Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Oh boy, there's some interesting stories out there this morning. We're going to start with this wild DOJ indictment that involves a bunch of top online influencers. That details are really quite extraordinary. So break all of that down for you. Part of a broader crackdown on a Russian disinformation influence campaign.
So we'll get into that broader effort as well. Trump did a Fox News town hall last night, was Sean Hannity, a lot of hard hitting questions there, but there were some interesting moments they would want to take you through.
Despite it was despite Hannity, we got to yeah exactly yeah.
And also it was built as a town hall, but then nobody actually asking Sean Hannity, what's going on with that whatever, So we'll show you the highlights, low lights, whatever, lights from that. We also have some new polls to break down for you, in particular a slew of new battleground polls from CNN that are quite interesting and if they came to fruition, would have the electoral college map
so incredibly close. So this election continues to, you know, be just as as tight as it possibly could be. We're also going to break down fact from fiction on this wild a or a gang apartment building story that has gone viral that Elon Musk has been promoting. I'll just leave it at that, and we'll take you through all.
The details once we get to that flock. So Boomers are up in arms about it, Yes, well perhaps you, yes.
Indeed, all right, so let's go and get to this story. Just bear with me while I go through the details, because I think it will pay off for you in the end. So the dj put online an indictment of two Russian nationals who work for our team.
Okay, what they are alleged to have.
Done is to have funneled ten million dollars through a Tennessee based content creation company called Tenant Media. Okay, we can put this story up on the screen. So your major players are these two Russian nationals. They're the ones who are indicted. This media startup called Tenant who has a number of very highly recognizable and influential right wing media creators on their payroll, including Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Timpoole,
Lauren Southern, and a couple others. I was less familiar with Matt Christiansen, yes, and somebody Hansen.
Yes, it's like the.
Same name as somebody from the Hanson Bannon but it's not the same guy.
And I actually looked it out just to make the.
Major names of Danny Johnson, Timpoole, and Dave Ruben, I think may.
Those are the major ones.
Yes, okay, And again, none of these individuals are accused of wrongdoing. However, the details here are quite extraordinary. So Tenant Media hires these influencers for extraordinaries of money to produce some content for them.
I'm talking like.
One hundred thousand dollars of video. Under the pretext that the Tenet Media people, run by Lauren Chen and her husband what's his name, dov Liam Donovan under the pretext, which they apparently knew was a false pretext, that there was this elusive, wealthy businessman who was funding all of this. And again we're talking like one hundred thousand dollars.
Of video plus.
Insane amounts of money for this. Okay, So it turns out that this elusive businessman is totally made up. Turns out that these two rt like Russian agents, effectively were influencing content. They were in the discord telling these creators and the producers involved with these videos that were being you know, produced for this money, like, hey, let's focus in on this angle of maybe it was Ukraine that
was behind the isis Moscow attack. Hey, why don't you guys, why don't you guys put this Tucker Carlson grocery shopping video.
I'll show you that in a minute.
Which is hilarious because one of the producers was actually like this, see just seems like direct shilling, and they're like, no, no, you should do it, and they're like, okay, fine, we'll do it. So directly shaping content and getting paid through this shady enterprise that comes truck. This is what's in the indictment. Okay, these are the allegations from the government.
So let me read you a little bit of that article that we just had up that says, the indictment claims the personalities on tenant, we're not aware of the backgrounds and intentions of the two Russians, and the funding for the company came through a Canadian shell company from a frontman named and this is the fake.
Guy Edward Gregorian, who did not exist.
Despite the fact that Google searches for Edward Gregorian did not return any results. Two of the commentators, and it appears that those two commentators are one of them's definitely Timpoole, the other one's probably Benny Johnson, potentially Dave Rubin, are the sort of focus of a lot of what's in this indictment. In any case, despite the fact that the Google searches didn't return any hits for this dude, the two commentators went through with the deal. The indictment alleges
after receiving a resume. Let's put a two up on the screen that has a little bit more detail.
Eventually they did the deal.
Benny Johnson, we think that could be Dave Rubin, but one of the two of them would unknowingly work for the Russians for four hundred thousand dollars a month in exchange for four monthly videos. Guys, we work in this into That is an insane amount of money per video, plus a one hundred thousand dollars signing bonus. Apparently Tim Poole also got one hundred thousand dollars a video, but no signing bonus. This person opines weak negotiating skills. Let's
put the next piece up on the screen. This is the Tucker grocery store situation. I was telling you about so on or about February fifteenth. They say, one of these producers who was using pseudonym, who was also who was actually a Russian national works for RT and one of the individuals who's actually indicted, shared with Tenant Media a video of they say, a well known US political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia.
We all know that's Tucker.
Carlson, but Russian National posted the video in the producer Discord channel. Later that day, a producer privately messaged one of the founders, Lauren Chen on Discord and said, they want me to post this, referencing the video that the Russian national had posted, but it just feels like overt shilling. Lauren Chen replies that her husband thinks we should put it out there. The producer acquiesces, responding, all right, I'll
put it out tomorrow. So one of the reasons this detail is important is because it shows the direct impact that these Russian nationals who were posing as not Russian nationals and who were involved in this producer discord, were exerting on the type of content that was being produced. Let's put the ICE's Ukraine piece up here as well. It's another instance where they were trying to influence the
content that was being put out by these creators. The Russians wanted to blame the i's Moscow attack this person who fines on Ukraine.
They got commentator three.
To do it, so that would either be Dave Rubin or Benny Johnson. Were not sure because the reason we're able to deduce who these people were is because the indictment lists not their names, but the number of YouTube subscribers they have, and Dave Rubin and Betty Johnson have basically the same number of subscribers. That's why we're not sure which is which. And they both ended up putting
out statements. We'll get to those in a moment, but sager initial reactions to this extraordinary chain of alleged events, which, by.
The way, no one is really denying it.
Oh none of them are. Ye, Lauren Chen is not put out a statement, neither her husband Liam Donovan. So again, just to recap, in the indictment, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, and Tim Poole were not aware, according to the US government, that they were being paid via Russian cutouts. But the indictment makes it very clear that Lauren Chen and her husband were aware that quote it was the Russians in
private communications right between the two of them. Multiple other circumstantial evidence guys showing that they were like when they couldn't get a risk spons for why invoices weren't being paid, they were googling time in Moscow as to why all of this was not coming in on time. I mean, at a philosophical level, it's sad, honestly, because it's very clear that the money was just so good that nobody was was not asking real questions. So, for example, let's
put a five please up on this. This is delicious because at one point They're like, hey, who is the guy? I want to see something about him? And this is literally the resume that was sent to them of some mystery rich man named Edward Gregorian. Now we don't have a full Like the resolution on this is actually quite bad because it comes from the indictment itself, but it says experience finance, professional investor, deeply engaged in business and philanthropy,
leveraging skills and resources to drive positive impact. Just a bunch of complete bullshit, honestly. Life and education. They say that he had a bachelor's degree in economics and master's in accounting. He had some professional experience in financial analysis and consulting, but they list some fake banks that he had allegedly worked at, and in general said he was
an accomplished financial professional, mister Gregorian. The problem is is that a basic amount of research would have revealed that Gregorian does not exist because there was no financial footprint. There was no footprint on bank websites, there was no Google history. I mean, it's basically impossible in the world at this point to become a person who could afford ten million dollars funneling to these people without having a
financial profile at all. It's basically the chance is zero, especially if you were working in finance LinkedIn any bank records, bank websites, you know, even if you were using archive or wayback machine or any of those, you'd be able to find them. And so that should have set off major alarm bills. But really what it is is that because we work in this business, sorry, those sums are insane. And if you go on the Tenet Media YouTube channel,
the videos were getting like eight thousand views. Okay, So just so everybody understands, eight thousand views, I mean, how much you make off that, Maybe one hundred and fifty bucks maybe maybe maybe if the producers want to correct me, they can, but it actually could be less. It could be like fifty oh they say much less. Oh okay, I don't think.
Yeah, yeah, well we don't.
Get that low amount of I mean, I don't know.
But especially when you consider the amount of product, I.
Mean the production value.
And I read in this entire indictment, which was enjoyable, to be honest with you, because some of the details there again are really quite entertaining. People were raising at the time, like yeah, you know the Tim Poole and whether it was Dave Ruben or Betty Johnson like they want all this money. There's no way this is going to be economic. And the Russians come back to are like, no, We're.
Good with it. It's like, okay, what are we doing here?
And the other funny thing about the fake resume, So whether Betty Johnson or Dave Ruben, whoever was the commentator that was, you know, raising these questions and was asking like, hey, you know, I can't find anything about this guy, like can you send me something?
And so it gets this farcical resume pass.
Yeah.
And the one concern that he raises is somewhere in the buzzword gobbledegook that's on this resume, it references social justice.
And that was the one thing that he was like, WHOA, I don't know, I don't know.
I'll speak up for it. That is a red flag, right because if somebody has that on your on your resume and you don't know anything.
That of all those situation that would.
Mean for me, the red flag is the money. I'd be like, hold on, so you won't pay me four hundredand a month to post four videos and each of those four videos going to get eight thousand views. So you're going to make maybe a couple hundred bucks at best over all of this, So what's in it for you?
But you know the fact of the matter is, and you could speak to this probably about that, I can't. Like there is a lot of ideological money floating around in right wing circles. I mean this is like sort of in defense of them that you know, there's all these billionaires and one other taxes cut and so even if they don't and ten million dollars is nothing to them.
And so even if it's the posting of that one video is an economic they're engaged in a broader ideological project that they believe is going to pay off for them over time. And so I mean that's what's crazy, is like, obviously we don't swim in these why we don't take money for many it's like all dependent on you guys, and you know, like really important obviously that we.
Do those things. But that's why when.
I read through this, it feels so preposterous because that amount of money just being thrown at you to do four video a month, yea, is insane.
Well, I'll speak to a couple of things. Yeah, First is the way that we set up our business. I'm extremely vindicated on this because for people who you know, we've spoken about this some at length, but we are one hundred percent financed by our premium subscribers through our subscription program, and then programmatic advertising, which is placed on YouTube or podcast ads.
That means your face never talk to an advertisers an advertising period.
In fact, the only input that we have is that in certain categories that we don't want, so we could actually make even more money if we're willing to have like shilling credit cards or any of those other things playing.
We're just want ads on our podcast.
So that was my next thing. So then the next phase of that, and this is where you know, there's been a lot of pressure always from any people who are involved in business that they're like, well, you know, you can make five to ten times more if you were to just read ads, and we're always like, yeah, but you know, should a guy who's bringing you the news really be reading a ball shaving ad? Like I don't only think so. And by the way, that is where the most money is, or blueto or any of
these others. If you're a comedian, I totally get it. That's fine. Get your bag, you know, But whenever you're in news like, it's just different. And so we never chased outside revenue. And that's part of what I see here, is that when you're out there and you're making deals with gold companies and shaving companies and all these other things, maybe it doesn't seem as preposterous if somebody wants to pay you x on hundred thousand dollars a month. And
that's just in the private sector. Remember, these guys are getting millions and millions of views, Like, let's be real, there's a lot of money floating around. And then secondary to that is what you identified. And this is where I'm going to give them some defense and also just some criticism here of the DOJ where it's not one
hundred percent fair. How many people do you guys know, who are on YouTube or elsewhere where you just suspect maybe these people are getting paid by Israel, by Ukraine, bye, I mean anybody, by Katar, by the Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, by anybody who has a vested interest in
influencing US politics. In fact, I have it on good authority that there are several so called war YouTubers who are out there who are directly on the payroll of the Ukrainian government and or cutouts of the US intelligence community. You know, we've covered and we will get to this in terms of secret Israeli influence operations, Katari and influence operations, Iranian perhaps influence operations with a DJ obviously is very particularly singling out these Russian this Russian scheme of ten
million dollars. Now, is that an excuse? No, because here's the truth. People with ethics or people with scruples like we would do this. We would never even be in a position where a deal like this even gets presented. Yeah, because our representatives are very aware. They're like, no, it's not on the table, not on the except.
Yeah, exactly, And yeah, I mean I would have a lot of questions beyond like, let me say, social justice. If someone's trying to throw that kind of money at you, that's immediate red flag, and we wouldn't even.
Be in a position to field those deals.
You're exactly right, because the people we work with know that we would never ever even consider going.
Down that path. But I mean the thing that, so your point.
Is correct, there's obviously very selective enforcement of these laws. And if it's you know, friends then of the official friends of the United States, then okay, no problems on whoever you want, run whatever influence campaigns you want. We're going to talk more about that when we talk about the sort of broader operation that they're conducting here the DOJ is conducting under Merret Garland. No doubt that it's
selective enforcement. But also the specific thing they're accused of, not again, not Timpoole, not Dave Rubin, not whoever, but the Russian nationals are accused of.
I mean, it obviously is.
Illegal and should be illegal if the allegations are correct, because not only I mean they adopted pseudonyms, they created a fake persona, they funneled, they laundered this money through shell companies. They were in these discord producer chats like under pseudonyms, pretending to be people that they weren't to manipulate this coverage like this is this is really it
is really dirty and the fairies. Then the thing that discussed me to Saga is like, you know, you're every time we have some opinions on Ukraine, on Israel, on what we've been accused of taking taking money from this regime or that, and so when you actually did it, you give so much credence. He was going to get to that, you give so much credence to these arguments that anyone who has a view that's not the official US mainstream narrative, Oh well, they really have a secret agenda.
They're really, you know, a useful idiot, like apparently Tempole and Dave Ruben and Benning ja are.
So and that's what is.
That's even though you know, like I said, I find the details sort of amusing, I also am like disgusted by it because it gives so much credence to those bad faith attacks that anyone who descends on the Ukraine War is actually being paid in rubles by the Kremlin.
Or whatever exactly, and that on Ukraine and on Israel specifically. I mean Lorne Chen was somebody who was very vociferous about dual loyalty accusations and about she actually spoke about free speech for hamas protester. Is one of the very few right like right people who is doing that. And now everybody who is pro Israel is mismissing her out of hand and is like, look, she was actually the one guilty of dual loyalty at the time, and guess what,
they're right. It's actually true. She literally knew according to the indictment. Look, maybe she has a defense. We haven't heard it yet. I've looked for statements from both her and her husband, nothing about whether what the allegations are true or not. That's a real problem, you know. And also in the independent media space, like you were saying, questioning Ukraine, how many times have accusations been leveled here? Oh,
you're a pro Russian propagandist. It's like, well, apparently not a good one, because I'm not be nice by a pretty fancy cyber truck. I think some of that money up. But that's this is the issue, is that now all of independent people, especially people with descending views, are going to get smeared to high heaven by all of these you know who knows the Mueller she wrote, empty wheel, all of these lunatics, literal Russia Gate obsessed lunatics. They're
having the greatest field day that they've ever had. I even see you know, generals, people like Mark Hurtling over at CNN. He's like, this is the tip of the iceberg. The Russian propaganda machine and all that and they take a they're going to take this kernel and explode it out to anybody who has a descending view. So I guess if any other independent creators and all that are out there, it is so imperative. Actually the onus is on you, and I don't think it's fair, right because
what is paying its bills with pharma money? So is Fox News and all these other people. And they don't have to answer any questions because there's a legitimate and legal and that's all cool. They take political advertising dollars and literally go to the campaigns and sell them airtime. Apparently that's fine.
Was it Saudi or one of the golf monarchies where they directly took a bunch of money and did a whole vertical that was just like, you know, propaganda to that country.
I remember that CNN does that course.
Remember CNN Turk. That's actually a whole ball bag of worms and nobody.
I don't know anything about.
My point is just they don't have to answer for all the sketchy hundreds of billions that they take from you know, major corporations, financial interest, Gold, Viagra and all these other places. And you know that's a double standard. But it doesn't matter. We're up against a system, and the system will use this to try and smear and destroy. You've given them more ammunition they could ever want, you know, and from now on that's just going to be the
classic thing that people put out there. Why don't we get to the statement.
Let's put Tim's statement ut this a six. By the way, you mentioned Lauren Chen hasn't put out a statement, at least when I was looking yesterday, she hadn't. I wonder if she's worried about legal jeopardy, because so I.
Spoke to Brad Moss. Yeah, it was like she's in big trouble. The fact that she didn't meaning meet indicted this time around is kind of astounding. And maybe she's cooperating with the government. I find it hard to believe she was retweeting people and posting as of like eleven hours ago when they're the indoutment. Indictment came out, Yeah, how is that possible? Right?
Well, because again there's no allegation that Tim Dane, Ruben, Benny Johnson, Lauren Souther and these other people did anything wrong In the indictment. They say, look, they had they had no idea, right, but the indictment alleges that Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan did know and referring to them as the Russians and were deceiving. Tim Pool, you know, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin at OL. So yeah, I do
wonder if they're in legal jeopardy anyway. Here's Tim statement, he says, my statement regarding allegations and the leak DOJ indictment. By the way, he corrected that it wasn't leaked, It was just like officially posted on their website.
Anyway.
Shouldn't these allegations prove true, I, as well as the other personalities and commentators, were deceived and are victims. Cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed. The Culture War podcast was licensed by Tenant Media. It existed well before any license agreement with Tenant, and it will continue to exist after any such agreement expires. The only change with the agreement was that the locational live broadcast moved
to Tenant's YouTube channel. I and TCW never produced any content for Contenant Media. Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show and the contents of the show are often aid political. Examples include discussing spirituality, dating, and video games.
Yeah, that's what he's known for.
The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company TCW separate company not associated with timcast dot Com or their properties. It exists solely for the production of the Culture War podcast. That being said, we still do not know what is true, as these are only allegations. And then he goes, Putin is a scumbag Russia. Russia sucks donkey balls. The journalists who wish to jump the gun create their own narrative,
rely about what is currently going on. You can eat my Irish et cetera. So that's his response, basically really trying to be like, no, I promise I wasn't taking you know, this was all my own idea that existed before this Russian influence operation, and trying to put some distance between himself and Tenant media. I mean it's listen, in a technical sense, yes, you are a victim. You were also getting millions of dollars to do this, so it's hard to like crime album.
About the whole I mean, you were bamboozled it's true, but yeah, I mean, let's be real, there are a lot of people who were bamboozled who also should have. You know, whenever somebody gets conned, you're like, I feel bad for you, but also it's like, really, you know, you really thought that an Indian guy on the phone, and you know that he was from Microsoft, you're supposed give him fifty grand. Yeah, but.
You're not getting cont out of money making millions exactly.
That's my point is that it's like, Okay, yeah, technically yes, but you know, let's be honest here. Benny also put out a statement, let's put this up there, kind of similar vibe. A statement on the leaked DOJ indictment, again not leaked. A year ago, a media startup Pitch my company to provide content as an independent contractor. Our lawyers
negotiated standard arms like deal, which was later terminated. We are disturbed by the allegations in today's indictment, which may clear myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme. My lawyers will handle anyone who states or suggests otherwise.
I have a Dave Urban statement too, which we don't have an element for because it came out later, but he says statement on the DOJ indictment, these allegations clearly show I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme. I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity.
Period.
People of the Internet was a silly show covering viral videos which ended four months ago. The DJ has never contacted me regarding this matter. I have no intention of comment further. This screenshot from the indictment speaks for itself, and he screenshots a part of the indictment that talks about the fact that Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who ran Tenant Media, that they work together to obscure the
source of the funding. So basically saying like, listen, they tricked us, they knew they were lying, and you know, it's really on them, not on us, seems to be the implication of screenshotting that particular part of the indictments.
I mean, look, they did trick them, right and Lauren, and I mean, honestly sorry, if this is true, your scum, you really are, because you not only you know, knowingly took money from a foreign government, you also put other people in a position where now they're named in a federal indictment. And look, I mean this is the other thing. Do they have to give that money back? Like what do the klawback things look like? From the Department of Justice.
This is literally foreign cash. Yeah, that has been watched. I don't know what that asked. I asked a couple of lawyers. They said, it actually depends on what the government is going to do. If I'm I mean, if you're the DJ you probably hate all these people anyway, you're really going to give them a free ride. And it's not like that money hasn't already been put in the bank and probably paid to employees, Like you could be setting yourself up for a very serious problem with
the US government. The other thing is too, with Lauren Chen and all of them, if they haven't even been arrested, then what are you did you roll up? Like did you cooperate? Now, so now you're both you know, cooperating with the government, and you were useful, not even a useful idiot, you knowingly conspired with a foreign government. This
gets back to integrity. I mean, I remember at one point I was approached I think it was Al Jazera, and they were like, oh, there was some stupid thing that they were trying to do, and I was just like, hey, you know, no offense. You know, I'm sure this is fine, but you guys take money from you from the Qatari government. I'm like, I don't take money from foreign governments. That kind of took offense at that. Actually they're like, that
suggests that we're not independent. Like it's not about that, it's just it's a conflict of interest. I don't do that. I wouldn't even take money from our own government. If some national state department thing was like, we're weant going to give you a fellowship, I'm like, yeah, that's weird. Yeah, And you know that's what you kind of have to do in this business is to bring it back to the ads. We could retire several times over. We're willing to read manscaped ads just not going to happen. And
does that make life more difficult? I mean, I guess in a sense. But the point is that when you're up against large forces who are going to try and destroy you, then you should definitely have a lot more scruples.
I mean, for example, you have to be unimpeaceable.
Dave Rubin, you know, to look at some of these tenant videos about Dave Rubin. It's getting you know, eight thousand views of him being like why South Park is real life? And I'm like, bro, like, seriously, you really really believed you were gonna that this was making one hundred thousand dollars and you know I should say this. You know, Dave has happy to accuse people being pro Hamas and all this other stuff, right, so it's like, bro,
what do you think happened? You know, who's paying for that fancy little studio down in South Florida, And you know, if some of this is all unfair, I'm just saying, like, it's not like they have all this charity when they're accusing other people, especially Dave. Now Benny, who I know on a personal level, I really I believe that he didn't know any of this. Tim you know, I don't
know him as well, but the same thing. The problem is just that this the integrity is so important for independent media, and now of course all the Russian pro Ukraine people are pulling all of these clips of them who are doubting, you know, this the narrative or whatever in Ukraine and they're just saying, look, they were literally
on a Russian payroll. You have discredited anybody in the independent space, and to that, I'm you know, that is actually what pisses me off the most about this entire thing, because again, for all of them, we all know what the actual dollars and cents look like, right, we know what the dollars and cents are supposed to look like, and when something changes orders of magnitude away from them,
you got your bullshit detector should be very high. Now if it's a Silicon Valley American investor with a page and they're like, well, our plan is to start small and go big maybe even though it's a little weird, but yeah, it's a conceivable plan. But nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever at all.
When that's the problem, a fundamentally uneconomic proposition, you have to ask.
Why, yes, yes, why yes?
Is this like what I am obviously being a tool for them for something?
What is it right?
And you know, maybe if it's an ideological project.
You agree with, you can live with that.
But yeah, to just you know, be placated by this phony resume and not ask any further questions. I mean, it's it's embarrassing, like there's no other word or about around it, And Not only have you provided ammunition for you know, people come after any independent media creators, but you've really discredited your entire body of work because I mean people are sharing all.
The tweet menu tweets of Tempoole saying.
Like it's civil war and like, oh gee, I wonder why Russia was interested in having like this particular commentary sponsored.
So, yes, this was a relatively.
You know, short lived It wasn't a long term media project or partnership or whatever. They'd go to great lengths in their statements to make it clear that this was a short term project.
They've severed, tized, whatever.
But if you think that people are going to to segregate off this one narrow slice of your commentary from the entire rest of your body of work, like I'm sorry.
They're just they're not going to do that.
Yeah.
No, you've called.
Everything that you have ever said into Whether that's fair or not is a different story.
I don't think it's fair. But that's the issue is that, you know, when you're up against the type of people like especially you, and I know on Israel's that is the red line, right and on that one this they are having the big, greatest field day of their lives. I see them all with the witch hunt already began. See her anti tem Semitism was sponsored by the Russians, you know, see this was clearly an effort to discredit the glorious nation of Ukraine. And it's like, no, these
are legitimate points of view. And I mean, also though, it is kind of interesting because it does show you where they're true. Like Russian agenda. People always say it's pro Trump. Lauren Chen was actively trying to get people not to vote for Trump, like she's a chaos agent. She was like, she's one of these like repeal the nineteenth people like, don't give women the right to vote? With her, okay, I know of her more I was. I was catching up and it's funny there are actually
people out there this conservative commentation. Ashley Saint Clair, who was on a podcast several months ago, asked about Lauren Chen and she was like, I think she's getting paid by some foreign influences, which is astounding. Yeah, she was like, I really believe that. It's pretty amazing, So credit to her. I wanted to give her a shout out because that's kind of amazing, and she was like, no, a lot of these like pro life people who are online trying
to rally the vote against Trump. She's like, I think they're foreign out like foreign ops. It turned out to be right, and she specifically was talking about Lauren Chen. So yeah, that's another couple of questions about maybe some of these other pro life activists who are doing that. But you know, I'll just wrap on this. There are a lot of people out there getting paid a lot
of money. Russia was certainly one of them, but Israel is also certainly one of them, and Ukraine and Katar and so you know, look, if the DJ wants to indict all those people, I'm for it. I really am. Get all that money out of there. We'll be sitting here clean as a whistle. Yeah, And that's you know,
that would be satisfying. But I also know that this selective in terms of the outrage, in terms of what people are gonna be looking, in terms of the discrediting for really for all time, you know that will follow from this, and I think that's actually a real tragedy for the independent media. Spase. Why you got to know a lot of.
These people, why you got to give their resistance lives so much? Oh guy, Yes, why why.
Are they are having you know, they're having such a field day. They really are so anyway, it's sad. It's sad. Let's move on to the next part. This is about Russia. This was actually the first Russia indictment to come down, and it was definitely kind of amusing. The DOJ is alleging a vast Russian social media campaign to influence the US election. Here is Meryk Garland at his press conference. Let's take a listen.
Today, our colleagues at the State and Treasury Departments are announcing parallel actions in both of these matters. Unfortunately, we know that Russia is not the only foreign power seeking to interfere in our elections. As a US intelligence community noted two weeks ago, we have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian
activity during this election cycle. That includes recently reported activities by Iran to compromise former President Trump's campaign and to avoid an election outcome that it regards as against its interests. Those recently reported Iranian activities also include efforts to obtain access to individuals who themselves have access to the presidential campaigns of.
Both political parties.
The Justice Department's message is clear, we have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our demogra our democratic system of government. We will be relentlessly aggressive encountering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran, as well as China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in our elections and.
Undermine our demopers.
Okay, so that was part of the big press conference. Next, let's put this one up there on the screen. They have announced a plan to counter Russian influence ahead of the twenty twenty four election. I went through, and while this RT indictment was a separate one, it actually came
out much later than the original one. The original one honestly is a complete joke, because if you go through and actually start to read what all of this is, they are targeting both individuals and others who basically like wrote op eds or appeared on RT Russia today as some sort of large encompassing Russian social media op on top of highlighting some of the so called Russian disinformation on social media. Somehow crystal, they have actually gotten worse.
In my opinion from twenty sixteen, if you'll remember all those idiot Bernie bro memes and some of the pro Trump stuff. I will show you some of that in a little bit. But you know, one case I've really had my eye on, and this is actually part of this investigation. Let's put this up there, is that of the DOJ who is serving subpoenas and search warrants on certain individuals here in the United States who they allege our part of this vast Russian you know, state media campaign.
One of them was Scott Ritter. Now, Scott is one of those people many people watch the show may even know. I would say it's probably fair to say he's like very anti establishment, has a very different view, i think in the most charitable sense of the Ukraine conflict, and
has been pretty vociferous about US support to Ukraine. He's been accused of being quote unquote pro Russian, but his house was rated, as they put in here, the FBI went after him, and a lot of it seems to stem from the fact that he was very open about going on RT and or writing op eds you know, for them. Now, I think that's very different doing something out in the open and being very open with your opinions, as opposed to what Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan were doing.
Which is taking money knowingly from RUSSI and then funneling that to other people and basically deceiving them into some sort of large scheme. So I haven't want to keep my eye on this. I'm not saying I'm pro Scott Ritter or anything, but I mean the US citizen and he has a legitimate opinion. You may not agree with that opinion. Why are they Why are they going through this man's house.
Yeah, and he hasn't been indicted yet, just to be clear, But yeah, this is where you get into like, listen, you're allowed to be pro pudin Like actually, like this is you know, this America. We're supposed to have free speech rights. And even if you know your speech is supporting official bad guy regime of the US government, like you're allowed to do that. So you know, that's where
it starts to get. The other thing with all of this saga is you know you're talking about the one of the things that they're they're targeting is this this doppel ganger campaign they're calling it of you know, this is the kind of the creating fake a network that use sites they say that impersonated legitimate news entities and fake social media profiles impersonating Americans. This goes back to like some of the core like twenty sixteen allegations of
the influence campaign that was being run there. And you know, I'm not saying any of this is good by the way we engage in these types of activities as well as.
Does and we'll get to this a minute.
Israel, and no one seems that upset about that, and there's no indictments coming down about that, but we'll pause that for a moment.
We should also be clear about, like.
We have wildly expensive, elaborate, sophisticated presidential campaigns. Okay, the means and the you know, fake news, the things that they're putting out, like it shouldn't freak you out that Russia is running our democracy. Okay, it's even these videos they got these top commentators on their payroll unknowingly again
Tim Poole and Dave Ruma. These guys get millions of views, right, They're very popular and in plenty of circles, and even their content you were saying, it is getting like eight thousand views on these videos, like that's nothing, that's not thing. So even as you know, in that instance of the allegations, are true, Like, there should be indictments there, you're laundering money ten million dollars, Craine, fake businessmen, whatever. But let's also be really clear eyed about how much impact any
of this is actually having on our politics. Absolutely, and there is going back to twenty sixteen, when you had the whole frenzy around this whatever, there was never any evidence that any of it meaningfully impacted how people voted and what the actual outcome of that election ultimately was.
Yeah, and for example, I went through and actually read this indictment whenever it was coming out. Let's put this on the screen. I want people to see what was so spooky and scary. Here is one of the massive Russian influence operations. It was a Facebook page called CNN California in blue, not even in the CNN logo. It had two likes and seven followers. The description was from
sunny Beaches to busting Techhubs. We explore the lifestyle, news and development Californian so drammatically in wrong logo and weird banner. The next seven followers, Yeah, with seven followers. Next is quote BBC California. Okay, like why should we care? Exactly? These were obviously a complete joke. And that's the point
is that they're very obvious. Throughout all of these you had grammatical errors, you had social media pages with very few followers into accounts, and it actually reminds me of a lot of what came through the Twitter files where you would watch the FBI get up in arms about some account that had like twelve followers that said, hey, everybody,
the elections on Wednesday. And there's an FBI agent sitting in northern Virginia getting paid probably one hundred thousand dollars a year plus benefits scrolling through and searching Twitter, spending our taxpayer dollars time interfacing with social media company to try and get the stuff taken down. That's what all
of this read through. And I went through, guys, this was a hundreds of pages indictment and they point out these fake stories and they point out their like the Russian government created dummy news websites, and you'll look at it and it'll be like Washingtonpost dot KP or something. Sorry, who's going to that? Like for real? Like do you really Google? And then go to page twelve to click
on Washingtonpost dot KP? Are you that stupid? And if you are like, you probably are gonna fall for a ten million more stuff.
Yeah, well that's what I was gonna say, is I mean out of all of us though, especially if you are on Twitter, like you just need to not believe anything that's on there anymore because so much of it is it's not even this foreign influence what some of it is that. Yeah, but people just make shit up now. I mean it's just I know it's always been the case, but I think it is worse than ever before under the new Elon model, where anyone can get a blue check and then they use that as some sort of
credibility and they'll just make stuff up. Their sources say Tim Wallas is about to drop out, their sources say like Joe Biden's actually dead, and this is a body like they will make stuff up.
So please, I implore you do.
Not believe this, you know, really really double check anything that you are seeing spreading online because the problem has never been worse than it is right now, last piece of this we reference a couple of times put D six up on the screen. We know that Israel organized and paid for an influenced campaign that targeted lawmakers directly and especially black lawmakers and would pose as like black
constituents trying to push the Israel agenda. And you know, I'll hold my I won't hold my breath on the indictments forthcoming for that one, which just show you like it's very selectively applied.
Of course, bottom line is very selectively applied.
Here is that there's so much filthy stuff out there and people who are trying to buy your attention. I mean, B five, you know I put this in. I put this in on purpose. Put B five please on the screen because as you see, they are also at the same time staying quote. Iran emerges as a top disinformation threat in you presidential race, and without fail. You know, with these conservatives, they're so laughable. For years they cry about Russia Gate and I mean Rushigate was a scam.
But then the moment that there's some BSTA being like Iran's funding the protest, They're like the entire protest when was being funded by Iran? I'm like, do you hear yourselves? Do you hear yourself? Did we not just go through this? Are some of those people getting paid Byron? Maybe? You know, I need to see a lot of evidence. I mean, that's part of the thing too, relating back to our
tenant media discussion, the evidence is pretty unrefutable. You got wire transfers, you got private communications, you got all this other stuff. Now again, I'm willing to hear them out, like if they really had some alternative explanation, that be fine, But we got to wait and see. This is the
allegation of the US government here here as well. Though you can obviously watch Iran, Israel, Russia, all these other people have all these influence operations that are currently happening here in America, but only Russia is called out, and they were whipping it into hysteria. And that's another issue, is that the Russia Gate people are having the greatest day of their lives because you've got commentators who they despise who are revealed have been secret cutouts for Russian payments.
On top of this, like oh my god, everything we see in social media already, you know, I watch these CNN freaks like Ashah, Ragan, Napa or whatever. If we worked at CNN, be like coincidentally, the Russian playbook exactly matches the Trump vance agenda. And you're like, okay, like here we go again again, right here we go again, and this is this is everything they've ever wanted. CNN is having a field day. By the way, who do you think broke the news that this was happening, CNN's
Jim Acosta. It just tells you everything you need to know. Like it is obvious that they want to whip this all up again. The Democrats, especially the elite ones, and a lot of the commentators are loving this. We'll see if the Kamala campaign picks up on it. Wouldn't put it past them. It would be smart not to do it. But in general, what we can really learn, you know, from this indictment is that, you know, look, you think we're not up to very similar things in many other
foreign countries. Hopefully we're doing a much better job. And CNN California, yeah, we probably aren't.
Just a last thing on the Israel point that I just I wanted to point out, it's what they did are confirmed to have done according to multiple reports, including in Israeli news outlets, and again this came directly from the Israeli government.
Is so similar to this whole doppelganger thing.
They created fake news website, they invented fake personalities interacting with lawmakers. They got caught because somebody who was you know, involved with this didn't change their profile pick they kept it as like, you know, some random white dude and then they were posting like as a middle aged black woman blah blah blah. But that it's exactly the same as like the you know, the doppelganger thing that they're alleging with the Russians. So in any case, uh, I guess Russia Gate.
Here we go again.
Yes, here we go, we go again.
But please, guys, if you're if whoever's out there listening, yeah, some random person who you can't find online is offering you millions of to produce a handful of videos.
Like maybe maybe think a little bit about that one.
Maybe I get it, you know, cyber truck. It seems cool.
I am plenty of money anyway, Like there are so rich.
That is what I was going to get to. At the same time, my guys, I know how much you're probably make it, and it's like it's enough. You know, at what point, good, You're very good. You don't need to take sketchy deals. You can make plenty of money legitimately and not have problems. Now with the Department of justice. And you know, I mean, look if you I mean the legal fees that you're going to incur on a
case like this, Oh my god. Some of these you know, from what I understand, these Washington lawyers who work on these deals, they charge like one thousand dollars an hour, you know, just to interface with the government on your behalf. So good luck. You know, it's some of those folks out there. It's not worth it. It's not worth even the public reputation hit. They'll take the absolutely, it's just embarrassing.
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what happens with Lauren Chen from here yet.
I mean, she should go to jail, she really should, or she should get at the very least she' should be put on probation or something like that. And all of those people involved, Ruben, you should sue her, They really should, like sue take their assets because they the public reputation would be pretty easy to prove about the damages of what you've done. And second, you know, the US government has the direct evidence of you lying to people, so screw you. Honestly, I have genuinely scum to put
something like that onto other people. That's if anything you know, maybe you can live with taking money from a foreign government, but deceiving others that is the worst thing you can do, especially given what has happened now.
Yep, So former President Trump did a big, supposedly town hall, but did the hall didn't actually ask any questions. What was Sean Hannity last night? Our producer Griffin pulled some of the most interesting moments from the evening. When he got a question, this was kind of elicit an interesting response about the contrast between the twenty sixteen campaign and this campaign.
Let's take a listen to how he responded.
Sixteen was about the forgotten man and forgotten woman.
What is twenty twenty four about him? So it's not that different.
It's still about the forgotten man and the forgotten woman. The people are being treated horribly in this country. We're a country that's being left at all over the world. And I'll be honest, if Joe Biden would be a great president, I would be happier than being the worst president in the history of our country, because I want to see what's good for the country and I would have been very happy.
I have very nice places I could be. This is not easy. I got shot at you know, I mean, I got hit. I got hit. Why it would have been all over that place I could have.
But you know what, it's very simple, and it starts with make America great again.
That's what we have to do.
Would you make of that soccer? Because I mean, it's just listen. Back in twenty sixteen, there was a lot there in terms of you know, talking about trade, talking about the Iraq War, like it was credible to say this is about the forgotten man and woman.
It's not credible anymore. I mean, your biggest.
Agenda item in the first term was this giant tax cut for largely for rich people, the type of people you put we were talking about this earlier that you put in your cabinet and key positions of power like Wilbur Ross, who's known for buying up and selling off steel Company, the polar opposite of what you said your priorities were going to be here. Your Nationalite Relations board was all about crushing workers. So and this time around, there just isn't even a lot of rhetoric around the
quote unquote forgotten man and forgotten woman. So I don't know that that's very credible at this point.
Okay, you and I may know that, but yeah, a field don't know that. Of course, Well, how many people are looking at policy or NLRB or who knows who Wilbur Ross is only people who follow very closely. So look, in a certain sense, this is was his best strength. I think that would be the best thing that he could quote unquote lean into. If you listen to many of the interviews that jd Vance gives works Ham, this is a lot more what it is I do. If anything,
I'm gonna read it this way. Hannity seems to be clear that he believes like Trump has maybe lost his step, and he's like, maybe we should come back to the forgotten man, right and we should come back to some of that rhetoric, and that seems to be where you
thrive the most. So he talked to Lar. I mean, look, immigration is probably his best issue, is probably the issue that resonates most with a lot of working class issues that are working class base that he has so far, That's what he's probably should be talking about where it's at his best. So the forgotten man thing is very powerful whenever you want to embrace it. This time around, though, and I mean, look, he did a lot of this in twenty twenty. It's very anti left. Now that can work.
Let's be real, Like, it's potent, and it is one that is actually more unifying to the Republican coalition. It's a lot of these people are communists, Delroy, Yeah, exactly, And actually that's much more unifying in terms of like the Republican electorate because you've got people who you know, small business owners or whatever, who all they care about is low taxes, and you've got working class they don't
care about that at all. They're animated about immigration, or they're animated about trade or you know, many variety of other things. But they also kind of hate cultural leftism. So this campaign to me seems much more about like cultural like capital l liberals and being anti that, and that is potent. I mean, you can easily win the White House. I think that's what we learn in twenty twenty whenever he did all that last time, and it's quite clear it could work against Kamala Harris as well.
I prefer they're forgotten man stuff. Yeah, but that's not really.
What you're describing is just a very standard Republican playbook. It's just very like you know, Mitt Romney, could have been launching these same sort of attacks against who And you know, whether it's Kamala or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, whoever it is, at some point they've all been called communists by Republicans. So it's just
it's a very sort of typical Republican playbook. They also, obviously, the subject of Kamala Harris did come up, and Sean Hannity made a joke about, you know, the how the brevity of her interview with CNN. Now, when you're Sean Hannity and you're doing an incredibly thoughtful interview with Trump, I don't know that you have a lot of legs to stand on. But in any case, let's take a listen to that exchange.
If you watch that interview, she had notes that means she knew the questions and she had notes she kept looking down. Nobody wants to cover it. I know all about notes. I mean, you know, it's all right if people know that. But she was a bestved notes. So she's asked a question, she looks down to keep. So she had notes that means she knew that she knew it was about did her campaign When they said that they wanted to change the rules that they had agreed to.
Did they ask for notes? Did they ask for that?
They wanted notes, They wanted to be seated, and they wanted your mic ho.
They wanted a desk. I'm going to allow it.
You can't take the chance. You have no choice. You've got to vote from me. You've got to vote from me.
You got.
Even if you don't like me. But even if you.
Don't like me, you could sit there. I can't stand that guy, but there's no way I'm going to vote for her.
I actually think that last part is kind of a good that that actually is his part is his core strategy is, listen, my favorability rating, it's not going to come up. It is what it is. I need to get some people who don't like me to hate her even more. And that's the goal between here and election night.
Now.
So far, they haven't done a very good job of that. Her approval rating has gone up tremendously. But you know, even though in some ways the time is very short between now and election day, and another way it's very long. And so his goal is going to be to push up that number of double haters and be able to try to win a majority of them in the way that he did in twenty sixteen. And so that's his pitch is basically like, listen, you may not like me, but you got no choice.
You can't vote for her.
She's incompetent, she needs the notes, et cetera, et cetera. That really is kind of his core bet in terms of how he can win.
I don't think it's a bad strategy either. Remember in twenty sixteen he had a thirty five percent approval rate and he's still won some forty eight something percent of the vote. Twenty twenty, his approval rating was actually lower and he won ten million more votes than the last time around. The double hater thing is actually strong and coming at it head on. I kind of like it because at this point, what Trump has been in our lives since twenty eleven, he's been in a national political figure.
Nobody is like, you know, I don't know what I think about this guy. There are a lot of people who hate him, but there are a lot of people will hold their nose and we'll also vote for him, as we've learned two times around now, so this time this whole look, you know, you may not like me, but you can't vote for the other guy. That's powerful. That's what happened with Biden in and twenty so again, I don't love this, like for the country, I don't
think this is healthy. But from an objective standpoint, I think it can be powerful and it's not a bad one in particular. For let's think about like the conservative like moms and dads who are making let's call it like two hundred grand a year. These people don't really like Trump. They're much more Mitt Romney folks. They are
lifelong Republicans, love McCain, love Romney. But they are like Kamala Harris either some of them have actually been voting for her, but this time around they're like, well, I'm just not so sure. And they hear something like that, maybe it's persuasive, it's possible, at least puts it in your head. And it's definitely one that a lot of their neighbors and others. This is where I think the biggest conflict is is over that Liz Chainey type voter.
Right yesterday she endorsed Kamala Harris by the way, congratulations. She said, She's like it's too much, you know, to even write in and the swings to stakes are just too high. So I'm voting for Kamala Harris. But that fight is playing out in a lot of these upper middle class Republican circles. And that's the logic that I often hear, you know, from those types of people. They're like, I don't even like him, but I am going to vote for him.
Yeah, it's you know, it's the existential type of you know, steakes. And like I said, I think if it's going to work, he's.
Got to be more effective.
They got to find some ways to dig her up more effectively, because right now our approval rating is in positive territory in moost bowls, which is actually pretty usual for a modern politician at this time. The thing that he was saying about, you know, the notes and trying to undercut her credibility and disqualify her, that hasn't.
Worked so far.
We showed that poll earlier in the week more people found her to be qualified to be president than him. So he's got some work to do if he's going to bring her favorability numbers. But you know, they've got a lot of ad spending plans and he's doing his his interviews and getting out there and doing his thing. So I have no doubt that by the time election day rolls around, some of that will land and.
Her approval rating will take a hit.
Between now today, I mean, it has probably nothing to do with her. People are going to make up their minds and they get hardened before the election. That's just how it goes in terms.
Of But I do think he missed a key window here, like they waited too long.
I said that from yeah, I go, hey, what are we doing here? You know? Even this, Sorry, why are we on a Sean Hannity Fox News interview? What is happening right for Sean McGuire, Yes, Sean, his whole audience is voting for Trump, like okay. Well, also, Sean didn't even give him any questions from the town hall, which would have allowed them to go viral and can be covered, right, because that's where the most interesting exchanges are. Now, this is the thing too with Trump and the podcast strategy.
At the very least, you're getting clips of that that are going viral because they're different. So Trump in general does better actually, I think in adversari interviews. This is another thing I've been watching JD's media calendar. It's all adversarial. Almost none of it is friendly. He's going on the New York Times the Interview podcast. That's gonna be great, right, You're gonna have like Michelle Goldberg folks like that, like
ultra Russiagate libs literally up against JD. I can guarantee you there will be some decent content that comes out of that. Trump needs to put himself more into that space, because I think he actually does better in some sort of a challenging environment as opposed to this just like this just fluid nonsense, right, And I'm sure it's comfortable. I get that from a human level. It's probably comfortable to sit there and bs with Sean Harris. But totally
I don't see it. I don't see it for him me neither.
I don't understand the strategy. Like I'll say this delicately because you have personal friends with JD. But he's the least popular person out of the four of these individuals. Why is he campaigning more than you are? I see the one out doing the interviews.
By the way, I no more disagreeable. I mean, that's just the fact it's America's job to decide what they think about JD. I don't agree with them, but that's fine. Yeah, I don't agree with America on the.
Law, right, So like, okay, you're putting your weakest asset in terms of how people feel about this guy out front to do like the heavy lifting of the campaign. Meanwhile, you're going on. I think he's really convinced himself. Like in the Lex Friedman podcast interview, which was atrocious by the way, but we'll save that for another day, he mentioned how many views his Twitter spaces with Elon Musk got and I was like, you're really buying those numbers.
You really believe that that had some sort of like massive traction and was really an incredible benefit for your kid. It was a disaster. You guys will remember how long did it take?
We couldn't get on the tech failed.
Once it did, it sounded like crap. He was slurring. That was you know, the microphone or whatever issue was going, but it sounded terrible, okay, And the numbers on that anyone with a brain knows as total, complete, made up bullshit. So I think he's really convinced himself of this strategy. And I said this before, but you know, just look, I would like it if the alternative media sphere was more powerful than it is, but it ain't. Look at
Andrew Yang and how his campaign went. That was largely an online like, let me go on all the podcasts and do the thing campaign. Look at viveg Ramaswami, who also had this very online let me go on all the like you know, alternative media, right left, whatever, podcast.
And do the thing. It was a four percent in the polls.
So you know, he's Trump really understands television, really understands television. I don't think he understands the alternative media space at all. I don't think that the strategy makes any sense. I think he or his advisors or whoever, have convinced them that this is way more powerful than it ultimately is. And then yeah, and then you're spending your time doing this Sean Hannity interview to a friendly audience that already like knows, loves and is going to vote for you.
None of it is very logical.
I'll flip it. I think the podcast thing is great as long as it's additive, as long as.
You're doing both right, but it's really not.
Right that he needs to do. I think more adversarial stuff.
And you're not even really doing a lot of routy, like he didn't even campaign on Labor Day, like to the Forgotten Man thing, and you're trying to drape yourself in like you know, working people and trying to win more of the union vote, and you don't even campaign on Labor Day.
That's crazy.
So I'm looking at a schedule. I believe he's got what He's got a rally that is this weekend in Wisconsin, and after or that, let's see, he will give a speech in Phoenix, Arizona. I think that's today, and there will be quote an agenda forty seven policy tour that is in Milwaukee, featuring Doug Burgum and a bunch of other people I've never heard of. So okay, all right,
that's what's on the schedule for today. Right now, He's going to Wisconsin, which I mean that actually makes sense electorally, But look, in general, I think he needs to work harder. I think he needs to flood the zone. And this is the other thing. Twenty sixteen Trump actually genuinely flooded the zone. And this is where the podcast strategy can
be genuinely additive. We'll see what they do, maybe he wants to take some time to prepare you know, what does it prepare for the for the debate, the debate which is coming up, that kind of that would be a fair human That.
Would be a first that he wanted to prepare for a debate.
He doesn't normally do that.
I think he needs to work harder. I think jd strategy is much more effective actually, and it would be ten x more effective with Trump was just like with the most dynamic figure in modern American politics. So look, you know, I'm not running this campaign.
Yeah, I mean, and let me let me just say, let's talk a little bit more about Kammain the poll block. But I don't think that their strategy is particularly good either. They have you know, Tim Walls is very popular, and where is he on all of these It.
Doesn't even take questions from freaking local media what is going on?
I mean, they actually have a really tremendous asset in Tim Walls. He has sort of set the most effective parts of their campaign. We're about to show you a Sean Hannity clip with regard to Tim Walls in terms of you know, the weird thing, which, whether you like it or not, I think it is way more effective
than the over the top, grandiose moralizing about Trump. The sort of like you know, laugh at him, roll your eyes at him, I think is a way more effective strategy the more populous elements of his policy when those have been highlighted, like I think those have been some of the best parts of your campaign, and he's not out here doing cable news interviews. They're shying away from talking about some of the most popular parts of their economic policy. She's too afraid to do interviews of any
you know, significance or quantity. So it's not like I think that their strategy is great either, So let me be clear about that.
Well, no, you're you're right. I think the reason why they don't do it is because if he did interviews and they'd be like, well, why doesn't your boss do interviews? And that's ultimately what it's about. Also, they don't want to make news on anything, They don't want to clarify anything. I'm like, yeah, so what do you believe on the capital gains tax? Your advisor said this, do you believe
in the EV mandate? Yes? Or no? Because recently, apparently the answer is now no or maybe or maybe it's not what is your reaction to the did you watch that? You know the clip where they asked him, They're like, hey, what do you think about Hamas murdering those six Israeli hostage? He's like, all right, thanks everybody. That was it. It's like, come on, Bill, you want to be vice president? Or
with Kamala? What is happening here? So yeah, let's not also leave them off the hook because anyway going.
Yeah, so let's we'll get some more on that when we get to the polling piece. But here is a question answer with regard to Tim Walls and the quote unquote weird allegations with tay Listen.
There's something, there's something weird with that guy. He's a weird guy. JD is not weird. He's a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock. We're not weird.
We're other things, perhaps, but we're not weird. But he is a weird guy. He walks on the stage.
There is something wrong with that guy, and he called me weird, and then the fake news media picks it up.
That was the word of the day, weird, weird, weird.
They're all going, but we're not weird, guys, we're very solid people.
They want our country to be great again. I mean, it's very simple.
See. I think he's in a certain sense making like a Hillary twenty sixteen mistake, which is when.
What strives in affecting it.
Yeah, you know, now they have set the terms of the debate. It's impossible to disprove a weird allegation. And the more you're saying the word, the more you're validating the frame. So yeah, I think it's I think it's been effective, an effective attack on them. I think they have not dealt with it well. And I think the more they talk about it, the more it sort of like gets ingrained in the psyche and the association with the term.
I mean, I'll just compare Ja. He doesn't talk about it at all. Every time they ask, he just laughs and he's like, Okay, you know, whatever, next question. I think it's probably more effective, right than than doing this. I don't disagree with you. We have what the last clip here from Trump about World War three and nuclear weapons. Let's take a.
Listen, everybody was afraid of Trump. You bring them back, You're not going to have any problems. It's all going to go away.
The world is blowing up.
The world is blowing up.
Bring and shown one thing. The world is blowing up.
And when you look at Ukraine and you look at Russia, you look at all the things that are happening, we are potentially getting ready, I'm telling you. And I've made a lot of predictions, and this is not a prediction, because it's so bad. I don't want it to be a prediction. We're heading into World War three territory. And because of the power of weapons, nuclear weapons in particular, but other weapons also. And I know the weapons better
than anybody because I'm the one that bought them. And you know, we rebuilt our entire militarily.
All right. I mean, look the World War three stuff. I actually think it would be better if he was campaigning on it more. You know, this is the other problem too, with the you you know, every time he's asked about Ukraine, Israel, or any of these other things, Afghanistan, it's always it never would have happened if it wasn't
for me. And while I get that that's an attractive answer, at a certain point you kind of do need to have a little bit of detail or offer something, or offer because right now he's all over the map where you're pro Israel and on Afghanistan. He's like, well, I would have kept a base in Bagram. I'm like, well, then you never actually believed in ending the war in Afghanistan. Just so you know, in terms of what.
That means, you're actually not answering Ukraine.
He's like, Wellkraine. It's like, well, okay, well now what you know. You say that the deal will be ended. I mean the war will be ended by the time in President Like great, but you know what is that going to do entail? What if Putin doesn't agree to your deal? Then what is Ukraine ever going to be allowed in the NATO under your watch? Yes or no? I mean, these are all like questions that genuinely need answers.
So look, I think being anti war in twenty sixteen, especially on Iraq, and in contrast to Jeb Bush and the rest of the party, was so effective, and I don't see that from him as much these days.
Well, there's a real there's a real risk, like a real world risk. We talked about like foreign influence whatever, baby Natanya, who would much rather have Trump in the White House, And he's trying to drag us into a broader Middle Eastern like regional war as we speak, and has long desired that, but knows that would be a problem.
For Kamala Harris.
And you know, so while I don't think that this talking point from Trump, which again he's not anti war, I mean, you know, obviously there's layers and layers of propaganda here, et cetera. It's not even clear where he stands on a variety of these issues. It is clear that he's way like even more pro Israel somehow than Joe Biden is. But you know, this talking point, I
don't think today wins the day. But if we find ourselves in some better, you know, conflict with Iran and flare up in the Middle East, which is surely you can lay the blame for that at the feet of Joe Biden and his vice president Kamala Harris, this talking point becomes much more salient.
And there's a lot of risks, a lot of risks.
Here, completely avoidable, you know, just focus on the politics, let alone the morality. Completely avoidable risks here that the longer that Biden has allowed bb to jerk his chain and do whatever the hell he wants with zero consequences, the more those risks escalating.
That's where we are.
So we had some new CNN polls come out across a variety of battleground states. Will show you the details of those in a second. David Challion, who's like their top like political guy.
Biden was inaugurated. He's like you could feel the warm glow.
The arms of the Capitol wrapping around whatever. Yet anyway, that's him.
So he looked at some of the numbers in this and he said, there's some warning signs for Kamala Harris in terms of not fully reconsolidating the winning Biden coalition from twenty twenty.
Let's take a listen to his analysis here.
If you look at the white voters without college degrees, this is a Trump based constituency. Obviously, you see his huge numbers with this group. You see that this is a trouble sign for Harris. She also, in place like Georgia is not doing well with white college educated voters. She probably wants to make up some ground with white college educated voters across these battlegrounds as well.
Gay so a couple of demographic groups or she still has some work to do. Let's go ahead and put up on the screen the actual poll numbers. So we can take a look battleground by battleground, and we have the electro map which I'll talk through.
So just keep this up on the screen.
So in most of these battleground states, Kamala Harris is up, so in Wisconsin, up by six, in Michigan up by five, in Georgia up by one, which is within the margin of aaron Nevada up by one with the marchin of era error, Pennsylvania tied, and then Arizona is the one where Trump has a clear lead plus five. So the map on the screen here represents Okay, if we gave Trump, it's tied in this bowl. Let's say we give Trump Pennsylvania and we give him Arizona and North Carolina. What
does that map look like? And he actually needs one more state to be able to put himself over the top. This map reflected by the CNN polls. Again, assuming you give Pennsylvania, which is tied to Trump, has Kamala Harris getting two seventy three and Republicans getting too sixty five. Now, one of the things that we talked about earlier this week, Sager, is that the ad spending really looks like Trump is going all in on like a Pennsylvania, Georgia Arizona play,
and that would be enough. You know, if he's able to Georgia in this poll, Harris only up by one. If you're able to have Georgia go in your column, that would be enough to put you over the time up. But it's kind of the reverse of where the Democrats
were under Joe Biden. Under Joe Biden, they had this very narrow, probably non existent, but very narrow path that they were attempting to pull off of keeping together Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, because he maintained some strength with those industrial Midwestern states that have a larger white voting base, older white voting base.
They had this really narrow, very specific path. Trump's path has with Kamala Harris and now narrowed significantly, where now they're the ones that are charting this sort of narrow electoral college victory. Now that doesn't mean they can't pull it off, but in a lot of ways the tables have turned in terms of the expansiveness we'll say, of the map and the way the various combinations of getting to two seventies.
Yes, let's keep this up there, please, because it's actually important. One of the things you learn is that in the Senate races that Democrats are running way ahead of Kamala Harris. That's bad news for Kamala, but it's also bad news for Trump because in general, split ticket voting is so rare. Nevada, for example, we would have to believe that there are nine percent of the electorate that would vote for Jackie
Rosen and then not vote for Kamala Harris. So either that's wrong, Democrats are just going to win by five or something like that, or Trump is just going to win and that number is totally incorrect. And so that's something that you should really bake in here. The analysis. Look, I get that, the pull looks you know this, This
this scenario is very intellectually intriguing. I just find it so difficult to believe that Donald Trump could win the state of Pennsylvania, lose Michigan and Wisconsin, lose the state of Georgia, win the state of Arizona, and then also lose the state of Nevada. Like to me, the swing voter in Arizona and Nevada is the exact same. The swing voter is probably you know a white or Latino male who is roughly the same demographic and roughly the
same economic status. Say, if I look at Georgia in Arizona, they have a lot of characteristics that they share. For example, it's those white suburban voters in Atlanta and the white suburban voters in Phoenix, which are the ones who swung the vote for Biden last time around. And then in Pennsylvania. I mean, the same demographic that turned against Trump in Wisgon, in Wisconsin and in Michigan is exactly which turned against him. In Pennsylvania. It was in the mainline suburbs of Philadelphia
where white suburban voters all came out to vote. So what I'm saying is that it's the same demographic basically across all of these places. Where you know, why would they be all that different in one state and not the other. Now, of course margins matter, right, so you know, theoretically it is certainly possible. I just find it hard to believe, especially Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. I mean, this is
the same type of voter. Yeah, and every single you know, in all cases they share the exact same demographic profile.
Yeah. I tend to agree with that it's just the elections are so national now, all of these states tend to trend in the same direction. That's why, you know, Joe Biden, even though it was razor thin in a number of these states, he wins basically all the swing states last time around by narrow margins. They all sort of swing in the same direction. So I think that
is true. The one thing you could say is the sun Belt demographics a little different than the industrial Midwestern, so you could see, you know, somebody out performing in one area but not the other. But yeah, I mostly think that these elections are pretty national and tend to you know, people come up with all these like exotic potential electoral maps, and I just think.
That's why I'm fairly, fairly unlikely.
I'm like, you either win or you lose. Like it's it's like you're either going to win white suburbanites. And that's the other thing in the national environment that we have today. You know, everyone talks about how we're so divided, and it is true politically, but we're also more connected than literally ever before. Yeah, media diet, Like the average white suburbanite living in any place in the country, they're
all reading the same newspaper. They're all reading the New York Times, they're all listening to the New York Times, the Daily podcast or the Interview, same thing. Like the working class voter, they're probably getting stuff on YouTube or you know, on podcasts or listening, you know, to the extent that they interact with their local stuff at all. It's not politics. So I just find it very difficult to believe, given where we are right now, that you
know you'll swing one way and then lose another. But you know, again, the margins do matter. So theoretically you could win Pennsylvan. How much do you win Wisconsin by in twenty sixteen it was like ten thousand votes. No, I'm thinking of Michigan. Michigan one, Michigan by tenth thousand. So yeah, theoretically you could lose in Michigan and you could win a Wisconsin. I could see something like that. But Pennsylvania and then also losing Georgia. I don't know
about that. I just I find it difficult to believe. But in general, I think we should highlight that, you know, things are not as rosy for Kamala as as some people may think.
The margin in Michigan was a little larger than your think.
It was two point seven eight percent, so almost three percent of the vote twenty sixteen. Oh you think twenty sixteen? Oh okay, yeah, Biden got two point eight million. Trump got two point sixty five million, so it was rough hundred and fifty thousand vote separating the two of them.
Let's put this next peece up on the screens.
Is gen Z specific poll by NBC News. So has Kamala Harris winning fifty percent, Trump at thirty four percent, someone else at six percent, and would not vote at ten percent. These are much better numbers than what Joe Biden was doing when he was in the race.
However, it still.
Lags by a bit what Joe Biden did in twenty twenty. So on the one hand, you can say, okay, she's underperforming what he did and obviously every vote was really.
Crucial to get him over the top.
On the other hand, you could say, okay, well, maybe she has room to grow here that could benefit her later in the election.
We'll have to see.
The other thing soager here that we've taken note of a few times is the gender gap with gen Z voters is pretty wild. It's bigger than any other demographic group by age, Young women say they're going to vote for him RS by thirty points. Young men only favor her by four. Yep, this is eighteen to twenty nine. That isn't I mean, we're used to gender gaps in American politics in modern history. That's nothing new, but this level of a generational gender gap is really pretty wild.
Yeah, I mean, I hate to say I told you so. I don't think this is good for the country, but it's it's just an ongoing dynamic, especially with the bifurcation of culture and education is probably the most important one, you know. I can't wait until the admission stats, the matriculation stats come out for college this year because the current prediction on online ed boards is a sixty forty split of girls women women. I mean, I mean, sorry, girls to men. It's wild, Like that's so much bigger.
And then if you think about what the Ivy League split is in the IVS and who matter because they eventually become the American elite, it's already sixty forty. It could go sixty six to thirty three, which would be if one third ratios like that just skew everything. They skew all of our politics culture, earning potential, et cetera. It's not necessarily a good thing. We're gonna put D four up on the screen and just look at the
Nate Silver. Something he's saying is quote setting convention bound stuff aside, there has been not much positive state pulling data entering the system for Kamala Harris lately, and his own projection actually lately has what is it, Trump at fifty five percent in terms of winning the overall electoral college.
If you look at Polymarket, which is the largest betting site, they currently have it at Trump fifty three percent, Kamala up forty six, which is I mean much, that's almost what That's a seven point swing of Trump to Kamala, and that largely tracks Nate Silver. I do believe, by the way, Silver is an advisor to Polymarket. I didn't know that until I read his book, but yeah, it did stright like that.
Just saying yeah, So that's why in Nate's analysis, that's part of why you know, with his model, which you know, take it for what it's worth, but he has Kamala Harris ahead in the popular vote, but he favors Trump in the electoral college vote and these you know, swing state poles that have been sort of mediocre for her
post convention are a piece of that. And then also his model kind of discounts the polls that come right after convention because they assume there's some level of temporary sugar high post convention, which we have really particularly seen for her. The poles have basically been stable. So does that mean that they're overstating her support and they you know they're going to come down? Does that mean that this race is just kind of like locked in where
it is? And his convention didn't provide a bounce, They were extenuating circumstances there, but her convention also doesn't seem to provide a bounce. Maybe people are just kind of locked into whatever it's going to be. We shall see, but that's where things stand.
Let's move on now, Aurora, Colorado. Many boomers are very very upset about this, and it's taken quite a bit of research to figure out what the hell is actually going on here. So all started with this viral video. Let's put it up there on the screen. What you see in front of you were what was alleged to be quote, armed Venezuelan gangs taking over whole buildings and vandalizing public properties in Aurora, Colorado, just outside of Denver.
These were allegedly members of a Venezuelan gang who were migrants, illegal migrants to the United States, and that this complex was allegedly fully taken over by these people. You could see that they have large weapons in their hands, and there was quite a bit of consternation wondering whether this was like a full on takeover and this was like chaired.
By Charlie Kirk, amplified by Elon Musk.
It was a whole thing. It went everywhere than so next then came the parsing of the details. So there were conflicting statements initially from the mayor, from the city and from the police department. So we've learned now here from the interim Chief of Police, Heather more Rus, she says, quote, what we're learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex. Let's take a listen.
Got quite a few of our officers out here that are out here tonight. Again. I've been out here for several weeks making contact with our residents, reassuring them about the criminal activity that's happening here and how we're going
to address it. We're out here. We want to reassure the people that live in this community that we are actively investigating criminal activity that's happening and listening to them to so that we can learn anything that we're missing, you know, what are we missing and actually find out what exactly is going on. We're out here because we care. I mean, nobody should be wearing this uniform if they don't care, and we want the residents and the people
that live here that know that we care. We've been talking to the residents here and learning from them to find out what exactly is going on, and there's definitely a different picture. I'm not saying that there's not gang members that don't live in this community, but what we're learning out here is that gang members have not taken
over this complex. We've really made an effort to the last few days to just realiz asked the specific questions and the direct questions in terms of the gang activity and who's actually making sure that people aren't paying rent to gang leaders or gang members that that's not happening. And we've discovered here today and talked in yesterday talking to somebody residents that that's not the case we've been
talking about, and they've been since here with this. We really believe that they are sincere with this, and we're standing out here and I can tell you that gang members have not taken over this apartment complex.
Okay, that's the police chief. Let's put the next part up on the screen. It reiterates this is from USA today. What they say is not only reiterating many of the quotes that we just heard from the interim police chief. They also flag this. They say, quote rumors of the complex being run by the trend de Aragua gang is a large criminal organization from Venezuela, began circulating when that video of men carrying guns and entering apartments went viral.
The Department of Homeland Security then confirmed news nations that the men see in the video were trend Agua members. The city of Aurora confirmed that there is quote a small trend at Agua presence in Aurora, and the police department has been taking it seriously. Now, though they say there has been a lot of misleading information shared about what is happening in our city. I believe, Crystal, that a lot of this stems back to the Colorado Aurora mayor.
Mayor Kaufman, who is one of the people who reacted to this by going on Fox News and implying that this was taken over. Let's take a listen.
Can you confirm whether or not this gang has taken over these buildings there in Aurora.
So there are several buildings actually under the same ownership, out of state ownership, that have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs. I'm trying to walk it back and do the investigation as to how there's a concentration of Venezuelan's in these these three buildings. Somebody put them there, and somebody funded it,
whether it's federal government or not. We're trying to find out who these gangs apparently or are attracted to where there's a concentration of of Venezuela migrants and so UH they've in fact have kind of pushed out the property management through intimidation and then collected the rents. UH we have now or have had. UH. It is ongoing UH operations with a task force of local law enforcement, state UH law enforcement partners, and federal law enforcement partners to
write the market and arrests have been made. But these operations are now are still.
Ongoing with the arrests that have been made. Are these confirmed gang affiliated members?
You know they this is an organized criminal effort. Whether it's trendy arragua, uh, that remains to be to be seen. But that really doesn't matter. I mean, if they're, if they're, you know, there's way when migrants and in their conducting crime and organized underside.
So yeah, he since changes tune after this interview. He totally changed his story. He says, those people that came and talked to me he's talking about residents of the building themselves, didn't seem fearful. Quite frankly, they gave a lot of explanation as to why they weren't paying rent.
There wasn't the property management there.
I thought that the people who were the so called gang members again this is all that say Mayry it has heard, were extracting the rent from them. But the people that came up to me said that was not the case. They wanted to stay there, but they wanted the place maintain. He believes the property managers were chased off the premises. What we need to do is figure out how to bring it back under the control to owner the property and so there's a meeting with representatives
of the owners on Thursday, all but participating. I think there's a pattern on all these properties. I'm going to be blunt. It's an out of state slum lord and hasn't maintained the properties.
And that okay.
So the police chief, the resident deep, the mayor, all of the other city officials and laboring Denver mayor and city officials as well now are all saying this building is run by an out of states slum lord. The residents are complaining about trash that hasn't been picked up for weeks.
This slum lord has.
Already been indicted on charges with regard to not maintaining another apartment building where the sewage was backed up, the trash wasn't picked up. We're talking rodents, we're talking infestations. The residents did their own press conference laying all of this out, and this slumlord hired a pr firm to basically push these claims to try to get out of these charges that he's already facing in court. So at
this point it's pretty clear what happened. Since you have the mayor, who's a Republican by the way, Republican mayor and the city officials and the police chief and the residents all saying this is not at all what's happening. This is about a slum lord trying to get out of maintaining the property that we are paying thousands of dollars in rent to live in.
We have E five please up on the screen. This is from the local press and it references of what you were saying. The residents at that complex state, deplorable issues are the cadooral conditions are the issue, not the gangs. They said, quote they are trying to put us along one group and all in one bag. They're trying to say that their delinquents their criminals here, There are moms, there are families. They did I believe acknowledge that there
was like criminals that had been there. But they were like, that is not the fundamental issues. So okay, let's step back, like why did this all become a major conflagration. So this is part of actually references our original eight block is you cannot just simply believe everything you put out there, and you know, none of this whitewash is concerns about migrants.
You know from the Denver Post forty three thousand Venezuelan migrants have arrived in the Denver area since January of twenty twenty three, and they don't even need to be committing crime for me to say that's crazy.
And do you know what has happened with crime?
What it drops?
It dropped twenty percent.
So what in the first eight months happened?
Declines in homicides, robberies and aggravedoss. Well, it's very relevant to this story because obviously the point of blowing this up was like, oh my god, violent migrant criminals are taking over this town. And while I'm sure there are some migrants, as there are some you know, domestic born citizens who commit crimes, no doubt about it, the overall picture here is actually the exact opposite.
These migrants haven't brought crime.
The crime rate has dropped twenty percent, as it has by the way, as part of a national trend in a lot of.
Eventually migrants is just about national trend and drop.
True, but it's the polar opposite of the picture that was attempted to be painted with these false allegations about gang members taking over apartment complexes. And again not just you know, people like Charlie Kirker, right, Wing employee Elon Musk, who runs the whole friggin platform elevating this claim and another completely fake claim by the way, aner Chicago of a similar thing. So yeah, it's successiful. That's the bottom line, Like,
don't believe these people. They lie, they make stuff. There's an ideological agenda here.
I agree, And that is part of what reason that I wanted to say is that yeah, just because it's fake though, doesn't mean that there aren't concern And that's part of what it annoys me, is that when you tar yourself by pushing stuff that ends up to not be true, you actually do disservice to anybody who has a concern as I do that there are forty three thousand illegal Venezuelan migrants who are in the city of Denver.
That's crazy. Also, whenever we are vetting, like whether something is committed by a crime or not, by pushing false stuff, you diminish genuine incidents of migrant crime and of people who are murderers and or rapists. You have to be solid in your facts whenever you make such claims. And this is what annoys me about the entire thing. I'm combining it with the tenant stuff. Is it simply allows a dismissal of any of legitimate concerns around migrant crime
or even around migrant presence. Period. You don't have to be comitting crime for you to still be a problem.
Here.
Are they receiving city services? Who's paying your rent? Is that the government? Are you getting welfare from the Denver Coment? None of that should be allowed, period. I mean, that is why I get so annoyed about these, you know, the Elon and Charlie Kirk and the flourishing of this stuff. In fact, just this morning somebody told me, they said, hey, do you know about this Aurora thing. X's mom is super upset about it? And I was like, Oh, I'm
actually covering on the show tomorrow. And it's it's because, you know, Fox News and many of these other places are not doing their genuine due diligence in presenting that, and they're just simply putting it all out there. And then will they do a correction or will they do a follow up? Almost certainly not now if it was real, would MSNBC or any of these other people cover it?
No?
But they certainly will cover it now because they'll be like, hey, look at these idiots who fell for all as they should. You know, I mean, I'm not saying it's not legitimate. I'm the political valance of this drives me crazy because it is whenever you whip people up based on something fake, then you just get to dismiss it out of hand. When I think, I think it's a very legitimate concern period, like who are these residents? Are any of them even
legal residents? Like who is paying their rent? You know? Why is this all being taken up by people who are not even from here? I think that's a very legitimate concern. But then saying you know, oh, it's like part of some major gang activity, whenever that obviously ends up being bs, then everyone should frankly dismiss a lot of what the other stuff that you're.
Saying, because it's a very clear attempt to demonize and lie about the migrant population. And you know, it's also very clear what's going on here. Immigration is the strongest issue for Trump. Yeah, Trump appears to be losing right now. Now, Who knows.
I don't know if that's true. I wouldn't say that, not when he's got a fifty some percent, fifty three percent or whatever chance by Nate Silvertall, we.
Just showed the same swing state pool polls in CNN. I think that he's probably a little bit behind, but reasonable people could disagree on that. In any case, what I think is very clear immigration is his best issue. They want to have a conversation about immigration, even if that and Elon Musk is a two millions of dollars
backer of Donald Trump explicit backer of Donald Trump. They want the conversation to be about evil immigrants because that benefits them politically, even if it means making some bullshit up and spreading a fake viral story. So just like, you know, keep these things in mind when you're looking at these stories that go viral, because they are shameless about it. And I reference, I don't know if you saw this. Elon also elevated there was like some claim
that this was happening in Chicago too. Somebody had called in UH to nine to one one about a similar Chicago incident and the police went to the Parma Complex were like, this is not happening.
People are just trying to like make.
Like you know, cause a stir and create false narratives.
So it was a total hoax that he also.
Spread and shared, and I'm sure many of the people millions of people who saw that are not going to know that that was also complete hoax. So anyway, it's very clear this was just like, and you're benefiting this slum lord who was screwing these residents who were playing rent, who were paying rent, and you know, deserve to live in clean conditions without bugs and rats and sewage back up and trash piled up over weeks and weeks because
you didn't pay to have the garbage collectors come. So in any case, it's the whole situation is sort of it's just disgusting to me, and the way that it was, the way that people ran with it, even after the residents themselves, the mayor, the police chief.
Et cetera, said this is completely false.
It's just yeah, it became a national story. Now you have the fact, you can make up your minds. I would say it didn't.
There's no one to make it up your minds. It was fake. It was totally fake, but you didn't make up your minds.
About Sure, yes, absolutely, but on the story there is no like, you know, evaluating decide everyone who's involved in this except for the clearly nefarious landlord is saying the.
Same, this lord, this guy got off real well, didn't he.
He's like, he didn't even pay because he had a court date set.
I love the out of state he had a date.
Set and the judge actually like let him push off his court date for a while while all of this was going on. So and so apparently, you know, at least in the short term, it worked. But what a disgusting scumbag.
PERI yeah that I agree.
Yes, all right, we'll end on that note of unity.
All right, We've got a lot of interesting economic stories that came out about Kamala Harris has some new campaign small business proposals. There's a report that Biden is going to block this nip On Steel acquisition of US Steel, something we've talked about before. And also actually Jeff messaged me that he has some breaking news as well about we're talking about Elon Musk, this Trump Elon commission that had been floated before. So a bunch of economic stories
we wanted to get. Jeff Steined from the Washington Post in away and on. Let's go ahead and get to it. Jeff Steinn in the Washington Post. Great to see you, sir, man.
Where's the player to be on breaking points?
Thanks guys, Yeah, it's our pleasure. Let's go and put this first piece up on the screen. So this was some significant news, something we've been tracking for a while. It does look like the Biden administration is preparing to block this nip on steel. It's a Japanese steel company's acquisition of US Steel. Subhad here from you and your colleague David Lynch, as the move would pose a setback
for relations with Japan. Talk to us about this decision, why they would want to block this acquisition, and what some of the broader context here is.
Yeah, so US Steel, really, an iconic American company, has been suffering tremendously the last decade plus. Unlike some of its sort of more nimble competitors, with the more agile furnaces in the South, US Steel has lost money I think don't quota on this, but something like eleven of the past fifteen years or thirteen years, and so they've
been looking for a buyer. This Japanese company has been very interested in acquiring US Steel in part because you know, increasing US tariffs on on on imports of steel have made it harder to get into US markets, So if they acquire a US firm, they get around that problem. But the Biden administration, I think correctly is right about the politics of a foreign company acquiring this sort of
symbol of American industrial light. Like a few months before very contested election in Pennsylvania, which is you know, this this obviously very important part of the election. And so the Biden administration tasked uh Scipius, this sort of obscure government committee that it sort of reviews foreign takeovers of US firms. This is pretty unprecedented for Japan. Japan is a major US ally and so it was really weird and surprising to see, you know, Japan's investment into the
US be scrutinized this way. But as we reported yesterday, Buying is going to block block this this deal.
So tell us a little bit about the union as well, because I know that they were very involved in this decision.
Yeah, Biden has taken a lot of pressure, has been under a lot of pressure.
From the United steel Workers union to not allow this to go through.
There's a lot of concerns about layoffs and that the Japanese by switching to a new ownership structure, would be really bad for the workers. The management, the executives of the company were warning that the deal went through. If the deal failed at the deal didn't go through, that the company would collapse.
I think the workers are saying that that's overblown hype.
These executives are trying to cash out, and we should be skeptical of the sort of warnings. But yeah, the union has been very vocal and very in the year of the Democratic Party saying, you know, we're already struggling to keep our members from defecting to Trump. Do you really want to allow this company to be taken over by the Japanese.
There's some other staying on the Democratic Party side, Kamala Harris been seemingly trying to quell some of the like CNBC revolts against them economic policies. He's trying to lean into a small business agenda. Could put this Wall Street Journal article up on the screen. She's also breaking somewhat with Biden's previous capital gains tax proposal, so she still would increase the capital gains tax, but not as much
as Biden had proposed. As part of her small business agenda, she wants to institute this new fifty thousand dollars tax credit. So what can you tell us about what she is proposing here?
Yeah, aploy for the Jim Kramer vote.
The coveted Jim Framer vote.
Yeah, they were under The New York Times had a great story about sort of donors freaking out about the extent of the tacks hikes push by Harris. Just to give people a little bit of the last few weeks of history here, Harris came out with one point seven trillion dollars in new spending measures and increased child tax credit, other things that they sort of saw as sort of populist goodies that they could run on. But then reporters started out like, how are you going to pay for this?
And then Harris said, oh, we support the Biden tax agenda, which is five trillion dollars of stuff. And then people started saying, hey, wait, like that has a lot of very significant tax hikes on investors through the capital gains tax and other measures, and so that led them to say, actually, you know what, like, let's kind of I want to be careful with how I phrase this. But they seem to be saying, like, we want to signal that we're
listening to the business community. That we're listening to investors. You know, the only people who would be affected by this are those who earn over a million dollars a year at.
Least that's what they've been saying.
And so, you know, numerically, it's not that big of a percentage of the voting public. But if you include people who might be concerned that they could become millionaires and be affected by this, or people who don't believe that Harris, you know, won't lower that threshold a certain point, this is kind of meant to assure them that she's
maybe more business friendly. I mean, the Harris people are really intent on showing that they're more sympathetic to, or at least open to listening to the business community than Biden was. Whether that is a message that's compatible with what they've said about banning price gouging and how those all shake out, I don't know.
There's some Democrats have spoken to who are.
Getting alarmed that, you know, Harris seems to be kind of going from crisis to crisis and kind of addressing her sort of most immediate short term political need. Obviously, the campaign would say that's highly ungenerous that they have a grand vision and this is all of all orchestrated and thought out.
Well, okay, then that's kind of where I want to stick with you, Jeff, because as you and I both know, you know, each individual policy seems to be in a lab. It's getting tested, and then a statement will come out. So can you just explain to us how this fits in that context? For example, I believe yesterday they were talking about perhaps walking back from an evy mandate. Obviously there have been previous stories about the positions on the border.
There's fracking, there's I mean, there's ad nauseum. I could go down the list of what these all look like. So how does it fit into that context?
As you were saying, I'm really glad glad you brought that up, Saggar, because I don't want to, like, not discussed that there are huge reversals of her positions from twenty twenty, I mean, massive changes from what she was
articulating just a few years ago. And I'm not sure I have great insight into exactly what is going on inside the campaign right now about how they're thinking about these questions, but I think it's fair to say that, you know, she's so new to voters She's still a relative unknown, and the amount of whiplash on some of these positions I think is a risk for the campaign.
I mean, for all of Trump's sort of incoherence and his sort of quick changes and about faces on policy, I think a lot of voters could tell you, sort of in broad strokes what he stands for tariffs and tax cuts and you know, reducing immigration, those kinds of things. But you know, on fracking on all these economic policies, on environmental policies, we're seeing Harris undergo some really dramatic changes, of course, and whether those add up for voters I think is sort of a big question.
I don't know if that really answers what you're asking now.
Yeah, well, it's worth keeping in mind.
She maintained a lot of the Biden who like Biden campaign team that was failing dreadfully, So you know, when these sort of perplexing about face decisions occur with Harris, I think that's reasonable to keep in mind. And I mean the other knock on her always has been that she doesn't really have a lot of and you looked into this like she doesn't have.
A lot of core ideas.
It's been more like Okay, Well, when I'm trying to get ahead in California during a certain era, it'd be tough on crime. Then I'm going to run to the left, because I think that's the lane in twenty twenty now, and with Biden and I got to win these you know, general election modern swing voters, I'm going to be in a different place. And that's starting to like, that's starting to feel like what's having here very clearly.
I think the most generous interpretation is that this is sort of like trying to build as big of a tent as possible. But yeah, I don't know if there's a metaphor in here somewhere that like if tent is too big and like it doesn't really.
But like we could leave, you know, we could leave the Jim Kramer vote out of the tent, like I would.
I would be I would be good with that, you know. But all right, we'll put that.
Let's let's turn to the news you broke with regard to Trump and Elon Musk. Put this up on the screen. We'll put this in in a in post guys, Trump, Ey's plan that may give Elon Musk role in auditing US agencies. This was some news that you broke earlier this week. This had been sort of floated that Elon would have a role in auditing federal government agencies. Of course, people immediately pointed out, hey, you have a lot of big government contracts. Seems like there could be a little
bit of a conflict of interest here. And the news that you broke is that they're set to formally endorse this idea.
Yeah, I mean, we'll see what this looks like if Trump is actually elected. But the idea is basically to say, like the government bureaucrats are all corrupt and doing everything wrong, let's bring in some like exact natives and CEOs Musk and maybe the CEO of FedEx and some other names I've heard tossed around, the former CEO of Home Depot, apparently Trump really likes.
And so the idea is.
Let's bring these guys in, go through all the federal books, find all the waste and taxpayers spending, and come up with a sort of list that they present to Congress and say, you guys need to get rid of this.
And Reagan actually did this in the eighties. It was highly well, it was never actually implemented, but from a political standpoint, it produced all these headlines about, you know, the Department of Defense spent like eight hundred dollars on the toilet or whatever, and then that became like a whole controversy that fueled the sort of Reagan message about
government waste and spending. And so I think the Trump people, you know, are spending a lot of time talking about you know, five six, seven trillion dollars in additional tax cuts, and so this question is growing.
Of like what are they going to do to pay for that?
Because Trump added more to the federal depth than any other president in American history eight million dollars of the course of four years, and so they're looking at, you know, potentially replicating that.
And so this is partly an answer to that question.
But as you said, you know, putting Musk in charge of federal regulations, federal spending, I mean, the amount of sort of direct interest he has, I mean, would he basically say that the US Agency is responsible for regulating.
You know, self driving cars, that that is government waste? Right?
Like, obviously I don't know if that is something he would come up with, but there's all kinds of reasons to believe that he's it's not a compromise party than one worth being skeptical of his ability to really impartially look at the government books.
You don't have to be a lib to say, hey, if you get billions or dollars in government subsidies, you also should not audit government subsidies. Okay, all right, I think that's pretty basic.
And your giant companies are subject to significant government regulation.
As the government contractor, shouldn't also be saved. Yeah, look, and I'm supportive of cutting a lot of governments. Like let's be let's be very clear about that, Jeff.
So you can imagine him being, you know, not allowed to look at the things that he's involved in. But the Trump people in their first turn were not particularly judicious about.
That kind of exactly that was. That was going to be my point about some of the people that were involved anything else, Jeff, that you want to go over in terms of you've broken so many different stories here in terms of how you're watching economics kind of shape within the election so far.
I mean, I think, I mean, I wasn't around for a lot of the campaigns that I'm about to refer to, but I do think it is I mean, maybe it's just like six nerds in Washington who care about this. It's probably the case, but it's pretty amazing, like how little detail we're getting about what the candidates want to do for the country.
Like it.
Obviously may seem quaint to even say that, but like I watched basically all both conventions, Like I listened to the candidate's statements, and we're really at an incredible like surface level of policy for I think more so for Trump than for Harris, but really even compared to what we got from Biden four years ago, but especially compared
to Clinton eight years ago or Obama. You know, candidates used to release you know, dozens or hundreds of pages of detailed analysis about like the reason that like all of politics matters at some level, right, like all the show, all the pomp and circumstance, all the like, like TV and radio and like media, like all of it about politics is like in service of the question in my view of like what do you want to do to like change the country, And just in my brief time
as a reporter, like that that has gotten so so vague.
Yeah, the political incentives seems to.
We used to argue about budgets, you remember that the book President's budget so percent less for the you know, and people would have cable news panels about it and op eds and you know, now somebody just the Harris campaign is like she no longer supports that, and the Trump campaign is like, hey says no tax on tips, And it's like, okay, what does that mean?
In what way to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits?
Right?
That's the potentially two trillion dollars I was going to see.
Incredibly complicated, like could speed up the data which social Security beneficiaries stop receiving checks they need to like buy food in medicine and we have no idea like how would work?
Like literally like.
A mandating IVF that's what a hundred billion, one hundred billion easily, right?
And then the Harrors campaign the ban on on federal price gouging for groceries and food, Like what does that
look like? Or is the FTC like going to be like checking all shots whe They're like, I don't know, we don't know, And so it's it's a it's kind of a frustrating time to be a policy reporter because we're just like we're we can get hit as reporters for trying to analyze what we think they're trying to say, and they'll say, no, no, we didn't mean that, But it's like, we don't don't know what you really and.
Tell us what you actually mean.
Well, I mean, you can kind of see why they do it because on the flip example is you've got Project twenty twenty five, nine hundred pages of spelling out in elaborate detail what they would do, and it's a massive liability. You know, it's a big problem for them. Or who was it Rick Scott who put out that terrible like policy detailed proposal and Democrats were hanging that around the neck of Republicans and so they feel like there's more risk than benefit and actually telling us specifically
their plans. And with Trump you have the added I mean with both of them in a sense, but especially with Trump you.
Have that added.
You know, he says all kinds of wild shit. Do you mean any of this?
Like do you really mean ten percent tariff on everything?
Do you mean a one time? He floated twenty?
Is a ten?
Is a twenty?
Do you understand what massive implications I would have? Or on the immigration thing, like you're talking about rounding all these millions of people. That's an un believe put the morality aside, expensive invasive undertaking.
What does that look like?
And when you have industries like agriculture that are dependent on sixty percent migrant workers, what does this mean? But then you're you know, it's like, well it is even he's probably not even really serious about that level of deepest So it makes it your your job and our job trying to understand what the implications would be.
It makes it sort of impossible. I saw this.
It was a Goldman Sachs analysis that was like O Kamala Harris's economic.
Proposals would add to the GDP and Trumps.
I don't even know how they're doing these numbers when you have so little detail from either one of them.
Yeah, my wife and I rewatched Idiocracy films. Whole plan is like we will fix what's uh. Luke Wilson's character is like he will fix everything. Yeah, that's the whole plan.
That's very Trumpyan. Yeah yeah, all right, Jeff, thank you so much. It's always great to see you and help us sort through what little we can glean from these campaigns.
Good to see you man, Seeing you guys, Thanks same.
All right, guys, thanks for watching. We'll see you all later.