Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/13/22: Nuclear War, Russia vs Ukraine, Global Recession, Fetterman's Fitness, Saudi Weapons, & More!

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover nuclear attack plans, Crimean bridge bombing, recession forecast, Fetterman's health, Kanye West's outburst, anti-woke grifting, North Korea nukes, & Ro Khanna's Saudi legislation!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/Chicago: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets Ro Khanna: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/09/the-u-s-has-leverage-over-saudi-arabia-its-time-to-use-it-00061082  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do a jam-packed show this morning, I have to say. We're taking a look at some of the key moments from President Biden's big sit-down with Jake Tapper, specifically with regards to nuclear war, the thing that we will probably be leading our show with for quite a while now, unfortunately. He also made some interesting comments about the possibility for a recession. I think for the first time, acknowledging that there is a risk of a recession. They've really been trying to tamp down any talk of that. But I think the writing is on the wall. It's kind

of undeniable at this point. Also, a very interesting moment in an NBC News sit down with John Fetterman. Of course, he's the Democratic nominee for Senate in the state of Pennsylvania. And he had suffered a stroke. And, you know, he hasn't really been in front of the cameras all that much. This was one of his first big television news sit downs. And there was a real freak out over the way that this was conducted. We'll show you the controversial moment, see what you guys think about it. We'll tell you what we think about it. It's interesting.

Let's just say that. And then speaking of interesting, Kanye West, new developments there. And the part, you know, this isn't the sort of thing we normally would cover in a way. Right. You know, the musings of basically someone who needs to be on medication. But there was interesting revelations about what was left out of his interview with Tucker Carlson, which I think says a lot about the cable news propaganda machine. So we'll get into all of that. We also have Congressman Ro Khanna. He's going to be coming in studio to talk about ways that he thinks the administration should reset and totally change their relationship with Saudi Arabia in light of everything that has happened there. So we're going to get to that as well. But before we jump into any of that, a couple of announcements. First of all, live show.

Live show. Chicago. This weekend, it's happening. We've got our tickets. We've got our hotel reservations. Yes. Chicago, this weekend, it's happening. We've got our tickets. We've got our hotel reservations. We've got our show plan. We've got our eclipse poll that we're going to play during the show, all that stuff. And it should be a really fun one. It's going to be a little bit different than the shows we've done in the past, if you guys have been to any of those or watched what we posted from them online. So it's going to be exciting, and I'm thrilled to be able to go and do it.

Yeah, we're really excited to have it. I think that people are really going to enjoy it. As we said, we learned a lot from Atlanta. So there's still a couple tickets on sale. able to go and do it. Yeah, we're really excited to have it. I think that people are really going to enjoy it. As we said, we learned a lot from Atlanta. So there's still a couple tickets on sale. You can go and buy them. Link is down in the description. Also, CounterPoints. So CounterPoints is going to be,

you're going to be seeing quite a lot of these folks in the next couple of days. They are just so amazing to have on the team. We should mention that. So since we have to go to Chicago and we also have to do this business thing on Tuesday as well, that we'll just, yeah. Anyway, we're a little stretched thin.

So we're going to have Ryan and Emily. They've been doing such a fantastic job with CounterPoints. We're going to have them fill in for us on Monday and Tuesday. So you will be seeing a lot of Ryan and Emily over the next couple of days. The feedback on the show has been absolutely phenomenal. I think they're doing a great job. I love the topics they pick.

I love the vibe between them. I love the way they structure the show. So this is the last week though, where you can get the Welcome to Counterpoint discount that we've been offering. Discount, 10% off. Link is down in the description. Helps fund our expansion and so much more. It really is just so, so helpful to us. And you know, it's perfect. We, you know, we had a business, we have a business travel that we have to do on Tuesday and on Monday as well. And so we're like, well, look, instead of just going dark, we have them that we have to do on Tuesday and on Monday as well. So we're like, well, look, instead of just going dark, we have them that we can lean on.

So you guys will not have, be without a certain fix. Okay. Indeed. Enough of the administrative. Let's get to the show. So obviously the top of mind for all of us, nuclear war. What are the developments with regards to Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its posture?

President Biden sitting for an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper making some news. Let's take a listen. How realistic is it, do you think, that Putin would use a tactical nuclear weapon? Well, I don't think he will, but I think it's irresponsible of him to talk about it. The idea that a world leader, one of the largest nuclear powers in the world, says he may use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the whole point I was making was it could lead to just a horrible outcome. And not because anybody intends to turn it into a world war or anything, but just once you use a nuclear weapon, the mistakes that can be made, the miscalculations, who knows what would happen. What is the red line for the United States and NATO? And have you directed the Pentagon and other agencies to game out what a response would be if he did use a tactical nuclear weapon or if

he bombed the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine or anything along those lines. There's been discussions on that, but I'm not going to get into that. It would be irresponsible of me to talk about what we would or wouldn't do. Have you asked the Pentagon to game it out, though? I mean, just in case? The Pentagon didn't have to be asked. Do you think Putin is a rational actor? I think he is a rational actor who's miscalculated significantly. I think he thought, you may recall, I pointed out that they were going to invade, that all those 100,000 or more troops there, and no one believed that he was going to invade Ukraine. You listen to what he says. If you listen to the speech he made after when that

decision was being made, he talked about the whole idea of he was needed to be the leader of Russia, that united all the Russian speaker. I mean, I just think it's irrational. So if he's not rational and- No, I didn't say he's not rational. You said the speech is welcome. I think the speech, his objectives were not right. I think he thought, Jake, I think he thought he's going to be welcome with open arms, that this has been the home of mother Russia in Kiev and he was going to be welcomed. And I think he just totally miscalculated.

Two noteworthy things out of that. One is the obvious, that if there's a war game going on, as to how exactly to respond. Number two, though, to me, was Biden's insight into Putin's state of mind, which is frankly probably the most important thing. Because these two men are the only ones who get to decide whether we're going to go into a nuclear war or not. And his answer is really revealing and actually shows us exactly why this is terrifying, which is, well, he's rational, but maybe he's not rational because invading was pretty irrational. And even though you can see how an irrational mind got there, it was still a pretty dumb thing to do. And if you miscalculated once, who's to say that you

won't miscalculate again? History does not tell us that people who have the hubris autocratic power that Putin does often are like, you know what? I've learned from a mistake. I'm just going to chill back and not escalate this time around. Well, I think I actually liked Biden's answer here because he there. It gives you a peek into a sort of behind the scenes raging debate that's going on here in Washington. The media and a lot of elite Democrats in particular have been portraying Putin as this like stark, mad, raving lunatic type of figure who, you know, if your assumption is this is a crazy person who is wildly irrational, well, it kind of absolves you of doing anything to try to bring the situation to a close.

So I appreciated that Biden clearly when Jake Tapper said, oh, so he's irrational, he really clearly wanted to make it known that, no, I see this as a rational actor who had irrational objectives and also, I think the key part was, really miscalculated the situation. And I think there's a lot of reasons why that could be. I mean, when you are an autocrat who surrounds yourself with a bunch of yes men, then they're going to tell you what you want to hear about your military's readiness and the chances of success and the way you're going to be greeted with open arms like a hero by the Ukrainians so that you can keep your position close to the king as it would be. And so it sort

of makes more sense to imagine that he was really dramatically misled, dramatically miscalculated, and now is backed into this corner where, you know, when anyone is backed into a corner where they feel their life, their power, they're like, all the things they care about are at risk, yeah, then people start behaving in these erratic ways. That's why there's this concept in foreign policy of gambling for resurrection. That's not because he's a crazy person. It's because he sees himself to be really backed into a corner right now. And that's the sort of situation from the beginning we've been saying you've got to try to avoid. So I appreciated that

he made it very clear. His view in that debate over whether Putin is crazy or not is no, this is a rational actor. Well, then that puts the onus on you in part to try to, you know, predict what this rational actor might do in light of the circumstances and try to avoid World War III and a nuclear exchange. Rational and rationality are always, you know, just very difficult concepts to grapple with. I actually think Dan Carlin has done a fantastic job of this. He has an entire series on the bomb where he calls it logical insanity. Yeah. Like the logical insanity of, you insanity of war is insane. And so firebombing of Tokyo, if I were to describe to you the exact circumstances of how 100,000 people were

burned in one night, you'd be like, that's the most insane thing I ever heard. And then if I were to tell you the exact logical sequence through which the US Air Force or US Army Air Corps arrived at the way that they decided to carry that, you're like, of course that makes sense. So you have to put that in the context of the nuclear bomb and also why the gambling for resurrection. Of course it would make sense in the context of all human history and warfare. You have to update then the consequences of said weapon. And Crystal, one of the reasons I got into this business, one of the reasons I'm sitting here with you is because one of the things I always hated about the press corps and the mainstream press was they never actually just dug deep into the details. And, you know, the Pentagon is where I started out. Biden gave a

speech yesterday about the national security strategy and all that. And all the reporters did was just quote from his speech in the fact check. I decided to just go read the thing. And inside of it is a very important, a very important line inserted yesterday, October 12th, when it was published. Let's put this up there on the screen. I'm going to read this for you directly in terms of how the Biden administration officially in the canonized national security strategy has written. Which is something that is required for them to deliver. It's congressionally mandated. It's required by law. Every administration has to publish it in the first two years. So here's what he says, quote, The United States will not allow Russia or any power to achieve its objectives through using or threatening to use nuclear weapons.

Now, the reason why I think that that matters is it's spilling it out in pretty unambiguous terms that there will be a response that is very different from where we are right now. And if you combine it with some past comments, both by President Biden there, and also previously about how there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon, I think we can all just readily acknowledge that we are in a world war if this is going to happen. Let's go to the next part here as well. And this is a perfect illustration of the logical insanity that I was alluding to. It's a piece in War on the Rocks by Jeremy Shapiro called We Are on a Path to Nuclear War. Put the inflammatory headline aside, and exactly what Shapiro talks about here, who, by the way, is a director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow at Brookings Institution, who also served in the State Department from 2009 to 2013. This guy is a member of the quote unquote blob, like the foreign policy establishment.

So for him to say something like this, I think carries more weight than just the two of us who have always kind of been beating this drum. And exactly what he lays out here, Crystal, is a direct and rational way in which the world gets into a nuclear exchange in a very, very quick timeframe. Specifically what he says, and this is where the onus is, of course, on Russia, which is Russia has laid out all kinds of red lines. They said that there would be a war Finland, Sweden, we're going to be in NATO. Okay, that didn't happen. They said that there was going to be crazy response if we delivered anti-aircraft systems. That didn't happen. They keep saying and threatening the nuclear, beating the nuclear drum, and we keep basically doing it. And so what is the lesson? A, that the nuclear threat from Putin is probably a bluff, or maybe could be a bluff, and that the U.S. can

continue to test red lines and see what we can get away with. Now, all of that's fine, as long as the consequences of breaching that red line aren't catastrophe and Armageddon for the entire planet. Yeah. What he points out is that eventually the ante is going to continue to be upped. Ukraine bombing that, well, likely bombing. Okay, let's say that. Ukraine likely bombing that bridge in Crimea was supposed to be a red line for nuclear war

in a territorial, well, they didn't respond in nuclear. So Ukraine is going to continue to test Putin's red lines. Putin is going to continue to test the West's red lines. And the West is going to continue to ignore a lot of Putin's pronouncements and give the Ukrainians everything they want. With that, we have something called path dependency, which are two things where that's just going to keep happening. And as that goes, the path to nuclear war that Shapiro lays out here becomes ever more likely because eventually somebody's red line does actually get crossed. And you can logically explain how the insane situation of a nuclear exchange would then happen. I really, really encourage people to read this whole piece. I sent it to a bunch of people yesterday because not only does he explain how the seemingly insane, which is nuclear Armageddon, could happen and could begin with two, you know, basically rational actors. But he lays out step by step what that could look like, what the Russians would do, how we would respond, how they would respond, how we would respond, and how you end up in this, you know,

potentially world-ending exchange with each step seemingly intelligent and rational along the way. And that's what's so terrifying about this. And that's also why, you know, I appreciate with each step seemingly intelligent and rational along the way. And that's what's so terrifying about this. And that's also why, you know, I appreciate Biden seems to recognize that that's the case. When he made those comments that we talked about before, which got a lot of attention in a, like, fundraiser where he posited that we could end up in nuclear Armageddon, which, you know, for a president to say that is quite stark. He indicated to Jake Tapper here that that was really messaging towards Putin to help him understand because in Russia, there seems to be more thought towards, oh, we could use these tactical nuclear weapons and it might be okay. It might be okay. They probably won't respond

that fiercely. We could probably get away with it without having this escalatory cycle. And so Biden is really trying to clearly send a message to Putin like that's not the way that this thing ultimately works. So you need to think again if you're considering, you know, following the line of the hawks and using these tactical nuclear weapons in this conflict. I'm going to read a portion of this piece by what was his name? Jeremy Shapiro. I want to read a portion of this because it speaks exactly to what we're saying here. He says, listen, no rational or even sane leader plans to start a nuclear war. And for all of the Russian regime's risk-taking, it does not show signs of

suicidal tendencies. The essence of the problem is more insidious than mere insanity. Once an escalatory cycle begins, a series of individually rational steps can add up to a world-ending absurdity. In Ukraine, both sides have publicly pledged that they cannot lose this war. They hold that doing so would threaten their very way of life and the values they hold most dear. In the Russian case particularly, a loss in Ukraine would seem to threaten regime survival and even the territorial integrity of the country. He goes on to note that what we know so far from this conflict is ever-increasing escalation. So anytime one side feels like the other side has a bit of an edge, they escalate.

And then guess what? The other side feels like, you know, they're at risk now of losing the war. They escalate. That has been the history of this war to date. That's why he says, you know, with the very provocative headline, we are on a path to nuclear war. Because if you continue step by step by step, step by step in that direction, that's exactly where you end up as insane as that ultimately seems. Yeah, I think that, hey, you know, the peace is important. It does describe the exact steps. And, you know, ultimately, I just think that the general, and know, the piece is important. It does describe the exact steps. And, you know, ultimately, I just think that the general, and I've said this before, the reason why that most

people aren't aware of this is because they're not considering the day-to-day realities on the ground. They're not listening to Putin's speech in Russian in the translation where he updates his nuclear doctrine. They're not listening to Joe Biden when he says behind closed doors that we're on the path to nuclear Armageddon. Frankly, how many people are even watching this CNN segment or even our coverage of this? The vast majority of people are like, yeah, Ukraine is good. Russia's bad. We should help them. They have no idea what the consequences and the chain of escalation will look like. And my fear is they're not going to find out until it's way too late. And then what say do we have? Nothing. I mean,

there's no, one of the crazy things about nuclear war, there's no democratic check. Congress doesn't have to say anything. Joe Biden has sole decision-making authority. And so does Vladimir Putin. You would think in a representational democracy like us, actually it would require people in the chain of command committing treason and saying, no, I'm not going to do it. So do you bet on that? Because I don't. They all share the same assumptions in this war. So I could see it all happening very quickly.

I mean, I don't – I've seen estimates out there. Even people like Shapiro and others are saying that the risk right now of a nuclear exchange is 20 to 25 percent. I don't know if it's worth putting percentages and all of that. I would just say the five seconds to midnight seems like reality to me. And that's a terrifying situation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it falls to President Brandon to keep his eye on nuclear war. And the really sad thing is we could do could do a lot worse, you know? I feel a lot better with him there than I would with, you know, Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush.

Kamala Harris or George W. Bush or, you know, even Trump who was like all over, who was extremely hawkish towards Russia, actually, when he was in office in spite of what the media would tell you about all of that thing. I mean, frigging Mike Pompeo's in his administration. John Bolton was in his administration.

Pompeo is now, they're going to get to this in just a minute, like, you know, it's saying very escalatory, hawkish things. So, you know, it's, I cannot possibly say enough what a precarious situation this is, what a frightening situation it is, what a predictable situation it is that, you know, if you escalate and escalate and escalate and escalate with nuclear power, you're going to end up in this exact scenario where it's, you know, 25 percent odds you're going to have a nuclear exchange. And that, in my opinion, might be on the low side at this point. So it truly, truly is partly it's underestimated. I mean, number one, because the media does a horrific job of explaining these risks and really laying out the risks and

the consequences. I mean, Tapper, you know, we played this out of him before being like, ah, that's crazy talk. What do you, to Senator Chris Murphy, like, why would you say this? This is ridiculous ultimately. But the other piece is, you know, it just, it does seem like an insane outcome. And it's been so long since we've really stared in the face of this kind of nuclear threat that I think it's hard for people to Washington, because they are much, much, much more in favor of conditioning our continued support for Ukraine on some sort of a diplomatic process. So even as they've been like misled and propagandized by the media, they still have the good sense to see the basic dynamic of like, this is not a good thing to just allow this war to continue. It should not be our government's policy that we want this war to continue.

We need to find a way to bring this thing to a close for everyone's, the good of absolutely everyone around the globe. Listen, if we had an ability to have democratic check, I will always put my faith. Oh yeah. What I'm saying is, I don't think that we have such a check, unfortunately.

Let's go to the next part here and let's put this on the screen just to underscore how exactly this is baked in now to basically the establishment and the foreign policy elite. This was an op-ed which was written by Leon Panetta, former CIA director under Barack Obama and the former defense secretary, former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, very, very tapped in figure in his own right. And probably, I think it's fair to say, probably still keeps in touch with some of his colleagues in the Biden administration, many of whom he was once the boss of. So why does any of this matter? Well, he's writing this op-ed to say clearly, quote, if Putin uses nukes in Ukraine, the U.S. must respond with military force. And actually, why I took away so important from this is not only, Crystal, the acknowledgement that the U.S. should respond,

which is that the new canard from the foreign policy elite is that if a tactical nuclear weapon of any kind is used, is that the U.S. won't just respond in a nuclear fashion because, as we would under NATO, since we have no obligation to defend Ukraine, but we would instead use conventional military weapons to attack the Russian military. And then they're like, well, then it's Russia's choice if they want to go to nuclear war or not. I guess you could see how rhetorically that means that you're not effectively signing the fate of tens of millions of Americans away. But the crazy thing in this piece is he acknowledges that it would be an escalation, which would likely lead to a nuclear exchange, and still says, yeah, we should just do it anyway. That's what we should do. So I just want people to know, like, this is the former defense secretary, Barack Obama, the guy who, you know, in the movie played by James Gandolfini, who was like, let's go and get bin Laden. This is the guy, you know, not necessarily known as a neocon hawk, even in his time in Washington.

And this is what he's writing in Politico magazine as a the way that you should always interpret these things are twofold. A, it's a pressure campaign from the outside. Try to get the people on the inside in order to take your argument seriously. But sometimes it's the other way, which is that they use former officials to actually, as a laundromat, for their internal thinking as to what the debates are playing out. So I'm watching all of this very, very carefully. And there are two noteworthy things that have happened on this front. First and foremost was the day after the nuclear threat issued, David Petraeus, former four-star, really the liberal intelligentsia kind of personified, goes on ABC News and said, absolutely, if that happens, we are taking out a conventional military response on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Of course, the Black Sea Fleet.

Of course, there is no follow-up question. Well, Ms. General, would that lead to a nuclear exchange? Right. What happens then? Nobody asked that. Crazy. Second is this piece. So now you have a former four-star, one of the most, probably the most recognized general in modern US history saying this. Second, we now have a former secretary of defense. So I think that we should take these

very seriously. On the other hand, we already showed you that clip the other day, which took tremendous courage by Admiral Mullen, who was like, no, we need to have diplomacy. We need it now. Putin and Washington need to sit down at the table. I'm concerned about the rhetoric. So these are all, like I said, these people don't just come out of the woodwork. It's a game that is playing out in Washington in order to massage the Pentagon and shape elite opinion. And right now, I think unambiguously the Hawks are winning, which is why I want people to know, like, if it happens, I am 99% sure that we will be in a full-blown world war with Russia, which will result in a nuclear exchange. I don't have any doubt about that at all.

And that's why, you know, having a real debate and understanding of the facts is incredibly important. I also want to underscore, this is totally bipartisan, so let's put this up there on the screen. From Mike Pompeo, quote, you know how we can convince Vladimir Putin to withdraw from Ukraine? Give the Ukrainians the weapons that they need to win. Why does that matter? Well, that's the former Secretary of State under Donald Trump, Crystal. So we just showed two prominent US officials. Also, by the way, he was a former CIA director. So I'm sensing a little bit of a theme here about what exactly is getting laundered in public opinion. There are two side-by-side bipartisan responses making it clear we will not back, not even back down because that's, don't even use their language.

We will not go to the table and try to forego this or try to forestall this possible eventuality and move in a diplomatic direction. So without any pressure on that, by the way, which is even with pressure, it would probably still fail. That's the crazy thing, which is that we are not even attempting at something that could give us the off ramp. It's like we don't even want to see if it's a possibility. And by forestalling that, we're essentially ensuring that the path that we're on continues. The longer we wait, the more steps of escalation that are taken by the Ukrainians, by us, by the Russians, the more difficult it becomes to bring this thing to any sort of a close. Cease fire, you know, temporary peace deal, whatever it is. The further we go down this path, the more unlikely it is that we can form any sort of negotiation between the two sides. And to go back to what Panetta is saying here of, you know, we

should strike Russian forces in Ukraine and basically make sure that Russia is going to lose this war in Ukraine and in the most maximalist way, pushing them out of the East, pushing them out of Crimea, where, you know, before this war, it was widely acknowledged that Crimea basically wanted to be part of Russia. And this is a very, like, that part is incredibly important to Russia. So he's saying we're going to strike Russian troops in a way that will basically make it impossible for them to win this war. How do you think that Putin is going to perceive that? I mean, if that is not an existential threat to him and his power and his regime, I don't know what is. So, yeah, what do you think the escalatory chain that he lays out that is step two. You know, step one is Putin uses tactical nuclear weapons in some way on the battlefield or even as a demonstration.

Step two is literally this exact strategy, this exact thing that is likely to happen is that they will see a direct NATO attack on Russia or Russian forces as confirmation of their view that the West intends to destroy the Russian regime and kill all of its leaders. They say for Russian leaders, this is an ever-present reality. Putin reportedly obsessively watches the video of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's death after he was overthrown by NATO forces. Facing the prospect of death if they do not act to save their regime, Russian leaders will risk launching further conventional and tactical nuclear strikes on NATO troop formations and Ukrainian supply operations in bordering NATO states like Poland and Estonia to signal that Russia is willing and able to defend itself despite the risk of strategic nuclear escalation. So, and then you're off to the races.

That is the way that this chain could unfold precisely. Like, and again, none of that is each step doesn't seem totally insane, you know, but the place where you end up is literal global suicide. So these things that are being suggested by the supposedly, you know, sober minds, the serious, you know, the serious credentialed folks in D.C. are total insanity if you care about, you know, the future of the globe. So the fact that you have, you know, once again, this hawkish bipartisan consensus and for all of, you know, some of the rhetorical things Biden has said that I've appreciated, you know, saying we don't want to get into World War III, sounding the alarm about nuclear Armageddon, some of the

comments that he made to Tapper about, hey, I think Putin's a rational actor. The fact remains that the policy has been one of escalation, escalation, escalation, and a total unwillingness to push Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table. Yeah. And unfortunately, the Ukrainians themselves, and look, this is an existential battle for them. They're actually preparing. Let's go and put this on the screens. Quote, some Ukrainians are bracing for the possibility of a Russian nuclear strike.

Fears across the capital and more of severe retaliation grew after the attack on the bridge to Crimea. Now, you know, they say, but U.S. officials have said they think the chances of Moscow's nuclear weapons use are slim, but they do quote officials inside of the Ukrainian government on background and more saying, look, there's not much we can do, but we are preparing for the reality. And despite Zelensky's initial pledge that, oh, Putin is bluffing, they have since retracted

that, both Zelensky himself and his military advisors, saying, no, it actually very much could happen. Now, also, this is another thing. As I said, I actually went and read the national security strategy and found a very troubling line. Put this up there. Here is it straight from the mouth of the US military. They say, quote, Russia's conventional military will have been weakened, which will likely increase Moscow's reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning, effectively saying that the current situation on the battlefield for Moscow means that they are going to become more reliant on nuclear weapons, both strategic and tactical, in order to achieve their overall war aims, meaning that the likelihood of the strike is actually higher whenever you read this document. So that was another one that slipped out to me. And then finally, let's put this up there, which is from the Washington Post. Again, we're reading these former officials, private U.S. officials. Here's what they said, quote, privately, U.S. officials say

that neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright. They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kiev. Interesting, huh, Crystal? And actually, there's more to that quote. Yeah, so the full quote is that they say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, and actually there's more to that quote. Yeah, so the full quote is that they say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright. And they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table. So the official policy of the U.S. government is just continue on this path. And as I think we've laid out in excruciating detail this morning, that path leads to total and complete disaster. So as much as we hear some, you know, at least like aware of the dangers of the situation notes from President Biden, which is better than you can say for like 99 percent of the media, the path that they are on continues to be terrifying and one of escalation and one of not even being willing

to nudge the Ukrainians towards the negotiating table. You have some other quotes in that piece that are also really interesting, troubling. They say all this adds up to war that looks increasingly open-ended, as even those in Zelensky's inner circle most open to exploring negotiations with Russia said Putin's annexations marked a fatal blow. Quote, Putin injected the virus of infinite war with his annexation move, said a top negotiator for Zelensky and the majority leader of Ukraine's parliament in an interview. Ukraine will never accept this. That goes to the idea of what we've been saying, that the further you go along this path and the further steps of escalation, the more difficult it becomes to achieve any sort of ceasefire and end to this war. You know, the piece about Ukrainians preparing for

a potential nuclear attack, there were parts of that that really got to me because you have to remember, I mean, some of the people that they interviewed literally fled from the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl. Like, this is a country that knows far too well what, you know, the consequences of radiation and nuclear fallout could be. So this is like very visceral for significant parts of this population. And then they were talking about how some elementary schools have advised parents to put together an emergency pack for their little kiddos to have with them at school. One person who works in a market selling home goods said a mom came to her with a list from the school that included latex gloves, a poncho, boot covers, tissues, wet wipes,

and a flashlight, as if that's going to do jack shit for you in a nuclear war. I mean, but that's where they are. I mean, trying to hold on to any idea that, you know, that they could ultimately get through this. And that really brought it home for me what an absolutely terrifying situation and how incredibly real this is right now. I think you're right, Crystal. I take solace in the fact that I live close enough to the Pentagon that I will be vaporized in the event of a nuclear strike. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Ukraine. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is developments on the Crimean bridge blast. Why does that matter? Well, the circumstances of this one, if they play out and can officially be blamed on Ukraine and

the intelligence services, which is currently the leading theory, could of course lead to escalation. And we are paying attention to the circumstances very closely. So the Russians are claiming, the FSB says, that five Russians and three Ukrainian and Armenian citizens have been arrested. They claim the explosive device that blew up the bridge was concealed in 22 pallets of plastic film roll weighing a total of 22,700 kilos. The FSB, and again, this is from the FSB, I'm not saying this is true, says that the explosives were sent in early August by ship from the port of Odessa in Ukraine to the port of Rus in Bulgaria. They then passed through the port of Poti in Georgia and were then shipped to Armenia before arriving by road in Russia.

So why did the circumstances of that matter? Well, you may recall that we brokered that deal in the Black Sea in order to let the port of Odessa open so that Ukraine could ship out grain from there to avert a global food crisis. The circumstances of this, of which people are not paying close attention to, is if Ukraine did use basically the opening of that port to facilitate the transfer of explosives on their eventual way to Russia, then drive it from the Russian side to Crimea and then blow up the truck, then that imperils the grain deal, which imperils the entire global food supply because Ukraine used to export, I think, like one third or something of the

developing world's grain. It's known as the breadbasket of Europe and a breadbasket of the former Soviet Union. Now, it's also, it's worth reading the full explanation. Let's go and put this on the screen. Again, this is from the FSB. This is a direct translation, please. So they say the explosive device, as I said, cargo was transmitted to Rusa. When the shipment arrived, it was cleared by rules and the documents were switched out. Afterwards, the shipper was assigned to an Armenian LLC. The explosives were transported to Georgia. October 7th, the device was loaded into an individual's car. He drove them to a certain place where they were blown up on the Crimean Bridge. They say, quote, the entire operation was controlled by an officer of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs who introduced himself as Ivan Ivanovich, which,

I don't know, that seems like a little bit too obvious. Anyway, he used a SIM card he had bought on the internet registered to Sergei Erdenechenko, a resident of Ukraine, in order to coordinate this. Again, I have no idea if this is any of this is true. Could be complete and total BS, but that is the official narrative from the FSB. In a way, whether it's true or not, how they respond to it is what matters the most. That's true. What they think is true matters a lot.

Well, what they say is true is what matters. The Ukrainians say this is a fiction, that none of this happened. It's very strange the way the Ukrainians are handling this. On the one hand, they're taking selfies with pictures of the bridge and celebrating the attack. On other they're like ah we didn't have anything to do with it but maybe we did wink wink yeah and so i mean i think it's probably pretty obvious to deduce that it happened i continue to think crystal that that story which came out uh from

the new york times which said that the ukrainians were behind the assassination of daria dugina in moscow was a basically a plea to the military services, like, please don't blow up this bridge. Don't do it. Please don't do it because we know that you're planning something. And, you know, why else would they leak it months later? I really believe. And of course, also, it's not like you've seen the same celebration from U.S. officials around this bridge. No. And also one of the red lines from the Biden administration is we're not giving Ukraine weapons that they can use to strike Crimea. And so the Russians have come out and said, you know, nuclear weapons would not be an appropriate response to this.

We didn't know that in advance. Not at all. I mean, this was a dramatic provocation. And I think, you know, first of all, it is worth noting that, you know, the FSB explanation of what happened with that car bomb. Right. Which we really pretty much dismissed at the time. It's like, ah, this is what they, it turned out to be true. So do keep that in mind when they're laying out very specifically, you know, their official narrative of the Ukrainians, while they want to sort of celebrate it, may not want to take direct credit is if this is the chain of events that actually occurred, which is one of the leading theories, you know, in terms of like it was a truck bomb driven across this bridge detonated specifically at the time to coincide with when the train is going across on the other side. That's a suicide attack. Yeah. I mean, so that's, it's sort of astonishing to me that no one has noted that if this is in fact the method that they use, you're talking about the Ukrainian intelligence services using suicide bombers.

Well, I don't know if that's been confirmed, right? No, it's not confirmed, but I'm saying if this is what happened, and this is also, again, one of the leading explanations that's been offered in the mainstream press, you're talking about a suicide attack. So that may be another reason why they don't really acknowledge that they're potentially using these sorts of tactics. That would be crazy. Right? Yeah, I mean, I was telling you yesterday. It's crazy to me that no one has even mentioned that. Yeah, I mean, if it's true, I mean, I've said to you, I mean, non-Islamic use of

suicide bombing is just incredibly rare. Like the Tumult Tigers, I think are one of the only groups that have ever done it. I'm trying, you know, I'm racking my, I took a course on this actually in college, the evolution of suicide bomb. And as far as I know, this would, this would definitely enter the textbooks as a, I mean, as one of those, yeah, I mean, as a use of a tactic. And that would show you just how extraordinary it is if it were employed in warfare here. That's why the Russians are calling it a terrorist attack. Which makes sense. I mean, you know, we shouldn't forget this.

Russia actually has its own suicide bombing problems with a lot of the Dagestani population. Yeah. And more. The people in Moscow have suffered before. The people in the provinces and more have used. So, yeah, wow. So, listen, I'm not, I just more have used. So, yeah, wow. I just want to be clear. This isn't confirmed. I'm not saying that is what happened, but it is

one of the leading theories that's been laid out in the press without them ever going that next step and saying, like, and that would mean it was a suicide attack. You have the Ukrainians who want to celebrate but don't really want to take credit, and then the FSB laying out what their official narrative is of what happened. And, you know, I think your point is the most important one, Sagar, which is that in some ways it matters less what actually happened versus what the Russian government is selling to their people as the narrative of what happened here. So, look, will it be a justification for more than the strikes we've seen on Kiev or not? We're going to see in the coming days and we'll keep everybody apprised. Let's go to the next part here, which is also, frankly, probably even more important. Let's go and put this up there, which is that Putin says all infrastructure is now at risk after the Nord Stream hit, which, of course, he didn't do, though.

So he says he condemns the gas pipeline blast as an act of terror and says that Moscow's adversaries are benefiting from the attack. Now, why does this matter? Well, look, I mean, we will never know who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline or not. There's a good enough case to basically say that everybody did it. Either the Ukrainians did it, the Russians did it, the U.S. did it, NATO did it. U.K. is a possibility. U.K. Whoever did it, somebody's benefiting.

Putin says that the adversaries are benefiting. You could make that case. You could also make the case that the Russians already already shut it off, so why does it matter? Anyway, here's what they said. The attacks are an act of terror that set, quote, the most dangerous precedent, according to Putin, yesterday at a Moscow energy forum. He says it shows any critically important object of transport, energy, utility, infrastructure is under threat irrespective of where it is located or by whom it is managed.

He, of course, blamed the U.S., Ukraine, and Poland, saying that they were the beneficiaries of the blast. And look, it's a very ominous comment because if you, okay, let's accept the reality, the possible reality that it was Russia. Well, in that world, that was a major signal to Europe. They're like, hey, this pipeline in the Baltic Sea with Norway, I can cut that off tomorrow. You're dead. You're going to freeze to death if I cut that off. I can cut off all my gas, and I can make life very miserable for you very, very quickly in the event of a real war. And now we've established the precedent, who knows who did it or not, that the Nord Stream pipeline has been targeted.

So this is not an empty threat. And that's why, again, everybody is testing each other's red lines up and near the point. And we have no choice but to take it seriously. Because even if, let's say it wasn't Russia who did this, well, now their infrastructure has been hit. And if they internally believe that it wasn't them, then they're going to look at other energy infrastructure as a legitimate target in protest. Either way, whoever is responsible, Putin's comments, we have no choice but to take it seriously, especially given the vulnerability of the European public. Now, Germany, as I understand it, has gotten about 95% of the natural gas stocks that they need. So they're actually probably going to be fine over the winter.

They basically had to mortgage their entire economy to do it. They've been filling up their reserves. Yeah, well, they effectively had to nuke their entire economic prospect for the next five years in order to make sure they don't freeze this winter. But they have survived. However, the developing world has not. Pakistan, Bangladesh, many others are going to have massive blackouts or are going to be burning coal for a decade, probably more.

Plus, as a result of all of this, Japan also paying. Anyway, like we're going to have a global recession almost as certainly as a result of what's happening. My point, though, still being that Germany is a very rich nation. There's a lot of other countries in Europe that need this gas in order to stay on. And to keep the EU and NATO united, it's a very precarious situation because they're not the only ones with high energy bills and they're not the, what,

the largest economy on the continent. Germany was always going to probably be fine. It really is the smaller nations, Slovakia, Czech Republic, them that are heavily reliant on this energy. And they're basically all competing for this natural gas. Putin has used before precedent, very poor actions and illegal actions taken by the

U.S. government to say, oh, well, if y'all can do it, then you've set the precedent. I'm going to go ahead and do it too. I mean, that was effectively his justification for invading Ukraine here in the first place was like, well, y'all did in Iraq, so I don't know why I shouldn't do it here. So him using these sorts of actions as justification for his own, you know, illegal and terrible actions would not be unprecedented. Another thing I wanted to note is there was just a UN General Assembly vote, which I think was quite noteworthy. I don't know if you saw this, Sagar, but there has been, you know, there have been a number of countries that have basically tried to stay non-aligned, unaligned in this conflict to try to stay sort of very neutral. Pretty stunning rebuke of them, though, with this U.N. resolution that was passed that, you know, is basically like condemning all of their actions in terms of Ukraine. And it passed overwhelmingly, 143 to 5.

So they only had five countries who were willing to directly side with Russia. And then you had 35 abstentions of people who were like, no, I'm staying out of it. And I think that China and India were among those. But, you know, he's clearly sort of lost ground in terms of the public narrative and like the global view of what's going on here. And we covered previously the way that China and India are sort of, you know, also pushing back on the actions that the Russian regime has taken with regards to Ukraine. Yeah, that vote actually was pretty important. The Biden administration wanted only 105, which is the same number that had the resolution on Crimea.

They got 40 more than they actually bargained for, which is pretty extraordinary. The five who voted against it were North Korea, Syria, Belarus, and Nicaragua. So some true great company to keep there for Putin. Look, I mean, it shows you how isolated he is, even China and India not voting affirmatively in that position. And on top of the fact that he was rebuked directly by Modi and directly, not, well, semi by the Chinese foreign ministry after the missile attack because of the uncertainty it has caused. All right, now let's go to one of my personal favorite mysteries of what has been happening in the last couple of days regarding Elon Musk. So, Vice News wrote a big piece two

days ago. Let's put this up there on the screen. Headline, Elon Musk spoke to Putin before tweeting Ukraine peace plan, colon, report. Now let's all take a lot of notice of that colon and report. That report is doing a lot of work there. So they have a declarative headline where they say that this happened. Now their source for this, this is where things get sketchy. They said that the report comes from Ian Bremmer, who is not a journalist. Ian Bremmer, it's hard to describe him. Pundit, international affairs explainer to the neoliberal elite. He kind of runs like a global information firm where rich people pay him to figure out geopolitics and tell him the inside scoop of what's going on.

All right, that's the best way. He's made himself fantastic. Washington insider type. More like global insider. He's always on the phone with world leaders and all these other people, and he has a big profile on MSNBC, et cetera. My point is that he's not a journalist,

so that's why it's a little bit sketchy, and he has been caught in the past kind of massaging the facts when trying to push a narrative in a certain direction in order to fit his worldview. Anyway, so all of this goes back to Ian Bremmer. Now, Ian Bremmer apparently wrote in a email to his subscribers, his paywall subscribers, that Musk had told him that Putin was prepared to negotiate, but only if Crimea remained Russian, if Ukraine accepted a form of neutrality, if Ukraine accepted the Russian annexation. According to Bremer, Musk had said that Putin had told him these goals that they accomplished no matter what. Now, what's weird, though,

is that Bremer claimed that that conversation with Musk had happened two weeks before, so way before the Twitter poll. So allegedly, in Bremer's timeline, Musk has spoken to Putin in some undetermined period of time, two or three weeks ago, then decides to just tweet this out of the blue. And then this was picked up as confirmation that Elon, whenever he was proposing his peace deal, which by the way, it was on Twitter and as a poll, stupid in its own right, but let's put that aside, that he was spouting, quote, Russian talking points, not his own feelings about what's happened. So it was tweeted to great acclaim, proof that Elon is a foreign asset, why he should be prosecuted as

the Hatch Act, all this stuff. But then something crazy happened. Elon denied it. Let's put this on the screen. So he comes out. Someone said, Elon, is this true? He says, no, it's not. I have not spoken to Putin only, or I have spoken to Putin only once. That was 18 months ago. The subject matter was space. Now, that's where things got really interesting. Because, I mean, you tell me what you think, Crystal. It's possible Elon is just straight up lying, that he did speak to Putin or not.

I personally, though, find it very hard to believe, given the fact that if it had happened, I have almost zero doubt that the NSA would have leaked that at the time. Remember Michael Flynn? Whenever they were monitoring his communications with the Russian ambassador? I just have to believe, and maybe I'm naive, but the intelligence services are monitoring every phone call that the Kremlin takes from basically the entire world, and specifically the West.

And if it were to involve the world's richest man, I think that that phone call, especially if he denied it, was going to be leaked by the intelligence services. I just, I don't personally see a world where you could lie about that and get away with it. Anyway, then what happened is Ian Bremmer now is sticking by his story, but he's massaging facts a little bit. Let's put this on the screen. He says, Elon told me he had spoken with Putin and that the Kremlin talked directly about Ukraine. He also said that he knew what the Kremlin's red lines were. I've been writing my weekly newsletter on geopolitics for 24 years.

I write honestly without fear or favor. This week's update was no different. I've long admired Musk as a unique and world-changing entrepreneur, which I've said publicly, he's not a geopolitics expert. Also— And I think Musk replied to that. Musk replied and said, nobody should trust Bremer. And then the Kremlin was asked, they said, hey, have you ever talked to Elon Musk? And they're like, no, we've never talked to Elon Musk.

So anyway, look, untrustworthy characters all around. Well, that's— I don't know what happened. I don't have much to say about this because I don't trust any of these people. That's the problem. I think the only— That's why I mean, that's basically. I don't know what happened. I don't have much to say about this because I don't trust any of these people. That's the problem. I think the only. That's why I love this story. The only thing I can really say is that with Vice, I don't even have a problem with them reporting that Ian Bremmer is telling this to his basically elite audience.

But it needs to be much more clear that, number one, they have not verified this. Number two, they say they reached out to Musk for comment. He didn't get back to them, whatever. But, like, you should be leading with the fact that this is a wholly unconfirmed report authored by one dude. But I don't actually have a problem with them reporting it because it is important to know what elite audiences are being told and sort of shaping their understanding of the unfolding of events. So that's basically the only thing I can say conclusively about this, because, yeah, I don't trust a single, I don't trust Kremlin, I don't trust Musk, I don't trust Bremer, so who knows? This is why journalism is very important.

Notice right before this, when I was describing the FSB, what did I keep saying? I was like, look, this is what the FSB says, I'm not claiming this, they have a narrative, these are untrustworthy folks. Yes. And here's the other side. There was none of that. They wanted the sensationalist headline to send everybody into a tizzy. Which they did. Which they did. And, you know, the thing is that if they, it still would have landed.

Yes. Because you have a lot of people who, you know, they see Musk as a sort of like partisan figure and they see him as their light. So they would have assumed that it was true anyway. But you got to lead with the fact that this is a wholly unconfirmed report and soft pedal this a little bit more, whereas they were really trying to go for like the clickbaity, most sensationalist, most maximalist headline. If you want to run that headline, you have to get confirmation from Elon Musk. You have to. You cannot say spoke to Vladimir Putin. You cannot say that. Otherwise, I think that it's enough to just say colon report on the end. You have to say Ian Bremmer claims Musk spoke to Putin.

That's what you have. That has to be the headline. Or report, you know, geopolitical analyst claims Musk said X. You can't just run it without confirmation or at the very least without comment. It's outrageous. It's a he said he said. That's what it is. And you've got to portray it as such. And so look, we don't know. I mean, personally, here's what I think happened. I think

either Musk lied to Ian Bremmer or Ian Bremmer misunderstood. And I think all of this probably happened in some weird off the record background conversation and then eventually got lost in translation to the public, causing embarrassment for both men. Personally, that's my takeaway, but it is a sad comment. I mean, Musk is an odd communicator, so you could kind of imagine how, you know, he was misunderstood or Brammer heard

what he wanted to hear or something like that. Yeah, you ever listen to him on Joe Rogan? You know, it's like, it takes like 12 seconds. I listen at three and a half speed

and I'm like, man, this guy's pausing a lot. I can't even imagine what it would be at normal. Anyway, so that's the takeaway from something

that you may have heard. Whether it's true or not, no clue, but it is a commentary on the press. Anybody's guess. So let's get to another noteworthy part of that Biden sit down with Jake Tapper, where he was asked about the possibility of a recession. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The economy remains top of mind for voters. JPMorgan Chase, CEO, said the U.S. is likely to enter a recession in the next nine months. Bank of America says the U.S. could start losing 175,000 jobs a month. Gas prices are on the rise again. Should the American people prepare

for a recession? No. Look, they've been saying this now how every six months they say this. Every six months they look down the next six months and see what's going to happen. It hadn't happened yet. There is no guarantee that they're going to be. I don't think there will be a recession. If it is, it'll be a very slight recession. That is, we'll move down slightly. Well, look, think about what's happened. We have done more. We're in a better position than any other major country in the world, economically and politically. So, noteworthy there that he even acknowledges it's a possibility. And to my knowledge, that's the first time that they've even admitted that we could be heading for a recession. Now, he's actually not wrong that we're better positioned than a lot of countries around the world.

It's just a dire statement on how poorly positioned a lot of countries around the world ultimately are. And that's being our own domestic fragility and likelihood of falling into a slight or deep recession is obviously being fueled and exacerbated by the Fed's policies. And that is also exacerbating, fueling that possibility for countries around the world. Sagar, there are also new inflation numbers out this morning that do not paint a pretty picture either. That's right. So it just came out while we were filming the show. Inflation rose to 8.2% in the last year. That is down from the 40-year high of 9.1% in June, but obviously still too high. In September alone, core inflation rose by 0.4%, which is up from 0.1% in August.

Food and rent prices are continuing to climb, even though gas has come down somewhat. So what are the things that are driving inflation? Number one, rent. Number two, food. Number three, health insurance. Health insurance is actually up 20%. You know, I just got a letter in the mail, of course, so my health insurance will be going up by 120%.

Open enrollment period coming up. I got that letter, too. What a beautiful system. 120% increase. We should actually cover those increases specifically because it is really out of control. So health insurance is up 28% in the last year. Thank you, Obamacare. Rent is up 7.2% in the past year, the largest increase since 1982.

Groceries are up 13% in the last year, with flour, turkey, and butter up the most ever in their entire history. So I guess we'll get to do that fun. Actually, we literally did it last year. I remember. Yeah. How expensive will your Thanksgiving dinner? It's like, wait. We'll probably do that again, guys.

Turns out it got worse. I can't believe it. Well, and this is obviously important in terms of what it means for individual consumers and families trying to make their budgets balance at the end of the month. It's only getting increasingly more and more difficult. It also matters a lot in terms of what the Fed is going to do because they're going to look at these numbers. They're going to say, so it already was basically set in stone that they're going to lift rates again by 0.75 points. That is an extraordinary hike. I think it will be the fourth time that they've lifted them by 0.75 points.

And then the reporting is after that, they were going to have a debate about what they were going to do next, whether they were going to, you know, sort of dial it back, maybe do half a percentage point increase next time around. When you see numbers like this, which outside of, I believe, food and energy is like the highest inflation that we've seen in decades is not good indicators of how things are going. That is going to keep them down this incredibly hawkish path of austerity, which is designed to, you know, quote unquote, tighten the labor market. What does that mean? Spike unemployment, crush wages, make it a lot more difficult for workers who are trying to organize or just trying to, you know, live and go about their business. So this all makes it that much more likely that we are going to enter into not a slight recession

as the president soft pedals there, but into a, you know, real severe and painful recession for a lot of people. We also had pulled before, there are a lot of signs of just how precarious the American public is financially right now. And in fact, the sort of global public financially. But let's take a look at this next piece. This is from MarketWatch. They say savings are drying up as financial fragility increases. After socking away savings during the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, American households and businesses are watching those cushions rapidly deteriorate as prices have soared.

They have, quote, an analyst here who says, you know, that what they find alarming is just how quickly Americans had to speed through their savings because of those high prices. This is all according to the latest reading of S&P Global Ratings Financial Fragility Indicator rose rapidly during the second quarter this year. Fastest pace of deterioration since the financial crisis of 2008. And before that, the dot-com crash back in 2001. So to summarize here, you know, people benefited from the pandemic programs. They actually were effective in helping to cushion the blow of, you know, the economy shutdowns and the loss of jobs and all that was going on then.

Plus, people were at home. They just weren't out spending as much money. Now that has ended and all those programs have been pulled and then you also have inflation stretching budgets and wages not even coming close to keeping up with inflation. You have people burning through their savings like crazy. All of those bank accounts ultimately being drained at the fastest pace of deterioration since the financial crisis of 2008. Not a pretty picture.

A fun warning from the IMF. Put this up there. I just love this headline. The worst is yet to come from the IMF. Cool. Thanks, IMF. It's growth outlook for the 2023. Interest rate increases will spur a harsh global recession, is what they say. They say, quote, we are headed for stormy waters in the World Economic Outlook published by the top

officials at the IMF. So look, I mean, the crazy thing about these is that in many ways, they're feedback loops, which is markets will drop as a result of the predictions. And so it's, it all just spurs together. And then something else that we've also been tracking very closely, Crystal, U.S. mortgages are now at a fresh 16-year high. Put this up there. 6.81%, making it nearly impossible to finance a new house. It's just crazy. The refinancing applications are down to a 22-year low. Wow. Meaning that if you own a home and you're paying a mortgage, you ain't moving anytime soon. Because

to sell your house, you'd be a fool. And to give up and get a new mortgage, you would also be a fool. Yeah, you'd have to be crazy to sell your house if you have a low interest rate, which they were low. They were extremely low not so long ago. If you had that locked in and then to move, I mean, you would have to buy a house that's like so much less than the house that you're already in to be able to afford it at these rates. It's hard to overstate how much the increase in mortgage rates makes housing wildly unaffordable for most people. And so you mentioned the inflation numbers, rent prices going up. I mean, this is also directly tied into this because if you have people, you know, being pushed down and being able to buy homes and being able to afford homes,

well, then you have a larger renter population and that increases rent prices. So it is like bad for everybody all the way around, unless you're someone who has, you know, millions in cash and can go snap something out up without having to get a mortgage or permanent capital. You know, we I think we covered how these home builders are making deals, selling their housing, new houses that like cut rates 15, 20 percent off to these to these large like Wall Street firms so that they'll be able to in a position to like make a, you know, make a bunch of money on the other side of this thing. But for literally everyone else is getting screwed here. And it's no accident that, you know, the numbers just on the political front, and we're going to transition to another political story here in a minute, which I'm with Fetterman. The CNN's most recent poll has only 22 percent of Americans

rating economic conditions in the country as good. 41% say the conditions are poor. 37% say they're very poor. Half of Americans say Biden's policies have served to worsen economic conditions. 26% say they have improved conditions. 24% say they've had no effect. And actually, that's actually a little bit of an improvement for Biden from a poll taken back in April and May when only 19 percent thought that Biden's economics policies were helping and 55 percent said they were worsening conditions. So I guess some of the things that he has done have at least made an impression, probably mostly of the movement I would guess is with Democrats who have been happier with him lately. But, you know, in terms of the political landscape and where things are headed for the fall, you know, this is a pretty dire portrait of the reality for Americans and how they're feeling

and where things are ultimately headed. Yeah, absolutely correct. Okay, let's get to this little controversy involving John Fetterman, who, of course, is the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Pennsylvania. This is a key race. He's up against Dr. Oz as the Republican. And Fetterman's still in the average of polls. Let's actually go ahead and put the second piece up here on the screen. D2, guys. D2. He actually does still hold about a six-point lead here, but he used to have a wider lead. Most of the analysts believe that things were likely to narrow anyway. And also, Oz has really been hitting him with a lot of ads on crime that seem to be having an effect. But the other component of this race is, of course, the fact that Fetterman is recovering from a stroke.

And, you know, he's been fairly open about the fact he's recovering from a stroke. He pulled back from doing many public events, many interviews. He's only doing one debate, fairly close to when the election ultimately is. He's talked about how, you know, you can tell in his speech that it's not all come back. It's obvious. He's talked about how he has a lot of auditory processing issues where he has to have closed captioning to be able to really understand what questions are being asked and then the context of the conversation. So all of that is ongoing and very open question over how voters are going to feel about that as they head into the polls. So and one of his first big sit down interviews since the stroke, he sat down with a reporter for NBC News.

And there was this one part of it of something she said about what her interactions were like with John Fetterman that has proved to be very controversial. Let's take a listen to that. We had a monitor set up so that he could read my questions because he still has lingering auditory processing issues as a result of the stroke, which means he has a hard time understanding what he's hearing. Now, once he reads the question, he's able to understand. You'll hear he also still has some problems, some challenges with speech. And I'll say, Katie, that just in some of the small talk prior to the interview, before the closed captioning was up and running, it did seem that he had a hard time understanding our conversation. Okay, so this was seized on by some right-wing outlets and by the Republican Party.

They clipped down that part and were sharing this. And this provoked a huge, huge outcry saying basically it was inappropriate. At her. At the reporter. It was inappropriate for her to say this, that it was ableist, et cetera.

And I'll tell you my opinion and then I'll hear from you because I know you had a strong reaction to this as well. Very strong. I just, I didn't honestly understand the freak out in either direction. I am not a person who thinks that it should be off limits to talk about people's like health, cognitive abilities. And we've talked about this a lot with President Biden. Feinstein. Trump with Feinstein. All these people, I think, I mean, they are auditioning to be public servants. I think it is completely on the table to have this discussion. I didn't think it was inappropriate what she said at all.

I also didn't see it as this great, like, gotcha that the right sort of wanted to portray it as because he has said very clearly, I need the closed captioning. I have trouble, you know, with auditory processing. You can see if you watch the interview, he's clearly capable of understanding what's being asked and formulating cogent responses. He just needs the closed

captioning. So I was like, he said he needs the closed captioning. You're saying he needs the closed captioning. That's perfectly consistent with how he's portrayed things. So I think if we had locked it in there, I would completely agree. It's the outrage at her, which is driving me insane because the smear campaign, which has been directed at that interviewer, Dasha Burns, is outrageous. They are attacking her as some like anti-disability, ableist, like activist. Did she say anything about you shouldn't vote for the guy because he needed closed captionings? Is that what she said? No. She reported the truth, which is he seems to have trouble understanding what I'm saying without closed captioning. That's

up to you in order to consider that. By the way, I actually do think it's a huge problem. You could say otherwise because he is not forthright about his medical condition. No, I don't agree with that at all. He's only saying that he has trouble with auditory processing. He refuses to say whether he has a problem with his cognition and will not release his medical records. No, he's said very clearly. I mean, he's released things from his doctor that have said, and you can tell from the interview, he doesn't have any problem with cognitively, like, responding to it. He says, I have trouble when processing, you know, from an auditory perspective.

I need the closed captioning. I don't think that's an issue. And frankly, I also don't think that it's been an issue for voters either. He has been upfront about that. So that's why when I look at this, I'm like, what's the gotcha? She's saying he needs the closed captioning. He's saying I need the closed captioning. I actually appreciate that he's been like candid about that and has been trying to hide that he is in the process of recovery. Well, I'm just saying, I just disagree because he refuses to release his most updated medical records. And the fact is, is that he could have had cognition problems and we have no idea like

until a medical doctor says it interviews so we can see that he doesn't have cognate cognition i mean he just i don't actually just i mean whenever he's replacing words and can't place things correctly you also have to be like uh you also have to be even-handed here i mean he just sat for a big editorial interview with the philquirer that Dr. Oz is unwilling to do. So he's actually subjecting himself to more public scrutiny than Dr. Oz is in terms of what his views are and how he would handle these things. So, like, the freakout about he needs to be more transparent. No, to me, he's sitting for these interviews. This is not the only one that he did.

He's done a bunch of them. He submitted to himself to much more mainstream sort of press inquiry and transparency than ultimately Dr. Oz has. So I think that's a very unfair characterization. See, look, I'm not going to say that Oz shouldn't do the interview. What I'm saying is that you can't rule out cognition problems unless a doctor says so. He refuses to release his medical records that say it to the otherwise. This is one of 100 jobs in the world. It's a tremendously important job.

And frankly, like saying that a guy who has very obvious brain damage, and that's literally what this is, you can ask Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who did a whole segment on this, that's a real issue. I mean, this is a very important job. It requires a lot of stress.

Yeah, but again, I actually think it's more important to know what your stances are on issues and how you would vote. And that's what Oz has shielded himself from having to answer any real hard questions on because he knows that the piece on abortion in particular is very uncomfortable. So like the outrage about Fetterman, who is out here subjecting himself to public scrutiny, you know, in a very transparent manner, seems completely out of step with the treatment of Dr. Oz, who's allowed to not sit for these interviews, not subject himself to press inquiry, and like gets a pass. I don't, you know, I just don't agree with that. I'm not going to give Dr. Oz a pass either. He should sit down for an interview. And

he's not doing it because he's also scared of his position on abortion. Like, let's be very- Yeah, that's obviously what's happening here. Here's the other thing, and I think we probably disagree on the politics of this as well. Like, you know, the polls have tightened in this race, something that we expected would happen all along. It's Pennsylvania. No candidate was going to win the state by 10 points. That was just never going to be realistic. But I don't think it's the stroke recovery thing that's been an issue for him. I honestly don't think that voters care that much about this stuff. And we saw this with Biden as well. Like they took a look at this guy. They're like, clearly he's slowing down. But you know what? I still prefer him over Donald Trump ultimately. I honestly think it's been the ads hitting him on being, quote unquote,

soft on crime that has been much more effective. So I'm not sure it's even a smart strategy. In fact, I don't think it is a smart strategy for Republicans to really hone in on this component as their main line of attack against Fetterman versus, you know, some of the things that they've gotten traction with. Well, that I agree. I mean, look at the data. How many ads are they running about his brain damage? Like, none. How many ads are they running about crime? All of them.

So, listen, I'm only looking at this in the vacuum of the people who are basically trying to smear this poor woman for just doing her job. I would have appreciated seeing this for Dianne Feinstein, for Strom Thurmond. This is the problem, which is that we have these, you know, quote, norms where we're supposed to just bow to whoever these quote unquote disability activists are and not actually and accurately describe people's mental. If you want to vote for him, be my guest. Me, personally, look, I already had hang-ups about Fetterman, so I'm already biased, right? Right. I'm trying to put myself in a position. Somebody who I really liked and had brain damage, honestly, I don't think I would vote for them.

To me, what his positions are on, you know, health care, drug prices, I mean, marijuana legalization, there's a million things that he supports, which are much more in step with my views. And I think that's the way that most voters ultimately look at this. And also, I mean, saying brain damage, it might be technically true, but it's also very loaded. You can see he's subjecting himself to these interviews. You can see he is able to very clearly articulate what he thinks on all of these various things, which is more than you can say for Dr. Oz at this point. So you're right. I think it would be right for Feinstein and, you know, Biden and a lot of other people besides who are 85 years old and a lot of questions about how they're hanging in there.

It would be definitely better and appropriate if they were mandated to subject themselves to this kind of public scrutiny. It'd be better if Herschel Walker, you know, subjected himself to this kind of public scrutiny. It'd be better if Herschel Walker subjected himself to this kind of public scrutiny. It'd be better if Dr. Oz subjected himself to this kind of public scrutiny. So I don't think it's fair to attack Fetterman for doing the thing that we actually want him to do. I did think the criticism of this reporter was completely over the top. But I also don't think it should be disqualifying. I mean, me personally, I don't think it should be disqualifying if you need closed captioning. You know, like, if you're hard, there are a lot of people

who are hard of hearing. There are a lot of people who are deaf who might struggle with. I don't think that it's hard to have, like, an accommodation to have closed captioning

doesn't seem like a big deal to me. And if it doesn't exist, it should exist because people who are deaf or hard of hearing should not be shut out in public office

just because they have trouble, you know, reading lips or understanding what's going on without having that accommodation. Totally. Look, if it's only closed captioning, fine. But, like, look, there's a lot of questions and he's much more at risk of having another stroke.

You never know. As I understand it, you know, with these events, it can also lead to, like, follow-on brain... All I'm saying is, like, you can't rule out the cognition. And I think that's a problem. Sure, but again, but again, he is subjecting himself to more scrutiny and more transparency about what he actually thinks and his ability to perform than

anyone else. So yeah, voters ultimately, like they get to decide what they think about it. But I think he should be applauded for actually subjecting. He could have not done this interview very easily and would have gotten it. No one could have even really said much about it since Oz is not subjecting himself to these interviews either. He could have just stayed quiet. He could have tried to hide the reality of, you know, how his stroke recovery is proceeding. So I think he deserves to be applauded for having this level of transparency. I'm glad he sat down for the interview. I actually do wonder, I'm curious what you think, whether it was the pressure for him not wanting to debate and not having done interviews in the past as to why he did it in the first place. I wonder whether he wanted to show strength in his ability or whether he felt compelled to do this or whether he wanted to do this.

I think they've decided as a political strategy that the best thing to do is just be up front. Yeah. And I think that they're correct about that because if he was in hiding and not doing interviews and not being up front about the fact like, hey, I need closed captioning for the debate and I need closed captioning for these interviews and he did a couple podcast interviews where he needed the same thing, I think it would actually fuel this direction more because it would to health, but a lot of things, the best thing you can do is just be upfront about like, yeah, this is what happened or this is where I am or this is how I'm feeling. And then it takes some of the teeth out of the attack. I will also say that he raised like a million dollars in a day after this interview because there was so much backlash and controversy around it and whatever. But, you know, I think generally speaking, obviously it'd be better for him politically if he hadn't had a stroke and didn't have to answer these questions

and could focus on his positions and his critique of Oz and all of those things. But, you know, I think he's sort of taken the best possible political strategy of being candid about how things are going that he possibly could. Yeah, I want to see how he does in the debate. That's going to be interesting.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Speaking of mental. Let's talk about Kanye. Speaking of brain damage. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So just let me give you a little bit of the context. Kanye, where was he at? Like a fashion show in Europe or something? I believe so. He and Candace Owens wore these White Lives Matter shirts. Correct. I don't give a shit, but a lot of people got very upset about this. I'm like, okay, this like unhinged celebrity did something provocative. Who really cares? Then Tucker Carlson decided to seize on this moment and do this long sit-down interview with Kanye West, which we also weren't going to cover for very similar reasons.

But what was interesting after the fact is Tucker really set this up, and I've now watched the whole interview. He really set this up as like, people say Kanye's crazy, but I'm going to show you unvarnished what his real opinions are. And he sets it up as like, he's obviously not crazy. His opinions make all kinds of sense. He's speaking the truth. It's just he doesn't stay on the script. So the whole purpose, as portrayed by Tucker, was to show his audience in the world that Kanye is not actually crazy and off his rocker, that he's thinking very clearly and logically about these things. Okay, so a day or two, I don't know, after this whole interview airs, then Kanye posts something on Twitter about, like,

I'm going to go death con three on Jewish people. Yeah. Gets banned from Twitter. He also posts on Instagram that he thinks that Puff Daddy Diddy, whatever he's called now, that he's being controlled by Jews. Gets banned from Instagram as well. Okay. So that brings us up to speed. Now we have someone in the Fox universe leak to Vice News what parts of that Tucker Kanye interview were actually edited out.

And it is very revealing because he chopped out, first of all, like four or five different just like over-the-top anti-Semitic comments, like really blatant anti-Semitic comments. But he also chopped out everything that sounded completely freaking nuts and like absolutely lunatic things that he was saying. So he was talking about like someone had planted fake children in his house. That was the freakiest one. Right. To like sexualize his children. He talked about like these energy cities that the Lord has told him he needs to create.

I mean, he had all kinds of conspiracies. There's this like seven minute long story literally that he tells about his friend who died of cancer. And Kanye's constructed this whole elaborate conspiracy about how elites in Paris conspired to take this guy out. So just to give you a sense of what was left on the cutting room floor, take a listen to this. I was biting my tongue on my political opinion because I thought it would be better for my children. And now you look up and my kids are going to a school that teaches black kids a complicated Kwanzaa. I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.

Think about us judging each other on how white we could talk or be like, you know, a Jewish person judging another Jewish person on how good they danced or something. I mean, that's probably like a bad example of people going to get mad at that shit? But another thing that they do that I probably want to edit that out in front of that like that. OK, so, you know, I was talking to Ice Cube today and we got really beat up in 2020 for saying we need to approach things a different way and not just be trauma drunk. Right. Which is a term that, you know, God just hit me with in the past couple of days. We are no longer trauma drunk. We're no longer trauma drunk and we're no longer trauma bonding. And we're no longer woke in the sense of what woke is because woke is just complaining about racism, but not doing anything about it. So what we're going to do about it is say, Hey, you know what? Y'all not going to send nobody at me based on my opinion. You asked the question before.

It drove me crazy to not be able to say that I like Trump. Planned Parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a known eugenics with the KKK, to control the Jew population. When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the race, the people known as the race black. So what also, okay, another thing that's funny,

and actually none of this is funny, but another thing that's interesting is Kanye said at some point that he was vaccinated, but also got cut. Really? But another thing that's interesting is Kanye said at some point that he was vaccinated. Oh, really? But also got cut. Really? Yeah. And he said this thing about, what was interesting to me was the way they cut.

So, like, the Margaret Sanger thing he says there. They left that part in. So, they left in the part of the interview where he's like, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, known eugenicist, founded with the KKK. And then they cut out that whole like to control the Jew. And by the Jew, I mean whatever he went on to say. So they were very selective in the way that they cut out anything that was, I mean, the financial engineering thing with regard to Hanukkah. Super. And then he also says this thing that made it into the interview where he says that Trump was the first black president and he's going to be the first Latino president.

And then in the interview, they leave out the part after that where he says, because I get along with them better than some other businessmen, I'm going to leave it unnamed who they are. Obviously, another reference to Jewish people. All of that, and also, like I said, the craziest anecdotes about, you know, this thing, this conspiracy he imagined with regards to his kids and with his friend and all the energy cities, all of that left down. And so, listen, I think my reaction is a little bit different than other people. Personally, you know, there's a lot of like this, they need to protect him and they shouldn't be airing interviews with him whatsoever. I sort of feel like, listen, this is a grown ass man who has made a, an affirmative decision that he does not want to be on his medication. And it was made an affirmative decision. He wants to be in the public eye,

but if you're going to do that interview, you can't cut and paste it and try to massage it to make it into the thing you want it to be. The whole purpose of this interview was set up by Tucker was like to show how he's not crazy. And then you cut the craziest shit out of the interview. Blatant propaganda. That's the problem with the cable news interview style too. Just the cutting and the pasting and the way it's done. It's like, you can basically weave whatever you want. By the way, we've never edited an interview here once. Yeah. I think maybe unless somebody missed, not even misspoke, but like lost their train of thought and like said, can I answer that question again? Yes.

Okay, sure. Yes. But. Yeah. So, I mean, listen, there is a time and a place for like a formal sit down edited interview. Yes. There are different ways that you can do interviews. Most of cable news is actually just live.

And there's no edits. It's live. It happens. Whatever happens, happens. And there's no edits. It's live. It happens. Whatever happens, happens. There are formal sit-downs. I mean, the Jake Tapper-Biden interview was a formal sit-down. I'm sure there were parts

that were edited out. There is a journalistically sound way to do that. And there is a journalistically fraudulent way to do that. The sound way is, you know, if you have some topic that's off topic

that you just don't think is relevant, you cut the whole thing out. But it's not. Imagine if in that Fetterman interview, for example, NBC News had cut out the places where he struggled for his work. Yeah, that would be outrageous. And selectively edited that way so that they could say, judge for yourself that he's doing great after his stroke. That would be completely fraudulent. And that's effectively what Tucker did here with Kanye was cut out all of the craziest parts to present a fraudulent image of how this man is actually.

And it didn't even work because the clips ended up. We're still right. Well, and the interview itself was still pretty right out there. But it was a little bit more in the rails and didn't contain some of the most like blatantly anti-Semitic comments that he made during. My takeaway is don't try and make any of these people your political heroes whenever they're literally all off the rock. You know, it's like, look, he's mentally ill. I feel really bad. You know, that stuff that he's saying, he sounds like Bobby Fischer did in his later days.

That actually reminded me of that. Bobby Fischer also, you know, was the genius, the chess prodigy and all that. He, like, lost his damn mind. He also was deeply, for some reason, like, mental illness and anti-Semitism and that specific brand, like, go hand in hand. Well, it's like the conspiracy mindset. And that's the thing is, like, Kanye obviously thinks he's very special. He thinks he's, like, world unique. And the reality is, you know, I've known people who are suffering from very similar mental illnesses.

And it's not unique. I mean, everything he's doing here is classic behavior, including the unwillingness to take the meds, by the way. Because he feels like this way that he is in the world is what makes him genius and special. And he doesn't want anything that's going to, like, tamp him, you know, tamp that down. Which is why I guess I have less of a reaction of, like, oh, we have to protect him.

You shouldn't air the interview at all. No, he is a grown man. He has decided he doesn't want to be on the meds. And there, you know, are consequences for that. And even consequences with regards to what his relationship with his kids are and what Kim's going to be willing to tolerate in terms of having him around the children. Those are things that he has chosen for himself. So, but if you're going to show the whole ugly picture, you got to show the whole ugly picture. The follow-up to this is he, I guess, recorded a podcast interview also with LeBron James's.

Yeah, and they decided just not to air it. And they just decided to pull the whole thing. See, I think that's stupid. They should air it. I, you know, I either think you should

pull the whole thing or show the whole thing. Right. I don't think you should selectively edit out the parts that you don't like. You've got to, you know, you've got to be transparent

with all this. I agree with that completely. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? This morning, I have an absolutely made-in-a-lab perfect story to share with you. It's a tale of money, culture war, and extreme political brain rot. So let's just jump right in, shall we? This is from the Wall Street Journal. Here's their headline. How a new anti-woke bank stumbled. Glorify CEO Toby Neugebauer won over A-list investors to build a bank for people who consider Wall Street too liberal. Within months, it was nearly bankrupt.

So here's what happened. Apparently, a group of right-wing billionaires gave money to this Toby fellow to start a bank designed to own the libs. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous, but that was literally the idea. Neugebauer himself, he's a private equity rich guy who plowed in $10 million of his own money. He joined up with former Mike Pence chief of staff,

Nick Ayers, to launch this whole venture. And they were able to raise big money from some really big Republican heavy hitters. Peter Thiel, Ken Griffin were among the wealthy backers who ponied up cash, along with former Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and a lot more. Per the Journal, quote, the startup, called Glorify, initially aimed to launch with bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and insurance, while touting what it

called pro-America values such as capitalism, family, law enforcement, and the freedom to celebrate your love of God and country. Glorify said its customers can earn rewards that they will soon be able to donate to a charity for veterans and first responders. A homeowner's insurance policy that gives discounts to gun owners was in the planning stages, the company said. Its website, adorned with flags, blue-collar workers, and families, urges customers to, quote, put your money where your values are. They introduced credit cards with pro-police and pro-constitution designs. They hired right-wing influencer Candace Owens to shill for this whole effort. They planned an ad campaign for Fox News

and MAGA internet influencers, including a video featuring Ronald Reagan giving a speech. And they had a big public debut at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Literally the day before this Wall Street Journal article dropped, detailing how the company is now near bankruptcy and in a total state of collapse, Candace Owens tweeted this, quote, We are at the beginning of the conservative economy. You guys will all be hearing about Glorify soon. It will overtake Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and PayPal very quickly.

Please remember, you heard about it on my Twitter first. And she tweeted this marketing video. We didn't start the movement. You did. 100 million of you. Tired of the corporate elite telling you how to think. Woke companies denigrating this great country. Tired of big government, fake news, and everything that challenges your freedom. We don't think it's too much to ask to enjoy the benefits of big tech while being free to celebrate your love of God and country. That's why at Glorify, we're building the marketplace for the movement so that you can put your money where your values are, preserving America for our kids, for our grandkids.

One nation under God, Glorify is pro-family, pro-freedom, pro-capitalism, and unapologetically pro-America. Backing those that stand on the thin blue line, celebrating the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, all the amendments. All the amendments, as one Twitter user responded. Finally, a financialized debt creation company that is pro-capitalism. Now, the best thing you can say about this whole venture is that it collapsed quickly before harming many regular people, unless that a year they've blown through their cash, had mass layoffs, missed launch dates, failed to pay vendor invoices, and by all appearances, are very close to bankruptcy. The article details failed efforts,

like an aborted attempt to make a credit card out of the same material as shell casings. Turned out that material was too thick to fit in an ATM machine and interfered with the security chips anyway. That gun owner's discount plan couldn't launch because the company did not have the cash to back up insurance claims, and their original big investors were not interested in investing anymore in what increasingly looked like a failed venture. Glorify also wanted to offer insurance coverage to cover legal costs for customers who shoot someone in self-defense, but according to the company, the tech to launch that product just wasn't working. Now, the private equity guy who launched this whole thing insisted on housing the whole venture

in his own home, which was a problem because it lacked the necessary security to handle customer-sensitive financial data. And the journal paints a portrait of an erratic founder who drinks heavily and constantly and verbally abuses staff and partners on a regular basis. Well, he might be a drunken, abusive asshole, but at least he's not woke. Am I right? Now, the whole thing is literally the right-wing version of what Jamie Dimon was doing here in this photograph where he kneeled in support of Black Lives Matter in front of a bank vault. Take all the horrors and immorality of Wall Street, alter it not one single bit, but give an ideological brand sheen

that you hope will snooker customers into thinking you really have their interests at heart. The shell casings, credit cards, sloganeering about faith and family, it's all just right-wing virtue signaling. It's their version of identity politics. It's the exact same vibes as when Wells Fargo sponsored a Black Lives Matter panel

with DeRay McKesson, or when Amazon put a Black Lives Matter banner up on their homepage while forcing their actual black and brown workforce into indignity and injury on a daily basis. It makes perfect sense that Glorify would hire a right-wing influencer like Candace Owens to persuade their hope for customer base that this new bank was really one of them, was really on their side. When you believe, as liberals and the right does, that societies are driven by individuals, not by big structures and systems, it becomes easy to imagine just swapping the right people into positions of power is going to fix all your problems. Remember when Hillary Clinton famously said that if we broke up the big banks, it wouldn't end sexism and racism? In the neoliberal

view of the world, which is shared by elite Republicans and elite Democrats, it's the people themselves who are the issue. It's all those white men who need to do better. We don't need unions or to break up the banks. We just need a diversity board and sensitivity training. Or for the right, it's all those woke college guys who are screwing everything up. We need anti-woke patriots who will own the libs and say that a woman is a woman. That's why when Marco Rubio actually came out in limited support of the Amazon Union Drive in Bessemer, Alabama, he didn't make it about unions or corporate power at all. He personalized it to Amazon

and the woke HR department that he didn't like, making it clear that the problem was not the disparity between worker and corporate power, just a particular beef with the ideological leanings of some particular executives at Amazon. That view, which focuses on the individual rather than the systems, makes it easy for you to get tricked by identity politics or culture war or virtue signal plays like this bank. It keeps you at the surface level, looking

for good and evil people rather than going deeper to understand the underlying rot that is leading to the terrible outcomes we're experiencing in America today. Imagine thinking that the real problem with Wall Street is some bullshit cultural posturing from the executive class about the environment or about diversity, and not the way that the whole thing is just a machine for funneling money to the top while immiserating the masses. Imagine thinking it's the Wall Street commercials featuring like biracial families that are the real issue here, and not the fact that they perpetrated a mass fraud on the entire world that nearly collapsed the entire global economy. Glorify

is the perfect reflection of a Trump administration which invaded against global elites and then gave said global elites a massive tax cut, all while covering it up with nonsense executive orders about patriotic education. The ideal grift for a movement that now pretends to have a critique of elite power centers, whether it's Wall Street or corporate America, but has an economic policy that is still devoted to being capital's bootlickers forever. The story of this bank was so perfect to me. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, the world is on brink of nuclear war. Weirdly enough, it's already the second time in my professional life that I've even had to consider it. While the risk of an exchange today may be higher than it was at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, many people seem to have forgotten an earlier nuclear scare that may be able to teach us some lessons. In 2017, I became obsessed with the idea of a nuclear war, even in limited in scale. In fact, it's what really ignited my love and interest in World War I, because I was convinced any use of a nuclear weapon of any scale would change the globe in a similar fashion. At that time, Russiagate was in full swing and would eventually put us on the path to where we are today. But the real scare was North Korea. Try and remember the circumstances. North Korea, the hermit kingdom, under the rule of the mysterious and young Kim Jong-un. Jong-un,

despite his Western upbringing, had bet the house on development not only of a nuclear weapon, but of an ICBM capable of hitting the United States to fully enshrine mutually assured destruction for the West. In 2017, he got there and he shocked the world. The Hwasong-14 showed capability to hit California from North Korea, officially elevating the Hermit Kingdom to one where a war with them wouldn't just be catastrophic for the Korean peninsula, but would incur millions of deaths here in the United States. And yet, this development, like those in Ukraine today, were dismissed by the Washington foreign policy elite. We had no choice but to continue our policy,

which was not only sanctions, but the wholesale cutoff of relations and economic ties between North Korea and the rest of the world until we, they said, they had to abandon nukes. Barack Obama famously, in his last sit-down with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, told him the biggest problem that Trump would face, probably in office, would be North Korea. And for a time, he appeared correct. Trump in those years was completely distracted by Russiagate and TV ratings. He effectively outsourced all of his foreign policy to the Washington elite. North Korea was no exception. After Kim Jong-un's missile test, he resorted to basically threatening Kim Jong-un with that famous line, fire and fury. Let's relive that.

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal statement. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before. Fire, fury, and power. North Korea, of course, didn't listen. They just fired off even more missiles, including one into the Japanese economic zone, making it clear they would continue until the status quo changed.

Either the West and the rest of the Asian nations removed sanctions on them, which were threatening to collapse the Kim regime and push them further into starvation, or nuclear war, at the very least an incident sparked by a nuclear test or missile launch, would put us on the verge of a catastrophic war in Asia. This already has happened on a similar scale. North Korea has shelled islands. It even sank a South Korean submarine. They're reckless.

They are comfortable with death and with taking risky maneuvers when their backs are literally up against the wall. Adding nukes to the equation made the stakes existential for the rest of us, while it already was for them. And yet, Washington did not budge on the nuclear question. To them, it made no sense to change our policy at all. The idea that Kim Jong-un's newly afforded nuclear status gave him the ability to basically blackmail the U.S. and other Western powers to the negotiating table was too much to bear. The alternative of risking not only tens of thousands of American troops stationed in Korea,

but tens of millions of lives in California was an acceptable risk, they said, to accept the already established reality that North Korea has nuclear weapons. Yet, Trump then shocked the world and he made what I believe to be one of the best things he ever did in his presidency. He just said, you know what? Enough. I'm just going to go meet the guy. The Singapore summit in June of 2018 honestly did not accomplish anything, but it shocked and changed the situation so much that basically up until just in the last week, we saw a total and complete change in relations between the Kim regime and Washington. Missile tests subsided for the most part. Trump even set foot in North Korea at the DMZ, shook hands with Kim. The leader

of South Korea met with Kim. Completely new era of relations was sparked. Yet here in Washington, his meeting was met with scorn. Disgust, they said, to meeting with a dictator and a murderer like Kim. Gross to give in to blackmail. I still maintain it's one of the most genius things that Trump ever did. And implicit was acknowledging a grim reality. We may not want North Korea to have nukes, but after they literally have one and the capability to bomb us, that's just how it is. In almost every negotiation where the US has asked North Korea to give up its nukes, they say the exact same thing. Well, Gaddafi gave up his nukes. Look what you did to him. I mean, can you argue with that one? Unfortunately, after Trump was defeated,

the Biden administration, though, has reverted back to the exact same policy. And lo and behold, we are now having the exact same problem. North Korea just days ago launched a medium-range ballistic missile over Japan, scaring the hell out of the population and raising the stakes,

reminding the West and the world, hey, we exist. Those sanctions still suck. And you stop talking to us. So what lessons can we learn from this? To me, it's about checking the hubris of Washington. Sure, we might want a world where North Korea does not have nuclear weapons, but we cannot do a damn thing about that at this point. We have to talk to them and acknowledge their status, because we're putting America on the line, not to mention our sworn treaty allies in Seoul and in Tokyo. Allies, by the way, who are a hell of a lot better and more important than Eastern Europe and a hell of a lot more important to the global economy. Pretending and wishing does not do anything. Second is that nuclear status is just

simply different. It compels weighing risks and giving in on things that we may really, really, really not want to because the alternative is unthinkable. The North Korea situation, the statesmanship of the Trump administration, and the reversion to brain-dead thinking is a mirror image of what is going on in Ukraine. If we lock into the Washington assumption in Ukraine in the same way that we are on the same path to an inevitable war that we were with in North Korea in 2017, except now with Russia, who is a thousand times more powerful. Creative thinking and willingness to challenge assumptions that carry the obvious risk of war are vitally important. We see absolutely none of this in Washington today across either party. Biden, the Republicans, and more are so committed to the

current strategy. A nuclear exchange with Russia seems not only a possibility, but frankly, the most likely outcome on a long enough timescale in Ukraine. Perhaps it is possible a Trump-style figure or even Trump himself will shake things up. But as the North Korea situation shows, unless you follow through or sustain your game-changing moon, move, reversion to the mean is the most likely scenario. I think there's a lot we can learn from North Korea. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So as you all know, OPEC Plus, led by Saudi Arabia, has decided to significantly cut production of oil.

That means that prices are going to go up for you at the gas pump. That means that Russia is going to continue to get more oil revenue. It also is great for the Saudis in terms of jacking up prices and what they are able to extract. Also very bad for Joe Biden and the Democrats in terms of the midterm elections. Well, we have joining us now one of the lawmakers, Representative Ro Khanna, who has really been leading the charge in how we should respond to the Saudis. And it's great to see you, Congressman. Great to be back on. Yeah, absolutely. So you penned an op-ed with Senator Richard Blumenwald. Let's go ahead and

put this up on the screen. We have it here. You say the best way to respond to Saudi Arabia's embrace of Putin. And let me read the lead paragraph and then you can elaborate. You say this week, Saudi Arabia colluded with Russia, deciding to cut 2 million barrels a day of oil production at the OPEC Plus meeting, thus raising the price of gas to Russia's advantage. The shocking move will worsen global inflation, undermine successful efforts in the U.S. to bring down the price of gas, and help fuel Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. So what, Congressman, do you think that we should do in response to this? Well, let's just go over some facts. I've criticized big oil, but Saudi Arabia makes big oil look like saints. They are making 70% profit margins on their barrel of oils. They made $100 billion in 2022. You know who's not making money

is Putin because he's selling it at a $35 discount to China and India and other countries. So he pressured the Saudis to keep these prices artificially high. Now, we have done so much for Saudi. We give them 70% of their weapons. We have more defense initiatives. We need to stop all of that. It's not complicated. We need to stop all of that.

We have tremendous leverage. So the president was asked about your legislation. He says that he's going to be re-evaluating the Saudi relationship. John Kirby reiterated that. What confidence do you have here that the president, the administration, are they taking a listen to your legislation? Like we saw Senator, and covered here, Senator Bob Menendez. Is institutional Washington paying attention to this? They are. I mean, Senator Menendez coming out was a big deal. But look, there are a lot of powerful interests at stake here. I mean, there are a lot of defense contractors that have business with the Saudis. There's been 40 years of relationships.

There's a lot of lobbyists that the Saudis have. So it's not an easy, easy road. When we passed the War Powers Resolution after Khashoggi, that was difficult. But this time, I think the ingratitude really has struck lawmakers, Democrats obviously being vocal about it, but even behind the scenes Republicans saying this is unacceptable. They may not say anything till after the midterms. Can you explain for people why it would be so significant if we completely halted arms sales to Saudi? Well, first of all, they couldn't fly their planes without U.S. technicians. I mean, that's just factual. They have U.S. technicians to fly their Air Force. So it would ground the Saudi Air Force

to a halt. Second, they say, well, we'll look at China or Russia. They can't. It would take five, 10 years for them to actually get those arms. So they would not have a military response and that they will blink. I mean, we have never threatened to stop the technicians, to stop the arms sales. And between 2017 and 2020, look at it. We have more defense agreements, defense initiatives with the Saudis than probably almost any other ally. And a lot of it's being produced, creating jobs in Saudi Arabia, not here. Yeah. I mean, the president of the UAE, even after this, a congressman still went to go meet with Putin, what I find extraordinary. It was like literally the next day, right?

The next day, he was like, I'm still going. He's like, I'm going to go meet with Putin. I mean, the Gulf clearly doesn't take this threat seriously, or at least not yet. With this legislation, how quickly do you think that they would respond? Would they pay attention? Is Riyadh, in effect, taking this legislation and this initiative seriously, this conversation? They are. And MBS, who's the leader of UAE, has a rivalry with MBZ of the Saudis. So they're competing for Putin's attention,

which should send a message to the United States that we need to be more serious here. They would take it very, very seriously if the president just takes some action. If he doesn't want to suspend all the arms sales, at least pause the Patriot missile sales that are impending. Make sure that you're not going to send technicians. But there has to be a consequence. And the consequence can't just be we're going to stop the talks or we're going to do something diplomatically. There needs to be real teeth in it. They obviously don't care about that. Have you had an engagement with the president or anybody right around him about your initiative

here? I have. I mean, candidly, I've spoken to Jake Sullivan. I've spoken to others. Senator Blumenthal has. They've assured us that they will do something significant. They don't need Congress. I mean, Congress can compel them to do it. They have the power to do it themselves. And what I've said is that the new generation in Congress, we don't have this 40-year history with the Saudis. We see the Saudis as being responsible for the brutal war in Yemen, the biggest humanitarian crisis before Ukraine. And we see them fleecing the American public at the pump. And there's outrage. And so if the Saudis care about their long-term relationship

on the Hill, they need to reverse the decision. Well, it's interesting you point to that because, I mean, there has been for decades, you know, this sort of like bipartisan, unified approach to the Saudis, giving them basically whatever they want and having this sort of, you know, back and forth deal. And it seems to me part of what has snapped and broken here is the sense that the Saudis have picked partisan sides, that they prefer Donald Trump and they prefer the Republicans, and they're happy to jack up gas prices right before the midterm elections. And so it seems to me like part of the, you know, really quite unprecedented response from Democrats here, including specifically Senator Menendez, is this sense that the Saudis have decided to be

partisan actors and effectively interfere in our elections. Chris, I agree with you. I think the partisanship, the timing of it has upset people like Senator Menendez and also the alliance with Putin. That is quite unprecedented. I mean, the Saudis were our allies precisely during the Cold War because they were seen against Russia. They helped us with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. And now it's coming full circle that they're actually supporting Putin. So they are really miscalculating here. But we need decisive action.

I think the president needs to have a primetime speech. And he needs to say, you know why you're paying more than $4 at the pump? $6.50 in my district, but $4. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's a big deal. And it's a big deal for November. One of the reasons is big oil that is making all these profits.

And the other reason is the Saudis. And here's what we're going to do with the Saudis and lay it out. But it can't just be considering and press conferences. There needs to be decisive action. How do we put this in the context of the president's trip? What were your thoughts on the president's trip there to Saudi Arabia? Like, was it the right move? I mean, clearly it didn't work. So why should they take it seriously? They're like, look, at the end of

the day, he still, he came here. He's like, we can spit it in his face. I mean, at this point, why should they take Biden's threat seriously when he said he was going to make Saudi the pride of the world and still bent the knee to MBS in a way by going over there and shaking his hand. Giving it a fist bump. Senator Sanders and I opposed the trip at the time. Now, Monday morning quarterback is here. I'm not saying that, oh, we were right and the administration made a miscalculation. We didn't think that it was worth legitimizing MBS given what was going on in Yemen. They went, they thought they were going to be able to convince them for increased production

and other considerations. And that obviously did not work out. So this was a slap on the president's face. I don't blame them. I mean, I disagreed with the strategy. I don't blame them for doing that. They had their strategy. But now that it didn't work, they need to be, take decisive action, or it would look like you can push around the United States. Another thing that's floated that, frankly, I don't totally understand the mechanics of is this. It's called the NOPEC bill, which would be the idea that we basically lift the protections that OPEC, which is a cartel, has had to block them from being subjected to any sort of antitrust legislation. What do you make of that approach? Can you help me understand the mechanics of exactly

how that would work? And do you think that that would be a significant reaction to what the Saudis have done here? Yes, not enough, but we should do it. Let me explain it simply, if I can. Yeah. You know how big oil is making $20, $30 billion of profits, Exxon, Chevron. Well, it's the Saudis are making a lot more. They're making $100 billion. And what NOPEC would say is they, Aramco and the Saudi oil producing, are a monopoly. They shouldn't be allowed to make 70% profit margins. And you could sue them in U.S. federal court for their antitrust violations, for these excessive profits. Right now, you can. federal court for their antitrust violations, for these excessive profits. Right now, you can't sue them for the antitrust prices because they have immunity

by our law. It would take away that immunity. So it's a long-term necessary solution. It's not going to do anything for the price at the pump tomorrow or in the next few months. The only thing they can do anything is for them to reverse their decision or reconsider their decision. I reached out to Rima, the Saudi ambassador. I've known her. She's much better than MBS. I mean, if I put her in charge, I mean, she's actually she's actually more more reasonable now. She reports to MBS and that's the problem. But she needs to get the temperature on the hill. There's a disconnect. They're used to what the relationship was under Trump, perhaps, and 40 years ago. They don't get

in now. So how much support do you have right now for your bill to halt arms sales altogether? Are there any? I know you said Republicans behind the scenes will say, yeah, we're kind of support you. But do you think that you would have any bipartisan support? We will, but not before the election, candidly. I mean, we have Democratic support before the election. I think the Republicans, you know, they're not going to do anything to help out is how they see it. But behind the scenes, they will support. And I actually think that the Blumenthal bill and my bill has a good chance of passing some version of it. Well, I would hope to see that. And just finally, you alluded to this in your district, $6.50 a gallon. How much do you hear about this from your constituents, like in terms of the pain?

A lot. I mean, look, prices are up. The inflation report wasn't great today. We have to be realistic. This is what's on people's minds, first top of mind. And we have to have a real plan. And it starts with going after the Saudis and OPEC. Well, I'm really, I've been waiting a long time to see somebody introduce legislation like this. So I just want to say I appreciate it. And we thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you guys in Chicago and enjoy CounterPoints. this is an iHeart podcast