5/31/23: Critical Debt Vote Today, Conservatives Threaten McCarthy Ouster, China and US Pilots Near Miss, Secret Abortion Poll, Millennial Misery Ignored, Ted Cruz Defends LGBTQ, James Comey Defends FBI, Pentagon Slush Funds

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Welcome to Counterpoints. I'm joined today, of course by Ryan Grimm, who's looking love actually not. Ryan's out for one more week, and Crystal is filling in. Thank you so much, Chrystal.

Yeah, you guys are stuck with me all week, so apologies for that. But we have a lot of good stuff to talk about today. We've got big developments with the debt ceiling. Emily has some inside scoop about what the Freedom Caucus is thinking.

Right, that's fair to say.

Right, I think so, a little insight, I guess.

Yeah, So we'll get into that big day for whether that is going to pass or not. We also have some escalations in terms of US Chinese tensions, including sort of interaction between two fighter jets that we have some video of we can show you. Also, this is perfect for Emily deep dive into what is going on in the state of Wisconsin, especially Republicans sort of despairing there about whether they're going to be able to win back the state, especially with the politics of abortion.

So we'll talk about that.

Some new numbers about how millennials are doing in terms of their finances and the factors that you know, to have student loan debt weighs into all of that. Ted Cruz getting in some hot water, I guess with his own base over some comments he made about that horrific law that was just passed against LGBTQ people in Uganda, So.

We'll talk about that as well.

But we did want to start with the very latest in terms of the debt sealing.

Emily.

That's right because it continues to change on a minute by minute basis. As obviously, the House is expected to vote today. Kevin McCarthy now reportedly wants to get to one hundred and fifty Republican votes for this deal that was brokeered by the Republican Speaker of the House out of two hundred and twenty two Republicans, So.

That means he's expecting or hoping at.

Best, to lose some seventy members of his own conference. We're going to get into in a little bit why so many members of the Freedom Caucus and of Kevin McCarthy, not even just Freedom Caucus members, but people like Nancy Mace are upset with this deal. But for now, let's start with Jake Sherman. You can put up a one here. He's saying, this is Thomas Massey. He's a libertarian member of the Freedom Caucus. He's saying, quote, he anticipates voting

Democrats are unhappy about that.

It's now on the floor of the House today and the Biden administration actually isn't that upset about what is going to be passed.

We can use a two here. This is from Lauren Fox.

Now in the Senate, John Thune here has said this is this is also a really big quote. He's confident there will be at least nine Republican Senators who support the debt selling bill assuming it comes to the Senate. Oh yeah, Doom told CNN when pressed on if there would be enough GOP votes to clear a sixty vote threshold in the chamber. All right, so not only does the math then check out in the House, the math checks out in the Senate, and President Biden is.

Cool with the deal.

Let's actually roll or we'll take one look. Actually here at what Speaker McCarthy, this is a you can put up.

The next element A three.

We have a lot of like rapid fire reactions that have been coming out over the course of the last day as there's been.

A little bit of a revolt.

This is Kevin McCarthy kind of taking a w here, saying President Biden claimed he'd never negotiate. Leader Schumer insisted there'd be a quote clean debt increase, they were wrong. Republicans fought to spend less, block Biden's new tax proposals, clawback unspent COVID money, and fully offend our Veteran Fund, our veterans and defense priorities. Okay, So there you have Kevin McCarthy saying expectations were low and Republicans met them essentially,

So a couple things.

First, on the mechanics, they passed the first hurdle through that Rules committee. That was the Thomas Massey situation. He was like the swing vote there and it passed out of the Rules Committee seven to six.

That was the first hurdle.

Now they're looking to have an actual vote on the House floor, and I don't think anyone doubts that there's a of House members, both Republicans and Democrats. If you put him together, who would vote for this debt sealing deal in grease situation. The challenge for McCarthy is that he has to have a majority of his caucus, and as you're pointing out, Emily, he's actually setting the bar a little bit higher than that. He doesn't want to

So that's the mechanics of it. Those are the big hurdles.

Still remains to be seen how many Republicans go along with this, given the fact that you have not just the House Freedom Caucus, other members as you point out, like Nancy Mace, and also a lot of conservative media and people like Ron de Santis, Mike Pence, a number of mainstream Republican figures and a lot of conservative media that have come out against this steal. So that's sort of the lay of the land. Do I think it's going to pass? Do I think he's going to get

Did he just you know, was he like charmed by Biden?

And Biden's really that great of a negotiat or some like what is the explanation for why the deal ended up being a lot less than what I expected and what a lot of Republicans expected they might be able to extract down of this situation.

Yeah, I think it's not wanting to play default chicken. At the end of the day. Kevin McCarthy, I think understands that the media is going to take Biden's side. It's not going to take his side if an actual default looms. And that's this is all happening in the context of the X date, right, which Janet Yellen first pegged to June one, which would be what is that Thursday.

So coming right up borrow so tomorrow.

That's why the vote is happening today because there's the city.

She then sort of said it might be more like June fifth.

It's sort of a subjective figure, but that's not wanting to play default chicken. Learning or looking back on the Tea Party years and all of the times where that did not go well for Republicans, either with voters or with the media.

Probably because of the media and.

Some in some sense, I think is what made everything become a rushed urgent and put the ball in Biden and the Democrats court. And we see clearly that Biden and the Democrats know the ball is in their court.

Yeah, some sound we're going to play in a bit.

But it's been very interesting to see Republicans spreading all of these messages from kind of establishment Dems saying how happy they are with the deal.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You see two very different stratu communication strategies. Biden even came out and said, we played this with Saugury yesterday. He even came out and said, do you really think it would help get this deal through if I was out there like singing its praises and how great it was and like growing about what a great deal Democrats were able to achieve. So the White House has made a strategic decision to keep things kind of quiet and not rub Republicans' noses in the fact that they didn't

To be Republicans.

On the other hand, Kevin McCarthy, we showed his comments earlier. He's really out there trying to sell like, oh, we really showed the Democrats and they didn't get anything, and here's all the great cuts that we.

Were able to achieve.

So even that is kind of a tell of which side really feels like they got the better end of these negotiations.

That's a good point.

End.

Well, yeah, let's put up a four because to Crystal's point, Newt Gingrich is out there sort of trumpeting the what does Nancy Pelosi call herself a master legislator, the master legislation legislating of Kevin McCarthy. He said, the debt limit deal is a dramatic victory for Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans. Before they passed their history changing bill, no one would have believed it possible to cut spending, re establish work requirements, reform permitting for energy and infrastructure.

And more.

There's some truth to that, which I think some people in this moment there's a little bit of negotiation theater, which is inevitable in any type of deal like this.

That's happening on Capitol Hill.

Or even if you're trying to buy a used car, or if you're playing poker, right, you have to have your poker place.

Yeah, vote your poker face. There's some measure of theater that's happening.

And so there is some part of the Freedom Caucus guys that they're saying, like, listen, we're go back to the negotiating table. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts said, go back to the negotiating table.

This is unacceptable.

To see if they can get Kevin McCarthy back to the negotiating table.

But he does not have much leverage.

He has never had much leverage, and so the likelihood of something like this being.

The deal was always pretty high.

Now, could it have been better? I think absolutely yes. I don't think anybody is wrong to be upset about this deal. There is no truth to the fact that when you don't want to play default chicken.

Yeah, if you don't want to be blamed.

For that because you know the media is going to say it was those dang Republicans, then.

Hey, you don't have it. Let like, you have no leverage at all.

Basically, when you don't control two thirds of the government.

Yeah, so McCarthy, I guess in the end wasn't able to posture as being as crazy as like the Freedom Gaucus types.

Truly.

I mean, that is a one frequent tactic in negotiations that's very effective.

I mean Trump uses sometimes.

Where you had to appear like you're crazy enough to actually take the thing over the cliff. And you know, I guess he decided that for political reasons, or for Wall Street reasons, or whatever reasons, he wasn't really willing to be as wild eyed and as crazy as you know, maybe the Lauren Boberts and the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the Matt Gates of the world would want him to be. It is interesting, as I said before, the Biden White House has tried to sort of be a little quiet,

R US, some of the work requirements stuff.

Although it just came out that on the SNAP that's the Food Stamp Program Work Requirements edition. Once you net out all the changes that were made to SNAP, you're actually going to have an increase of seventy eight thousand additional recipients on SNAP. So I don't think Democrats can be too mad about the changes that were made there. And the reason is because while they're increasing work requirements on single men between fifty and fifty four, they are

Let's listen to how he's speaking to it, and.

We're confident that it'll get to the President's desk. I want to emphasize that it accomplishes three main things. Number One, it takes the possibility of a default off the table, which means we avoid on almost certain recession because of a first ever debt default. Number Two, it protects all of the key pieces of the legislation that the President's signed into law in the last two years, new investments in clean energy, new investments in semiconductor manufacturing, new infrastructure

So a big piece of the negotiations Republicans in their bill that they passed originally from the House had really taken an ax that the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of tax credits to move towards clean energy transition, none of that was touched. And I do think that that was an important win for the White House, given the fact that, you know, I think their whole approach to the White House from the beginning was really stupid and ill and advice, etc.

Agree.

But given that they put themselves in a really bad position, the fact they were able to protect all of the Inflation Production Act, which is the signature achievement of President Biden and of some of the more progressive folks in Congress, I do think that was an important.

Part, absolutely, and that's one of the big things that Freedom Caucus members are looking at and saying, we passed this budget, this was important to us, and here we are, we're at a place where none.

Of that was touched the IRS.

What this bill does with the I mean ever sends one point for a billion and IRS funding, But that's really like, that's not what people wanted, because that was also a huge cornersett of Biden's agenda. When you're adding eighty seven thousand new employees at the IRS, some of whom will be agents, not all eighty seven thousand will

I think that tells you kind of what the problem is.

Acting like this is a huge win as opposed to saying this is the best we can do.

Yeah, Well, let's transition to talking about the House Freedom Caucus and some of their reaction, because you know, they're two questions. First of all, were they going to vote for the deal? Most of them are not going to vote for the deal. But McCarthy doesn't need them either. If most of the rust of the Republican Caucus hangs in there, then he'll be good in terms of getting

To kick his butt out if they didn't like what he did.

And so you're starting to hear a few of them float this idea of, hey, maybe McCarthy's not the guy, maybe we need to get him out in there. Go ahead and speak to a little bit of that, Emily, And what the dynamics are.

Yeah, this is really interesting. It's some of the same dynamics from the speakership battle. Folks will remember from January when it took what nineteen rounds to finally elect Kevin McCarthy a speaker, in which he had to ring concession after concession or they run concession after concession out of Kevin McCarthy, including the motion of a Kate, which is something that Nancy Pelosi torpedoed after she saw what happened to John Bayner back in the Tea Party years and now.

Here, how much I mean, how much confidence do you have in a speaker right now?

None?

Zero?

What basis is there for confidence?

You cannot forfeit the tool of Republican unity. It was not necessary to do just speak of lying about the way he's characterizing this bill.

Yes, he's a lot, but the bill is chock full of things that are cosmetic and artificial.

All right.

So that's a motion of a kape threat. And we've seen that come from several members of the Freedom Caucus of the last like twenty four hours. Again, it seems like it's one of those things that every hour you're seeing a new Freedom Caucus remember, threaten the motion to vacate. Let's go ahead and play this SoundBite from Chip Roy, who has emerged. He certainly emerged during the speakership battle.

Hi, colleagues, be very clear, not one Republican should vote for this deal. It is a bad deal. No one sent us here to borrow an additional four trillion dollars, so you get abs absolutely nothing in return. But at best, if I'm being really generous, a spending freeze for a couple of years. That's it. That's about what you get. And frankly, you're going to make things worse. And my Democratic colleagues know it. That's why they're supporting it. That's why they're going around gleeful.

All right, I have a quote that I want to read from a senior Senate staff for this is exclusive to breaking points.

It's a great quote.

McCarthy had historic unity, a massive leverage to demand a deal.

He fucked it up bigly. The bill is horrible. My fear was that we.

Would get a bad deal. This is an objectably horrible one. And so not only if you take that expectation right like there's not a lot of average it's probably going to be a bad deal, but then you take what chip Roy just said, which is it's basically just all you're getting here is a spending freeze, and you try it for like a year, and then you have a

Yeah, there's a few things there.

So first of all, you know, if I'm putting myself in the shoes attempting to put myself in the shoes of a Chip Roy or a Dan bishop or.

Your Senate staffer who thinks they fked up.

Vaguely, part of this deal is not just we're going to lift the debt dealing until you know, after if Joe Biden gets re elected, so pushes us out past the twenty twenty four elections.

That's one part.

There's also provisions in here about how the budget process will unfold that basically says, if we can't come to a deal on the budget appropriations, then we have, you know, an automatic freeze. And this was the Thomas Massey thing, a one penny cut that's actually not that bad of a deal for Democrats, and it denies Republicans leverage on

They're not going to.

Negotiate, We're not going to be able to get any of our priorities here. And that's the other part of this that is just so perplexing is effectively everything they got they could have gotten through the normal budgeting process and it didn't require this whole like theatrical threatening the entire global financial system to achieve it. So, you know, I think that, from my view, is probably part of

So they get to do.

That they get to like posture, they that their base wants to see them position themselves, But do they actually have any teeth here?

Really?

I think, well, the messaging in and of itself is really important because we've seen this happening happen with John Bayner, with Paul Ryan, none of whom were necessarily like tea party darlings.

Of course they never really were.

But when the Freedom Coccus folks and sort of grassroots activist type Republicans turned against them, it became a movement.

And that's been true.

So if this is a real break with those folks, his ability, I mean, he's made maybe it's sincere, but he's made a lot of concessions in the way that he talks about the FBI, the way that he talks about a lot of different issues now, and for all of that to go out the window over this debt ceiling fight, if he's not able to kind of get them back on his team, give them something, you know, maybe there's something that he can do after the debt ceiling fight to placate them, to appeal, appease them, to

Yeah, I don't know how you put that back in the bottle.

I think that's well said, because if he becomes a villain to the base, then whether the sentiment against him is genuine or not genuine among this handful of Republican House members, it becomes to their individual political benefit to try to oust him, to try to fight with him, to try to buck him at every turn, and make his life miserable, whether they're able to oust him a

Right, your average Republican voter doesn't give a damn about this procedural specifics and the detailed breakdown of negotiations on Capitol Hill. Yeah, because first of all, that stuff is extremely hard to understand, even if you cover it and you follow it. And secondly, it's your team or my team, right, and it gets broken down in that really easy way.

It would have been such a.

Target rich environment to make Biden defend his surveillance programs at the Pentagon, defend some of the obviously ridiculous items in his budget or federal spending that anyone can go to the federal budget left or right and look at some of the spending agenda and be like, what the hell is this?

Like this is insane.

Make Biden defend that stuff, like the excessive like what people would call like the excesses of woke ideology that's become baked into the federal budget.

Why are they not fighting over that stuff? Why are they not fighting over.

These new things that Ken Clippenstein reports on every week that are popping up at the Pentagon that are surveilling average Americans and said they're increased the defense budget. So it's just been a very strange, not strange for how the Republican Party operates, but post Trump, to see the Republican Party dying on the hill of work requirements that's and freezes to the federal budget without talking about very specific things increasing defense spending is just strange.

Yeah, and last question for you, Emily is Trump has been notably quiet about this deal and cyberth theorized, and I think this is correct.

Kevin McCarthy probably called him and begged him to.

Keep stuff because a Trump's not an idiot. He can see where the winds are blowing. He can see that if you wanted to be on the right side of the Republican base, like DeSantis and Pence and the other in vivek Ramswami and the others who have come out against it who are running for president, they're on the correct side of this issue in terms of like the vibes and the sentiment of the base. So notable that he has stayed quiet, and clearly he and Kevin McCarthy

How much does it matter.

That McCarthy has the sort of tacit backing of Trump.

That's a great question, because Trump can make life hard for basically anyone, although I think in a primary his power to do that is going to wane because if you're splitting off, you know, the kind of maga folks into DeSantis and Trump. I think Trump doesn't lose his thirty percent grip on the Republican your average Republican primary base.

He's got thirty percent grip.

If he can make that, if he can make life difficult for Kevin McCarthy with that thirty percent.

That's definitely meaningful.

On top of Zager's theory, something you said that he sort of senses where the wind is blowing.

Trump wants to be on the side of the winner.

So he's not necessarily ideologically going to say this is right or wrong.

Oh, he doesn't care about the details.

No, He's waiting in the wings and he's going to see where the winds blow.

And I think it's up in the air.

It's been up in the air for the last week or so as Republicans like the Freedom CROC has felt really good about their relationship with Kevin McCarthy until.

Like a week ago. Oh really yeah, it was like.

They felt like they were things were moving along well. And then he settled on this deal with Biden over the weekend, and really, like that is really really bad and really quick.

And so I think Trump was waiting in the wings seeing what was going.

To be the winning side of this argument, and I think when that becomes clear to him, he'll jump in and say something.

So it's your assessment that the anger and the upset that is being portrayed coming from the Freedom Caucus is genuine, that they feel they actually feel betrayed here.

Yeah, I think it's a little both.

I think it's there's a broad, genuine upset over being left behind by Kevin McCarthy, But then there's a layer of you know, that that becomes an opportunity. So feeling genuinely sold out by McCarthy can then become an opportunity for some a negotiating theater and be you know, broader like political theater.

So they could play up their genuine emotions for a receptive.

And willing audience.

Yeah, all right, Well, today's going to be a big day for the debt ceiling, so we'll keep an eye on it. Because this supposed to pass through the House. We will see what happens. It will be very interesting not only whether or not it passes, but what the numbers are in terms of the future for McCarthy.

So we'll keep an eye on that.

In the meantime, we had some significant updates with regards to our relationship with China.

Number of different pieces here, so the very latest, let's put this up on the screen.

You had a Chinese J sixteen jet fighter which flew directly in front of an American surveillance plane that was flying an international airspace over the South China Sea last Friday. That forced the US Air Force plane to fly through the fighters wake turbulence and caused the US aircraft to shake. The Pentagons felt so strongly about the aggressive nature of this incident that they actually released the video, which we have. Let's go ahead and take a look at this. I'll

So that is the incident. That is a question.

This comes at a particularly fraught time in US Chinese relations. Things have been going sideways ever since that whole like spy balloon situation. So here's the latest on that. Got and put this up on the screen from the wall Street Journal. They report that China rebuffed the Pentagon chief blunting push for reproachment. US had proposed a meeting. China accused the US of insincerity. Here are the details here.

They said, the Chinese believe they.

Have the most leverage when dealing with officials who handle economic issues, so they are prioritizing those engagements over ones involving national security. I also pulled for US the South China Morning Post to give the sort of Chinese version of these events and why they rebuffed this meeting.

They said, put this up on the screen.

China says the US must correct its mistaken actions before top defense chiefs can meet. This is part of their Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. They say Washington should earnestly respect the sovereignty, security, and interests of China and immediately correct its mistaken actions to show its sincerity to talk. And they pointed emily in particular to the fact that their defense chief is actually under US sanctions, which the US doesn't have any intention of lifting.

But I also think that's kind.

Of an excuse for them to, you know, have some justification for why they didn't want this meeting to go forward.

Yeah, and you know the I think it's the journal that notes that they still haven't rescheduled that Beijing trip that Blincoln was supposed to take during that initial spy balloon upheaval that was supposed to coincide with a trip by our Secretary of State to Beijing, right, And they said, you know, we're going to table this and reschedule it, and that was our move. The United States made that decision because the Biden administration was taking so much flak

Yeah, I think it's a real shame that that meeting didn't go through. I think it's a real shame that they pulled the plug on this meeting as well. And within the Biden administration, the reporting is that you do have sort of dueling views of how to approach the

That's so interesting about the internal dynamics of the Biden administration because you know, you see it in just a very i.

Think confused policy towards China.

And to your point, if that's reflective of internal debate about what the right course of action is, I mean, maybe this puts the Biden administration, maybe this forces their hand, Maybe it puts them in a position where the people internally who are fighting to take a more hawkish stance on China inevitably are winning out.

Because it definitely break it's their hand.

Yeah, when you hit that brick wall and diplomatic relations are strained to the point where you can't have these meetings anymore, then that's when you start to get to a I mean, I would say a dangerous place. And I think there's obviously good reasons to have the hawkish instincts towards China, especially when you look at you know exactly what the video c that you just showed. Yeah, it's understandable, but at the same time, that puts US closer and closer to a.

Hot war, Yeah, which you know would be a disaster for us, for them, for a lot of people around the world. And China has long taken this approach. That's why I found that comment so interesting about how they're most interested in dealing with officials who handle economic issues. I mean, they really sort of understand our society and how much it is driven by like capitalism and by capital and so this was noteworthy. Elon musk Is actually

And meeting with Elon Musk.

Billionaire's audience with the Foreign Minster highlights complex relationship with Beijing. So the fact that this meaning is coming at this time, I think it's also noteworthy and fits with this idea of you know, they feel like the way they can pull our strings is through economics, and it's not just us too. I mean, this is why they're with their initiatives in Africa, you know, lending a lot of money into build out ports and roads and bridges and fund

Data and all this stuff.

They're worried that his satellites could be used to spy on Chinese citizens, and so there are defense hawks within China who are not comfortable with, you know, the level of interaction and the level of market penetration that Musk

By all accounts.

Yeah, and I'm sure the audience will be shocked to guess who else is in China this week, None other than of course, our real Treasury Secretary Jamie Diamond. We've seen over the course of the last six or so months all of the real president, I would say, the President, Jamie Diamond and our real Secretary of State Elon Musk together and China at the same time. No, I think

Something very telling, accurate.

And maybe a little bit sad about China's recognition that dealing with economic people and people in positions of economic power in the United States and economic diplomacy with the United States is probably their best bet to make inroads.

And they're like, you know, who really holds the keys to the kingdom in your country?

Well, they're not wrong.

I learned that from WTO and everything after that.

And it's still you know, there's still people who refuse to learn the lessons. Well, they know the lessons, They've just benefited from everyone else's misery.

Yeah, at the same time, you know, so Musk is tying in the muskpiece. He had commented previously about the Chinese space program, saying that it was far more advanced than a lot of people realized. Put this last piece up on the screen, and we just got an announcement China launching a.

New crew for Space station.

They are planning to land people on the Moon by the end of this decade. You know, this is classic like sort of national projection of power and prestige. So China officially, you know, really going into the space game, and there's a lot of competition. You know, we're used to talking about like the economic competition between the US and China and potential military competition between US and China. Part of that military projection of power is increasingly in space.

Yeah, that's a great point.

And what we're seeing happen in space is it's really reminiscent of the race during the Cold War. You know, it's obviously China has more than echoes. Yeah, Yeah, it's actually kind of eerie of how much the not just space, I mean space in particular is a very on the nose echo. But there are obviously so many other things that happened between the United States and China, the West and China in general that feel just ripped from the

Yeah, indeed, all right.

At the same time, back here at home, a lot going on. Wisconsin Republicans really in a.

State of angst. Emily, they sure are, They're really in their feelings right now.

Yes, they're so flag this long Politico magazine reported piece from Wisconsin. We can go ahead and see one up on the screen. The headline from Politico is quote numbers, nobody has ever seen how the JP lost Wisconsin. Now, it's a very interesting glance into the dynamics in a state where a lot of people were surprised to see

For forty years.

You had a Democrat in that district for forty years, super rural, you had you know, paper mills that were shut down because of all bad trade deals and all of that stuff, problems with opioids, drugs, addiction.

All of that.

And in twenty ten that district flip Republican, so six years before Donald Trump. So Wisconsin Republicans had been making those kinds of gains for years, and then it culminated in Trump's narrow victory in the state of Wisconsin and Hillary Clinton sort of famously not going to Wisconsin, and now you have a really difficul situation for Wisconsin Republicans. Ron Johnson barely eked out a win ye over someone a. Republicans saw it as eminently beatable.

Well, and Democrats kind of gave up on that race. And if they hadn't, it might have actually gone in the other direction because they stopped focusing on it.

They thought it was a lost cause.

And then Ron Johnson barely squeaked through a victory.

Right, And so Politico is looking at how you have Potasswitz, the liberal Supreme Court justice, how does she win? And Politico is coming down the side and saying, you know, actually quoting state democrats. This is from the Democratic Party chairman in Wisconsin.

He said.

He referred to an internal Democratic pool conducted after the election shared with me later by a Democratic operative in the state, that showed abortion, while slightly more resident and issue for voters in the Democratic leaning media markets around Madison, Milwaukee, and Claire Lacrosse, was the main vote driver for Potassa Wits in every market in the state. It was an issue that wasn't just working for Democrats in big cities,

In some cases, this is lifetime union Democrats. People have voted for David Obie for forty years.

If you can't get them, maybe they actually vote them, but maybe they just don't vote. If you can't get them, you're in big trouble.

Well, and all you have to do is en into the margins. You know, you don't have to win rural counties if you're Democrats and you're you know, driving up the numbers in the suburbs and you're pulling in huge numbers in the cities. If you just eat into the Republican margin a little bit in rural America, then you're really in business here. And I did think that was the most interesting piece. There were two parts of this article that I found most interesting. First of all, Democrats

Wisconsin is a different model.

Though, and this was one of the places that you know, some of the sort of lazy assumptions of oh, well, if things are headed in this direction, they're going to keep heading in this direction. Was first it's Wisconsin and Michigan, and then it's going to be Minnesota, and you're going to all these blue wall like traditional Midwestern industrial states, they're all going to become solidly Republican.

That was kind of the assumption because.

You have a population that has a lower percentage, that's college educated, more white, and so it looked like it was a place that would be right for the picking for Republicans, not just in twenty sixteen, but it would kind of continue to trend in that direction. And it looks like, you know, first of all, that didn't turn out to be true. You know, Biden ends up winning Wisconsin in twenty twenty, even before Roe versus Weight is overturned.

And I thought it was really.

Interesting because there was actually a polling memo that put this up on the screen that somebody accidentally left behind from a Republican group. They say left behind polling memos shows abortion hurting outlook for the GOP.

At the Greenbrier. Someone put this in the trash at the Greenbrier.

Which is this West Virginia resort that Republicans. It's owned by Jim Justice, by the way, who is currently governor and gonna run for Senate against Joe Mansion.

By the way.

I saw that has them out by like twenty points on mansions, So we can talk about that another time.

It's swanky, it's very.

Swing, it's very dice, it's beautiful there. So anyway, they left it in the trash there, and the numbers here are quite dire. They say there's been a six point swing in just the last year on the generic Senate ballot from R plus three to D plus three. This movement is led overwhelmingly by independent and new voters that identify abortion.

As one of their top issues.

So according to a national issue study by Coefficient, which was in the news recently, so they found similar findings on the House side ten point swing in just the last year on the generic House ballot, where previously Republicans were winning on the generic ballot by six points, now Democrats winning by four points.

And they say reproductive freedom is the.

Number one issue among those that did not vote in twenty twenty. So this has been an incredibly activating issue on Wisconsin. On election day with that liberal Supreme Court justice winning, there were all these sorts of anecdotal reports about how strong the voting had been in college like university towns there, and after the fact we've gotten the numbers that that has in fact been the case. You know, young people very like classically unreliable in terms of their

New voters are turning out.

It's really motivating independent voters, and it is a significant problem for Republicans.

It's a huge problem for Republicans.

And I've actually been skeptical of the theory that abortion was what killed certain candidacies in the last election, but this is the more this evidence emerges, I mean, you have to keep an open mind with this stuff. And I think this evidence, this polling evidence, has really really shifted the weight of the argument to the fact that abortion is genuinely dragging down Republicans. If even Republican polsters are finding this these like six point.

Swings, I mean, that's significance.

And I think that's not to say that I think it's necessarily a losing issue for Republicans.

I think there's the old Ronald Reagan mantra.

He talks about painting with bold colors, not pale pastels, which is really like, that's how he ends up winning the youth vote in huge numbers. And there are a lot of people who didn't agree with everything that Ronald Reagan said. He was seen as this like movement conservative activist type Republican in idiologue for sure, and yet people.

Voted for him.

So I think there's a way for Republicans to talk about abortion more honestly. That may drag them downe in certain areas, but in other areas maybe helpful. If you have a like, a certain kind of candidate. You know, Ron de Santis puts up big numbers in Florida, you know, with people who haven't always voted Republican, And I think partially that's because he doesn't shy away from the issue, he doesn't try to hide the issue and like be apologetic about his.

Beliefs on abortion.

So if I were a like consultant for Republicans, I would say, you just need to.

Be honest about what you think.

That said, it is absolutely true that if you can't match, if you can't put up higher numbers with the as opposed to the ones the new voters coming in, if you can't motivate, for instance, in Wisconsin, we were all sitting here on election night not too long ago, looking at the numbers in Wisconsin, and we were seeing, for instance, in what's called the Wow Counties, Waukesha azaki in Washington always like a bastion of like hard Republican.

Voting suburban areas, right, suburban Milwaukee.

Yeah, absolutely, and the numbers were obviously Republicans were winning those areas, but the numbers were down, the margins were down, and that's because millennials are now moving to the suburbs and they're sure as hell not voting Republican in the same numbers as other people were.

So it's a it's a real, real problem.

But you know, even with the DeSantis example, so before he gets re elected, he's signed what it was either a twelve or fifteen week abortion ban into law, and he felt pretty comfy with that. The six week abortion ban that they just passed through, he clearly felt like politically you had to do it. Passed it like on a Friday, did the press conference like literally at midnight. It was like, let's not talk about this, let's just try to move forward.

And I think that's that illustrates the.

Problem that Republicans have right now is they have won on this issue in the past when they've successfully First of all, their base was super motivated to get Supreme Court justice on an overturn Row versus wad Okay.

Well, that energizing factor is now gone for them.

And the other thing that they did which was successful for them is they would paint the Democrats as the extremists, you know, partial birth abortion and you know the latest what's the one the aft that they claim that like after the babies delivered that Democrats wanted.

They just claim Democrats are like really.

Extreme on the issue, and they put the focus there on the most sort of fringe examples that Democrats will support.

Very effective politically.

Well now given the way that the landscape has changed, necessarily because Roe versus WAD was already kind of the compromise position, So the compromise position has gone, so now necessarily all the fronts that they're fighting on are extreme and are fringe. So you know, a six week abortion ban or the heartwheat beat or the personhood stuff like these are very these are very have very limited popularity. It's a very small part even of the Republican base

Those are the sorts of.

Things that are now happening of every day because of the restrictions that are being passed into law in these states. So I don't know how you get out of that without you know, just like shifting your stance on the issue.

Yeah, and you're right, I mean that is absolutely the strategy because and by the way, people like Ralph Northam and Andrew Cuomo make it really easy for Republicans to point to examples of like listen, this is this is a so called like moderate centrist Democrat who has some some pretty unpopular positions on third term abortion, and that though we've seen.

First of all, you have to talk about that proactively.

You can't wait for the media to start like jumping on you, you have to like actually be be going after that, want to talk about abortion and want to say X, Y and Z, which most Republicans don't like. Ryan and I were on air together when Roe v. Wade the decision or the Dobbs decision was handed down. Yeah, first thing I said was the Republican people over at the RNC right now are.

Scared out of their minds.

They hate this, Like they're not happy about this at all, because to your point, that was always the thing that they could say, I support you know this, this is like right, and when you lose that, you have to go on offense.

Otherwise you're going to look terrible.

You're going to look like you're hiding from the issue, like you're a secret extremist, and.

That's what we've seen Republicans do.

So the pro life movement right now is really trying to get Republicans to rally around that Lindsay Grahamville the twelve week thing, and there's a lot of hesitancy on that because some people want to go further, some people think it goes too far, and it's a huge albatross I think right now because nobody knows how to talk about it, and nobody knows what they actually believe because for a long time, and I think this is still true, those people at the RNC, they don't know what they

Know, they probably wish Roe we're still in place.

Oh absolutely, I mean Trump picked up on this right away. Yes, reportedly, he said right away, this is going to be a major problem for us, and you can see, you know, he's pissed off a lot of the pro life groups by being like, listen, I'm going to sell what I did when I was in office by putting these justices on there.

But am I going to commit to anything else?

No, because politically this is incredibly toxic, and it's part of why, you know, in the twenty twenty four race, there's this assumption like, oh Ron De Santis would be more electable than Trump, and maybe, but I'm not even one hundred percent sure about that, because this issue has become so potent and so toxic, and he now has this six week ban hung around his neck and has taken a more like aggressively overtly right wing stance in

Of today, he hasn't been able to win that debate.

Yeah, then there's you know, there's some evidence on that side which that Donald Trump was always able to pick up voters that Republicans never were and those are people that are probably not going to vote for just your average Republican career politician.

And you know, the the last thing I'd say.

Is actually Trump's one of Trump's best political moments is when he went on offense in a debate against Hillary Clinton.

And whether or not you agree.

If anyone agrees with what he said about abortion, he was he painted a very vivid picture and just went in on Hillary Clinton.

And that is I think an.

Example of where going on offense from a strategic messaging perspective, for Republicans can be really strong.

And really valuable.

But then if you have six week bans, for instance, it makes it much harder.

Like that takes some of the power away from doing that.

So there's no question makes it much harder to ship the focus.

I mean, I've always said Americans, I think on this issue, you obviously have you know, you have your id logus who this is their number one issue when they're clustered at the extremes and they drive most of the debate. Most Americans overwhelmingly, you know, they see it as a moral issue, they see it as a difficult and tricky issue, and they have these sort of like mixed and moderate stances on it which I really relate to and I

They're out of your home state of Wisconsin.

That's right. And Chris CHRISTI, by the way, he's in.

It's happening New News.

So while we're talking about politics and elections, Chris Christie's super pac has been formed. He has actually set to announce his candidacy in New Hampshire next week. I mean, the details from Axios about how he wants to be his pitch to voters.

I think it's laughable.

What are the details? What is his pitch to voters that he wants to be.

I think the word they used was jolly.

Okay, that all right? I like jolly yeah.

I mean, but Christie, I just think it's hard yet hear it is.

That Christy thinks I can't take this seriously. Being joyfully, being joyful and a hopeful note aimed at America's quote exhausted majority, being authentic, a happy warrior who speaks his mind, and running a national race a quote non traditional campaign that is highly focused on earned media, mixing up the

This is also bad news for any.

Republican who helps to have a binary Trump versus Destantus race.

That ship is sailed a who long time ago.

People will still say, for instance, you know, we want we expect that folks will learn from twenty sixteen and dip out of the race earlier when they realized that their candidacy doesn't have any wings, and they'll stop, you know, stop the bleeding so that they can you know, if it's Trump versus pen so Trump versus DeSantis, which is probably more likely outcome, it can just be Trump versus DeSantis, and it's more of like a Hillary Bernie race where

Yeah, and it's a sign of DeSantis's weakness that so many people decided to jump in the race to be the Trump alternative, because if he had really appeared like a juggernaut, like all this guy, there's no way he could be knocked off. Then you would have discouraged some of these folks from getting in the race. And also the fact that you know, the donors didn't like some of his answers on Ukraine, they didn't like the six

Do I think that's gonna work.

Do I think Christy has like that kind of traction with the Republican base.

No, not necessarily, but I do.

Think that that is an appealing and sensible enough pitch that he's going to get some funders. And definitely, if he's launching, he already has some funders behind him. You only need one billionaire to like float your super pack in order for you to be able to get in there and do your thing. Now, part of the problem for him is that, you know, unlike what he was able to do with Marco Number one, Trump is much more skilled political player on a debate stage than Marco Rubio is.

But also, I don't think Trump's going to debate, so not likely to have that.

Moment where you can make him look foolish in real time. And that is what Chris Christie I mean, you guys, I don't know if you remember, but when he was coming to prominence and when Republicans were absolutely loving this guy is he would do these town halls and were like yell at teachers and you know, very like he embodied some of that like we just want someone who's

Yeah, he criticized Rond de Santis from his left on Disney or from his like libertarian side on Disney, which is just I don't know why Republicans think, from from Nicky Haley to Chris Christie to what like Asa Hudgens, I don't know why anybody thinks, yeah, Trump, that's right, that's the elephant.

In the room.

I don't know why anybody thinks that's a winning campaign strategy. But I think with Chris Christie, New Hampshire is actually where he had that moment against Marco Rubio.

Oh it's eat stage.

Remember that.

You can see how Yeah, the pugilism and the more centrism of somebody like Chris Christie new Hampshire really should be his bread and butter. But that point about courage, yeah, I agree, this is a common Coze mission. I don't think he thinks he's going to be president. I think he probably thinks maybe there's a chance, so it might as well run take down Trump in the process and have fun on TV, which is the earned media aspect.

Of his campaign strategy he enjoys.

He's got a former Romney staffer.

I mean, it just it's not a recipe for success with today's Republican Party and his courage message, he is going to have a hell of a time making that pitch when I think he has really covered himself in not so much glory. It's more embarrassing the way he what does that media report about how he went to like get Trump's McDonald's orders for.

Him, Well, he's kind of pleased nobody exactly.

I mean, you've got, you know, the Liz Cheney's of the world, like there's a constituency for them, you know, become the resistance hero and be consistent and strident in your opposition to Trump.

Christy's been all over the map, you know Afrey.

After he nuked Rubio, which was much to Trump's benefit, he then drops out and endorses Trump.

He gets the McDonald's, does that dance for a while?

Sucks up.

I actually think the breaking point was breaking fack to do that anyway, was when Trump was using Christy for debate prep and they were in like a hotel room together and whatever. And it turns out Trump, which he probably knew at the time, had COVID, and Chris Christy got COVID from Trump from helping him with his debate prep. At that time, Chris Christie almost died from COVID. I mean, you know, he's overweight, he was in the hospital. He

Emily.

One question I have for you is, like, do you see a vulnerability for Trump, Like if you were advising DeSantis or any of these other cast of characters, is there an area where the Republican basis Like I'm not sure that you could press on that you could potentially, you know, move them off of him, or is he just still the sort of beating heart of the Republican Party and very hard to supplant barring some sort of like external factor that you have no control over.

Yeah.

I was talking to someone about this yesterday, because every little attack I think other Republicans the DeSantis camp included things that they end up having on Donald Trump. It's like, well, listen, the guy isn't running on policy. He does run on some of these really broad policy issues. You know, on Ukraine for instance, that's you know that sort of like fits with his broad narratives. On foreign policy, he runs in one position on immigration, he runs in one position

Not building the wall, you know, not he has a lot of things that he said he was going to do.

He'll say it was because you know, he was taken out of office by his stolen election. But I still think that's you know, even if you think the election was rigged, not stolen, I think that's a really tough argument to make for Trump. So that's definitely a disadvantage. And that's one thing he's never had as a presidential candidate before, is that he lost and this is the time to test it out.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, I mean he's made it very difficult because unfortunately, overwhelming majority of the Republican base believes the stop the steal stuff, so they don't see him as a loser.

They think he was robbed.

But I do see DeSantis trying to sort of like gesture at that when he's talking about, hey, we should have done maybe we should have done mail in voting. Maybe that would have worked out for you better what actually happened, which is just like indisputably true.

Yeah, and that's where Republicans are on this. Most publics, most like activist Republicans or people in DC, agree with that. At this point, Crystal, let's move on to millennials.

We're both millennials, aren'tly?

Yeah, I'm barely barely. I'm like an old millennial.

You're an elder millennia.

Yes, I am a senior millennial.

Well, this article caught our eye because it crunches some new numbers on how millennials are faring. And I know a lot of our audience is definitely in the millennial camp.

Take a look at this tear shady. It's d one.

This headline in particular, people were circulating it on Twitter because.

It seems shocking.

The headline from Business Insider here is meet the average American millennial who's a parent and homeowner with a net worth of one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars and hoping for student debt relief, the article says, and here's where some of the numbers get interesting. As of twenty nineteen, the median millennial household income when adjusted for inflation, was roughly ten thousand higher than the ten thousand dollars higher than those of medium Gen X and Boomer households at

Actually, according to rent.

Cafe, that was what was that last year and apparently so the average millennial was thirty four years old. When the generation reached that milestone, Gen X and Boomers were thirty two and thirty three. So again you have a business insiders saying they weren't.

That far behind.

But again that's actually not accurate either, because we don't know until millennials are like we actually don't know until we have a clear information on like the twenty seven year olds, right like by the time they've reached the age, they're not thirty four yet, they're not necessarily at the average yet.

So I don't know. I think this is all really premature.

And I had to include this National Review article.

We can put the next element up on the screen.

Because this to me playing semantics with the word crisis, saying the student debt crisis doesn't actually exist, saying it's bad, but it's not a crisis because Americans have all kinds of other debt that we don't call it crisis.

It's just an maybe we should call that debt a crisis. Certainly a medical debt is a crasis exactly.

And here's the line that really I thought was such a tell and just incredible quote. The vast majority of student loan borrowers have manageable debt burdens of five thousand of forty thousand dollars.

Oh yeah, mayl manageable forty thousand dollars in debt, super manageable.

I don't care if you're.

Going to be a doctor coming into your which is not the case with most of those people.

And by the way, there are a lot.

Of outliers and millennial among millennials who have like crazy amounts of debt, like pushing six figures. Oh yeah, and those are for degrees that are not going to make it easy to pay it off. But even if you're talking about an average from five to forty thousand, the average, I think graduates with closer.

To forty thousand.

So whether or not it's five or forty thousand right now is a different question. We've seen poll after pollstal millennials saying that has made them put off marriage, it has made them put off home ownership, It's made them put off all kinds of different normal milestones, and so yet having to scrape by for years and years and years where you are for instance, Lime and Stone at the has crunch numbers over and over again showing women

Yeah, I mean this is part of First of all, let's think about the framing of this article, that's like older millennials, it's not even all millennials.

Older millennials have maybe started to catch up to boomers.

Yeah, is that our standard for a country that like, younger generations may possibly at some point in their lives be able to achieve the same level of success as older generations. It is always in the opposite, always been the aspiration. Of course, you want your kids to do better than you do. So the very fact that we've lowered our goals to be like maybe one day, by the age of like forty five, you'll have a shot of achieving what your boomer.

Parents and grandparents were able to achieve.

Like, that's a sad statement in and of itself, but I also think, you know, part of what is missed in this analysis is how much the landscape has changed in terms of as you're pointing to Emily, like housing is wildly unaffordable. So those milestones in terms of home ownership get pushed back, which means that you have many fewer years of like building wealth as a homeowner, So

Bit cherry picked.

They say the typical millennial earns between fifty two thousand and sixty two thousand a year, but again that really depends on whether you are at the upper end of that age spectrum or the lower end. And overall, I think you have a generation that has just been made so much more precarious by the fact that some of these core pieces of a stable and thriving life have

Change jobs, move locations.

Remote work has made it possible to live in more affordable locales so that they can also save more money or have just better quality and balance of life. So I do think that some of those programs have continued to contribute positively to the life trajectory, particularly of young people.

And I think that speaks to where some of this is very polarized.

Like the pandemic economy.

Was great for some people overall millennials included, and really bad for some people overall millennials included.

And that's similar.

I mean, the article talks about obviously millennials, many of whom graduated as the Great Recession was either about to happen or had just happened, and that's I mean, that put a lot of people off on a very bad foot, and they've been trying to And that's also Americans in general.

Good as it was. People are not in as good of a position as it was.

To your point about like why we're celebrating millennials catching up as opposed to exceeding where everyone else was. And I think it's really interesting to see libertarians downplay the level of student debt people graduate with, because so much of that has to do with government subsidies putting the price of our college educations wildly out of whack. So it's not even just that people are in debt for

So it's just rich to see that.

Downplaying happen because that's never ever been how we approach generational.

Growth in the United States.

And it's just sad to see us cheerleading and picking numbers where you say, oh, the average millennial is married and they have kids, and it's like they probably got married way later than they wanted to, and they may have had a whole lot of emotional scarring on the way. They probably wanted to have more kids on average. We know that's true of women than they ended up having, and even if they own a house, they might not be really happy with the house that they owned.

That did happen.

With the pandemic, you had housing prices go down. A lot of millennials take advantage of it. But now those millennials who didn't take advantage of it because they were you know, twenty three or whatever. I guess maybe twenty five.

Good luck, good luck to them.

Yeah, that's true.

And just to wrap this up from the libertarian perspective, I mean, if you're in that kind of debt, like you're not free, like talk about like freedom and ability to chart your own course and make your own path. And that's reflected in the numbers of young people who say that that debt burden, specifically from student debt, keeps them from launching the businesses and becoming the entrepreneurs that they want to be because they got to have that steady check to be able to make sure they're still

And what a waste of energy to play semantics with the.

Word absolutely yeah, absolutely can't deny reality.

So this is an.

Interesting one I wanted to get Emily's take on, so Ted Cruz got himself in some water for what what I considered to be a rare w here.

Put this up on the screen.

He tweeted out about this anti gay Uganda law that is incredibly just brutally punitive. He says, this Uganda law is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque.

And an abomination.

All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse hashtag LGBTQ.

He took a.

Lot of heat over this from you know, fellow conservatives and from some of his base, but he stuck to his guns. Put this up on the screen. This is from media to say Ted Cruz doubles down on condemnation of barbaric ugand in law criminalizing homosexuality after being compared to bud Light on Memorial Day. They say that he tweeted that New York Times article with the tweet that

Twenty presidential election.

She says, you can condemn a law that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality without being pro or LGBTQ.

Like bud Light.

You should have just said nothing, not this, she continued, for the commenters, I stand with Uganda on this because the definition of aggravated homosexuality subject to the death penalty is raping children. Why would Cruz be against this anyway? He replies, Jenna, Not sure why you're defending this barbaric law. It imposes life imprisonment for consenting adults who engage in

So they sort of celebrated that.

I even saw someone passing around I'm not one hundred percent sure whether this was real or not, but Make America Great Again hats that were like rainbow colors to celebrate, you know, pride. And now if you even come out against a law that is just like insanely horrifically barbaric, you get a huge pile on from the Republican base. So to me, demonstrated the way that the Republican Party

Yeah, it's actually so, this is sort of a stupid conflict because I think it was mostly like media. I picked up on it because Jenna Ellis, who I don't think is super popular among the Republican base, started going in on Ted Cruz. I don't think she even knew that the law was broader than this aggregate aggravated homosexuality question, which is why Cruz comes back and says it calls for life imprisonment. This is per the New York Times,

The Uganda law without coming out and talking about it.

Right.

It's so interesting because I think post Trump conservatives and even non conservatives, this like the kind of backlash people who find themselves in this like anti woke base, they

To being betrayed.

Doesn't make it right as an explanation whatsoever, but I think people should be aware this is going to be a driving influence in our politics. It's why I think the boycott's of Tar and bud Light have worked, because bud Light was about like one dumb influencer can and what the marketing executive had said on like zoom calls and all of that stuff. It feels like a betrayal of people who always thought bud Light was like, you know, something that you could drink in Middle America, be fine

Now, well, they're going after Chick fil A for having a diversity and inclusion.

Years old, years old news about.

Chick fil a right, and apparently Ford they dug up some like two year old pride related Ford commercial.

And this is why I'm.

Saying like it feels, I don't think it just feels. It is a regression because these ads, this corporate virtue signaling stuff went largely unnoticed and uncommented on and was no big deal, and people were generally like accepted that gay marriage was the law of land. And still I think if you if you pull Americans, overwhelmingly people are comfortable.

With gay marriage. So for a really like banal.

Tweet about it, just like objectively horrific law in Uganda, to spark this kind of conservative backlash, I think it's really telling.

And we talked last.

Time about you know, there was a sort of revelation that there's this The way conservatives have frame their concerns around trans issues has primarily been around like kids.

You know. Even the target thing.

Was like, oh, these bathing suits, so the tuck friendly bathing suits are close to kids stuff, So this is really all about protecting the kids.

But when you see this kind of backlash to.

Even just like people being gay and living their lives and being okay with that. You can see it has gone much further than wherever the original locus of concern

It feels like a betrayal.

I think for a lot of not just like Democrats or liberals or just like normal Americans. The specter of things that we took for granted may regress, may roll back. I think that feels very visceral, and there's a real heightened sensitivity to that as well.

I think it's pushing a button that's going to be critical, that's going to be like a fault line. Scager has been really smart in I think outlining the kind of barstool conservative faction of Republican voters. And when I was doing reporting out in loud In County talking to parents that were part of the like Youngkin Revolution Virginia.

So it's very funny to think of that guy as a revolutionary like.

Mister gunnvest in my ad Equity Carlisle group, just a real revolutionary but radical. A lot of those folks never vote a Republican, didn't usually vote, definitely would fall into like, I don't know, maybe the barstool conservative camp, like people who were brought over because of the excess of some

I think if.

Republicans keep winning elections like Younkin and DeSantis, because that is a very bitter dividing line between those two camps, and I think, I mean, I mostly just saw John Ellis weigh in on this.

I didn't.

I don't know that I saw other people pilot Ted Cruz, although I think people were, like.

I saw a lot in the comments. I saw a lot in the comments.

That's interesting because I think it speaks to being visceral like and that might not be productive politically for Republicans to like start boycotting Chick fil A and to poll on Ted Cruz and all of this stuff. I mean, people were even going after the show The Chosen, which is hugely popular Christian sort of brings to life and the sort of prestige TV model, the story of the Gospels and is by uh, the son of the guy who did left behind and all of that.

It really like.

People going after that because I think, like reportedly somebody had a Pride flag on set, and it just speaks to like people do not Republicans feel betrayed by bringing it full circle Kevin McCarthy. They feel betrayed by the corporate class, they who used to be their allies and tax cut fights, and so it's just going to become really, really reflexive and visceral, and that may not be productive ultimately.

Well, I know a lot of Republicans, chiefly Ronda stand as they talk about the woke mind virus. Me, this is representative of the anti woke mind virus where even someone you know, something that should not be controversial of even just signaling any kind of support for yeah, it's okay for people to be gay, triggers this intense reaction.

Yeah, and tribalism.

I agree with that totally, and I think we'll see only more of it in the future.

All right, Emily, what are you looking at?

Renown novelist James Comy responded to some questions about the Durham Report on MSNBC Tuesday, and yes, I said renowned novelists. He was out promoting his new novel and in the course of this promotion he was interrupted by some tough questions that should have been probably much tougher by Jonathan Lamire and Willie geist Over on Morning Joe. It's pretty interesting, actually how he responded to these questions because Comy, remember,

Populism they're going to get.

It's remarkably counterproductive and self serving and also just plainly stupid, bad for the country.

But to hear James.

Comy say that the FBI and DOJ is a threat, It's like, yes, absolutely, that is a threat to a duly elected president.

Of the United States. That would be Donald.

Trump, who you targeted by breaking the rule of law, as the Durham Report clearly showed. And that's the value in talking about this. I said a couple of weeks ago that when people start going deep on the Durham Report and the FBI and the CIA and dan Chenko, when all of this, my eyes will sometimes glaze over because it's intentional, convoluted. It was intentionally involving all of these shell groups.

And you have to know Faisa law, and you have to.

Know everything about Carter Page and George Poppadopolis and all of these names. It's Watergate esque and even more complicated to fully understand the scheme that was perpetrated. But the more you dive into it, the more like disgusting it looks. And I think just this surface level comment by Comy, in contrast with what the Durham Report has from emails and all of that stuff on Comy himself, is a really perfect reason to focus in on the broad takeaway

At the top of the list. Okay.

So you get Chuck Ross over at the Washington Free Beacon, who's covered this stuff really effectively, who says in response, in reality, the Durham Report revealed extensive evidence that Comy was far more involved in Crossfire Hurricane, that was, the investigation into Russian collusion and the push for the phony FISA than he has previously claimed. That's the FISA into carter Page. The report also revealed that Comy refused.

To cooperate with Durham. Okay, don't let your eyes.

Glaze over yet, because we can go even more to the thirty thousand foot level and just put this really simply, Durham found that Comy had a very different standard for how he treated the Clinton investigation and how he treated the Trump investigation. That is to say, the FBI, under Comy and including Comy, checked a lot of more boxes in investigating Hillary Clinton than they did in Donald Trump. Comy was repeatedly asking where's the PISA, Where's the FISA

But there you have the rule of.

Law right in itself. Rule of law means equal enforcement of the law. That is part of our legal and cultural understanding of what the rule of law is. So when Durham shows pretty persuasively that James Comy and the entire FBI under his leadership had provided very different and unequal treatment to Hillary Clinton, one presidential candidate, Democratic presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, that in and of itself shows that he violated the rule of law.

And guess what, they're not wrong.

They're not wrong that the FBI and DOJ are fundamentally broken institutions. Even again, John Durham came to that conclusion after years of investigation, somebody who had pretty bipartisan incentsive respect has worked around the FBI for a long time. If you have even that, and if you have persuasive evidence that you Dreams Coy violated the rule of law, that your staff.

Violated the rule of law, and you are the.

Ones you're griping about Populace coming in and saying the institution that you led and that conclusively persuaded like it conclusively failed to uphold the rule of law. For you to come in and say that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to it when you have already been the biggest threat to the rule of law because you actually, in a position of power.

Violated it.

People are of course going to start to want to fight fire with fire. You know, they're going to start justifying violations of the rule of law in order to get back to a position where we can uphold the rule of law. And that's wrong. But it's because of you, James Comy. It's because you violated the rule of law first.

So if you're worried about it, be better.

And that's exactly what John Durham prescribed in the Durham Report, and that's the scariest part of all of it. He concluded that, you know, those tweaks can be made, but no policy alone is going to fix the FBI. It actually needs to be full of people who wield their power responsibly. So long as you have James Comy out there talking about he you know, he made a couple mistakes and you know some boxes weren't checked that they

All right, Chris Soll, what have you got for us this week?

While we were just talking about somehow the you know, cutting the FBI, but it didn't come up in the dead ceiling deal.

Not a thing that didn't come up, And actually the opposite of came up was defense cuts.

You may recall at the beginning of the House Republican Caucus when there was the speakership fight, put this up on the screen the first element. There were actually some members I think Jim Jordan among them, who were floating, you know, as part of this debt ceiling hostage taking, one of the things we want to extract is actually

There was a lot of.

Freak out from some of the defense hawks, some of the typical characters, but there was actually this idea that was taken seriously by the media of like, oh, maybe they actually want to cut the Pentagon budget. Well and behold, when the deal actually comes down. Not only do they not cut the Pentagon budget, they actually increased the Pentagon budget by quite a significant amount. And this is not

Literally, no matter what.

Jud leg m Over at Popular Information his substack had a good piece on this. Put this up on the screen, guys. He talks about the numbers here. The compromise reach Sunday includes a small decrease in domestic discretionary spending and a record eight hundred and eighty six billion dollars for defense, a three point three percent increase over the current year. The money allocated for the defense budget is exactly what Biden requested in the twenty twenty four budget. Notably, half

The US has added more.

Than three hundred billion dollars in military spending in less than a decade. Okay, really take that in, So all the people who are out there. We're so concerned about the debt, We're so concerned about the deficit, et cetera, et cetera. Guess what, they don't blink an eye when you increase the military budget by three hundred billion dollars in less than a decade. That apparently doesn't count somehow.

Here.

They did a long report. I really recommend you watch all of it. If we played some of it, they would hit us for copyright.

So that's why.

I'm just going to read a portion here, but they say how the Pentagon falls victims to price gouging by military contractors. Just one example here in nineteen ninety one, there used to be more competition for military contracts. There was a wider array of defense contractors. They had to genuinely compete against each other, and lo and behold, the cost of one shoulder fired Stinger missile was twenty five

The entire world.

And by the way, these companies, what are they doing with these astronomical profit margins that they're able to reap at this point on the back of the US taxpayer. Are they investing in research and development or are they hiring even more workers or paying the workers they have better? No, you know what, they're doing stock buybacks to increase their share prices.

They actually have more.

Of their money, more of their profit margin, going to stock buybacks than to research and development or capital expenditures. So it is a truly disgusting state of affairs. The last piece of evidence I'll offer for you here, which I think just says it all. Put this up on the screen from responsible state craft. We just recently got the news, which we covered here. This was a few months ago the Pentagon, for the fifth time in a row,

And Emily is just such a tale as little time.

Crystal.

It's been wonderful to have you here in counterpoints the last couple of weeks, especially as we part ways and say goodbye to the brick prison.

Listen, don't besmirch our brick walls. Emily, all right, it's too soon, too soon, but I haven't enjoyed the vibe here. I've enjoyed my time with you, and I'm sure we'll be doing it again. Thanks to Ryan for asking me and give me the opportunity, and hope you enjoyed your day doing whatever.

I don't actually even remember what he told me he had to.

Do, but it's important to ask.

So hopefully something nice with this family and all that stuff. So thank you guys for watching. Listen if you haven't already subscribe on YouTube. We're getting close to a million subs.

So close.

Yeah, Kyle's got his like million subplaque hanging up in our place.

Now.

I'm a little bit jealous, so make that happen.

Number one and number two help support us in terms of being able to build out. This set is a huge investment at SAGA, and I've been discussing super grateful to everybody who's already signed up as a premium sub. As you, guys know, you get the show early, you get the whole thing ad free, but also you just support some of the investments that we are making or continued inbate for the election season. So thank you, guys, We love you. If you haven't signed up yet Breakingpoints

Sounds good to see you guys then,