Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/10/22: Russia vs Ukraine, Nuclear Armageddon, Weed Policy, Uvalde Police, Starbucks CEO, Midterm Ads, & More!

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Russia striking Ukraine, Crimea bridge explosion, Biden's warning, Trump's call for diplomacy, Biden's weed policies, Uvalde firing police officers, Assange vs Bolton, Starbucks CEO, TV revolution, & midterm ad spending!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Kyle Kondik: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/the-2022-ad-wars/ https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/The+Long+Red+Thread  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We're going to dispense with the normal stuff at the top because we've got major breaking news that's happening literally right before we started filming. So we went ahead and scrambled the show to bring it to you as fast as possible. So we're going to go ahead and start with this. The Putin regime in Russia has announced new strikes all across Ukraine and specifically on the capital of Kiev in Ukraine, launching missiles, cruise missiles and a variety of other air assets against critical energy infrastructure. We have a little bit of video that was released by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Here you can watch a cruise missile which was launched from Sea Crystal. There are two separate missiles that were launched there. That was hundreds of missiles that rained all across the country of Ukraine that happened in the early hours Washington time. We have a map, actually. We can go ahead and

put that up there on the screen. This is a map that just shows you all of the strikes across the entire country. Notably, there is the city of Lviv, which is all the way there in the western part of the country near the Polish border. That is the major thoroughfare for a lot of the NATO armaments that are making its way into Ukraine. It's a largely untouched city. It's only been bombed or struck a couple of times. Other places, Kyiv and other five different places across the country in retaliation for the Crimean Bridge attack that we're going to be getting to a little bit later in the show, all current indications show that they tried to target critical infrastructure. And yet, as usual, we don't have a lot of the footage because things are happening so quickly right now, but it's horrific. I mean, you could

see downtown Kiev in the middle of rush hour being bombed, maximum retaliation against civilians. There was a children's playground that was literally struck. It's supposedly in retaliation. It shows you also that the Russian precision guided munitions are not as good as, or at least they have expended some of their best weapons in the early phase of the war, moving to less accurate type of munitions. And unfortunately, it's just wreaked horrific damage all across the country. And it is a sign of the escalation in this war that unfortunately is a result of Putin has his back to the wall. The bridge attack really about Ukraine launching extrajudicial assassinations inside of Moscow, basically throwing up the flag saying, hey, we know that you're planning something, maybe don't do it. It's possible that this might have been one of the things that they were trying to warn them against doing. Regardless, we are now in a new phase of the conflict with

Putin and others saying the gloves are now coming off and all of that. That's exactly right. I mean, for a while now, the hawkish, most hawkish faction within Russia has really been upset with the prosecution of this war. They wanted strikes that look a lot more like this. We know also, and we can put this up on the screen, this is highly relevant. So Russia just appointed a new commander for the war in Ukraine. This was sort of a different approach to put one person in charge of the entire operation. There was a lot of speculation about what this meant. But a lot of folks noted this dude, Serovkin, I'm going to go. Serovkin, yeah. Serovkin.

He was known for, you know, he's a veteran of the war in Syria. He is known for being sort of a brutal, gloves-off kind of a guy. No accident that he's put in charge, and then just days later, you have these attacks across all of Ukraine. And I think there's a couple things that we know at this point. You know, and this is very early. We're just getting details in about where exactly these strikes hit and what sort of infrastructure they took out. It seems very clear they were designed to take out the electricity and water capabilities of Ukrainian civilians, so reports of outages across the entire country. And then also, I mean, seems very clearly designed to sort of terrify the citizenry.

The strikes in downtown Kiev, this is something we haven't seen since the very beginning of this war, when Russia was successfully, you know, pushed back from those regions. Now you have citizens who, in Kiev yesterday, they were out sort of like enjoying the last bits of summer, out at that cafe, sort of feeling a bit of normalcy in their lives. That is now completely upended. And I think it's worth saying we're going to get to more with the bridge that Ukraine successfully was able to cripple, not completely decimate, but to cripple, which was a humiliating strike for Russia. You know, Ukraine hit what was a critical piece of infrastructure. This bridge was something that

was being used by Russia to, you know, bring troops in, to supply their troops. So they're hitting a critical piece of sort of military infrastructure. And the response here is basically to terrorize citizens. I mean, that's really, this is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of all Ukrainians. And, you know, it's unfortunately predictable. It's something that we've been concerned about for quite a while now, as Putin does become increasingly desperate, as on so many fronts he's been, you know, getting pushed back and effectively losing this war. So the hawkish faction is delighted this morning. They've essentially gotten their way. These are the types of actions that they have been pushing for for quite a long time. Yeah, just to underscore that, Ramzan Kadyrov, you know, the Putin's tiger, the leader of Chechnya, he put out this message this morning,

quote, we warned you, Zelensky, Russia hasn't really started yet. Stop complaining like a sucker and run away before it gets to you. Run, Zelensky, without looking back. Now I am 100% satisfied with how the special military operation is conducted. So for context, Kadyrov was one of those people who was very vocally criticizing the Russian military and Putin for not taking the gloves off. He's saying he is now, quote, 100% satisfied, meaning, and this also fits into what I think controlled opposition in the Kremlin looks like, which is that they allow, all the peaceniks are either drafted or thrown into prison. Everybody who's the most hawkish, they're allowed to have dissent. To say their piece.

And then they're like, hey, we're just listening to the criticism. And that criticism happens to be, we should continue to escalate the war. Now, Putin actually gave a speech early this morning, Washington time, where he specifically said that this was in retaliation for the, quote, terrorist attack at the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. He says that Russia's military had, quote, used long range, high precision air, sea and land based missiles in the strike and warned he was going to repeat them. He claimed that the targets were military. He says, if attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia's response will be severe and at the level of the threats that are facing it. Nobody should be in any doubt. That was on top of a

message that was put out by Medvedev, who used to be the president of Russia, kind of the caretaker in that fake scheme to legitimize Putin as the autocratic ruler for basically his entire life. He put out a message on Telegram also saying that the strikes on Ukraine are, quote, the first episode and that, quote, there will be more. He said that Russia is working to dismantle the Ukrainian political regime. On top of that, President Zelensky actually appearing above ground in Kyiv, making it clear, like, we're not going to be intimidated. He says, we are dealing with terrorists, dozens of missiles and Iranian drones. They have targets, energy facilities throughout the country. Such time and targets were specifically chosen to cause as much damage

as possible. And he said that Kyiv will survive all of these Ukrainian attacks. So that is the posturing, you know, at the high level. But I think that we can say, and it's crazy for me, you know, I actually started my career covering Sorovikin because I was covering the Battle of Aleppo and all that stuff during my time as a Pentagon correspondent. So it's weird in order to see him come back. And I think that one of the fears that I had

at the very beginning of this war is that we would get to this point, which is that how did the quote-unquote Battle of Aleppo and really Assad regain control of all of Syria? By barrel bombing the population and killing approximately half a million, you know, civilians with absolute no thought and total impunity with no regard for the loss of human life. That's essentially what the Battle of Aleppo was. They took a great city, ancient city, and basically leveled the entire parts of it, which were full of the opposition. Same pretty much across the entire country. That's also whenever we saw Russia use cluster munitions, munitions which they have seen them use in Kiev. So I think that unfortunately,

this will be a harbinger really of Sorovkin's way of doing war, which is effectively total war, declare war on the population, declare war on all civilian infrastructure, put aside any of the ways that we would consider humane, not even humane, put aside the rules of the Geneva Convention and so much more, and just decimate the infrastructure, decimate the population, make it unlivable until they bend the knee. And that is a grinding war of attrition that now we're not just seeing on the front line, where we're seeing the back and forth

between the Ukrainian and Russian military. Now with the air component, as I said previously, Russia's best precision guided munitions are basically gone. They've been used up. They don't have access to microchips that they had previously. They're actually ripping them out of dishwashers and other appliances to keep their missiles going. So, but they have a massive stockpile of traditional, almost like World War II era stuff. And unfortunately, what's the last place on earth that will sell them weapons? North Korea. North Korea also has a hell of a lot of stockpile of exactly these type of missions. It's really what the North Korean military relied on as part of its war campaign

against the South, should it ever have to do so. The point I'm making is that they have a tremendous amount of traditional military power that they will likely try to draw on and combine the air operations with their ground tactics in order to stop the political opposition all across the country. I don't expect the Ukrainians to fold, of course, but I do think that there will be a tremendous loss of life over the next month or so than now that we're in the new phase. Yeah, I mean, this doesn't change the reality that Russia is losing. But it does mean, you know, the idea that there was going to be this sort of like grinding stalemate and throughout the winter you'd basically have a sort of status quo situation with perhaps the Ukrainians making small gains and small advances, you know, characteristic of what the ground remain that they are on the back foot, that Putin is in a desperate situation, that he's having all these issues domestically in terms of sort of a, you know, disgruntled population that isn't really on board for what he's doing here. But the Russian

military still has tremendous capability to inflict tons of pain, death, and damage on the Ukrainian population. And so this is a stark reminder of that fact. It is, you know, a devastating new phase of this war that is almost certainly going to come with increased civilian casualties. And it is a sign that it's a sign both of desperation, but also that at this point, you know, the hawks are in control. They are getting their way. And this war is likely from here on out to be prosecuted much more to their liking than with any sort of governors or restraints or abiding by the sorts of rules of war that you would ultimately hope. I mean, listen, it's an illegal war to start with, so let's be clear that it's not like they've been playing in some sort of a humanitarian way to begin with. But this represents a really frightening and brutal escalation of this conflict.

And it comes on the heels, Sagar, as we've been mentioning, of the successful Ukrainian attack. We think it was a Ukrainian attack anyway. Russians are blaming Ukraine. Ukraine is more or less taking credit, although they haven't 100 percent. Unclear exactly how this all went down. This vital bridge that has both, you know, incredible strategic and sort of psychological importance to the Russians that goes between or it still does. They didn't take it all down, but it's been severely damaged. Goes between Crimea, which, of course, Russia sort of illegally annexed back a while ago, and the Russian motherland. This was a pet project of Putin himself. Somewhere, cost between somewhere of $4 billion and $7 billion. When it was opened and inaugurated, Putin himself drove this construction truck across it. So this was a major sort of psychological and propaganda piece for Russia and also has incredibly vital significance in terms of just restocking, resupplying their troops. It appears Ukraine was able to successfully damage that.

Yeah. So let's go ahead and start that, which is that we have video. Originally, we were going to begin our show on this. You can go ahead and see this is a car that's driving all across the bridge at the time, immediately struck there and the car itself blown out. You could see what happened essentially. Let's go to the next one, guys, just so we can show people the actual images. So that's a side-by-side image taken of the Kerch Bridge. As you said, very strategically important to the Russian regime, to Putin himself, who made it kind of the legacy of supplanting Crimea officially back into the Russian Federation on fire. They've restored effectively some passage along the bridge, but it was a major psychological blow, not only because it was one of Putin's pet projects,

but also because, as you said, it was a key weapons supply to the Ukrainian front for the Russian military. So a couple of things happening here. Number one, which is that, as we have said previously, Putin updated rhetorically their nuclear doctrine to say that they would have a first strike nuclear weapons in the event of territorial integrity being breached. Now, territorial integrity is in the eye of the beholder. And regardless of what we think, Putin considers Crimea to be part of Russia. So this bridge strike between the Russian Federation, the existing Russian Federation, and now Crimea, which is disputed, to them, it's all Russia. To them, this is effectively a strike on their domestic territory, which explains part of the

reason why they had this military response that we just talked about in the first place. Also, it was seen, as you said, the Ukrainians kind of effectively taking credit, but not really officially put this up there on the screen. All across the entire country ahead of the missiles that are raining down on the city this morning, people were wishing Putin a happy birthday because the strike or the bombing had actually occurred on the very same day as Putin's 70th birthday. And the Ukrainian government erected these pictures like as a postage stamp all across the city with people taking selfies, taunting the Russian regime across the entire country. It really was seen as a major strategic victory and it was cheered and hailed inside of Kyiv. Now, the fascinating thing, Crystal, is, as we said, nobody is 100% certain how exactly this all went down. Initial indications are

that it seems to have been some sort of truck bomb. Now, again, you have to take out what the Russians are saying. They have claimed that they've arrested the quote-unquote military operatives who are responsible for this. I don't know. I mean, it could be anybody. That being said, you know, it's not like the Ukrainians weren't clearly probably behind it or some faction of the Ukrainian government was behind it. And the abilities and the technology that they use, we still don't have a lot of indication on what they did. But like we said, it does appear to be some sort of a truck bomb that was used. That's a leading theory at this point, but no one has figured it out exactly. It could have come from this truck. It could have, there've been theories that it was, you know,

came from the water, that it was some sort of missile strike. But I think the leading theory at this point is some sort of truck bomb. There's all kinds of videos circulating online of the moment when this bridge explodes. There seems to be a large like tractor trailer that is sort of going up the bridge right when the whole thing lights on fire. In terms of the extent of the damage, as I said, the whole thing wasn't taken up. It looks like a couple of lanes collapsed and there was a train that was actually going across the rail portion at that point that also caught on fire. Now, Russia is making a big show of reopening some lanes to car vehicle traffic. And also they were able to run a train across the rail portion. So they're trying to demonstrate like, see, it's not even that badly damaged. Portion of it definitely was very badly

damaged, but there are some parts that they were able to get operable again, so it's not a complete loss for them. However, I really don't think that you can overstate how psychologically important this bridge was. I was looking into it more, and when it was opened and completed, Russia's state-controlled media called it the construction project of the century. They called it a work of art. They said, one television correspondent said, we have been waiting for the Crimean Bridge for over a thousand years, adding that the opening of the bridge was the main global news development of the day. So in terms of sort of actualizing their view that Crimea is part of their territory and as the symbol of Russia's sort of new imperial ambitions, this bridge was really a linchpin. And it was also just kind of like, you know, on a logistical and practical level, really important for the population of Crimea who had been cut off to the Ukrainian side. And so prior to this, you could only get there basically by boat or by like by ferry or by plane. So the fact that

this bridge was put into place and it was very complicated logistically and all of those things, it was really important to Putin and it was really celebrated across Russia. So you had this initial reaction from Ukrainians who were absolutely delighted and kind of understandably so

at such a significant military win for them and such a blow to Russia's ambitions. They were posting memes. They were really excited. And then there seemed to be a sort of setting in over the weekend of, OK, what's this going to mean next? And of course, this morning, we have the answer of how Russia would ultimately respond in a way that, you know, is marks a significant and frightening escalation and also really is designed to sort of terrify the civilians and remind them that there is no normalcy as long as Russia can continue to strike in downtown Kiev and

other places. Yeah, and unfortunately, this really is a harbinger of what happened this morning. Put this up there on the screen, which is almost immediately after the bridge attack, the hardliners like we had alluded to, Medvedev and Medvedev, Kadyrov, many of the others inside the Kremlin and on Telegram were urging Putin to face and have a harsh military response. In fact, there was an interesting story that broke over the weekend, which was apparently intelligence included from the presidential daily brief. So this most sensitive intelligence that exists in the U.S. military. And I don't know why exactly it was leaked, and I still don't really know what to make of it, Crystal.

Yeah. Which is that they said that President Putin had faced, quote, direct criticism for the war in Ukraine to his face in a recent meeting with his military advisors. Now, I took that with great interest because the Times is trying to spin it as perhaps criticism for doing the war in the first place. And I was like, well, what's more likely that this guy still has his head and had criticism to Putin's face? And it wasn't for actually being tough enough. And unfortunately, given the makeup of the people who are closest to Putin and around him, it almost certainly had to have been that type of criticism. The reason it was actually reported to President Biden in the presidential daily brief, it appears, is because such criticism is unheard

of in Russia. Now, people like Kadyrov and others, they can say stuff on Telegram. But in terms of what you say to his face, it appears, according to them, he's been increasingly more isolated and the most isolated in his entire career as president of Russia, perhaps in his entire life. Seems to be a total health freak, even continuing being like 20 feet away from other people while signing documents. Very odd, you know, clinical behavior. That being said, what is coming across is that he is facing increasing pressure from the people around him, and it's not the type of pressure that we want to see. Right. The controlled opposition and controlled dissent, which is allowed within the Kremlin and that Putin himself seems to respond to almost every single time, is that of, Mr. President, you need to ramp up this war. You need to ramp up this war, you need to ramp up this war, I think in a sense it completely tracks because how are all those people supposed to survive? Like their regime

depends not only on Putin, but all of them have committed some pretty serious atrocities for many years before that. They need to ensure their survival, their strength, and their attachment to the military because the peaceniks and all the other people who've ever advocated for stronger relations with the West, those people are all either dead or they're exiles. They don't really exist. They've been neutered. They don't exist anymore. Yeah, I mean, and this is something we've been trying to point out the whole time. There's oftentimes, you know, on social media and even in the mainstream press, there are these clips floating around of, around of dissent on Russian state television.

But if you listen to what they're saying, none of them are out there like, and that's why we should give up on this war and go for peace. It's all, that's why we need to escalate. That's why we need to be more brutal. That's why we need to strike critical infrastructure. That's why we need to directly strike government buildings. That's why we need a general mobilization. And bit by bit by bit, and especially within the last few weeks, you've seen Putin extremely responsive to the direction that that more hawkish faction wants to take the war. And it's also a reminder for all the people who are, you know, wish casting like Putin himself falling and his regime falling. These are the people that are likely to take the place. It's not like a dovish pro-peace faction that is likely to fill the void here if

ultimately Putin falls, which I don't think there are enough signs yet to say that he's in danger of that, even as he's facing significant domestic discontent. And I do think that that is very real. I mean, they're facing both the situation where some of these blows have been undeniably humiliating for Russia. And then also the fact that, you know, it was one thing for the population, which does largely support the idea of this quote unquote special military operation. It was one thing to like support it in theory. It was another thing to be willing to like yourself go out and fight and die. And that has completely, that has shifted for a lot of folks the way they feel about

this. And it's just undeniable that you have hundreds of thousands of military age Russian men who have fled and are looking to flee the country at this point. So it's a lot of chaos on the Russian side. And clearly now we know what the response to that chaos ultimately is. Right after the Crimean Bridge was struck, as you said, Sagar, this more hawkish faction, I mean, immediately taking to social media channels like Telegram to express that now is the time for punishment, saying, let's ask the question, if this is not a reason for really decisive measures, then what is it at all? People demand revenge. So, you know, this morning we know at least what phase one of that response ultimately is. Yeah. The only question is, is this going to be the new day to day of the war or is this going to be a one-off

action? I mean, they have supply constraints, as I alluded to. They do have a lot, but they don't have that many precision guided weapons. So they don't necessarily want to blow all of it every single day and not accomplish their total strategic objectives. On the other hand, this new commander literally made his name by bombing and basically, you know, eradicating, like, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Russia, so it wouldn't be outside of the norm. Will they concentrate new firepower solely on the Ukrainian positions militarily? Or are they going to make everything open for warfare, attack the civilians, and attack the military? A lot of that depends on what they do. This could probably, I think, is a new phase of the war in that it does show us again that almost every time when he is presented with the option, he doubles down and

goes for escalation. Everything I've read about the man shows that in his best times, when he was probably mostly there mentally, that was already his modus operandi. Now include the crazy constraints of whatever his mental state is, on top of having his back up against the wall and the political survival of his regime. And I think that we pretty much have our choice, which is unfortunately a segue to another very important thing that happened over the weekend. President Biden making his thoughts clear about nuclear Armageddon. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is from the president who remarks that he made at a Democratic fundraiser. Personally, I think he should give these remarks to all of us.

But here's what he said, that the danger of nuclear Armageddon is the highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Biden said that Putin's threats to use tactical nuclear weapons are not a joke. He says, quote, we have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Quote, he is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological and chemical weapons because his military is, you know, might say significantly underperforming. And he says, quote, I don't think there is any such thing as the ability to easily use tactical nuclear weapons and not end up with Armageddon. So President Biden echoing something that we've said here on the show, which is like, listen, once you go nuclear, whether it has a tactical, quote unquote, use on the ground for an operation or strategic use like an ICBM, once you break that threshold, all bets are off and we

are almost certainly going to be in a war with Russia, especially given what the Baltic states have made clear in response would be. And President Biden making it very clear that he believes that. Now, the question then arises, if you believe that, are you going to change U.S. policy? I mean, since you seem to believe that, what is your, you know, plan for an off-ramp? I will say, Crystal, I was heartened at one thing that the press did not tout as much, which is in the same speech, he did say, and I want to give him credit for this, I and my team have been looking for ways in order to give him an off-ramp as much as possible. So, he does at least have it in his mind. We haven't yet seen that in any leaked private communications or active diplomacy with the Russians. As far as I know,

it has not happened yet at the presidential level. I know that there was a brief talk once, I think, between the foreign minister and the secretary of state. There are some quasi interactions happening, but nothing at the highest level, nothing in Turkey that is significant enough in order to report to anyone. So on the one hand, he says nuclear armageddon is possible. I'm looking for off-ramps. On the other hand, there is no actual policy yet pursuing that end. So who knows?

I mean, I don't know where his mind is at, and this is always a difficulty with covering Biden. One day he's the guy who comes out of Afghanistan. The other day, he's like, no, we're committed to an unending war in Ukraine. So I'm like, well, who are you? Right. Yeah. And I definitely co-sign your thoughts that these sorts of comments, like it would be important for the American people to understand the totality of President Biden's thinking and not just have it reserved for donors in New York City. However, there was a lot of pearl clutching about these comments from leaders.

You had Macron saying we must speak with prudence when commenting on such matters. You had former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying that these comments were reckless and demonstrating maybe one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the last decades. Here's a quote. Oh, my goodness. First of all, those comments were reckless. I think that even more importantly, they demonstrate maybe one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the last decades, which was the failure to deter Vladimir Putin the same way the Trump administration did for four years. When you hear the president talking about Armageddon at a random, as a random thought, just musing as a fundraiser, that is a terrible risk to the American people. Listen, I am

personally heartened to hear that at least this is somewhere in Biden's mind, the awareness of what an incredibly dangerous situation we're in right now. nuclear crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis, that there is no little bit of nuclear war. This idea of, quote unquote, tactical nuclear weapons and an ability to manage the escalation of that is somewhat fanciful. I am very heartened to hear those comments, even as I indicated, I would prefer them come directly to the American people versus a leak from a donor fundraiser. The other thing to say about this ultimately is that, you know, it seems like, as best we can tell from leaks from the administration and some of the offhanded comments that they've made at the beginning of this war, when Russia's military failures were so clear, there appeared to be a lot of arrogance from the Biden administration. You had all those

comments leaking that were like, you know, we need to end Putin's regime and like the only way out of this is ultimately for Putin to be gone. You even had Biden making some comments to that effect actually multiple times saying, you know, calling Putin a war criminal and saying that he must go and these sorts of things. And I think that arrogance at the beginning of this war really short-circuited the best possibility of coming to some sort of ceasefire and peace deal early on. Now, when you want to talk, and we were talking about off-ramps at the time, and it took a lot of heat for that ultimately, and you still take a lot of heat for saying things like that. Now, thinking of how to find that off-ramp is just increasingly, incredibly difficult, even as these latest strikes that really hit across all of Ukraine are a reminder that the people who suffer the most, the longer this war goes on,

is ultimately the Ukrainians. And then you layer on top of that the chance, as Biden puts it, for nuclear Armageddon, and you really have a horrifying situation. So, you know, I'm glad to see this is at least somewhere in the thinking and the president's mind that we are at this incredibly perilous, terrifying place. But we have yet to see the U.S. policy to match this kind of rhetoric. And ultimately, you know, what they do is what really counts. Yeah, I think that is what I would underscore more than anything, which is that on a policy level, nothing is reflecting it. And I am really concerned that these comments on nuclear Armageddon happened behind closed doors to a billionaire, not on camera. Like, what is that? To his credit, I encourage everybody to go and watch it. President

Kennedy, in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, before things were quote-unquote solved, did a primetime address from the Oval Office where he's like, look, here's the evidence, here's where my head's at. Here's what I'm thinking. And here's what I'm saying to the Russians. This is the way that we resolve it. I think pretty much the entire country at one point either watched or was familiar with what the president said in that. President Biden, if you believe we are closer to nuclear Armageddon than any time before the Cuban Missile Crisis, why would you not then be clear about that to the American people? And unfortunately, I think that you and I know the answer to that question, which is if people knew how close that we were, and I really don't think that most people do. Like, look, you know,

I love this show. A lot of people watch it, but let's not pretend even not just our show. I'm doing my own monologue on this today. Most people don't read the news or are vaguely familiar with what's happening. I don't think they have any clue about how close we are. Well, there was only one way to solve that, which is to really create a major event in which you're like, here's where we are. Here's the potential solutions. Here's my position with Russia. And that's where we go from there. Instead, it's to say this stuff behind closed doors for those who are kind of, quote unquote, in the know to be like, oh, my God, we're so close to some sort of nuclear crisis with Russia. And then you continue policy as usual with Ukraine that is on the ground. Well, and that's the reason why he doesn't do that major address and really lay out the risks, because the fact that we're in this place is in part,

at least due to his administration's policy. And so the minute you realize how close to the edge we are and what a truly terrifying situation is, then, you know, the American people are going to go, well, how the hell did we get here? Why did you let us get to this place? Where has been the consideration of the risks of the strategy that we've been employing here? We haven't heard anything about this up until now that we're on the brink of nuclear war. So that's why the comments have to be sort of like hidden behind closed doors at some Democratic Party fundraiser, because to acknowledge the risk of the situation is to acknowledge the failure of the policy that has led us up to this point. So I think that's why you don't hear it. But I mean, certainly the media isn't going to do

the job of helping the American people understand what a frightening place we're in right now and the consequences of this action. This is what we've been terrified of the whole way along, that with so little, no debate effectively, so little discussion, so little debate, so little weighing of any potential negative consequences of the actions, we would sleepwalk our way right exactly to this point. And sadly, that is exactly what has happened. And the missed opportunities early on, to the extent that there were, and there's no guarantees in terms of ceasefire talks

or peace deals or any of those things, but there is no doubt that in those early days, you remember Ryan Grimm was the only person at a White House press briefing that even asked the question, hey, what about diplomacy? Hey, what are you doing to pressure the Ukrainians to try to come to the table and try to come to some kind of a deal so that we don't end up in this hellish dystopian landscape? There was no pressure

from the press. They never explained the downside risks of the actions that we were taking. And so that's in part how we end up in this place today. Yeah, I think. And let's move on now to the next block because I found this with very great interest, Crystal, which is that I have often thought with Trump that his superpower is just saying what a lot of people think and without any regard for what the Washington establishment or the media will say. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes there are things that shouldn't be said. With Trump, though, with Ukraine, he, to my knowledge, is the most prominent former or current U.S. official, former president of the United States, advocating for a negotiated peace in Ukraine. And also, I want you to not only to pay attention to what he says, pay attention to the way that the crowd reacts whenever he says it. Let's take a listen. We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in

Ukraine or we will end up in World War III and there will be nothing left of our planet all because stupid people didn't have a clue. They didn't have a clue. They really don't understand. I rebuilt our military. I rebuilt our nuclear power. They don't understand what they're dealing with, the single most prominent person affiliated in any way with the U.S. government to make any sort of comment like that and to tell the reality of what we are. I also do think it's very noteworthy that Trump, being the only person who says that, will become the flashpoint onto which this debate is then decided, which is part of the reason why I think it's a bad thing that he's the only person who is saying it. But I do think that there probably is a political opportunity for somebody out there who wants to say it. It's just that they're all terrified of being branded by the media as like a Russian sympathizer. I mean, look at what they did to Josh Hawley for voting against NATO on Finland and Sweden. Well, look at, I mean, look at what they did to Elon Musk. I mean, I'm, you know. Right. You don't even have to be a fan.

I'm not a big Elon Musk fan. But the man has done a lot for the Ukrainian cause. I mean, like, legit, Starlink has been critical to what they've been able to accomplish. And just by, I mean, it's sort of stupid to have, like,

a Twitter poll about a peace deal, but just by suggesting, hey, maybe we should have a negotiated settlement here, you have former and the current Ukrainian president coming out and slamming him and all kinds of their diplomats and all this stuff just going nuts over this thing, totally trashed by all sorts of mainstream liberals as well for, you know, and as Putin's puppet and Russian sympathizer and all of this sort of nonsense. So yeah, I think with Trump,

like obviously this isn't some sort of principled and clear eyed stance or whatever. The man sniffs out on a political opportunity. And we know that's the case because actually, I mean, previously he was in spite of the like, oh, he's Putin's best buddy and whatever. He was actually very hawkish towards Russia in a lot of like the actual policy sense when he was president. The beginning of this war, remember his rhetoric was like insane about the things that he was suggesting that we do, like direct U.S. fighter jets getting directly involved. I mean, all kinds of nonsense that he was floating about this stuff. So he was sort of like testing out where is the political opportunity here? Where should I land? One day it was suggesting being more hawkish. The next day it was suggesting sort of more like

what he's saying here. The fact that he's landed in this place after testing the waters on all kinds of different messaging of what we really need is to force them to the table for a peace deal, I do think says that, you know, he's sensing that there is an unmet desire with the American people for diplomacy. And I don't think he's wrong. And we've covered the polling here from the Quincy Institute and other places that says, like, the mainstream position in American society is not endless weapon shipments with no ends in sight. It's, yeah, we support the Ukrainian cause. We'll continue to support them. But we want to see some real moves towards diplomacy. And don't pretend like you have nothing to say about that when the whole reason that Ukraine is able to, continue to support them. But we want to see some real moves towards diplomacy. And don't pretend

like you have nothing to say about that when the whole reason that Ukraine is able to, you know, get to this place in the war at all is because of our arms, our training, and our intelligence. Don't sit here and pretend like you have nothing to say about how this conflict comes to a close. That's also one of my biggest pet peeves. They're like, well, what are the Ukraine? I'm like, listen, Ukraine does not exist as a polity without the United States. Let's all be very, very honest about that. The Ukrainians themselves would tell you that. They're like, well, what are the Ukraine? I'm like, listen, Ukraine does not exist as a polity without the United States. Let's all be very, very honest about that. The Ukrainians themselves would tell you that. They're like, no, we wouldn't exist without the defense of the US. So, okay. If that is the case, then of course that you have a say. On the Trump thing, I don't want to claim that the man is some great strategic genius because this is always the problem with

Trump. On the one hand, he says stuff like that. Does he really mean it? He's also the person who hired John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and recognized Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. He's also the person who shipped Javelin missiles to Ukraine when Obama would not ship Javelin missiles to Ukraine out of fear of provoking the Russians. He's the person who I think they withdrew from whatever the nuclear treaty was under America, the New START treaty, I think it was. So there's two hands to Trump. There's the guy who basically folded to the anti-Russian deep state the entire time. And then there was a guy at the Helsinki conference who was actually in charge. In general, I'm going to go with the deep state. That being said, when he was the president, as president, he says that

if he were to be in power, this is the type of deal that he would go to. And on that, there is some evidence, right? He is the person, broke longstanding U.S. precedent, and met with Kim Jong-un. You say what you want, but after that meeting, they didn't have any high-profile missile launches in the Asia Pacific. You know, I'm thinking about doing a monologue on this tomorrow, Crystal, but, you know, this is not the only nuclear crisis we have to worry about in Ukraine. Kim Jong-un's been flying off ballistic missiles. The Japanese are freaking out. They're overflying the EEZ.

You know, I was basically convinced in 2017, I was like, I honestly think we might be going to war with North Korea. I didn't really see what the off-ramp was because I didn't think it was possible for Trump to basically break the diplomatic consensus and say, no, enough. I'm going to go and meet with Kim Jong-un and try and come to a deal. Ultimately, it didn't work out, and he left office and kind of lost interest. But I still think he should be applauded for doing that. I thought it was a courageous act as an American president. Here's the other one. He did an extremely unpopular thing, according to the American deep state.

Trump is the one who negotiated that peace deal with the Taliban. We have to give him credit for that. He did it. It didn't end up withdrawing on the timeline. He supposedly tried his best, all of that. So Trump is torn between who he actually listens to, whether he's paying attention or not. I just think it's – I want to present all sides of who Trump really is. He's unpredictable.

That's exactly right. I mean, in some areas, his foreign policy was like the most hawkish possible. Right. Think about the strike on Qasem Soleimani. Oh, right, right. Incredibly dangerous, escalatory, risked war with Iran right then and there. Of course, took us out of the Iranian nuclear agreement. You know, also very escalatory measure that ended up with a hardliner coming to power.

And we're still not back in that deal because of everything that has happened there. The Biden administration is partially to blame for that as well. Extremely hawkish and dangerous actions there. Very hawkish towards Russia. And then you have, you know, the meeting with Kim Jong-un. You have the deal making with the Taliban. So, yeah, that's why that guy, you can't rely on him to be, you know, interested in diplomacy or peacemaking because he really is all over the map. I think the best thing you can say about these latest comments is he does have a nose for sniffing out when there's a political opportunity to say something that the mainstream press is completely unwilling to, you know, just even entertain when there is a

significant part of the population that wants to hear exactly what he's saying. Because ultimately, even though the media has done a terrible job laying out the risks, even though the president hasn't come out and said it directly to the American people, people aren't stupid. They realize that you're messing with the nuclear power here and that you could very easily end up in World War III. And they also just are asking themselves, how much are we, what is really at stake for us in the Ukrainian cause? Why aren't we using our leverage

to ultimately trying to bring this war to a close? I mean, there just has been no vocal pro-peace movement within the United States. So it's just interesting to see him trying to seize on what he clearly sees as political opportunity. That's what my takeaway was, which is that I'll never believe a word the man says until it's actually done. But I was like, I do know his real genius is for sniffing out a position that is completely underserved in the market of politics. So I took

away a lot from the fact that he was even willing to go there. And of course, it does reflect at least some of his existing underlying beliefs. To underscore exactly why that political opportunity existed in the first place, well, in the media, they are actually, and I can't even believe I'm making this up, or I can't even believe I'm saying this, are going after President Biden for suggesting that there is a threat of nuclear war. CNN's Jake Tapper, who will be the new host of their 9 p.m. primetime, essentially mocking Biden and pressing a Democratic senator on why he would be so foolish to even suggest this basic fact.

Let's take a listen. So what's President Biden talking about? Do you see Armageddon as a real possibility? Well, I think the president is right to raise the risk of nuclear conflict because Vladimir Putin is increasingly getting pushed into a corner. This war is going incredibly badly for him. The mobilization that he has undertaken has backfired. This morning, you see scenes of hundreds of Russian troops essentially refusing to go into training and to the front. So, you know, this is a dangerous man and the United States has to be ready for Putin to use a tactical nuclear weapon.

I agree. I don't think there's any sign that he is going to do that imminently. And it's important for us to send signals about what the consequences would be should he make that choice. So, I mean, he's like, what is he talking about? Essentially being like, what do you mean?

What do you mean that you don't know what he's talking about? Right. Are you serious? Like, how could you possibly arrive at a scenario where you don't understand, especially whenever you work in media, what the risks are? And I think it's all part of a concerted campaign, basically, in order to try and, quote, calm the waters and not make people realize what's going on here. Because if they do, they might start asking a lot of questions. I meet a lot of people, Crystal, who are like, hey, what's going on? They don't follow this stuff. To the extent that they're aware of it, they're like, yeah, Putin's a bad guy and he attacked Ukraine.

I think Ukraine's been doing pretty well. They don't know what all of the pronouncements from the Kremlin are, the update to the nuclear doctrine. And they didn't know it in 1962, whenever the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. It kind of snuck up on them, whereas anybody who was paying attention was like, hey, this is not a good situation. The point being that these things escalate to that point. And I actually think it's a duty of people like us and of Jake Tapper to be very clear with people. They're like, this is the possible risk. Here's why he's saying it. Here's what he's talking about.

Instead of basically downplaying it. That's what I saw in that. The press only ever pressures lawmakers basically from the hawkish side. And that's effectively what Tapper is doing here. Because if you start to really internalize that we're at this risk of a potential nuclear conflict, then it does raise all these questions about what our strategy has been. and escalating, escalating, escalating from our side and really actively short-circuiting any ability to sit down for some sort of ceasefire or peace negotiation, even as I totally acknowledge that at this point, this seems absolutely fanciful at this point in the conflict. That's why we should have done everything we could

at the beginning of the conflict to avoid getting to this place. So by sort of tamping down the concerns, and we've heard this from Hawks the whole time, of like, he's bluffing. Putin wouldn't actually do that, he's a coward, he's just talking big. The reason you do that is because if you take the nuclear threat off the table, then you give the Hawks a stronger hand to say, oh, there's, you know, there's no reason why we can't have a no-fly zone or these other insane things that they've ultimately been suggesting. So this is a way to pressure Senator Chris Murphy from the hawkish side. They never asked the question like we did, well, why doesn't President Biden lay the sound for

the American people what the risk is? Why did President Biden engage in this policy that allowed us to get to this place of potential nuclear escalation in the first place? You never, ever hear those sorts of questions from the press ultimately. Yeah. And I think that's really what it is, which is that I would like to see people like Christopher Murphy and others pressed on, what are you guys doing? That's the other one that bothers the hell out of me on this, which is that the abdication of the US Congress, they just green light these new weapons packages to Ukraine. I've read them before, before you guys on the show. There's no limiting principles, no limitation on exactly what total delegation to the executive, to President Biden. And, you know,

this is where you got to call the Republicans out too. If you believe that Biden's brains are scrambled eggs, why would you give that man the ability to give anything that he wants in the moment to an armed conflict, which may result in nuclear weapons. Unless you, too, are as scrambled brains on whatever it comes to Ukraine. They have no thought. They're abdicating their responsibility. And none of them want to be branded by the press as some Putin lover. Even Rand Paul.

I've got to call out Rand Paul for a second. I mean, this guy, yeah, he held up the, he asked for the inspector general. Right. He still folded. He took away his vote. We haven't heard anything from him since then. And same, and on NATO, yeah, and Rand votes present, which is like, dude, you know, if you're actually a libertarian, like stick up for your principles whenever these things matter. He didn't want the heat. So even the people who pretend to posture and have all this, the stuff that will come on your head if you voice any sort of dissent is exactly why we're in this predicament and in this problem in the first place. I've talked about on this show about controlled opposition. I think the same thing exists here in the United States. It's just not as brazen in terms of what it all looks like. I guess we're allowed to exist, Crystal. It's nice that we're not in prison.

But let's not also pretend. It's a good algorithm to take care of us. I mean, there's a lot of institutional elements that they can reach for, that they can go for. Anyway, I think it's an important point. Overall, on Biden's nuclear Armageddon talk and Trump's comments here, I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad that I think we could be in a lot worse position than we are if we had Kamala Harris as president, if we had Hillary Clinton as president. I think there are a lot—there would be people who could be in this position of power who would be much more easily swayed by this notion being put forward by Jake Tapper of, like, you don't have to worry about this nuclear war stuff. This is just a bluff.

Nobody serious really thinks this is ultimately going to happen. And listen, again, what's the percentage that we end up in some sort of nuclear conflict? I don't know. It might be quite low. It probably is quite low, but that's a sizable risk that we need to be taking incredibly seriously. So at least that exists somewhere in the brain of the president of the United States, and I'm glad to hear that. All right, let's turn to the domestic front. Some big news also from President Biden last week. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

So this is a fulfilling of a campaign pledge he made. This is from the AP. They say Biden pardons thousands for simple possession of marijuana. Let me read you some of the details here. So President Biden pardoning those Americans convicted of simple possession of marijuana under federal law. And that's important as his administration takes a dramatic step, they say, toward decriminalizing the drug and addressing charging practices that disproportionately impact people of color. His move also covers thousands convicted of the crime in D.C., and he is calling on governors to issue similar pardons for those convicted of state marijuana offenses, which reflect the vast majority of marijuana possession cases. The real news here, I think, because ultimately there's no one in federal prison for simple possession of marijuana. Now, this will

be significant for people who have convictions and they're struggling to get jobs or housing or those sorts of things. It will be helpful ultimately for them. But I think the biggest, most significant news here is that he also is looking at rescheduling marijuana. He's directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Attorney General to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Rescheduling the drug would reduce or potentially eliminate criminal penalties for possession. Currently, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, so it's alongside things like heroin and LSD, which is insane, but it is ahead of fentanyl and methamphetamine. The White House didn't set a timeline for the review. So ultimately, that would be the biggest and most significant shift in terms of

drug policy if it was ultimately rescheduled. And it also is worth saying, I mean, this is a dramatic departure from how Biden has approached marijuana and every other substance throughout the entirety of his career. I mean, he really prided himself on being a drug warrior. Of course, we all know he's very involved in that 1994 Federal Sentencing Act. So he has been very, very tough. And even his own administration, remember they tossed down a bunch of people who had been like, who had smoked weed. They were like fired for admitting that they had ultimately smoked weed. So this is a really significant philosophical, I think, shift for Biden. I would say, undertaken under pressure based on a campaign promise and with the understanding that the midterms are coming up. And this is a very clear political winner here. I mean, the polling on this is clear.

Let's go ahead and put this morning consult poll up on the screen. 60 percent of voters say marijuana should be made legal entirely. So that's going way further than Biden is going here with this order, compared with only 27 percent who say it should not be. And Sagar, this is really across demographics. Even Republicans, that's plurality support. Even among the oldest demographics, it's plurality support. And it's most popular among young people. You're talking about like 70 percent support and only 17% oppose among young voters and also among black voters as well. So for people who care about this, it's a significant issue and

it's just like such a clear political winner that it's kind of astonishing it hasn't been done yet. It is interesting, you know, much to my chagrin that all of this is happening. I do want to reiterate that there is not a single person in federal prison for simple marijuana possession. I will not deny that there are horrific, unjust tragedies that have happened over the years at the state level, of which I've always made clear I'm 100% against. I do not think anybody should be in jail for marijuana possession. I do think that the HHS thing is going to be interesting. So I read up a little bit about this, which is that the reality is that HHS civil servants are the ones who are in charge of this decision. They are required by federal law to review the scheduling of marijuana and all

controlled substances every five to 10 years, of which eight factors of analysis must be required to meet to de-schedule. Marijuana has never reached those facts, quote unquote, failed on all of those factors around the way that the definitions have said regarding harm, et cetera. Now, I don't even disagree that Schedule 1 status, especially given what's not Schedule 1, doesn't make any goddamn sense. I am fully, I want to be very, very clear. The reason why that this matters from a bureaucratic point of view is that the HHS recommendation is actually binding for the Department of Justice. So this isn't really something that you can just do without the, you essentially need whoever the equivalent of like

the parliamentarian of the HHS is. That guy or those guys and girls have to sign off before the DOJ were to make anything. Now, of course, the DOJ can also change its policy about what it will and will not prosecute, but I'm speaking specifically on what the overlying policy is. And I also will say part of why I'm deeply skeptical of all of this is I think all of this is being done on behalf of the marijuana industry, of which is completely unregulated, and of which there have been insane – it's essentially like the supplement industry. You have no idea what you're getting. I'll just reiterate my friend Andrew Huberman.

He's got a great podcast on cannabis, which I recommend everybody go and listen to. I'm not going to sit here and say it's safe. I don't think alcohol is safe either. Personally, I don't even drink alcohol anymore. I just want people to know that a lot of the claims that the industry is making is really all about money. They want marijuana descheduled so that they can make a shit ton of money by selling it commercially and use the commercial banking system. A lot of people don't know this, but originally the way, the way, because marijuana is still federally illegal and schedule one drug, they're not

eligible for a lot of banking services. So they have like special marijuana banks and it's also a high cash industry. That means that they don't get loans. They have basically cut off from like the normal financial system, almost like OnlyFans also was. They want that removed so they can make a ton of money. There's a lot of venture capitalists, corporate, and even Pfizer and the big drug companies that are eyeing this as a multi-billion dollar thing. I think it would be the worst thing possible in order for that to happen. So I've eventually come around to some form of, if it's going to be legal, I think it should have to be nonprofit. There are a couple of countries and other places where they have taken profit

completely out of it and they make it. So on a couple of levels, A, you know what you're getting. B, you're not like using deceptive advertising in order to target children. And C, which is that anytime profit is involved in drugs, I'm just going to go ahead and say that things are bad. Yeah. And I say the alcohol industry is perhaps one of the biggest killers in the United States. And that's a whole situation. And tobacco as well.

I mean, I support that as well. I mean, your issue really is with capitalism, not the availability of marijuana directly. And there are models within the U.S. too that are promising. So we talked about in Rhode Island, they have, I think this got passed, they have sort of landmark legislation that would enable, they're licensing to marijuana businesses. There's some percentage that would have to be co-ops. So there are sort of models that can be employed to make sure, yeah,

it's got to be regulated. Obviously, the like illegal black market for marijuana right now is not regulated at all. And it can be laced with all sorts of things which are even more dangerous. So that's a really bad situation. Overall, obviously, I think this is a really positive potential step forward. We'll see what happens with the rescheduling being schedule one right now. It's completely, I mean, it's just totally insane. No one would say that marijuana is as addictive or dangerous as like heroin for one very clear example. There have been, you know, people who have found medical benefits from marijuana as well. So I think it's really interesting from a political perspective, too, that Biden is reaching for this just before the midterms, because it does show you what a dramatic shift in public opinion there has been on this issue over the course of just like

the past two decades. I mean, when just very recently, public opinion was completely on the other side of this issue. And now you have even some red states which have at least decriminalized marijuana. It's become a very mainstream position. So as I said, I think it's kind of surprising that no one politically has reached for this previously when Biden obviously, like, I mean, he's still the same guy that he's always been. But he sees, both with this and I think with the student loan debt cancellation as well, where the numbers are, where his campaign promises were, and what it could ultimately do for him in the midterms. You know, I found this, this was just a little note in this. Let's go ahead and put the last element for this block up on the screen. I thought this was interesting in a Walker-Warnock focus group. So the bulk of this

article from our friend Dan Marans is about, you know, how people are responding to the various Herschel Walker scandals and how they think about that race. But there was this one little note in here that I thought was really interesting. They were interviewing this one woman and she said she was neutral on Biden because she appreciates the student loan forgiveness, but at the same time is struggling with inflation and nervous about the declining value of her investments. And they have this little side note in here that Biden's forgiveness of student loans and steps to decriminalize marijuana

were his most popular policies among the participants who ranged in age from younger to middle-aged adults. These were all people who were sort of, they were swing voters. I think they were folks who had like voted for Biden, but also voted for Kemp. It was something like that. They like divided their votes between Republicans and Democrats. And these two policies actually seem to land most with them. Now it's a focus group, it's a small group of voters, et cetera, et cetera. But I did think

it was kind of an interesting note. These sorts of things, which, you know, no one would rank, very few people would rank as like their number one issue, they can be disproportionately impactful and motivating for the group of voters that really, really ultimately care or are impacted by it. That's what Michael Moore always used to say. I think it's going to be a good test case. I cannot wait for the election results to come in. Is a youth vote going to be up or down? Let's see. It's a perfect test of like student, everybody said for years,

if you do this and the young people will come out and vote. This one is not as one-to-one, but I think student loan is pretty one-to-one. Let's figure it out. If it's actually true, if it's not, then we can reform our talking about how exactly it will all work out.

I'm genuinely pretty skeptical just because of where the polls and all that stuff have moved. And some people, people anecdotally say a lot of things. Are they really going to break their voting pattern and actually come out to vote? I don't know. I mean, does anybody really care about weed enough in order to come just specifically for a possible de-scheduling in a couple of years? I'm deeply skeptical. That's why I think that the student loan one is a good test case of like, are you

going to come out and vote or not? I think it's more, you know, people get this sense of like people who are more progressive or who are directly impacted by this policies. They just get a little bit more of a sense of like, OK, he's doing some stuff. It creates a more generally positive impression of him for a certain group of voters. Now, I continue to think the most important things are going to be inflation in the economy and the fact that gas prices are probably going back up. I still think that, you know, gives Republicans a significant edge ultimately. But I did think it was interesting that that was something that was brought up by this focus group participants. We're going to talk to Kyle Kondik today. It's also interesting that Republicans really, I think when the student loan debt forgiveness thing happened, they really thought they had maybe a winning issue on their hands.

They're not running any ads on it, but neither are Democrats. I mean, it's basically in terms of the ad wars not being focused on at all. So that's kind of an interesting note as well. Yeah, that's right. Okay, guys, we have some updates for you out of Uvalde. One of them good. One of them, I just can't even wrap my head around what they continue to do down there. Let's go ahead and put this first part up on the screen. So they hired this ex-Texas trooper, this woman, who was actually at the shooting, okay, the day of that horrific, unconscionable massacre. She was one of the first people into the building after the gunman. And she is one of seven troopers who are actively under investigation for their failures on that day. And this woman, the Uvalde School District, turns around and hires for their specific school district police force.

What are you doing? Now, they've since been forced to reverse course because the outcry over this, understandably, was so loud and so great that they had to ultimately go back and let go of this woman. But what the hell are they ultimately thinking? And by the way, she was there and that she was under investigation for her failures on that day. And they still saw her, went ahead and hired her. Yeah, the Uvalde family victims put out a joint statement saying, quote, We are disgusted and angry at Uvalde CISD's decision to hire her. Her hiring puts into question the credibility and thoroughness of their HR and vetting practices. Yeah, you think? Continuing, and it confirms what we've been saying all along, UCISD has not and is not in the business of ensuring the safety of our children at school.

I don't think you could possibly deny that. Even representatives from that area are saying that this trooper was on the scene within two minutes and failed to follow training protocol and duty she was sworn to. People's children died because officials failed to do their jobs. And then she was turned around and hired her. These people, I mean, it's like a den of the most useless rats possible. All they're capable of doing, apparently, in this CISD school district was covering up both for Pete Arredondo, the CD chief, who made the decision not to go in in the first place, and apparently hire other people who are, you know, also involved in the cover-up. And, you know, also, what was it? Intimidating that mom who spoke out against their failures. Just, this is, it's insanity down in the world. Insanity down. I mean, I can't explain it other than just like total nepotism and corruption.

Like just like this good old boys and apparently good old girls club looking out for each other above any and all other principles. She was literally the first DPS member to enter the hallway at that elementary school after the shooter gained entry. She didn't bring her rifle or her vest into the school, according to the results of an internal review. And yet, this is someone that they thought would be appropriate to put on the Uvalde School Police District force. So the other, in the wake of all of this, the more positive update here, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Long overdue, Uvalde School District suspends their entire police force. The superintendent is also going to retire amid fallout from the shooting. I think the superintendent was probably

involved in some of the cover-up here, since it seems like everybody in any position of power was involved in the cover-up here. So they say that the school district, still facing withering criticism, announced the suspension of their entire district police force on Friday. This is actually a relatively small number of people because we're not talking about the overall Uvalde police, which, in my opinion, everyone who was at that freaking school on that day should be suspended and ultimately fired. But they're just suspending the school district police force, which is like, it's like four people. It was like six people. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, they were the ones who made the call not to go into the building.

Pete Arradondo specifically. I agree, which is that it's not just them. Arradondo was the fall guy. And so is the, I mean, you had federal marshals. You had Texas DPS, Border Patrol. I mean, look, we've all seen the photos. We've all seen the video about what happened in the hallway. Every single person who did not actively try to break the commander's protocol and go in should be fired.

And in my opinion, those at the top should be criminally prosecuted for negligence and negligent homicide. I know that's not how the law works, Supreme Court decision, et cetera. I just said, in my opinion, I know that that's not going to happen. The point is though, is that there are a hell of a lot more people who need to be held to account. And I think a lot of Texas authorities are hoping that the world just moves on. You know, some people had attention to the story and I get it. You know, we started with Russia with all of that. Of course, nuclear issues are always going to trump this, But this was a scandal of which the country cannot and should not move on from. And I think the whole world, you know, put gun policy aside, what did we all agree on? These people have got to pay. And so, you know, until they do, I don't think that we should drop it at all.

Yeah, exactly. And certainly the parents who lost their kids because of the cowardice demonstrated on that day have not forgotten. And, you know, I think we also have to kids because of the cowardice demonstrated on that day have not forgotten. And, you know, I think we also have to remember all of the public officials who were involved in covering this up and lying on behalf of the police and trying to make it sound like, oh, they were brave and they were out there getting shot at and getting injured. And all of this stuff turned out to be complete and utter nonsense. So at least some tiny, small step forward in terms of accountability, but obviously far from what the unconscionable nature of that situation ultimately demands. Yeah, that's right.

The other piece we wanted to bring to you this morning is a pretty interesting moment on Piers Morgan's show. He had on Julian Assange's wife and had her directly respond to John Bolton saying that Assange should be in prison for hundreds of years. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that exchange. Their extradition should go forward. And when he gets to the United States, he'll get due process here. And I hope he gets at least 176 years in jail for what he did. Stella? Well, of course, Ambassador Bolton is kind of the ideological nemesis of Julian. He has, during his time for the Bush administration and later the Trump administration, sought to undermine the international legal system, ensure that the U.S. is not under the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction. And if it was, Mr. Bolton might, in fact, be prosecuted under the ICC.

He was one of the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq War, which Julian then exposed through these leaks. So he has a conflict of interest here. Ambassador Bolton? Well, that's ridiculous. I have an opinion. So does Assange's wife. I guess we both get to speak them. You know, I think that what she fears is being brought to the United States and having Assange put under trial. If he's innocent, if she can at least show reasonable doubt that he's not guilty, he'll go free. What's she worried about? I guess what she's worried about is a fair trial,

because it's pretty clear what the attitude towards him is. Well, let her say. A large number of Americans. That's fine. Let her say Julian Assange cannot get a fair trial in America. Let her say it. Okay. Well, he cannot get a fair trial in America because he is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act and he cannot bring a public interest defense.

I don't know why he thought that was such an own to be like, let's hear her say he can't get a fair trial in the US. She's like, he can't. She's like, you can't get a fair trial in the US. I think we should explain what she's saying, which is that under the Espionage Act, you're not actually allowed to bring the same defense that the Pentagon Papers defense was able to have in court. You can't basically say, I'm a whistleblower. I'm exposing government wrongdoing. Right. And it was written specifically in the way such that if the government does bring it, you're litigating it only on the details, not in the way that the original Pentagon Papers case was prosecuted. Part of the actually biggest probably misunderstandings that we have

looked at with regards. Anyway, the point is, is that if you do prosecute him under the Espionage Act, then essentially all aspects of journalism have been compromised under the potential for prosecution under the Espionage Act because all acts of journalism dealing with classified information, including things I have done, involve actively soliciting and reaching out to people with high national security clearance and being like, hey, tell me what you know. And sometimes they do, of which I've reported, of which every reporter in Washington has done so.

And technically they would be able to prosecute me for doing my job, which should be protected under the First Amendment. Which is exactly why the Obama administration, who hated Assange, just as every other president since then has, decided they could not prosecute him. Now, they did all sorts of other terrible things to him, but they could not prosecute him without also implicating mainstream publishers like The Washington Post, like The New York Times, etc. That's also why The Washington Post and The New York Times, I don't talk about it much now, but why they were opposed to Assange ultimately being prosecuted because they feared what it would mean for the First Amendment overall. Now, what's wild, I mean, it's not surprising, but John Bolton went on to spout all of the most,

you know, disingenuous and misleading talking points about Assange, called him a hacker and criminal and said that he put our men and women at risk. Glenn always points this out. Don't you think if there was a single service member or intelligence asset whose life was harmed or even directly put at risk by Assange's revelations, we would know all about it. They were desperate to find that person and they never did. So all they can do is what Bolton does ultimately in this interview and say, just generally, their lives were put at risk. Really? Who? What? When? Prove it. You can't. And ultimately, you know, the other thing they tried to do is paint it like, oh, he's not anything like a publisher. And it was interesting because Bolton tried to say it's a mistake for The Washington Post and The New York Times to take Assange's side because then

that does put them at risk. It's like, no, no, no. It's the prosecution of Assange that has put them ultimately at risk, not their rightful understanding of what this could mean for the First Amendment. So, you know, I really applaud Stella Assange there for being able to keep her cool and, you know, make it clear how she felt about John Bolton, but without sort of losing it the way that I probably would if I was face-to-face with John Bolton there. But, you know, these ridiculous talking points never ultimately die, and to hear them come out of Bolton's mouth is really something. No, yeah. I mean, I thought it was a valuable exchange.

It's not something you'd never see on cable television. So I guess props to Pierce for holding it. He's not afraid of the conflict, that's for sure. Yeah, I guess. He's a strange cat. I just saw him today talk about how you don't even—anyway, talking about being anti-free speech. I never can pin Pierce. Part of why I think he's an interesting figure in his own right. True, and enraging oftentimes.

Yeah, I mean, he's both pro-Ukraine, pro-war, but I guess pro- I mean, when else have you seen Stella Assange on cable television in the United States? I haven't seen it. He's clearly backing her up. Yeah, and he was backing her up. He was quasi-weirdly civil libertarian, but then anti-gun when he had his CNN show. Anyway, this is turning into a much deeper conversation. It was a good segment, and I appreciated it, and I thought it highlighted something important.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Washington Post's Greg Jaffe is out with a profile of Starbucks founder, CEO, and Union Buster extraordinaire Howard Schultz. It's a sort of a mirror image of a profile that Jaffe did a while back of Jazz Brissac. She was one of the lead worker organizers in Buffalo. She helped to jumpstart that whole organizing firestorm. And by digging into Schultz's anti-union obsession, Jaffe reveals a lot about billionaires and the way they rationalize their wrongdoing. So here is that new profile. It's headlined, Howard Schultz's Fight to Stop a Starbucks Barista Uprising. In it, Jaffe writes of Schultz, quote, The 69-year-old CEO had always seen himself as the good guy of American capitalism.

Believing that his own wealth and Starbucks' rise to become one of the most ubiquitous brands on the planet was a direct outgrowth of the company's concern for its workers and their well-being. Only now, all of that was being challenged. Across America, workers who had labored through a once-in-a-century pandemic were concluding that they deserved better and were quitting or demanding more from their bosses, or in the case of some Starbucks workers, unionizing. Good guy of American capitalism. Gotta love it. Now, Starbucks, of course, is in the business of selling coffee, but they also sell a sort of progressive ethos and aesthetic. Its brand is situated perfectly in that late 90s and early 2000s ideology of doing well by doing good.

The idea that there didn't have to be a conflict between your liberal values and your desire to cash in. It was the same mentality sold to a generation of bright, would-be activists who, instead of fomenting real change, persuaded themselves that the best way to do good in the world was to maybe get an MBA and land a stint at McKinsey Consulting. Very Clinton and Obama era way of thinking, and a very Howard Schultz way of thinking as well. Now, for decades, it worked out pretty well for Schultz. The Starbucks do-gooder brand aesthetic made Schultz personally feel good, also landed with a highly profitable market among affluent urban and suburban types. But now, that do-gooder liberal image has crashed directly into the desires and aspirations of Starbucks' mostly low-paid workforce. And in that collision, it becomes super clear that any investments that Schultz had made into those baristas were ultimately governed by business logic, not by any actual commitment

to their well-being. As Jaffe explains in this profile, quote, Schultz found that customers would spend more if their barista knew their order and a little about them. Translation, it was profitable for Starbucks to invest a little bit in their so-called partners so that they'd stick around long enough to learn those important little customer details.

Now, the self-appointed good guy of American capitalism, he's been thoroughly revealed. And behind the mask is exactly the same thing behind the mask of every billionaire corporate executive. Whether it's the ruthless Bezos, the trolling Musk, or the liberal Schultz, at the end of their day, they want their power. And so when faced with a movement of workers demanding a say in their workplaces, Schultz has become one of the most aggressive, lawless union busters in the entire country. Starbucks has illegally

fired workers across the nation for organizing, including seven workers at a Union Memphis Starbucks that the courts have forced them to rehire. They've closed stores that have unionized, citing bogus reasons for the shutdown. They're being sued by the National Labor Relations Board for illegally discriminating against their new union workers, withholding benefits for those workers that have been provided to the non-union workforce. That did not stop Starbucks from continuing the practice, flagrantly thumbing their nose at any sort of worker protections. That's all just the tip of the iceberg. In Buffalo alone, the city where this union wave started, the regional NLRB cited Starbucks with 200 violations of the National Labor Relations Act. According to Jaffe,

this approach, this incredibly aggressive approach, stems directly from Schultz's total existential freakout over the union wave. You come away from this piece with the distinct impression that Schultz takes the union drive as a direct personal affront, a challenge to his very sense of self. And actually, in a way, it really is. For the workers, this isn't really personal to Schultz. It's about having a say, having a living wage, having reliable hours. But Schultz can't maintain the lies he's told to himself about being that good guy of American capitalism in the face of a lot of angry workers who are straight up telling him that his elaborately constructed fantasy is really just a pack of lies. So here's

the Washington Post quoting Schultz at an executive meeting. Why is this so personal to me, he asked the executives in the room. Schultz stared down at the ground, his arms resting on his knees and his shoulders bent. I know what it has taken to build this place. I know what's at stake right now, he continued, struggling to get the words out. And we have to show, to show up in a different way. The room fell silent. Schultz steadied himself. And let me be honest with you, he told them, time is not on our side. Now, Schultz has clearly tried on a variety of strategies for reconciling his personal self-image as a hero

with the wildfire union wave that has exposed a mountain of legitimate grievances. At times, he makes up stories about how these worker organizers are really outside agitators unleashed on the company, part of some elaborate scheme to destroy Starbucks. At other times, he blames the workers' complaints on society at large, which is a good way to recognize legitimate concerns while blame-shifting away from himself and Starbucks, thereby absolving the company of any responsibility to address those workers' grievances. Now, I saw some critiques that this piece was far too sympathetic to Schultz. I sympathize with that view. I mean, we can only expect so much from Bezos' paper, ultimately. But really, I found it quite useful. Because the more we learn about Schultz, the more we see he's ultimately not any different from any of the other billionaire masters of the universe.

They each have their own self-serving mythology about why the way they treat their workers is okay, noble even. Perhaps it's a free market ideology. Perhaps it's a story about how much better they are actually treating their workers than at other companies, or a story about how driving their workers like slaves is justified by the happiness or ease of their customers. But ultimately, they all come up with a way to behave in basically the same manner, an approach that is mandated for public companies by a fealty to shareholder value that demands that you screw over your workers while handing out goodies to your investors. That the personal ideology or vision or mythology of Schultz matters so little in the end, that's exactly the reason why the union movement is so critical. Schultz tells the Post that, quote, unions existed to protect workers from bad companies, like the ones who had abused his father. Quote, that's why unions were

created, he said in an interview. A union had no place at a company that cared about its workers like Starbucks, Schultz believed. But of course, if Schultz actually cared about his workers, he would let them organize and he would remain neutral in the union campaigns. It all just goes to show that regardless of what story or personal billionaire mythology you wrap them in, corporations aren't ultimately good or bad. They exist to maximize shareholder value. Workers aren't organizing because Schultz is a good or bad guy, but because they deserve better. And the system that we've got isn't going to give it to them without a fight. Interesting look into how he's having this sort of like personal meltdown. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, it may not seem like it sometimes, but the magnitude of cultural change in this country as a result of the internet is really difficult to describe. When I read books about a result of the internet is really difficult to describe. When I read books about the period of the 1950s all the way to the early 2000s, the ubiquitous thing that they always describe, the power of TV. A history of the American presidency post-Truman is inextricable from television. We all know the story of the JFK Nixon, but when you dig deeper, the real magnitude of TV actually comes when it shapes

the future of politicians who take power later. Take Reagan, for example. Yeah, Reagan was a movie star in the 1940s. What really put him on the map as a political figure was his GE television hour in the 1950s when he extolled the virtues of capitalism and aligned himself with the political right. He took that stardom, combined it with advocacy for a cause, and it launched him into the governor's chair in California and then the American presidency. Take Bill Clinton. Clinton was a literal nobody from Arkansas. He actually gave a panned speech at the 1988 DNC convention nominating Dukakis back when those things apparently mattered. But he was a national joke.

But he saved himself and his political career by going on late night with Johnny Carson. When he was running for president, he was actually at his televised press conferences and his appearances, like programs like Arsenio Hall, which is what put him forward, eventually won him the presidency. Barack Obama, of course. Obama may have used the internet to propel him to the Oval Office in 2008, but he owes all of his fame to television. His speech at the 2004 DNC convention about there being no white and black America was a blockbuster. Not only millions of people watched it, it was played over and over again on cable TV. He wrote a book and was interviewed on Late Night. How else do you go from a state senator in Illinois to president of the United States in four years? TV could also be a career killer.

It was for George H.W. Bush. He checked his watch at the debate with Bill Clinton. Or Dan Quayle not knowing how to spell potato. I could give a million examples, but I think my point is being made. American politics, and really our whole culture, it was ruled by TV. Until suddenly, it just isn't anymore. Trump may have gotten himself famous through TV, but it was the internet that elected him. Not only through his gargantuan fundraising, but for the first time, flipping the script,

forcing TV to cover his musings on Twitter. That flip of power was the first of its kind in American politics. And while 2020 was a much more normal type of election because of the COVID pandemic, my prediction is that the power of TV will diminish less and less and less every cycle from here on out. And I absolutely welcome it. We dunk a lot on cable news ratings and the decline in the medium. But when you look at the data on all of television, it's stunning to behold. Consider this. Trevor Noah recently departed the scene, supposedly voluntarily. Whether that's true or not, a 38-year-old comedian in the supposed prime of his life departing a primetime TV show even a decade ago would have been unheard of. Even if you don't like Trevor Noah, can you really deny he's not going to be better off on the internet and touring around the world? The numbers bear it out. Noah presided over the loss of a million viewers a night in the seven years that he headed The Daily Show. And look, I do not like Trevor Noah. He certainly had some agency in this.

But the truth is, it's probably more a commentary on the decline of TV itself. Jon Stewart was garnering 1.3 million total viewers on the day he left, compared with the 372,000 for Trevor Noah on the day he said he would leave. Noah's departure in the same year, Conan O'Brien is out, James Corden, Samantha Bee too. On broadcast, crazy things are happening. I personally think almost all Fox programming is cringe, but a lot of people took notice when Fox News' 11 p.m. slot featuring Greg Gutfeld beat out Stephen Colbert with a total audience of 2.355 million people compared to Colbert's 2 million.

Both of those make a guy like Jimmy Kimmel look like a joke. He only gets a million. When you consider younger viewers through all of them, though, they look even more ridiculous. None of them even crack 400,000 in the key demo. Ten years ago, those numbers were orders of magnitude larger. And ten years before that, even bigger than that. They were juggernauts, genuine titans who ruled American culture and our politics. Today, if a politician goes on Jimmy Kimmel, does anyone care? On cable, of course, the people I consider are true enemies. We've talked about it endlessly.

But the recent management of Alex Wagner over at MSNBC and her replacement of Maddow portends the exact same thing. Wagner's debut by nearly all metrics has been a colossal failure. She routinely is able to average only 150,000 viewers in the key demographic. Furthermore, she is not even doing well by cable's own standards. Data currently shows that thousands of people are actually turning the TV off when she comes on at 9 and then turning it back on at 10, meaning they would rather watch Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell and have no interest in her. Management, for their part, has no response. As Dylan Byers of Puck News wrote, quote,

MSNBC is just trying to manage the decline of the linear business. Manage decline is an acknowledgment that the writing is on the wall. And as I've said many times, the real death knell to TV will not come from viewers. It will come from the cable companies themselves, who pay billions of dollars to the three networks to keep them as part of their bundle. Now, it's what makes Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all make a collective profit just last year of more than $3 billion, despite losing a historic amount of viewers. The cable companies pay them a lot of money because they have a monopoly right now on live events, like when an explosion happens and people want to tune in. But this, too, is dying because of the internet. Ask yourself this question on Ukraine.

Do you really need that CNN guy there on the ground? Or is a bunch of dudes on the ground posting on Telegram and on Twitter? Is that enough? It's obviously the latter. Live news and live sports are the last bastions of TV. They too are dying. In fact, the latest ground on sports was broken just this month. Amazon Prime's new deal for Thursday night football drew in 13 million viewers, more than the NFL network brought in the previous week. My prediction 10 years from now, CNN and the cable news networks will be making around half as much money. In 20 years, they'll be making half of that. But with approximately 50% or so of the budget, eventually it's going to be like Radio Shack, selling their prestige

and brand to other companies for pennies on the dollar, because they simply have no reason to exist anymore. All the writing is on the wall. It's just going to take some time. And that's one of the frustrating things. It's like, I wish you would all... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, we have the managing editor for Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics.

Great to see you, Kyle Kondik. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. So you really tortured yourself here recently by watching how many ads? 350 campaign ads from the second half of September so that you could really get a sense of, like, what are the Democrats running on? What are the Republicans running on? What are they bashing each other over? Just give us kind of your overall, first of all, how was that experience for you? And second of all, what were your overall impressions of where the bulk of the ads were? You know, I didn't drink during it, although maybe I should have had a couple of drinks and it would have gone a little

better. But I did space it out over a couple of days. But, you know, I mean, it's a lot of what you'd expect. I mean, Democrats are running very heavily on the abortion issue, talking about how, you know, they argue that Republicans want a national ban. And really focusing on, you know, the exceptions, you know, rape, incest, life of the mother that some Republicans really don't believe in anymore. And so they're trying to tie that to other Republicans. incest, Life of the Mother, that some Republicans really don't believe in anymore. And so they're trying to tie that to other Republicans. And then, you know, Republicans, a lot of it is, you know, candidate X votes with Biden and or Pelosi, you know, 100% of the time or 95% of the time or whatever. And then they sort of connect that to spending decisions that led to inflation, other sorts of policy points, a lot of crime lately.

You know, Democrats, I think Democrats have argued, I've heard from them anyway, that they think that this focus to crime is actually an indication of Republicans that the economic stuff isn't maybe working as well. I don't know if that's necessarily true or not, but that's sort of the gloss that gets put on it anyway. But, you know, the thing about just in like watching the ads all the time is that, you know, the crime stuff is certainly more sort of visceral and gripping, I think, than the economic messaging. Just like the abortion messaging is very gripping and visceral. And that probably has something to do with this too, in that

you're running these ads. You're trying to get people to actually internalize them and pay attention to them. And so maybe that's sort of emotional messages maybe work a little bit better. Yeah. So Kyle, we have two of the generic kind of ads that typify this type of messaging. Guys, let's go ahead and roll these back to back. Six weeks. Lori Chavez Doremer wants to ban abortion at just six weeks before most women even know they're pregnant.

Before most ultrasounds and doctor's appointments. Right in line with Republicans pushing a national abortion ban. If you think it can't happen here, it can. Chavez-Durimer said she was, quote, encouraged to see the Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade. Don't give Chavez-Durimer a chance to put her extreme ideas into action. DCCC is responsible for the content of this advertising. Albany's bail reform is fueling crime, putting criminals back on our streets. Francis Canole would make it worse.

Canole thinks there's too many criminals in prison and supports letting felons out. No wonder Canole praised Kathy Hochul's agenda. They're both for letting criminals loose, making us less safe. Canole and Hochul, too soft on crime, too liberal. We can't trust Albany's man, Francis Canole. Congressional Leadership Fund is responsible for the content of this advertising. It's fascinating to see it, you know, in the context of the comments that you just put there, Kyle. I mean, how is it working? That's the question. I mean, the polls kind of, what, expanding Democratic chances, and I think the last time we talked, now seeming to narrow.

What should we make of what? So not only from these ads, do they even matter in context of all the fundamentals? Yeah, look, I mean, there's a broader political science discussion that we could have about the efficacy of campaign ads. You know, there's some belief that they, you know, I guess if one side has a huge advantage over the other, then that might help move the numbers. And, you know, of course, there's going to be a disagreement between the people who run the campaigns and the people who observe the campaigns on the efficacy of ads. And there is, you know, there can be a little bit of a self-serving thing going on here in that, you know, people are running you know the more money that's spent basically the better it is for them now that said you know this sort of messaging is is you know there's so many parts of a campaign that that the candidate and his or her

campaign really can't control but the message is and the amount of money they raise is something that they can at least try to strive toward and they try to spend that money the best way that they uh that they can you know i think that the crime messaging for Republicans, if you look at two of the most high profile races right now, the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Senate races, you could argue that the Republican position in both those races is better now than it was a month ago. And a lot of the focus of the campaign for both Republicans in those states has been talking about crime-related issues, looking at John Fetterman's role on the pardon board in Pennsylvania, talking about some of the things that Mandela Barnes, a Democrat in Wisconsin, has said about defunding the police and mass incarceration and those sorts of things. And so from that standpoint, let's say, you know, that Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, if they end up winning, I think a lot of people, maybe rightly or wrongly, will say, oh, well, the crime messaging was really effective in those states. I think a

lot of people seem to believe that now. You know, who knows what's actually, you know, going on underneath the hood. One thing that I thought was interesting that you pointed out here is, you know, when Biden announces student loan debt forgiveness, I mean, this is a really significant action. It affects tens of millions of people. It's very hotly debated. It seemed like Republicans felt like they had a good talking point about how this was like, you know, forcing working class people to pay for elite college educations and, you know, the Yale gender studies major or whatever.

But you actually don't see either side running much advertising on that issue. What did you make of that? Yeah, at least in the ads that I looked at, the student aid issue or, you know, student aid forgiveness didn't come up at all, really, or in a very limited kind of way. Now, you know, I was just looking at, you know, basically ads that go on broadcast effectively. I've heard since I wrote that from some folks who maybe see these bumper ads on YouTube or on Hulu or whatnot. Maybe you'll see them as you watch the show. I'm just saying that there are so many different formats for where these ads come from. I think maybe it has popped up in some places, but at least in terms of the ads that I watch,

and again, close to 350, I hardly saw it at all. So I just thought that was interesting. I mean, it does make sense that on the broadcast audience, you're talking about the broadest possible funnel. So you want the message that's going to have the most resonance with the largest group of people. It would make sense if you were targeting those sorts of audiences to a more niche market, you know, using online ads and those sorts of things. So that does kind of have a logic to it. The other thing I wanted to ask for your opinion on, Kyle, is how much candidate quality matters in these races? I mean, you're looking at 350 races from coast to coast.

You're seeing these very similar themes, very similar messaging coming from the Republicans, coming from the Democrats. And it sort of underscores that even though we focus a lot of times on, you know, whatever, like Oz saying crudite or what's going on with Herschel Walker now in Georgia, that isn't necessarily the messaging that's going out that's really shaping the dynamics of these races. Yeah, look, I think the messaging does reflect that sort of nationalized political environment, which I think party label matters quite a lot, maybe more so than it did in the past. And so by extension, things like incumbency and candidate quality, they probably matter less too. And so on one hand, you could say, and I think this is fair to point out, that, you know,

the Republican Senate field of, you know, the non-incumbent candidates, there's a lot of, you know, weak, unproven candidates. On the other hand, like, this is a great time if you're going to have to run those candidates to be running them because people are maybe voting more on party label. Now, you know, look, if Herschel Walker loses by a point in Georgia and Mehmet Oz loses by two points in Pennsylvania or whatever, I think you could reasonably say that, oh, maybe a different Republican candidate would have won those races. But at the same time, I can't sit here and say,

oh, well, you know, it's over for them. You can see this in some of these House races too. There's this candidate running against Marcy Kaptur in Northwest Ohio, J.R. Majewski, who basically, you know, didn't tell the truth about his military record and has all sorts of other problems. And so the National Republican Congressional Committee cut off the ad funding in his district.

But it's also a Trump plus three district, so I think Capner's probably going to win. But if Majewski won just based on inertia from political change and the environment, we shouldn't be shocked by that. Right. I think it's such an important point around candidate quality, whether all this stuff matters. Really appreciate you doing this work for us, Kyle, or this work and then featuring it here. We really appreciate your analysis as always. Thank you for joining us, sir. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. God,

it was a crazy show this morning. We were like, ah, bombs flying in Kiev, all of that. That's why we do what we do. And that's why we so appreciate those of you who are premium members because you enable the team. We have such an incredible team. We ask so much of them on days like today, and they execute it absolutely flawlessly. So thank you all so much for signing up for the premium membership. We've taken advantage of the discount not only to support the core show but all of the expansion. Partner content, my God. James Lee dropped a bomb on seed oils.

Yeah, you guys got to watch that one. It's such a fantastic job. You guys really should watch it. He does a fantastic job with the deep dives. Super talented, super smart. I really recommend that one in particular to you guys. And also subscribe to his channel where he does even more great work.

But yeah, we are so grateful to you all for enabling all of that. New hire gonna be announced very soon. Yes, new hire will be announced soon. So stay tuned for that. Also, Chicago. I was going to say. Live show.

Live show. We didn't do it at the top because we wanted to jump straight into the news. But we would love for you guys to be able to join us in Chicago. If you're in the area, grab your tickets coming up this weekend. So very excited about that. Sagar and I have some new things planned for you that I think is going to be a lot of fun. I'm psyched for it. I think people will really enjoy it.

It's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I'm excited to see Chicago. I hope the weather is better than it is here, although I am doubtful. Yeah. I think it's going to be sunny a little too. Chicago weather. What do we got? Let's see. It's 54. All right. It's not looking terrible. That's not bad. It's high of 63, 63 43 I can live with it

that's great not fun but so be it okay guys we'll see you all tomorrow this is an iHeart podcast