Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/6/25: Dems Blowout Elections, Economy Screws Republicans, Trump Panics Over Shutdown

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Dems blowout elections, economy destroys Republicans with voters, Trump panics amid shutdown.   Summer Lee: https://summerlee.house.gov/ To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. She said, Johnny. The kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas planes, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.

There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, The Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Used Chewereld. cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever.

Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development. for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line.

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

Become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. We are digging into all of the cross tabs, the election results. How big of a win was it for Democrats? What does it mean? What demographic groups shifted in which directions we're going to get into all. of that. We're also going to take a special focus on how much the economy played a role in Tuesday's election night results. We're also going to take a look at the shutdown. This also connects to the election results. Trump is actually blaming the shutdown and putting pressure on Republicans in the Senate to nuke the filibuster in order to reopen the government. You also have some real fallout now

hitting, especially in terms of air travel. So we'll take a look at all of that. Also, yesterday, big day at the Supreme Court, they heard oral arguments with regard to Trump's tariffs. And six out of the nine of them sounded very, very skeptical of the arguments for the government. It is looking increasingly likely that Trump's tariff regime will be struck down. So obviously, that is a seismic potential development there. We're going to take a look at. Also, a bunch of stuff going on with the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, actually getting some pretty strenuous pushback from Joe Scarborough with regard to his treatment of Zora and Mamdani. So that is an interesting one. We've also got some AI updates for you, Sam Altman, crashing out in an interview after getting

a little bit of pushback on whether this whole open AI and AI in general is overhyped. And then Representative Summer Lee is going to join me to talk about Zoron's victory and what it means for the country and the Democratic Party moving forward. So it should be an interesting show. That's right. And please go ahead and sign up. If you can, breaking points.com become a premium subscriber. You guys enable our live stream. We had Griffin, Ryan, on the ground. Obviously, a lot of travel, lots of logistics in order to make stuff like that happen. But we think it really elevates the show. It makes it a go-to on critical nights like election nights. So breakingpoints.com, if you want to be able to join that coverage and you know, see all the stuff afterwards.

Thank you to everybody who has been subscribing. If you can't afford it, no worries. Just please hit subscribe on this YouTube to our channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please just send an episode to a friend or rate us five stars. It just really helps other people find the show. But yeah, let's go ahead and start with 2025. So much, so much data to synthesize to put together in a short amount of time. But we think we've done our best.

to pick some of the best. Indeed. So let's just go through some of the numbers here. So we all know it was a shalacking for the Republicans, just how big of a shalacking. Well, here was one indication.

We could put A1 up on the screen. So at the beginning of the night, I saw an election analyst who, you know, like a Twitter election analyst who put this up of, okay, here's my metrics. If Democrats get, you know, zero to three of these different things

and it's things like, okay, Spanberger wins, Cheryl wins, Proposition passes, et cetera. If they get zero to three, that's a pretty catastrophic night for them. If they get four to six, it's a bad night.

If they get seven to ten of these markers, It's okay. If it's 11 to 14, that's a good night. And if it's 15 to 18 of these markers, it's a fantastic night. Well, guess what? After the votes were counted, 18 of 18 on this list. And it really was across the board. You look at the margin in Virginia, you know, Abigail Spanberger just absolutely romping by 15 points. Mikey Cheryl, I think 13 points was the final metric in New Jersey. Every single county in Virginia shifted to the left. So it was not. a mixed bag at all. Those were very high turnout elections. You also had in low turnout elections that the Georgia statewide races were actually crazy. You had a 20-point Democratic win in two statewide races in the state of Georgia. You had some things that were, you know, that we weren't even paying that close attention to, like the Mississippi Senate. Now the Democrats broke the supermajority there. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court races went, again, wasn't even close for the Democrats. These were three statewide races that Republicans were really focused.

because they matter in terms of election law and adjudicating, you know, different voting issues, those overwhelmingly for Democrats. So truly was a sort of coast-to-coast across-the-board reckoning. And Sager, I genuinely, usually in elections, there's like some little thing you can go, okay, well, we did, you know, but we held on to this. Or, you know, we shifted voters here.

I don't see a single thing that Republicans can really point to. The one thing I saw from Dave Wasserman is that in the state of Virginia, where Democrats, you know, obviously won all three of the statewide races. Even the Attorney General's race when their nominee was, you know, had these texts have been revealed, threatening, like saying basically he wanted his Republican opponent to be murdered. And the children. Pretty big scandal. And he's able to win.

Actually, he outpaced Kamala Harris in terms of his victory margin in the state of Virginia. But the one thing I did see is in the House of Delegates. Democrats picked up, I believe, 13 seats. They won all of the swing districts. They won all of the districts that Kamala Harris had won. Then they won all of the districts that Trump had won by zero to five points. But he said at least they didn't win all the ones that Trump won by five to ten points. So the bottom didn't fall out entirely.

I think it's maybe the best thing that I saw, the most potential copies off of Republicans. That's terrible because in the current environment, nobody wins by five to ten anymore. The days of 2008 Barack Obama are long gone. People win by one or two percent in the popular vote, and that's it. And it's going to be a nail-biter in terms of the electoral college for the foreseeable future. There's just not a lot of independent voters that are out there anymore. Even when turnout goes sky high, there's high levels of partisanship. So no, I think there's no question that this was a absolute blowout against the Republicans. And any Republican telling you otherwise is absolutely lying to you. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen, because this is the most important one, actually. You've heard it here before on the show. the NBC News exit poll shows that voters who dislike both parties break for Democrats.

And the key behind that is that a lot of Republicans were trying to hang their hat on the fact that Democratic approval rating is actually lower in some cases than Republican approval rating. But the case of that is that many of those are partisan Democrats who are fed up with their own party. It doesn't mean they're not going to come home to vote. Now, a lot of Republicans are fed up with their party as well, but they are not coming out to vote. So if you put that together, you see a super majority, really, of a lot of the people who came

to the polls who are basically anti-Republican. That's very different than being Democrat, right? It's kind of like how we've talked about MAGA, very distinct from the Republican Party brand. And I do also think that's a key element of the story. The low propensity voters just didn't come out. It's not surprised. It's off your election. A lot of the Democratic coalition is a lot of people who are college educated, people who read the news, who are much, much, much more tuned in to the election. Not to mention the fact that they have something to vote against and if you're a Republican, you have all three branches of power and not really giving you a reason to come out and to defend anything. Like, oh, yeah, please come out and support our

governor so we can continue the shutdown or so we can have regime change in Venezuela. You know, it's like, well, if you're a republic, like, what reason would you possibly have to go to the poll? So that's all together. You know, in Virginia as well, the composition of the electorate, the breakdown that I saw, it's overwhelmingly like Kamala Harris voters, if just those types voters had come out in 2024. She would have won a state by a landslide, right? And I think that that largely was the case in all of these elections. And yeah, I mean, that's why it's a meme to say it all comes down to turnout. But actually it's true because at the end of the day, you're subject to the people who come out to vote for you. So I think that's really the story of this entire night of

2025. And the Republicans are in big, big trouble on a number of issues. One is the shutdown and two, and we're going to get to this in here in a little bit. They are turning themselves into Joe Biden. I mean, when you're chart posting about why the economy is actually good, you're dead. You're long gone. I mean, and especially when you lived through defeating a president previously where Bidenomics was a ridicule. It was literally a term of ridicule. And every time one of these pansy economists would come to the White House podium under Biden, I mean, you know how many, how many of these are we covered? They're like, actually, the economy is good if you look at it compared to this, or if we cut things off right at COVID, then it shows like an upward trajectory.

Well, they're doing the exact same thing. And so, yeah, it's just, it's all bad. It's all bad in every direction. They've got, I mean, to say work to do, presumes it can be fixed. I think this is, this cake is baked for 2026. I mean, not, not everything is certain in politics, but, you know, even if you did okay, you were probably still looking at losses. And now with that gerrymandering, I would be feel real uncomfortable to gerrymander seats in Texas, 5248, Ohio, potentially in play, Sherrod Brown. There's a number of Senate seats. Susan Collins, she's gone. The only question is who's going to take her out.

I'm sure that it'll be clipped when Susan Collins wins. Actually, do you remember they clipped us saying Susan Collins would lose whenever she did win? I don't remember that. In particular, why I would go. Susan Collins' campaign actually clip that. Well, so the, to bolster your point on gerrymandering, because, you know, Republicans are being very aggressive with the way that they're drawing these districts. And the assumption underpinning that is that any Republican is going to be able to more or less maintain the Trump voting coalition from 2024. I don't know why they think that that is happening.

And, you know, if, like, if they were unclear on how much people have shifted away from Trump and how much, look, it's never been the case that a general, like, generic Republican is able to pull together the same coalition as Trump. But also a lot of those voters have moved away from Trump, too. And so one of those key demographics, of course, Latinos. And we can put A3 up on the screen. This is the overall Latino numbers. You can see the shift here. This was an area where Trump was very proud of his progress. And so they say that Latino voters swung hard in the GOP's favor nationally last November

with the presidential winning 46% support to Harris is 51% with Latinos. On Tuesday in New Jersey, the answer was no that they could hold on to them. Cheryl won 64% of Latino voters to Chittarelli's 32%. That is per CNN's exit poll, we got more. the next element we can put up on the screen as well. So this was Steve Kornacki, I believe, pulled all of these municipalities that are 60% plus Hispanic. So you can see in 2024, Trump even won one of these districts, Passaic. Trump got plus seven.

This time around, Mikey Sherrill, plus 26. In every single instance, you see massive swings, like 30-point swings. It's double-digit at least, and some of them are like 50-point swings. towards the Democrats here. And so, again, when they were drawing these districts, particularly in Texas, they were assuming some level of strength with Latino voters. And that is far from a certain assumption at this point. And just to give you one example of how tightly they're drawing these districts in Utah,

they drew two districts that are now swing districts. One of them was Trump plus two and the other was Trump plus six. Democrats now have a real shot to pick up two seats in the state of Utah because of the way that they drew these maps. Meanwhile, you have the California ballot proposition passed overwhelmingly crazy turnout for to go and vote just for this one proposition. That was wild to see. So California is going to be aggressively redrawing their maps. Virginia now, Democrats have, you know, a large margin in the House of Delegates, in the legislature, and of course, all statewide offices. They're also looking at redrawing their maps. There's another of, Maryland is also

jumping in the fray as well. So what Republicans started, Democrats have now joined the fight, and they're drawing maps that given the national climate are much more likely to work out to their advantage. So it is not crazy to think at this point that it could actually be the Democrats that benefit from this overall, you know, we're all going to redistrict everything right now in this particular moment, given how much the Trump coalition has already fallen apart with Latino voters, also with young men, by the way. You know, it is not looking like this was a wide direction for Republicans. Definitely.

Yeah. So the case that really needs to be, you know, hammered home here is that the Republicans fell victim to the same mindset that the Democrats did in 2008 of demographic's destiny, right? They were assumed white working class would always be Democrat. They would add an increasing large coalition of Latino and black voters, and thus they would win. Well, Republicans now learned in Texas that over a five-year period, a significant part of South Texas Latinos started to vote Republican and just assumed.

they would vote Republican forever. Now, considering that they voted for Hillary by some 40 points, why would you ever assume that? Right? I mean, such, it's so stupid. It actually begs like how you can professionally even be in this business. But it does really demonstrate also the folly of assuming that anyone is ever for you all the time. I also think, you know, with the sample, one of the things that's really important to, as I underscored, to say it's been a Latino swing. It's about the Latinos who turned out to vote. It also shows you in 2024 when you have a larger number of people who did come out to vote. Yes, some of them, many of them actually, in fact, voted for Donald Trump. But in an off-year election, if the Latinos that you're going to mobilize are the ones who are

pissed off at Trump, then yeah, you're going to see huge numbers in that direction. So to assume monolith, it's not like it's a sample of the same types of voters. And I guess that's the only possible cope you could come up with Republicans. Well, but even that's not really cope because midterm elections are also going to be that same type of elect. I was going to say, exactly. I mean. For an off-year election, turnout was pretty high in, you know, Virginia, New Jersey, other key places. And in New York, it was unbelievable. Yeah, New York City turnout was. It was like 20-24 general election.

The male-off race turnout was wild. Which, but I actually support that. I love that because it means that the, you know, you had similar turnout to the presidential. And it's like, yeah, that actually affects your life, like in a local race. Because it's not like New York is really hotly contested in presidential election. So this was a much more actually hotly contested race. so it does make sense that turnout would be so high. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.

Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith.

This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson.

Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons.

And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business genius. along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask,

why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies. But I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early?

We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili, Yves. Singh and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In any case, I mean, the indications are that even in the places where you had the highest turnout for an off-year election. Obviously, it was still a, you know, total shalacking across the board. Let's put A-5 up on the screen. I mentioned this before, young men. We see, you know, significant swings

here. This is a demographic that Trump narrowly won in 2024. And now you see Abigail Spanberger won them by 14. Mikey Sherrill won by 10. Sir Ron Mondani won him by 40, by the way, in New York City. And, you know, the biggest divide. There were a number of interesting divides in that race that I'll get into later a bit with Summer Lee, but the biggest divide was generational. I mean, Zoron won overwhelmingly with young voters and Cuomo won with older voters. So that was, you know, the biggest divide to take out of that race in particular. But you can see that we covered even before the election the way that Trump's approval rating has fallen off a cliff with young voters.

He's now in the like 20s. When it comes to his approval rating with young voters, again, this is a demographic that Republicans were very proud to have been. prove significantly with, especially again young men. And you can see that those gains have largely significantly evaporated. It's the same thing, guys, as to the Latino. It's the young dudes are going to be pissed off at Trump, the young guys who like Trump or were Trump there just probably shouldn't come out to vote. It's going to be skewed toward the Democrats. And then even with the swing ones, I mean, look, at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Like, it's not like all

young people voted in the 2025, 2024 election, same in 2025. But if the people who do come out to vote are overwhelmingly going to be polarized in particular from social media, from activism, whatever, then of course, you know, you're going to have a huge drop in that. So yeah, it's a huge problem here because there was a level of online enthusiasm for the Republicans in 2024 that evaporated in the span of a year. It's honestly impressive to torture yourself that quickly. And there's, let's think about the reasons why there's been so much analysis online. My personal favorite, by the way, is that Republicans beefing with each other is why Republicans didn't come out to vote. I was like, yeah.

for sure. That's definitely the reason why. Or maybe it has to do with a monomaniacal obsession with Israel for an entire year. And the fact is, is that the basics of life have not changed at all. There's no optimism that they will change at all. There's no plan to make it so that they will change at all. So people, one thing I appreciate about the younger generation is that they are cynical to the point of, if you don't do something for me very quickly, I don't believe you anymore. Because at a certain point, we've seen the movie so many different times that after the one big beautiful bill, you're like, look, I've explained it here. We only open the tax code once every five years. So they opened it. And that was it. And we got an extension of the tax cuts,

and nothing is really changing in terms of housing policy, industrial policy, whatever, anything, like whatever the basics are. Interest rates are not going anywhere, as we've explained here as well. the best of his ability, try, but the tariffs complicate that story as well, which also, at the very least, he's either made things more expensive, but has injected an element of chaos. And so the full picture means that if you voted for Trump because he wanted to try and buy a house and you thought that he would help you economically, that story is basically dried up. And at this point, you don't have enough trust for the next three years to put it into the Republican Party generally.

Yeah. There you go. And also, look, if you were kind of like a vibes for voter, which, you know, I mean, based on the sense of the podcast and him, you know, having a lot of success there and going on there and getting support from that world. I mean, we've been tracking the way that they've shifted, right? And the way that, and I think this is where things like the Epstein files actually do make a big difference because the fact that you credibly put yourself out there is this very

anti-establishment figure. You're going to be different. You're going to be exposing the secrets, all of that stuff. And then you come in and you're like, nope, not releasing the Epstein files, nothing to see here, and by the way, I'm in the Amstein Files, you know, that's a big blow to your brand. And Trump of everyone will understand how important a brand truly is. Yes. And then when you have the, you know, I think Israel is another, certainly fault line, especially

for young voters. And then you have, like you said, a, you know, total fixation on those sorts of issues over. Now Trump says, he's going to work on affordability next year. Okay, don't worry. Whenever you have time to get around to that. So all of those pieces come together where, you know, if you're, you know, if you're someone who thought he seemed cool going into 2024, you're no longer necessarily feeling that way at this point. If I think back to a year ago, and if I think back to the vibe election from

September to November, which was like the height of what it all was, ultimately why did the podcast young guys generation back Trump? I think it's because there is something exciting about anything revolutionary, which seems different. This is the same of the Zoran Mamdani phenomenon. It is different. You can't deny it, right? You can't say that a Cash Patel and a RFK Jr. and all these people, Tulsa, it was, you'd never seen anything like it. You'd never seen anything like, and then Biden was the physical embodiment of an ossified political establishment. Kamala Harris was the embodiment, again, of just being handed something because of the color of your skin and of your gender. There was no competitive primary. And it was just foolish. Everything,

that was vibes based around Kamala, seemed utterly and totally manufactured. The Trump one was truly organic, I think, at a level of excitement. And that always was going to evaporate because that's the reality of colliding with power and of actually having to make decisions. Like, it turns out you can't appease Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio in the same coalition. Shocker, if you knew anything about Washington, you knew they'd be dumb. But, I mean, a lot of people did believe it. And Trump also made a lot of promises.

We've talked here about voters. There's something, I checked the stats on this yesterday. Statistically, there are between 100 and 200,000 people who voted for Trump because of free IVF, which I wish you'd ask me, told you you're an idiot, but listen, they did it. And so how, I'm going to talk about this in our Zoron thing. It is so, I mean, when you believe in something and when you get burned, there is truly nothing worse than that. Whenever you were a younger, especially probably lower propensity voter, or you maybe have still some. faith in the political system. So there's that times what, a million for housing, for trying to make things better, inflation, cost of living, foreign policy. I mean, nobody votes on foreign policy, but my true belief is that foreign policy matters because it like hovers in the ether. And if you watch the news... I don't agree that nobody votes on foreign policy. Think of the Iraq war. So that's kind of the thing is nobody in normal times votes on foreign policy. But when they do, they vote hard on it.

And I will not say Israel is the number one reason that Trump lost yesterday or two days ago in the 2025. But I do think that there's just something sick about watching this obsession with the political elites of this foreign country while your life gets worse. That's why the Zoron answer, how much of it was, sure, him saying Netanyahu was a war criminal. There's a certain element of the DSA crowd, which is going to go wild for that shit. But there's a certain element of an everyday New Yorker who really doesn't care. And when Zoran says something like, I'm going to stay here in New York, is like, hey, fuck, yeah, man.

I'm in on this, right? And there's the reason I've said, that's the most viral moment of his whole campaign. Yes. The whole nationally was, I'm staying here in New York. Donald Trump and his people cannot credibly say that because of how they've governed over the last year. So I think there's a, I mean, top to bottom, it's all baked in. You talk about vibes. The truth is, is like, the vibe at that time is that it was physically exciting to try to see something new.

Now we have what that new is. We've lived through it up now for, what, 10 months, approximately that he has been the president. Of that 10 months, nothing seems all that different. And if it does, it's worse. So it's like in a worse Israel direction, the worst economy direction and or flat, which in my opinion is worse, because it means of nothing happened about it. And then also, I talked about this immigration. Remember during L.A., I was like,

the warning is chaos. Is the people who were pissed off about immigration were mad at the chaos of the border under Biden and of the uncontrolled, unlimited amount of migration into the U.S. But this time around, every fucking story that you read is about chaos with, oh, I said this, the video says that they're lying. I mean, how many TikToks are there floating around?

I just saw this morning some ICE agent in Chicago charged with a DUI. This is what I'm saying. After he left the Broadview facility. Another one was down there bragging about what a good Marx money is after he shot a woman five times. Yeah, I mean, I think and to that point, this is what I've been thinking about. I think people, not just Americans, I think people in general will accept a lot of authoritarianism if the trains run on time and their material conditions. Yeah, it's called China. But, you know, they aren't in it for the.

authoritarianism's sake. And that's effectively what the Trump administration, instead of making your life better, right, dealing with health care prices, dealing with cost of groceries, dealing with education prices, dealing with just generally the sense that things are going to be harder for my kids than they were for me. The AI apocalypse, I mean, they're ushering in the AI, you know, taking all of your jobs. So instead of doing anything, they thought it would be enough to have these images of, you know, in this authoritarian crackdown, like, that's what people really elected them for. No, people are actually willing to tolerate some of that if it's making their life better.

Yes. But you can't have that for its own sake and think that that is going to appeal to people. People are going to fucking hate that. And they do. And so, you know, I think the big verdict here is on the Trump economy. But I do. But the authoritarian crackdown piece, first of all, that demotivates their own. base who have been upset about the free speech abuses and some of those things as well.

But even more importantly, you are going to energize the hell out of the opposition. They are going to come. They will crawl over broken glass to vote your ass out. They will. That don't tread on me instinct runs deep in America. And so if you are triggering that and you are not giving anything on the other side to compensate for it. And meanwhile, throwing yourself great Gatsby Halloween parties while the food stamp benefits

are being cut, and air travel is chaos, and federal government workers are furloughed, building yourself a multi-hundred millions of dollar ballroom, gilded ballroom, you know, and demolishing part of the historic, you know, nature of the White House, you know, it's like I actually saw voters reference that in their vote. Yeah. Because I think those images do touch something deep. I mean, it does feel directly like this gilded age thing, where they're out there, they're partying in this incredibly opulent way in his gilded golden, you know, golden white house. And you're struggling to make ends meet. And there's zero sense that anyone is doing anything for you. Yeah, people are going to vote your ass out. They are going to, in Mississippi,

in Colorado, in Virginia, in New Jersey, wherever they can, they are going to go and say, this is not what I wanted. If I voted for you before, this is not what I voted for. and I'm going to do whatever I can to send a message that you have gone so far off track. And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad.

Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.

And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive. of companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into

the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad.

And we'll talk about some of the classic great. moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked, like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself?

You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes or early. We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong.

Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I really do think, you know, when you put all of those things together, look, I think the economy is a good transition to, you know, the economy piece. So we could put A7 up on the screen here. I do think the economy is the central piece. But these other factors, whether it's Israel, whether it's the, you know, the just gaudy show of wealth and opulence, sucking up to these tech oligarchs and handing them everything that they could possibly want. The crypto, yeah, the smash and grab, I mean, all the corrupt.

deals and patting the pockets of you and your family and your aides, the insider trading, all of that sort of stuff, and you couple that with a dire economic landscape that feels like it's only getting worse and worse, yeah, there's going to be a political reckoning there to pay. So this was, G. Elliot Morris wrote this up, and the astonishing thing here, if we can hold on this for a moment, is that you had a voter's number one issue, as it usually is, was the economy. If you look at Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, 48% of voters said the economy was their number one issue

of those 63% voted for Abigail Spanberger. In New Jersey, similar numbers, 32% said that the economy was their number one issue. Taxes was another one that was a significant issue there as well. I think Chittarelli really put that on the table. But in any case, of those economy voters, Mikey Sherrill, won 65%. Guys, this represents a 93%.

point swing away from the Republicans compared to the 2024 election. Economy voters went for Trump in the 60 percent. So it was the number one issue in 2024, and those voters overwhelmingly chose Trump. And now here we are a year later, and Democrats are winning two-thirds, roughly, of the voters who say the economy is their number one issue. Put a eight up on the screen here, because I think this is also really important. I mentioned this before the election. but I just wanted to underscore this. This is incredibly telling. So right now, in November 2025, 72% of Americans say economic conditions in the country today are poor. 72% only 28% say that they are good. If you rewind back to Trump's first term, to the same period in Trump's first

term, you had an almost complete flip of those numbers, 68%. At that point, said actually the economy's good and only 30% said it was poor. And I will remind you that even with those sorts of strong economic numbers, you still had a backlash election in 2018 that was overall very positive for Democrats. So now with the economic numbers looking so dire and possible, you know, we're obviously tracking close with the AI bubble and what that means and all of these layoffs some caused by AI as well, things could be worse by the time we get to the mid-year-old. term elections. And so that reckoning happened in 2018. Just imagine what we could be in store for here in 2026, given that you have all kinds of upset over Trump and, you know, his authoritarian

tactics and his foreign policy and all those sorts of things. And you also have incredibly dire economic conditions and very negative sentiment about the economy. It doesn't take a genius to figure it all out, does it? You know, to your point about authoritarianism or just generally like what is society in particular. Yeah. Sorry, let's not go too deep, shall we? But everyone agrees that if somebody is threatening someone on the street, that their rights have to be at least somewhat deprived

so that other people's rights are not deprived, correct? Right? Everyone agrees with that. Now, when I think about the most authoritarian but high functioning societies in the world, you can look at Singapore, where you literally cannot enter the country with chewing gum, they do public canings, they have rigid enforcement. but when you're in Singapore, it's awesome. Okay, that's the dirty little secret about it.

People who live there, they like it. And honestly, why? Because it's clean. It functions. They have good jobs. They have an extremely high level of state functioning, and they buy into that. And they don't really care very much. In fact, they laugh at America and they say we are less free because of our freedoms.

They're like, yeah, you're free to be assaulted by somebody. You're free to live in a shithole. You're free to have horrible public transit. When you ask the Chinese people who actually broadly support the Chinese Communist Party. They're like, yeah, I can't talk badly about Xi Jinping. But, you know, remember that video I showed you of Chengdu from 1980 to today? If you live through that, I mean, that's one of the most extraordinary economic and physical transformations in the history of mankind. So yeah, you're like, okay, whatever. But here, I mean, be honest, have things gotten better? No. All right?

And, you know, it's not the same. We don't have centralized control and there's local stuff and and all of that. But at the end of the day, if you don't give somebody a lot of benefits and you see that happening, then obviously people are going to say, well, I'd rather at least not have to deal with that or to feel as if there is chaos in my country. And I think broadly, that's where even the people who do support some of this are, they all admit the chaos, but they're saying that the chaos is the point. I think there is like a logical insanity to that, which is that it incites self deportation. So you can say, okay, you know, It's net worth it or whatever in the end, but I don't think that's a gamble that 90% of people are willing to take, which is part of the issue, is that broadly, under Biden, it felt chaotic. This is just not just on immigration, but I think generally, like, because his old age made it so that nobody was running the show. And, you know, under Trump here, there's kind of an element to that as well, because you have all these disparate parts of the government.

They're not talking to one another, and everybody's constantly beefing. I mean, I'm still knee-deep in Venezuela. I'm getting calls every single day from, oh, he change his mind. You know, by the way, I can currently update that he has changed his mind currently because of a more recent update. Oh, we're invaded Nigeria. Yeah, well, we may bomb Nigeria. But my point around Venezuela, right, it's like one of those where everyone is kind of just willing, is under this, you know, this mafioso like system where people who are vying for the ears of the boss. Remember my analogy of Trump is it's like Versailles, right?

It's like whoever gets the ear of King Louis while he's taking a shit is ultimately for the great. Victor. Well, he goes checked down half the time, too. I mean, there's significant ports. Sort of this ballroom shit. All this, all the ice stuff. That's like all, you know, put into Stephen Miller's purview and Christy know him and whatever.

But then even they're fighting, you know, like Stephen and Kistia fighting. And then Corey Lewandowski, her alleged boyfriend is the person who is underneath that. And then you've got the Border Patrol guy who's beefing with the head of ice. And then you got Tom Holman who's beefing with him. And it's like trying to explain this to a liberal doesn't make any sense because they don't actually understand, like, the intra-like party like beef over, but it actually does matter because it manifests in where it is

right now. In a lot of ways, you know, ICE is losing because their image is being subsumed by Border Patrol. Now, again, try and explaining that to a defund abolish ICE person, but it actually kind of matters because the ICE people are like, hey, we want to arrest criminals, drug dealers, rapists, and the Border Patrol people are like, no, we want to do these vast raids. Border Patrol, they're the ones who did like the apartment with the Black Hawk military helicopters. actually are more militarized and have like they have their own like basically mini air force they have drones they have helicopters whatever and so yeah they in there it looks like they're winning the battle right now you had a huge um you know ice a bunch of ice guys who got fired

and replaced with um CBP type so in any case you're to your point yes even though there's a lot happening but every week it's you know we're here we're there this is our focus that's our focus now we're in this city no we're not getting into that city and Meanwhile, you've got, you know, these images of, like, mass thugs, tear gassing kids go into a Halloween parade. I don't think it's making people feel like, oh, you've got this under control, and I'm going to get some actual benefit out of this. Another example of the authoritarianism that, you know, has been popular is but Kelly, right? Down in El Salvador. And but what did he do he, you know, through his.

I'm glad to hear you admit that. I mean, it's true. Through his, first of all, they had much worse crime than we had, right, in terms of the level of lawlessness. And he genuinely threw horrific. tactics that I would never support, he has brought the crime rate down. Yeah, but you might support that. You might support that if you had people getting beheaded in the streets and Mara's off, whatever you call it, you know, being carved into people's chest. I mean, I remember thinking about it, but do terrier, do what is, do territic.

They're like, oh, it's horrific. I'm like, yeah, well, you had drug dealers everywhere, shooting people. I don't know, you know, maybe I'm going to get to a point too where I'm like, yeah, kill them, okay. And you've never lived through that, so you have no idea. We're doing extrajudicial assassinations of random people. in the ocean. And, you know, and meanwhile, the actual number of indictments of drug traffickers, human traffickers, like those sorts of things, the actual, you know, even the deportation of violent criminals is down because instead they're just going after, you know, your Home Depot guys and your, you know, lady selling to Mollies on the street or whatever. In any case, the bigger

point that I said before is the one that I've been thinking about, which is that, yes, people will tolerate authoritarianism, but only if it's actually benefiting them. And only if it's comes along with some sort of market increase in their material well-being. They're not going to take mass thugs in the street and I can't afford stake anymore. And I can't make rent at the end of the month and rent is going up. And my health care premiums are going up 100% this year and you shut down the government can't bother to do anything about it. No, they're not going to take that. And so, you know, your own supporters are going to be demoralized. The opposition is going to be incredibly, incredibly energized and will, you know, do whatever it takes to send that message.

And so, you know, one of the things I've been very worried about the midterm elections and like the, you know, the gerrymandering and the Supreme Court coming in and them seizing all the voter rolls and, you know, all the executive orders and I've been very obviously tracking that very closely, what's hardening to me about this is it does look like things are going to be too big to rig. And that very likely the Latino voters, you know, that have shifted and all of these demographics that they counted on to still be in their camp are going to screw their gerrymandering ambitions. and it's going to be too much for them to be able to overcome. Now, what's going to be interesting to see is how do they respond? So, you know, what – first of all, one option is they just bury their head in the sand. Publicly, we're seeing a lot of that, you know, J.D. Van saying, oh, these were just New Jersey and Virginia blue states. We can't really read anything into that, which is – he knows that's not true. He knows because he's looking at these same results of freaking Mississippi and, like, you know, all of the – Georgia and Pennsylvania.

He knows. But I see a lot of that of basically like, yeah, it's no big deal. This doesn't mean anything. We're not going to read anything into it. So one possibility is you just stay the course and you don't really do anything. Another possibility is you try to adjust. You take the message of like, okay, people are sending us this message on affordability. Trump is now talking about affordability nonstop. I saw Ryan say on Twitter, he is like, by the end of the week, he's going to be talking about fast and free public buses and just totally taking the Zoran mantle. But in any case, we also have, you know, one of his Who is this guy, campaign political director from 2024, talking about how Trump plans to refocus his messaging on cost of living. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. 75% of Mickey Sherald's ads were positive, overwhelmingly talking about cost of living and heavily talking about lowering power costs. Jack didn't really talk about that. He talked about taxes and he won the tax vote, but he didn't address those key issues of affordability very effectively. He was mostly talking generically about change to Jersey. And I'm not denigrating Jack, but it was not in line necessarily.

necessarily with what voters were saying. Two, in Virginia, over half of Winsom Sears ads talked about transgender. And it's not even the top five issues, according to voters. Why did Zoan Mondani do so well last night? He relentlessly focused on affordability. People talk about communists. They can say all these things. But the fact is, he was talking about the cost of living. Folks that I'm talking to privately who are supporters of President Trump think that he needs to be talking about cost of living a whole lot more. I think you'll see the president talk a lot about cost of living as we turn the year and into the new year. The president is very keyed into what's going on. And he recognizes like anybody that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there. And I think you'll see him be very, very focused on prices. Sager, can you give me, yeah, give me a view into the White House and like how they think about the economy right now. Yeah. Look, none of them are stupid.

They did win an election, a popular vote, man, the first since 2004, okay, of a. a Republican. So that's one thing where we shouldn't always discount necessarily the political skill of the comeback. This happened to Bill Clinton. This happened to, I mean, multiple, yeah, I could go on forever. Obama, right? All of these people who did seriously get checked in the first two years of their presidency, adjusted course, maybe not to the benefit of the country, but to their own political benefit. Their sense generally is that the president does need to talk more about the White House, but, or about the economy. He's talking about the White House.

He's talking too much about the White House. But this is what always belies the problem is this is not a normal White House. Trump is a singular figure who actually doesn't have to run for re-election again. That's part of the reason he's doing the ballroom and labeling the Oval Office in Gilded script that you may see at a Marlago resort. That's kind of the stuff he has always cared about, right? And then you have all of these disparate other people. You have the cash grab section, which includes like his son and his own family.

Then you have the people who are pursuing their own ideological agenda, let's say Marco Rubio, who's trying to push regime change in Venezuela, J.D., who has to try and balance being good to his boss and wanting to run in 2028. So he's probably in the worst position because he's to defend all this shit and he has potentially run on it. Again, then you've got the secretaries of Scott Besson, who are, you know, Scott is ultimately a creature of Wall Street. He does not want to be humiliated in his job because he eventually has to go back. That's what these people all do. Look at Steve Mnuchin and others. And by the way, Mnuchin, part of what guided his behavior when he was a secretary of the treasury is he's currently still back on Wall Street. They need to maintain some credibility.

So, you know, that's why he's bailing out his friends on Argentina, okay? Like, it's all pay for play, like, in terms of what the future is. So there's no one sense of the White House. At any one moment, my phone is blowing up from a different contingent of the White House who are pissed at their other colleagues in the White House. I can, look, I've only ever covered really Trump, like I had no real insight into the Biden administration that are leaking to a very different, but everything I've ever read, that's not all that common in a White House. So, yes, there's a huge contingent of his White House, which is upset with the direction that they are taking. But I think the demonstration is that they don't have a lot of power to compel

a change in behavior because they're all playing the same game. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they don't. So on the affordability piece, generally, did you notice the language that he said, we're going to talk more about it? Talk is cheap, bro. Yeah, it's not a messaging problem. It's all, yeah, it's like Biden. Yeah. No. After the gas prices went up to $5, everyone's like, fuck you, all right? I don't want to hear a word you have to say. It's not a messaging problem. Exactly. And this is the problem, you know, that they have right now. Their heads were far up their ass and they believed the vibeship. I actually think that more than anything, it's an information bubble. You can see this with a huge amount of Republicans.

Twitter, Elon buying Twitter is one of the worst things that ever happened to them because it definitely helped them win the election, but there's no question in the world that a lot of them huff their own bullshit. And there's also a huge perverse incentive in MAGA world to make, suck up to the White House, right? So no one's inviting me back to the briefing room anytime soon. Nobody is pitching me Scott Bessent or whatever, some for some fluff.

It's not happening, okay, because they demand total fealty. Like the days of me trying to get a Trump interview or whatever, it's over. It's not going to happen. But that's the issue is that these people all suck up to them. And so they don't really tell them what they want to hear. So the White House isn't a situation where they don't trust mainstream media and they don't even really believe anything that they say. You know, to be fair, they won two elections out of three. So, or in their mind, three out of three, but whatever.

The point, though, is that the stuff that they're consuming, there's one person, one, Tucker Carlson, who is willing to be like, yeah, I think what you guys are doing is wrong. but turn on Fox News, turn on Glenn Beck, turn on any, you know, right-wing-aligned podcast. It's all propaganda all the time. Go on Twitter, you can follow entire accounts, which a lot of these people in White House do. They're more online than anybody who are just mainlining propaganda about how great they are. So imagine, you know, the information environment that they're swimming in. That's really dangerous, actually, when you're in power. And that's why I think some of them were really shocked at the election.

results. I really do. I mean, I think they knew they were going to lose, but, you know, there's all this down ballot stuff that nobody else cares about except for people like me, like the Bucks County School Board, which was about like a harbinger of the Youngkin, you know, revolution, anti-CRT, uh, trans stuff. Like the trans mafia is fully back in control, uh, if you live in any of these places. So yeah, no, we're fucked. If you, if you're a parent, it's not good right now. To your, um, to your point, someone shared the stat, you know, these Moms for Liberty School Board candidates or like, you know, conservative, whatever, there were 31 contested races involving moms for liberty candidates. You know how many they won? Zero.

Yeah, I know. All 31 lost. Every one. And that's why it was such a reckoning. I mean, even, look, I was expecting it to be bad for Republicans. I was not expecting the coast to coast, everything from Georgia and Mississippi. And I mean, every single, whether it's a local level or a state level or somewhere in between at every single level, it was a uniform shift and reckoning against the Republicans. And so I'm sure they are shell-shocked. And so, yeah, so, you know, the interesting thing will be to see if they do more than just say, like, oh, next year, we're going to get around to talking about affordability as to your point. Talking about it is not, I mean, they would have to do a total 180 on what they've been doing. And this will be a good transition, actually,

into the tariffs. Well, we've got tariffs later on. We'll talk about how the Supreme Court's going to, you know, going to probably rescue them from their tariff insanity. But you have to do a total 180 on the economy. You have to actually deliver on health care. You have to actually make people feel like their lives are getting better. And you've got to pull the mass thugs down in the neighborhoods. You've got to take back the National Guard. Like, you have to do a complete, complete 180 on the way that they've been running this administration thus far. Or you have to really try to go full authoritarian and make it so that votes don't matter. And I just don't know if there is enough that they could do at this point to truly make sure that, you know, come 2026, there's no meaningful elections whatsoever.

I think it's sort of too far gone for, you know, it would take too much and spark too much of a backlash if they were to do what it would take to make it so that there were really no meaningful elections. Yeah. Can it be fixed? I'm not so sure. I'm of the belief that Biden was dead by October of 2021. I don't think there was any world where a Democrat could have won after that period because of the way that he ran the country for up to that time with the inflation and the spike that eventually happened and then his eventual deterioration. I really, I don't see a world where a Democrat could have ever won 2024. Maybe that's a little bit too reductive, but I don't know. I mean, if I just think of the cake was baked. Let's think about it. I mean, think about the approval, the vibe.

Everything was done. I mean, if you think back to that, that's what Yon happened. and they were given, you know, a tiny little savior with Roe v. Wade, which gave them a lot of hope. And then they were dead. I mean, it was literally over. So I'm starting to feel a lot of the same way. We're right around the same time. Obviously, a lot could change. But on the horizon, I see much less chance of success. And many more pitfalls for my things where I see an AI bubble on the horizon. I see a tariff problem on the horizon. I see an international crisis with Taiwan on the horizon. I see regime change in Venezuela.

I see Israel and Iran just sitting there just waiting for something to happen, for some sort of international crisis. Ukraine, not, you know, still going on. There's a reason we don't want these things to happen because it doesn't take a genius to read a book and say, at any moment, at any time the globe can explode and gas prices can explode, right, and could go all the way up like they did underbun.

They can sink your presidency. So this is, and that's why it's to your book. benefit to try to get these things all wrapped up. I mean, if you asked me when the vibe turned against Trump, what would you say? I would say March. And by the way, see, I disagree. I think the, I think they turned before that. I think it was March. March of 20, what was that, March of 2025. And if we think back, the vibe was with Doge. They were, they were winning, I think, the vibe wars in the original war. There was the ceasefire that initially happened in February under Steve Whitkoff. A lot of the promises made, promises kept stuff was there. The revolution still

felt as if had had energy. And right around March, something began to change where the Doge reality started to hit. The opposition started to start to flare up. The sheer stupidity of a lot of the White House's statements and things falling apart. I believe Seacot was around that time as well. So if you think about all that together, that is when people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know? And that's exactly when I started to see a few dissident comments. Yeah. And then things exploded by, I would say, May of 2025. You know, if you actually look at his approval rating, one of the hits he took was on Kilmara Brego Garcia.

Yeah, yeah. Because that wrapped up, Seacot and lawlessness and all of that sort of stuff. And Democrats, a few of them actually got around to, like, making a point about it. And it sort of focused people's minds on, you know, what was going on in this administration, what it actually looked like. And, but I do, I actually feel like the Epstein files were a critical turning point, too, because that's when you got some MAGA voices being like. dude what the hell you know and when you have your own side all shut up didn't they when you have

your own side yeah they sure did but when you have your own side chirping at you that's always you know a difficult thing she said johnny the kids didn't come home last night along the central texas plains teens are dying suicides that don't make sense strange accidents and brutal murders in what seems to be a plot ripped straight out of breaking bad Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.

And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. and some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever.

There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. so many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Here we go.

Hey, I'm Cal Penn. And on my new podcast, Here We Go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye.

When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the shutdown. I know we're still a bit tight on time. So shutdown, we need to focus here on Trump and kind of his view of where things are. He kind of said the quiet part out loud, which you're never supposed to do in the shutdown. By the way, we are now officially in the longest shutdown in American history. And he was like, well, the Republicans, he's like, it didn't have

anything to do the midterms with the shutdown. But also maybe it did have to do with the shutdown. Here's what he had to say. But I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it and also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night. I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans. And that was a big factor. And they say that I wasn't on the ballot was the biggest factor. But I don't know about that.

but I was honored that they said that. So you could see what he's saying there. Well, you know, if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative four Republicans. But I wasn't on the ballot. And also, don't worry. The shutdown didn't have too much to do with it. That's why we need to nuke the filibuster.

And that's, you know, obviously that's gaining some steam. Although I don't think that's really going to happen with a lot of these Republicans. Well, and reportedly behind closed doors, he was much more like we've got to open the freaking government. Oh, yeah. I mean, look, he's not stupid. I mean, anybody who's looking right now. sense, I feel like that is, that is cope. Because if you think that these election results were just about the shutdown, I think they actually had pretty little to do with it. I totally agree, but

nothing is worse than chaos. I mean, what did I just say? When I'm feeling of out of control. Actually, let me just go and put that up up the top. B7, please. Put that up here on the screen, the last element. The FAA just today announced it's cutting thousands of flights starting tomorrow due to the shutdown. 10% of air traffic at 40 major airports. I cannot even quantify the billions of in lost profit, productivity, and more as a result of this airline stock's going to take a dive. I mean, just the sheer amount of chaos that that is going to cause, I cannot be the only person who's going into Thanksgiving. Genuinely, if the shutdown's going to happen, I'm probably going to cancel it because

the airport, Houston, that I would have flown in and out of, had a three and a half hour line for security. For pre-check. For pre-check for three-and-a-half-hour line. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not subjecting my kid to that. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, having a six-month, but, like, it's not happening. Like, I would rather die than experience that. I would rather walk to Houston.

Yeah, I would walk from Houston to Washington, D.C. I'm not the only person. I bet you was tracking that. Like, you know, most of the year, it's mostly like business traveler. Like, Thanksgiving is the time when normal people are traveling with their kids and they are planning far in advance. So they're looking now at these headlines and going, I don't know if. this is going to happen. Like, I may pull my trip. I may not make those plans. I'm sorry,

Grandma, it's not happening this year. I mean, those sorts of things are already happening with where we are in the shutdown right now. Yeah, exactly. So there's that with the shutdown. And then there's the politics of the shutdown with Mike Johnson saying, speaking out, saying, actually, the shutdown had nothing to do with what happened. Take a listen to that. I don't think the loss last night was any reflection about Republicans at all. I think people are frustrated and angry as we are, I am, the president is, and we expressed that different ways. No reflection on the Republicans. Okay. Oh, did it? Did it? Okay, yeah, exactly. Okay, then you've got some of the stuff going on right now with the Democrats where no shit,

they're hardening their position. Wouldn't you? After you just won this elections, put the next one, please, on the screen. The Democrats warned of hell to pay if they cut the court week post-election shut down deal. So they're showing that they are absolutely ironclad. They don't want to budge because of the health care premiums. I mean, you know, actually, you know what's interesting? My tweet about my in-laws went massively viral. Really? Yeah, because I tweeted their insurance premium. It wasn't even a political statement. I just had my in-laws Obamacare premiums went from 1800 to 4,200 a month. And I mean, it got like thousands of retweets and it was shared like all over the health spectrum. Republicans were like, yeah, see,

that's why there shouldn't be any subsidies. And then Democrats were like, see, this is what happened to, but I was like, that's just the reality, okay? And as you and I have discussed, Obamacare is a horrible system. No one should even be paying $1,800. No one should be trying to subsidize $18 to $4,200. By the way, it's not that like they're early, the early retirees of Mike and Shelley, they're self-employed, okay, just over everybody's, for everybody's information. And, you know, they just happen to live in this little state called Pennsylvania, if you ever heard it. And maybe it's electoral importance. Somebody else can can enlighten me as to what it is. But that's happening to a lot of people. And no matter who you are, really on the

political spectrum, if you go from 1,800 to 4,200 a month in healthcare, you are just going to start asking a lot of questions about whose fault is that. Again, I think Obamacare is a horrible system. I think the subsidies are incredibly stupid, and they just subsidize the healthcare companies. I think it actually inflates health care prices, I could go on forever about the critics. But at the end of the day, you're still probably going to be in a more politically popular position to say, hey, hey, hey, let's not make it so people have to pay $4,200 a month for health care, right, in the immediate term. So, yeah, that's kind of a winning position, especially if that's what you're generally going to offer people. Put it all together. It's not good. And there's like maybe one Republican

who is speaking out against him. Yeah, that would be Steve Bannon. We can put the next element up on the screen who, you know, I think Republicans, I think Emily shared this. One thing they were saying the only silver lining for us is Zoran getting elected. And he's like, Bannon's like, listen, not so fast. This guy's got some things going for him. You know, he's compelling. And he and, you know, he and some of the other politicians who are kind of in the same vein, they are not to be trifled with. Like, you have to take it seriously. And, you know, this also has some layers of cope in it too. But he basically gets down to also, okay, Trump's really got to deliver on cost of living. And, you know, Bannon is one. He'll sound the alarm before something. He'll say, you know what,

you actually in the big beautiful bill should raise taxes on the rich. And then it won't happen and then we'll never hear about it again. He'll say, you know what, this whole dalliance with Elon and like throwing in with the tech oligarchs, maybe not the best idea. But then once it happens, again, you don't hear anything more about it. He warned about the Medicaid cuts, right? He's like, listen, a lot of MAGA is on Medicaid now. Same food stamps. A lot of MAGA is on food stamps as well. And, you know, even though court said you have to pay out, they said they're going to do 50% that, even that is not forthcoming whatsoever. I mean, that's, you guys, that's a huge number of people who are really going to be immediately suffering right now because of those food stamp

cuts. So, yeah, he's, he's sounding the alarm. He's not sounding like J.D. Van saying, oh, nothing to see here was just, you know, blue states. He's saying, no, you know, the Sauron guy is something you should be taking seriously and you better get to work on the economy or else you're going to be in a very dire situation. Well, let's pull over an element, which we didn't end up using Per the NBC News exit polls, Mamdani lost immigration voters by 26 points. Crime by 41. But he won cost of living by 36,

and they represented 55% in the electorate. That's the whole ballgame. It's all cost of living, 100% period. So that's why, if you think about 2024, it was an economy election, but it was also an immigration election, it was also a crime election. And so, yeah, that's why the Republicans

probably fared better in the aggregate. But if the entire discussion is going to come down to cost of living, the Democrats is the opposition party, they're going to beat your ass, even if they have much less popular positions on trans, on crime, whatever, immigration, et cetera. This is where, you know, I just talked about the school board stuff. How many people were even there voting for school board who were like, well, what's their position on gender affirming care?

Nobody. They were like, screw the Republicans. Screw Trump. So they voted for him. Now, you know, I think that's going to reap a lot of destruction in the future, but so be it. That's the way the politics works here in our country. That is the issue right now with the shutdown and with the chaos. And the fact is, is that, yes, snap, you know, is being held up by both parties at this time with shutdown.

When you run the government, you will bear the blame, period. Especially whenever you're like, no, we're not going to pay it, even though maybe we can kind of, you know, if we wanted to as the people in the government. That's the issue that you have here. Same with, you know, Governor Yonkin recently. he was asked specifically about Virginia and the elections, he talked about the shutdown. So he's not stupid. Let's go and take a listen to him. A lot of Republicans, including Lieutenant Governor, ran on the idea of keeping the good times going,

referring to the successes of your administration. Given the fact that Lieutenant Governor lost by 15 points, Republicans are on track to lose more than a dozen house seats, is it possible that Virginians don't see your administration the same way that you do? Well, I believe that Virginians thoroughly support what we've been doing. I mean, at the end of the day, when people say, is the state heading in the right direction, people say, yes. As I said, I firmly believe that particularly the government shutdown was a very, very big challenge as we ran into this election. We have 330,000 government workers here that weren't getting paid. That is a real challenge heading into an election.

And therefore, I, again, encourage the Senate to please open the government, because Virginians are hurting, and it's time for the government to get back open and then for you all to do your work. accidents and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.

And now we're back making this. new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.