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Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
We have an amazing debate special for everybody today.
What do we have, Crystal, That's right.
We've got all of the biggest moments, all of the worst moments, all of the cringiest moments.
The worst ones would be the whole thing that it wasn't really.
A moment, it was just the fact that had happened at all. We've got Ryan and Emily coming in studio to talk about it. We also are going to talk about a couple other stories, including updates on what's going on with Bob Menendez and questions over whether he may have been they may have been attempting to recruit him as the Egyptian government as an intelligence asset. We've also got big update for sober on the dress code situation. Our long national nightmare is over, thank god, the most
important issue in this town. So Raach bring all of that down for you. We've also got Jake Huger is going to be here in studio talking about his book and also talking about, you know, the future for Joe Biden the Democratic Party. So excited to have him joined us as.
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That's correct. Okay, let's get to the actual debate.
So we thought that you know, for many of you, if you didn't actually spend any of the time going through this and all that, we wanted to give you a substituive enough recap to be able to take away most of the awful parts, which is most of what the two hours was. Let's go ahe and put this up there on the screen just to give everybody an idea.
This was the overall speaking time.
So what we have here is Ron DeSantis clocked in at twelve minutes and twenty seven seconds. Is a big change from last time around. Vivid Ramaswami at eleven minutes and fifty three. Here's the big change, Crystal ten minutes and forty two. Tim Scott tried to have a big night, try,
I think being the operative word. Chris Christy ten minutes and thirty two seconds, Mike Pence at nine thirty five, Nicky Haley at nine oh five, and Doug derk Bergham at seven thirty five, despite certainly not for his best efforts, because that man was interrupting left and right.
And that's also why it's a little even difficult.
Almost honestly to talk about the speaking time, because how can you count it when they're all talking over each other? And I think that'll be a common theme of what we talk about today on substance alone, of course for our show, but really for the whole nation. People wanted to say, what do these people have to say about the UAW strike And there were some revealing answers and moments from that, and we'll break it down on the other side.
Let's take a listen.
We should look back at the first bill in Congress under Joe Biden. The first bill had eighty six billion dollars for the union pensions. Because they continue to over promise yet under deliver. One of the challenges that we have in the current negotiations is that they want four day French work weeks, but more money. They want more benefits working fewer hours. That is simply not going to stand. I'll say this, Joe Biden should not be on the
picket line. He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border because it is unsafe, wide open.
And secure patience for the union bosses. I think that's where he and I actually have a common view. I do have a lot of sympathy for the workers. However, people are going through real hardship in this country. I've been through hardship growing up. My father stared down layoff said GE under Jack Welch's tenure at the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio. My mom had to work overtime in nursing homes in southwest Ohio to make ends meet and pay off our home loan. So I understand that hardship is not.
A choice, but victimhood is a choice.
Choose to be victorious in the United States of America.
That was the rhetorical difference between the two.
Crystal tim Scott kind of bringing up basically the you know he already said He's like, well, if you're a strong strike, you should be fired. Nicki Haley back that Doug Bergham took a little bit of the Trump line, mostly in terms of the electric vehicles.
Viveg I think maybe the.
Only candidate on the stage to say I sympathized with the first demands, of course, not coming out and endorsing the cause whatsoever. It's interesting, you know where we can
talk about it now. American Compass, our great friend or in cast of the show, put out some new polling about how Republicans feel about unions, and actually I thought that the Vivik's answer probably split the difference at the best, so Republican voters that they found in their poll forty one percent had an approval rating outright for unions, and I think it was fifty six percent. That's actually a huge sea change considering that one percent of elected Republicans
are against unions. But considering like where that split is, and even just in terms of general independent v or has Vivig tried to split the difference between the traditional Republican line and the emotional sympathy. I guess to what they are asking for, Yeah, but in.
Terms of policy, is not like any of them are actually different from each other with regards to unions as far as we know. And so yeah, I mean, this is the extent of the quote unquote populisce shift in the Republican Party being willing to you know, sort of say like I have a little bit of empathy for the workers, even as your continuing it's about the same
like corporate talking points about quote unquote union bosses. But I guess that is a step in the right direction as opposed to Tim Scott, who would not only want to fire the workers, but want to allow them to suffer in their old age with no pension after Wall Street absolutely destroyed these pension funds during the two thousand and eight crisis. That pension thing, I know, it irritates
you too. It irritates me so much because actually the issue is that they didn't bail out these pension funds sooner after a bunch of Wall Street ghules basically tanked the Central States pensions. I mean, what he's calling for is it's like, you know, retirees to suffer and die penniless after they've promised a decent pension. So anyway, that's
just like particular point of contention for me. But you know, you don't have anybody on that stage who's willing to actually overtly say I back the workers and I back their claims. It's all just rhetorical shifts, okay, But no real substantive difference from the trajectory of Republican policy over many decades, which is something that we'll see too in terms of Trump's comments and trump'speech that we'll talk to Ryan Ami.
We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
You're right, I mean, on the Tim Scott thing, it's just one of the most dishonest things I've honestly ever heard, because he's basically blaming the unions for not having their
pensions be one hundred percent. One of the reasons why the pensions are underfunded with the mandate is because, as you said in two thousand and eight, they were absolutely destroyed and had to take a haircut after their hedge fund managers and others, and their benefit managers and some of the other financiers that were involved in the process gambled with their funds, and a lot of that even traces back to the fact that many pensions had these
rules in place. You know, we can go all big short for a while and they're like, okay, you can't reinvest in anything, and so there's a triple A rated or whatever. But when the rating system, though, was rigged, these poor pensioners had their money completely wiped out. And then that happened again actually in twenty twenty. And look, I think public sector union and discussion of all that
can be a separate thing. But we are talking here about hard working retirees who it's not that the union promised them.
By the way, the company also promised them.
What this was, and the American finance system absolutely wrecked it.
That's not the union's fault.
If anything, he's making an argument for much more stringent regulation whenever it comes to management of institutional funds, of which so many hardworking people were lying.
Yeah, okay, let me one more.
Thing on this, because this really gets under my skin.
Yeah.
So the backstory here is that the Central States Pension Fund. This is for two. So we're talking mostly about truckers, truck drivers, you know, the ups workers, et cetera. And because there had been so much like corruption and mob ties whatever with the teamsters, they had been under government decree, so the government was actually closely scrutinizing watching these pension funds and put these Wall Street gules in charge of
it that then gambled with the funds. And of course they have all these incentives rather than putting the money in things that are going to be relatively safe, to make these big bets because they get bigger fees when they do this. And this is a consistent problem that we see with pensions, and it all goes back to Wall Street Creed. This pension performed so poorly under the you know, supposedly bright minds of Wall Street that it actually did better when Jimmy Hoffo was running it and
using it as his personal piggyban. That's how poor their performance was. When you had like a crook at the top who was stealing from the pension fund, the workers actually did better with that than when Wall Street was running it. Just so you know the.
Backstory so well, who raises a mor meta question, who is the real cruk oh Something that we were alluding to is that one of the reasons for those who.
Watched will know what we're talking about.
It was very difficult to watch the moderators had no control. The questions were awful, but most importantly the candidates themselves. It just turned into a total clown show up there. There was so much cross talk, very often. I'm talking ten whole minute blocks. You had no idea who was talking,
what was even debated on the stage. We have a little bit of a mashup that we can show you, just to give you a little bit of a taste for those who want to just tune in and be like, Okay, so what the hell happened?
This is what it was like all night, guys. Let's take a listen.
Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say, because I can't believe they hear what got TikTok situation. They were there before I even showed up at the residents. You want.
You want to do?
Intend to go ahead like this?
Yeah, guys, that that there was That time's probably like a thousand and it just wouldn't stop. And I blamed the moderators here probably more than anyone. At one point, Dane and Perino was like, we're going to have to cut your mind. I'm like, you should have cut his mic forty five minutes ago, like what are we doing here?
Well, and they would just let this go on. They didn't even really try to intervene in many instances, and so of course that sets the tone for how everyone's going to approach it, you know, watching it, part of what was so painful about it was number one, you're right, the moderators were horrendous the question even putting aside, like all the fights and cross talk that you couldn't make sense of what anybody was saying, and it was just
a pathetic waste of time. The question selection was really bad because that actually that union part that we played you that was the most substantive part of the demand was in the beginning, the very first question, and you know what, I listened to that question, I was like, oh,
maybe this is going to be interesting. No, it was not going to be interesting because they chose to talk a lot of issues that all of them agreed with, you know, like they all are not have the same issue on the border, They're all going to have the same issue on crime, They're gonna all have the same issue on quote unquote TransGeneration, all this stuff, like they
all are the same on these things. The point of these debates is to try to tease out some of the differences that might be interesting that help people make a choice. So the question selection was terrible, the command of the stage was horrendous. And by the way, this isn't like the one thing I can say for them, they like united the country in disgust for the way that this debate went down, because everyone I saw in my timeline left right, center, didn't matter, was all like
this was a horrendous waste of time. And you could see how each of the candidates. You know, they're all getting desperate at this point, and that's part of why you had all this like ugliness and like crosstalk, and just it's smelled of desperation for all of them. You could feel all of them coming in with their like consultant instructions of how they were supposed to be. And then you know, clearly Scott got the message of like, you were too passive last time, you need to be
more aggressive. So he was trying to pick fights with people left and right and get in on the action. You could see vi Vic it was kind of the opposite. Clearly, his consults had been like, you got to dial it back and be it. People didn't like you were too aggressive. You got to be more conciliatory. There was visceral, absolute hatred of the Veke across the stage, but especially from Nicki Haley.
The thing he is about a Vike is he was like, let's all just be conciliatory up on the stage. He's like, look, you know, we're all Republicans, these are all good people, and it's like, dude, last time he literally said they were all bought and paid for it, right, But it's very I know exactly what happened because it's funny.
He telegraphed it a little bit too on the nose.
He said, I know a lot of you out there are thinking, who is this guy. He's a little bit of a no at all. He's a little too ambitious. I was like, oh my god, what happened is clearly they did a focus group. Yes, those were the top things, and so he's like, let me allay their concerns by addressing them head on. Now there's a casual way to do it, and it was not the way that he
did it. I'm talking to about straight to cam looking at them just being like I know that you think that I'm x Y and Z, but I'm not X Y and C. And I was like, Oh, it was incredibly cringe worthy just the way that it was delivered.
I think you're right.
I mean, so many of them had these poll tests after poll tests after poll test, had answers, even the canned attacks. You know, we gave you, guys, just favor there about freaking curtains. They were arguing about whether Nikki Haley had purchased too many expensive curtains or whatever for
the UN ambassador's residence. I'm just like, oh, my god, Like, that is the lamest possible thing I've ever heard in my life and the entire and this was in the last seven minutes of the debate, guys, And that's why it was a very fitting honestly, and to the thing we did want to pull one matter of substance, which was and honestly, this is probably outside of the questions about Trump, which, by the way, we're missing.
Why were there no.
Real questions about Trump? Are you gonna support them? What do you think about the criminal charges? All this other stuff. One of the areas where they obviously wildly disagree on abortion in particular, there were pointed questions about how are you gonna hand considering how much about poison pill it has become for a lot of voters.
Let's take a listen.
Because I believe in life, but I also believe in states' rights, and I think we fought hard against Roe versus Weight for decades to say that states should make these decisions.
And I reject this idea that pro lifers are to blame for midterm defeats. I think there's other reasons for that. The former president, you know, he's missing an action tonight. He's had a lot to say about that. He should be here explaining his comments to try to say that pro life protections are somehow a terrible thing. I want him to look into the eyes and tell people who've been fighting this fight for.
A long time.
So I actually thought that was an interesting, spicy moment. We're going to talk with Ryan and Emily about some of the more overt attacks on Trump, which I of course found very interesting, just about for him not showing up. Yeah, but I thought that Chris Christie's answer, and you know, he had the best point. He's like, look, I'm the only guy here who is actually a governor of blue state and He's like, so obviously, you know, talking about
states rights. It's like that's probably more of a winning element. You could see Mike Pants didn't even have the gumption to like jump in there and defend you know, his biggest issue. But you also saw and there's a big fight going on right now behind the scenes.
I don't know if people saw.
Trump gave an interview recently where he basically implied that a lot of pro life movement was grifters. He's like, they're always raising money. I guess it's a business something like that.
Something.
Every time with him, I'm just like, hey, you know, I mean, he's definitely right, but it's one of those where it's just funny always to hear somebody say that. It's just look to me, that's one of his political strengths. He can piss off supposedly one of the most vital parts of the coalition.
I saw a poll yesterday, Crystal which says that.
GOP voters believe that Trump is the person of most faith in the entire race.
Yeah, I mean, that's why, you know, you can get away.
With it if he wants to. I mean, I don't know who these people are full of himself. And by the way, if you're like a Christian and you're like, well, I think he's the leader who accomplish what I want most. Fine, But to be like, no, no, no, you know what, that's a godfearing man right there.
That's a whole okay, okay, delusion.
Yeah, I mean and that listen, when I look at Donald Trump and I look at these other candidates, I feel like, Okay, he is the person who got these justices in place and accomplished the long term goals exactly, I do think, I mean, he is the one that opened up this new, in my opinion, absolutely horrific, unconjurable landscape, which has been devastating for Republicans at the polls when people have actually gone and voted. But if you're someone who that issue was core, you know, I do think
he gets a lot of credit for that. And so it does give him a lot of bandwidth to say things that other politicians couldn't get away with. And it's Donald Trump. He gets away with saying things all the time that other politicians couldn't get away with. So you know, they're still trying to navigate this issue. I thought, I actually thought Chris Christy did a little bit better last night than he did in the first debate, but it's
just very heart Listen. The winner of this debate was Donald Trump, no question or like Asa Hutchinson for not making the stage and not having to participate in this matter. But the thing that always stands out to me too is while there were some jabs at Trump about him not being there or whatever, they trained way more of their fire on them on each other, on Vivic and Nicky in particular, and Nikki you know, she's the one candidate who got a little bit of a bump from
the first debate. So clearly Tim Scott in particular had it out like I gotta take her down. I got to be the donor favorite, you know, I got to rise in the polls and you know, make have my moment or whatever, which he's just not an attacker. It's not natural to him, and he didn't land any of it effectively.
Really.
You know, a lot of jabs at Vivike, who also has you know, sort of hung in there as like a solid third. He's risen to be about third place in the most poles behind Ron de Santis, and so there was a lot of fire trained at him. Still not a lot of fire trained at Ronda Santis for whatever reason. But you're just looking at this. This is part of why this whole thing feels so pointless, is like the guy who is overwhelmingly winning, you're barely talking about him,
and you're barely barely punching at him whatsoever. And these attacks, I'm like, I wish, I wish it was a potent attack to be like, you're not here and you should
justify yourself to the voters. I've just never seen it actually really be politically salient, really land a strong political blow because I've seen this attempt many times because oftentimes incumbents, unfortunately I feel like they don't have to debate and it would lower themselves to have to talk to the voters or have to meet their challenger, and you know, challengers always try to make an issue of it. I've just never really seen it work out.
We know, we had a pull from our friends over at Jail Partners that they did for the Daily Mail, and unsurprisingly people basically felt the same way that we did. They say, quote, who was the real winner of the second presidential debate? Number one Donald Trump twenty seven percent, Number two, vik Ramaswami at twenty six percent.
It's funny.
I'm not sure I agree with that or not in a traditional way. I do just because I'm always like, okay, if the new guy is getting fired and he's getting the second amount of speaking time, Yeah, that's the metric that I use last time around.
Guess what didn't matter at all?
Literally hasn't seen a single righte in a poll, a sausage, a pole on in any average that we saw afterwards.
So yeah, okay, Then Rond.
DeSantis at seventeen percent, and then a smattering of Nicki Haley's, Mike Penc's, Tim Scott's, Chris Christie's, I mean, outside of the loser again being all of us who wasted our time on this entire thing. I don't think Nicki Haley came off particularly well last night. I'm curious what you think. I thought that she came across. It was a canned
moment where she tried to go against a vak. She was trying to recreate her moment of you don't have any foreign policy experience, and it shows with the like, you know, every time you say, every time you speak, I feel dumber, Yeah, or something like that. I did not find anything that she I didn't she didn't have a moment, to be honest, none of them really had moments.
No, there was very hard to point to any breakout moment from anyone. Really, it was just a mess. The whole thing was just a mess. No one stood out. And so I agree with you on Nicki Haley. You know, I thought she had putting the substance aside because I did a whole thing about it, like her foreign policy I think is atrocious, ETCeteras are. But I thought she had a strong first debate and I thought she really exceeded expectations. I thought she was strong, she was clear,
she was unafraid of mixing it up. I thought she was the one person who really kind of put the vacant his place, you know, and had won the exchange, even again putting the substance of the issue aside. And she needed a follow up performance. She needed to show it wasn't a flash in the pant. She needed to consolidate that increase in the polls, that bump and fundraising interest that she had after the first debate, and she
failed to do that. So in that way, I do sort of feel like maybe she's the biggest loser just because she had something to lose here in terms of being the new donor favorite, the new media darling, et cetera. And she definitely did not deliver a similar level of performance as she did in the first debate. You know what, It reminds me a little bit of Kamala Harris. Yes, absolutely, she had that first debate back in twenty twenty, that little Girl with Me. She had the whole moment, she
delivered it. It had an impact. She genuinely went up in the polls. We forget now, but she went up in the polls. That was her highest level during the whole campaign, and so I was like, oh, maybe she can you know, build on this. And then there was never another moment because you know, those those scripted attack lines, those scripted you know, sort of like fakely generated moments,
they're hard to pull off more than once. Yes, so I feel like Niki was able to pull it off in the first one and the second one not able to land it and just ended up looking less adult, less presidential. Part of that is she was taking more incoming from other people or whatever. But I do think
that this, if you had to pick a loser. I would probably pick Nicki Haley outside of like literally everyone, because I think I could see her slipping back in the polls and you know it being a little more muddled. Who is going to be the donor favorite going forward? And the reality is too I think a lot of these donors who were hoping to have a Trump alternative are kind of giving up at this point.
I mean, and they should give up.
I mean, look in the current you know, real clear politics average, where do Trump stand?
He stands at fifty six percent. Ron DeSantis doesn't even come close. He's at fourteen point four percent.
Hailey then is number three at five eight, and Ramaswami is at five to one even in Iowa. And for anybody who wants we did breakdown on this as well during our debate preview. Trump in Iowa is at forty nine, DeSantis is at sixteen. Trump in New Hampshire is at forty four, Hailey is at thirteen. I mean, we're looking at a clean sweep really across everywhere. Another thing that
people are forgetting in the Republican primary. The California primary is now in Super Tuesday, and the current allocation of the vote count looks like Trump is going to sweep every single delegate out of California, which would effectively clinch the nomination like three weeks into the actual primary. The calendar right now and the way the primary processes works in terms of the alec of delegates.
And all that.
This man it will it will not be in any way like a long contest. It's not going to be Obama two thousand and eight.
It's not going to be you know, Clinton in ninety two or w even in two thousand and It's just like it almost seems over before it began, which is it's difficult in in order to treat it with this level of seriousness. It's all just made me really think of like watching a JV squad, like a JV squad practice.
What it felt like.
That's what it felt.
Yeah, that is absolutely what it felt like. And it's depressing, you know, as people who care about politics and think this stuff matters, and you know, want to like sort through the policy differences and have people we actually potentially like respected Ormer to be possibly president the United States. It's depressing that on neither side do you have a
real contest. You know, I do think it's like a bigger meta point about the decline of our democracy that makes you feel like, like, do we even have any real choices here? Because neither of the front runners, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, are willing to actually subject themselves to democratic process and there's nothing to force them to.
And so it's very every other presidential election in my whole life, you've had these debates mean something and matter, and even though they can be silly and political theater and they're all putting on makeup with their can talking about whatever, at least there was something there to talk about. There was some sense that these issues were consequential, that you had people that were weighing them, that what they
said on the stage might matter at all. And now you just don't have any of that whatsoever, and so it really is depressing. I think it's a sign of the decay and decline of our society.
Frankly sad as one politician who was not there once had to say, we've got Ryan and Emily standing by. We're gonna have a nice power panel. We we're gonna have them in for the rest of the show. We're just gonna have a lot of fun. So we'll post this one a little bit early, both for our PREMIU subscribers and for everybody else. Everybody else, stay tuned, We're gonna have a lot of great content for the rest of the day.
We'll see you in a bit.
So we brought in some backup here, Ryan and Emily joining our big power power panel that's right to evaluate all of the wonderful moments from this debate that was just uniformly loved last night. Welcome guys, great to see you both.
Thanks you having you.
So we wanted to start with what was perhaps the defining moment and the most significant moment of the debate, which is when, for some unknown reason, Tim Scott decided to pick a fight with Nikki Haley over curtains sexist, which got good point, good point Emily, which extremely heated. Let's take a listen to how this all went down and get reaction on the other side.
As the UN ambassador, you literally bring it, put fifty thousand dollars on curtains and a fifteen million dollar subsidized location.
Next, you got bad information. First of all, I fought the gas tax in South Carolina multiple times, against the against the establishment. You know what that was when they wouldn't pass the gas sex the establishment of the companies wanted me to do it.
So much that I said, the only way I will.
Here's what you have to do. Three All you have to do is go watch it on YouTube.
If you will give me three times the deduction and income tax, then I will look at.
Your gat.
Exactly.
Secondly on the fifty here is.
A nice part.
Secondly, on the curtains, do you work ten because Obama bought those curtains.
Did you send them back? Did you send them back?
It's the state department.
Did you send them back?
You're the one that works in Congress?
You get it.
You hung them on your curtains. They were there before I even showed up at the residents. Here's a scrapping, here's here's you want, as.
They were Obama curtains.
Emily is, well, let's not act like Obama didn't hang the in here.
Yes, I mean I thought, guys that it just really the reason we picked it is that was seven minutes left. That was InLu by the way of closing statements from the candidates, which is what's actually so insane.
It was better than.
Yeah, that's what they chose to go with. I mean, Emily, why do you think so?
Tim Scott obviously feeling a bit insecure, also from South Carolina. Everybody said, oh, you played too much of a nice guy last time.
You got to land some blows.
But like, what makes people think that this is actually substantively or even like totally going to land with any voters who are even watching at ten fifty pm last night?
So much?
Yeah, First of all, I think that Tim Scott sees his main attack on Nikki Haley as being that she's some sort of corporate welfare queen, which is true, by the way, she's like a queen of crony capitalism. But she that's clearly Tim Scott saying, like, if there's a way for me to distinguish myself from this other very popular person from South Carolina. In South Carolina, it's to call her some sort of corporate welfare queen, to say she loves foud money. I don't know if it's gonna
make any difference. I think we all know it's not gonna make any difference. They're both jockeying to see if somehow Elaine opens up where they can squeeze in the second place. At some point, DeSantis fails, they're able to someone you know, wins Iowa, New Hampshire and somehow listen, don't trap us up by like, yeah, it doesn't matter. But if you're going for second place, that's how Tim Scott sees in the off chance that he and Nicky Haley end up jockeying for second place. Yeah, that's his
line of attack against Nikki Haley. And that was a preview of it.
I liked the goateee ran if anyone would know, do you know the backstory? Not that it matters, but do you know the backstory this whole curtain situation? Because I don't even like digging into the recesses of my memory. I don't remember this particular little mini skin.
My vague recollection is that Obama, the Obama administration had done some renovations for the UN facilities.
That yes, the UN ambassador's residus residentes okay, And so I think the key question is you're appointed ambassador to the UN, you show up.
Obama has bought these nice curtains. You hate Obama, you think he's born in Kenya if he should have been impeached, but the curtains are lovely.
Yeah, what do you do indeed world.
By the way, the apartment is very nice, actual sausage pictures something. Samantha Power did a great job. I know, apparently she spent a lot of money.
Wish.
I can't stomach any more of this ridiculous convo.
So let's actually get to the so called substance of this, which was Trump's actual attack, or attack at least on Trump for not showing up. We saw a pointed moment from a couple of the candidates, one in particular, trying to make something happen which really wasn't happening at all.
Let's take a listen.
They need to change what's going on. And where's Joe Biden. He's completely missing in action from leadership. And you know who else is missing an action? Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight. De owes it to you to defend his record where they added seven point eight trillion to the debt that set the stage for the inflation that we have now.
I get in Washington, DC also, and Donald Trump should be here to answer for that, but he's not. And I want to look at that camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you're watching. You can't help yourself. I know you're watching, okay, and you're not here tonight. Not because of Poles and not because of your indictments. You're not here tonight because you're afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You're ducking these things. And let me tell you what's gonna happen you keep
doing that. No one up here is gonna call you Donald Trump anymore. We're gonna call you Donald Duck.
All right.
I want to ask the grin minigame, you know, Crystal, I feel like he could have just cut it right before the whole Donald You.
Know, it was so good.
It was a good mind up, and the problem was with him and they were sort of like engaged, and then he land he throws out this Donald Duck line.
It was just like, oh, collective boomer bellyflop.
So absolutely absolutely, But I mean, listen, there were a few like jabs, mostly around the fact that Trump wasn't there, but they spent way more time attacking each other, Ryan, and it's not like any one of them is anywhere close to Donald Trump at this point. So it just feels it all feels very weak to me in terms of how far they're willing to go. And you can trast that with you know, the things Trump is willing
to say about DeSantis or any of them. You know, he's out now his his new line, which you can't help but laugh at, because that's just how it is with Donald Trump. He's out there like Ronda Santis is fallen off as fast as a wounded bird like that, and the Santas feels like he's really like going hard when he's like, where is he should be here?
He's wounded because he called he called Joe Biden a stay, a wretched old vulture.
Yeah.
Well, he's always been interested in the birds with the windmills. Now we brought the whales and whale concern into the windmills.
Dogs to him, Oh that's true. He doesn't like dogs, and everything's like a dog.
Substance. Yeah.
I mean it should have been Donald Donald Dodge. Maybe that could have worked.
Not sure.
Don't do the nicknames. It's Trump's thing. Just don't do the nicknames.
They're all so bad that they made Trump look great again. It's just remarkable, and it reminded me almost of twenty sixteen, all of these clowns just trying to like throw spitballs at him, right, and just none of it works. They're like trying to talk substance and looking like normal candidates even though what they're saying is completely empty and nobody
believes it. And then in the face of his like presentation to these auto executives or whoever showed up at this non union plant, it it just pales in comparison. Even Trump when he's doing is like, like I sent to you guys his ridiculous, ridiculous story about here. See that's even way that nonsense is even more fun than anything that these guys.
Had to offer.
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, Emily, do you think though that there is was there a way to make that in a better way that I mean? I thought the Santa's handled it fun, But I mean, it's just difficult to take gauge it. It's like, dude, you're pulling
a fourteen percent. The guy's beating you by forty points. Like, realistically, was there anything he could have done outside of that to you know, let quote unquote land on something and Trump get some Trump people over, you know, to his corner here.
I'm not sure. I'm sure if there is, because I almost feel like he's playing a rigged game at this point.
Yeah, I think it's a good question, and actually the answer is I think he could continue to more successfully use this will be controversial the tact that Vivek took in the very first debate where he's talking about Donald Trump, and of course you get into these questions of like, well, if Trump was such a great president winner, you run well, run to Saint Justs can answer that question because he
was governor of Florida and had high popularity. So that's the DeSantis approach where he's actually trying to appeal to like never Trump people instead of just Trump curious and hardcore Trump people, which is you absolutely needed to win you grassroots of the Republican primary. He always should have been way less in the never Trump camp and way more and you you will automatically be put in the
never Trump camp if you criticize Donald Trump constantly. And I know that's hard in the Republican primary, but from a political strategy, his consultants had months to figure this out. Yeah, pretty obvious. You're going to immediately lose the trust of those voters because they see him being indictments being stacked up against Donald Trump. Whenever we think of it, the voters see that as an attack on him. It's about like solidarity with Trump.
You know.
I actually have been a little bit persuaded that some of the early attacks that DeSantis was trying to do on Trump with regard to COVID and Fauci, were probably the best lane for him. The issue is, I mean, the timing just everybody's moved on, right, Yes, but I think if you had a different universe where that was still like the beating heart of what was going on in the Republican Party, and then you're really beating up
on Fauci versus beating up on Trump. And we did see this with our focus group, you know, the one area where every there couple who were you know, disgusted with Trump, they didn't want Trump anymore, and they were very clear about and this it was New Hampshire, right, so you have that strained there. But even the people who were Trump's supporters, the one thing that a number of them brought up that they had issues with his
administration was around the handling of COVID. So I do think that was probably like the most promising attack, and like I said, rather than it feeling like you were just dumping on Trump. You could have used fauci as like you know the guy that you're beating up on, and then why did an insisty like why didn't you fire and why'd you keep him there? Et cetera, et cetera. That's probably the most promising line of attack for him still, but it's just a little late, because, like I said,
people moved on. COVID feels like a long time ago.
I think the back you up is it's clearly where that Trump people feel very uncomfortable.
They feel vulnerable there.
Yesterday or maybe a couple of days ago, at this point, Carrie Lake would she go on Patrick Bett David's show and she accused Dessant. She was like, he was masking kids, he was doing the lockdown, and it was like and it kind of came out and a lot of the deshantest people actually got very upset. She ended up moving on being like, let's all just agree to you know, it's okay. COVID was a long time ago. I'm like, well, why did you bring it up?
That lady is that said? You know, she's the tack dog, she's she basically she doesn't live in Arizona. She lives in mar Lago. From what I've heard, the ladies there literally every night.
So clearly she's talking with Trump, She's talking with the Trump advisors, and so Emily, I mean, clearly they feel some vulnerability on the FAUCI and COVID handling, even though I mean, frankly on the substance I've always thought, you know, with Trump, I'm like, yeah, like, we live in a federalist system such that DeSantis could do whatever he wanted to do, which is also why California could do what they wanted to do.
What is the president supposed to do? But that's a whole other conversation.
Well, when Meghan Kelly started her interview with Trump, she said, the number one thing I wanted to hear from my audience, people who like you, is why you shut the country down for so long. He freaked out. He did not want to answer that question. Didn't have a good answer to that question, to the point where actually was on Megan Show yesterday and she was pulling out the receipts like tweets that Trump posted in the time period when he was like, oh, you know, it was all good,
Like I was delegating it to the governors. So I think it is You're absolutely right. Both of you are absolutely right. That has always been but it's tough because it's now twenty twenty three and the hits don't land like they did in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, because now the country sort of moved on high inflation war in Ukraine, it's a different political climate.
So that's always been a problem for DeSantis. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, just to stay on the debate, you know, continue. I just we were talking about it a little bit before. I was curious what you guys thought in terms of the questions. I mean, they kept teeing them up for areas where there was no actual debate. They're like, what do you think about crime? They're like, I think crime is bad.
I I mean, wow, that was really revealing.
What difference would they all have, like where they have no area of disagreement on transgenderism, on crime, really on anything abortion.
Honestly, they probably is some disagreement. So I'm glad they spent some time there.
Are the economy, uaw, I mean a little bit, you know is Frankly, I would have liked to dug a little bit deeper in there and tax policy and like because there probably is some difference around top tax rates, et cetera.
But we didn't get any of that.
Guys, like even you know, the government shutdown is like, yes, they kind of a big oil right now. Questions me and two questions that nobody even really addressed.
Press them.
And that's another area where there could be real divides between the McArthur approach and then Matt Gates approach and what Donald Trump has said and whatever, and they did nothing to try to tease any of that out.
Did you notice that the premise of a lot of the questions was left wing?
Oh yeah, yes, I sort of enjoyed that first.
It's kind of funny, of course, I also knew its pointless.
Yeah, exactly if you if you tell someone, hey, the executive pay is three hundred and seventy seven times as much as workers, what are you going to do about that? Like they're not doing anything about that, So it's not actually question, but it's fun to hear it.
I thought that framing was fine.
I wouldn't even necessarily code that as left wing, just because I think that one that's like empirical fact. So like the other ones though, where on amnesty or slavery. And I'm just like, okay, like what this is a Chris Hayes interview, Like what doing here?
I have no problem with them getting tough questions, but it's a Republican debate. You have people that are able to bring out the contrast Republicans because.
Not responding to a left wing premise, they just like blow past it.
But you know, if you think about it, yeah, they definitely did just blow past it. I actually don't mind the framing from an adversarial position if you think about it. Though, no one would think anything of democratic debate questions being framed from like a corporate right.
We're so.
We're just used to that being the case of like you're going to spend too much money on Medicare or whatever. Like they're always framed that way on the Democratic side. So you know, maybe this is just a little bit.
Of that's actually good point.
If you're going to raise it to your if you're going to phrase it in an adversarial way, then I mean that's you know, and especially if it's going to be like that on the other side of the debate, then I actually think, you know, maybe I revise my position. Yeah, it's more about let's get some goddamn disagreement.
It's like they didn't know where to bring out contrast Republican candidates. And that's I mean, that's when you're using left ring frame on the questions of no problem with that whatsoever. But there it wasn't towards any helpful end. Right, The conversations were constructive.
The weird thing is too that this was a Fox Business and Univision debate, but they did very little on the economy, and which is you know, one thing if you're going to go into topics where again there's going to be some debate and disagreement, but there were actually be more debate and disagreement around some of these economic issues. I mean you also have you know, big things happening
in the anti trust world that they could have gotten into. Yeah. Absolutely, but you know, the government shutdown being a huge example of this that's just totally invisible. And so by skipping over their own what's supposed to be the core of what Fox Business, I guess it's all about talking about the economy, business, et cetera. They really left a lot on the table in terms of some of the more interesting divides that could have been in this debate is that.
Because they don't like to disagree about the economy, like that's Fox business has been basically an ideology that goes unspoken, and it is just at it was.
In the you know, Ronald Reagan Library.
Nostalgist their ideology, and if you start asking them about it, you're going to get a bunch of them who are going to give populist answers even if they don't believe it. And then and then that's an awkward moment for Fox Business.
That's true. You could ask a question, Actually, this would have been perfect. This is such a good point. This is a huge point because Reagan Japan tariffs. You're at the Reagan Library, a single point of disagreement that almost every single one of those candidates have with the guy who is up by forty points and just gave a speech literally on economic nationalism. It's a phrase that he used when he was talking at the non union plant
economic nationalism. He just gives this big speech and you don't draw out the contrast between all of the candidates and that big like the single divide, the biggest divide
between them and him. On policy is that he is out there talking about economic nationalism, whether or not you believe he'll deliver on it as a different debate, but that speech was the new Right in an address, yes, and so to not push them on that, I think now that you guys brought that up, I think that is actually a huge mistake.
It's an important point, and it's also one where you know was trying. He's like, we cannot fall to the siren song of populism, and like all this other stuff that he's bringing, wondering why he's on the wing in the stage.
It's very interesting.
You can't have a meal alone with populism.
That you I forgot that he made that joke about how he's been sleeping with a teacher.
For thirty Joe Biden thirty eight years.
Christy brought up years.
Everyone he's wrong, everyone stopped.
I hated that. I didn't like when he mentioned he should.
Have gotten five minutes off the stage.
It.
But you can see you can see Pence debating whether or not to say it, like the wheels were turning in his head. He like sort of slowed down. And yet if if you missed this moment, he said, Chris Christie said that he had been Biden's had been sleeping with a teacher for years, referring.
To doctor Jill Biden tea union point exactly.
It was super bad. And then Mike Pence is like, kind of looking at the camera, He's like, well, I've been sleeping with a teacher for thirty eight years.
There was a buzz and everyone was like, is that real to actually just happen? Both of you off for five all the policemen, what do we call it? Let's move on to let's move on?
Okay, So, as we know, we had Trump in another location at this non union plant with people who some of them may be workers or a bunch of people who were interviewed who said, you know, I'm not union, I'm not an auto worker or whatever, and making some very interesting comments about the ongoing United Autoworkers strike, basically telling the workers that they don't understand what they're doing and they're picking the wrong targets. Take a listen to what he had to say.
In other words, your.
Current negotiations don't mean as much.
As you think.
I mean, I'll watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketting for the right thing. But if they endorse me, your leadership, you can tell them I said it, although I have a feeling they may be watching tonight.
Ryan, what'd you make at this moment?
And he goes on and on and on and on about, of course he does, about how the UAW leadership'll endorse him, and if you does, the auto industry is just going to explode, and if he doesn't, then it's all going to be get driven into evs and they'll all be out of work. I think he doesn't understand. I get it,
he's talking to the whole country. Yeah, but if he was actually serious about talking to the auto workers, he could have addressed the actual concerns that the auto workers are having, which and they're saying, what we're striking over is we want protections for the future EV jobs. I think a lot of autoworkers and a lot of people around the country know that, yes, there are incentives in federal law put in by the IRA to move people, you know, to move the industry quicker away from the
internal combustion engine. But I don't think anybody thinks that absent that that fifty years from now, it's going to be just a thriving industry, like you're just kind of shouting into avoid at that point, I think everybody knows like.
This is over, Like we're moving toward electric vehicles. So the question is how do we transition?
So I think the answer to that is correct.
I don't know if it will be one hundred percent, and we've talked a lot about on the show, but I'm curious, actually, this is tactical point I've been trying to save and I want to get your guys take, and I'll include mine as well. UAW president Sean Faine was asked whether he was going to meet with Trump, and here's what he had to say. Quote, I see no point in meeting with him because I don't think the man has any bit of care about a workers stand for, what the working class stands for, and he
serves the billionaire class. So I am curious if you guys think it was tactically it's a good move. We don't know what percentage the UAW of workers exactly voted for Trump. I would venture to guess what thirty forty percent something like that. Forty probably is too generous, so it's somewhere probably hired Okay, so it might be hired is a tacticle move. Then to outright is a good move. To outright like trash a candidate who maybe at least a decent portion of your membership is going to vote
for or did vote for in the past. I'm not saying he may not be substantively correct, but is explicitly aligning yourself with the Democratic Party the correct thing to do when you're going to embrace Biden and then explicitly move Trump aside, which it only gives him even more of an incentive to union leadership.
I'm curious what you guys said.
Well, I mean, I think it forgets the fact that they pointedly did not endorse Biden when a lot of the other unions. So he's been very critical of Joe Biden. But you know, I don't think we give these workers enough credit for understanding the lay of the land. Auto working manufacturing jobs went down under Trump. He made a lot of promises to these I mean went to Lordstown and went to all of these different you know, places that have historic union auto plants and told them, don't
sell your homes. The jobs are coming back. And it did not happen. Now, I think that that is a big part of the reason why he won Michigan in twenty sixteen and lost Michigan in twenty twenty. And also we don't talk enough about the fact that actually Joe Biden doubled the margin that Hillary Clinton still won union workers Joe Biden doubled that margin in twenty twenty. And I think it's exactly because more than anyone, they're tuned
into the distance between the rhetoric and the reality. And listen, I'm you know, I think there was a lot of bait and switch going on with Trump and the way this event was portrayed what actually was which in reality it was an anti union event and invited there were yes, so he was he was invited by management to this non union shop. You know, there were and some of the people who help organize the event, we know, we're affiliated with the National Right to Work movement, which is
like the union busting movement. Some of the workers that were interviewing the crowd, that were even holding up the like union workers for Trump signs were not union. So, I mean, it was just obviously very different than what was portrayed. And Ryan you pointed out most of it was just like a normal campaign speed basically. Yeah. So you know, many of these details may not seep through to the national public, but I can tell you this was huge news in Michigan. The local papers were covering
it extensively. The local papers were covering extensively the comments from Sean Fain and also from other UAW leadership about the distance between Trump's rhetoric and what he actually does. And like I said, I think more than anybody they have seen the broken promises from him when it comes to labor. So do I think it's a mistake for
Sean Fain to invite the presidence of picket line. You also have to think these workers are risking a lot to go out on strike and try to achieve better wages, better working conditions, etc. You think they're going to turn down either a Republican or do the President of the United States coming to stand with you, even if he's not your guy, even if you didn't vote for him, even if you're not going to vote for him, That
is powerful leverage on your side. So no, I think I actually really appreciate the clarity of his language and the way that he's approached this, and the fact that he has been critical of Biden where they've fallen short as well.
I wouldn't say it was a mistake to invite Biden. Of course, you take it what you can get. I honestly, though, I think what Sean Fain may not understand though, is that he's actually making it easier for MAGA to code anti union in my opinion, because what it would mean and there are so look, I'm not gonna say Trump or many of the people work for him are pro union.
But we were just talking about this earlier block, Emily, you and I were reviewing that polling from American companies forty percent of GOP voters support union, So I mean it's you know, it's not all of them, but it's some. And if for the unit of quote unquote union boss is explicitly gonna come out and trash Trump to a lot of people, because it's effectively a cult of personality party, they're gonna be like, Okay, we'll screw this guy, and
then by extension, like possibly screw a union. I thought it was a mistake because I think it tactically makes it more difficult for a senator like Josh Holly just went to the picket line or other senators who I know are considering visiting the picket line. They will make them appear almost as if they are like crossing into democratic territory. And again I don't agree with that. I
don't think that's the right thing. But I thought that his statement explicitly coming out trash Trump like that, I thought it was a tactical mistake. If he wants to achieve any sort of by partinership. If he doesn't, that's fine. I mean, maybe he thinks is the lost cost. It probably is, But I'm saying, like, if you want to even attempt to get it, it makes it more difficult. In my opinion, I'm curious, think, of course we need to.
Get a response.
Yeah, you know, I was thinking actually back to tea party times, and I'm thinking, you know, if someone had done what Donald Trump did last night, which was again like rhetoric versus results totally different, there's a gap there that I think, again, you could have actually had the Republican debate focus on that. In fact, and the Michigan question is huge. I think that's such a smart point.
He though, has identified the single biggest wedge between workers and union support, which is the union leaders and UAW is particularly vulnerable to that, not because of Sean Faine, but because the people who came before have.
Yeah.
Absolutely, and if in the Tea Party years you had somebody doing what was what Donald Trump did last night, which was this really like just he made this crystal clear wedge driving trying to drive between the workers and
the leadership, which is just tactically smart. I'm not talking about it substantively, but tactically that is the only shot Republicans have at like really, if they're not going to go full pro union, that's the only way that they can possibly start to appeal to some of these workers. He did it it very boldly, and that was like Republicans have never been able to do that, They've never
even thought to do that. At the same time, I do think it's very very true that Trump is the rhetoric versus results in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin are going to be a real problem for him because people think of like union membership in Michigan it's probably like one in every five household something that you guys might.
It's like sixty six thousand, that's a really big deal.
It might not sound like it but it's a really big deal because there's a ripple effect into families and there's a ripple effect into communities, and so actually this is huge news. And Sean Fain coming out and just going hardcore against Trump. On the one hand, it does make it easier for Trump. On the other hand, it makes it harder for Trump. It's just like two, there's two sides to it.
I think I could see it.
I mean, Ryan, I wonder if you have thoughts on Biden ran his first actually ran it during the debate, direct ad against Trump, and it was about unions and wages. And when I see that, I'm like, oh my god, Democrats maybe finally figured out how to run against this guy. And I to me, the rhetoric from Sean Faine is also very effective because it's like this guy is the problem. He's the billionaire class. The first time that Democrats tried to run against Trump in twenty sixteen, it was like,
he's not a real billionaire. We have the real billionaires on our side.
He's actually not a bad thing, right.
And so now when I saw that ad, that was like, no that you know, the I think it was like Donald Trump talks and Joe Biden delivers actually thought it was effective, and I thought it could potentially land in states like Michigan, Wisconsin where they know very viscerally like those plants and those jobs that were supposed to be here under Trump. Guess what they did not come back and Trump lost again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what I think it shows is that if Democrats actually do something, even the minimal amount for workers, then it really puts Republicans on the spot, like it puts Trump on the spot when Trump is running against Hillary Clinton, that he can just say I'm for workers.
She's terrible, and the workers are like, yeah.
She probably would have let the Detroit go bankrupt, like the reason Obama wins Michigan in twenty twelve because they saved Detroit. Nobody believed that Hillary would have done the same thing. So Trump then can get away with just like some like surface level pro worker stuff. Once you've got Biden actually doing things like going to a picket line, then you actually have to peel back what Trump is
saying a little bit. It's like, Okay, Sean Fain says, they want a forty percent raise, and they want like all of these ev plants to be unionized, and they want access to these plants. What's Trump saying. Trump is saying you're picketing the wrong place. You should endorse me me me, me, me me, And all of a sudden that starts to fall apart. You're like, Okay, he says he's for the workers, but he's not. Is he for our forty percent rais he didn't say he was. Is
he for us being able to unionize ev plants? Or does he just not want EV plants to exist?
I think yeah, yeah.
And then so then the workers are like, okay, well, once you are on board with our agenda, then you come to the picket line in march with us. If you're not on board with our agenda, we're going to march with the guy who is okay.
And to Crystal's point, I think that's the big thing, Like Republicans still are not willing to go full like, yes, unionize the ev plants, and so Trump knows his only his best option is to say no ev plants, because if you're not willing to take that step, that's the only way that you can go.
I think you guys are right.
At the same time, he did he didn't just regale the audience around Eve's. He also, Ryan, you pulled this for us to give people. He basically just turned it into a rally and gave some some of his more classic riffs.
That's one of his Ryan's favorite.
You signed this first day I was in office.
I said, what is it.
It's a new Air Force one. It's five point seven billion. I said, that sounds like a lot of money for a plane. It's actually two planes, by the way, but they go over at air Force one.
They're identical. I mean, even the wood grin.
You can't tell the difference.
I could tell because it was a little nick in one desk that wasn't on the other, so I could say that's one on the other ones too. So the head of Bow came in and he said, sir, we have to get five point seven.
I said, nope, I'm not doing it. I was supposed to sign it. I said, I'm not doing it. Not for five point seven.
It has to have a three on it.
I didn't know what that meant, except I knew where it was a hell of.
A cut, right right right, Al sir, We'll do it for three billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred nine nine nine nine nine.
And ninety nine cents, right, And I said, you have yourself a deal. So I saved one point seven billion dollars on that plane.
I was very careful.
Does anybody give me credit for that?
No, I losing it.
If you're a Republican, how are you going to compete with that?
Right?
Yeah, I can't compete with that.
You're good.
I do agree that Air Force one is too expensive. I will ridiculously that's Lucris air Force one. He also is a common misconception.
Air Force one is only the plane in which the president is on, of which we all know from the movie Air Force One.
What else?
Actually, my last take on this aesthetics of which we will get into a little bit, is I did think his new color scheme was better the red, white, and blue as opposed to the JFK blue, and.
Should have gone into that to make us want to be extended riff.
A substantive point about that, not that all of your highly substance about the color scheme. Humor is such a weapon. Humor is such a weapon. And that's one of the things that every one of those like dreadful people on stage last night are completely lid.
There was not I can't think of Donald Duck.
I'm cad thinking of a single moment of levity, Like it was all just like pain and right exactly. There may have been some unintentional humor all of a sudden, like when ron to Santa said he visited Ronald Reagan's gravesite, like, you know, just trying to play into this as much as possible. Anyway, no humor whatsoever. It was another I mean Obama was also funny. He had comedic timing and land a joke George W.
Bush.
Yeah, and it really maybe it shouldn't be this way, it should be about the substance or whatever, but it really is so powerful and so difficult to overcome when you're up against someone who is actually just genuinely funny. Whether you like him or hate him or anything, I totally agree.
I also think Obama was unfairly slandered for your likable enough Hillary.
I thought it was a great lie. I don't think he took way too.
Much for it. There was a moment where the moderators last night asked them if they could be the next Ronald Reagan, essentially meaning that they could have like a generational pull, like could you have a legacy like Ronald Reagan's was essentially the question. And it's a perfect question when all of them are down by what forty points and the leader's not on stage, because you look at it and you say, absolutely not, and partially for that.
First of all, Reagan was very charismatic, was hilarious, and they none of nobody on that stage has that. And Donald Trump is out you up in Detroit riffing. It's such a clear contrast. There's not one person who stands out like that. And I think some of them are talented politicians. I think Tim Scott's a talented politician. I think Rond DeSantis when he was in his moment twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, was a talented politician on the state level.
He hasn't been able to translate it nationally, and that contrast is glaring.
I am I am fascinated by how Ronda Santa struggles with his face.
Oh my god, I.
Really, I mean, I'm just like you.
You don't.
Yeah, it is, and I think that's exacerbating it the whole time, and like you don't know how to just like exist without doing something like moving around anyway.
I actually do too.
At this point, you know, it's like, now that he's no longer a threat to anyone or anything, I just feel uncomfortable looking at these weird faces that you can't help himselfver make it.
It's the smile. It's when he tries to laugh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, or when he thinks he lands a point, and then there's this like, oh, stop, stop, Let's move on to another big story outside of the debate that has been ongoing here in DC, which I'm actually there's a couple elements of this that have become very interesting. You guys over the Intercept have done some great reporting about some of the subtexts of this indictment. Put us up on the screen, which is really fascinating, So Ken
tweet it out here. Egyptian intelligence may have been trying to recruit Senator Bob Menendez as a spy, according to four former CIA officers. Let me go ahead and read you a little bit of this report, they said. National security experts say the indictment's reference to Egyptian intelligence officials and Menendez, this disclosure of highly sensitive and non public info to Egyptian officials suggest that more than a garden variety corruption scheme there may be an intelligence element to
the charges. Egypt's elicitation of information resembles a textbook recruitment pass, an intelligence operation intended to recruit an asset for former CIA officers told the Intercept, what more can you tell us about this ran?
It goes back to the question of whether or not an asset is recruitable. You have to as an intelligence agency, you have to try to figure out whether or not this person is someone you can get. Actually, and back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, when people were accusing Trump of being a Russian asset, I asked.
Some CIA folks.
They're like, he's what we would call an unrecruitable asset. Yes, it's like because you can't trust him with any information.
I don't know.
You might be able to manipulate him for your own advantage, but you absolutely he cannot be.
A recruited asset.
And so the way that you start with some of these assets is you ask for small things that aren't necessarily damaging, but that they know.
They're not supposed to give you.
And the key one here that they asked was the size and details about the Egyptian the US embassy in Cairo, because that is known to be a center of kind of intelligence activity. Most all embassies are at some level, but certainly the one in Cairo is. And so for Menendez to give non public information about that is a useful to the intelligence operations of not just the Egyptians, but the Emiraldis who basically run the Egyptians to see operation.
But it's a sign that Okay, he's willing to cross lines.
Which is what he did.
I mean, what is it He got the nonpublic information as the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, he checked what he texted it to his wife.
Yeah, and then his wife related to the man who.
Bought her a very nice Mercedes who she then thanked by a text mess allegedly all this, it's all a little bit stunting. Christly, you flagged this. Let's go ahead, put this up there on the screen. Currently, there are what is it twenty eight senators Democratic senator that have come out, so more than half the caucus actually, who have called for Senator Menendez to resign. However, not one Republican has come out to say that Menandez should resign.
The only one I saw was John Cornyn who said, quote, I think all my democratic colleagues should resign.
A good line.
Let's give it to him. It is a good line. And I was curious Emily for your take as to why.
I think it's because if you say that and they should resign, it then impunes Trump because it would imply that indictment is, you know, in any way like some sort of fact pattern that correlates to guilt, and that they don't want to box himself into a corner and they would rather just let the Dems like play into it on their own.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think, first of all, that's right. But second of all, it's a wonderful political tool to have the Senate foreign relationship, and I know he stepped down from that, but to have him still sitting as a member of the Senate is a wonderful political tool. So why call for him to resign? That's when you can continue to say Democrats have a likely Egyptian asset someone as corrupt
as Menendez in the Senate. But the other problem with that, though, is all the Democratic senators have essentially neutralized that line of attack by calling for him to resign. Yeah, has Biden called on him?
No?
No, not.
That's a big problem for the Democrats.
Yeah, and Schumer has it either. I mean, it's wild. So I've got Tom Cotton and Mark Rubio. But Tom Cotton went into detail. Actually it sort of like overtly came out to defend Menandez, and I think his reasoning is illustrated. He says, the charges against the er Menendez
are serious and troubling. At the same time, the Department of Justice has a troubling record of failure in corruption in cases against public figures, from Ted Stevens to Bob McDonald to Donald Trump to Bob Menendez the last time around. Sarah Menndez has a right to test the government's evidence in court just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey's voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold
on power. Which is like that part is kind of ridiculous, given the fact that they intentionally made him chair of this very powerful committee. But Ryan, what is going on here with because I didn't actually see this coming, I thought, because you know, Republicans, Yeah, I get they look like hypocrites if they call him out, but not Trump or whatever. But they're willing to be hypocrites in any manner of
other ways. So why was this the bridge too far where they felt the need to back up this man who was charged with the most cartoonish levels of government corruption that you can possibly imagine.
I think it goes partly back to what Emily is saying. There's that famous Napoleon line where he says, you know, never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.
So just let me let Democrats keep foundering on this.
But also I think they want to break all the norms around this stuff, and this helps break the norm because the norm would be that if a president is convicted or even indicted under these types of circumstances, that he would you go away out of public life, like that's the old norm. That obviously Trump is not doing that, and so to make it seem a little bit normal for him not to do that, you have to smash
all these other ones. And so if you just kind of push push through this and you have it corruption everywhere, then it's like, well everybody's corrupt, so who cares?
Well?
I was just going to quick add there's this sort of bubbling idea on the writer theory on the right that and I think it's echoed in Tom Cotton's statement, Yeah, menandaz became inconvenient because of his positions on Iran and Cuba based on what the Biden administration wants to do or people in the Biden administration want to do. I know it sounds, but that is the deep state. Basically it came out to something.
Right, if the deep state is going on, is that that wouldn't hold water because they wouldn't gotten rid of him way before that and they wouldn't have.
Him committee Like, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, I think it's just Trump.
I honestly think Trump is the I think in five ten years ago they would have called him to resigned. I think now with Trump on her indictment, any just saying that an elected official should resign because of said indictment, They're like, well, why would we then have to go walk down the hallway and be like why should Senate Ninnas design if Donald Trump shouldn't run a president?
And they would rather not get into it.
And so the two who are willing to come out and speak for Tom Cotton, Mark or Rubio, those are more ambitious politicians. They probably want to get on Trump's good side. Whenever they say something like that. The rest of them they're just happy to stay.
Quiet or they want Menanda's there because of his position.
God, not a good point, but also the good point.
Do these guys not have signal and disappearing messages? The Senate Foreign Relationship?
They have not cracked sigma yet signals secure?
Well, we don't know, I don't know if that don't people.
Yeah, no, it didn't work for the DC government.
I think they did crack. I thought. I think they got it back.
They can crack it if Pegasust gets onto your face. But as long as you're not on the phone. Everybody's probably on his phone.
But you know, I do find it really disturbing, even him Cotton like overtly backing up the Supreme Courts. I mean, the Supreme Court has basically made it so that corruption the definition of corruption is literally like getting a stack of cash and saying on camera like I am taking this cash to do your bidding in this specific way. And this does go back to the Bob McDonald case
in particular. And so you know, the Republican Party at times has talked a big game about corruption very recently, and so for them now to totally back away from that and just completely get on the side of like, yeah, what even is corruption and who really cares?
And of course the bump.
Yeah, I mean, I just I do find it like it sucks. It just sucks that they would take this position basically in favor of government corruption and jank you or who we're having on the show today in person, which we're excited about. He actually made a really clever point, which is like, you know what Menanda should do. He should flip parties, make the deep state point, and he'll be good to go because no evidence those a golden
bars and closet whatever. No, it's the deep state there want to get you because of your sanctions on Cuba or whatever. That would work for really, it was.
A perfect text message.
Yeah, yeah, perfect, exactly exactly just Cuban you know.
Oh, and he's already been trying that. He's already been trying. Its the Republicans now, so you can get better.
So it all works for.
Him, Okay, free advicement and does to the last block, the most important block to me personally, it's not true.
Okay, it's a joke. Let's go and put this up not in dro.
The Senate has adopted by unans Senate Resolution three seventy six, the Shorts Act, which stands for Show our Respect to the Senate, introduced by Senator Joe Manchin. We now officially have a dress code in place on the Senate floor. It will require a coat, a tie, long pants of some sort of slack of which now personally even think he should weark he's on the Senate floor. But you know, I guess this is willing to It's got a compromise,
a little failure, willing to have a conference here. This comes after Senator John Fetterman and Senator Cinema frequently violated said dress code.
There was never actually an official dress code that was on the floor.
For those who were wondering, the way that this all happened is that Senator Schumer instructed the Sergeant of Arms not to enforce the unformal dress code, which was kind of written in the rules previously allowing Fetterman to preside and be on the Senate floor in his signature shirt slash, hoodies and shorts and sneakers, and his colleagues rebelled. Now Fetterman himself has back down completely after talking a lot
of big game. I would just say on Twitter along with the staffs put this up there on the scene.
He's got a strong social media I can't. You cannot deny that.
I will deny because.
Because they talked a massive game, and then he doesn't even object to the resolution where all of his colleagues are like, no, you look like a disgusting ogre.
No, because he he actually has his eyes on the prize of things that are matter, unlike this stupid story.
To this, Fedator Fetterman has said during democratic lunch he will wear a suit now when speaking or presiding over the chamber, and if not in the suit, he will vote from the cloak room. So he is completely caved after talking such a big game about how oh he was standing up and all of this.
I you know what I think, Okay, go ahead.
I think that this is a war on men.
Oh, because why is it we should have been.
That Senator Fetterman is getting so much scrutiny when Kirsen Cinema is a serial violator. Why don't people say anything? Absolutely, I think this is a war on men, and I will not stand for I agree with you.
And that's the point that I made in my monologue, because it's actually a by it's a by gender. I guess if you could say a problem that we've had in the Senate, I do think and.
I wanted to.
Of course, everybody knows what I think about this, and I thought it was funny.
I however in terms of the biggest sticking point that I had, And I'm sure and Christal you already agree with me this, so Ryan, I'm sure you as well, especially because you've been a reporter on Capitol Hill. Don't you think it is complete bs that thet aff and the pages still had to wear coat and ties, but it only applied for Fetterman and for Cinema. Basically, the help still had to dress up. You've had to wear
a coat and tie on the end. I've had to do it too, whenever we go into those you know, the chamber or whatever, or in some of those places where it's only press and senators or congress people who are allowed. It's like we all had to abide by the dress code, but they set the rules so that only he and Cinema didn't have to abide it.
You have to at least admit that was it.
Would be pretty cool if pages and Turns were able to wear.
Yeah, I favor mister Populus didn't push for the pages to be able to address badly only for himself.
Let's see clear of us. That's a fair point, Okay. To me, anything that undermines respect for the Senate is a good thing.
Okay.
So I've heard this take. I don't agree with it, but you can listen to this.
It's a good take.
I just agree to Look, I just think Fetterman when he came out as the first Democratic senator to actually call in Menendez to resign, and it has been very direct and forceable about it, and also his half we're completely mocking him saying we're going to return his donation.
And like cash stuff.
End one.
I like to take one's the week.
I don't care what happened with the I've never cared about what happens with the dress code. I still don't care what happened with the dress code. He was on the picket line. He was the first down to call for Menandez to resign, which has helped to open up the floodgates of people actually saying the thing that is like totally obvious that of course this man should not be in a position of power. So I am one hundred percent team Fetterman on this week.
In all respects. I think on policy it was a good week for him. I agree with you. I also I'll even give him credit for this.
He gave a fantastic speech at hearing about banning the Chinese Gomberes party from being able to buy farmland in the state of Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's a long standing problem that we've had, So I will also give him this. I just think he should be wearing a suit when he's on the second floor. I don't think it's a co you want take the w I'm here, this is my super.
Bowl about what about this new zip puddies that like people are.
I do think Soccer has his finger on the pulse of something, which is that this does It is I think very obviously a proxy for how people feel about like the country right now and people's standards, and so
I don't think it's entirely unimportant. I think like the public actually there's a segment of the public that's like, you gotta be thing kidding me, Like my paycheck is going down, Like Bob, I agree with that but I also think some people are like, come on, like they go to church and everybody's in genes and it does honestly bother them, And so I don't think it's entirely out of the realm of what matters.
I think it's very I think it has really exposed the priorities of media and the political class that have listened. We don't okay our show. Okay, fine, we talked about Menandez and we're talking about the dress code ridiculous silliness that it deserves. Okay, but how much time is spent on this whole dress code situation, especially over on Fox News.
That's just like, you know, the millions of kids that fell into poverty, Bob Menendez being incredibly corrected, like a million issues that are going on that are actually substantive, and you got Joe Manchin, who I would take John in a song over no mansion in anything, every freaking day of the week, and he is now like the hero of this. It shows me that the screwed up priorities in the Senate that they would spend so much
time talking about those, in debating those, etcetera. It shows me the screwed up priorities of the news media.
And that's what I have to say about that Ryan last word.
But I think tactically he looked more absurd than usual where it was that unicolor like, yeah, I actually said that.
I used a mark wating, though.
I used a Marxist term for you guys actually contract the contraction. Think he dressed so repulsively to the average eye and made it so obvious where Cinema when she breaks dressed, she just dresses like an idiot, you know, or like a met Gala wanna be, whereas genuinely looks horrib I.
Find Cinema's attired to be so much more so.
She greates I'll put it that way.
He repulses me, she grates me, and she grates me. Though actually the grating might be worse, as you said, because it on her lies a lot of attention seeking narcissism. And the what was the shirt that she wore when she was presiding. It was like something you would buy like for a teenager from limited to and like it bejeweled across it, so it.
Was it was bad.
Okay, why do you even know about limited to?
I think she used general cultural knowledge anyway.
I would just say we won, we beat them. Ugliness will not Ugliness will not prevail in the long run. I've always believed that this is a bit. I don't think it went on all tactical.
Ryan Emily, I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. This was a lot of fun for the breakdown. I'm also glad we didn't spend the whole time on the debate because of God, it was.
Like there just wasn't enough there to pretend to like it was. It mattered. Okay, last question on the debate to wrap it up. Do you think anything changes in the polls? Absolutely not, anything changes in the polls significantly.
I don't even think it changes like that at all.
I don't think anything moves anywhere outside of the.
I think Haley may follow a couple of points.
O interesting, that's mine because she did get a first debate bomb.
She was the one person who got bomb. Curtain curtain gage, devastating, devastating, the Obama curtains.
Inside inside baseball and wrap it all up and bring it off full circle. I want to say that they got into a shouting match before we started taping about Fetterman.
So what you saw was also what happened off that's actually.
We have Shank Huger standing by. Let's get to it.
Auspicious day here at breaking Points. We have a very special guest joining us in studio, Jank Huger. He is the creator of the Young Turks and also author of the brand new book that we have here, how progressives are going to take over the country and America is going to love it. Oh I skipped the main title, which is Justice is Coming.
Indeed, yes, right now, Yes, you have arrived.
Justice is arrived. It's great to see you. I know you went through some links with the Red Eye and all that to be able to get here, and we're really grateful.
No problem, thank you.
So before we get into the book, any big hot takes from the debate last night is Doug Burger I'm going to surge into zero point six percent of the vote. What do you think?
Well, I actually kind of liked Doug Burghram.
I thought he made some practical points, had actually done some things in his life, and he was the only one that was actually trying to be substantive. Okay, Having said that, no, he will not surge two point six. So look, I've got as similar take as a lot of folks do. It was a mess and it looked like the kid's table. They're constantly talking over each other.
They're running for a second. Although I thought the Sanders was a little strong last night, stronger than he normally is, with a weird smile and all.
Yeah, but he's a little better than the first dight.
Yeah yeah, but all that.
Notwithstanding, both Democrats and Reporicans don't really know how to hit Donald Trump. Chris Christy is the closest that Liasy's aggressive and not shy about not scared. He's the only person in neither party not scared of Trump, having said that I have a thousand better ways to hit Donald Trump, and they just won't do it. You should put a nickname on him, spoil Donnie. He got four hundred million dollars from his dad. He blew it all, he says,
spoiled little child. And then when the country took his toy away, which is the American government, he wanted to break the toy.
Right, That's who he is, spoiled little baby.
You have to undercut his strength, and they keep the Democrats keep calling him racist, sexist, bigot, et cetera.
Dude, everybody already knows that.
And for a lot of those voters, unfortunately, that's not the bug, that's the feature. But even so, it's not all folks who are you know, there's a lot of anti establishment people there, especially among independents. You need to deliver on issues, and you need to attack and where it hurts. He's a terrible businessman. He's weak, insecure, a baby undercut his strength instead of constantly feeding into he's too strong.
Oh, that's a terrible way of attacking him.
That's tough because a lot of Republicans loved Trum and they don't even I mean, anything that codes that way they're going to say is liberal. But I'm curious actually about why you decided to write this book in the middle of the Biden era and what you see as the justice coming, how the progressives are going to take over in the middle of an administration which has probably been middling from your guys' perspective.
So why do you think that this is the tide going in there?
Yeah, So I'm really worried about twenty twenty four, which we'll probably get into in a second. Yeah, for sure, But after twenty twenty four, it's all us. So I explained in chapter six this is not false. Ope, it's backed up by overwhelming data. So the young are incredibly progressive. The top republic impulsor, Frank Lunz, has his two pay on fire. He's like they're coming, and I showed in the book even states that Bernie Sanders loss in twenty twenty,
he wins with crushing margins for under forty five. Under forty five's is it really still a hung And this selection is going to be under forty nine, and by twenty and twenty eight it's going to be under fifty four, and then we've got a majority, and so we could win a Democratic primary and we could win a general election. So it's actually all we have to do is make sure that we don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There's no question we're going to win in the long run.
It isn't about race, it isn't about sex, it isn't about gender identity, it's about age. We have the young on our side, and it is a tsunami. But we just can't lose democracy in twenty twenty four. And that's what I'm really worried about.
Biden.
Interesting how is this different from the arguments that were made about the quote unquote coalition of the Ascendant and the idea that you know, demographics are destiny and therefore, you know, the Republicans are going to be vanquished and then we end up getting Donald Trump and it turns out, you know, Latinos have been shifting. Democrats still win Latinos, but there has been a notable shift there. There's been some shift, even a more marginal among black voters and
black men in particular. So isn't it a little bit too triumphant to assume that these demographic groups that support progressive values and tend to support democratic democra right now are just going to continue to vote in the same way that they have historically.
Yeah, so there's a great question. So there's a couple of very important differences.
So, first of all, Democrats took those minority demographics for granted. They're like, oh, black people and Latinos are always going to vote for us, we don't actually have to deliver for them. So, for example, this time around, Bare Minimum was voting rights, and then they didn't do voting rights right. They didn't even really try to do voting rights. They almost never deliver on those things. Joe Biden has delivered on about twenty twenty five percent of his agenda, but
not nearly good enough. You have to and you see the discontent in African American media like Charlemagne and others, etc. Latinos. Now Trump's up to forty two percent. So just saying hey, you're black or you're brown, vote.
For me is not good enough.
Right, But for young people, they're not going to all of a sudden turn around and hate gay people, hate black people.
Their identity is usually set.
As I explained the book, Meta studies show between the ages of fourteen and twenty four, and once it is set, it does not change. So they're not going to random turned into hateful folks or corporate policies. It's not gonna work in the old days. And here's another giant part of the puzzle. It's us okay, breaking poise, tyt et cetera. Because mainstream media is on the precipice of capsizing. Yes, yeah, because their costs are now higher than.
Their revenue for a lot of television.
Okay, So when they capsize there and they're already bleeding viewers, and their viewers are on average about seventy years old. Right, So now, guy, I've underestimated that before. I underestimated in twenty twenty and I'm honest about that. It turns out those older voters were still ascendant and were and controlled the Democratic primaries, and they're brainwashed by Joe Scarborough and mainstream media. And so that was a very powerful force and has been for a long time in this country.
You can't underestimate it. But by twenty twenty eight it is a completely different ballgame, both in media.
Which is everything, and in the age demographic, but all throughout.
The one other giant difference when corporate democrats go, Okay, you have to vote for us because you're a black or brown, but then they don't deliver it. But progressives say, no, we are going to deliver for you. We're going to deliver on paid family, higher minimum wage, relieving student debt, public option, medicare for all, you name it, we actually mean it. So who's our standard bearer has been for
a long time is Bernie Sanders. And everybody knows whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not, he's probably the most honest man in American politics, in our lifetime.
I think even the right wing knows that.
And definitely independence though in that I'm not saying Bernie's gonna run again, but our standard bearer is honest and the other guys have Trump and corporatists, so they're not going to win the young doing that.
Yeah, let's get into that. And that's why it's interesting. You've been talking a little bit about Joe Biden. Let's put this tweet up there on the screen now. For example, you say Biden is losing by ten points in this poll. Even if it's half wrong, it's still an epic disaster. The Democrat has to win the popular vote by five to win the electoral college. Right now, Biden is fifteen points behind where he needs to be.
Wake up.
You mentioned Bernie Sanders. I believe Bernie is what is he eighty two eighty three? Probably in my opinion, he shouldn't run at that point. So you talked about standard bearers, but there doesn't From an outsider's perspective, I don't see a standard bearer in the progressive move I've seen a lot of fracturing. There's a lot of fighting going on, there's some like there's a lot of different theories of.
Change and all that.
So how if you want to mount a challenge to Biden, what does it look like? Give us some actual names of what that would be and then the fights that would ensue within that.
Yeah.
So, first of all, I agree with you. Bernie's got age issues, as Biden and Trump does. And not only that, I love Bernie, but he just doesn't like to fight. He doesn't like to fight other Democrats Keller. Yeah, And you can't win if you don't find right. You've got to make your own case. That's the same problem Biden has. He just never makes his own case. So look, guys, what's going to happen is there's one strong, populous progressive is going to rise and they're going to capture the.
Country with lightning speed. Interesting, so right now do we have that?
Not?
Not really?
And so why do I say that? Well, look, you know, if you want to be the strong leader, you got to step up. That's what strong leaders do. They don't go Well, Biden didn't give me permission. If you're worried about Biden giving your permission, you ain't it. Yes, Okay, I'm sorry now having said that, for twenty twenty four, the progressive boat is almost gone, right, so there's only one like.
It's so bad. I seriously considered running because nobody will do it. For God's sake, it's a golden opportunity.
The guys in this is in the in the thirties, in the polling that we're whistling past the graveyard.
He's gonna lose. He's he had.
He was at fifty two when he won in twenty twenty, and he won by a razor thin march of forty four thousand votes in the electoral college. Now fifteen points lower. We're just kidding ourselves. The handwriting is on the wall.
He's gonna lose.
So at this point, soccer, give me anybody, give me anybody, give me Andy Msher in Kentucky, give me Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania.
I'll even take Whitmer. Okay, Okay, I don't care.
We just anybody but Biden, because it's not personal. I don't mind Biden. I would prefer someone more progressive, et cetera. But at this point, it's not about that. We've got to win. Is democracy on the line or isn't it? Because I think Democrats are full of crap.
They say stuff like.
That, Oh, that guy's a fascists, he's gonna kill democracy. So we're running a guy who's a wounded antelope, who seventy two percent of Americans think is not even going to make it through a second term. There's no one on planet Earth that could look at those pulling numbers and say, yeah, he's gonna win. If they do say that, they're definitely lying.
So it's hard to disagree with much of that. However, I will say that I do have some nervousness in my ideal scenario, you know, Biden would withdraw, wou'd have a real democratic process. I'm not of this view that like democracy is bad for electoral chances, et cetera. I actually think it's really good. It allows people to make the case. It allows democratic voters to choose the cannon that they would be think would be best suited, et cetera,
et cetera. But I do worry that there are some cannons that I feel like would be worse than Biden, not only electorally, Like I think Kamala Harris would be worse electorally. I think Pete Boodagic would you know, potentially
be worse electorally. But I also think that they would be a lot worse on policy, because even though I have a million criticisms of Biden that we talk about here all the time on labor issues with regards to the National Labor Relations Board, on the fact that he went to the freaking pigy line first president in history, he is better than the Obama Democrats in some key ways. I mean, they've tried to do industrial policy, that's been
a significant step forward. They haven't done enough on the consumer side, they haven't done enough on the workers side, et cetera. You know, they let all the Social Safety Net stuff from COVID expire, and that's why so many Americans are feeling really stressed and struggling financially. But I can see a lot other options that would actually be worse, both on policy and on like being able to win and defeat Trump. You agree with that, No? Should you think commlal win'll be better?
No?
Be clear?
Okay, So Number one, this is not about Biden's record. If we were started this primary a year ago, when the Republicans started, or six months ago, it would be about Biden's record.
And Biden's record is mixed.
So normal Democrats like Barack Obama do five percent of the things that they promise, and then the media declares them champions of the world. Right, Biden has done about twenty percent of his agenda, which for politicians is a bit stunning. It still sucks, but it's like way better than some other politicians. You write, his record on labor is pretty good, a bunch of spotty areas, but overall
pretty good. Now, but I'm not arguing that, guys, it doesn't matter how great we think Biden is if he loses. So look and incumbent under fifty points the old rule. Everybody in Washington knows this cannot win or does that win, and incumbent under forty points, it's unprecedented, Jack Carter, I've never seen it in my lifetime.
It's not going to happen.
On the day that he won with odly forty four thousand votes in the electoral college in three swing states, he had a four and a half point lead, not in a poll, in the actual vote, the popular vote. So the Democrat needs a five point lead for us to feel a tiny bit comfortable about saving democracy, and Biden is currently losing to Trump, So I'm not having a conversation about substance. At this point, I wish I was I'm having a conversation about who can win. Now
this crazy thought that people in Washington have. They have all this mythology, and in the book I break down all the mythology. In this case, though, the line is, well, if it's all Biden, and we go to the line of succession, and Kamala Harrison says.
What the hell did we become a monarchy? There's no line of succession. That's not a thing. It's a thing.
If some of God forbids something were to happen to President Biden, then you have a lot of succession when they're in office, but not in a primary. We're not the British royalty. Kamala Harris isn't anointed, neither is Biden, or shouldn't be. And now people in media are freaking out a little bit. They're beginning to see I'm right. James Carville's freaking out. David Ignatius at Washington Post is freaking out. But they're frozen in amber because they're like, well,
we have to bow down to Biden. I mean, what would the king say other And we're Democrats, we obey authority.
Right.
No, we're Democrats. We don't obey authority.
Right.
And then they say, well we get rid of Biden, Well we have to go to the crown princess.
But what plan is?
Unfortunately a lot of Democrats do a bit authority. I mean that's what we saw in twenty twenty, right, I mean that was the killer. Once the media was like, it's Biden, and if you want to beat Trump, you got to get behind Biden. We saw how quickly the dominoes fell. So you know, I am worried about a scenario where if for whatever reason, Biden is not in the picture anymore and you have a wide open primary and there's this media coalescing around. We have to back
up Kamala Harris. She's the first black woman vice in line.
No one, No one wants Kamala Harris.
Every person I talk, you'll get racially blackmailed into I don't, no way, nobody's got time for that.
Okay, that's like when you're old, that time for it. I don't care what the else in Washington thing.
You may not.
We agree, Yeah, we.
Saw the way Democratic primary voters fell in line.
No, So look, I hear you mainstream media is still powerful. Like I said, we're definitely gonna win in twenty eight and in twenty four. We're probably right on the edge, right, But we're not asking for a progressive to be Kamlin Harris, because if it was a progressive, yes, like for example, let's say Iran or Nina turneran or.
Anyone like that, Marianne running or mary An.
Williamson running right now, right, what does the press do. Our number one problem is in Biden. You put me one on one against Biden, you give me a fair head hearing, I would destroy him. It wouldn't even be close. It'd be a landslide, right, But you don't get a fair hearing. The press, which is totally corporate media, shreds every progressive. So Chris, at this point, I'm not wishing upon a star, Hey, Press, you love corporatis. Andy Bishier,
governor of Kentucky. It's a red state. He won in Kentucky.
He's the most popular governor in America.
Most popular governor in America. Josh Shapiro won in Pennsylvania, crushing victory against a Trump acolyte.
So you guys are comfortable with Shapiro and Bashir, You won't rip them, gotcha.
Let me push a little bit on the election point. What do you make of all of the special elections we've had recently that have had Democrats outperforming on an average of eleven points. So we've gotten used to these polls that underestimate the Republican support. It seems like, you know, in recent years that may have flipped post jobs. So that's what the Biden people would point to, is like, listen,
the polls can say whatever they say. The polls are wrong all the time, but when voters are actually showing up to the polls, they are we are outperforming polls. We are outperforming the marchin by double digits. What do you make of that?
Okay, so first of all, did it happen? Yes? But was Trump on the ballot? No, he was not on the ballot. Trump drives out crazy Republican votes and you know that. We all know that. Yeah.
Second of all, saying, well, hopefully the polls are wrong, but hey it turns out, if it turns out science is.
True, we're going to lose democracy. Cross your fingers right, and hey we might get an eleven point search.
No, we're not going to get an eleven point search in a presidential race, but hoping for that.
Okay, I got a great idea.
Why don't put in Andy Basheer and he'll have a five or six or eight point lead, and then we'll get then eleven point search and we'll guarantee democracy. And then we could fight Andy Basher in the twenty twenty eight primary. Somebody could run a year early. We can have fun within the Democratic Party, but this is the time for look about everything in everybody in Washington has to decide, and especially in the Democratic Party. Do you actually think democracy is on the line, because I do.
I mean Trump is talking about killing US generals. The guy's a monster, a total maniac. He's talking about imprisoning his political opponents. He tried to cool last time.
Fake electors everything. This guy's definitely a dictator.
Want to be Apparently I'm the only person who thinks that, because other Democrats are like.
Well, that's true.
But on the other hand, we don't want to be impolite to Joe Biden. Joe Biden has a legacy to protect. He needs to be a two term president to fluff his ego. Let's note for the record that Joe Biden is incredibly selfish. If I was in the thirty and I thought democracy was on the line, I would definitely step aside.
Yeah, the actions don't match up with the rudder.
My last question for you, your governor, Governor Newsom, he was all over Fox News last night. The man is making a play. What do you think of him as a candidate, because clearly he wants it. He wants it right now. He's the only one you're talking about stepping up. He's probably gone the most as anyone. What do you think do you think you should run against Biden? What do you think you should do?
Well, he's not going to because he's a corporate demeral. Yea, So if he ran against Biden.
I'm not a fan of Gavin Newsom, but I would, but I would hold my nose. And at least he's young, he's dynamic, he's out there fighting the fight. I'm trying to win here, guys, we got to win. So now, having said that, Gavin is not going to run against him because he's a corporatist. So the corporate Democrats obey authority. So when Biden says my he goes more important than democracy. Gavin Newsom says yes.
Sir, of course, sir, Absolutely, sir. I don't do whatever you want, sir, just as.
Long as I'm not in polite Sir Washington, please don't yell let me, Please don't yell at me. Make me president in twenty twenty eight, I mean, if we have elections, but who cares about democracy?
Democrats? Stop being so selfish and ridiculous. Do you think we have to win?
Or don't you if you think we have to win? Biden is not going to get a five point lead. He doesn't even campaign.
Where the hell is he?
Where's Joe Biden? I'm asking where the hell is he?
He's right here, yeah, yeah.
Nodding off taking and he did make appearance on the picket line, which I very much appreciate. My last question for you, Jank is like, how hopeful are you that we could end up with someone other than Joe Biden as nominee? Like do you think because she say yeah, I mean because you say, listen, Gavin Newsom's not going to run against him. That goes for every one of
the corporate Democrats. I mean, Gavin Newsom is the one making the most like doing the most right now, and it's very clear he's not going to jump in this race against Joe. So do you think there's a chance, Chrystal.
We are definitely in an unsolvable riddle because the corporate Democrats say, I will not disobey, I will always bow my head right, and the progressives say, well, I can't run. The mainstream media will destroy me. They will destroy my life, they'll destroy my career, et cetera. Right, So how do we get past that? That's why I'm desperate enough to think maybe I should do it. And I'll tell you why. Because let's say that somebody like me gets in the race.
The Democratic voters are dying for an alternative. They keep saying every poll, for God's sake, give us someone else, give us someone else. If someone like me were to get to twenty points, do you have any idea how quick Newsom and Whitmer would enter the race.
So are you seriously you're seriously considering it?
Like, yeah, I'm considering it, And I'll tell you what's happened.
RFK Junior is at twenty percent, you know, Marianne's at like ten percent something like.
But RFK Junior, first of all, he's not a twenty anymore. He peaked at twenty for a brief moment until democrats found out he's.
Not a Democrat.
Okay, then he went, Then he dove down, and Marianne got butchered by mainstream media.
They made up things about crystals, et cetera. So I love Marianne.
I I you know, if if she could somehow bring through media, great, wonderful, et cetera. But it's taken a while and she hasn't broken through yet. So we need someone to be super aggressive. And if they'll let me ask you this way, if you get again, someone anyone, it doesn't have to be progressive, gets to twenty or twenty five, an outsider, right, this whole town panics and Newsome and Whitmer go in and media.
I do think that's that, right.
I don't know, because it already happened with RFK and they just ignored him and they went after him.
Yeah, that was that was No, that was before when they were convinced that Biden was going to win, and RFK everybody knew it was a flash in the pan because he's not really a Democrat.
Maybe, but so Jake, tell me more about your thinking. Yeah, timeline, when do you Wang, how serious are you give us a detail?
So I already thought about it before, and I rejected it because I know what they're gonna do.
You know, you're an outsider radical.
They're gonna dredge up things from nineteen eighty seven and when you were a junior in junior high school.
They need that to you.
They did that.
Yeah, yeah, of course. And look, if we're being honest, the number one problem is mainstream media. Mainstream media is the shock troops of corporate politicians, both corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans. Their job is to eviscerate any outsider. So that's why do you think Progresses aren't running. I've talked to at least half a dozen progressives and try to convince.
Them to go in the race, and they're like, I don't want my life ruined. Who's going to ruin their life? Joe Biden's in a bunker somewhere.
No, it's gonna be ABC and NBC and CBS and CNA and MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post.
They're going to go to any outsider and shred into pieces.
And I'm now so desperate for making sure that we win that I think I'm already destroyed, right, Like they've already attacked me ten thousand times, right, so come at me, bro So, Crystal, it's crazy for me to consider it, right, but that's the times we're in. If like, literally, no one else will do it, it's insane. So we're I don't want to go quietly into that good night, and right now we are one hundred percent on a track to go quietly into that goodness.
So what's the timeline?
As Crystal s, no, I.
Look, if I'm gonna do it, if anybody's gonna do it, they gotta go.
Now, well, have you thought.
About staff, have you thought about a plan? Have you reached it? I mean we know, you know, donor networks, all those sorts of things that we started taking real steps.
So if you're going to run a campaign this late, you can't go traditional, right. You can't be like, oh, I'm going to collect endorsements from politicians. Oh, and I'm going to build up my base tiny bit. No, you got to go and hope for grassroots tsunami. The good news is when I ran for Congress, I mean it was a tiny little race. We raised like one point
three million in three months. I mean, if anybody can raise money, it's meat from the grassroots, right, And I'm a successful businessman, if I might say so myself, I have some credibility in running things, managing things, et cetera.
So have I reached out to staff?
I have?
Okay, Now the problem is everybody thinks, well, how the hell are we going to beat these guys?
Right, So if I go in, it's going to be threadbare staff, threadbare website, and we're gonna see is there momentum? Because if there is a momentum and people go no, no, no, no, no, Biden, Biden, even if he's in the twenties, I don't care. I don't want I don't mind losing. I don't mind losing. You're being impolite, which is totally possible.
Right, So if that's yeah, I think there's a decent contingent though.
Yeah, I think that yeah.
And if that's the case, then at least I left it all on the battlefield, or whoever does it, for God's sake, don't make me.
Do it like I have someone else run.
Right, But I can't get anyone to do it, And so I want to leave it all on the battlefield and I don't want to say, well, like everyone else, I wanted to be polite. So we lost democracy because we thought it would hurt Mussolini's opponent's' feelings.
Right, does anybody remember Mussolini's opponent?
I don't actually, of course no one does.
No one, okay, because Mussolini ran him over and he probably sat on a couch, just like Joe Biden is. Right now, you guys, we're on it. And I know how mad Democrats get it. I know how mad media gets when you point out an iceberg. But we did it before. We pointed out the Hillary Clinton iceberg, and then they said you made the Iceberg appere No, your knuckle heads.
It's right there the country.
The voters despise the establishment, and they're like, so let's pick the most establishment can ex weekend, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
Guys, he barely won last time. There's no way he's gonna win. Now.
Let alone of Cornell West is in the race, and Larry Hogan's in the race, and these guys are in the race, then there's no chance at all.
So no, I'm not going quietly into that good night. So somebody better announced before I do.
All right, well, well all right, well I never thought to ask you and your appearance if you were considering running for president. Yeah, I appreciate yeah, absolutely, And guys, definitely check out the book. I think you will not be disappointed. It's very interesting, very thought provoking. As are you always, Jenkins. Great to see you and I said this to you privately, but I want to say it
to the audience too. You were there from the beginning helping us build at Rising and we are always grateful to you for you know, helping to build up your true believer in terms of independent media, and that really shows. So thank you forgotten.
So thank thank you, guys.
I really appreciate you saying that.
Absolutely, it's our pleasure. We'll see you guys later