Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/10/25: Trump Bends Knee To China, NYT Demands War, Jon Stewart Rips Trump, Trump Gives Economy A+, Dem Landslides

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump bends the knee to China, NYT demands war footing, Jon Stewart rips Trump on Venezuela, Trump gives economy A+, Dem landslide elections.   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. Guaranteed Human. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.

When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the brothers Ortiz. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloos? I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman'scut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit

gentlemen'scutturbin.com. Please enjoy responsibly. 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 breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. So if this two-hour program is not enough, Ryan and Emily, for you today, you can see us, what, tonight at, what's the theater? The Miracle Theater.

The Miracle Theater in Washington, D.C., we will be. be debating some reason bros who are going to be defending big tech apocalypsers. Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown, the resolution is big tech does more good than harm. Ryan and I are obviously arguing that big tech does more harm than good. We can put the details down in the show notes and comment and all that. But that's where we'll be tonight. Still a couple seats left. Yeah, there are seats left.

So come join us if you're interested. How are there still seats left on the day? That's outrageous. I would have thought this would be sold out. is disappointed in all of you. Very disappointed. Every single one of you. Every single one of you.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. All right. So today's show, Donald Trump sat for an interview with Dasha Burns of Politico that has just spawned several different news cycles because he said all kinds of things like the economy is an A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, but also just called European leaders weak and has a new national security strategy that is circulating. It's a PDF. You can read it yourself.

So we're going to dive into that. John Stewart went deep on the Venezuela crisis. And it's a masterpiece. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And then we're going to talk about a little bit about tariffs, Trump's thoughts on where the economy stands heading into a midterm election cycle and some elections last night, Ryan, that had interesting results, Miami in particular. Yeah, some huge overperformances around the country for Democrats. And then we've got Brad Lander jumping into the race in.

Manhattan against Dan Goldman, not you to the chagrin of APAC. You have some consolidation around Lander already, Zornamomadne, endorsing him, Bernie Sanders endorsing him. Yulay new candidate dropped out to encourage some consolidation, much to the delight of Republicans. You've got Jasmine Crockett announcing her run down in Texas for Senate. We'll talk about all that. Yes, and Kamala Harris is getting into another war of words with Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, who was asked about it on MS Now. That clip you're going to want to stick around for, but Kamala Harris got a splashing profile in the New York Times this week, which has some pretty interesting details, and it sounds

a whole lot like she wants to run for president. Again, Gavin Newsom was flailing to try to answer for his relationship with APAC as well. we're going to break that down. And Sam Gidaldig is going to join us. His firm, CGCN. Sammy may remember from a segment we did with Brody Mullins and Sam himself talking about sort of the dirty secrets of lobbying here in D.C. Sam's firm put out a really interesting report that put some numbers on the realignment

phenomenon and the class-based element of the realignment phenomenon. So we're excited to have him here. Yes, indeed. All right. Well, let's get started with Donald Trump's comments on NATO as he seeks to end the war in Ukraine, though it seemingly has no end in sight at this moment. Let's go ahead and roll this part of Donald Trump's interview published yesterday with Dasha Burns of Politico. This is going to be A1. How involved are you going to get? I mean, could we see you getting involved in European elections, for example?

I want to run the United States. I don't want to run Europe. I'm involved in Europe very much. Might you endorse candidates? NATO calls me daddy. I mean, I have a lot to say. I just think he's doing a very good job in a different sense on immigration. His country's landlocked. You know, he's got a different kind of a country. He doesn't have the sea, so he can't have ships coming in with energy.

He's got a big pipe coming in from Russia. They've had it for a long time. So would you consider some financial assistance there? One thing he has really, he's really gotten right as the immigration because he allows nobody in his country. And Poland has done a very good job in that respect too. too. But most European nations, they're decaying. They're decaying. Those landlock comments were about Hungary and Poland in particular. But this is another part of the interview where Donald

Trump talked about negotiations in Ukraine. Let's roll A2 here. On Sunday, your son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to a reporter's question about whether you will, quote, walk away from Ukraine. and your son said, I think he may. Is that correct? No, it's not correct, but it's not exactly wrong. We have to, you know, they have to play ball. That's a great lie. It's not correct, but it's not exactly wrong, Ryan.

Zelensky, meanwhile, just in the last, like, day or so, has said they are not giving up territory. And he's doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on this. So no closer at all to an end of the war there. Right. So it's a little bit, right, it's a little bit schizophrenic where he's saying on the one hand, he doesn't want to run Europe. On the other hand, NATO calls me daddy. Which, anyway. Actually true. His son says that he's going to walk away from Ukraine. He says that he's not, but that's not necessarily wrong. So, you know, it's difficult to read exactly, you know, where he is at this because he seems to kind of. of be flailing. Meanwhile, you're getting, you know, more and more reports that a massive

portion of the Ukrainian soldiers who are on the front lines at this point are there as a result of what they call, what they call it, they were busified or they were bust. Basically, it means they were forcibly inscripted that you have these buses that go around Ukraine and they see somebody of fighting age and fighting age can now be up to like 64 or something like that yeah uh and they grab them and throw them into the bus and there's a lot of a lot of videos that are going around of you know passers-by or family members shooting footage of this happening with just some absolutely you know heartbreaking stuff with like you know two little girls in the back seat of the car and their father like gets yanked out of the front seat of the car

and thrown into a bus and at Reuters did a report recently where they followed I think like a dozen men who went to the front lines and over a period of months and none of them are there anymore like either they're either AWOL injured or dead and a lot of those were just forcibly sent there so to me it would be one thing if the Ukrainian people were like enthusiastically yeah you know rushing to the front and saying the beginning of the war right for the first yeah for the for the beginning they were if that was the case then you could say okay the free world whatever that is free world needs to defend people who were like willingly like throwing themselves into this conflict but to give ukraine a whole lot of money

so they can fund the forcible grabbing of men And then putting a gun in their hands and sending them to the front against their will, that can't be the right side. It doesn't mean there is a right side of it. But that certainly is not the good guys. And Putin obviously has been forced to change recruitment methods as well. I mean, it's just been a meat grinder for years and years. Right, but he's what, 10 times bigger or whatever?

Right, yeah, exactly. And so it's obvious that European leaders are also getting frustrated with Zelensky that New York Times expose on the corruption and the mismanagement. I mean, that's an understatement. The willful mismanagement might be a better way to put it of tons of funds. Looting is the other work. The looting of tons of funds is a country that has been propped up by its European neighbors by the United States over the last several years.

And the money is turning into just a graft for elites or the well-connected. It's like a spoil system for well-connected Ukrainians. And so the incentives to end the war, if you're somebody like Zelensky or if you're them, they're not aligned right now with the people who are just getting pulled off the streets. Right. And so, yeah, a completely tragic situation. And we're now coming up on a year from when Trump took office and said he would have this, you know, ended in 24, 48 hours. And if other people are starting to get irked with Zelensky,

if other European leaders are really starting to get irked with Zelensky, his time's running out on these negotiations. But then again, what can you do? Right. And the Europeans seem, they continue to seem to seem to be all in on this conflict. It seems like at the beginning, on the corruption point, that the U.S. sort of hoped that vibes would override the underlying structure that, like, your country is under mortal existential threat from this Russian invasion, and the vibes from that are going to produce a level of patriotism that is going to stigmatize and suppress the endemic corruption that was central, or that is central to the Ukrainian political economy.

and that just never happened. And I don't know why it would. Like if you look at the U.S. during the Civil War, you look at the U.S. during World War I, U.S. during World War II, there are always people that are profiting off of war in corrupt ways. Yeah.

By selling, and the British Empire, every conflict you have scam artists, in fact, massive corporations, who will, like, sell substandard equipment to the troops or no equipment at all and just invoice for it and keep the money. Like that, it's just endemic. When you start with an underlying higher level of corruption,

yeah, this is what you're going to wind up with. And it's also not their money. It's coming from other countries. And that's what, I mean, a lot of it coming from us. And I think that's also what's going to test the patience of European leaders, the more, I mean, kind of everybody knows this. But when you're able to start putting investigative reporting to the question like the New York Times did, actually running down some of these trails, that I think is obviously going to start to test the patience of more and more people. We can put the next element up on the screen.

Trump, waiting back into these negotiations comes as their national security strategy, the Trump administration's national security strategy document was released. There is a classified version of this as well that one outlet, I've heard the name of it, has a look at. But here, we like this piece from Compact, which pointed out the first, so it has shocked in two ways, according to the compact. This is about the document. The first lies in its surprisingly doveish stance toward China. Those hoping for a grand strategy to confront the People's Republic are thereby disappointed. And the second shock lies in the brusque assessment of the existential risks facing Europe. According to the document, the continent faces the stark prospect of a civilizational erasure.

Now, the classified version of this, by the way, says that Trump wants to create a new group without any Western Europeans. And it would be called like the Corps 5. So Russia, India, Japan. I'm forgetting who else. I'm doing Rick Perry. China? China? It might have been China.

Brazil? Yeah. almost like a bricks rival, but... He wants to do bricks, but with us in it. With us in, yeah, he's like, let us in. Now, this compact piece goes on to say, but those stances are connected, they come from the conviction that whatever challenges the U.S. faces from China in the 21st century, returning, rerunning the paradigm of the Cold War with the traditional European allies,

and China in lieu of the Soviet Union is the wrong way to do it. And it says, not only is this paradigm inadequate to grasping the nature of the challenge from China is also dependent on a coherent. concept of Western civilization that no longer reflects existing conditions in Europe. So, Ryan, the political question this raises is as Trump struggles to end the conflict in Ukraine, it looks like his national security grand strategy is also to move away from alliances with Western Europe. Now, he's likely only in office for another three years.

So how much of this can be accomplished, I think is a pretty open question. Right. If it's J.D. Vance, he believes this and then some, as he never hesitates to point out. Right. He's much more explicit about seeing Europe as kind of a vassal situation. Right. Than as anything of an alliance. And the Europeans have just kind of allowed it to happen. They have. They have. And I don't know what option that, what else is on the table for them. Really. I mean, the leverage that they have compared to, obviously compared to China. I mean, it's just night and day.

They could also, I mean, they could stop undermining themselves economically, constantly. Like, coming out of the financial crisis, Germany insisted that it lead the way when it came to austerity. Like, the U.S. had an insufficient stimulus in response to the financial crisis, but ours looked like the New Deal compared to what Germany insisted that Europe do. And so if you look at the divide in GDP per capita between the United States and Europe, it begins in like 2008. That's the great divergence. And Germany did that to Europe. Now they're kind of deindustrializing themselves in order to basically just appease the United States. And it's not going well.

Because basically what they're doing is they gave up cheap energy from Russia. the cheap energy was fueling their manufacturing base. And so now their manufacturing base is collapsing, as is Ukraine. Yeah. And anyway, they're a giant mess. It really is a giant mess. And let's also put A4 on the screen. This is, speaking of China, the New York Times headline here,

is China's access to powerful Nvidia chips comes at, quote, critical moments. I've had President Trump said NVIDIA can export some chips, but years of U.S. restrictions have propelled China to make everything it needs for advanced AI. And so the Trump administration is trying to walk this

tightrope when it comes to NVIDIA to kind of make sure that the United States is on the forefront and that China doesn't fully develop its own alternatives, which is a case that you can make if you're Jensen Wang and you want to keep that money coming. But also, please

the hawks who say, what the hell is this policy? So another tightrope for the administration. Yeah. So basically, Trump is saying that he's going to allow some of the most, some of these most sophisticated chips that the Biden administration and previous U.S. administrations, including Trump, had been keeping from China. Right. Because the belief is that China will do what China Alvin does, which is take U.S. technology and kind of reverse engineer it and make their own one, you know, new NVIDIA, new NVIDIA. And so I have not found anybody who thinks that from a U.S. perspective, this is like a good thing. You know, we're objective here.

We don't care about the U.S. perspective alone, right? So maybe if this moves us further away from war, that's a better thing. I mean, I think that's the gloss that Jensen went. Wasn't he on Joe Rogan this week, too? I think that's what he can put on this, which is it's possible. I mean, that is possibly an answer that if you keep China addicted to U.S. tech, it's less and less likely that you end up in a kinetic conflict. So I actually...

That is a good theory maybe, except we have now made it so clear to them that we are not a reliable ally. We're not a trustworthy business partner by being as reckless as we are. That's mutual. And sure, but that we were never expected. that, really. Yeah, that's right, yeah. And so they are full steam ahead trying to build an economy that is

that is not dependent at all in the United States. Yeah, as they should be. I mean, from their perspective, as they should be, yes. And how long... You know, well, we need, like, all of their stuff to make our weapons. Exactly, that was actually... How's that going to work out?

And we need Taiwan. Yes. And what I was just going to add to that is the administration's rationale for this invidia decision, we are talking about the, like, strategic possibilities. I'm sure it had a whole lot to do with Jensen Wang, kissing the ring. And NVIDIA kissing the ring and not this, like, grand.

Because that's how the Trump foreign policy 2.0 has essentially been conducted. It's by Trump himself making deals. So we can put that rationale on the, we can use that sort of like substantive meat on the bones, but that doesn't mean it's the reason, the real reason at the end of the day the administration made the decision. It might just be a strategy that makes them feel more comfortable with the decision. But I think your point is right, even if they're dependent on invidia chips now, it doesn't mean that they're actually going to be dependent on invidia chips long into the future. Being a parent is basically a juggling act, dinner, hockey practice, homework, a last-minute science project,

And someone's always, always shouting for you from another room. So yeah, I'll take any shortcuts that actually works. And that's why I'm all in on Hello Fresh. Fresh ingredients, super easy recipes and over 80 options every week so everyone eats. No one complains and I get to feel like I've got it all together. At least for dinner. And the best part, you're in total control. Skip a week.

Pause any time. Pick what works for you. It's dinner on your terms. They even have 15-minute recipes. Perfect for those nights when everyone's hungry and patience is officially off the menu. And with so many options, even my pickiest eater found something they loved, which means no more backup mac and cheese. Try HelloFresh today and get 50% off the first box with free shipping.

Go to HelloFresh.com.combe rescue 50. That's Hellofresh.ca promo code Rescue 50. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers. And what is this? How is that not a story we all know? What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet? Boy, do we have a show

for you. From smartless media, campside media, and big money players comes crimeless. Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Roy Scoval, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.

We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, feels more like a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfish is a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap if you think, she's a witch.

And it freaks you out. He has x-rayed vision. How could I not follow her? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimless on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.

Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas. 32 years, total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy. He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us. the game, as they call it.

When Larry is murdered, Game is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming. My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about. Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name and I just heard one gunshot.

The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family, and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The New York Times is quite concerned that, and actually I think reasonably so,

that the Chinese would actually, you know, whoop us if we got into an actual conflict with them, which should make really avoiding war with China probably like the highest priority of the United States if we might actually lose it. It's a very long, New York Times opinion video that is worth watching just for a look into the mindset of the kind of military industrial complex has reflected through the Times opinion page. And it's looking bleak for them. Let's roll a little bit of this Times op-ed. America must prepare for the future of war.

This is the opinion of the New York Times editorial board. You might be thinking America should focus on peace, not war. But one of the most effective ways to prevent a war is to be strong enough to win it. That's why it's imperative that we change. The U.S. must reform not just its military, but also the political processes for funding it and the industrial base that supports it. For decades, our military has been built around the idea that more sophistication is better. This made sense during the Cold War when the West could outspend Russia.

But today our reliance on expensive and exquisite systems has become a vulnerability. In war games, large ships like the USS Gerald R. Ford are often destroyed. Still, the Navy plans to build at least nine additional Ford-class carriers in the coming decades. America must embrace new and more nimble means of warfare. This means simultaneously winning the war to build new autonomous weapons and leading the world in controlling them. Doing so will require challenging the status quo for how weapons are designed and manufactured. Defense spending is routinely steered towards the five major defense contractors, who

have become experts at navigating thousands of pages of regulations, but they're both slow and costly. To jumpstart new technologies, the Pentagon must relax its Byzantine rules for buying weapons. and make bets on young companies that show promise to get results. Congress needs to stop getting in the way. Each year, the United States spends billions of dollars that the military didn't ask for, often so that lawmakers can make their districts happy.

Let's focus on winning wars, not elections. We also have a workforce problem. In the next decade, the U.S. will need to add 140,000 shipbuilders to its workforce. And that's just to meet the district. demand for submarine construction. We should intensify recruiting and training programs for manufacturing trades, and we should focus on recruiting young people interested in software and technology. In long wars, the countries that can manufacture the most win.

America now makes just 17% of all manufactured goods, while China makes almost twice as much, and their lead is growing. It's only by partnering with allies that the U.S. can match China's manufacturing capabilities. So rather than slapping our allies with tariffs, we should be partnering with them. I mean, what? I mean, the last point that they're making there, we should just be partnering with a lot more people. Okay, that's good. Diplomacy is good.

The part of all that we shouldn't focus on peace, let's focus on war. It's like, well, I don't know. We've been focusing on war pretty hard here in the United States for 250 years. And this is where we are now. the context, to put some context on this, a couple days ago, there was news report that China is now able to produce hypersonic missiles at about $100,000 a piece. There are Ford F-150s that cost more than that. And so they showed that image of the Gerald Ford getting hit, that it's massive aircraft carrier

that it's now in the process of like, you know, trying to overthrow Maduro. They said, quote, over the course of the next decades, the U.S. is trying to build nine Nine more carriers. Nine more of those. Decades. Decades. And so if you have, let's say you have 10 hypersonic missiles that you spent a million dollars to build, like the chance that, let's say you have a hundred of them, spent

$10 million, which is nothing compared to the cost of a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. You send a hundred hypersonic missiles at an aircraft carrier. They're not going to block every single one. And so that's why they say in the war games, these ships are supposed to. sitting ducks. And yet, here we are, we're going to go spend enormous amounts of money to make nine more of them over decades. Decades. Which will take, which they can all be sunk in the first week. I would say, we'll still be making them after everything is like, you don't even need them anymore. We'll still be making them. Right. So you can, you can very easily see the history

being written after a conflict. Like, the U.S. did this. They spent all, the Times is right. They spent And all this money on these, like, hyper-expensive things that enriched the donor class and the billionaires, the Chinese built cheap and effective things like hypersonic missiles and drones, hacked all our systems, and we lost in a week. Well, this is what was so confusing to me about the video. I mean, on the one hand, they're making a lot of extremely important long-overdue points. I mean, the point about breaking up the monopolies in the defense industry is, like, obviously. very obviously, true. And that's while we were watching it, I was like,

was this sponsored by Anderl and Palmer Lucky? Because he has a great point about the industry. And, like, that's all true. It's just framing it in this big picture context about how we need to be focused on winning wars. You have to get into wars to win the wars. And the whole point of shaking up the defense industry, let's take it at face value from people like Palmer Lucky is the piece of their strength line,

which is that you don't actually get into the wars because your tech is better. Right, except the problem, and Palmer Lucky is a good example. He's building these multimillion-dollar drones that just keep crashing. China's building much cheaper drones that work. We're giving Palmer Lucky millions for drones that don't work. Well, we aren't just giving it to him. He's trying to sell it to us. That's the difference.

But we're already, we are buying a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're buying. But like, I think that is. We'll see. I'm not a Palmer Doomer. I think there's something pretty interesting happening there. But we'll see. I mean, there's, you can break up the monopoly and then end up creating new monopolies.

So that can easily take the place. And we'll see about that. So our system, we can't do, like, even when we do industrial policy, we can't do it right. So speaking of war, John Stewart went. Daily Show old school. Let's watch this, a little bit of this masterpiece of a segment from him. Go watch the whole thing, but here's a clip of it

on parallels between Venezuela and Iraq. But I know what Maga is doing. They're convincing us that Iraq was an entirely different set of circumstances. That country was led by a sword-wielding mustachioed madman who held an iron grip on his people and his power.

Nicholas Maduro is nothing like... Oh shit. That drugged out dingy was a floating weapon of mass destruction. Every boat carrying fentanyl and drugs in this country's weapon of mass destruction. Are you fucking kidding me right now? You guys have the balls to tell us that the pretext for Iraq was bullshit, and that war was a mistake, and we're not like that.

And also, Venezuela has weapons of mass destruction, and we have to stop them. For those of you who are like, oh my God, I didn't even really. realize that all the fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Venezuela, that's because it doesn't. Like, almost none of it. Like, none of it. Because as much as you say war with Venezuela would be so different from Iraq,

it seems like you may be using the neocons sales manual. Like, other than WMDs, why was it so important to take down Saddam Hussein? His regime has an active support for and cooperation with terrorist networks. Terrorist networks. That's the worst kind of networks. Well, you'll never guess where the terrorists are now.

Iran, it's IRGC, and even Hezbollah. They have planted their flag on Venezuelan territory with a full and open cooperation of that regime. Wow. So if you're saying we go to war with Venezuela, we're also getting into a proxy war with Iran. I'm sold. Now, if I remember correctly, though,

Iraq lasted until still. And what did they say? about that? I think it would be a cake rock. I don't think it would be a that tough fight. I think the saddest part of getting into a war of choice in 2025

is it Dick Cheney won't be around to see it. Later, he goes into the question of how you can square America first with this with the circle of this intervention. he plays this great clip of my friend Jesse Waters saying it's South America

America is right there in the name it's obviously America first good it's obviously America for it well that's the line that we that's the line that Rubio has been using is that if you are America first this is our hemisphere it's a less sophisticated rendering of the Rubio line but it's also our world like how does that not apply to the world they're trying to we're world power I mean it's our world it's our world so everything in the world is ours. There you go. If it identifies as America, that it's America. Says it right there, the Americas. Yeah. Like what part of this is confusing to you? But this is where we talked in the last block about how the Trump National Security Strategy

that was released is a literal PDF titled National Security Strategy is trying to move away from the Cold War coalitions with Western Europe. But this is still all entire. Cold War rhetoric. It's not even Iraq. It's Marco Rubio talking about that you can substitute Iran and Hezbollah for Soviet Union. It's exactly what we were doing in South America and Central America during the Cold War is exactly the same playbook and the same regime change playbook and they're using, I mean, if you were trying to sell this word, the American public saying these are legit weapons of mass destruction is about the dumbest way you could do it. That is the quickest way that you can get distrust about the legitimacy of this war is to say what did jesse water say those boats are 3d weapons of mass destruction something like that yeah like that is the quickest way you can make people be like whoa hold on yeah let's let's go easy on this one like that work i mean in his defense claiming weapons of mass destruction destruction worked last time yeah they don't care that the war didn't go well they got to do their war so in that in that sense they're like oh let's do the wmd playbook again but to to your point

about Rubio, for that reason, dropside news is actually we're launching a Latin American desk for this reason because like it's clear that as the, based on this national security strategy, what Trump is saying about Europe and China, there is a recognition that American global hegemony is at the beginning of the end at least. And what that's going to mean is that our friends closer by are going to get a lot more attention. John Stewart, define America first as we're not going to kill people over there, we're going to kill people here. Right.

So we're going to have to beef up our coverage of that. Yeah, but I mean, also, let's just say you buy into that strategy. Their plan, they point constantly to Panama, but their plan has not worked elsewhere. Give them that. Give them that. Also, we had a massive military base in Panama already. Yeah. And Manuel Noriega was a CIA asset.

So, like firing your own asset and replacing them. Yeah. Is not as impressive a feat as going into a hostile place where you don't have a military base and trying to completely revolutionize the political structure. Well, we did revolution. I mean, originally, Panama exists because we were revolutionizing and like we created it right and for yes and so if you again keep going back to these examples there's a best example is right now uh you have a sandinista

president like how has this worked for you all like the in the the arc of history how have these regime change operations backing uh militants against alleged communist or hesbolo sympathizers uh which he's of course correct, and this was the point that you were going to make, or that you were making, which is that, yes, Iran and China are going to get footholds in Venezuela. And to some extent, they already do have them. It's because of the regime change wars that many people in those countries have been open, have been open to embracing these different countries, because some people that really don't like the United States.

I wonder why. I wonder. Can't imagine why. One example of why they might not is Pete Hexeth, being on a serial killer spree around the Caribbean. Trump was asked in this interview whether or not he'd be okay with Hegeseth testifying. And if you're Hegsteth, you'd probably like to see a little bit firmer defense than the president offered him right here. Should he testify, Pete Hexeth, under oath before Congress, about that controversial second strike on the alleged drug boat October? I don't care if he does. He can if he wants. I don't care. Do you think he should?

I don't care. I would say do it if you want. He's doing a great job. Have you watched the video? He missed stopping. I watch everything. Yeah, I watch everything. I see a lot of things. And do you believe that that second strike was necessary? Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat. But I don't get involved in that. That's up to them. Yeah, I don't care. It's not exactly what you want when you're facing, you know, work. crimes allegations. Speaking of war crimes, he was also asked about, and this was the story that Sagan I had reported earlier, that he was given a bunch of targets in Mexico and Colombia by his intelligence community when he asked for targets connected to the drug trade

in Venezuela because there isn't much in Venezuela connected to the drug trade except a little coca leaf off in the jungle. And so he's now got his eye on Colombia and Mexico. Let's roll that one. Would you consider doing something similar with Mexico and Colombia that are even more responsible for fentanyl trafficking into the U.S.? Sure, I would. We put up before here, a Daily Mail reporting, Trump sending shockwaves through Latin America. They should be watching breaking points or reading dropside.

They would not be shocked. No. Learn ahead of time what's going on by getting some actual news. Don't just wait for it to spill out of Trump's mouth. Save yourself the shockwaves. But I actually don't even think many people in Latin America are at all surprised by this, to be honest, because he's... Daily Mail might be sensationalizing that a little bit, you think? They wouldn't do that.

They wouldn't do that. But, yeah, I mean, he's sort of been telegraphing a willingness. I mean, speaking of Cold War 2.0, with Trump, you genuinely do not know. I don't know whether he knows if this is serious, if he's serious about this or if he's posturing, because he does so much posturing. comfortable with pushing the limits on what typical politicians are comfortable threatening. And so it's hard to say how serious that is. But because the President of the United States said it, you have to take it seriously. Of course, you have to take it seriously.

So we'll see. You would certainly have a better justification for striking targets in Sinaloa, for example, if you're trying to stop fentanyl overdoses in the United States, fentanyl trafficking into the United States. That justification would be a whole lot easier than boats. that are going to Suriname off the coast of Venezuela. It's 5.23 p.m. One of your kids is asking for a snack.

Another is building a fort out of your clean laundry, and you're staring at a half-empty fridge and thinking, what are we even going to eat tonight? Or you could just hello-fresh it. With over 80 recipes to choose from every week, including kid-friendly ones, even for picky eaters, you'll get fresh ingredients and easy step-by-step recipes delivered right to your door.

No, last-minute grocery runs. No, what do we even have, fridge staring? And the best part, you're in total control. Skip a week, pause any time, pick what works for you. It's dinner on your terms. The kids can even help you cook. Yeah, it's going to be messy. But somehow, they tend to eat the vegetables they made themselves.

Try HelloFresh today and get 50% off the first box with free shipping. Go to HelloFresh.com.com.com. Mom 50. That's Hellofresh.ca promo code Mom 50. Hellofresh.com.com. Hellofresh. Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? And what is this? How is that not a story we all know?

What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet? Boy, do we have a show for you? From Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players comes Crimeless. And me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Rory Scoval, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime.

Who catfish is a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap, if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks you out. He has x-ray vision. How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me.

Listen to Crimless on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us. Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas. 32 years, total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built. an entirely different legacy. He was the head of this gang,

and nobody was going to tell him what to do. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming. My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about. Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name, and I just heard one gunshot. The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family, and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way.

Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We do have some good news on the economy. So a lot of you out there may think that rents and rents, home prices are through the roof and becoming unaffordable. You might think it's really tough to get a decent job. You might think it's tough to keep the job you have and that your manager lately is feeling pretty good and not treating you quite as well as here she was

in like 2021 or 2022. You might get a bag of groceries and be like, excuse me how much for that? You would be wrong, fortunately. Yeah, this is the good news. This is the great news. Luckily for you, the economy has never been better. Trump was asked about it and celebrated his tremendous success in the interview with Politico. But I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home.

And I wonder what grade you would give your economy. A plus. A plus, plus, plus. We're going to pick a new Fed chair soon. Is it a litmus test that the new chair lower interest rates immediately? Yes. Well, this guy, too. So the economy is A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus plus plus plus plus.

But the Federal Reserve needs to be lowering interest rates. I don't know if you're economically literate or not. If you are, that's a contradiction. But never mind. Forget it. The good news is everyone's fallen for a hoax. So it's actually all fine. You've fallen for a hoax. This is the midterm message test.

Trump gave a speech last night in Pennsylvania where he said he's not supposed to talk about affordability being a hoax. He was like, I was told to stop saying this, like, tone-deaf thing. And yet, of course, he did it. This was, like, I think, a 97-minute speech. I think he said at one point also that they told him not to talk about immigration, talked about immigration. I just find it hard to believe they told him not to talk about immigration. What does he mean by that?

I think he was supposed to be focused on affordability. Oh, I see. It was a speech that was supposed to start undermining the democratic narrative. Recognize that it's a serious issue that people are concerned about. Right, right, right. Stop calling it a hoax. And political reports, yes, there were lines in this 97-minute speech in Pennsylvania where he talked about, you know, affordability being a problem.

It's like your point on this paradox of saying the economy is an A plus, plus, plus, but the Fed needs the lower interest rates because people are dying out here. And at the same time, you also then have to, as the Trump administration, say, yes, we've had a year in office, but if you're feeling badly about the economy, that's Democrat's fault for the Biden administration creating a bad economy, and it's also Democrats' fault for making you think the economy. Like, there's so many paradoxes in this. It's Democrats' fault for creating the A-plus-plus-plus economy. Right, yeah. The Biden economy was so, this is what they're going to, this is what you have

to say, that the Biden economy was so bad that the economy is still bad, but also the economy is great. Those things cannot all be true. I've seen them talking about rates of growth and improvement, and so maybe they'll start to say, it's really great just for, just not for you. And that's kind of a you problem. Everybody else is doing great. I don't know why you're feeling so badly. Let's look at the broader economic data. Oh, they're not rolling out the economic data. So their major, you know, price indexes are not going to be coming out anytime soon. So they're delaying a lot of different data that the Fed would like to see and replacing it with Trump telling you that it's a plus plus plus plus plus plus plus so he also called affordability a hoax twice and then said he's

no longer quote allowed to use the phrase as we mentioned and he whipped out this old saw where he says you don't need $37 for your daughter two or three is nice which by the way I agree with it is a politically disastrous message though for a billionaire to be making on the campaign trail in a midterm season when people are broadly dissatisfied with the economy. So that's going to be a brutal messaging effort. They're hoping that tax cuts kick in, and by the time summer rolls around, people are feeling better. But broadly right now, people are unhappy with the tariff policies, and businesses are

unhappy with the tariff policies, saying that the tariffs are causing price hikes. So we're going to, like, I think what we'll see is some holes poked in the tariff policy, big-picture tariff policy. I would expect, like, coffee, bananas, those sorts of things to have some deals made on going forward. Right. I think we tried to encourage our local banana growers to increase production and encourage our American coffee producers. But apparently only the Hawaiians were willing to step up. and nobody else here in the continental U.S. And Alaska basically has produced zero coffee despite all of the tariffs.

Like, what is wrong with them? And so I think at some point you just have to recognize that the American people just aren't up to snuff when it comes to growing coffee beans. So at that point, you're going to have to back off the tariffs. But he is willing to increase tariffs on some goods, he said, if we can roll this next one. Consider more carve-outs on other goods

that Americans find too expensive? Well, some car vats, you mean from tariffs? From tariffs, yeah, like coffee, like bananas. Sure, and I've done that already with coffee. They're very small car vats. It's not a big deal. So would you rule out reducing tariffs on any more goods? On some, and then some all increase tariffs. Because you know what happens is because of tariffs,

all of the car companies are coming back. So meanwhile, he says he's going to increase tariffs, car company is all coming back. manufacturing jobs have collapsed faster than any time since the financial crisis under Trump. It's actually rather shocking. The manufacturing jobs exploded under Biden and are collapsing under Trump. So apparently there's $20 trillion flooding it. I saw a bot you saying that on the network she's on now. $20 trillion is flooding in because of tariff.

what are they doing with this $20 trillion if they're actually firing tens of thousands of manufacturing workers every month? So reason had a good roundup and obviously reason libertarians. They don't like tariffs, right? Hate detest tariffs, but they had a good roundup of just the big,

like the aggregate picture right now looking at surveys of business owners and the data overall. And so that's where I think, as sympathetic as I am to the point that Baia is making, that some of this is necessary and some of this, you know, in the long term, if done correctly, we're both sympathetic to the idea that we need a manufacturing base. A hundred percent.

And that we should have federal policy to encourage it, including tariffs. Right. And so I'm not completely closed-minded to the possibility that if this continues, if these policies continue and are done really strategically in. a year or two years that the costs are worth the benefits. But right now, these tariffs have been haphazard. The haphazardness has continued since the Liberation Day period. And that is creating an environment.

I don't even think is a fair test of industrial tariff, tariff-industrial policy because- No, it's not. It's, on the one hand, yes, there is some leverage for Trump being the kind of madman, Nixon, figure where you don't actually know what he's going to do. You just hope that different companies are betting on the U.S. They got these big tax breaks for manufacturing and all of that. But that actually has to work in the long term. And so far, prices are higher. And manufacturing jobs are continuing to slip. And manufacturing is part of GDP. Is still not going up. Right. And it seems like the main reason for that is that if you manufacture something here

in the United States, there's a 99% chance that significant amounts of your inputs come from overseas. And there was no accounting made for that in the tariff policy. So the idea would be, okay, well, then you're going to encourage domestic manufacturers to make those inputs. But in the meantime, the American companies are just going out of business. And so then there's no incentive to have the inputs made domestically because your customers are out of business. Right. Or they moved overseas where they don't have to pay the tariffs. So James and Greer, obviously, the trade representative, U.S. Trade Representative, and this is, I'm reading from the Eric Bain piece in reason that I just referenced, said he gave two points or two ambitions.

of the tariff strategy, two metrics by which you could judge the tariff strategy. He says the trade deficit needs to go in the right direction, and manufacturing is a share of GDP needs to go in the right direction. Now, you may agree or disagree with those as metrics, but they're what the administration has set for itself. BAME notes from January through July, America's trade deficit was $840 billion, so it was about 23% larger than during the same months in 2024. And now he's saying also, BAME is arguing, and I think these are pretty persuasive

numbers. The manufacturing sector is being crushed by tariffs. He says, monthly surveys by the Institute for Supply Management show that overall manufacturing activity has declined for seven consecutive months through September. So that's brutal for the aggregate picture because the administration has listed all of these examples of manufacturing being brought back to the U.S. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this fascinating example of Sharpie, which bet on the U.S., opened this factory in Tennessee, brought new jobs to Tennessee. But then you have the separate survey. that Bain points out, this is from the Dallas Federal Reserve in August, found just 2.1% of business owners believe the tariffs had a positive impact.

And in manufacturing, 70% of firms said they had negative impacts. 70% affirms that they had negative impacts from the tariffs. So the aggregate picture, as of right now, December 2020-5, what, eight months after Liberation Day, is not what the administration would want to see. It's not meeting their own goals at this point at all. And so they're going to have to, in the new year, I would think, Ryan, make sharp, significant, dramatic changes to their policies. Yeah. And I think I might have said a year ago that one guess I had is that he might just tank the economy for a year and then lift the tariffs with enough time into the midterms that you've got the economy growing again.

And it feels like he did it. He's on his way. No, no, but like it would feel to consumers like this. was a Trump because it happened. Yeah, like things are getting better. Prices are going down because he lifted the tariffs. Right. That'd be really funny. And then he puts them right back on in like January, destroys the economy for another year and then heading into the presidential election lifts him again. And, you know, can just do his own, it's a way of doing your own kind of economic policy without having to deal with Congress. The same way he's like taking tariff money

and, you know, his tariff policy is destroying the farms. And then he's giving the farmers a giant bailout. Meanwhile, he's betting the entire house on AI. And so let's take a look from more perfect union of what AI is doing with the money that we're funneling to them. Walk into any grocery store. And on average, everything is about 30% more expensive than it was in 2020. Inflation.

Supply chains. We've heard it all. But what if something else is happening? Something intentional. What if someone who's charged $2 for these eggs, put another person that's charged $2.40 at the same exact store? And it's pushing prices up. Five months ago, a researcher reached out to me about Instacart. She'd been studying their Washington, D.C. workforce.

Different pay for nearly identical work. Her question, if they do this to workers, what about consumers? Five months of digging, what we found is bigger than Instacart. Yes, inflation is real. But something else has been pushing prices higher this whole time. There's a system when that grocery stores and tech companies built together. So you're an Instacart user? I am sort of ashamed to say that, but yes, I use Instacart way more than insurance.

Tens of millions of people are using Instacart. Yeah, I mean, they definitely... You know they mess with the prices. Yeah, but it's a little bit embarrassing because I'm trading the convenience of having the groceries delivered to my door for, in some cases, definitely higher prices than if you actually just walked into the store. So you think they are doing this dynamic pricing? quite clearly? Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that they are. I saw Robbie tweeting in response to this. Some person on the left was posting the more perfect union video, and Robbie said hilarious watching a left to discover that the labor theory of value is indeed wrong. Price is determined

by what you're willing to pay, not what it costs to make, news you can use. Robbie Suave, of course, of Reason and the Hill. And it's like, yeah, yes, of course, that's what's happening here, it doesn't mean that it's moral or good if they are price gouging. I mean, price gouging is, you know, it is not defensible after a certain level and on certain goods. I mean, like, I would pay Martin Schrelli my life savings for a life saving treatment. It doesn't mean he should be able to charge me 3,000 percent of what it costs to make that life saving treatment or that he should do it. Right. Basically, what Robbie wants is, the entire global economy to operate like a Bangkok market for tourists, where the tourists

come in there and the price you pay is based on what the seller thinks you can extract from you. Yeah. And what your ability to kind of fool them and your desperate and your desperation level. They want to take, you know, mass surveillance so that they can figure out you know, how desperate you are for whatever particular, you know, product or service is on offer, and how much money you can pay toward that, how much credit you have, how much willingness you have to lay out that credit, throw that into their algorithm, and then produce the maximum price that they think they can extract from you. That is a libertarian dream. Yes, truly. And we're living in that nightmare.

I mean, yeah, the Instacart and Dynamic Pricing is testing the Libertarian Dream in real time. I sent a story to you guys the other day. We didn't verify it. It sounds accurate, but it sounds very accurate, but take this for what you will. It was like one of the DC local blogs, someone pulled into a parking garage, and the dynamic pricing had the charge at $28 by the time they left. and I don't know how that worked if they if it was the price was in flux when you pulled in or whatever but the dynamic pricing stuff happening in real time is going to suck so hard sucks so hard because if you're organizing your life around particular prices which is what people who live paycheck to paycheck which is most of the country actually do for example this part of my routine I go to Wendy's for coffee and breakfast because it costs X amount of money that I've budgeted. Well, if Wendy's does dynamic pricing and changes that part of your budget, yes, you're going to have to change, but it's just going to piss people off. Like, I mean, talk about class consciousness.

That's going to spark some real backlash. Yeah. And you put up C4 here. Despite the economy cruising at this A++ plus plus plus plus rating, the bankruptcies are at their highest rate since the financial crisis. Which is weird. That must be, you know, poor personal decision-making on the part of a lot of Americans, given that Trump has gifted you with this incredible economy. So a lot of people participating in this hoax here. The politics of this, obviously the administration is realizing are a nightmare. And that's why they sent Trump to Pennsylvania last night to deliver the speech where he said he wasn't allowed to call affordability a hoax and has did it multiple times.

So they're going to have to put their heads together in the new year about this midterm cycle. Because when you have something like Jake Sherman reported maybe 20 House members, Republican House members, contemplating retirement, they could be looking at a bloodbath. Yeah. And Matt Van Epps, who beat Afton Bain recently, basically almost never talked about Trump. like if one thing you're noticing in a lot of these elections is that Trump is where he used to be helpful and having him on the ballot was useful that's not that Republicans don't take it from me take it from Republicans Republicans don't think that's the case anymore but Susie Wiles so I have bad news for those Republicans Susie Wiles went on what is this the mom view

she's the I think soon to be former White House chief of staff saying that he's going to party like it's 2024. Typically, in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. It's you localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it. We're actually going to turn that on its head. Good. And put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters. Yes, they are.

And we saw, oh, we could go Tuesday, what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active? So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to. to campaign like it's 2024 again for all these people that he helps he doesn't help everybody but for those he does he's a difference maker and he's certainly a turnout machine so the midterms will be very important to us he'll work very hard to keep the keep the majority and he'll use himself and he'll use their their his money that he's raised probably his money too and and and and nobody can outwork him so there's every reason to to be confident, but we have to actually get it done.

So I think Democrats are pretty excited at the idea that Trump will be out on the campaign trail constantly saying that affordability is a hoax. However, can we confirm that that's even a show? What is this mom view thing? I like how they're permanently stuck in 2002. It seems like they're trapped in 2002. Including with their audio. Yeah, that was rough.

I don't know what that is. But for Susie Wiles, I think the strategy of sending Trump, everywhere during the midterms is like you can see the wisdom in that Trump motivates a section of the GOP base to vote and without him on the ballot Republicans really suffer and a lot of people took that as a lesson from what just happened in the off-year cycle now that happened in 2018 it's happened consistently since Trump has been the leader of the Republican Party that midterm elections off your elections are real struggles for Republicans. So the wisdom of having Trump on the campaign trail

is that you're motivating the Trump coalition, which other candidates have still never figured out how to replicate. The only person who really has is maybe Glenn Yonkin in Virginia in a very particular time. But without Trump, you have this massive advantage for Democrats because their coalition votes

in midterms and off your elections. We're going to talk about this later in the show because it's increasingly affluent and increasingly motivated to vote and the opposite of true is true of Republicans. So if you have the affluent voters who are highly motivated, highly plugged into the news cycle

coming out during the midterms, they're going to be more likely to vote for Democrats now. And the Republicans who like Trump but don't like the Republican Party on average, those types of voters that you need to make up the difference in the middle.

middle, they're not going to come out for, you know, your average Joe Chamber of Commerce. Being a parent is basically a juggling act. Dinner, hockey practice, homework, a last-minute science project, and someone's always, always shouting for you from another room. So yeah, I'll take any shortcuts that actually works. And that's why I'm all in on Hello Fresh. Fresh ingredients, super easy recipes, and over 80 options every week so everyone eats. No one complains. to feel like I've got it all together, at least for dinner. And the best part, you're in total control. Skip a week, pause any time, pick what works for you.

It's dinner on your terms. They even have 15-minute recipes. Perfect for those nights when everyone's hungry and patience is officially off the menu. And with so many options, even my pickiest eater found something they loved, which means no more backup mac and cheese. Try Hello Fresh today and get 50% off the first box with free shipping. Go to Hellofresh.com and use promo code Rescue 50. That's Hellofresh.combe, rescue 50.

Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? And what is this? How is that not a story we all know? What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet? Boy, do we have a show for you? From Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players comes Crimeless. Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists.

And me, Roy Scoville, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfish is a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap, if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks you out.

He has x-ray vision. How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimless on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us. Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.

32 years, total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy. He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming. My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about.

Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name, and I just heard one gunshot. The brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story. about faith, family, and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We have some evidence of that last night. We have some good news from Republicans yesterday. We'll get through in a second, but some bad news as well. We can put up C6 here. So Trump won Miami by like 21 or 22 points or something like that, a real blowout. In the exact same

area, Democrats won in a landslide. I think it was like a 22 point swing or something. Trump is plummeting with young people, plummeting with Hispanic voters, including in Miami, which is sometimes, which is a different set of Hispanic voters. than the rest of the country. You put up C-7. There were also elections elsewhere around the country. So you had a,

throughout Florida, you had the old villages. Ryan's old stomping grounds. You had, in each of these special elections, you had 15 to 20 points swings. I can, while you're chatting, I can pull up a couple others because there were other

elections that had everywhere from 10 to 30. They flipped one in a very rural district with a candidate who had lost by like 20 plus points. He won yesterday in like a house, you know, state house, like special election. So the same pattern we're seeing, the same pattern we saw in Tennessee and we've seen in other special elections continuing. Yeah, absolutely. It feels a lot like 2018. It doesn't feel new, but it does feel a lot like 2018 for Democrats. Now, they were on, actually, it might even be a more powerful cycle for Democrats, because then we'll remember those campaigns were so focused on Russia collusion and Russia in general and trying to kind of muster this resistance spirit to the question of Trump like shattering

norms and all of that. What we're going to talk about now, I think. Oh, it was Georgia, by the Georgia and you know those we talked about a Trump plus 12 district and Democrats flipped it but about about a month ago we were talking about these random down ballot races local elections in Georgia where because of data centers in some cases Democrats were winning that's it's now a pattern obviously not a pattern which is why Susie Wiles is talking about how Donald Trump is going to campaign like it's 2024 and the 26 midterms but you know in 2018. Democrats had this, like they had this plan to campaign almost, I don't want to call it fully cultural, but it was kind of this cultural question of rejecting Trumpism and rejecting collusion with Russia, rejecting what Trump stood for. And that helped motivate the base. It didn't help in presidential cycles. I mean, I guess it helped in 2020, although I still think that's it's kind of difficult to say what really like in in terms of what put Biden over the edge there's the the COVID question of course would would Trump have won if it weren't COVID I don't

know but all that is to say Trump comes back after the lawfare and claims this bigger victory than before in 24 and the problem for Republicans isn't that Trump can't get elected it's probably this last term. The problem is none of the other Republicans are Trump. And that's where, for example, we can put C8 up on the screen. This is a report from notice. The NRC, so the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to notice, and I confirmed this actually this morning, ran a quote, astroturf recruitment process to push Jasmine Crockett into the Texas Senate race. Ryan, you said they robo called high propensity Democrats, urged them to call Jasmine Crockett's office then connected the caller to the office and they pushed polls suggesting that she would win

crockett believed this hype and then launched her run which is completely predictable it's why the nrc was like this is going to be super cheap and we'll give us jasmine crockett to run against in all of these different races around the country it's not just about texas where they feel fine about john Cornyn. I'm sure they'd rather I'm sure they would rather run with Cornyn than Ken Paxton. Oh, they 100% want Cornyn, but he's losing now, right? We'll see.

I mean, there's a question of whether Crockett getting in makes Paxton's life easier because he can say character is probably not going to be on the ballot. Oh yeah, because Paxton can win. Yeah, he might say something like that. But either way, I mean, Republicans feel pretty comfortable in Texas, is my sense of it.

You know, they've never been the last 10 years super comfortable, but they feel pretty comfortable um were they nervous if it was going to be um the like colonel all right the little white guy or colin all red oh talarico yeah i think taler rico makes them nervous for sure i don't know that um i haven't confirmed that really it's just i know it's crazy i think that maybe they're buying into the hype uh of talerico going on but him against paxton corin wins i think easily right yeah i think so taler rico against paxton would be really interesting because uh talerico could plausibly make a character

argument against Paxton who has a character characters scandals in his in his past but you're a Christian do does the fact that like absolutely not the Haller he goes

no he feels like a a a Democrat's version of a like that's exactly right of an evangelical Christian right yeah that's exactly right he doesn't speak the language of evangelical Christianity he speaks the language of like which is of my kind like the social justice like i mean i would of course argue that christianity is uh predicated on social justice but

what you're saying is this like this kind of niche politicized social justice and i don't mean politicized in a pejorative sense i mean that it has a political connotation the language has a political connotation and uh it's a very different language than what your average texas evangelical speaks and so the media sees talarico and dc people see talarico talking about scripture and they're like oh do we have something here this guy could really give uh you know conservative christians around for their money and it's like nobody is buying that as their own like one of their own uh so it's yeah i think it's kind of a dc phenomenon but republicans are not immune to that at all uh people sitting at the nrc i definitely would find that compelling i think

and so crockin announced that she was running yesterday in her announcement speech she said that she saw the poll she saw herself rising in the polls and so let's linger for a second on what the Republicans pulled off here and you're that's interesting that you were able to confirm it I'd be curious if you'd get from your source whether they also ran

a like bot reply campaign like if like if I were then what I would do is every time Crockett would tweet because you know she's online you know she's super hyper online checking her replies just reply you need to run for Senate run for Senate this brilliant brilliant

tweet, go get them, now run for Senate. So what they did, Crockett was not in the polls that were comparing that were in the Democratic polls or the head-to-heads. So the NRCC ran a poll asking, you know, putting Crockett in. Right. It's clever. Nobody had been talking about it. It was like nobody, NRC. And she's popular, like, among the Democratic base. And so polls showed, oh, wow, she's looking actually pretty good. So they pushed that poll to all the press and they get some coverage around it and then future pollsters said well okay well now crockett's in the press right will include her in our poll too and so she could consistently perform well and her name recognition's way higher than random state right assembly member totally and so then there's this

technology you've maybe been on the receiving end of it where you robocall you you get a voter file with like and you can say like who are the who are the big democratic activists in this give me a hundred thousand democratic activists you robocall them and say you know we're from x sounding nice group uh jasmine crockett should run for senate like if you agree press one press one would you like to call jasmine crockett's office and urge her to run for senate if so press two or whatever so you press two and then right there on the phone they connect you with the office and so the office is talking to a genuine human being who genuinely wants Jasmine Crockett, but they were never going to call if the NRC hadn't reached out and prodded them to do it. So then at the end of every day, Crockett, and I sympathize

with her on this front, she's getting these reports from her staff. Like, we're getting flooded with phone calls from constituents who really say that you should run for Senate. Now, Democrats have done this pipe piper type stuff to Republicans, and sometimes it works. And they get a terrible candidate in there. Democrats push Trump, for example. And sometimes it backfires. And sometimes even when it doesn't work, you increase the nastiness and the polarization by cementing a particular type of candidate. Because now Crockett will have the support of her own base.

Plus, she'll have Republicans support out there. And the Republicans have said that they're going to fund some like, independent expenditures. So outside groups are going to be out there attacking Tala Rico and boosting Crockett paid for by Republicans. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, the point of running Jasmine Crockett or the point of nudging Jasmine Crockett into the race isn't even just about Texas. It's about having this worked really successfully for Republicans in 2010 when it came to Nancy Pelosi. It's kind of laughable. to, again, like, Beltway types, like, oh, really, you're running Fire Pelosi ad campaigns.

But when you're tying a San Francisco liberal to, let's say, a Talarico-type candidate in a red state, that's actually pretty effective. And so if you're going to tie Jasmine Crockett, who has said that what was it, Latinos who vote for Trump have a slave mentality, I mean, she said all kinds of just reckless stuff because she reminds me of Jennifer Welch in this sense. there's this vacuum of Democrats willing to break rhetorical norms in the same way that Trump does. And so they stepped into that void, but they're not necessarily like going to be persuasive figures to swing voters. And so Democrats lack the person that can do both. Both.

They lack the person that's willing to violate rhetorical norms like Trump has done and like voters are happy to see them do. But then also be appealing to swing voters. I think Graham Platner is the best example of somebody who actually. He's doing that now. AOC in 2018 did that in the way that... Bernie does that for sure. In 2020, the way that she would... With, like, her, like, constant presence on Instagram

and her Twitter clapbacks back when that was a thing. Yeah. Although that Crockett takes that to another level. And Walsh takes that to another level. And I think, you know, Welch isn't running for anything, so it's apples and oranges in that case. But I just think they're... Crocket is...

The Crockett rhetoric, if it were, think clever and smart, which it often isn't, you know, when you're just accusing people of taking money from Jeffrey. But it's well done. Right. Like the, the butch thing that she rolled out MGG. I couldn't. I couldn't pull that off. It was masterful. You believe she believes what she says when she's talking about some of that stuff. Now, when she's talking about crypto, Ryan, you reported this in your book. I don't know that she really believes anything. Yeah, the substance doesn't match the rhetorical norm breaking, she, and also in 2020, she celebrated herself for not taking corporate PAC money compared to her opponent. Within months of that, started taking corporate

pack money, has taken like over 300,000 now in corporate PAC money since she's been in Congress. Yes, she's gotten millions in support from crypto. In my book, I reported that basically the campaign was like, look, we might get attacked by these crypto. people, how should we handle this? She's like, well, what's, what are the options? They're like, well, if here's the crypto plank, like, here's what they want you to say. She was like, how much does it cost? If you say this, like, they will support you and give you money. If you don't say this, they will come after you. And she's like, she's very much, what do I have to do kind of candidate. She's like, okay, fine. She's like, I'm not running. And to give her,

like, the steel man on this, it's like, she doesn't care about crypto. Right. And a lot of people don't. Right. It's like, so she's like, whatever. Like, who cares? How much does it cost? Just sign the, whatever they say they want. Because if I don't sign it, they're going to nuke me. Because they were going around, nuking everybody.

Right. That was, like, remotely, like, questioning crypto. So you can justify it to yourself, well, I'll never get into Congress to do the good things I care about. Right. If I take a stand on this thing that I, frankly, honestly, don't care about. No big deal. She also, you know, did similar on Israel.

Like, 2023, she took an A-PAC-funded trip. has consistently voted to send weapons to Israel. And there's some clips going viral now of defending our ally ship with Israel. So you get the kind of squad-like rhetoric, but it's not matched with any type of policy that would challenge corporate power. For more, check out Ryan Grimm's TikTok.

There you go. So we'd be remiss if we didn't play a little snippet here from Brad Landers's announcement video. He is challenging Dan Goldman. Let's take a look. Hi, Brad! Good morning. Great to see you. This community means everything to me. It's where Meg and I raised Marik and Rosa, and where we've worked together for years to make life better for our neighbors.

Brad rooted out waste and corruption. Divested billions in fossil fuels. Built housing New Yorkers can afford. Saved housing. 50,000 families from being kicked out of their homes. When Donald Trump and Elon Musk tried to steal $80 million from New York City, Brad caught it. And when Ice Ages started kidnapping our neighbors, I fought back. You're fighting, Brad.

Take a look at this video. It's Grant Lander being arrested by ICE. I've always believed that you fight for the things you love, And I love this city. I love the streets where I walk my kids to school, the public schools that nurtured their curiosity, the fields in Prospect Park where I coach their Little League games. But most of all, I love the people who make this city what it is.

So I'm running for Congress because the challenges we face can't be solved with strongly worded letters or high-dollar fundraisers. and not by doing Apex bidding in a district that knows our safety, our freedom, our thriving, is bound up together. Our mayor can have an ally in Washington instead of an adversary in his own backyard. At a moment of dark oppression, we can shine. Ryan, you know Brad Lander. We had him on the show actually not too long ago. What do you make of this announcement?

This is a very welcome announcement to the kind of Mamdani coalition. Mamdani immediately endorsed. Bernie Sanders has endorsed. Eulen Nu, who came within like a point or two of beating Dan Goldman the first time he ran, was running again. And she dropped out. And she put up a heartfelt thread that I would encourage people to go find, where she said, look, we lost last time because the left did not consolidate. You had Mondair Jones, Bill de Blasio, which a lot of people forget. I totally figure out.

And Euleneu, all splitting the vote, and it allowed Dan Goldman, Levi Strauss heir, to spend his own fortune and kind of stumble to victory with like 30, you know, because it's first past the post. You don't have to do a runoff. So with a divided opposition, Goldman was able to get in. And so what Yulen knew is signaling is that everybody should get out and let this be a one-on-one Goldman versus Lander.

And, you know, if, you know, Goldman can spend an enormous amount of money because he has it and can raise it. But Landers are going to be able to raise small dollars, too, from the Bernie wing of the party. So, you know, I think this is Landers to lose. Man, this is going to be one to follow. A couple, yeah, I think Crocett versus Tala Rico is also just an interesting test of the different strands and Democratic Party right now. You have Tala RICO running sort of Biden with maybe a slightly more Bernie aligned. I don't even know if you can say that, because he's also a big APAC guy. He took money from Miriam Edelson, I believe.

I don't know the particulars of the APK connection, but... Yeah, and when it's, you know, Goldman's move would be to say that criticism of his support for Israel is anti-Semitic. Oh, he'll definitely do that. Telling that to Brad Lander, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in New York, supported by Bernie Sanders, the most famous Jewish elected official from New York, isn't going to land the same way it's going to land against a mom. Donnie. It's just not. Especially post-Zeron. Yeah. And with

Tariqa, you have this almost Biden style, we will restore norms and civility, and Crockett is the opposite. But their populism is reversed. Like you have this interesting, if these are the two character traits, you have kind of populism,

at least Tala RICO kind of runs and tries to make people think he's populace. We would probably disagree with that characterization. And love of norms versus non-populism. and hatred of norms, you're sort of switching. It's a little bit of an interesting role reversal. So these are some really interesting tests coming up for Democrats.

I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother, Larry, A mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle the dangerous past,

one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloos?

I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes gentlemen's cut different is me being a part of, you know, developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com or your nearest total wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on

gentlemen's cut bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com. Please enjoy responsibly. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.