Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/29/22: Biden Doubles Down, Billionaires Tax, Defense Spending, Recession Looms, Hunter Corruption, Midterm Forecast, & More!

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Krystal and Saagar provide the new comments from Biden on regime change in Russia, peace deal negotiations, Biden's billionaires tax, defense budget increase, recession indicators, Hunter Biden revelations, worst Will Smith takes, independent media future, China lockdowns, and the 2022 midterms outlook!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Kyle Kondik: http://www.kylekondik.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Long-Red-Thread-Democratic-Republican/dp/0821424424  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big stories breaking this morning that we want to get to. Developments in Ukraine, potential, maybe, negotiations over a peace deal, some possibly hopeful signs, but I would very much moderate your expectations there. Also, Biden trying to clean things up and probably just making things worse.

We also got a new budget from him, heavy on military spending, very different trajectory than the beginning of the administration. We'll talk about all of that. Latest signs that we may be headed into a recession, a key indicator that always precedes recessions in the last 50 years has now indicated that we may be headed in that direction. So we'll break all of that down. Hunter Biden, new details revealed about potential criminal problems for him that, of course, is being completely ignored by most of the media.

We will break all of that down for you. And we can't resist but to bring you the absolutely best-slash-worst takes of the whole Will Smith situation. We've done a little roundup for everybody. There was some amazing, really world-class galaxy brain unfolding over on Twitter. I've seen takes out there you people wouldn't believe. Yeah. So we brought them all together for you to enjoy this morning.

Also, Kyle Kondik is going to be back with us to preview the midterms, but we wanted to start with Biden and his cleanup job. That's right. So we brought you those three instances yesterday where the president's comments had to be cleaned up. Number one, whenever he told troops or intimated to them that they might be heading towards Ukraine. Number two, obviously, whenever he declared regime change or policy of regime change of the United States for Vladimir Putin. And then a third instance where he also had a gaffe that had to be cleaned

up by the White House. Yet the president yesterday is defiant. He says, I didn't make a single mistake. You people are the one who are misinterpreting it. He's got a little bit in common with Trump in that regard. Let's take a listen. Do you believe what you said that Putin can't remain in power? Or do you now regret saying that because your government has been trying to walk that back? Did your words complicate matters? Well, yes. Three different questions. I'll answer them all. Number one, I'm not walking anything back. The fact of the matter is I was expressing the more outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing in the actions of this man. Just brutality. Half the children in Ukraine.

I just come from being with those families. And so, but I want to make it clear, I wasn't then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it. Personal feelings? My personal feelings. Secondly,

your man in power just like you know bad people shouldn't continue to do bad things but it doesn't mean we have a fundamental policy to do anything to take putin down any way. Are you worried that other leaders in the world are going to start to doubt that America is back if some of these big things that you say on the world stage keep getting walked back? What's getting walked back? It made it sound like, just in the last couple days,

it sounded like you told U.S. troops they were going to Ukraine. It sounded like you said it was possible the U.S. would use a chemical weapon. And it sounded like you were calling for regime change in Russia. And we know— None of the three occurred. None of the three occurred. None of the three. So, yeah, there you can see, none of the three were a walkback.

There was no problem, even though his administration had to clean up every single one with a clarifying statement after the fact crystal. I think that mashup that we just had there is extraordinary because it shows you that this man has no contrition for what he said, that also that the White House staff are jumping the gun a little bit whenever they try to put out these statements clarifying things for him. And it creates a narrative he clearly doesn't like. He's like, no, I didn't make a mistake. I didn't misspeak whatsoever. I said exactly what I mean. And this is part of the issue. During that conference, he said, I was not changing the policy of the United States. What you say is the policy of the United States. When you declare regime change, that means that's the policy of the United States government. We used to have the same

problem under Trump. His advisors would say, well, if you look at the underlying policy, it's like, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works. He's the democratically elected one. Whenever he speaks, he is declaring something. Part of why what he said yesterday was so catastrophic in terms of its implications for the Russian government itself. But it just shows you that this man, I mean, is completely, he just has no apologies. He has no ability for him to even clarify his words, even if you can recognize the extraordinary danger that he's putting us in by speaking off the cuff like this. Joe Biden has always been completely undisciplined when it comes to his language and his words. This is a surprise to absolutely no one. And sometimes

that trait is actually charming because sometimes it makes him relatable. You know, I mean, it's it's part of, frankly, what people liked about Trump, too. Sometimes they liked that he would say the thing that he's not really supposed to say. And it's just like what happens to fumble into his brain at that moment and then fall right out of his mouth. It can be an appealing characteristic. When you are talking about a potential World War III confrontation with a nuclear superpower, it is the most disastrous character trait you could possibly have. And that's why we've had, over the past just very short period of time, he off the cuff calls Putin a war criminal. Now, was that planned in advance or not? We don't

know. After the fact, then they come out with a sort of like rollout of, okay, now the U.S. government is going to officially call Putin a war criminal, which, look, he is. But when you have the president of the United States and the official policy of the U.S. administration to label him a war criminal, that makes it very difficult to be a positive, constructive part of forging a peace. So first you have that. You have him call him a butcher, something else that, you know, allies distanced themselves from and the White House had to clean up. Then you have him seeming to insinuate to our armed forces that they're going to be actually going to Ukraine.

Okay, disastrous for anyone to get the idea that he's like letting slip there what's actually going on. And then you, of course, have him ad-libbing this line from his speech that Putin cannot remain in power, validating the worst fears of Putin, effectively pushing him even further into a corner and making the risk of escalation that much greater. And then, and I didn't catch this till after the fact, after this presser yesterday, when he was responding to a question about what he said to the 82nd Airborne and seeming to imply that they were going to be actually going to Ukraine, he made another mess for himself. He denied that that was what was going on, that they were actually going to Ukraine, he made another mess for himself. He denied that that was what was going on, that they were actually going to Ukraine, adding, we're talking about helping train the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland. Got it.

Well, that hasn't been acknowledged. And that represents, if true, and by the way, he reiterated it when pressed. He said, I was referring to being with and talking with Ukrainian troops that are in Poland. We have not acknowledged that our troops are training Ukrainian troops in Poland. And if that is in fact true, number one, that is classified. And number two, that is a significant escalation that, again, nobody has been made aware of so even in his cleanup he's making another catastrophic mess for him and i would love to know the answer of whether or not that is actually happening right now that's a great question as well i have no doubt that it is happening but as you said you know these things are easier classified or they should be briefed to congress and we should all maybe have a little bit of a say or understanding about what's happening and this just comes within the general context of all the arms that are flowing into

Ukraine, the very lack of current oversight and the lack of inquiry currently by the press. This is really what astounds me about Biden, which is that any rational person, anyone could look at what he said and say, this is a real problem. I mean, some people are trying to excuse it away. We covered all the bloodthirsty neocons in media yesterday saying, oh, actually, regime change is good. I mean, outside of these psychopaths, most people could say this. Yeah, I think Putin should go. I absolutely think that. Do I think that we should bring force to bear in order to accomplish that goal?

No, I don't think that. This was exactly the same position that the elites used in order to gaslight us into war in Iraq. They made it a referendum on Saddam Hussein, not on Saddam Hussein and then removal of Saddam Hussein and all of the 40th order consequences that could come with that. I mean, look at the dissolution of Russian regimes in the past. Doesn't always go so well for the rest of the world. And I think that that is exactly why what he said is so consequential. Even on CNN, I saw an analyst yesterday named Kim Dozier, a national security reporter. She's like, look, this is the greatest gift of Kremlin propaganda that could have ever happened.

Everyone can understand that in terms of what the Russian people are hearing domestically, being hammered home that sanctions are going to come no matter what. They want to overthrow our government. They want to return to the chaos of the 1990s. They refuse in order to back down. And thus the Ukrainian, you know, peacekeeping operation or whatever they call it is what is needed at this time. Again and again, we see this from Biden. He validates the concerns,

but worse on a strategic perspective, he's all over the map. He's like, no, we're not going to send any troops, but we are sending these advisors. Also the policy is regime change, except it's not regime change. I was expecting my moral outrage. And also the troops are going over there, but they're not going over there. What the hell is happening? Uncertainty in these environments is exactly what causes miscalculation and escalation. Lack of ability to understand what your opponent is thinking.

In the Kremlin, they have already the lens of the most maximalist interpretation of what the Biden administration is saying, which could lead them to take the most maximalist action, which could then cause a miscalculation on our part. And next thing you know, we're in a minor nuclear exchange, and there's nothing minor about what that looks like in this day and age. Well, and it's not just that this is like verbal diarrhea. The problem is that he is probably revealing here the true thinking inside the administration. Well, and it's not just that this is like verbal diarrhea. The problem is that he is probably

revealing here the true thinking inside the administration, which is even worse. This isn't just he slipped up and said the wrong thing. No, it's a gap in the true sense in that he revealed the discussions that are actually going on behind the scenes that we had gotten little glimpses of before. I keep mentioning, but it's really important that Niall Ferguson piece where he reports that privately a senior administration official was saying the only end game here is Putin out of power. You had Michael O'Hanlon, who's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He said of Biden's comment, what it tells me and worries me is that the top team is not thinking about

plausible war termination. Now, I'm not talking about, you know, the type of hot war we had in Iraq where we brought in the tanks and we, you know, using military force to pose Saddam Hussein. But if they are deluding themselves into thinking that their actions are going to in the near term push Putin out of power, and that is the only endgame that they are ultimately pushing for, well, that means that they aren't going to be a constructive part of trying to create an off-ramp, trying to create the conditions for peace, pushing for negotiations which are going to be difficult and painful on both sides. What Biden seems to be indicating here is that they are thinking instead

that the pressure they're bringing to bear, the extreme pressure through indiscriminate sanctions and through bolstering the Ukrainian military and by making Russia a global pariah, that that is actually going to have the end effect of pushing Putin out of power. The reality is their comments here and their actions thus far are likely only strengthening Putin's hand domestically, providing him with propaganda wins, as you said, validating the narrative that he has been selling to his people that the West is out to get Russia. They want to destroy Russia. They hate Russia. And we are simply providing fuel for that fire. So it's not just that this is a verbal screw up. It's that the direction and the thinking of the administration that it reveals is a catastrophic direction. Yeah, but not everybody in the press corps was willing to acknowledge it that way. Just

look at the way this PBS reporter talks to Biden. You can't even make it up. Let's take a listen. You have more foreign policy experience than any president who's ever held this office. Whether those are your personal feelings or your feelings as president, do you understand why people would believe you, as someone commanding one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, saying someone cannot remain in power is a statement of U.S. policy? And also, are you concerned about propaganda use of those remarks by the Russians? No and no.

Tell me why. You have so much experience. You are the leader of this country. Because it's ridiculous. Nobody believes we're going to take down, I was talking about taking down Putin. Nobody believes that. Number one. Number two, what have I been talking about since this all began? The only war that's worse than one intended is one that's unintended.

The last thing I want to do is engage in a land war or a nuclear war with Russia. That's not part of it. So even after buttering him up, you have so much more. Oh my God, you're so amazing. That's not true. You're like the best president ever.

He does not have the most foreign policy experience of any president. John Quincy Adams would like a word whenever it comes to that. And George H.W. Bush and many of these others. Experience in foreign policy, not necessarily a good thing here, folks. Not necessarily a good thing. I'm just listening off people who have much more foreign policy experience than he did before he took the office. And yet, this is the issue, which is that even within that, he is such a crotchety old guy that he had not retreat.

Nobody believes. Actually, a lot of people believe it. And you should know that if you actually did have proper foreign policy experience. But this ornery nature of Biden, this is not an old man thing. This is intrinsic to his character, has been for the last 50 years. When he believes he's right, he refuses to back down. We saw this during the campaign. We see it here now. And look, this is a very unfortunate part of his character that makes him, the leader of the democratic free world world a real issue for all of us because of the global security concerns he's igniting. And he refuses to even acknowledge a single part of that. It's making us all less safe. most aggressive sort of people out there, mainstream foreign policy types, who is running cover for Biden on these comments, who's very upset about the number of questions that were about, you know, whether regime change was the policy of the United States. Because I think seven out of nine of the questions had to do with this. fixates on it as like, oh, it's a gaffe and it's a mistake. One instance where that lines up with

what is actually the central, most critical issue of the day, which is what is the administration actually thinking? Now, of course, they never really press the case. I think the only question we've really seen that pushes, okay, what are you doing to create a peace came from Ryan Grimm. One instance, they never really press the case of like, how are you doing to create a peace, came from Ryan Grimm. One instance, they never really pressed the case of, like, how are you creating an off-ramp? How are you making it so that negotiations will come to a peaceful resolution? But in this one case, their instinct for, like, gotcha questions actually lands on what is the most central and critical issue of the day. And it's not that he misspoke.

It's the fear that this reveals what is really going on inside high levels of the day. And it's not that he misspoke. It's the fear that this reveals what is really going on inside high levels of the administration. Yeah, unfortunately, that may be the case. Let's move on to the peace. Okay, yeah. So there's negotiations going on today in Turkey. These are the first negotiations between Ukrainians and Russians in about two weeks. And, you know, we've gotten, we've sort of been to this movie before where you get some potential indications that maybe there's some movement and maybe there's some openness and maybe they're coming to some sort of an accord, some sort of a deal. So we're going to give you the latest signs of that with a lot of caveats that, you know, the Russians may not be operating

in good faith here. The Ukrainians very much feel like they are winning this war, so unlikely to want to give up much in terms of concessions on their side. But let's put this first piece up on the screen. This is from Financial Times, Moscow Bureau Chief Max Saddam. He says, new details on Ukraine ceasefire talks with Russia. Ukraine has to give up on NATO, but will be free to join the EU. That's new. Russia is no longer demanding denazification, whatever that meant. Demilitarization and Russian language are not part of the possible deal either. So reading into the article that is linked to here, they say, as part of the agreement under consideration, Ukraine would refrain from developing nuclear weapons or hosting foreign military bases in addition to abandoning its pursuit of NATO membership. In exchange, Ukraine

would get what one of the negotiators called wording close to NATO's Article 5, whereby the alliance's members must come to each other's aid if one is attacked for security guarantees from countries including Russia, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, China, Italy, Poland, Israel, and Turkey. However, the draft communique under consideration leaves the biggest sticking point Ukraine's attempts to reclaim territory seized by Russia since 2014 to be settled in a tentative future discussion by Putin and Zelensky. So there's a couple things to note there. Number one, you know, you should always question whether Russia is really engaging in good faith or they're just trying to provide sort of propaganda cover that, oh, of course we want peace when really they're

continuing their war and their military operations. So that always hangs over all of this. But the other important piece there is that even though you see some potential outlines on some difficult pieces, NATO membership, security guarantees, foreign military bases, those sorts of things, the biggest questions of, all right, well, what happens to those separatist territories and what happens in Crimea, that they're not even really talking about. Yeah, we're not talking about that. So that's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it also could follow on in the follow talks. Now, let's put this next one up there because this is also important.

While the Biden administration continues to basically push regime change, at least in rhetoric, against Russia, Ukraine is President Zelensky, while, yes, constantly asking for more planes, is sounding a different note in his interview with Russian journalists. I talked a bit about this yesterday, but he said, quote, Ukraine is prepared to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of the peace deal with Russia. Such a pact would have been guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum. So that is per what Zelensky said. Now, what's even more important about that is that they would codify it in their constitution, have it guaranteed by a third party. Further discussion here, Crystal, actually indicates that the Russians, what we were talking about earlier, might be okay with EU membership, but it's NATO specifically that needs to be ruled out entirely. So there's a lot of room for discussion here, once again, in terms of the deployment of defensive slash offensive weapons. What they're really guaranteeing

here is that no Western military deployment to Ukraine that appears to be the total red line in terms of what the Russians can at least demand from a realistic point of view, given their lack of current military success on the ground and the kind of the reversion to a stalemate that we see currently. All of this has setting the ground for two outcomes. Number one, we could see a speedy peace. That would be a great thing. We have thousands of civilians who are dead, millions of people who have fled the country. A large part of it is decimated.

The Russians have egg on their face, even though they still have superior military capability. And they could throw in the towel and say, okay, we're good. Given what happened to our economy. Take some sort of a face-saving win here. Exactly right. Take the face-saving, Ukraine guarantees, all of that.

Within three months, none of us have to talk about it or think about it anymore. However, the other thing is that this peace talk could break down, and then we see very unfortunate consequence of a humanitarian disaster, hundreds of thousands of civilians who are dead, and really even more of the gambling for resurrection that you've talked about and the further stalemate into those things. We should all pray and hope for the former. That doesn't mean, though, that it's likely.

There are still demands that the Russians would have to give up in order to see a real negotiation on the part of President Zelensky, namely the fact that, A, he can't guarantee demilitarization because, you know, he just got his country invaded, and he has to guarantee his own sovereignty, his ability for his regime in order to stay in power. There's no way that he's going to willingly give that up. So can the Russians really accept that type of outcome? I just don't know the answer to that question.

There was another interesting part that Zelensky said, and this was in his speech that he gave on Sunday. So with regards to the neutrality, I mean, this was in his speech that he gave on Sunday. So with regards to the neutrality, I mean, this is similar to language that he's used before, but he says security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state, we are ready to go for it. This is the most important point. But he also, and this is a quote from the piece, he ruled out trying to recapture all Russian held territory by force, saying it would lead to a third world war and said he wanted to reach a compromise over the eastern Donbass region

held by Russian-backed forces since 2014. So perhaps in that language, you could see this sort of challenging, tricky, narrow diplomatic path where Ukraine does not recognize those parts of the country as under Russian control, nor do they use their military to try to regain control. So you have this sort of like tenuous balancing act that we've certainly seen, you know, in other parts of the world where, you know, you have an official recognition by one side, you don't on the other side, you sort of maintain a status quo that at least gets us out of the conflict.

I don't know if that could be the direction they go. And the one other thing that just came out this morning, this is also from Max of Financial Times, Russia's deputy defense minister is saying Moscow has decided to, quote, fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kiev and Chernyakiv. I don't know how to say that. In order to, quote, increase mutual trust for future negotiations to agree and sign a peace deal with Ukraine. Again, you can't take them at face value, but this is what they're projecting. This is what they're saying. They're clearly trying to signal a seriousness in their approach to these latest negotiations, which again,

they haven't, the two sides haven't met in two weeks. So it is significant that they are meeting once again, but they're also, I think, trying to cover for the fact that they're suffering some military losses, especially around Kyiv. So this is a way to say, we're not defeated. We're holding back because we really are serious about peace. That's my immediate reaction is that's a hell of a way to spin the fact that you've had a military setback, to put it nicely, in terms of your ability to try and seize the city. I had seen that Russia did take control of the city of Mariupol,

at least according to the people who were on the ground after a pretty brutal military campaign there. So look, hopefully this is the way that things are moving in this direction. They have egg on their face. They can accept it. They can pull back. And they can have a hope for a return to the community of nations, although that is pretty unlikely at this point.

And yet, they still might go for it in terms of trying to at least have some sort of acceptance and reintegration into the global economy. All of that put together in that Kiev announcement, I would say, is pretty good. That being said, look, we have seen fake-outs before. Many times in the history of military conflict, promises of ceasefires, which are actually the harbingers of offensives, of trying to get the defensive side to back down a little bit and then use that as a pretext in order to start even more conflict. So we'll believe it whenever it's signed on the dotted line.

And even then, we'll distrust, but we'll verify. So it's still a long, long way to go. Rhetorically, though, it's not a bad thing to see from our perspective. There was one other piece of tantalizing news that we wanted to talk about. Oh, yes, yeah. You've been going deep on this. Yeah, well, I don't know how deep I went, but I, so I'm skeptical of these reports

that came out from the Wall Street Journal, and we can go ahead and put this up on the screen, that Roman Abramovich, who is a close Putin ally and has been involved in the peace negotiations, and three Ukrainian peace negotiators purportedly suffered from a suspected poisoning. This was based on an investigation from an investigator with the Bellingcat Open Source Collective, which receives funding from the U.S. government. And, you know, sometimes they're correct and sometimes they're not. And it's been the question has been raised whether they, you know, have oftentimes a political agenda in terms of information that they are putting out. But even by their own admission, they were unable to obtain to travel on to Istanbul. The symptoms of this alleged poisoning included, like, they said their skin was peeling

and they had issues with their eyesight. So strange symptoms. Okay. And you certainly don't put it past, you know, hardliners in Moscow. They've been known to poison people before. So I'm not putting it off the table. I'm just saying that this should be treated with a dose of skepticism because of where the report comes from and also because they were unable to specifically obtain a sample that would prove that this was, in fact, poisoning. And by the way, even the New York Times in their report about it were kind of skeptical that this was really what was going on. And they quoted someone who said that the symptoms could be consistent with something much more mundane like food poisoning.

They all eat the same, serve the same thing at the peace negotiation. They end up with food poisoning. I'll say it'd be weird for food poisoning to cause you to have weird problems with your vision. But anyway, I just wanted to cover it to say I'm a little skeptical of these reports, so take this one with a grain of salt. I'll believe it when I see it.

Wouldn't put it past him, though. Yeah, sure. Of course. There you go. All right. The other big news from yesterday is President Biden unveiled his budget. Big picture. This is a very different budget than the sort of presentation of what this administration would be when they were hanging the FDR portraits in the office and they had big plans for how they were really going to deal with inequality, deal with climate change, transform sort of the landscape of what life is like for workers. This budget seems to be very much responsive to Republican attacks on Biden and the Democrats. And I will just say, listen, guys, they're going to say the same things about

you no matter what. So it'd be much better for you to have an affirmative governing vision that you care about and actually get behind and push for. But let's get into some of the details here because there are a couple of things that are good. First of all, he's pushing for a billionaire tax, something that, you know, we can get into the details of it and the mechanics of it. But certainly, Lord knows, those at the very top end are paying very little in taxes. It is wildly unjust, is contributing to massive fundamental imbalances within our economy. And so taxing the richest among us more should be an end in and of itself. But as I was just saying, rather than affirmatively making the case for taxing the rich

more, he's fitting it into this, oh, now we're serious about deficit reduction narrative, basically adopting the Republican talking points. So let's take a listen to some of that, and then I'll talk on the other side about the dangers of that. Yeah. Compared to 2020, we're reducing the size of the deficit relative to our economy by almost two-thirds, reducing inflationary pressures, and making real headway cleaning up the fiscal mess I inherited. After my predecessor's fiscal mismanagement, we're reducing the Trump deficits and returning our fiscal house to order. Right now, billionaires pay an average rate of 8% on their total income. 8%. That's the average they pay. Now, I'm a capitalist, but just,

if you make a billion bucks, great. Just pay your fair share. Pay a little bit. A firefighter and a teacher pay more than double, double the tax rate that a billionaire pays. That's not right. That's not fair. And my budget contains a billionaire minimum tax because of that. I hate that whisper thing. It's so irritating to me. I don't like it.

Anyway, on the substance, first of all, let me say, listen, guys, we've been in this movie before. When you talk about deficit reduction, it does not end up with you raising taxes on billionaires. It ends up with you following the Rick Scott plan of raising taxes on the working poor and cutting the social safety net. That's where this deficit talk ultimately ends up. In terms of the details on the billionaire tax, something that is very popular with the American public and, yes, does have the impact of, you know, cutting the deficit, but more importantly to be helps to correct what is a fundamental imbalance in our economy. Let's go ahead and put the CNBC tear sheet up on the screen. He's proposing a new 20 percent minimum billionaire

tax. It's called the billionaire minimum income tax, would assess 20% minimum tax rate on all U.S. households worth more than $100 million. Over half of the revenue would come from those worth more than $1 billion. Jeff Stein ran some of the numbers about how this would change the game in terms of some of our most famous billionaires. Elon Musk would pay an additional $50 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would pay an additional $35 billion. Actually, those numbers come from Gabriel Zuckman, who's a well-known economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who does a lot of work with Thomas Piketty on inequality. So effectively, what they're trying to do here is make it so that billionaires can't play all the games with their wealth that they normally do. Typical billionaire isn't getting a lot of money from wage income.

They have assets and they're able to borrow against their holdings in order to fund their living expenses. That means they can go their entire life without paying taxes on their true net wealth because they never, according to the tax code, realize those gains. Then there's a provision in the tax code that lets them pass all of that forward to whoever, you know, their kids or whoever. And there's what's called a step-up basis. And then the kids don't pay taxes on it either. So this massive amount of wealth goes completely untaxed. I mean, it never is ultimately taxed. And so this is an attempt to try to really recognize the sources of wealth of billionaires and make the code a little bit more fair. Yeah, I'll say two things on this. First of all, the budget is fake. It doesn't matter.

We have the president's budget has not mattered for many years. Well, how it works is basically during the Obama administration, during sequestration, the president would send his budget. It used to be that there would be a debate and it would pass within some form if the opposite party, they basically said, no, we're going to continue funding the government through a continuing resolution. So what the Congress decides is what actually matters. This is purely a messaging tool. I will say this though. I think that taxing unrealized gains is incredibly stupid. And the reason why is because it doesn't actually correct the problem. The problem, as you said, is that people are taking massive amounts of loans, Musk, Bezos, et cetera, based upon the actual unrealized asset. So you should tax the loan. That's what the actual cash

income is. Same, we should fix the step-up basis. Because again, that is the point where the wealth is then transferred over to the actual heirs, who are again using the loopholes within the financial system to borrow against these assets. Same thing whenever it comes to very high-end real estate. So this would be a way in order to correct this imbalance while also addressing the problem and fix the incentive. Because the current incentive, it should not be disincentivized to hold equity in a company, especially if you're going to start a company and it does 100x to a billion. The issue is that it should not be disincentivized to hold equity in a company, especially if you're going to start a company and it does 100x to a billion. The issue is that you should not be incentive to never realize that gain and thus never have a taxable event. So the taxable event can say, hey, you can hold all the stock that you want, but you can either sell some to live or you could have a tax on the loan.

That's up to you yeah and this is the issue uh that i see without this is the same thing in the equity markets too and actually a way that you can get around some of the possible unconstitutionality of a wealth tax is that people buy all this art and then they take loans based upon the art people buy all this stuff and then they take loans and the rich people are always like well how are you going to tax it it's not possible we don't have to tax it. That's fine. The way that we do it is,

if you're going to float your lifestyle based upon this piece of art sitting in a Swiss Freeport, okay, then we're going to have to have a little bit of a discussion here. It's just, it's an unsophisticated way to turn things off. Well, here's what I would say. I don't feel that we're in a position to be too picky about how we ultimately tax billionaire wealth because the reality is, as you said, is this going to actually happen?

Well, it's not going to happen. So if we were actually at the point where I thought this was going to be reality, I would be more interested in engaging in the specifics. I think you make a great point about how it might be a more elegant solution. We also know what happened when Biden was proposing getting rid of the step up basis. People like Claire McCallum. What's that lady's name? Heidi Heitkamp. She's the one. Remember making up these completely disingenuous arguments for how is this going to hurt like family farmers? It was like she invented this scenario of a truck driver who inherits a log cabin that's worth tens of millions of dollars. I mean, it's just like the lengths that they will go to to keep the step up basis from being changed are

completely insane. And so that got dropped from Build Back Better pretty quickly because of entrenched moneyed, well-funded interests, both on the Democratic and the Republican side, making sure that it would never, ever come to pass. So in the spirit of thinking of this as like a messaging tool, which I think probably is the best way to think about it, I believe that they are probably thinking more in terms of this is the easiest approach to sell to the country. Because when you start talking about step-up basis, I mean, we've explained it here a number of times, this strategy of buy, borrow, die, and how you can pass your assets forward, and then they're never right. But it's complicated, and it leaves the door open for people like Heidi Heitkamp to muddy the waters and make it impossible. Whereas saying, listen, billionaires are going to pay 20% minimum tax. That's what's going to happen. I think it is probably, just on the messaging front, probably more effective.

Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, look, maybe. At this point, the other problem with Biden is he's literally so unpopular that everything the guy touches completely dies. Well, and they don't, they change messages every week. I mean, literally, like, think about all of the messaging iterations that we've gone through on inflation. You know, there was like, first they didn't say anything about it. It was just like, oh, it's transitory.

It's not a problem. Let's not talk about it. The other things. Then it was like the infrastructure deal is going to fix inflation, which was always a little bit silly. Although, I mean, if you had a real massive investment in infrastructure and dealing with supply chain issues. That would be a real answer. Then there was a tiny flirtation with talking about monopolies and antitrust and corporate greed. Then they got uncomfortable with that. And now they're just like, it's Putin's fault. Yeah. So when you can't hold a single. Meanwhile, the whole time the Republicans are saying it's Biden's fault, it's Biden's fault, it's Biden's fault. So which message do you think

ultimately is going to carry the day when you all are workshopping them and have a different one every single week? So that's the other problem here. This was the problem with Build Back Better is you have this whole suite of policy ideas, many of which were really good, many of which were really popular. But you're not selling and leaning into any particular vision or desired policy outcome. So this week they want to focus on, you know, the billionaire tax. Again, something that would be wonderful and which I support. And I don't know why you have to cloak it in this deficit reduction nonsense, but whatever. But next week, who knows?

Next week they might be back to talking about climate change. They may just be not talking about domestic policy at all, which is something we've also seen from this administration time and again. That's right. The other part of this budget. Now, this part is not the wish list. This is the part that will actually happen is Biden is calling for a massive increase in defense spending. Let's take a listen. Security also means national and international security. This budget provides the resources we need to keep Americans safe, ensuring that our military remains the best prepared, best trained, best equipped military in the world. This budget also provides additional funding to forcefully respond to Putin's aggression against Ukraine and its economic, humanitarian and security consequences.

The world has changed. In addition to dealing with terrorist organizations, for the second quarter of the 21st century, we're once again facing increased competition from other nation states, China and Russia, which are going to require investments to make things like space and cyber and other advanced capabilities, including hypersonics. And this will be among the largest investments in our national security in history. Some people don't like the increase, but we're in a different world today. Well, I'm sure all of the defense contractors, music to their ears. That's right. And this is the piece that will actually happen. That increase will 100 percent go through. In fact, the Republicans only complaint

is that the increase is not large enough because that's the direction that that's the angle they're always coming from. And, you know, I'm sure the defense contractor stocks, I'm sure they're doing quite well. I'm sure all the members of Congress, Congressman Ro Khanna and others who are significantly invested in these stocks, I'm sure they're quite pleased with these announcements because it faddens their bottom line. And ultimately, Sagar, you have to love the logic of this because it literally doesn't matter what's going on in our geopolitics or with regards to our foreign affairs decision. Every single situation justifies a defense spending increase.

So if war is possible, threatened on the horizon, that just justifies an increase. We just we're like, if war is, you know, possible threatened on the horizon, that just justifies an increase. You know, we just got out of Afghanistan. Somehow that justifies an increase when we're actually inside a war. Of course, that justifies an increase. So it literally doesn't matter what happens. They always find a reason why we should have significantly more military spending and, you know, never do anything that really helps the working class. And more money doesn't actually solve the problem. This is, you know, never do anything that really helps the working class. Yeah. And more money doesn't actually solve the problem. This isn't, you know, the thing that I talk about with a lot of people who are even in the defense industry and who want to disrupt it. A guy, Christian Brose, who I recently spoke to, this, what we talked about

was that more money, you can't buy your way out of the issue. If your fundamental problem is that there's a mismatch, hypersonics is a good example. They're not that expensive in order to create. It's that we had a problem in terms of what we were creating in the defense production pipeline, and certain congressmen weren't involved in the decision, and thus it leads to an imbalance. I mean, same during the Iraq war. The actual stuff that would save our troops from IEDs was not being prioritized, while fifth-generation fighters, which were the dream of some Air Force general was not being prioritized, while fifth generation fighters, which were the dream of some Air Force general, were being prioritized. So the money wasn't the issue. We were spending

hundreds of billions of dollars. It's what we were spending the money on, which was the issue. You could take the whole current budget, completely take it and retarget it towards where our actual military defense capabilities are not meeting what we actually might have to face in a current war. And you could completely solve the issue. The problem is that would then disrupt all of these lucrative pre-existing contracts and doctrines which are inside of the military. And there's all these wars that happen within the services around this stuff, which leads to all of this chicanery about why we need, you know, X amount of tanks and X amount of this, even though, you know, sure, we need tanks, but like, are we really

going to fight a tank war like anytime soon? I don't think so. In terms of development too, on the F-35, that's how the F-35 became a complete boondoggle. I've spoken previously about how the Navy pushed this thing called like the, I think it's called the Zumwalt class of these ships, and the guns cost a million dollars a round to fire. That's crazy. I mean, that's not useful because everything was built, you know, in the wrong way and because of a problem with production. But that just shows you how we're all getting bilked.

I can guarantee you this. We could build a gun that costs less than a million dollars to fire. A million dollars a pair. Okay, a round. A million dollars, we could do it.. We could build a gun that costs less than a million dollars to fire. A million dollars a pair. Okay, a round. A million dollars, we could do it. Per round. Can you imagine that? Well, and also this is a very myopic view of what security ultimately entails.

Sure. Because part of security is also being strong at home, not just having all the, like, fanciest weapons that the defense industrial complex can ultimately spin out. So, you know, there's a very, very limited view of what being strong and what making sure that the people are protected ultimately means and very little investment in actually making a strong, making a self-sufficient here at home, let's say by not outsourcing our jobs and our industrial capacity is one particular example. So there was one person who did not like this direction, and he happens to be chair of the Senate Budget Committee.

That would be Bernie Sanders. Let's go ahead and put that tear sheet up on the screen. He says very clearly, no, we do not need a massive increase in the defense budget, and goes on to point out that we are already spending more on the military than the next 11 countries combined. So, look, at this point, Bernie is, you know, in a position of power. As I just mentioned, he is the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. So any sort of spending priorities have to go through him. We'll see if he actually is just sort of rhetorically signaling his discontent, but ultimately we'll go along with what the administration wants or if he will do something more than that.

Let's see if he's going to talk or if he'd actually do something about it. Yep. Remains to be seen. To be determined. All right. All right. This is another significant one that I wanted to bring attention to. A key indicator that has predicted recessions consistently since the 1970s is now once again

signaling we might be headed towards a recession. However, there are some caveats. I don't want people to panic yet. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. Five-year and 30-year treasury yields invert for the first time since 2006, fueling recession fears. I don't know if you guys have heard this term before, but oftentimes people talk about inverted bond yields, basically to make this as simple as possible. Typically, the further you go out on the time horizon, the higher return you're going to get. This is basic time value of money. If you're willing to hold an instrument for a long time, you're rewarded with a higher interest rate. That's sort of the typical bond yield, and we're talking about U.S. Treasury bonds here specifically.

So when things are out of whack and investors are very worried about the longer-term prospects for an economy, then sometimes you get funky situations in the bond yield curve where it doesn't just consistently go up over time. They call that an inverted bond yield. Now, usually when you're thinking about recessions, the ones that investors usually look at are the two and the 10-year bond yields. Those have not inverted yet, although there has been significant flattening across the entire curve. Right now, it is the five-year and 30-year bond yields that have inverted. So if you understand nothing else, just know that this metric signals that the economy is out of whack

and people are concerned about the future. That's basically what this means. The history is also quite clear. So the two and 10-year treasury yield curves, that's the one that I just said people typically look at that hasn't inverted yet, but is a lot of flattening, those inverted before the last seven recessions since 1970. However, the data also suggests a recession is unlikely to be imminent when you do have a bond yield curve inversion. It took 17 months after the bond market inversion for a downturn to start on average. On the flip side, there has been at least one, some would say two, false alarms where the bond yield curve inverted and you did not end up in a recession.

The one that they're very consistent and clear about is 1998. The other caveat that I'll put on this, but that people who are way smarter and understand this way more than I do, we're saying is that it's not clear how much information these bond yields contain anymore because the Fed has so has gone into the market and is so influential at the market in the market at this point. It's effectively it's not really a free market anymore. It's effectively sort of rigged. So how much information does this really contain about how investors feel about the future of the economy and, you know, the shape of where we're headed in terms of recession? Hard to say at this point. But again, this is a key metric. It has consistently had predictive power in terms of whether you're going to head into a recession over the next year and a half or so.

And right now it has inverted for the first time since 2006. Right. And I believe the Federal Reserve chairman, he was pressed on this in Congress. Let's take a listen. Is the leadership at the Fed under you and the Fed prepared to do what it takes to get inflation under control and protect price stability? Well, let me say I knew Paul Volcker. I'm pretty sure I saw him testify in this room many years ago. I think he was one of the great public servants of the era, the greatest economic public servant of the era.

And I hope history will record that the answer to your question is yes. So you're prepared to do what it takes without any reservation to protect price stability? Yes. That would be a departure of what you've done. Thank you very much. So this was Fed Chair Jerome Powell getting pressed on how serious he's going to be at getting inflation under control. And why this is relevant is because obviously the Fed, they just announced their first rate increase, and there's worry that they could move too quickly, lift the rates too fast in an effort to get inflation under control

and spark a recession. What he's saying there, he's like, oh my God, I love Paul Volcker. He's amazing. He's a hero. He's a role model. Volcker is the sort of storied Fed Reserve chair who aggressively raised rates during the 70s to curb inflation at that point. And so Powell is saying, this is my model. I'm going to do what it takes to get price, you know, to focus on prices and get inflation under control. And the subtext is, even if it causes a really brutal recession, because while, you know, at this point everyone says, oh, Volcker did the right thing, it's easy to forget how painful it was at the time. The 70s were horrible. Yeah, because when you

lift interest rates, what you're doing is you're intentionally slowing down the economy. So he says, yes, I'm fully committed effectively to getting inflation under control, even if it causes a recession, is kind of the subtext of what he is saying there. Now, the actions have not necessarily been totally consistent with that. He was under some pressure. They were under some pressure to lift rates more, to do so more quickly, to act before they even did. And so there's been an attempt to be sort of like moderated in their actions here. So we haven't seen that spark a recession right now, but you have more and more analysts who fear that we could be headed in that direction. My authority on this is Joe Weisenthal over at Bloomberg. I really look to him on a lot of this.

And it seems to be that there's been a split the difference approach at the Fed. The Fed has a dual mandate, full employment and inflation. Now, inflation is what obviously, you know, people in the upper tier care the most about. I'm not erasing exactly how it impacts the working class, but I'm saying that it's generally more of an elite concern amongst like conservatives and Republicans, just because of the way it can affect markets up at the top and interest rates as well, which affects capital, which is what these people care the most about. And in terms of what's happening there is that there's an immense amount of pressure in order to do something about inflation. And that becomes then a question of what is the cause of inflation? Is it monetary policy or is it a supply chain problem and a problem in the downstream

economy? Now, your view of those two things, I personally think it's much more the supply chain, will then lead you to whether you have the monetary instrument that you can reach for. The only thing that they can reach for there in order to slow the economy down is increasing the interest rate. So their acceptance and saying they're going to increase the interest rate, at least in part right now and over the course of the next couple of years or so, is very much a bow in that direction, but they're not fully bowing to what I guess the most monetary hawks would like them to do. People like Richard Shelby there. People like Richard Shelby is a perfect example.

He's the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, or I think the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, next to be the chair. So obviously he matters a lot. He was instrumental in COVID relief in not necessarily great ways. The reason why it matters for you is because if the interest rate goes up and there is a recession cause, which then causes the amount of cheap capital in order to stop flowing around the system, the rich people will suffer in terms of the stock portfolios, but you're the one who's going to lose your job. And you're the one who's going to see downward pressure, especially under wages. But even worse, you're going to see it in terms of the supply problems that already

exist within the economy whenever it comes to price. So I would just say that this is a real catastrophe. Anytime I see, and I don't mean the Fed changing rates necessarily, I'm just saying the current situation, the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction. I'm doing my monologue today on China and its COVID zero policy causing even more inflation. The amount of uncertainty right now in the global economy just makes me incredibly, incredibly nervous. It's very like 2007 vibes about what could be happening here. I think that's all well said. ideal functioning political system, you would have a range of tools available to deal with the type of inflation we're experiencing right now, which does have a lot to do with supply chain issues,

with the fact that we had, you know, relief checks hit people's pockets and they weren't able to fully partake in like the service economy. So there's more purchasing of goods. There are some signs that some of those factors are beginning to ease, even as you have other catastrophic situations unfolding that are only exacerbating things. So in an ideal and perfect system, you would have a political system that could actually like pass legislation and spend money to deal with the supply chain issue. And I don't mean by just like, you know, giving people more money. I mean, by investing in the infrastructure, expanding port capabilities to try to resolve these supply chain issues. That would be the ideal system. Well, since the political system is so broken, the only tool that's effectively left

is this sort of like blunt force instrument of the Fed, which, I mean, we basically know in no uncertain terms, if they move too fast, it will cause a recession. So that's the terrible landscape that we are faced with right now. And I feel like every week there's another sign that potentially we are headed in that direction with the bond yield curve inversion here just being the latest one. Yeah. So everybody keep an eye on it. We're going to keep you guys updated. Watch it like a hawk because it affects you so much. Let's move on here to Hunter Biden, the gift that keeps on giving. This guy really is a character. So let's put this latest news up there on the screen. Prosecutors have been advancing a tax probe of Hunter Biden. Grand jury is hearing witnesses in February about past drug use and spending habits of the former president's son. Now, some of these

things are truly incredible and are almost out of a movie as to how you would exactly expect a corrupt son of a politician to behave who has deals with foreign oligarchs. It has nothing to do with Ukraine, and it has to do with Kazakhstan in this instance. Let's put this next one up there on the screen. One of the things that they are pointing to is that Hunter, in 2014, bought a Fisker sports car, which he then later traded for a Porsche, using $142,000 transferred to a business account by a Kazakh oligarch, Kenges Rajikev, who had sought business with Hunter.

Now, can you think, Crystal, of anything more cartoonish in the behavior of somebody who is using sketchy dealings? We have an Eastern European oligarch, direct cash transfers, fancy sports cars, through a business account, all in the middle of a tax inquiry. But what this points to is that Hunter has been all over Washington for, what, three decades using the president's name, or at that time his father's name and then the vice president of the United States, in order to do business. I've seen some of the emails of what he's been doing. My personal favorite is he was trying to secure like a professorship at Georgetown where he had been and said that he would use his dad's position as the drug czar and relationship with South America to get the president of Columbia in order to come and speak at the

university. Thus why Georgetown should pay him some 45. Now that is a microcosm of the corruption. Yo, it's, it's ridiculous. He says it out there completely in the open. And with the rest of the emails, what you just see over and over again is the use of the president's name in order to get inordinate amount of cash out of these sketchy countries. Ukraine and Burisma is well-trodden, $50,000 a month. Actually could have been up to $80,000 a month. This Kazakh oligarch, $142,000. Him and James Biden had a Chinese slush fund, which the Chinese government would just transfer straight-up cash. And him and James Biden, who is Biden's brother, would go out and just buy MacBooks and laptops and airfare and all this stuff straight out of this stuff.

And also, from a tax perspective, he clearly has not been paying his taxes. I mean, allegedly, okay, for Hunter's lawyers. But, you know, if you're just taking straight-up money, cash out of your business account, and buying cars, fancy sports cars, now that we're small business owners, I just can't even imagine what the accountants would do if we were to do some sort of madness. Like, they'd be like, what are you doing? That's not legal. Very careful with all of these things, guys. Very careful. to do some sort of madness. Like, they'd be like, what are you doing? That's not legal. with all of these things, guys.

Very careful. Yeah, we dot all our I's and cross the T's here simply because we know we talk a little bit of smack about the IRS, but you would think that if you're the president's son that you would take

even more care, but it seems to have been the opposite. He thought he could get away. Well, he felt protected. Without anything. And he has been. And he has been protected.

That's right. I just want to go through the details in the Wall Street Journal more about this sports car because it really is a perfect window into the way that he traded on his name

and his theoretical access in order to fund what was clearly a lavish lifestyle. And, you know, the allegation here that is being probed by a grand jury is whether as part of funding that lavish lifestyle and, you know, the allegation here that is being probed by a grand jury is

whether as part of funding that lavish lifestyle, he also failed to pay his taxes and engaged in illegal shenanigans to avoid doing so. We also know that he had to borrow a million dollars in order to help get himself current on his existing tax liability. Where did he borrow that money from, by the way? I'd love to know that. Great question. So here's how the car thing went down. This is for the Wall Street Journal. In April 2014, a business associate, Mr. Biden, from Kazakhstan,

wired $142,300, so he's not buying like a Honda Civic here, guys, to Rosemont Seneca. This is a Delaware corporation with ties to Hunter Biden. They were earmarked in the bank record as, quote, for a car. So I guess I'm like the memo line that you put when you do a wire transfer or whatever. They just wrote for a car. A day after the money was received by Rosemont Seneca, the entity's banking statement showed that they wired that same amount to a New Jersey car dealer. The money purchased a Fisker sports car for use by Hunter Biden, but was owned in the name of that corporation, Rosemont Seneca, according to a former associate and another person. Hunter Biden later traded the Fisker

for a silver Porsche the ex-associate added. And, you know, there's some speculation in this piece about whether they may actually file charges against Hunter Biden in this federal tax investigation. One of the things that they point to here is that reportedly prosecutors were extensively questioning people on Hunter's drug and alcohol use, his spending habits, and his state of mind in 2018. And their analysis is that this could suggest prosecutors are exploring whether such activity would present a defense against a potential criminal tax case. Again, this could be an indication that they are seriously considering charges and that, you know, they're trying to probe like what the potential defenses would be so that they can make sure that they're sort of protected against him saying, look, I was in, you know, I was in recovery. I was struggling with mental health issues.

And so I should be seen with some lenience in my dealing story this time. I have sympathy for anybody who is struggling with addiction. But as you have pointed it out, it is the height of privilege. You know, I just got back from Los Angeles. I saw human suffering on a scale that I did not think existed in the United States of America when I went to Skid Row. I genuinely thought I was back in Cambodia or the slums of Mumbai. That's what it actually felt like. I couldn't believe my eyes in terms of what I was seeing. Do you think those people are allowed to cavort with European prostitutes around the globe and wire hundreds of thousands of dollars

from Kazakh oligarchs and give in a pass this entire time? No. They're giving a pass for nothing. These people can barely jaywalk without being arrested and thrown in jail. That's right. So when they are treated in the same way, maybe. Arrested and thrown in prison

for a tiny joint in their pocket. Whenever I see people on Skid Row who are being raped and taken advantage of out on the street, treated with the same level of compassion by the justice system that we then see Mr. Biden treated by, we can have a discussion. Until then, screw you. And to add insult to injury, his own father is the one who architected those tough on crime rules and continues to be a, you know, front of the line drug warrior, even as president and, you know, wildly out of't have a penny to their name and get bankrupted. And when they steal like a TV or whatever, thrown in jail, you think they're going to plead, oh, I was high on do you think the judge cares? We don't shouldn't care either. This is not only money that is owed to the United States Treasury, but this is somebody who used the influence of his father clearly in order to live some crazy high-flying lifestyle. And it is the height of degeneracy for a regime in order to excuse this type of behavior, especially whenever we are prosecuting people

at the very lowest level of the rung. And you're not hearing any of this on the media. Put this next one up there on the screen, which is that even though these current emails show that Biden obviously lied about the extent of his knowledge, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News have not mentioned Hunter Biden's name in 259 days. This is from an analysis by Newsbusters in terms of the transcript reviews of those three channels.

Those are the way that millions of people get their news in this country. They have no idea that any of this is a thing. Are we saying that this is the most important thing? There's a reason it's all this way late into the show, okay? Biden and Ukraine, obviously more important. The budget, billionaire's tax, more important. Fed, also more important. But the president's son having sketchy dealings with foreign oligarchs is a problem. And we said the same thing when Jared Kushner was, you know, begging for Saudi cash after leaving the White House, when Steve Mnuchin was begging for cash, when Ivanka Trump was having dealings with Nordstrom and the Chinese

government, when Jared's brother was asking for visas for a VIP Chinese and promising them access to the White House. All of that is equally corrupt and spent a decent amount of time on it. Or whenever foreign diplomats stayed at the Trump Hotel here in Washington, D.C. And even Zelensky, by the way, do you remember the perfect phone call? The most objectionable thing about the perfect phone call to me is when Zelensky was like, by the way, Mr. President, we stay at Trump Hotel. Great hotel. I was like, oh, this is disgusting.

I'm sorry. This is disgusting. Wait, we're not talking about that part of Zelensky. Yeah, not that Zelensky. But yeah, some of us remember, you know, funny, that perfect phone call. I was thinking about that in the A block when we were talking about Biden saying, like, I did nothing wrong on these things. It was perfect. Right. So it's sad how similar these men can be in certain respects. But yeah, it's also look, the corruption itself is worth covering and worth talking about. And it's a window into sort of standard issue practices and corruption that have been accepted in this town for far too long. in collusion with the security state and the tech companies to try to protect Hunter and,

by extension, his father from any scrutiny on these issues. I think the American people should have information. I think they should be able to make their own judgments. And frankly, I think they probably would have still elected Joe Biden. And by the way, by trying to cover all of this up, they created a lot more interest in this story than there was if they had just let it sort of run its course Trump family and the Biden family, it also plays into, you know, real concern about how even handed and how fair the media actually is in covering these things. There are a few reporters out there, Ken Vogel, who we put up on the street. He doesn't care. Who really does, you know, both sides of the aisle.

He's looking, he's following the money. You know, David Sirota and his team over at The Lever, same deal. But those types are few and far between, sadly. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. Speaking of the media. The most important story. Yeah.

Oh, this is the fun block. Okay, we went ahead and decided to curate some of the worst Will Smith takes that are out there. And without fail, what is the one thing that you can always expect to be brought up by resistance Russiagators whenever it comes to any cultural moment? It's Donald Trump. And somehow these idiots made the Will Smith, Chris Rock incident into a Trump thing. Asha Raghunath, let's put this one up there. I honestly have to respect the former FBI agent, a disgrace to us South Indians out here in media, says, quote, So did anyone like walk out after that happened? Or are we getting an independent psychological case study on how Trump got normalized? What? What does Trump have to do with one guy slapping another guy about a joke around his wife. Let's go to the next one up here. Howard Stern. This shows me that the brain worm goes deep. Same thing. Howard Stern says Will Smith slapping Chris Rock because, quote, Will Smith and Trump are the same guy. It gets worse, people. It's still going. Let's go to the next one, please. Steve Schmidt over at MSNBC, Lincoln Project.

The Oscars have demonstrated the power of group psychology. The room is a hermetically sealed bubble where all mores can be eradicated in a second. Do you want to understand how Trump happened? Watch the Oscars and the crowd reaction. The pull to belong is very powerful. There's actually a thread that continues. He says, the pull to conform of what is happening around you is a powerful tie. Applause for assault in a tuxedo is the same as applause for assault of white wearing a red hat in Alabama. That was

a crime. There was no virtue, none whatsoever. Oh my God, guys, why can't we just look at it for what it was? Here's my personal favorite one. If you want to talk about the power of group psychology, you might cite that series of takes that we just, now that's some group psychology for you. Now that's a good take right there, okay? Now, this is my personal favorite one. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is actually a viral Twitter thread.

Oh, this is amazing. It says, quote, to clarify on the earlier tweet I had to delete, I'm obviously not saying it was the same as 9-11, but Will Smith slapping Chris Rock had a similar live TV shock value that will echo throughout our culture. 9-11 was worse, but Muhammad Atta did not win an Oscar right afterwards. Dude, that is— Yeah, that's the only substantive difference, is that he didn't get an Oscar right after. The galaxy brain that you have to have in order to think that that is a good take is... I want to know what the original tweet said.

I couldn't find it, but, I mean, it must have been even worse than the explanation. It wasn't 9-11, but, you know, it was basically, like, the same impact on our society and on our culture. We can continue going, because it gets even worse. Let's put this one up there on the screen. This is a commentary from Matthew Donica.

He says the Will Smith doctrine has no place in Ukraine. And in that, he says acts of aggression should not be rewarded. President Biden was only speaking the unpalatable truth when he said that Putin had to go. Please. You can just imagine this person workshopping this, figuring out how to get people to click on what

is a completely standard issue foreign policy take, and you're like, I know, I'm going to tie this in somehow to the Will Smith slapping incident. It was just incredible to see the way people routinely took, like, whatever their pet cause or issue was. Yes. And, like, filter, force the Will Smith thing through that lens no matter how tortured or strained. So, yeah, there were takes that somehow somehow that linked this to Ukraine like that one

there were many resistance takes oh I liked this one this one was just like over the top Jed Apatow let's put this one up on the screen he said Will Smith could have killed him could have killed him from a slap to the face he could have killed him that's pure out of control

rage and violence come on guys this is just this is silly. And of course, you know, you could also make the point that Don't Look Up, of course, did not win for Best Picture. And it was sort of smeared by some as being too over the top in our media's distraction and obsession with like frivolity and celebrity culture. And yet, here we are. It's kind of a statement that they were only way too accurate in their assessment of what people ultimately obsess about and get all their outrage juices flowing over.

Right, yeah. I think that this entire thing is just completely and totally ridiculous. You can just evaluate it for what it was and be like, wow, that was kind of crazy. And then let's all just move on with our lives. This is a dispute between Will Smith and Chris Rock.

Apparently, they've worked it out amongst themselves. Will Smith apologized. Yeah, okay. Yeah, some fake tested apology, but whatever. Chris Rock.

Chris Rock said, profile charges. Yeah, he was like, Diddy mediated the dispute. Yes, that's right. Thank you, P. Diddy or Diddy, whatever is going by these days.

I'm a boomer. I apologize. There was one other take we didn't include, but I just have to mention, which is because it's a consistent theme, Joy Behar managed to make it about herself. Oh, really? Oh, maybe she tried to tie it to her Italian vacation. Which is the only real significant damage of the Ukraine war is, of course, our solidarity with Joy, who was not going to get to go on her Italian vacation.

Tuscany is beautiful this time. Italian vacation, vacation perhaps for another year. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the story of how the sanctions on Russia have realigned the global order and will increase prices for all of us, it's very well trodden ground at this point. But in the midst of what some other major actions that will influence our economic future have continued, they fly under the radar. I've been doing my best here to draw attention to how China's COVID zero insanity could have major ramifications for us here at home. And unfortunately, they continue down their path of this madness. Despite literally on Saturday promising the world it would not do so, Shanghai authorities

announced they would be doing a full-scale two-phase lockdown of the entire city of 26 million over just 3,500 COVID infections. The lockdown confines some people to their homes, others even to their offices, where they are required to stay in place so they can implement a mass testing protocol. Per Chinese authorities who announced the policy, their goal is to achieve, quote, stillness to stop the variant. Now, while some of us here in the West long ago accepted the transmissibility of Omicron made any attempts at lockdown or pandemic mitigation impossible, that we simply had to move on with our lives and that people could get vaxxed if they wanted to, they apparently have not yet reached that conclusion in China. While the Chinese people are almost certainly feeling as annoyed as the rest of us, unfortunately for them, they live in an authoritarian country, and what the authoritarians believe is the only thing that is important. However, if you look

further, it's a problem. As I noted last time, China, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, has done a not very good job of vaccinating its elderly population. Only 51% of its population over 80 years old have received two COVID shots, while only 20% of those have been boosted. And over 60 is just as bad. Of the 264 million Chinese people age 60 and over, only 52 million are fully vaccinated. The reason that we in the West don't face the same situation is obviously because we have a very, very high vaccination rate amongst our elderly population, who of course are the most at risk of this disease. Ironically enough, reporting from inside China indicates that many elderly Chinese did not get the vaccine because they were confident enough in the COVID zero

policy, as in they refused to get the vaccine because they simply confident enough in the COVID zero policy, as in they refused to get the vaccine because they simply thought they'd never be exposed and trusted the Chinese Communist Party. So now when the Omicron variant rolls around, that defies any realistic attempt to contain COVID. This is really bad. It means Shenzhen and Shanghai are the beginning of this coming disaster. There is no way they're going to be able to vaccinate 150 million or so Chinese elderly fully before Omicron is going to wreck this whole country. That means they are about to get swarmed by mass death. And as Bloomberg notes, it's not exactly like China has a great rural hospital network. I genuinely feel for the Chinese people.

Their government failed to contain this pandemic in the first place, put them all through misery of the last two years, and then did such a poor job. It is now about to kill millions of their own people, and they still have to lock down. Worst of all worlds, two years into this thing. But beyond them, this is going to affect us too. As I covered when Shenzhen locked down, these policies are going to have a massive direct effect on the U.S. economy. When Shenzhen shut down, it meant Apple iPhones had to stop at Foxconn. It appears here that could have been the tip of the iceberg, freezing up nearly $300 billion a year alone in exported

goods. Shanghai is very similar. Just last year, Shanghai exported 200 billion worth of goods alone, making it the fifth largest in the entire country. Worse for us, what are the top goods that Shanghai exports? Automatic data processing machines, phones for cellular networks, electronic integrated circuits, computer processing equipment. Now tell me, is that important to the global economy? Oh yeah, by the way, they're the only ones that make it at that scale. Now consider the entire Chinese economy locking down over the next two months,

precisely when we're going to feel the actual effect of the new disruptive sanctions against Russia. What do we have? Disaster. I'm not the only person noticing this. The only piece of good news out of this lockdown is that oil prices actually dropped by 7% on the news of it, because it means that China, which is the number one importer of oil, is very likely to go into lockdown, and thus is going to have a lot less demand, and perhaps cheaper gas for us here at home. That's macabre, but potentially positive benefit

for us on this end. But it would still be catastrophic and make up for it, because'd still have to wait for spare parts, consumer electronics, and many of the other necessities of daily life. Globalization is collapsing all around us. If you think we can simply buy things from new places, you're wrong. The problem is that we need a way to get it here, and we remain in a massive shipping container crunch. The vast majority of the containers are where? Oh, that's right. Stuck in China, where because of a variety of reasons, we've been sending too many back because of a trade imbalance. Can't get them out unless they ship stuff to us. And if they lock down, good luck. The global shortage in shipping, the high oil prices, inability to reproduce these goods, it is going to wreak havoc on the U.S. and the global economy. The American way of life in ways ways that we barely even understand, is eroding. Slowly but surely,

we are being taxed for the sins of our leaders in the past who shipped jobs and capacity overseas with the promise of cheap prices. Today, things are actually the worst of all worlds. We have high prices and we make nothing. Nothing is made here. We have no proper skills or ability to scale up in a time of problem. So we're incredibly vulnerable economically. A dark thought I've had lately is that we would really, would we really survive another war? At least in the lead up to World War II, we had a concerted effort of industry here at home and even build up. Even though we had the Great Depression, we still had a big industrial capacity. Do we really have that right now?

Wouldn't we need parts from other countries just to make sure our weapons work? Or what about the things outside of weapons? Can the home front really stand in the era of globalization? One of the promises of making us domestically weaker by the elites was that they said the likelihood of war would then decrease because

we're all trading with one another and everyone will be democracies and friends and our economies are all connected. Instead, war today is more likely than ever before. Our adversaries are authoritarians and they are ones who are willing to not only start wars, but also possibly cut us off in that process. And perhaps it's what we deserve for being such fools in the past in the first place. All we can do now is fix it. And too bad Joe Biden doesn't seem to want to do any of that. And Trump was too inept to live up to any of these promises. It seems fitting to have them both as the only two options in these times. I honestly, I hope that we can make it through, but I'm not so sure. I don't know, Crystal, it's really depressing. First of all, I actually feel terrible for the Chinese people. I mean, they're about to get wrecked.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, you might recall when we interviewed Jon Stewart in the early days of Russia's war in Ukraine, he told us he was really impressed with the media's coverage of the war. He actually held it up as an example of the best of cable news and what it should strive for all the time as a way of arguing that cable news could be done well if only the individuals involved decided to make better choices. But now, with a month plus of war

coverage under our belt, John is apparently no longer feeling so great about how the media's war coverage is going. So what happens, I think, especially with the 24-hour cable networks is they find their narratives. And then, so when the invasion first occurred, it was an all-hands-on-deck, 24-hour eyewitness. The bravery was incredible. They lost the entire right-left polarity of coverage. Punditry went out the window. It was just about brave people on the ground and those who were expert in conflict in the studio. And they would have conversations about what was actually happening but it doesn't take long for mission creep to set in with journalists who then become

the what's like this is a siege and a siege is by its very nature static and the carnage is unspeakable but it is the same and journalists want movement they want action and as you're watching you know i looked at that uh i think the intercept uh sent something out it was the white house correspondents that are all like would you bomb them if they touched Poland? How about this? Would you bomb them if they had a drone? Okay, okay, let's look at it this way. What would it take for you to bomb them?

How about bombing them? You know, we have a question for you. Bombs, what about those? That's the part where you realize they're trapped in a business model that creates news as narratives. It's one thing to tell stories. It's another thing to direct them and to start to try and shape them.

And that's what I'm starting to see. But here's the thing that's fucked up in my mind. There ain't a lot of questions about peace. Right. There ain't a lot of questions about what would it take to deescalate this situation? And how could we possibly do that? And are there other, uh, conflicts in the world that we've ignored that, that create this? It's all about the action. And I disagree slightly with the idea that they're dispassionate because I'll tell you underneath it all, they know this is where careers are made.

They know this is where careers are made. And that is so true. There is a lot to unpack here, first of all. I think he makes a good point about the early days of coverage versus as a story unfolds and partisan lines harden. It actually reminds me somewhat of the early days of COVID before we had all these weird ideological views of masks and vaccines and certain treatments and lockdowns and the very seriousness of the disease itself. The COVID coverage before that time in the very earlier days, it actually was better. One might even say useful. Sure, there were still all the same problems of cable news, the limitations of the format, the drive towards sensationalism and outrage. But this was a moment when the sheer level of resources and access probably made the product net beneficial at a time when we were all

just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. That phase, though, of course, it did not last long. Now, I don't give cable news quite the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to war coverage, but in general, the point that any initial factual reporting quickly curdles into partisan point scoring is a very good one. John then makes an even more important point, which is that media not only wants to support the narratives that are convenient for their team, they also want to create outcomes that are good for their ratings. And that is very dangerous. John believes that this can be changed, that cable news denizens can simply make different choices and create better outcomes. This sadly,

in my opinion, is complete folly. There's a reason the product is what it is. They've got 24 hours to fill. They've got corporate advertisers to attract. They've got politicians to flatter. They've got shareholders to enrich. It's not that most cable news hosts and producers simply don't care at all about the public good. It's just that it's maybe like 19th or 20th on the list of priorities to consider when running their networks. This state of affairs does not have to be depressing, though. In his interviews, John continually asks his guests what can be done to improve the dismal state of media, to make the product worthy of trust. Whether it was Bob Iger of Disney or Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post, they reluctantly acknowledged some of the problems, but they had absolutely no solutions. And that's because the answers are never going to come from the mainstream profit-driven, corporate-backed media. It's just

not possible for them to admit their own failures. But there's a much easier project that we could all sink our teeth into, and that is to make cable news completely irrelevant. These outlets are truly legacy products, relics from a bygone era, attempting with increasing desperation to hold onto their power and purchase with an increasingly distrusting populace. If they were to be stripped of their potency and relegated to the status of the trashy infotainment that they actually are, that would be an insanely positive step forward. Every single time you see stats that say public trust in cable news is at new historic lows, that ought to lift your spirits. Your heart's the thing every time

you see that ratings at Fox or MSNBC or CNN have fallen off a cliff. In fact, one of the absolute worst things that Trump did to this country was to rescue cable news from the dustbin of history, conferring tremendous ratings and rivers of cash to an industry that should have been allowed to continue its long, slow march to the grave uninterrupted. Because the truth is, the alternatives with actually useful and intelligent information that we would wish for our nation, they really already exist. We act like it's so impossible to create a media system with quality information. But as the Ukraine war has unfolded, I've been able to listen to historians and economists, military analysts in long form,

laying out the relevant stakes, the relevant history, considering challenging issues with nuance, going in depth on matters of profound significance. These far more substantive, one might say nutritious products, often find significant audiences and truly do a service in helping us understand the world and gather more clarity about events as they are happening. That should be celebrated,

not erased or dismissed. You can, of course, do your part by supporting the independent creators who are doing this kind of work and those journalists who are actually chasing stories that hold power to account. But that is not enough. Cable news, it's got to be destroyed because as long as it's playing in the halls of Congress, as long as Ted Cruz, for example, is prepping his SCOTUS confirmation questions based on what is going to get him on Tucker that night, the tired and destructive cable news networks will set the elite agenda. Listen, alternative media isn't perfect.

Lord knows there are plenty of charlatans and grifters who are nakedly pursuing political agenda, committed to dehumanizing their opponents, actively selling out to corporate America. But I will take the breadth and scope and variety of the alternative media ecosystem every single day. Cable news has a stranglehold on elite political discourse, but it requires all of us to maintain its relevance. Let's starve it of oxygen and be part of elevating the truly beneficial media that is being created right now and which also already exists. I think this is appropriate

given that CNN Plus is launching today. Launching today. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, great friend of the show, Kyle Kondik, managing editor over at Larry

Sabato's Crystal Ball, also author of a great book. Let's put this up there on the screen. The long red thread, how Democratic dominance gave way to Republican advantage in U.S. House elections. We'll have a link to that in the description. Kyle, it's great to see you, my friend. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So, Kyle, first of all, as we always do with you, let's just do a general check in mood of the country. The last thing that we heard from you was, well, the national environment is very bad for Democrats. It seems that that seems to relatively be the case. Any updates in your analysis of how things are very likely to go come November?

I don't I remember specifically when we last talked, I think maybe it was about a month and a half ago, but the numbers are basically the same as they were back then in that, you know, Joe Biden's approval rating is in the low 40s, disapproval a little over 50. The, you know, the House generic ballot, which asks folks whether they want to vote for a Democrat or Republican in their local House race, you know, it's relatively close. Republicans have a small advantage, but one little historical quirk of the generic ballot is that it often understates Republicans, which, of course, is sort of a kind of a problem in public opinion in more recent times. But over the longer stretch of history, the generic ballot has routinely underestimated Republicans. And usually if Republicans take a big lead in the House generic ballot polling,

it doesn't show up until later in the cycle. So, you know, I feel pretty confident that the Republicans are leading right now in the generic ballot and that, you know, the electoral environment continues to be pretty challenging for Democrats. It's been pretty static for the last many months. So, Kyle, there is one state where Republicans are contemplating giving Democrats a gigantic gift, and that is the state of Missouri. We've been following this race fairly closely. This is an open seat, and there is a robust primary on the Republican side. Previously, the top candidate, at least based on the polling, was former Governor Eric Greitens,

who had resigned his governorship in disgrace after actually a series of corruption scandals and facing potential impeachment, but also for the revelation and allegations that he was having an affair with a hairdresser and even more significantly that he had blindfolded her and taken a picture of her to use as blackmail against her will. Now we have new allegations which have come out in a sworn affidavit from his ex-wife, that he was violent towards her and towards their son. There's a lot more there in terms of sort of psychological and mental abuse as well. And we, in fact, have a new poll out that shows Greitens slipping from the lead. Here's the very latest. Now you have Eric Schmidt leading the pack at 24 percent, Greitens in second at 21 percent, and Vicky Hartzler, who's the choice of Josh Hawley and some other elected Republicans, at 19 percent.

So a pretty close three-way race there at the top. I mean, how do you evaluate this poll? Because on the one hand, you look at it and you go, OK, well, Greitens, you know, after those allegations, he's fallen out of the lead. But he's still pretty close in there. I mean, this may even still be within the poll's margin of error. Is it your expectation? How has it gone in previous races when you have a significant scandal like this? Will the standing continue to erode over time?

Or does this represent a kind of bottoming out potentially for Eric Greitens? You know, I think that if a scandal like this had happened 10, 20 years ago, you'd say, well, Greitens is most certainly finished. And yet I think that I just don't feel comfortable saying that yet at this point, even though there's this accumulation of really, really horrible allegations against Greitens. And, you know, the former President Trump has sort of toyed with the idea of endorsing Greitens. Now, Trump's endorsement is not, you know, the silver bullet for these candidates. I think we've seen that there have been some Trump-endorsed candidates recently

who have been struggling, but he does seem to still be considering the possibility of doing that. Look, you have these large multi-candidate fields. Greitens, of course, despite being disgraced, is a former governor, and so he does sort of have kind of a built-in name identification advantage.

And, you know, there's no runoff. And so in a big multi-candidate field, you know, you get 25, 30 percent of the vote. That could be enough to win the nomination. I personally still think that if Greitens got nominated, he'd still win the general election. But it would be, you know, a huge headache for national Republicans who probably would have to spend on his behalf because he's such a would be such a weak, weaker candidate in the general election compared to other Republicans. And then, of course, if he wins, they'd have to deal with Greitens in their caucus, which would be another headache for Republican Senate leadership. How would you handicap his odds, though? Because there was some polling even before

these latest scandals that seemed kind of hopeful for some of the Democrats in the race. We've interviewed Lucas Kuntz here, who has a good profile. He's a military veteran. He's got a very populist sort of tone and plans for the state and for what he would do in the Senate. So do you think that if Greitens was the nominee, Missouri's very red state at this point, but do you think Democrats might have a shot at it? I think you'd at least have to keep the door cracked open to the possibility of a Democratic upset if Greitens were the nominee. I wouldn't say that if any of these other candidates were the nominee. And so that's the fear for Republicans. They just don't want to have to deal with that when they otherwise have a lot of credible targets to try to win the Senate back in November. Kyle, one of the things we've been trying to look at is the Trump effect within all

of this. You know, we've just had that rally down in Georgia where we see that Trump is 100 percent fixated on stop the steal. Georgia voters don't appear to feel that way whenever it comes to Governor Kemp. Now he's had to unendorse Mo Brooks for departing from him on stop the steal. I mean, what do you think that the Trump effect of this stop the steal obsession could have in terms of downward pressure on Republican chances in an already such favorable environment? Look, I mean, I think that, you know, the former president's fixation on this is probably not helpful in a broader sense. Although, frankly, I do wonder if there can be some sort of kind of perverse advantage about talking about this, because if Republicans writ large sort of feel aggrieved about 2020, maybe that ends up being kind of a motivational tool for turnout in November. 5th, 2021. But then you get later in the election year, you know, 2021, and you see really awesome

Republican turnout at places like Virginia and New Jersey. You know, midterms are often defined by, you know, which side has the sort of enthusiasm advantage. Republicans clearly have that. And again, I wonder if sort of the grievance of 2020 is part of that, even though Trump and his allies have produced really nothing in terms of credible evidence that they really were robbed in 2020. But again, sometimes waving the bloody shirt there can actually have some sort of motivational advantage. Now, it also seems like, though, that Trump's endorsement himself is not necessarily enough to catapult some of these candidates. I mean, he was speaking

the other day on behalf of David Perdue, the former senator of Georgia, who's challenging Governor Brian Kemp, who Trump doesn't like in the Republican primary in Georgia. But Kemp seems like he's, you know, he's doing okay so far in that race. And Kemp has otherwise been a pretty loyal conservative Republican other than not indulging Trump on this. So it seems like there are, you know, some Trump critics in the party who may lose primaries, but Trump just sort of pointing to someone and saying, hey, you got to vote this person out without necessarily other good reasons to vote that person out. Maybe that's not necessarily enough in the primary set. And is that a shift from previously? Because, yeah, we've talked about

on this show, we talked about the Kemp-Purdue dynamic in Georgia. Mo Brooks was Trump's candidate in Alabama, and then he's losing. So Trump decides to unendorse him and say, oh, it's because he wasn't sufficiently pro-stop the steal. I believe his candidate in North Carolina is also not faring particularly well at this point. So is that a different dynamic than did Trump's endorsement seem to hold more sway at other times than these primaries? You know, look, Trump's endorsement record was never perfect. You know, part of the we talk about, you know, potentially bad Republican Senate nominees. Great example of that is Roy Moore, who kicked away a Senate seat in Alabama

for a couple of years, a few years ago, and Moore won over a Trump-endorsed candidate in that primary, Luther Strange, who was the appointed senator. That's sort of a high-profile example of a Trump-endorsed seat not working out. And I think a lot of other Trump-endorsed seats have worked out. But I think we sometimes look at his record, again, as being perfect, and it certainly isn't. And, you know, he is probably going to take some more losses here in the primary season. I mean, again, he rescinded his endorsement of Mo Brooks, but, you know, he did support him, and that didn't, you know, that didn't allow Brooks to, you know, to take command of that field. And, you know, Trump is also handing out endorsements left and

right, or at least he had been. And when you do that, you open yourself up to the possibility of some of those folks not getting over the finish line. It seems likely to be the case in the spring. Yeah. Well, it's been really great talking to you, Kyle, on this, looking at your analysis. I mean, any closing thoughts in terms of how things might change in the future? What would people want to look for if there was going to be some change up in your prognosis of the elections? You know, again, it's Biden's approval rating. You know, do we see some sort of level of improvement? Again, I'd say that by and large, we really haven't. He didn't really get much of a bounce from the State of the Union or from, you know, the response to the Russian

invasion of Ukraine. You know, I also think that the one way that, you know, the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You know, I also think that the one way that, you know, Republicans could potentially screw up this political environment, at least in the Senate, is the nomination of weak candidates. And again, Greitens is a good one to watch in Missouri, but there are several others. Yeah, well, it also brings to mind another Missouri candidate from back in the day, Todd Akin,

that Democrats actually kind of put their thumb on the scale, ran some ads to try to get him as the nominee. He ends up the nominee and Claire McCaskill is able to hold on, even though it looked very much like her political doom was sealed at that point. So you just never know. Kyle, it's always great to have your analysis. Thank you, my friend. Great to see you. Good to see you, man. Thank you. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it, as always. It's a fun time in order to try and do the news. We mentioned yesterday about how you have to dance around these Trump comments to make sure your channel doesn't get taken down.

Look, you guys are the only ones that we can rely on at this time. Things are really heating up in terms of the censorious environment. We're going to be talking over the weekend about Chris Hedges and what happened to him. This is insane. I mean, the man's entire catalog is removed within a span of minutes and he's been canceled, you know, from contemporary discourse. Ask yourself if that can happen to a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. That can happen to any of us. So thank you all for your support. It's what keeps us going and it gives us the lack of fear in order to produce the news exactly the way that we think it should be. And we thank you all so much for your support and it gives us the lack of fear in order to produce the news exactly the way that we think it should be. And we thank you all so much for your support and for watching us.

Love you guys. Have a wonderful day. We'll have some great content for you tomorrow. We'll be back with a full show on Thursday. See you then. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane

and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your Not the Father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK

Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.