Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, gristle.
Indeed, we do lots of big things going on in all corners of the world. We have some big Federal Reserve decisions. What does it mean for now? What does it mean for the future? And also some new rankings about just how poorly the US fairs in terms of rights for workers, no big surprise. There also some new developments with regard to Ukraine. A lot of pressure being brought to bear on the Biden administration to lay out a specific path and timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO.
Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but we'll talk about it. Also, some of the developments on the third party front both some polling and also Cornell West is switching to the Green Party, and the White House is looking to block a potential NOE label's bid. Excited to bring back the panel long awaited, going to be in studio. We've got two great gats, super excited to talk to them. One who is all in for Trump,
one who is all in for DeSantis. We will respectfully hear their views and what they have out.
Eric for the audience exactly.
But before we get to any of that, thank you guys so much for the incredible comments and your excitement and enthusiasm about our new home here. We're still working everything out to make sure the shots are perfect and it looks exactly the way that we want to. But I have to say, looking watching back at some of the show, like it looks amazing.
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I did wear a bucket hat.
I was in Lake Travis in Austin over the weekend and I got to be honest. You know, one hundred degree heat and you're in the middle of the lakes. It does have a fun, it does have a use. So I did wear the bucket hat. You know, even though I've crapped all over it here a lot of Breaking Points. I was like, Okay, you know. Look, it works, it works, all right. Let's talk about the Fed can argue with results, Dan, you can't.
All right, So let's talk about big decision taken from the Fed yesterday. They decided to hold interest rates where they are, but there was a bit of a surprise in their announcement. Let's put this up on the screen. So they're going to hold rights steady for now, but they say two more are likely coming later this year.
Let me read you a little bit of this.
The market's apparently surprised a bit by the expectation of more rate increases. There's a quote here in the CNBC article from some trader analyst dude who says people expected a hawkish pause and they got a very hawkish pause. Given the strong labor market, the Fed has room to crush inflation and they don't want to miss their chance. Go and put the next piece up on the screen. This is part of what informed their decision making. So we got new numbers with regard to inflation rose at
a four percent annual rate in May. That is the lowest in two years. So the top line number there looks pretty good. You dig into the numbers, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag. Part of what led to this slackening, I guess slowing of the pace of inflation was a decrease in energy costs, but you still have significant increases in terms of housing that actually made up about one third of the indexes waiting. You
had a point six percent increase in shelter prices. That was the biggest contributor to the increase for the all items. Elsewhere Where there was significant inflation. You had used vehicle prices that increase four point four percent. Transportation services were up point eight percent. There was a little bit sager of good news in this report for workers, which is for most workers, their wages have not been keeping up with inflation. There's you know, it's like a little bit
mixed down at the lowest end of the spectrum. They actually have been keeping up with inflation. This was the first time that overall you had average hourly earnings adjusted for inflation rising point three percent on the month and on an annual basis re earnings zero point two percent, after running negative for much of the inflation search that began about two years ago. So why does all of
this matter in the context of the Fed? They obviously are raising rates because they think that's going to be the solution for inflation. It hasn't worked all that well to this point, for reasons we've discussed, gre inflation, supply chain issues, these are all things that the FED can't really deal with. But if inflation starts to cool, they're going to feel less pressure to continue hiking rates.
So that's where we are.
We got a pause, but what is being described as a quote unquote very hawkish pause, which means they're not expecting any rate decreases and they are expecting to increase the rates in the monks.
Yeah, and I always think it's you know, worth taking step back, like why are we even spending any time on this. It's because is the impact on the overall interest rates for credit cards, for mortgages, for car loans.
I mean, we're seeing a record amount of debt. We've over a trillion dollars in credit card debt outstanding right now for the average American consumer, and in general, we have very rarely seen any sort of real wage increase, especially whenever you factor in over the last two years. So to me, the fact that the housing market, you know, we did see a cool as in it did not go up as much, but the price did not come
down on the overall supply of housing. Crystal same whenever it comes to the credit card debt, I mean we expected, you know, especially everyone was like, oh, stimulus checks and all that, it did wipe it out for a time. But actually what's happened is a total resumption of a consumer finance patterns, and we have seen a record increase with people taking out the same amount of debt but
also servicing it at much higher rates which are going broke. Also, as I understand it, student loan the pause that the Biden administration had agreed to in their debt that's going to expire now in two or three months. So you know, most some ninety five percent of people actually did not pay down some of their debt while the pandemic was there. Obviously was a lot of confusion over whether the debt
was going to get canceled or not. Given where we are right now with the Supreme Court and the overall like administration of the project, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. So resumption of debt payment is also coming back. I mean that's going to hit what forty something million households on average, so two or three hundred dollars or maybe even more per month that
they weren't including in their overall household budget. So don't make this, you know, report out to seem like, oh, this is rosy and everything it was fantastic. Things are still bad, at least from what I can see in the overall you know, the core numbers. The only real reason that you know things are going down is yeah, gas prices have come down, but you know, let's be honest, like they still haven't come to a very comfortable place of where they were during the pandemic or even right
before the pandemic. So we still have an overall increase in price pretty much across the board. It's just not going up as finantially as it was at some point.
Yeah, that's right.
And the economy continues to be a very mixed bag. I mean, we've covered this week how there are a lot of signs of potential cracks in the economy. You've got foreclosure rates going up. You know, we continue to follow the housing market very carefully. We continue to follow the commercial real estate market real carefully because I think that is where the largest risks for the broader economy exist.
And then we also can't forget like we just had a number of bank failures, of banks of fairly significant size, and maybe those are just complete outliers and anomalies because of the way that they haven't be structured and the types of clientele that they happen to focus on. But no one is really too sure about that. So that's
why the feed is treading carefully here. Up to this point, there's really been unanimous agreement about this extremely hawkish, i mean, you know, very remarkably aggressive pace of rate hikes in recent history. There's been pretty much unanimity about it. Now there's starting to be a lot of divergent, divergent opinions on this panel in terms of what they should do
going forward. The markets also responded in kind of a mixed way yesterday because again they were surprised by the fact they expected the pause.
Okay, that the rates wouldn't change. They're keeping them.
High, Okay, this is not like, Okay, they're backing off. They're keeping them high. That means mortgage rates and other things are going to continue to be high. That means money is going to continue to be expensive. That continues to put the brakes on the economy. But what they were surprised about is this trajectory that was laid out, the expectation that will be multiple increases in the future
in this year when they had even floated before. Hey, maybe he starts to you know, maybe start to pull back, maybe they start to lower interest rates. There are some other significant economic news that we really wanted to bring us kind of an update in terms of working people, So I covered my monologue that you've got three hundred and fifty thousand UPS workers who are right now. They're
organized under the Team Staves. This is the largest private sector union contract in the entire country, and they're right now voting on whether or not to authorize a strike. Now, authorizing a strike is different than going on strike, just to be totally clear, and it is expected that vote will pass because if you don't authorize a strike, you don't really have negotiating leverage in terms of your contract negotiations.
But because they're organized as part of a union, they've already been able to win a significant concept.
Let's put this up on the screen.
Now, Let's be clear that it shouldn't take any fight for workers who are delivering our packages to get air conditioning and other heat protection in their trucks. When you're talking about, you know, thanks to the climate crisis, but thanks to just hot summers in Phoenix, Arizona as well, temperatures in those trucks were reaching up to one hundred.
And fifty degrees.
You literally had hundreds of workers UPS workers who were falling out from heat stroke having to be hospitalized. Yet some of your kidney failure had one who actually died. So the teamsters in negotiation with UPS have been able to secure air conditioning for the UPS fleet in a major what they're describing as tentative deal. This is from
the team Stairs. They say they've agreed to tentative language to equip the delivery and logistics companies fleet of vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans. Just to give you some of the specific numbers here, this agreement would require in cab air conditioning in most US delivery vehicles purchased after January first, twenty twenty four. Two. Fans would also be installed in package cars, which the union said make up most of the company's ninety three
thousand vehicle fleet. So They're not retro fitting the vehicles they already have, but new vehicles will have air conditioning, the old vehicles will have additional fans and other heat protection in it. The union and the workers consider this to be a huge win. And again, Sager, I mean to me, I just look at it, and I'm like,
thank God they're doing this. But also it's ridiculous that three hundred and fifty thousand workers would have to threaten a strike and a total shutdown of the company in order just to get the basics of their day to day safety protected.
It's really stupid, and it actually does come at a time when Americans are more supportive right now of better wages and protections for workers than at any time really in modern history. Let's go ahead and throw this up there on the screen, guys. We have here voters strongly supporting raising the minimum wage to twelve, seventeen and twenty dollars per hour. And this also shows that you were referencing Crystal that right now the US is the bottom in every.
Category on labor policies.
Currently quote, the wealthiest country in the world is near the bottom of every dimension of the index and the worst ranked amongst the thirty eight OECD countries on worker Protections. So look, I mean some of these are smaller European nations, but some of these are also like major dynamic economies
as well. And so when you consider like went up against some massive, like some peer competitors which also have you know, pretty good dynamic market economies, that's something that everyone I think is genuinely aware of for these workers, like ups workers and others, whenever they're striking. We saw
this in the railway unions. Even though the railway strike, the bipartisan consensus was to come in and basically crush them in the deal, the overall American people were with the railway workers, especially when they heard i mean, we play that famous clip of the newsweek the Newsmax anchor, I'm sorry whenever he was like oh, so, he's like, why are you striking? What's going on? And he's like, well,
we literally don't get any sick leave. And he's like wait really, and he's like, oh, that's pretty bad.
Yeah, and he's like, imagine if this was like an airline pilot.
When he heard feel about it, when he heard that, you know, live on the air, it was just a hilarious moment. You know, somebody predisposed to say this is totally ridiculous, then he heard the truth, he's like, yeah, that's He's like, you can't, you can't have that. But then of course the government just came in and crushing Yeah.
Well, that's I think a really key point because what you see here is a failure of democracy when you have the public overwhelming majorities, bipartisan majorities of the public who want one thing, and the actual policy implemented by elites is at the polar opposite end of the spectrum. What can you call that other than a crisis and
complete failure of democracy. So, in terms of that report of the US ranking last and basically every category with regard to labor rights, you know, there were a number of metrics they considered here. They considered wage policies like what's the minimum wage? What kind of unemployments is there? Can They consider worker protections, things like healthcare?
Do you have paid leave?
As you were discussing with the railroad workers, is their equal pay across genders and different identity classes? Is their childcare support? Are their pregnancy accommodations? All those sorts of things. They also considered the right to organize, So that's do you have sectoral bargaining? Do you have our workers really able to exercise their rights to collectively bargain? Are they really able to exercise their rights to join unions and
organize within a union? And across literally at nearly every category, we were at the bottom, at the bottom. And again this is not because this is what the American people have decided. That's just we're going to have this rugged free market capitalism and sorry, workers like go out there and fend for yourself. Care more about low prices or quote unquote freedom or whatever.
No, this is not what the American people want.
Put the last element here up on the screen with regard to the minimum wage that Soccer was referencing, just so people can see the numbers. Sixty percent of Republicans support raising the minimum wage, not to twelve dollars an hour, not to fifteen dollars an hour, to.
Twenty dollars an hour. Three quarters of.
Americans support raising the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour, and understandably so. And we've been having the conversation about, you know, the fight for fifteen for over a decade now, prices have gone up, as y'all know, quite a bit. So, yeah, twenty dollars per hour. If you're thinking about just being able to live and be able to afford the rent, be able to afford food prices, like just the basics of living, twenty dollars seems like the absolute minimum at
this point. And that's certainly the way the American people feel. And then you can trust that with you know, the Democratic Party. The Republicans forget about it. Many of them will say they don't even think there should be a minimum wage period lot right. At least Democrats will pretend that they support maybe a fifteen dollars minimum wage maybe over some time period, But do they fight for no, I mean, just to relive recent history for those who've
forgotten all the slings and arrows of this. The one concession supposedly that Bernie got out of Biden when he conceded, he did this whole like hostage video and was like, do you support a fifteen dollars minimum wage?
And Bud's like, yes, Bernie, I.
Do they put it to, you know, to try to get it through a reconciliation parliamentarian says no, that's the less we've heard of it. That's it. They didn't say, you know what, screw this parliamentarian. We're going to get someone who is going to agree that the you know, this is okay with the American people. They didn't say, all right, we're going to try to get this into these must pass bills, We're going to work it into our deal with a republic. And no, they just gave
up on it. And so again, when I look at these numbers, what I really see is a complete hobbling and crisis of democracy. When you have seventy five percent of public saying here's where we are, and you have the entire political class say it, screw you, we don't care. We're not going to do anything about it other than
maybe sometimes paid lip service to it. That's where you start to understand how faith in all our o institutions is crumbled, How people are so discussed with the political process, how they don't feel like their vote counts, how they don't feel like their vote matters, How they don't feel like it matters whether they show up to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Ronda Santis or anybody else. So you know, it's astonishing that we're at a point we're just for workers to be able to get air
conditioning in their trucks so they don't die. They basically have to threaten to shut down the entire economy.
But that's where we are, and people forget they often look at this as a partisan issue. But you know, the Florida, Florida, the state of Florida, we talked a lot about this in twenty twenty on the night that Donald Trump won it by more than President and Obama did in twenty twelve. In twenty twenty, in the contested election Florida republic you know who went for Trump and then later on went for DeSantis. They passed a minimum
wage by some sixty some percent. So there is a huge overlap between people who are willing to vote Trump Ron de Santis, who are willing to vote Republican, and who do support an overall minimum wage. And that's why it's also important to understand too, whenever you look at the minimum wage that is in many Republican states, you know, like in Alabama, and in Alabama, for example, it's seven to twenty five per hour, and that's actually the case
across much of the industrial Midwest. In Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, which is the overall federal minimum wage Louisiana, I'm saying, federal minimum wage Mississippi, New Hampshire, even North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma. And now look in some cases, you know we've talked before about the minimum way. We did a lot of discussion of this back on rising if I remember correctly,
regional minimum wage and all the discussion around that. Actually think it's totally reasonable, but there is no saying that seven to twenty five is actually enough in most of these places where it doesn't even meet the poverty line. And the problem too is everyone's like, well, you know, if it's the minimum wage, it's like, why should we
spend so much time on that. Well, unfortunately, unfortunately, we do have millions of people who actually do make the overall minimum wage, and so it would have a genuinely big impact. Also been some discussion too around whether the corporations and some of them could absorbit everybody's talks about small businesses. I've even seen previous proposals and discussions around like phase in times for the level of employees and
times that you have. So there are a lot of ways we can work all of those like, there's a lot of discussion that we can have about making sure you absolutely not only minimize but completely reduce any impact overall on small business and small firms to the corporations that can obviously afford to pay them, people like Walmart, Amazon and all these others. Even if Amazon is what is fifteen it might even be nineteen dollars an hour.
It depends on where you are right now. But of course you know sometimes they will actually raise their minimum wage to also stop from having to do healthcare, to increase churn and remain and have total control over their overall hiring process.
These are the fights that are most critical right now, given how our economy is, how it exists in the current moment.
We have a tight labor market. That's a good thing for workers.
That means that they're less afraid to take strike actions, they're less afraid to vote to unionize, they're less afraid to push on their bosses and individual cases because there are jobs out there. So the question isn't are there jobs available? The question is are there good jobs available? And that's where you know these fights over are right what's the floor going to be federally, what is the minimum wage going to be? What can you actually support
yourself on at this point? I mean, this is the basics of the American what the American dream and the American bargain should be, that if you work hard and you play by the rules, you're going to be okay. And right now, millions of workers, I mean, they're so close to the edge. I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but we just got some dire numbers about the number of people who couldn't afford a four hundred dollars you know, emergency expense. It's just insanity.
So in any case, I think to me, the biggest takeaway is the distance between the political class what they consider to be radical. I mean, I don't even know how many members of Congress, if any, have come out in favor of a twenty dollars minimum wage, even the furthest left right, and yet three quarters of American people, in sixty percent of their publican Republican base.
Are there always a good reminder what the actual divides are in this country. It's not what you would think if you were watching any other news channel. Let's go to Ukraine. There's some really interesting stuff going on behind the scenes, which is absolutely going to explode into the top of the news. That's a debate inside of the NATO Alliance. Should Ukraine be put on a pathway to NATO membership or should it be just given an extended outright NATO membership right now? So let's go and put
this up there on the screen. This is kind of a New York Times TikTok behind the scenes of all the jockeying that's happening. What they say is, quote President Biden taken every opportunity over the past sixteen months to celebrate NATO's unity on Ukraine, but on one topic, he finds himself somewhat isolated within the alliance when and how
Kiev would join. Mister Biden, who has been cautious about getting NATO into a direct fight with Moscow, has sought to maintain the status quote of more than a decade quote a vague promise that Ukraine now that are they say it now arguably the most powerful military force in Europe, will eventually join the Alliance, but with no set timetable. Now there is a huge debate among the allies, putting pressure on Biden to quote support a significantly faster and
more certain path to membership for Ukraine. Much of this is actually coming from the Baltic states, including Estonia, Latvia, Poland and I'm forgetting one of them with Lithuania of course, Estonia Latvia, Lithuania and also the new you know naming members of the NATO Alliance as well, kind of weighing in trying to bring Ukraine into the overall into the actual formal alliance.
Now why does this matter, Well, you.
Know, depending on who you believe and what narrative and all that. Let's just say that the pretext given by Vladimir Putin for invasion of Ukraine in the first place was that he could not extract a promise both from Ukraine or from the United States, so they would never become a member of the NATO Alliance. Now the La Latvia.
The winning of the Baltic argument is that there is no way to guarantee long term peace to Ukraine without extending them membership and effectively saying that if the war in Ukraine does continue or we decide on some sort of line, that will escalate to some full blown nuclear conflict.
The problem is is that Bristol a lot of people won't talk about this. It's not just Putin.
Many Russians, at least according to some of the independent polls, that we have been able to get out of there, and nothing is perfect, but many Russians actually do agree with the overall with the overall idea that Ukraine should never be inside of NATO given their long history and the border and how they feel about collective security. I am not justifying that, I am only saying that is how Russians feel, including not only Putin but many of
the people inside of the Russian government. So that sets up the question of like, is this an idea which could actually make things much worse? And what to me is so fascinating is that Biden is the only apparently it's Biden and the Germans right who are like, well, hold on a second here, maybe this might be a bad idea. This actually could get us into some sort of insane nuclear conflict. And also, I don't think it's an accident that the people pushing this the most are
the people who are in the Baltic States already. This is where I get very frustrated, Crystal, these Baltic states, they have nothing to lose, like if there's some sort
of conflict, it's game over for them anyway. In America, actually, it's a choice for us as to whether we're going to go nuclear over the Baltic States and whether we're basically going to you know, annihilate some of our world class cities, our economy, and all of that in a conflict which you know, may maybe not actually have something to do with us in effect, not only our economy, our people, and our overall strategic interest. So I get why the Baltics want to do this, but there's no
reason why we would want to do this. And actually, if you consider or if you at least take it out their word the Russians that this had something to do with it, you know, not in the immediate invasion, but the two thousand and eight promise Ukraine will eventually go into NATO. Then why would you want to accelerate the timeline, especially when there's an ongoing, active war in the country right now?
What does the trip wire even look like? Like?
Where and when do you invoke Article five? Is it the current border? Is it if the Russians gain ten percent more territory right if you.
Cross this river? But if you don't cross that river.
It's like, this is where things get very very murky, and all of us, all of our lives, really are on the line.
Yeah, I mean, listen, what they would argue is, look, Russia hasn't invaded NATO allies, and there's a reason for that because they worry about that Article five protection and so this would be a way to prevent future wars. And so that's the case they would make. But I look at it and it's like, this is a way to guarantee that we actually go to World War three over Ukraine if this happens again. And you know, the
Biden administration's position seems pretty reasonable. They're like, hey, we don't even know where the borders are right now that you like, you can't admit or even like set down a specific timeline for admission of any country when you don't have set borders, and when you're in the middle.
Of a full scale war.
So the fact that every other country except the US and Germany is like, let's do it anyway, it just kind of boggles my mind. But Sagara, I think to your point the fact that it's you know, the burden is overwhelmingly on the US.
Yes, we pay all the bills.
Right, So that's why they're for them. It's like a free rider situation. They're like, yeah, bring them in, no problem, let's do it for us. It's like, wait a second, what are we committing ourselves to exactly? And so some end characteristic restraint from the Biden administration. It looks like though they're under enough pressure that they feel like they have to take some sort of like a half measure here.
Put this next piece up on the screen from the Financial Times, they say Western allies plan to provide long term security assurances to Ukraine by lateral agreements to formalized level of military and financial support for Kiev, and of course Lensky is also pushing for that timeline for NATO members. So Biden in the White House under a lot of pressure here, and effectively what they are likely to do
is to reach an overarching political declaration with Ukraine. They said that under the umbrella declaration, Ukraine would conclude bilateral agreements formalizing that current level of support and establish it on a more long term footing, with space to expand if deemed necessary. But neither the framework document nor the bilateral agreements would have the status of legal treaties, and
they would be signed outside of the NATO Alliance. So this is like the and I don't want to say this is just like a bone they're thrown.
This is significant in and.
Of itself that they were pressured into making some sort of longer term security guarantee and commitment here, which I do think makes sense, some sort of a longer term security agreement, but I think it makes sense in the context of a resolution to the war, not before then.
Well yeah, look, I actually I wouldn't even say. I would say it's way more up for debate because right now, I mean, look, we have no obligation to do anything inside of Ukraine, anything that we are doing right now in terms of aid and.
All of that.
In terms of formalized legal agreements, nothing, And that's why it's very important to understand we should not get into anything formal or legal about in the future.
I'm talking about Senate ratified.
Agreements without very very careful consideration, because it could literally lead to a nuclear exchange in the future. And I just think that argument that you laid out from the opponents are so foolish.
Oh well, it hasn't happened yet. It's a sixteen month long war. You can't say rule anything in or out.
Anything could happen in the you know, if you look at timelines in terms of the way that long drawn out conflicts like this go, it take years in order to see what the full spectrum of what the actual possibilities are.
So, first of all, can't rule that out.
Second, what they point to here is this quad agreement, which would be a non binding agreement which would be effectively, you know, kind of make aid to Ukraine. They would say, like, oh, the US and you know, the US and the other quad countries UK, Germany and France would you know, formalize a current level of aid. But you know, for the UK, Germany and France that's not much off their backs. They're not the one who are paying ninety five percent of the military expenses.
It's the United States.
So the current issue that we have overall is the free riding problem from all of the nations inside of NATO that are not the US and the UK, which are the only two like genuinely great great powers with military in terms of their military capabilities. France in Germany too are powers in their own right, but they're more like regional powers on the continent. Everyone gets mad when I say this, but you know, Poland's like, well, we
pay two percent of our GDP. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, your GDP is literally like less than Alabama or something like that. It's just on absolute terms, it really doesn't matter. Same in terms of the Baltic States. And what drives me nuts is that those are actually the most hawkish nations who are trying to get us embroiled in the conflict. You know, if they care so much, okay, spend one hundred percent of your GDP on that if it's so existential to you. But they're not, and they
literally don't even have the capability. They weren't Washington to go and pick up a slack for them.
Well, we should also not lose sight of the fact. We have said a million times here and I'll say it again, the Russian invasion is horrific, it's unconsionable, it's illegal.
We are completely opposed to Yes, the Russian.
Position with regard to NATO is eminently correct and reasonable. I mean, there was an expectation, there was at least an understanding that NATO would not expand towards their borders. We did it anyway. I mean, we knew that we have the cables. Let's say, our diplomats knew that it was a red line to even talk about ukraine admission into NATO and.
Georgia as well. We did it anyway.
So it's not like there isn't a point here in terms of Russia's view of NATO. So, just to put this in the most simplistic terms, their public position, Russia's public position is that part of why they invaded Ukraine is over these tensions around NATO. And so our response to that is like, let's up the ante and make it even more concrete, like let's thumb or nose that you even more. I just think that is reckless and
wildly dangerous. But to show you what kind of pressure the Biden administration is being put under here, there's a report in the Guardian that some NATO countries are talking about sending their own troops directly into this conflict. The polls in particular, they said, if NATO cannot agree on a clear pathward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility some countries.
Individually might take action.
He argued that the Poles would seriously consider going in among others.
So that's why they've really.
Put the screws to Biden and why they feel like they have to at least do something here at this next NATO meeting to you know, provide some kind of security assistance and guarantees Ukraine. Otherwise, I mean, this would be, this would be why.
You know what my response is, go for it, sign away and say that if you incur any sort of problem as a result of that, then that's your issue.
Guess what.
They will never do it if that actually was the case, because they feel confident that we are going to back them up through our nuclear umbrella. That's again, it's like you need to make strategic of you need to make strategic decisions such that you are factoring in both risk and reward.
They bear none of the risk. We're the ones.
Who have to back up all and backstop all of it. So yeah, look, if you want to send your troops into Ukraine, literally that's on you. Go for it. You know, I wish you the best. But if things go south, then that's also on you. And should you know, escalate into some broader problem, you deal with it. That's not going to be up to us, unfortunately, though, that's not the way that Article five works, at least in terms
of the way it can be in voke. So this is why we all have to spend a lot of time on this, and while we dedicated, you know, literally the top of this is because arguably this is ten one hundred thousand times more important than whatever is going on with the Ukraine counter offensive. Whatever village you know, changes hand here or there, whether they get NATO membership or not, which is what Lenski wants and, by the way,
what most NATO countries want. Apparently that will decide whether we ever really do escalate into a broader war in my opinion, and I have absolutely I have very little doubt that we would get embroiled in some massive conflict if we were to ever confer genuine NATO membership on to me, and from everything we've seen so far, given that Putin literally invaded the country, it actually does look
like an actual red line. So I guess everybody should decide you want to go to a full scale war for Ukraine or not.
I personally don't. I don't think it's worth it at all. All right, let's go to the next part.
This also gets to exactly why we should have some trepidation around these and let's go and put this up there on police on the screen about Belarus. Belarus is currently taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons forward, deploying them
much closer toward Ukraine. This is according to President Lukashenko himself says the country has been taking delivery of the tactical nuclear weapons, specifically some of which he said, quote were three times more powerful and the atomic bombs that the United States dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in nineteen
forty five. The deployment is actually Moscow's first move of such warheads, tactical nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield outside of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. So that is why you know, this was downplayed really in the Western press. They're like, oh, it hasn't had It's like, no, this is the first time, literally in thirty something years, they've ever moved nukes outside of Russia. It's a direct response to what's going on
in Ukraine. They're moving them closer towards Ukraine. No, that doesn't mean they're going to use them, Yes, it does mean that, you know, things would change significantly but it also lets us return to something that we talked a lot about during the tactical nuclear weapon discussion, Crystal, there's no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Strategically, that
escalates things to a whole other realm. And as Lukashenko and Ell said, even these quote tactical nukes that are yeah, they won't annihilate, you know, the entire globe in a single bomb, so three times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That's that's where we're at. That's where that's what quote unquote tactical.
Thing means so important for people to understand because you hear that term throw thrown around like oh, it's just a little nuke. No, It's like, no, We're talking about something that is extraordinarily powerful, dangerous, and puts us on a chain of escalation that nobody knows where it will ultimately go. I love the way that they downplay this too. I mean, even in this piece they say the US has criticized Putin's decision, but SETA has no intention of
altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons. Has not seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon like don't you consider this a sign, Yeah, that may be considering use of nuclear weapons. They gone to say, the Russian stuff is nonetheless being watched closely by the US and its allies, as well as by China, which is repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
I do think that part is significant.
But it also speaks to another lie that has been told in the press, which is that like, oh, we keep shipping you know, more advanced and longer range weapons, and the Russians they don't respond, they don't escalate, so all these fears of oh they're going to escalate are overblown.
What do you call this? I call this an escalation.
I mean I call a lot of what Russia has done an escalation, you know, in returning to attacks on Kiev, on drafting their own people, and up in the ante in terms of this war, A lot of that I think could very clearly be called an escalation and is in part in response to the actions that we have ourselves taken here as a country. So you know, this is the whole ballgame right here. Ultimately, will nukes ever be used in this conflict? Are we going to end
up accidentally stumbling into World War three. The danger might be small, it might be, you know, one percent, it might be point one percent. If there is any risk of that at all, it should be the number one thing that we're concerned about here and around the world.
Yeah, of course.
And also the idea that NATO says that they're not worried is actually just completely wrong because what just happened put this up there on the screen, literally the very same time that their Russians are moving nukes into Bellarros, NATO just held its largest air force drill ever in history to demonstrate alliance capabilities and quote solidarity against Russia. The wargames officially launched and are called the twenty twenty three Air Defender Military Exercise, also included Finland as well
as many other countries. Includes twelve days, two hundred and fifty aircraft, ten thousand personnel, the largest deployment in the
history of all of NATO. All that was happening such to make a very strong message towards them, And actually the funniest part to me, Crystal, is that if you look at the actual quotes of what they are saying, is the trigger for me was the capture in the annexation of Russia, and that since Russia's full scaled invasion of Ukraine last year, NATO member's Eastern flank want the assurance that they will defended should the Kremlin turn its
sights on them. That was the German general who was in charge of the exercise himself and said, while he painted it quotely as purely defensive in nature, behind the scenes say that they hope it will show President Putin for that the Alliance is not backing down in support
for Ukraine as Kiev begins it's counter offensive. So clearly this is in response to Russian not only the invasion of Ukraine, but also the deployment of these nuclear weapons and the increased fear that this could escalate into something. If they didn't have fear, then they wouldn't have the drill. The drill is quite literally being held as a response to what's going on right there. So once again you cannot say with a straight face that you are not
worried about this escalating to anything. That's why we sent thousands of troops to NATO's Eastern flank in the first place. After this response, why we literally inducted two or tried to induct two new members, successfully inducted one into the Alliance, and then now having this ongoing you know air drill that's happening, and also literally at the same time you and I are talking, all NATO defense ministers are gathered right now in Brussels, hammering out more agreements, running over
more types of exercises and things they can do. So it's not like strategically that things aren't moving and they aren't changing.
Yeah, I think the whole point of this is just to underscore for people. You know, we can feel it can feel a little bit like the frog and the boiling water. You just keep hearing this news over and over again, and increase escalation and the next step on the ladder, and now we're sending US sixteens and now you know, the largest war games in NATO history, and now we're talking about a timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO,
and now Russia is moving nukes and de Belarus. It can feel exhausting, It can be hard to hold on to that sense of alarm at where all of this is heading. But I think it's just really important for people to keep in the front of their minds what a dangerous volatile and unpredictable situation we continue to be in so long as this war continues.
Yeah, that's well said.
Okay, guys, let's get to some domestic politics here. So I wanted to start with what's a really interesting poll about how Americans feel about a potential third party effort. Put this up on the screen. Now, keep in mind that these numbers are not based on any specific third party candidate. They give people the option of Biden, Trump or third party, and Biden DeSantis or third party, So it can be like this is basically like the third party candidate of your dreams. Is the way that voters
would interpret this. And this is from Suffolk University, USA today, you know, well respected pollsters.
To the extent that such a thing exists anymore.
Biden they have at thirty four over Trump at thirty two, third party taking twenty three percent of the vote. And interestingly, actually the margin is wider for Biden if he's against DeSantis thirty three over DeSantis's twenty six with a third party at twenty five percent.
So you basically have in this.
Poll a reflection of the fact that people are really not excited about any of these choices to be perfectly honest with you, And even though you have a lot of hard partisan loyalists in this country, you also have a lot of people who would theoretically be open to a third party candidate. Now, of course, there are a lot of barriers in the US to third party candidates running to them having success. It's not easy to obtain ballot access. There are only a few organizations that do.
But as I said, I think this really reflects how you have higher interest in this election in third party efforts than I believe you did last time around. I think the levels are more consistent with the third party interest we saw in twenty sixteen when people were really not excited about Trump, and there are a lot of people really not excited about Hillary Clinton. And so you had Gary Johnson, you had Jill Stein in those elections. Now, liberals will tell you Jill Stein was a spoiler and
she got enough et cetera to throw the election. I would personally say that Democrats should have done about a job appealing to voters if.
They wanted to win that election.
But there is no doubt that there is a heightened interest in a third party effort this time around. And so you see some burcheoning third party efforts. We've already covered here. How doctor Cornell West, who is on the left. He's really well respected, well known political thinker and academic.
He initially announced that he was going to be running as a People's Party candidate, which people, including myself, found quite perplexing because they don't have ballot excess in most states, they don't have any track record of fielding a candidate or having success fielding a candidate, and so if you're running just as People's Party candidate, you're basically a glorified ride in which the limits of the efficacy of that
is going to be quite limited. Well, he just announced that he is going to be actually pursuing the nomination of the Green Party. Put us up on the screen. I think Ryan and Emily covered this yesterday as well, but I thought it was important for us to.
Chime in on this too.
Cornell West says, in the spirit of a broad united front and coalition strategy, I'm pursuing the nomination of the Green Party for President of the United States. Go to Cornell West twenty four dot com for more information To continue to support this unprecedented effort to empower precious poor
and working people here and abroad. I think the volunteers of the People's Party for the initial launch and Sagar, I gotta tell you, I think this is a like I think the Biden administration should be pretty concerned about this because Cornell West, doctor West, is a powerful person.
He's a powerful order.
He has a voice of moral conscience and moral clarity that is incredibly compelling to people, even people who disagree with him on some of the issues. He's very effective at talking to people who don't agree with him exactly on the show. I mean, used to go on Fox Now, on his people, Fox News all the time. He's known for, you know, being willing to reach out to anyone who's willing to have any sort of legitimate or honest conversation, and even some people who aren't willing to have really
a good faith conversation. He's a very compelling figure at a time when people are desperate for any sort of alternative to what is a really depressing choice between Biden and Trump. So I think this is quite significant that he's decided to pursue a Green Party effort because they do have ballot access in almost all of the states, so there's a much more serious organization that I'll be.
Behind him exactly. So, now that he has ballot access at least in all fifty states, it will mean that, Look, he's got much higher name id, arguably than even Jill Stein did at that time. He's got a significant period in order to force the issue, force media coverage. All he really has to do is, you know, at least not even placed necessarily, but you know, gets some media attention, have some real events, and that's it, like game on,
especially if you start showing up in the polls. I mean, overall, the Biden administration should be terrified. I was just reading this morning. Politically, yeah, RFK Junior is very likely going to win the first two states in the Democratic primary Iowa, New Hampshire, Iowa and New Hampshire because they are likely to go forward and not treat South Carolina as the first even though the DNC changed the rules. But Biden is likely not even to be able to contest in
those states. Now, the media and everybody else will do their best to just downplay that and say didn't happen. A win is a way, okay, when you win something, you have to cover that. So you have two Kennedy wins in those first two states, going into South Carolina. Okay, Biden probably will do well in South Carolina. But guess what, Yeah, then, Chrystal, what are we We're right around the corner from Super Tuesday. And when you have got all that media attention, then
you could have high third party initiative. You could have Kennedy literally winning the first two states. Yeah, and all of a sudden, you're in a way weaker political position than probably any modern president since Jimmy Carter ran in nineteen nineteen eighty.
And remember the drum beat from the media. Biden's opponents aren't serious, They're not qualified. I mean, they have done everything they can to just pretend like it's not happening. And that's necessary because otherwise, you know, the fact that the DNC is saying we're absolutely not going to have any debates or any real like small de democratic process becomes completely unconscionable. You know, overwhelmingly voters, including voters in the Democratic Party, think there.
Should be debates. There should be a real.
Process here by which voters can evaluate Joe Biden and RFK Junior and Mary and Williamson and anyone else who gets into the Democratic primary race. So yeah, the fact that you have the two early states, I mean, as much as they will want to ignore and just pretend like that didn't happen either, and there will be some chunk.
Of the electorate that's like, yeah, you're right, that doesn't really count.
You can't just completely dismiss out of hand if the guy who's in the White House loses the first two early states. And so to get back to doctor West and his role here. You know the reason I say that, I think it's a problem for Biden. These things can be complex about which party a third party.
Candidate actually takes away from.
But doctor West is clearly on the left, and Biden has a real weakness on his left at this point because, especially posts ron Klaan leaving as a chief of staff, their whole strategy has been to pivot towards the right.
Right.
I mean, they crush the railway, where as one example, they structure the terrible situation with the debt ceiling and the deal that they end up striking with the Republicans. They've just done issue after issue, chosen to pivot to the right because I assume electorally they think, oh, this is.
What we've got to do in order to appeal.
To the quote unquote center for a general election. But now you've got an issue where you've pissed off environmentalists, You've pissed off a lot of your progressive base on the left. They're actively looking for other alternatives. And now you not only have some strong contenders in the Democratic primary, you've got a really powerful force.
Coming at you in the general election as well.
So listen, do I think a third party effort could succeed? And actually, you know, doctor West become President of the United States, No, because not because of any fault of his own, but because of structural barriers that exist in American politics. Could it really reshape the quality and tenor
and direction of this election. There's no doubt about it, especially with him pivoting to a Green Party run, and with the fact that the Biden administration still even with they think they've crushed the left.
They think that the left will show.
Up, that they'll vote blue no matter who, because the alternative is so bad. I mean they this genuinely, I think is how they see it, that they don't have to do anything to win over the young voters who are disgusted with Joe Biden, who are on the left who are disgusted with Joe Biden.
They think they don't have to do anything.
And you know, we saw them make that calculation in twenty sixteen, and we saw how it worked out for them. So there is a third party effort that they are concerned about, though, even though they haven't paid any mind apparently to doctor West or to any of Biden's primary competitors.
So put this up on the screen. There's been this nascent effort from No Labels, which is this like grotesque corporate Wall Street monstrosity of an organization with really no popular support, but they have lots of money, so they hang around anyway, and they have been so sort of shopping around this idea, well, maybe will run a candidate, and you know, Jamie Diamonds gets floated here, the CEO of Chase JP Morgan, Chase Joe Mansion gets floated here.
It's like for the people.
Who think that Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren't pro Wall Street enough, this is like the candidate for them, which again I don't know, that's like, you know, people who work on Wall Street and no one else, but you have a kind of a panic from the White House about the possibility of a no Labels candidate running
and splitting the quote unquote anti Trump coalition. The headline here from the Washington Post Michael Sheer Democrats meet with anti Trump conservatives to fight no Labels twenty twenty four. Bid Biden allies seek to undermine an effort they see as a threat to the President's reelection. You had a lot of high level Sager figures who were at this meeting, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, DNC senior advisor Cedric Richmond, Stephanie Cutter, former campaign advisor of Barack Obama.
They were joined by former Senators Doug Jones, a, Heidi Hike Camp, Claire mccaskell, along with representatives of the Anti Trump Lincoln Project, former Weekly Standard publisher Bill Crystal, and Lucy Caldwell for a Republican consultant who now advises the Independent Forward Party, according to people present at the event,
who's book on the condition of anonymity. You also had their Dimitri Melhorne, who is a big donor advisor for Reed Hoffman and has really been very Gentral Ryan did a fantastic and very revealing interview with him that I encourage people to check out over.
On Ryan's podcast.
But their whole theory is that the way to win is not to deliver materially for the American people and do a good job as president so that you have a high approval rating and people actually want to re elect you. Their whole idea is, we're going to make it so all of the people who hate Donald Trump are united behind the same candidate. We don't really have to do anything other than not be Donald Trump, and that is our path to victory. Let's be honest. It
worked in twenty twenty. Let's be honest, it basically worked again in midterms. But the margins are extremely thin and extreme narrow. So even though this no labels effort is not going to have a whole lot of popular support, if they draw even a tiny bit of support and split this theoretical quote unquote anti Trump coalition, the White House is very concerned about what it would all actually do to Biden's reelection chance.
I feel like everybody is forgetting Biden only won the presidency by some one hundred and fifty thousand votes across three or across five states, and actually thirty thousand against three states. Yeah, I mean it literally arraigns a little bit in Georgia and things go very much differently. Yeah, if you know, I don't know if it rains in Maricopa County, but let's say it did in Arizona.
Well, you know, once again we're talking about like ten thousand votes.
Or something like that. I mean, that's total madness. Whenever you have that low of a sliver. Sure things worked out in the midterms, who knows what things are going to look like in twenty twenty four come that election. No labels then the reason why they have to take it so seriously is because they're not strong's that's the issue.
And my suspicion is is that should Cornell West campaign get some traction, then they are going to be pulling the knives of everything you've ever seen in order to get him off of the ballot in every single one of these states, suing them. That's why they're doing right now. The Arizona Democratic Party already sued to take no labels off.
That's why they're freaking out.
Yes, inside of the White House, they cannot take any third party, real contender whatsoever.
Yes, they don't.
Actually believe in democracy. I mean, that's like really clear.
They don't actually believe in democracy, because if you did. They're a very simple answer to this. It doesn't involve like suing them or you know. With regard to the corporate efforts, their play all nicey nights, they have them the White House, let's talk, let's work it out, let's negotiate. With regard to the left wing efforts, it will be like smear them as fascist enablers and Pudent's puppets and whatever.
They'll be just like disgusting attacks against them. There's another strategy, though, which is to like actually do a good job as president and then people will want to re elect you. You know, it's not that complicated. That's how it could work. In a democracy. You have a lot of power to do things that would be good for the American people. You've already missed a lot of chances at that, but
it's not too late. He still got a shot to actually win people over and not have to go the path that ron Klan laid out, which is I've brought those up a million times, but this is their strategy. When Emmanuel Macrome won in France and he had like a thirty percent approval rating, and Ron Klain, former chief of Staff, tweets sound like, oh interesting.
He was able to win.
Because people are so disgusted by the alternative. That's their only play, and so anything that disrupts that whatsoever, they hit the panic button over because they have no They will do anything to win except actually deliver for the American people so that they want to re elect them affirmatively rather than just as an alternative to like a horrific choice.
In Donald Trump. That's too difficult, Christians act true any work. All right, let's get to the next topic. UFOs had to shove this one in there just because there's just it's too good and there's so many developments.
So let's back up a little bit.
As I outlined actually to RFK Junior when he was like, are you aware of this whistleblower or it was like, brother.
Yes, we're Dave Grush.
The whistleblower has come forward from the intelligence community alleging that there are multiple alien spacecraft inside the US government possession. Okay, so that interview has already come forward. There's been an over an hour long that's been released. I encourage everybody to go and watch it. That's on News Nation, It's on their YouTube channel as well. Many of the allegations in there are absolutely stunning. So the next question is
how are Congress going to handle it. Part of what Dave Grush is saying is you guys were lied to, is that the Pentagon is quite literally lying to you about all of these existence of the programs about the developments inside of the building. Well, actually they've gone ahead and actually been asked about it. So let's put this up there with some really revealing quotes. These are all compiled by Matt lasla over at Wired, who asked some
of these senators. Senator Warner quote, there's been a lot incoming. Frankly, I just need to find out more information on this. But here was the really interesting quote from Senator Holly quote, I'm not surprised by these latest allegations because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of a grudgingly admitted to us in the briefing. It's not good. None of it's good. We want to get to the bottom of this.
I think it's disturbing. Senator Jillibrand, also, who has been a real leader on the topic, says quote I have no idea. I'm going to do the work and analyze it and figure it out. We need to look at whether there are rogue special access programs that no one is providing oversight for. The goal for me will be having a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these special access programs actually exist.
So are if there are special access programs out there that are somehow outside of the normal chain of command and outside the normal appropriations process, they have to divulge that to Congress.
Now.
The reason why that is so important is that one of the allegations here that's come forward Crystal is that there is actually basically rogue spending and budgeting going on outside of the normal system in order to cover up what Jillibrand is a legend. There which are unique special access programs that the American people have never been notified about, nor do they have any overside of including of Congress. This kind of gets to maybe why the Pentagon Path
can't pass any audits. I'm not saying that this isn't just it's just UFOs like that's the entirety of it. I'm saying things are designed in such a way such that assessing and auditing and you know, taking it an an actual note of where the money is going. It's probably to the benefit of several black programs that are out there. And what really Dave Grush is alleging is that this thing is going on for decades, which would fit with a pattern of cover up of inside of
the Pentagon. So that's number one that I wanted to bring everybody. Number two is an equally fascinating piece from Vanity Fair. Let's go and put this up there on the screen and it gives a little bit of the background. Why did the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico not publish the report that was brought forward outlining Dave Grush's allegations. So as they lay out, you know, Ralph Blumenthal spent forty five years on staff at the
New York Times. Leslie Keene literally wrote with Ralph Bloomenthal the twenty seventeen story on UFOs that debuted the New York Times. Why did they turn it down? Well, according to Charlotte Clin, she's a media reporter over there who spoke with some people behind the scenes. The Times straight up decided not to publish this piece.
Crystal. They just decided, Nope, we're not touching this. They tried to.
Report it but weren't able to get to the bottom. The second thing is the Washington Post is denying. They're like, we didn't turn it down. They're like, what it is is that we were reporting it out, as in they had accepted the piece or not accepted it, but they'd looked at it and they were like, well, we want to hammer this out, we want to ask some more
senators and stuff about it. Well, what Leslie Clean and Ralph Blumenthal are saying is that the reason why it ended up here in the debrief is that politico of the Washington and the Washington Post did not want to allow enough time or wanted to allow way more time
to add more context and facts. The issue is that Grush's identity apparently was beginning to leak out in the UFO community and he was getting content acted by some interesting people who are out there, and so Leslie Keen and Rob Blumenthal said it was of the utmost importance to get this out as soon as humanly possible because his identity would otherwise leak, they would lose.
You know, the scope of the story and the control on the story.
Yeah, that's ultimately why it ended up over there at the debrief, but it is clear the Times just just straight up turned it down, which you know, look, this could be the scoop of the century, you know, if it all ends up being true and for some reason, there's clearly a lot of squeamishness that's going on. You know, I'm in contact with people in the UFO community, researchers and others. I know that sounds funny, but these are
very serious people, Okay. And what they've told me to Crystal is behind the scenes, a lot of media outlets, individual reporters, they're interested, but from the top down, they're like, no, you can't cover this. You can't have any real scrutiny of this at all, which you know, to me, I'm reading this quote from Holly, from Jillibrand and all this, I mean, it seems pretty real. It seems very real that they're taking not I mean, show me one of them that says this guy sounds like a crank.
Every single one.
Said, hey, we got to take this real seriously. I mean, they know they know cranks from non cranks.
Whenever they have a lot of interaction with cranks their colleagues. Fact, my guess is that there's just there's such a so much like decorum and like appearance humping over at the New York Times, that they're just like afraid of looking ridiculous, you know. And so even though they could have reported it out, even though I mean, these are serious, credible reporters, yes, with a track record, who ended up reporting out this piece.
So this isn't just like some you know, crank weirdo who's obsessed with UFOs Like these are you know, real legitimate journalists that The New York Times has experience working with too, by the way, And so that would be my guess is they just like they're afraid of looking ridiculous. They're saying, afraid of stepping outside of the bounds of what you're supposed to think and what you're supposed to.
Say, so they just take a path.
We they didn't even come up with an excuse the posting and political We're like, yeah, we totally would have done it, but it just didn't have the time.
Here's another reason why it's so important, you know, Look, you cannot dismiss some things that are just straight up facts. Friend, Jeremy Corbel and George Knapp. They released actually one of the forms of the disclosure of urgent concerns and the complaint of reprisal actually from Dave Grush, which is signed by him, completely unclassified and also signed by his lawyer. Let's go ahe and put this police guys up on the screen. This is a screenshot from what Jeremy Corbel
released over on the Weaponized podcast. And as you can see here, I mean read the allegations that Dave Grush says here. Mister Grush previously served as a fully cleared member of the United States Government UAP Task Force. He has direct knowledge that certain ICY elements have purposefully and intentionally withheld and concealed UAP related classified information from the
US Congress. He has direct knowledge that this information has been withheld and concealed by the involved IC elements two purposefully and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP program. UAP is another way of saying UFO. And he said specifically that in July twenty twenty one, he constantly confidentially provided UAP related classified information to the Department of Defense
Inspector General. This is literally almost over a two year process that has been playing out behind the scenes, and we have here his genuine signature by his lawyers that he's testifying before this, and that has been brought forward as part of a whistleblower complaint given to the Inspector General, which was then received and said that they were urgent and they needed to be looked into. I mean, I don't know what else we can really lay out for people.
And yet behind the scenes, also what we have seen is the Pentagon is continuing basically to call him a straight up liar. The Pentagon and the UAP tasks for Susan go who is one of the spokespeople over there. She came out and she was just like, yeah, this is totally untrue. There's no existence of any of these. United States Air Force came out with a statement just being like, yeah, look, ever since Project Blue Book and all of that closed the door, there's no reason that
we should even be looking into this. I mean, the cover up is happening in plain sight. The only hope we have are these congressional representatives and whether they're actually going to get to the bottom of it. But I mean, really, what we're looking at here is a vast conspiracy of people who have been covering this up now for decades, special access programs or grushes, straight up psychotic. All these other people that have come forward to Michael Schellenberger and
all of that. Look, yeah, maybe they're just stone cold crazy. It's very possible. It's certainly possible. But watch the interview. Maybe maybe Look, I've seen hucksters out there before, but this many people, this level of seriousness, the testimony to his character and all of that, the fact that he was vetted by Jeremy Corbel, by Leslie Keen, by Ralph Blueman.
These are all people who've been met a lot of crazy people out there, you know before, and they don't just bring these things forward without any recourse.
I believe him. I believe him whenever he talks.
So what do you say to Like in Vanity Fair, they were like, Okay, you have a track record of a credible person. You have other people who are corroborating your claims. But where's the evidence, you know, where's the like, where's the photo, where's the material, where's the something? Because I do think it's reasonable for people to say, like, Okay, this is an unbelievable, Like it's a literally unbelievable claim.
And so in order for us to take this seriously, you're gonna have to give us a little something more than just some chitty chat.
Well, guess what, it's classified. I don't think everybody keeps forgetting that. He has to come forward through the official whistleblower process. He can't just leak classified information. They're gonna lock him up. They're gonna throw him in jail.
So he can't.
First of all, he even said, I never saw anything. I just saw the existence of the program. That's not what he's alleging. What he's alleging is I know these programs exist. I'm not saying I saw it. He's never claimed to be some sort of eyewitness. He said, I've seen people would testify the forward. Okay, so we need those names and we need to get them under oath and bring them before Congress. But what he has claimed first,
that's I'm glad that you brought that up. He has to deal with the US government and their classification regime. If he leaks something like that, it's the easiest pretext in the world to throw him in jail literally for the rest of his life. Look at Edward Snowden or Julian Assange about what's happening to them.
Would you have confidence about bringing that forward? No, yeah, you absolutely can't.
Sol So they could even go after him just for what he's already revealed.
I mean, from what I've understood, you know, it's not like they're making his life all that easy right now.
So look, let's just keep all of this in.
Mind, you know, as we move forward, and as we continue to ask our congressional representatives to actually take up the mantle and you know, maybe try and get to.
The bottom of this.
All right, Tager, what are you looking at?
Well, if you were.
To go back to the original days of the World Wide Web and the promise of the Internet and tell everyone what the world would look like today, they.
Would be stunned. They would be dismayed.
The Web, in its original conception, was to be a free marketplace of ideas and a tool for destroying established institutions to circumvent the center of power. At first, that was kind of true, but over time we saw that established institutions either co opted the Web or worse that.
The new institutions of the Web.
From the early days became their own centers of power. The Googles, the facebooks, the Microsofts, the Apples, the Amazons. They replaced the original major institutions. They became behemits in their own right, touching the lives of almost every American citizen, and often the lives of almost every citizen of every developed country on the globe.
This isn't just a touch either.
We're talking about our ability to communicate, to enter our homes, to remit payment, to use transportation.
All of this it these days, relies.
In some ways on these companies, and so these companies impartiality is vitally important. For the first two decades or so their existence, it really wasn't even an issue. It wasn't thought of. They seemed to just be utilities. Your ability to be a customer of Apple or Amazon or Google didn't have anything to do with your social or your political views. But then there was a great awokening. It happened everyone had to take a stand. The election
of Trump only poured gasoline on that fire. Suddenly the companies themselves, they're not just utilities anymore. They started to kick people off their services for reasons that had nothing to do of whether they could pay or not, and this set up a new dystopia, an almost private social credit score system where at any time, for any reason, your ability to exist as a normal human being in twenty twenty three can just be cut off for wrong
think or even alleged wrongthink. The latest example is so crazy it is almost difficult to even wrap your head around. It revolves around a Baltimore man's recent experience with Amazon. Brandon Jackson. He's a Baltimore resident who on May twenty fifth found himself in a weird predicament. He couldn't log in to his Amazon account, and it wasn't just a nuisance. The issue was his Amazon account was linked to his smart home devices. It was run by the Alexis system.
No Amazon, no smart home. So he did some digging. It appeared he had received an email the day before from Amazon from an executive asking him to call the company. He was mystified, since when do you need to call Amazon? It almost seemed like a prank or a phishing scam. After he gets on the phone with the Amazon executive, he discovers the delivery driver of a package on a day before reported hearing a quote racist remark As he dropped his package off at Jackson's home. Now, it's important
to understand a few things here. Number One, Jackson himself is a black man. Number two, he was living in a Baltimore neighborhood, also predominantly black. Number three, most important of all, Jackson was literally not at home, nor was anyone else in his household at the time of the delivery,
an alleged incident. Luckily, he was actually able to gain access through a third party to his smartphone smart home doorbell footage, and he verified that the automated response after delivery driver rang the bell was quote, excuse me, can I help you? The driver reported the remark was also wearing headphones at the time of the incident. Jackson believed that he somehow had misheard it while wearing those headphones.
Jackson compiled multiple video angles from directions to verified had occurred, and he submitted this evidence to Amazon, but he had to wait days before his account was restored. All of this was verified by YouTuber Luis Rossman. Now, the company did not even apologize to him. They did not acknowledge any fault, quite literally rendering his entire system useless that
he used to run his home. Now I know that people out there who can't even get into their house without Alexa or can't even use their TV, what would they do?
And for what? The guy didn't say anything?
The moronic delivery driver misheard an automated remark. Does that mean from now on all of us are literally at the mercy of hearing an Amazon delivery driver driver how what they might or may not hear onto whether our account can exist or not. It's easy to say, yeah, this guy's an idiot, why is he relying entirely on Amazon for his house? But realistically, how many options do you really have out there?
For a smart doorbell that's easy to use?
Sure, you can use your own you can do your own research, you could rig everything up locally. Who has the expertise, in the time, the money to do that? Or take smart home an Amazon out of it? What is you about your I Message account for if you use an iPhone, your Gmail account or your Google Drive, were Microsoft account that you may use for your business. All of us, it seems, are simply one fake accusation away from being cut off from a vital part of
our lives or our business. The world really saw how precarious this all was after January six.
You can hate what happened.
You can still be alarmed, though that parlor, a social media site we now know is not really central at all to planning the January six attack was simultaneously nuked from the Apple App Store and basically removed from Amazon Web Services. Prior to that incident, most people it didn't even know that was possible. Amazon Web Services was like a utility, but it's not a utility because it's not governed by any laws.
It's a private company. It can do whatever it wants.
Same with the way that our payment processing companies like Visa and MasterCard are. They can simply just not accept you as a customer if they don't want to, and right now their services have been pulled mostly from fringe actors. But that's just how starts the architecture for a private social credit score system.
It's already here.
You can be locked out of your phone and your smart home, your bank, and you will have no right or recourse to contest what happens to you. In many ways, you actually have more rights when you were accused by the government than you do when you're threatened by the might of corporate power.
In this country.
In the meantime, remember, anytime you willingly sign up for any of these services, you're signing up for something else too. That's the iron hand of fake justice. In the event, should you ever be accused, how crazy is this? He didn't even say anything.
He did not And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Chrissel, what are you taking to look at? Well?
Guys? Once upon a time, student athletes at top colleges were treated more as indentured servants than as the remarkable competitors that they are. While their schools and TV networks all profited off their hard work and grueling schedules, the athletes themselves, they were denied any opportunity to share in the fruits of their labor.
Then everything changed.
In twenty twenty one, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of student athletes who were challenging limits on internships and other educational benefits that schools could use to lure them. And that decision opened the door for a whole lot more. As Justice Kavanaugh wrote at the time, traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA's decision to build a massive money raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not
fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate.
The NCAAA is not above the law.
Now.
The NCAA, seeing the writing on the wall, decided that rather than being forced into actually directly compensating student athletes, they would change their rules and they would allow athletes
to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. So athletes could nab sponsorship deal as they could monetize their social media, thereby enabling at least some of them to earn real money off of their prowess, including athletes and sports that don't have a sational league waiting to pay them big bucks after their college career, and they all lived happily ever.
After, Right, Well not quite.
Did you actually think capitalism was going to lead to some noble, perfect meritocracy. Come on, guys, this is America at the height of influencer culture, and sex sells a whole lot more than your.
Actual athletic prowess. According to a new report from The Free.
Press, the top female in particular college athlete earners are not the top in the sport.
They are the.
Hottest girls with the savviest social media presence. The reporter dubs this dynamic the NCAA's hot girl problem. In particular, they highlight the Cavender Twins lean blonde twin basketball players who transferred from Fresno State to University of Miami in order to be closer to the limelight just to become a Division one college athlete. Let's be clear, it's a
really impressive accomplishment. So I'm not trying to take anything away from these ladies' ability, but they're clearly not being paid for their basketball skills so much as their skill at frolicking in a bikini on a beach. After all, as the article points out, top women's basketball players average and nearly thirty points per game. Now, Hayley Camder scored about twelve points per game. It was pretty impressive. Her last year at Miami, Hannah average about four points per game.
Another top female earner, Olivia Dunn, is an excellent gymnast. It was distinguished herself at Louisiana State on the uneven bars in particular. But it's not like she's Olympian caliber good at the sport. She is, however, Olympian caliber good at Instagram, where she posts exactly like your typical Instagram
model and has wrapped up over four million followers. The branding incentives on the men's side are apparently a little bit different, seemingly a bit more related to actual athletic performance, but even here ultimately all comes down to your ability to brand, and for the guys, having a famous last name that seems to be the ultimate trump card there. The top earners on the men's side are Lebron James's son Brownie, and Peyton Manning's nephew Arch.
Of course, none of this should have been remotely.
Surprising to anyone who actually thought it through. In fact, I remember years ago there was kind of a similar panic about the fact that tennis player and A Kornakova was one of the best known and highest paid female athletes in the world, even though her tennis ranking topped out at eighth in the world and she never actually won.
A singles title.
But she was gorgeous, and she was blonde, and she knew how to work a camera, even though this was the pre social media age. No casual scroll through the list of top paid women's athletes today reveals a remarkably similar dynamic. Sponsorship deals aren't just about appearance, it's more about overall brand. But being hot certainly doesn't hurt. Just ask number three on the list freestyle skier Eileen Goo, who is both an incredible Olympic gold medalist and also
exceptionally beautiful. Number one on the list actually in twenty twenty two was tennis player Naomi Osaka, who has a look and a story that fashion mags fell all over themselves to feature. Brands aid it up completely. She's currently ranked in the four hundreds in tennis, but as of last year at least, she was the absolute top in terms of female earnings. Now, I don't think any of these people, not the covender twins or osccer or the cute gymnast girl Instagram model, I don't think they should
feel bad about any of this. As they say, don't hate the player, hate the games. Haley and Hannah, they were asked about the fundamental unfairness of their fame and fortune as opposed to other superior, more impressive athletes, and they were appropriately apologetic about the system and about their privilege.
Hannah told the Free Press quote, I mean.
Obviously, yes, this is a touchy subject, but I think that we are privileged in a way. Obviously we don't deal with the same things that other women deal with or other people deal with, and that's just how our world is, and it's awful. They also don't expressed an awareness of how fleeting their Instagram model coom sports star celebrity might actually be. After all, they just graduated and
they are not headed to the WNBA. So an uncertain future in a fickle capitalist marketplace where reblans can die in an instant that's already staring them right.
In the face.
To me, the whole situation is pretty revealing. Shows the distance between what we tell ourselves we value merit, hard work, excellence, and what we actually value. After all, these sponsors and these athletes, they're just responding to what the human beings who make up the market actually want. It also shows you the kind of twisted supposed meritocracies are actually built, even in the best of cases.
In the free market.
On Wall Street, for example, we would theoretically, an ideal world want to reward stability, ethics, competence. Instead, cheaters and reckless risk takers win the price. In corporate America, we want to reward innovation concern for employees, but instead we reward the biggest ladder climbing psychopaths who are best at ringing markets into monopolies. Don't be mad at these girls for getting their bag. Still better that at least some
athletes can monetize their labor in some way. But let's not pretend this is anything approaching economic power for the vast majority of extraordinary student athletes.
Sager.
As you know, and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. We're very excited to have the panel back here on Breaking Points.
We got too historic.
He's an historic moment.
Many people are saying, We've got two fantastic guests. Ryan Gerdosky's a political consultant and author, and we've got Sam Mangold Lennett.
He is a staff editor over at the Federalists.
Guys, we've been hyping this one up big, so we appreciate you. You're a first thing in studio, guests, I already think it looks pretty nice. Let's go and see that beautiful wide shot people.
Oh yeahs operate than the old set one you would have guests on.
I'm loving it a lot.
Okay, So the reason you guys are here is we wanted to do a panel about America First, the case for Ron DeSantis and for Trump. And it's I think an interesting way to approach it because the way that most of the media talks about this, they leave kind of the policy out and then they just focus on the politics. We're actually going to put the politics second and focus a little bit on a policy. Ran I want to start with you. You're somebody who's been active
in the movement now for quite a long time. You're somebody who no, you're not old, he's not old.
It looks great here on the Capra.
But Ryan, you were somebody who were making the case on America first, even very very early days twenty fifteen onwards, somebody who's voiced some support now for Governor Ron de Santis.
So I think it'd be valuable to start with.
You and kind of layout what is America first, and why does Ron Desant just kind of fit into that vision. Well.
I think that we've had now several decades of the people running our government putting working class people last and oftentimes working for the idea for their own ideas and their own narratives about globalism or international organizations, international peace missions. And lost in that is the fact that working class people in this country, they have died earlier than they have in decades. They're poorer than they have been in decades.
They don't have real material wealth as they had. A lot of their children who have famed these wars and are now coming back addicted to fedanol. I think that I think that Trump did a great job at breaking through the Republican narrative, the long standing Republican ARA and the dates back to Reagan. However, when he was president, he didn't do many of those things. He hired people that he either was related to or that was brought to him by the RNC, and that was really really
bad for a lot of things. We never got a wall, we never got most of his immigration policies. The factories jobs that had come back, they didn't go to the Midwest. We didn't get infrastructure. I mean, Washington lovespent money, he couldn't even get them to spend money on infrastructure. And I think we need somebody more capable and more understanding of how to use the lovers of power in the direction we want to go.
And I think that's Ron Desanta's.
Sam, why don't you go ahead America first kind of how do you disagree with anything that Ryan just laid out there, and then give us the case for Trump within the America First framework.
Yeah, so I agree with what Ryan said about the left behind Americans. I think of it as a complete and utter prioritization of the people who really are the better rock of the nation. You know, working class Americans grow the food, They build the stuff here, or at least they used to build the stuff here before we stop building stuff here. I think there are valid concerns about staffing in the former Trump administration, and I think a lot of those concerns will be remedied moving forward
should Trump be the forty seventh president. But I do understand the concern I think it's also imperative to note that the political moment we're in in the conservative movement is entirely because of the Mega movement. It's entirely Trump's paradigm that's built around his brand, or not his personal brand, but his political movement.
So, Ryan, let me push you a little bit on DeSantis here, And obviously, like I don't really have a dog in this fight.
You guys are on different team than me.
But in terms of DeSantis, his legislative track record is very much of that standard no conservative. You know, he's many times talked about or he wants to cut so security and raise the age, he wants to cut Medicare and you know, debt and the deficit, and you know, it was very much in line with sort of the standard views on foreign policy, the kind of John McCain type neocon.
Views on foreign policy.
So and even now, it's not like what he's running on is a restoration of the working class. He's running you know, we're going to make Florida's the place where what goes to die. And he's fixated more on the cultural side of the conservative spectrum. So what makes you think that he fits with that working class vision that you.
Had well when he was governor. One of the things that he did Forlorida is a very expensive state to live in. Now, there's a lot of people who moved there was. He did the hometown Heroes Law, which is if you're a nurse, or if you're a firefighter or a policeman or a teacher and you have to live close to the centative a very expensive place, the state helps paper your down payment of your house. He suspended
sales taxes on baby items for working class mothers. They did a lot of stuff that was towards working class people. Is he running and messaging on it the correct way.
No.
I like to sit there and seem to do more. But I think that the intentions and the conversations that he's having, I think there's some in capable of actually executing that. It's going to be the Santas more so than Donald Trump.
Well, so that's Sam. Let's talk about the staffing that you were saying. Ryan and I were quite literally covering it a lot of it at the time. I personally observed interviewed Trump four sepperate times. He always seemed to care much more about his own personal issues than really kind of the movement issues that you're talking about. You
described it his movement and not as personal. What makes you think that given the way the demands, loyalty tests and hiring his relatives who don't necessarily face the hemergrad but who don't close Crystal they are let's just let's yeah, I will let Riot say that.
Yeah. But you know, I think that's a fair criticism.
What gives you the confidence that Jared Kusher is not going to come right back into the White House Rice's previous won't be the chief of staff again? Why do you have such confidence in a second term rather than what happened in the first term and we all saw it.
So in regard to Jerry Kushner, I think he's distanced himself pretty far from this go around, just for whatever personal reasons. There's also the whole, you know, punished Trump arc aspect of it. There's the whole drive for I don't say revenge, but the want for a comeback type thing.
They are.
He's surrounding himself, from my understanding, with people who are better able to sniff out the land mines, which frankly should have been from the get go, But being a political outsetter, there's a bit of naivity with that. So my understanding is that with a healthy dose dose of skepticism and cynicism, they'll be able to better replaced their feet and they were the first time around.
Ryan, what's your pase totally disagree with that.
I mean, he's got Christmas Slivida, who is the chief political person, the guy who was from Paul Ryan's campaign and he ran Tony Gonzalez for Congress and Ohio who voted for impeachment. It's his number one political guy right now. AFPI American Principal of America. Whatever the whole AFPI think tank is, they're going to staff the White House. They were created from Jared Kushner's number two in the White House.
So it's all Jared Kushner people left and right. And Trump's demand for an arc for a redemption is not that he's going to finally give into his base. It's going to finally earn love from the media. That's who he's really appealing to. I mean, Trump would much more care about a positive headline from Maggie Haberman then from the Daytona Weekly, and like that's just the truth. So when he gets in there, I mean, what was he working on right before he left office?
An amnesty?
There's no evidence whatsoever that he wouldn't just do that because he's finally going to get the love from the morning, Joe will have a great segment on him saying, Wow, Donald Trump, he finally did. He'll get all the love he finally wants from the people who hate him the most.
Which is all he craves.
And there's that sociopathic cynicism.
That he just can't help himself.
He can't control his his fingers on truth social he can't control his mouth in public. There's no evidence whatsoever he's gonna be able to control anything. And you know, and Jarald will be going to foreign countries, probably bribing them for more money like he did with the Kataris and the Saudies, so like he's Hunter Bider without the kids and the hookers. Like that is basically what you're looking at with the Trump family. And there's only so much more that we could sit there and say, no,
this time, he's going to get it right. He's seventy seven. Now that's the magic number.
What do you say, Sam, I mean, I totally understand the cynicism.
Yeah, but I would just highlight that I don't I mean not to you know, bring the personal personalities into it.
I don't see how.
Any Republican administration would be able to avoid any land mines put by bureaucrats or the deep state or whatever. I just don't see how it is Santis administration can back sniff things out.
That actually kind of gets to the question I wanted to ask both of you guys, which is, it's hard for me to see why you have any faith in either one of these guys to actually deliver for the working class when.
You know we've seen post Trump.
First of all, Trump's major accomplishment in office is a giant tax break, too, like the wealthiest Americans overwhelming.
Well, he let criminals out of prison too. Don't forget that was a second.
I support criminal justice reform, but I know you have a different position on that. But I mean, but that's his biggest accomplishment in office is a giant tax cut. Why because that's all the infrastructure that backs the Republican Party. You know, they had that tax cut. He's incompetent, but they had that tax cut locked and loaded, ready to go. And those are the still the institutions that run the Republican Party. And you see it with you know, the
current House Republican Caucus. Yeah, they were sort of shamed into claiming, oh, we're not going to touch those security in Medicare state headline today, they're plotting like, okay, well, how can we actually cut social Security and medicare? The elites in the Republican Party have not changed. NA say this is backed by those elites. I mean his you know, he's very it's very much a donor play from Ronda Santis.
Trump has more grassroots based support, but there's no track record for him actually delivering on any of the things that might help working class people. So it's just not clear to me why you would think either.
Of these people would deliver it.
But if it was a donor play, Desandas would not have done e verify. The donors are screaming, don't do it. They wouldn't have done the pro life thing.
Folded on Ukraine, right, I mean he got pushed back on Ukraine. He was uncomfortable. Was that clearly was pressure from the drum. Just look where he gets his money. I mean, that's why I'm saying it's a donor play. Is just listen, we all know how Washington works, right, I guess you know that those are the people whose calls he will take. Those are the people calls they complains not even running on the things that you want him to run on. So what makes you.
Think that he's gonna like, what makes you think.
That if you're not even if you run on it, there's like a small chance you might do it when you're off, you're not even talking about it, like it's.
Not gonna happen.
Okay, there are three things that the donors said don't do this year Disney.
He did it. He verified he did it. Abortion, he did it.
So what evidence is there that he's going to cowtow to the donors? And Nikki Hilly's criticism to him was you got money from them, how could you possibly hurt them? Come to South Carolina Disney? That was her little like, how dare you defy the donors?
That's her attack.
So if he's balance the donors, he's doing a bad job.
That's a fair point. He's kicked on some of their stuff. Crystal's right that he did fold a little bit on Ukraine, which was different.
He doesn't have a very very well thought out policy, and he said point blank it might be over by the time it become president.
So I.
Liked that.
Unfortunately, so given that though Ryan, in terms of the donor support, it is on you know Ken Griffin, many of the other elites, billionaires in the Republican Party, they do support Rond DeSantis. How do you why do you have confidence that he will be better able to kick their influence than Trump did.
If you look at what donors have said about him, it's the constant he doesn't take our phone calls he does. That's what the billionaire from New York, the Greek guy, he's like, I'm not giving him because he doesn't take my phone calls. It doesn't return of my phone calls. It's a constant complain about him. He's not personal. He doesn't show up at my events.
That's the thing about him being like socially awkward basically.
But it's not socially awkward. Well, that's the accusation I've been. I mean, it wasn't that socially awkward. I know people way wars, but go to the streets of Washington. Yes, that's true, but it's not that it's not social. It's not he's not owned by them. And if he was, I mean, he verified. Is one of the hardest things you could do in Flora. Between the agricultural lobby, the tourism lobby, and the construction industry, and he still managed
to do it. And they were all pressuring him and the Florida GOP, and he did it and he was like, no, you can't have illegal stealing jobs from American workers. And I mean it got past amazingly because I didn't think it was going to right.
So Sam, I think that's also a fair point though, is that while Trump was in office, Steve Schwartzman's on the phone, Rupert Murdock's on the phone, he loved getting the praise from all of the donor class, like while he was there. I actually person witnessed it whenever some of these guys were there, and the way you would suck up to them, the fortune five hundred CEOs.
Why do you have confidence that's not going to happen this time around?
Oh, I want to push back on something real quick. I think a major reason why DeSantis was able to accomplish a very successful and great legislative agenda was because he had a very ideologically aligned of Florida legislature. There's no guarantee that success would translate over to to Congress. That success was able to be achieved because Florida was aligned with him and coalesced around him. I am very skeptical that success could be achieved at the national level.
I hope it could, but I don't think it would be as smooth as butter as it was in Florida.
Absolutely true.
But what you could do is you could do a schedule f and start firing people who are bureaucrats. There's things an executive actually can do that can fire bureaucrats. They can move agencies to different locations and let the bureaucrats not want to go to the Middle Omaha or whatever, for sure, and that's what Trump for that one I think was Interior or something the fear of land man, but yeah, that's what he did, and move them out of DC and people did not apply for their job.
Again.
I mean, there's things that you could sit there and do as the executive. You could do schedule there's a couple of schedules you could do to sit there and get rid of bureaucrats who defy you and hold you back.
That's totally possible.
Is it possible every legislative agenda through with a sixty vote threshold? Probably not, But with a lot of the issues that I care about, immigration, trade, foreign policy, you don't need Congress.
Let me just write the last thing Ryan on this part, and then I want to move to the horse race part and look at the poles and all that good stuff. But I guess Ryan, when I look at DeSantis and try to take my own like ideological view out of it, I just see a guy who's trying to find the spot for like.
He's twisting in the wind.
I mean, when it was cool to be a Reagan Conservative and a Neocon, that's what he was. Now he sees the rise of Trump, He's like, Ah, that's that's the.
Thing I need to get in on.
So let me try to be that thing, and let me try to copycat Trump and even his mannerisms and whatever he would try to copy rhetorically. Okay, And so what gives you confidence that, if you know, the worm turns a little bit more and some of the issues that you care about fall out of fashion again, and he's under pressure from whoever, from the public, et cetera, that there's actually a core ideological commitment to any of this.
Well, a lot of people try to be like Trump after twenty sixteen, and what they thought being Trump was was being an asshole on social media and being allowed and abrasive and still voting for tax cuts.
And that's it.
Like the Maga inc brand that some of the worst politicians in the country have on them is literally just Bushism with a different bumper sticker. What I and a lot of governors do the same thing too. Dessanta's didn't do that. Dsanda's really reformed education. It wasn't just about black and school choice and don't worry about it and whatever.
He got into the policy weeds. I did.
I do my school board elections. I have done over three hundred nationwide. The only two elected officials have ever called me to ask me about it, and one was de sand As.
He was the first one.
So he really does care about process and in depth things and he does not have to go as far as he has. When did we ever think, as in the two thousands, that Florida would be considered the free state in Texas would end?
Yeah? That I think that's a.
Massive change under one person's administration, only one person.
That's round to say, Sam, I want to actually give you a similar version of that, which is with Trump. You know, like you said, we've all had experience with Trump. We've watched him change his mind constantly, both on the chorus issues to Republicans from like reagnite Republicans, but also even on trade, on many of these immigration, any of
these issues, amnesty. Considering that, why do you have confidence that this man will actually do even some of what you want him to do when he's in office when we already had four years. We didn't accomplish much of it. It wasn't just staff. Much of it was also up to him personally.
I think on trade in particular. In particular, it was one of the more consistent aspects. I think that's really his strong suit is the economic populism, and that's part of the reason why so many working class Americans are hopeful because of him. He actually represents, at least culturally, what they need, what they yearn for. You know, there is no obviously no guarantee in anything in politics. I'm not going to bet the house on anything, Yeah, but
I think there is. That is his strength is going to war for the economic populism. We got the USMC trade deal out of him, and that renegotiated NAFTA, which gutted the Midwest. I think that's a major reason to be optimistic for a future Trump administration.
All right, let's turn to the politics and control erm I actually want to start with.
I think it's the third.
Element showing Trump's losses in the midterms and how his candidates struggled, because for any of this to matter, your guys got to be able to win an election. And one of the cases that the Desantist team is trying to make is like, well, listen, we are the We don't have all of this ingrained hatred of more than half the country against us. We think we could win back some of the suburban voters or who whoever it is that we want back in the coalition, so we
are a better bet for the fall. And in fact, there is some evidence of that, given the fact that in the midterms, the Trump bat candidates performed very poorly.
The candidates who were you know.
The most in un stop the steal that appeared to be a real albatross. And on the other hand, Ron DeSantis one in Florida, which not so long ago was a swing state, and he won really easily, and actually all Florida Republicans did quite well. It was quite a
standout as opposed to the rest of the country. So what makes you think that your guy, as he's facing multiple indictments and all of this other chaos that constantly swirls around him and makes a whole lot of people hate him, what makes you think he could even make it back to the White House.
Well, I mean, the midterms were very disappointing. I don't think anybody would deny that. I don't think it's necessarily because of Trump himself. I think a lot of it is the political environment we were in. You know, you did have people who campaigned way too heavily on stop the steal, on it was stolen, things like that, And I do think Trump through punches he shouldn't have thrown like I think it was Dan Boddock in Uh I'm sure, yes, thank you. That was a fight that was totally unnecessary.
But you know, that's just how things shook out. In the case of Arizona, you know, there was their funding issues in general, campaigning issues in Michigan, there was the abortion ballot referendum that really boosted Gretchen Whitmer and hurt Tutor Dixon. Yeah, and then there were just you know, quirky personalities on ballots across the country.
I think.
A little too many memes on the official campaign pages. But I think the culture is a big driver for Trump. I think people are increasingly less motivated by actual nuanced political issues. I think they're more motivated by by vibes.
Yeah, no, I actually agree.
There's a reason why he got a boost after the indictment, after every single negative news.
Cycle boost the Republican primary, which general electorate.
It's I think a very very different.
Deal, right, yeah, right, And I see you want to tell me about the question. I don't know, Okay, it was just it was just I think on the Desantas front is I do think that his strongest case, at least somebody like me.
He's like, I'm a winner. You think you can call me whatever you want. But as you just said, he won Florida by twenty points. That's insane. Like within he won Florida by twenty points.
He is never, in his entire political career ever underperformed an election cycle. So when the state, when the nation was a D plus way year in t eighteen, he won by less than one all right. In his congressional runs, he always outperformed the nation.
So let's talk to you about the primary.
Let's go ahead and put the poll up on the screen of where things stand today.
That's the first element. Donald Trump at fifty nine.
Percent, and this is with the broader field, but it you know, still has him up over fifty percent. Ron de Santis at nineteen percent according to Morning consult Listen the polls, you know, they're take them with the grain of salt, but consistently the polls show Trump at this point with quite a sizeable lead. In fact, the polling looks pretty close to Biden versus RFK Junior at this
point in terms of where Ron DeSantis stands. So one of the things we've talked about here is when Trump gets indicted, as Sam just pointed out, it really seems to harden and coalesce Republican Party around him. You know, they see him as under threat, they want to rally to his side. Sucks up all the media oxygen. DeSantis is put in impossible position of basically having to like, you know, bend the need to him on the indictment
stuff and make it even more about him. So how do you actually win over the Republican Party and convince the base that they should want to move on from someone who they still really love and admire.
Well, the polls show that Desanta's is not negatively viewed. He's very favorite with you, and he as everyone's second choice. I think that the electorate on both sides of the aisle is very reactionary. They love who the media tells them to hate and it is They're not telling them to hate dissantas anymore, and that I think part of it. And also time has healed the wounds of Trump's losing in twenty twenty two so badly. Yeah, people have just kind of forgotten.
Oh yeah.
He nominated that insane man in Pennsylvania who said we should imprison women who want to get abortions and kick everyone off the voting rolls. That was the land was like, We're going to clear the whole voter rolls, and wed that crazy lady who vacuumed for him in Arizona as leadership.
Right, yeah, I like, I mean, I didn't even see Carrie like vacuumed for.
Before he walked on. She personally vacuumed. Oh, it's just and he just nominated the Wisconsin guy who was like
drooling from the mouth and the lady. The lady ran for Secretary of State of Alabama who's now running this Michigan brother who's now running the state party, and she's completely insane, and yeah, the is all everyone's forgotten, like, oh yeah, he lost and he lost bad, and he lost all these people and every state that he lost in twenty twenty, all of his canisl loss, with the exception of the Lieutenant Gonor of Georgia.
Herschel Walker didn't even want to run for office. Yeah, he was like, yeah, I'll do it. I guess.
I mean, I got nothing going on a Wednesday. That's literally the team that he assembled. So I think that you have to. I think Desanta's should be taking more adversary interviews.
How would you I think he has to because he has.
To take risks.
Yes, what do you think of like how he's handled the indict How would you advise him to handle these indictments? Because I do think it creates sort of an impossible situation for them because so much of the media focus is on it. It does I agree with you the base response to like, the media hates this guy, so we love him, and you know, not only does it suck up the oxygen, but if you're trying to defeat
this person. But you're spending a lot of time having to bolster what they're the arguments that they're making.
How do you get out of that?
Bubby?
I think the problem with the end, well, this indictment, the one in Florida is much of the one in New York. The New York one is a complete nonsense joke, but the one in Florida is.
Very it's more progressed.
Sixty sixty two and thirty thirty four of the indictment is literally I don't know how he's going to get.
Out of it.
But I think that having said that, I think that the one thing you said people are mad at the indictment not because they think Trump is a you know, a boy scout and he's so honorable and wouldn't do with this. It's that why isn't Hillary Clinton in jail? That's what frustrates them. I mean, just Sandon should sit there inside. Would press the intelligence. I'm intelligent, my FBI and my YEAH and my DOJ to reinvestigate Hillary Clinton breaking up information with hammers and also looking into Joe
and Hunter Biden. If there was an equal level of justice, people would not be this upset.
I think you're right, Ryan, So let's talk though, sam My last thing on politics of it.
The indictment is a problem.
As Ryan said, I mean you lay it out and look, both of us were very critical of the Manhattan indictment looking at all this being like, listen, this is bs, especially when you compare it to Florida and with the classified documents case in the general election. We have to admit there is still a lot of faith and you know, the rule of law, and you know when somebody's indeted, they're like, oh my gosh, you know, an alleged felon all this, how can Trump politically get past this specter?
As we appointed previously, it's about movement, It shouldn't be about him, but almost all of the coverage is about him and his personal issues. How does he get past that to a general election to the suburban voters who he actually lost in twenty twenty and were ultimately the reason why he lost the election.
I think it's going to rely on altern of the media. Brankly, I think it's going to rely on the Internet because obviously corporate media isn't going to cover it. It's not gonna You're not going to hear anything about you know, actual policy from CNN or MSNBCN.
No arguments, but they exist, right, and a lot of people, a lot of Boomers specifically, watch and those are the people who vote. And so you know for those people, you know, the people who I forget what the district is called, the things like Omaha Nebraska two or something like that, which Trump ended up losing in twenty twenty.
I mean, these were big stunarts because these were people who otherwise were also voting for republic or like Mitt Romney type Republicans who were willing to vote and cross for Biden for the first time in their lives.
Those people, they get pissed off from that. I just say one things.
From twenty ten to twenty sixteen, Republicans won the independent vote in every single election, and they have not won. Instance twenty sixteen, part of the reason Trump won was because America truly hated Hillary Clinton. Yes, and we have to just admit that that is part of it. They do not hate Biden the same. They think that he's too old, they think that he is too inefficient, they think that he is probably senile, and they have absolutely
no love for Kamala Harris at all. She is you know, black Asian Hillary, So that.
Is she's not anyway, we don't accept her daily week she's black raging.
So she's Black Asian Hillary, and that is problematic. And if the election is about Joe Biden, he is not going to win reelection. The only person who could take the attention away from Joe Biden is Donald Trump.
I think kind of circle back a little bit. I think a way for Desantist to major ly boot himself in the polls would be to, you know, offer a hypothetical pardon should Trump end up.
He's already done that. Yeah, he said I will pardon Trump from this. And I mean, if we're going to give everyone the Richard Nixon status quo and say every president is not going to go to jail, we're not going to be like other countries even first of all countries where prisions go to jail, right, then that's then that's the standard. Then everyone just that's just cause we get out of jump free card.
We don't.
We haven't seen, at least I don't believe we've seen the ceiling of DeSantis is pulling. It's still very early on and uh, you know this this morning, Consopt Consopt consult jeez. Uh so this was near the bottom of where he was pulling since it started tracking. Yea, So the ceiling I think is far from being reached and it's still very early on, so interesting to see what happens.
Well, I think that's fair and this kind of gets ran in my last question to you, can we throw the second element up there, guys, please on the screen where they were talking about how whether DeSantis is the Wine Track candidate or not?
What they get to here?
And it's actually an intelligent point, Ryan is it's so far the vast majority of DeSantis support, or really of non Trump support, generally comes from college educated Republicans who are much more likely to vote for Romney. So, as someone who has worked on the side of wanting to push the Republican Party in a more working class direction, you don't work for the Chances campaign, what would your advice.
To them be? How do they make sure that they don't have a one time I would say, we're not talking about Florida so much. Interesting. I'm so tired of hearing at Florida.
Really a Florida I don't want to most if I was going to move there. It's a great tourism, to sit there and say how free Florida is, how DEI is dyeing Florida, whatever is is. I need a big national vision. It wasn't in his book, it wasn't in his campaign thus far. You need to sit there and say what are you going to do. You can't plant palm trees in Michigan, that's just not possibility. So what are you going to do for the rest of the
country that doesn't want to live in Florida? The other forty nine states that has not been articulated that as well, And that vision has to include the fact that certain things have happened in the last eight years, including a Trump's president in four years, a violent crime up third for thirty years highs, and all deaths up thirty years highs. The cartel is still not being taken care of, the wall was never built, all these big things.
That are really part of both.
I mean, even Biden has now taken up a lot of you know, Trump stuff, which is like infrastructure whatever, But a lot of those jobs they're not going back to those places in eastern Ohio or western Pennsylvania or northern Michigan. Those towns are still decaying. They're going to you know, Atlanta, you know exactly, So it's gotta be some place something diffite like that.
And Sam, similar question to you to close things out here. You know, if you were to give advice to the Trump campaign about you know, they're they're in a pretty strong position in terms of the primary, but how do you take the edge off for a general election so that you got a shot at winning the electoral college at least ideally winning the popular vote when you have emotions so hardened against him.
Kind Of like what Ryan said, I think focusing on a national vision is imperative. You know, there's the agenda forty seven videos that he's been putting out that I think are pretty fascinating. They're pretty optimistic. Some of the things like flying cars, I don't think are quite achievable per se, But I think there's a lot of reason for hope in those videos. He was painting a vision for restoration, for renewal. I think giving people a reason
to hope is part of the part of Trump's major appeal. Yeah, like you said, it's vibes necessarily, not policy nuance, and that's part of the reason why he was such a attractive alternative to Hillary in twenty sixteen, and I think continuing to juxtapose himself to decay, to such aggressive decay and presenting himself, as you know, the golden Tower of renewal hopefully not a Tower of battle, would be a great opportunity to do so.
Okay, well, guys, we really appreciate you join us.
Thank you, thanks for your super appreciative to both of you guys for coming in, and really appreciate both your contributions.
Yeah, welcome back on the show any time, and I think the audience enjoyed the panel return. All right, that is it for us today here on Breaking Points. I hope you guys enjoyed it breaking Points dot com if you want to go ahead and help us out otherwise, we will see you all next week.
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