Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/11/25: Dems Wave White Flag For Trump, Trump Blames Biden For High Costs, Maxwell Sweet Life In Club Fed

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Dems wave white flag, Trump blames Biden for affordability, Maxwell living sweet life in Club Fed.    AIPAC Tracker: https://www.trackaipac.com/      To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyanko Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane de Bolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I Have Scurvy at 3 a.m? And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type two?

Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On an all new episode of IHeartRadios Las Culturistas, Jennifer Lawrence is dishing. Jennifer Lawrence from her hilariously awkward run-ins with A-Lister's. I don't know what I was expecting, but he was just like, nice to meet you. To her unfiltered take on beauty treatments. I'm so upset. I think the Botox before that. And a jaw-dropping reveal you won't see coming. I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just going to. Open your free IHeart Radio app.

SearchLust Cultureista and listen to the full podcast now. Hey, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this, high-speed rollercoaster we call reality. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday. And let's get weird together in a good way.

Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anymore. anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com,

become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal? Indeed, we do lots of recriminations on the Democratic side after the shutdown cave. and Angus King says, standing up to Trump didn't work. So we'll break all of that down for you. Trump is not floating $2,000 checks.

Galane Maxwell is asking for a commutation of her sentence and getting lots of special perks that she gets to play with the puppy while she is in prison. Who wouldn't love that? Incredible things happening there. Also, incredible things happening in the White House yesterday where the former Al-Qaeda leader turned president of Syria made a historic visit and got sanctions relief and all sorts of things.

wild world that we're living in here. We have new indications of an AI bubble that we are tracking. We're also taking a look at the fight over on the Republican side over Miriam Adelson's loyalty in what countries she's citizens of and all that sort of stuff. And the co-founders of APEC tracker are going public exclusively with us. Previously, they've been anonymous. Obviously, their information gathering has been incredibly influential in terms of raising awareness about AAC's influence in our country's politics. So really, excited to share with you guys that interview that we recorded with them yesterday. Yep, that's right. Excited for that. Thank you to everybody who has been

subscribing to the show, breakingpoints.com, if you're able to help us up. That's how we get stuff like the A-PAC interview. We are a place to see and be seen, right, for the A-Pack tracker, which of course has been very influential. So thank you very much, breakingpoints.com to become a member. If you can't afford it, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this a podcast, please send your favorite episode to a friend or rate us five stars. It really helps the show grow. But with that, let's go ahead and get to the shutdown. Let's get to the Dems and what's going on with them. So Chuck Schumer, obviously, and I think appropriately, taking a lot of heat for being leader while manufacturing this

shutdown. Now, he put out, I'm sure this leak came from his camp yesterday about how he was really opposed to the cave and that he was behind the scenes working to push these senators who ultimately caved to hold out for longer. Of course, if that is. is true, which I'm very doubtful of. That just means that you're extraordinarily weak. However, Gene Shaheen, who was the lead negotiator of the deal to end the shutdown, she said, no, we were in touch with leadership throughout, basically backing up some of the reporting that was coming out of the American prospect

in other places. Let's go ahead and take a list of what she said. Senator Chuck Schum, your leader on the Senate said, I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address health care. I am voting no. Did you do this outside leadership? And was there a big push for you not to join the U.S. others and break the 60 threshold?

No, we kept leadership informed throughout. Kept leadership informed throughout? Was there a big push to get you to not go along? No, no, we were, you know, talking to leadership. And of course, I mean, we talked to Rocado about this yesterday. He said basically, like, do you think we're stupid? Of course, Chuck Schumer was involved in this. And you can see it even in the strategy of which senators went along with the shutdown deal.

They were, none of them are up for re-election. They know this is politically toxic for their own base. So it's all people who are either retiring or not up until at least 2028. And so, you know, your two options here are either Chuck Schumer was sort of like tacitly good with this or affirmatively pushing it or so weak that he couldn't hold his caucus together. Either scenario, not a great look for him. One of the things the inside reporting has come out is that Chuck Schumer hold this whole so-called gang of Democrats like moderates in his office sometime in October about a month or maybe like three or so weeks ago. And he was like, look, just at least hold. out until November 1st. And this actually fits with a lot of the stuff that we reported

throughout. They were going to wait until November 1st for open enrollment. They were going to get their new cycles about premiums go up. And he was like, okay, if you guys cave after that, so be it. You know, and allegedly he said that he wouldn't stop the deal. But of course, you know, like if he wanted to, he absolutely could have. I think the complicating factor in this is that what changed was the 2025 election day. And it was very clear, you know, how much energy a lot of the Democrats had. It was a blowout. I mean, to cover that one statistic of the 18 out of 18, whether it would have been a good night for Democrats. And that actually genuinely would have shifted the calculus, if you are, Chuck Schumer. I do think, and more and more that I've sat with

it, I think that the Thanksgiving travel ended up being the deciding factor, because Snap was already on the ropes, but, you know, I don't think they actually cared. I think a lot of them, and this is one of the things that Trump did, is apparently the administration specifically target our airport here, Reagan National. They're making travel hell for a lot of the congressmen and the senators who are flying in and out of dc and i mean if you think about who are the people who fly a lot it's like upper middle class mostly liberals especially at this time people were higher income so i mean all all signs and this is not just me but including some reporting out there the thanksgiving travel things seem to be one of the major pushes for a lot of these

you know so-called moderate democrats which kind of interesting actually in terms of why they decided to fold it's not just their own inconvenience and you know the people who are like their primary supporters and all of that. It's also the airline industry gives... Right. Well, I talked about that. Bailouts, you know, if they went through that, they would have had to get bailed out. It would have been really bad. And so I'm sure airline lobbyists were blowing up their phones and others as well.

And then... But I actually think another key part was the threat from Trump to nuke the filibuster. Now, to me, that would have been a superior end where you're like, you stay strong, you go to the mat and you force the Republicans to nuke the filibuster, something they don't really want to do because they, like the... lame Democrats like having the excuse of the filibuster because that gives them a reason, a good excuse for why they can't actually deliver. These are the, I mean, the filibuster is the best friend of the lame corporate Democrat who

really wants to serve their donors but wants to posture like they care about serving the American people. And so they can always serve their hand. Oh, the filibuster, it's such, it's so hard. We'll never get 60 votes. We can never do anything, et cetera. So I actually think that the potential threat of getting rid of the filibuster was another piece that really pushed them.

across, you know, the, I guess, the finish line or whatever, the cave line, the pathetic line, the loser line. I mean, these are also people who wanted to cave from the beginning. So they were looking for any possible excuse, any possible off-ramp that they could potentially take. Just to underscore what a group of, like, pathetic losers this is, Angus King, who's technically an independent of Maine, went on morning Joe to justify his vote. And by the way, guys, I was watching some MSNBC yesterday. They are across the board irate.

I mean, it really is like the level of backlash on the Democratic base is quite astounding, including the Joe Scarboroughs of the world, including the Rachel Maddows of the world, who is seldom critical of the Democratic Party. But in any case, Angus King said this extraordinary thing to Joe Scarborough, which is that, quote, standing up to Trump didn't work. Let's take a listen. Well, Joe, you have to go back to what the strategy was at the beginning of the shutdown. There were two goals, both of which I support. One was standing up to Donald Trump. The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue. The problem was the shutdown wasn't accomplishing either goals, and there was practically, well, it was zero likelihood that it was going to. In terms of standing up to Donald Trump, the shutdown actually gave him more power, Exhibit A being what he's done with SNAP and SNAP benefits across the country.

Oh, by the way, Joe, you're going to love this. Guess who's getting paid during the shutdown? down. Not the park rangers or air traffic controllers. The ICE agents, under special law, under that big awful bill that they passed last summer, the ICE agents are being paid. Nobody else is. So standing up to Donald Trump didn't work. It actually gave him more power. Standing up to Donald Trump didn't work. Like literally resign. I mean, seriously, like, if you want to be in the opposition party and actually fight, which is what your own voters are demanding you do, and your view is that standing up to Trump doesn't work, like, genuinely

you should step aside and let someone else in who has a different idea, a different conception of power, because this is utterly pathetic. And it's not even true, Saver. Like, Trump was freaking out after this election, like, screaming at people that the government needed to be reopened. The pressure was all on the Republicans. They were owning this shutdown. and all the chaos at the airports and whatever,

that was falling squarely at their feet. So, in fact, it was working. And I think Ezra Klein made a great point in his piece, which was also decrying this pathetic deal that they struck, saying, listen, the thing Trump is going to take from this is that they will always cave. Like, all you have to do is threaten them, bully them, hold out a little bit, and you're going to get your way.

We always suspected that would be the case with the Democrats. They had a chance to push it, you know, to prove everyone wrong this time, but instead, once again, they demonstrated their, like, habitual weakness and that even when they hold all the cards, even when there's just been this national reckoning that sent as clear a message as possible that, you know, people are rejecting the Trump administration and they are behind you in this strategy, that that's the moment you choose to cave is beyond pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic, especially, I mean, yeah, the election demonstrated that Republicans are underenthus and Democrats are turning out to vote.

like, what else do you possibly need? You're like, yeah, people are behind you to actually, in terms of your strategy. Now, in terms of how it all plays out, what we saw with, first of all, with Angus can, he's not even sharp up there, you know what I mean? He can barely get a sentence. Like, brother, you know, get out of here. This is why, you know, people get mad at me about Target and old people. Sorry, all right.

Like, you know, you can't be having these people up there at the top for decades. This is what happens. I'm not going to continue to go down that row, but the point that demonstrates is how weak they are. And I made this point yesterday where I actually think a lot of people should be really mad. I mean, they immiserated tens of millions of people. Millions of people. Do you know how many people?

You got nothing. I mean, I told you that story. I was at the grocery store and this lady is like, you know, going through a wallet. She's talking about being furloughed because they asked, hey, can you donate to the food bank? She's like, I need a donation because I'm furloughed. I can barely afford these groceries. You know, the food banks around here are going crazy. I know so many people who are, you screwed them for nothing.

You got the same deal. You melted down air travel, billions of people had to do. Look, I don't cry for the consultant business class, but it's not nothing. You know, sometimes people have to fly home for funerals or for weddings. You know, I've seen people, I've seen brides get stuck during cancellation. So it's horrible, all right? So, like, you can't be doing this to people when you were going to, you took the same deal, which was on the table three weeks ago.

And by the way, my insurance is still high, and so is yours, right? So it's like nothing changed here. Literally got nothing. No, I was at the Y with my son. And there was a lady at the counter who was like, you know, I have to cancel my membership. Can I get last month back? I'm furloughed. It's like, yeah, I mean, you scored with people's lives.

And for what? For the same thing you could have gotten on day one. I mean, it really is, it's enraging. And I know we're not the only ones who feel that way. I mean, I genuinely think, like there was already a lot of like dem tea party energy. a lot of takes out there that are like, that's it, Graham Plattenor will be the next senator for me. Like those types of candidates who demonstrate that they are actually committed to a fight

and are willing to say Chuck Schumer is out. There is no way in hell I'm voting for Chuck Schumer as leader again. Those are the type of candidates who are going to succeed. If Chuck Schumer is behind you, which he is behind Janet Mills, he is behind Haley Stevens, there are other candidates, you know, other sort of like centristy candidates that he is backing, whether publicly or more surreptitiously, like, that is a mark of shame for those candidates. And it is, people are going to look at that negatively in a Democratic primary and vote for their opponents simply because they are disgusted.

They feel betrayed. They're horrified by this continued demonstrated weakness coming from the Democrats. And lo and behold, you know, the one thing they supposedly got, which, again, had been on the table from the beginning, is a vote sometime in December on the ACA subsidies. Well, it's a vote in the Senate. There's no guarantees that the House is even going to take it up. And Mike Johnson, yesterday, confirmed what all of us, you know, with three brain cells could see, which is that they're not going to take it up.

He says, you know, no, I'm not going to commit to a vote in the House on this stuff. Let's take a listen to that. We'd like to bring back to the table because that will actually solve the problem and not just subsidize insurance companies. So you're not committing to bringing up a bill that deals with the Obamacare subsidies before they expire? I'm not committing to it or not committing to it. What I'm saying is that we do it. deliberative process. That's the way this always works. And we have to have time to do that.

And we will in a bipartisan fashion. Sounds like something Trump would say. I'm not committing to it. I'm not committing to it. I mean, they're not going to vote on it because he doesn't want to put his people on the record if he doesn't have to because it'd be in popular to vote against this. But they also don't actually want to pass the subsidies. So this is all thoroughly, completely predictable. And, you know, speaking of the backlash and how widespread, I mentioned, Ezra Klein, like Jonathan Chey, near Tan, like really ideologically. spectrum of liberals and lefties who are furious at the Democratic Party right now. There are a few exceptions, but they are pretty lonely voices at this point. Yesterday, the ladies of the view,

we're taking the Democratic Party to task as well. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little of that. I want an opposition party. I think the Democrats caved. I think the Democrats let down the American people. And like you will be, I have absolutely no faith that the Republican Party will come to the negotiating table in good faith. You know, you do something like this, shame on you the first time. You do it twice, three times, four times. Shame on me. Shame on the Democrats for even believing that the Republicans will, you know, even

vote on it. There's no guarantee in this new deal that there's going to be a vote. There's no even commitment to have a vote. So the bottom line is the Democrats went into this after a blue wave. out of the American people saying we do want the opposition. We, we, we, the working people want the, uh, the Democratic Party to fight for them. And now they just caved and surrendered. I think Chuck Schumer, his days are over.

I can't put that. If we cannot keep his caucus together, if he cannot keep his caucus together, he needs to go. A number of Democrats in the House at least have come out and called for Chuck Schumer to go. Uh, Rashida Tili, being one of those voices. Obviously, we talked to Rokana yesterday. who was the first of those voices. So kudos to him for showing some leadership there. It could put A5 up on the screen. I think there's roughly eight Democratic members of the House who have come out and said that Schumer needs to go. Unfortunately, not a single senator,

including Bernie Sanders was asked about it yesterday. He expressed, you know, his differences of opinion with Chuck Schumer but refused to call for him to step aside from leadership. So very disappointing that there's no senators, Democratic senators, who were willing to listen to their own voters about the direction that the party should go in and, you know, allowing it to continue to be led by a guy who can't even say whether or not he voted for the Democratic nominee in New York City is pretty pathetic. At the same time, it's put A6 up on the screen, apparently internally, you know, tons of recrimination that's complete BS. Dems go ballistic over Senate shutdown deal. You had move on, come out as well and say Schumer should resign. This is about

these internal like Dem party text message chains where people were just, losing it over this, you know, this deal. We can put next one up on the screen, A7. It's being called a complete betrayal. This is about the 20s 26 Democrats who were all uniformly slamming the shutdown deal. And as we mentioned before, the most vulnerable senators, people like John Ossoff, who are up this year, they voted against the deal because the politics of voting for this thing are trash. And so even, you know, they had Roy Cooper was the candidate that you see that. who's moderate governor of North Carolina, he's certainly no lefty. Even he was critical of this deal. In Maine, you had both Graham Platner and Janet Mills, who were critical of it. All three of

the Maine Senate candidates in the Michigan Democratic primary were critical of it. And someone went even further. Let's go ahead and listen to Graham Platner put out a video again calling for Schumer to resign. Let's listen to that. This happened because Chuck Schumer failed in his job yet again because they do not understand that when we fight, we win. When we hold the line for working families, for working people, we win. But they don't get this. They see all of this as a game. These are just numbers on a sheet of paper, not people's lives. We need to elect leaders that want to fight. We need to elect leaders that care about people, that care about the actual outcomes of policies. Call your congresspeople. Call your senators and tell them that Chuck Schumer

can no longer be leader. Call your congressman and tell them that they cannot vote for this when it comes to them on Wednesday. We need to fight back. But sadly, until we elect more Democrats that understand that fighting is what we need to do, we're going to find ourselves in this position over and over and over. Look, I think this is going to be a litmus to us for a bunch of Senate candidates. this year. And, you know, this will be fuel on the fire of that anti-establishment, Democratic Party base backlash, long overdue, by the way, in my opinion. But, you know, the level of disgust they already had with Democratic leadership is going to be just like, you know, multiplied by tenfold by this betrayal. And I mean, they haven't forgotten the fact that in the first opportunity to use

their leverage and force a shutdown, that they just didn't even bother. They haven't forgotten about the fact that, you know, they've just seemed to be weakening, pathetic all the way along, and then you get one thing, finally, okay, they're going to fight a little bit, and then instantly, you know, cave at a time when the Democratic Party is riding high, when they should be feeling a lot of momentum and sense of, you know, okay, we're doing something, we're fighting, people see that, we're going to move into the midterms, we're well positioned. Instead, you've just sucked all the wind down to the sales of the party after what was, you know, monumental victories last week. You definitely have. I do wonder, though, if it actually helps.

a lot of these candidates because they can run against the party establishment. That was part of what made the Tea Party actually successful as they weren't running as Republicans. They were running against the Republican and the Democratic establishment. Yeah. Which is what people were mad about. So I actually would be happy if I were a Glenn Platner because he's already said he doesn't support Schumer. So it's like it's only, it only boldens his point, right? Oh, it definitely benefits them politically.

I actually think the insurgent candidates, this is a good thing. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes. I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I have scurvy at 3 a.m? On health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health,

but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world that, like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but, like, you don't even know.

You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know. is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff that y'all said.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and to binge the entire season ad-free,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman.

We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system

is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. I do think one of the things, though, that this does demonstrate is how ill-conceived, I think, the shutdown was from the Democratic side in the first place, because as you and I discussed,

It wasn't really about health care, right? Like, that's not what most people were up in arms about. At the end of the day, only 7% of people are even affected by Obamacare premiums. It's just not that many people, like in the grand scheme of things. That's not the ultimate problem with health insurance. You know, health insurance's number one problem is cost. People were mad about Trump for a whole host of reasons. I think, you know, health care premium was like number 50.

They decided to kind of make that a linchpin. And to their credit, we're sitting here talking about it, so it definitely kind of worked. Yeah, but, you know, it definitely reframe the conversation. It reframed the conversation about health care, but, you know, if you read the centrist arguments, they're like, can you anyone point to me how the shutdown would have worked out better? And I was like, you know, the one thing they have going for them is it because they put their whole strategy just on health care, they didn't really have like a fulsome nature of ass. And this is on Schumer and on leadership, too. And this kind of gets to where the platiners and others, like when they come into office, you also have to professionalize what it is you're asking for, right? So, I mean, by the way, I also think that many of the ass and the so-called whims were lame as hell.

Like, they were like, oh, no more rifts, you know, like government employees. Like, I'm sorry. Like, nobody gives a shit about government employees getting fired. Like no wouldn't, yes, health care, like I just said, it's only 7% of people who are on the Obamacare exchanges. Most of them are elderly or small business owners, like you're myself, not exactly the most, you know, tender demographic politically. They needed something real, like, and maybe something, not even necessarily attainable, but stuff that actually got. to the heart of what people are very upset about with Trump. But I mean, this is part of the failure you and I've talked about like with Venezuela, right? Like if I were designing something, I'd be like

no invasion of Venezuela, right? That's in part of the deal. If I were a Democrat, what are people most upset about? Ice and stuff like that. I'll put some writers in there and be like, we're not signing shit until there is some actual agreement here on behavior of ICE or border patrol. Like the stuff that people are really mad about, this is where I think the Republicans did a better job in some of their shutdowns where they got to the heart of what people were pissed about. Like, it became a line. 2013, the big shutdown, it was over DACA. Like, that was it.

Immigration was the number one issue. Remember, Boehner suing Obama in court about, like, that was what the entire thing was about that gave people a real reason to fight. It's also why the cave wasn't really as much as a cave as this one. So this is really, I think, an indictment of the Democratic establishment for trying to pick a poll-tested thing to. fight on and not coming to terms with, like, what are we mad about at the Trump administration? And this gets to, you know, establishment failure, too, and even the heart really of it.

Like, at the end of the day, these people are fighting to subsidize insurance companies. Like, this is why I can't get past with ACA premiums. Like, look, you know, my in-laws insurance went 1800 to 4200. That's horrible, is devastating. But, you know, 1800 was also a shitload of money, and the money is coming from us paying health insurance companies who are continuing to jack up prices. That's, you know, I don't know. I can't really get past that, I guess.

They needed something concrete. What is the base mad about? Put those five things down on a list. We all come together. We at least kind of agree on some of them. We got to get three out of five before we do anything. I think the base just wanted to see them fight. You know, I don't think they cared that much about the details.

I just think they wanted to see Trump get punched in the nose, which he was last week in the elections, for sure. And then it's after that, that's the moment when in spite of the fact you got literally nothing in terms of a concession, that's the moment. that you're going to decide to cave. I mean, I think that's the part people just cannot get passed. And so, you know, I have been saying this from the beginning, too, of like, you know, what's really animating the Democratic base is a lot of Trump's just like, you know, insane, authoritarian overreach, the masked agents in the streets, the National Guard deployments, those sorts of

things. That really gets the core of what the base is concerned about. Leadership has been very squeamish about pushing back on any of that. You know, they've always, from the beginning, oh, this is a district, you know, the Epstein Files is a distraction. Oh, talking about Kilmer-Abrego-Garcia is a distraction. Talking about National Guard in the streets is a distraction. We need to just talk about egg prices and that's it and nothing else. And, you know, the few, I think that strategy has proven incorrect. And I think that the, you know, the American people have been pretty horrified by a lot of the abuses that they have seen. And these things, you know, they go together. You don't have to only talk about the economy or only talk about

the abuses. You can talk about the way. that Trump has basically seized the power of a king. That's why the no king's protests were so, you know, so appealing to people and made a lot of sense to people that he's favoring the oligarchs over, you know, ordinary people. He's sending these thugs in to abuse ordinary American citizens. Meanwhile, you know, he's denying you food stamp benefits and giving out taxes and cuts to the rich, et cetera.

There is a coherent message there, but Democratic leadership is very afraid of talking about anything that has to do with, like, you know, that touches on crime whatsoever, that touches on immigration, whatsoever. And so they've been very squeamish about that. So instead, they picked this issue of the health care subsidies that they felt like would be a good wedge. And in a sense, it was, you know, Republicans realize it's going to be a problem for them when everybody's health care premium skyrocket and they're stuck holding the bag. That is still the case. And

the, you know, people I've seen online, they're like Tim Miller's of the world from the bulwark who are making the case that actually Democrats won this fight, et cetera. That's what they're pointing to is basically like, look, they raise the salience of the issue of health care. It's a very good issue for Democrats. They did fantastic in the elections, in part because of the shutdown strategy. Republicans are going to be on the record and have to own completely now. And everyone will know that they own the fact that health care premiums are skyrocketing. And there is something to that.

Like, I don't think that it's that, like, Democrats politically did achieve some things out of this strategy. But Matt Stiller was making this point that, you know, I think is. is similar to what you're saying of effectively, you know, the real issue with the shutdown strategy is that the Democratic Party apparatus doesn't really know what it wants. They were never really on the same page about like, okay, what does victory look like in this? What is the resolution that we're actually aiming for here? How we're going to effectuate that outcome? And since they were sort of meddled and confused and on different pages, you know, different people had different goals in the shutdown, that's how it becomes easy to peel off these, you know, a lame

corporatist Democrats to get them ultimately to cave. So, you know, I think the party is really in a, it's in a transitional place right now, right? There is a true battle going on between the Schumer, Hakeem Jeffrey's way of doing business that has been, you know, rock solid in the Democratic Party for years and years, and these new insurgents. And the new insurgents definitely have the energy of the base of the party. You know, Zoran Mundani being emblematic of that, Graham being emblematic of that up in Maine. You've got a very close three-way race now in Michigan right now between Abdul al-Sayyad and Mallory McBorough, who's kind of like, you know, progressive-ish, but a little bit more mainstream. And then Haley Stevens, who's the pick of Chuck Schumer,

who's just like, you know, totally normal establishment type of dem. So you have a battle going on right now within the Democratic Party. And I don't think that they're going to be able to really solidify any sort of clear agenda until you get to like 2028 and you have the sound and a Democratic primary and you have a new leader and someone who has some sort of Democratic legitimacy. One last point, let me put this up on the screen. We looked at some of these word clads yesterday. This is A8, just to underscore how the strategy really was putting pressure on the Republicans and very politically damaging for them right before the cave. So if you go back to October 9 through 13th, you see, you ask people, okay, what negative things have you heard recently

about Trump? It's all about shutdown and government and tariffs. The next thing, week, they ask again, still shut down government tariffs. The following week, it's ballroom, White House, East Wing, destroying. And then November 1st through 3rd, you know, leading into the elections, it shut down food stamps, snap, government. So, you know, the Democratic messaging for the first time, really, I think, was breaking through. You know, these were the messages that I don't think that's a message thing. I think that's a reality thing. There's 42 million people who are on food stamps. That's just a shitload of people.

Like, you know, think about it. That's more people than work for the federal government. We sat here and talked about people who were furloughed. That's only 2 million people. This is 42 million, literally 21 times the number. What is that? One seventh of the entire United States? Like, that's crazy.

I was looking at some polling from you gov, and one of the questions was just like, are you on food stamps or someone in your family? And for people under 50K, it was 50% of people who either, you know, themselves were on food stamps or someone in their family. So they're taking, like, a direct hit. They're seeing personally what an impact it is.

So, but in any case, you know, that's where things stood when they decided, like, let's just take a deal that gives us literally nothing. Yeah, you know, just thinking about it again broadly. I don't know. I think one thing that is the problem in this fight with the split over who the party is, is you can overread too, you know, like one of the things, like the centrists are, totally convinced that they have won because of the Spanberger and Cheryl victories. Yeah. The Mamdani people, like yourself, are also totally convinced that they've won. And I don't think it really either, correct.

I mean, you know, yes, you won some and then others won others. And neither vision has dominated at a national level for, like, who the party is, right? And both are like pretending that the other side doesn't. Well, actually, the centrists are more pretending the left part doesn't exist. Buttigieg's not congratulating Mamdani, insane. Like, literally insane. I'm like, dude, like, what? He's a Democrat.

Like, why can't you just be like, congratulations? I actually don't understand it or even remotely where it comes from. Kind of more of a secondary point. What you risk in the interim couple of years, though, is you don't really have a national brand of resistance or a vision for our alternative. And that's how you lose. You know, even when you, let's say, have the shutdown fold, like, you know, in some ways, like a lot of Republicans can point to that and be like, look, Trump was an effective

leader against the Democrats whenever they were all up. I mean, by the way, even in the elections, yes, I think the Democrats did very well. We're still talking about an off-year 2025 election. The idea of some national referendum is ridiculous. Like a vast majority of people didn't even vote. And midterms is going to be much more voters, still a much lower turnout election than what eventually comes in 2028. I've been thinking, I really think a lot of this is a victim of no primary after Biden. You know, it really is shocking to think how the Democrats have not been able to hash out their differences since 20. 2020. And even that was kind of a rigged primary with COVID and with Obama coming in. So the last

time there was like a real fight, it was 2016. So just watching how this all plays out, the cognitive dissonance between the two sides, I think that's the biggest consequence. And it does show you the ratifying and healing nature of democracy. Like one reason why Trump is lockstep is because he won, like he won multiple times. 2016, he won the primary in 2024 and he got the popular vote. Like no Republican can credibly stand up. Actually, my side is correct, right? You have to defer to the leader. This rudderlessness, I think, is really a real problem for them. And it also shows, I think, some of their risks going forward, because they don't have the answers to the irreconcilable questions inside of their coalition. And both sides can be like, well, no, see, our guy won in New York.

And people in Virginia are like, well, we won in Virginia. You know, we're not the same. Like, this stuff needs to get hashed out at the national level. Yeah, for sure. But I would say, like, I still think that even if with the Democrats being like lame and weak and sucking, well, they were lame and weak and sucking going into these off-year elections. And they wronged. I mean, it was maybe not a nationwide referendum just because of it being an off-year election, but literally every race went Democrats with literally ever, regardless of the state, you know, Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, Proposition 50 in California, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, Mississippi, like across the freaking board. And so,

I think that probably the cake is baked for, you know, a backlash election in 2026, even with the Democrats being like lame and not offering any kind of a vision. But you're absolutely right. I mean, this is what is being hashed out right now and it's going to be hashed down in these primaries to come. I think you're already seeing it. And so to me, probably the biggest political legacy of this shutdown fight is just further enraging the Democratic base and, right? radicalizing them against their own leadership. There's already been a lot of that. This, I think, is just fuel on the fire.

And, you know, to your point, like the grand platoners of the world, the Abdul al-Saians of the world, like the more renegade outsider candidates, this is going to inure to their benefit. So, you know, for the corporatist Democrats who caved, thinking that this, you know, benefits their political worldview, I think they have only further alienated their own voters from the brand of politics that they espouse. Yeah, I absolutely think that's correct. And I don't disagree on 2026.

That's not real. I was more to really talk about 2028 because there's no credible, like, we won at a national level. That's what really, you know, Trump shot everybody up in 2024, not with the primary, but with the election. We're like, it's over, okay? It's MAGA. Like, it's period. It's done, right? We won the popular vote.

There's no more if fans or butts. Obama did the same with Hillary. He crushed her in the primary. It's just done. Like you can't really argue about it anymore. Hillary, I mean, in some ways, kind of did it to Bernie in 2016. At the end of the day, you know, she did win. I don't think she did a very good job, and she didn't bring those people in, so a lot of them didn't come out to vote. But this just really shows me the power of actual democratic politics. And this, that's a bigger indictment of the establishment, not just about the shutdown, but like going back

in the fact they've never really been battle tested, you know, over these last eight years. I think it's a real issue. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I Have Scurvy at 3 a.m? On Health Stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health.

But also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world that, like, your mangoes are fine because

mangoes are incredible, but like, you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your Podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve,

this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff. that you all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match

and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people

in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw.

the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first. first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at

pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Let's get to Trump, shall we? Who is this man inspiring so many of these, in my opinion, shitlibs in their own victories, despite the fact that, again, in my opinion, some of the lamest people literally on the planet. How does a Mikey Sherrill win by 10 points in New Jersey? How? How is this even possible? I think it was like 13. Don't even get me started in a state that you got won by five, sorry, lost by five points just a year ago, literally a year ago. Well, this is how Trump is now floating some new proposals, which his own administration says are totally fake. Many of them are flailing in response to affordability, which will remind you he also recently called a con job in an interview, including floating the so-called 50-year mortgage, which we have a little bit more of.

But now, in an attempt to try and defend the tariff policy, and the tariff policy, of course, which is under fire at the United States Supreme Court, seems very likely to get shut down, he's floating something called a terror. dividend of $2,000. Let's take a listen. We're going to be bringing them down. Without tariffs, we would be, this country would be in such trouble, as they were for many years. That's why we owe $38 trillion. And one of the things we're going to do, we're going to issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about $2,000. And we're going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt. For the last several months, eggs, gas, a dinner cost for Thanksgiving way down. But other things, as you noted, have gone up, beef, coffee, auto repairs.

Is this a voter perception issue of the economy, or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill or done in terms of policy? More than anything else, it's a con job by the Democrats. They're saying, they just have a say, you know, they put out something. Say today, costs her up. They feed it to the anchors of ABC, CBS, and NBC and a lot of other, and, you know, CNN. It's a con job. And, I mean, the Biden vibes here are just so strong. It's like every single time, what did Biden say?

He said Republicans are lying about inflation. They're lying about grocery prices. They're lying about this. They would do similar things. They would float some bone-dead, you know, idiot policy. Same thing like the tariff dividend, which again, look, we all know it's not going to happen. They don't have the unilateral authority to just cut you a $2,000 check. If they did, every president would do it.

Right, not everyone, but a lot of them would have done it. Or they would have tried to do it in the past. Yeah, you need Congress. Oh, Congress is going to do a $2,000 dividend check? No, it's not happening. And so they're flailing, completely flailing about here. And, you know, this is where I think MAGA has a sickness. Now, I just talked about how Trump won popular vote, and so he took over the Republican Party.

But part of the sickness is nobody can speak out about an obvious drubbing in the election. Because all Trump has to say is, it was a shutdown and I wasn't on the ballot. It's like, yeah, true, dude, but you're never going to be on the ballot again. okay so all the other people who still have to have a career in politics needs some flexibility and freedom well what happens you have one republican literally once who's talking about cost of living marjorie taylor green and now he's attacking her i'm not going to go too much into it because you guys are going to cover it tomorrow and it really is kind of a separate conversation but think about it like in terms of maga media there is nobody out there at a prominent maga level

from Fox News, Ben Shapiro, The Blaze, I mean, who else am I thinking of? Who can honestly admit that shit is bad right now economically for a lot of people? There's just not that many of them. They stay silent and then they'll do their show on some woke left. You know what I'm saying? It's like, guys, this is so boring at this point. Like, your shit is over. And so after an election like this, they need to come down and just be like, this is a huge problem.

Like, this is a massive signal boost. People are pissed about affordability. We need to come up with a set of issues. We're already probably going to lose in the midterm elections. If we have any chance of building on some sort of legacy of 2024, you've got to win back some of these voters. Let's look at the cross tabs and say, hey, what went wrong, where? What can we fix? No Republicans is capable of saying that nationally.

And it's because of Trump, because Trump will attack them from the national puppet. He said Marjorie, oh, she's lost her way. Marjorie's lost her way, but Lindsay Graham hasn't, who we're doing fundraising for. Okay, okay. I mean, yeah, I mean, that, listen, what's the signal? The signal is, if you kiss his ass, no matter what, even though you were an ideological opponent, whatever, doesn't matter. As long as you're fealty to him personally, that's the only thing that you're allowed to do. You're not allowed to speak up about the issues that you see that are out there. Even, you know, Tucker, look, you know, a lot of the wars over Israel, frankly, a lot of the war also, though,

is over, you know, he did that episode with Charlie Kirk right around the time a couple weeks before Charlie died. The whole episode by Charlie was about economics and young people. And he said young people are feeling hopeless, affordability. A lot of it was about Zoron. Actually, you should go back and watch it if you're interested. Because frankly, those were two of the only people in the entire apparatus who were even willing to talk like that without sounding like, you know, that they were Democrats or something. And that's what I see out in the landscape right now. It's truly a sickness in the party and in Maga Media. Maga Media even more so. Because this party is very downstream of a lot of internet posters and podcast people. And they have just, they have

their heads so far up their ass whenever it comes to these issues. I mean, there's two lanes. So this is something Emily has mentioned before of part of the appeal of Nequentes, is that there is really, there are very few venues for Trump criticism that aren't like liberal or leftist. That's very true. And so, you know, you've got these, a number of dynamics, but one of them being that most of MAGA media is just grotesquely sycophantic in a, like, pathetic and embarrassing boomer cringe kind of a way. And so, you know, if the only guy, one of the only guys who's saying critical things from the right also happens to be a neo-Nazi. And then by the way, you also have this whole censorship regime of like if you say anything against Israel, you're literally an anti-Semite. That's part of what is fueling the rise of Nick Fuentes within the Republican Party and why he is.

such a potent force with young men in the party in particular. But Sagar, you're selling our dear leader short. He does have some really important ideas for how to deal with things like housing affordability. Yesterday, we mentioned his brilliant genius idea for a 50-year mortgage loan. Even Laura Ingram was not really buying this one. Let's take a listen to that. Your housing director has proposed something that has enraged your MAGIFRANS, which is this 50-year mortgage idea. So a significant backlash, calling it a giveaway to the banks and simply prolonging the time it would take for Americans to own a home

outright. Is that really a good idea? It's not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years and what it means is you pay something less from 30 that some people had a 40 and then now they have a 50. All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It's not like a big factor. It might help a little bit. But the problem was that Biden did this. He increased the interest rates. And I have a lousy Fed person who's going to be gone in a few months.

It's not even a big deal. It's not a big deal. Also, do everybody notice he doesn't even know how long a normal mortgage is? He said it was 40 years. Yes. Okay. You know, we don't all have specialized banking instruments from Goldman Sachs on our commercial real estate properties. Most of us are dealing with the shithead mortgage brokers at whatever a bank or rocket mortgage, you know, that you're lucky enough to even get if you can qualify for one. Yeah, I mean, this is like, what was it? Wasn't it Dan Quayle who didn't know how much a gallon of milk costs? No, I'm thinking of George H.W. Bush, how he was like mystified at a grocery store checkout counter

because he hadn't seen barcode scanners. This was in the 80s. Yeah. I think Quayle's thing was not knowing how to spell potato. Yeah, sorry. That was his humiliation moment. But yeah, HW and that image went, you know, viral in whatever 1990s terms. Why?

Because they were like, this man is so rich and so old. He literally's not been to a grocery store in like 25 years. This stuff matters. I mean, we talked yesterday about the White House. These things, the symbols, you know, they strike at the heart of how out of touch a person can be. I also think what it gets to is I've said this before, too. I remember about Biden. Biden would do something very similar where a year or so in office, he would still talk about January 6 and he would talk about Trump. Well, Trump is now in the same boat. It's November 11th, dude. I don't want to hear about Biden anymore. Does anybody else? One of the nice things I like about America is when I A guy like Biden steals off, we're all just like, who? Like we get temporary amnesia. We're like, who are you talking about? Because what we expect is that when a new government comes into power, yeah, you can blame Biden for a couple of months. After that, you own it, especially now at this point, especially with the way that you dominate media.

So I see that where he blames Biden, interest rates, I mean, I don't think he's wrong to blame a lot of the actions of the Federal Reserve. But as we demonstrated yesterday, interest rates alone are not the issue. It's price. Prices are 50% higher than they were five, you know, six years ago. Yeah. That's the whole ball game. It's all supply. Then we have all these boomers with massively appreciated assets.

Average first-time homebuyer today is 40 years old. The average person who's like looking at a house, I believe, is in their 60s. You know, in terms of their ability to offer cash, there's no incentives whenever it comes to first-time homebuyers, even if there are, you know, some modest, more interest or whatever, doesn't remotely make up for the fact that wages have not kept up place. That's it. There's literally nothing else to say about it. All you have to do is attack.

Supply, you need to throw a Manhattan-level project, level of stuff at it. There's no other way, simply. And yet, we're all just, you know, working around the edges. And this is what's leading to the dumerism for a lot of people who are much younger. I was just looking, you know, I put some tweet out about boomers, don't get it. And, of course, you know, a vast majority of boomers are like, well, I graduated in 1985. I was like, yeah, well, in 1985, the average first-time home bar was 29 years old. Today it's 40.

Okay, so things have radically changed. Median income relative to a buyer, there's no comparing the world. The median age of a home buyer now is 59 years old. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We can't live like this. I mean, it distorts the whole market. We talked yesterday about developers and supply side. So if all the rich people are old, what do you do?

You build houses for rich people and for old people. That's who you're going to cater your market. It's basic economics. You have to have some sort of intervention. A 50-year mortgage turns you into a permanent renter to the bank and also makes you somebody who's paying, you know, what was the example that we gave? It was like compared to a 30-year, they would pay a quarter-mill in interest, but compared to a 50-year, they're paying a million, a million dollars for like a $500,000 home over the

lifetime of your mortgage. I saw a hilarious tweet where there was an old man, like, in a diner, and he's like, he's owned this place for 49 years, and somebody said, he's only got one more year to pay it off. You know, it's like 80 years old. Can you imagine that? Like, if you buy a house in your 30s, you're 80 years old and you might pay it off. And let's say you move after eight years, which the average person does, whenever they have it, you're going to have zero equity.

After closing costs, you're going to be flipped upside down. Like, most people, you know how most people are upside down on the car loans? You're going to start having people negative equity in their home loans. That's what the net result of a 50-year mortgage. That's what happened in the great recession. That's exactly what happened. You're exactly right. Yeah.

Well, and it's also, you know, for a guy is supposed to be like this post-liberal process, is the most neoliberal idea you could possibly come up with. Like, it's a market-based solution, you know? Like, we're not going to actually do anything to help you or, like, you know, actually come in and shape the markets and the more housing is being built. We're just going to make it so that banks can bilk you for even more interest.

And you can be even more in debt than you already are. So, yeah, there's a reason why that idea was panned across the board. I actually want to play next B6, which is Scott Besson. Speaking of the $2,000 idea, which is a complete and total fantasy, Bessent really gives away the game here because he's asked like, okay, so what form is that going to come in? Let's go ahead and take a list. This is B6. Let's listen to this. The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms in lots of ways, George. It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security.

deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions that, you know, are being financed in the tax bill. Because of all the extra tax revenue, there isn't more room to get checks back to people. So when people hear that, what's the reality of it? When do you think that people would get these $2,000 checks in the mail from the White House, from this plan? Well, again, it will have to be passed by Congress. But the reality is just this, that because of Biden's inflation, which averaged 5% over four years, that people on average lost about $3,400 in purchasing power. And they've gained about $1,200 this year, but there's still room to go. And so we're making upground fast, but the fact is that people are still down about $2,000

relative to what their purchasing power was when Joe Biden took office. And so we understand that people feel like there's an affordability problem, but we're closing the gap fast. and with these policies and potentially, you know, rebate checks, we might close the whole the whole gap really, really fast. Okay, really fast, but you're not, you won't say exactly when, whether that's Q1 of next year. Yeah, not me. Not yet. Okay.

So you've got Besson saying, like, actually if you think about it. If you think about it, you've already gotten $2,000 stimulus. If you really think about it in the right way, you know, we did that whole tax cut thing. And mostly went to the rich, but some of the little tiny shreds of it may have gone to you. tax on tips. That could be the form. And then you have Hassett who's like, well, let's talk about Joe Biden. You know, economics were bad under him. And like maybe low key, the $2,000 that you're going to get is in theoretical increased purchasing power from lower inflation. So, you know, it demonstrates to you just how real of an idea it is. And Hassett even says, like, look,

actual checks would have to go through Congress. So that's what I said. All right. I mean, look, The whole thing is a farce. Yes. Oh, you're going to get it. It's kind of like the way they did Social Security, where they technically made Social Security tax-free by making it tax-eligible in terms of your deduction. It's too complicated to explain. But the basics is 88% of people get Social Security. They get it when they file their taxes in terms of being tax-free. It's not that they get, like, less of a check, or more of a check, if that makes sense. So this is the similar way where they always are trying to play with it. And it just reminds me, I mean, for all of the talk about moving back, Paul Ryan. What are my like big brain moments where I was like, holy shit, these people are so out of touch. Is I was dragged to this meeting with Paul Ryan. I guess it was like 2017, and he like sat back in his chair and he was like, as a result of our tax legislation,

the average American will save $780. And that is enough to remodel their kitchen. And I was like, $780 a year. And I was like, that's what you're sitting here bragging to me about? I was like, what a joke. I was like, these people are done. they're going to lose and that's exactly what happened that's what you said first of all it's not enough to remodel kitchen all right i don't even know they're going to buy a sink

maybe you can get some new hardware on the cabinets it was 2017 it was 2017 so i guess there was less inflation but even at that time i didn't own a home it was like living in a shithole apartment but even at that time i was like i don't think that's enough to rebuttal action i'm pretty sure but that's the level of discourse that they all these people all try to fall back on and i don't It's pathetic. It's genuinely pathetic. And it also shows how out of touch they are, really with consumer sentiment, something that we've been flagging here. We used to flag it a lot into the Biden administration. You can do it now, too. The University of Michigan survey, brutal for the way that people feel about the economy. B5, let's take a listen. This is consumer sentiment,

their current conditions. Consumer sentiment can be the current conditions or it can be future expectations. We're looking at current conditions. And get this, according to the University of Michigan, we are dealing with the worst ever, the worst ever view of current conditions dating all the way back since 1951. This is record breaking in the way you don't want to be breaking records. And get this, Kate, it is down 30 percent consumer sentiment of current conditions, down 30 percent from January when Donald Trump took office. But take a look here. Trump blamed. Trump's policies have worsened economic conditions in America. Look at this. We're dealing. with a super majority here. We're talking about more than three in five Americans, 61% who say that Trump's

policies have worsened economic conditions in America. How about worsened your own finances? Again, we're dealing with a majority here. 51% of Americans say that Trump's policies have worsened your own finances. This is double trouble for the president of the United States. I decide to look at pure, pure independence, those who don't lean towards either side. And look at this. of Trump on the economy among pure independence. We're talking about four in five, four and five, 79%. I'm laughing because you rarely ever see a number this high. 79% of pure independence disapprove of Trump on the economy.

How about this? This is no outlier, Kate. This is no outlier because look at Marquette University. Their law school, 76% of pure independence disapprove of Trump on the economy. When you put it all together with the approval ratings, it averages out to a net approval rating on the economy among pure independence of, get this, minus 58 points. What a disaster.

There's like no, there's barely even words to bring all of that together. So good luck. You're Joe Biden now. That's basically the same numbers that we're racking up in 2021. We covered it here day in and day out. They lost their way. What happened after that? They became laser focused on you.

Oh, they became labor focused on a. foreign war. They were seen as doing not enough for people who were at home. They seemed like they were out of touch, old, and focusing on the wrong things, and then trying to dominate on some culture issues. Shall we all remember how that all played for the election? I mean, it's like napping in the oval office. The script is written. During press conference. Yeah, same shit. I mean, the script is written. By the way, it's actually similar sycophantic dynamics. The king was obviously, you know, Biden was obviously decrepit and dementia-ridden by 2021, if not even whenever he ran. Nobody could say it. If you did, you were a conspiracy theorist. Well, this time around with Trump,

it's like if you say even anything, even moderate, like MTG, about, hey, I think we should focus a little bit on prices. You get excised, like the Dean Phillips of the world or any of the other Democrats who tried to originally. And then eventually sometime around mid-2027 in the middle of the election, and everyone can start to say the truth out loud and there will be a civil war and at that point, what do you think is going to happen? You know, it's the same shit, literally all over again. You know, of all those numbers that Harry Anton put up there,

the one that really struck me the most, is where it said a majority of people actually say Trump's economic plan has directly hurt me. Because a lot of times you'll have a negative sense overall of the economy, but people will say, but I'm actually doing okay. There you had very little discrepancy

between the percent who are saying Trump's policies have made the economy worse and the percent that said Trump's policies have made my life worse, directly my economic situation worse. So when you have a majority who are feeling that direct impact, yeah, that is political. Well, he tied himself to the tariffs. He made it. I mean, he keeps the economy was his number one thing when he ran, obviously. And then two, he tied himself directly to the tariffs. People either felt the problems with the tariffs or they feel the general chaos with their, their stock portfolios or anything. I mean, if you look, you and I run a business for that entire Liberation Day period,

we were like no big expenses, like at our company. How many other people are like that? I'm sure there's a ton. Look at the job market. There's a ton of people who are like, man, between AI and the government and all this other nonsense, not hiring or we're firing, we're just, we're spending no big money, projects which originally may have been greenlit or not being greenlit. This stuff cascaged throughout the whole U.S. economy.

And, you know, home prices, flat or high, mortgage rates, flat. basically not that you know much lower than they were electric bills going into winter higher i mean genuinely economically what's all that different from last year i can't think of a if anything it's worse if you look at all the private data by the way when the shutdown ends and we actually get some of that uh some of those numbers bLS it's going to be bad i was just looking adp you know just this morning put out a new um put out a new report which here let me just pull it up very quickly. But ADP just had a payroll report that came out, you know, I think maybe like an hour ago or so, which showed, you know, the exact similar types of losses in terms of payroll.

So it's just, it's not good. It's really all of the data points. Same with Biden. He wasn't singularly focused on it. To most people, it's quite obvious Trump cares more about some bullshit Nobel Peace Prize nonsense. Well, and you have the insult to injury of Trump, too, throwing these opulent, you know, Yeah, that's part of it too. At Mara Lago and building out his East Wing and redecorating his marble bathroom and whatever. So you have not only are not

focused on me, but you are living this lavish great Gatsby, roaring 20s like opulent lifestyle in all of our faces and giving away the store to a bunch of billionaires. On the podcast health stuff, we are

tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. On health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type two? Extremely.

Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world. Like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but like, you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizens, investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife

helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her, and I did not kill her,

or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I or guess on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight,

I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone tone for, For an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism.

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the I-heart radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to Galane Maxwell, there, of course, was a big pause in any potential vote on the Epstein files in the United States Congress. Some 54 days they stayed out of session, including refusing to swear in a new Democratic member of the House because she would have signed a discharge petition to force a vote on said Epstein files.

Adelita Griehalva, she has now. officially travel here to Washington, D.C. to be sworn in, and we'll probably be shining this petition very shortly. Here's what she had to say. So it looks like I'm going to get sworn in this week. After seven weeks of waiting, I almost can't believe it's true. I am really upset that one of the first votes that I will take is on a bill that does nothing for affordable health care for the American people. And I also have to say that we have to do something to make sure that one person can't silence. the voices of 813,000 people.

This can never happen again to another member elect that is waiting in the wings because someone doesn't want to do their job or because they're playing politics. So that was Adelite Grijalva. She won that special election. Mike Johnson and Crook,

who decided not to swear her in again, largely because of the Epstein situation. And at the very same time, we're getting some very, very troubling details from a whistleblower inside of the federal prison system. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. This is from the Jeffrey Epstein case regarding Galane Maxwell and her current club-fed treatment. Now, according to a whistleblower who has approached the United States Congress,

they are saying that Maxwell has received what was described as, quote, concierge-style treatment at the minimum security prison camp she was transferred to, including customized meals, permission to go to exercise after hours, time to play with a puppy that was being trained by an inmate to become a service dog, among other things. So you could see that is a little bit interesting. The whistleblower, by the way, also claims that a top official at the prison camp complained

he is, quote, sick of having to be Maxwell's bitch. Fair, fair. It's objectively crazy. You're running a federal prison camp. Most of the inmates are fraudsters. White-collar criminals. They're white-collar criminals. You're not even allowed in this prison.

if you're a sex offender, like Elaine Maxwell. If you're a murderer or whatever, you must, there's something called a point system. I was doing some research in the federal prison system. Like, you need a very, very low number of, like, points, like violent crime and all that. It usually keeps you out a place like a federal prison camp, pedophiles and all that.

They're not allowed in there either. It's a very specific type of inmate. It's kind of a cushy place. That's why it is what it is. And they have a lot of, like, leeway. There's not as many guards. A lot of them, you know, they can smuggle food in or whatever. Like, people kind of look the other way.

So when Galane shows up here, these guys are not, first of all, it's the type of inmate who's not even supposed to be there. But then second, there's obviously pressure from somewhere about her treatment inside of this prison camp. So if a top prison official is saying, I'm tired of being her bitch, somebody is telling him you have to be her bitch. Who is that person? Is it in the DOJ, at the Bureau of Prisons? You know, all of this, by the way, I mean, the Bureau of Prisons, are we all going to forget? was the entity which oversaw the suicide, released the video, if you want to call it that, of the evidence, again, if you want to call it, they who covered up and did the investigation

of the so-called suicide, of which there's a million holes to run through. So this stuff just stinks. I mean, the entire thing stinks. I mean, we know it comes from Trump. Yeah. Like, there's no, there's no mystery around it. We know. She knows stuff. He doesn't want out. She has all this power and leverage. You know, ever since she started in her cushy treatment, guess what? The lease of the Wall Street Journal and everywhere else stopped. She got her prison transfer. She gets to hang out with their puppy.

Another thing that they said here that was noteworthy is she gets to have more access with visitors who have computers so that she can have, you know, outside electronic communications, again, something that is completely barred and banned for any of the other inmates who committed much lesser, like, crimes than she committed. So it's insane. No, it's straight up. what's going on here. She no has dirt on Trump or on his friends or all of the above that he doesn't want to be made public. And so, you know, in fact, like not only is this prison official

her bitch, but Trump is her bitch. He's doing her bidding and getting her the special treatment. That's what's happening here. And oh, by the way, she's also putting in her application for her sentence to be commuted. And Trump has been going on a pardon spree, pardoned all these fake electors part of the like, you know, January 6th, stop the steel bullshit, just pardoned them. I saw someone else, the husband of this Republican representative,

just gotten pardoned this morning for some sort of health care fraud that he committed, by the way, as we're talking about health care. And so she's on the list for potential pardon or commutation. And every time he gets asked about it, he won't deny it. He won't

rule it out whatsoever. So I think everyone should expect that that is a very very likely outcome, especially when you see the details of the special treatment, the cushy concierge-style treatment that she's receiving at this club fed. I don't think you can draw another conclusion at this point. It's like it just has to be some very high-level people in the White House who are telling them this is the way that it all has to be treated. I mean, how else can you explain? You know, all of the changes in policy and the prison movement and now the top prison officials saying that she's treating me like her

bitch it's crazy the commutation i i still like as corrupt as i believe things are and as crazy as i things are the fact like if if he commuted her sentence i i have i can you even imagine like the yes the break no no no no no i mean the reaction i'm not saying he he wouldn't do it i'm saying the reaction to that it would confirm every but the react the reaction from wild because maga has mostly shut up about this at this point yeah but he even that would be, I mean, I would hope it's a bridge too far. I did say that, you know, a lot of these people are sick of fans and all that, but like, would we really all just sit here and allow something like that to go? I don't think so. But look, I could be wrong. I do want to

say, I want to give a major shout out to Ryan Grimm, who, I mean, story after story from Ryan and from Maas over at Dropside is just confirming beyond my wildest dreams when I laid out all of the Israel connections with Epstein. If I had this stuff, I would have. been less careful in my language and I'm in like 100%. I'm willing to just say it out loud. Let's put his story up here on the screen. Here he had a blog. You guys broke this down on the Friday show, but Epstein helped Israel sell the surveillance state to Cote Duar, an African nation. And some of the allegations inside of the story are absolutely wild. They talk about his relationship with Ayud Barak, about the sale of his military technology, about the daughter of this

leader and how she herself was ensnared kind of within his scheme. This is just one of the latest Epstein stories that they've dropped previously one that also involved Africa, Israeli intelligence. He's got a new one actually out just this morning. I have it pulled up. Israeli spy stayed for weeks at a time at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion. Leaked email show Epstein working on a wire transfer to Ahud Barak's top aide, Yoni Korin, who regularly stayed at his mansion. I'll read you the lead of this. So this is again Ryan and Maz. An Israeli military intelligence officer stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan apartment on at least three occasions, including once in February 2013, while working as a senior aide to then Israeli Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.

Yoni Koren made his intelligence career working in covert operations alongside the Mossad, remained a lieutenant colonel in reserve duty after he officially left the Intelligence Directorate. He stayed in Epstein's apartment again for two weeks in October 2014 and a third time for 10 more days in September 2015. Drop site compiled evidence of these days from schedules released by the House Oversight Committee last month and Barack's hacked emails. On all three trips, Korn appeared to be conducting official or unofficial business. A Times of Israel article from late January 2013, a few weeks before Korn's first documented stay, identifies him as still actively serving as the Bureau Chief for the Israeli Ministry of Defense that month.

And it goes on from there. But yeah, TLDR, this guy, Israeli military intelligence officer, high-level senior aid to the defense minister, then defense minister of Israel, Ahud Barak, staying at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion on the Upper East Side for two weeks at a time, you know, 10 days, two weeks

while he's conducting business. I mean, it's confirmed. Like, it's confirmed. Yeah. He was an intelligent asset for Israel. Period. Done. Dusted.

We know now. And the other wild thing that we always bring up, and I think really bears mentioning, is, you know, Ryan and Maz, they're just going through things that have been publicly released now,

either from the House Oversight Committee, or from these, mostly from these hacked emails, this is all available to any news outlet who cares to look through them and do the reporting, and none of them do. None of them care to go through the emails. None of them want to put this sort of information out in the public domain, and that is wild. That is incredibly revealing in and of itself. Again, I wish I had this six months ago when I was really on a tour of it because, like, this is actually what I needed. like the actual stakecraft stuff behind the scenes of the nitty-gritty on how you are a very useful person.

One of the things also that always annoyed me is the assumption, you know, when we talked about intelligence asset, was that they're being run by Israel or run by CIA. It's not like that. The point was that he had a blackmail scheme or what, who knows, exactly, what he was doing behind the scenes. But he had access to a lot of sketchy money circles. That was very convenient for huge numbers of intelligence agencies, power broke, with a lot of these Israeli public officials, and he used his influence behind the scenes

here, obviously, to benefit the state of Israel, four separate times documented that Ryan and Maas have now shown us. I mean, what else do you want? How else would you describe that relationship? Right. We don't need anything else here. We're really straining the, you know, language and definitions to say that it's not what it is. It's just, it's open, it's shut. If this was any other person, if you're just neutral, said, here are four separate instances where he acted and used his private influence to benefit a foreign state. How would you describe that person who also was involved with like this trafficking ring and was also an extremely high net worth individual under extremely suspicious

circumstances? Come on, all right. I mean, it's like a movie character. It would be so obvious to any neutral observer. But yeah, I mean, this is where the mainstream press stuff and MAGA. I mean, they pretended to care. Nobody's caring anymore. They got nothing. Nobody retweets. Nobody covers it. It all just is out in the open. Obviously, it's great. Where's the free press at? Yeah. Well, they're interviewing Mossad.

You remember that? Remember when she interviewed Mossad? Barry, and she was like, so, was Epstein ever Mossad? And he was like, no, of course not, Barry. You know, it's like, it would never happen. You're like, okay, I don't take your word for it, I guess. I'm enjoying the Colombian president, Petro, Gustavo Petro, going after Trump on the Epstein front.

And by the way, we just murdered some more random, you know, people out in the ocean, two more boats were blown up, claiming to be drunk traffickers. Oh, it's specific. It was not, yeah, at least not the Caribbean. Yeah, at least not. It's no longer in the loop. The Venezuela thing, I really, it has died down very recently.

For now. Kind of an interesting internal thing. I think the election had something to do with it, but I also kind of believe that some of the pushback that we were providing in terms of the intel and just how bullshit the case was. Made a difference. It somehow, I really do think it actually made a difference at some level. But in any case, I'm appreciating the,

Colombian president taking Trump to task for his Epstein ties. He said recently a clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy to keep Epstein's list from coming out. They send warships to kill fishermen and threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil. They want to turn the region into another Libya full of slaves. So the Epstein, you know, as I have explained, pedophile, Mr. Petro. Petro is desperate to get sanctioned because he's actually not that popular. And he wants the Lula treatment. He wants Trump to sanction him. so that he can become very popular, and his leftist coalition can prevail in Colombia. So that's mostly what explained.

I mean, it is funny. He can't be wrong. He's trying to say the most outrageous shit about Trump because he's desperately seeking some sanctions from the U.S. State Department, who, by the way, the State Department is aware of this. Rubio doesn't want him to get reelected. And so his advice to the president has been, sir, you just got to have to shut up and take it. And knowing Trump, it's not going to work. We'll see if that last.

We'll see if that last. That's a little inside baseball for everybody here. on the show. On the podcast, health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyankawali, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I Have Scurvy at 3 a.m? And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way.

Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On an all-new episode of I-Hard Radio's Las Culturistas, Jennifer Lawrence is dishing. Jennifer Lawrence from her hilariously awkward run-ins with A-Lister's. I don't know what I was expecting, but he was.

was just like, nice to meet you. To her unfiltered take on beauty treatments. I'm so upset I think the Botox before that. And a jaw-dropping reveal you won't see coming. I don't know if I can announce this, but I'm just gonna. Open your free IHeard Radio app. Search Loss, Cultureista, and listen to the full podcast now. Hey, I'm Kyle McLaughlin.

You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing? where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday, and let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

Thank you.