Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/6/23: Chinese Spy Balloon Shot Down, Biden vs Trump 2024, Trump Refuses To Endorse GOP Primary, Biden Rigs Dem Primary, Krystal and Saagar on Joe Rogan, History of Spy Balloons, Adani Corporate Scam

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Krystal and Saagar discuss the Chinese Spy Balloon shot down by the Biden admin after days of it floating over the country, the seemingly inevitable rematch between Biden and Trump begins to take shape, Pete Buttigieg bristles when asked about Biden's re election polling, Trump refuses to endorse the winner of the GOP Primary, Biden attempting to rig the Dem primary by moving the first state from Iowa to South Carolina, excerpts from Krystal and Saagar on Joe Rogan where they chat about Men's struggles, Stock Ban, and Cable packages propping up Mainstream Media. Saagar looks into the history of Spy Balloons and Krystal looks into Gautum Adani, the richest billionaire in Asia and potentially the largest Corporate Scammer of all time. To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm Sagar Anjeti. Welcome to Breaking Points. Every week, we have four shows for all of you, bringing you the most important stories in the country, especially those that the mainstream media won't touch. So if you want to support what we are up to here, we have a special discount for all of you this month at BreakingPoints.com.

With that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting stories this morning. Of course, we have all the latest from Balloon Gate, the latest responses, the back and forth, what Trump is saying now, all kinds of stuff to get into there. Even a UFO tie-in. Yes, we had to. We've got it all for you. Also, a new 2024 poll that, boy, oh boy, does it look bad for Joe Biden. Looks bad for him with regards to the Democratic base, looks bad for him with regards to the general election. He's even losing to Trump now. So we'll give you all of those details.

We also have on the Republican side of the equation, the Koch network looking to jump in behind one candidate that could, of course, reshape that race dramatically. We also have other news from the Democratic primary. They are already aggressively trying to rig it to make sure that Joe Biden does become the nominee. And as you guys may know, we were on the one and only Joe Rogan podcast last week. Yes. A lot of fun. Very, always very intense experience. But we have a few of those highlights for you this morning. There we go. Before we get to any of that, though, tomorrow is the State of the Union address and we will be covering it here live for you. Our friends, Kyle Marshall, will both join us as well. Are we getting Ryan and Emily in? I don't know if we have confirmation. We'll see. We're still working it all out, guys. But that is going to start at 8pm

tomorrow night, so make sure you join us here for all of the coverage that you are looking for. That's right. We've got a live stream here on the channel. It's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. We'll watch it all together, and then we'll break it all down for you afterwards. So pre and post game analysis for all of you who are out there. But let's start with Balloon Gate. So we won't bore you all with the old news now at this point, although we do got to watch it just for amusement's sake. Let's put it up there on the screen. There's the balloon. It's floating over American territorial waters off of the coast of the Carolinas, popped right there by a fighter pilot.

An air-to-air kill, the first in quite a long time in the history of the U.S. Air Force. So congratulations to that pilot. I know that's a big one in the annals of the U.S. Air Force. However, there has been opened up a lot of questions about this balloon. I'm doing a monologue today about our own use of balloons, balloons used through history. Balloons are awesome. So it's glad to talk about it. But it raises the question of, well, how many times has this happened before? Because, of course, there's been a major partisan break that's come out. Many Republicans accusing the Biden administration of being soft on China for not shooting down the balloon after its initial

detection over the Aleutian Islands. but then secondary questions being asked of, well, hey, hold on a second. How many times has this actually happened before? Let's put this up there on the screen. Lucas Tomlinson, he's the Pentagon correspondent for Fox News, so Republicans should at least, if you want to doubt somebody, this is a Fox News reporter just saying that, putting it out there.

He says, a Chinese spy balloon crashed into the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii four months ago. U.S. officials say Fox News has also learned at least one Chinese spy balloon flew over portions of Texas and Florida during the Trump administration. So that is an especially important detail because basically all through the weekend before those revelations came out, Republicans were smashing Joe Biden for being soft on China. We have a little bit of a taste of some GOP officials exactly talking about that. Let's take a listen. This entire episode telegraphed weakness to Xi and the Chinese government. And to illustrate why, I would just ask one hypothetical question.

Imagine how this would have played out if nobody had taken any pictures of the balloon, if nobody in Montana had looked up and noticed this giant balloon, if it wasn't in the news. We know that when the Biden administration knew about the balloon, they said nothing, they did nothing, they didn't shoot it down. And at the end of the day, I think the only reason they shot it down is because it made it into the news and they felt forced to as a matter of politics rather than national security. The Pentagon says that they know of the Chinese doing this at least four other times. Previously, once at the beginning of the Biden administration, three times during the Trump administration. It seems to be you're saying, oh, you're saying no, that's not true.

But in any case, is the, is the, what's the difference? Okay, well, the difference is this. Are we aware? Have we seen the Chinese fly these balloons in the past? Yes, I think there's even Twitter pictures of it flying at one point off the coast of the U.S. down south somewhere. The existence of the balloons is not a mystery to people in that field. What we've never seen, what is unprecedented, and whoever the source was at the Department of Defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over Idaho and flew over Montana, over all these sensitive military installations, Air Force bases, ICBM

fields, right across the middle of the country. That has never happened before. That is unprecedented, that it flew briefly over some part of the U.S. or continental U.S., that's one thing. But what we saw this week, it's unprecedented. And that's why everyone's reacting the way they're reacting. We've never seen this. So this is no comparison to anything

that may have happened up to this point. So lots of jockeying in the press. Would Trump have shot it down? You know Trump would have shot it down, although some may have flown over. At this point, okay, here's what we can say. It does seem, based on what Marco Rubio said, you should remember he's one of the members on the Intelligence Committee.

He's been very involved in the UFO report. He is accepting as fact that a balloon did overfly the United States at least once during the Trump administration. That's opening up all this discussion. Well, would Trump have shot it down? And honestly, I just wish we would take a step back and be like, well, yeah, wait, how many times has this happened before? That's actually a pretty valid question. And to be fair, the intelligence officials who were in charge during the Trump administration, they say it is totally not true that the balloon did fly. Although, you know, many people who are privy to the current intelligence are saying it is.

So we have some clips of them saying that. This was the DNI rat clip, the director of national intelligence under Donald Trump for a portion. He says that he never learned about this balloon flight while he was in the administration. Let's take a listen. The Department of Defense is claiming that there were three balloons, Chinese spy balloons that entered the United Space airspace during the Trump administration and that they were not shot down and they were not disclosed. Can you please tell us the truth and if that's true? Well, it's not true. I can I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refuted it yesterday. Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has refuted it. Who's lying, Crystal? I really don't know. I mean, we got a lot of untrustworthy characters. We got all the Trump intelligence and then you also got

the Pentagon. I mean, it's not like you necessarily want to take those people at their word. And Trump himself, let's put this up there on the screen for the, I guess, the final word from the man. He says it, quote, never happened. And it is fake disinformation. So did the balloon fly over the United States or not? It remains a mystery as to whether that is true. But it is, of course, opening up all sorts of partisan charges. I personally just found it very amusing that people I think Fox and Friends did a panel where they said that Biden wasn't going to shoot down the balloon the morning that the balloon was actually shot down because of the Hunter Biden laptop. Right. And I was like, well, that's a that's that's that's certainly a take. Let's go with that. And then, of course, hours later, had to shot down the eight crow when he shot shoot down the balloon. I mean, OK, so first of all, there later, had to eat crow when he actually shot down the balloon. I mean, OK, so first of all, there is some reporting this morning that tries to square the circle between like balloons probably overflew the U.S. from the Chinese during the Trump administration. And we didn't know about it.

And Trump officials are insisting like, no, this didn't happen, which is that it did happen. But they didn't become aware of it during the Trump administration. How is that possible? See, I still have so many questions about this. Right. I mean, another thing that I will say is I just despise whether it was under the Obama administration, whether it was under the Trump administration, or now what Republicans are saying. I hate this weakness discourse when it comes to foreign policy, which is so squishy.

It's so meaningless. It's just, you know, foreign powers are not pursuing their aims. Like China is not deciding whether or not to invade Taiwan based on what the hell we did with the stupid balloon. Okay. That's number one. So that whole discourse really, really irritates me. It irritates me, you know, when it was under Trump and there was all this discourse about his weakness with regards to Russia and Vladimir Putin, et cetera. So that's one piece. Another question I still have is like, was this intentional from the Chinese? Because there is huge and significant, I think, diplomatic, you know, fallout over this. Blinken was scheduled for a sort of long overdue visit. He canceled his trip.

This is, this trip was kind of designed. They didn't have any big deliverables or goals on this trip. But one of the goals was actually to try to have lines of communication so that if you had some sort of like domestic mishap or some sort of like weird international diplomatic crisis as the one that is unfolding right now, that it could be more easily diffused. So the loss of that trip is actually a

real loss. So you're going, okay, was this intentional on the part of the Chinese? Did they, you know, mean to float something over Montana that people could visibly see with their eyes? Was this incompetence? Was this hawkish hardliners in the Chinese government trying to undermine the trip? I mean, I think there's still a lot of, they say this was a weather balloon that went off course. You can read into that what you will. But I think there's a lot of questions here over whether this was like an intentional provocation from the Chinese or whether this was just a dumb mishap. Well, it's one of those things where now actually all that matters. And it's actually on the Biden administration to tell us as much as possible, because if you're going to cause a major diplomatic

conflagration over this, then you at least owe us what the intent certainly was. Now, here's what we know. The balloon was spotted over Montana, over one of the three bases in the United States where we keep intercontinental ballistic missiles. Little tease from my monologue. I actually learned this for research, which is that we also are investing heavily in spy balloons. Many other nations are as well. They're able to remain static over the target. And actually, our balloon program is specifically designed around hypersonic missiles. So I know that the United States is currently developing hypersonic missiles in response to hypersonic missile development with China and Russia. So it's possible that they are trying to use balloons for the exact same reason. In that case, it certainly would be pretty provocative.

On the other hand, look, it's very possible that they've done this a couple of times before. Many nations have spy balloons that are floating around the world, mostly the great power nations. And how many, maybe we just learned about it because in this particular case, it was spotted by a commercial jetliner who was like, hey, what is that? Well, people in Montana could see it with their naked eye. Right, right. So, I mean, that, again, if that's intentional, this is some gall, right, ahead of this important diplomatic visit that, you know, they'd been long in preparations for. The piece of information that makes me feel like this was more probably some incompetence or dumb mishap or somebody trying to subvert this trip, the more hawkish elements, is the fact that when the existence of the balloon was first reported, the first thing they did was deny it.

Yeah. But then once they acknowledged it and, you know, spun their story about, oh, it's a weather balloon and it feared off course, whatever, it was notable to me that they apologized. And that indicated, I mean, if I was leaning in one direction, that sort of indicated to me that, all right, they didn't really, this went awry. This was not the way that they wanted things to go. Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't a spy balloon. It obviously was. I'm not saying that they didn't intend to float it over Montana, et cetera.

But I don't think that they perhaps meant for it to be this blatant and this obvious. Because, look, the one thing Ted Cruz said here that I do actually agree with is this does all come down to politics and it does all come down to optics. Because it's no mystery that China's spying on us and we're spying on them. We know that they have these spy satellites that are probably able to gather just as much data as this freaking balloon was. The problem is when it's so in your face that it prompts an entire nation to focus on it and say, okay, well, guys, what are you doing about this? And what does this ultimately mean? Well, it is emotive. I mean, can we not help but say, look, I don't know why there's a difference. There just is. Between a satellite that's up in international space and one that's literally 60,000 feet up, barely in the stratosphere, right over an ICBM site that's

overflying America. I mean, if you think back to the Sputnik moment and what that feeling was like for a lot of Americans, I think it comes down to a fundamental nation of security and especially the fact that it is our country. On whether, though, it was intentional or not, I don't know, because actually I was thinking back to the 1960 U-2 incident. So if we think back to that, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, he actually was shot down at 70,000 feet. What did we say? We're like, oh, it was a routine geographic – geological survey that went off course into the Soviet Union. But it was unmanned. There was nobody on it because they thought he was dead.

And then he was alive and it was like, yeah, it was a spy plane. And then we had to – the whole bridge of spies thing blew up and eventually get him back yes eisenhower eisenhower and khrushchev it actually set some bad relations going into the cuban missile crisis a year later okay so or a couple of years later so the point is is that sometimes these are routine military missions and then what happens on routine military missions stuff goes wrong. As to whether it was drifting off course, the more I've researched into this,

I don't believe it for a second. So I'll tell you why, Crystal. Our own balloons, and as I understand, over the high-tech spy balloons that now exist in the 21st century, they have a high rate of maneuverability. They actually have software on board that incorporates wind patterns so that they're able to determine their course

and all of that. The idea that it was blown off course is ludicrous it has actual like it has the ability to maneuver yeah and its own engine onboard the balloon itself so let me ask you this since you've gone deeper into these by balloon yeah the history and annals and current capabilities than I have what about the the altitude because what strikes me as so brazen about this is that random people standing on the ground in Montana could see this thing. Like, would it normally be at such a high altitude

that you wouldn't be able to? So that's the part that to me, I'm like, maybe that was unintentional because I do think that if they had done a better job sort of like covering their ass and like they did in the Trump administration, flying the balloons, but nobody really notices, whatever, you wouldn't have this whole diplomatic fallout. A lot of it is determinative weather. But again, our own balloons fly at the exact same altitude. Our balloons fly at 60,000 to 90,000 feet. This balloon was reportedly detected right at 60,000 feet, which, you know, if you're taking photos, probably better to be lower so you can get as high resolution as possible.

A lot of the visibility from the naked eye, that more has to do with weather conditions on the particular day. From what I understand, especially also if you consider, even if it wasn't visible from the naked eye from the ground, which it was in some cases this time, commercial jetliner is a whole other one. And that's where my question is to everybody who operates these balloons, which is, you know, commercial airliner flies at, what, 35,000, 40,000 feet? It's only 20,000 feet away from this balloon. Like, obviously, they're going to be able to see it. And visibility up there is totally different than visibility from the ground. I know aviators are probably rolling their eyes at me.

I'm sorry, you know, based on my limited research from what I can tell. But the idea that it was brazen to fly at 60 my limited research from what I can tell. But the idea that it was brazen to fly at 60,000, from what I can tell, that's actually a normal altitude for a spy balloon. So really, I think they got caught. And it's really just like the U-2 incident where it was a routine mission. Part of the reason why they probably didn't think it was brazen is they're like, hey, we do it all the time. Who knows how many balloons? Also, this is what we're about to get to. These are just the ones that we know about. How many flew over that we have no idea? Because something I take away and have taken away from a lot of my UFO research and reading as not only that, but also on missile technology, the idea that we have a perfect clue

of what's happening outside of commercial space, it's just completely not true. Yeah. Like, as much as we like the idea of technology, you know, it's a big country and there's a lot of air up there. A lot of sky up there. Yeah. I mean, I guess that to me is maybe the most likely explanation is, like, they do these things all the time. And so they didn't think to, you know, to break up the routine, given that we had this visit with Blinken coming. They just kept doing the thing that they normally do. It just so happens this time, for whatever reason, it was

so obvious that they got caught. That's the best I can figure out with here. I mean, I think there's a couple other pieces to comment on. Number one, you know, within the Biden administration, there is kind of a tug of war between various factions in terms of how they want to approach China, a more collaborative approach. You know, this diplomatic mission from Blinken, sort of reflective of that desire to work together, especially on issues like the climate crisis. There are others who are more hawkish and, you know, this sort of like strengthens their hand within the administration. That's one thing to say. And then the other thing to say here, which frankly, I think is unfortunate is, I mean, this is Cold War 2.0. It has the exact same vibes

of some, you know, a spy mission gone off course, major diplomatic blow up, potential, you know, long term fallout, et cetera. And I think it's a real sign of the times that we're living in. It's possible. I'm a little bit more hopeful. Stuff like this happens. I've talked here about for the April 2001 Hainan Island incident where a U.S. Navy spy plane actually collided with a Chinese plane in the middle of the air. The Navy blames the Chinese. The Chinese blame us. I don't know what happened. Anyway, the plane itself was forced down on Chinese airspace.

It caused a big, major diplomatic incident, but people got over it. Yeah. Well, this was back in what, 2000? That was 2001. This actually happened right before 9-11. It caused a huge crisis with China. The pilots, they wanted him to apologize.

We were like, no, they're not going to apologize because your pilot is the one who hurt our guys. He died. It was a whole time in terms of Chinese development and our relationship. Look, also, this is a choice on them. Like if they want to make it this into a whole thing about the look, you know that they would shoot down one of ours if they detected it. It became a domestic incident to like don't get all higher, you know, holier than thou. The whole point is with these things, as they found out with Hainan Island, why they were buzzing our aircraft. It's

like, well, you know, if you can see it and if you can detect it, you're going to be aggressive towards it whenever it's your airspace. So I don't want to hear it. I guess I guess the best hope, as you're pointing out, is that everybody is sort of like acting out their part of what they feel like they need to do to appease their own domestic populace. Right. The Biden administration, ultimately, they bring this thing down, you know, over the Atlantic. They're able to collect whatever they're able to collect and sort of, you know, posture the way they have to for the domestic populace. We're tough and we're not going to let this happen, et cetera, et cetera. And the Chinese put out their statement, sort of bellicose statement, like being upset about the fact that we shot it down. But I guess the hope is that

everybody behind the scenes kind of knows this is the part they have to play and they don't really have another choice. And the real test is when the visit happens, how does that visit go? Are they going to snub Anthony Blinken like they snub President Obama in 2008? Are we going to have engagement or are we going to have a snub? That actually matters probably even more so. Although, of course, you know, we can't deny that this isn't going to play a part. Yeah, it's a lot. This, the circumventing of this, the undermining of this particular visit is a loss. Hopefully, they're able to get it rescheduled in the not too distant future. Absolutely. Okay, let's go to the next one here and let's put this up there on the screen. So, we had that little UFO tie-in and a lot of my UFO friends were talking quite a

bit about this, which is that the previous UFO report actually specifically pointed to foreign powers who are aerial spying and specifically the possibility of Chinese and Russian balloons, which had previously entered the United States. However, I do want to kind of break this down and talk a little bit about it because some people were saying, actually, this vindicates the fact that all these UFO incidents are really just Chinese spy balloons or Russian spy balloons or spy aircraft or drones or whatever of some kind. First of all, many of the incidents that have occurred and happened on camera are ones which don't appear to have nearly the same, let's just say, propulsion as a normal balloon, not necessarily propulsion known to humankind. That also, though, what many people were talking about is they were pointing to the fact that when they know that it's a Chinese balloon, they're very, they can say, when they know it's Chinese compared to when they pretend that it's something else, it gets wall-to-wall coverage, it gets a statement of condemnation, the cancellation of the visits, and a clear

identification. Where in the past, what they have pointed to is they're like, well, maybe it's Chinese or maybe it's Russian. Well, clearly, what do we learn from this balloon? It has Chinese letters on the side. So, you know, it's at 60,000 feet. So clearly, if it's a Chinese balloon, it's not that hard to figure out that it's a Chinese balloon. I'm going to presume the same with Russian and probably the same with American spy balloons. So kind of the UFO takeaway that my friend Jeremy Korbel highlighted was that if you think about what it's like when an actual spy balloon overflies the United States and our ability to clearly and almost immediately identify it, if they were able to do that in the past with respect to hundreds now of UFO incidents, they would, because it's actually not that hard to attribute

whether these things are or not. And I think the second part to this is, and this gets to what I alluded to earlier, I think one of the only reasons that we even know about the last couple of balloons is because of a lot of interest in the UFO phenomenon, UAPs, because the whole push for transparency was, hey guys, we have all this data, but nobody's analyzing it. Nobody's really looking on at what's going on up there. There's a lot of pilots over the years who have reported sketchy things going on. Most of the time, they were encouraged to just sit down and to not talk about it. And so one of the reasons why we're able to say, oh, one crashed four months ago or it happened during the Trump administration,

well, 2017 is when this whole thing even broke open. That's whenever we were even trying to start paying attention to the skies. And actually part of the push for the whole transparency was, you don't know what else you're going to find up there. That's what Marco Rubio and other UFO transparency figures who've been pushing for it, their whole case has been, this is a matter of national security as we just found out. I really do believe, and look, I don't have a lot of evidence. This is just a hunch based on what I've read on this and everything. I think if this happens in 2015, this thing flies over and we have no idea. I really do. It's possible not, but- I think not just because people on the ground in Montana were

like, what the hell is this? And there was the ground stop at the airport in Montana. But who knows? I mean, you have the numbers here. Since 2021, the Pentagon has examined 366 incidents that were initially unexplained and said 163 were balloons. So not anywhere close to all of those. And they say a handful of those involve advanced surveillance balloons, but none of them are conducting persistent reconnaissance of U.S. military bases. They also say, though, that a lot of times if the U.S. government

immediately identifies this as a spy balloon, well, of course, that's not included in the unidentified aerial phenomenon tracking. So it does, this report does raise a lot of questions of like, okay, we're learning about like this incident now and maybe like three max incidents during the Trump administration. But this report suggests that there was a lot more going on than even what is being reported at this point happened during the Trump administration and happened now. They also say that of the 171 reports that were not attributed to balloons, drones or airborne trash, some, quote, appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis.

To your point, Sagar, of like, when it's a balloon, they can tell it's a freaking balloon. It's not that hard for them to be able to figure it out. Maybe someone who's untrained initially is like, what the hell was that? Right. But then once they actually do the research, it was not particularly difficult for them to figure out it was a weather balloon, a spy balloon, whatever. There you go. So there's the UFO angle for everybody. Had to get that in. Yeah. All right, guys, we have some new polling

here that is fairly devastating for Joe Biden and for the Democrats. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from the Washington Post and ABC News. You have now in a theoretical general election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, something almost no one actually wants. Donald Trump now beating Joe Biden by three points. Now that is within the margin of error, but a significant move towards Trump, five point swing towards Trump since just September. The numbers among independents are particularly bad. There you have Trump over Biden by nine points. The D.C. wisdom, conventional wisdom, after the midterm election was that Trump is extremely weak. Biden has really strengthened his hand. He outperformed expectations. Yes, Republicans

took the House, but Democrats were able to not only hold on to the Senate, but actually pick up a seat. This defied recent history. So he is in a great position to get reelected. This poll, among others, says otherwise. And Trump, even with January 6th, fake electors and investigations into his business, going back to investigations into Stormy Daniels again, and the whole classified documents scandal, which of course, now Biden having some similar problems has kind of muddied the waters on.

Still, you cannot write this man off. If there is one thing we have learned over the years is that you just cannot write off Donald Trump. And Biden, in spite of that conventional wisdom saying that he is in a much stronger position, he actually is in a weaker position, according to this poll and according to some other numbers, than he was before the general election. There are some other numbers in here too, Soccer, that are just damning. So I mentioned that basically no one wants the Trump-Biden rematch, even though we look very likely to head to the Trump-Biden rematch, although a lot of things could happen between now and then,

you've got only fewer than two in 10 who are enthusiastic about Trump, that's 17% of the overall electorate. Just 7% of the overall electorate enthusiastic about Biden. If you drill down to just the Democratic Party, okay, Democrats who almost all say they did vote for him, will vote for him, whatever. You know what percent are enthusiastic about Joe Biden? Sixteen percent of Democrats are like, let's go, Joe Biden. This is incredible weakness from the incumbent president.

Yeah, it's a tough one to read because what do you take away from this? Most Republicans don't want Trump. Most Democrats don't want Biden. Most people will vote for both of those candidates if they're nominated. And majority of people say they would actually be pretty dissatisfied or angry if Biden were reelected. And a lot of the same people say the exact same thing about Trump. This is as clear of a broken political system as you can possibly get. There's hours of discussions that we could have about this, about the move to party primaries, about what different types of elections and all that look like. But let's all be real. That ain't any going

to happen in the next two years. This is what we got. Most likely, it is the result that we have. And I just can't help but look at the nine-point margin that Trump has with independents and say, you better be worried. What did we point to in the GOP performance in November? Sure, it was skinny in the House, didn't work out in the Senate. They still won the popular vote, guys. That doesn't happen all that often. In fact, the last time that the Republicans had won the popular vote, I believe, was like 2004. And then even if you think about a presidential election, 04 remains the only popular vote election that a Republican president has had since the year 2000. And that's the last 23 years. We'll see how exactly it goes in 2024. So what does this mean? I would look at this. And again, I just come back to, I didn't, I don't know why

this apparently is a, uh, a controversial point. Don't underestimate the guy who got elected president and almost won reelection. Like, why is that such a, everyone's like, Oh, old Donnie, he's got, what do we always say? Look, he was dead to rights, indicted gun to his head. He was done. And then the Biden classified documents thing happened. You can never underestimate this man, not even in terms of his own doing, but in the way circumstances always come about and make things a lot more nuanced and complicated than before. So I look at that. And remember this, look, it's also hard because the polls were so significantly off in the Republican direction in 2022. But if you were to look at a statistical average of Trump's appearance on the ballot, it would tell you that in general, he overperforms

rather than underperforms. Yes. Maybe stop the steal changes that, as we saw in 2022, certainly could. Maybe lower inflation and better jobs numbers for Joe Biden to a year and a half or so from now. Maybe that changes it. I have, you know, maybe a war in Ukraine ends. We have no clue as to what the major factors are. As things stand right now, I just take away, don't underestimate Trump. It is anybody's ballgame. I think that's what you have to look at this. And yeah, I mean, there is only so much we can read into polls at this point, because we did sort of have this consistent rule of thumb up until these midterm elections of like, they tend to lean more democratic than what the actual reality is. We had a reversal of that in the midterms. One theory you could put forward, though, I mean, Donald Trump was not on the ballot

technically in 2022. And his core base, even if you look at how he's doing within the Republican primary, continues to be with non-college-educated, white working class voters. And there is, you know, one polling theory that those are exactly the people who tend to be reflected the least in the polling data. Now, is that still the case? I just really, literally don't know at this point. But if you wanted to write down a theory of why Trump may be stronger than what the poll numbers reflect, I think that's where you would start. Just digging into these numbers, let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is the Washington Post write up. They it was kind of funny what they chose to highlight. But anyway, their headline

is few Americans are excited about a Biden Trump rematch post ABC poll finds. And they dig into exactly how Biden is doing, which with which demographics in the Democratic Party. And they say he's weakest among Democrats and Democratic leaning independents who are under 40 years old. So he's weakest with young Democrats, 69 percent of whom say the party should nominate someone else. Black Democrats just narrowly prefer nominating Biden, 47 percent, over someone else, 41 percent, which, you know, this continues to be one of his stronger constituencies. But even with this group that is supposed to be the core of his base, they're kind of split fairly close to 50-50 about whether they want this dude again. And 64% of white Democrats want someone other than Biden. The point I really want to underscore here, Sagar, is that the disenchantment with Biden on the Democratic base goes much

further than just progressives who, of course, have never been particularly excited about or enthusiastic about a Biden presidency. It goes much further than just progressives who, of course, have never been particularly excited about or enthusiastic about a Biden presidency. It goes much further than just young Democrats who, again, have been some of his biggest critics and were certainly deeply skeptical of him during the Democratic primary in 2020. This is across the board. A lot of normie, lib Democrats of all races, ages, demographic groups, et cetera, who I think have this instinct of like, you know, they don't hate the guy, but they're like, I just, you're going to be old. I don't know if you're up to it. I think that's the bottom line.

Like, I don't know if you're going to be the guy to beat Trump. I don't know if you're really capable of handling this thing for another four years. And oh, by the way, we've seen your vice president, Kamala Harris, and we don't have a lot of confidence in her ability either to win or to be able to effectively govern if you don't end up making it through the next term. Absolutely, you're right.

Okay, so this has all led to an interesting moment from our secretary of transportation, the one and only Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was pressed on some of these numbers and how the Democratic base is feeling about Joe Biden. He got a little testy about some of this. Let's take a listen. Soon, do you expect the president to announce he's running for re-election? That's out of my lane and above my pay grade at the same time. What I know is that whether we're talking about- But you want him to run? Do you want him to run again? I mean, you saw our poll. A large number of Democrats say they don't want him to run again.

He is an absolutely historically successful president, and I want to see that continue. So you want him to run again? Look, when I'm appearing in this capacity, I can't talk campaigns and elections. But let me say this. I'm incredibly proud to be part of this team that he has built. Getting a little testy there. Pete really selling it there. Absolutely historic president. I mean, no secret that this dude wants to make another run.

So, you know, what he would like to see is either. I mean, I don't think he really cares whether Biden wins again or whether he loses, because ultimately he's setting himself up to run in 2028. And I mean, one side drama with Pete is the fact that no secret, he struggled with voters of color throughout the Democratic primary. So the rearranging of the Democratic primary states, which we're going to get to in a little bit, putting South Carolina first, it's actually really bad for Pete Buttigieg. Oh, it screws him. I mean, he did well in Iowa. He did well in New Hampshire. That lineup for him last time around was kind of the best possible scenario for him to be able to get off the ground. Putting South Carolina first is kind of devastating to his chances for the future.

No question. Actually, I've been thinking about that a lot. I think that this really rigs things in an establishment direction for all time to come for the Democratic primary. If you consider Bernie Sanders and his major over-performances in Iowa and in New Hampshire, he never did particularly well in South Carolina, although he probably did better than if he had gone up versus Obama. There's very little evidence to show that Obama ever would have won the Democratic nomination

if they had started in South Carolina, and he hadn't proven that he could win in Iowa and at least come second in New Hampshire. Even if I go back to Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton very likely would not have won in the 1992 Democratic primary. So this basically makes it whoever the establishment rubber stamps, they're almost certainly going to win. Yeah, I mean, certainly. And we'll get we'll get to more of that and the dynamics there in a little bit. But, you know, Pete's comments to me are reflective of the fact that before the midterm election, you had some wavering among even Democratic elected officials. We played a bunch of them here. Even people like Jerry Nadler, who's like longtime senior House

Democrat as establishment as they come, expressing reservations. You had people out and out saying that they thought they should go with a different candidate. That was a pretty wild break in terms of an incumbent president and the amount of elected Democratic officials you had who either wouldn't say or actually went out there and were like, let's go in another direction. The midterm election results have clearly shored up Biden's support among Democratic elected officials and Democratic party elites, no doubt about it. But they did nothing for him with the base. They did nothing for him with the general electorate. So you now have this kind of disconnect where no one is going to challenge Biden in terms of established elected Democratic officials. There were some that were kind of sniffing around a little bit before the midterms. I don't think they were ever

going to actually jump in against him. Now that is completely closed off. They have completely closed ranks. And yet you still have vast, vast disaffection, both within the Democratic base and with the nation at large. So he's heading into, this should be some of the strongest times for him.

You know, after he did defy history with his midterm results, this should be some of the strongest times for him. You know, after he did defy history with his midterm results, this should be, you know, he got a few things accomplished in the first two years. He should have about the strongest hand that he could play. And this is what it ultimately looks like. Approval rating hasn't budged. Losing to Donald Trump after all of this, it's really pathetic. Oh, certainly. Trump, he's not going down without a fight. And he's basically reverting right back to the 2016 playbook. Let's move on to the next one here. And let's put this up there on the screen. Trump will not commit to backing the GOP nominee in 2024.

This was from an interview that he gave with radio host Hugh Hewitt. He said, Hugh Hewitt asked him, will you support whoever wins the party's nomination? Trump announced, he said, quote, it would depend. It would have to depend on who the nominee was. Now, obviously, it's not a unprecedented situation, I would say, for Mr. Trump. It really is more of a return to, probably one of the most iconic moments of the 2016 presidential primary, which couldn't help remind me of. Let's take a listen and relive that. Is there anyone on stage and can I see hands who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person? Again, we're looking for you to raise your hand now.

Raise your hand now if you won't make that pledge tonight. Mr. Trump. I cannot say I have to respect the person that, if it's not me, the person that wins. If I do win and I'm leading by quite a bit, that's what I want to do. I can totally make that pledge. If I'm the nominee, I will pledge I will not run as an independent. But and I am discussing it with everybody. But I'm talking about a lot of leverage. We want to win and we will win. But I want to win as the Republican. I want to run as the Republican nominee. God, I feel like that was literally

yesterday. I know. Iconic. If you bake it into the overall GOP primary and what that's all going to look like, we haven't even been on the air since this happened, but allegedly Nikki Haley is supposedly going to announce that she's going to run against Trump on February 15th. We'll see. I think she's a born loser candidate. We'll see how that exactly works out for her. But the real threat is going to be Ron DeSantis, of course, which we've been covering a lot. And even if DeSantis is not firing at Trump, Trump is just absolutely unloading on him any chance that he gets. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is my personal favorite also from the Hugh Hewitt interview. He said that DeSantis had tears in his eyes as he begged for an endorsement. Quote, he was dead. He was leaving the race. He came over and he begged me, begged me for an

endorsement. He said, if you endorse me, I'll win. There were tears coming down from his eyes. And here's the thing. Trump is not wrong. DeSantis was down in the GOP presidential primary. As I think I've told this story many times, but I interviewed Trump the day after the midterm elections in 2018, or maybe like two days after or something like that. And he, all he wanted to talk about was DeSantis. He was like, look at this guy. He's like, he gets nothing without me. He was down by this. He went up by 31 points when Trump endorses him because it's all about Trump. And you know, that is kind of a potent attack that he has against DeSantis. DeSantis continues to deflect. Old friend,

Henry Rogers asked him a question about this over at the press conference down in Florida. And DeSantis was like, look, you know, I'm getting firing from all sides and people are criticizing, but enough with the politics. We'll all just move on. And ultimately that's up to the voters. And he talks about, again, his resounding win in the state of Florida, which is also going to be a very potent feather in his cap. But Ron DeSanctimonious attacks and all of that on Trump's truth have continued and continue up until this day, all throughout this, even when the man hasn't even announced he's running with Nikki Haley. He also talked about her essentially branding her as disloyal. He was like, she said that she

wouldn't run against me. Again, I don't think that this woman has a chance in hell, but good luck, I guess. Enjoy the one day of good press that you're going to get. He made some similar comments about Mike Pence, about how he made Mike and he was nothing before him, etc. So, I mean, this is definitely Trump getting back into fighting form here, no doubt about it. The comments about him being unwilling to commit to backing the nominee in 2024, the GOP nominee in 2024, there's a few things to say about it. I mean, first of all, what a bind Republicans are in, because clearly the establishment of the party and a lot of other folks, you know, in the party are ready to move on for Trump. They see Ron DeSantis as a better electoral prospect. You know, they see him as just sort

of like easier to deal with altogether. And so they would love to move on to Ron DeSantis or someone else. But you've got this thread out there of there was a poll that was done by Bulwark, which is like an anti-Trump news website. third party and the Republican nominee, who would you back? 28% of Republican voters say they would back Trump if he ran as an independent. I mean, that's automatically handing the election to Democrats. So in a way, even though they feel like, okay, if you just had DeSantis versus Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is, that would be a stronger hand to play. It may actually end up being for them a much worse electoral prospect, especially because even if Trump doesn't mount an independent bid, I just cannot imagine him bending the knee, going around, campaigning for Ron DeSantis, saying, this is my guy. We should get behind him. He won fair and square. And, you know, he's the better man. And let's all get after it to beat the devil. I just, I cannot see that ultimately happening. So this is kind of a disaster waiting

to happen ultimately for the Republicans. And why does that matter? Because in a GOP primary, for example, Brian Kemp, I believe he won his primary like 60-30 or something like that. Well, that matters whenever it's head to head and then you eventually become the nominee. But in a general election, if you get people to not, if you get, let's say, one-third of people not to vote for you, well, if one-third of Republicans don't vote, we all know how that works. George H.W. Bush, till his dying day, believed that Ross Perot is the one who cost him the election by splitting the vote. People forget. I think Bill Clinton only won like 43 percent of the popular vote whenever he was elected the president. But because of the way Electoral College and Ross Perot on the ballot in many of these states, H.W. maintained for a long time that it was Ross Perot's fault. I think it was George H.W. Bush's fault for not appealing

to those people. But hey, the point is, is that when you have a third party candidate on the ballot, of course, that can screw things up. You know, the Gore people always blamed Ralph Nader as if that's it's his fault that Gore ran a bad campaign. For me, more the merrier. I guess whenever it comes at the end of the day, it's just about winning people's votes over. But it shows the danger that Trump could pose to a hypothetical DeSantis candidacy in the event that a bruised DeSantis does actually emerge victorious from the primary. We'll see. At the same time, let's put this up there on the screen. This is a major piece of political news. This is about the Koch network, kind of a name that we haven't talked about with GOP politics for some time. But we should not forget, these people are multibillionaires. They remain some of the biggest spenders in the entire Republican Party. They are libertarians. They were essentially overthrown by the Trump apparatus while Trump was in power, but they are not just going down without a fight. And they are saying that they are willing to throw money and weight behind a single Republican

candidate in the 2024 presidential primary, but they have refused to name Donald Trump as that potential candidate. So we don't exactly know what this means. It very likely, in my estimation, is a bid to show DeSantis that he has the money if he wants to run. And because it's not just about Koch, it's we've got Ken Griffin as well, who I've talked about, the Citadel billionaire, some of you will remember from GameStop fame. I think he's worth like $30 billion. He's already said he's like, I would back DeSantis. Last time around that we did a segment about DeSantis, we talked about Miriam Adelson. I believe she has some $40 or $50 billion to play with. The Kochs is a $100 billion slush fund.

So I think that this is one of those signals to somebody who would be much more friendly to more economic libertarianism, even than Trump, even though Trump was really only doing it in rhetoric. The Kochs love a DeSantis-type figure. Remember, they're also the people who funded much of the initial Tea Party wave back in 2010. So I think that this is a big signal to DeSantis. They're like, hey, money's there. If you want to do it, you're going to have an unlimited pocketbook. Money's not going to be the issue for Ron DeSantis. Yeah, of course.

Even without the Koch network, he's got a number of billionaires lined up. I think there are a lot of Republicans who are, you know, well-positioned to donate to him, well-positioned to raise money for him, who would back his candidacy. So that is not going to be the issue. I mean, they have not come out and said it would be DeSantis. I do think that that is the most likely direction that they would ultimately go in. But it's worth mentioning that there are some deep ties between other potential Republican contenders and the Koch network, especially former Vice President Mike Pence. Yes, true. His former chief of staff and longtime aide, Mark Short, who we interviewed a number of times over when we were at Rising,

he once oversaw the entire political operation over at the Koch network. So you have sort of deep tie-ins there, and you can see like an ideological affinity there as well. You also have some tie-ins with Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, but I agree with you. It is most likely that they would get behind Ron DeSantis. And this isn't just about the presidential election. They also are signaling they want to play more heavily in terms of Republican primaries to try to reclaim the entirety of the Republican Party and make sure that they're back under their thumb in the more consistent way that they ultimately used to be. Bingo. All right. So we were mentioning before a lot going on on the Democratic side in terms of, you know, Biden is weaker than he should be with the general electorate, but also extraordinary weak, extraordinary weakness with the Democratic base. And they want to try to

short circuit any potential challenge to Joe Biden in a Democratic primary. So they are basically sort of like, you know, it used to be a scandal when the DNC would like rig primaries in favor of like Hillary Clinton, for example. Now it's just all out in the open, apparently. So go ahead and put this up on the screen. On Saturday, they passed a new primary calendar. They're making South Carolina first, and they are booting Iowa entirely. Now, in fairness, I have to say, after the way the Iowa caucuses went last time, you can hardly really fault them for moving Iowa out of the front of the line. But what you're going to have now is the party's vote on Saturday replaces Iowa caucuses as the first in the nation with South Carolina, a state they say with significantly more black voters, one that saved Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. That's what it's really about. It really doesn't have anything to do with the demographics.

Would then be followed by New Hampshire and Nevada one week later and then by primaries in Georgia and Michigan. So the big winners here, South Carolina, obviously, Georgia and Michigan. So the big winners here, South Carolina, obviously, Georgia and Michigan. These are three states that Joe Biden feels confident about, that he sort of takes for granted. You will recall he did abysmally in both Iowa and in New Hampshire. I mean, he placed so poorly. I think he got, what, fifth in New Hampshire? He plays so poorly. He didn't even stay through election night. He just went ahead and flew on to South Carolina, which then is the state that completely resuscitates him. However, there is a lot of backlash to this move from certainly party officials in Iowa, but especially officials in New Hampshire. Now, New Hampshire has a Republican governor,

and this becomes relevant because they actually have a state law that says their primary is supposed to be the first in the nation. So they're saying, hey, we can't just get rid of the state law. We're going to move forward. And also, by the way, all of the party officials there, like the Democratic Party apparatus there, their entire national relevance and power comes from being the first in the nation. So this is like an existential threat. Now, what the DNC is saying is they're going to face penalties if they disobey the party. They might ban candidates from campaigning in the state. They might have them lose delegates.

But this is a real sort of intra-party fight that is brewing here. And people in New Hampshire are furious about the attempt to sideline them. And also, Sagar, as you were referencing earlier, this really remakes the Democratic primary and what type of candidates are likely to be successful. This means that if you are a big money national candidate, you're going to have, with the establishment stamp of approval, you're going to have a much better chance. Iowa and New Hampshire were about grassroots politics. They were about being able to come in with a tiny amount of money, be able to do shoe leather and go around all the local Democratic Party affairs and meet people and win them over face to face. If you don't have Iowa going first,

you don't have Barack Obama. This means that they are getting rid of that sort of retail politics dynamic in the Democratic Party almost completely. Oh, absolutely. Well, I mean, I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand, should two incredibly white states

really be the goal, you know, the making grounds for a party base which has a lot of black voters. That's the argument for South Carolina. A lot of Hispanic voters as well, although that increasingly is getting split, you know, in terms of union participation. And then, of course, one of the reasons we have a bunch of BS ethanol standards in this country is specifically because of Iowa. Yeah, I always screw up our, like, obesity politics. Yeah, exactly. You know how much high fructose corn syrup Americans are pumped into

just because of the Iowa caucuses? So maybe we can fix that. That'd be a fun thing. On the other hand, I mean, look, in terms of South Carolina, there was a good argument in that case, if anything, for making Nevada the first one. Me, I think Michigan.

I think Michigan would have been a great first in the nation. White working class voters. It's got a large population of people of color for the Democrats. It's got an actual swing status in 2016. And if anything, like the point of the primary is to prove that you can do the job or that you can win the election. So that's where I would have put the actual votes. But I understand exactly why they did it this way. I mean, listen, I think your point about the base of the Democratic Party and wanting to have states that are reflective of that base, I think that is completely reasonable. But let's be clear, that's not what they're doing. They're doing this entirely because these are the states where Joe Biden did well, and that's where they want to ultimately start. If your real concern was about having demographic diversity, Nevada would be a much better choice because you

do have a more, even more diverse electorate in Nevada than you could maintain because much of the population is sort of centered in and around Clark County. So you maintain that ability to have that sort of retail politics, the ability of a grassroots candidate to be able to catch fire somewhere and then go on across the nation. If that was really what you were concerned about, there was a much better case to be made for Nevada. Now, I agree with you. Listen, Iowa, they blew it. They've blown it like a number of times at this point. And also, Democrats don't win in Iowa anymore. That's true. Iowa used to be a critical swing state. Barack Obama won it. It is not a swing state anymore. It is a red state. And, you know, Democrats might be able

to win it back, but they show no interest in in doing that ultimately. So New Hampshire, on the other hand, you know, the fact that you are and people in New Hampshire are taking this very personally. I'll show you a shot in a minute that reflects exactly that. New Hampshire is a swing state. New Hampshire is a state that Donald Trump came close to winning. So the fact that you are snubbing them so brazenly and so publicly, that could actually endanger your general election chances in this state. You are certainly not doing yourself any favors with the electorate there, let's just say. And as I referenced before, New Hampshire Democrats are furious. They have two Democratic senators, one of whom in particular is very, you know, sort of high up and senior and whatever. They have been furious and sort of snubbing the White House over their video of the former New Hampshire House speaker who was a Biden delegate last time around who says he's looking for another candidate.

Let's take a listen. One of Biden's delegates from 2020, Steve Shurtleff, talking about this new proposal. I'll look for another candidate before I support Joe Biden. If you should go so far as to take away the first of the nation primary. He says he will look for another candidate before he supports Joe Biden. This is not just any DNC delegate either. The former New Hampshire House speaker. You don't think this guy carries a lot of weight in the state? He certainly does. So you had the former the chair of the New Hampshire Democrats saying that this could open up a lane for an insurgent candidate who camps out in New Hampshire and takes advantage of this split and the snub ultimately. So this is really a big deal in terms of how they run these primaries and caucuses going forward.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, it's a game changer. That's why we're covering it so much. And I don't think it's just relevant to this. This is relevant for all time to come. Like for Kamala in 2028, if it ever comes to that. For Buttigieg, this is a massive blow to any future that he has. But he can't say anything because he'll get called racist, which I love. And if you look at the past, things turn out very differently. I think Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2008 if South Carolina is first. Nobody remembers his history, but Obama did not win in South Carolina until he

could prove, essentially, that he could win in Iowa and in New Hampshire. Many such cases going back, I think, all the way to the 1970s. So it's a big problem for the future. At the same time, I like change. I like the fact that we're shaking things up so we can get rid of some of these stupid shibboleths that we have in politics. I actually think there should also be some more West Coast representation, part of the reason why I'm in favor of Nevada. You know, like more than half the country also lives there. And they don't even get representation until Super Tuesday. That's not right. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, the Democrats, like Latino voters are sort of the new swing voters. Democrats really want to bring them into their camp, like think about how to appeal to them, whatever. I mean, that's why Bernie Sanders was able to do so well in the Nevada caucuses is because they really spent a lot of time and effort

and money, boots on the ground, trying to appeal to that electorate. So yeah, I just, let's just make it clear all of their stuff about, oh, the demographics and we want to diversify. No, this is a power play, pure and simple. That's 100% what it's about. Very true. All right, let's talk about Joe Rogan. We were on the Joe Rogan experience. We had a fantastic time. I think, oh, it was three hours and some minutes. Yeah. Wow. It's an intense experience. It's intense, but it also it also goes by. It was fun. It was a lot of

fun for sure. We really enjoyed it. We put together a little bit of a highlight reel for everybody. As we reminded everybody on our podcast, we've got a special discount going on right now for new JRE listeners. I know a lot of people found us through Joe Rogan. So breakingpoints.com, we've got 10% off right now on our yearly subscription if we like what we're all about. But with that, here's a little highlight reel we put together from our appearance, all the stuff that we loved. Let's take a listen. We did this video.

It was like the problems of boys and men with an author, Richard Reeves, who's actually fantastic. He wrote a great book on this. You'd have a great conversation with him, actually. It went super viral. And he talks a lot. He's like, look, I understand.

He's like, I'm not an anti-feminist. He's like, what we are talking about, though, is in the last two decades, we've had a crisis amongst young men. And something we talk about on the show is what Crystal's getting at with the decline of the American dream, like the idea that you are going to do better than your parents. And that's just not really true anymore. wage growth, upward mobility, people who are graduating from high school who are men and working class having much more trouble actually finding a mate. So there's a big college imbalance right now where a lot of men are dropping out of college. They no longer feel accepted. And

you're reaching almost 60-40 splits of women and men in college, especially who are graduating. A lot of women who have college degrees don't actually want to date somebody who doesn't have a college degree. And so there's this big imbalance in the dating market. And then also amongst single men, you see a big decline in lifetime wages. But what really makes me really sad is the drug overdose numbers, and they die much earlier. They're much less likely to exercise, much less likely to fulfill a more like a stronger life. And that's what gets to the charlatanism of like being able to buy into the charlatan, signing up for some MLN scheme that you might see online, buying crypto. By the way, you're looking at a crypto victim. I lost five thousand dollars on BlockFi, got fucked out by

that. There's a lot of men that feel by their very existence that they're bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big cultural problem. They're fed this thought of toxic masculinity and the things that they're attracted to. They think they've been told they're stupid or, you know, that they're evil or, you know. There's a thing about being a man in this world today that I think we have to look at all human beings as just human beings. Yeah. And you don't you can't help that you were born a man and you can't help the things that you

enjoy. Like if you enjoy going to football games, you enjoy getting loud with your friends. This idea of toxic masculinity, it's like, yeah, there's toxic aspects of men. And that's real. That's a reality of being a male human being. If you look at the history of war, it's all started by men. Men did all of it. Men do all the raping. I had this guy on the podcast once. It was hilarious.

He goes, actually, you know, statistically speaking, men get raped more than women do. I go, yeah, by other men, you fucking idiot. I go, it's not packs of cheerleaders raping football players. The fuck is wrong with you? The problem is 100% men. That's the problem with manosphere is that there's grifters in the manosphere

that aren't actual real men. And by real men, I mean, they don't have resolve. Like, if you took them on a hike, they would get tired. They would sit down. You would have to leave them behind. They're not the word tough is a word, but it's like, oh, you're tough. No, mental toughness is fucking important. It's a really important quality of life. And it's been diminished to this thing that's like a part of toxic masculinity ideology.

Well, and this is where, you know, the Andrew Tates of the world come in and they like perform this just like caricature-ish, ridiculous, masculine, whatever they're doing. And then also maybe as a sex trafficker, we'll find out. We'll see what happens there. But it again speaks to the fact there used to be a really clear sort of cultural narrative, right or wrong, about what it was to be a man. And at the core of that was being a provider. Right.

For women, it was like, you know, it was other things being like a mother and a nurturer and like the way you look. For men, it's like about the wallet. Right. The pocketbook. on the working class where it becomes so much harder to be able to fulfill that cultural narrative of what it is supposed to be to be a man. I think that's been this is this woman. But, you know, from my external perspective, I think that's been really, really devastating. Look, at the end of the day, systems can change if enough people actually want to do something about it. Yeah, we've talked a lot about the stock market ban. I think that's actually probably step one.

If we get to the point where we can just ban members of Congress from trading stocks, the institutional trust I think that we could all then have within the system, just at a baseline level, it would help a lot. It would help a lot to be able to get that. But, of course, Nancy Pelosi is the speaker. First she says, what was it? We live in a free market economy. We're allowed to participate.

I do wish they would participate. When she said that, I pushed the microphone. Locked up the stage. Your Nancy Pelosi impression is pretty good. That was wild. When she just walked off the stage, I'm like, that is wild. I mean, she's not the only one, though. I mean, it's a completely bipartisan issue.

Oh, yeah. And a lot of these guys, and they'll claim, look, though. I mean, there's some, it's a completely bipartisan issue. Oh, yeah. And a lot of these guys, and, you know, they'll claim, like, look, I don't have any inside information. I'm like, look, motherfucker, you're guilty. Like, you got to prove that you're innocent. Honestly, I mean, whether, listen, they do. And, like, obviously, these are not geniuses. And they're all, like, beating the market and beating people who are expert at this and whatever. George Soros and Warren Buffett are not as good as Paul

Pelosi. Oh, wow. He's better. He's better at trading. He's just an amazing trader. He has nothing to do with it. Right before the antitrust suit was filed, it sold like $3 million. And once again, you're just never going to convince me that you didn't know about that. You're just not going to. He knew, they knew, she knew, they knew. Okay, let's theoretically

say, all right, we believe it. Like, they didn't use their inside information. It almost doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't. Because ultimately the bottom line is people fucking think that you used your information and, you know, are benefiting from it. And by the way, when you look overall, like, you could look at any individual trade and be like, oh, maybe, maybe not. Who knows? But when you look at the numbers overall and you're like, all you motherfuckers beating the market no fucking how is it possible unusual if you look at the actual speculation the the

actual the trades sales and trades yeah they they're fucking no they know something and they're not doing anything about it unusual whale shout out to him he's really the one of the guys who sparked this whole movement because he was unusual whale he's like an anonymous twitter account and he's the one of the first people who actually whole movement. Who's Unusual Wales? He's like an anonymous Twitter account, and he's one of the first people who actually published. Independent journalist type. He published the first trading. This was like 2021, maybe 2020, actually, were some of the first people who actually picked it up originally about the congressional trading numbers.

And we went through the exact same, and he loops it all together as an institution and the way that it was able to beat the market consistently year after year after. And this is all publicly available data. Shout out to him. He's a great dude. Yeah, definitely give him a follow.

He is really. He does really good work. And you can actually see it all right there. The full trading report on politicians in 2022. And again, totally bipartisan. Yeah. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Patrick Follin, Susie Lee, David Joyce, Gary Peters, all look at the blue and the red.

They're all within the graph. And you can even see like, look, it's it's everybody like from all across the board, people who are supposedly against the system, people who are totally within the system. And that's what makes it so disgusting. We have got to ban this like with 19.8 percent. What does that mean? Well, that was down down percent. Well, and that's the other thing with Paul Pelosi. The guy is extraordinarily leveraged. He's always trading options. He's not even just buying and selling individual stocks. He's making much larger bets on these things.

I mean, he's got $100 million in access to shit you and I don't have. Boy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the top there. Yeah, she's doing well. Nice little portfolio return. I don't even know who that is. Look at that. 51% on year-over-year in 2022, which is crazy.

I mean, if you compare that to the S&P 500, I'd actually be curious what the 2022 S&P... Yeah, there you go. So S&P 500 is down 18%.

Look at every single one of these individual members who are able to have portfolios which are beating the total market. This is outrageous. Pelosi's off her game now. Look at that.

She's actually off her game. It seems like they threw just because everybody was on to their shit. Yeah. Yeah. Pelosi's off her game, though. Look at that. She's actually off her game. It seems like they threw just because everybody was on to their shit. Yeah. They fucking threw a little bit. But look at the red and blue. Exactly.

Oh, it's bipartisan. Yeah. 100%. Completely. And the top is red. Well, this is, and this is like a story of like hope

and it's very depressing because there was a whole grassroots movement to be like bipartisan. You know, the Republicans were pissed off about Pelosi and Democrats were pissed off about the Republicans. They're like, everybody was like, all right, this is fucked up, right? Any thinking person who cares about the country would be like, this is fucked up. Why are we doing this? And so then because there's this organic movement, you see actually some people in the mainstream press start to cover it.

There was actually a reporter at Insider. They started digging into the details of these trades and compiling reports. That leads to that, when you're talking about Nancy Pelosi at that press conference, that leads to her actually getting asked a question about it. And wasn't it incredibly revealing, her response in that moment? That leads to a backlash. Kevin McCarthy sees an opportunity with Republicans about to take it.

He starts posturing like, oh, if Republicans take the House, we're going to do the stock ban. Of course, they haven't said shit about that since then. Pelosi actually feels some pressure, like, all right, we're going to do, we're going to try a thing.

And they sort of like poison pill that to make sure it doesn't happen too. And that's where the, you know, it's a mixed bag because you're like, all right, we got it on the menu. There was a lot of pressure. Politicians heard it. They had to do something.

But then both parties, again, found ways to just completely, you know, let the issue slide and not actually have to change anything. That is an independent media story, though, because that's one of those where that guy published it. We started talking. This is not just us. This is a lot of people. Dave Portnoy. There's a lot of other people out there who've talked about it. A lot of independent media.

People like you have also brought it up. That kind of put it in the cultural pop culture conversation. You year where he was going to endorse a congressional stock trading ban. The line was pulled at the very last minute. Of all the things, you know, you listen to the State of the Union. It's like a laundry list. Check in the box on every fucking thing. Twenty five check boxes. And that's the line. That's the line that gets pulled.

Amazing, right? At whose request? I don't think people understand that cable is a fake business model. So for example, we talk a lot about the failing ratings. The key demo numbers on all three of these channels is a joke. I always like to say like Crystal and I would be starving in a ditch if any of these if we were getting the same numbers as these people. So how do they survive? It's because they're part of something called the cable bundle. And so like when you buy cable like Cox Communications or whatever, they pay – or Comcast for example. They pay CNN and MSNBC and Fox to be a part of the bundle.

The vast majority of the profit of these cable channels comes from the bundle. So CNN made a billion in profit just last year all propped up by the bundle because they're getting paid just to exist. I mean, can you imagine if we were getting paid to exist, not based upon our actual numbers? Like you can make you can actually reach less people and make more money. And so it's all part of this fake system. But I mean, the benefit is, is that with the rise of independent media, more and more advertisers are waking up, the less eyeballs, the less of an incentive for the bundle to actually pay them to be a part of it.

And that's why I was actually really excited by Amazon striking that deal with the NFL because I'm like, yes, get the rights away from these people because that is what props up all kinds of bullshit. We don't have like a small d democratic input with our eyeballs on CNN or any of these places. They can exist just fine without us. Like to really kill them, we have to get away from live news on TV. That's that's the number one thing still propping them up today. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a zombie business model. But I will tell you, I mean, I have a lot of optimism, certainly about what we're doing, about the response to what we're doing, about the independent media ecosystem. But we were you and I were talking the other day, Joe, about I do think it's a dangerous moment for people.

And one thing we've been covering a lot on the show is you have a kind of breakdown in previous national stories and narratives. And people are very like story driven. You know, you have a breakdown in I'm not a religious person. so this is like not my bag, but you have a breakdown in religion. So some of the stories that have kind of like held the country together and that people helped use to make sense of their life or even the story about the American dream. A lot of these things are kind of breaking down. Now, that's a good thing because it creates a possibility for a new, more beneficial story.

But in the meantime, it is just a like heyday for con artists and charlatans and, you know, people who are willing to sell a narrative to, you know, a lot of folks who feel kind of lost, kind of adrift and don't like existing in that chaos. So it's like, you know, whether they're being scammed by like SBF or this like Congressman George Santos who like made up every aspect of his life. That guy's amazing. I am. Crystal's obsessed with him. I just find him a disgrace. So there you go. Oh, God, I hate listening to this voice.

I actually listened back through the entire thing. Three hours of yourself, even when you're listening in three and a half speed, is not altogether pleasant. Though it was very pleasant to be there with you and with Joe. I thought, you know, it was just a lot of fun to be with Rogan. And the fun of Rogan is on one moment you're talking about Ukraine, and the next you're talking about bears and bear hunting in New Jersey. Yes, indeed. I mean, this was our third time going on. First time, I was nervous as hell.

And it was also, it was a very fraught moment in public life. It was like George Floyd. That was in LA at that point. There were riots going on right there. So that was a very intense experience. Last time, it was right after we had launched. So it was in the milieu of launching. Yeah, which was also very sort of like nerve wracking.

We didn't know how it was all going to go at that point. It was looking good, but we were still sort of like in the like really building up phase. This time, being that it's our third time and we spent more time with him, it felt a little bit more relaxed and conversational and like we could just kind of let the conversation flow. Definitely. So, was really excited about some of the topics that we got to get into, things that we cover a lot here on the show. The scam economy, something I'm talking about in my monologue today,

chat GPT, the freaking Chinese balloon, Ukraine, media, of course. So was really, really grateful to have the opportunity to raise some of those subjects on a show. Definitely. So if you guys enjoyed it, as we said, we got the discount going on, but we'll leave you with that. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? As everyone here knows,

there's nothing I love more than a good history lesson. So when I saw the Chinese balloon, I could not help but get excited. I've always had a weird fascination with large balloons and their use by mankind over the years. Might be the only guy sad that the Hindenburg blew up and killed the chances of balloon travel. Who gets nostalgic of how awesome it looked in Indiana Jones?

So with that said, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and look at how balloons have been used in war and for spying throughout history. Before the aeroplane became ubiquitous in war, the balloon was the go-to for aerial surveillance. Surveillance from the air is obviously useful for understanding the position of enemy forces without having to send ground forces to determine where they are. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out. It's the technology that has always been the limiting factor. The French were the leaders in balloon technology and with aviation in general in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so it's not a surprise they're actually the first to use balloons in war. The first recorded use of a balloon took place in 1794 by French forces in

the battle against Austria. Balloon was considered critical to French victory in the battle, and it was so important it led to the establishment of a French military department, which roughly translates to a company of aeronauts. The original balloon itself was tethered to the ground with ropes and cables and, quote, would communicate with the ground with flag signals or by placing written messages in sandbags fitted with rings that would be slid down the cables. The first use reportedly stunned the French because it allowed them to see a distance of 18 miles through the use of a telescope and let them get a clearer picture of the battlefield before the attack. In fact, one of the commanding generals at the Battle of Fleurs stayed in the air for the entire battle and directed it with messages sent down from the balloon for 10 hours.

The balloon also had a significant moral effect on the Austrian enemy, who, quote, feared the balloon and looked upon it as an agent of the devil allied to the French Republic. The balloon was then quickly noticed as a critical tool. In warfare, it appeared next in major conflagration here in the United States, the American Civil War. It saw the next major organized deployment of recon balloons by the Union Army after a balloon technician personally convinced President Lincoln of their utility. Seven balloons in total were deployed by the

Union during the war. None were ever shot down, though the general utility was questioned by 1863. They were more a novelty than a critical military necessity. They didn't really explode on the scene again until World War I, when the great European powers were all fascinated by big developments in manned flight. Balloons, by this point, were able to reach some 3,000 to 6,000 feet and were much more useful at being able to spot enemy artillery positions. And in fact, what's reminiscent of today, some of the first use of planes were actually used to shoot down enemy balloons.

Balloon operator was considered a very dangerous job because enemy fire was able to reach them, and they were equipped with parachutes. But it was World War II where things got really interesting. In one of those since forgotten but extraordinary moments, the only people to die in the continental United States during the Second World War was from an attack where six citizens of Oregon on a picnic, including some children, who encountered a Japanese balloon laden with bombs. The Japanese sent up nearly 9,000 balloons to drift over the U.S. in the hopes that they would cause mass panic and casualties. They were largely unsuccessful, luckily. So you might think that was the last of balloons, but actually they have been used by great powers since then in all conflicts, including by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, in Afghanistan, they became such a potent symbol of American oppression by villagers who found the idea of constantly being spied on very obtrusive. So you might ask,

why even use a balloon in the age of satellites? Well, the U.S. Air Force put out a paper in 2009 that described why balloons are still used. They can stay above a target for much longer than a satellite. They're easier to retrieve. Orders of magnitude cheaper to launch. They can scan more territory from a lower altitude. In fact, balloons are seen as so critical even today that the U.S. Air Force just a few months ago established a new program to use them against China and Russia.

The new program, which is known as COLDSTAR, or the Covert Long Dwell Stratospheric Architecture Program, is similar to the Chinese one. It deploys stratospheric balloons between 60,000 and 90,000 feet for global surveillance. In 2023, we are scheduled to spend some $30 million on balloon technology. Balloons are seen as one of the first lines of defense against hypersonic missiles, which move in an irregular manner and have posed a nightmare to missile defense planning capabilities. So this actually gives us an insight into the Chinese spy balloon. Many have asked, why is this balloon being used in the first place in the age of spy satellites? It especially makes sense that the Chinese balloon was deployed over one of those

three U.S. bases, which house intercontinental ballistic missile programs, and in a time when we are looking to compete with Russia and China in the development of hypersonic missiles. In fact, my biggest takeaway in research for this piece is that the balloon isn't nearly as crazy or as rudimentary as our first initial impression may be. My bigger takeaway is a joyful one. For all the advances that we have made as society,

sometimes the simplest technology is the best and the most reliable. Nothing better than putting gas in a balloon and going up. Maybe my dreams of balloon travel are not dead after all. So, pretty crazy, right?

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. What are you taking a look at? Well, guys, about two weeks ago, a short seller known for exposing corporate fraud dropped this little cryptic message on Twitter, quote, soon we will release a report on what we strongly suspect to be the largest corporate fraud in history. And they did kind of deliver. Hindenburg Research, funny we're just talking about the balloons, posted a 100-page detailed report along with a lengthy Twitter thread claiming that one of the richest men on the entire planet was actually a massive fraud

using a network of shell companies to manipulate the valuation of his corporate empire stock and to falsify his balance sheets. The fallout has been swift and it has been dramatic, erasing $100 billion in corporate value in just a matter of days and shaking the economy of an entire nation. All right, so here are the details. Ghatamadani is not only the richest man in India, but in all of Asia. His rise was intertwined with the rise of Prime Minister Modi. Both hailed from the Indian state of Gujarat, Adani guaranteed Modi's longtime loyalty when he broke from the Indian business community consensus and defended Modi over the deadly anti-Muslim riots which unfolded under Modi's watch. As he rose to power, Adani also rose to vast wealth, with enterprises deeply intertwined with and critical to the Indian state.

Now, today, Adani's empire spans coal, green energy, ports, airports, and a whole lot more. He is, in large part, the industrialist building the nation-state that Modi envisions. The state backs him, and he backs the state. Now, this has led to the accumulation of vast wealth on the scale of household name titans, people like Bezos, Musk, and Gates. But, according to Hindenburg Research, this fantastic journey to world dominance is being propped up by fakery and outright fraud. Essentially, they claim that Adani used dozens of shell companies, most in the notorious tax haven of Mauritius, to pump up their stock price and launder their balance sheets, inflating asset prices so that their financial health would appear much better than it actually is. Many of these shell companies, seemingly only business, was holding Adani stock. As one former

shell company employee put it, quote, I think this stock is definitely held by the Adani group because nobody else would want to buy it. As any investor, why would you invest with the Adani Group? You know the stock is inflated and they cannot be trusted. And looking at the business, it is a house of cards. It's all fueled on debt. And if the Modi government goes out of power, maybe the whole thing comes crashing down. This phony picture of financial health and inflated stock prices allowed Adani to borrow vast amounts of money, loading all of their companies up with debt and further imperiling their financial health, but also enabling them to pursue some of those big infrastructure projects to build up the Indian economy. Hindenburg's report reveals not only details of those alleged crimes, but also of the cover-up.

The shell businesses were set up with phony websites describing businesses that are nonsensical. They used stock photos. Many of them had no employees. The Adani corporate empire is closely controlled by family members, which of course would be a good way to keep prying outside eyes from raising objections to potential fraud. Financial officers of the conglomerate come and go in rapid succession. Hindenburg also documents a series of sketchy characters with prior history of stock manipulation and fraud who are involved in this whole enterprise. And the outside auditors who would be responsible for revealing these schemes are wildly inexperienced and appear wholly unable to actually audit complex enterprises. So there you go. A global empire

intertwined with the Indian state, pumped up by fake stock prices, balance sheet manipulation, and allowed to get away with it due to their symbiotic relationship with the Indian government. Hindenburg itself has a pretty good track record of exposing real fraud. For example, they exposed lies at electric truck maker Nikola, which eventually led to the CEO of that company being found guilty of fraud. But as we weigh the merit of these allegations, it's of course important to keep in mind, Hindenburg is ultimately a short seller. Their entire business model does rely on leveling allegations of fraud and then profiting off of the resulting stock decline in value. So, although they do have a very good track record, they are

also not a disinterested party. Just want to put that out there. As for Adani, in their response, they leaned heavily into Indian nationalism. They claimed Hindenburg's research was an attack on the Indian state itself, but they actually answered few of the substantive questions, which were raised. They do, though, fully deny any wrongdoing. The fallout from this report has been truly astonishing. Adani companies plummeted in the stock market. They lost $100 billion in value in a single week. Adani's fortune has similarly collapsed. He's estimated to have lost half his net worth since the report's release. It's been such a catastrophe that he actually had to abruptly pull a $2.5 billion stock sale, saying it would not be morally correct to go through with it at this time. The collapse in the company's stock price

meant that any investor in the new stock sale would be immediately signing up for a big loss. Economist Adam Tooze recently spoke about the likely fallout in India and how this is all being interpreted by the domestic audience. Here's what he had to say. There's really an element of culture clash here. I mean, there aren't many players in the Indian financial markets who imagine that the value of the Adani group is determined in a conventionally free and fair way, because people aren't naive about the way in which India's political economy operates. And the sophisticated rationale for what's going on in India is that Indian financial investors know that it is indeed the impunity, if you like, the ability of the Adani group to, if necessary,

produce rather high valuations of its assets to sustain large amounts of credit that is part of their business plan. And with the backing that they enjoy in political circles, they are not just too big to fail, but essentially identified with the Modiite project. So long as that is hegemonic in Indian politics, these businesses cannot fail. So there is, in fact, very little risk that you won't get paid back. And there is some prospect,

and in fact, no prospect any other way, of this major infrastructure in India actually getting built because they are the last resort, if you like, of the Indian state machine. And to that extent, no harm, no foul. Look, to his point, it'd be one thing if this was just an India-only story. State-aligned enterprise propped up by state-affiliated capital and state subsidies. It's basically a tale as old as time.

But while the reverberations will be felt most acutely in India, no doubt, we're talking about sophisticated global investors and titanic banks who were snookered by the fake stock prices and rigged balance sheets, allegedly, who forked over gigantic loans to fund this conglomerate based on alleged fraud, which taken together, as Hindenburg puts it, would amount to the largest corporate con in history. Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Barclays, and more, all scrambling to figure out what their exposure is on this whole house of cards. Yet another illustration of how easy it is, apparently, to rig the game, pull the wool over the eyes of the supposedly most brilliant, sophisticated people in the world,

the scam economy with a massive global reach. And, you know, it's funny because he's not a household name here. Yeah, oh, there they are. But you made this point. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys,

thanks for sticking with us. It's a fun show to be back. Reminder, we got the State of the Union live stream tomorrow starting at 8 p.m. We'll have great coverage for you before and after the State of the Union. Welcome to our new JRE listeners and all of you.

We really appreciate some of your support. And it's going to be a fun ride as we go into the 2024 election. But with that, we'll see you all tomorrow. Tomorrow evening. Guys, see you tomorrow evening, 8 p.m. It's going to be fun. This is an iHeart Podcast.