Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/15/22: Ukraine Crisis Update, Canada's Trucker Crackdown, Election Landscape, AOC Silence, Sarah Palin, Trevor Noah, & More!

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the latest on the Ukraine-Russia situation, Canada's new emergency measures against the truckers, a new set of awful polling for Biden and Trump, AOC's weak comments on Pelosi, Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, Trevor Noah's DNC comedy, why the truckers won, 2022 midterm forecast with Kyle Kondik, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Kyle Kondik: http://www.kylekondik.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Long-Red-Thread-Democratic-Republican/dp/0821424424  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're gonna be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media.

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ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Some big updates this morning on the big stories of the week. That, of course, is the conflict in Ukraine and also what is going on with the truckers in Canada. Also, though, in addition to those two big stories, some other things we're tracking.

Some really interesting polling about just how Democrats feel about Joe Biden running again and just how Republicans feel about Trump running again. Neither party really sold on these guys being their nominees. So we'll talk about that and what that means. Also, some really interesting comments from AOC about Pelosi. Actually, lack of comments on Pelosi that were noteworthy there. Also, her view of how a civil war could go down in America and what that would look like. So there is a lot to say about that. Also, Sarah Palin's libel suit against the New York Times dismissed by a judge.

We will give you all the details there, tell you what it ultimately means for press freedom. Sager is looking at the selection of Trevor Noah for the White House Court's audience dinner. I promise you, there's a real lesson to be learned. Yeah, plus, if nothing else, you get to re-watch some great Stephen Colbert

clips from yesteryear, which I'm really looking forward to. I could never watch that enough. I've got a take on the trucker protest as well and what

it really means and the media's coverage of it. We've got Kyle Kondik on who's always great at just giving us kind of the landscape of how the midterm elections are shaping up, what races need to be on our radar.

But we did want to start with some very, very big and noteworthy developments breaking just this morning in Ukraine. That's right. So over this morning, we woke up this morning to find that the tone of the entire Ukraine crisis has shifted overnight. Lo and behold, look at that. So it does not look like invasion is imminent, and that is even according to the Western media. So headline from even the New York Times saying tone of Ukraine crisis shifts as Russia signals openness to talk more. Diplomacy is, quote, far from exhausted, Russia's foreign minister said. And President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine said that the prospect of his country joining NATO might just be a quote, dream. So this is very important. As we remember, the tone of the crisis and the reason

the crisis is sparked in the first place is Putin says, I want assurances that Ukraine will never be a part of NATO. Now there are two actors in that scenario. There is NATO and there is Ukraine. The NATO alliance, the United States being the chief member of that, has refused to rule out Ukraine membership within NATO and to not rescind its 2008 invitation. Ukraine, however, has been, well, really all over the map in terms of how exactly they were going to pursue that. They said it was a goal, but they didn't say it necessarily was going to happen quickly. And Zelensky's comment that NATO membership may be, quote, just a dream is the very opening for an actual diplomatic solution to this crisis. And the reason why is that now, and this is once again according to the Russians themselves, but also the Ukrainians and others verifying this, that many Russian military troops and equipment have actually returned, at least to some of their bases, away from the staging area. So the imminent level attack that appeared to be happening,

Crystal, appears to be rescinded. That being said, as of yesterday, things were still very much up in the air. And I do want to say to Mr. Zelensky, I know that he is a former comedian, but now might not be the time for jokes, because yesterday he actually tanked the entire U.S. stock market. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Whenever he said that he said a sarcastic comment in which he said that the attack was coming on February 16th, what he really meant was, and we actually played you some of this yesterday, is he was saying sarcastically that the West had told him that a date was coming for February 16th in terms of the invasion, but that was actually transcribed and it was lost in translation. The headline went out all across the AP Reuters and Bloomberg wires say Zelensky expects attack on February 16th. Boom, market

drops like 300 points, major financial crisis. He has to come out and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't worry. It's okay. I was being sarcastic. Look, not the time for jokes there, Mr. President. I don't blame him. I blame our stupid ass media that's just looking for conflict here. Hair trigger ready to just fire, right? They're being like, oh, it's on, it's on. Yeah, the man can't even make a joke about how absurd it is that the Americans around here are like, it's going to be specifically February 16th at 1.30 p.m. And here's, they're hiring the crisis actors now and all of this, again, without a shred of evidence. And starting to, of course, now that we see the Russians pulling some of their troops out,

that doesn't mean the crisis is over and we don't know exactly how many have been removed from the border area. Yeah, who knows? So it's still a tense situation. I don't want to oversell it here. But you know that the White House, because we already got a preview of this from Ned Price, if they don't invade, then they'll say, see, we thwarted the invasion by

revealing to the world their true false flag, crisis actor plans, right? And then, of course, if they do invade, then see, we were right all along. So for them, it's a win either way. They get to pretend like they were right, even though they never still have offered even a shred of evidence outside of their own word, which is worth nothing,

that this was what was in the works from the Russians. Yeah, that's right. And this is where we also have to go again to the media and how irresponsible that they have been throughout this entire crisis. We've seen the White House and the media lockstep in pushing the most inflammatory rhetoric from Washington, while Kiev and President Zelensky have been begging us and the U.S. media to stop the panic, which is tanking his economy and which very clearly he has wanted a diplomatic solution to this crisis from the very beginning. And now offering up the Russians what he wants. You can call that what you would like, but this is between Ukraine and this is between Russia. We don't have any real treaty obligation or anything outside of the interest in peace in Europe in order to try and get involved. But once again, CBS News just parroting talking points and intel

straight from the community. Go ahead and put A3 up there, please, on the screen. And you can see they reported yesterday, CBS has learned some Russian units have left their assembly areas and begun to move into attack positions, according to a U.S. official. Some long-range artillery and rocket launchers have been moved into firing positions. Once again, one U.S. official. Some long-range artillery and rocket launchers have been moved into firing positions. Once again, one U.S. official. When you dig into it, it doesn't describe who exactly that is, how they know, is any of this true. And all of this is meant to spark the idea here in the United States and in the Western press that an attack was quite literally imminent. And then, Crystal, 12 hours later, now the troops are pulling back. In other words, it's a dynamic situation. Just parroting what these people tell you, you know, lockstep,

doesn't do us any good and it doesn't contextualize anything. It's very clear here that Putin wanted to play a high-stakes game of chicken. He's basically getting most of what he wants when the president says it's just a dream. He'll probably, over the next year or so, hammer out some long negotiations. Remember, the Minsk Accords of 2014 took a long time in order to settle. What happens with Crimea? We'll have some face-saving maneuver where the Ukrainians say something about NATO, but half pledge probably to never join. And this thing will generally be over. I mean, this is the problem, too, which is that our lack of understanding in our press and just parroting this stuff has escalated things to the place where, as you said, our markets can drop instantly because the people who are running the financial system don't really know. They're listening to the media as well and has inflamed tensions all across and including in the region, arguably making the situation way worse than it could have been if the two of them had just handled this themselves.

I don't understand how you can go to press with just one anonymous official. I mean, standard journalistic practices, you have to have two independent sources. So, you know, and it can't just be like two people who were talking to each other. It's supposed to be two independent sources. So I don't even understand how you can, as an at-all self-respecting journalist, just reprint what one random unnamed official is telling you, especially when they're anonymous. But who am I to say? Apparently they know better than I do. There's another piece here that is really interesting about the way that the public feels about all of this and their view of whether or not we should be going to war. Go ahead and throw A5 up on the screen there, which has some important polling that shows,

according to a new YouGov Concerned Veterans for America poll, veterans and military families are most opposed to U.S. conflict with Russia. Now, let me be clear, the entire American population is opposed to military conflict with Russia. But it makes all the sense in the world that those who have paid the price of our endless conflicts and those who are currently paying the price of our endless conflicts are the ones who are most reluctant to see this turn into some sort of a hot conflict. So here are the numbers. Right now, a strong plurality, 49 percent of the general population does not favor the U.S. going to war with Russia if they invade Ukraine. So even that's in a situation where they do the worst possible thing, they invade Ukraine, still 49 percent. And on the other side, only 9 percent strongly favor U.S. military involvement, while 15% somewhat favor it. So you've got 24% of the public that favor, in some regard, military action.

49% oppose. The rest are like, I don't know. Among veterans, though, those numbers are even higher. 60% of veterans oppose a U.S. war with Russia, even in the event that Russia invades. Among members of military families, that figure was 52 percent. So clearly, the U.S. public has no interest in this conflict. It is a very small percentage of the population that is pushing and hungry for this war. You know, interestingly and sadly, in my view, Democrats were actually more interested in conflict than Republicans were.

I think you can directly, directly attribute that to Russiagate and to all of the damage and the harm that was done during the Trump presidency and the sort of Russia derangement and return to Cold War mentality that has been pushed down very effectively among the Democratic base. And so once again, you see that wasn't just a lark. It wasn't just, you know, oh, ha ha, let's talk about pee tapes. That did real damage to, you know, world relations and the potential for peace in Europe in particular. Yeah, and, you know, look, I want to say this too, which is that, look, the Trump administration, they were buffoons, disorganized and, you know, caused their own idiotic things on the world stage many times in their own ways. expansion and refusing to actually see our own role in creating some of this crisis, not all of it, our own role, and to at least try and understand where the other people are coming from. They're, you know, dogged and old, tired commitments to this idea of like the U.S. being the total guarantor on the continent of Europe as if it's like the year 1970 and we're facing Brezhnev and

not Vladimir Putin, you know, a country half the size, half as powerful, demographically declining, economically 11th in the world, getting beat by the Italians whenever it comes to GDP. Their old view of the world, Biden and the entire administration, because I don't even think Biden is necessarily the one doing this, has created a major international crisis, escalated the rhetoric. And I kept saying that. I was like, listen to the Ukrainians. I mean, the Ukrainians are telling you, you need to stop.

You are one of the people who is making this 10 times worse. And we never listened. And it's not to satisfy domestic political concern. It's because they're truly so delusional that they thought this was the best that they could do, which is very scary to me. I mean, look at how close they could have gotten us into a real conflict. And I'm not saying there would have been a hot shooting war, but I've outlined those accidental scenarios many times. And this is the cost of a forward deployment. We have 6,000 United States troops forward deployed now in Eastern Europe. Doing what? You don't think they are better off here?

You know? I mean, also, it costs a million dollars a day in order to fund those guys all the way out there. I'm not saying that—I'm not trying to put a price on their lives. I'm saying, like, we don't even have a discussion. There's no debate here as to whether any of this is worth it. Yeah. And, you know, even without that sort of hot conflict scenario, worst case scenario, you have energy prices that would go up significantly. If you're someone who cares about climate change, that then puts pressure on Biden to open up, you know, new lands to drilling and more fossil fuel out of the ground. It's a bad situation there.

Of course, it's a bad situation, terrible situation for working class people who are just trying to put gas in their tanks and food on the table. So this had really potentially devastating consequences. I want to emphasize again, it's not that we're out of the woods, but where things stand this morning is Russian troops, some amount of them pulling back. Russia also yesterday had already stated that, you know, they saw renewed opportunities for diplomacy. Yeah, I pointed to that Lavrov statement. Nobody in the media was telling you. They already were striking a different tone.

That came directly out of the Ukrainians saying, you know, NATO, that may just be a dream. We may have to sort of step back from the idea that we're going to join NATO. That one piece falling into play led the Russians to also back off some of their more heated rhetoric. And meanwhile, the U.S., though, I mean, we still yesterday moved our embassy out of Kiev. Yeah, that's right, to Lvov, which is crazy, out onto the ear of the most Western part. Again, acting on this assumption that there's an imminent attack coming tomorrow. So we seem to have been just totally out of step with not just where the Ukrainians are, but where the rest of Europe was during all of this conflict.

Europe, Ukraine, our own domestic populace. This is really serious stuff. And I'm scared that the experts are back in charge. You know, honestly, it's way worse than I could have imagined in terms of how they're running the world. And I realize this is how they got us there. Their immense hubris, their lack of consideration for public consideration, their, you know, inability to visualize what the other person thinks. It's a very dangerous situation.

Yeah, so good news is it seems to be we're stepping back from the brink. But, of course, who knows? Inshallah. We'll continue to keep you posted. All right. Some really dramatic moves coming from leadership in Canada yesterday. The big headline here is, of course, all in response to the Canadian trucker protest, which for a time had shut down some critical bridges, causing shutdowns at auto plants in Michigan. And of course, once they started messing with capitalism, then it got serious.

Well, especially U.S. capitals. Exactly. Yeah. Then it got really serious. Biden puts in the phone call to Trudeau and everything changes. Yesterday, Trudeau went so far as to become the first prime minister of Canada to invoke the Emergency Act. This gives him sweeping, almost, I don't want to say martial law, but sweeping powers that the government normally does not hold, that the executive normally does not hold. Let's take a listen to that.

The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations. Oh my God. Yeah, so this is a huge deal. And I did a lot of digging here, Sagar, about like, what is the Emergencies Act and what was the predecessor act? Because it's relatively new. That's why it was like implemented in the 80s. That's why this is the first time ever that a Canadian prime minister has invoked it. They actually considered invoking it for COVID, which would make more sense because, you know,

in a pandemic- Yeah, that's way more of an emergency. You've got, you know, hundreds of, I don't know how many people died in Canada, a lot of people dying in Canada, extreme risk to the population, especially pre-vaccine, but even post-vaccine. And having some broader powers to be able to distribute the vaccine, you could understand more of a case for this. Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act here has met with significant pushback in Canada. You had one of the provinces,

one of the leaders of the provinces basically saying, we'll get to him in a minute, Doug Ford, saying that he's good with it. Three other provinces saying, I don't like this direction whatsoever. We have appreciated that actually. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we do have premiers of three Canadian provinces oppose Prime Minister Trudeau invoking emergency measures. One other one, Doug Ford, did say he's in favor of it. Some of the experts that were consulted, you know, Canadian scholars on these sorts of matters, expressed a lot of concern about this. They say to invoke a national emergency, the government would need to be saying that these protests threaten the security of Canada, our sovereignty, or our territorial integrity. So these are really quite extreme measures. That expert went on to say,

I have real concerns about fudging the legal thresholds to invoke the most powerful federal law that we have. So this is being done in response to a protest that has been almost completely peaceful and has just, you know, it's caused disruption. There's no doubt about that. Right. But there have been few arrests. There have been some allegations of, like, property damage and those sorts of things. But to call in this sort of broad-sweeping federal powers, the most extreme act that the federal government can take,

to deal with some protests. This is completely insane. And one other thing that I'll tell you from my research on this law. So the predecessor act was called the War Measures Act. And the last time it was used in peacetime was during what was called the October crisis. And for those of you who don't know what that was, that was when a high level politician, Canadian politician and a British diplomat were actually kidnapped by Quebec separatists. So this was an extraordinary situation. One of them was actually ultimately murdered. And that was the last time that anything similar to this was invoked. So, like I said, they consider doing it for COVID, which of course was an extreme

situation. And they said, no, this is too far. But for these protesters, now they're invoking the Emergencies Act. Really crazy stuff. Yeah. And I just want to go into even more of the details on what they're allowed to do. This is CCP level madness. The deputy prime minister said yesterday that banks can immediately freeze or suspend bank accounts without a court order and be protected from civil liability as long as they are connected to the trucker protests. They also are going to be seizing any funds directed towards the protests, including cryptocurrency, trying to go and ban any sort of monetary contributing to the protesters. In addition, what they have said, Crystal, is that if you are one of the protesters who's involved in this, they can not only seize and suspend your license forever,

they can also even go and take money out of the owner of the truck's bank accounts. So we are looking at full-fledged financial warfare on the truckers. I don't think there's another way. They can commandeer tow trucks. Part of the problem was that some of the tow truck operators weren't cooperating with them and refused to move the trucks. They can commandeer tow trucks. So this is quite extraordinary.

We have a little bit of a sound of sound from Chrystia Freeland, who I was just telling you actually knew her. She used to be a regular guest with Dylan Radigan back like a decade ago. Yeah. And now she's been in Canadian leadership for quite some time. But in any case, she is announcing these incredibly disturbing and draconian new rules and regulations that the financial transactions will be subjected to and new powers claimed by the federal government. Let's take a listen to what she has to say. Their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades and report to the RCMP or CSIS. As of today, a bank or other financial service provider will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order. In doing so, they will be protected

against civil liability for actions taken in good faith. Federal government institutions will have a new broad authority to share relevant information with banks and other financial service providers. So the saga with regards to this money just continues. This is totally nuts. Again, there's no indication that there's nefarious anything to do with this money. Now, they don't like that a lot of it has come, frankly, from the U.S. But that's not illegal. And it's not, you know, particularly nefarious. They've been using all this language about like foreign interference and Canadian affairs. But look, clearly there

is significant, not majority, but some significant grassroots support for pushback against pandemic restrictions among the Canadian population. So it's funny to me the way that they've used this money, which there isn't a lot of transparency around. You can't go and look at exactly who's giving and what amounts, et cetera, et cetera. But they've sort of used this money to try to paint this picture that this is some shadowy, secretive thing that is happening. And again, if you got evidence of that, then bring it forward and we can all evaluate what's really going on. But there is no evidence. There's just sort of like insinuations and allegations based on the sheer amount of money that has come in to fund these protests.

Yeah, and the pretext and the language is just totally out of control. As you said, Crystal, they're repeating over and over again, this is not a peaceful protest, this is an occupation. I mean, they're honking their horns. Now, look, I think that's probably pretty annoying. I'm sure if you live there, it's been a gigantic pain in the ass. But as you said, you and I lived through a lot of different civil unrest here in Washington, D.C. It wasn't exactly fun to live around,

but that's part of what living in a liberal, free, open society is. You know, I'm reminded often of, there's that clip from the Newsroom terrible show, but there was a clip that went viral back in the 2010s where the host was like, many other countries have freedom. What are you talking about? And I'm reminded in these moments that it's not truly true. I mean, you have here the Canadian prime minister, who is our neighbor to the north, invoking the Emergency Act, declaring full-scale financial warfare on his own citizens, suspending civil liberties. I mean, that's crazy town. I don't even know, in the history of the United States, it's one of the most rare things to ever have done. I think maybe Lincoln in the Civil War. And this is being done in order to stop truckers protesting in the capital city in a supposedly free, liberal, and open society?

No, that's not freedom. If you can seize the bank accounts and just simply go after them with no recourse in the Canadian judicial system, you don't live in a free country. That's very clearly what's happening here. I don't know if I, I gotta think that one through because, you know, we saw some really aggressive actions taken by the federal government here during the George Floyd protests. We saw what happened with the peaceful protesters in the square by the White House. We saw the way that, you know, federal operatives were sent to, like, infiltrate the protests. Yeah, but those people could raise $60 million, right? That were in Portland.

Sure, they did. And by the way, we should do a segment on the fact that no one knows what's going on with that money, and it is shady as hell, and no one basically wants to touch it. And they have a constitutional right, though. More what I'm pointing to is our constitution, I'm not saying it's perfect, but we're a lot more free than the Canadians, and I can tell you that right now. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, we just were about to cover for this weekend how the CIA has some other secret data collection program, so we don't overtly come out and say we're going to suspend all civil liberties, but I also wouldn't say that our civil liberties have exactly been protected. We can save that debate for another day.

No saying that it's not perfect, but come and take it is a meme for a reason. We do want to point out, though, listen, these protests have had an impact. They're working. Yeah. There are a number of Canadian provinces now that have rolled back some of their pandemic protections. Let's take a listen to Ontario Premier Doug Ford talking about rolling back pandemic restrictions, but also how he is on board and the actions he is taking to further crack down on protesters.

And as I mentioned before, he does support, he is one of the premiers who supports the enactment of the Emergencies Act. Let's take a listen to Premier Doug Ford. Because of this progress, we heard from our Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Moore, two weeks ago, and again last week, that we were fast approaching a time when we could safely remove restrictions. Over the weekend, We have been working hard to get the vaccine to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in

Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Ontario to the people and the people in Today I can announce that beginning on February 17 we will remove all capacity limits except for sporting events, concert venues and theatres which will be capped at 50%.

Those who are still there to those of you who are there with the sole objective of causing disruption and chaos there'll be serious consequences for this lawless activity. We will continue to raise the consequences against those who are holding millions of jobs and people hostage. A number of personal vehicles were seized over the weekend, and those seizures will continue.

Let me be clear. If you choose to use your vehicle to create chaos, you will lose that vehicle and your license, plain and simple. So that's the dual message there, Crystal, which we did find very interesting, which is on the one hand, they're like, okay, we hear you, no more vaccine passports, which is kind of interesting. It's even happening here in the city of Washington, D.C. Our mayor removing the vaccine passport system after a month. Thank you for destroying some businesses that refused to comply trying to have the dual approach of we hear you. Basically, I think what they're trying to do is placate any of the domestic political sympathy with the protesters and then try and remove the protesters through extremely forcible means at the same time. Yeah, it all changed on a dime once they started messing with the U.S.'s capitalism. I mean, that really is the flip right there.

Before that, they really were just kind of, you know, there were some actions being taken, but mostly they were just kind of letting them do their thing. And then once auto plants started to have to shut down because the bridge traffic was closed, Biden makes his call, then all of a sudden you see both the, all right, fine, we're going to give in on some of the pandemic, we're going to throw you all a bone, we're going to give in on some of the pandemic. We're going to throw you all a bone.

We're going to give in on some of these pandemic restrictions, which, you know, that poses no – like giving in on the pandemic restrictions. In fact, that's something that business community really wants. So it doesn't pose any sort of threat to, you know, capital. So that's easy enough to do. And then on the other hand, we're going to crack down on these protesters. I haven't seen polling. I'd be curious to know what the Canadian public thinks about the sort of more aggressive tactics towards protesters. I wouldn't be surprised if there's fairly decent support. If I had to guess. To get this thing under control and, you know, get them off the streets and arrest them and do whatever it takes to get them out of there.

We've seen that in Europe, Crystal. I would put the Canadians much more analogous to like the Europeans. They actually largely support a lot of these measures, sadly. But look, it's their country. You can do whatever you want. But from what I can see in Germany and in the UK, France, there are some protests, but the vast majority of the public seems to either be okay or support these types of aggressive measures. Like I said, look, the West, we have some similarities, but we're very, very, very different people. And even our neighbors to the North, I don't know, I would guess based upon public polling that they probably support it. You know, even vaccine passports and all that were very broadly popular out there.

No, that's right. I mean, I think, again, zooming out for the relevance for the American public, I think the actions of GoFundMe and the awareness of the ability of these tech platforms to just pick and choose which causes they support, that's, you know, obviously a problem that would afflict us as well. So that's incredibly significant. The fact that there was a global spread to other countries of these type of protests. And then something I'm going to be talking about in my monologue is the left could learn something from the tactics that were employed, but also kind of the limits of what this protest was ultimately all about and why it was so easy for officials to ultimately cave to it

in some respects and basically give them what they want. Yeah, I think that's right. Very interesting story that we will continue to follow and see what happens next. All right. Another one that we wanted to show you guys here is some pretty revealing polling about just how everybody is feeling about 2024 and the potential Biden-Trump rematch. Go ahead and put this tweet up on the screen. New polling here that shows is from CNN. So among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, they asked whether they wanted the presidential nominee to be Joe Biden or to be someone else.

45% said Joe Biden, the incumbent president and leader of the Democratic Party. And a majority, 51%, want a different candidate. OK, extraordinary numbers for the dude who is the sitting Democratic president of the United States and who has said he fully intends to run again. The Republican side is not that much better of a picture, actually, for Donald Trump. Granted, he's not currently the president, so it is a little bit of an apples and oranges comparison. But among Republicans and among Republican lean voters, bare majority, 50 percent, say they want Trump as the nominee and 49 percent say they want a different candidate. So basically a 50-50 split for Trump. On the Democratic side, you've got, you know, a little bit of an edge

towards we want another person. And Sagar, when you dig into these numbers, a big part of the problem for Biden is, number one, people are worried that he can't be reelected. 35% say mostly the reason they want a different nominee is because they doubt Biden's ability to win. And the rest offered up different reasons for wanting to switch up the ticket. The most common, 19%, were concerns about Biden's age. He's going to be 82 by November of 2024. On the Republican side, only 19% had a specific alternative to Trump in mind, while 29% said just anyone other than Trump. But among those who had a specific alternative to Trump in mind, one name stood out. 21% of those

voters mentioned Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, with no other potential candidate getting more than 1%. So that also gives you some insight into why Trump has gone to war with DeSantis because he cannot take even a small fraction of the Republican base actively preferring DeSantis to him. Yeah, I think that's broadly the situation. At the end of the day, all those Republicans will still vote for Trump. On the Democratic side, I actually don't know because this is the fascinating part too with Biden. He doesn't have strong support amongst the Democratic side, I actually don't know because this is the fascinating part, too, with Biden. He doesn't have strong support amongst the Democratic base. No.

The reason why I have no—I have complete certainty that Trump would win the nomination is because those 50 percent are the hardcore Republicans who support him and would come and crawl over broken glass to vote for him in a primary. Does that exist for Joe Biden in the Democratic base? See, that's the difference, which is that he has no strong affinity within the Democratic base. Everyone's kind of like, yeah, sure, Joe. Okay. I mean, they'll vote for him. Maybe we'll see how it shakes out. Well, how's the weather that day? All those other different things with Trump. That's not what exists. So even though the Trump number is 50 percent, the other 50 are people who probably hold him in relative esteem, don't like some of the stuff, but still would vote for him because they don't like the left. With Biden, it really is up in the air. It's interesting. While you were talking, I actually pulled the numbers for how Biden compares with past presidents. This is just really pathetic. I mean, Biden is currently tied with Donald Trump on this exact day in his presidency for his disapproval. But Trump had what advantage? Well, he has the fact that the Republican base had a, what, 95 percent approval rate.

They were all in for him. There was George W. Bush was around the 9-11 part of his presidency at this time, so it doesn't really compare. But Bill Clinton, he's running more than 14 points behind him. George H.W. Bush running, I mean, you know, 30, 40 points behind him. Obviously, you know, the farther you go back in history, we weren't as polarized. But just looking at the past two presidents, it's a pretty good benchmark to say that Biden is doing terribly in terms of his approval with the American people. But where he's actually more brutal is really on the issues. Because as we've pointed to, most Americans feel Biden is not focused on the issues that matter to them. Build Back Better wasted, I don't even know what, a year of eight months or something of national attention, and nobody cared about what was in it, A, because it was whittled down, B, because nobody really explained what it was going to do about inflation, high gas prices, and the supply chain crisis. And to this day, the president, I don't know what he does. I mean, you and I do this for a living. We monitor him very closely. He's more focused on ratcheting up the

tensions in Ukraine than on gas. I mean, gas is out of control expensive. It's 50 percent of all inflation. What is the president doing? No plan. There's nobody being summoned. You know, the supply chain is the same thing. You know, I was just looking, you know, what the domestic cost of shipping a couch from China two years ago was $50? Today is $500. I mean $450. They're being passed directly to you and me anytime we buy furniture. That's just furniture.

Same with the car. I just read a piece. 83% of cars in the United States are selling above MSRP. Just in 2019, it was 2%. 83%. That's crazy town. The dealers have all the power now. That's how crazy this system is. Well, for the comparison to Obama back in March of 2010, so analogous time period, eight in 10, 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters wanted Obama to be the nominee again. Right, right. 80 percent.

They loved Obama, yeah. And Biden's at 45. There you go. I mean, so it does show you – on the economic piece, I was thinking about a friend texting me this morning. They were like, what do you even think Biden's going to talk about with regards to the economy and the state of the economy? Oh, yeah, that's a great question. No idea. I mean, probably what he's going to do is he'll try to pump up the infrastructure bill like it was some

big deal when it wasn't. And the American recovery plan, all of the provisions of which have already effectively all expired. And maybe have some wish list of things that he has no intention of actually passing. Yes. But who could say? Who even knows what his real economic agenda or what his priorities are? That was the other part of the problem with the Build Back Better bill is he never weighed in of like, these are my red lines. This is my priority. Here's how we're going to get it done. There are a lot of issues there.

But, you know, it does open up the possibility for, if he does run again, a legitimate primary challenge threat. I mean, this is before you even have anyone really directly on the Democratic side out there making the case against this guy. And it's already only at 45%. And as you say, that's not even like a hard 45%. That's a super soft 45% that could be very persuadable. So if you're an incumbent president looking at these numbers, this is total disaster because now not only do you have to worry about, all right, is it going to be Trump? How am I going to get through the general election? But you got to worry that you are going to face a real primary challenge that is actually a true threat to you as an incumbent sitting president. That is just an astonishing state of affairs. So that's why

these numbers are so significant and why we wanted to highlight them, because it's an extraordinary circumstance and it creates massive vulnerabilities for Biden, who now has to shore up both sides of the political spectrum in order to have any shot at winning the presidency once again. And of course, you know, if he's too old, decides not to run, whatever, and they try to line up behind Kamala, her numbers would be even way worse than this. So if you're the Democratic establishment right now looking at, you know, we got to maintain our grip on power, you've got to feel a little uneasy about what this landscape looks like. Yeah, I mean, look, not just uneasy. They're completely dead. I don't see how they can pull themselves out of this one. And just to give you guys an idea in terms of history, he's currently six points less popular

than Jimmy Carter at the same point in his presidency. That takes real skill. Congratulations, Mr. President. All right. We wanted to bring you some noteworthy comments from AOC in a new interview with The New Yorker. So there were a bunch of little pieces of this that got pulled out. There was one part about cancel culture that people were talking about where she got asked about it. And she sort of, you know, I didn't think her comments were all that interesting. She was basically like, look, we only ever talk about what she described as podcast bros. But we don't talk about Mark Lamont Hill, who got canceled for his views on Palestine. Fair enough point.

That's actually not true, by the way. Well, at least if you point to us. Well, we talk about all this stuff. I've talked a lot about Mark Lamont Hill. I feel like those comments don't really illuminate what she actually thinks about it, because she doesn't go on to say, and I think this is a problem, like we need to pay attention to across the board. She's just kind of saying like, ah, there's hypocrisy. All right. Yeah, there's

hypocrisy. We know that. But what I found more noteworthy, the first piece that I found really interesting, which I didn't see anyone actually comment on, was she got asked three times about whether she thought Pelosi in leadership was a problem. The first time she gets asked, it was sort of this like generalized like, well, the leadership is older. What do you think? And so in that context, you could pretty easily dodge the question because it was about Pelosi and Clyburn and all the Hoyer and all the rest of them. But then they follow up. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. And they ask, is it healthy directly or not for the Democratic Party, for Nancy Pelosi to remain in place as the speaker, as leader of the Democratic caucus in the House? And she again demurs. It's really all about a specific moment that we're in. We're in such a delicate moment of the day to day, particularly with the threats to our democracy.

I believe at the end of the day, there's going to be a generational change in our leadership. That's just a simple fact. Now, when that particular moment happens, I think it's a larger question of conditions and circumstance. Then they follow up again and say, you don't want to get near this one, do you? Good, good, good interview. And she says, it's a tough question. It's not even just a question of the speaker. It's a question of our caucus. I wish have to contrast this with how she started in the House protesting outside of the Speaker's office. really remarkable is that that protest that she did right before she was even sworn in was dramatically successful. She forced the issue of the Green New Deal at that point. She protested with the Sunrise Movement kids. She forced the issue of Green New Deal on the table. She forced, she got a co-sponsor from the Senate, Ed Markey. They actually offered legislation. They put the Green New Deal on the map.

She was using at that point what is her actual power and strength, which is she has this gigantic platform through social media. She's able to command a lot of attention and a lot of press coverage. And when she was taking that tactic, it was really effective. Now, this, trying to play the inside game and work with the levers of power the way everybody else is in the back room, it's going to get you nowhere. And we saw that, Sagar, when, I don't want to relitigate Force the Vote, but when the Force the Vote thing was a live issue, and AOC, to her credit, actually responded to those who were pushing, hey, take some harder ball tactics here, threaten Pelosi's leadership, her speakership, to actually get some things done or at least get a

vote put on the floor. And she said, listen, guys, paraphrasing, listen, guys, we're working on things here in the back room. Not everything is public. You may not understand all that we're doing. For example, she suggested that she was working on getting put on some committees that may be significant, and then she didn't even get on the committee that she wanted. So clearly the backroom deal direction hasn't worked, and yet she's been completely defanged when it comes to posing any sort of real threat to Democratic leadership. They don't care if you say these generalized things. I wish the party had more stones. They don't care. It's when it gets specific and direct says there is a very real risk the U.S. will no longer be a democracy in 10 years. Warning of a return to Jim Crow. Look, that's genuinely one of the dumbest historical comparisons that you can think of,

especially when you're comparing like a Texas abortion law to Jim Crow. But the truth is to me is I think her brain has been so rotted by Fox News and other quote unquote attacks that she is unable to get out of the posture of seeing Republicans and anybody even sympathetic to that point of view as an existential threat to her way of life, like her beliefs, such that she's comfortable with the Democratic establishment. She's one of those people who's like, I am uncomfortable with Nancy Pelosi, but the real enemy is the Republican Party. And actually, I see this quite a bit with a lot of right-wingers too, which is they'll say things like, look, I get it, Mitch McConnell, he's pro-corporate, this isn't this, but he had our

back on abortion, or he had our back on this. So what are you going to do? It is what it is. Can't stand Mitch, but we have to make peace. I see the same thing here. They're just culture warriors. I think she's frankly, you know, just a very unsophisticated, very like activist college thinker. She doesn't speak like a normal human being, which is another problem. And I actually believe her. I think in her mind, she truly does believe that some sort of Jim Crow thing is coming. And part of the reason why that's so dangerous is if you believe that, then it makes sense what she's doing, right? It makes total sense that she's not going to take on Pelosi. She's like, we can't, we can't, we can't show too much consternation in the Democratic ranks because they'll give the Republicans an opening.

Yeah, because the wolves are at the door. If you believe that, that's the butt Trump defense of why she went with Biden. If you believe that, which is ludicrous, if you really do, honestly, you should seek counseling. But if you believe that, then all of her moves make sense. She's just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, DSA, leftist from Brown University. And that's a sad thing and a pill to swallow for a lot of people who may have believed in her. But, you know, frankly, I've seen it from the beginning.

But I just think that, look, you drink this type of Kool-Aid, this is what it's going to lead to. This is why you and I spent a lot of time on this show telling you, you drink this culture war nonsense, it ain't going to get you anywhere. Yeah. In terms of what you really believe. Well, it's also what you're, like this kind of language will get her a lot of clout in certain spaces. New York Times is going to love this. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people will love this. Yeah.

You know, and you get to sort of sound like you're being edgy and radical. You're not MLK. Shut up. Well, and here's the thing is like, you know, I was thinking about this a lot actually in the context of had Adolph Reed on, who has a new book out, writing about what was Jim Crow really? Like, as someone who grew up in the Jim Crow South, what did this look like? What did it feel like? is so that people understood the reality of what we're facing today and that these comparisons to Jim Crow when you have like a voting law in Georgia or whatever, that this is just a historical nonsense. I mean, and that's not to say that, you know, I don't care about those laws,

but also I think it doesn't help to illuminate what the real problems facing the country are and what the real divides are. The danger is not that we go back to looking like Jim Crow America. And that's not to say that there isn't a lot of, you know, racism and bigotry. All those things are out there. But the reality is the leadership class of the Democratic Party, of the Republican Party, of corporate America, of Wall Street, it doesn't threaten them in the least to change the like gender and diversity ratios of their leadership. What threatens them is to change the overall distribution of resources and the share of the population that has power. So the other piece that's dangerous and regressive ultimately about this sort of simplistic language of we're going back to

Jim Crow is that it also feeds into this narrative that, you know, America's original sin was slavery and it's built on racism and it's this immutable thing that can never be dealt with and never be changed. This is the 1619 era. And then it operates on this individual level rather than on an institutional level. And so if that's your analysis,

then you're basically subjected to nihilism. It leads you in the direction of police state tactics to suppress the people that have the bad views, who are the white nationalists who are going to reinstitute the new Jim Crow. And it makes any kind of potential collective politics of solidarity, it makes it impossible. So the real danger to me isn't that any that people in general or that specifically black and brown people won't be able to vote. The danger is that that vote won't mean a goddamn thing. And that's more of the place that we are in right now, where people vote in politicians, they vote for agendas, they vote for policies, and it doesn't matter. I mean, look at what happened in California. That's the danger with single payer. People voted in California for single payer health care. They voted in

politicians who told them they were going to pass single payer health care. And their vote didn't mean a goddamn thing. Because when it came down to it, Gavin Newsom and some progressives and the Democratic Party were more interested in placating the health insurers who had given them campaign cash than they were being responsive to those votes. So that's why if you're just focused on things like voting rights, you're missing the true threats to our democracy that we are experiencing right now. So I don't disagree with her comments of we may not have a democracy in 10 years. I just completely disagree with her analysis of what that looks like, how we get there and what the real threats are. Because if she recognized the real threats, to go back to the Pelosi comments, she'd have

no qualms calling out Nancy Pelosi, oh, we all have to participate in the free market speaker of the House. So that's, I think, where her thinking and the thinking of a lot of liberals has now gone astray and is very damaging. It's very well said. And I always point to that. The 1619, I've been a critic for way before it was cool um on the 1619 and it's exactly for that reason and this is all the thing i always point to these liberals your historical analogy is wrong you're

not living in the 1920s jim crow we're living in the 1890s gilded age and you need to reform everything you think about the way that power and structure and needs to be taken on and the way it eventually was under the teddy roosevelt and the progressive movement woodrow wilson and all of that those were real titanic fights that happened right here that we actually won but you know race is a far more uh race is a far more convenient uh narrative in order to buy in politically salient obviously emotionally as well but has been co-opted by the elite because the more you talk about that, the way less you're going to talk about trust bust and wealth and so much more. And that's the key point.

If you're on the right or if you're on the left and you subscribe to this us versus them racial politics, then what you are guaranteeing is that a small sliver of the country will continue to rule. You are guaranteeing Bezos will continue to be balled out. You are helping them achieve the divide that they want to achieve. So that's why we wanted to talk about those comments. There you go. Let's go ahead and move on to this New York Times case. We've watched this with a lot of great interest because it has far-reaching implications in terms of the press. And probably contrary to where most of you will stand, we'll show you where we come out on this after we deliver the facts. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that a judge is dismissing Sarah Palin's libel case against the New York Times. This was actually a very significant case

because it actually went to trial, so much so that the jury continues to be in deliberations, and it went through the discovery process and more. Now, it all comes down to a 2017 editorial that ran in the New York Times editorial page called America's Lethal Politics. It was written by the editorial page. Now, that's very important because the editorial page speaks as the voice of the New York Times. So she's not suing a columnist. She's suing the New York Times itself. Inside that editorial, they drew a connection between what was at the time a link on Sarah Palin's website, which showed a map of different congressional districts with a bullseye on top of them. They linked that to the shooting on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011. Now, it later came out that the shooting had nothing to do with politics. It was just a complete crank. Well, he was deeply mentally ill. Yeah, deeply

mentally ill. There were all kinds of stuff that were going on there. But anyway, it had nothing to do with Sarah Palin's map. And actually, that was all litigated at the time in 2011. But then in 2017, there was an editorial on America's lethal politics. And in that editorial, they actually cited the Palin map as evidence for why that Gabby Giffords shooting took place. Clearly wrong, clearly defamatory, in my opinion, but was it libel? And the reason why is because the Palin would have to prove that the New York Times not only messed up in what they did, which they did and they put a correction down at the article. She would have to prove that they acted with actual malice, the actual malice standard. And the judge, while the jury is deliberating, ruled that the Palin team did not rule the actual malice standard based upon evidence that James Bennett, who was the editorial director there, had testified within court that they did seek to try and change it, aka correct it. So

the judge, by dismissing the case but allowing jury deliberations to continue, it's a bit complicated. He's basically saying, I as a judge find on the merits that this doesn't hold to scrutiny, but because this ultimately went to the jury and this I know will go to the Court of Appeals, I'm going to allow the jury to find their deliberations because that will matter in the appeals court. So it's a little bit complicated. Now, in terms of how I feel about it, I hate to say it, I don't like the New York Times, but I like press freedom a whole lot more, which is at the end of the day, we have the strongest rules to protect journalists and press institutions, including us here on Breaking Points, because of our First Amendment and our Constitution that guarantees that the benefit of the doubt always goes to the media. And the reason why is because otherwise it would lead to not only frivolous lawsuits, but actions like during the Pentagon Papers and more to try and shut down publication of sensitive documents. That's why

we've talking so much about why the standard on Julian Assange matters so much. And anybody who knows anything about press freedom knows how dangerous it is that prosecution to what it actually means to publish classified information. And here on this one, I got to say it is, that prosecution, to what it actually means to publish classified information. And here on this one, I got to say it, I'm sorry, Sarah Palin. I think what they said about you was awful and was completely wrong, but they corrected it. And a lot of people out there, oh, but people can lie with no consequences. Here's the consequence. Don't read them anymore. That's the consequence. Don't trust them. You shouldn't. And we'll tell you that here all day long. But from a press freedom perspective, Crystal, this is

undoubtedly the best move. And the reason why being that while the New York Times and the editorial page has certainly wrought a lot of damage and they were dead wrong here, the standard has to be set. They have to be able to prove that it had actual malice in order to libel your character, even if you do publish something which is completely wrong. The benefit of the doubt matters to the actual freedom of the press so that we can expose the people in power. And the standard is higher when you're talking about a public figure. More so than a public figure like Sarah Palin. And part of why these rules and protections for journalists are important is because even the best journalists are going to screw something that's exactly right sometimes that's exactly that is just

the nature of the beast and we try to be as careful and precise here as we possibly can be but we're going to screw some things up i do segments of time right we do segments about it we we you know correct when we get things wrong we try to be as meticulous as we can but you can't do the job in constant fear that if you slip up or get something a little bit wrong or even a lot wrong, that you're going to be actually criminalized, that that's going to cost you the job or cost the paper its ability to publish. It just journalism wouldn't work if you had that kind of a stringent standard. This was one of the worst things that Trump would float because he would float all the time, like changing the libel laws. It's an absolutely terrible idea. I will say, though, I did some digging here, and there were some interesting things that were revealed through this trial that gave some insights into the New York Times process, in particular how this editorial came to be and how it came to have this

extraordinarily inflammatory and ultimately completely wrong language about Sarah Palin. And it's basically a story of sort of like, you know, like lazy office workers. They had this piece they wanted to write about like gun control and that didn't feel punchy enough so they wanted to add this angle of inflammatory political rhetoric leading to violence and the initial draft didn't do a really great job making that case because it's a hard case to make how do you draw the direct line between this inflammatory rhetoric and this violent action so james bennett bennett steps says, all right, let me rework this draft. And he inserts in this language, ultimately totally incorrect language, that has the Sarah Palin,

the famous targets over the district and makes a direct connection to the shooting of Gabby Giffords in an effort to make it sexier and clickier and punchier. And so they publish this piece, and actually Ross Douthat sends an email, and is like, this is wrong. Yeah, he's like, this is completely wrong. This is completely wrong. And so they start going back and forth and recognize that they have an issue, and they start talking to the fact checker. And the piece published in the evening and at

5.08 a.m. after like going back and forth all night over this piece, Bennett emails the initial author and the section's fact checker and writes, I don't know what the truth is here. And that was what the Palin team really seized on. As the malice standard. Right, exactly. That, like, they knew that this wasn't really correct. And it took some time later before, you know, it's pulled from the piece. Correction is written. An apology actually went out, which is against Time's policy. But they felt like it was an egregious enough mistake that they needed to actually directly apologize to Sarah Palin, which was also offered as evidence against the idea that there was actual malice here.

Yeah, and I think that's correct. But it does show you how sloppy they are. You know, the motivation here wasn't, let me get this correct. The motivation was, let me get clicks and traffic and punch this up and make it sexier, even though he admits here, I don't actually know what the truth is. There you go. I thought that was interesting.

And there's your takeaway, everyone. There's a lot of people who listen to the show. You should listen to that, and you should be like, hey, don't listen to the New York Times. Or whenever you read the New York Times editorial page, you should try and fact check a lot of these things ourselves. We do it, too. And anytime we use the Times reporting, usually it's just for the headline in order to show

it kind of in its starkness. But we'll go and check and make sure that what this is showing, etc. And that's part of the problem. We live in an individualized age where you have to have deep lack of trust, and you have to be able to go through and think a lot for yourself. But at the end of the day, press freedom is what matters more than anything else. Not just about this show. It's about every show, about any independent journalist out there. Because look, if push comes to shove, it ain't them that will actually be paying the price. It will be all of us, the much, much, much, much smaller players who don't have as much money, who don't have the same support. We don't have the millions to have lawyers fight the sound

force in court the way that they do. Exactly. So if this show was in the UK or somewhere else, for example, where they don't have true freedom of speech and something like this happens, you're dead. And I don't think that's the right standard. All right, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, if you were to ask me one of the best things that Trump ever did for the city of Washington, D.C., it would have been killing the White House Correspondents. I know it sounds trivial in practice, but it actually mattered for far-reaching reasons that I'm going to outline today. You see, the Obama presidency fully completed the merger of elite media with the elites who

ran the country. It completed the class transition of journalists to elite regime defenders rather than those who are paid to question the regime. Now, this happened for a variety of reasons, but as Matt Taibbi has so eloquently described, the main reason is class. Journalism used to be a profession that was working class, and it drew muckrakers. It increased in status slowly over time, and soon it became a way to enter the American aristocracy. It was symbolized best in the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Professional stenographers who gather with Hollywood and business elites to impress upon the world they are among the pinnacles of power. Their job used to be to question it.

And under Trump, we actually had somewhat of a return, at least in rhetoric, to that oppositional posture that should exist between journalists and the White House. After Michelle's wolf performance at the WHCA in 2017, coincidentally, also while I was a card-carrying member of the White House Correspondents Association, the organization actually did something useful for once. They decided, you know what? Screw all this Hollywood glitz and nonsense. Let's use the organization for something useful. Imagine that. And for a brief shining moment, they did something

good. The WHCA invited historian Ron Chernow to the dinner to help the journalists understand their place in history and place the current times in context. Chernow is by far one of the greatest biographers of American presidents that is alive today. It was an inspired choice, and it sought to use the event not only to raise money for journalism scholarships, but to actually educate the journalists in question. Sadly, it was one-off event. And now that Biden's back in power and COVID is mostly done, the regime is solidly trying to recreate the glory days in the most pathetic way possible. The organization announced yesterday that a comedian, and I guess that is his technical title, Trevor Noah, the host of The Daily Show, will host the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That is a terrible choice for many number of reasons. Number one, it shows that the WHCA

made the explicit choice to reject the new course, return to try to make themselves as cool people in entertainment and Hollywood. They couldn't stand not hobnobbing with the powerful for so many years. That is as close to fame as most of these people are ever going to get. But number two, it's the obvious. Not only is Trevor Noah not that funny, but his political comedy, it only goes one way. Noah is about as reliable as a Democratic mouthpiece that exists. In fact, Noah has boasted that he is glad not to make jokes about Joe Biden. His idea of a joke, apparently, is lecturing his audience most recently on critical race theory as to why his adopted country of America should be representative of the Supreme Court. In fact, a review of all of his supposedly newsworthy things that I found of him over the

last year shows almost every single time towing the establishment Democratic media identity politics line in support of President Joe Biden. Look at those headlines right there. The guy is not a comedian. He's basically a Democratic Party operative and, frankly, not even a very good one. So, ha ha ha, can't wait for the comedy that night. Sure, Biden may get a few jabs here or there, but Noah is just not simply going to give him the mockery he deserves. In my opinion, the only comedian who ever did a good job at the WHCA was Stephen Colbert, for mocking George W. Bush to his face, making him uncomfortable, insulting him. If you're too young to remember this, here's a taste.

And tonight, it is my privilege to celebrate this president. Because we're not so different, he and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut. Right, sir? That's where the truth lies.

Right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now I know some of you gonna say I did look it up and that's not true. That's because you looked it up in a book. Next time look it up in your gut. So good I still cringe even though I hate George W. Bush to my core. That's what it really looks like, people. Bush deserved it for the disastrous war in Iraq,

and at the time he was one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history. That's what we deserve right now. Joe Biden is one of the worst presidents that we've had in modern times. He is historically unpopular. He blew probably the easiest presidential layup in history. And he deserves to be mocked to his face for what he has done to this country. But the WHCA, they're not going to do that because it doesn't actually challenge power. They can't pick someone who might offend Biden's feelings. And in a way, Noah, the WHCA, and Biden all deserve each other.

They are a symbol of a failing dream, that the establishment has any credibility. Noah most recently tried to capitalize on the Joe Rogan controversy by reminding people that he and his show exists because he routinely only gets like 500,000 viewers a show. That's about as bad as the average CNN broadcast. Nobody watches him. If we only got that daily, we would be living under a bridge and this show would be a massive failure. Real comedians, Rogan, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schultz, Bobby Lee, Segura, Kreischer, all those other guys out there, they're crushing Trevor Noah on the daily, on the internet. They are crushing him precisely because they're willing to tell jokes that make the people in power upset and are actually funny.

Noah is a dying symbol of accepted comedy. The mainstream media who are throwing the event are a dying symbol of what was once trusted as journalism in this country. People who had credibility to deliver the news to you. That's dying. Collapsing. to deliver the news to you. That's dying, collapsing. They're partying like it's Versailles 1790 because they just can't see how complicit they are in getting us to where we are today. On top of all of that is Biden,

himself a literally dying symbol of the old order. They think they can pretend long enough that we'll all just go back to sleep, but it's far too late for that. And they underestimate all of us at their own peril. That's really what I took away from it, Crystal, which is that Trevor Noah, look, I don't think the guys... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, guys, we have, of course, been covering the trucker protests that occupied Ottawa, shut down key bridges, inspired actions in countries around the world and forced a massive government reaction. We told you about that today. That protest also seems to be having some immediate policy impact. Multiple provinces have announced some easing of pandemic restrictions, seemingly in response to the movement, even as Trudeau announces dramatic actions to crack down on their protest. Now, as I've watched all of this unfold, the dominant feeling that I have been struck by is deep envy. I am sympathetic to some aspects of the truckers' cause, but clearly it's not really my cause. If every pandemic restriction was lifted tomorrow, it would do nothing to solve the

corruption, greed, and grotesque Gilded Age disparities afflicting our society. So to see the truckers' organization, their attention-grabbing tactics, their discipline, their ability to mess directly with commerce, yeah, I am jealous as hell that the populist left cannot pull off something on that mass scale. In fact, the last time my ideological brethren did anything close was just about a decade ago, September 2011, when the first activists disgusted with Wall Street crimes and working class misery launched Occupy Wall Street. I've been thinking a lot about Occupy recently. Partly, I've been reading a new book about the legacy of Occupy from Michael Levitin,

who we're actually having on KKF this week. But it really does represent this kind of pivot point where for once in American society, we actually got the divide correct. The 99% versus the 1% class was foregrounded, elite lawlessness was central, and the tactic was also really symbolically powerful. Occupying a park in the heart of Wall Street, forcing cloistered bankers to have to look in the eyes of their detractors and their victims every single day. The violent and hysterical response from authorities also helped to make the case. Occupy activists were, in fact, over the target. Now, the truckers imagine that their

demands represent a threat to elite power, but in reality, that's kind of a farce. In fact, the corporate world has been pushing for reopenings. Commercial real estate developers, they need bodies back in offices. Bosses need worker bees back under their watchful gaze. Schools need to be open so that workers can make their shifts. That's not to say that ending pandemic restrictions is the wrong policy. In fact, I agree with lifting most restrictions at this point, given how successful the vaccines have been. But we shouldn't confuse a policy being correct with thinking that implementing that policy would be a meaningful challenge to the capitalist powers that be. It's only really a meaningful challenge to the confused wine moms duped into double-masking their kids outdoors.

It's telling that the Canadian government basically took no action against the protesters until they were hurting trade with us. Once they started messing with capitalism, the truckers were immediately shut down. But while, yes, their tactics for sure hurt the bottom line of powerful players in corporate America, their actually core sure hurt the bottom line of powerful players in corporate America, their actually core demands don't. And there's a really obvious sign that this is the case. The media has covered this protest in the partisan manner of any other culture war nonsense that will have zero impact ultimately on the established order of things. Instead of with the bipartisan uniform condemnation that you see when movements really

represent a threat to the power elite. Because the core sources of power, money, corruption, political rigging, those are all bipartisan in nature. Attacks on these things trigger uniform smears and condemnation. Think Biden's Afghan withdrawal, or think about the fight for Medicare for All, or think about every anti-war movement ever. With the truckers, GOP-aligned corporate media, they're totally comfortable backing them and lauding them as freedom fighters. This comes on the heels, of course, of their derisive treatment of George Floyd protesters, including demands to call in the military and the passage of multiple bills designed to constrain

and defang protests and even to legalize running protesters over in the street. Sure, the libs have been hypocrites on the trucker protests, but the right has done a total 180 here as well. Meanwhile, CNN and MSNBC, they're opposed to the truckers, intent on tarring the entire group with the extreme or racist views of the fringe in order to dismiss their legitimate grievances, spinning out articles on how their tactics are basically fascism. These networks were, of course, very supportive of the George Floyd protests, even as they came during COVID and pre-vaccine and included a significant amount of chaos and violence. Without debating the worthiness of these two different protests, it's very clear the response to both of those two protest movements was thoroughly partisan. Coverage and treatment

totally depended on which political team stood to benefit. Contrast that partisan treatment of the George Floyd protests and the trucker protests with the uniform smearing of Occupy, a movement which, while ultimately impotent, mainstreamed a devastatingly accurate critique of the most powerful institutions in the entire world. GOP-aligned media certainly led the charge against Occupy. Rush Limbaugh called them pure, genuine parasites and claimed that rhetoric about the 99 percent was anti-Semitic. Over on Fox, Brett Baer said the protests were supported by the Ayatollah of Iran and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Eric Erickson of Red State partnered with Fox News for a whole campaign around how he and his fellow upstanding citizens were part of the taxpaying 53 percent, supporting the lazy 47 percent who could just hang out and protest on the government dole.

This would, of course, ultimately lead directly to the campaign-destroying comments from Mitt Romney about the 47%. But liberal outlets, they were also dismissive. The initial phases of the protests were met with a nearly complete blackout on coverage. Here's NPR getting raked over the coals by their listeners for their lack of any kind of coverage. Then, once the protests grew to the size where they just couldn't really be ignored, hosts and articles were routinely contemptful of the protesters themselves and also their core grievances. Over on CNN, Erin Burnett, she sneered at the demonstrations. She said, it's not just a bunch of dancing hippies protesting. There are all kinds of people there,

babies, teachers, cheerleaders, and that, she said, panning the camera to a freaky zombie guy, before launching into a stirring bit about how they don't even really understand how great the bank bailouts were for ordinary taxpayers. Glenn Greenwald thoroughly trashed CNN for their coverage at the time, writing, I bet that these two CNN personalities would genuinely find the suggestion that they are not objective to be baffling and offensive. That's because their world begins and ends with Jamie Dimon, Citigroup executives, and Columbus Circle corporate gallas.

I was at MSNBC at the time, and the network, by and large, as I recall it, covered Occupy as a fringe distraction from the real political work being done by the grownups in the Obama administration. So when your movement is really going after something big, both sides of the political spectrum are going to demand an end to it and potentially call for the military to come in and quash it. So listen, if your protest is being praised by some faction of partisan media, that's fine. It doesn't mean the cause is unjust. Just that it isn't going to really represent any

sort of threat to power. And don't be fooled by Fox News and other GOP-aligned media's new working class rhetoric. They are still fully cucked to capital. As for me, I'll continue to wish for a day when the effective tactics of the truckers are used on behalf of a movement that might earn the unified contempt of every legacy media ghoul and truly shift power towards the working class. Sager, it's interesting to think back about Occupy and what... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, a great friend of the show, Kyle Kondik of Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, but also the author of a great book. Let's put that up there on the screen. The long red thread, how democratic dominance gave way to Republican advantage

in U.S. House elections. Highly recommend it to all of you. And within that vein, Kyle, you're joining us to talk just about the midterm elections, redistricting and all of that. Since the last time we spoke, what's your general view of the landscape heading into the midterm elections? I mean, it's just bad for Democrats. I mean, I don't know what else you're doing. Thanks for joining us. So much of this is you just kind of follow where the president's approval rating is. And if it's lousy, as it was for, you know, Bush in 06 and not so much for Obama in 2010, although the trajectory was bad. And obviously, I don't know would be a bad election for Democrats. Obama was unpopular in 2014.

Trump was unpopular in 2018. And, you know, we saw what that sort of translates to in the midterm environment. We saw either the House or the Senate flip in all four of those years. The longstanding history of midterms going back to the Civil War is that the president's party almost always loses ground in the U.S. House, often loses ground in the U.S. Senate. And, you know, I think we last talked right around the time of the Virginia, New Jersey elections. Those were not good performances for Democrats. And Biden's approval number is even worse now than it was, you know, in early November during those elections. And so there are all sorts of little pieces of the story that we could talk about. But I think the top line is really important that if the president's approval rating

remains weak, you would just not expect Democrats to do particularly well in November. Talk to us about I think it was you all who had an analysis that said Republicans could actually win a historic majority in the House if they have a few more balls bounce in their direction. Lay that analysis out. And then also, how many swing districts at this point even really exist in America? Because we know the way that, you know, the lines have been drawn in ways to shore up a lot of safe districts for Democrats, a lot of safe districts for Republicans. And so the only contest in the general election that really matter are these like few dozen congressional districts. So when the Republicans won the flip the house in 1994 that was you know historic they hadn't won the house in the 40 years prior to that.

The Democrats had dominated the house really since the time of FDR and the New Deal but in 94 they flipped 54 seats and then in, they won the House back from the Democrats who won in 2006. Republicans flipped 64 seats in 2010. But one thing you got to remember about that is that the Republicans were starting from a fairly low place. They'd only had in the 170s in terms of number of seats heading into those elections. This time, the Republicans are already at 213 that they won in 2020. And so they only need to pick up five to get the majority. And so I think you'll sometimes hear Republicans say, oh, we're going to have this historic election. We're going to win 60 or 70 seats. That seems a little unrealistic. However, if the Republicans just won 35 more than they won in 2020, that would get them to 248 seats, which would be their biggest majority since right before the Great Depression.

And I do think it's possible that they could do that. And, you know, you have to pick up a a swing district in 2022 is, is different than what it might be in 2024. Because in the context of 2022, it's probably going to be a bad environment for Democrats, or at least not a good environment for Democrats. And so seats that Biden maybe won by 10 or 15 even points, maybe those are swing districts in 2022, but maybe they aren't in 2024, because they're, you know, they sort of revert back to their presidential partisanship in the presidential year. You know, you're always going to have a lot of uncompetitive districts in house elections because so many parts of the country are

uncompetitive. You know, it's hard to draw competitive seats between the two parties in Los Angeles or New York City. It's hard to draw, you know, a district of Democrat could win in, you know, Western Kansas or Western Nebraska or something. But, you know, there aren't that many competitive districts across the country. We're still going to, you know, figure out what the tally of that is. But again, what a competitive district is kind of depends in some ways on what the political environment is. Right. You know, this is the interesting thing, Kyle, then. So how are we supposed to gauge the so-called swing districts? My whole life I hear about swing districts, swing districts, swing districts. But as redistricting and all that continues to go, and as you say, whenever so much of the country is just actually uncompetitive, where should we look?

Do you have an idea, not even of just races, regions? Where should we keep an eye on? You know, look, I think that Michigan's map, I think, is a good example of a competitive map in that you had a new commission system there. Previously, it was a Republican gerrymander. The Democrats were still able to claw back to a 7-7 tie in the delegation in the most recent couple of elections, in part because some of the safe Republican suburban seats that they drew for themselves all of a sudden weren't safe anymore by the end of the decade. You know, these things do change over time. And we saw big changes in the electorate, you know, in 2016, 2018, 2020. But there are, you know, there are a number of districts drawn in Michigan that really are plausibly winnable by either side. And you can look at, you know, some other parts of the country, like Virginia Beach, for instance, almost always

seems to host competitive presidential or House elections. Some of the Philadelphia suburban areas have historically been pretty competitive, particularly like Bucks County. You know, there are certain pockets in the country where you do often see competition. Upstate New York is another example. Of course, the Democrats drew a gerrymander in New York state to try to, you know, win as many seats as possible. But some of those upstate seats are still going to go Republican. You know, so, again, there are competitive places. But, you know, how you draw the lines, of course, matters a lot.

In a state like Michigan, they seem to try to maximize the amount of competition. Other places, they're going to try to, you know, minimize the level of competition. Texas is a good example of that, where Republicans drew a positive map for themselves, but it was more designed about protecting the seats they already had as opposed to necessarily adding seats. Talk to me about the Senate then. How are things looking for Mitch McConnell and the Republicans there? You know, on one hand, I think you look at the Republican candidates in the, you know, the frontline Senate seats, you know, like Georgia and Arizona, Nevada. And I don't think the Republicans have kind of A-list recruits in

those places. But at the same time, if the political environment is bad for Democrats, I think all these candidates are capable of winning. You know, the likeliest Republican nominee in Georgia is Herschel Walker, the football star who has, seems like a lot of baggage. And yet there have been, there's been some recent polls polls that shown him narrowly ahead of Raphael Warnock, Democratic candidate, obviously got a long way to go there. You've got a competitive primary in Arizona. Adam Laxalt, the former state attorney general in Nevada, is the likely challenger to Catherine Cortez Masto in that state.

I got to tell you, Nevada, demographically, it's very much a working-class state, but we've seen Democratic erosion, particularly with working-class voters. So I think that Cortez Masto is in real trouble, even though Laxalt is pretty conservative, and I wouldn't say that he's the greatest challenger, but certainly capable of winning in this kind of environment. So there's a lot of, I think, hand-wringing on the Republican side about, are the challengers good enough? But again, it might be that the challengers are lousy, but some of them end up winning anyway. So I think that the real question comes down to this.

It's obviously Biden and popularity. Is it issues-based in any way? And what do you think those issues are? I do think that it is issues-based in the sense that there are concerns that people have with the country that maybe they feel like Biden and the Democrats aren't dealing with in the right kind of way or aren't addressing fully. I mean, there's been a lot of polling that's indicated that there is broad approval of some of the things in the Build Back Better social spending packages Democrats are trying to pass. But a lot of people don't feel like that sort of legislation is actually addressing what they see as the problems in the country are, and that is, you know, COVID, inflation, gas prices, et cetera. And those are harder things, I think, for the, you know, for the White House and for Congress to affect, you know, ultimately, I mean, again, I'm no economist, but, you know, the Federal Reserve may have to intervene to try to deal with this inflation problem if indeed it's going to be a lasting issue. And, you know, but that's not really the White House.

And, you know, if the Fed does intervene, that could cause economic problems public cares about and maybe what the White House cares about. And also this feeling that maybe the White House just isn't up to the task of dealing with these problems. But again, this is so common in midterms. You know, there are problems that arise after a president gets elected. And it can be pretty hard for the White House to be able to get a handle on those problems. Yeah. And finally, Kyle, looking historically, is it too late for Democrats to turn things around because on the or for conditions just generally to improve in their favor? Because on the one hand, November is going to be right around the corner. On another hand, of course, in political time, it can be an eternity and a million things can happen between now and then.

So what do we know from history in terms of that? That's a great question. I think I don't think the cake is baked yet. But I do think that by the time you maybe get to the summertime, people's perceptions of what reality is, I think they kind of lag behind what reality may be. Like a good example is, so in the lead up to the 1958 midterm, which is one of the huge midterm blowouts in American history, the Democrats just crushed the Republicans all over the country in that election. There was a really bad recession in late 1957, early 1958, and things had started to recover in the summer and the fall, but I don't think public opinion necessarily caught up to that,

and the Democrats still had a really good election. And so if you still see COVID and inflation and other things as a problem, people feeling bad about the economy, even though the actual metrics are, you know, COVID and inflation and other things as a problem, people feeling bad about the economy, even though the actual metrics are, you know, some of them are pretty positive. But people, if people's feelings are kind of still negative in the, you know, late spring, early summer, even if things kind of turn around, it might be hard to get people back on board for that. You know, we also have, you know, a lot of states, of course, do a lot of early voting, absentee voting. And so late breaking developments may matter less than they have have in the past because a lot of votes are going to be banked by Election

Day anyway. Those are all great points. Really good. Thank you so much for educating us, Kyle. I think this is very helpful, man. I love your opening point. Well, things are bad for Democrats. It's pretty simple. Yeah, the rest of it's just gravy, you know. Great to see you, man. Thank you. Thanks, guys, so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thank you also for supporting our work, you know, in the time of all this censorship and stuff. The Canada thing really does get me. I mean, in terms of cutting and using the financial system, not just in terms of Canada itself, they're a country that can do what they want, but weaponizing Western financial media companies in order to do that.

That's why we have it set up and we rely specifically on you and we have that relationship, which is solid, I guess, for now. You can always doubt. Did you see Jordan Cheridan, what YouTube did to him? Yeah, I did. Yeah, they've censored taking his channel temporarily down. Gave him a strike, right. For giving him a strike for something, a live stream he did like a month ago.

Right. Questioning Stop the Steal. Right, that was deemed to have some unspecified misinformation in it. So it just goes to show you. a livestream we did like a month ago. Right. Questioning Stop the Steal. Right. That was deemed to have some unspecified misinformation in it. So it just goes to show you. You never know what you're facing.

And that's why we rely on you. We thank you all so, so deeply. And we'll see you guys on Thursday. We'll be right back. Arthur writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up.

They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningrunning weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

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