Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/17/22: Polish Missile Strike, Ukraine Funding, GOP Civil War, Biden Attacks Trump, Gay Marriage Bill, FIFA Corruption, Crypto & MORE!

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Ukraine funding, the Polish missile strike, GOP infighting, a gay marriage bill passing the Senate, Qatar World Cup fallout & crypto's collapse explained by Matt Taibbi.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/Matt Taibbi: https://taibbi.substack.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. That is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A whole lot of news breaking here and around the world. We're going to start this morning with what is going on in Ukraine. Big old disagreement between the U.S. and NATO and Zelensky about exactly what happened with that missile in Poland. So we'll break all of that down and also some real questions for the media, for some of our NATO allies. There's a lot to dig into there.

We also have continued fallout and reaction from Trump's big 2024 announcement. He is running again. Here we go. Third time around. His daughter is not going to be involved this time. That was kind of stunning. Matt Gaetz, one of his top allies, not showing up to the speech. On the other hand, you did have some of his people coming out and saying this is exactly what we need. This is he needs to, you know, keep going, stay on message, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll bring you all of that. We also have a look inside what the Biden team's plan is to take Trump down again in 2024. They released some videos right away and we have some more reporting on what exactly they are planning. Also, a big, big vote in the Senate yesterday to move forward on gay marriage. It looks like they have rounded up about 12 Republican votes to codify gay marriage

at the federal level. We will tell you who and what is going to happen now. And we also have some new video coming out of Qatar where they are hosting the World Cup. Not going so well and not a big surprise there. Yeah, there's a lot to say on Qatar. Indeed. But before we get to that, live show. Let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen. New York City, we are coming. Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan, December 6th. We will be there, 7.30 p.m. The tickets are on sale. Link will be down in the description. Next one, the very next day, we'll be traveling to Boston at the Wilbur Theater. We've got tickets on sale for that. Now go ahead and buy those. We've got Marshall and Kyle that are going to be in the house. We've got more production value for both of these shows. I think you guys

are really going to enjoy it. We are kind of mixing our lessons from Atlanta and from Chicago, and I think it's going to be a really fun experience. Absolutely. All right, let's start with Ukraine. So lots going on. Obviously, we began our last show on Tuesday with the developing situation. So first of all, let's go chronologically. First, what came out was an anonymously-supported report by the Associated Press that, according to a U.S. official, a Russian missile had landed in Poland very close to the Ukrainian border, killing two Polish civilians. Shortly after that, President Biden woke up early in Bali, attending the G20 summit, where he held a phone call with the Polish President Duda, and then also had an intelligence briefing from his staff. After that, he spoke with journalists,

where he's the very first time intimated, actually, these missiles may not have come from Russia. This was the first indication of that. Let's take a listen. Mr. President, it's too early to say whether this missile was come from Russia. This was the first indication of that. Let's take a listen. Mr. President, is it too early to say whether this missile was fired from Russia? There is preliminary information that contests that. I don't want to say that till we completely investigate, but it is, it's unlikely in the minds of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. That was the first indication that we got from the United States that actually this may not have been fired from Russia, Crystal. And there were competing explanations, which we floated in our Tuesday show, which was, it is possible that these were fired from Russia. It was also possible this was Ukrainian anti-missile defense systems that either fired and then landed inside of Russia, given that it was very, or inside of Poland, given that it was very close to that

border. Well, furthermore, we finally got a statement from NATO, from the United States, and from Poland, all independently saying this missile came from Ukraine. It was an anti-missile defense system. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So the NATO chief said that there was no indication that the blast in Poland was a deliberate attack. Both the Poles and the United States with their technology said that the missile, which hit in proximity to the Ukrainian border, was fired by Ukrainian missile defense systems. Their original suspicion or the original suspicion and fear was that this was either a deliberate or accidental attack there. And however, this is where things get kind of

interesting. NATO, the United States and Poland are all saying, yes, it was Ukraine, but it's not Ukraine's fault because Russia is the one who was firing missiles. They were simply defending themselves. I think there's some logic to that. I think it's fine. But to try and originally cast blame on Russia, which we're going to get to in a little bit, really confused and muddied the waters and really led to an about face. And then finally, I know you have it in front of you. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. This was a statement by our National Security Council on the incident and the official position

of the United States on the blast in Poland. Yeah, so I'll read this in part. They say, we have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda's preliminary assessment. This explosion was most likely the result of Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland. They say they will continue a full investigation and go on to say,

that said, whatever the final conclusion might be, it is clear the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia, which launched a barrage of missiles on Ukraine, specifically intended to target civilian infrastructure. Ukraine had and has every right to defend itself. So I think what's really important to say about that statement is they're going out of their way to say, listen, it might have been, it looks like it was the Ukrainian missile defense system. We don't hold you, you know, like no harm, no foul. We understand it was an accident. We're not trying to like cast blame on you.

We're just saying this is what happened. You have every right to defend yourself. Going out of their way to say that. Right. And we will get to this. Zelensky continues to deny. But here is why. There's basically no reason to believe that the U.S. and Poland would not know almost immediately. There's a reason President Biden only hours after was like, we don't think that it was fired from there.

Do you have any idea how many anti-ballistic missile defense systems that we have sitting in Poland right now? This was one of the original things that Putin used to gripe about. We have troops inside of Poland, which these are fully acknowledged U.S. soldiers. Poland is the waylay for NATO arms into Ukraine in the city of Lviv. If you think we don't have some of the most sophisticated missile technology like known to man inside of Poland, I think you're crazy. And second, which is that I think the Poles are going to know as well, because, A, we probably sold them the technology, and we share intelligence on all of that. They've also been very hawkish.

Exactly. So the fact that they're saying it, and we're saying it, and NATO is saying it, I mean, listen, it's possible that they're lying because they just don't want World War III to start, which, frankly, if they are, I'm okay with that, because I just don't want World War III to start, which, frankly, if they are, I'm OK with that because I also don't want World War III to start. But given that you have all three of those entities all saying very unlikely this actually came from Russia, that seems the most likely actual explanation for what happened here. I mean, yeah, look, we have no evidence or indication to say otherwise. The United States and NATO.

Also, I mean, Russia is a party to this too, right? And their immediate response was, no, we didn't have anything to do with this. None of our missiles were fired into Poland. We know exactly where they landed. We were somewhat skeptical of that or somewhat skeptical just because, I mean, they lie all the time. That being said, one of the fears that was and why I think it was credible to be dubious on that was one of our longtime fears is that the Russians are running out of most of their precision-guided, are running out of precision-guided munitions and turning towards less accurate ones. That's what's led to

many of the misfires. They'll be targeting, like, energy infrastructure and they'll accidentally hit, you know, like a playground or something like that, which is obviously horrific. And look, even targeting energy infrastructure is, you infrastructure is a horrific act of war. But put that aside. I'm saying they have had problems hitting what they want to hit. Part of the reason why it's been so dangerous, every single time I see Russian missiles going to the city of Lviv, I always think, like, it's just a matter of time.

You know, I mean, what happened here is we were only, what, 12 miles or 12 to 50 miles. I forget exactly what the exact distance was. Nobody's entirely sure on the exact coordinates of where those missiles hit. That's not that far away. I mean, we consider where these missiles are actually being launched. And also, given the fact that Ukrainian's anti-missile defense systems in there are so close to the Polish border, unfortunately, given the fact that there are no major diplomatic breakthroughs that we can speak to right now, well, it's possible this can only happen again. And also, it's a bit scary that it took so long, really.

I mean, if we did know immediately, we should have put out that information as soon as humanly possible. Well, I really cast a lot of blame on the AP for running with this story. I agree. Barely sourced, thinly sourced. I mean, you know, we're not the AP. We don't have all the journalistic resources that they do. But we know enough to, when we were covering this, say, we don't know what actually happened.

Here are the possible plausible scenarios. That is the responsible thing to do when you're dealing with potential, you know, Article 5, potential confrontation between two nuclear-armed superpowers. It is so imperative that you actually wait for the facts before you just go ahead and jump to conclusions. So it was just wildly irresponsible of them to run with the story. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so then let's move to the, well, this entire thing was a complete cluster and has dramatically and should dramatically decrease much of your faith in the immediate information that was put out by the Ukrainians and by many of the NATO Baltic states, not including Poland.

First and foremost was Zelensky, who seized on the immediate information or the immediate aftermath of the blast to call for increased NATO intervention into Ukraine. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is the very first statement that he made. Quote, terror is not limited to our national borders. Russian missiles hit Poland, NATO territory. This is a Russian missile attack on collective security, a very significant escalation. We must act.

Let's go and put the next one up there. Because in a way, you can say, okay, Zelensky, he's always trying to draw the U. We must act. Let's go and put the next one up there. Because in a way, you can say, okay, Zelensky, he's always trying to draw the US in. He's just doing what he wants. Here you have the Ukrainian foreign minister. This is the very first immediate response on the attack or on what happened in Poland. He says, quote, Russia now promotes a conspiracy theory. It was allegedly a missile of Ukrainian air defense that fell on the Polish theory, which is not true. No one should buy Russian propaganda or amplify its messages. This lesson should have been long learned since the downing of MH17. Now look, he's not wrong. The Russians are liars on MH17 and have been liars for a long time. But it is on you to provide accurate

information unless your aim is to draw the United States and NATO and to escalate the situation further. And unfortunately, our NATO so-called allies in the Baltics, they were very willing to jump on the same bandwagon. Let's go and put this up there. Here you have Slovakia, or sorry, here you have a NATO defense minister saying, quote, I am very concerned by Russian missiles dropping in Poland. Russia must explain what happened. Senseless attacks on infrastructure must stop. Russia's recklessness is getting out of hand. We will be in close contact and allies to coordinate a response. Let's go ahead and throw the next one up there because, again, it just underscores. Here you have Latvia's defense minister saying, quote, criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland.

And then finally, we'll go with what you said, Crystal, underscoring the Associated Press's role in all of this. I'm going to put this on the screen. How a lightly sourced AP story almost set off World War III. That deadly explosion showed that the AP was willing to run on a single attribution source of a U.S. official claiming that this was a Russian missile, only hours later to be contradicted by the President of the United States. Now, people may say, Crystal Saga, you guys are over, you guys are exaggerating. You know, oh, this specific incident wasn't going to lead to World War III.

I don't think that's what we're claiming at all. What we're saying is that was a real jump off point. It could have been one of those things where it's like, okay, now we're good. Let's say Poland issued an ultimatum. Ultimatums have never led to war in Europe, specifically in Eastern Europe, when over one or two people were killed, right? That's never happened before in history.

The point is, is that whenever you unleash that level of uncertainty and bad information, it was clear in this instance that the Ukrainians and many of the Baltic states, barring both Poland and Estonia, I'll give them credit. They never actually said it was Russia. But you had two NATO allies and Ukraine, our ostensible ally in this situation, who straight up lied about what happened or at the very least did not have complete information and put out propaganda instead to draw the United States and its allies into this war. And Zelensky, in spite of the fact that you now have Poland, the U.S. and NATO saying this looks like it was Ukrainian missile defense, that is very unlikely this came from Russia,

there is no evidence to suggest that it did. He is sticking to his story. Yeah. I mean, he is straight out saying, no, it was not us. I promise you it was not us. It was definitely Russia. So, I mean, this is an extraordinarily dangerous situation in and of itself. But I think the thing it really, really reveals is how many actors are looking for any justification to try to pull us further into this conflict. And, you know, over at Responsible Statecraft, they had a number of examples. So before anyone really knew what had happened here, you had prominent journalists, as you were pointing out, lawmakers jumping in to say, all right, it's time to think about Article 5. I mean, people were literally saying that at 2.10

p.m., a Ukrainian journalist with a significant following in the West tweeted, so Article 5. She softened her comment about 20 minutes later, calling on concerned parties to wait for official information, but they say a member of Ukraine's parliament had no such compunction. The lawmaker simply tweeted out the phrase Article 5 at 2.29 p.m., adding later that Putin was, quote, testing the limits with the strikes and that reaction equals appeasement. Another prominent American supporter of Ukraine and member of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Paul Massaro, said around the same time that Russian terrorism had reached Poland, adding shortly after that it was, quote, hard to believe this was an accident. NATO allies all jumping to conclusions and implying we ought to be thinking about Article 5 here before you have even, you know, an hour to see any sort of confirmation of what actually happened. It just really reveals what their game is.

And also with whoever this U.S. official that leaked this to the AP, like clearly they're playing their own game here as well. Yeah, look, it's incredibly irresponsible. And this gets to the point where whenever you have major national security information being confirmed on background and all this other nonsense, it needs to end as authoritative. And, you know, I think all of us have to play a role in this. At this point, when you have a major international incident and you just have some rant, by the way, what does U.S. official even mean? You know, this is what I used to do this as well. And we had to try and take great care to describe like a senior administration official, a senior

White House official, a person close to Donald Trump. U.S. official could mean, you know, like a sergeant in the Pentagon, like, or it could mean the secretary of state. It's one of those where we genuinely have no idea. And the fact that the AP chose to run with it, and then furthermore, that so many people in the American press who had just been agitating for escalation were willing to run with it too, without any information, without waiting for time. I mean, in a way, you can almost expect those people to do that. It is Ukraine and the defense ministers of Latvia and of Slovakia who are pretty much unforgivable here.

The Ukrainian government, once again, I get it. It's their responsibility to luck out for their interests. But maybe we should learn then that their interests can diverge a little bit from our own interests. And that's part of the problem in American political discourse. If you say that, you're a Russian plant. I mean, you're not a Russian plant for saying, yeah, I hope Ukraine wins. I hope they continue to keep up the good fight. But I don't want any part of this war in Ukraine. Same whenever you have the Latvians willing to just so immediately say criminal Russian missiles, all of that. Look, if it was,

everybody would condemn it. You, nothing is hurt to the NATO countries to just wait 12 hours. And I think the polls immediate response should be applauded here. As you said, even though they are as hawkish as they come, they were like, we're convening a national security council. We're going to look at all the information. We'll let you guys know what we find. They did not leak anything about Russia, all of that. They held that. They said, maybe we'll do article four if it does turn out to be Russia, but we're going to come out and have the information. The Polish president immediately called the NATO secretary general, the president of the United States, the prime minister of the UK, you know, the two most powerful countries inside of NATO, and also the NATO Secretary General.

And then they all put the information out together. And then they also came up with the line, we're like, look, we're not blaming Ukraine. They have the right to defend themselves. It was a bad situation. It's an accident. Let's clean up and go home. Well, and Zelensky needs to be a little careful here because, you know, he is completely dependent on the U.S. in particular, but the West and NATO in general for the continued existence of his administration, for economic support, and obviously for the weapons that we have been providing in mass quantities to him. And there's actually a NATO country diplomat who told the Financial Times, quote, this is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying our confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile. That is from a diplomat from a NATO country saying he is really, really misstepping here and just out and out lying to try to, you know,

bolster his own desire to draw countries more directly into this war. So, you know, it's a very revealing incident, that's what I'll say, from the press, from some of these diplomats, from Zelensky himself, from some of the countries, from some of the journalists who wanted to push an agenda that they have long had. Yeah, look, keep this in mind. The next time some ambiguous stuff pops up in Ukraine, I'm not going to believe Zelensky the very first thing he says. I'm going to wait until some real information comes to line. Let's go ahead and go to the next one here.

Why does any of this matter? Talking about Ukraine's trustworthiness and all of that. Well, the Biden administration, fresh off the heels of their victory in the Senate and, you know, very narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives. What do they want in the lame duck Congress? Let's go and put this up there on the screen. $37 billion more in Ukraine emergency aid. President Biden is asking Congress to provide $37 billion in additional aid, on top of $9 billion more in COVID funding. I'm actually curious where exactly that $9 billion is going. But anyway, why does this matter? The proposed Ukrainian military assistance includes, and this is why it's important, of that $37 billion, people could say, oh, but it's for humanitarian.

No, no, no, no. $21.7 billion of it is military aid. $14 billion is humanitarian aid. Only $900 million for healthcare and support for Ukrainians who are living in the U.S. and $600 million for, quote, nuclear security support to Ukraine and also for modernizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, I have a lot of questions about what nuclear security support to Ukraine even means. By the way, it's not like anybody in Congress is even going to ask what that means. But the point is, is that this brings us to an extraordinary level of support for Ukraine to a degree which I don't think is really setting in for the American people. I mean, let's lay this out. U.S. funding for the war in Ukraine in the last nine months is now total $91.3 billion. That is 33% more than Russia has spent on its entire war effort that they're actually involved in. It is double the U.S. average annual expenditure for the war in Afghanistan,

which itself was a colossal boondoggle. So let's just consider that. And actually, Glenn laid this out quite well. If we're projecting this out on a year-by-year basis, that means Ukraine needs $120 billion just of U.S. money a year to fuel this war. General Mark Milley gave a press conference yesterday, our top general. They asked him, they said, sir, do you think Ukraine has the capacity to take back all of Ukraine? And he was like, no, I don't think so. He's like, look, they've done very well, but Russia still holds 20% of their entire country, which is not a bad way to put it. And the point that he made is, and has made behind the scenes, is I don't see any possible scenario where that's going to happen. And let's say even that it does exist, it would require hundreds of

billions of dollars on behalf of the US taxpayer. And actually, there's a lot of arguments to say that if that were to happen, it would precipitate some sort of nuclear crisis, which would lead to a full blown war. Well, that's that's the part that I'm really most concerned about is the longer this goes on, the more potential incidents you have, like what just transpired in Poland, that can lead to a dramatic escalation and ultimate complete catastrophe. And you do have I think, you know, this is sort of barely getting covered and mentioned in the press, but we talked about that extraordinary report that behind the scenes, General Milley is saying, listen, guys, now's the time to start pushing Ukraine to come to the table to meet directly with Russia to have some sort of diplomatic negotiations. His argument is, you know, this is a chance for them to consolidate the gains that they have made in order to, you know, lock in what they have done before we get into this long, cold winter.

And you also have Zelensky himself revealing that, and this is from Just Foreign Policy, tweeted this out, that Western allies have told him Putin wants to begin direct negotiations. This comes after Milley and others in the Biden admin have voiced support for talks publicly and privately. And Sullivan discussed talks with Zelensky in a recent visit to Kiev. So we shouldn't pretend like, you know, a lot of people like to say, well, there's no chance for negotiations right now. There's no possibility of diplomacy. So maybe later, maybe at a later date, maybe we'll get down the road to that. But there clearly is somewhat of an opening right now. And, you know, if this aid comes out with absolutely no conditions, I mean, this is a way to exert pressure on the Ukrainians to say, all right, we got to start being serious about trying to bring this to some sort of a negotiated settlement, because that is the only way this war is ultimately going to end.

Yeah, look, I just think that it's not that difficult. Whenever everybody, Americans are sent, Americans supported aid to Ukraine. Americans were like, look, we're good people. We decided, you know, that this is a just cause. But let me just lay it all out again. The United States to date in terms of this is just pure military aid. This is not all aid, although we can talk about all aid as well if we want to, has already spent 15.2 billion. We have an additional 11.7 billion in reserve. So why do they need 20 more billion in reserve? Now, let's stack that up against every other country on earth. The United Kingdom, to date, has pledged to Ukraine 1.5 billion euros. How kind of them? They have 2.3 billion in reserve. Next to that is Poland, which has done 1.8 billion. Next to that is Germany, which has done 0.7 billion.

Next to that is Canada, 0.9 billion. Next to that is Norway at 0.2 billion. Denmark, 0.3, Latvia, 0.3, the Czech Republic at 0.3. Am I making the point? Which is that that 20 billion of extra military aid that the Congress is asking or that Biden is asking for Congress is 10 times, more than 10 times more that the UK has spent on all military aid to Ukraine. This is a one-to-one conflict. And if that's the case, well, then I don't even know why we consult with NATO and the rest of these people, because we're the ones who are the driver's seat. Now, I was reading also on Ukraine. By the way, they're also almost running out of ammunition. That's part of the reason why they're asking for this. Well, where is all the money going? I mean, does it really require that much ammo to keep this up?

Because if that's true, okay, let's take it on their face. Let's believe them. That's the case. Well, then that means, ladies and gentlemen, we just signed up for $20 billion expenditures, what, every three months? In perpetuity. Yeah, I didn't sign up for that. That's one-seventh of the entire Pentagon budget. I think the most important point is what you just said, which is the reality that we are in the driver's seat. I mean, all of

the like, oh, we're consulting with our NATO allies. No, no, no. The whole policy of the West is coming directly from the U.S. I mean, we have pushed, you know, exactly the policy that we want to see and approach this in exactly the way that we want to approach this. So that's the thing that drives me crazy is when people say like, oh, well, we're just letting the Ukrainians do their thing. No, no, no. Like, let's not pretend that we're anything other than a very direct and active participant that is determining the course of this war, because we are. I mean, training, intelligence on top of, you know, the military aid, the economic aid, all of that. we are in the driver's seat in terms of

what is going on in this war. That is just reality. And to pretend otherwise is to just like sort of bury your head in the sand. So at some point, you know, you have people in the administration who have decided that, you know what, the best course right now would be to try to push for diplomacy. That would be, there's no guarantees there, but now would be an opportune time. And I think that it is at least worth the media taking that debate to the American public and laying out for them. And we've just had with this incident, which could have ended in catastrophe in Poland. I mean, it did end in catastrophe for the two people whose lives were lost, but a larger conflagration could have occurred. This is a perfect case in point to say, listen, the longer this goes on, the more we risk potentially catastrophic situations

like what we narrowly avoided here. Yeah, no, I think that that is very well said. And finally, look, we'll give credit, I guess, where it's due. Let's put this up there on the screen. Marjorie Taylor Greene says, quote, I am calling for an audit of all U.S. aid and funding to Ukraine. The American people deserve to know how their money is being spent in defense of another nation's border. We'll leave the Biden stuff, all of that to the side. I agree with her.

I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, okay, 21.7 billion. And I have read here before what exactly those appropriations sound like. It just says $14 billion to be appropriated at the discretion of the President of the United States and whatever he wants from the United States Air Force. So what is it? What are we sending? Why are we putting it all in the hands of Biden? This isn't even saying don't send the aid. It's just like, hey, what kind? What is it? Deliver a quarterly report to Congress. Is that so much ask for? Part of the reason I'm up here speculating about ammo, I have no idea. All I know is what the U.S. government tells us, nothing.

There was that one report that came out. What was that, CBS? Yeah, CBS News. They had to retract. They had to retract. It was like, you know, some of these weapons aren't going where we really think that they should. There was a whole uproar about it.

But where's the follow-up? Where's the rest of the journalism on? Oh, actually And they had to, there was a whole uproar about it. But where's the follow up? Where's the rest of the journalism on? Oh, actually, they fixed it. Now it's going the right places. Like we have not seen any follow on reporting about how this is all going. There you go. Okay, let's turn to domestic politics, because 2024 is apparently here, whether you want it to be or not. And we may be facing the rematch that absolutely no one wants, Trump versus Biden. He officially announced on Tuesday night we were here. Thank you to the many of you who joined us here. It was a fun night and great to have Ryan and Emily also to join in and do the whole analysis and all of that. So post-announcement, actually, just as we were walking out of here, we got the

news that there was a pretty notable no-show at his announcement speech. That would be his own daughter, Ivanka, who put out a statement, I guess, shortly after or during the speech that said, in part, I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics. While I will always love and support my father, going forward, I will do so outside the political arena. I am grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people, and I will always be proud of many of our administration's accomplishments. That is from Ivanka. And then another sort of notable no-show saga was Congressman Matt Gates. Let's put this up on the screen. So obviously he's been a very close Trump ally.

He was one of the very few lawmakers who had planned to go down and be present at Mar-a-Lago for the speech. But he bailed out saying the weather wasn't looking good for his flight down from D.C. to Florida, but he will be there, quote, in spirit. I'm sure that went down just fine with Trump. And by the way, people were sharing pictures of like the weather forecast for that day, which was like perfect, no clouds, no sky. The weather was bad here. I don't know if it was bad enough to ground flights. Look. I don't think so.

Is it true or not? I don't know. Yeah. So what did you make of those two? The Ivanka one is the biggest piece. Yeah. But at the same time, I wish she would take her husband with her

because Jared was in attendance on that speech. He has not made any such declaration. That being said, if she were to sit out the whole Ivanka part of the White House and contingent that was such a mainstay during the Trump years, it would be significant. So I don't know. Especially also, Jared is an egomaniac, right, Which is that he very much thought that he could do immigration. He could run U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Peace in the Middle East, yeah. Peace in the Middle East at the same time that he could do, I don't know, criminal justice reform.

So it's like you put all those things together. I don't see a world where he stays out. But with Ivanka not there, it would be significant. The reason why is that Trump, at the end of the day, really only trusted his children. And Jared and Ivanka had walk-in privileges to the Oval Office. What does that mean? Which is that traditionally, almost nobody can just walk into the Oval Office without a clearing, an appointment, the approval of the White House Chief of Staff, Staff Secretary. Well, in his White House, he had a lot of people with walk-ins.

And any time Ivanka or Jared had something that they didn't like, they would just walk in there and be like, hey, Mr. President, you know, we need to do this. Hey, Mr. President, what about that? So for her to sit it out, to bow out and not even appear at the speech. Yeah. I mean, look, it's clear the reputational damage that she suffered. Frankly, it doesn't have to do with January 6th, like from day one of being part of the administration. I mean, it hurt her and her brand. Her brand. That's exactly right. I mean, but I would just say to her, like, sorry, sweetie, the damage is already done. I agree. Like, you're never not going to be a Trump.

You're never not going to be associated with everything that went down in your father's administration. You were there every step of the way to defend all of his actions. And, you know, I remember in the early days when before he got elected or like right after he got elected, there was all this conversation. Oh, Ivanka will be a moderating force and she'll be there in his year and he won't be as unhinged because she's going to she's really, you know, sort of a liberal and she'll be the one to to bring him to heel. And she's the favorite and all of that. And like, obviously, that didn't really transpire. So, you know, she is clearly here trying to protect her brand. January 6th

probably was like a bridge too far for her. Don Jr. has been the one to step up to the plate to be all in extra crazy with his dad and, you know, try to claim that favored child status from his sister. But like I said, I think if Ivanka is trying to protect her brand, good luck because that damage is ultimately already done. But nonetheless, the fact that his own daughter is saying publicly that she is not going to be involved whatsoever, that is pretty extraordinary. You also had an interesting moment. lot of reporting about, you know, Rupert Murdoch, who's Fox News and Wall Street Journal and New York Post, that he is out in terms of supporting Trump, that he's going to use his media properties to try to push other GOP candidates. You've seen some signs of that. It's not across the board at Fox, but you had Stuart Varney asking Laura Trump a pretty pointed question about her father-in-law's speech and just how the sort of like entertainment

value of it. Let's take a listen to that. So I'm sure you're very supportive of your father-in-law, but those of us on the outside looking at it, it didn't seem as he got the old magic. You know what I mean? Oh, well, I highly disagree with that. Look, for Donald Trump, from the very beginning, from the first day he came down the escalator in 2015, in Trump Tower, it's never been about elected officials, politicians, people, you know, in the swamp in D.C. It's been about the American people. And if you look around the room last night,

you had people from all different walks of life. The energy there at Mar-a-Lago was absolutely incredible. It really did, to me, feel like the 2015-2016 campaign. So you see this from Varney saying, doesn't feel like quite the same as before. It doesn't have quite the same magic, which is, I mean, just kind of undeniable. Yeah, he was a huge Trump booster. You're absolutely correct, Crystal. I mean, I don't know what to make of really like this entire thing. But I do think we know that the response to it was not nearly what Trump would have wanted. And the fact that that was even openly floated on Fox. Now,

we'll get to the fawning coverage that he got as well. But, you know, the Murdoch empire, the New York Post, they put it on page 26, Trump's announcement. Of course, you know, it's not like we should put all that much stock into it. MSNBC didn't even carry it live. CNN, Fox, and Arcel, we all cut away from it after like 45 minutes or so because we're like, listen, a lot of us have just heard a already bowed out and said that they're not going to be doing it. Steve Schwarzman, two other billionaire donors who backed Trump repeatedly all throughout the cycle, none of them came and said that they were going to be backing Trump this time around. So I think that's very significant. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, listen, let's also not oversell it. He has plenty of money. He's going to have plenty of money. He has a large fundraising base of grassroots donors and also plenty of rich people who are sticking with him. He is the former president.

He is the head of the Republican Party. And let's also not oversell the influence of Fox at this point. You know, they did not go along, by and large, with Stop the Steal. Some of the primetime personalities, Tucker Carlson in particular, sort of toyed with it and played with it. But, you know, you had people like the Bret Bares of the world and Martha McCallum is that her name of the world who were very adamant about, no, this was all above board. Base didn't go along with them on that. 70 percent of the Republican base says the election was stolen. So, you know, it's also it's different now that Roger Ailes is no longer there. I mean, he really had like iron grip on all the personalities and really sort of,

you know, directly there was a more top down like this is what our line is and this is where it's going. I don't get the sense that Fox is all on the same page the way that they once were. And you see that already in some of the coverage where, yeah, you have some personalities like Stuart Varney, who's willing to say, you know, that wasn't all that great. You've seen on Fox and Friends them taking some shots or like putting up graphics of potential Republican candidates that don't actually include Donald Trump, which is kind of funny. But you also see other personalities who continue to be big boosters, which we'll get to in just a minute. Now, we floated during our coverage, we'll go ahead and move on to this next part, that perhaps the audience, the intended audience for this speech was not so much,

hey, let's, you know, let's let the good times roll. Let's get the grassroots base excited again. Let's like, you know, gin up our sort of grassroots supporters, that it was more aimed towards the elite audiences and elected officials and Republican tastemakers and the consultant class who have been very skittish about going in again with Trump, especially in the wake of the election results. And that's why he really stayed on script. That's why he was on the prompter. That's why he stayed away from some of the craziest parts of his conspiracy theories and really didn't go in to stop this deal at all, which was extraordinarily notable,

given that that is like his total fixation for the past ever since he lost the election. And at least with some of them, that approach seems to have landed. So you have Senator Lindsey Graham, who, of course, has always been, you know, for a while now, I should say, a big Trump booster. He says if President Trump continues this tone and delivers this message on a consistent basis, he will be hard to beat. His speech tonight contrasting his policies and results against the Biden administration charts a winning path for him in the primaries and general election. You heard some of this commentary from others as well, basically like, you know, oh, if he just stays on message, if he just sticks to the script, then he's going to be very hard to beat in the general election. And so, you know, here's a theory of the case that that was basically his goal was to prove he could be the good boy, that he could color within the lines and, you know, do the thing that makes these Republican elected officials more comfortable. And at least with some of them, they were taking the bait.

I thought that was very significant. That was the immediate response there from Lindsey Graham, right? So let's go and put the next one up there on the screen as well, which shows you the way that Fox fawned over the Trump speech when they cut away from it, when Sean Hannity was on the air. Well, Sean, nothing like the original. He went back to the themes that put him in the White House, from fair trade to borders to ending nonsense foreign wars to saying we, the people, have been ignored by Washington, D.C. It's a forward-looking speech that recognizes the disaster of the last two years. He said, as president, I delivered for you where other presidents have not.

This looks like Trump, in as good a form as you've ever seen him, sticking to the issues that matter to his voters, making the case to Republican primary voters that he's the guy to continue to be the standard bearer as the original that remade the party. There will be others, many of which leverage their association with Trump to get where they are, who will try to be like Trump. There's only one original who got to the White House and fought. And I think if he stays on message the way he did tonight, he's got a formidable case to make to a Republican electorate.

I mean, that's clearly a shot at Ron DeSantis. People are trying to copy Trump, who owe their position to Trump. There's only one original. And you should just assume, I mean, the reason why I found this interesting is because you've got, this is Sean Hannity's hour, you've got Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, and you can guarantee that Hegseth there is on exactly the talking points Trump wants him to be on. So it's revealing of what Trump wanted people to take away from the speech, which was, number one, there's nothing like the original,

and all the copycats can, you know, can stand down. And number two, that he's going back to the themes that won him the presidency in 2016, which you did hear an attempt to, you know, grab back onto some of those themes about trade and the economy that, you know, that he ran on in 2016. Yeah, I think that's right. And look, that level of fawning coverage, that is going to be a mainstay. This is the problem with the whole idea of like the Murdoch empire turning on Fox, turning on Trump. They tried that with Stop the Steal, Crystal. And what worked? Nothing. Their ratings dropped, Newsmax and Ballooned, OAN, and all of them, yes, they have now their problems with Dominion lawsuits that are happening right

now. But in the temporary game, it did not work out for them. They will come around. We all know that to be the case. So for all of the talk of the Stuart Barneys, we should always be mindful of the Sean Hannity's. Of the fact is, is that he is the incumbent. He is the king. He's got the fundraising element.

I have seen no campaign apparatus yet from Ron DeSantis. Also the theory of the case for Ron DeSantis is he's beating Trump in head to head. Mike Pence just this morning got an endorsement from the National Right to Life group. They were like, we're ready for you, sir. We're ready to run for you. Asa Hutchinson was on CNN this morning, the governor of Arkansas, saying he was thinking about running for president. Mike Pompeo wants to run for president. So you'd have multiple people who would be splitting the anti-Trump win. Glenn Youngkin, Larry Hogan, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley. There's a whole slew of them.

Even if five of them don't run, okay, that's a decent amount of split that you're going to see there. So anyway, I think it's very important to always try and emphasize to everyone, this is Trump's to lose and not the other way around. Agreed. Agreed. Absolutely. At the same time, you know, Trump was pumping up Senator Rick Scott as his candidate to take out Mitch McConnell as leader of the Republicans in the Senate. That did not work out. McConnell was reelected yesterday. Let's go and put this up on the screen. Comfortably reelected, despite what they describe here in ABC News as a historic challenge from Rick Scott, just because McConnell has really never even faced a challenge. The vote here ultimately was 37 to 10. And, you know, it's the stunned secret ballot behind closed doors.

They even tried, there was an effort to just delay the vote. And you had people like Josh Hawley, I think, in particular, who was making the case of like, oh, it's not fair that Herschel Walker, you know, we are telling him to go win and he doesn't even have a voice or a vote in this room, et cetera, et cetera. But that died as well. So McConnell easily reelected as leader of the Republicans in the Senate, minority leader. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen. Here is what we know about who voted against McConnell. You've got Brown, you've got Cruz, you've got Graham, Hawley, and Johnson. Ron Johnson still don't know who the one present vote is. So, you know, this is, I guess, the most challenge that Mitch McConnell ever faced, but ultimately doesn't even come close to success. Yeah, and from what I heard, the reason was is that people knew it was a doomed campaign

and they voted for Rick Scott because they didn't even like Rick Scott, but they wanted Mitch McConnell to feel the heat. I mean, did he really feel any heat? Yes, it is the first challenge. On the other hand, you won it overwhelmingly. So I'm not even sure what you particularly accomplished in voting for Rick Scott other than being on McConnell's shit list, which I mean, look, he's an 80-year-old man. He's not going to reign forever as head of the GOP, but he will be the minority leader for the foreseeable

future. So I'm not so sure I would want to engender- He's a big fundraiser. He's a juggernaut. He has all the power. I think the reason why that we did this was to show people, look, Trump's power, yeah, it exists. But in the Senate, they're bucking him as they did the entire time that he was in office. And the next one is what I'm really interested in, which was Trump's major pick was for Rick Scott, and he endorsed him against McConnell. Well, Scott famously is the person who lost the Senate and blew tens of millions of dollars in the NRSC. Now, he's coming under a bit of scrutiny. Let's fill this up there. Senators are considering floating an audit of the NRSC. This was by Marsha Blackburn and by Tom Tillis, said there should be an independent review of how the party's campaign arm spent its resources

before falling short of its goal of winning the majority. And Scott responded in a statement saying that actually when he took the committee over two years ago, he had learned that previous staffers had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized and improper bonuses. Lots of people who are slinging responses. The previous director was actually Representative Todd Young. Now, his representative responded to Scott saying, that is what children do when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

They lash out. This is crazy. We welcome a full audit of our finances. But does Rick Scott welcome one of his? We know that he drained the coffers of the NRSC of the tune of, what, $100 million? What did he spend it on? Why was he hanging out on a super yacht in Italy in the middle of August whenever you had candidates that were getting like absurd long shot. Washington, Oregon, Colorado. Places that ended up being not even remotely close. While, you know, Blake Masters was out begging for cash. You know, Laxalt. All of them were sort of going, having to go to McConnell. Right.

And beg for funds there. And of course, Trump didn't really pony up much of anything for anyone, despite the fact that his coffers were pretty full. There's some fun, like, internecine little backbiting that's detailed in this article. You also have this Scott advisor, Kurt Anderson, who went on Twitter to criticize the Senate leadership fund, that's McConnell's group, for not doing enough for the Georgia Senate runoff election. He wrote on Twitter, have they given up? And then you have the McConnell chief of staff chirping back that the NRSC was barely making a mark in the race. That's, of course, Scott's group. But he says, quote, don't worry, little buddy, we're used to covering for you.

So total, I mean, total warfare between the McConnell camps and the Rick Scott camps. It's also the other thing that I always want to underscore here is that none of this is like, there's no ideology you could attach to this. Like Rick Scott, if there ever was this sort of like different Trumpist approach to economics, Rick Scott is on the polar opposite side of that. It's just that he was like willing to be loyal to Trump,

willing to be the sacrificial lamb here, even though he knew he had no shot of ultimately unseating Mitch McConnell. And like, why would anyone vote for this dude? Even if you don't care about ideology, you just want to win. Why would anyone vote for this dude when he just was at the helm of a total catastrophe, like wipeout level catastrophe for the Senate GOP? Right. Yeah. No, I think the look, Rick Scott is a moron. was at the helm of a total catastrophe, like wipeout level catastrophe for the Senate GOP. Right. Yeah. No, I think the, look, Rick Scott is a moron. I think basically everybody knows that. And a fraudster. Let's not forget that. Yeah. Beyond that, and his conduct, not like what we know about his electoral capacity is not good so far. So I don't know why exactly you would vote for him. As I said, it's considered like a quixotic campaign, you know, right now as to why exactly they,

all these people even voted for him in the first place. I don't see any particular point to it. The only reason to do it. I think if you're going to unseat McConnell, then do it. The only reason to do it is prove your loyalty to Trump. Yeah. That's it. You're more concerned about the Trump audience than you are like the money from Mitch McConnell. If you look at the list of names of people who voted for Rick Scott, you know, these are these are all people who

basically are safe in terms of their seats. So they don't necessarily need the McConnell cash. So they feel like it's important to stay where their bread is buttered with Donald Trump. Right. That's how I read it. The Biden team has apparently been preparing for a while for the Trump presidential announcement. Of course, Trump has been telegraphing for quite some time that he was going to run again. He even floated announcing before the midterm. So they were ready to go with a couple of videos that they pushed down on the day of his announcement, including this one that they posted on Twitter during the speech itself. Let's take a look. Nobody has ever done what we've done in

the last four years. Their entire economic plan, tax cuts for the rich and corporations. And record-breaking unemployment. The worst jobs report on record. Trump is the only modern president to leave office with fewer jobs than when he took office. The Trump administration formally asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act. This could leave up to 23 million Americans without coverage. I hope that they end. It'll be so good if they end. You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no? There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah, there has to be some form. And if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.

The tagline there, for those of you who are just listening, it says, Trump failed America, and that's what the Biden team tweeted out. I have to tell you, this is actually, to me, one of the more effective Democratic attacks on Trump that I've frankly seen. Well, yeah, because it left the Jan 6th stuff all the way to the end. It's like a box check, but they led with the economy. They led with he rigged the economy for the rich. And then they talk about health care. I mean, they talk about and then they go on to talk about abortion. They talk about extremism. And I think obviously we saw in this election, those are potent attacks as well. But this was one of the first times I've really seen Democrats with what I thought was a smart

and effective pitch, characterizing his time in office as a time where he failed the American people, where he towed the line, you know, delivered for the wealthy while sort of letting everybody else wither on the vine. And it's interesting to me that, you know, instead of going with the normals or pearl clutching, oh, his words, his language, his decorum, et cetera, they actually dug into what some of the policy failures were in a way that, you know, I think could have some resonance with people. It's possible. I don't know.

I do think it was a smart initial attack. Biden all throughout 2020 led with soul of the nation, all that other stuff. And I always thought it was relatively. I'm not saying it didn't work, but it was enough. Barely. 40,000 votes away. Really more because of COVID. Yeah, right.

40,000 votes away. So if you're going to beat Trump in 2024, you're going to have to run almost entirely on the economy. Now, you know, look, three weeks ago, I would have told you there's no way that that was going to happen. But Biden clearly got some pass from voters on the economy whenever it came to the midterm elections and on the Democratic Party specifically, how he handles the next two years. Also, look, macroeconomically,

it's possible. I was looking that we could see food deflation for the first time in two years this month. We could see a slowdown and did see a slight slowdown in inflation. Let's say the worst of the Fed Reserve hikes are behind us. Well, a year from now, we could be sitting in a much better economy. We could have 4.5% unemployment, lower inflation, and things could be rocking. So the point is that prognosticating two years out, it's possible that Joe Biden comes back from behind and does win. On the other hand, he defied one historical trend by not winning midterms but far outpassing expectations. So previous presidents, though, who got shellacked did go on to win re-election. So he could reverse that trend, too.

There's no way to know. Yeah. I mean, I do think that after the midterms, we have to say the American people are pretty done with Trump and his bullshit. Like, there was a pretty clear reckoning there. I'm going to talk in my monologue. Nate Cohn crunched the numbers about the penalty for the, like, super Trump-aligned candidates was about five points overall.

And in swing districts, it was closer to seven points. That was like the Trump tax on candidates who were too closely associated with him and in particular candidates who were all in on stop this deal. So, you know, I think it's a at this point, I think it's a pretty big hill for Trump to climb to make the comeback and win the presidency. I feel much more confident that he could win the Republican primary than I do that he could win the general election. I mean, he's got an indictment hanging over his head, all of that stuff. But that being said, listen, as you're pointing out, it's a long time from God only knows what's going to happen with Ukraine. God only knows what other things are going to transpire that none of us is even thinking about right now and what the economy looks like and all of that. So I never want to say like, oh, it's a sure thing that Trump

will lose ultimately this time. I did want to say the other video that the Biden team put out, I also thought had a smart framing to it. They had on a split screen and on one side was Trump just like talking about infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure week. We're going to make beautiful. Who's better at infrastructure than Trump? And on one side was Trump just like talking about infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure week. We're going to make beautiful. Who's better at infrastructure than Trump? And on the other side, you have Biden saying nothing, just signing the bill. And at the very end, it's, you know, people clapping and obviously him signing this infrastructure package into law. And it says basically like talk versus action. I think that's a smart framing as well, because obviously Trump is going

to go after Biden for like his inability to talk. And so what he can say is like, all right, sure, you're great at like talking and, you know, at it in front of a rally crowd. But when it actually comes down to it, I got it done and you didn't. So I thought that was also a sort of smart framing and something they're likely to come back to in other instances as well that tries to protect Biden from the obvious attacks on him that he's too old and frankly not up to the job, which have now two relatively certain political instances, which those have been put to the test. Let's go to the next one up there on the screen, which I found really interesting, Crystal, from the New York Times, specifically about the effort to coordinate the Trump response has now being led for months inside of the White House. And this ad was a result of kind of the autopsy that they decided to come to, they decided to lead with. So they, clearly what you're seeing there is the amalgam of like polling

data, instinct, and also a little bit of learning from the midterms, which is you lead with the economy, then you go to abortion, then you go to Jan 6. So many of the other issues and areas, you basically put it to the side and you stick solely with economic recovery. Biden, again, we have seen now with the midterms, people think that inflation in the economy is much more of a structural problem than it is a partisan problem. That is a massive problem for Republicans who really wanted it to not appear as a structural problem because then they also may need to fix it and propose some solutions.

But second, because it was thought to be such a fantastic political asset. So for Trump, you have to be able to say that he also led kind of structural good change in the economy when he was in charge. Do people really have a memory of five years ago, six years ago, really, in 2024? I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, you really have two very different narratives about the Trump era. In the Biden

ad that we put up there, they say, like, historic job loss, which, I mean, listen, anything's fair in politics. Like, it's technically true. But obviously, this is because of, listen, anything's fair in politics. Like it's technically true. But obviously this is because of like COVID and like, you know, it wasn't really his. It's really not fair. Not really his fault. But of course they're going to spend that. He left office with fewer jobs as first president in history or whatever they said. And of course, Trump is going to talk about the first part of his administration when you have a hot, you know, job market and low unemployment and all of those things. So that will be the battle of the narrative. In this New York Times piece, they say that Biden will continue to underscore his belief

that Trump is a threat to democracy, but his political handlers are determined to show that Mr. Trump's four years did not yield actual accomplishments for the American people. That obviously is very much the aim of that ad that we showed you where, you know, they are leading with the economy, the job loss, health care, bringing the economy for the rich, and then they go on to abortion and Charlottesville and January 6th. This effort is being led by some of his top advisors, Anita Dunn and General Mally Dixon, who ran his campaign. Last time around is now deputy chief of staff at the White House.

They also have already, to be honest with you, I mean, listen, this article obviously is like coming from the Biden team. They're portraying in the rosiest possible light. But I'm a little bit surprised they have their act together this much, to be perfectly honest with you. And they have also started hiring staff in early GOP primary states like New Hampshire and Florida. And obviously, Democrats would want to win New Hampshire next time around. I don't think they have any hope of winning Florida next time around. The reason they're putting staffers, the DNC is putting staffers on the ground there, is so that they can follow Republican presidential candidates around and record them and grab any potential missteps or extreme language or whatever it is that they're saying on the trail

to potentially use against them. So that is the thinking there. Very interesting, certainly. Okay, let's go to the next one on gay marriage. This was some news that we didn't necessarily expect. And let's set up a little bit of history on this because it's kind of interesting, which is after the Dobbs decision

where Clarence Thomas said in his concurring opinion that not only should Roe versus Wade be on the table for being overturned, but Obergefell as well, it opened up the door to a lot of speculation, which is that, oh my God, is the court going to get or possibly get rid of gay marriage? Could they even go back and get rid of interracial marriage? Two of these things which were decided at the level of Supreme Court. Senator Tammy Baldwin, one of the only openly gay members of the Senate, decided to take it upon herself to try and whip the votes for that type of legislation. She was not able to get the legislation on the floor or votes committed for Republicans before the election, but she had

promised before that it was going to come during lame duck, which is that period right now before the new Senate is then sworn in. What's interesting is she actually delivered. She announced almost immediately after the election, I have the legislation, I have the votes. Many of these Republican senators, their only objection was like, we need to have some sort of religious liberty protection for religious organizations, as in it doesn't going to target them in ways that not necessarily worth getting into right now, because according to these Republicans, they say that that language has been added to the bill and they feel that this is an actual up or down vote on gay marriage and interracial marriage itself.

That legislation then had a key vote, procedural vote, proceed yesterday in the Senate, and it passed pretty overwhelmingly, let's put this up there on the screen, 62 to 37, advancing the marriage equality bill, protecting same-sex and interracial marriage under federal law. The 12 Republicans, let's go and put the next one up there on the screen. This is important because there's a lot of diversity going on here. Senators Blunt, Burr, Capito, Collins, Ernst, Loomis, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Sullivan, Tillis, and Young. And Crystal, for me, that is just a real amalgam of both retiring senators, quote unquote, moderates. But Mitt Romney is a Mormon.

Romney's a little surprising because he's obviously very religious. Utah's a very religious state. So that was a little surprising. Mitt Romney is a Mormon. Todd Young is from Indiana. You have Joni Ernst from Iowa. Iowa, I was saying, is a very Catholic state, especially with GOP voters. You have Cynthia Loomis. I mean, she literally, Wyoming is one of the most Republican states in the country. So for a lot of these senators, there's not necessarily any political benefit in voting for this at all. It also comes to a real test for the rest of the Republican senators who didn't necessarily vote in terms of the procedural bill. Now that they have the votes, are you going to vote up or down? Marco Rubio famously said, I think it's a waste of time. It's like, well, okay, now it's on the Senate floor. So are you

going to vote for it or not? I mean, I don't think he'll pay a price out of the way. He won by almost 20 points in Florida. So he can genuinely just vote however he wants. He is very religious. It's possible that he goes with that one, but I think it will be an actual test of kind of the civil war within the GOP as to whether to leave the old culture war behind and do a new one or to try and, I guess, reclaim an old position which was held by the party and effectively abandoned after Obergefell, but now being put back on the table. Yeah. You found this clip, Ben Shapiro speaking on The Daily Wire,

declaring you cannot be a Republican and support this legislation. Let's take a listen. Let me just put this out there for the Republican senators. If you vote in favor of the idea that society has an obligation to recognize male male or female female dyads in the same way that society has an obligation to recognize male female. You should not be in the Republican Party. You shouldn't. The reason I say this is not because I wish to shrink the size of the Republican Party. You shouldn't. And the reason I say this is not because I wish you shrink the size of the Republican Party. Because if the fundamental basis of human society is male-female child, and you think that by passing a law

you can change that reality, you do not belong in government. See, that's interesting to me because on a couple of levels. It's going hard there. I think it's interesting to me on a couple of levels. A, it presumes that he gets to decide

who's a Republican or not, which I think that we all learned in 2015 is not necessarily how that entire game goes. But B, I think it does show that these people in this wing, we haven't heard from them in a long time. Basically 2015 and so, yeah, Ted Cruz, he ran for president, but even he wasn't talking all that much about Obergefell on the campaign trail in 2016. And to the extent he was, he lost to Donald Trump and Trump was like, I don't care about gay marriage. And so everybody just kind of moved on. So from that point forward, it really did become a test. And it was silent. It was established. They thought it was settled.

Clarence Thomas's dissent really threw things for a loop because it's now putting them back on the spot. And look, now that they do have the votes for it, for a lot of Republican hopefuls or not, I'm personally of the opinion, like, I don't think you pay a price either way, unless you literally are one of those people like the Mike Pence's or the Ted Cruz's of the world who has a hardcore evangelical base. So at that point, vote your conscience. So we'll find out, you know, where exactly these people stand on this issue. I mean, on the politics of this, first of all, I didn't do this. I should have looked up when those senators who voted to move this legislation forward, when they're up for reelection. Because obviously with the six-year terms in the Senate, if you're not up next time around, you feel like you get a little more breathing room.

So that's one thing to consider. The other thing to consider is, you know, the calculations very different for senators, depending on whether they are in a deep red state and more worried about a primary challenger to their right versus in a swing state where if you vote against gay marriage at this point, we're talking about this is a position that 70 percent plus of the country will disagree with you on. And by the way, a majority of Republicans, which is also what I think is very striking about Ben Shapiro's comments here is obviously he's limiting this in his like verbally to Republican elected officeholders. But what are you saying to the majority of Republicans at this point who are like, you know what, we're good with it and we've

moved on to other fights? I think it's not just the Clarence Thomas, you know, affirming dissent or however they word that, where he put back on the table explicitly Obergefell. I think it's also because a lot of conservatives like Ben Shapiro and others feel like they have gotten some traction with their attacks on trans rights. And so that has also opened the door to how far can we push this? The stuff about drag shows, all of that stuff, I think has also sort of emboldened them to go back to some of these arguments

that they have been quiet on for quite some years. Well, yeah, that's why I think it's weird. I think it's the wrong move. I've actually openly said that. I'm like, look, you know, you want to fight about gender ideology and whether you plug little kids full of hormones. Yeah, I think that's actually a winning fight

and one that should be fought. But if you want to take it back to gay marriage, I full of hormones, yeah, I think that's actually a winning fight and one that should be fought. But if you want to take it back to gay marriage, I'd be like, listen, a lot of people who have concerns about plugging little kids full of hormones do not think that consenting adults shouldn't be able to get married. And so when you put it on religious and Christian grounds, then you're actually putting yourself in a losing position.

I've openly said this before to a lot of them, And I do think that it's part of the problem is that, look, a lot of these people, they are deeply religious. They have felt aggrieved on this front and have basically tried to fight in a more secular realm of politics now for quite some time under Trump. They felt like they had won. Abortion, though, was the greatest victory for a lot of their lives. And it has now put them in a position where they feel like they're winning and all I will say is good luck after the you know look tried to tell you here about abortion and about how people feel about that even in deep red states yeah and they didn't listen and look the more actually will say this if you care about

the kids issue and gender ideology and all that stuff, making it explicitly religious is probably the single worst thing that you could do whenever you were having that fight. Well, I mean, I don't know if you saw, Rogan and Matt Walsh had a big debate about gay marriage. Yeah, I saw that. Which was also very, I mean, it was interesting. It was worth watching. I thought Joe did a good job pushing back on him because ultimately, yeah, it came down. He didn't want to use the language of religion because I think he knows, like you said, if you're trying to sell this to everyone, just grounding it in your particular like interpretation of your faith is not going to be a view that's held by, you know, a large majority. But it was

clear the only way you could really defend this position is coming back to like, this is a tenant of my religion. Which is fine. You believe what you want, right? Yeah. I mean, to a point, but I mean, not to the point that your beliefs are like infringing on other people's rights. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. Again, if you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married. That's fine for you in your life. I mean, I have to say on the kids piece, obviously we disagree on that whole debate. But the other piece with that is like, you know, if you push a Matt Walsh or you push a Ben Shapiro about it, they want to keep it politically on the topic of kids because they have the most political traction there. But if you ask them if grown adults living their lives should be able to transition,

no, they don't think so. I agree. I think that's a big problem. And that's wildly unpopular. So anyway, this whole vote with gay marriage, it is, I do think it's a problem for Republicans politically because a good chunk of their base and many of these senators are really on the wrong side of the issue. It is a little bit like abortion where the people, you have a majority that are good with gay marriage, but the people who are opposed are more vocal and more influential in terms of Republican primaries. So it's a tricky situation. And again, we just saw with abortion, how potent it can be when people feel like rights they have gained and take it for granted are now being potentially rolled back. Yeah, it's going to be, you know, on the kids front, I think it's worth, I don't know if

you saw this, New York Times actually did a decent write-up about puberty blockers and about the cost. I did see that. I think that's important. Well, I do think that's important too, but let me say that puberty blockers have been used among girls who have early onset puberty for a lot of years. So, you know, the sudden like obsessive concern over it just seems more ideological than it is based in like concern over kids. Now, I think there should be more research. I mean, part of the problems are not sufficient research to know if this has long-term impacts. The whole idea of puberty blockers is just to buy some time so that, you know, you can wait a few years before you do undertake some of the things like the hormone therapy. That's the part where things start to be more irreversible.

Puberty blockers, you just stop taking them and then you go through puberty. Yeah, there is a cost as we learn from this, right? And that's why I think it's, you know. It's still like being researched. But there is also a cost to gender dysphoria and to the fact that you have, you know, increased rates of suicide and increased rates of like depression and anxiety. So it's not like that is without a cost as well. So I am totally open and I think we should be able to have a good faith debate about what the care protocol should look like for children who are trans and, you know, for their parents trying to figure all of this out. There's a lot of debate within the community about how long is the consultation period?

How, you know, when do you start puberty blockers? How long does that go on? What about hormone therapy? All of that is totally up for debate. But again, to go back to people like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro, ultimately, they don't think you should be able to do this at any age, at any point, period. Yeah, look, this is why I'm not welcome with a lot of these people, because I'm like, listen, I just think we should talk about kids. I was like, I don't saw, you know, if you're an adult, you're 18 years old. I mean, listen, I think there's a lot to be said about irreversibly changing your body. But you could do what you want. You know, if you get a tattoo, you could go do this to yourself if you want to.

So that's kind of one of those places where they have libertarianism to an extent, you know, on some things. On economics, yeah. Not even necessarily on economics, on other social, I believe Walsh is actually pro-weed. I need to go back and check to see if he is or not. But I'm pretty sure that he is. But then on this, it's like, well, we should ban it. And in general, Americans do not like to ban things,

specifically for adults. Like, overwhelmingly, that's not what they're for. That's why, as you said, I think that, you know, everybody converges on the kids. And again, I think it's a very important fight. Uh, that being said, you know, the divergence and the real political ground is it can't be a religious discussion and it also can't be one that impedes on the ability for adults to basically do within reason, whatever you want to do. And I think that is where, you know, it's just real. It really is one of those where if you don't give that up, you're going to lose the whole fight on all of this.

Anyway, I think it's very interesting. All right. Let's move on to the next part. Qatar. You guys knew that I couldn't resist a good Qatar story. Fun back story. I lived in Qatar. Went to high school there my last two years.

Actually was there whenever they got the World Cup. So this is kind of interesting for me. Well, a lot of people are finding out what I found out in Qatar. Turns out, Crystal, they don't have free speech over there. They don't have the First Amendment. They don't really like gay people in response to our previous segment. Turns out that the prince's brother decided just on a whim, I don't like these alcohol tents next to my World Cup facility, and moved them on a whim, forcing millions of dollars to be able to put them, quote, out of sight. People who are drinking at the World Cup are going to have to drink, get on a bus for 45 minutes, and then come to the stadium.

That's like, you know, when you pregame a wedding and then you get in one of those buses and you're like, oh shit. You're like, this better last all the way until I get to the venue. So good luck to all of the folks who are suffering Qatar as I did while I was over there. illustration of this was a Danish reporter was doing a live shot in a totally public area in the middle of Doha in Qatar. And he had all the accreditations that's since been confirmed. He had the accreditations, his papers, his filming permit, all of that. He was doing a simple shot there talking about that. And immediately in the middle of a segment comes up and starts being harassed by Qatari authorities for filming in a public place. Let are live on Danish television. Og der kan I se, nu bliver vi stoppet med at filme, og det er

forholdene her. Minister, you invited the whole world to the... You invited the whole world to come here. Why can't we film? It's a public place. This is the accreditation. We can film anywhere we want. There are only, of course... No, no, no. We don't need permit.

No, no, no. But listen, but listen. You can break the camera. You want to break need permission. But you can break the camera. You want to break the camera? Okay, you break the camera. Okay. So you're threatening us by smashing the camera. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? So apparently he wasn't threatening to smash the camera.

He was like, no. Yeah, I have a friend who got very upset with me, by the way, for highlighting this. He was like, they were saying in Arabic, no, just bring the camera over here. I was like, that doesn't excuse the entire situation. By the way, the Qatari government has since apologized for that. So they're admitting actually wrong that they shouldn't have been doing that. But listen, it's a country. It's a theocratic monarchy, folks.

Frankly, those shouldn't even exist in the year 2022. And I encourage everybody to go and watch this new Netflix series. It's like FIFA Uncovered or something, which goes exactly into how the Qataris and all them other bribed their way into this and just the absurdities through which we have gone through to grant this nation the World Cup. I mean, it's just like completely corrupt, right? Not only completely corrupt, but let's consider this. They had to disrupt all of the major soccer schedules to hold it in December just to have it in Qatar. Qatar has now spent some $120 billion on facilities for this, and it hasn't even worked. You know, there are videos coming out of Qatar of temporary shipping containers being used as hotels,

which genuinely look like they're out of the fire festival from the Bahamas. Like plastic little doors. It's all out there. People can go and watch it. And why do I care? I mean, me personally, because living in Qatar was the first time that I never had free speech. And I remember watching these, you know, it was a weird situation for me personally, because I'm Indian, but American. So they couldn't screw with me because I was American. But watching the way that these Indian laborers were treated, it killed me every day. I remember they used to have these fake rules where if you're a single male, you can't go into some public places on Friday, which is like the one day off for everybody. And if you're a single male who is American, they're like, oh yeah, you're good. No problem. And they would keep these laborers just basically like sitting

out in the middle on their one day off of working, not allowing them to do anything. They would seize their passports. They're treated, not even second class citizens. They're like third class, like straight up, like effectively modern day slaves i mean i've actually visited some of the camps like i walked into a place uh to buy cigarettes when i was 15 sorry mom um and saw like 15 different guys living in a single uh in like a single room literally with beds on the floor it's basic squalor probably no air conditioning yeah and they were telling me like you know oh we don't have our passports we can't even go home. Like, if one of us gets hurt, it's a real problem.

Nobody knows how many of them died in constructing these World Cup facilities. It's a catastrophe. And everybody looks the way because they happen to have been born, these people, on a pile of money with natural gas and in oil. And it's disgusting. It's corrupt. And frankly, you know, my personal opinion, I think they played themselves because they can't give up, you know, their religion and the way that they run their society.

And now the entire Western world is about to get a full view into how basically backwards and incompetent that they really are. Yeah, I mean, they're under a microscope now. I'm looking at the Fyre Festival vibes. It's terrible. I mean, it's not quite as now. I'm looking at the Fyre Festival. It's terrible. It's not quite as bad, but it is just basically like shipping containers, like you said.

Now, I read a long piece about the migrant laborers that they depend on and that they especially depended on to construct this World Cup stadium and facility. And it really it is just disturbing. It is absolutely heartbreaking. The estimate is that thousands of migrant workers have died building these facilities. Many more of them because you're talking I mean, it's freaking hot there. I mean, 120 degrees in the summer, not uncommon. And they're working outside in the elements. So even the ones who then survive, many of them have lifelong ailments because of the stress and the toll that the heat took on their body, including kidney failure that they have no ability to get treatment for. And so it was very disturbing. You know, Indians, Nepalese, a lot of people. Pakistanis too. Yeah, absolutely. Filipinos. It is pretty heartbreaking. And they used to have a policy where they would let employers hold your passport so you can't leave.

Now they have technically gotten rid of that, but it's not enforced. It was there when I was there. It's still going on. All kinds of wage theft, all kinds, because, you know, you're talking about people who are desperate, who don't have work back in the villages that they come from. So, you know, they're willing to like take on debt to get these jobs, to go to, you know, Qatar and other places in the region. And ultimately they're just at the whims and mercy of their employer and sometimes with deadly results. It is such a weird experience for somebody who grew up in the West to be in a situation like this, because I was like, man, this is really messed up. And people would be like, hey dude, you need to shut up. They're like, if you say that, you're like,

you and your whole family is going to get kicked out of this country. And I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe they were living this way. I could tell stories about this all day long. But I think it's a very good illustration of, like, why caving to these people just because they have a ton of money is corrupt and is morally bankrupt. So that clip really put a lot, I think, for the world, and there's going to be a lot more to come. Can't say I'm not sad. I can't say I'm not too happy

about it. Let's go to the next part, which is even more important and illustrates why dealing with despotic regimes like this is a problem. Put this up there. For the one million plus visitors who are visiting Qatar for the World Cup, Qatar is requiring them to download an app on their phone. Well, European privacy regulators are like, do not download that app. That app is a massive security and spyware threat. Here's what they say. The German data protection commissioner said that data collected by the apps goes, quote, much further than any of their privacy notices indicate. One of the apps collects data on whether and which number a telephone call is made. The other app actively prevents the device it is installed

from going into sleep mode. It is also obvious that the data used by the apps not only remain locally on the device, but is then transmitted to a central server. The German data chief says, only do it if it is absolutely necessary, and then go do so on another air-gapped blank phone, which does not include... You need a burner phone just to download this app? Jesus Christ. Norway also said it was, quote, alarmed by the extensive access that these apps require. Quote, there is a real possibility visitors to Qatar and especially vulnerable groups will be monitored by Qatari authorities.

The French are telling their fans you need to take special care with your photos and videos and say that travelers should install apps only before their departure and delete it as soon as you arrive back in France. So, this is a nightmare. I mean, at least the NSA has a little sophisticated weather effort. This is just out and out.

It's just very hand-fisted. This is insanity. You know, to have, again, nobody is, like, France, for example, has huge and close ties to Qatar. So all the Europeans are willing to say this even though they buy a ton of LNG. Qatar is one of the largest LNG reserves in the world. They have been literally labeled as straight up, quote, spyware. Literally give the Qatari authorities the access to all of the data on your phone. Furthermore, I was reading that Qatar, because they want to have basically AstroTurf fans,

was like, we are offering fans around the world a round-trip ticket to and from Doha, accommodation, all of that, the experience of a lifetime. But you better not say one bad word about Qatar. And as part of your free trip, you are required to report social media postings of anybody that you see who is saying bad things about Qatar. And it just so happened, by the way, I got a flood of messages after I started posting about what's happening there from not only people who I went to high school with, but a bunch of fake anonymous Arabic accounts, Arabic accounts effectively calling me like an Indian dog or something like that. But it just shows you, look, these people are very sensitive. And I have always thought that the only thing they had going for them is

nobody really cared or knew anything about Qatar. And so, look, the whole world, they're finding out. They're under a microscope now. Yeah, absolutely. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, in the popular vote, another thing that's not discussed for the House, we must remember that Republicans won five million more votes, the largest margin in many, many years over the Democrats. Five million more votes. That's a big thing. Famously, back in 2016, Hillary Clinton won more votes than Trump, but ultimately, of course, lost the presidency because of a structural

disadvantage for Democrats in the absurd electoral college system. Well, suddenly, Republicans are a lot more interested in the popular vote because for the first time in a long time, that dynamic actually flipped. So in the overall popular vote, President Trump there is correct. The House actually did shift pretty significantly towards Republicans. Counting is still going on, but Republicans will end up with maybe about a four-point edge in the nationwide popular vote for the House. In spite of that, however, Democrats are only losing the chamber by the narrowest of margins, outperforming their overall popular vote total. Now, the big reason for this is that Republicans wildly outperformed in non-competitive districts that Trump had previously overwhelmingly won. But if you show up in droves in a district that you already hold, it doesn't help you any

in terms of picking up seats. All the actions in the swing districts, and here the Republican record is a lot less impressive. In the type of seats that they needed to win in order to manifest that full red wave, they underperformed. So here from Patrick Ruffini is a chart that shows exactly what I'm talking about. In the nearly 160 solid red seats where Trump had previously won really easily, Republicans romped. They voted around seven points even more Republican in 2022 than they did back in 2020. But the GOP had their most underwhelming performance in the purple swing districts where Biden had narrowly won. So in seats that Biden won by between zero and five points, Republicans managed to only improve a couple of points on their previous margins, enough to narrowly reclaim the House, but just barely.

The exuberant performance in Trump country, that boosted their popular vote numbers, but it did nothing for them in terms of flipping seats in order to achieve a larger House majority. Now, the reason for GOP underperformance in those swing districts is pretty clear. Trump and his Stop the Steal obsessions were very popular in deep red areas and were completely toxic among independents. Nate Cohn at the New York Times crunched the numbers on exactly how much of a drag Trump and his conspiracies were on candidates, and the verdict was it was a total unmitigated disaster.

MAGA candidates, on average, performed about five points worse than what they labeled traditional Republican candidates. In swing districts, that penalty was even higher. In the districts that were truly competitive, MAGA-type candidates performed about six and a half points worse than those traditional Republicans. Now, there were some high-profile examples of underperformance that back those numbers up.

You've got Lauren Boebert, who underperformed Trump by about eight points. And by the way, her race still has not been called. It's going to a recount. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a deep red safe district, but she also underperformed Trump by about six points. Herschel Walker underperformed fellow Republican Brian Kemp by about eight points. Now, to state the obvious for Republicans, this is a big problem. Trump's influence still hangs heavily over the party. He single-handedly made Stop the Steal a critical litmus test issue in the 2022 Republican primaries. And although there is a lot of elite hope that voters are ready to move on from that, there isn't a lot of evidence for that claim at this point.

For now, Trump is the Republican frontrunner for 2024. But this data also contains a warning for Democrats. What it makes clear is that without Trump pulling candidates down by six and seven points where it matters, the predicted red tsunami would have been in full effect. You're talking a large GOP majority in the House, likely a clean sweep of the toss-up races in the Senate to give the GOP a several-seat margin to work with. If they had run the table in the toss-ups and picked off places like New Hampshire, all doable without that Trump drag,

the GOP could have been on track for a super majority in 2024. Bottom line, without Trump and without Roe, Democrats would have gotten their asses handed to them, which explains why now a number of Democrats are out there openly hoping for Trump to win the GOP nomination once again. Bernie Sanders was pretty honest on this point, telling the New York Times, quote, as an American, the idea of another Trump campaign in all of his lies and divisiveness and his efforts to undermine American democracy is an absolute horror show. On the other hand, I got to say that as a politician who wants to see that no Republican has elected the White House in 2024, from that perspective, his candidacy is probably

a good thing. Trump's next level insanity, that has helped Democrats to paper over their own failings and inadequacies. There is simply no doubt without Roe and Trump, Biden's low approval and the poor economy would have led to a traditional midterm shellacking that would have forced a round of wrenching soul searching. But instead of an autopsy, Democrats are celebrating.

They were bailed out once again by the orange ban, save from having to consider how they might do more for Americans and deliver more than the baby steps of decent policy that I outlined here previously. And like Bernie, I'm kind of conflicted on this point because I too would rather have Democrats in control, at least doing the bare minimum for the working class and at least staffing the NLRB with decent personnel

than to have Republicans actively making everything worse for workers. But Trump's grip on the GOP will end at some point. Whether he's tossed overboard by the GOP primary base or by the general electorate, this is pretty likely to be the last cycle we actually have to deal with him. And when he's gone, Democrats had better have some real answers, be ready to deliver more than the bare minimum for ordinary Americans, because the Trump bailout has an expiration date, and that is coming fast. I mean, Sagar, listen, Democrats are celebrating right now. 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, when Elizabeth Holmes was finally revealed as a fraud by John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal, there was a lot of blame to go around. First, her and her partner

in crime, Sonny Balwani, for scamming people, but also the due diligence that New York City and DC elite billionaires had in pumping her company full of billions of investment for a genuinely fake product they never bothered to check. But the reckoning that never came was for the media. Holmes' ability to scam elites and scam Walgreens into deal with her genuinely hurt people's lives. It was based in part by the Steve Jobs myth that she created for herself, hand in glove with the mass media. Forbes magazine, Fortune magazine, Inc. magazine, the New York Times magazine, every single one of them had hagiographic view of Elizabeth Holmes as a visionary entrepreneur, at last a self-made

woman on the billionaire's list. They let their excitement at girl boss feminism overlook any real scrutiny of the company itself, and so when Theranos crumbled, they simply moved on. It's in that vein that we got to continue looking at Sam Bankman-Fried, who appears to have borrowed from the Holmes playbook, but taken it up a notch even further. I wasn't the only one that noticed SBF's similarity treatment by the very same magazines that Holmes once graced the cover of. But SBF is no Elizabeth Holmes. Frankly, he was smarter. Holmes merely just charmed the national press. SBF appears to have done everything he can to buy them off while also charming them. He not only was treated the same as Holmes was by the national press,

but he went further, making sure to fund left-aligned news outlets, including but not limited to ProPublica, The Intercept, the newly launched Semaphore, and Vox News. All that funding, of course, backed by his potentially ill-gotten gains. But it also explains the extraordinarily odd incident right now, which really just underscored this. The New York Times got what should have been the scoop of the century.

An interview with SBF after his potentially illegal diverting of $10 billion in customer funds came to light. And after his company went completely bankrupt. And yet, the way that it was written was completely insane. The interviewer accepted as fact SBF's explanation for diverting $10 billion of customer funds from the exchange. What really struck everyone, though, was what was not included in the article. As Trunk Fan points out, the word fraud, crime, illiquid, stolen, hidden, criminal, backdoor, did not make one appearance in the story.

A story written after he was exposed as at a minimum historically incompetent and possibly actively a criminal. The explanation for this press treatment is belied by several obvious factors. Number one is embarrassment. The Times crowned SBF the quote crypto emperor. So downplaying how much of a fraud they ended up to be, I guess, is in their reputational interest. But the other one is this, too. SBF was a weirdly ideological ally to the national press in a way that Holmes never was. He funded them. He was the second largest Democratic donor this year, beaten only by

George Soros. He spent some $37 million during the last election cycle, with the overwhelming majority of it going to Democratic candidates. He donated half a million to the DNC. But here's where it's important to really dig down. It wasn't just that SPF was just a Democrat, because he was using his potentially ill-gotten gains to try and influence Washington for a very selfish purpose. What many aren't realizing is that while SBF was the leftist front man at the top, his top lieutenant, Ryan Salam, was also pumping $19 million to Republican congressional candidates and committees. He was actually the 10th largest donor to the entire GOP.

Why were they conducting this multi-pronged assault, you ask? Well, SBF and his proxies were donating millions to the Uniparty in Washington and cultivating the press because they were trying to legalize their leverage trading platform in the US. It's that simple. The exact type of leverage that caused them to go bust in the first place, their money was propping up not only new media outlets, but several lobbying shops of very high acclaim here in DC. And the lesson to me is just exposing how corrupt this system really is. If you're a billionaire with the right ideology, the right amount of checks cut to the right people,

you can make a hell of a lot happen in a very short period of time. You can get the press to cover you even when you've been exposed. You can come inches away from actually getting what you want. Remember this, FTX only went bust because of a leaked document and the liquidity crunch. If that document never came out, we would still be chugging along. He would likely have prevailed in adopting a regulatory framework which would have only made him 10 times richer in the US, and it would set him up to have wealth on par with Jeff Bezos in like five years. If it was this easy for SBF, imagine what the real titans of industry are doing behind the scenes.

Imagine how many of them are just as full of it as he is. I mean, that was an unbelievable expose to me. A lot of people online are talking about- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Matt, it's great to see you. Welcome back. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me back. So I didn't even realize you're also writing a book right now to deal with the crypto years as they've been. But just give us your top line view of what has

happened here with FTX and Sam Bankman Freed. Well, it's actually not a terribly new story, unfortunately. This is a story that has elements of things that we've seen in the past on Wall Street. There's the dot-com revolution where you had all these people investing huge sums of money into companies that had no plan, like no pitch. There were no numbers, no nothing.

That was pretty common back in the 90s, and that seems to be the case with FTX and Sam Bankman Freed. There's the total absence of record keeping or any kind of numbers that would help an internal auditor figure out what's going on, which is pretty much what we saw with Bernie Madoff and that somehow their banker ignored for a dozen years. And, you know, so there's a lot of elements to scandals that we've seen before. And I think that this is probably just the beginning of some stuff that's going to happen in the crypto world going forward, even though I think it's a good idea in principle. Right. And so, Matt, you covered so extensively the 2008 moment and crash and the aftermath. We talked a lot here about how this was a, quote, Lehman moment. You were speaking before to us about Bernie Madoff and some of the history that that is aligned. Can you lay some of

that out for people who were maybe too young at the time to remember some of the details? Yeah, I mean, Madoff was really just a straight up Ponzi scheme where he convinced a bunch of, he was wealthy himself, obviously, and he was telling wealthy clients that he could deliver incredible returns. And he showed them, you showed them records of returns that he was delivering. Actually, it was just a Ponzi scheme. He was taking money from new investors and using it to pay out to old investors, which is the oldest trick in the book, and there were no actual trades. There was an investor named Harry Markopoulos or an investigator who told the SEC about this like 10 years before it blew up. But a thing that Americans don't know is there's nobody in the American government who investigates or regulates hedge funds. So this just went unnoticed. And unfortunately, it's not that much different for investment banks,

which is how 2008 happened, because there were all these messes in places like Lehman Brothers, where they had basically no money and they were borrowing massively. And, you know, one day the Piper, you had to pay the Piper eventually, and it turned out they had no cash. And the problem with the modern financial system is everybody's interrelated and so when one goes there's always the possibility that a whole slew of others are going to go with them so that's that's kind of the problem here um there's a tweet that is going viral again that i want to see if you think is a fair characterization or rough approximation of a fair characterization that says, I'm sick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are pump and dump schemes.

Others are pyramid schemes. Others are just standard issue fraud. Others are just middlemen skimming off the top. Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry. That's pretty. I mean, that's very funny i i look i i i hate to joke about this because i think crypto is a good idea actually um you know it's it was designed actually specifically to get around the problems of 2008 uh the blockchain technology is there so that people can basically have a record of all transactions.

And so you get around the problem of centralized finance, right? This is the big thing that they're after is to get away from the problem of somebody above all the customers who's kind of telling you what's going on financially, but you don't get to see. And in an ideal world, that's how it would work. But this is the exact opposite of that. This is Sam Bankman Freed was basically just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul between these two companies, which is the definition of centralized finance. This is exactly what they weren't supposed to be doing. Well, and so where does the hopeful promise and idealism of crypto like is there a way to do this where it doesn't end up with just like total fraudsters rising to the top? Because, you know, it seems to me one of the lessons from 2008 wasn't

like, let's go in a totally unregulated direction. It was like, oh, we actually need to go back to some of the old guardrails that used to make banking more boring, frankly, and used to separate the like wild speculative thing like what Alameda was doing from the, you know, boring business of like regular customer banking. So do you think that there is a way to do this that doesn't end up in the same place? Yeah, I think so. I think you need some basic regulations. I think those regulations probably already exist. It's just a question of the relevant authorities like the CFTC deciding that certain companies qualify for regulation under existing laws. And then once you have that, then you'll probably have sufficient authority to go in and make

sure there's no hanky-panky going on. But I do think that similar to what happened in the dot-com revolution, where you had all these web bans and e-toys and all these other fraud schemes sucking up mass amounts of money. But in the end, we did end up with Google and Amazon and other companies that were major revolutionary companies. I think that's going to happen with crypto. I think there will be products, Ethereum, Bitcoin maybe, that will survive. And they will become something that will grow out of all this. But for the time being, it's the Wild West. Anytime you have a loose monetary environment, lots and lots of places to borrow money and not a whole lot of places to put

it, this is what's going to happen is stuff like this. Yep. I think it's really well said. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Matt. We really appreciate it, man. Great to see you, Matt. Good to see you both. Thanks very much. Yeah, our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching.

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