Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/9/23: McCarthy Becomes Speaker, Biden Goes to Border, Cartel Wars, FTC Non Compete, Brazil's January 6th, Andrew Callaghan on NPR, Tea Party 2.0, New Frank Church Comittee

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss McCarthy's long painful road to becoming Speaker of the House, Biden arriving at the Mexico Border, the Cartel Wars against the Mexican Government, FTC Non Compete clauses for workers, Brazil's January 6th chaos by right wing Bolsonaro supporters, Andrew Callaghan's confrontational NPR interview, the makings of a Tea Party 2.0 in the House, and thoughts on the creation of a new Frank Church Committee.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets & Presale Linkhttps://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054To 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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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 BreakingPointpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Great to have Sagar

back in the studio. All the gang is back together. Also, both of our new producers are here behind the scenes in D.C., so very excited about that. Stay tuned. We will introduce them to the world shortly. Lots of news in the show today. First of all, there is actually a Speaker of the House now. Kevin McCarthy did win.

We will tell you how it happened, the near fight that broke out on the way there. We'll show you that as well. Also, we'll do a deep dive. And Sagar and I are both are looking at different angles of that in our monologues of exactly what the hardliners here won. So we've got all of that covered for you. Also, the president visiting the border for the first time since he has become president. Also, there have been some big policy changes in terms of the border and political fights to come and massive violence breaking out in Mexico as well. Crazy images there that we will bring you today. Big news that we didn't want to miss in terms of labor contracts, the FTC looking at banning non-competes. This would actually be a huge deal. So we'll break all of that down for you. Chaos in Brazil. People are calling it a

Brazilian January 6th. Of course, it happened on January 8th. The aftermath of that continuing to unfold. Also, a bit of a hilarious interview from NPR with Andrew Callahan over his new documentary. So we've got that for you, too. My apologies. My voice sounds like crap. Sorry. Oh, you're good. Don't worry about it. I'm feeling fine. So we'll get through all of this. And before we do jump in, though, live show in Austin. Put it up there on the screen. Austin, Texas, February 3rd.

We are coming, guys. We've got the tickets almost sold out there. Go ahead and buy them. We've got Crystal, myself, and friends that will all be joining us. We're going to do fun stuff

while we're down there in Austin. I think it's going to be a fantastic show. And you guys agree because almost all the tickets are sold. So go ahead and buy yours while you can. But with that, Kevin McCarthy. Yeah, it just sort of hit me. It was like, oh shit, this is less than a month away. Yes, yeah. Only a couple of weeks. I better give my plane tickets and get ready to go and book my childcare and all that stuff. So the time is upon us. Okay. Let us start with Mr.

McCarthy, who is now Speaker of the House. Now, you guys have been probably following this. We followed it closely last week. Round after round of balloting. Ultimately, he won on the 15th round of balloting. That is the most in 100 years or something like that. And it just seemed like the 20, roughly, Republicans who were against him were sort of dead set. Ballot after ballot, no one was moving. Nothing was changing.

President Trump weighed in and endorsed McCarthy. That didn't really matter. All these negotiations were happening behind closed doors. But finally, Friday, there seemed to be a breakthrough. McCarthy was in meeting with some of the not never Kevin, but like probably not Kevin group and was able to sort of move them. And Friday morning, we had a ballot where a bunch of them switched over and were voting for McCarthy. So late Friday night, they're coming down to it. You have the last few holdouts,

including Matt Gaetz, who's kind of been a leader of this group. Everybody's tired. Everybody's exhausted. And the voting procedure is a little bit complicated because you have to win a majority of the people who are there. And if you vote present, it changes the numbers you need to get. Ultimately, they had a sort of like miscalculation. And they thought originally on this 14th ballot that all they needed Matt Gaetz to do was to vote present. Yes. But as it comes down to it, some of the people that they thought were going to vote for McCarthy ultimately only vote present. And then they come to realize that they actually need Gates to vote for McCarthy. So Gates then votes present, which means late at night after they thought they had this thing wrapped up, they were going to have to at least go to another round of balloting. And that's when

things started to get really heated between Gates and one of McCarthy's top allies, Mike Rogers. Let's go and put this up on the screen and I'll walk you through it. It's kind of in slow-mo here. So Gates is over there sitting next to Lauren Boebert. He's kind of looking down, not paying attention. You see Mike Rogers there is the one who's screaming at him, has to be held back, hand put over his mouth. That's Kevin McCarthy walking away. And this was after McCarthy had gone over to try to persuade Gates to vote for him. It's clear Gates was like, no, I'm not doing

that. That's when this all ultimately unfolds. But it was the ballot after that, that ultimately, you know, they got it together. They had the right maneuvers. Gates's present vote was sufficient, and McCarthy ultimately prevailed. So it was very heated. It was very tense, but ultimately they were able to get it done. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. They had a deep dive into the way this all happened and how it all went down. And actually, some of the missteps that made from Kevin McCarthy that made this much more difficult for him than maybe it ultimately should have been, because, you know, these are human beings. Some of them just really hate Kevin McCarthy. I put like Matt Gaetz in that category and we're just not going to vote for him, period. There was really nothing McCarthy could do other than not

be speaker that would have sat aside Gaetz. But there was another group there who they have issues with the way that the House is run. Most of these are hardcore fiscal conservatives, like Tea Party types, rather than really sort of like, you know, Trumpian or populist types. And this is something that I'm breaking down in my monologue. And part of what they were really frustrated with is that McCarthy had a level of arrogance towards them and condescension towards them. And the initial concessions that he offered were sort of rigged to maybe on the surface level look like he was really bending to them and offering them. But it contained a lot of obvious loopholes that were going to allow him to maintain control

of the house and basically the way that it's been operating. And they were really offended by that because they're like, basically, what do you think? We're stupid. You think we're not going to read the fine print and realize the game that you're playing here. So I'll just read a little bit of the ending here of how this all went down. This is before, you know, this is when they're getting those final holdouts to be able to come to heel. They say they huddled in the office of Majority Whip Tom Emmer. McCarthy told these moderates that he had gathered there in four holdouts that his offer was to become the 55th speaker by significantly weakening the position and empowering his party's hardliners. The meeting, according to people present in brief, became a turning point in breaking the impasse.

As much for the terms of the deal as for how it reestablished trust between the two factions, small group was selected among those who had shown good faith in weeks of negotiations and turned into what was described as a therapy session, which gets, again, to some of the feelings that were rubbed raw. The holdouts explained that McCarthy had offended them by rejecting their wish list of committee assignments after he'd been the one to ask for it and for delivering a fiery speech to the Republican conference saying he'd, quote, earned the job. That was something we highlighted last week as kind of an arrogant and obnoxious thing to say that seemed to piss people off. The moderates,

in turn, gained assurances that the concessions to the hardliners were not unreasonable and wouldn't be abused. So that's ultimately how this thing all came together. Yeah, let's go and put the last third one up there on the screen. The actual rules package here really goes and is important to go through. Number one is the motion to vacate, that one member can force a vote to overthrow the speaker at any time. This is akin to the British system or a parliamentary system where you get to call a vote of no confidence if you desire. And it's literally something any member of the House can do. And also, it was like this. This is how things were until recently. So it's not that big of a change or break from precedent. Really, I think the way to describe this entire rules package,

aside from the specific concessions, the pay go to cut go, constraining the debt limits, the three-fifths to raise taxes, allowing the two-minute vote, 72 hours for bills, dynamic scoring, changing the name of the Education Committee and the new COVID Select Committee. What this all really is, Crystal, is the erosion of the strong speakership. The strong speakership is something that emerged sometime around the Sam Rayburn era in the 1940s, kind of the iron will of being able to move things in the way that you wanted. It ebbed and flowed, but really was crystallized then with Tip O'Neill. And then finally, Speaker Pelosi put it all together. They're the ones who used House leadership and their long-running speakerships to basically erode any opposition

and consolidate all the power within the speaker themselves. This is one of the first times in modern American history where you had enough of a contingent willing to force many of the rule changes back to the way that the House was run, really in the pre-World War II era, in terms of the level of control and ability for any individual member of Congress to actually try and force some stuff through. So actually on that front, I'm quite happy about it. Even if you disagree with what the Freedom Caucus guys and all of them want to do with their power, having a weak speakership actually just opens up all kinds of very interesting possibilities, especially in terms of committees and some of the Democrats. And because the House is so really almost evenly divided,

Democratic power on the committees is going to be more so than previously. And actually, it's possible that some compromise could actually go through, not on the major top-line stuff that you and I would pay the most attention to, but really more on the downstream in terms of work with the Senate for routine business. So just in terms of American history,

we should view McCarthy as genuinely one of the weakest speakers in modern American history from a pure power level, and the weakest since John Boehner. Because if you're Joe Biden, how are you supposed to cut a deal with Kevin McCarthy? He can't deliver all of his votes. You can't. In any meeting that you have, you need to have McCarthy. You need to have Gates. You need to have the Freedom Caucus. And you need to have Pelosi. And that's a huge victory for the Freedom Caucus. A huge victory. And, you know, I admire their willingness to go to the mat to extract these concessions. And it shows you what a small group of, like, committed people with a strategy can ultimately pull off.

I agree with you on the theoretical idea of changing the power distribution in the House. But then the question becomes, well, what do you want to do with that power? And the things that they want to do with that power are all terrible. And, you know, this is not like a secret. They were out front saying like, no, we want to cause a debt ceiling showdown and force massive cuts. And there are some pieces of this that I support, like their defense spending cuts that they have floated. We'll see if that ultimately comes to fruition. But they also, you know, this is a real return to the sort of hardline fiscal austerity deficit hawk focus of the Tea Party era. Because ultimately, you know, Gates, he led this group, but it really wasn't him that they were negotiating with. So to the extent that he has like different heterodox views or whatever, that isn't reflected that much in the concessions

that were actually granted. The bulk of the concessions are really to the sort of like hardline fiscal austerity Tea Party faction. They want to balance budget in 10 years. They want to use the debt ceiling to force some sort of massive social spending cuts. They want to change the government appropriations process so that they also, you know, can go after certain agencies and certain budget line items that they really disagree with. Those things are all going to potentially have major ramifications for the American public, not only in terms of the social spending, which could get cut, which disproportionately benefits, you know, working class people. They also have this rule in here that you have to have three-fifths of the house in order to raise taxes. So they're clearly trying to protect, like, low tax rates

for the rich. And also the sort of chaos that comes from potential economic disaster from failing to lift the debt ceiling, potential economic disaster from threatening another government shutdown. So the power redistribution, that part is actually either neutral or affirmatively good. What these people plan to do with that power is affirmatively bad. And I think it's unlikely, just because constitutionally the more moderate parts of the caucus are less likely to wield this power in this hard way. They're squishes, right? This is the group that wants this power and has an agenda of what to do with it. So, you know, the Trump movement of the Republican Party and a sort of like different heterodox economic policy, the sort of things he ran on back on 2016, that has long ago crumbled away. And so in the absence of any alternative

ideological program, well, we know what all of these D.C. think tanks want. We know the dominant ideology that gets funded and backed and pushed within the Republican Party. And so in some ways, this to me seems like actually a return to pre-Trumpian politics, where the Tea Party ideological agenda was really the ascendant force within the caucus. A lot of that came through in the interview with Jim Jordan, where he talked about some of the priorities on how Freedom Caucus and them are going to behave under Kevin McCarthy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board says this, the price for Speaker McCarthy, it says, the pressure for defense cuts will be great. That's a terrible signal

to send adversaries who are increasingly belligerent. But is that now the message that the speaker, the GOP, is sending, that defense spending at a time you mentioned our military is struggling could potentially be on the chopping block because of this deal that was made? Well, Shannon, we got a $32 trillion debt. Everything has to be on the table. We're on pace to spend $500, $600 billion in debt payments and just to deal with interest payments on servicing that debt. Maybe focus on getting rid of all the woke policies in our military. We'd have the money. We need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve. We have the weapon systems and the training that needs to be done. So we're ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet. That's what we want to focus on. But when you got numbers like that, a 30-some

trillion dollar interest payments to service that debt where they're headed this year, you had better look at everything. And frankly, we'd better look at the money we send to Ukraine as well. I mean, on that front, you know, it's not so bad to hear that. I'd be interested to hear because the real question is, are we going to have a return to sequestration, which actually would trigger some like automatic military spending cuts? Are they going to do what John Boehner and some of the Paul Ryan deals were, which they would keep spending in the military constant and then increase, but then at the same time cut social spending? I really have no idea how it's all going to shake out. I do, although, think that some of it is quite funny. We got Joe Scarborough's reaction. We'll put it up there on the screen. Of course,

Scarborough freaking out about the only good thing. Yes, the only good thing, which was declaring the defense budget, slashing aid to Ukraine, and reviewing the U.S. Intelligence Committee and spying on Americans. He says, Americans can only hope that the Democratic Senate and sane Republicans will push back. The world is too dangerous to turn our country over to radicals and isolationists. So there's going to be, I think what we're laying out here, there's going to be very different and interesting fights, some in their own right. Again, I support the military, especially looking at some of the budgets, and especially with the aid to Ukraine and possibly having Inspector General. I think

it'd be great. I'm doing my whole monologue on why I think the Church Committee 2.0 is a fantastic idea and one of the ways that they could really bolster it. At the same time, you know, cutting social spending. I was just looking at a poll this morning in terms of people who voted for the Democrats in the midterm elections. And the very top thing, actually, that they said that they voted for, I have it in front of me, is 78% said they were doing so to protect Social Security and Medicare. So clearly, I mean, it was a very resonant message in the midterms. And lowering inflation was actually their fourth priority behind climate change and abortion for people who voted Democratic. And clearly, a lot of people,

much more than expected, voted Democratic in 2022 in the midterms. I think that in the last phases of the midterm elections, there was actually a lot more talk and a lot more of hitting Republicans on their plans to slash Social Security and Medicare. And that came directly out. I remember Senator Rick Scott put out his plan that was like, we're going to have to vote on these things. And then Sunset over five years or whatever, he put out there, which is like disastrous political message. And they know it's wildly unpopular, which is why Mitch McConnell was like, shut up about your terrible economic plans that are disastrously unpopular. Like, yeah, we might do this stuff once we get into office, but let's not talk about it.

And I think it was actually an undersold issue in terms of how the final weeks closed and why that those midterm elections ended up being much better for Democrats than were ultimately expected. And anytime you talk about cutting social spending, look, the bulk of the money in terms of social spending is Social Security and Medicare. So the numbers really don't add up

unless you are focused on cutting Social Security and Medicare. So it's not unfair to say when they're going, when they're saying we're going to balance the budget in 10 years, we're going to use the debt ceiling for this fight over social spending, that it is very likely they're going to come after Social Security and Medicare. I mean, this was, remember, back in the Obama administration. And this is why it really does feel to me like deja vu and more like the Tea Party era than something like new and different. Back during the Obama administration, when we had all these grand bargain talks and Obama put on the table like, hey, how about we cut Social Security? And actually, the only thing

that saved us from doing that was the fact that the Tea Party hardliners wanted to go even further. They wanted even more. So in a sense, we have them to thank for them not doing what was a terrible deal and a terrible idea under Obama of cutting Social Security and making some of these other social spending cuts. So it feels to me, again, like we're going back to that era. I mean, Jim Jordan, having him out there out front as a spokesperson, he was one of the leaders of the Tea Party, one of the hardliners. And all they really share with the supposed new Trumpian economic direction of the Republican Party is sort of like a vibe and an aesthetic, like a screw these people and fearlessness with regard to taking on their own leadership, which again, I respect. But then you have to ask, like, to what ends? And in terms of the Jim Jordans of the world and the hard right

fiscal austerity type Tea Party folks who seem to be really driving the train here, both in terms of the Jim Jordans of the world and the hard right fiscal austerity type Tea Party folks who seem to be really driving the train here, both in terms of this deal and ultimately in terms of what they want to do with this caucus, I think it's nothing but bad for the American people. The other piece of this that is very interesting that we wanted to look at is what was Trump's influence on all of this, if anything? And it was complicated because Trump had backed McCarthy, right? And even there was a question once McCarthy looked kind of weak, would Trump stand by him or would he let him just twist and win? He came in and he, you know, put out his true social and said,

it's time to come behind Kevin McCarthy or whatever he ultimately said. So you have that faction, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene over there, who, of course, very like MAGA aligned figure. But then you have Matt Gaetz, who is another very MAGA aligned figure, who is on the other side and really the most visible and vocal part of the never Kevin contingent. And it didn't seem during this process like Trump was really moving any votes after he came out and put out that message and said, hey, guys, it's time to come behind Kevin McCarthy, there wasn't a single vote that actually moved in terms of Kevin McCarthy's favor. So it was very interesting after the fact, after McCarthy is able to win the speaker's gavel, who is the person he wants to make sure and indicate that they were important and that their support really mattered and really influenced people.

It was Donald Trump. Let's take a listen to what Kevin McCarthy had to say. But I do want to especially thank President Trump. I don't think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning. Somebody wrote the doubt of whether he was there and he was all in. He would call me and he would call others.

And he really was, I was just talking to him tonight, helping get those final votes. What he's really saying really for the party in the country, that we have to come together. We have to focus on the economy. We've got to focus, make our borders secure. We've got to do so much work to do. And he was a great influence to make that all happen.

Just amazing. Yeah, what do you make of that? Chrisley, you're right, though, that he eventually did. But his initial statement did not say to vote for Kevin McCarthy. It did nothing. He endorsed Kevin McCarthy. And then he was like, well, maybe, you know, and he was pressed repeatedly by the reporter at NBC News. He's like, are you endorsing Kevin McCarthy? And he just said, we'll see what happens. Whatever happens is going to be great. It's only after McCarthy called him and basically begged him to do so that he came out for him again. I mean, look, Trump did throw him under the bus when it actually mattered on the floor. When McCarthy was at his most precarious, he did not have Trump support. It was only after there was movement in some of the negotiations that Trump decided to come

on the bandwagon. And look, Marjorie, you know, with the famous photo. Yeah, we have that. Let's put this up on the screen. Yeah, let's go ahead and put it up there. It's kind of incredible. So what you see here is she's holding up a phone to one of her colleagues, Congressman Rosendale, who was, you know, on the not voting for Kevin McCarthy side. And you can see on the phone it says D DT as in Donald Trump. So she's literally got the president on the phone. She's trying to get this dude's attention to talk to Trump so that

Trump can try to talk him into voting for McCarthy. And he has his hand up just completely blocking it. And apparently he shouted repeatedly, don't you ever do me like that to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right. Yeah. Because he was like, I'm not taking Trump's phone call. So I think this has much more to do with the Tea Party, with the House rules and with actual power for this group than it does to do with Trump. And that's actually terrible news for Trump. I always have to remind myself he is an active candidate for president of the United States. Like he's not doing rallies. He's just like sitting in Mar-a-Lago. I have no idea what he's doing. I'm sure he's fundraising, I guess. He's been truthing. But his actual power projection, sure, he can get Kevin McCarthy's of the world to, you know, bow down and grovel before him right now. But like, does it matter?

Because he could barely deliver the votes in the first place. And to the extent that the votes were delivered, it didn't have anything to do with him. It had to do with what they wanted in the first place. I see this as a major weak episode for Trump. I really do. Yeah, it's really fascinating, too. I mean, just even the ideological direction of the party at this point, it shows a real weakness for Trump because, you know, ultimately his core insight in 2016 that allowed him to prevail shockingly in the Republican Party primary and then shockingly again in the general election was that people really liked the attitude. They really liked the sort of populist rage and anger that some of the Tea Party members had and their willingness to

buck the establishment and that sort of like affect people really liked and responded to. But the actual details of the policy they hate, right? This, you know, let's cut social security, let's slash spending, let's have government shutdown, all that stuff, which by the way, you know, under Trump, they didn't use those levers to try to force social spending cuts. The actual details of what the party stood for when the Tea Party was the dominant ideological force was really unpopular. And so he kind of put those two pieces together of I'm going to moderate on economics. He famously, you know, obviously changed their positions on trade deals. He obviously changed their positions in terms of he came out and said we're not going to cut Social Security. So he recognized that there was a lane for someone to take a

different course on economics in the party, but maintain that pugilistic attitude that people really liked and responded to and wanted to see. And that was a real ticket to success. But of course, Trump long ago abandoned any sort of real ideological framework. So again, in the absence of some other ideological project, this is what the Republican Party is always going to default back to. Yeah. No, I think that's the right way to say it. Overall, in terms of Trump's power, it just really looks like a very weak episode. But also, look at McCarthy. I mean, he has to grovel now. He still has to grovel.

This is, again, like, I don't know why he would ever want this job. Yeah, I'm like, you have no power. You are beholden to Trump and you are beholden to the freedom caucus like you yourself you can wield nothing i actually put it out on twitter i'm like why would you even want to be speaker when you're the weakest one in a century and ryan gerduski actually had the best replies because you make a lot more money as a lobbyist when you're a former speaker and i was like you know that is actually the only point and somebody else was like vanity because he wants his uh picture the house speaker's gallery.

I'm like, all right. I mean, I guess it's worth it. Humiliating on the world stage. He strikes me as the type who's been dreaming of this since he was like 40 years old. I think I said that. The classic student council guy in high school. But, yeah. Yeah, that's what it strikes me.

You can just smell it. The ability to cat. I mean, look at Paul Ryan. He's made in the shade in terms of his financial position. He's got his SPAC. He's a multimillionaire. He's on the Fox board. I see him around here in town all the time, on the street.

Boehner's doing, he's like on some weed company board or whatever. He's a weed lobbyist. So Kevin McCarthy is going to be just fine, guys. Don't worry about it. Good point. Okay, let's go to the next. And actually very significant news. President Biden yesterday deigned to visit the U.S.-Mexico border two years into office. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It was his very first trip to the border area on Sunday. I think took note that it actually did happen on a Sunday, visiting El Paso, Texas. So the details of his visit was very tightly controlled, Crystal. He basically took a tour of a migrant facility.

There were no actual migrants, though, that he met with. He basically just walked around a Customs and Border Patrol parking lot, talked to some of the agents that were there, got back on Air Force One, and drove back here after a brief meeting with Governor Greg Abbott on the tarmac. And it actually came after a pretty significant event. We have to set up, because it actually starts a couple of weeks ago, while we're off on the holidays, the Title 42 section was actually held up by the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively keeping in place Trump-era policies which require people to apply for asylum in Mexico when they arrive at the border. Before they are processed, their asylum claim is then litigated as they remain in Mexico, which they are then around into the United States in order to avoid a catch and release policy, which was previously there under the Trump administration and all of that before.

President Biden now effectively architecting the entire Trump era policy, which is astounding. After two years in office, he laid some of it out in rhetoric, which all of you will probably recognize from the previous president. Let's take a listen. Next week, I'm going to travel to Mexico where I'm going to meet with President López Obrador. We have a big agenda that ranges from the climate crisis to economic development and other issues. But one important part of that agenda is strengthening our border between our nations. And I will visit the border myself this Sunday in El Paso to assess border enforcement operations, meet with the local officials and community leaders and the folks at the border sending me what they need that they don't have and make it public what they conclude they need

they don't have to try to convince my Republican colleagues they should do something. Do not, do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there. I mean, look, you could basically copy and paste that from Obama, from Trump and Joe Biden, which is why I find it hilarious. I mean, it's like you basically have after two years of dithering and basically recreated the entire policy. So just to lay out the, go ahead. I just wanted on, on title 42 specifically, and I think you're going to lay out the complete ahead. I just wanted on Title 42 specifically, and I think you're going to lay out the complete picture of what he did here because there were two pieces to

it. But Biden on the campaign trail explicitly against this policy. Yes. Even as president, his administration was fighting against this policy. And the Supreme Court, the courts have intervened and basically said, like, you know, we have to keep it in place for now. There were technical reasons that I won't get into. And so with the court saying it has to stay in place, not only are they fully implementing it, he's expanding it because it only applied to nationals from certain countries. Specifically under Trump, it was the Northern Triangle and Mexico. Now it's expanded because the places that migrants are coming to have largely changed.

It's expanded to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. So not only is he keeping it in place, even though technically his administration still says they're opposed to it, he is actually expanding it. So that's the insanity of what's going on here. And the other thing that's important to say about Title 42, which does make it absurd, is the fig leaf of justification for it is the COVID pandemic. And in every other aspect, even within the judicial system, they basically said, like, y'all, the COVID pandemic is over. So the big issue in our immigration system, as you were alluding to, Sagar, is you have a lot of people, thousands of people are showing up to the border to make asylum claims. Some of those are justified under, you know, under our law and some of them are not. massive backlog in the system, there are people who exploit that ability to show up and request asylum, even though they know that probably when things are adjudicated, they don't have a technical legitimate asylum claim. But under our law and under international law, you have to allow people

to make asylum claims. The issue becomes because the system is so backlogged, it takes years for these claims to be adjudicated. So while this situation is very complex in a certain sense, it's obviously incredibly politically fraught. It's also very clear like Biden is doing this as like a political show. He doesn't think he has a threat from the left. He's trying to pivot to the center and like short circuit some like, you know, law and order type critique from the Republican Party. But on another level, it's very simple. The real core issue here is that backlog in the system. If you had a massive surge in people who adjudicate these asylum claims, which is judges and other officials, and you could clear out this backlog, that would eliminate the ability for

people to take advantage of this lengthy process. And it also wouldn't create this urge on this administration's part, Trump administration's part, Obama administration's part, to find ways to basically go against law and international law and not allow people to make these asylum claims in an orderly process. So that's really the core of the issue here is this backlog, which you would think would be something that everybody could kind of agree on, like, hey, let's get more immigration judges so that we can clear out this backlog. But of course, nobody really wants to ultimately solve the problem. I unfortunately have been covering

this issue for a long time. And I remember at the time being like, isn't the solution here just hiring a shitload of immigration judges? And everyone's like, yeah, but nobody wants to do it. Because frankly, a lot of people benefit from the fact that there is like a massive surge of migrants at the border. I'm looking at the data, the number two issue for people who voted Republican in Congress, 85% was securing the southern border. And also, frankly, there's a lot of left-wing activists who like the fact that we have like a de facto catch and release system, which allows people to just come in and do whatever they want for years and in many cases never even show up to their asylum process. So I think the whole system is completely nuts, and I personally very much support hiring all of these judges because I don't think anybody has a right to come here, and a border and that there's going to be an orderly process by which we adjudicate who comes in and who doesn't. I don't think that's

unreasonable expectation whatsoever. But we also can't just I mean, Title 42 is is it's ridiculous at this point. Like we are not in the middle of a pandemic and you can't just use this like fig leaf of a law to just mass expel people because you don't want to actually deal with the claims. So that's kind of the situation they find themselves in. And then Biden, the other piece of this is they're expanding this so-called parole program that they actually rolled out with regards to Ukrainian refugees, where if you can get a financial sponsor in the United States, then there's a process you can go through in order to apply for asylum from your home country. They've also expanded this to Venezuela. It's apparently been somewhat successful in curbing people just showing up at the border from Venezuela. But that's obviously not a complete answer, number one, because the numbers

that they're talking about are not sufficient, but also because not everybody who has a legitimate asylum claim, and these are places that are violent and dangerous and have all sorts of issues, some of which we've caused, by the way, not everyone is going to have a financial sponsor who has a legitimate asylum claim. Yeah. And actually, it's funny because from the left, some of the reporters and others are attacking the Biden administration for effectively recreating Trump's policy. And the Biden press secretary just completely crumbled when faced with that. Let's take a listen. Just a follow up on the border.

I spent a long time covering immigration stuff during the Trump years. I never saw more damning quotes from immigration advocacy groups and human rights groups during the Trump years, as I saw yesterday, towards this administration. Just reading one to you, Eleanor Acer, who's one of the leading advocacy people, heads up the refugee group, called what the president did yesterday a humanitarian disgrace. And that was echoed across the board in literally scores of emails I got from every humanitarian group. What do you all, what does the administration say to the overwhelming consensus from people who advocate on behalf of asylum seekers and refugees and migrants that what the president did yesterday was a humanitarian disgrace? Well, obviously we take a different view.

What we would say is that this is a president who understands that safe and legal immigration into this country is a key cornerstone of our own security and prosperity. Clearly, you can see that they just can't handle any questioning on this whatsoever. And it highlights what you were discussing, which is, look, the border has been a problem for them since day one. They basically have had no idea what to do. They kind of fought Title 42 in court, then they couldn't. And now they're recreating, effectively, they're recreating the Remain in Mexico policy for three more of the countries. They're expanding it. They're not recreating it, they're expanding it. So they're expanding Remain in Mexico. And by the way, I support Remain in Mexico. I think it's probably the best solution outside of the judges.

I don't think, you know, we should just allow people to come here willy nilly. But the point of all of this, I want to say is that whether you're left or whether you're right, this is full blown, pure hypocrisy. And frankly, I don't think it's actually going to help him in any way. I think it's clear what's happening here. He wants he's going to run for president again. He knows the border is a huge problem. He's trying to recreate Trump policy, but kind of appease liberals who effectively want open borders. And he's like, well, what do I do here? I'm going to try and create some sort of third way. But here's the thing.

No Republican is going to trust Biden on the border after two years of what we've been had happening down there. And I also don't think he's going to get any particular credit with the left or even with Democrats for attacking it this way. And it was also a very cowardly visit, I think, in my opinion, going to just El Paso ahead of his trip to Mexico. We're about to talk about what's happening in Mexico right now ahead of its visit. But look, I mean, even Trump did more. Actually, even Obama did more of an effort in actual visits down there. I mean, to the Biden administration, who have they sent? Kamala Harris down to the Northern Triangle? I mean, it's just not been a seriously treated issue.

But part of what happened is that Obama thought if he was super hardline on immigration and, you know, deporter in chief, which he was, that that would give him the political credibility to strike a deal with Republicans on immigration reform. And Republicans don't want to strike a deal on immigration reform. They like the issue. They like being able to send cameras down to the border and show thousands of people sleeping under a bridge or whatever. They like going down to some country and finding a caravan and like freaking people out before midterm elections. They like having this issue remain unsolved. And so I have all kinds of issues with Biden and this policy. I think, again, Title 42 is absurd at this point. The idea that this is like justified by the pandemic is stupid. People have a right to claim asylum. The countries that we're talking about, let me give you the four countries that we're talking about here where the bulk of the migrants are coming from. It is Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti,

and Venezuela. Okay, three of those four countries we right now have massive sanctions on, which are part of why people are so desperate. It's not the whole story, but it's a big part of why people are so desperate and wanting to come here in the first place. And then Haiti, our hands are dirty. I mean, the dude we're propping up in Haiti may have had something to do with the last prime minister's death. Yeah, but here's the thing. Does that mean every person that the U.S. has ever interfered with has a right to come here? Like, by that standard, anyone from Iraq should be allowed to come to the United States. Well, I mean, there are a lot of people from Iraq who should be allowed to come to the United States. But they don't share a land border.

Look, but there's two things here. Number one, I'm pointing out, we are to blame for a lot of the misery in these countries that is causing people to want to flee in the first place. So if you wanted to deal with the root of the problem, you don't think that a lot of the misery in Cuba is because of us? Or Venezuela? I think some of it. Some of it is their problem, too. Yeah. So anyway, if you have people who have legitimate reasons to come here and are fleeing violence and chaos that, by the way, the war on drugs also helps to create, there are a

lot of things we could do by changing our policy to make it so fewer people wanted to come here in the first place, because this is not like a fun journey that people want to undertake just for shits and giggles. That's number one. Number two, people have a right if they have a legitimate asylum claim under our law and under international law to file for that claim. The idea that the pandemic still now should change that is absurd at this point. But because you have Republicans who do not want to solve this issue, who like the fact that they can send cameras down there and create political upset about it at election time, you have an insane process. And then you end up for the Biden administration to signal to, you know, the right and that they're, you know, serious and whatever,

not only recreating the Trump administration policy, but actually expanding the Trump administration. Yeah, but I don't think Republicans are the only people who love this issue. I mean, I think a lot of Democrats are very comfortable with the fact that millions of people can just come here illegally and stay, which I think is crazy and completely insane. And look, I mean, the idea that every crappy country on earth. Because what I see is. Well, then why don't they? They're also not. They're they're the ones who effectively allowed catch and release and gone to bat for that program over the last 20 years. Because that's what. No, that's not. That's what national law determines. And the problem, the reason why you have people who stay here so long is because of this backlogged immigration system.

And by the way, the overwhelming majority of people who claim asylum do show up then for their court ordered hearings. That's the first court hearing. It's not the actual last one. It's insane that you have years go by that people are here. And that's true. And by the time that you have people who've been here for years, then to say, OK, well, your claim is, you know, is not proper and you have to be removed. Yeah, that becomes a lot more difficult of a process. So listen, I just think it's an issue where there's a lot of dishonesty, where Republicans like the problem and don't actually want to solve it, and where a lot of our policy here in terms of sanctioning these countries exacerbates the issue

so that we have more flows of migrants than we would otherwise. I'm not saying it's 100%. I'm not saying we're the only problem in these countries, but are we contributing the problem in each one of these nations where the bulk of the migrants are coming from? 100%. Yes, I just think that a lot of these countries have agency. Nicaraguans, Daniel Ortega, like, we didn't create Daniel Ortega. He created Daniel Ortega. Like, look, there are many countries in Central America which are doing fine. Costa Rica and many others.

It's not, like, a complete cause on behalf of the U.S. They happen to be benefited by the fact that they can march here from across Mexico, which I don't think is fair, actually, if you think about the rest of the country. I just, look, this is a difference of opinion. I don't think you have a right to come here. And under some of these asylum standards, they're absurd. Like if somebody says they're fleeing domestic violence, look, I have a deep sympathy with anybody fleeing domestic violence. That doesn't mean you get to come to the United States. There's a billion people on earth who are suffering domestic violence by one standard from the human rights campaign. You can allow a billion people to enter here. But do you agree that there are certain asylum claims that are justified? For

example, you brought up Daniel Ortega, who is known to persecute his political enemies. Okay, his political enemies, sure. But if you're an average economic migrant, maybe. And then, look, even the Biden standard. I don't deny that there are a lot of people and human traffickers who exploit the fact that we have these massive backlogs in the system and bring people here basically on the promise that you're basically going to get to stay. You just have to say the magic words and you're going to get to stay. There are two ways you solve that because people do have a right when they have legitimate asylum claims based on our law and international law. They have a right to make those claims and have them adjudicated. There are two core issues here. Number one, the way that we are screwing over these countries ourselves and making it more likely that you have more migrant

flows. And again, you can look at the four countries where most migrants are coming from and see how much of a direct impact we ultimately have. And two, if you end this backlog, which I know you also support, then you get rid of this effective loophole that enables people who don't have justifiable asylum claims to come here and feel like they're going to be able to stay indefinitely. To me, that seems like the two core issues. And, you know, I'm sure there are plenty of Democrats who are bad faith on this. Republicans certainly aren't interested in solving the problem. And so you end up with a disgusting humanitarian disaster like what the Biden administration is. I can agree that it's not fair to anybody. I mean, do I have sympathy for poor people in another country who say, hey, if you pay $50,000, I can get you

to America? Like, yeah, I have a lot of sympathy. My parents came into this country for very similar reasons, for economic opportunity. I get it. What I'm saying is the system has to be actual, the system has to have some merit or, and actually what you're seeing is that you have a deep suspicion of many people, including myself, of the entire immigration system, because I think it's been made a mockery of over the last 20 years, specifically with some of these policies. And I do want to say, Crystal, I hate to say it, but I do think a lot of people like the fact that millions of people are coming here illegally because once you're here, we all know how

difficult it is to get them out and they want to legalize them. And I think they want to get them to vote. And I'm not saying this in a conspiratorial, like racial way. I'm saying, I think that they like the fact that people are coming here. They have the entire, you know, like, oh, immigrants are the people who have more children. So actually this is the way that we have to solve our demographic crisis. I think there's some truth to that, but look, I mean, the truth is I think they like that they're coming here. I do think that that is conspiratorial. Then why continue the policy? Because you ultimately, I mean, the people is, I think they like that they're coming here. I do think that that is conspiratorial. Then why continue the policy? Because you ultimately, I mean, the people who have really actually tried to come sort of some sort of immigration deal, which always includes more border enforcement and more border patrol, have been Democrats. I mean, they have been the ones who have actually offered.

Even Joe Biden offered some sort of package of here's how we're going to deal with this issue ultimately. And, you know, there is no interest from Republicans in ultimately solving this problem. So I'm not washing Democrats' hands of culpability here, but I do think it's conspiratorial, this idea that they just want to like ship in a bunch of illegals and make them vote for Democrats. Latinos are not even voting for Democrats like overwhelmingly anymore. So the, you know, racial demographic argument here doesn't even really add up. I don't even care about the racial part. What I'm really saying is that I think there's a lot of people who are very comfortable with the fact that millions of people

get to come here illegally and they are very OK with. I mean, look, non-starter for every single Democratic immigration comprehensive immigration reform, which effectively means every single person who's here illegally gets to stay and becomes a citizen. I have a big problem with that. Who voted ultimately for more judges to adjudicate these claims? I mean, this is actually something that the Biden administration was pushing. So, again, the thing that leads to people staying here so long under the system is this backlog. That should be something everyone could agree on to ultimately solve it, but I see zero political interest ultimately in resolving the issue.

I do agree it will not happen. Let's talk about Mexico now. Let's go to the next part here. So President Biden is actually set to visit Mexico, and what's happening right now in Mexico is genuinely completely insane. We have some video of a full-blown war that has broken out in Culiacan between the Mexican army and the drug cartels after the Mexican army actually captured the son of El Chapo in what was supposed to be a show of force and of law enforcement and is now threatening widespread violence across the entire state of Sinaloa. Let's go ahead and put this on the screen. We have a little bit of a video from down in Mexico where they could show what they're being narrating

is that a police plane was actually hit by the Mexican drug cartels. You've got trucks which are literally on fire in the street. This was all after the capture of one of El Chapo's sons in Sinaloa. And they are threatening a full outbreak of war in the province. Already, we've had Mexican army officers and people who were killed, multiple cartel gunmen. I was actually in Mexico when some of this started breaking out and people were talking about it. And look, the circumstances here are nuts. Let's go to put the next one up there. The Guardian actually did a decent job of laying out some of the terror on the streets of Coyoacan after the arrest of El Chapo, which, you know, previously

his arrest and others had led to major shootouts and showdowns between the army. This is a major show of force, which was scheduled by AMLO, the Mexican president, to show the United States and President Biden that they were taking the war to the drug cartels. Unfortunately, it is now threatening, you know, domestic, major domestic turmoil in the state because it's a direct challenge, obviously, to the Mexican government authority. President Biden is actually scheduled to bring up some of the fentanyl, some of the fentanyl coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. And this is all in the context of geopolitics. So it's setting up a real problem for the Biden visit to Mexico for AMLO. As I was telling you, I was just in Mexico and I'm not going to pretend I was in a tourist area, so I

don't get a full view. But from the people that I spoke to, I did my best in my limited Spanish. They're very popular. AMLO is very popular, but the cartels are the one thing that they all bring up. They're like, look, the idea that it all ended with El Chapo is a dream. We have this new generation.

They're like, if anything, it's worse than ever. You know, the lack of law and order here is a disaster. And I just want to say, you know,

for the working class Mexicans, some of whom I was able to meet, I mean, they're the ones who suffer the most. Oh, absolutely. They get taxed by the government

and the cartels. Yeah. And they, I mean, they live in fear of violence. They told meed by the government and the cartels. And they, I mean, they, they, they told me some stories, right, about taxi drivers who weren't paying the cartels, who were literally just shot in the head in the middle of the street as a reminder to the rest of them. And it's very uncomfortable, right, to acknowledge some of that on their end. But

what you can see here is a breakdown in what was ostensible some order in Mexico. And it's all really because of a show of force by the Mexican government ahead of Biden and also some of the demands the Biden administration is making there and reminds you of who some of the real victims of some of this stuff are. Biden, one of the demands he wants to make of AMLO is for them to do more, to stop the trafficking of drugs across the border. And so, yeah, this was an attempt to show like, ah, look, we're on top of it. And it was kind of predictable too because this is basically exactly what happened.

This isn't the first time that this dude was detained by Mexican authorities. And last time when they detained him and there was a huge outbreak of the same sort of warfare and fighting and violence. And so they let him go. So it was not a surprise that it would provoke a similar sort of reaction because, hey, last time it worked, so why not try again? So the reason that so much of this focused around this airport is because they were flying him to actually the same Supermax prison that his that daddy escaped from previously um but they were trying to prevent his plane from taking off from this airport and so i read

accounts of people who are checking in and all hell i mean they think they're just like going to the airport going on their business trip or their vacation or whatever and all hell is breaking loose at this airport so total total insanity. I think my understanding is last, I was reading last night that the violent seems to have calmed down since they were able to successfully like remove him and take him to the super max prison. But it just shows you the brazenness and the, you know, the high level that they feel that they can operate at effectively. Also though, we shouldn't't take with that violence. They're actually threatening and they're saying, look, if you do not return him to us, they're like, we're going to have even

more violence that breaks out in the region. So it is not a guarantee right now in terms of what the cartels communicated to the government. And they also know that it would be a massive embarrassment to them if they were to have even more violence happening in the country while President Biden is there as well. So look, it's a total nightmare for the Mexican government. And it could also put some egg on Biden's face to have such level of disrespect and just disorder while he's in the country as well. It's also a game of whack-a-mole. I mean, they took down daddy and guess what? Son took over. I mean, and actually a lot of times when you have a leadership vacuum after

you remove one drug kingpin is when the most violence occurs, because then you have turf wars between the various cartels and gangs trying to fight over who's going to have what territory, and you have leadership wars over who's going to take control of the reign. So, I mean, it's just, it's an utterly disastrous situation is the bottom line. Yep. All right. We do have a little bit of good news for you this morning, though, which is the Federal Trade Commission led by Lena Kahn, who's a real sort of warrior for antitrust and been very innovative regulator. She has announced that they are looking at banning non-competes in employment agreements.

This would be a huge deal. People, everybody from like sandwich makers, I'll get to a particularly egregious example, to white collar workers and executives oftentimes are subject to these non-compete agreements, which means you can't leave and go work for a competitor. It's really insane and it truly is anti-competitive, and it is a key way that employers keep control over their workers. We actually have a clip of CNBC laying out the details here. Let's take a listen. Welcome back, everybody. A new move from the FTC could have some serious ripples across corporate America. The agency proposing a new ban of so-called non-compete

clauses. Eamon Javers has the details. Hi, Eamon. Tyler, the FTC says that rule would increase wages across the board for American workers by nearly $300 billion per year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans. The rule would make it illegal for a company to enter into a new non-compete agreement with a worker or maintain an existing non-compete. And companies would mostly not be allowed to tell workers they are subject to non-compete clauses. Now, the proposed rule applies to all paid and unpaid employees, as well as independent contractors. It would require companies to cancel existing non-compete agreements and tell workers they aren't in effect anymore. And Tyler, the Chamber of Commerce told us today that the FTC's rulemaking is unlawful.

And they told me today it's already contemplating legal action against it. So we're still some ways away here from this being implemented in full. But this is the opening bell of a big fight over non-compete clauses in the United States of America. Chamber of Commerce hates it. Obviously, I love it. They're going to fight it tooth and nail if this ultimately does come to pass. Right now, it's just a proposed rule, so they're in the seeking comment period. Let's go ahead and put the FTC release up on the screen here. They say they're seeking public comment on the proposed rule, as I just said, which is based on a preliminary finding that non-competes constitute an unfair method of competition and therefore violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. We've got a quote here from Lena Kahn. The freedom to change jobs is core to

economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy. Non-competes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool they need to build and expand. By ending this practice, the FTC's proposed rule would promote greater dynamism, innovation, and healthy competition. Just to give you a couple of the pieces that are really important there is it's not just that it would end non-competes. It would actually require employers to tell their employees that non-competes, it would actually require employers to tell their employees that non-competes are banned and they're not subject to them anymore. Because there are a few states that have actually

banned non-competes, but workers don't know that that's the case. So their employers will still have them sign these garbage non-competes are actually meaningless in courts. But the workers don't know that. So they still feel that they are subject to these non-competes and they can't leave and they can't go somewhere else. Well, I think as some people who personally suffered from non-competes, Crystal, we can just say this is very near and dear to the heart. And for legal reasons, we can't go into all of it. But let's just say that it was a pain in the ass whenever we were launching something called Breaking Points. So whenever all of you, if you personally want to make sure that the future founders of a Breaking Points type show wouldn't have to worry so much about non-competes and probably could have had a lot more peace in mind, job security, and more if they were able to

do so, well, then this is something that you should support. But let's look, let's take it out of us completely because we were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are the actual like working class people, especially what they point to in the FTC release. It's like hairstylists. The idea you as a salon can lock in a hairstylist from going somewhere down the street because they're going to offer you more money is insane. And this is one of those things which is used both at the white and blue collar level on a routine basis to lock people into unfair agreements. I've personally had a non-compete used against me twice in my career. Both of them stopped me from being able to make a jump or do something which would have paid me a lot more money and which would have been a better career

move. So, you know, that's on a personal level. I obviously stuck it out, was able to work it out, but it's very stressful, you know, whenever you're in that type of situation. And I'm, you know, at least was able to figure it out. There's some people who they're not. And it's like you said, many employees, even in California, where some of them are straight up illegal, they will still make them sign these bunk agreements so that they at least think what this person is going to do. So I very much support this. It's very important to have and have the ability for labor to move freely. The only, I guess, exception would be like with training and, you know, on a very specific skill, but like in a, in a, in a place where the, you know, workers like, and the skill is like

one of those things where that you can apply across all different sectors. And it's one of those where you're clearly being locked in purely for the business's own benefit. I think it's Which is the overwhelming majority of the cases. And a lot of the instances you're talking about, you can solve with a non-disclosure agreement where it's like, if you're learning trade secrets or whatever, that you can't then just walk across the street and bring them to your competitor. Okay, that's a reasonable position ultimately to have. But no, I mean, let me give you an example that our producer Griffin highlighted for us. At Jimmy John's Subway place, sandwich makers were not allowed to go work for another sandwich shop. Go ahead and put this third element up on the screen here, guys.

This is insane. They had a non-compete clause in their contracts. Jimmy John's franchisees in New York, those agreements barred departing employees from taking jobs with competitors to Jimmy John's for two years after leaving the company and from working within two miles of a Jimmy John's store that made more than 10% of its revenue from sandwiches. Think of the insanity and how wildly unfair that is to

workers who, for whatever reason, left their Jimmy John's job and want to go work somewhere else in their neighborhood, and they can't do it because of freaking non-compete from Jimmy John's. Total, total insanity. And just to give you a sense of how widespread this is, I looked up the numbers. These affect roughly 20 to 45 percent of U.S. workers in the private sector. And it holds down pay because, of course, job switching. And we've seen this really a lot recently with the Great Resignation Wave and all of that.

Changing jobs is one of the primary ways that workers are able to obtain pay raises for themselves. And so this cuts off one of the primary avenues for workers to be able to get a raise. The article I was reading also said that a lot of economists believe there's a lot of research that suggests that the reason why middle income worker pay has stagnated in recent decades is exactly because of these non-competes. So it may seem like a small issue and a little niche thing, and it didn't get a whole lot of press attention. But the reason we wanted to highlight it here is it actually could make a huge difference for the labor force if it is ultimately- Hundreds of billions of dollars in worker

wages could be unlocked by the release of non-competes. Literally, I mean, it could dramatically change, especially, I think, white-collar work, but also it would have a big impact on blue-collar work as well, where I would most want to see wage increases. Like I said, on a personal level, I've suffered through it. And also, you know, I can just empathize with what it would mean, especially if you're, imagine being in a precarious economic spot, you find a better job, and you get a non-compete, and they say that you can't do it. And it would have meant that you could have taken your kid out of daycare or put your kid in daycare or something like that. Or somebody could have stopped working or you could have moved into a better place because you can afford more rent. It's really just not right what's done.

Indeed. So, guys, if you have feelings about it, go to the FTC website and comment on the proposed rule. So that's Matt Stoller would want us to make that plug. Okay, guys, we have to get to the chaos that was unfolding in Brazil yesterday. We're watching this closely. So the backstory is Jair Bolsonaro is a former president. He lost to Lula, and ultimately Lula was inaugurated. There were a lot of questions

because leading up to the election, Bolsonaro was engaging in a lot of the same like Trumpian rhetoric, calling into question the results of the election. But then after Lula won, Bolsonaro just basically, he didn't concede, which of course would have been the right thing to do. He didn't go to the inauguration, which also would have been the right thing to do, but he just didn't say anything. And in his silence, his most hardcore supporters have been sort of losing their minds. They've been blocking roads. They've actually, I just really, I didn't

know this was going on. They were camping outside of like military installations, hoping that the military would back them in some sort of a coup of Lula ultimately. And this came to an extraordinarily chaotic head yesterday. Let's go ahead and put this image up on the screen, these videos. You can see thousands of Bolsonaro supporters storming the country's Congress, its Supreme Court, and their presidential offices on Sunday. And this was all over, you know, they claim the election was stolen. Again, a lot of January 6th vibes here, a lot of Stop the Steal vibes here. A lot of the imagery was stunningly similar to what happened here on January 6th. And of course, this occurred on January 8th. So the timing even was very similar. And you can just, you know, see people basically

ransacking the place. It was a lot of property destruction and vandalism. There's, I see, it looks like tear gas being dispersed. And you can see these overhead images of just thousands of people. One of the differences here is like with January 6th, there was at least like a theory of how this was going to work out for them. You know, they were ongoing with the certifying of the election. They thought if they came in and they pressure people, they got Mike Pence to do their bidding, then maybe the results were going to be overturned. There was no one there. So I think the idea was that just by them showing up in force and ransacking the Congress and the Supreme Court and the presidential offices, that maybe the military would come and back them up. I mean, again, they've been camping outside of these military installations, or maybe there would be some mass populist upheaval that would help them to be able to execute on their coup. Ultimately, all that

really happened was security forces came in, cracked down, and hundreds of them were arrested yesterday and like frog marched out of there. One of the other things, which I don't know why that didn't happen on January 6th, by the way, it is kind of crazy that people were just allowed to go back to their towns. A lot of questions. A lot of questions. Yes, indeed. There also continue to be a lot of questions about what happened here. Like, for example, there are reports that there were 40 buses that brought these rioters into Brasilia, the capital here. All right. So who organized this? Where did that financial backing ultimately come from? No one knows the answers to that.

Lula, who now has been inaugurated as president, is saying he is going to prosecute those people who financed all of this. There's also another interesting note that broke last night. The Brazilian Supreme Court justice decided late on Sunday to remove the governor of this part of Brazil for 90 days, alleging security flaws that allowed the invasion of government buildings by supporters of Bolsonaro. One of the things, the other key questions here is there are some video that appears to show local police at the very least allowing this to occur, potentially assisting this local governor

was a big ally of Bolsonaro. So the fact that that local governor is being removed by the Supreme Court, at least temporarily, is also extraordinarily noteworthy. So a lot, a lot of questions about what exactly the hell happened here and who was involved in backing it. Yeah, it's fairly odd. And also American right-wing commentators, or at least I guess more like MAGA, specifically Stop the Steal ones, are loving it. Yeah, January 6th affiliated people. Let's put this up there on the screen.

Ali Alexander played a big role in January 6th. I do not denounce the unannounced impromptu Capitol tours by the people. The National Supreme Court in Brazil is illegitimate. Apparently Steve Bannon was cheering it on as well. I don't really get what currency that you would have, especially after the drubbing of the Republicans in the midterms as a large result of Stop the Steal insanity. Clearly a lot of people here were really pissed off by it. I don't know why you would look to what happened here as a model. Exactly.

My question to you, because you know the situation better than I do, what is Bolsonaro's role in this? From what I can tell, he stayed quiet. Right now, he's actually here in the United States, which is kind of crazy. I don't really know why he's even here in the first place. But at the same time, it's a different situation because he narrowly lost power. But as Glenn said on our show,

Bolsonaroismo is now in power all across Brazil. Like, their party had major gains in the National Congress, as well as for key governorships in, like, Sao Paulo and for Rio de Janeiro. So I don't understand the point of, is it about him himself? Because from what I understand, like, outside of Lula holding the presidency, the rest of the country is very much a Bolsonaro, pro-Bolsonaro country, at least in terms of the party. Yeah, and honestly, this might change that, you know, as a result. Yeah, I think that's a good question. I don't

think anyone really knows the answer to it. Yeah. Because as I said, on the one hand, you're like, okay, I mean, I sort of felt like the big danger had passed in Brazil because the inauguration happened. You know, he just stayed quiet and left. And I was like, you know what? That's fine. But because he hasn't said much, he did tell them before when they were blocking roads, he told them to stop doing that. So let's give him credit for that. He did yesterday after basically everything had happened, which is also very Trumpian because, of course, on January 6th, Trump waited for basically everything to have happened and then, you know, go home, great patriots or whatever the hell he said. I mean, very similar vibes from Bolsonaro yesterday. It's like after everything had happened, he put out

some tweet statement saying like, OK, let's not do this. This is no good. But, you know, there are a lot of people raising questions about whether there was some direct involvement for him, whether his silence was ultimately like an encouragement, an incitement for his supporters. So I don't think anyone really knows the answer to that at this point. To your point about him being in Florida, go ahead and put the fifth element. We've got some images of him. Now, the fifth element, guys, this is about some of what Lula has done. He halted the privatization of eight state-owned gigantic companies, including a state-owned oil enterprise. So he's already getting to work here. But we have a VO of Bolsonaro, the Fifth Element, just like walking around Florida, which is so strange to see.

He's in Orlando. He's at the home of an MMA fighter for some reason. I don't really know why. And I don't know why the U.S. I don't know why Florida. The whole thing is very strange and interesting. Go to the fourth element, guys. This is Lula's statement. He had here's what he said. He said, you must have followed the barbarism in Brasilia today. Those people we call fascists, the most abominable thing in politics, invaded the palace and Congress. We think no precedent in history of the country for what they did today. For that, they must be punished. And we are going to find out who are the financiers of those who went to Brasilia today, and they will all pay with the force of law. So that is ultimately what Lula is saying. At the same time, you have a reaction from some government officials

here. And Joaquin Castro, who's a member of Congress, Democratic member of Congress, is actually calling for Bolsonaro to be extradited from Florida back to Brazil, not only for this, which, you know, again, we don't know exactly what or if he was directly involved or implicated. He's also under corruption investigation. So anyway, that's the comment from Lula. We'll see what is uncovered from here, who was involved, what happens next, if this is like the end or if they're going to try some other sort of shenanigan and another like failed coup plot. But if they thought they were going to get a big populist uprising or the military to come in and back them in their coup plans, that clearly ultimately didn't work out. Just on the U.S. political front saga, I saw Joaquin Castro and AOC, and I don't know if there were others, calling for Bolsonaro to be extradited to Brazil. And I also saw President Biden coming out and, quote, condemning the assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil.

I don't even know about extradition. I just personally think it gets real sketchy whenever you have former heads of state who are here in the country. Personally, just go back to your own country and they can litigate it because we shouldn't have to get into some high stakes thing here. You're not a citizen. You know, what did I just talk about in the previous block? Having former controversial heads of state just come here for seemingly no reason, just hang out in Orlando. We don't need any of that and any of those problems. Your people are calling you back.

Yeah, exactly. Go join them. You can deal with it. And hopefully he will treat you better than you treated him while you were in office. showdown moment between NPR, a WBUR Boston reporter in an interview with Andrew Callahan for his new documentary on HBO, kind of the inside story of January 6th. And I think it's actually a fantastic view really into like the heart of, I'm not going to call it radicalism because it almost deigns it too much in terms of what it is, but of, you know, of QAnon, of Jan 6, of some of the just general MAGA insanity of which I think

he gives a relatively human portrait of. But with this human portrait included, you know, interviews with Alex Jones and with other controversial figures of which this lady just cannot compute. Let's take a listen. What did you want to get from Alex Jones? The drinking with him while he lifted weights? I'm serious. I mean, you know, this is, you know,

one of the most despicable Americans in our history. How do you think the Sandy Hook parents would feel about drinking with him. You're asking me? Yes. Well, the lawyer, Mark Bankston, who represented most of the Sandy Hook families, loved the scene. He told me that the film was great.

I mean, she just cannot compute that there could be any substantive interview with Alex Jones for this documentary. The Sandy Hook thing, and trying to align him with that as some sort of like platform discussion is disgusting. The entire point of the documentary is to show the roots of clearly a significant event. To do that, you need to interview people who were, I don't even think Alex was necessarily key, but I mean, I guess to the whole ecosystem to try and understand that mindset, why wouldn't you interview Alex Jones for that documentary? How are you going to have a documentary about January 6th and not talk to people who were involved in January 6th?

Yeah. Like, how is that going to, it's funny because, you know, the topic is something that the mainstream press is very interested in. Yes. They're very comfortable with. They really want to talk about it.

But they're not totally comfortable with the way that Andrew Callahan went about doing that. And we played before he got into it a bit with Don Lemon because Andrew wanted to say to them, like, this was about January 6th, but it also was a critique of the media and of you guys sort of specifically and the way that you divide people into these camps. I mean, basically, like the Matt Taibbi Hate Inc. thesis was an undercurrent, a metanarrative of what was going on in this documentary, which I watched and I recommend to you guys, too. And Lemon really, really took on bridge of that, didn't really know how to deal with that critique whatsoever. And then you have this line of questioning, which is like, how dare you interview Alex Jones? Which again, listen, Alex Jones, he is a despicable person.

He has a gigantic platform. He doesn't need Andrew Callahan to platform him. Yeah, that's a good point. That's number one. Number two, he doesn't portray Alex Jones in a good light whatsoever. I mean, Alex Jones comes off looking like a fool and a clown and totally disingenuous if you watch this documentary and the way that he's ultimately portrayed. But there's just such a, you know, there's just such a mindset and an instinct towards censorship and this whole like platforming concept that she's really struggling to get past.

She also did the same thing with Fox. And they always love to do this. They're always like, we're different from Fox. And the whole point of his documentary and his critique of the media is like, no, you're not. You're all the same. You're dividing people. And he really gets to that and reveals also her mindset for how she views herself in this discussion. Let's take a listen.

Right-wing media and... So you don't consider Fox mainstream media? Not when you've got Tucker Carlson saying that. It's mainstream media. Well, considered so by people at more... Fox is definitely mainstream media. Yeah, but they lie. How's that mainstream?

Oh, my God. to the right. But they lie. How's that mainstream? No, I mean, I might be old school sitting here, but if I lie on NPR. If they lie, that is mainstream. That's the whole point. She's like, if I had NPR, you know, I would get in trouble for saying so. No, first of all, NPR is the clown outlet which wrote that entire thing about why we're not covering the Hunter Biden laptop story, okay? So the idea that they're all solely interested in telling the truth and all that is BS. The whole point is that all of them are within a system which is bad, and they love to try and hold Fox out. It's like, no, you're just like Fox. Frankly, you're just not as good at it in some respects. I mean, I don't even know why you'd want to make this case,

because to me, like Fox loves to posture as like, oh, we're outside the mainstream. We're not mainstream. We're different. Yeah. And I have always thought, first of all, that's absurd. You get the largest audience of any of the cable news networks, of course, you are definitionally mainstream. So that's why I'm not even sure from her ideological perspective, why you would want to make this argument because you're actually backing up what the story they want to tell about themselves. Yeah. So no, I completely agree. The idea that they're not mainstream is absurd. All of them are part of a deeply flawed system. And I think Andrew did quite a good job of exposing it. By the way, people have kept messaging me asking us to have him on the show.

We tried very hard to get Andrew on the show. We would love to have him on. Andrew, we've been trying very hard. Apparently you told our representatives that you don't want to come on, but hey, if you see this segment, we're not going to treat you in the same way as NPR or all of that.

You are welcome on the show anytime, my friend. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, now that the first battle in the great GOP rebellion of 2023 is complete, what the hell was it actually all about? What did the rebels want? What did they win? What will it mean for all of us, after all? At times during the fight, it was actually a little hard to discern exactly what the asks were, what principles were really at stake, especially since the 20 holdouts weren't a united front, but rather a collection of different ambitions and grievances. This confusion was exacerbated by the fact that the two sides were both led by sort of pseudo-Trumpian

figures. Kevin McCarthy was directly endorsed by Trump, of course, and had as one of his top allies Marjorie Taylor Greene, a woman who has not found a Trump delusion she would not embrace. And the 20 rebels were led by Matt Gaetz, a pugilist whose natural gifts as a genuine asshole have made him a natural for the Trumpian political aesthetic. The media largely treated this fight as if it was something totally new, totally different. And to be sure, we haven't had a speaker fight this lengthy in 100 years. But as the dust settles on this new GOP House majority, it seems to me most of the lines of this fight weren't actually ones set down by Trump in 2016, but by the Tea Party back in 2010 and by the Koch radical libertarian wing and Barry Goldwater before that. Yeah, there are a few Trump-era twists that are new and different, and frankly, these are the only pieces which are interesting and not terrible. The potential defense spending cuts, the deep state investigation, which Thager is digging into in his monologue.

But the overwhelming bulk of the concessions are actually antithetical to Trump's 2016 break from GOP economic orthodoxy. Remember, back then he was the guy who trashed the neoliberal consensus of trade deals and deficit hawks and would-be Social Security cuts. But now with this fight, we're officially back to 2010, with all its hostage-taking over spending cuts and demands to slash social spending, including potentially social security and Medicare. There's nothing new about these politics and they sure as hell are not populist. But this is predictably exactly what you get when you have a party that under Trump embraced vibes and aesthetics more than actual political content. Because there are a million DC orcs and billions of dollars ready to fill your empty vessel with the anti-tax, pro-plutocrat, starve-the-poor ideology that has been haunting this town for decades now. Let me be a little bit specific here about these concessions, at least what we know of them,

and what they ultimately will mean. Remember, since Democrats hold the Senate and the White House, the most critical action in the session is going to be on items where the House and the Senate must actually act together in order to keep the basics of government operating. So basically, the whole game here is the debt ceiling and the government budgeting process. If the debt ceiling doesn't get lifted, economic chaos could ensue. If the government doesn't get funded, it shuts down, with huge ramifications for basic societal functioning. The concessions given by McCarthy make it much more likely that ordinary Americans will suffer because of radical anti-government ideologues. In fact, many of the 20 who are opposing McCarthy were explicit that their core demand was a pledge that McCarthy would use the

debt ceiling fight to hold the entire nation hostage in the name of fiscal austerity. South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman said that he would never vote for McCarthy until he was willing to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling. He described it as a non-negotiable item. A letter that was sent by seven of the holdouts last month, they demanded that a debt ceiling showdown occur and that they balance the budget in 10 years. Even if they actually follow through on a defense budget cut, the bulk of the spending cuts are going to come from vital and popular programs, things like Medicare and Social Security, that make up significant chunks of the federal budget. This dramatically unpopular agenda appears to be exactly what the radicals have ultimately won. McCarthy agreed to change the process for passing spending bills in a way that empowers the most anti-government radicals. He also pledged to send the country into economic crisis rather than lift the debt ceiling with no spending cuts. For the rebels,

going to war with D.C. elites might be popular, but the actual provisions that they were warring over are decidedly not. Republicans know this, by the way. When Rick Scott floated a similar program as head of the NRSC, Republicans who actually wanted to win elections, like Mitch McConnell, trashed him for it, wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. Now they're implementing exactly the unpopular agenda that they tried desperately to run away from back then. Additional reported concessions have to do with power. Any single caucus member can now call essentially a vote of no confidence on McCarthy. Powerful Rules Committee, which effectively governs how legislating occurs, that's going to be dominated by hard-right Freedom Caucus members. On their own, these provisions aren't really good or bad,

since it all depends on whether that new power is going to be used for good or ill. But again, this group has made it clear what they want to do with that power, and it's hostage-taking, spending cuts, which will hurt the working class, and maintaining criminally low tax rates on the rich. In fact, one reported concession requires a three-fifths vote in order to raise tax rates. I can assure you this provision does not have you, average taxpayer, in mind, but rather the goodies and giveaways that the ultra-rich wish to benefit from in perpetuity. Listen, Trump the man and the movement lives on. He may well

once again be the GOP standard bearer, but nearly all of the economic content of Trumpism was abandoned long ago, leaving literally anyone the ability to claim the mantle of supposed populism, even as they gnashed their teeth in favor of a raft of plutocrat-friendly policy priorities. Fighting the powers that be feels like a populist revolt when given a 30-second gloss on cable news. I, too, enjoyed watching Kevin McCarthy's repeated humiliation over and over again. But what was won is ultimately a more hardline entrenchment of capital and the same old policies

that create socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. And Sagar, the way that the Republican Party has really been able- 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, as fun as the drama that unfolded last week with Kevin McCarthy's humiliating effort to barely attain the speakership was, it still has tremendous consequence. Crystal and I are both looking at its harbingers of major fights to come. Spending, of course, the debt ceiling, Ukraine, all of that. But potentially, one of the most significant demands that Kevin McCarthy was forced to ascend to was the establishment of a new church-style committee to investigate the intelligence agencies. For those who don't know, the church committee was a tremendously important event in modern American history.

It was established in 1975 after nearly two decades of FBI and CIA malfeasance roiled the entire country, from creating Charles Manson to coordinating hit jobs on leftist black leaders to drugging people without their knowledge, and possibly even orchestrating the killing of our 34th president. Everyone at the time was just exhausted by scandal after scandal and the just absolutely insane rogue behavior of our law enforcement and spy agencies.

Here's how Senator Church laid out his committee and its importance at the time. There has never been a full public accounting of FBI domestic intelligence operations. Therefore, this committee has undertaken such an investigation. Its purpose is not to impair the FBI's legitimate law enforcement and counter espionage functions, but rather to evaluate domestic intelligence according to the standards of the Constitution and the statutes of our land. If fault is to be found, it does not rest in the Bureau alone.

It is to be found also in the long line of attorneys general, presidents, and congresses who have given power and responsibility to the FBI, but have failed to give it adequate guidance, direction, and control. Information is a powerful resource. One of the FBI's most significant features is its system for efficient processing, filing, and retrieving of the data it gathers. The potential dangers in this system are obvious. Today we are here to review the major findings of our full investigation of FBI domestic intelligence, including the COINTELPROGRAM and other programs aimed at domestic targets,

FBI surveillance of law-abiding citizens and groups, political abuses of FBI intelligence, and several specific cases of unjustified intelligence operations. These hearings have one overriding objective, the development of sufficient information for Congress to legislate appropriate standards for the FBI." The Church Committee was established right after the resignation of Richard Nixon, and when people in power just could no longer deny the decades-long insanity that had existed at the top. And it yielded real and stunning results. The Church Committee made public and questioned senior officials involved in mass

illegal activity of pointed directly at manipulating the American public, including the official recognition of the MKUltra program, COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, the beginnings of mass telephonic surveillance. The Church Committee actually wrote the rules and put in place safeguards for the FBI and the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, which by and large worked okay for a while. More importantly, what the Church Committee really did was reestablish American trust in spy agencies

with the public who were disgusted by their illegal and immoral activity in plain sight. We are at a similar breaking point right now, and it's why I actually welcome this news. As part of McCarthy's bid to win the speakership, he was forced to promise this new style committee. It's going to investigate the domestic intelligence agencies and their interference, not only in domestic politics, as we've plainly seen now over the last five years, but to some extent, their coordination, in some cases, outright direction of big technology

companies and censorship. This committee is needed now more than ever because we are in a very similar period in American history. The limited safeguards that existed within the FBI and the CIA vanished 20 years ago on 9-11. From that day forward, combined with the legislation enacted by the Bush administration, we have seen the mass surveillance program accelerate beyond our wildest dreams. Worse, we actually saw our so-called terrorism apparatus, promised by the FBI and the CIA

to always be pointed outwards at our adversaries, turned inward at American citizens in the last few years, cheered on by those who once decried those powers when they were used by George W. Bush against Muslims. The new committee to investigate the intelligence community will specifically focus on, quote, the weaponization of the federal government. Its authority will include access to intelligence operations within all law enforcement agencies, and it will examine, surely, the current investigation into Donald Trump and the holding of classified information at Mar-a-Lago, but also the origins of coronavirus, civil liberties concerns about illegal spying on American citizens. The committee, as the rules are currently drafted, would enable lawmakers to access the most classified information normally shared only with the House Intelligence Committee, including covert operations. And the scope and the size of the committee are already being attacked by FBI and CIA defenders calling it

a partisan witch hunt. Which, look, maybe it is. Which is where I really want to focus on. The difficulty in our current environment is that one party does not trust the intelligence community, and the other, at least the base, does. Neither are doing so for particularly principled reasons. It arises from the domestic political conditions of the time involving Trump. That's why I think it's absolutely essential to get to the truth of what really happened during the BLM riots on January 6th with COVID, the cover-up, Russiagate, with Trump, Mar-a-Lago, the Clinton investigation, big tech, that this new committee

has to work with any Democratic lawmaker who has shown skepticism of the intelligence community and in good faith would co-sign at least some of the probes. The current knock on the committee by liberal outlets like the Daily Beast and commentators like Joe Scarborough is it lacks legitimacy because Democrats won't sign on. Yet, in the same breath, they say that the FBI and the CIA have done nothing wrong, that they're acting honorably and are continuing to serve as mouthpieces for the deep state. A successful church-style committee can do three important things. Number one, just simply give us the facts, information, everything on politically motivated or ideological motivated action over the last 20 years. Information is everything, as Senator Church

said. It's why even today they're hiding the JFK files, even though everyone involved is dead. Number two, draft new rules. This will be the most difficult part, but perhaps the most essential, especially to be bipartisan. When we discover everything that has been done to us, we will have to establish new rules that apply to the IC and to everybody. But we cannot create these new rules without seeing how the current ones have been violated. Three, perhaps the most important. All of us need to have confidence that these agencies don't work for one political party or one ideology. Everyone has to trust and have confidence that we're being worked for, not worked on or worked against. Sure enough, there are people out there who will always cry foul. But only the most ardent, I think, MSNBC liberal at this point can say that these agencies

are doing a good job. It is time for a new church-style committee. And I'm actually glad to see the makings of one. And I hope that they try and recreate at least somewhat what made the original one so important in the first place. And that's really what you alluded to in our previous conversation, Crystal. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Okay, guys, thank you so much for joining us, for bearing with us. It's been a long show. We had a lot to say. I've been off for a little bit while.

I'm so happy to be back here in the studio with you, Crystal. And I'm very happy for our live show that's coming up on February 3rd. Go ahead and buy tickets if you haven't done so as well. But otherwise, we'll be back here on Tuesday. Normal schedule from here on out, everybody. Don't worry about it. And we will see you all later.

Yes, and remember, we have moved counterpoints to Wednesday. Yes, counterpoints on Wednesday. And the graphic will reflect that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we have shows Monday And the graphic will reflect that. Yes. Yeah. So anyway, we have shows Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for you now with Counterpoints being the Wednesday show. We'll see you back here tomorrow, guys.

Love y'all. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. What up, y'all? This your main man, Memphis Bleak, right here. Host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month,

so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from it. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid.

Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts looking for your next obsession listen to high key a new weekly podcast hosted by ben o'keefe ryan mitchell and evie oddly we got a lot of things to get into we're gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about i am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account.

Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.