington and New York City today about democracy, all that you've endorsed President Trump. Anything changed from the town hall, from the Egene Carroll and all of that as to your posture towards the president.
No, nothing has changed.
Went on to CNN last night the first time I've been sing CNN in a while, and gave a full throat at endorsement to the President.
I thought he did a very good job.
What I really liked last night is that was Trump and his very best. He was funny. This town is absurd. A lot of what goes on here is absurd. That people were sort of pearl clutching and talking about the end of democracy. They're the ones who are going to drive this country off a cliff. Because everybody else looks at this and says, you know, it's kind of ridiculous.
We should be able to make fun of it.
And I think having a little bit of self awareness and a little bit of humor makes it easier to govern, not harder.
Well, I think the audience agreed with you as we kept saying Republican voters like Trump that particular, that particular audience liked him. I meant that audience not necessarily hard. I'm sure you'll get some hate, but I do too, So it is what it is. Thank you so very much for joining us, sir. We really appreciate your good guys.
Thank you.
Ryan. By the way, I thought you did a great job in that interview. Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, and I just want to say go ahead.
No, we were talking just before that. I wasn't sure if he would remember it or not. And like when whenever he was he had finished up, he'll be you. He had come to the Huffing and Post to promote it. Yeah, and Ariane.
Was like, you need to pocket your j D. Bat He's such a wanderful young man.
And we had a long phone call where I gave him tips on how to promote the book really worked out for them, and then it was like six months later, the things like the National Best Son, like well, obviously those.
Tips worked right, Yeah, exactly, It's all right, Grim. That's why our Deity Advance is in the Senate. I want to say thank you man for sitting in. You and Emily are such a fantastic addition to the team. You guys do a really great job.
It's a great show with you. How was the How was the right wing show?
Oh?
We loved it.
Well I wasn't right wing. I'm the liberal.
According to my MAGA critics, I am the liberal here on the show. You can never please these people, which is why you shouldn't even try anyway. Look, thank you everybody who helps support the show helps you know, it helps support the work.
That we do. We're building this new studio. We had Centaert de Vance here.
I look at that CNN town hall and I look at something that I don't want that to be only in the domain of cable. That's got to be in the domain of people like us. For the ability to convene. We have RFK Junior, hopefully right here in the studio at the desk that we'll be able to question him and treat him in a professional way, but in a challenging way if possible.
We should pack it with RFK junior fans. Yeah, that's right.
We should have only o RFK junior fans here. But my point is is that there's no reason why they need to be ones making news. It can be all of us. So help you help us, support our work breakingpoints dot com and otherwise.
We'll see you all next week then