Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/18/24: Media Cancels GOP Debates Ahead Of NH, Biden Panics Over NH Polls, Taiwan Elects Anti-China President, Chinese Population Drops

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss the media cancelling GOP debates after Trump and Nikki pull out, Biden panics over possible NH loss, do Americans hate Trump or Biden more, Taiwan elects anti-China president, Chinese population drops again.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We are, of course, looking towards New Hampshire. Does anyone, Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, have any shot at defeating Trump at this point? And in a sign that the answer is no, the beep stakes have already started. Yes. We'll get into all of that. We're also going to take a look at the economy, little vibe check. How are people actually feeling about the economy as we head into the general election? There was an election in Taiwan that may have a lot of broader implications

for their relationship with China, for us as well. So we'll take a look at that. We're also following big updates out of Israel where Netanyahu is proclaiming this thing could last for years. Of course, as we've been discussing for a while now, he has every incentive to basically make this war on Gaza and on Hezbollah and whoever else he wants to take on last indefinitely so he can maintain his grip on power. And this comes as the Houthis are striking back after the U.S. decided to redesignate them as a terror group. Also excited to have an Australian journalist in the show today, Antony Lowenstein, who is taking a look at the way that Palestinians are used effectively as guinea pigs for testing out new weapons systems. So a lot to get to this morning.

Yeah, there's certainly going to be interesting. I'm actually excited to talk to him. But before we get to that, we do have an election discount. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So we've got 25% off on our yearly subscription. That's at breakingpoints.com. You guys can help us out. We've got the RFK Jr. rescheduled focus group because of the weather that is coming up. And we've got all kinds of plans that we're going to be debuting very, very quickly, I guess, as the season continues. So if you can go ahead and help us out, sign up, breakingpoints.com. We've got a lot of fun things for this election season. We want you all to help us be a part of it.

But let's go ahead and start, as we said, with the New Hampshire primary. And let's actually just check in, like what the hell is going on over here? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is just a sign of, I guess, the dwindling nature of the entire race. CNN and ABC News have both pulled the plug on the GOP primary debates in New Hampshire after both Trump and Nikki Haley critically have bailed. Crystal, this is all part of Nikki Haley's bizarre attempt to spin her third place finish in New Hampshire as a two-person race. So she's like, I will no longer debate Ron DeSantis. I will only debate Trump. And obviously Trump has not participated in a single debate. And so she effectively withdrew from the debate.

Now, I mean, I'm not quite so sure how much it matters. I mean, this is a five-day, basically last gasp at any attempt to try and win. We did see a single poll conducted the day of Iowa, which actually showed Nikki Haley, we know within striking distance of Trump, don't know how much to even put in stock of that. And obviously there's a lot of rapidly shifting and changing dynamics, but it does show her that this is it for her, last five days. I mean, frankly, DeSantis too, although I'm not quite so sure he realized it because he didn't have the same expectations of New Hampshire. He may actually be shifting all of his focus towards South Carolina and I guess make that his last dance. We'll have two last

dance, I guess, in South Carolina. There's a lot of Pete Buttigieg energy here with Nikki Haley. You'll recall that he just like declared victory in Iowa and then pretended like he was the guy and the media sort of went along with it. And, you know, to be honest with you here with Nikki, like we can't say it's not working. The media is sort of going along with it. And to be fair to her, Ron DeSantis put all his eggs in the Iowa basket. I mean, this man spent tens of millions of dollars in that state, did a massive number of events like they were broadcasting and telling the press that they were going to make their stand in Iowa. His surrogates were all declaring, you know, they're going to win Iowa, et cetera, et cetera. So it is a bigger

disappointment for him to finish such a distant second than Nikki has always put all of her eggs in the New Hampshire basket. So basically she's saying, look, I did okay in Iowa. Let's just pretend that didn't happen. And let's move forward to the state that I actually care about, which is New Hampshire. You know, in terms of backing out of the debates, obviously, from a democracy standpoint, I think all of these candidates, Trump included, Biden included, should have been required to do debates all along. I think it's disgusting that people feel like they can just, you know, back out of the democratic process. However, as a tactical move, I think it's probably smart. I mean, number one, I don't think that it's kind of a waste of time at this point. Not that many people are watching.

Not that many people care. But also, she's clearly versus Ron in the driver's seat in New Hampshire. And so why give him any oxygen and any chance to make up some ground and, you know, score some sort of a blow on her in that format? So I do think that, again, from a tactical perspective, it's probably a clever move. And, you know, while she's running on a runway and I mean, as I said last time, I think this primary is basically over. But for Ron, the landscape is even more grim because you already lost the state that you put all your eggs in. There is no other state on the map where it appears, including your home state, where it appears that you're going to perform better than you did in Iowa. So like, what's your plan here? Yeah. I mean, to that point about why the debate would probably hurt, it just opens her up. And

then last time, actually, because we had that parallel Trump town hall versus the debate, the town hall got over double. It had like 4.4 million people watching and the debate had like two some million. And Ron did pretty decent in that last debate. That's right. People said that they thought he won. Right. So why would she give him that? Now, again, I agree.

They should be required to debate, period. In the past, I mean, if you'll recall, Mitt Romney and all them, they were debating all the way into South Carolina. That was some crazy stuff. They had 15, almost 19 debates. The Democratic debate, even though Obama basically won after South Carolina, Hillary and him kept on going for a long time. So it's actually sad to see the total collapse of all this. To bolster your point about how some of the wagons are now circling within the GOP anti-Trump direction, let's put this up there on the screen. The Wall Street Journal put an editorial board

out on Tuesday saying that President Trump's sweeping win in Iowa, quote, should push Governor DeSantis to drop out of the GOP presidential race and give former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley a chance at beating the former president. Mr. DeSantis faces no clear path to the nomination. He's well behind her in New Hampshire and South Carolina. If he believes, as he says, that Trump cannot win in November, he should leave the race and give her a chance to take on Mr. Trump one on one. So, I mean, to a certain extent, I kind of do see their point, Crystal. This is probably the only chance you have to have any

meaningful blow. But DeSantis himself, I mean, from a self-interested point of view, like, why would he do that? For him, he did get second in Iowa. He has no reason that he necessarily has to drop out. I mean, everyone's like, oh, you have no chance. He has no reason that he necessarily has to drop out. I mean, everyone's like, oh, you have no chance. I mean, you don't know until the votes are cast. It's one of those where it's up in the air. I don't think it's going to work out for him. But, you know, I guess we'll see.

And then it all comes back to this. They say things. Do they really believe them? Like for DeSantis. DeSantis raised his hand at every debate, and he said that he would support the GOP nominee. So when Trump wins, is he going to endorse him? Yeah, he already said he would. Nikki Haley too. I mean, by all means, it seems as she's campaigning for vice president. There's been actually, interestingly enough, I spotted an instance where Jason Miller, who works for Trump, the day before

the Iowa caucuses, he was asked, will Vivek Ramaswamy ever be president? He said, no, I don't think so. They said, what about Nikki Haley? And he said, well, we'll see. So he kept the door open. There's previous leaks and all of that. I don't know. There's going to be a big fight within Trump world. I wouldn't personally bet on it. But for this woman, ambition is everything. And she also doesn't believe anything that she says. Now she's against Trump. Previously, she walked back her January 6th criticism. And then before that, she was against him for January 6th. She's all over the place, and she's like, I want to call my friend, President Trump,

to clear the air. This is before she decides to run against him. So I wouldn't put it out that all of them are just in a self-interested march towards this, and they're just looking out what's good for them. I'm not convinced that it would be the best thing for DeSantis to drop out, because then the Trump people would say, oh, well, he tried to help Nikki. You know, the enmity would only increase. They don't believe what they're actually saying here.

So for Nikki and Ron, in terms of their self-interest, there are two possible tracks to pursue. One is the try to stay good with the MAGA base track. I think Ron DeSantis is probably more likely to go in that direction because he, even though he's been a little bit critical of Trump, like the Republican base still likes him. They don't see him as a never Trump figure. You know, he maintains support. If Trump were to drop out of the race, I think Ron would, you know, go to prison, die, whatever, for whatever reason he disappears. I think Ron DeSantis would be way better positioned to pick up his support, certainly than Nikki Haley. So I think he's probably more likely to go in the direction of like, what am I going to do to make sure the

Republican base still likes me, that I still have a future in Republican politics, given that Donald Trump is still the man? How can I get back in Donald Trump's good graces so he's not just like being mean to me all the time and humiliating me all the time so I have some chance in the future in Republican politics? I think that is more likely the track that Ron DeSantis is going to go on. The other possible career track is the one that I think Nikki Haley is more likely to pursue, which is the let me be the darling of the media and the donor base. And let me, you know, maybe I'm positioned for more board seats and making more money. Maybe I'm positioned for some future never Trump or anti-Trump lane. Maybe I'm positioned for a CNN gig or other mainstream press gig.

And she, because she has taken on almost like an anti-Trump Chris Christie vibe with the Republican base in this primary, in spite of her very conservative record, in spite of the fact that she also was very gentle with Trump. That's the way she's beginning to be seen among Republicans. I think she is more likely to pursue that track. Now, what does that mean exactly in terms of her calculation for when and how she gets out of this race? I think it's a real open question. I hadn't really thought about this, thought through this until yesterday, but there is some chance that between even if she loses New Hampshire and even if she loses South Carolina and even if she's going into Super Tuesday and she's way behind,

there is some chance, 0.5% or whatever, that there is a Black Swan event and Trump is taken out of the race and that there's some benefit to donors of having one of their representatives as like the last person standing. That's a great point. So I think, you know, that may be a calculation that she makes where even though it's completely humiliating to get blown out in all of these races by like 60% that she may stay in there even, you know, and accept that level of humiliation just because that's what the donor class wants her to do, to be where they want her to be just in case something unforeseen happens. I mean, remember, Hillary stayed in until June of what was it to June of 2008, months and months after it was clear that she wasn't going to win. I mean, I guess she was

banking more on superdelegates at that time. But, you know, the same kind of case was there just in case you might be able to do that. And that's something that Ted Cruz and John Kasich, as we all can recall, he stayed all the way until the end of the primary. So Vivek Ramaswamy, obviously we covered the news on Tuesday, dropping out of the race on Monday night in Iowa after he only was able to get 8% finished. Fourth, immediately not only endorsed Trump, but is now actively joining the campaign. He campaigned with Trump in New Hampshire, now taking to the airwaves, mostly on Fox, calling on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to drop out. Let's take a listen to what he said. I think that you guys may have seen some of the rally that we had and the response was overwhelming. And I think it's very clear who the

Republican primary electorate is saying that they want to be their nominee. I ran to be that person. They sent me a very positive message, but the very positive message they sent to all of us is that Donald Trump needs to be the nominee of this party. And I think Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley would actually at this point do this country and this party a service by stepping aside to make sure that we're focused on not only nominating Donald Trump, but getting this country back and reviving those founding revolutionary ideals. And I think we do live in that 1776 moment right now. We need to win. You're calling on Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis to drop out right now. I am that I do think that would be healthy for this country.

And I think that, you know what, especially Ron DeSantis, at least of the two of them will have an important role to play in the future of this country and leading this nation. I do believe that. But I think that the right thing to do right now is the people of this country through the Iowa caucus. It's the most grassroots process I've seen. I personally did over 390 events, built great relationships and goodwill. But the message they sent was clear. I think it's time to actually make sure we elect the right president. So to underscore your point as well, Crystal, with that, let's put this up there on the screen. The Ron DeSantis super PAC is actually having layoffs on the very same time that he would try to win in New Hampshire. They appear to be putting all of their efforts, as we said, on South Carolina.

They're basically writing off the state. Nikki Haley's got much more, not only never TrumpTrump type, anti-Trump sympathetic voters, but New Hampshire's got the open primary process. And since we don't have an active Democratic primary, or do we, which we will get to just in a second, it's one of those where we could see some crossover voters who come in and support her as some sort of last-ditch effort. So all of this is kind of pointing to the fact that it's do or die, you know, for Nikki Haley.

And Trump is basically treating it that way. He's not even really paying attention to Ron DeSantis. Let's put this up there. After following on, he had originally had a birther attack on Nikki. Now he's going with this. Anyone listening to Nikki Nimrata, Haley, it's actually Nimrata, whacked out speech last night with things. She won the Iowa primary. She didn't. And she couldn't even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious who's out of money and out of hope. Nikki came in at a distant third. She said she would never run against me. He was a great president. She should have followed her own advice. She's now stuck with weak policies and a very strong MAGA base. There's just nothing that she can do. So look, he seems to be treating it as a one-on-one. And actually, the Trump people are

on the ground in New Hampshire They seem to be feeling good about it. Let's just underscore the one chance Nikki has which is she's got a hell of a lot of money She's got more money than Ron DeSantis right now. She's got the billionaire class behind her and she's got the possibility I mean at this point, it's not even fair to call it a black swan event because it's totally predictable It's like a white swan. It's just like when is it gonna flap to flap its wings? And that's Trump's legal problems. To what extent are they going to be there? Nobody knows. Just to give everybody an idea, Trump currently is fighting his second defamation case against E. Jean Carroll. We can put that up there. That's happening right now, actually, with a federal judge actually coming down on Trump. They're saying that you can be kicked out

of this trial if you keep making disparaging comments that the jury could hear. Then he's been putting stuff out on Truth Social as well. Previously, she'd already sought and won damages against him. Now she's going for it a second time after, I believe it was a previous Truth Social case that came out afterwards. I mean, obviously, I believe her case is being bankrolled by, what is her name, Reid Hoffman, the Democratic billionaire. Regardless, it obviously worked already in terms of the defamation against him. Now we're getting to the second case that's against him. She's basically trying to bleed money from him and just keep him tied up in court. But that's, I mean, that's the least of his problems.

Money he at least has, or at least appears to have. Everything else, like that's not necessarily one you can just pay your way out of. You've got the Georgia case, although, you know, we've got problems there, which we've covered. We've got, but I mean, I mean, at the same time, I always have to come back to the documents. I have to remind myself, as you did the last time we were discussing that, that one is just open and shut. Like, there's just no, there's no January 6th, like First Amendment, Supreme Court, like not even the court can save you on that one. And that's why Trump, his last truth actually just this morning was about how the president should have total immunity while he's in office. Because I think he does seem to understand it's like, look, he's got a chance on Jan 6th. He's got it at the court, not necessarily

with the jury. He's got a chance-ish, I guess, with election law and free speech and all that. But the documents case, I mean, that's one where after he was president, so he no longer has the same level of immunity. And given the fact that his own administration argued against the same classification standards that he, like, is trying to prop up for, like, why he didn't do anything wrong, it's going to be a problem. Yeah. I mean, you just have to, like, there's different factors in all these cases. The Florida one, he does have going for him that it's not in D.C. You know, he could get a more favorable jury pool. He seems to have a judge who's much more sympathetic towards him. So he had does have going for him that it's not in D.C. You know, he could get a more favorable jury pool. He seems to have a judge who's much more sympathetic towards him.

So he had some things going for him there. Not really in terms of necessarily winning, but his whole strategy is to drag this out so that he has a chance to win at the ballot box and then get himself out of all of his legal trouble that way. The DC cases, they are trickier from a legal perspective, but he has less friendly judges and a potentially less friendly jury pool. And so I don't know. We'll see. I mean, the big question with all of these things is the timeline. And the other question is, when you have so much legal jeopardy in multiple states, multiple charges, what is it,

like 91 different charges, you're going to run the table on all of them? It seems unlikely. So that is the big thing that's hanging over all of this. But in terms of the Republican primary, it seems very unlikely that any of this comes to a conclusion before he's the official Republican nominee. So perhaps you know, perhaps some of these trials conclude before the general election, perhaps, but I think it's highly unlikely that there is such an expedited process that any of this comes to fruition before he is officially the Republican nominee. And so, you know, that's kind of where we are. Yeah. As Trump used to say, we'll see. We'll see what happens.

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I'm really curious to hear what you think about Biden and the DNC, honestly, writing off New Hampshire, bypassing it, changing their process such that South Carolina comes first, basically to rig the primary because they know that Iowa and New Hampshire actually didn't choose Biden last time. And Iowa gave him the perfect excuse. They're like, oh, well, it was such a shit show last time. We have to bypass it. But that didn't mean you had to bypass New Hampshire, where Biden conveniently got fifth place. But South Carolina, where we have a large elderly black population, which votes very, very differently than Iowa, New Hampshire, yeah, let's just throw it to them because of racism or whatever. Well, now though, it seems, even though the New Hampshire primary will continue, let's put this please up on the screen, the Biden team, I'm not gonna, I mean, look, it seems to be panic in a certain way. They are now instituting, after Dean

Phillips has announced his candidacy, a quote, weird write-in campaign where they want Biden to win New Hampshire, but they don't want to seem as if they are all that invested in him winning. Because Biden, by trying to end the quote, 100-year reign as the nation's first in the primary and put South Carolina first, now his allies are trying to make it so that he will have a write-in campaign on a shoestring budget where his campaign is not technically involved, but they still really, really want him to win because it would be embarrassing, which it would be embarrassing for you to lose to Dean Phillips, to Marianne Williamson, or previously RFK Jr., who had been vying for – I mean, if we think about the RFK Jr. case before he went independent when he was in the Democratic Party, his entire thing was New Hampshire, because that was the one place where Biden's not competing. He's literally not there. And if RFK was able to win 40, 50, or whatever percent, that would have been humiliating. And the media would have had to treat that as a story. In this case, now we've got Dean Phillips,

who's got, I mean, some momentum. It's unclear exactly how much. They seem to be pulling a fast one, both trying to tell the media, New Hampshire primary doesn't matter. All of this Biden challengers, they're fake. That's why they're rigging the whole election process and the rest of these states. But now they also do want to win to try and save face in terms of their headlines. Basically, by being so heavy handed and trying to rig the Democratic primaries, they screwed themselves. They really screwed themselves. They thought New Hampshire would fold and would just get in line. And then they would be able to have the exact state order that they want, that they thought was ideal for Joe Biden.

But they didn't think through the fact that, I mean, number one, this is like a point of pride and a source of identity and money, by the way, for the Democratic Party in New Hampshire. They didn't want to let this go easily. And the other thing is the New Hampshire Constitution says that they go first in the nation. And New Hampshire is not run by Democrats. It's run by Republicans. So even if they wanted to change it, they're not in control to change it. So they're saying, okay, we have to abide by our state laws. So we're going forward with this primary, whether you're participating or not. So that's what put Joe Biden in this quandary of like, okay, well, since the DNC isn't sanctioning this thing, and in fact,

they're penalizing the candidates in the state, if whoever wins the state isn't going to get any delegates. So Biden can't put his name on the ballot. So they have to do this write-in effort. But they're also worried that all of this anti-Biden sentiment that is very clear within the Democratic Party, where people really feel like they want another alternative, and which has been amplified and exacerbated by the fact that so many young people are disgusted with his unconditional support for Israel's all-out assault on Gaza, that has opened them up to a very precarious situation. They don't want to be seen as spending any money in New Hampshire. So the state party, which is, by the way, incredibly pissed at the DNC and incredibly

pissed at Joe Biden. They've sort of begrudgingly taken up this effort. It's a very low dollar amount in terms of presidential politics that they put into this write-in effort. And it's a real wild card what's gonna happen here because it's hard to poll, right? How do you poll what's gonna happen in a write-in campaign? Are you's hard to poll, right? How do you poll what's going to happen in a write-in campaign? Are you asking people, okay, here's your options that are on the ballot, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, or some other write-in? Are you sort of like pushing them with the fact that you can write in Joe Biden? Are people going to be aware that that's the case? I just think it's very, even more difficult to predict what will happen here.

And the irony is, Sagar, if they had just played this straight, kept New Hampshire at the front of the line as it's always been in terms of the first primary, Joe Biden was going to win. He was going to win. He's winning in every other state. He would win in New Hampshire. And even maybe somebody would do a little bit better than they're going to do in other states. But because they are so concerned and so nervous and so overly controlling of this process and so opposed to actually having real democracy and letting people have a say and go to the ballot box and actually pick, they have opened themselves up to a vulnerability. So I genuinely don't know what's going to happen in New Hampshire for Democrats. We can put this next one up on the screen. I mean, the polls have been, again,

a little bit all over the map, I think, in particular, because it's very difficult to poll this write-in situation. But there was a poll that had Dean Phillips at 26%. That's not nothing. I think even that level of support is embarrassing for an incumbent president versus a guy. I mean, nobody knows who Dean Phillips is, right? We've interviewed him here. We know who he is. But he's a random congressman that the overwhelming majority of the country has no idea who he is. And the media has gone to great lengths to make sure nobody knows who he is.

They've done the same thing, obviously, to Marianne Williamson. And then you couple that with there's also a new effort to write in just the word ceasefire on the ballot to try to send a message to Joe Biden. I mean, I think probably the more effective way to send a message to vote for one of his actual opponents who's on the ballot. I think Dean and Marion at this point both support a ceasefire and have some differences from Joe Biden on their policy towards Israel. But that just adds another factor, motivating young people to go out and send some sort of a signal against Joe Biden. So it makes it a little more interesting than, Iowa, nothing happened for Democrats, but it makes it a little more interesting than some of the other states. It's more interesting because we genuinely have no idea. Like you said, it's already difficult to pull a right in. Number two, people aren't spending any money on pulling

the Democratic race. We have one, maybe two. At this point, super PACs are the only ones with any cash. I mean, if we look to history and we think about a competitive primary, even a sitting president, the last time this happened was 1980 election. Jimmy Carter only won 47% in the New Hampshire primary. Ted Kennedy actually got 37% of the vote. So let's say that Dean Phillips gets 2630. I mean, that's a serious contender. But I could flip it and again, just point to if Biden had any confidence in himself, he would do what Carter did and you would try and crush your opponent in the primary. Carter maintains he has some cope where he's like, well, Ted Kennedy really hurt me going into the election. I'm like, dude, Ted Kennedy was at least

your problems whenever I was going into the 1980 election against Ronald Reagan. It's not that it didn't cost too much money. Money wasn't your problem. The thing is, I actually think it helped him, having read a little bit about it. He had to hone his message, both in terms of getting people to come out for a vote for him, and he was in fighting shape. If we'll remember,

remember Obama's first debate against Romney? Disaster. And the reason why was, what did all the people around him say? He's out of practice. He hasn't run for office in a long time. He's like, he kind of forgot that you need to make a case. His second debate was very, very different. He tried to reform his professorial tone and getting angry. That was the real,

the real Obama was the only time we ever really saw him was in that first debate. And then he put the mask back on. But the point is, is that, you know, it's healthy. It's good for you. And actually can make you better at overall running for office. There's also just a question about the media in this primary. We talked and looked previously, Vivek Ramaswamy was saying like, oh, look, they're leaving me out of polls and they're not putting my face on the screen. You and I are familiar with this going back to the gang gang, how many times Andrew Yang was left off, how many times he was either blackballed or not mentioned by the media. I mean, in the case of Dean Phillips, there's some crazy stuff, actually. Let's put this up there.

So Dean Phillips says that he has not been on MSNBC a single time since he has announced his candidacy. Phillips here, this was an interview with Politico. He says he may as well be calling in from the sidewalk outside of the Capitol Hill studio. He can watch fancy guests come and go, hoping in vain for Chris Hayes, Joy Reid, or Jen Psaki to just bring him in from the cold. He says, quote, right-wing media has actually been more than invitational. By contrast, I don't think there's an MSNBC viewer that even knows I'm a congressman, because that is what is being portrayed in design to

prevent that education. Now, look, let's be clear. He doesn't have a right to go on MSNBC. But then there's a question with MSNBC. They're not stupid. They know they run the table in terms of elite Democratic opinion. You can't even have the guy on one time. So according to them, the Phillips campaign, they said that they had two previously scheduled appearances. Then, this was actually on CNN, then both of them were subsequently canceled. MSNBC has not even reached out to the man. You have interviewed him twice. And it's like, it's not that hard. You can just text him, people. It's very available.

Let's think about this, you know, from their their low-rated shows even and all of that. Joy Reid or any of these other people. What the hell else are they covering on the show? Why pretend? Just have him on. You can even be confrontational as you were. Dean, look, I'm going to give him credit. He sat there and he took it.

You went back and forth with you guys. That's pretty rare, actually, for people who are running for president. I actually can't think of a better thing than to have somebody on like that, especially if you're Jen Psaki or someone. Challenge him to his face. What's the issue with that? They seem to be totally, they seem to be terrified at even opening the door, which is a huge mistake. It's a lot of disdain for the viewer because a lot of these viewers, they love Joe Biden. Or if they don't love Joe Biden, they're going to be offended because they're much more institutionalist than anybody would even challenge him.

So by airing him, they more likely would turn people towards the Biden campaign. But at the very least, you got to let people talk. There's just no reason you shouldn't. I guarantee calls went in from Biden world to MSNBC and to CNN and I'm sure to other places as well. I mean, that's why he's getting booked on CNN and then canceled. That's why the invitation is not even getting extended to MSNBC. And the way this works is someone in Biden world calls the president of the network and says, listen, we don't want this guy on your air. And if he does,

you're not getting your interviews with the president. You're not getting your interviews with Kamala Harris or whoever it is that they want access to. It's not happening. And so that's the way this game works. And I saw it when I was at MSNBC and I did critical commentary of Hillary Clinton before she was going to run in 2016. And someone from Clinton World called the network and that's basically exactly the message that was sent in no uncertain terms. So that's the way that this game is played. It's disgusting. It's not journalism. It's not, you know, it's anti-democratic, especially for these networks, CNN and MSNBC, that pretend they care so much about democracy. And think about it on CNN, too. They've done town halls with,

they did town halls with all of the Republican contenders, even the ones that were polling at like 3%. They gave them plenty of airtime. They gave them plenty of exposure. So even if you look at the poll numbers here and you're like, oh, well, Marion's not polling that high or Dean's not polling that high. They're polling high, a lot higher than some of the people they put on air for these town halls and gave them plenty of space and whatever. They've just decided to pretend there are no options on the Democratic side. And I'll tell you, Sagar, it's very clear from the way the Biden people have reacted, they fear that his support is a house of cards. Now, is it really a house of cards? I don't know. But they clearly are worried about that. And there's a reason for them. I'm not sure that

they're wrong, I guess is what I'll say. If you genuinely had Dean Phillips, who I think presents himself reasonably well in interviews, even in a confrontational or contentious interview like I had with him a couple of times, he comes across across while he's able to handle himself. And they're worried that if MSNBC viewers actually internalize there is another option here, basically like generic Democrat is actually on the table for me to choose, that they may go ahead and choose that option. And I'm not 100% sure that they're incorrect about that. Look, I don't know. I actually do think Biden probably would prevail in a quote unquote primary as it's currently constituted. Yeah. Because I think a lot of viewers or a lot of voters are comfortable and, you know, especially an incumbent is a huge advantage. Huge advantage. Yes, that's right. That said, you know, there's no reason not to

give him a shot. And I think your point that you made was fantastic. If frickin Tim Scott gets town hall, Dean Phillips gets a town hall. If Mike Pence, who can't even drag his ass to the finish line in Iowa to actually run and go on the ballot, gets a town hall, well, then I think Dean Phillips should be able to get a town hall. It's pretty wild. It's interesting, too, the Biden campaign, to back up what you're saying, they were actually asked for comments on the story, whether they were quashing. And all they responded was, quote, LOL in all caps. It's like total disrespect at that. Very arrogant behavior for somebody who is terrified and is literally rigging the primary. So look, anyways, we can look at it. We could say it's a possible, because New Hampshire is the one place where they don't have it entirely rigged to their benefit. One thing we also know is that the New Hampshire Attorney General, and most New Hampshire Democrats are so furious with the DNC,

the New Hampshire Attorney General actually is threatening to take legal action against them because the DNC keeps saying that the New Hampshire primary is not real. And they're like, hey, you're violating state law because you're denigrating or whatever our process. So there is some internal fight here. The DNC is throwing everything they are at this. But overall, we just have to say this. This is really bad for the future because what it means is that if they're going to commit to South Carolina first, there will never be a Barack Obama type figure ever again, period. There will always, like South Carolina and its political system are designed as machine politics. If that goes first, you deny the momentum stories that originally came out for Obama.

And to put it back in history, if South Carolina was first, Barack Obama would never be president. Hillary 100% would have been the nominee. And who the hell knows? We're going to have freaking John McCain as president. Can you imagine that? America wouldn't even exist. We'd be in a nuclear wasteland or something like that if it ever happened. So let me ask you this, Sagar. What do you think, how do you think the media handles it if Dean Phillips actually beats Joe Biden in New Hampshire? They have to pay attention. They have to cover it. I mean, I feel that way too. Like they may want to do the blackout and whatever, but you can't just 100% ignore. They may doubt, they will definitely doubt that. They will give you all the context in the world for why this doesn't

count. Joe Biden wasn't even competing. They didn't even spend any money there, blah, blah, blah. But I don't think that they can avoid just completely pretending like it didn't happen. It looks like RFK. I mean, everybody wanted to pretend he didn't exist and they got, you know, some 26% or whatever in a national poll and like, all like, all right, we got to do something on this. Even he gets to go on Fox News and all these other places. And what did he do? Did an interview with ABC? Yes, they edited it.

They, you know, censored it, whatever. But the point is they still acknowledge that he was real. I think the same is going to happen with Dean if he wins. But if he loses, which probably looks most likely, well, then it's going to be a problem. But I still think if he does crack 25, you still got to interview the man. You have to interview the man. You have to give him like something because 25% is a non-insignificant amount of people who came to the ballot box and are actually Democrats. You can downplay it all you want, low turnout, etc. But you have to at least acknowledge his presence. We'll see. I mean, to his benefit right now, he's got a lot of these VCs, you know,

currently backing him. He's got the All In podcast. Jason had Jason Kalkanis. He did a Twitter spaces with Elon Musk and with Bill Ackman and with Dean Phil. Bill Ackman actually gave Dean Phillips a million dollars. Yeah. And then most that he's ever given. That's a whole other conversation. But it's very impressionable. It is not as if, you know, he doesn't have powerful people behind him ready to help if he's able to capitalize. The only question is, you know, if that even materializes as possible, which I don't know. Yeah. Nobody knows.

Well, it'll be interesting. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. daughter to steal somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the same time, I wanted to take a look at the US economy. How exactly are

things going? Not just for you, but how is it going to affect the overall election? So we have a lot of weird indicators. You could look at things a couple of different ways. First and foremost is probably this. Let's put this up there. Inflation is going to be so massively determinative in the election and how people feel about where things are going. As you guys can see from the chart in front of you, technical, the CPI inflation, which peaked at over 9% in mid-2022, seems to be down. But it is down to what? Somewhere around 3.5 or so percent. And I think the big question, though, is that even though it may be down to 3% or 4%, depending on the month and things ticking up in December, it's still a hell of a

lot higher even in the monthly and or annual rate than where it was back in 2020. We've had over 20% inflation or so that consumers have experienced in a very, very short period of time, which is part of what is affecting the overall shock. At the same time, though, if you look at Americans' pocketbooks, despite the fact that inflation is high, we do seem to be in a weird conundrum. Let's put this up there. This actually just came out. A new survey, which is called the Axios Vibes Poll, which I love, finds – oh, I don't know. Do you like it?

It kind of nails it. It says Americans are actually pretty happy with their finances. So this is despite the fact that consumer sentiment is very weak. People in general are unhappy with the overall economy. But then if you ask them, how do you feel about their overall prospects? They're like, yeah, I actually feel good about it. They say 63% rate their current financial situation as being good. 19% actually say, quote, it's very good. Neither number is very low. They're actually in line with the average result right now for the last 20 times that Harvard-Harris has asked this poll. And nationally representative of thousands of people, they say 66% actually think 2024

is going to be better than 2023. And 85% say that they will change our financial personal situation for the better. So, Crystal, I mean, you can put those two things together. I'm not quite sure. I could see it, like I said, a lot of different ways. We've got the inflation, which is ticking up. People are still pissed off about the grocery store, about gas, about the fact that they're spending more on personal household goods than they used to. But then in their personal lives, they seem to be kind of happy. I don't really know what to do with that, but it makes it so that the question that the economy is 100% going to be bad for Joe

Biden, the data doesn't bear that out to make it a foregone conclusion. There's enough sticky and noise stuff within there that it actually is more up in the air than I would have expected. Especially when you consider that I think the vibes were probably judging by people's self-reported sense of the economy and how they were feeling and also the real numbers about inflation. They were worse around the midterms. Way worse. And we really thought, and a lot of analysts really thought, that was going to be the determining factor for people casting ballots. And it wasn't. So I think there's two questions. Number one is how are people actually feeling in their lives on a micro sense like day to day because there's, you know, do I feel like I can pay the bills today and I'm okay today? And do I feel a sense of comfort about the future or do I feel a lot of precarity and

a lot of fear for the future? Because I suspect that's a lot of what's going on and why we get these like counter indications of how people are actually doing. And then you also have the question of, is it still the economy stupid when it comes to politics? Yeah, good question. And as someone with sort of like democratic socialist leanings that looks a lot at class and material analysis, I'm not sure that that's the case in American politics as much as it

used to be. And the reason is because no one has any confidence that any of these politicians are going to do anything for them. So it's like, why vote on material interests when the only thing I really expect to get out of them is to signal on whatever cultural fights that I care most about? And so that's the way that I'm going to think about politics, and that's the way I'm going to cast my ballot. I think that's increasingly the case in American politics. And you can see that in the fact that there's, this is something that Matt Karp has tracked really closely. There isn't really a class realignment.

If you look, working class voters are almost split 50-50 between the two parties. There's a class de-alignment in American politics where perhaps the economy, which should be the center of a lot of concerns and traditionally is the center of a lot of concerns in terms of translating into voting preferences, just isn't the king that it used to be. It's not the king that it used to be. 2022 was the real one where abortion activated so many voters with such passion, willing to override the interests. On top of that, you had Trump, like cult of personality issues, both ways that stemmed and had their issue. If we take, you know, just a look though, I think what we could say this, it is determinative

in some respects, but it's not, you know, as predictive as it once was. It used to be that, you know, if there was a bad election, a bad economy, there was just no question about what the economic wins are. So on that front, Biden has to hope for better economy if he wants to continue these fights on stop the steal abortion and all of that. And look, as I said, too, there's some leading indicators going Biden's way. Let's put this up there. The U.S. consumer actually propelled the economy forward in 2023. This is from the Wall Street Journal that actually just happened yesterday. They say how American shoppers silenced doubters. The Commerce Department said retail rose actually by 0.6% in December, putting them 5.6% higher than a year earlier, way stronger than a lot of economists had predicted.

Previously, they had predicted not only recession, which technically we were in a recession, but whatever. The whole point is, are people spending money or not? And that on the consumer question, it seemed that consumer sentiment, while it remained low in terms of satisfaction, consumer spending remained high and high enough that actually we saw a record number for the S&P 500 at the end of 2023. And you put together with that a couple of other things like, well, can we expect rate cuts? We can expect a rate cut to come sometime. That means that let's say rates drop to 4.5 or so percent. There's two and a half years of locked up capital, people who are ready

to go. I was just reading this morning from the journal. There's some $8 trillion of consumer and institutional money in money market funds because they're paying such high interest rates. Well, if you have an interest rate cut, then the prospect of actually spending that cash, some $8 trillion either in housing or investing in business, whatever, something that you think is going to get a better return than when you're currently at basically completely safe in a money market, you could see that. Polling-wise too, things are all over the place. So we have this, let's put it up there, just the latest YouGov poll, this is the first one we've actually seen in a while, which shows Biden actually beating Trump.

It says Biden at 40%, Trump at 38. This is in the national. And 2% is right around where you need to be if you actually want to pull off an electoral college victory for the Democrats. If you add in RFK Jr. there, it's Biden 34, Trump 33, Kennedy 17. Interesting to see that Kennedy actually appears to be pulling a decent amount from both sides. Pretty equally. Quite equally, 7% from Trump and 6% from Biden. This is in this poll, but relatively kind of consistent. But you have to also remember that this is an electoral college. And if we look at the electoral college and we see some of the must-win states or the ones that if Biden wants to recreate his win from last time, things aren't nearly looking as good. So let's put this up there. We have Georgia here, for example. In the state of Georgia,

Trump is leading Biden by some 45 to 37%. It said that 20% of Georgians, critically though, were not yet ready to support either candidate as things are shifting in that direction. So with a large number of undecided voters, I guess it shows us a couple of things. Trump may be leading right now, but he still very much could piss enough Georgians off that they would come out and vote for him, saving Biden. Biden did barely win the election last time, but the special elections and Georgia politics since then have definitely trended in a non-Trump direction.

If you zoom that out, it's just funny because I really could make the case either way. I could easily sit here and make the case for Biden. I could easily sit here and make the case for Trump, which just makes me convinced that it's not only unknown, but it's a lot closer than I think either side wants it to be. Not to mention just the chaos factor of not knowing what's going to happen between now and election day. We had no idea October 7th was gonna happen. We had no idea the way that Israel would respond in this just absolutely brutal fashion, the way that would become a real center of gravity, especially in politics on the Democratic side, where the Democratic base is very much at odds with Joe Biden and young voters disgusted

with his response there. But we did have another election result. This is where I was, cuz I always look at these polls, the Georgia poll, I'm like, my God, Joe Biden is completely toast. Like this old man who can't formulate a sentence that is like, lost any sort of potential moral high ground that he may have had at one time. How could he possibly beat anyone, let alone Donald Trump, who's a very skilled, charismatic performer? And then I see a result like this out of Florida, where Democrats just flipped a Florida State

House seat in a special election. It was a seat that, now listen, this cuts both ways, OK? Because on the one hand, Joe Biden did win this seat by five points. On the other hand, Ron DeSantis had won this seat by 12 points. So I guess you can say it's kind of a swing district and Democrats just flipped it. In spite of the fact that I was looking at some of the online analysis, there was not a strong Democratic registered Democrat turnout. So early in the day, all the Democratic like polling analysts and data gurus were freaking

out like, oh, Republicans definitely just won the seat. But when the results came in, I guess because of strong independent performance showing up for the Democrats, they were able to pull it off. And this is consistent with the trend that we have seen since the midterms of Democrats outperforming in almost every special election that's occurred. So in the politics of it, I do think I could, I'm like you, Sagar, it depends on the day and what data point I'm looking at. I can see it happening either direction. Just to go back quickly to the economy and trying to sort through how people are feeling, I want to be really clear. I think the macro picture for Americans in this economy is incredibly dire. Prices have gone up a lot. Wages have not gone up a lot. You have massive inequality

continuing and becoming further exacerbated. You have, critically, the building blocks of middle class life, the things that make people feel like, I'm going to be okay for the future, and you know what? My kids are probably going to be okay for the future. We're talking housing, healthcare, and education, all three wildly, insanely unaffordable and have been skyrocketing in price for years. The things that previous generations were able to accomplish, the milestones they were able to achieve at earlier points in their life, millennials and now Gen Z are way behind in being able to achieve those milestones. In the big picture, America is going backwards in terms of basic levels of economic

achievement, prosperity, and lack of precarity, which I think is a really important term. So I don't want anybody to think that I'm saying, oh, actually, the economy is great, and that's why Joe Biden's going to get reelected. I don't think that is accurate at all. I just think that there is so much hopelessness around any of these politicians really delivering that people are evaluating their choices in the election through a different lens than perhaps they did in the past. Very possible. Like you said, I mean, maybe they've given up. I agree completely. I mean, nobody should mistake this as us being like, yeah, the economy's great. No, structurally, there's massive problems. People are very aware of them. Things you're swimming

against the tide in many respects, you know, whenever you're younger and the deck is stacked in various different ways, regardless whether you're college educated or non-college educated, as we continue to look for that. But as you said, people are also short-term creatures in the way that they think and they evaluate. And 2022 really did show us, though, that you can be materially really suffering and you will still vote sometimes in a different direction if you don't agree with another party. That's a real X factor that comes in here.

So, you know, the whole point of this is just to show you and prepare since the Republican primary is effectively over now at this point to just say like, okay, what is actually going to impact this election? And we want to give everybody as, you know, round of a picture as we can to try and make sense of things. Because 2022 definitely caught me by surprise. You know, I think it did certainly a lot of people. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes,

but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution, but not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit man we got uh ricky williams nfl player hasman trophy winner it's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne for brothers osborne we have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free

with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move on to China. This is a story that we've been wanting, saving for quite some time.

Obviously, we had domestic politics and our own elections to kind of think about, but this could end up being one of the most consequential elections of this year whenever we look back, you know, 10, 20 years from now. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. There was a major election in Taiwan between a couple of parties. You had the KMT and you had the DPP. The DPP kind of being the party that the Chinese foreign ministry and the Chinese population and government was warning the Taiwanese, you should not vote for them because they are not as, I wouldn't say under our control, but it's more so that they don't not favor having as much of a relationship with Beijing on Beijing's term. This new leader, I'm not going to try and say their name, but the party that China did not want to win did end up winning the election actually pretty decisively.

And their new leader says that he is going to, quote, stick to the status quo. But as the Wall Street Journal says here, his past is what makes the U.S. nervous. So he's previously the mayor of Tainan. So he wanted to, quote, move a section of a railway underground. Residents whose homes would have been demolished blocked bulldozers with their bodies and accused them of selling them out to property developers. Political opponents apparently called him a dictator. Quote, he was undeterred selling them that this was crucial for the future. The reason that that anecdote matters is that his, quote, resolve or stubbornness, as his critics

call it, has now taken on outsized significance after he emerged victorious with some 40% of the vote. So the reason why is that currently, the current ascent of this man, who is currently serving as the vice president to the top job, is what makes Americans nervous because they see him, is that he is more likely to provoke Beijing with, quote, envelope-pushing rhetoric and draw the US into a dangerous confrontation. Beijing obviously also doesn't like him because he has openly been kind of spiteful of Beijing. He's kind of rallied the Taiwanese populace as independent from Beijing's extension of foreign policy. And then the issue, too, is that our Taiwan policy is very complicated because it's one of those where it doesn't make any actual sense unless you have to go back to the beginning where they call themselves the Republic of China, but then we recognize them as China at the UN until we had the opening of China, and then we no longer recognize them as China. So we

passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which says that we have relations with Taiwan, but we don't recognize Taiwan as its own country. And yet all of our diplomatic relationships with Taiwan treat them as their own country. We have visa relations and all that. In terms of our defense, we have a strategic ambiguity posture as spelled out in the Taiwan Relations Act, where we do not support a change to the status quo. And all that means that we don't support Beijing taking over Taiwan, but we also don't support Taiwanese independence. This was reiterated by President Biden in reaction to the election results. And the only reason that we're spending even a lot of time and so much on this on Taiwan,

24 million people, is that they are one of the largest trading partners of the United States. They make some 94% of the world's semiconductors that are in the most super advanced nature. And if there was to be any conflict over Taiwan and a disruption to that, it would dramatically change the global supply chain and almost certainly would ignite into a regional war and possibly even a global conflagration. So this makes a Beijing armed invasion of Taiwan much more likely. That doesn't mean that it's going to happen, but you have Xi Jinping, who has spelled out in multiple party congresses and made it, you know, kind of a picture of national pride for the Communist Party, that Taiwan reunification, reunification as they call it,

is something that is very important to the party, specifically as they come after the 100-year anniversary of the Communist Party in China and as a way to try and bolster kind of sagging Chinese nationalistic pride, which we're about to get to in a little bit. I'm curious for your reaction. Yeah. So, I mean, the bottom line here is while the U.S. may frame our concern over Taiwan about the international rules-based order and democracy and sovereignty, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think if anyone believes that at this point, you have to have your head examined because it is very clear we don't care about any of those things. What we care about is what you said.

90% of the most advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan. Now, why we allowed that to happen is a whole other story, right? And basically points to the utter failure of neoliberalism, where it was just about, oh, where's the cheapest to produce and where can people make the most profits? And it's a global economy. And the theory of that case, in part, was that this was also going to keep us safer. This was going to integrate the world. This was going to allow peace to prevail.

And instead, in this instance, you can see very easily how it could push our, you know, leaders who are clearly not afraid of starting wars in any place in the world into a direct conflict with China, which no regular person in the United States of America actually wants. So this is all about those semiconductors. I mean, I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but that's basically the bottom line. That's why the Biden administration pushed through this chips act to try to spin up semiconductor production here in the United States. So we would have at least some domestic production. That takes a long time. That's a very uncertain future. We are nowhere near far enough along that path to feel comfortable about where we are at this point. And then at the same time, Sagar, you've got to have China looking at the way that we are basically fools getting humiliated in every corner of the globe and the way that we are completely overstretched and saying, hey, they don't look like they've got a real strong hand to play right now.

So maybe now's the time to act. I mean, speaking my language. How much how much have we overextended ourselves in Ukraine? Now we're shipping all this stuff to Israel and bypassing Congress and our foolish leaders and presidential candidates and contenders and top Biden and Trump and everybody else. Oh, of course we can afford wars wherever we want. No problem. It's no big deal. It's complete and utter insanity. I have zero confidence that any of these psychopaths actually want to avoid any sort of conflict. They seem to be totally happy to risk World War III and global conflagrations in every corner of the world. So yes, this should make you extraordinarily nervous when you see these potential tensions

ticking up. Yeah, I'll put it this way. Let's put this up there just, you know, again, to bolster some of this, just to talk about how people across the globe are looking at this from Politico EU, actually, and say the China skeptic wins Taiwan's presidency in a snub to Beijing. What they basically show is that this is going to lead to a series of kind of diplomatic, interesting standoffs. The very first one actually just happened a couple of days ago. And bear with me, please. Let's put this next one up there. The Pacific Island nation of Nauru has severed ties with Taiwan in favor of China. Okay, why should we care? Most people don't even know that Nauru is a nation, let alone should we care about their relations with Taiwan? Well, the reason that they

did it is because Nauru is under significant control by Beijing, and they have major economic ties, and they're a power in the Pacific, not necessarily a big power, but what the Chinese are trying to do here is to set up a diplomatic case such that breaking off relations with Taiwan leads to either Chinese bases or mutual defense agreements or such that the Chinese Navy can move through. And it's all about a chessboard.

The way that they think about these things is decades and how they would wanna make a move. And so what do you want to do? You want to make sure that all the other people in the region no longer are either invested in Taiwan, have any relationship with Taiwan, and don't care about Taiwan, or at the very least have decided to side with Beijing and to look the other way. This is a whole part of why the South China Sea conflict has now mattered since the mid-2000s and why they've been moving in that direction. Now, as you said, this has nothing to do with democracy, and I would never make a case here about that because, I mean, let's be honest. This is about our eighth largest trading partner and probably the most critical piece of land in the entire world because, as you said, you can have the chips act. That's great. It takes five years from breaking ground until you can even begin to have a chip roll off of a fab

based upon people I've spoken to. In the US, because of regulation and because of lack of know-how and all that, it's probably a decade. So that means that for the next decade, we're in an incredibly precarious situation. Then you look at America. And if I were the Chinese dispassionately, and I'd be like, these idiots are bogged down in Ukraine. These idiots, they don't have enough artillery to supply a third world nation in Eastern Europe, let alone themselves. And then they've got all this Israel stuff going on. They got two carriers over there. They're getting stumped by the Houthis in terms of their global trade. I mean, if you guys think the Red Sea matters to America, take a look at some of the global traffic through the Straits of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait, and

through the South China Sea. This is 10, 15 times more important. I'm just talking about shipping and not even talking about the semiconductors. This literally would reroute the entire globe in terms of how things would work. Not to mention that China's our third largest trading partner. Taiwan is number eight. The amount of economic damage and all that that would suffer as a result of this is just incalculable. My only point is that this level of precarity and some sort of war in East Asia would be catastrophic. And what's even more

interesting to me is, I sent this actually, I'm not sure if you got a chance to read it, is that Kim Jong-un and North Korea also appears to be preparing for something happening in East Asia. They're changing their constitution to say that they're basically they're re-changing it so that currently their declared enemy is America. They're changing it to South Korea. They actually have a huge influx of dollars into the North Korean economy right now because the Russians are buying so many weapons from them. They appear, according to some military analysts and others, to be preparing for some sort of war in the region. And the reason why that matters is that if there was some sort of conflict with Taiwan, South Korea is one of the world's largest and most advanced militaries, and they make a lot

of weapons. They're a critical weapons manufacturer for the United States. It could be possible that he's gotten either a nod or some sort of edge from Beijing, which is their main partner. They're like, hey, you need to keep South Korea or whatever busy. They also can cause major problems for Japan. Remember, too, we are the guarantors of security for Japan and for South Korea, which are also in that top 10 trading partner list. Everything I'm listing here is genuinely really terrifying, I think,

from an overall US perspective. And I think you're totally right, which is that America's distracted at home. America is overstretched abroad. And it's a talking point, but it's also actually true. And then in terms of our manufacturing base, I mean, they're not stupid. We lived through COVID, which is their fault. And they still are the ones who sold us our masks and all of the medicines and everything. It all came straight from them. So they even know and see our critical manufacturing deficit. And it's not, you know, in 1939 through 1941, there was a major debate in the Japanese war cabinet. And they were like, well, if we attack them, can they really attack us? And same with Hitler, you know, the Nazis

regime, they wrote up an internal report and they gave it to Hitler. And they're like, here's what we estimate what would happen if America came into the war. And he laughed at them. He said, there's no way they can do this. It ended up actually dramatically understating what US manufacturing capacity is. This time around, they've been able to battle test that more. You can look, Crystal, at the Ukraine situation, at the fact that there's a fire at a plant that makes artillery. We don't have any more artillery. We make 100,000 rounds in a month. We used to be able to make 2 million in a year. I mean, just to look at the scale of that, it was only 30 years ago. You look at the

way that we have cars. I mean, do you have, you know, you had semiconductors shut down all new cars in America. And I've talked about here what the prospects of all that stuff would look like. If there was some sort of conflagration, we could go back to rationing systems. They could take our laptops, our camera equipment away from us, dig all the chips out of this, just like the Russians have done. That's how dire things get and not that far for the timeline. So anyway, we're preparing people just to say the Taiwanese people have made their choice as is their right, I support their right to do so. But the results of that election could certainly have big impacts on us.

Well, and the last thing I'll say on this particular topic is, I don't think that the US is impotent with regards to Israel's government, given all the aid we send them and all that we do diplomatically to provide cover for them. However, the Biden administration has decided to adopt this posture of impotence, of feigned impotence on the global stage. Sure. Of like, sure, we ship them all this money, but they just won't listen to us. We're trying, et cetera. We really want them to do things differently, but they just won't. So they are publicly declaring to the world that we can't even influence this country that was

our client state that we fund to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every freaking year. So how does that look also on the global stage? And by the way, bottom line is these are delicate, complicated situations. The failures and the vulnerabilities were created over successive administrations, both bipartisan Democrat and Republican. But we are led by moronic psychopaths, and I have zero confidence in their ability to get us through this in any sort of a peaceful, non-catastrophic manner. So that's the reason that you should feel terrified. You can't have confidence in these people when you see the way that they operate around the globe. The Israel situation is very analogous because obviously we gave a lot of money to Taiwan.

They only spent 2.6% of their GDP on national defense. They basically openly have said, they're like, look, if we get into a problem, it's going to be America. That's going to save us. I mean, I have a lot of issues with that. And because it's like, hey, if you think you're imminently going to get invaded and you're a Western style developed high-tech democracy, you should spend a lot more money on weapons to actually do something for yourself. But we never pressure them to do it. That's the Biden doctrine. He's like, yeah, don't worry, we'll take care of it. But then, you know, we're also sending some stuff that would be useful to Taiwan, to Ukraine. It's like, we have major trade-offs, as you said, like there's the level of seriousness that you would need to approach this conflict and get out

properly on the other side is one of competence that we have not seen in this country in literally decades. We are run by people who think it's a good idea to, quote, escalate to de-escalate, who think that you can bomb the Houthis, who have been bombed now for years and have not submitted, and that this is going to improve the situation on the Red Sea instead of just turning it into a war zone and further deterring trade, which was supposedly the whole goal of what you're doing here. So, I mean, that's the reason why all of these things are so deeply concerning is there is just I have zero confidence in our leadership, whether it's Biden, whether it's Trump or anybody else who is a potential contender. Nikki Haley, right? Like, God forbid, we'd be going to war with China tomorrow if it was up

to her and Iran, by the way. So that's the reason why this is so concerning is because you can see the way that US officials now and over years, every opportunity to make the wrong choice, they make the wrong choice. Well said. There's a little bit more on China. Just to put this up there on the screen, this is a point that I know a lot of you've been interested in. Peter Zayhan been talking about it for quite some time. I do gotta say, he was one of the first people I ever heard speak about this.

I didn't really believe it at the time, but he was dead on. The Chinese population now has fallen for a second straight year, births dropping even after the end of the one-child policy. The number of deaths in China rose by 690,000 to 11.1 million, which is more than double the last year increase. Quote, demographers said that the rise was driven by the aging of the population as well as widespread COVID outbreaks from December 2022 into February of last year. The total population of China at 1.4 billion has now dropped to second place behind India, according to the overall UN estimate. And the major flashing red signal

inside Chinese society is the falling birth rate and the long-term economic societal decline. Chinese economy was built on a major increasing consumer-like market and sentiment. And if you don't have more consumers, then you can't have more of a market. The problem that they have is that you have major middle-class promises and others that were built upon demography overall increasing. And now the massive effects, the tail end of the one-child policy, the gender imbalance, the economic imbalance, and now their foreign policy plus COVID and all of that has made a significant impact to the point where this is probably the single biggest thing that they are

thinking about, about how to reverse the effects of the one-child policy. And just to show you, you know, the economic problems that they're facing are one in the same with their demography ones. Let's put this up there. So for example, the overall economy rebounded from 3% growth in 2022, which happened because of zero COVID. China, according to the official number, remember, the official number is 5.2. But what they say is that other economic data shows that there's major weakening demand for Chinese products, which long-term is a major problem for them. On top of that, you have to remember, property and home prices in China, which we covered a little bit during the whole Evergrande thing, is a huge portion of their overall economy.

They are rapidly declining with major bankruptcies and corruption investigations that are happening in the property sector, making the middle class dream, the Chinese dream, so quote unquote, that most of the current generation and their parents really banked on, not nearly as attainable. Corruption is still widespread. Then you had zero COVID, which devastated a lot of the economy, actually called into question some confidence in the government. We saw a few protests and all that there, but still incredibly rare. And really what we saw is that Xi at every turn has chosen authoritarianism over capitalism, which probably good for him in the long run, but not necessarily

good for the economy. And it makes it so that this, just to link back to Taiwan, which we were talking about earlier, whenever like nations, there's a common theory that like nations lash out and invade when they're on top. That happens sometimes, kind of like America and the Gulf War where like, listen, we can do whatever we want. Like that happens. But there's also a very likely story of when you're on the downswing and you know you're on the downswing, you want to move when you're as like close to where you're faltering as opposed to when you're at the bottom. And it leads to an urgency in your thinking where you're like, listen, our economy is declining, our population, all of this. If we're going to reunify Taiwan, if we're going to set up this nation, which they look at themselves as a 2,000-year-old people for eternity and to move on forever and have the CCP cemented in that same way that you would look at older Chinese empires, well, we need to do it right now. They have a much longer timescale in the way they think of their own history and their own role in it. And for them, they've seen this story many,

many times before. They don't want to repeat the century of humiliation of the 1800s. And this could be, in their head, the time when you want to act is now. So all of this actually links back to the urgency of the international situation and kind of what they want to do to cement their own legacy as we look forward. Yeah, that's right. To overly simplify things, the incredible growth story of China has been built on this, you know, massive industrialization, you know, building out all this factory capacity, building out massively all of this infrastructure to the point that it, you know, became like some of the projects became sort of ridiculous. Then now you

can go and look at like the number of airports in these towns that don't really need airports and things like that. Or like the fake villages. Right. So that running way has sort of run out. And then the next piece was the property boom and, you know, building out all of this residential real estate and that becoming like a real, you know, part of like Chinese middle class identity. And that has sort of run out of runway. And now we've covered all these stories about Evergrande and this property bust. And so, you know, the next thing would be, all right, well, we're going to move into like the U.S. consumer economy mode and focus on services, focus on, you know,

our own domestic economy, buying more crap, basically. And they've sort of rejected that direction. So I don't I think there is a real awareness, both in terms of where they stand economically and in terms of where they stand from demography, that this could be very much be the peak of their, you know, potential power and potential influence. So that, again, raises the risk that they may see it as like, you know, they've made no secret about the fact that they want to reunify with Taiwan. They made a pledge that they will do it. That is, yeah. I mean, that's not like, you know, a secret wish that's very much out there in the open and spoken publicly all the time. So the question is just a matter of timing. And, you know, I can't get inside their heads. I have

no idea what they're thinking, whether they feel like now is the right time or not. But there are some indications that it's possible they look at this chessboard and they say, you know what, we could do worse than to act right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about it from their perspective. When's the best time to go? When we're in the middle of an election and there's all kinds of craziness going on, we're stretched militarily abroad. We've got the Ukraine situation, the Israel situation, all of that. You've got multiple carriers in the Middle East. You have all of CENTCOM, which is focusing on international Houthi targets. That's exactly whenever you want to try and do something. And a country that's

deeply divided. Deeply divided, yeah. Deeply divided along very hard partisan lines. So, yeah. We'll see. Scary situation. Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,

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