Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/5/23: McCarthy Speaker Vote Chaos, AOC Floats Compromise, Trump Blames Abortion, Mass Tech Layoffs, Jim Cramer Flips On Crypto, Age Of The Con Artist, Big Soda Smears Opponents

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the multiple days of continuing chaos surrounding the vote for House Speaker, AOC floating a potential compromise between Dems and R's, Trump receiving blowback from the religious right over his Abortion midterm comments, Mass tech layoffs at Amazon and Meta, Jim Cramer changing his mind and warning people about Crypto, the Age of Con Artists like Andrew Tate and George Santos, and Big Soda smearing their opponents as racist.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of breaking developments this morning in the continuing saga over on Capitol Hill, trying to figure out who will be the next speaker of the House. Will it be Kevin McCarthy or someone else? We have some big updates for you on that this morning, as well as some rumblings of talks between some Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Is there a deal in the offing? Seems unlikely, but we'll tell you all about that. We also have some comments from former President Trump on abortion that were quite noteworthy and received a significant amount of backlash from within his own party. So we'll talk to you about that. We've got a big fine being levied on Meta from European regulators. We also have a mega Jim Cramer take on crypto that we wanted to make sure to bring you. We've got Jefferson Morley on with regards to JFK assassination documents. What did we learn with the latest drop?

But before we get to any of that this morning, live show. Live show. Go ahead and put it up there on the screen, guys. Austin, Texas, February 3rd. We are coming. As I said in our last show, I did a little drive by the theater.

I met some of the great folks in Austin, Texas who are fans of Breaking Points. The show is selling incredibly well right now. So if you want to go ahead and buy tickets, it's probably going to be last chance. Reminder to the Lifetime members out there, go ahead and buy those VIP tickets and they will be fully reimbursed. But other than that, we've got a great show planned for you all. It's an awesome way to kick off the new year. And I'm excited to go back to Austin.

I was just there and it was an awesome time. Yeah, Austin is amazing. We've never done a live show there. So super psyched about that. And those tickets are in very short supply. So if you want to come, make sure you get on top of that right away. All right. Let's get to the very latest with regards to Kevin McCarthy, the House Republicans, and what exactly is going to happen in the Speaker fight. So as you guys know, they have been doing round after round of Speaker votes with Kevin McCarthy consistently falling 20 votes short. And that number has effectively been unchanged from the beginning. Last night, he finally decided, all right, we got to call it quits for the night and go back to the negotiating table and see what we can do to try to bring along

these 20 people who right now in the House Republican caucus are not willing to vote for me. There's kind of good news and bad news for McCarthy this morning. I'll give you the bad news first, which is that it very much appears that there continue to be more than four hard-nosed, the sort of never-Kevin variety, that are sticking to their guns. Matt Gaetz is leading the charge with regard to that contingent in the House GOP caucus. He spoke yesterday night after the group had been meeting, some of McCarthy's allies, some of the dissidents. They had been in a room trying to negotiate. Here's what Matt Gaetz had to say after that exchange.

In some way to try to divide our conference. But look, he's a desperate guy whose vote share is dropping with every subsequent vote. And I'm ready to vote all night, all week, all month and never for that person. So I'll tell you what, when he comes out and heads back to his squatting in the speaker's office, which why is he allowed to be there? Like, is there some basis in law or statute or rule for someone who comes in second place and sixth consecutive speaker? So he's talking there about the fact that Kevin McCarthy has already taken up residence in the speaker's office, which is, you know, quite elaborate. And Gates taking some issue with that. But, you know, he's emblematic of a contingent that there really is no particular demand that they need satisfied other than they just don't want Kevin McCarthy as speaker. How many of those are there is an open question,

but the reporting right now at least suggests there are more than four. And again, four is that magic number. That's the maximum number that McCarthy can lose and still win the speaker's vote. So that's on the bad side. The good side is that he really wanted last night to get this adjournment so they didn't just continue to go through the night with these failed speaker votes. And part of why this was important is there were starting to be rumors that some of McCarthy's own allies might offer Steve Scalise as an alternative to him. So it was possible he was going to lose even more ground. And the minute you have that sort of crumbling of your own backing, you could see how the whole thing could ultimately

fall apart. So he desperately wanted to get this adjournment vote so they could break for the night so he could go and back into negotiations and try to win over the people that he could. It was very, very close, but ultimately, put this up on the screen, he was able to succeed in getting that adjournment vote, which shows you, I think, 216, yeah, to 214. So it was as narrow as it could possibly be. All the Democrats voted against adjournment. A few of the Republicans did as well, but he narrowly ekes that out. So that was seen as a good sign that he was at least able to get his way on this one procedural vote. There were a couple other things that seemed kind of positive for him. The Club for Growth, which had not been backing him, they had an issue with the way his PAC was spending in primaries. They came out after negotiations and did explicitly back Kevin

McCarthy. That was seen as some sign of progress. And you did have some of the holdouts after that meeting where Gates was saying Kevin McCarthy is a desperate guy and, you know, he needs to give it up effectively. You did have some of the other holdouts come out of that meeting where Gates was saying Kevin McCarthy is a desperate guy and, you know, he needs to give it up effectively. You did have some of the other holdouts come out of that meeting and say that progress had been made. They didn't say they were ready to vote for him. But even the fact that they were willing to say like, all right, we made up some ground here, we're going in the right direction, seemed to be somewhat of a hopeful indicator for him at this point, Sagar. Yes, the issue right now is that there are effectively two camps. There are those who want an extraordinary amount of concessions from Kevin McCarthy about how he would run the speakership. Now, it's actually worth explaining what some of those are. One of them is called the motion to vacate. a procedure that I think hasn't been in place in the current House of Representatives for quite some time, which would allow any individual member to effectively call a vote of no confidence

on the speaker. That's the core demand for Lauren Boebert and for a few of the others in the Freedom Caucus. McCarthy has offered up five members, not one member, effectively making it so that the House doesn't get thrown into disarray anytime each one of the individual 435 members has a problem. But the one member rule, which again, actually goes back to Thomas Jefferson and some of the original founding fathers is kind of a red line that people are drawing from the Freedom Caucus. You also have the Gates type camp who I'm not exactly sure what their beef is with Kevin McCarthy, but at a certain point, it also doesn't really matter. I mean, if you want to be the speaker, then you have to be able to get 218 votes with a majority in the House of Representatives.

And when you have four people who are the holdouts, then you're simply it's not going to happen. So even if these concessions are given by the McCarthy camp, and right now there's actually no indication that they will go to the one member rule in addition to some House Freedom Caucus members who want membership on something called the House Rules Committee. I think another reason why it's bare explaining that is that the House Rules Committee literally based they set the rules, as the name implies, for how the House of Representatives is run, not only from the motion to vacate the types of things that are going to get brought to the floor, the exact protocols through which things can be called up, whether things can be discharged in the committees. People should remember that the House of Representatives itself, as well as the Senate, they have their own rules that they adopt. Very few of these are actually laid out in the Constitution. And so having people who want much more ability to basically inject chaos into the system is kind of what makes this so fun and interesting to cover, because even if McCarthy does end up as the speaker at this point, he will be the weakest speaker of the House in more than a century.

I mean, he will have effectively no control over the House of Representatives. So he is hobbled on either front right now. And I still don't really see a path right now for him to 218. I'm curious what you think, Crystal. No, I don't. I mean, I try to lay out the best news for him. And, you know, these things are incredibly fluid. And how much of Gates and Boebert and their contingent, like how much of it is a bluff? And they really are just holding out for the most concessions they could possibly get. There's no way to get inside of their minds and really know that. But it appears that there are more than four people

who just do not want Kevin McCarthy. They don't really care how long this goes on. They don't mind being demonized in the press and all of those things, which frankly, I mean, I kind of respect and I certainly don't mind seeing a weasel like Kevin McCarthy twist in the wind. So it's very hard to see how he ultimately pulls this together. And part of what makes this complex and fascinating is the group of 20, it's got the whole thing has a kind of MAGA cast to it because Gates has been the most vocal. But actually, if you look at the 20 members who continue to be holdouts, more of them are House Freedom Caucus types. More of them are sort of hardline Tea Party types. And so some of the things that they've been demanding are like changes to the appropriations process. You know, they're the types that would threaten a government shutdown. One of them explicitly came out and said that his demand was that he wanted the government to basically default on the debt and not lift the debt ceiling again.

So it also has more of a 2010, 2012 hardcore Tea Party throwback vibe. So you've got people who want, you know, those sorts of like hardline, radical libertarian economic balance the budget, those sorts of things. And then you have the anti-establishment MAGA contingent that I think are more like they just don't like Kevin McCarthy and don't think that he is an ideological ally of theirs. And they're not wrong about that, by the way. I mean, McCarthy is a shapeshifter. He came into Congress. He represents a district in California. He came into Congress sort of positioning himself as more of a moderate. He was famously one of these young guns with Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, both of whom have at this point been bounced out of Congress. Paul Ryan

retired, but it was not looking great for him in his district. And Eric Cantor was bounced out famously, you know, over his positions on immigration. That was one of the things that foretold this kind of new era of Republican politics. And so Kevin McCarthy has tried to mold himself to be a fit for the Republican caucus in the Trump era with, you know, a mixed bag of success. But I think everybody knows this is not where this guy's real ideological. I don't know that he really has ideological principles. He's just one of these. He's a climber. He's wanted to be Speaker of the House for a long time. And so he's been kind of willing to do whatever it takes to get there. So they just frankly don't trust him. So in any case, it's that's what makes this a

difficult situation, because you have all these different people with different demands and different ideologies. So it's not like he can give them one thing and they'll all come to the table. There's some group that can be negotiated with, and there may be some group, and that number may be more than four, that really can't be negotiated with. Let me move on to this next part because this is also very interesting and a sign of where the Republican Party is today. You know, how does former President Trump fit into this whole dynamic? And this is, again, part of the complexity here, because you have some of Trump's top allies, people like Gates, people like Lauren Boebert, who are opposed to McCarthy. But Trump himself has endorsed McCarthy and some of his greatest allies are backing McCarthy. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the person who most

comes to mind. So there was a question once McCarthy was kind of on the rocks, okay, is Trump really going to stand by this guy or is he going to kind of let him twist in the wind and let the chips fall where they may? Well, he came in, Let's go and put this up on the screen from Politico. Trump came in and tried to rescue McCarthy. He gave him a strong, you know, endorsement once again. He said some really good conversations took place last night. And now it's time for all of our great Republican House members to vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory. He went on to say Republicans do not

turn a great triumph into a giant and embarrassing defeat. It's time to celebrate. You deserve it. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job and maybe even a great job. Just watch classic Trumpian stuff there. But, you know, so Trump goes out. He does this endorsement full throated, you know, after these negotiations have been going on, after McCarthy's also lost already lost several votes. And what happens next? Let's put this up on the screen. It didn't make a difference. Trump endorsement or not. McCarthy lost yet another vote. And I think this this piece is part of why he has been able to unable to move some of the dissidents in the caucus saga. You pointed to this.

Very arrogant here. In his original meetings with this group, he was incredibly forceful saying, I earned this job. We earned this majority. And God damn it, we're going to win it today. This was, you know, early on in a meeting with the whole caucus that really did not go well for him and has sort of set the tone for the disaster that has ensued. Yeah, and go ahead and put the next one up there to finish Crystal's point, which is McCarthy actually got fewer votes than he got prior to the quote endorsement from Donald Trump. This is the key point. And I think why he's having so much trouble. At the end of the day, we all know he's an ass kisser. The only reason that Trump is endorsing him is because Trump, Kevin used to literally send like individual picked out Starbucks to Donald

Trump in order to curry favor with him. He is the worst of the worst of the social climbers here in Washington. This is his dream. He smells it. He's like the guy who always wanted to be student council president. It's my turn. Probably the least effective message in the history of American politics. And that's why he's losing. He lost the first time for this reason. But I think the Trump angle here is extraordinary because when you have Lauren Boebert and Matt Gates and many other of these original kind of MAGA warriors, in addition to Freedom Caucus people who were very closely aligned with Trump,

just outright buck him on the vote over and over and over again, that is really kind of humiliating for him. And Boebert actually, in a smart way, twisted Trump's words to try and use it against McCarthy on the floor after the endorsement. Let's take a listen to what she said. And tactics to get people to turn against us, even having my favorite president call us and tell us

we need to knock this off. I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes and it's time to withdraw. With that, I yield. Thank you. Very clever. No effect. No, no effect whatsoever. And look, I mean, that's that's got to be a massive story here. The president of the United States, especially look, it's his fault. It's Trump's unpopularity in the first place that this House majority is so slim in the first place. And it's Kevin McCarthy's fault, too, for kissing his ass and for backing all of his stop-the-steal candidates, you know, wherever they may. So I have very little sympathy for any of the parties who are involved here. how could they, right? But I personally enjoy seeing the dissent. I personally think that with this kind of, you know, opening of chaos as an opportunity, but there's also a danger on the

other side, and I referenced it earlier, which is, you know, some contingent here, they're not after, you know, well, let's go after big tech more. Let's, you know, let's hold the deep state. Let's get the January 6th, all the January 6th documents so we can see what the deep state was up to there. A larger contingent are these hardline Tea Party type Republicans who want things like shutting down the government, who want things like potentially sending the country into unnecessary economic chaos and calamity by a debt default. And McCarthy, by having such a weak showing here early, by being forced into taking a lot of concessions and basically having to give this group whatever they want, is really setting up some very perilous economic fights that could have a lot of consequences for ordinary Americans down the road and also are almost certain to be extraordinarily unpopular across the country.

Like the country is not impressed with your debt default showdowns. They're not impressed with your government shutdowns. And it's very clear which party is pushing that direction of governance right now. So I also think this is a real prelude for some of these fights. The last thing I'm going to point to here, and Sagar, you've been really great on the history of the 100 years ago when you had the, what was it, 130-some ballots before we ultimately got a speaker. Let's not good for McCarthy. First, the opposition is not unified except in their opposition. They don't have a unified motive. Some want rules. Some want committee representation. Others just don't want McCarthy. Why does that matter? It hinders McCarthy's leverage to win over a large block of holdouts. Back in 1923, 100 years ago, the insurgent Republicans represented heavy agricultural districts and interests. They had specific rule demands because they had specific policy preferences. And Sagar,

that allowed the leaders, I think it was like Longworth and somebody else at that point, to negotiate with them and ultimately give them what they want and get the thing across the finish line. Because you don't have a united ideological cause here. It makes the task much more difficult for Kevin McCarthy. So last thing before we move on to the Dem negotiation part of this that I will say is, you know, one thing to watch for is I mentioned yesterday, there are rumors that some of McCarthy's allies, seeing that this vote is not moving and wanting to get on with, you know, governing and doing whatever it is that they want to do in this next House session,

they have been floating the idea of offering up Steve Scalise. And if you see some factions start to break off of McCarthy's number towards a candidate like Scalise, you know, that I think could basically spell doom for him and things could unravel, I think, quite quickly. Now, is that what's going to happen? I don't know. I mean, you may, on the other hand, you may have genuine progress made in these negotiations. You may find out that the hardliners aren't as hardline as they insisted that they really had some sort of concessions they were looking for. And once they get it, they come to heel. But, you know, at this point, if I would

not really want to be Kevin McCarthy. No, absolutely not. It's just very, very hard in order to see how he can become the speaker of the House. Let's tug a little bit more on that thread, Crystal. Let's move on to the next part here, because this is a potential kind of crazy scenario, which seems very unlikely until, you know, it could only be a matter of hours till it actually comes up. Some Democrats are talking about the possibility of a, quote, compromise candidate. So let's go ahead and put this one up there on the screen. Ro Khanna was one of the first to say he said, quote, I would consider the right Republican someone I could trust like Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Gallagher, who actually spoke eloquently on the floor, David Joyce. But there needs to be two

conditions. One, you cannot have the debt ceiling, the debate or the shutdown is something that takes the country hostage. Two, there would have to be some agreement on subpoena power, but I'm open to a Republican who could work to put the interests of the American people first. AOC also sounded kind of a similar vein. Let's go to the next one there. She says that McCarthy would not be a unity candidate, but she was not going to rule out working with Republicans to resolve the speaker battle. And Democrats would need more concessions than things just like committee ratios. Quote, but I mean, hey, if we could get some chairs. And she said it would be a combination of things, including possibly the debt ceiling. here where Democrats, both these progressive members, but also even some centrist types,

let's throw the next one up there, are all basically proposing different ways in which they could have either a rescue of Kevin McCarthy with concessions that they would have, or they could try and get a centrist type Republican who is either not particularly well-known in the caucus, but would be willing to work with the other side. This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities. It also reminds us of one of those long talked about things kind of on Twitter and in political nerd circles, but which has never happened before. The Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House of Representatives. So one of the things that's being thrown out there is possibly having a retiring member of the House of Representatives, Fred Upton, as a sort of consensus choice.

Lauren Boebert actually indicated on Fox News last night that she might go ahead and nominate Donald Trump in order to be the speaker of the House. So that could be the protest candidate for the group of 20 or the group of five or whomever it is that's going to be on the first ballot. This opens up negotiations and putting things in a completely different way that really does bring us back to what we previously talked about, that 1855 period of 133 ballots, two months in which the House was not actually able to be sworn in because so many negotiations were happening behind the scenes and eventually somebody was picked. You know, it all remains to be seen as to what that would look like. But I think that we're only a couple of days away from actually trying to get a very different compromise solution.

And this could be kind of the first tip of the iceberg of what that would look like. I would be I mean, it would be wild. Just so you know that this isn't totally a crazy idea. This actually just happened in the Pennsylvania State House. So here's what happened. Republicans in Congress are feuding. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, there was a fight for control of the State House. Democrats technically won more State House seats by just one seat, in theory making it 102 to 101.

But one of the Democratic state representatives actually died in October, a month before the election. So now you've got it 101, 101. And what they ended up doing is coming up with this consensus pick. And that person is actually technically going to maintain an independent status. But they effectively, you know, the more moderate Republicans and more moderate Democrats got together and they came up with this consensus pick. So it's not crazy. Like things like this have happened in other situations in the past. Now, I am skeptical that this is going to be how it goes down here in Congress, just because the partisan divisions are so incredibly hard and fast. You know,

if you're Kevin McCarthy and you're making a deal with AOC or any other Democrat, you can imagine the way you're going to be demonized by the more MAGA or hard right sort of Tea Party type Republicans. But, you know, if you're Democrats, you're thinking about,

all right, what would it be worth it for us to do to rescue the Republicans and pull them out of their impasse here. I think, in my opinion, it's less likely that they would want to really rescue Kevin McCarthy. They would be more likely to look for a different separate candidate that they could get the Fred Upton path rather than the rescuing Kevin McCarthy path. But the fact that you have rumblings of this and talk means that it is theoretically possible, especially as the Republicans kind of continue to beat their head against a wall with no progress. So I think if

you see another day of 20 people in lockstep voting against Kevin McCarthy and things that like a total standstill in terms of any sort of progress, then I think something more unusual like this potential deal become a somewhat more likely outcome. Yeah, I think that's correct. And, you know, while we're on the subject of crazy stuff, there's also some talk of potentially nuking the rule that you need to have a majority in order to win the speakership and trying to go instead for a plurality. Now, why would that be a problem? Because right now, the person who is winning pluralities is Hakeem Jeffries. It is not Kevin

McCarthy. So it could end up in a situation where they try to basically change the rules for a plurality type vote or through absentees and strategic absences and all of that. But they could backdoor themselves into a very precarious situation where Hakeem Jeffries himself could end up becoming the speaker and some sort of crazy floor fight. It does not seem likely that that would be the case just because so many of the people who are against Kevin McCarthy would not likely assent to the plurality rule change. But the longer this goes on, a lot of Democrats have a lot of leverage here if the holdouts on the Republican side continue to go. So, you know, look, it's all about something's got to give. I do kind of want to bring it back, though, to what we were saying earlier.

At this point, if I'm Kevin McCarthy, why do you even want to be speaker when you would deal with one of the most raucous houses in over a century where somebody can call a vote of no confidence on you any second of the day? It's like the people's house is already crazy. So why would you even want to be in a situation where you are probably the weakest speaker? Yeah, literally one of the weakest speakers in American history at this point. I don't even know why it would possibly be worth it. But, you know, for these resume climber types, I guess it's all the title. Yeah. I mean, I think he's been dreaming about this one for a long time. You recall, I mean, he was up to be potentially speaker back in what was that, 2015 or something like that? And he kind of blew himself

up on that one because he gave up the game that the Benghazi hearings were an effort to bring down Hillary Clinton's favorabilities. And, you know, it was kind of a different time in politics where things like that would make a difference. I think at this point that would be water off a duck's ass, no one would care. But at that point, it kind of revealed it also revealed a level of sloppiness and kind of that he wasn't really up to the task at that point. And so he got pushed aside. And then you end up with with Paul Ryan. You know, the saga of Republican speakers over on that side has been fraught with drama for a while now. And that's why I think this is, you know, another thing that's interesting about this is the Republicans have had raucous majorities ever since the Tea Party era. And so in some ways, this is new and

different and it has a mega anti-establishment flavor to it, but it also has a throwback Tea Party era flavor to it. And as I was saying, a lot of the concessions are more in that like hard right libertarian economic vein of we want to balance budget amendment. We want to, you know, default on the debt. We want to shut down the government. We want to have these key positions on the appropriation and change the appropriations process so that we don't pass such large spending bills anymore. It has a lot of those vibes as well, injected and infused with the new MAGA flavor, too. So very hard to see. I mean, usually in Washington, there isn't real drama.

Everything is resolved behind the scenes and these closed-door negotiations, having the American people be able to process, you know, who they agree with, who they don't, how they want these processes to unfold rather than it all being done behind the scenes. And then the last thing you have to say about this is, you know, this is the identical situation that the squad was in last time around when Democrats had a very narrow majority in the House. There was pressure on them to do something with their numbers to get their own concessions, whether that was key committee positions or whether it was certain votes on the floor of the House. And they have completely taken a different tact. And I think we see now with the level of concessions

that this group has already been able to extract from McCarthy and the way that the squad has been completely sidelined in the Democratic Party. That was clearly the wrong approach. They thought they could play an inside game. They thought that would be the way to ultimately pursue and achieve their policy objectives. And it just has not ultimately been the case. So in terms of political strategy and what works, it helps to have a few sort of asshole bomb throwers like Matt Gaetz on your team. You know, something I think about a lot is the 48 Laws of Power. It's a great book. People haven't had to read it. One of my favorite ones is called Create Compelling Spectacles. You can't deny this is a compelling spectacle. I mean, the entire country is tuned in

to this. You know, I have normal people messaging me, but who do you think is going to get the speakership? I mean, since when do people care about such arcane rules? But it can't be glued away. And so this is, look, I'm not saying I even agree with some of the aims here about, you know, nuking the debt ceiling or whatever. But as a tactic, it clearly, from the level of media attention, the capture of attention, this would be a way to elevate message. So for the dissidents who are real dissidents out there, I guess take note. Let's go to the next part here, which is an important story in its own right, which is Donald Trump, as we sometimes forget, is running for president. Again, it's not like he does all that many events, but every once in a while he pops off on national politics. And look, you know, we should never count him out. His new

tweet or truth, I should say, on abortion is ruffling a lot of feathers, revealing something about the inside of his psyche, GOP tactics, how exactly things went for the midterms, and who's to blame. So let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. And I will read from it in full quote. It wasn't my fault that Republicans didn't live up to expectations in the midterms. I was 233 to 20. He's talking about his endorsement record. It was the quote abortion issue poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother that lost large numbers of voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard for decades against abortion got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court and just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.

Plus, Mitch stupid monies. My personal favorite is the Mitch stupid monies. What does that mean, Sagar? I don't know what that means. It could mean a variety of things. It could say that Mitch did not spend enough money in the right areas. Although here we're talking about the midterms, not the Senate races or the House, not the Senate races necessarily. Look, I think that this is all about blame casting. And it is also a very precarious situation that Trump finds himself in. He, of course, was the most, I guess, pro-life champion in modern American history. He appointed the justices that overturned Roe versus Wade. At the same time, Trump, look, I'll just say this. I don't think he ever really

cared about the abortion issue. He thought he could use it in order to garner votes, and he certainly did. But at a core level, also kind of understood just how fundamentally unpopular the abortion ban position is. He is now basically trying to square out an abortion moderate position for the Republican Party, which is definitely more in step with the opinions of the American people, but widely out of step with almost every Republican elected official and specifically the pro-life base who have really held them hostage or really just garnered purity tests from them for a long time. The reason I'm really worried or I'm really like tracking this is because the pro-life groups

themselves are now in a very interesting situation where are they going to speak out against somebody who they went to bat for in 2016? And then will it induce other people like Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence and others to garner their support in an upcoming presidential primary? So let's put the next one that is up there on the screen, because this is very important. You have basically a pro-life group that is actually firing back at Trump after having backed him and his policies while he was in the administration for years. So to have that Susan B. Anthony group go back against Trump actually shows you that these are people who went to bat for him in 2016. They really appreciated having Mike Pence on the ballot with Trump for them to actually come out against him.

And now in a potential primary situation, almost, Crystal, it just creates a dynamic where I think it almost ensures some sort of Mike Pence candidacy, which will bleed some 7 percent or something of the vote. Mike Pompeo as well, possibly trying to get that. And then, you know, Ron DeSantis. And you're almost recreating a 2016 dynamic. So we have two storylines here. Like one is the actual political analysis that I think Trump is fundamentally correct about. Of course, conveniently erases stop the steal as well, being a major problem. And then the second part is it opens up a major political opportunity for pro-lifers in a Republican primary, not necessarily with the general electorate. Yeah, well, 2016 worked out well for him, didn't it?

So I personally actually think that this was an intelligent move on his part. Yes, the Republican base is in a different place than most of the country on abortion, but you have, I just looked it up, only 8% of adults say abortion should be against the law in all cases without exception. So Trump is on the correct side with regards to American people. He's also strongly on the correct side with regard to the Republican base. And it does remind me of that like 2015, 2016 dynamic for the first time in a long time, where remember Trump would say something that I was a long time where, remember, Trump would say something that it was supposed to be like, oh, you can't say that if you're running in the Republican Party and the Iraq war being case in point, but other economic issues as well, like saying we're

going to preserve Social Security and Medicare, supposed to be like, you can't say that and win a Republican primary. But it turned out he understood what the actual voters in the Republican base thought a lot more so than the other candidates who were more in step with what the sort of like activist organization leaders, what they thought on the issue. So, you know, the other thing that this does for him effectively is he was half right in this analysis because he said abortion was a problem for Republicans. That's true. The part that he was half wrong on was saying it had nothing to do with me. I'm actually great. And, you know, he didn't say this directly, but stop the steal was no problem for these candidates. That clearly is not the case. But by setting up this abortion fight, he's on a stronger ground

for himself. It kind of causes people to, you know, debate this issue. And was this a problem for Republicans? And where do people stand on this particular issue? And puts them on stronger ground with regards to the primary. So I actually personally think politically it was an intelligent move. I think opening up a lane for a Mike Pence or like evangelical right candidate to get in, be the hard line. I want the national abortion ban candidate. I think having more candidates in the race ultimately only benefits Trump. Now, again, I continue to think he is at a significantly weakened position from where he was previously. Our commentary about the speaker's race and how his endorsement had literally no effect on it, if anything, it actually set things backwards a little bit after he came out in full-throated support for Kevin McCarthy is an emblem of that weakness.

But this was the first little throwback vibes to the old Trump that I've seen in a while. I agree. And that's why I was intrigued to see it happen. And then I was like, oh, no, this is going to cause a raucous primary situation, which probably only more guarantees his at least re-nomination for the GOP party. I mean, it is just, look, I mean, I think his biggest problem is with Stop the Steal. Can he actually be disciplined? Because by leaving it out, you know, not only from the tweet, but also we shouldn't forget, he did not mention abortion in his reelection announcement and, or I guess his subsequent election announcement.

And he did not mention stop the steal. But he has since backtracked on stop the steal has been truthing some insane stuff about the vote being stolen. I have not yet seen him do any real public appearance, though, where he has mentioned it. That said, he hasn't done a lot of public appearances. So it all comes down to the question of like his own message discipline. Do we get old Trump who's kind of ideologically all over the place or do we just get the self-obsessed narcissist? I'm personally always going to bet on the latter, but you know, you never know in terms of how long he can actually keep it together. Yeah. Well, he also has something compelling that he can say if he does feel himself on shaky ground with the evangelical right, which turned out to be his

most fervent and committed base of support, which is he's the one who got it done. He's the one who got the justices on the bench that gave them their big win. And so, you know, Trump doesn't hold himself to any sort of ideologically consistent position. So when he's in front of those audiences and he feels like he needs to shore up their support, he can tell them what they need to hear while also signaling to others who are, you know, not in the 8% that believe abortion should be illegal in all instances, including, you know, rape, incest, life of the mother, etc. You know, when he's talking to that group, he can sound these sorts of notes and sound a lot more reasonable. So again, I agree with you. I think his brain is so addled and so obsessed with stop the steal and election conspiracies. And I think he's been in this

Mar-a-Lago bubble. And I think he's been in the truth social, like social media ghetto echo chamber for too long. You could see signs of that already even before he left office. I think that has only hardened more. But this was the first little glimmer of like, oh, yeah, I remember why this guy romped through the 2015-2016 Republican primaries. Yeah, smart point. All right. So we've got a lot, actually, of news coming out of the tech sector, which, you know, they've been there have been tons of layoffs. And now the very latest, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, is that Meta is facing a large fine in the EU. This New York Times article says Meta's ad practices were ruled illegal under EU law. So that decision includes a fine of 390 million euros. That's about $414 million. And it has the potential to require Meta to make some really

costly changes to their advertising-based business in the European Union. That's one of its largest markets. So the EU passed this regulation with regards to data privacy, giving users more control over how their data can be used, what can be collected, who it can be sent to. And these regulators basically looked at Meta's policy and said, you are not giving users the power and the control that this law dictates you must give. Now, why does this matter? Ultimately, it's, you know, the fine is a hefty amount of money, but they could stomach that. The problem is that it really cuts to the core of their advertising business. I mean,

a huge percentage of both Facebook and Instagram revenue comes from the ability to serve people these personalized ads based on farming all of their data. So if you are now saying you can't really do that anywhere, you have to give users a clear way to opt out of having this data collected and sold to third-party providers and used for this ad program, that could take a significant chunk out of their revenue and their profitability. So Meta has three months to outline how they're going to comply with this ruling. The decision doesn't specify specifically what they have to do. But again, it could result in Meta allowing users to choose whether they want their

data used for such targeted promotions. And if a large number say no, that would cut off one of the most valuable parts of Meta's business. We have some numbers here. Those practices helped Meta generate $118 billion in revenue in 2021. So number one, this is a real business issue for them. Number two, EU regulators have come under a lot of fire for, you know, they have this rule, this law, this regulation in place, but they haven't really enforced it. This is one of the first big examples where they're actually cracking down. And, you know, we don't have anything like this in the U.S. that gives customers and users here a similar level of control over their data.

And I think it would really be a benefit here as well. Well, it's really interesting to see exactly why and what it means, because we put this together with a bunch of other different elements because it is a bad time just for the American tech sector writ large. The meta is having problems not only on the business side. We shouldn't forget they've had two subsequent quarters of down growth, largely due to actually less active users on the platform than ever before and pouring billions and billions of advertising dollars

from the profitable part into VR with a major bet on the metaverse. It hasn't materialized yet. You'd have to sell a hell of a lot of Oculuses or whatever the hell they're called now in order to make all of that up. Now, that means that their core business is not doing as well. They've got a big bet, which is more of like a decade-long thing, but they're not necessarily working out for them. At the same time, revenue itself across the entire industry is down in almost every single sector. You pulled this one, Crystal, let's put it up there on the screen. Salesforce, the sales tracking technology, they're cutting 10% of their entire staff and actually downsizing their location at the classic Salesforce tower in San Francisco. Why does this matter? Salesforce itself is like the

backend system for a hell of a lot of business activity. So if you have less business activity in the overall economy, that means you're going to have less use of the Salesforce platform, which means they get less revenue, which had less fees, which means that they have to go ahead and fire people. But then second and third here, what I think is even probably the most important was Amazon with the news that broke last night. Let's put this up there. They are now laying off 17,000 workers, which is actually more than they had initially scheduled for layoff. So to have to lay off actually over 18,000 workers now, the number has been updated to have almost 18,000 represents like 5%, it says, of the elements of its workforce and about 1% of the overall 1.5 million employees. So on the one hand, it may not sound like a lot, but Amazon, because it is the second largest employer in the entire United States,

has a far disproportionate impact in terms of how people look over the economy, how exactly, you know, what the job market looks like in, you know, in more down market areas of the country, just because unfortunately, it's one of the only places that still employs a lot of people. You put this all together, it's not setting 2023 up for a good, you know, boom, quote unquote, especially because tech makes up so much of the S&P 500 indexes and other stock market retirement funds and other, etc., it's actually disproportionately weighted in how we think about the U.S. economy because it was the biggest driver from over the last 20 years. Overall, I think all of this just paints a really dim picture for tech going into 2023. Oh, no doubt about it. And, you know, the economy continues to be very uneven. These mass tech layoffs, which is not just Salesforce and Amazon, but really company after a large

company in the sector, which, you know, what happened is during the pandemic, people are at home. So they're using, they're on Zoom, they're buying on Amazon, they're, you know, Salesforce became more important. All of these tech companies became super critical to the work-at-home economy during the pandemic. Now that people are back out and about, they've taken a hit. Many of them have admitted, Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, for example, admitted they staffed up too quickly. I love the way that these CEO types can just be like, oops, my bad. Sorry, guys. Now I got to lay off tens of thousands of you. But that's the way that they ultimately roll. So you have these huge

layoffs across the tech sector. You have their stock prices taking a huge hit. And the tech sector has basically, you know, really driven the sort of upper middle class. So when you have that group of society no longer really safe in the way that they were, but on the other hand, you have a different dynamic among service sector workers, where a lot of those retailers, you know, hospitality, that sector, they're struggling to get workers. They're still having to compete. Now, listen, let's be clear. With inflation, people are still getting pay cuts. But workers actually have a little more power in the service sector economy than they did previously. So the combination of those two trends is really remaking the economy overall and I think is going to be one of the big trends of 2023 to follow in the impact that has

on inequality, on the impact that has on the job market, on the impact that has to low-wage workers, the middle class, the upper middle class. These things are just starting to shake out because those Amazon layoffs, the 18,000 plus, are predominantly white-collar workers. These are knowledge economy workers. This was the thing that our whole economy has been built on for several decades now, starting with Bill Clinton. The fact that they're taking hit by tens of thousands of workers is going to have a huge impact with big ripple effects that I think we're only just beginning to wrap our head around. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's just no way to. We just have to consider, like, how much tech has basically dominated the U.S. economy since what, the 90s, or really with the dot-com bubble and onward. And then think about what, especially with zero

interest rates going away, what that entire industry looks like. So, you know, look, it'll be an interesting year. I've learned not to make any predictions. Let's just leave it at that. Bottom line, maybe don't learn to code. Right. Yeah, maybe don't, or maybe don't. Maybe don't learn to code. Right. Yeah, maybe don't. Or maybe don't. Maybe don't learn to code. You know, it could pay off in the future. Let's move to the final one, our fun segment here of the day. We just had to cover it.

Anytime Jim Cramer opens his mouth with the prediction, it's usually wrong, although maybe it's right. Here's what he's now saying on crypto. It's not too late to sell losers right now. That's my motto for the first part of 2003, because I fear it will be too late if you wait until the second half. First on the list of it's not too late to sell is crypto, anything crypto. Hardly a day goes by where we don't get more horrific headlines from crypto world. We all know about the travails of Sam Bankman Freed,

but there's constant wars among former colleagues all over the place in this industry. I know this sounds like inside baseball, but these interesting wars among major players are classic signs of a financial world that's actually falling apart. Falling apart. Sell all of your crypto from Jim Cramer. Although this is the issue. Usually that means you should just buy everything on the opposite of what he said. Look, I mean, you know, the Cramer ETF, as I understand it, in terms of betting on things that he said, not to betting against everything of his predictions, apparently has done quite well. I think let's put it more in the context of there's now an institutional turn on Wall Street against crypto. I think that's probably a fair way to look at it, which is that

you had JP Morgan and CEO Jamie Dimon against crypto, but then kind of co-opting a little bit of crypto during the boom. So many of the other Wall Street CEOs and others, Kramer is kind of the mouthpiece of like the most brain dead establishment take on Wall Street. So for him to now be saying this, especially in the context of SBF and Bitcoin, a lack of performance over the last year and not even just that, really just more of the collapse of the NFT market itself and even trouble for Coinbase, the company, which actually broke last night. Let's put it up there on the screen. They have to go ahead and pay a massive settlement for violating money laundering provisions with New York regulators. This isn't to say that they themselves had been doing money laundering, but the problem was that they had not proper institutions in place inside of their

company to make sure that they weren't allowing potential criminal activity on the platform, subject really to the same regulations that any US-based bank is going to have to pay. But I mean, $100 million definitely hurts, especially when their stock has already been going down pretty precipitously after all of the stuff that's going on with SBF. I can't think of a single major crypto exchange or really crypto bank out there, as my friends at the Bankless podcast like to talk about them. I can't think of a single one of them which is doing well in business right now, which reflects, I think, Jim Cramer's comments. Yeah, I think your point is the correct one, which is that the business press has a lot of egg on their face over the way that they failed to do any due diligence, not just on SBF and FTX, but on any of these companies and how legit. I mean, they just took their word for it on

everything. There was no real sort of transparency. Many of them didn't have any like boards to be accountable, nothing. And they just took their word for it. They, you know, helped to, she purred a lot of casual investors who didn't really know and just sort of trusted the word, God forbid, of people like Jim Cramer and others of what they should be getting, investing their money into. And so I think now there is an effort to come to what I believe is the correct position of like, you know what, this stuff is really not safe, especially not now. So I guess better late than never. Yeah. It's funny nonetheless. So take it with what you will for Jim Cramer's prediction. What exactly it all means, I guess we'll all find out.

Some people are telling me that Bitcoin is going to a million. I'm like, you know, I'm just going to say I don't think that's going to happen this year, this year for this one in terms of the hype bros that are out there. Let me put the caveat out there. Look, you never know. I'm not afraid of being accused of FUD here. Bitcoin is not going to a million this year. Mark my words. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, Congressman-elect Santos, if that is indeed his real name, arrived in Washington this week. The man who lied about everything from his job to his school to his race to the way his own mother died was mostly shunned by his new colleagues sitting there in sullen silence as the whole Kevin McCarthy drama unfolded. In his successful congressional bid,

Santos claimed that he himself was the American dream. Now, at present, that actually might be a little closer to the truth than we'd really like to admit. He appears to have told everyone he encountered the lies that they wanted to hear. To GOP elites, he was a wealthy Wall Street type. To Republican Jewish coalition, he was a wealthy Wall Street type. To Republican-Jewish coalition, he was a proud Jewish-American and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. To his moderate-to-liberal Long Island electorate, he was a gay minority trailblazer. Lord knows what he told the donors, who very likely funneled illegal millions to him to float his campaign in a new Potemkin village of luxury living. In the end, only one fact really mattered. He's a con man, an archetype which is indeed as

American as apple pie. And at a time when the American dream of stable middle-class prosperity has never been more fraudulent, it's only fitting that the man who described himself as the American dream personified also turned out to be a complete fraud. So how is it that in an age of social media investigations and massive, well-funded opposition research, that this dude was able to pull off this con. Well, we shouldn't really be surprised. Look around the country. Look around the globe. We are awash in a sea of scam artists. Millions of people being preyed upon every day by crypto bros, Ponzi schemers, and internet influencers.

People promising easy money, status, meaning, beauty, happiness, love, whatever it is you want. Is it really so shocking that the voters of the third congressional district of New York would be any different? The most successful con artists, they always play into whatever it is we want to hear the most. And we're living in an era where a lot of people are desperate to hear a whole lot of things. As Umair Haque writes at his Substack, this is the golden age of the con. With people's bank accounts increasingly crunched at the same time that supposed lifestyles of ease and abundance have never been put on more prominent display, everyone's out there looking for a side hustle, a way to make it. And the traditional paths to basic prosperity and stability

have been barred shut. In such a climate of desperation, people become easy marks the moment that a charismatic salesperson targets them with the pitch that most matches their yearnings and their fears. Crypto promised young men that fortune favors the brave, evoking in one tagline a hero narrative to shake them out of their listless, emasculated lives, promising them riches, status, girls, all of the things that the capitalist establishment had shut them out of. Meanwhile, there's an entire ecosystem of MLM schemes pitched to depressed housewives looking to have a little financial independence and autonomy without sacrificing their time with their kids. Leggings empire, LuLaRoe, perfect example here, but there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other ones.

Work part-time, be a local maven of fashion or beauty or healing, earn cash, feel interesting, feel relevant, and like you exist as a human being and not just a mommy. The latest fallen scammer is one Andrew Tate, currently being held by Romanian authorities for alleged involvement in a sex trafficking ring. Now, his innovation was to combine grindset manosphere influence peddling with an actual pyramid scheme in his Hustlers University scam. I mean, he is in jail at the moment, but he's not really fallen. His fans are still Legion, and they're still diehard, still seduced by his promises to help them escape the, quote, matrix, a term that's a useful stand-in

for whatever is making them feel miserable in their own lives, even though in reality, Tate is actually just offering them a juiced-up version of the world that already exists. Whoa, you aspire to luxury goods exactly like the corporate world wants you to? How rebellious. Hustler University teaches you how to run an Amazon side hustle for the benefit of Jeff Bezos? Wow, that's revolutionary. Haig is right.

The downward mobility has left many vulnerable to these types of scams. But I'd go a layer deeper here. We are in an era of fallen ideologies. Soviet communism failed. Now neoliberal capitalism has failed. Soviet communism failed. Now, neoliberal capitalism has failed. The old mythology and narratives, ways of being, those are all gone, but the new ones are still struggling to be born. People are unsettled. They're adrift psychologically as much as they are financially. And I'm not talking about other

people. I'm talking about me. I'm talking about you. So word to the wise, be careful of anyone or any product or any news item that seems too perfect, that's too good to be true, that too neatly fits your prior convictions, that lands too close to your unspoken fears and desires. There is no get-rich-quick scheme. There is no quick and easy answer to intractable political problems, no simplistic good and evil narratives that let you switch your brain off, no one charismatic figure who's going to save you or save the world. George Santos, arriving in D.C., perfect emblem of the era. Congressman scam artist taking a seat in the golden age of the con. This dude was a D-rate scammer, and he still managed to fool a lot of

intelligent people, separating them from their money and their votes on his way to federal office by telling them all exactly what they wanted to hear. As we enter 2023, make this resolution for yourself. In a world of con artists, do not be an easy mark. And Sagar, been thinking a lot about this one. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's the new year. A lot of people have New Year's resolutions. Subscribe today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, it's the new year. A lot of people have New Year's resolutions. The gyms are full. A lot of people want to lose weight. I sympathize. I've been in that position many, many times. And I got to say, it's one of the toughest journeys because there's so much information out there. And trying to make sense of it is so difficult as an individual person when you're up against

some really titanic forces. That's what I want to focus on today with a really interesting and really just revolutionary new expose by somebody who used to consult for Coca-Cola. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I'm going to read this thread in full. He says, quote, earlier in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure that sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding. Coke's policies are evil because I saw inside the room. The first step in the playbook was paying the NAACP and other civil rights group to call opponents racist. Coke gave millions of dollars to NAACP and the Hispanic Federation directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association. This picked up in 2011 to 2013 when the farm bill and soda taxes were under consideration. The conversations inside the room was deeply transactional. Quote,

we will give you money. You need to paint opponents of us as racist. And the worst part is the effort was successful. The message was carried in thousands of articles. Koch's position was that soda is one of the cheapest ways to get calories, which is, of course, an inaccurate statement when you factor in health consequences. He even watched as the FDA actually funneled money to professors at leading universities and think tanks on the left and right to create studies showing soda taxes hurt the poor. They also paid for studies that said that drinking soda did not cause obesity. Not mentioned in any of those studies is the obvious link between sugary drinks, obesity, and diabetes, and that the soda companies themselves, as Callie points out, are deeply embedded in the USDA, so much so that the agency actually has talking points on its website that, quote,

there are no bad foods, there are only bad diets, which, of course, ignores the world of sugar. And even the worst part that I think that he really exposes is that whenever Koch was doing this lobbying campaign, they were trying to keep soda spending inside of the food stamp program, specifically to make sure that it was available to lower income communities who disproportionately drink and eat some of the unhealthiest foods imaginable, except this part they're doing with government assistance. So the reason that I wanted to highlight this thread is because it just highlights how difficult it is for so many of us to try and parse through all of the information when the world around us

is being shaped by major forces, which are just trying to make money and which are really making a lot of us unhealthier. At a baseline level, I think what's so important in this thread is to just not trust so much of the meta mass cultural marketing that we're seeing from a lot of different forces. I don't want to make this into some cringe, you know, reacting to a fat positivity ad or something. But I do want to say that when you see that, you should realize that it's part of a concerted campaign in order to make money. It's used in a way to co-opt possibly, you know, the well-meaning notion that we shouldn't bully anybody or you shouldn't intentionally try and make people feel bad. Of course, nobody wants to have racism exist in our society, but to combine these forces, which actually co-opt them then for profit and to push

something on you, which is fundamentally not good for you. So I'm not going to tell you what to do because I barely know what to do. I'm literally struggling with it right now myself. I will tell you though, that you should be very skeptical of a lot of the information that is out there. There is no get, you know, what Crystal just covered. There's no get rich quick scheme. There's also no, just no scheme in order to just lose weight immediately. It's a very concerted and difficult process. And on top of that, losing weight at the same time is trying to be sustainably healthy for the rest of your life. It's going to be one of the most difficult journeys that a lot of us are going to embark on. But the one thing that we do know is that the big food companies and specifically the U.S. government right now is not on our side.

Crystal, that's what I really just wanted to highlight for everybody in this thread. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, thank you so much for bearing with us while I was on the road. I'll be back Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. and I'm excited to get back in the studio. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a great year. We got some big updates for you that we're going to bring to you next week and co-sign Ryan and Emily's coverage of the McCarthy speaker drama has been fantastic because Emily has a great understanding of the different factions in the GOP.

Ryan has a great understanding of like congressional Hill procedures. He's broken some of the most significant stories in this whole drama. So we're super lucky to have them on top of all of this. We love you guys. Happy 2023. We'll see you back here next week. I know a lot of cops. 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. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. 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. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.