Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at.
Breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, Let's get to the show. All right, good morning and welcome the counterpoints.
Hi.
You doing, Emily?
I'm doing great? How are you? Ryan?
We have an amazing show today, We really do.
Today. We do have you know, we say it, but today we have an amazing show.
I was telling Snager, I need more of his kid in the candy store energy in the show.
You need more ghost energy.
Yes, just just fired up and happy to be here.
Yeah, okay, Well maybe that's more of a psychological thing though.
All right, there we go.
Okay, I'll enjoy in your life.
That might be it.
There you go, that's it.
Joy is rubbing off.
So we're going to talk about RFK, A lot of RFK, and also people have been asking about the Friday Show. Back to Friday Shows, this Friday, we're going to have a debate over the kind of the role of RFK in this race, in his role in the general, whether or not he's going to actually be a boost to Trump or not, or whether he feeds into the Democratic weird meme that they're trying to wrap around Republicans.
Yeah, we'll be joined by Michael Tracy and Jeff Hotto is a field director for our f K Junior's campaign, for a debate about the future of URFK Junior, is Trump endorsement, and all of that. So stay tuned to the Friday show for that debate, but it'll come out early for premium subscribers on Thursday night. We're going to cover We're going to start by covering the ongoing situation where Tulsea Gabbard and RFK Junior are now going to
be stumping for Donald Trump on the campaign trail. He's sort of collecting his former Democrat Island of missfit toys and sending them out. And I don't say that derisively because I think we'll get into it.
I don't want to tell the Republicans love theirs.
I mean the Democrats love there as they put their Republicans on the stage at the convention.
Yeah, and we'll be.
Doing some election updates. We have some interesting news about ballot access, about Kamala Harris's fundraising numbers which are eye popping. We're going to talk about the hostage release yesterday in Israel, and other updates.
Mass massive raid by the IDF of the West Bank. They currently have Janine surrounded. Bizarrely, they are calling it Operation Summer Camps.
Oh, would come on? Are you serious?
You always also know the operation name, which I think is useful.
I guess sometimes it is. Other times you're like, what are you doing?
Such a window into the.
Operation Summer Camps. Come on, it's so.
Bizarre, all right. And then we'll be talking about Mark Zuckerberg's kind of concession, his regrets about censoring.
Stakes were made, Mistakes were made, so we're censored.
Right, And that's about both COVID and the Hunter Byden laptop story, as Zuckerberg put in a letter this week, So we will be talking about that and just the crazy ongoing situation with the French government and the French sort of their their attempts to form actually their attempts to government, and we'll tell you what Emmanuel Macron is up to, because it's a doozy.
We were just saying that whenever your republic is called the fifth Republic, that might not bode well for its longevity. So we may be staring at the tail end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth, and be interesting to see what do we have in the middle.
Well, they just stop with the whole republic thing.
There might be your sixth, that's true. Where's another? Are there any Napoleon airs around?
There might be?
There might be Brian tell Us about Dan Osborne, who's joining the show as a guest as well.
This is fascinating.
Everybody believes that control of the Senate and thus the agenda for whoever comes into office hinges on the Montana Senate race, that if Democrats and John Tess hold that one, that they're going to hold the Senate. There's also this wild card of Nebraska, where Democrats decided, you know what, people hate us so much, we're not even going to run a candidate Nebraska.
Forget about it.
The absolute political dynamo of Montana Republican Senator deb Fisher is unbeatable. Incomes veteran Dan Osborne, who led a massively successful strike in the state, and he's running a kind of class first independent campaign.
Polls have him.
Shouldn't be surprising to anybody that watches this program. Neck and neck with the brand name Republican in the state. You could have a scenario where this actually pans out, or this might be a Democratic gimmick that where they're just trying to cloak a Democrat in independent clothing. Yes, although one who happens to be a labor leader in the state and with a cool background. We'll ask Dan Osbourne which he is at the end of the program.
Great well, looking forward to that. Let's start with Telsea Gabbard and also RFK Junior jumping into the race on behalf of Donald Trump. This has been developing over the course of the week. Obviously started with RFK Junior's announcement that he was formerly endorsing Trump, but has developed as
Trump has brought them both on as campaign advisors. This is some of the big news, and we have a clip from RFK juniors an appearance on Talker Tucker reportedly helped kind of broker the negotiations about an endorsement and a dropout. So let's take a listen to what R. F. K. Junior said on an edition of Tucker Carlson Show that came out yesterday.
I'm going to work to get him elected. And and you know, I'm working with the campaign. We're working on policy issues together, or I will. I've been asked to go onto the transition team and you know, to help pick the people who will be running the government. And I'm I'm looking forward to that, and I you know, I'm I'm going to fight. I don't know what would happen to me if we lose?
Well, that's kind that was that's kind of I mean a lot of people I know personally and I'm friends with have gone to prison. One of them was in prison right now, Paubl Durroff. There are others, uh, like, what happens if he loses?
To you, if he made if Trump loses and Kamala Harris becomes first.
Oh, I don't know, but I mean, I listen, I know, I don't. I never really think about that.
I want to.
I think it good.
What I think is okay, here's what I gotta do today. And you know, get up every day and I say, reporting for duties, sir, and then go do that, and you know, nothing's at christis. Everything's a task, right and and so that's what I'm gonna be kind of a happy warrior or not. You know, I'm I know what I have to do, so I'm going to do it.
So Tulca Gabbard also made a speech at a National Guard it was Trump made a speech. She made her formal endorsement of Trump at a National Guard event in Detroit. So let's take a listen to Tulci Gabbard and as I took you up this clip, I also mentioned that it's worth remembering both RFK Junior and Tulsi endorsed Bernie Sanders in twenty sixteen. So here's what Tulcy Gabbart had to say at that speech.
This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world, and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before. This is one of the main reasons why I'm committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House where he can once again serve us as our commander in chief. Because I am confident that his first task will be to do the work
to walk us back from the brink of war. We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace, and we can't live free as long as we have a government that is retaliating against its political opponents and undermining our civil liberties, weaponizing our very institutions against those they deem as a threat. Kamala Harris has done this over the last three and a half years. She won't hesitate to
continue that if she is elected as president. President Trump has been their first and foremost target in this because they don't want us as voters to even have the option shint to vote for him. I've been their most recent target, added to a secret domestic terror watch list after exposing the truth about what kind of dangers we would face if Kamala Harris is elected as president.
Okay, so that was Toulta Gabbard. She also and you could probably fill in the blanks from the speech, but said, one of the biggest resident reason Shoes endorsing Donald Trump is that there were no new wars started under his watch, and that was Thorne policy was a huge feature of the speech. I guess no surprise from Tulsa Gabbard. Now I don't know who.
To blame quick programming.
Note on that one, she mentioned that she was put on this terror watch list the Quiet Guys.
Next week we're.
Going to have Matt Taybe and Jeffrey Sachs on on the Friday Show. Yes, talking about other stuff, but Taybe has done a bunch of reporting on the Quiet Skies, Tulty Gabbard element, and so we can get an update on that anyway, Go ahead.
No, No, I don't know who to blame for putting this crystalliz a tweet in the rundown, because why you put a three up on this green crystal is a tweeted this fairly interesting graph that comes from the Pew Research Center. Now, what's also pretty interesting about this. You're seeing how Harris Trump supporters view key cultural issues. If you're listening to this,
that's what the graphic says. Goes down the line of gun ownership, how the legacy of slavery affects a position of black people in America today, openness to people from all over the world, religion should be kept separate from government policies, and what you see is just really intense polarization. That was also the same between Biden's supporters and Trump supporters, which is fairly interesting. Pew redid the poll after Harris got in the race, because Harris has actually gotten RFK
Junior voters. This is also from KEW who were supporting him in July broke for Harris two to one according to their research between July and August. So this is all happening against the backdrop of really start cultural polarization. And I think that's what makes it doubly interesting that both RFK Junior and Tulsa Gabbard come from positions supporting Bernie Sanders. Tulsi basically memorably was the vice chair of
the DNC. These are not you know, people who were sort of figuring out what they believed, and you know the type of centrists who were brokereen deals with like the never Trump Adam Kinsinger's I mean, these are ideological. These are ideological like you might take it if I say leftists, but they were at least close to that.
I think what's what I think what's telling and interesting about both of them is that they're they're both they both have eccentric and kind of malleable politics.
And what is and that's not a criticism.
What that means is that when there's a realignment happening, when there's a shift on the move, they are going to be the first types of people who are on
the move. Gabbard was the kind of so when she first ran in her primary, she was considered the more conservative of the Democrats running in the primary, and there was some skepticism of her coming in because of this really ardent support of the global war on terror, which is one of her few positions that has remained completely consistent throughout her career.
And it's why conservative is a weird label for her, among many other reasons.
Yeah, and so.
Then in February twenty sixteen, right before Super Tuesday, she resigned from vice chair of DNC and supported Bernie Sanders. But then in twenty twenty she ran herself rather than support Sanders, and then after dropping out, instead of endorsing Sanders, who was still running, she endorsed Biden, which is a
weird like it's that's not really on the horseshoe. That's her just kind of going on the spectrum, the old traditional spectrum with a little with a little stop in the middle, and then becoming an independent and then an independent Conservative and then a Republican and then a Trump, a Trump supporter. But I do think this is not
a christ of hers. What it says that I think somebody like her who has kind of the kind of politics that a lot of people have, which you have, you know, some you agree with some people over here and you are with some people over there, defies categoration that she would be more attracted to the kind of looser coalition that is that is Trump right now.
And she's also correct me if I remember, she's apposed like a Medicare for all populist economic person as well.
She definitely was be interesting to see recently. I saw her saying stuff about how government spending is out of control, you've got to, you know, attack the deficit, very non Burnie type stuff.
But she should come on the program now.
As his UH as an ambassador. We love them as a surrogate and say, look, we'll talk about where where you are on that, because Trump is for all that stuff practically, I mean, if it depends on his mood. But there was that famous moment where Paul Ryan's like trying to repeal Obamacare for like the fifty third time, and Trump's like, why don't we just.
Do single pair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's we're not gonna do that.
Well, you know there might be some issue.
Yeah, we're not doing that.
We're not that party, right, But Trump was he care now it is a good health care.
Ran I particularly wanted to get your take at actually speaking about that on this clip from RFK Junior where he's discussing how the environmental movement's obsession with carbon started to push him away from the Democratic Party, away from the left. He calls Tucker Carlson a radical environmentalist. Tucker agrees with that very heartily, and I think it fits into this broader discussion about how increasingly a lot of normal Americans just defy categorization. That might be because of Trump,
by the way. You know, people feel like they don't belong in the Republican Party because they're really uncomfortable with Donald Trump, and they're really uncomfortable for support for Donald Trump. Or you have people like Telsea Gabbard and RFK JR. RFK Junior in particular has some colorful quotes about Donald Trump from years past where he's highly critical of him. So it's kind of a remarkable turn of events to
what you were just speaking about. How does Tulsea Gabbard go from endorsing Bernie to endorsing Biden to endorsing Donald Try, And I'm thinking about Tulsi and Afghanistan. You know, Biden
wanted to end the war in Afghanistan. Everybody sort of has their big priorities and they say, I can deprioritize all of these other policy issues where I disagree with one Canada not because I think what they're going to do on this particular issue, which is my priority, which I think is the most important thing in the country, is going to get done under them. That's kind of what our Ka Junior is talking about here with the environment. So let's roll this clip of him talking to Tucker Carlson.
You literally spent your life river Keepers as an environmentalist, environmental lawyer in the environmental movement. I mean, that's that's your life work product. Have you been expelled from the movement pretty much? Yeah.
You know.
The weird thing is I think of you as a radical environmentalist.
Well, I definitely am. Yeah you are.
I haven't showered inside in ten years. Yeah, yeah, no, I feel it so strongly. Also, you know, you love nature.
You're again to these big projects that are desloying it, and you know you you talk about and the environmental movement no longer talks about toxics anymore.
They don't care about it. I talked Roger.
L's all the time that both of us know Who who who would let me occasionally onto Fox News to talk about it. But there was so much hostility from the Republican Party because it was like, you're attacking corporate profit taking and that these are chemicals, they're molecules. Who
cares you know, they can't hurt you. And there was just and then you do this incredible show on Enracrin Disruptors, and I'm like, oh my god, Tucker Carlson has just done the best show that's ever been done, showing you know what's happening with eddercrin Disruptors, how they're just destroying us. And the Democrats went after you and the environmental movement and I'm like, what you know, this is what we've been trying to get for forty years, the Republicans that
care about these issues. And they said, oh, he's saying that chemicals turned people gay, he's any gay and all this stuff, and that wasn't where you said at all. And that's not what anybody said, Ryan.
You're a hippie. Is he right? Is he right that toxins in particular, because that's what he's doing. He's saying. Listen, Donald Trump has said that he might give me the ability to have some oversight over public health, the obesity crisis, the chemical crisis, the metabolic disease crisis. You know, I think that is the most important thing in the world and if we don't deal with it, you know, that's
why I'm basically supporting Donald Trump. So is he right that the environmental movement has moved away from those priorities in a way that's alienating sort of old school RFK junior environmentalists or is he mischaracterizing on it.
I don't know if it's alienating old school or K junior types other than him. But he's absolutely right about the focus on carbon and climate change, Like there's no question about that. I don't think, And we could get
him back on the show and ask him. I don't think it needs to be an either or, like climate change is an existential threat to us, like the Middle East is going through right, Like as we speak, one of its worst heat waves in history, just looked at like one hundred and ten in Baghdad, which I understand people like, oh, it's the Middle East, it's hot over there.
No, it's like much hotter than.
Normal, and we are facing massive problems as a result of it. His point that we have overlooked toxicity is dead on. There's no constituency right now calling out forever plastics except right, yes, And that was an interesting program that he did on.
Disruptors and plastics.
And also the way that our food food system is poisoning us basically at an industrial level. These are all like also existential questions that we need to be faced.
So it shouldn't be an either or because you have to get them both right.
If you'll get one right and you don't get the other right, good luck.
But so, yes, we do need to focus on them both. It would be kind of a.
Shame if you wound up with like one party it's like we need to deal with toxics and the other ones we need to deal with carbon, and they're like, I forget it, let's just do neither.
It's crazy because you can easily see, like the revival of the country Khan trope is exploding more than it was when Rodre originally wrote the book Country Conservatives, like this is right now. I've never seen anything like this in the Republican Party where you have people like Ovia Junior and Telca Gabbard supporting Donald Trump and talking about these issues, people like Tucker Carlson openly talking about these issues. You could easily see a world where we see this
on economic policy a lot, healthcare policy a lot. You just never end up putting the two pieces together. They can have conversations and be like, yes, your right.
This is so important, and this this is one where you cas a part where you really have to bring both sides together on this because you can't approach the question of toxicity and toxics in our in our food system and our water from a personal responsibility right wing frame.
Right right right, You just can't. It's like, hey, have better personal responsibility find while it doesn't have plastic in it.
You can go to an Arctic and you can't find that this is a global problem that requires a global, literal, top down solution that can be like democratically executed and agreed upon by everybody.
But yeah, just saying like we need to and it goes to.
The the kind of environmentalism that corporate America tried to foist onto the world in the nineties and eighties, nineties and two thousands. One of them was one of their big scams was recited where they're like, just take personal responsibility and put you know, separate things, put them in these bins.
You feel like you're doing something good.
Then they'll all put them all in the same place, and then they'll just make that much more more plastic. The second was when they invented the term carbon footprint, as if every every particular act you have, you take, has some particular carbon footprint, and then if you just buy offsets for your little carbon footprint, then actually everything's okay, it's great.
Scan rather than saying no, no.
No, the problem is the industrial production of blasting carbon into the atmosphere that needs to be rained in at a global level, not by a few people, like making different choices and biking rather than driving, which you should do, but you should do. You should do all these things because they're good for you, not because you think that they're going to be the solution to a global crisis.
Well, and that's the opening for I think conversation with conservatives and it's bubbling into something that's more than a conversation, which is where that's particularly worth watching because some of these things, right, like when you're trying to talk about healthcare or right left alliance or trade or right left alliance, you can have all these conversations and then you hit a brick wall because ultimately you don't want to be seen with Donald Trump or you don't want to be
seen with Joe Biden. Like Chips, great example, at ultimately passed, but a lot of Republicans ended up dropping out of their support for Chips, which they had like shepherded through the Senate and through Congress. And here, I mean, I just don't know where this goes because to your point, I mean, if conservatives are concerned about forever plastics, microplastics and disruptors all of these things, you also have to I mean, that's tethered for many people, like Rfkjunior, to
climate to production of like intense industrial production levels. So we'll see, we'll see how it ends up.
Right, there has to be an an actual earnest conversation about it, because it gets really interesting because on the forever plastics, for instance, one of the leading sources of them and you go down this rabbit hole. Is car tires like the rubber and car tires, and you need stronger tires to drive heavier evs. So paradoxically, the more evs you get, the more toxic tires you have, and then the more forever.
Plastics you have out there.
You could be the oil industry be like, Aha, that shows we shouldn't we shouldn't do EV's, we shouldn't care about climate at all.
Or you could say, okay, these are problems.
We're not morons, like, we can figure we can get together and collectively figure this out if our goal is to actually make a better planet and not to just protect like incumbent oil industries or plastic industries or whatever whatever else.
Sure, well it'll be a fun one to watch.
Yes, for sure.
There is some also RFK Junior news, but we're gonna get into how this affects the election more broadly. We can put up B one on the screen. This is an Axios report that shows Michigan denying Robert F. Kennedy Junior's attempt to get off of the presidential ballot in Michigan. They say it's too late for him to remove his name from office according to the Office of the Secretary
of State in Michigan. Now that may not seem like a big deal, it actually really is because we remember how close the margins were in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, especially in twenty sixteen. Speaking of those states, we can go ahead and put the next element up on the screen. He's also going to remain on the ballot in Nevada, North Carolina, and guess what, Wisconsin, Blue
Wall state. So Ryan, I've seen some theories floating around that this is kind of an effort to hurt Donald Trump on behalf of like these DEM officials in these states who want to give voters who may be torn between RFK Junior and Donald Trump the option of voting for RFK Junior, because you know, there are a lot of double haters and they're just gonna say, I'd rather not vote for Trump. I'm going for this Robert F. Kennedy Junior guy. You know, reasonably many people don't follow
the news as closely as we do. Mercifully, it sounds like a wonderful life, but they may not. Even by the time I would assume everybody knows what happened but a lot of people are tuned out, and reasonably so. So I don't know that it's like a conspiracy, but it definitely does seem like it could have a small positive effect on the Harris campaign almost of the Biden campaign.
Yeah, Democrats started by trying to keep him off ballots.
Now that one, I'm desperately trying to keep him on. Some of it is his own fault. In Nevada, the deadline was August twentieth, Like, you show up in person, you like the laws, you have to show up in person and file by August twentieth to get yourself off.
He didn't.
It was like August twenty whatever that he decided to endorse Trump. So the election of Viduals, they're like, look, we got rules, rules of rules in Wisconsin. I think he was nominated by the Natural Law Party and they held a.
Convention, and that could mean so many things. I know, it's great.
So just for people who don't mercifully, you know, haven't looked into this throughout their life, it's very difficult to get on these ballots around the country, and so one thing people try to do is try to find a party that doesn't have a candidate and a party that just for some bizarre quirk of state history, has ballot access. And so RFK Junior found the Natural Law Party in Wisconsin, and I as his campaign, was like, Hey, anybody running
for this, can we run for it? They ran for that nomination, they won it, and Wisconsin said, look, in order to get him off of a party's ballot, because he's not an independent, they would have to have another convention vote to get him off and get a new candidate.
And there's just there's no time.
Like ballots are going out North Carolina ballots are going on September sixth. I was just going to say, and something like a third of North Carolina's one hundred counties have already sent their ballots to the printer.
So like we're getting into actual practical.
Problems like which if it weren't for them, would Trump just like say thanks JD and just put RFK Junior as this running mate? You think if he could, if you think if logistically it could be done, he'd be like, you know what, let's just have the candidate Trump Kennedy.
No, I don't know, because I think Trump I would be very curious to hear. I haven't heard this from many people, like just journalistically what Trump really thinks of RFK Junior, because one of the things with him is if you endorse him, if you sort of engage in these negotiations with him, he doesn't always respect you. He feels like he sort of owns you. And I don't know if he has that level of respect for Robert F.
Kennedy JD Vance. He took JD Vance from like third to first in the Senate race.
Right, Yeah, that's true. Although RFK Junior is sort of yeah, I don't know, he's just like he's.
Kind of kooky and trying to be trumped on.
Like his voice Trump, Well, that's also.
Junior is like kid or whoever leaked that phone call that must have ticked him off.
I'm sure.
Oh.
In North Carolina, to wrap that one up, they have said that I forget what party he's running on there, but they said they've gotten no word from the party that has nominated RFK Junior in North Carolina that he wants to be off the ballot, because you would think like, Okay, we had a press conference, we said we want yes. But he also in North Carolina's defense, he said I'm going to remove my name from ten battleground states where I think it's competitive, but I'm going to keep my
name on in the other states for some reason. So in North Carolina's defense, they are like, look, okay, unless we get a phone call, yeah, then we're not going to take any deliberate action.
Once everyone gets back from the Labor Day holiday, it is shocking how quickly.
The voting these ball let's ballots are going out.
So I just have this calendar in front of me. There are a lot of states that are forty five days out from election, fifty days out from election in one or two. I think one of those might include Pennsylvania. So people are like quite literally going to start voting very very soon around the time of the first debate, which is scheduled for September tenth, because I think when we get back from Labor Day next week, they're about sixty days left before the election, so it's coming up
extremely fast. Tons of pragmatic questions now. James Carvel to this point about Donald Trump, was on a show recently talking about Trump's efforts to like write the ship of his campaign amid the and maybe I'm just going to go out of order to the control room here. It's in the context of what we saw happen with Kamala Harris. This is before a report from al Jazer, but it's been also reported elsewhere that her fundraising numbers are at
a record level right now. I think she's hauled in some five hundred and forty million dollars just after the DMS. Just after the DNS is the presidential record eighty two million during the convention.
Itselfne Bernie raised in twenty sixteen two hundred and fifty million from small dollars, and that was amazing, which and which broke all kinds of small dollar records. I mean, Obama was as separate, separate case. That was the campaign, you know, that included the general election. This is just weeks, shattering records in weeks, and I think people need to understand that this also.
If you believe that.
That politicians are bought and can be bought, which you should believe because that's obvious, to have that, to have them bought by five hundred and forty million dollars largely from just normal people is actually a really good thing for our democracy, and the Republicans are moving in that direction too. Just filling up your inbox, and Democrats to the same thing, to fill up your inbox, begging you for money, and then in moments of real enthusiasm, you
go and you're like okay, fine, and you give. Obviously you give Kamala Harris five hundred and forty million dollars.
So Kamala Harris has also one point five million new donors, which is really interesting coming in after Biden drops off the ticket. So that's people who weren't previously giving to the Biden campaign. This is according to The New York Times who analyze the disclosures, which is I think fairly significant. Actually just in and of herself was.
Giving to the Biden campaign, like I mean, I know, like big, big money people of course would do that because that's their job and they're say influence.
But if you're a regular person.
Because you hate Trump, I mean you're you're genuinely hate Trump.
But it was so embarrassing open, that's so demoralized. Yeah, this is just uncorked, like enthusiasm.
The New York Times reports hairstonors were slightly more likely to come from more educated ZIP areas and more educated areas ZIP code were more than half of those twenty five and over had a bachelor's degree at and Miss Harris also claimed a slightly high share first time small dollar donors from zip codes. We're more than five percent of the population was black, so that's where some of that one point five million new donors are coming in.
But this is obviously if you're the Trump campaign right now, you're on your heels. These numbers are astounding. So let's go ahead and roll this clip of James Carvell talking about how Trump has how in his mind as a democratic sort of legendary mythical democratic strategist analyzed the Trump campaigns or Donald Trump Himself's reaction to harry S joining the ticket.
He like shock, like survival instinct, and he knows that he's not having the same effect as he used to. He knows that Harris has become what he's always wanted to be. Is the kind of hard item he does, and he's not the new kid on the bock anymore, and he's struggling to regain that. But he he, like I say, he has very primitive survival skills, and I think this is something that is driving him crazy, right.
I think what you're saying is he's in deep in deep trouble and is aware of it.
He is, he is, and he's aware of and now how he gets out of it? Oh, Kenny, get out of it?
I don't know very primitive survival skills. So James Carlin's as well said, well, I mean I don't know. He survived pretty long at this point.
So, but primitive creatures survive for millennia.
Fair enough. Fair enough. Now the interesting, well, it is beyond interesting. I mean, it's always worth remembering. It kind of feels like it gets lost in all of this.
But a primitive is a compliment, by the way, because it's like that that's those are the best survival skills.
Okay, you don't.
I don't think he was using.
You don't want an accountant survival skills?
True, but James carvill seemed to be using it in this sense that like he's a kind of dthal.
Yeah, but I think he respects an Okay, okay, as.
A Clinton a Clinton operative, fair enough. Well, Donald Trump is in quote deep trouble because if he loses this election amidst this flood of cash for his opponent and a polling surge for his opponent, he could be facing
jail time. He can't dismiss, for example, the DJ's case against him, the Jacksmith case against him, just reup, can't pardon people, right, Yeah, just refiled yesterday to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity or to make it more to sharpen it in light of what the Supreme Court decided in that case. So he is quote in deep trouble if he loses the election, because you know, obviously his freedom is on the line.
Yeah, and we can put up B five here.
Democrats are now getting extremely confident, about extremely confident, but they're getting excited about the possibility of actually flipping the House. And you know, we're going to talk to Dan Osborne, Senate candidate at the end of this show. Because Democrats actually also believe that they have a chance of holding the Senate, like there is a chance that they could.
They went from assuming and several members of Congress and this articles said that they were going to lose all three chambers decisively to thinking we might actually win all three of these at this time and a Democratic operative was making an interesting point to me about Harris that I think plays into this, which is that there's a key difference between her and Barack Obama in this sense that in two thousand and eight, the Democrats and independent
progressives and others kind of invested their hopes into Obama as this transformative, unique leader who is going to you know, take them somewhere new, like he was the guy that was going to do it. They absolutely do not think
of Kamala Harris that way. What they think of as when they think of Kamala Harris, they think of somebody who can be the vessel for their for people's ability to fight against Trump, that like she'll do interesting, and they're actually just they're rooting for her, you know, And that's why they're I think fine that she hasn't had any interviews yet at all, and when they watched that interview Thursday night that she's going to do with Dana Bash, they're all just gonna be on pins and needles and
with their fingers crossing, like please, Comma, please come please, Kamla, just you know, hoping that she does well enough that she can then be the thing that they use to kind of fight back against Trump. Whereas when it was Obama, they would have been sitting back and just watching and like allowing Obama's genius to like wash over them.
Yes, and I think like the joy washes over.
No, that's their joy in Biden being gone.
And I think it's actually paradoxically a much a much healthier relation. They have a much healthier relationship with Kamala Harris. You should not invest all your hopes into a politician. You should actually have no confidence in them at all, I mean, and need to kind of push them and drag them, because that's the democratic will then kind of working, rather than this this guy is going to take us to the Promised Land.
The magical transformation of Kamala Harris, though, I think has some people who are previously very cynical about her now genuinely investing like emotionally in Paris as a human being hilarious, which is, yeah, it is absolutely wild. So to your point, also a brilliant move I think by the Harris campaign to finally agree to a sit down interview. It's going to be a joint interview with Harrison Walls.
On CNN forward as possible.
And yeah, weeks ago she said she hopes her team will schedule and by the end of the month it is like right, it's happening on Thursday night, literally the eve.
Of maybe we'll get one by the end of September.
Maybe if we're lucky. But I mean it's just like tactically it's the same thing with this entire campaign. It has been such a risk averse campaign, and I think it's like anti small dy democratic from you know, the hypocritical.
And Vice presidency.
We played a couple of months ago that that clip with Lester Holt where she sits down to.
Do an interview on the border.
Oh yeah, and he asks her, you know, why haven't you gone to the border. She's like, I have gone to the border. He's like, no, you haven't. She's like, oh, well, I haven't gone to Europe either. It was the most surreal exchange, like why did you just say you went to the border.
It doesn't make any sense. She didn't do an interview for like a year after that.
She's not I mean, it's not her strength. It could be pale A esque, but you know, she's feeling herself right now and that goes a long way just in terms of your personal confidence when you're in these interviews and it can backfire on you too.
And having walls there It's kind of a funny move. And also for this tiny ecosystem on the right, the Laura Lumers of the world, who were convinced that Democrats deeply regretted their choice of Walls and that he was going to be swapped out for whoever any minute now, they must be very confused by Kamala Harris like asking Walls to join her in her first interview.
They might like, how do you make sense of that?
If you're if you're convinced that he's actually like cooked and they're embarrassed by him.
Yeah, I don't know. It's a good point, but any mistakes they make will absolutely be buried in the Labor Day weekend. I mean, it's is Thursday, so Friday. Many people are already on vacation. DC is like all in the Hampton's right now, so everything, yeah, city's empty. Everything will just be buried anyway. So sort of a brilliant move. As much as I hate it. Game, respect game, All right, Ryan, Let's move on and move on to the Middle East and the invasion of the West Bank, which is ongoing
right now. Tell us what happened.
So last last night, the IDF launched what they called Operation summer camps, which is an invasion of you know, major parts of the of the occupied West Bank focused heavily on Jane, the refugee camp of Janine. So we can put this first element up. Associated Press was reporting that every entry in and out of Janine was being blocked by armored vehicles.
And that what you can see on the screen here, Yeah, and.
That the hospitals were you know, they had blocked access to all hospitals and other medical centers. Their argument was they didn't want to allow people to kind of shelter in hospitals, and so they have said that this is the largest assault. The Israeli Army announced that this is the largest assault on the West Bank since two thousand and two, that will involve thousands of service members and will last for days. And they have said it's a preemptive attack on what they said is the build up
of resistance groups in these in these refugee camps. Uh, they just you know, they just did a preemptive.
Attack on on Hasbal.
A lot of you know, a lot of a lot of preemptive attacking going on, the preemptive attacks for decades.
At this point, at least.
Nine Palcidians were killed in this in this attack, which so far, which is a number that, yeah, which pales in comparison to the to this day the numbers of deaths that you get in Gaza from the ongoing Israeli attacks. You're also having, uh, and we can talk about this later in a bit, an attack on Southern Communis by the IDF arrayed there, which appears to be based on intelligence gleaned from the Bedouin hostage who befriended This is
this is what we're hearing in the media. By all accounts, it appears to be true that he did, you know, he had a good had a good rapport with some of his captors and what and has been debriefing with the IDEF continuously since he was really and that the coincidence of the kind of raid on South Communist seems to suggest that, uh, the IDF believes that they have
intel that they can they can operate on. So we may soon be hearing new you know, the the bodies of hostages being recovered or more more, hostage rescues.
The way that.
The the way that the bed One hostage was rescued, it turns out, was because communications were disabled, you know, between because the infrastructure is so completely annihilated in Gaza that you know, different Hamas operatives lost lost communication and
basically they weren't able to keep up with people. A number of hostages were recently found suffocated in a tunnel after an idea of bombing, and so there's a huge risk two hostages of the of the the constant shelling and the and the constant attacks and destruction the infrastructure, and the the inability of you know, of their captors to communicate with each other because they're you know, they don't want them to die, like they want to keep
them alive. This guy, uh very You don't want to call anybody who went through that ten months of hell lucky, but lucky in the sense that the tunnel didn't collapse on him and you didn't suffocate.
And we've heard that from other rescued hostages who said they felt like nobody knew where they were and there was indiscriminate bombing around them. They didn't have confidence that they were being protected or safe, and they felt lucky. Basically, that's the that's the implication there is that we're lucky that we didn't die. Right from our like, I don't want to call it friendly fire because it's not exactly the same, but from bombing in Gaza.
Yeah, and what do we have to see two here? This put up this next element?
So yeah, this is Channel fourteen is like Israel's Newsmax. Basically, the Army's launched a large calm already several areas at the same time. In Channel fourteen, one of the one of the correspondents there, uh said, said something like.
Everyone survivor you're all going to die. If if you ever, if you ever.
Want some blood curdling stuff, Channel fourteen is the is the place to go.
Can put up.
The put up the third element here in here in this block. Ah, yes, there it is terrorists in northern West Bank. The gates of hell have opened. Either you surrender or you die, which, okay, some interesting trash talking, just weird from a journalist. I'm somebody who believes in uh, you know, putting some passion into your journalism, and it's okay to have a point of view. Just just an interesting approach, just a little weird. The gates of hell
have opened. So anyway, Operation Summer Camps, according to Channel fourteen in Israel, is the gates of Hell opening on the occupied West Bank, which again, to be clear, is not Gaza and is not controlled by hamas you.
Know in the Operation Summer Camp. With that juxtaposition to the communication that it's just yeah, it's very i mean, not surprising, but bizarre.
Nonetheless, I'm putting a fourth element here.
This is the Biden approving humanitary to Gazaviya the floating peer, despite warnings from the US government that rough waves could post significant challenges and objections. This is from Yashar Alie saying, an IG report revealed that Biden himself approved this plan.
Right right, which we would assume there's no way that this gets done without Biden, but it's this This IG report has some interesting details that of people arguing logistically quote high waves was what they were calling it.
You know, we here, we call it high tide.
You know, they're like, look, it's this isn't going to work, Like the idea just logistically is dumb. And he's like, now it's fine, let's put hundreds of millions of dollars into this. And then separately, the report exposes internal objections which which kind of leaked out into the press of the time and also were obvious. They were saying there were people inside the State Department were saying this gives Israel and out on actually letting humanitarian aid through the
ports of entry that already exists. Like and if you remember from the our reporting on this at the time, like this is weird, Like you're acting like there's some natural disaster around the rest of Gaza's where it's where you're unable to just put food and humanitarian aid into trucks and drive it in and distribute it to people. Like somehow that has become an impossibility that what you need to do is build this you know, five hundred million dollar pee peer and bring it in from Cyprus.
But then as soon as they started loading supplies into Cyprus, the IDF was just crawling around Cyprus and doing the exact same thing with their you know, their pencil and their clipboard.
What number do you have on this truck here? You know that number doesn't match what I have? Sorry, back of the line, Well, we talked about like if you don't solve the problem, what is one extra port that doesn't even work going to do.
We talked to someone a couple of months ago, I think was in Cyprus at the time that we had that conversation with you right about how trucks were being and that's you know, the United States wanted Israel to accept more trucks and as a huge backer in frounder of the war. If your ally, the the who's prosecuting this war won't comply with that, you then spend how of much money? I mean, what's the total on this peer to get around it because they won't let trucks through.
The only extent to which this worked at all is that because of this peer, that's when you had the World's Central Kitchen convoy attacked by the IDF and killed. And because they attacked the World's Central Kitchen because people in Washington, d c. Know Jose Andres that embarrassed by the enough that he made a phone call to BB and said, come on, this is embarrassing. You're killing me
here by killing all of these people. And then all of a sudden, for a couple of weeks, more trucks started getting in, proving the case that it was actually Israeli policy. Was really kept saying because if if it wasn't, then why could you know, b betweak it? And all of a sudden more trucks are getting and that obviously
didn't last long. And the long term effect of killing the world central kitchen humanitarian aid workers was that there were many fewer humanitarian aid workers willing to for good reason, you know, go out onto the distribution runs, which then led Israel to say, well, it's the United Nations and UNRA that that can't distribute the aid. It's really not
our fault, it's their fault. Knowing the fact that they had killed, you know, more than one hundred of family and workers of UNRA and and had led a global campaign to defund them.
There's some truth that there there's some truth to the claims about from the Israeli perspective that but we've talked about this before. When it's that embedded in such a tiny and concentrated population, that's sort of inevitable. And a big picture thought on this is it's the post World
War two. These are all of the tangled, bizarre conversations that we have, and now we have international pressure that you feed civilians of your enemies, which is in the like sort of aggregate a good thing and unusual in like all of human history. But if you say that
you're doing it. You got to do it if you agree to the terms, and if you want to, you know, throw international law around like Biden does when it comes to Russia and then flout it or fail to pressure people into complying with it when you're supplying arms, et cetera. It's obviously incredibly problematic. Let's put CEE five up on the screen. This is a video of the hostage rescue. Yes, and that's a actually a Muslim citizen of Israel, fifty
two year old man was rescued. You can see the body cam footage from the IDF on the screen here. Like Grian said, pretty lucky situation, but also worth mentioning that this well worth mentioning that this has reapped calls from the family members of other hostages who have not been rescued, of which there are I think roughly an estimate of like alive seventy something like a sixty seventy
right now. Those families are calling for ceasefire. So it has put that in a spotlight once again in headlines that you have the family members, the loved ones of people who are still being held hostage re upping their demands for ceasefire. Because this was the fourth successful recovery, I think the fourth successful recovery by the IDF of hostages. But there are a lot of people who have been
over there since October seventh. Then their families want to ceasefire and they want them back, and that domestically complicates the politics for Netanyahu as well.
Right, it's Wednesday.
You could have all of the hostages, or enormous number of the hostages out by the end of this week if they would just agree to the deal that Israel already put forward. That's what's so wild about these these ongoing negotiations that Israel put forward a deal.
Biden made that deal public. Hamas said, this works for us, Let's implement this framework. Let's do it. And ya, who's come back with Actually, we want to checkpoint in the it's a rem court or we want.
To control the access and through rafa et cetera. And so we're back to a place where they're deadlocked again.
And yeah, okay, So that's important context to all of this too. That's where we are right now with the potential cease fire deal, which was the Biden camp was saying was more and more likely as we went through the Democratic Convention, week, which I thought was very interesting timing. And now after dance Week is over, you know, maybe
these things are not. But my theory at the time was those public relations for the Biden campaign to say like, hey, this is going really really well, We're doing a great job, We're almost there. And you know, when the week turned to the next week, came pretty clear that's not what was happening.
Right.
And meanwhile, it's been interesting to see kind of Israeli society first first mourning a lot of the children that were killed who were kind of Syrian Arab children and occupied occupied Syria or you know, calling them Israelis, and then saying they're going to attack Hesbola over that when the relationship between those populations and the Israeli government is
mostly adversarial otherwise. And then if people want to look up how kind of the bed Ones are treated in settlements that are refused to be recognized legally by the Israeli government.
Uh that that's.
That's just an interesting juxtaposition here watching this unfold, and as as we think about.
The the the.
Mass roundup that must be going on as we speak in in the West Bank, it's worth noting this final element here. Human Rights just absolutely horrifying Human Rights Watch report that has come out that is confirming a lot of of what bets lem and and and other another reporting has already shown us about the the absolute I don't want to say collapse of the Israeli detention system because that suggests that it's something that was done accidentally.
Uh the uh Smotrich.
And our national security advisor Ben Gavir has said like forget him, yeah, that he has said that he wants conditions in these detention centers to be as horrifying as you could possibly imagine.
And then some. And the Human Rights Watch report.
Takes all the caricatures that you've understood about torture throughout the worst movies you can think of, and and ratchets them up to eleven people you know, you know, held naked up, upside down, you know, being you know, tortured
with electrocution, sexual assault, rape. Well, one of I don't know if you noticed this, one of the accused rapists from the from that prison facility is now going regularly going on like Israeli game shows and being kind of fetted and celebrated as a way to say, like, look, we defend this we support this, so check out check that Human Rights Watch report out.
Yeah, well, we'll continue to follow the story. Of course, fairly big news from Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, who actually wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee this week that he regrets two different censorship moves that Meta took back in around twenty twenty, roughly pandemic era one was surrounding the Biden Whitehouses, not secret at all.
In fact, Jen Zaki at the time was public about this in a sort of braggadocious way, demands for social media companies, including Meta, to censor what they deemed at the time to be COVID disinformation. We can put D one D one up on the screen. And also the Hunter Biden laptop story, which Zuckerberg will get to this in just one moment. Memorably told Joe Rogan the FBI approached Meta in the weeks before the twenty twenty election informing Meta to be on high alert for Russian disinformation
twenty twenty one. Biden administration attempts to censor COVID content twenty twenty. The Biden campaign and the FBI had pressured them to censor.
Well, he didn't say Biden campaign.
Right, No, no, no, he doesn't. But we know that the Biden campaign was telling.
People not to run this st liberally. I mean they were doing it publicly, basically one hundred percent.
And now what's also very interesting is Zuckerberg responded in this letter to Jim Jordan the House Judiciary Committee, where he did, of course copy ranking member Jerry Nadler, and said that the roughly four hundred million dollars that he had put into boosting quote, electoral infrastructure. You can see this quote on the screen in front of you if you're watching, he will not be making similar contributions this cycle.
That money was huge, and by the admission of a Molly Ball story in Time magazine, everybody remembers she described efforts spearheaded by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, that's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's four hundred million dollar contribution, as that well funded cabal. That is the word of the Time. This is the language of the Time magazine story, And there were annale, there were analyzes that came out
afterwards saying it disproportionately boosted election infrastructure in democratic area. Zuckerberg, in this letter to Jim Jordan said he doesn't agree with those analyzes, but he won't be contributing. Nonetheless, in the context of all of the concerns about what happened, that is a response, I think, probably most prominently to my former boss Molly Hemingway, who wrote a book basically about what happened after Zuckerberg made those contributions, called rigged.
And I don't know, I haven't seen Zuckerberg directly address it in a way like this before, so he just kind of seemed to be throwing a bone to the right in this letter in huge, huge ways. Now I think I agree with everything that he says here in terms of like directionally, I think this is all good. But he also called Trump badass recently. Remember that.
Yeah, I'm well, he was saying then getting shot in the ear and then standing up and pumping your fists was badass, which objectively is true.
Yeah, no, it absolutely is, but like it's he's an enemy. He's long been considered an enemy of Trump, so it was sort.
Of which I don't know exactly why.
And people think that Facebook actually boosted Yeah, absolutely, and I think there's probably an argument to be made for that. But he I mean he's been at least.
He lives in or he lived in Berkeley or whatever, superficial liberal and never never listened to what this guy said.
Not so sure that's the case. The reason I don't buy buy into as much of that. So on the on the Wisconsin Zuckerberg, you know money that went into you know, boosting the mail in ballots. I think I think it's probably true that the that the analysis correct,
that the money ended up helping Democrats. But I think the reason that Zuckerberg doesn't necessarily deserve blame for that is that the reason it helped Democrats is that Trump and Republicans made the absolutely inscrutable decision in real time to urge all of their voters not to vote by mail. And therefore, like if you any money you invest into encouraging people to vote by mail is going to benefit
the party that is taking advantage of it. Trump, I think recognizes that that was a fundamental mistake, and you see him now saying, you know, we're going to get rid of mail in voting, you know, when I'm president, but we haven't yet. So everybody needs to vote whatever way that you should vote. He's gone as that rhetoric of don't do mail in voting, because it also leaves you vulnerable to chance, like in Nevada where Democrats all voted early, and then in northern Nevada on election day
you had a giant snowstorm. Yeah, we're like, eh, I'm not going that's been in my truck off the side of the road for Trump.
Yep. Right.
So here's a flashback to how Zuckerberg talked about the lead up to the Hunter Biden laptop controversy with The New York Post. This is two years ago. On Joe Rogan's show, Zuckerberg kind of opened up about this with some I mean, if we take him at his word, and he seems to be a genuine in this quote, because it's like he's reflecting on how he didn't know
what he was getting into. And I'm doing a segment on my show Undercurrents tomorrow on this because I found it so interesting that Zuckerberg in his letter cited kind of his own declining institutional trust. He says, at the time, I trusted the FBI. This is what he gets into with Joe Rogan. He's like, I trusted law enforcement that they had, you know, best interests of the country, and we thought this was the right thing to do. So let's take a listen to Zuckerberg on Rogan.
It's like, Okay, if someone has has spent a bunch of time, you know, searching for puppies, you know they like puppies, so if you show them a puppy video, they'll probably engage with that. But if you only show them puppy videos over the long term, you're missing an
opportunity to understand what other things that they're interested in. So, even though it might not be kind of ideal for the experience today, carving off five percent ten percent of basically the experience to just try to expose people to different things to see if they if they're interested in
that too, ends up paying long term dividends. So I do think that like these systems done well, if you design them with a long term perspective and you're not just trying to kind of maximize engagement today, but you're really trying to understand what people care about and who people want to become and what their values are. I think you can you can build some stuff that gets it,
that gets really good over time. But I do think that the design of the system and the values that go into it matters quite a bit too.
So that was actually him talking about the way that Facebook and social media should be designed healthily. But in that Joe Rogan appearance, he also talked about how the FBI approached him. Trusted the FBI, and it wasn't that they told him you must suppress the Hunter Biden story. He said that there was a lot of daylight between what Meta did and what Twitter did. At the time, he was sort of criticizing Jack Dorsey for brottling the New York Post link. I don't know if you remember this.
I remember going to DMS to.
Took the New York Post accountdown.
You could, so if this is genuinely the most orwellian thing I've ever experienced in this country. When you went to send the link you copy paste the link into a direct message, it would say, can't do it. I'm just saying this, this won't work. Same thing. Yeah, it was the same thing when you tried to post it. So that in and of itself was pretty interesting. But
it's I think one of the big takeaways here. Jack Dorsey has also said that the reporting and the Twitter files showed that Twitter was mismanaged under his leadership, He's agreed with a lot of the criticisms and the Twitter files. Basically, he's supported Elon Musk. Jack Dorsey said it was a mistake to throttle the link, and now it's like all of these regrets to look back, and I'm like, listen, a lot of people in the wrinner like this is
too little, too late. I'm like, this is good. I'm so like the only the top line for me is that this is good. But our allergy to government censorship is kicking back in. I think that's a good thing that the antibodies and the American system say. I don't care if I you know, Mark Zuckerberry is not like a Trump supporter, no matter if he's a sort of Silicon Valley Nietzsche and Oligark, He's not a Trump supporter. And Jack Dorsey is certainly not a Trump supporter, even
though he's been supportive of Elon Musk. But so these people saying your government should not be telling us what information can be disseminated, generally, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Apple ended up letting Parlor back on the app store, So you know, dust settled, and I feel like we actually came out on top.
And hearing him talk about the Facebook algorithm is interesting from the perspective of what if you actually just showed people's stuff from the people you follow, your friends and family, and you showed your stuff to the people.
Who follow you. What about that? Can you imagine? So wild?
Why did they make everybody jump through all these hoops of friending people and listing the thing and actually listing the things that they like and subscribing to things that they like, and then they wrote an algorithm that says, actually, none of what you have told us is going to be factored in in any significant way into our algorithm.
Instead, we're going.
To just feed you stuff and see like a rat, which makes you click the fastest, going to your basest human instincts the boom, rather than the things that you consciously from your better self, Like, no, I want to keep up with what my aunt's up to, even if like I don't agree every single time, but I'm curious, Like what what's she up to? What's my cousin up to?
They're like, no, you don't actually care about that. What you really care about is, you know, seeing a seeing like a random fist fight, in Milwaukee.
So we're going to give you that Why Milwaukee, I don't know, why not Philly, Milwaukee suburbs, Hilly or yeah you want to see like Eastern Uh yeah, well I never see anything from there.
That's right, because even if you care about it, they know that they can. They're more likely to get you to spend more.
Time with somebody like jumping off a cliff or something. Yeah, it's what is it?
Like?
Why you like, I'm so old.
Actually do something real? But it's a pretty like just the all of this was written in a letter to Jim Jordan. These major concessions. Interesting. So let's move over to France, where this isn't getting a ton of pickup in the American press, but an incredible And maybe it's because the American press isn't as attuned to the like
actual left. I don't know, because if you're on the actual left, the story is incredibly disturbing and validating as to sort of the mushing neoliberal middle and their true their true allegiance to what do they say, lowercase de democracy and all of those things. Ryan, what on earth? We can go ahead and put this tear steet up on the screen, This is from BBC ch Left backs protests after Macrone rejects prime minister choice. What is going on behind that headline?
So this is wild.
So let's explain to people how this fifth republic, this fifth French Republic works.
So bab, They've got a president and a prime minister.
The president is the kind of good looking guy you put out on the national international stage. Handles foreign policy, doesn't matter, if he's short, does not matter. The prime minister handles domestic affairs. Traditionally, they've always been from the same coalition, the same party, basically because that's just how it has worked out. They may have stumbled on a
fatal flaw in their fifth Republican constitution. So in the last election results, the far left finished first, the far right finished second, and then McCrone and his center right party finished third, and I guess you got some little other part and then a bunch of like dregs, you know, finishing after that. So you would think, okay, fair enough, the far left gets to form a government and we
go from there. Macron and the far right like, no, we actually don't want to see that happen, and they have the power to stop it because the far left did not win an absolute majority, and they don't have anybody forming one with them. So even so, if Macrone did appoint somebody from the far left to form a government, the right and the center right and the rest of the dregs would immediately hold a no confidence vote and oust the government. So he could do that, and in
Spain the king did that. They had like an eighteen month stand off that was very similar to this one, and the king was like, okay, fine, you know what the right wing in this case was the right wing, the right wing one more votes but doesn't have a majority, so fine, go ahead form a government and like backed off and let them try. Then they failed, and then they let the center left former government. So Macron is not even allowing that. And so what the left said, Okay, fine,
you don't like us, you don't like our policies. And Macron has been very very clear it's we don't like I don't agree with your policies, your politics, like we don't want the left in charge. It's been very clear. He's like, I don't care what the voters said. So they have said, Okay, here's this thirty four year old, unobjectionable woman who will be our prime minister and we will take zero cabinet positions. They're like, that's that's their concession to the fact that they did not win an
outright majority. And Macron's like, no, not good enough, not going to do that. And as we as we saw you put up this next element here he's as he's sitting down with the pen and saying, all right, who knows what he's talking about with La Penn and these talks.
And the French left by the I was so concerned that La Penn's party would do incredibly well and the elections were in July would do so well that they that's the bigger context us that they all formed a coalition alliance, right, and.
That's defend off the fascists, right, exactly right. And so now Macron is like, well, let's sit down with fascists. And so you've got all these bizarre arguments where they're saying the left doesn't deserve to govern because some of the people who voted for the left weren't actually voting for a left wing agenda. They were only voting to block La Penn. So okay, a that's true. B Like psychoanalyzing why somebody voted for somebody as ridiculous idea, they
voted for them. See, that's the only reason anybody has ever voted for Macron. So by Macrone's own reasoning, there, Macron is thoroughly illegitimate.
Nobody has voted for Macrone.
In every every time he has won, he has won because he's not La penn and and so and so here he is so now.
The way, So I talked to Art gold Hammer, who we've had on the show before, who's a French. He lives in France. For American and lives in France.
He translated picketty he uh translated Tokeville is like he's great, he's and he's like, I have no idea where this ends. Usually he's like, here's where this goes from here, and he's like it has the feel of the beginnings of an extremely bitter divorce.
Like every like there's.
Absolutely no good faith among any of the parties. And he's like it might be a fatal flaw that's in the in the constitution.
Because there there.
Actually is no way out of so and to make people understand why this is happening now in this new era where we have kind of far left and far right both rising for the entire history of the French Republican and this goes for other countries too. The dominant parties or the center left and the center right, and so I let's say this. Let's say Macrone's center right party wins the most votes, the center left wins the second, and then the far left and far right are off
in the background somewhere. The center right would then grab a couple of little tiny parties from the far right and they'd form a government. Center right wouldn't complain because they didn't win the election and they get to be part of this governing coalition.
And in general, the voters.
Wouldn't complain because they'd say, okay, this is fair enough, Like a majority of people voted either for a center right or a far right government. Now, when the dominant polls are the far left and the far right, it's not clear who the far left forms its coalition with, because okay, let's see say the far left forms its coalition with the center left. Who then is the prime minister. Well, it would only be fair. It's just from the far
left because they won the most votes. But at the same time, a majority of voters voted against.
The far left.
You know, let's say fifty five sixty percent wanted center left over all the way to the right. So the center left party says no, Actually, if you want to represent the median voter, it should be us. But there is no median voter anymore because you're using this old
spectrum rather than understanding than that. Actually you've got different wings of populism that are the overwhelming majority against the kind of fading neoliberal elites, and so the old frame just doesn't work for the new politics.
It's so interesting you say that, because I was just
going to bring up this. I'm reading from this article kir Starmer doesn't understand populism because Kirre Starmer gave a speech this week that was described as quote gloomy by a lot of the press, and the author of this article makes a really, really good point that actually really the failure when Starmer was talking about quote the snake oil of populism in his speech, he's pinning all of those riots, the Southport riots that we talked about a
couple of weeks ago, on quote fourteen years of Tory failure, just pinning the blame on the Tories and this writer says, the public has a sense that the roots of our national woes go much deeper, more than forty years of a broken economic and social settlement, which we owe to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as their Eric
Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Richie Sunek. The mantra there is no alternative has produced decades of rampant economic and social individualism dressed up as progress, when in reality we've gained into liberal freedoms yet lost stability and common solidarity.
This is connected to what we talked about in the first block of the show today about people like RFK Junior and Telsey gab founding common cause with Donald Trump because he's somewhat heterodox in the Republican Party on particular issues. You know how he uses government, et cetera. But still not even that being the perfect marriage. Our categories don't
work anymore. They only kind of superficially ever did for the average voter, and everybody right now is just spinning their wheels and reeling to try and figure out the solution. But people like Kires Starmer and Emmanuel Macron and arguably Kamala Harris and maybe even to some extent, you could say Donald Trump, they have no real idea how to address this. And James Pogue wrote that story about Chris
Murphy for The New York Times. I don't know if you read about how Chris Murphy is genuinely trying to figure out what Democrats can do to address some of the concerns that the New Right is tapping into. He's like the only person in the Democratic Party other than Roe who's like Rocano, well, he should talk to you. It was like actually seriously engaged in that project. You see basically none of that from the starmer Macron Harris is of the world right.
Yes, that's right.
And so the we can put up this third element here from this McCrone ally.
Bayru or this is a great, great follow.
I don't have my glasses on, so I can't tell exactly what has ad is, what he's arnold, but Tron he's he's great on so much stuff.
What is he He's fantastic? It's are not bertrand so r n A U D b E R t R A n D.
And so he's talking here about how this macrone advisor is just very explicitly saying that it's the left program that mcrone objects to, and that they that they as the establishment elite, object to, and that they're going to cling to power against against this, come hell or high water. The fact that this is happening at the exact same time as they arrested the Telegram found the Telegram founder
in Paris, I don't think is. I think it might it's it might be a coincidence in the fact that they're lining the events are lining up at the same time. But it's similar to the trends are similar. The establishmental lead is going to need censorship and authoritarianism to kind of lock down this, this this bubbling rise of populism. And so what Bayrou was arguing there is he's stating a fact, which is that the left did not win an outright majority. So but then he goes on, therefore
they should not be able to govern. It's like, but whenever the center left or the center right one forty five percent of the vote, they were not told and we're the leading vote getter by far, they were not told, oh, you only want forty five percent, you don't get to govern. If it's the center left, the left wing parties would join with them, and they'd form a coalition. If it's center right, the right wing parties would join with them
form a coalition. But the center is just is unwilling to do that for either Paul right right and.
So center left and center right too, whether it's Mitch McConnell or Truck Shoomer.
Right and so, although in our system they seem a little bit more willing to do that, and also that our centers are holding better. Yeah, then well, maybe are the center and the Democratic parties holding better than the one in the Republican Party?
Yeah? No, I mean that's the question, is how much
longer does that last? I posed that question actually to Rick MacArthur, who's the president of Harper's and publisher of Harper's, because he wrote a story for Spectator World about how Democratic elites have been able to control the party so well over the of course of the last several decades, and the Sun undercomits two where he's and he there is such a difference between how Republicans totally lost control when Donald Trump came along and Democrats fought Bernie Sanders
tooth and nail in twenty sixteen were able to use them the muscle of the DNC to shut down the Sanders campaign or to hamper the Sanders campaign did it again in twenty twenty by getting Peep Bida Judge and Amy Klobachr to come together, and the Republicans had basically no ability to do anything about Donald Trump, whereas Demok's actually like like the DNC figured out how to muscle him out of the picture and to get rid of people like Marianne and TULSI just basically shut those campaigns down,
and I mean not shut them down, but hamper their ability to be serious contenders.
It's a good segue into our next segment, which is an interview with Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne.
We don't know if this will be the independent that.
Breaks through and becomes an actual senator, but I do think it's going to happen, like over the next several cycles, somebody, somebody's going to break through and do it. I mean, obviously Bernie Sanders already did it winning as an independent in Vermont in two thousand and six, but nobody else has been able to do it since then. Well like right now, I'm not thinking of anybody who is like
a fake version of that. So anyway, up next Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne, who is pulling neck and neck with the Republican in Nebraska on a class first message. Joining us now is Nebraska Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborne.
Dan, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me on.
And so we're having you on at kind of an interesting time in your race now. Not only has your Republican opponent deb Fisher just been officially nominated to be your only opponent, and I believe it's correct that there's no Democrat running in the race, but you know, you really got kind of rocketed to Nebraska stardom as the leader of this strike and the leader of the Kellogg's strike,
very successful strike three years ago. Seeing that Kellogg's is now claiming it's closing its planned so can you can you back up for people who aren't familiar with the with the Kellogg's story at all, tell us about your eighteen year career there that led up to the strike and what the strike was over and where we are now.
Yeah, not that I'm really ever into correcting people, but it was twenty years I.
Spent there twenty years. Sorry, Yeah, no, no worries, those details matter.
Sometimes this one not necessarily, but yeah, I was a mechanic there for twenty years. Really, my origin story with the union begins at COVID. You know, we all have our COVID stories, most of them not good.
But I was union president during COVID. We were working, and.
It's noteworthy to say that there's four North American plants under the umbrella of the master contract and we were all working seven days a week, twelve hours a day as essential workers.
During that time. Gellog's made record profits that year.
They went from well, it's noteworthy to say also we kept all plants going hundred percent capacity, so they made record profits. They went from nineteen billion to twenty one billion dollars. The CEO gave themselves a two million dollar raise, the board enriched themselves, the stockholders enriched themselves. In our contract expired that year. We figured it was going to be a no brainer. We were going to get our
little slice of the pie. But instead Kellogg sat across the table from us on the first day they said, we're going to go out to your health insurance. We're going to go out to your cost of living wage adjustment, which was our only form of wages designed to keep us even with inflation.
You know how that went.
And we're going to implement a two tier wage system with no path for a lower tier employee to move to the upper tier. So essentially everybody is going to be on the lower tier. So for me as president, that was my old crap moment. There hasn't been a strike in Nebraska since nineteen seventy two.
I had to learn what that meant.
But we could not come to an agreement with Kellogg's and so we shut down four North American cereal plants and we walked off.
The job preserve our wages and benefits.
We all felt we were on the right side of history on this, and I knew out on the picket line Democrats were going to come out and support a labor because that's what they do.
But I was able to get two Republicans.
One governor well one congress person to come out to the picket line and one governor to draft a letter on our behalf to send it to the CEO imploring him to get our people back to work. But we were on strike for seventy seven days and we got a favorable contract. But I stood up for the people
when we felt we were getting wrong. But the Kellogg's announced that they're closing the plant Omaha on twenty twenty six, and a lot of people online, a lot of keyboard cowboys and cowgirls online blaming me in particular, but the union for that closing. Well, there's also three other plants in the network in North America that are under the same master contract that get the same wages and the same benefits. But they only announced Almaha. But two years
is a long time. A lot can happen. I have a good feeling that this is not going to occur the way they are saying it's going to occur. This could even just be a negotiating tactic by Kellogg's to try to get the Union to take concessions. We'll see, But again, two years is a long time.
Is any of it political? Do you think? Then they announced this closure two years later to try to torpedo you.
You know, I thought about that, and you know.
I appreciate the thought that I'm somebody special enough for a corporation to announce a plant because of one guy.
And so no, the answer is absolutely.
Well, let's put this element up on the screen. These are the polls from five point thirty eight. Obviously, it's incredibly difficult for an independent candidate to pull as closely as you are coming in. This is a u go of poll you can see right there at the top from five thirty eight, collection of polls, five hundred registered voters, and it finds dead Fisher up. By the way, she's running for her third term, right, so she's been in office since twenty twelve. She's up by two points in
that UGO poll. I imagine that's within the poll's margin of air forty one to forty three percent. You're at forty one, she's at forty three, and.
You've got that deb Fisher pole that has yes just absolutely crushing you.
Yeah, she has a poll out that has her up twenty six. But then there was a poll from your camp that find you guys tied. And these are all since the last thing that we mentioned are since July. So the polling is showing a competitive independent candidacy, there's no question about it. So my question for you is
why run as an independent? A lot of people who are aligned with labor jumping as Democrats obviously, so I imagine some of our viewers outside Nebraska who aren't super familiar with this race might say, why be independent here, why not just go with a Democratic party. What's your answer to that, and how do you sort of describe your own politics?
Yeah, well, I became an independent in twenty sixteen. I became disenfranchised with a two party system. I see this huge divide that is being created, seemingly both sides catering to their extremes and leaving people I feel like me out of the middle, Like there's nobody like me in the United States Senate, and by that I mean less than two percent of our elected officials in both the House and Senate come from a working class. I get
frustrated when I see their corporate agendas. For example, ninety percent of deb Fisher's campaign funds come from corporate super PACs. But we're being different. I'm not taking any corporate money. I don't want to be beholden to corporations elected. I don't want to be beholding to a party boss if elected, I want to be beholden to the people of Nebraska
who elected me. Because that's the way the framers of the Constitution set this whole thing up right, a government for and by the people, it's.
Not a government for the one percent in corporations.
And that's where you know, when I do deep dives into our government and our politicians, that's my findings.
So I want to be different and I want to I want to bring it back to the people.
And what what is deb Fisher won by in the past, and what does a typical Republican win by statewide in general?
Yeah, you know, she's never really had any competition either in the primary by I think design parties like to uh support their incumbents, which I completely understand that. And you know here in Nebraska, it's a red state. It's very conservative values here, and I believe she wins by she wins by large margins.
Trump went by with about sixty percent of the vote, and twenty and find got about forty percent.
So yeah, so so how do you how do you thread how do you thread the cultural conservative conservatism of Nebraska versus any any impression that you're like, you know, I'm sure they're trying to saddle you with this is actually he's actually a liberal right now in independence clothing here. So what what messages are you finding are resonating? Where do you come down on the kind of general kind of social conservative spectrum of questions.
Sure, and you know dev Fisher is going to paint me as a Democrat in chief's clothing, because you know, that's probably what I would do if I was heard too. Right, I'm running against a Republican. There's no Democrat in the race, so it stands to reason she's going to.
Paint that picture. But I've never been able to put.
Myself in a tidy, little blue or red box. I've always felt like I like things from both parties. But what's differentiating me from being a Democrat or being a Republican is you know, my core message, and my core message is we have to get corporations out of our politics. We have to have corporate or excuse me, we have to have a campaign finance reform. We have to end
things like Citizens United. We have to get the corruption and the money out of our politics in order for it to be this sound entity that is mostly free from corruption. Again, we're being different. I'm not taking corporate money. My average donations thirty five dollars. We've raised two point three million, So this campaign, excuse me, it's truly powered by the people. But where I lean towards the right would be. You know, we do have to have a secure border, and we have to do it yesterday.
Both parties are to blame. They keep kicking the can down the road.
I mean, we haven't had any meaningful border or immigration reform for that matter, in a very long time. And also we have thirty four trillion dollars in debt. You can place the blame on both parties for that, and many administrations adding six seven billion dollars or trillion dollars.
To the national debt.
So we have to do things like hold the Department of Defense accountable for passing audits.
Things like that.
And we have to hold corporations accountable for when they start price gouging and grocery stores for jacking prices up one thousand percent. These are the things that I think we need to do because we're all hurting.
I'm hurting.
I'm a steam fitter for a living now. I got fired from Kellogg's after the strike. But you know, these are the things that are taking money out of our wallets at a time where we're all hurting. So that's kind of where I set myself apart.
And Bernie Sanders sort of famously independent from Vermont obviously, but caucuses with Democrats or has long caucus with Democrats. And some people didn't even know that Bernie Centers was actually an independent because he went for execut rand of the Democratic presidential primaries, caucused for years with Democrats. So do you have plans for how you might approach the
caucusing question should you be elected to the Senate. Do you have plans to caucus with Republicans, with Democrats or just not caucus with either party?
Sure? I do have a plan for that.
And George Norris was the last independent senator from Nebraska.
He's from the Cook Nebraska.
He would he actually set up the non partisan unicameral that we enjoy in Nebraska today that I think Washington, d c. Could take a few notes from. But his last term he did not caucus with anyone. And you know, there's nothing in the Constitution or anywhere written that says you have to People will tell me, oh, well, you'll never get a committee assign I meant, if you don't choose to caucus, I would like to challenge I would
like to challenge the entire system. Deb Fisher early on called you know, dismissed us, and she's refusing to debate because she says, oh, this is just a political science experiment. And I was like, yes, that's exactly what I am and what is and you know, guess what else is a political science experiment in the United States of America.
Are a declaration of independence our constitution. That's a political science experiment. And I think it's done pretty well.
But I would like to challenge the system, not caucus with anyone, but if I feel like the people because I want to deliver for the people in Nebraska at the end of the day, and if I feel like I'm failing at trying to buck the system, depending on who how the House is set up, how the Senate set up, who's the president, there's a lot of different scenarios.
I'm going to have to make a decision on who to caucus with.
And I will caucus with somebody if again, if the people in Nebraska are suffering, but it's going to have to be a choice to made who I can best deliver for Nebraska at that time.
If there was a bill that came to the Senate floor that would codify Roe v. Wade, would you vote to support that and how big an issue are abortion rights in the Nebraska Senate races fairly conservative state, but then again abortion rights triumped in nearby Kansas.
Correct, it did.
And it is also about initiative in Nebraska, as is the legalization of medical cannabis is going to be on the ballot as well. And you know, I always divert back to the Constitution of the United States and the.
Founding fathers and how they envisioned the country.
And they envisioned the federal government take care of the big stuff, the economy, the border affairs, things like that, And I don't think the United States government should be meddling in our personal affairs, whether that's at the doctor's office or our bedrooms.
I truly believe that. And so you know what I codify Roe v. Wade. You know that goes that boils down to also.
The federal government should be taking care of our individual liberties, right the Second Amendment, things like that, and so I believe that does fall under the category of an individual liberty. Look in my own personal life, I'm on a percent pro life. I would never advocate for anyone that I know or love to have that procedure.
But if I also know that I'm a male.
And I don't have a womban I would never advocate for women to have that choice. And I know pregnancy is a very difficult thing and that it does need to be available for women who need that procedure because it could be life threatening. So you know, it's a very polarizing, a very difficult subject to talk about, but ultimately I would I would side on a woman being able to choose for her own body.
What about the medical marijuana one? How are you going to vote on that?
I didn't realize that was up, But how does Nebraskan not have yet have that yet?
Come on, guys, well, I met the woman who.
Is leading that ballot initiative, and she has a son that has a condition that it would totally benefit from being able to give him THC to not have massive seizures. And so the fact that you know she doesn't have this medicine, and I'm going to call it medicine because ultimately that's what it is. In this case, she doesn't have this medicine available to give to her son. And if she goes out and gets it through other means and gives it to her son, the state can take her son away from her.
This is this is absurd. So absolutely, I'm going I'm going to vote for that.
Well, I guess last question, have you have you endorsed a presidential candidate, because I assume that you're hoping that they're a decent number. I mean, you can't win in Nebraska if there aren't a decent number of Trump Osbourne voters, people who vote for Trump and then vote for Osbourne. How are you How are you approaching the presidential.
Yeah, well I approach it.
I tell people, Look, I will work with whoever the president is. And since I've been doing this and speaking to people who are one hundred percent pro Trump, and well, I'll go back to an event I had.
An alliance in Nebraska. It's on the western end of the state.
There was about seventy five people at this event at a VFW, which.
I'm a member of.
But I had a guy come in wearing a Maga hat an open Cary pistol. I had people there with right and with Biden T shirts, you know, so it was a very eclectic group of folks and uh, you know, we had great conversations and uh, both riding with Biden T shirt and both Mago opencerry hat guy they left with Osborne Yard Science. Because my message is simple, we need to get back to working together.
Because at the end of the day, I'm not red, I'm not blue.
We're all This is going to sound really cheesy, but we're all red, white, and blue.
Right, We're we're Americans.
Uh, and we need to and we need to act as such, and we need to start to come back together and stop this this silly arguing.
And this the bud that's been created.
And uh, that's again that's my message, and it's and it's getting corporations again out of our politics, getting the money out of our politics, stop.
This corruption that we're seeing.
I want to be different, and that's that message is really resonating with both conservatives and liberals.
So I have I have pictures with my Osborne sign.
Out in front of a Trump tent that they were in.
I believe it was Boone County, Nebraska.
Out of affair there they put my sign out in front of the trunk tent and I see my sign next to Harris signs.
So I love it. I Uh.
That's the whole message of this campaign is let's just let's just be one people again.
Hmm all right. Well, Dan Osborne, Navy veteran steam fitter, union leader and independent Senate candidate in Nebraska, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate you.
You've got it. Take it easy, Emily, What do you think he has your vote?
I mean, I don't love dub Fisher, so.
I'm not zero people love that fish. I mean her family loved well.
I think she's probably been good to some particular industry in Nebraska. I'd have to like, go.
Back surance industry.
I think that's the other think Nebraska is a it's not just culturally conservat it's actually kind of a corporate state too, because there's a lot based on a were in Buffett, the insure and then there's the insurance industry there.
So the anti corporate.
Ag there's a lot of stuff out there.
Yeah, consolidated, big age.
The anti corporate message is going to run up against some people are like, hey, wait a minute, we're a corporate state here.
Well no, I mean it's it's it's so interesting and it's like we weirdly didn't even plan for this, but this turned into like a realignment themed edition of Counterpoints, because this kind of goes with every black Like we started talking about our kid and Tulsi like not having a lot of luck in the third party lane or in the independent lane or in the like populist dem lane. They talked about how that's going in France, the.
Weird journey of Zuka all throughout, all throughout his realignment.
I mean, it's just up to Nebraska.
The most interesting part of that, actually, I thought was his answer on row that one seemed like I just got the sun that he felt that was the toughest one.
And he game, yeah, I'm sure it is, because on the one hand, I bet the ballot measure in Nebraska will pass so.
And you know, I don't know, But what do you think?
I don't know how close you've followed the like how you because it passed in Kansas?
Right well, But his version of and soccer talks black is a lot. But his version of like live and let live libertarianism is really popular with Americans. And that's sort of what some of these like pro abortion activists have tapped into in places like Kansas, is like libertarians for choice, like those types.
Of groups, you don't want to vaccine mandate.
Get right like they're they're doing, like they're really being smart about how they're pitching this stuff in ads to voters. And so that his answer in that I think was trying to channel that sentiment. And it's so interesting how he's coded and said I'm pro life. I think he said I'm one hundred percent pro life when you asked him that. But he's also coded as a hardcore labor leader.
I don't know anybody else who really brings those two things together, because even Donald Trump would never say that he was one hundred percent of pro life. I mean, I doubt he would, you know, say it like that. But he's, you know, not great on labor. We don't really know what we actually do. You know, bring in the CEO of Eggsun and statementation and just you know, let things go. But gets so rare that you get a combination that's as stark like that.
And we'll see if it reverts to the partisan mean an he winds up losing by seven eight points, or if he ends up kind of shocking people.
A lot of money's going to come in for deub Fisher.
I'm sure, yes, that's true.
I wonder it's a it's kind of a catch twenty two because I think Democrats, even though I think Democrats are pretty confident, he would caucus.
With them if it meant giving them the majority, you know.
Pro life or caucusing with them in the Senate.
Yeah, although who said he would vote to codify ROS That's how I read his answer. But will Democrats spend money on his behalf or maybe then, because then it makes him look like a Democrat? Yeah, and his and Democrats are fatally existentially unpopular in rural areas, and I think just giving up is actually small.
Including Tim Walls by the way, if you look at his marvell. Yeah, so this is a really important race to follow. And maybe I'm a softy, but I just love like that story he said about the rydeing with Biden and the open carry guys both leading, leaving with his yard signs and then being able to just talk about this stuff is awesome. I think that's great.
I wonder where that Ryde with Biden T shirt is.
We gotta get you one put on the show.
Maybe I'll buy that guys stuff it into your fish water bottle.
All right, Well, we will be back if you're a premium subscriber, on Thursday evening with a truly incredible debate about our Cage Junior featuring Michael Tracy and somebody who was a field organizer for our FK Junior's campaign, Jeff Hunt. So that's on Thursday night. If you're premium sub you can go ahead to you can go head over to
breakingpoints dot com to get a premium subscription. You get full episodes of Counterpoints, you get Friday Debate shows early, and we've got some pretty great Friday debate shows coming up, so if you want to get those early before the general public, make sure to subscribe, and then we'll be back with more Counterpoints on next Wednesday.
See you then, stay tuned.