8/16/23: Trump Promises 'Irrefutable Report' On GA Indictment, Christie Passes DeSantis Poll, McCarthy Scrambles On Gov Shutdown, Narco Assassins In Ecuador, Blind Side Movie Lies?, Hillary Clinton On MSNBC, Pakistan Confirms Leaks

over Ron DeSantis. He's actually leading Ronda Santis. We're going to talk about that in one pole. The likelihood of a government shutdown increases by the day. We'll probably see some real threats of that going into the fall. Kevin McCarthy as new things to talk about on that, We're gonna talk about the cycle of tragedy in Ecuador, which is an important place to look at US policy. It's an important place to look at what's happening in South America,

Central America in general. And we're gonna be breaking down a little bit of both of our takes on what's happening with the Blindside controversy in Michael orr and the family who famously took him in whether or not there's truth to their story. We're going to get into all of it. I'm gonna be talking about Hillary Clinton weighing in on the Trump indictment in a very giggly interview with Rachel Maddow. And you're going to be talking about Pakistan again.

It was not leaked by Imran Khan. And also it's a nothing burger. So they were all three of self contradictory claims would be made it once and it seems like now they're finally giving up on the inauthentic claim. And we'll talk about the completely bizarre State Department response as well. But speaking of jailing political opponents, we've got number four for a good old former president Donald Trump. We've got rico charges. What do you make of the case that's being laid out.

the screen here. He posted a truth social yesterday morning, so Tuesday morning, saying that a large, complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete and will be presented by me at a major news conference at eleven am on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this conclusive report, all charges should be dropped against me and others. There will be a complete exoneration.

So Donald Trump is having a press conference where he is going to be, according to this truth Social post, putting on display, demonstrating and showing evidence for what he says is an irrefutable case that there was fraud in Georgia and all of the charges against him should be dropped. Now let's put a two up on the screen. There have been some interesting reactions from Donald Trump's fellow candidates.

Vivek Ramaswami said he called this another disastrous Trump indictment, and he also said, as someone who's running for a President against Trump. I'd volunteer to write the amick is briefed to the court myself. Prosecutors should not be deciding US presidential elections, and if they're so overzealous that they commit constitutional violations, then the cases should be thrown out and they should be held accountable. Ron de Santis said he's going to end the weaponization of federal agencies like

the DOJ and FBI. I think it's an example of this criminalization of politics. I don't think this is something that's good for the country. And then you know, you have your Asa Hutchinson's and Will Hurd who said things you know that this is like Donald Trump demonstrating he's fit for office, basically what you could expect from those to I think this is another great example of how

Ramaswami has a better colm strategy. Is somebody running in the Trump lane or the Trump adjacent lane than Rotten DeSantis, who's supposed to be running in like the Trump adjacent lane, the Trump but not Trump lane. Once again, I think Ramaswami had a better messaging strategy there than DeSantis himself did.

But as for the case itself, Ryan, I, as I read through the ninety eight page indictment from Fanny Willis had a pretty similar reaction to when I read through Jack Smith's indictment, which is that it's very dangerous to say you know that people were and this word comes up over and over again in both indictments, knowingly spreading

false information. So this is I think the predicate of both cases, and in Jack Smith's case, and a couple of times in Willis's case, she does show that there were people who knew they were spreading false information in certain particular instances. She also, in Jack Smith, also accuses people Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani of knowingly spreading disinformation information they were aware was false in times where I don't think they've proved, and I doubt they have the

evidence to prove that those people knew it was false. Now, I think it was grossly unethical because I imagine a lot of times they did realize some of this information was at best very very iffy. But to charge people for that without evidence, I think is a pretty terrifying precedent. There are cases where they're citing evidence in both of these indictments, and I want to be clear about that.

I also think that as a predicate for you know, going after a political opponent, which is something that we have generally steered away from in this country. People weren't happy when Ford pardoned Nixon, and you know, we can go back and think about that, we can think about what Coomi did with Hillary Clinton, but we've typically sort

of steered away from that in the United States. So if you're going to do it, I think it's sets a precedent that scares me a little bit to say, oh, well, of course they knew it was false without any evidence. In order to charge them with the conspiracy, and in order to charge them with the statutes that Fanny Willis is listing, you do need to prove that they knew it was false. So maybe she can do that. I'm pretty skeptical. What did you make of it, Ryan.

know they'll they'll take you down for that. But broadly speaking, under the constitutional umbrella, politicians have the constitutional right to lie their pants off, and they have a veiled themselves of that right for two hundred plus years, and they will continue to do it for as long as.

explain away what they did. But to me, the hacking, you know, trying to bust into the Georgia voter database going, which they sort of seem to imply they had some access to legitimately, but it wasn't really legitimate, Like this was not kind of public access that they were exploiting here.

And also the go you know, go and find me eleven thousand votes, and then also creating fake electors like if you create, if you make make if you run a fake ID business, if you run if you falsify mortgage documents, if you engage in that type of fraud, those are crimes, and so if they can prove that, I do think, then it does have to follow that it doesn't actually necessarily have to follow that they knew one hundred percent that the election was stolen, you know.

And what I mean is this, like, let's pretend that we can get inside of Donald Trump's mind and he really did one hundred percent believe that, you know, he beat Joe Biden in Georgia. He also knows that you have a variety of legal paths that you're able to take in the United States that allow you to challenge what you consider to be, you know, an unfair or a rigged election, and that's mostly going through the courts. They went through the courts, they failed. They knew that

that was the outcome. So even if at the end of all that they still believe that they were wronged, it kind of doesn't matter what you believe. Like, if you believe that you were unfairly convicted of burglary, it doesn't give you the right to break out of prison, even if you authentically believed and were even innocent.

certified and he lost by eleven thousand votes. They knew that rapid Berger told him that the news reported it. Everybody knew that he disagreed with it, right, But whether or not that was an authentic disagreement or not in some point besides.

Donald Trump similar things. But Jack smithan Willis say, well, because Brad Ravensberger and Rusty Bauers had told Donald Trump and his legal team, what they thought about the vote totals he knew, and then everything he said differently from that was knowingly spreading false information because somebody had told him that. But the fact is, and as these indictment show, he has legal experts telling him different things. And to your point, Ryan, it's one of those it's like, what

do we know about what Donald Trump actually believed? And that's where legally it gets in a different territory. For me, it just becomes it becomes really difficult to it becomes very difficult. The legal precedent for me becomes very difficult.

than say a week. You're always gonna have some type of motion or decision coming down in one of these different cases. And so Emily, on the one hand, I feel like this helps Trump in the sense that it rallies Republicans around him, also feel like it doesn't necessarily help him with a general electorate, which key can where he continues to erode support. So I'm wondering what your sense is of the politics.

I think it creates a lot ranker. We're gonna be talking about this in the Hillary Clinton block coming up in a little bit, and we can probably go back and forth out it more then. But when you look at this calendar and you look at what's happened since the first indictment came down in April, Donald Trump's numbers and the gap between him and any other candidate has gone up. So it helps Trump in the primary, might

not help him in the general. But the reason it helps him in the primary is that I think it's for the same reason it helps whatever candidate, likely Joe Biden is matched up with Donald Trump. This is the type of thing that energizes both bases, and then you have this middle of the country that's just like, well, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? I think Donald Trump is nuts, and I think he

has done all kinds of extra legal things. The other hand, I'm looking at Joe Biden, who's got all kinds of issues of his own, whether that's cognitive problems, whether that's Hunter Biden problems, whether that's the economy frankly, and so I just I mean, it makes me, it pains me for the country thinking of looking at that axios chart, looking at the calendar going forward, which if you're listening to this, if you find that axious timeline, it might

be worth looking up because it's incredible to look at how many court dates and how on earth even one person could balance a presidential campaign with these four indictments in all of these different jurisdictions. Over the next year or so, it is going to be I like, buckle up, because we're in for a pretty wild.

a stronger political position. And that's not to say I'm not trying to get into lockdowns or masking or anything, but just it devolved into something because in some sense he was being attacked as being you know, X, Y, and Z, and he lashed out and responded in ways that I think, you know, made it more difficult for the country to approach the serious crisis that was killing lots and lots of people. And so the problem is you just can't separate that from the things that make

Trump politically successful. You know, the things that make him successful are also his downfall. It's like a Greek tragedy that plays out every single day on true social now. And so you can't really have I just don't see how you can have one, the one part of Trump without the other part of Trump, which is where again, like a problem with both of these indictments Smith and willis legally and I think just as like a strategy as well, is that it's saying that Donald Trump was acting.

I think they're they're taking him as a rational actor.

Who you know, when the Secretary of State who's a Republican tells you something, you are like, oh, that is a very good piece of evidence that I lost the election, whereas with Donald Trump, you see over and over again, and people I've talked to say, if he believes anything, it's that he won that presidential election because he had Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and their people chirping in his ear saying stuff, and that's who he chose to believe. He's like a you know, he's a Twitter boomer. He

was a Twitter boomer. And so the the other thing I wanted to say, Ryan, is I agree with you completely on that Sidney Powell part about the Georgia voting machine. That is that's in the Fanny Walls indictment, and that is extremely diceing material that looks like it could be a real problem for her. Whether they got access to just like a password and it gave them access to the voting thing. That might be the case, but they

knew that they weren't supposed to have it. It sounds to me from the evidence, and we'll see what evidence is presented in court, but it sure looked like they knew they weren't supposed to be entering the voter database from the back end there, and so I think that is a pretty serious part of the indictment. Too.

files to leak to Wiki leaks. And so you know, if for everybody who talks about two different tiers of justice, we have to remember that too, that if anybody who tries to kind of penetrate an election system without legal access to it is committing a crime like that.

democratic president. There's nothing that a president can do to save Donald Trump from these charges, and obviously they're serious in nature. So that Fanny Willis is, if we put the next element up on the screen, A four, she has been The right is exploring Fanny Willis's history, as you know, it's sort of natural in a situation like this. But one thing that's come up, you see, this is

from Newsmax. They say she's an activist Democrat and her father was a member of the Black Panthers, which they described their Ryan as you'll enjoy in parentheses, Marxist Leninist

black power group. There you go. And so Fanny Wills to sort of come under the microscope, and the Telegraph did a pretty interesting deep dive on her, and I found interesting one quote they have here from a Georgia State University law professor who said she's really a tough on crime liberal, which is kind of a rare bird these days, but I think that's her brand. The Telegraph also notes, by her own admission, miss Willis is a

fan of Rico. She has previously used Georgia's expansive racketeering charges to prosecute cheating teachers that's a case that actually got some national headlines at the time. She won eleven convictions and national media attention in relation to the public school test score scandal. As the Telegraph notes there. I think she also had rico charges against young thug and she won. She pursued those charges and I think she

won in court now. Devin Franklin, an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights who spent twelve years in the Fulton County Public Defender's Office, said that using these laws drives quote, a narrative of violence in Atlanta that's not true, that's not necessarily reflected in the data, and has a tendency to sensationalize the cases. She's bent. Actually most of her career as an assistant DA down in

Fulton County. That's, as people know outside of Atlanta. It's the most populous county in Georgia, so obviously a hugely important political center of the state. She she beat a primary fight against her mentor, Paul Howard, who had been Georgia's first black district attorney. And so she comes takes out her mentor and she says she was She actually said her father was a former black panther that comes

from her. That's not like some weird digging. But I think that's when you have Newsmax calling her an activist Democrat and then the Telegraph saying she's actually a tough on crime liberal prosecutor. Those are obviously in tension right now. If you're an activist Democrat prosecutor, a lot of people think of you along the lines of like a Chesaboudine or Gascone. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Fanny Wills, who's like, hey, Ricos, let's just have

a Rico party. And these things seem to be intentioned so that the picture of Fannie Wills to me, at least as somebody who's not you know, in Georgia following politics for the last couple of decades, that's sort of a muddied picture.

had gone in Fulton County. And if she were just as straight up kind of partisan Democrat, she would never have taken on that that kind of case, and she certainly wouldn't have done it with the zealousness to bring in Rico, which then allows, to the point of some of her critics, allows you to criminalize some things because they're part of the criminal conspiracy that otherwise wouldn't be criminal acts on their own. And so she but you know,

she's she's good at what she does. Like she's got she's got the record to show it, and you know,

good for her dad. You know, Black Black Panther, you know, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense had you know, went in some crazy directions towards the very end, but you know, throughout much of its history was you know, a real real force for good and empowerment, uh and and particularly kind of stitching together civil society elements in the black community in the late sixties and early seventies.

So h yes, but you know, you come after the foreign president, You're going to certainly, you know, get get the spotlight from you know, not just outlets like Newsmax, but everybody.

word that would accurately characterize the indictment itself. But I wanted to ask you Ryan about Rico just sort of in general, as someone who's covered Rico for a while, what it means that she's invoking it here given the history of Rico and mob stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

So uh, to the extent that you can bring those laws to bear on, you know, entities that are trying to become private governments, and that's that's the interesting kind of link between a private gang of people that is trying to you know, overturn an election and a private gang of people that doesn't bother with elections and just kind of takes over a community by force. That's basically the same thing. And that's what a democratic society can have.

Like we we have established ways that you you know, are are able to get into government and we don't have mafias like I mean we do.

place in the Granite state, garnering nine percent support. DeSantis's support, on the other hand, fell to eight percent from seventeen percent in March. So check that out. That is a nine point decline for DeSantis. Christie's one point lead over de Santis. But this is actually a good point, and I'm glad that he'll put this because you don't always

see this in news coverage. That is within the polls plus or minus three point four percent margin of error, well within the margin of error there, which is pretty important. What is still outside of the margin for air from the margin of error is that big decline for DeSantis. There's you cannot you know, math away that giant decline in the same pole of New Hampshire voters from seventeen

to nine. That's really really brutal. Now, according to that pole, Trump still dominates the GOP primary field, as The Hill puts it, with forty nine percent support. You then have Tim Scott at six percent, Doug Bergham and Nikki Haley at four percent, Ramaswami and Parry Johnson at three percent and two perspective respectively, and then Mike Pence and Will

Heard each at one percent support. Now we have also thirteen percent of voters saying they are undecided, which is a good chunk, but not enough to make up that massive margin between Trump and everyone else. What did you make of that, Ryan.

do that, it does do that. But he's got such a hill to climb and he's facing such significant headwinds.

Iowa back in twenty sixteen. Cruz wins Iowa comes out of that with a lot of momentum, And I just again look at that and shake my head and like from maybe it's easier to see the forest from the trees when you're not like when you're a journalist and you're looking at this from the outside. But Ted Cruz

lost great. I'm glad Ted Cruz had a lot of momentum and Ted Crews barely beat Beto O'Rourke with the same consultant in Texas, And so I just don't it doesn't inspire if I were a Saintist donor, it wouldn't inspire a lot of confidence that that was the strategy, especially since it's Still, when you're looking overall at voters, it's such a huge margin. I would understand that if it was a much slimmer margin, But given that it's such a huge margin, I find that comple lely not persuasive.

Let's show Chris Christy. He's got to be feeling good right now, because again, when you're looking at Chris Christy and when he entered the race, it was sort of like, okay, great, Like Chris Christy's not going to win well if he's taking nine percent support away from all of the other candidates.

I mean, maybe that's why you have Mike pens in New Hampshire at one percent, because you have Chris Christie taking nine percent of the vote, and when you have everyone else sharing, you know, Trump's at forty nine percent and his next opponent is forty points behind at nine percent. When you have somebody like Christy eating into the vote, then that's a big I mean, that's a big chunk that would be spread out from other candidates. It's certainly

not enough to make anything up. But when you're trying to get financial support, when you're trying to get momentum, media attention, et cetera, et cetera. Christy's taking some of that up. So let's see how Christy was talking to a voter in Iowa just this week.

Because what he's saying, not even implicitly, but explicitly, is that if appeasing Trump had benefited him politically, in other words, if he hadn't prosecuted Jared Kushner's father and created a lifelong enemy in Jared Kushner, then he would continue to violate his principles and appease Trump as long as it, you know, benefited Christie politically. And so I get it, that's true, that's how he feels, But I don't quite I mean, I guess it sounds the way he says it.

And I wonder if he sees Donald Trump being one of the few people in American politics who sort of leveled with voters, at least purportedly or is ostensibly leveled with voters and said, listen, I know the system because I've been a part of the system, and let me tell you it's bad. I wonder if Christy sees that from Trump, sees that it's been successful with voters, and thinks that he can do it. I still don't think Chris Christy thinks he's going to win the Republican primary.

I think he's having a lot of fun sort of blowing it up, blowing up Donald Trump, if you know. Yeah, I think it feels like cathartic for him to be out there just trashing Trump with people who might otherwise support him. And I think it's kind of fun for him too, to muck it up for rond De Santis and everyone else, which, by the way, could be that could be something that actually just ends up handing the

nomination to Donald Trump. And I don't know that Chris Christie genuinely cares that it goes to Donald Trump, because if this is if this is Chris Christie's pitch to voters. If anything, it's interesting that he's at nine and Mike Pence in this poll is at like what one percent, because Mike Pence has the strongest argument that he stood up to Donald Trump on a moral level. On January sixth. I mean that is like Mike Pence's bread and butter

that he's leaned into and that's his pitch. Is that, like listen, at a certain point I had to say no, So that Chris Christy is more successfully making that pitch in New Hampshire not entirely surprising because he's not an evangelical conservative and he's more of like a Northeastern you know, sort of Maverick Republican than Mike Pence's, but it's still pretty interesting that like that's Pence's thing and Christy is getting into that lane.

So maybe Christy is seeing that that, Like, look, Trump was just completely open about his cravenness and people liked it. People felt like it was raw, it was He's just being straight with them, And so maybe Christie's trying to follow him in that past.

something else, each between eight and five percent. But if you're looking at the two biggest ones, so more than fifty percent of voters in New Hampshire say that their top issue is the economy or housing. And I think of those in the pretty much in the same vein, because obviously one affects the other that I don't know what answer Republicans have. I never hear Republicans talking about

the issue of housing affordability ever. I mean, that is just not something There are two things that voters care about a lot that Republicans never talk about, and housing and healthcare. It's not just that they don't seem to have a policy. Answer is that they aren't even talking about it. And you know, I think Democrats have their

own issues that they don't talk about as well. But for Republicans looking at that, looking at how important housing is, they needed if they don't want to have success in a general election, not just a primary, they need an answer to that.

bottom line. So at least they talk about it. But you're right, it is to have one in five New nsial voters saying that that's their top issue and to basically have no national conversation about any type of a federal legislation or federal approach to it is rather striking because housing is becoming the real kind of dividing question between the haves and the have nots, and it is it is becoming the thing that is just you know, making people feel so bleak about their about their future

because even as you know, consumer prices start to level out, you know, if you're still you're still paying jacked up rents over from the last couple of years, you know, you're that means you're still falling behind relative to a couple couple years ago, even as your wages are going up. So yeah, it's a huge, huge problem for both parties. But you're right, Republicans are just completely nowhere on that on that question. And it's interesting that it's in New

Hampshire or not. It's not a state you typically associate with kind of out of control rents.

economy is on shaky ground right now. And that's actually a good transition into our next topic, which is that Kevin McCarthy this week on a conference call with Republicans, said actually that he might go with a short term solution of funding the government in the fall, so meaning he would be potentially supportive of a continuing resolution in September that kind of kicks the can into December when

it comes to funding the government. All this is to say that the threat of a government shut down is very real going into the fall, so real that Republicans are obviously already starting to talk like this. So let's run a clip here from Jeff Jackson, Democrat from North Carolina, who Ryan and I once misidentified as a Republican for like an entire segment. I think our brains were broken

that day. But let's roll Jeff Jackson, Democrat from North Carolina, weighing in on the potentiality of a shutdown.

Republicans versus Democrats. It's because there's an internal fight within the majority party about spending, but also whether to add a bunch of cultural issues like new restrictions on abortion, which is the official story. But here's what's really happening. This isn't about the budget. In the House, You've got a group of folks in the right flank who want to shut down the government. So they're asking for things they know everyone else in their party will say no to.

to shut down the government. That said, they're also facing an immense amount of pressure from their base, and they look at again, this is their perspective, what's happening in the country, and say, we need to use our power. If we have a majority in the House and we don't push as hard as we possibly can by driving a taking a really hard line on defunding X, Y and Z, defunding DEI, CRT, whatever it is, then we're

not using our power at all. If we're not negotiating for the sake of just going along to get along, then we're not going to get any wins. And we saw them find success with us in the speaker battle. They used a whole lot of wins out of Kevin McCarthy. They felt like they were stabbed in the back a little bit by McCarthy in the bill that was passed in the spring that they felt, you know, the funding bill from the spring. They felt not great about what

happened with that. They thought that they could have kept pushing. But even then they still got some successes. They still squeezed some wins out of McCarthy in Republican leadership. In that case, Acxios had the story from the Republican Conference call, we could put C two up on the screen about what McCarthy said himself. He's saying that according to Axios,

he wouldn't do a CR past early December. So that is according to four sources on the call, So that CR would if you have the government deadline as September thirtieth for funding, he wouldn't pass a continuing resolution that would fund it after early December. So that's kicking the can for like a few months. Ralph Norman, Republican from North Carolina said, right now, I would say know about the CR. He would says he's absolutely willing to force

a government shut down. And then Bob Good of Virginia said, if we have a temporary shutdown of the government, what's the risk of concern about that happening? We shouldn't implement bad policy to avoid that. And that's what Jeff Jackson is talking about Ryan, right, is that attitude of saying, like, wellhy cost benefit here, it's you know, at a certain we can push far enough that it won't hurt us.

Jackson said, they've only done one so far. And so when you when the government is shutting down because you haven't done your homework or what looks like you haven't done your homework, then it's even more humiliating for you because then it's you know, political and ideological and also a competence problem because then all Democrats have to say is like you didn't you didn't pass anything yet. So at least pushing to December theoretically gives them the possibility

to actually get these these appropriations bills together. Whether they can do that or not is not obvious, Like this is this is harder stuff than you would think, ironically, because it's it shouldn't be hard because it's not going to become law, Like they're just writing bills that are messaging documents, like there's no there's no world in which Joe Biden is signing off on whatever, just straight up

whatever House Republicans come up with. There's no world in which it gets through the Senate, right, so it really doesn't matter to anybody's actual daily lives what's in the built. Yet it's still very hard to get two hundred and eighteen votes on twelve different appropriations bill. So I think they're hoping, like, we can punt this till December and then we'll have our work done. Then we'll have a shutdown. Freedom Caucus can do, you know, do what Jackson was saying.

They can get a lot of interviews, they can show that they did everything they could. But at some point they're going to have to bow to the reality that they don't control the House. And even if they kind of control the fate of the Speaker and they don't control the Senate, they don't control the White House.

It's not impossible, but if you don't agree on which ones to pass, that means you have to do a lot of negotiating between now and then and in those just twelve days that you're in session. So it makes sense for McCarthy's perspective to do a short term like stop gap measure for the next couple of months. Figure out what they're going to agree on or disagree on when it comes to funding. Everyone sort of find their place, which buttons that they're actually going to push in this theater.

Because again Republicans know they don't control the Senate or the White House. But to your point, Ryan, the question is whether they control the speaker, and they have shown that it's not so much they control the speaker, and it's not that the speaker controls them, it's that they've actually had this relationship where it's a push and pull that can explain and either of their faces more in McCarthy's face at any given moment, which is why he's

negotiated with them. I think so he understands how fragile the relationship is and that can blow up at any moment. So it does make sense to sort of find consensus on the appropriation bills and then get to long term government funding. We have a couple more reactions from the Hill. We can put C three up on the screen. This is Tony Gonzalez with his read of the situation. I just got off a member call. It's clear President Biden,

Speaker McCarthy want a government shutdown. So that's what Congress will do after we return in September. This is a member of Congress saying, quote, plan accordingly because he expects, frankly, the government to shut down based on all of these conversations, internal conversations that have been happening that both Biden and McCarthy see a shutdown as something that is in some sense politically helpful. I don't think that's the case with

Kevin McCarthy. I do think it's the case with President Biden. Democrats again know that if the government shuts down, they have one huge advantage, and that is the media, which will generally take their side. And sometimes that's fair. Sometimes Republicans do want a government shutdown, and it makes sense for the media to blame Republicans because Republicans are saying, yes, blame us. But in some cases that's not exactly how it works out. We can put C four up on

the screen. This is more from the Senate side. This is Schumer, in a press call, said he spoke with McCarthy at the end of July on need for CR. Quote, I thought it was a good thing that he recognized that we need to see r I'm supportive of that. And then Schumer says, I was glad that Speaker McCarthy had mentioned publicly the need for a CR. If we do this in a bipartisan way, I'm confident we can

avoid a government shutdown. If the House Republicans and the Freedom Caucus insists on doing this partisan so extreme and gets no Democratic votes, they're heading us towards a shutdown. That's from reporter Mika Solmer. So, Ryan, what do you make of Schumer's comments there?

either carried or or that Biden was very close to. Uh, those are districts that are becoming even tougher for Republicans because of you know the activism around you know, codifying roll V wages. So you're going to have a huge turnout in those kind of centric in those swing districts.

And so if the Freedom Caucus gets everything at once in these appropriations bills, which again will not become law, they're just kind of messaging documents, Democrats then have the ability to you know, pick through this entire budget that Republicans just approved and find things that are unpopular in it and hammer away at these vulnerable Republicans in these swing districts. And so for those Republicans who are up, who are facing serious re elections, they're like, why are

you making us do this? Like, why are you making us take a difficult vote on you know, a bunch to let's say, much tougher abortion restrictions.

And it makes them furious that they have to deal with this, and you're going to start to see you know, people like Gonzales kind of speaking out as we get closer this again, you know, firing back at the freedom calls, and the freedom clock is firing back at them, you know, calling them rhinos or whatever the whatever drama we're going to see unfold. But that that's that, I think is

a scenario that Schumer's happy to see unfold. And all the while he'll be saying, look here we are, We're ready to do a cr We don't want, we don't want a government shutdown.

political leader was assassinated in Ecuador on Monday. That would be Pedro Briones. They have, you know, they have presidential elections happening this Sunday, So a special presidential election is happening this Sunday. Pedro Briones is a member of the party of the front run of former president Rafael Korea So and the front runner in this special presidential election is Luisa Gonzalez from the same party. So that's violence across the spectrum in Ecuador. And one thing I want

to mention before we get into that. A lot of times when you see, you know, the former Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated tragically last summer shinzo Abe. A lot of times when we talk about political assassinate assassinations, it's not connected to wider trends of violence throughout the country and Ecuador, it absolutely is. So this is from

the Associated Press. The country's National Police tallied three thousand, five hundred and sixty eight violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the twenty forty two reported during the same period in twenty twenty two, is a huge increase. That year ended with forty six hundred violent deaths, which was the country's highest in history

and double the total in twenty twenty one. Ryan. One other thing I want to mention is that a lot of especially people of my fellow conservatives in the United States, Ecuadorians are rushing the southern border at the US in like huge numbers, extensively record numbers flooding upwards for some good reasons, and a lot of the messaging you hear from conservatives often is well, you know, fix your own country first, then come up here. Our country is directly

tied to the violence happening in Ecuador right now. That is pushing people up to our border. And that's because a lot of the violence, the political violence in Ecuador is connected to Sinaloa, is connected to Jalisco, and these cartels are ballooning as a result of US policy, whether it's US drug policy, whether it's US border policy. Our policies are responsible in a big part for the explosion in Jalisco and Sinaloa, which are now destabilizing countries like Ecuador,

which borders Columbia. Vice reports some forty five percent of Colombian cocaine is going through Ecuador now that has Ecuador has been and is There's a great Vice report in April that I mentioned it has been obviously borders Columbia, so cocaine has gone through Ecuador for a long time. But they say, if it was once a highway, it's now a super highway. That's the quote from the Vice report that I thought put it really, Well, what do you make of this? Ryan?

outflows of migration. It's not as if the Ecuadorians desperately want to live in the United States, like they know, the vast majority of them would prefer to live in Ecuador, but the a narco situation is making it untenable for so many of them. And you know, our our war on drugs, like you said, is the is the driving cause of that. And to put this in context, we can put the next next element up. In a couple of days, believe it's on the twentieth, there will be

a presidential election in Guatemala as well. That this, this one's this one's wild, and not just because the left lefty candidate is named Bernie Bernardo Alvaro, who is actually the grandson of the first Guatemala's first democratic, democratically elected president from the forties.

really threatening this massive crackdown. Bernie, though, is if the polls are going to be believed up two to one against him, and this is so this is a kind of social democrat, left left wing and an anti anti corruption populist candidate who's dominating the kind of tough on crime I'm going to be a bou Kelly style. But now he's of course saying he's also going to be tough on crime. But interestingly, he's not saying I'm going after the little guys.

problem in Ecuador as well as Guate Malave. It the criminal justice system can't really function because even if you're able to arrest, prosecute, and imprison gang leaders, once you put them in prison, the gangs completely run the prison and they become just kind of recreation areas that are just controlled by those cartels or by the.

power over to private actors. And so you know, he's saying that he's going to crack down in that sense, but he's not going to do a Boo Kelly style thing where he just pretends that human rights don't exist anymore. And you have you know, they tried, the prosecutors tried to throw him off the ballot, and it had to go all the way to Guatemala's High court say no, no, no, the guy's in the runoffs, like you have to let him in. You haven't heard much at all from the

United States on this question of Guatemala. They vaguely said, you know, we support you know, there ought to be democracy and everybody should follow the rules. But you know, if that if Democrats, Republicans the United States are serious about root causes, that's the thing they love to talk about, root causes, then you know a guy who has you know, a mandate from the people on a social democratic platform saying that he's going to redevelop, you know, the economy

of Guatemala and take on the private gangsters. You know, ought to have the support of all good people who are making these kind of root cause arguments if they actually mean them. But that also means allowing Guatemala to have some sovereignty rather than you know, having it continue to be a vassal state of the United States. So

both of these elections are going to be interesting. But to your point, every you know, as these countries continue to be unstable, the situation the border is going to continue to be a crisis for whatever administration is in power, no matter what we do with that board.

benefit from. And so you know, you go in one direction or the other. I think there's a Obviously, as a conservative, I think there's a pretty strong argument that you know, we need a clear asylum policy that is not being you know, over overwhelmed by what they're doing with CBP one at the border and what they're doing with you know, just basically kicking trial dates a couple of years down the road, letting people in and then

disappearing into sanctuary cities at the same time. Even from the left perspective, if it was just let's basically open up the border, that does starve cartels of their ability to smuggle human beings, and you would need cooperation for Mexico and other places. But basically what I'm saying is that you can go in either direction. You can have a much more open border or a much more closed border.

But what we have right now is an establishment that wants to you know, say they have both depending on what their audience is. And it has completely destabilized not just our country, but it is having a massive effect on these countries that are just south of US, smaller, already less stable for a lot of different reasons, some

of which directly go back to US as well. And so our border policy, it's not just our drug policy, it's also our border policy, whether you go in one direction or the other, is having an utterly destabilizing effect on these countries. And in the same way that the Biden administration held tried to hold Haiti hostage, Haitian democracy as they like to talk about hostage to their border policy,

which we saw and we've covered here. These policies are allowing cartels to grow into multi billion dollar multinational corporations essentially that have also government power, and that they've been seated like land and territory. And that is not just going to affect Central America, South America, it's going to

start affecting the entire world. It's already having acute effects obviously in these regions, but it's spiraling in a really bad direction in ways that we don't seem prepared at all to deal with.

And what I mean by that is you would really need some type of NAFTA and staff to bring together South America and Central America, North America and come up with a way to just straight up legalize and regulate the cocaine trade, like we have tried this war on drugs, where we're, you know, just funneling money through these different corrupt systems and it doesn't do anything about the flow of cocaine, and it just props up these these vicious cartels,

You're still even if you did that, you'd still have problems with the cartels, you'd have human trafficking, you'd have whatever.

cycles of violence. And also, you know, from a pain user perspective, at this point, you're you're get you're getting a lot of fentanyl getting mixed in uh with with different drug products, and people people dying who aren't you know, out out at a club think that thinking they're doing a little bump of cocaine. Instead it's you know, laced with fentanyl and they're and they're overdosing and dying like that's you know, that that's not.

the conservatorship, which was rather than an adoption. So there's some questions here about whether the conservatorship that Michael Orr was kind of pushed into allegedly by the family as opposed to an adoption, was a in and of itself a questionable move. He always thought that he was adopted. It turns out, according to allegations he's made in a new lawsuit, that may not be the case. Let's actually start with this. You can put the tear sheet up on the screen. This is a New York Times coverage.

He says that in the this is the headline of the New York Times, that he was quote conned with a promise of adoption. It now appears that it was a conservatorship, and he's making allegations that the family set up this conservatorship basically to profit off of him in ways that he would not profit himself. That's the allegation that Michael Orr has made extremely sad obviously situation as

the family relationship is devolving in public view. Let's actually play though this clip of Michael Orr talking about the situation himself. This is E.

Number One, that you were this kind of shy wall flower, that you were timid and you had to be kind of like drawn out of your shell, when in reality you were a workaholic, you were hyper organized, and you were like, damn it, I'm making something of myself no matter what it takes after a rough background.

You know, that way's heavy.

but beloved by all lout of the country. You can imagine how that would affect everything and the reason this is coming to light now. Michael Orr said he was focused on football basically until about twenty sixteen and wasn't focused on the details. And after he sort of shifted his focus from football, he was able to dive into the details and start unraveling some of what he thought was an adoption and seeing where some of the money went.

So he filed a petition to end the conservatorship on Monday, and or learned that the conservatorship didn't have the power, as NBC says, to make him a legal member of their family back in February. So this is all happening now because he's just starting to in his type of in his reasoning, kind of put the pieces together. This

is from the petition. It says the lie of Michael's adoption is one upon which co conservators LeAnn Toe and Sean Towey I'd never learned how to pronounce that name, have enriched themselves at the expense of their ward the undersigned Michael or I think it's Touey Ryan. This is like obviously very very sad situation. The Tua family denies the allegations. They say, we love Michael at sixteen or seventeen, we'll love him at thirty seven, we'll love him at

sixty seven. Both the son and the parents have said that there was an excerpt from the mom's memoir that came out talking about if there's a if there's a conception about Michael, it said, he's actually very smart. So I don't know how deliberate any of this was on their part. That will be litigated in court. I genuinely don't know. It could have been really malicious. It could

not have been what's your sense of this? Ryan as somebody who you said when we took a break earlier, not a fan of the film.

before I moved in, uh to their home. And so the one thing the New York Times reported is that there's some discrepancy over the question of how much money, uh the kids got the uh the parents are saying the kids got very little, the kids saying they got

a little bit more than that. But broadly, broadly speaking, there was a deal that was struck, the film deal where the blood children uh did get cut in on the revenues of the movie, and an or did not or who was the you know, putative star of the film did not get cut in, while the while the while his you know, quote unquote siblings did And I

think everybody across the spectrum could agree that that's weird. Now, the dad says that the conservativeship was set up in a way that would enable him to go to college, and there are some rules about income in college, et cetera. But you know, the movie didn't come out until you know, he's already in the NFL, so that that wouldn't have you know, that wouldn't have implicated that question. Uh So some of this does need to be litigated, but some of it also does seem clear like he should have

been cut in on the movie. Like I think we and and the and the book, if if there was any kind of book, they're probably not book proceeds. I'm not sure but film proceeds absolutely if the kid, if if the kids that he's living with are getting cut in because of his story, Like it's not a it's not a movie because of them. As you know, I'm sure they're fine kids or whatever, but you know that's not that's not who they who we all flock to the theaters to see.

about it. And sort of diving down into the particulars legally, I mean, I think it's really sad that that has to play out publicly. But at the same time, if you know this was malicious and to your point, it is really weird. I actually think the conservatorship is extremely weird. To begin with, he was seventeen years old, I think when this deal was struck, and rather than adopting a seventeen year old I can understand the legal argument for

going with a conservatorship. A lot of people are familiar with conservativeships because of what happened with Britney Spears, what played out with Britney Spears over the last ten plus years. But it does seem odd that they had a conservatorship over Michael Orr and continue to He is now filing a petition to end the conservatorship. That the whole thing, I mean, that in and of itself I find very strange, and it seems like it's possible the conservativeship. You know,

maybe there were there were legal justifications. Their attorney, who I believe as a family friend, told them at the time, you know, you've got to do this for college reasons, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe that's the case, or maybe there were other motivations involved, and there were reasons why they didn't want to formally adopt him into their family.

But to your point, there are some things that are just on the surface weird, and you know, at least from the sort of court of public opinion, I do feel like the ball is now in the Twoey's court to prove that they had, you know, no ill intentions, because these two things in and of themselves, Like you said, with the movie deal, that stuff is just patently bizarre on its face, and they're the sort of shift culturally I think puts them in their legacy like actually in

Big Try going forward, I think the mom is doing motivational speeches. Leanne I think is her name. She does motivational speeches. I think they're still profiting off of the Blindside narrative in some pretty big ways. And if they're doing that and there's there's way more to the story than we realize, then they deserve justice. They deserve to

be held accountable for what they did. So in some sense, it's sad this is playing out publicly because it does seem like there was a lot of love between these folks. But on the other set, on the other hand, if the public's being taken for a ride, good, let's let's have it play out publicly so there can be some justice served.

just you know, pumps out classic after classic. So I will be interested to see, you know, how how well it holds up and whether or not he just kind of embedded himself with with the parents rather or quote quote unquote parents rather than or. So we'll see that's that's something that that I don't know yet, but I'll but I'll be curious about I'm also curious to read

his uh Sam Bankman freed. He's got that one coming out, so I guess he's got his hands full, although his subject is now indisposed having gone back to jail, So maybe you can focus on just writing it at this point.

his career. The way he was depicted in the movie is he was he was treated as an idiot basically in the movie, and so you can understand how frustrating it would have been from his perspective to have that follow him throughout his career. That is just his frustrations are very easy to empathize.

first clip. It's a little bit shorter, but it's just you can see Hillary and Rich Mattow having a little bit of a good time as the indictment is announced.

especially not funny if you're Kaylely macanany. But at the same time, she does have a point about how funny all of this is and whether or not it's a good look for Hillary Clinton, somebody who actually avoided an indictment because James Comey said, you know, no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case against her, which was very debatable at the time, she's somebody who sort of skirted that

and lost to Donald Trump. Then you know, perpetrated this fiction of Russian collusion in ways that were not tethered to a small but real problem of Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. Haha, this is so funny, let me laugh in this nice MSNBC studio might not be the best look, but that aside. Let's dive into the substance here and let's watch more of the conversation between Mattow and Clinton from Monday Night.

But the article you mentioned that I published about the weaponization of loneliness really does, in my view, point to the larger cultural concerns because the lack of trust, the divisiveness, the undermining of faith in ourselves, in each other, respect for our institutions, the rule of law, law, all of that has been deliberately inculcated within our body politic.

election is stolen if they lose it. The fact that Rachel Matto said that to Hillary Clinton earnestly in a way that wasn't pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton. I think is remarkable. There's a huge difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and that Hillary Clinton didn't concede that she lost the election to Donald Trump the next day. She spent years after that casting doubt though on the outcome of the election, saying that Russia stole the election.

Her campaign was a huge part of planting the seeds of doubt about Trump's legitimacy as president of the United States, and she continued to perpetuate the fiction of this grand vast conspiracy, to borrow a phrase about Donald Trump being an asset of Vladimir Putin in some very specific and very false ways. So, just to start Hillary Clinton again, we see her being somebody that is creating a world she doesn't want to take accountability for having created. She

creates this world that she's then unhappy with. I don't think she recognizes how detrimental I shouldn't say I don't think. I know she doesn't recognize she never could recognize how detrimental the crisis of confidence and institutions, how much her fiction, the fiction that she was in a large part responsible for about Russia collusion how much that played into the

loss of trust and institutions. By the way, it's always worth mentioning that even the birther Or conspiracy, which was famously perpetuated by Donald Trump, came from the Clinton campaign all the way back in two thousand and eight. I believe that was a Sidney Bloominhaal special. But nevertheless, Hillary Clinton has been sowing the seeds of doubt of distrust

in our institutions for a very long time. And again, this is where the elites who are passing down the United States of twenty twenty three to their children and their grandchildren look around and are suddenly really unhappy with the world that they've created, although of course they're unwilling to take accountability for having created it. They'll take accountability for creating other things, but they won't take accountability for creating this world that they're deeply unhappy with.

the everyday lives of your average American. And so you know, half of the battle is omitting you have a problem. So, in all seriousness, I think it's fantastic that somebody like Hillary Clinton has come to the realization that there are serious trends. You know, when this was being written about by Robert Putnam in nineteen eighty, where was Hillary Clinton? When Bolling Alone came out? When What's the Matter with

Kansas came out? When Coming Apart came out? All of these you know, essential pieces of scholarship that we're creating, that we're showing very real problems existed. What happened from the Clinton administration in the nineties, What we saw a lot of policy decisions that exacerbated the problems of civic breakdown in certain pockets of the country, of loneliness in certain pockets of the country. Let's just name too, NAFTA and WTL great for some parts of the country, very

very destabilizing for other parts of the country. Let's look at all of the tech mergers that happened during the Obama administration that Hillary Clinton was a part of. Let's talk about Section two thirty, which was passed by none other than Bill Clinton himself, passed into law by none other than Bill Clinton himself, that allowed tech companies. And you know, there's a piece of legislation at the time that we didn't really know where the Internet was going.

So it's somewhat understandable in the same way that you can look back and say, I get why there was so much excitement among elites for NAFTA and WTO. I understand, but the practical consequences have been way more serious and way more destabilizing than anybody from that sort of political establishment recognized that would be. And yet they still they don't want to take accountability for it, and they still

blame everybody else. That's what Hillary Clinton is doing here, pointing her fingers at everybody else, instead of looking around and saying, oh, maybe the regime that I led and championed for so long had something to do with this. It's also remarkable to hear her talk about the rule of law, which, as I mentioned earlier, I mean she really just said there rule of law. We've talked on

the show over the last couple of weeks. I mean, I think pretty much everybody here at Breaking Points would be super happy if they locked up every politician who did something bad. That's not what happens. So to hear Hillary Clinton, a supporter of Joe Biden who was overseeing or was the father of Hunter Biden, I should say, there are very serious implications about lack of rule of law when it comes to Hunter Biden, very serious implications about lack of rule of law when it comes to

Hillary Clinton herself when it comes to Bill Clinton. So to hear her sort of waxed sanctimonious about rule of law is another example that again she's looking around and saying, you know, rule of law. Donald Trump felt so comfortable flouting rule of law in all of these different cases, and Republicans are now so comfortable with Donald Trump flouting the rule of law in all of these different cases.

That is so disturbing, you know it is, But the only reason people are doing that is because rule of law. It's sort of a fight fire with fire. That's a lot of things. And I'm not saying that's right. A lot of people on the conservative side think that's right. Now. I don't really agree with that over in particular cases. But to see her just being like, oh my gosh, the mysterious rule of law, the breakdown and rule of law, it's just really really too cute by have to hear that,

specifically from Hillary Clinton. And it's also remarkable to hear her talk about public trust for all of the reasons that we've already mentioned, so again, especially from Rachel Maddaw, the journalist in this situation, to be tossing a question to Hillary Clinton about how disturbing it is that people think, you know, it's only it's just an election is not stolen if I win, but if I lose, then it

is stolen. To hear that particularly tossed to Hillary Clinton, to hear that from a network that has platformed Stacy Abrams however many times without ever asking her the question like, Hey, maybe do you think walking around saying that you're the legitimate governor of Georgia might be sewing some seeds of distrust in ways that are very unhealthy it's just again, it's the world they created that they are unhappy with. So that's one and two. It's that they're just unwilling

to admit that it's the world that they created. They're unwilling to even see, recognize understand that it's the world they created. And it's not just from these sort of abstract questions about how Hillary Clinton talked about Russia and the media. It also goes down to policy decisions that she supported. Guess who was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, the Sackler family. Some of this stuff Tech

a donor to Hillary Clinton. Some of the stuff is concrete policy decisions that she supported, NAFTA, wto two thirty tech mergers under Obama. I get that she wasn't in control of tech mergers, but what was she talking about when it came to all of these different decisions. Where did she disagree? I mean, this is the woman who campaigned for president in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, campaign for president in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen and was on the wrong side of a lot

of these issues. So, in addition to just sort of the bigger questions about how Hillary Clinton has discussed these issues and public in ways that are severely detrimental to public trust. The issues where she has been untruthful, where she has outright lied over and over again that has

contributed to a lack of public trust. The ways in which she has been treated by let's say, when it comes to case of the rule of law, her husband has been treated, the administration, the Obama administration she's served under has been treated. These are all really serious and they are all They have all contributed over time to places in the country that are super supportive of Donald Trump.

Maybe because they were they bore the brunt of WTO and NAFTA in ways that other parts of the country didn't. You know, Hillary Clinton famously and on stage in India bragged about how she won in twenty sixteen states with the highest GDP, as though all those places that are unproductive. That is just who would want to win those states anyway? Who would want to be popular in those states anyway? That's for people like Donald Trump. So it just comes

back to this lack of accountability. Ryan, and I find that really grating. All right, Ryan, I think you have an update for us on your fantastic reporting in Pakistan about the Imran Khan situation continuing to unfold. Over there, tell.

losing a top secret Pakistani cable. He had previously said that he had lost this cable that proved a connection between United States pressure and his ouser have now filed charges against him, with the strong implication being that Imran Khan was the sort our source. You know, that he lost the document. Now we have it.

any civilian functionary. We were very clear about that, and the fact that he lost the document doesn't have any connection to whether or not somebody.

lost it. Now it has been published on a website, and so that is confirmation that the document is authentic. Now, within about an hour or two after our show posted last week breaking the news of this cable and simultaneously published at the Intercept, there was a State Department briefing. I want to play a couple of clips from that briefing to show kind of how they responded. And people asked, why wasn't it in the show? Why did it come out just a little bit after we were giving the

State Department time to respond. What Matt Miller says from the podium here is very similar to what he said in the written statement that we included in the article. But it's interesting to watch him say it. So here's the State Department getting pressed on that cable last.

As we've stated they're false, They've always been false. And they remain false.

interference in fact in the document. In his own assessment, he says that don spoke out of turn here and that the Pakistan ought to complain officially to the United States about the behavior. What I think is going on, and I asked for a clarification for the State Department of this a week ago, and I re upped that request today. I think they have the wrong Khan here,

So we put up this next element. A man named Osam Khan, who was the principal secretary to Imran Khan, was arrested and held for thirty days in detention by the Pakistani government. After that thirty days it attention. He put out a statement saying that Khan really trumped up the allegations that were in this cable and that actually they don't show that there's any US conspiracy that is consistent with what Miller is saying.

that you have of the right con here. I'll report back if I hear any of this, but there is no public record that we can find of a sad con going back on his initial assessment that is included in the cable that we published. And then you have a follow up from the AP reporter who's in the gallery here, saying, look, okay, you're saying that you're not expressing any preference, but you can imagine why people receiving that message might think that you are.

will be tough going ahead. So, Emily, you and I were talking last week before we had gotten the State Department response, and we were which is why we hadn't posted the video yet, and we were kind of guessing, like, how is the State Department going to handle this? Because they clearly are now caught doing the thing that they have said for more than a year that they did not do. And it turns out no that they can

just continue to say that they didn't. It's hard to be stunned at my age in this field, but that to me was a rather dunning set of sentences for a public official to put together.

we showed earlier in the show. Every time in DC a political reporters sort of braced themselves, and you know, it's bittersweet, it's exciting, and it's also going to be a ton of work when you're covering a presidential election cycle. But this time is a presidential election cycle with foreign indictments that we'll be weaving in and out of each other. So there's a lot Especially when Congress comes back after Labor Day, it is just going to be peddled to

the medal. There's so much news to cover, and we'll be back here every Wednesday breaking it all down for you.