8/3/23: Trump In Court Today As Co Conspirators Revealed, US Debt Downgraded, Obama Warns Biden Could Lose, Ukraine Counter Offensive Failing, Hunter Business Partner, LK99 Superconductor, Trucking Company Collapse, Panel On Trump Indictment

So we will take you inside all of that. And we also have MSNBC kind of freaking out about the Cornell West presidential bid and how black voters will do for the Democratic Party, what they will do, who they will.

free speech. They're going after him for wrong thing. We've got someone who says, no, this is justified. So we'll get into all of that and attempt to have a very nuanced conversation about the legal analysis of these latest Trump in Diamondcycer Before we get to any of that, though, Thanks so much to everyone who has been signing up to become a premium subscriber this week, and just as a reminder, we have been having more ads inserted even into.

That's also a good reminder you can watch the full show in your Spotify app if you become a Premium member. Breakingpoints dot Com also I thought we should mention this too. I realized, Crystal, given our posting schedule, we've been posting things on a different timeline these days. So if you actually want to watch the full show, like right when it comes out and not on a staggered schedule of what our team thinks is appropriate for that day, just sign up. You can become a premiu member. You can

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these are mostly perfunctory. We probably won't get anything particularly new here.

As I mentioned earlier, we are going to have a panel on to debate the legal piece of this, and one of the individuals we're going to have on is certainly going to be making that case that this was all about free speech, and we've got someone on to make.

her ruling. The judge wrote, presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not presidents. So, like I said, Sager, not expecting anything super traumatic today. It's not even one hundred percent certain that Trump is actually going to appear in court.

those people rolling around here. I actually found it's not the immediate court proceedings, but now the current timeline of Trump's legal drama to be one of the most insane things on a political level. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was assembled by Fox News, so as you can see Thursday, that's today. We've got the jan six court appearance. August twenty third is the first GOP debate, which current indication seem he's going to skip it.

October two, then you've got the Trump Organization civil suit that will proceed in court. Then January fifteenth, you have the Iowa Caucuses. The exact same day, there's a civil defamation suit, the continuing suit of Egene Carroll. Then a pyramid scheme class action.

political drama layered on top of the legal problems. We don't yet have a trial date set for this, so remember this is going to be somewhere in that timeline, Crystal, and just the true insanity. I mean, you and I have said this on the documents. Listen. I think it was charged relatively in a timely manner with this one.

They took two and a half years, almost three years to bring this case now against Trump, and now we're thrown into this insane situation where, you know, very likely the most legal jeopardy really that he faces here on this case just because of the you know, not exactly friendly judge and not exactly a friendly jury in terms of facing jail time. When are we gonna find this out? Are we gonna find out before Super Tuesday or not? Because that seems pretty damn relevant if it happens after

Super Tuesday. Look, current indications he's gonna wrap this thing up on that day in terms of at least look, everybody always usually knows by that time whether you're on the path to the nomination or not, unless it's a very very tightly held election. I'm going to try to think in modern memory, I think the last time that things really got clenched up post Super Tuesday was probably Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety. So let's just put that there.

If we know then he's on a dramatic path, then we are on the collision course to one of those most insane outcomes where he gets convicted, then we have what an immediate kick of the case to Scotus. Imagine in the final days of the election, you know, ahead Trump gets convicted, Scotis vacates it like it vacates a conviction or upholds a conviction. Either is an insane outcome

that could lead to who the hell knows what. In terms of the argument pre election, it looks like it makes a comy press conference and all that look like like the total JV squad compared to the drama we are setting ourselves up for, is just absolutely nuts.

but sewn up the Republican nominy. It's going to be very difficult to come from behind for any of these candidates, and you know, for him, as a non incumbent, to have the sizeable lead he has at this point, it's just hard to see how how anyone makes that come back.

And you know, keep in mind with this timeline too, this is not fully fleshed down, like we still have the trial for these January six related charges, We still have whatever is going to happen in Georgia and whenever that trial is going to be scheduled, So between now an election day, there is going to just be a lot of legal news about.

regardless of how you feel about President. I saw Chris Hayes on I'm SMBC saying the same thing, like, you had enough time for the Senate to come up with their whole thing and you know, make their whole presentation, and for Congress to at least have some you know, assembling of the facts. What took so long to launch this investigation when we all saw January sixth unfold, Like there was enough already on the public record to say

this at least bears some investigating. So I do think that it was a disservice to the American people to wait so long. Now, that doesn't mean that I think the I personally, from my analysis as a non legal person looking at the charges, I think they're appropriate. I think just Trump deserves to be held accountable for trying

to steal the election. I think it is a horrible look to see all of the people who like stormed the Capitol on January six go in to prison and the guy who fomented and created the conditions that led to that whole situation getting off Scott free.

that dunicated in terms of court. Now on the political side, I just can't get over it. It's like, you can't wait two and a half almost three years after the event to charge somebody. You can't decide not to charge the guy. Effectively, what's been coming out Crystal is they decided not to try argin kind of by Merrick Garland.

Then he kicks the case in some weird way to Jack Smith, even though Jack Smith was a point for the document's case but like anything Trump related will just kick it to you and then Jack Smith suddenly like expeditionally puts it. If you read the indictment, all of the evidence that was to gather before there has been available for what three months, six months or whatever after the fact, all the emails, everything is actually a pre

January six, twenty twenty one. So I mean, look, if you look at that and then check the timeline, there is just no question that if you're a Republican, you can't look at this and be like this is the most politically convenient timing ever, like right whenever he's surging. How about during the Biden situation. I mean, look, these

I think these are legitimate points. I will say, like on our show, we've got both, We've got Trump and Archer here, but you know you and I know this, like Fox is not going to be talking about both, and neither is MSNBCO. So that vast majority of people in this country are going to be imbibing like kind of one narrative on this, and I can I can actually understand really for specifically a lot of these Trump voters are like, hey, this is BS, this is political,

this isn't real. There's a reason they don't really use that on the document's case because it's so indefensible. But I think they've actually opened themselves up for where's all, like you said, for people who do believe that Trump should be charged and criminally liable for January sixth, to use that political attack against the genuine merits of the case because they didn't conduct themselves in a timely enough manner.

And actually Trump could possibly argue that much of this in court as well, like what exactly took so long?

what the Insurrection Act is for it. So I personally don't know that the timing piece really sells as a political argument for Trump that's going to be persuadable. People can hold two thoughts in their head, and this is what the polling has showed thus far with the Document's case, with the Alvin Bragg case, they both feel like, Okay, yeah,

it's kind of political these charges. Also we think he did it and we think it's serious is real, So you know, I think that they're the overwhelm based on pulling the overwhelming majority people feel like Donald Trump committed crimes with regards to trying to overturn the election, and just on the free speech part.

of that is criminal. What you can't do is then use those lies to perpetrate a fraud that involves you know, these seven states of fake elector schemes and you pressuring Mike Pence to try to overturn the results and obstruct quote unquote official government proceeding. That's what you can't do. And that is the case that we're going to make in court. So listen, we're going to have both sides of that coin argued in our panel today. So look forward to hearing what the legal experts have to say

about that. But to me, the idea that the Republican talking point about, oh this violet's free speech, it almost seems pre baked and like they had this locked and loaded before they really absorbed the details of the indictment. Most just my humble opinion. Let's go ahead and get to one of the other interesting was kind of a mystery, but maybe not so much of a mystery anymore pieces of this indictment, which is, who are these six unindicted

co conspirators. Let's put this up on the screen. From the Wall Street Journal, they say six co conspirators described Trump's twenty twenty election indictment. Descriptions in the document indicate that they are former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesbro, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. They at this point said a sixth person has described as a political consultant whose

identity is unclear. Well, I think we now know who that political consultant actually was. We got some reporting from the New York Times, go and put a four up on the screen. Looks like the political consultant was Boris Epstein, based on some emails that he sent back and forth. I think with Rudy Giuliani and the role that he is known to have played in terms of the fake

elector's scheme and election conspiracy. So looks like we have all six of the unindicted co conspirators sort of identified in terms of their roles matches up with what's already been publicly reported. Just to remind you some of the you know, some of what was going on with these folks at the time. We played this sound recently because Rudy Giuliani is actually being sued for defamation of two election workers that he just out and lied about.

Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. This particular instance was at a press conference where she was laying out some fairly wild claims that turned out to be obviously not true about the way that this alleged fraud was all perpetrated on.

the federal government in order to try and take this to a whole other step, which would have been the actual intervention of the DOJ in like seizing ballot boxes and trying to like officially like spark investigations based though on completely spurious claims. So if you put those together, Epstein and Juliani, sorry Juliani, Eastman and Jeffrey Clark all seem to be like the three centers of the most

nefarious plot. Sidney Powell. I mean, she comes across in the indictment and also at the time it's just completely nuts, like out of her mind, so much so that even the people in the room were like, what are you talking about? And it's funny because even Mike Pence took a shot at Sidney Powell after the indictment came out. He's like, yeah, the President surrounded himself by all these crackpot lawyers. Yeah, I think we all know exactly who

he was referring to. So the other final thing mentioned this in our immediate breakdown in the indictment press conference by Jack Smith, he said, this will not stop our co andtuing and investigation of individuals. So these are not necessarily the last of the co conspirators. Yes, there are others who may still be. I still think Mike Lindell. Look, you know, I don't wish this on Mike Lindell, but I'm like, the man has had his hands in so many things and be in funding so many types of things.

Him and then the Overstock CEO guy I forget is Patrick something those two because they were funding different schemes and things like this. They might have put themselves on some serious legal jeopardy.

But she continued to be really central and certainly was publicly making the case, but also was deeply involved in a bunch of the meetings that were happening at the White House. And there's a whole bunch of reporting about how wild things were then, where some of the aids were trying to keep people like Sidney.

of the US debt by Fitch. Their credit rating was downgraded at the exact moment actually of the overall indictment, from triple A down to double A plus. You might be asking, like, why does that matter, But it's the outlook for the twenty five trillion dollar treasury markets. And actually a representative from Fitch appeared on Business TV in order to break all of this down. Here's what he said.

The debt ceiling to be the fact that the government both sides, Republicans and Democrats haven't been able to come up with kind of meaningful long term solutions to deal with growing fiscal issues, especially around in title.

below top grade. And the point that you actual she just made is very important is that the pitch, I mean, he's framing it in terms of fiscal but at the core of what they said in their statement around the downgroad of US debt was we feel like the American governance system is brittle and will allow things to fall through the cracks such that we cannot rely entirely and fully upon the American political system to be one hundred

percent behind its debts. While I don't think that as true in practice, as in like with the debt ceilings standoff, eventually we did figure something out, we got something pass like whatever, and we always do seem to have it happen. In the end. We are still playing chicken though with our full faith credit and debt. But beyond that, they don't just point to the debt ceiling. They point to the overall system of like can you deal with irreconcilable

issues or not even irreconcilable. Can you deal with like very tough, long standing problems coalitions sit down and actually talk to each other when that has broken down so much that they look at it that they feel like that can't be evolved, not only now, but long time in the future. They're onto something there. They're not wrong, they.

I can't say that they're wrong. And then the other piece that I would say, and of course the Biden administration is very offended by this downgrade.

And it's clear that extremes by Republican officials, from cheerleading default to undermining government's democracy. Just seeking to extend deficit busting tax giveaways for the wealthy is continuing to threaten our economy. I mean the part that begs belief here is the whole President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world. You know, they're continuing to stick with this freaking Bidenomics narrative. And listen.

I mean, they can try and point their finger at the Republicans all they want, here's the truth. They have just as much of a you know, as a role in systemic problems in the US economy as in the Republican officials. If you listen to what Fitch and them said, it wasn't just about the debt ceiling and about January sixth or any of that. Really what it was is that it comes down to the actual fundamentals of our economy and something that we talked a lot about everything

about this a lot. What went wrong for Biden and the entire first year of his presidency is just one of the biggest own goals in my opinion, and like modern presidential history, he was elected for one simple reason, which was to be normal and to not be Trump. And then one of the things that he almost immediately did was continue to go down not only mask mandates, vaccine mandates, but finally the problem of inflation was not a problem that he tried to tackle until almost eighteen

months into his presidency. We had shipping problems. Almost immediately, the economy was going haywire. That's actually whenever things start to win to go negative for him. It was pushed fully over the cliff on Afghanistan because it was like a physical manifestation of failures. But I think that all came down from a vibe of like things are falling apart. And then eventually we get to the invasion of Ukraine and that's where things really take a dive for him.

But on the economic piece, totally, you could view it from many different angles, but he didn't make it a priority of his administration those first nine months, and by doing that, he lost the whole country. And look, you know, you can say, oh, well, the masks in the back, I'm saying when you combine all of that together, it clearly eventually came to October of twenty twenty one, where things went off a cliff for him, approval rating wise,

and I don't think that's an accident. I really think that it all comes back to the economy, and he has lost people since then. And actually, you know, he could have put himself in a position imagine how popular he would be if he had actually gotten something done. If he'd the lower gas prices, you know, in those first nine months, if he'd actually attacked inflation, if he'd done tried to do something around wages, both either on the you know, legislation front or in terms of using

his administration. But many of these initiatives were dropped, and now it's like, what do you you know, what what have you done for me? Yeah, in the last three.

to pass you know, bipartisan legislation. There was a lot going on, and some of the things that went through, like I always use the example of the child tax credit, they really worked, They really helped people, They really insulated a lot of people from the worst parts of the COVID economy in the post COVID economy, and then inflation starts to creep in, and there was no sense of urgency from the White House in tackling that. I mean, there was a lot of sort of hand waving it away.

And I genuinely think that the American people do not expect the President to be a magician. I don't think they have unrealistic expectations of what they want this individual to be able to accomplish.

who were just out and out gouging American consumers.

get a lot of commentary on. I'm sure much of it extremely annoying about how half of the country thinks the economy is getting worse in spite of the fact that the Biden administration will go out and to all this top line number is great, and that topline number is great, and actually the economy is wonderful. People just don't really understand it. They need to read the New

York Times more. I guess the reality is for most people, those top line numbers do not reflect their reality because you have such vast gulfs between you know, the people have so much wealth and income on one side and the vast bulk of America.

quite significant and quite important. And I'm not trying to sidetrack at all, But how can you look at that landscape and say, yes, I've got full, full belief in the American political system that it's going to be aoka.

more political strength than Democrats may think. Here are the specifics from that article, they said former President Obama out of private lunch with President Biden earlier the Summer Voice, concern about Donald Trump's political strengths, including an intensely loyal following, a Trump friendly conservative mediate ecosystem, and a polarized country, underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable

candidate than many Democrats realize. They go on to say that during their lunch, Obama made it clear Saga that his concerns weren't about Biden's political ability. Right, of course, of course Biden's great. It has nothing to do with him, but rather a recognition of Trump's iron grip on the Republican Party.

someone else. And there's a bunch of reporting too about how even when they were together in the White House, Obama and his brainiac side of the team basically had contempt for Joe Biden.

the phone. It's also ridiculous because there are only two people presumably inside the room, so obviously one of them leaked it. It's not like it was made and saw what is it. It's not exactly done in such a way that is supposed to be like anonymous anyway. So you look at this and what becomes clear Obama is

trying to telegraph two things. I'm going to help Biden, so you can't blame me for not but also he is trying to telegraph his you know, political genius, his above it all almost approach where he still believes, I think rightfully that he's a better politician than Joe Biden. And he kind of wants to put it across. He's like, I'm not the one underestimating Trump. I'm pushing Biden to do everything he can. I want to dispel with any narrative that you know, this thing isn't as in a

tight race. And it's interesting too that actually came on the heels of the New York Times, Paul, which showed them completely neck and neck. And you know, Obama's political analysis too is not wrong, but it's also just funny coming from the guy who in many ways is the most responsible for Donald Trump's presidence. If he did a better job as president than Trump would never be president.

It's simple, you know, and it's like, in many ways, like Trump didn't just beat Hillary, he destroyed the Obama consensus and really all the obamaization of politics was basically dead, you know, all of his ideas and both on the left and the right in terms of how everything was supposed to work. That's where Trump really kind of came

in and blew up. So, I don't know, I found it interesting, like on a very meta level, about how Obama is still trying to because he's a young man, he can't still yet be seen to be he can't be shown yet to be kind of the political fool that he is in turn, and what I mean by that is he's turned himself effectively into a lifestyle brand. He's ceased being an actual human being a very long time ago, him and Michelle, and so he's got to keep his political bona fides by calling up the Washington

Post reporter and giving his analysis. So there's actually quite a bit going on here.

would be a tougher general election candidate. But I always thought there was major reason for skepticism of that analysis, at least, you know, to be sort of like agnostic on that analysis, because we know Donald Trump has won before, so we know he can, and we know the fervent support that he inspires. We know the way he brings people out on the woodwork who don't answer polls but then show up and vote for Donald Trump, you know,

no matter what. So you know, I always thought it was remember all those articles of Democrats like delighting in the idea that Republicans were going to nominate Donald Trump again, like you people have learned absolutely nothing. So apparently relatedly, allegedly, according to what being leaked to the Washington Post, they're finally starting to realize that this is no slam dunk, even with and I do think Trump's legal issues, I do think those are a problem for him with normy voters.

I think, you know, if he's found guilty, if he's facing some sort of prison sentence or whatever, I think that is a real issue for him in terms of getting reelected. But you also can't deny the reality that his polling versus Biden right now is way better than his polling versus Biden was last time around. It's also better than his polling was versus Hillary Clinton, an election that he obviously went on to actually win back in

twenty sixteen. So, you know, they're kind of waking up to the fact that they have a genuine political fight on their hands and could be once again responsible for handing the country over to Donald Trump.

Carter twenty nine. Joe Biden is the second least popular president in modern times in the third July or whatever of his presidency. That does not bode well. I mean, listen, Obama barely won reelection in twenty twelve, and then if you're looking at this, Clinton won reelection, you know, I guess with forty six percent went on to win in nineteen ninety six. But it wasn't all that easy going, and you know, there were a lot of Dole kind of screw up that campaign. There's a lot of interesting

stuff actually about how things could have gone differently. But Biden is lower than all of them. And then of course Carter, we all know how that worked out. So he's not in Jimmy Carter territory yet, but he's getting pretty damn close. You don't want to be next to his name there. When you're running for reelection, there's a.

the presidency. And you know, Obama wasn't so long ago that he had a fifty one percent, and at times during his presidency he had much higher approval rating than that, especially at the beginning and kind of the honeymoon period. So even within the very recent memory, we see that

that is not the case. It's just if you want to play the political game as it exists now and deliver very little for people except for you know, sort of like emotional sucker and cultural signaling and the yeah, you might not.

a coherent sentence. And I have a feeling based even with this guy Joe Biden, who you know is not in his prime, even with him, he had a much higher approval rating at a different time because people felt like he was really doing something for them and fighting for them. So let's move on to some interesting analysis over at MSNBC. There have been a number of pieces now recently, and I think justifiably so, about Democratic concerns that black voters and black men in particular may not

show up for them in twenty twenty four. And they're looking at the numbers. They're looking at the fact that in twenty twenty two, in a lot of demographics, particularly among like suburban white women and white men, that there was a surge for the Democratic ticket and that's what forestalled the Red Wave. But if you dig into those numbers, there were some troubling signs among black men in the cities. It's not that they showed up and voted for Republicans.

It's that they just didn't show up. There was a fall off in the vote vote for black men, in particular in urban areas, so AMAS NBC decided to do some reporting on this. There's also a lot of hand ringing here about Cornell West of course running as the Green part on the Green Party line, so they're concerned about what he might do in terms of voters overall, but black voters in particular. Let's take a listen to what they had to say.

very different. And basically something that we heard on the ground from the director of organizer from the New Georgia Project, which is easily pushing the largest voters registration efforts in the state. They registered about thirty thousand people alone this year. He said, people are just frankly not running and jumping about another term of President Biden, and they're frankly keeping

their options open. And that's something that I heard from voters consistently, is that while they're aware that Joe Biden could be the default, they're still wanting to see who else could potentially get in this race. At least one voter told me they were considering Portell West, but the majority of people here said even though they may just be voting for Joe Biden in the end of this

their big concerns right now is the economy. They're still feeling the stress of inflation, and jobs are drying up in the state. Even though we've seen some of this good economic data, we just haven't seen those perceptions seem to catch up yet. And as you mentioned, these unfulfilled promises. Student debt was something that we heard consistently from voters that they really wanted to see that policy come to fruition.

to go out there and earn it. And then of course there's the you know, Spurriys analysis that ows Jill Stein's fault that the Democrats screwed up twenty sixteen, and that you know, if they lose this time, it won't be their fault again. It'll be the fault of Cordell West or the fault of potentially Joe Mansion, no labels ticket whatever.

of the demographics which Democrats take for granted. And now whenever she as she said, oh, we can only lose less than one percent and something like that would still have an impact, It's like, well, get you know, it's not difficult. Do something for these people and maybe they'll vote for you. But you can't be blaming Cornell West. There's also something very racist about that. I just I will never stop thinking. It's like, what, because he's a black guy, you think black people are going to vote

for him? Is that it It's like that where you're reducing people to yes, people is so stupid.

to that funcus ridiculous. It's deeply racist.

you know, very understandable apathy there. And all of the Democratic spokespeople leaders DNC types that they interviewed were like, Oh, we know what's going to get black voters to the polls. It's the fact that we have Kamala Harris on the ticket. It's the fact that we put Tanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court. It's the fact this one, really, this one really made me chuckle, that we have Hakeem Jeffries

as Minority leader. Do you think there is a single person in the entire country that is going to change their vote based on the fact that Hakim Jeffries is in a position of power, And like, listen, representation is important. It's not nothing, but when you're talking about what actually matters, like these voters are telling you what is important to them. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out the way to message to people and not just a message to

actually deliver for people. So they feel like they have some sort of freaking stake in this election. Washington Post had a piece with a lot of this very similar analysis.

bother to show up and vote for you. And most of what comes out in this piece is the Democratic strategy is just like, oh, we need a new field program, we need to put some more money into like voter outreach and whatever, and like, okay, sure, but if you're not selling something that is compelling to people, although voter outreach in the world isn't going to do a damn thing.

They also side a poll here Washing Post ipsos pull Black Americans back in May found what they describe as a tepid reaction to Biden's reelection, something that I'm sure many people can relate to.

city that actually don't like Biden that much. Well, Trump just won the presidency and I can I mean every single one of these places. That was Wisconsin, Michigan as well, Detroit. You know, it's one of those where it's very clear here that you barely won the presidency and then they

don't act like it by either doing anything. And then whenever it does cime Tom to come time to vote, you come and you scold these people because a black guy is on the ticket and they think so little of them that they're going to go and vote for them. I always think about this story, but you know, the majority of black voters supported Hillary Clinton in the two thousand and a primary until Obama actually started winning votes.

So it's one of those where it's like, yeah, they knew the black guy was running, it was not enough for them. How many times would it go over the fact that Kamala didn't win a lot of black votes in South Carolina. It's one of the reasons that she dropped out. Same with Corey Booker. The two black candidates in the race actually had to drop out or didn't even make it because they were getting so low. They ended up voting for Biden. And for Bernie because they don't.

People don't think that way, and we never learned that, and apparently it's permissible. And even there are race obsessed media, I don't know why they don't get called out on them.

the color of skin. It has to do with the ideas that he's pushing and the fact that he is has demonstrated over his life a commitment to working class people and making sure that their material lives are improved. So, yeah, they need to reflect if they actually want to win, they need to reflect on what voters are actually telling them and not what they imagine voters want to hear or to see from the Democratic Party.

actually find out the truth. But every once in a while, you know, you still have to rely on like what's going there, and you hear one guy who's on the ground, and you hear another guy, but always getting paid by this and that. But it's always important to try and

read the tea leaves, even within side the propaganda. So whenever the propagandasts can no longer spin something in a way because the facts don't match up with it, that's when real turning points start to come and you start to get a little bit of a glimmer of the truth. This was in the New York Times just yesterday morning, and this is a pretty damn good insight into what is happening in terms of the clear shift where even they have to admit what's going on. They say, quote

Ukrainian troops trained by the West stumble in battle. Ukraine's army has for now set aside US fighting methods and reverted to tactics that it knows best. They say that the first several weeks of Ukraine's long waited counter offensive have not been kind to troops who were trained and armed by the United States and its allies. Equipped with advanced American weapons heralded the vanguard of a major assault, the troops became bogged down in dense Russian mindfields under

constant fire from artillery, helicopter gunships. Units got lost. One unit delayed a nighttime attack till down, losing advantage. Another fared so badly commanders yanked it off the battlefield altogether. Now, the Western training, Western trained Ukrainian brigades are trying to turn things around by changing tactics, focusing instead on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long range missiles instead

of plunging into minefields under fire. A troop surge is now underway in the country south, second wave of Western train forces launching mostly small scale attacks to punch through Russian lines. There's a lot to actually think about this. Number one, they have just admitted something very basic that US aid outside of sheer bullets and of artillery, which is the most basic form of aid that we've basically been You know, you can go read books from eighteen nineties.

We were providing militaries with that, all of the advanced weaponry, all that other stuff that was supposed to turn the tide. It just didn't work. And this is a testament for Look, are there a lot of people who watch the show in the US military. I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever, because this is never a denigration of the actual service members I'm seeing as an institution. Let's look at the track record of training and equipping Iraq. How did that go?

That was great? Right, it was awesome, so much so that they threw their weapons down. They flew a fleet whenever IIS takes over the city of Mosul Okay. So that costs two trillion. Now let's talk about Afghanistan. We spent let's say seven hundred billion training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces. Oh that was great. The moment that these guys getting into the city of kabbl the guy who salary paying gets on a plane laden with gold,

He's like, peace, I'm out. And then the US military has to lock down an airport to try and get down interpreters out, even though we just prop these people up for the last twenty years. Syria, anyone want to

remember that one, I mean, whether or not. Yeah, Like, my personal favorite is that the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, I will never forget this covering it at the time is whenever he was testifying before the Senate and they're like, so, how many people have you actually successfully trained and equipped for five hundred million or whatever? And they're like, oh, you know, like a dozen. They're like, wait, what so that that's what ended up happening.

by the Navy Seals. They were deeply embedded like green Berets, Navy Seals and all these other guy special operators within that when they were at their most combat effective. And then same whenever it comes to yeah, sorry Siria and then Afghanistan, same thing. The moment that the US Special Operators and the USISR and all that other stuff either got pulled or wasn't as robust, they fell apart completely. And so I mean again, I mean as an institution, it is clear here we don't know how to do

this very well. We know how to do one thing we're good at, like the office management part of war, as in with the Ukrainians, we're like, yeah, the Russian ship is over there to take dismissal, go fire it. But in terms of being like here's the weapons, here's how you train, combined to our tactics all this, and how do you use ELSA, it's not going to work. And so whenever they also point to here reverting to

the tactics of simply trying to wear down the Russians. Okay, well, on A, We've tried this battle a million times throughout history. The person who wins is the one who can last out the longest. How are you going to last out the longest. You don't make any shells, You only rely on charity from Western nations. Why do you think that you're going to beat a nation which has a genuine industry,

which is Russia. They have oil which they can sell to people who aren't in the West, and they have a populace which is relatively untouched completely by the war. I mean, the thing is is that the nation who folds is usually the one after many years of bloody and horrific conflict, is the one that just can no longer sustain itself from the home front. And this is deeply sad, and already we're actually getting in indications just about how brutal this war is from the Wall Street Journal.

They actually talk about how the number of people inside of Ukraine who appear to have lost limbs, this is based on prosthetic prosthetic limb like data inside is now, at least by some estimations, equivalent to the number of Britons who lost limbs in all of the First World War, nearly equivalent to the number of Germans that lost limbs

in the First World War. I don't need you know listen, if you have the stomach for it, I actually encourage you to go look at what some of those wounds and all those look like, because they have a profound impact on me personally. Just to see, like, you know, before the invention of a lot of prosthetic surgery and stuff like, that's what the actual face of war looked like. Is somebody's nose gone because a shell hit them right

in the face. Luckily, we've gotten to the point where things, you know, look better, I guess, but you can't take away the psychological damage, the trauma, the generational impact that that has on the people that they interact with and on a day to day basis. So I mean, all of this is just a very long way of saying like, look, obviously, the Ukrainians, I mean, it takes a hell of a lot of guts to march into a minefield, to lose tens of thousands of limbs, and to still live to

fight another day. We have to look at this from a geopolitical level and be like, what are we doing here? What are we getting? And I also was thinking about this. One of the most common talking points in Washington is you know, this is the best money we've ever spent. We're wearing down the Russians. That is like looking at the Ukrainians as ponds. You know, it's literally thinking of these people be like, oh, yeah, they lose a couple of limbs here and there, whatever. You know, I know

some people who have lost limbs in combat. It's no joke. I mean, it stays with you forever, and they think about it and they talk about it, not even in a shame level, just you know, there's of course it's going to impact your life. It's a physical representation of what was lost and what you gave and family, and there's so much impact that happens there. So yeah, I don't know. I mean I just think it's one of those where and come back to and you're reading things

like this. It's just so clear what is happening. Yeah, and yet nobody wants to grapple or face with reality. The only response Crystal By why christ By Washington, is let's give them five hundred million.

GDP numbers look just fine and dandy. Economically, you know, the all out economic war that we attempted to wage on them has basically completely failed, So that hasn't worked out. You know, we had the whole progosion situation. There was a lot of cheerleading of like, you know, cheerleading on this maniac to try to take control of Russia, which could have been really disastrous and very chaotic.

a part of. They had business dealings with Moscow, they had business dealings with China. He was also at to the center of a lot of the Beisma dealings. New Hunter for over a decade and says here in this interview that he heard at least on twenty occasions President Biden actually with then Vice President Biden phone into business meetings with Hunter Biden. Here, let's take a listen.

and he kept kind of smiling around the truth. But the truth enough about calling in twenty times and that real moment that stuck out to me. He's like, look, it's the pinnacle of power in Washington. You're in a meeting with some Ukrainian guys who are paying you eighty three thousand dollars a month, and you put the guy on speaker. And Tucker even he was like he's like, look, I love my kids. I talk to him every day. He's like, I don't. And he has adult children. He's like,

I don't call them into business meetings. It's super weird. And if they did that to me vice versa, what the hell is going on? So clearly something was happening to the extent where Biden knew he was calling into a business meeting because he literally would put him on and that, you know, Dan Goldman, the Democratic representative, His defense was, well, they didn't really talk about business. They

were talking the illusion of access. As Archer says, the mere fact that the man is on the phone was clearly worth millions of dollars two Hunter's foreign business partners. At the very least, it was part of the sales pitch that he was able to monetize his last name. There's no denying it now, Like looking through this and in this interview, and of course we were talking about this sport,

it's hilarious. One Tucker taught that this interview is not allowed to be covered on Fox News, apparently because Tucker's in it and he's fired and he's persona on Grado now. But also the actual allegations here are completely ignored by the Dan Goldmans and all of them, the type, all the spin around. It was obviously wrong when from the horse's mouth, he's like, yeah, the mere fact that he was on the phone was worth a lot of money to us. Yeah, He's like, that's what we paid him for.

That's why I was in business with Hunter. It's obvious, I know it.

his associates. Do we really have confidence that, listen, human beings are human beings, that you're not impacted by that at all when you're making decisions on, you know, supposedly

on behalf of the American people. And you know, we talk about this with regard to Trump and Kushner and the Saudi money and all of that stuff as well, like the fact that you're getting those funds in the fact that you know your son's livelihood is dependent on his access to you, his last name, his affiliation, this, you know, group of sketchy foreign businessmen, and we're expected to believe that you remain pure as the driven snow in terms of your business, in terms of your doing

the business of the American people. It's just, you know, it's hard to believe that. And then the other piece of this is just astonishing to me. It kind of reminds me of the defense that's being mounted for Trump of like, oh, this guy's so dumb that he actually believed that the emission was stolen. It's sort of the same. It's like, no, no, Joe Biden is so dumb that he actually didn't realize Hunter Biden was calling him into these business meetings to trade on his name. Like I'm sorry,

I don't believe that. I do not believe that whatsoever, because Joe Biden has been in DC for longer than we have been alive, way longer than you've been alive, and we're expected to believe he doesn't also have some basic understanding of how DC works.

is pretty scummy actually on his behalf. But I remember it was like, it's like a power move. And I was like, whoa. I was like, all right, guy knows a guy. He's like, I'll listen to him. I'll hear what the person has to say. Is this is like a this is like a power move. I think that was it's a flex in front of these business guys. And that's what they're paying for. That's what they're paying in eighty three thousand a month.

scientific breakthroughs of the twenty first century. It has captured the minds of engineers, venture capitalists, and technologists everywhere. I'm talking about the LK ninety nine superconductor. Luckily, my dad is a professor of electrical engineering, and he's able to translate the implications of this technology for my fellow and uninitiated through me. Basically, it matters because our current infrastructure that supplies power to devices, our homes, our cars, our

data centers and more have a central enemy. Heat. When electrons flow through with current conductors, they create resistance. This causes two problems. It reduces the flow of the overall electrical current, and it creates heat, which degrades the infrastructure around it is conductivity. Thus, a so called superconductor is

a conductor of electricity that functions without this heat. The problem is that achieving superconductivity requires using liquid nitrogen to cool materials down to minus three hundred degrees or so fahrenheit. It can only function at certain artificial pressures, and this poses a lot of problems from an engineering point of view. You've got to make space for cooling. You need temperature control, you need atmosphere control. You need materials that can withstand

both of these things. It can be done, but it's tricky. That's why engineers make the big bucks. Now, if you think about these principles, it starts to make sense. It's why data centers have to stay cool. This is why your laptop or computer has a fan built inside of it. It's why electronics can get hot whenever they're charging or not. In s's heat is the enemy of two things. It is inefficient and it's hard to build around whenever you're

making real products. Thus, the holy grail has always been what if we don't have to worry about all this pesky heat and pressure? And this is where the hype of recent days is come from. A team of scientists in South Korea have published the preprint of a paper in which they claim to have developed a superconductor which functions at temperatures above two hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit and with ambient pressure, so basically doesn't need to be

cold anymore. You don't need some crazy atmospheric pressures. The thing just works in normal temperature, normal climate. The team claims to have replicated a genuine superconductor status in a video that they published showing a magnetic effect that is supposed to be the hallmark of superconductivity. So why are we not popping champagne and celebrating. Well, some people are still very skeptical of all of this and are reiterating

a scientific principle. Sounds great, can you replicate it? As Scientific American notes in nineteen eighty seven, there was actually a similar hype around a compound that was discovered. The confunction is a superconductor but after closer inspection it ended up fizzling out. Apparently, these claims do pop up every once in a while in academia and then they fizzle out. It's just that this time Twitter exists and people are getting seriously hypened. So at the same time, we still

shouldn't pour water on the entire thing. Chinese researchers at Wazong University they've claimed to replicate the superconductor manufacturing process and post it as proof the magnetic effect that I reference by cooking up the same materials as published by

the South Korean team. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California system also claimed that it had simulated the South Korean team's findings and believed that it was theoretically possible, and they were joined in that by the Shenyang National Lab in China. So we're in the weight and see mode. It's kind of like the lottery,

though the best part it's not the drawing itself. It's that part, the three hours or so before the drawing when you get to sit back and you imagine what life could be like with a small chance that actually it will be that way if this works what does it mean. It means smaller electronics. It means abundantly cheap energy because so much will no longer be lost in transmission. It means a revolution in cars, frictionless technology, and it

means massive advancements in quantum computing. But I think more importantly, it means that we are no longer living in a stagnant technological era. One of the most important quotes about technology was said by venture capitalist Peter Teel almost a decade ago. We were promised flying cars. All we got was one hundred and forty characters. There's something profoundly true

about this. In our last scientific advancement in the last two decades, watch a movie from the nineteen nineties, Other than the cell phone, what's really all that different from their life and yours. The only advancement that we've made is consumer electronics. And while we think that and the Internet are incredible in their own right, put it up against previous eras of scientific discovery, they pale in comparison.

For those who have watched the movie Oppenheimer, one of the most exciting parts of the film is the first hour and a half or so, as they show Oppenheimer traversing through the universities of Europe, meeting some of the most important scientific minds in the world and collaborating. In those days, it seemed as if world changing Nobel Prize winning discoveries were being made on a near daily basis,

and then accelerated by things like the Manhattan Project. And the crazy thing is it really didn't even stop there. We went from President Kennedy's wish to a man on the Moon within a decade, and then along the way accelerated the development of technologies computers, micro proceressors. These never would have taken off without the funding that these programs provided and the scientific inquiry. But then it all came crashing down sometime around nineteen seventy one, As Teel himself

has said, we stopped going to space. We became a financialized and consumer obsessed economy. Life got easier, Americans got fatter and richer on paper, but our pace of advancement basically kind of stopped. Even now, consider two countries that were at the forefront of this, South Korea and China. While we're apparently only in the replication game, not the advancement game. If there's any hope to LK ninety nine.

It said it could give us the world another shot of greatness and we can actually ditch one hundred and forty characters or whatever the hell. The limit is now on X for real flying cars. So I want flying cars, Crystal. That's what I've always wanted.

certainly the Trump administration, could not rescue the company. And the end result, my friends, is that American taxpayers now the proud owners of a massive steak in a company that just went belly up.

This debt almost pushed them over the edge after the two thousand and eight financial crash, but they managed to narrowly escape bankruptcy by wiping out their shareholders and forcing their workers to take a huge pay cut. At that time, the teamsters agreed to billions of dollars in painful worker concessions in order to try to keep the company afloat, but it still wasn't enough to write the ship. And then when COVID hit, Yellow was once again facing financial collapse.

But unlike you, or maybe the vast majority of workers and small business owners in the country, Yellow had an ace up their sleeve by the name of Jared Kushner. You see in one of their attempts to refinance that giant debt burden. Yellow had refinanced through private equity giant Apollo Global, which kept the company going with a massive

six hundred million dollar loan back in twenty nineteen. So Paulo Global then had a big interest in keeping Yellow afloat, and they also had a big favor to call in from the White House because a few years before rescuing Yellow, they had also rescued the presidential fail son in law Jared Kushner, with a big old loan on a Chicago skyscraper that his company had foolishly purchased at the height

of the real estate bubble. Given what commercial real estate valuations look like today, I can only imagine how screwed that loan and investment is at this point. That Apollo loan to Kushner was fishy as hell to start with, coming as it did after Kushner brought Apollo into advice on infrastructure and even discussed a White House job with

an Apollo founder. So when the pandemic shutter businesses and pushed millions into unemployment, Yellow, thanks to their high level government connections, they were able to secure a sweetheart deal from none other than you and I, and it was a doozy seven hundred million dollars authorized under the CARES Act. Even though that legislation was supposedly for relatively small loans

to small businesses. That loan to Yellow was so gigantic that at the time it was authorized, it represented ninety five percent of all the funds that had been dispersed through the program. If you owned or were employed by a small business, you probably remember how tough it was to get the paperwork done and prove them and the money release. All of that was a mess. Not so

for the chronically mismanaged but politically connected Yellow. With the administration access provided by Apollo, they argued that the company was critical to national defense and therefore deserved to be part of a special carbount program within CARES.

blaming the union strike notice for the company's failure. Words cannot describe how misleading this is. Yes, negotiations between the union and the company were increasingly acrimonious as the company entered its death rattle phase, but the workers.

company out once again. They're like eighteen elements of the story that are just absolutely classic American capitalism, favor trading, sweetheart deals, scapegoating workers and unions for daring to speak up while they are getting screwed, socializing the losses to

taxpayers while privatizing any potential gains. But yeah, let's just pretend this country is a free market meritocracy where the brilliant and deserving succeed instead of the connected and the craven, where the elites can never fail, they can only be failed. And by the way, where corruption gets a pass if it's corruption from your own side of the aisle. But hey, Lee Kushner got a skyscraper loan. This one was really when I started reading into the details.

the first amendmentsues. All it does is just very simply the idea of Donald Trump was told by every one of the government, told by every one of the White House, told BYO his own campaign advisors, told by his own personal lawyers. You lost the election. These fraud allegations have no merit. There's certainly nothing to warrant overturning anything, or to believe is there going to be any merit to the lawsuits.

aspect for a moment, I'll address the merits. So to some extent, I agree with Bradley, except that I.

But set that aside for a moment, like as if some government bureaucrat tells Donald Trump something that's going to sway him, and he must have known, essentially what the case boils down to is Trump knew he lost but claim that he won, and so everything that he tried to do to pursue every single possible remedy, Pleading to state legislatures, assembling alternate slates of electors, debating with Vice President Pence and others about what could be done with

respect to certification, etc. All of that is evidence of a fraudulent conspiracy because he really knew that he lost. And so jack Smith is going to have to prove that he can get inside Donald Trump's mind, know what he truly believed in his heart, that all the advisors around him conspired to defraud the American people, and that there was this malign intent.

Six protests. This is a Sarbins Oxley slash Enron driven law, and it's probably going to come before the Supreme Court whether or not that could even be applied to protests.

But it's not as if Jack Smith has even necessarily drawing a direct line to Donald Trump led these protests, in cited them, led a riot, etc. So from my vantage point, this is trying to fit statue to meet what are in effect thought crimes, even if the idea is they're fraudulent actions, because the actions are made fraudulent by the fact that Donald Trump really knew he lost but claimed he won.

You have a part that I think relates to Sidney Powell with regard to one of the key swing states here, Georgia. They say in the indictment that on November twenty fifth, co conspirator three, which everyone thinks of Sidney Powell, filed lawsuit against the governor of Georgia, falsely alleging massive election fraud accomplished through the voting machine companies, election software and hardware. Before the lawsuit was even filed, Trump retweeted a post promoting it.

Co conspirator Georgia lawsuit was dismissed on December seventh. So, Bradley, can you explain from your perspective, how central to this case is it that they're able to prove that Donald Trump actually knew that the things that he was saying were complete and utter nonsense.

Powell was bringing the Crackpot lawsuits. Rudy Giuliani, who was trying to bring the insane idea is being provided by Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, all these things combined showing that not only had he been told by not just some random bureaucrat, his own appointees in government, there is no truth to this, his own lawyers in the White House,

there is no truth to this. His own paid campaign staff let Jason Miller telling him there is no truth to this, and he privately says, yeah, these people are all nuts and crazy. But then he keeps going forward with it. He's signing verified complaints in states and submitting paperwork saying, yeah, these allegations are actually drew in the courts of order ruled at least in one of those instances that was not accurate.

he was trying to effectively invalidate people's votes. And I think you know very clearly what the Trump response would be is, actually, I wanted to make sure that people's votes weren't deluded by the fact that there may have been unlawfully cast ballots, or ballots that were accepted after the time they should have been, or the fact that masses of ballots might never have even gone through the wire had changes to election rules and law not been

made by state executives rather than legislators. And you know, of course, the government is going to make the case, and it's worth noting that all of the assertions in the indictment, of course, are going to present the worst possible case for Trump, and Trump is going to marshal a substantial amount of evidence on the other side and maybe get into discovery, and we'll see where that goes. But I think that that argument can be probably pretty

quickly dispensed with. In addition to the fact that, again if you just go on the Department of Justices Civil Rights Divisis website, they lay out what this I believe it's eighteen in the US Code two forty one. If you look at what it's applied for, it has nothing to do with one's vote. And even if it does get to dealing with the idea of Trump was trying to invalidate pete lawful votes on the merits, I think that argument probably fails on.

He was told there's no merit to this, and he's still pushing the Georgia Secretary of State saying I need to get eleven thousand votes to dilute the votes of those who were lawfully cast.

Donald Trump White House. Second of all, if you're talking about a president and you're charging a president, and this is for conduct when he was a president, and yes, we are, of course in the middle of an election where his successor and chief opponent, his DOJ is the one bringing this case. The bar has to be really high and really clear cut. Now, Brad, you're making the case. It is really clear cut here. But what I would say is these are political questions at the end of

the day. They have not been dealt with, typically in a court of law, and in fact, the political system and the legal system did check Donald Trump during twenty twenty. So why is this indictment being dropped now when to some extent this was already dealt with in an impeachment proceeding where he was acquitted in the Senate. Well, I think the thing speaks for itself it being in the middle of an election, and I think there are many

political aims to this. One of them is I think the left and Democrats believe that making Republicans have to grapple with January sixth or quote unquote election denialism is going to be a winning political argument's say.

The evidence that's proffered here that looks the worst. And number two, if you think that there was no there there and these offenses really weren't chargeable, and these weren't the right charges, et cetera, et cetera, where would be the line, like, what would Trump have had to have done for you to say, naw, he crossed the line, this was actually criminal, He should be charged, there should be accountability.

an intent to pull the wool over people's eyes. Setting aside, you know that there weren't millions of people who had questions about an unprecedented election with unprecedented the rule and law changes as.

the indictment to defend? I think you have aspects of For example, I think that there's some insinuation or allegation that Trump asserted or he signed off and verified certain information that Jack Smith claims, and I think this might have been I don't know if this was respect to certification with respect to electors. He signed off on the fact that something was true as he understood it, but at the time there is knowledge or there was indication

in correspondence that he knew it was not true. You know, certainly to the extent you signed off on a document to a court or another official body, and there's going to be evidence presented to show that actually you did know what was true and you signed off on something that was false. Obviously that's going to be a challenge in court. Jonathan Turley has raised the point though, that you're going to be able to argue, well.

have conspiracies being down from the mothership. But I would throw these folks under the bus, saying he believed in good faith, he understood that their allegations on his mind, had credibility. Sidney Powell, this grand lawyer, had these affidavits from Spider and all these other people who claim they had proof of these voting fraud issues, and so that was the basis on which he moved forward with things.

I would chuck every single one of these people under the bus in a desperate attempt to save the client.

an interesting point. I'm Miro. I've taking notes here and writing it down, so I hope that you guys get also as much as we do out of the show. We appreciate everybody who helps support our work, from our premium members at Breakingpoints dot com. Otherwise, We'll see you all next week.