Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/5/24: Michael Moore DIRE Biden Warning, MSNBC Says To Scare Voters From Trump, All Demos Say Trump Policies Better Than Biden, Corporate Landlords Rent Price Collusion, SCOTUS Trump Ruling Debate, Whoopi Goldberg Meltdown, UN Report Can't Prove Sexual Assault Claims, and Local Israelis Debunk NYT

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Michael Moore's dire warning for Biden, MSNBC plan to scare voters against Trump, voters across all demographics say Trump policies better than Biden's, corporate landlords sued for rent hike collusion, Krystal Saagar debate SCOTUS Trump ruling, Whoopi Goldberg meltdown over Trump, UN report can't prove 10/7 sexual assault claims, and local Israelis debunk NYT Hamas assault piece.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. It is Super Tuesday. We're going to break it all down

for you. What to expect, what states are voting, how you can vote uncommitted or with another protest vote if you live in a Super Tuesday state. We also have a few key figures who are sounding warning alarms for Joe Biden. Not that that's an unusual thing at this point, but we'll give you that as well. Speaking of Joe Biden, he gave a rare interview to The New Yorker, and we learned something about why those interviews are so rare. Some very interesting comments that many people took note of. So we will bring that to you. We also are following a really important story. States are starting to fight back against rental companies colluding to raise your rents. Some key action there. So we'll tell you what is going on. This follows up on a report we covered from ProPublica previously about this company that

uses an algorithm to set rental prices. But since they're getting fed in all of this rental information, it is effectively collusion. So we'll give you all of those details, really important one for you and your life. We're also taking a look at reactions, which are pouring in after that SCOTUS ruling we covered yesterday, saying Trump can stay on the ballot, saying that that provision in the Constitution, not that it doesn't necessarily apply, but it has to go through Congress. So we will react to all of that. Yesterday, we also got a U.N. report on sexual violence on October 7th. We'll break that down for you. Ryan's got another bombshell, once again, completely undercutting that New York Times reporting on October 7th. And actually, the UN report itself debunks a key narrative from that piece as well. So we'll break that down for

you. And we've got Congressman Ro Khanna here in the studio to talk about Biden's Israel policy. So a lot to get to this morning. Yeah, that's right. And on Thursday, we've got our live stream coming up. We've got a promotional graphic. We can go and put it up there on the screen. So we will have a live stream that began shortly before. We'll do a pre-show, then we'll go into the State of the Union. We'll all watch it together. We'll react on the other side until we have an exclusive premium-only live stream for our subscribers. You guys can ask us questions, all four of us here at the desk. So breakingpoints.com if you want to become a premium subscriber, and we will email and make sure that you guys have all of the information that you need. And in addition, you really just help us pay for and

create special logistic events and all that stuff, because obviously it's outside of the normal schedule and there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. So thank you just to everybody that supports our work here. BreakingPoints.com, like I said. I love a good logistic event. It's true. We are actually going to be the four of us spending a lot of quality time together this week because Sagar and I are also going to join Ryan and Lee tomorrow to react to whatever happens tonight on Super Tuesday. So look out for that as well. And speaking of Super Tuesday, let's go ahead and put up on the screen the map of the states that are voting today, including my home state of Virginia. We've got, I believe, 16 states and one territory that are voting today.

This one, you can see the number of delegates allocated per state. Obviously, this is all about winning those delegates. The two parties actually have different systems in terms of how they apportion the delegates. The Democratic Party does a lot of proportional delegation. So that's how Uncommitted was able to pick up a couple of delegates in the state of Michigan. One interesting question tonight will be whether or not Uncommitted or similar choices on the ballot in some of these states is able to pick up additional delegates to go to the Democratic National Convention. And as you can see, California and Texas, the big delegate-rich prizes on the ballot tonight. Let's go ahead and put this next map up on the screen.

We showed you this yesterday, but just to refresh, this is courtesy of Ettinger Mentum, who did all of the work of figuring out which states allow an uncommitted vote, which ones you can write in some sort of protest vote and those are actually counted. Some of the states you cannot vote uncommitted, but they will count blank ballots. Some states you cannot vote uncommitted. It does have write-ins, but they don't actually count those write-ins unless they're for quote unquote qualified candidates. So a few of the states that do have that uncommitted option on the ballot that are voting today, you got Minnesota, you got Colorado, you got North Carolina, you got Vermont, you've got

a number of states that will be, where voters will be able to very directly register that protest vote. So that is certainly something we will be paying attention to. You know, granted, there's been very little lead time in terms of organizing, but it'll be interesting to see whether some of the momentum coming out of Michigan and the national attention that that movement garnered and the sense that the Biden administration does feel some pressure from the results from Michigan that could really impact the way that people turn out to Night Stalker.

And let me just put up this tear sheet, just the basics of Super Tuesday. What to know about Super Tuesday and why it matters. As I said, voters in 16 different states in one territory going to be choosing who they want to run for president. Some states are also choosing who should run for governor or senator for their state and some district attorneys too. In addition to the presidential contest, there is also an important race in California to replace Dianne Feinstein. California has an unusual primary system. All of the candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same ballot. And then the top two vote getters go on to run in the quote unquote general election. Adam Schiff has actually been propping up the Republican candidate to try

to make sure that he is the only Democrat on the ballot come this fall. So that will be another thing to watch tonight that is very significant. Who would have thought Super Tuesday, the more interesting story, would be on the Democratic side? It's not exactly one that we would have predicted a couple of months ago, but because the Republican convention is so, or at least the Republican election contest is just so basically not even in question now at this point. The Democratic side, not necessarily that the result is in question, but protest vote and how both of those fit into the overall election. The number of delegates, as you said,

you've got 35% on the Republican side up for grabs and 36% on the Democrat side that are up for grabs. So neither side is going to quench the, going to get the number of delegates necessarily that they need exactly to win. Apparently the earliest that that could happen is March 12th and March 19th for Joe Biden, which I basically expect is going to be somewhere around there. And then we can all stop this nonsense with Nikki Haley, at least. But that's really what we're all looking for now are voting patterns, the level of victory. It'll be a big question about Trump's electoral margin. Not necessarily that I think it matters as much for the general election, Crystal, but that's the big media thing. They're like, oh, he's underplaying his polls and same vis-a-vis Joe Biden. So we can get real looks into the coalitions

of the faithful that do come out for primaries and just be like, okay, let's start to think about how this is really going to play out in the general election? It's more data. Exactly. It's more information. I guess the other thing to watch for tonight is Nikki Haley staying in this race after Super Tuesday. She had originally sort of indicated, you know, she was in it for the long haul. Then after the I believe the one of the recent contests, maybe Michigan. I don't know. My memory fails me. But she said, you know, she sort of committed through Super Tuesday, but not really beyond that. So I think we're on Nikki Haley dropout watch as well as we go through the Super Tuesday results

and see how she fares. I do think it'll be interesting. You know, a lot of these states, there hasn't been a whole lot of primary polling because the result is so certain on both sides of the ledger. But it will be interesting to see if that trend continues of Trump underperforming his polls, which is very different dynamic than what we used to see from Trump back in 2016 and beyond. So something to watch for. Anyway, like I said, more data. OK, so Michael Moore, of course, famous filmmaker, has continued to push the uncommitted protest vote. He was one of the key figures helping to push that protest vote to over 100,000 voters in

the state of Michigan. Quite an extraordinary performance for that protest movement, especially given the short amount of time and the tiny amount of money that was put behind it. He joined MSNBC to continue to talk about why this movement is important. Let's take a listen to that. Do you think Donald Trump is the threat that he is? And Joe Biden is gambling by aligning himself closely with Netanyahu at the risk of American democracy? Absolutely. And gambling by aligning himself with an authoritarian in Tel Aviv, somebody who is facing a number of felonious charges, who was supposed to stay in trial this past fall, and that all got shoved aside

because now there's a war. So one thing that's been interesting here, Sagar, is you have a number of people who are voting uncommitted or it's equivalent in whatever state that they are able to vote in. Some of them are not going to vote for Biden. They're done, right? There's an abandoned Biden movement that started in Michigan. And they're like, listen, he's backing a genocide. It's too far. It's already too late.

Forget about it. But the more sort of like liberal argument from people like Michael Moore is we're actually trying to help Joe Biden. We're trying to push him in the right direction because at the moment he is risking everything. I mean, Michael Moore is 100 percent voting for Joe Biden in the fall. Right. And he despises Donald Trump. I think it's very clear. Yeah. He despises Donald Trump. He is going to be voting for Joe Biden in the fall, et cetera. And so their message is we're trying to push this man in the right direction so he doesn't throw everything away for the psycho right wing Netanyahu government. And I do think that that, because they've been able to stitch together both

the people who are a little more radicalized and like, forget it, I'm not voting for Joe Biden, and the people who are still like, yeah, but lesser evil and I don't want Trump, etc. The fact that they've been able to keep that together and keep that messaging focus for an MSNBC-type audience is interesting to me. Definitely. You know, I think back to, you weren't here for this, Ryan and I interviewed the right ceasefire guy in. Right. I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, I encourage people to go watch it. This could not be the most cookie cutter, like a Democrat boomer. At the end, he was he loves Biden, didn't want to vote for anybody else. He literally ended our segment, Crystal, by saying thank you to the Capitol Police for

their actions on January 6th. At first, I mean, we honestly thought he was trolling. But I was like, oh, no, he's 100% serious. But my point is that, I mean, this is the respectable lib boomer. Yeah, in a certain way, you have to admire him if you put aside the damage they've done to the country. And you're just like, wow, okay. So, you know, this is certainly not the demographic that people in the media may think are the types who would come against it. I thought it was it was very illuminating for me personally just to say, OK, well, that's interesting, because, as you said, it's probably more Michael Moore.

I mean, part of the reason why it's so remarkable for Michael Moore is if people remember, he was literally on our show in what was like November, maybe October of 2020, talking about how Bill Barr was going to like personally go and steal ballot boxes to rig the election. I was like, man, this is crazy shit. But my point just being like this is a person who actually believes Trump is like a militant fascist who's going to overthrow the government and have a coup d'etat. If he's willing to mount a campaign against him, yeah, I would certainly take notice of that. Well, here's the thing. Michael Moore is actually being far more consistent with what Democrats claim they believe than the Democrats are themselves. I mean, that's what he's saying. It's like, you say all this rhetoric about how our literal democracy in our country is at stake on the ballot. And you can see the electoral damage. You know the electoral

damage. And you continue to persist. Why? Why? And so he and many others, their push is we are trying to push you in a direction that will perhaps improve your chances against Donald Trump in the fall. At the same time, another voice that, you know, you should always pay attention to when it comes to swing states, especially in the industrial Midwest, is Debbie Dingell, congresswoman, longtime congresswoman. She famously was sounding the alarms prior to 2016 when everybody on the Democratic side was, oh, Hillary's going to win. It's going to be easy. She barely even needs to campaign. This is going to be fine. Donald Trump is a joke, popping champagne on the plane before the election results even come in,

et cetera, et cetera. She was saying, no, there's a real problem here. And she has been consistently prescient in a lot of her predictions. And, you know, she's keeping things pretty diplomatic and mild here. But she's also sounding an alarm again about Biden's performance in Michigan and taking note of the significance of that uncommitted vote. Let's take a listen to that. Michigan is a purple state, and I've been saying that for a long time. We are a state that frequently votes uncommitted. President Obama got a highly, got a significant uncommitted vote in 2012. But it is one issue that needs to be paid attention to. I've got a lot of people that are hurting in my district. So, first of all, I'm always the wrong person to talk to about polling because I told the world and many of my Republican friends didn't believe me either that Donald Trump was going to win Michigan and thus won the election in 2016. now that we're even looking at, there have been three national polls that have showed President Biden up or tied with Donald Trump, the numbers and all these different polls in the last,

but he's done well. I think, I do believe that President Biden is getting that sense of urgency. That's her take at this point. So listen, we'll see how it all unfolds tonight. If there are any surprise performances, if there are places where, you know, uncommitted or similar protest efforts have a significant result. And just once again, to reiterate how widespread the problem throughout the Democratic base is for Joe Biden. You know, it was not just the college kids and the Arab Americans who had something to say through their uncommitted protest vote in Michigan. There was a widespread support for that movement throughout the state, rural, urban, suburban, etc. And it'll be interesting to see if that trend persists.

There's been a big debate around strategy, Crystal. How can the Democrats pull it out against Trump? One strategy is just to ignore the polling. The other is to look for silent indicators that may seem like things are better than they seem. But on MSNBC, what is his name? Donnie DeWish. We're not exactly sure where he came from or how he became a political analyst. But he's on Morning Joe.

And nonetheless, he's on the president's favorite television show. He's come up with a new strategy about how to make sure that Biden does beat Trump in the upcoming general election. Let's take a listen to his analysis. I'm afraid. You know, I've been one of the most general election. Let's take a listen to his analysis. I'm afraid. You know, I've been one of the most outspoken guys. You know, it's interesting. Somebody said to me, are you afraid if he gets reelected? And I hadn't thought about it.

And like, he's not coming after Joe. He's going to come after me. He might come after you. I mean, this is what people are not comprehending. And here's the campaign the Democrats need to run. And I've been thinking about this a lot. There are four people that need to step forward. Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, and Milley. And there needs to be a general campaign where these generals who have worked with him need to turn to the American public and turn to Cameron and say, you don't understand how

scary this can be. We really can go over a cliff here. These people, patriots, need to start to stand up because that's what America listens to. I think if you do the right campaign with those four guys and you continue to put the message out, you're going to lose control of your bodies. Women, immigration, it will even get worse as it did the first time with Donald Trump.

Our democracy is really, really, really online here. And our way of life will change. Get people, scare the shit out of people. Scare the shit out of people. Inspiring. That's a strategy. Very inspiring, Crystal. And also, it's definitely like it's never been done before. It's not like we've heard all that rhetoric all this time around. So there's a lot going on here. But it fits with the general panic inside the Biden administration. And the Biden admin did a long profile with Evan Osnos. He's a reporter over

at The New Yorker, and they gave us a little preview into their electoral strategy. So let's go and start with their first one. Here's Joe Biden's last campaign, trailing Trump in the polls and facing doubts about his age. The president voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reelection. The most noteworthy quote, I thought, came from Tom Donilon. Donilon is a longtime Biden advisor. He's a real whisperer. And here's the strategy. He says, quote, by November, he predicted the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people's minds are going to be of January 6th. So he sees a parallel crystal to the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry. At the time, Donald says he worked for Kerry. The Democratic Party didn't want to believe it

was a 9-11 election. Instead, the party wanted to focus on an array of issues like other things, but it all came back to 9-11. Now, I'm just going to say I think 9-11 was a little bit more pertinent and different in 2004 because we were in the middle of a massive war in Iraq, but maybe that's just me. Now, let's lay out how Donilon arrived at this conclusion. Many of us, including at this desk, were poo-pooing that strategy ahead of the 2022 midterms. It ended up being tremendously impactful. That said, that was also a combination of abortion. We will never actually know what the real impact of Stop the Steal and abortion was. I still believe that abortion was far more influential than a lot of Stop the Steal. And I would have loved to be able to see an election without abortion on the ballot

that was purely about kind of MAGA kookery. Now, I'm not going to say it didn't have any impact, but I think it was relatively marginal as opposed to abortion. That said, are you really going to bank it all on, frankly, what barely saved you last time still litigating at a very, you know, like real degree where our troops were dying in the middle of a war and we were still in the, you know, all this morass in Afghanistan. How can you possibly think that those two are still so linked in like the American consciousness when people are going to go to the polls? It's March 5th right now. It feels, you know, a million miles away, January 6th. Now add several months to that for election day. I think it's an incredibly foolhardy strategy. It just seems like there is an unbelievable amount of complacency and arrogance among the Biden people and that they've drawn these lessons

from both his ability to win the primary, the Democratic primary back in 2020 with a lot of assistance from, you know, Obama and the media and whatever. But he was able to pull that off against the odds and people had counted him out, et cetera, et cetera. And you combine that with the overperformance in the midterms. I mean, they still didn't win the House, but they did much better than the predictions. They did much better than incumbent presidents usually do in midterm elections. And they've just decided that data doesn't matter. Criticism doesn't matter, that they can just stay the course and block everything out and it's going to be just fine. And so, I mean, that's what you see from here. Now, listen, we haven't seen any

affirmative. We're on the State of the Union this week. Maybe Biden will lay out some more affirmative, positive looking vision of what the second term would look like. That's possible. We'll see, but he ain't done it yet. And it's very clear that they're leaning into basically the Donny Deutch strategy of let's just scare the shit out of people and hope it works one more time. Maybe it will. I don't know. I mean, the, you know, Republicans don't do themselves any favors with all of the like wacky shit that they're doing all the time, not just January 6th. And I think for my assessment of the midterms, it was you can't really pull apart the factors of stop the steal and that sort of kookery and January 6th and abortion and the level of extremism with regard to that issue. It just made the entire party

seem like they were fringe wackos. So I think it all sort of plays in together. Maybe that works again, but I don't know how you look at these polls, not just a one-off, not just an outlier, not just an occasional poll, but literally every poll that comes out and not say, you know what, we may be thinking about this wrong. We need to reassess. We need to come up with some ideas of how to actually defeat Trump. And we're going to talk more about the SCOTUS ruling here in a bit. But I also think they need a wake up call that the legal system is not going to save them. It's not going to come to their rescue. It's not clear that it's going to change significant votes from Trump to Biden. They are going to have to figure this out themselves. And right now,

there's just nothing but arrogance and complacency coming from everybody around him. You also see almost frankly delusional promises from Biden. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was what really struck me. Whenever they asked Biden what exactly he was going to do in his second term, he says, quote, I will pass Roe versus Wade as the law of the land. Democrats would then need to win control of the House of Representatives and gain seats in the Senate. But he expressed confidence. A few more elections like we've seen in place with states would suffice. You're seeing the country changing, reiterating its position on Roe. I've never been more supportive of.

It's my body. I can do what I want with it. But I have been supportive of the notion that this is probably the most rational allocation of my responsibility that all the major religions have signed on and debated over the last thousand years. So very convoluted quote, frankly, there from Biden, almost abandoning the libertarian framing and kind of putting in his own, what is it, putting in his own religious interests, I guess, within that. But I mean, at a baseline level, Crystal, you can't say that you're going to pass Roe versus Wade when the last time the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority and control of the House of Representatives under Barack Obama, who also said that he would do it, they didn't do it. So why would they believe you? Also, as I understand it, maybe I'm wrong,

mathematically, in the terms of the Senate math, it's actually impossible for them to get a filibuster-proof majority. He supports a filibuster. Thus, how can you claim that with a straight face? There's not a single Republican in the United States Senate that would sign on to specifically Roe. Now, maybe a 14-week or whatever. Maybe. I'd still doubt it. But my point is, it's like, this is a, and that's the only promise he's got.

And it's a fake one, if you know anything about how the political system is structured. I am just really struck by, I mean, listen, presidents put out all kinds of delusional promises. That's par for the course. I mean, I'm actually surprised they don't talk about that more. This is honestly the first time I've even really heard him mention that he has even an intention of codifying Roe as the law of the land. So your point is apt that he has no actual strategy for getting that done. And part of the reason he has no strategy for getting that done is the is evidenced in the other part of the quote where he's like, yeah, this whole pro-choice thing is not really my bag. Yeah,

it's my body, my choice. That's not really ever been my thing. It's like, do you understand how this issue has saved your party's ass now in multiple elections that this is like the only reason why you all did OK in the midterms and did all right in these special elections, etc. And you're going to like pour cold water on it and make it very clear to everyone involved that you don't really care. You're not going to fight for it. And you'll sure you'll throw out some empty words and empty promises, but it doesn't go any beyond that. Now, I think most people who are voting on this issue are not actually voting on like, oh, I think the Democrats are really going to like restore my rights. They're voting on the Republicans are going to make things even worse. And the Republicans have demonstrated that they want to make things

even worse in states across the country. You know, the IVF situation in Alabama, there was a bill that would have codified access and protect IVF at the federal level that Republicans blocked. So I think that's where probably more of the energy is because people just have so little hope that any of the parties really going to deliver for them, let alone a man who just comes out and is basically like, yeah, pro-choice. I'm just not really, that's not really my thing. So I think that's where the energy is, but this certainly doesn't help his prospects. And as part of why they don't let him do interviews very often because he says stuff like this. It's like, what are you talking about? It's also interesting because that type of messaging might have, even then, I think about it. Something I go back and watch all the time,

just to remind myself of a different world, is Bill Clinton's acceptance speech of the 1992 Democratic Convention. It's on YouTube if anybody wants to go and watch it. And he's adamant. He says safe, legal, and rare over and over again. It's kind of like a perfect secular messaging, in my opinion. And so what came across to me with Biden is I still think in his mind he's living in the 1980s, where he's living in like a very Christian country where the moral majority and all that still exists. It's like, bro, you know, half this country is, you know, Christian to the point where like they don't go to church and it's mostly entirely cultural. If you were to question and articulate, like, really dig down into their real beliefs, they're agnostic at best and mostly just secular and or nonbelievers, deeply more socially libertarian than at any time in modern history.

I've never believed that safe, legal, and rare is, like, the most popular messaging today than it was in 1992 when Bill Clinton won that election. So it's interesting to me to see him kind of torture himself through this. And then the final part that we had to pull here, let's, let's please put this up there because it's just, you can't even make it up. Now, in terms of proving his prowess about saying that the White House, by allaying criticism that the White House is quote insular or dismisses of reality, Jeff Zients, who is the chief of staff, has pointed to Biden's reputation of, quote, soliciting opinions from critics. As he says, just the other day, he picked up the phone and he called Larry Summers.

What a bold move. No president's ever done that before. Yeah, he would be, I believe he would be. So Trump definitely never called Larry Summers. Oh, he probably met with him. So let's Obama definitely, Obama employed Larry Summers. Bill Clinton employed Larry Summers. George W. Bush, I wouldn't put it past him to talk to Larry Summers. So how many presidents in a row then? That doesn't make you unconventional.

That's like, you know, going to a Georgetown cocktail party, soliciting foreign policy advice and saying that you're going outside of the normal thing. To seek dissenting voices. I don't think that's how it works. Maybe we want to update the boomer press or silent generation president. I apologize. He said Biden's other occasional calls range from columnist Thomas Friedman to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He says that's how you pressure test decisions. What world is this gentleman living in? Oh, my God. I mean,

seriously, when I connect the abortion thing, this man is in the 1980s. That's what he is. You can't, you couldn't possibly name three more staid architects of the status quo than those three men. I mean, it really, that's the list of people that comes out of your mouth is actually quite extraordinary. And, you know, Zines has come in, he replaced Ron Klain. Klain had some better ties with the progressive world. He was pushing, you know, the big stimulus at the beginning of the administration. There was a lot more sort of connectivity with a more aggressive like FDR style. Not that he ever came anywhere close to living up to that, but that was more of the vision. Zients is this corporate establishment sold out tool. And it's worth like $200 million. Absolutely. And so, you know, there has been

basically since he's come in, Biden hasn't really done anything that has been good. So that's effectively the tenure of Jeff Zientson, you know, that he's the one saying, oh, well, Biden's doing great. He's seeking out all these dissenting voices and pressure testing his decisions with Larry Summers, Mitch McConnell and Thomas Friedman. It's nuts. It is so revealing, so revealing and also incredibly hilarious. Let's get to why all of this is a problem. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is actually seriously remarkable because it demonstrates the underlying strength that Trump has. This is more from the New York Times-Santa Paul. They say, quote, no matter race, age, or gender, more voters say Trump's

policies helped than Biden's. So do you think Joe Biden or Donald Trump's policies have helped you personally? Joe Biden, 18%. Trump's policies, 40%. You know what really is underlying in this crystal? If you look at some of the interviews, those COVID checks, people remember the hell out of that. They remember deeply some of those COVID stimulus checks. So for all the people out there who put that policy- But you know what? Biden sent out COVID checks too. He did, but it was at the end. And I think that they're pairing inflation probably more so with the tail end, whereas they remember low gas prices plus the check. I don't really buy that. What I think-

I mean, you may be right. I'm not sure. I'm just saying, if you have both presidents that sent out COVID checks, I don't think that you can really ascribe that to, you know, this difference. I think that a big problem for Biden is, first of all, people remember things through rose colored glasses. So, you know, it kind of cuts against normally there's like an incumbency advantage. This is a very weird election because you basically have two incumbents going up against each other. And in some ways, Donald Trump is benefiting from the way that memories have faded. Whereas last time around, when he was in office and we were in the midst of COVID and people were miserable and they were

very frustrated with him and his, remember those bizarre press conferences and the bleach and all that insanity at the end of COVID. People were disgusted with that. And that was a huge boon to Joe Biden, I think is what helped push him over the line. I honestly think a big part of this too is people just, they don't have any confidence that anything that has potentially improved for them, which there are, there is data now that says that on some metrics, people are doing better economically than they were say a year or two years ago. But they don't give Biden credit for that because they see that he is like old and doddering and they have zero confidence that he's able to deliver on anything. So they're not attributing like if their position gets a little bit better, they're not like, oh, that's thanks to Joe Biden.

It's you know, it's in spite of Joe Biden. So to me, that's a big part of what's going on here. And that was one of the things that both Ezra Klein and Nate Silver, I think, pointed to in their pieces about why the Democratic Party should ditch Joe Biden. They're like, the economic numbers are improving and his approval rating is not. And that's a problem for him because that means there's basically nothing you can do to sort of get people convinced that you're good for the country because they've just decided you're too freaking old and you can't get anything done. Well, what really struck me, can we put that tear sheet please back up on the screen, B5, just because I want to really point to a number there, is the hurt you personally. Do you see that one? Biden's policies, 43% say hurt me personally, 25% of Trump policy. Now,

it's pretty insane considering this is the man who appointed Supreme Court justices on Roe versus Wade. And he says not made much of a difference, relatively tied at 39 and 34. What struck me also is that within gender, if you look at help me personally, both men and women highly rate Trump, dramatically really. 17% and 18% men and women respectively say that Biden policies helped. 41% and 39% say that they did help for men and women. So almost a 20-point spread there in Trump's favor. By ethnicity, it's the same thing. 44% say that Trump helped them. 26% of whites, 26% of blacks, 37% of Hispanics. By age, you actually see a huge benefit to Trump amongst the 45 to 64 demographic. Unfortunately, by the way, America, those are the people who vote.

48% say that Trump's policies help them. 21% say that Biden's policies help them. Same amongst the boomers, 65 plus, 38% versus 20% on Biden. So basically, I mean, age, gender, wherever you look, you know, a huge portion of this also I'm starting to think about when I look at these numbers is I think interest rates play a big role in this way that people have. You know, I mean, if you think about that number, the 45 to 64, this is the 401k generation, you know, the 401k millionaires.

I mean, let's be honest, the stock market was booming under Trump and more so the interest rate policies, inflation, and all of the, uh, the, basically the chaos of the last couple of years on top of increasing borrowing costs for folks who may be putting off retirement or, you know, trying to take out a loan, trying to fund a business or something like that, that is really going to screw you both at the lowest end, like a 18 to 29-year-old and a 45 to 64-year-old, just because you can compare the literal gain from previously to now. 65 plus, I mean, a lot of folks who are retired, they did get a 9% inflation increase in Social Security, which Biden did try to take credit for, if you remember that. He was like, Social Security increased under me. It's like, yeah,

because of inflation, dude. Not because of anything that you did, but okay, go for it. My point just being that I think interest rates had a massive impact on the psychological way that we thought about the economy, especially for, you know, just anecdotally, friends who are buying houses, you know, the prices remain very, very high. And with the mortgage rates where they are, some 6% to 7%, I mean, you know, don't look at your mortgage balance would be my advice, just because you're going to see how much you're paying in interest versus how much principal that you're really putting down on your house. I think that was a big part of it. Huge part of it too that we see, Crystal, is about the flip over. Nate Silver very astutely,

let's put this up there in his latest, says Biden's problem is with swing voters, not his base. He points to that graphic that you can see in front of you for her watching. It shows U.S. political party identification, and it actually shows that political party identification for Republicans and Democrats is near all-time lows, both at 27 and 27%. The independent number is actually at 43. Now, what he shows also is that amongst those independent voters, they are shifting hard against Joe Biden. And in fact, one of the crazy things that he pointed out is that some 10 percent of people who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election are now affirmatively saying they are going to vote for Trump. Not that they are undecided.

More so, only less than 1 percent of the people who voted for Trump are saying that they are willing to switch to the other side. So huge swing voter problem there where, you know, if you combine the coalitional issues plus the swing voter issues, Biden is, I mean, he's looking more and more cooked by the day with all the caveats. Yeah, of course. I mean, that was actually Nate Silver's piece kind of irritated me because what you just said is accurate, that he has problems in both of these areas. Like, I don't think you can look at the disgust over the Israel policy and how dramatically opposed not just young people in these few demographic groups, but the overall majority of the of Joe Biden voters from 2020 disagree with him on Israel. Some so strongly that they are not coming back. Some so strongly that they're

willing to go out and vote uncommitted in order to launch this protest. I mean, so strongly that they're terrified of even showing up on a college campus because they know they're going to be met with protest. So I don't think you can look at that and be like, eh, the base is fine. Don't worry about the base. It's both. You have a base problem. You need those people who are core Democratic constituencies to show up for you. You need the modern traditional Democratic coalition, which is really reliant on young people. You need those people to be willing to come out and vote for you and not to stay home and not to go vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein. And you also need to win independence. So it kind of

irritated me how he like pitted these two groups against each other. Like you have to pick one or the other. Joe Biden has problems with both. He needs to win over both, perhaps with independence. You know, the thing that would really, you know, push them in his direction is if he had more affirmative, positive vision in terms of the economy that they actually had confidence in him delivering, which I think is a major problem for him. There's nothing he can do about his age. It is what it is, which is, I think, a big part of the reason why it's these numbers are unlikely to move. I would say one of the biggest reasons. But he also has real problems with the Democratic base. And you need all of those pieces in order to win, especially given how close closely divided the country is, how close we expect

this election to ultimately be. So I've actually kind of found this column irritating and annoying. Fair enough. Listen, he's pointing to a legitimate issue. He's not pointing to all of the issues. All wins and losses are multifaceted. You can't point to any one thing. I think this points that when you are losing so many grounds in battles on different fronts, it makes it so that you are it's very difficult to try and calibrate, to try and think about where you're going to go, what exactly you're going to do. And then when we connected to what we started off the story with, which is the Biden strategy of January 6th, I'm not seeing a whole lot of January 6th hope in these numbers. It didn't show up last time either. So like seriously, let's at least give them credit for this. Yeah. No Hampshire 2020. These people got fifth. They're

cooked. There's no way they're going to win. Guess what? They ended up winning South Carolina. Boom. The guy's literally the Democratic president or Democratic nominee. And then he eventually wins the election. Same thing in 2020. Story is he's done. There's no way all history is against him. They pulled it out. So let's not give them, you know, let's, let's give them some credit for their strategy. I think a lot of it has to do with their opposing force rather than anything that they do. They're banking on the same thing. I would just say, first of all, it's a very, very small sample size. And number two is that that's a hell of a risk. It's a hell of a risk because it was just one thing goes the other

way. I mean, I just always think of whenever you're trying to win anything in life, you've got to do everything in your, you know, humanly possible to cover all of your bases and then also hope that your opponent makes a mistake. They're very much like, you know, oh, our opponent is such an idiot. It'll take care of it. That was the Hillary strategy. It was the Hillary strategy. You're right.

Exactly. That's how you lose. So anyway, I don't think it's going to work out for them. We'll see. We certainly will. Let's move on to the next part. This is a very inspiring story, actually. Some very interesting state government action against raising rent prices. So we've talked here previously about algorithmic, basically programs, consortiums, and companies that have been buying up real estate and that landlords can then self-enter into, where they can collude with each other to set rental markets and to increase aggregate prices

above where normal rent inflation is. We're now actually seeing a report out of the state of Arizona where the attorney general is suing RealPage, which is a company, an organization, and landlords, and accusing them of conspiring to illegally raise rents. We have a bit of a taste from a local news report there on the ground that we just wanted to play for all of you. Let's take a listen. It's a story many Valley renters know all too well. Major spikes in their own rent. Up to $600. And I'm like, okay, that's a bit steep. The next year they raised it, I think it was like $200 a month.

State Attorney General Chris Mays feels these price hikes aren't a coincidence, but possibly a conspiracy. I don't think it's a stretch to say that people were made homeless by this scheme. A recent lawsuit from Mays is pointing the finger at the software company RealPage for collecting leasing data and using that information to collude

with at least nine land order management companies, all in order to keep rent prices high and create a rental monopoly in both the Phoenix and Tucson area. The companies were actually talking about the algorithm and how much money it was going to make them to their investors. So what's really interesting

is if you look at some of the data included, they say, according to the attorney general's office, 36% of Phoenix households are renters. They have seen a 76% rent increase from 2016. Meanwhile, in Tucson, 37% of households remain renters with a 30% rent increase. They say several tenants who rent from these companies who were named in the lawsuit say that while prices went up, quote, no physical changes happened in their living areas. They keep getting money from everybody, but I don't know what they are doing with all that money, said one renter who did not

want to be identified. So they said, I would say these last two years or last two or three years, it was a headache. I mean, one of the things they're pointing to and it's not only the large landlord organizations, but is the company itself real page, which allows property management, you know, companies and others to enter and to basically enter into some sort of price fixing scheme. And, you know, my advice too is this lady's a Democrat, you know, and this is how you get reelected, you know, and elected, by the way, in a red state, just if you're wondering about the things that real good governance and things really people will pay attention to. If you're able to stop a 76% increase in rent, yeah, that's pretty impactful. You know, you shouldn't forget that. You know what? Arizona has impressed me on a couple of

fronts. This being one, another one is going after those Saudi-backed firms that were buying up all the land and suck and dry all the water. And they're buying up for pennies on the dollar a bunch of medical debt and dismissing it, discharging it so that the residents of Arizona, you know, can be can get some relief from this overhang and burden of medical debt, which is really interesting, which we should actually cover on another day. But, you know, to get to this particular story we covered in the past, ProPublica did a whole expose on this company, RealPage, and their software, which is called Yieldstar. And they brag about how they're able to squeeze their tenants and how they're able to effectively

collude, as you said. So what happens is all of these landlord companies, you know, they buy access to the Yieldstar software. Part of that is they have to enter in all of these landlord companies, you know, they buy access to the Yieldstar software. Part of that is they have to enter in all of their information. So Yieldstar has all of this non-public information, and then they use that to algorithmically maximize the amount of profit by setting the rents for these companies. So rather than the individual, you know, you go to rent an apartment or whatever, and the individual property manager is setting the rents based on what they can tell of the market and what will sustain.

And also based on that, like, human interaction of, I don't want to price this person out of a home. Instead of that, they use an algorithm that has all of this non-public information. So the allegation here is that this is price fixing because you have, even though there's like this intermediary, this tech intermediary, you still have the reality of all of these companies colluding with their private information to be able to maximize

and set rents at the highest possible price. And in markets where this becomes incredibly dominant, you have this one company setting the rents at the highest possible price. And in markets where this becomes incredibly dominant, you have this one company setting the rents for basically the entire market with disastrous results for tenants. What's interesting too is one of the main architects behind Yieldstar, this isn't his first trip to the price fixing rodeo.

He apparently was Alaska Airlines Director of Revenue Management, I'm reading from ProPublica now, when it and other major airlines began developing price setting software trip to the price-fixing rodeo. He apparently was Alaska Airlines director of revenue management, I'm reading from ProPublica now, when it and other major airlines began developing price-setting software in the 1980s. They had to enter into a consent decree to unwind this price-fixing scheme that they had there. He moved on from that to apparently price-fixing in the apartment market, rental market, because he has so much experience in that direction. But just to give you a sense of some of what they were saying about this software and what it does, one of the people involved said the net effect of driving revenue and pushing people

out, meaning pushing them out of the apartment, was $10 million in income. I think that shows keeping the heads in the beds above all else is not always the best strategy. What they're alluding to there is the fact that they found through this algorithm and through their price fixing ability, that was actually more profitable for a lot of apartment complexes to set prices so high that they actually had some vacancies that they pushed people out in this person's words and didn't keep the heads in the beds, all for maximizing absolute revenue. And they also point to the fact that when it is a human being who is setting these rents and providing the incentives and the breaks, et cetera, that they find it difficult to be as cold-hearted as profit maximization would demand.

So it's a significant issue. I think they are 100% correct. The DOJ actually weighed in on this, which I found really interesting, too. They said they filed a statement in support of these tenants. They said automating an anti-competitive scheme does not make it less anti-competitive. Specifically, the Fed said that algorithms themselves are not illegal to use, but rather the way it was being used with competitors knowingly combining their sensitive non-public pricing and supply information in an algorithm they rely upon in making pricing

decisions with the knowledge and expectation that other competitors will do the same. That signals to me, if the Biden DOJ is paying attention to this, that they may have a bigger problem than just this Arizona tenant suit. Well, I would certainly hope so. There's also some state-by-state legislation. We can put C3, please, up on the screen. The Colorado actually now has a bill that's just been introduced to prevent landlords from using algorithms to send rent. They say that currently, quote, renting an apartment in Metro Denver has become so difficult for the average person that the state lawmakers are

now trying to prevent these landlords from using the RealPage, Yieldstar, or the Yardi Revenue IQ to fix that market to their disadvantage. The law seeks to broadly define a prohibited algorithmic device that says one or more algorithms to perform calculations of data, and that if a landlord is found to have used this preventive device, it would allow tenants to take civil action. Now, I think one of the things I come back to with this is that it really does come down to entering that non-public information. Because if you think about it, if you go on MLS data or apartments.com, Zillow or whatever, you can see what the rental market around you is.

This is about getting it before it actually is rented and it's making it less of a guessing game and then also making sure that nobody can undercut your competition. So it really does enter in the realm of collusion and takes away that, you know, kind of free market aspect of what the rental market kind of should be, which is people kind of guessing and thinking and looking around their local area. One of the strengths that people always talk about with small local landlords is that they're community members, whatever, is that they're one to five properties, something like that. And it's not the resources of a giant corporation, which is what you should be afraid of. But this effectively kind of makes them a lobbying block and a price fixing cartel,

which is what we should be afraid of in the first place as to why I oppose corporate, most corporate land ownership in general whenever it comes to rental tenants, because they just try and squeeze every single dollar there is out of you. Yeah, well, and this goes beyond that, even because part of the allegation here is that because you have, especially in certain cities, you have the overwhelming bulk of the market participating in this scheme. They are all they are effectively acting as a cartel. And the way that works is you've set a price arbitrarily high and you have this agreement

that no one's going to come and undercut because what would bust this up in a typical free market if someone comes in and sees a market opportunity is like, oh, well, I can undercut these people with a lower price. I can fill out my apartments much more easily. And so and then that causes them to have a problem with their own buildings. If you have them all participating in this scheme, then you've got everybody sort of like agreeing to charge these high prices and no one undercutting them and causing a problem for their cartel price fixing algorithmic scheme. That's the allegation here. So it is encouraging to see a little bit of pushback

in a few different states. Hopefully this will be a model for the country. And to your point, Sagar, listen, one of the bright spots in the Biden administration has certainly been the focus on antitrust. You know, there have been some really great appointments like Lena Kahn, who've been much more aggressive, been trying to sort of not reimagine, but actually restore actual antitrust push from the government and break up some of these large monopolies that have so dominated our economy. We know, we've seen the energy around housing. It's obvious the pricing of rents, the pricing of homes, how much pain this is for everybody at a variety of income levels.

This would be a great thing for the Biden administration to lean into and talk up and really do something about. Because I think this particular case will really be a trial balloon of if they're able to succeed at the judicial level, proving that this is anti-competitive behavior. Yeah. Well, we'll see. It's a story they're definitely very interested in. I know it impacts a lot of you guys out there. You know, the rental rent inflation is one of the biggest drivers of overall CPI. And it's one of the things that has a huge issue in terms of sucking your money away, your savings rate and all that. I know it's really, really difficult out there. So we'll continue to track it.

We broke down the news for everybody yesterday about the Supreme Court decision. The TLDR is that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 unanimously that Colorado wrongly took Donald Trump off of the ballot by claiming that they had violated the 14th Amendment. The split decision was 5-4, where the majority, the slim majority of the court ruled that in the future, any process that would lead to the removal of a candidate from a ballot must come from specifically congressional action, as in they had to pass a law as they lay out in the 14th Amendment that lays out the exact candidate, the qualifications, the types, and the rules as to which would govern it.

And that currently does not exist as we understand it. So this kind of punts the ball to Congress. The dissent came from all of the liberal justices, where the three justices said that they should have narrowly considered the Colorado question and not set a new standard. And then Amy Coney Barrett, as I understand it, didn't join the liberal dissent, but didn't join the majority opinion either. So I don't really know what's going on.

Her thing was weird. I don't understand it. But it was basically like she actually agreed with the liberals that the decision went too far. But then her whole thing was like, but what we really should talk about is how we came to a unanimous decision. That's what's really important. It's like, what? It was weird. You can tell she's a mom of seven because that's like a very mom of seven.

It was a very mom of seven. That's so true. Like, we all came together. Let's just focus on the positive here, guys. Well, thanks, mom. Yeah, usually not the right answer. Anyway, so immediately, though, that sparked panic and responses here in Washington. The most noteworthy was one by Congressman Jamie Raskin, who said he will immediately join with several others to introduce legislation in the House of Representatives to bar Donald Trump from the ballot. Let's take a listen. I am working with a number of my colleagues, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Swalwell, to revive legislation that we had

to set up a process by which we could determine that someone who committed insurrection is disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. And the House of Representatives already impeached Donald Trump for participating in insurrection by inciting it. So the House has already pronounced upon that. Interesting. So Jamie Raskin has introducing the bill here. Obviously, he says that he's joining with, who is it, Eric Swalwell and a few others to increase this. Now, this may be a hot take that people wouldn't expect this, but you know what? It's through the normal legislative channel. I mean, first of all, it doesn't have a chance in hell, so it doesn't really matter. But hey, it's keeping with the procedure that was laid out by the Supreme Court, so I say go for it. Yeah, you know, I actually, I saw a bunch of

conservatives like freaking out over that. It's like, they're just literally doing what the Supreme Court told them to do. So I didn't see why there was such a like thing about this particular. As you said, I mean, listen, we should see this basically as a messaging bill. There's no expectation. They don't have control of the house. They don't have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. So this is not going anywhere anytime soon. Um, but it was directly responsive to the, you know, I saw, I said, Hey, thank you, Jamie Raskin. You know why you're following what the court told you to do? Go for it. That's the democratic process.

You can introduce it in the House. You guys can debate it. They can bring it to the floor if you want. You can send it over to the Senate. Crystal, am I wrong? I'm sure Mike Johnson will get right on that. Crystal, am I wrong that you need two-thirds as described by the amendment? That's the only thing I'm confused by.

No, no. Because, well, I mean, this gets into the ruling itself, which in my opinion was kind of bullshit, especially this aspect of it. Okay. Because, okay, so they based this, you know, this reading that, oh, well, this has to go through Congress and that's the process. They based it on the last line in the amendment, section three of the 14th amendment, where it says Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each house remove such a disability. The amendment doesn't say anything about Congress being the body that has to affirm the disability. They just made that up because, I mean, that's how the court system works. It's not surprising to me. It was exactly what I thought that they would do

because they're cowards and they didn't want to be the ones like responsible for upending the election, whatever. And they also wanted to sort of just like settle this question and push it off. And so they've made it so that even in a scenario where someone, Donald Trump or someone else, was actually found guilty of insurrection through a jury of their peers through the criminal justice system, that that doesn't count so long as they have enough of a political majority to block this sort of legislation. So no, two-thirds isn't prescribed. Two-thirds only has to do with removing the ban. There's literally nothing in the amendment about affirming the ban, which is part of why this went through the court system. I'm not a legal scholar. I'm not a federal society any person, so I can only speak to the politics, but I support this decision 100%.

And I'll tell you why, which is that, that was my laptop charger. Sorry about that. I will say they've resolved the question for all time. And I'm happy about that because enough of this nonsense, like we can't have a competing decision of insurrection and what is it? And is it not? I mean, it's a genuine democratic question as happened after the Civil War. If you go back to our original debate on the subject after the Civil War, if you serve for the Confederate States of America, you cannot serve in government unless you are removed by the, unless that disability is removed as it was in 1876, according to the history I have here in front of me, that you can no longer serve. Great. It's simple. Did you serve in the Confederate

States Army? Did you fight and take up rebellion against the government? Here, I mean, it's not really clear. You know, we don't have a real congressional legal standard. So what is an insurrection? What is it? Is it a riot? Is it an insurrection? Is it a coup d'etat? Are they trying to overthrow the government? These are like genuine democratic questions that need to be resolved through the democratic process, either by voting or through Congress. Now, is Congress broken and inefficient? Yeah, but it was in 1872 too. It has been for 200 some years. So for me, I'm happy because I'm sick of all of this fake interpretation of the 14th Amendment or whatever. Nobody knows. It's like none of us are lawyers or others. The court, I think correctly,

kicked it to Congress and said, you guys figure it out. What is insurrection? What's not insurrection? And if you can't figure it out, then we're going to err on the side of democracy, which is what it is. I mean, come on. These, you know, these courts, what, some freaking D.C. appellate court is going to set the standard for president of the United States? That's nuts.

That's just as nuts as the Texas Fifth, what's it called, the Fifth Circuit that made that crazy ruling. What am I thinking about? The abortion pill, Menifee Press Zone, something like that. So whatever. All right, people can look it up. The Texas abortion judge who can just say, oh, this one abortion pill is outlawed. That's bullshit.

You can't have national policy that's like that. So anyway, for me, you can't allow the legal system to weigh in on such a highly important democratic question of who can run for president of the United States. Well, I will remind you that states have the power and that was affirmed in this decision to decide who's eligible for the ballot based on all of the other constitutional requirements. So I don't really see how this is different. But I mean, listen, like I said, this is not a legal decision. It's a political decision. It's a political decision.

Yeah, I support the politics. Because the decision like, oh, we're going to come up with this process, they try to ground it because they have their, you know, bullshit originalist like cloak that they put on whenever it's convenient for them and then they immediately take it off

when it's not convenient for them. So they try to ground it in this last line of the amendment, which says nothing. The amendment says nothing about the process by which you determine whether someone engaged in an insurrection or not. They don't say that. They just talk about, okay, well, if someone is found to have engaged in an insurrection, is removed from the ballot, here's how you can override that through two-thirds vote in Congress.

So they try to use that to say, oh, well, that must mean that they meant that Congress is in charge of the whole thing. Well, it doesn't say that. So, I mean, it's completely invented. Let's just be clear about that. This is the way they wanted to resolve it. They wanted to resolve the question. They did not want to have, you know, the idea of someone being kicked off the ballot and, like, really resting on them. And I'm talking about the conservatives and the liberals now at this point. They didn't want that in their hands. They're fundamentally, basically, cowards. They always look for, like, the, you know, the least sort of bombshell thing they can do outside of the abortion decision. But that was a long time coming and sort of a different

deal, et cetera, et cetera. And so they invented this process that isn't actually grounded either in the history or the text or the way that this thing has been used before. They invented it. So listen, like I said, am I surprised? No, because I think almost all of their decisions are basically political in their interests based on their ideology or based on their desire to preserve the legitimacy of the court, et cetera. So they invented this process and it is now what it is. I will grant you that there is no basis for this, okay? There's no history. Thank you.

No, for real. I am not an originalist. I am not a textualist no basis for this, okay? There's no history. Thank you. No, for real. I am not an originalist. I am not a textualist. You know any of this? Like all this other legal. Frankly, when my friends who are lawyers talk like this, my eyes completely glaze over. I can only speak to the political question. I think it was a good political decision.

Obviously, it was 9-0 enough that was intended. I just don't see why going through Congress, which is obviously, I mean, that's the definition of a political body. Why that's superior to going through like to saying, you know, OK, it has to go through the court system and someone has to be found guilty of insurrection by a jury of their peers. Like it's that's a piece where I'm like, I don't see why they settled on this versus, you know, some other standard. Again, they just sort of invented it because at bottom, because they know this will never happen. They know that there's no chance that this Congress is going to come anywhere close to, you know, deeming that Donald Trump or anyone else for that matter engaged in an insurrection. So they can kill the idea that this is relevant, even though if you read the plain text of this,

if it applies to anyone, it applies to Donald J. Trump. They can avoid having to actually make a decision on whether he engaged in insurrection. They can kick the can to another body, but they can also effectively kill, you know, the possibility that this is relevant at all, but with their hands staying clean. That's why they did it. This is where I'm departing, because I don't see the clear insurrection or any of that in there at all. I think that the amendment was written for a very specific purpose, to bar people who were genuine traitors who took up arms against their country in the United States Civil War, and then to make sure that they couldn't serve in government and recreate the Jim Crow South. Oops, it happened

anyways. But the point is, is that that was the point by the radical Congress that passed the 14th Amendment. I think we should stay within that. I But the point is, is that that was the point by the radical Congress that passed the 14th Amendment. I think we should stay within that. I think the bar should literally be that high. To ban you from office, I think you should basically have taken up arms against your country, fought and killed your own countrymen, sold them out, and literally fought for a rival army as these Joe's gentlemen did against the Confederates. Other than that, it's up to the people, and you guys get to decide. That's just my bar for the ballot. It doesn't say treason. It doesn't even say it says you can have engaged in insurrection or rebellion or give an aid or

comfort to the enemies thereof. I mean, listen, he tried to overturn a democratic election. He, you know, all of the election maneuvering behind the scenes. There's a reason why even Trump's lawyers didn't try to make the case that he didn't engage in insurrection and had nothing to do with any of it. So in addition, you know, yes, that was the context that this was originally put into place, but it was not the only context in which it has been used. So I don't accept that this is just like, you know, some dead piece of the constitution has no relevance going forward post civil war. I don't think that that makes any logical sense. I don't think it's dead.

I think if people want to figure out what rises to the barrier of the U.S. Civil War, you are welcome to pass a law through Congress in which we will all commonly understand as a united people was an act of such terrible, you know, taking up arms against our government that we will bar you. Otherwise, leave it to the people and they can decide. If enough people agree with you on January 6th, as some did on 2022, don't vote for Trump. Be my guest. It's a free country. I mean, that's really what it comes down to in this particular instance. And again, this is why the history of it matters. I think you're engaging in a bit of textualism,

is the reason that they had to pass this is that the South was unreconstructed and they would have reelected genuine traders to basically, they would have reelected genuine traders and unreconstructed Southerners to represent them in the Congress and then to use their senatorial and congressional ability to block rights for freed slaves in the South. That was the actual intent of this entire thing. So that's, again, where we have to kind of raise the bar to for what we assume where we should come to the point where no government or all governments representative should do their absolute best and not stand in the way of democracy and allow it to

ultimately flourish for the people. And I don't think that anything Trump has done has ever risen to the level of literally taking up arms. But nowhere in here does it say that it has to. Nor does it say like the bars, the civil war and anything below that doesn't count. It doesn't say any of that. I mean, you know, they're very intentional about the way that they wrote and conceived of, you know, these various parts of the constitution. So, you know, I am very reluctant to put limits on who can run for office. This is why I oppose even term limits. Like, you know, I think if people want to elect some deadbeat congressman for 35 terms and who's, you know, getting wheeled in a wheelchair, like, I think that we should have

democratic mechanisms so people have better understanding of what that means. I think we should have money out of politics so there's not such an incumbency advantage of just like corporations flooding their campaign coffers so they're there forever. But I support the right of the people to vote for that frigging 110-year-old who's like slobbering on themselves if that's what they want, okay?

Unpopular opinion, but that's how I feel. I don't think we should have age limits in the Constitution, either at the higher end or at the lower end. I think I believe fundamentally in that democratic process. To me, this is an exception because I do think that the country has an interest in banning from office people who actively seek to undermine the basic tenets of that country. And I think that's what Donald Trump did. So again, listen, I'm not surprised by the decision. I do think that the legal questions involved were very complex.

But, you know, part of why they crafted the decision the way that they did, they kicked it to a body that they know is going to be unable to act, is because if you read this on its face, a lot of people are going to feel this applies to Donald Trump. They didn't want to deal with that messiness, so they effectively punted and that's where we are. It's a political decision. They made up the criteria here and that's the reality. That's the problem. You could use that against anything, a political understanding. You could say that any Democrat who didn't vote to certify the election in 2016 engaged

in the same sort of behavior. And I would not oppose that. I want those people to run. I want the bar to be so incredibly high. If you believe that Trump is bad, then vote against him. It's your right as a citizen. I gotta disagree on the age limits, though, because it's in the Constitution in terms of how young you gotta be. So at that point- People who did January 6th, it's fine to run for office. But if you're 24 or whatever, and people wanna vote for you, that's not okay. Well, no, I don't think it's okay. I think it's

in the Constitution. And so clearly the framers or whatever, we gotta stick with a little bit. Okay, but we're talking about what should be. Yeah, no, I would't think it's okay. I think it's in the Constitution. And so clearly the framers or whatever, you know, we've got to stick with a little bit. Okay, but we're talking about what should be. Oh, yeah. No, I would put it on philosophical grounds, I wouldn't support it. Yeah, I would not. That said, now given where we are with age, it's a little bit more complicated, especially with a captured political system where we are right now in terms of mental faculties. I mean, this gets to like all basic fundamental questions like driver's licenses.

Should people who are over 80 be allowed to drive? Honestly, I think the answer should be no. Or you should- I think it depends on capability. I've seen too many of these folks- A lot of sharp 80-year-olds out there, all right? Listen, I think they should, well, at the very least, they should be subjected to a very, very strenuous test. And we as a people should be like actually accept and think about what that should look like. Basically, every year after 72, your're asked to go to the DMV and you need to retry. And that's the thing, is that there are complicated questions here also in terms of public safety and your impact on others. Now, I generally err on the side of democracy, but if we're going to have

age limits, like you said, for, what is it, 25, I think, for the House? Yeah, what is it? 30 for the Senate, 35 for President, which I think is actually too low. But you think that's too low? Sorry, no, no, no. Too high. Way too high. Yeah, I agree. I don't think it should be. I don't really think there should be anything there at all. I agree. My point is that if we're going to have that, then I don't think it's really fair at all that we don't have old ones. I don't think we should have any of them. I also agree with Cenk that naturalized citizens should have the right to run for president of the United States. And Cenk's argument on it is, you know, does have some legal basis. But putting aside the legal argument, because there was a court ruling that basically said naturalized citizens should have all the rights of natural born citizens and to not do so is discriminatory.

So using that basis, you can then say, you know, this interpretation is, you know, is illegal or unconstitutional. But putting aside the legal questions, which I am admittedly no expert on whatsoever, I think just as a matter of principle, I do think that they should be able to run for office. I think Jenks should be able to run for president

if he wants. So again, this is all just to say, I am reluctant to put limits on who people can vote for and limiting their Democratic choices, I think, is a big problem. It's part of why I have an issue with the two-party system and the fact that our choices are so constrained. It's why I have an issue with money in politics, the way that constrains choices, etc. But in this instance, I do think that the state really does have an interest in keeping people from high office who actively subvert the basic

principles of the country, which is why I support this. But, you know, obviously, we are where we are. We're not even in disagreement. We're only in agreement on disagreement on the standard and through which the mechanism is something that should be on. Okay, debates aside, there's still been quite a bit of a liberal media meltdown that we've seen. The view, of course, can always be promised to have a good reaction. Let's take a listen. Welcome back. The thing that bothers me about this, and I know it's probably the right decision, but I don't like that we've normalized this man. It has really irritated the poo out of me. Yeah. That we have normalized him and his bad behavior. I get that the law says, listen, it would be really rough and it should be the Congress

that makes these decisions. And yet that's not how we've been acting. We keep saying, state's laws, we keep giving people the right to make these changes. And then they make a change and they say, well, we don't want this. And everybody says, well, no, of course we shouldn't want this. But the problem is, why have we normalized it? Look, if Joe Biden had one count against him, not 91, he could not be the Democratic presidential candidate. If Joe Biden had committed sexual assault and we had heard him, he could not be running for president. If Joe Biden had been found liable for sexual assault to the tune of $83 million, he could not be running for president.

If Joe Biden had been found liable for half a million dollars for fraud, he could not be the Democratic candidate for president. You can't, you can always count on these ladies. Crystal and I were talking while that clip was playing and we're like, do we know what is he trying to say? I don't really totally understand the points you're making there. It's totally indecipherable to me. I do love her outfit, though.

It's very, like, California vineyard energy. That said, irritates the poo out of me. It's just too good. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say. It's just it is funny to me to see the way that these ladies react. And there was also, Crystal, I don't know if you saw this. There should genuinely be a little bit of a scandal happening from a legal perspective.

The number of people who are quote unquote respected legal scholars who predicted 9-0 in the opposite direction or who said that the case was very good, people like David French or some of the guys in the Atlantic Federalist Society and others, it's kind of astounding actually because even the court went against them. I didn't really see people predicting the Supreme Court would actually uphold it. Oh, I saw several. Very possible. I didn't see that. But what I saw more is people basically making the case that they should uphold it, which is different, right, versus a prediction of what's actually going to happen. I mean, that's my position. I think they should have upheld it,

but I was under no illusion whatsoever that that would happen. But, you know, what I take, so first of all, let me comment on the specifics of their comments. It's interesting, Whoopi says, listen, that's probably the right decision. Then she goes on to make some point about the states in the Congress that I didn't really get. And then you had Anna Navarro make a point, which is partially accurate, that I do think it's true. Trump gets away with things that literally no other politician, including Joe Biden, would. I mean, she is right that, listen, Joe Biden has faced his own credible allegations of sexual assault that should have been taken a lot more seriously at the time and should continue to be taken a lot more seriously. But if he was actually found liable for sexual assault, even in a civil case, that would be a huge deal.

We would never hear the end of it. It probably would be a deal breaker for him and most other politicians. I mean, you kind of see this right now with Robert Menendez and these corruption charges, which look very real. And by the way, you know, one of the guys who's accused of basically bribing him has already pled guilty. So the writing is on the wall there. But, you know, he wasn't able to survive that. Not even close. Even after being this New Jersey fixture for so long, he immediately plummeted to like three percent in the polls once these details emerged. So it is just true that Trump, for whatever reason, you know, his charisma, his big personality, his showmanship, whatever it is, he gets away with stuff that other politicians don't. And it's not just Trump. I mean, you know, Bill Clinton,

it's the same thing. Like he had this political talent that enabled him to get away with things that other politicians wouldn't be able to get away with. And Joe Biden does not have that political skill, especially not at this point in his life. So what I sensed in this clip and in the next one we're going to show is a healthy beginning of acceptance that the legal system is not going to save the Democrats. And I actually think like that needs to be the assumption. There's been a lot of wish casting around these polls that show, oh, well, you know, if if he's found guilty of this or if he's found guilty of that, then this many voters would flip to Joe Biden. They've really been betting on that. But between this SCOTUS ruling and the pushback of the January 6th trial because of the Supreme Court deciding they're going to take up these immunity claims, number of the Georgia case getting pushed back, the Florida case getting pushed back by the judge there, there's beginning

to creep in an awareness and an understanding that they're going to have to win this election on their own terms. The legal system is not going to save them. Yeah. Trump really is like the Ubermenschen, like the Nietzschean Ubermensch, like who's immune to the laws of God and of man. And look, you could take that whichever way you want. It's been deciphered ever since Nietzsche wrote about it. But my point, I think that the point that you're making about the legal system is one that is beginning to really, is really to hit home as well. We actually saw some of this on CNN with Larry Sabato, the pollster. Let's take a listen to what he said. Ginning up this insurrectionist-like rhetoric. Of course he does. He'll never change because it's worked for him, and it may work again.

You know, in the end, Jim, you can't save a people from themselves. If they're determined to reelect him after he organized that insurrection, arguably our first coup d'etat, then there's nothing to stop the people from doing that. Now, in particular, the legal system may intervene, but I doubt it. He'll probably, he's certainly going to be on the ballot. He's certainly going to be the Republican nominee. We'll know that for sure tomorrow if we don't already know it. And that's the way it is. There you go, Crystal. That's what that's where that's where I think that is exactly the way that a lot of people are internalizing. And because I do think there has been quite a bit of cope and false hope and other things where people genuinely did believe that the

legal system was going to save them. Keith Olbermann apparently being one of them. Let's put this up there just because it's funny. Can't help but take a look at what Keith has to say. He says, the Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its members, including Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor, have proved themselves inept at reading comprehension. Collectively, the court, in quotes, has shown itself to be corrupt and illegitimate. It must be dissolved. It's funny because there are two sides of the coin here. I think that the Larry Sabato one is the realm of what you continue to highlight is this is it now. You're playing in the system. You have to beat him.

You actually have to try. And all the side plots in the world, they're not going to save you in a way that I think many people have come to believe actually the courts or any of these other systems would do the job for them, as opposed to the campaign that now must be undertaken. Yeah, well, especially, listen, I think Biden world continues to be extremely delusional that just, you know, running against Trump is going to be enough for them to secure victory. So let's put that aside. But the sort of like liberal commentariat right now is because they've experienced a few blows in a row are, I think, starting to grapple with that fact. Now, that may not be a permanent state of affairs because we do

have that New York criminal trial. The sort of stepchild charge is beginning. Here, no offense to stepchildren, by the way. I'm not going to get it canceled for that. You're not supposed to say that anymore. Anyway. If you ever want to, enter the mamala debate about Kamala, whatever. This is a whole other conversation. Well, I saw there was a whole piece in the New York Times about the toxic nature of the boy mom phenomenon. What's that? A bunch of moms get really into being quotequote boy moms. And this one mom, apparently, who has a boy and a girl posted something that seemed to indicate

that she was more into her son than in her daughter and sparked this whole mom war situation. Good. Actually, I support that mom war. Anyway. Moms, get off social media.

Stop making me a mom being your whole identity. That's a whole other thing. I agree with that. I wholeheartedly agree with that. Anyway, with regards to this, I think that we may see

the resurgence of some hope that the legal system is going to save them once that criminal trial in New York starts because, you know, they just can't help themselves. And there's no faith that the Biden administration, the Biden campaign is actually up to defeating this man. So they got to hang their hat on something. And I guess that's all they got. All right, guys. So a report came out yesterday that we wanted to spend some time taking a look at. This was a U.N. report that sought to confirm or rebut charges of systematic rape by Hamas on

October 7th. Obviously, it's a very fraught topic, one that we've delved into before. Before I jump in, I just want to say I don't enjoy nitpicking these things, whether there was no rape or some rape or systematic rape or whatever. But the reason we do it is because the atrocities that were committed on that day and the inflation and invention of additional atrocities committed on that day have been a key part of the propaganda effort to justify now Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Now, let me also say, even if all of the beheaded babies and all of the things that were spread were actually true, it still wouldn't justify atrocities in response. But that's the reason why it's important to dig into these things.

So, in any case, I want to start by setting the context of what this report actually is and what it's not. This is the words of the woman Pamela Patton, the Secretary General's Special Representative on Sexual Violence and Conflict. She was in charge of putting together this report. This is how she framed what this report actually is. Let's put this up on the screen. She said her trip into Israel to investigate these claims was not intended to be investigative. Other U.N. agencies have that mandate, she said, but to, quote, give voices to victims and survivors and find ways to offer them support, including justice and accountability. So she says this wasn't intended to be investigative. There are other bodies that have that mandate. In fact, in part of the report, she calls on Israel to allow those bodies to conduct

a full investigation, which they have not done. She also called on them to allow a full investigation into allegations of sexual violence directed from Israelis towards Palestinians. Of course, Israel said no to that as well. So in any case, that's to set the stage for what this report actually is and what it is not. In addition, let's go ahead to set the stage for what this report actually is and what it is not. In addition, let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen. The report contains a boatload of caveats as to the limits of what they were able to ascertain and how much evidence, quote,

unquote, they were able to gather. So I'm going to read from the report. Bear with me, guys. You know, I want to read from the text so that no one can, you know, so it's not being taken out of context and we can't be accused of this. But I wanted to give you a sense of some of the context here and some of the caveats that were offered. She writes, the national authorities face numerous challenges in the collection of evidence in pursuit of their investigations of the crimes committed during the October 7th attacks, including challenges of coordination and information sharing between governmental agencies, with very specific challenges related to crimes of sexual violence. These included limited survivor and witness testimony, limited forensic evidence due to

the large number of casualties and dispersed crime scenes in a context of persistent hostilities, the loss of potentially valuable evidence due to the interventions of some inadequately trained volunteer first responders, the prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification, and burial of a deceased in accordance with religious practices over the collection of forensic evidence. Further, a significant number of the recovered bodies had suffered destructive burn damage, which made the identification of potential crimes of sexual violence impossible. The mission team also faced specific challenges

in gathering and verifying information on the occurrence of conflict-related sexual violence. The main challenge was the limited number of and access to survivors and victims of sexual violence and to survivors and witnesses of the October 7th attacks. While the mission team was able to meet with some released hostages, as well as with some survivors and witnesses of the attacks, it did not meet with any survivor or victim of sexual violence from October 7th. So pretty noteworthy here that they are indicating that they were unable to meet with a single actual victim of sexual violence from October 7th. We know from other reporting in the New York Times attempt to report all of this out that

they were unable to locate or speak with a single actual victim of October 7th attacks. They talk about the challenges of forensic evidence. There is also no forensic evidence that they were able to use in the production of this report. And so, you know, very limited in terms of the actual data and evidence that they were able to collect. In addition, let's go to the next piece here. So they said, despite concerted efforts encouraging them to come forward, the mission team was made aware of a small number of survivors who are undergoing specialized treatment, still experiencing an overwhelming level of trauma. Further, the internal displacement of several communities from the Gaza periphery to

other locations, relocation of survivors, and the deployment of October 7th first responders from military forces to combat hindered access to firsthand information. They go on later in the report to add what is maybe one of the most important lines in the report. So as a result of the aforementioned challenges, which are the ones I just described, along with other ones that they include in the report, must be noted that the information gathered by the mission team was in large part sourced from Israeli national institutions. This is due to the absence of UN entities operating Israel, lack of cooperation by the state of Israel with relevant UN bodies with an investigative

mandate. Nevertheless, the mission team took every step in line with UN methodology to mitigate issues of source reliability before drawing conclusions within the scope of this report. And Sagar, I want to just get your reaction to this initial piece about the limits of the report, the caveats that were put into it, and the fact that at the end of the day, much like, and this was the same thing that Anat Shorts revealed in her, and the same thing that happened with the New York Times report, at the end of the day, they weren't able to really glean much other than what the Israeli authorities were telling them about what happened on that day. Yeah, I think the biggest problem that they have is circumstantial evidence, quote unquote. That's really the thing that it relies on. That's just,

I mean, imagine, would you convict somebody of rape in the United States on circumstantial evidence? Ask yourself how exactly that works. The reason this matters is, let's go back, is that if you talk to, and I've done this, if you talk to people who are in the wild, normal people who have thoughts on the war, if they're pro-Israel, then number one and two things they're going to talk to you about is rape and beheaded babies. And it's like, that's why you have to scrutinize some of these claims. Think about it in the Ukrainian context too. If Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island and all of that is real, then these are valiant warriors who are standing up and able to fight off the Russians. If it's a World War I-style attrition thing on Bachmut, well, maybe that's going to change the way that the average normie American is going to think about the battlefield.

So these stories, there is myths, there's legends, how all of them, why and when we should litigate and be responsible around it. That's why it comes down to. So let's just lay that out there. Yes. For all of the, you know, anti-Semitism and all these other ridiculous excuses. I would treat, by the way, if there was a, let's say, I think they have claimed this, mass, what is it, mass sexual violence against Palestinians. Maybe.

Let's see. You know, you have every incentive in the world to lie. Got to see some evidence. Got to see some firsthand testimony. Got to see some interviews and all of that. I believe the report actually calls on the Israelis to allow that investigation also. And the Israelis said no. All right. Well, there you go. All right. So my point, if we just come back to this, is I have not seen a shred of physical real evidence about the claim

of like systematic use of rape as a weapon of war. So my opinion, it probably just didn't happen. Maybe we'll see. But based upon all of this, Sheryl Sandberg's involvement and, you know, with the documentary, et cetera, they are trying to will this into existence to justify the emotional, you know, guardrails people can put up about the way that the war has been conducted. And I think we should call that like we see it. I don't have a particular dog or anything in that fight. I honestly don't even feel particularly passionate, you know, about some of this, but it's like the evidence and everything that we've gone through, the debunking of the New York Times report itself in the UN. Yeah. The reason why all of the attention and all this focuses on this is because it is so emotively powerful such to justify. And

I would just say in general, whenever mass rape is used as a systematic weapon of war, you don't have to, you know, have a whatever report or whatever, like you'll know, because look, and I pointed to what are the times in history, uh, the sack of Germany by the Soviet army. I mean, we had literally millions of rapes that happened at that time. And you saw the physical evidence nine months later. Um, then you saw the democratic Republic of the Congo, where I believe it was like almost like 30% when It was horrible, you know, again, in what was happening. It was immediate. There was physical evidence. There was video evidence and all of this. The level of parsing and all of this that has happened, I'm not going to say nobody, you

know, was attacked. It would be, I think you've said this, it would be crazy if nobody was attacked. Right. Right. But in terms of the campaign that they are alleging, I don't think that happened. And I don't really know why they even have to do this because 1,500 people or whatever were killed or however many, I don't know what the actual number, 1,200, whatever the real number is, whatever it is, a lot of people who were innocents were slaughtered on that day for no reason. That's enough and it should be. But, you know, they're the ones who are trying to make it into a thing, the media too, in particular. So if they're going to play that game, then, you know, we've got to parse every single claim too.

Yeah, and I would encourage people to actually read this report because the media presentation of the report does not include a lot of the layers of caveats and limitations that we're laying out for you. Basically, what the report says, I mean, to echo what you said, I do find it extraordinary that at this point, if there actually was systematic rape, not some amount, but systematic rape as a weapon of war, that we don't have one single survivor. We don't have one single instance of forensic evidence at this point. Yeah, I find that extraordinary. Israel is very interested in getting this story out. You know, they've made a concerted PR effort. That's part of what that New York Times piece was all about. You had Anat Schwartz herself talking about how, you know, pushing someone to cooperate with them in that reporting by saying this is important for Israeli Hasbara, in other words, propaganda.

So this is a very important part of the narrative to the Israeli government. If they had this evidence to share with the UN, you can 100 percent bet that they would. Now, what the UN team here was able to look at and why their conclusion was that there are, quote, reasonable grounds based on circumstantial evidence to believe that conflict related sexual violence occurred at several locations on October 7th. They were looking at, you know, things like women, photographs of women who were unclothed from the waist down. Things like that, which are suggestive but not conclusive. They also talk in this report about how some of the initial reports coming out from first responders and paramedics on the scene, that they assumed that sexual assault must have occurred to whatever victim they were looking at

is because they were untrained in some of the body's responses after death that, you know, leads to certain, you know, these fencing positions, especially when fire is involved, that, you know, can appear like the person was fending off some sort of assault and other bodily changes that these paramedics were not, or whether they're paramedics or other volunteers or first responders, whoever they were, were not trained in understanding. So they misinterpret. That's something that they found here. Something I'm going to talk more about in a moment is they actually say that some of the rape allegations widely reported in the media, especially at Kibbutz B. turned out to be unfounded. Put a pin in that because that was one of the instances that the

New York Times highlighted in their now undermined and debunked report. So let me go ahead and put up on the screen the next piece, which is a summation of their conclusions. So you can see what they did find and claim and what they did not. And again, they themselves admit this is all predominantly based on official Israeli government sources. So they say based on the totality of information gathered from multiple independent sources at different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including the form of rape and gang rape during the October 7, 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including general mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,

was also gathered. They were more definitive with regards to hostages because they were able to speak directly to some of the released hostages. This is a very small portion of the report, but they say, with regards to the hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence as reasonable grounds to believe such violence may be ongoing. This part is maybe the most significant conclusion or lack of conclusion in the report. It gets zero attention in the media whatsoever. But listen to this carefully. The mission team was unable to establish the prevalence of sexual violence and concludes that the overall magnitude, scope,

and specific attribution of these violations require a fully-fledged investigation. A comprehensive investigation would enable the information base to be expanded in locations which the mission team was not able to visit and to build required trust with survivors, victims of conflict-related sexual violence who may be reluctant to come forward at this point. Now, the reason why this is so significant, Sagar, is because this speaks directly to the allegation, not that there were isolated instances of sexual violence, but that this was a systematic weapon of war. And they say they were unable to establish that. They were unable to establish it. So after all of the reporters who were on the ground, all of the Israeli efforts to create this narrative around systematic use of rape as sexual violence in conflict on October

7th. This team was not able to establish that. And then the other part of the report that also got no attention from the media whatsoever was that they found that within the occupied Palestinian territory, the mission team received information from institutional and civil society sources, as well as through direct interviews about some forms of sexual violence against Palestinian men and women in detention settings during house raids and at checkpoints. By the way, there's already been UN investigations into that, but Israel has refused to cooperate. Israel rejects, they say, the report's call to investigate Palestinian claims regarding sexual violence by Israeli elements. So that is the sort of bottom line of what we got from this report. Just like I said, I would be very aware of the limits of this report as spelled out in the report itself.

I'd be very aware of the fact that this continues to be primarily based on Israeli sources. I'd be aware of the fact that they say that they were unable to speak to a single victim. They had no forensic evidence. And they also were unable to determine that systematic rape happened on that day. And, you know, so I would listen more closely to the report than the media characterization of what this report contains is what I would say. Also, go read it for yourself. You know, it's free. You can literally go and read it anytime you want. Nothing that we're saying here is like cherry picked.

As you said, you put a lot of effort into pulling all of the quotes. And if you want to go check the work, be my guest. You know, there's a link right out there. You can Google UN report. You can read the full thing, et cetera, because none of the stories that I even read that looked at even close to a job of what you just laid out, which is it makes sense. It takes a long time. How long was that? Maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

That's welcome to nuance and the world that actual war that we have had to cover. Yes, indeed. All right. So let's talk about this specific instance that this report says was unfounded, which is with regards to often repeated media claims of multiple rapes at Kibbutz Biari. So this is significant because in the New York Times, now, you know, discredited and very controversial piece, Screams Without Words, which we have been covering here, which Ryan and his team at The Intercept and other reporters in Z-Squirrel have been doing a great job breaking down. They talked about three specific instances of rape.

One was the woman, Gal Abdish, the so-called woman in the black dress. We've already talked about how her family immediately came out after the story and said, no, we don't agree. We have actual evidence in the other direction that she wasn't raped. We had no idea that this was what you were even talking to us about and you need to stop lying. So that one fell apart. The other two were both at this kibbutz biyari. So let me put up on the screen what the UN report says about what happened at kibbutz biyari as far as they were able to ascertain. The mission team conducted a visit to kibbutz Biri as far as they were able to ascertain. The mission team conducted a visit to Kibbutz Biri and was able to determine that at least

two allegations of sexual violence widely repeated in the media were unfounded due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the facts gathered. They go on to say these included a highly publicized allegation of a pregnant woman whose womb had reportedly been ripped open before being killed with her fetus stabbed while still inside her. Other allegations, including of objects intentionally inserted into female genital organs, could not be verified by the mission team due in part to limited and low quality imagery. So they say the often repeated allegations of sexual violence, you know, that the media has been talking about are unfounded. Okay. So let me now put up on the screen what the New York Times had said in their Screams Without Words report about what happened at Kibbutz Biri. They said, and again, this is two of the three instances of rape that they specifically cite in this report. A paramedic in an Israeli commando

unit said he had found the bodies of two teenage girls in a room in Be'eri. One was lying on her side, he said, boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin. The other was sprawled on the floor. Face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back. Because his job was to look for survivors, he said he kept moving, did not document the scene. Neighbors of the two girls killed, who were sisters 13 and 16, said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family. Now, the New York Times, faced with this U.N. report saying that the Kibbutz Beery rapes were unfounded and their own rapidly crumbling quote-unquote report on this instance, they said in their write-up of the UN report that

two specific allegations of sexual violence and kibbutz birri that were widely repeated by the media were unfounded. First responders told the Times they had found bodies of women with signs of sexual assault at those two kibbutzim, but the Times in its report didn't refer to the specific allegations that the UN said were unfounded. So that's their defense is like, oh, well, they looked into some other stuff. The stuff we reported is different from what they looked into. Oh, really? Well, Ryan has another report along with Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept. We can put this up on the screen. They went back to talk to the folks at Kibbutz Beery to see what they had to say about all of this. And lo and behold, the spokesperson for that kibbutz rejects the story in the New York Times and says, and I quote,

they were not sexually abused. Let me read a little bit from Ryan's article. He says, the Times article described three alleged victims of sexual assault for whom it reported specific biographical information. One, as I said before, is known as the woman in the black dress, Gal Abdush. Some of her family members have contested the claims made by the Times. The other two alleged victims were unnamed teenage sisters from Kibbutz Be'eri, whose precise ages were listed in the New York Times, making it possible to identify them. When asked about the claims made by the Times, this spokesperson for the Kibbutz independently raised their name.

You're talking about the Shrabi girls, she said. No, they just, they were shot. I'm saying just, but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse. This spokesperson also disputed the graphic and highly detailed claims of the Israeli Special Forces paramedic who served as the source of the allegation, which was published in The Times, The Post, CNN, and other media outlets. Quote, it's not true, she told The Intercept, referring to the paramedics' claims about the girls. They were not sexually abused. They also, in the story, even dispute that detail about, oh, they were separate from the rest of the family. Apparently they died with their, alongside their mother. Again, this is all horrifying. You don't need to add any extra horrors. This is horrifying that they were murdered, these two young girls and with their

mother and others at the kibbutz. But they're saying the specific detail is not accurate. The Times responded to The Intercept and said, we stand by the story and are continuing to report on the issue of sexual violence on October 7th. So that's where we are. Well, I think that's all you that you really need to know, Crystal. That's wild. I would encourage, again, people to go read for themselves. If the kibbutz, woman, if the, what, the kibbutzim or whatever are the ones who say it's not true, they've got no reason in the world to lie. Yeah. So listen to them.

And again, this is why he claims a bare scrutiny. And I think it's shameful, honestly, that the New York Times ran it. Yeah. And she even said that she believes that sexual violence was widespread on October 7th. So she believes the Israeli narrative that that is the case. So she's not some like, she's bought into the overall picture. But with the specifics regarding these two girls, that New York Times report was based on the word of one paramedic, which again, goes against their own reporting guidelines that they're supposed to have two sources.

They are sticking to their story, even though the kibbutz itself is saying this did not happen. All of these details are inaccurate. And, you know, there were questions about the story that were raised even before the Times put out their piece. And yet they neglected to provide their readers with the conflicting accounts that had already been published. So, I mean, we really are at this point talking about Judith Miller level or caliphate level collapse at the time in terms of this and that their reaction is not to fix the report, you know, retract the report, which is, I think, at this point, what is really, you know, called for issue an apology, fire all the people who were involved in putting this thing together, and especially the higher-ups who put these two totally green, I mean, barely had any experienced reporters on the ground doing

the overwhelming bulk of the investigation in Adam Sella and Anat Schwartz, whoever made that decision, I mean, they should be out 100% because that judgment call is just astonishing that they chose to go forward with this, again, in violation of their own basic standards. And you can see, you know, some of the people who work at the Times who actually care about it being a credible institution, part of why they're leaking to Ryan and others is because they're so disgusted and disturbed by the incredible, you know, breach of journalistic duty here and by the undercutting of the Times reputation. It really is extraordinary. Every

single piece that drops, it's just incredible. It's so radicalizing for me to see the way that this was all just invented. You know what my bet is, Crystal? I think they're going to win a Pulitzer Prize for the story. I'm going to lay it story. Well, I actually think that's part of why they're sticking by it because they published this right at the end of the year to make sure it got in under the deadline for awards like the Pulitzer as part of their award-winning submission or whatever. You heard it here first. And so if they were to retract it, what does it mean for the award they already won for this, quote unquote, reporting? What does it mean for that?

What does it mean for their Pulitzer prospects, et cetera? So I actually do think that's a part of the reason why they're going so hard in standing. And that is just such an embarrassment. It's just such complete embarrassment for them. All right, guys. Congressman's running a little behind schedule, busy man that he is. So I'm going to go ahead and film the interview with him. We'll post it later today, but wanted to get the show out to all of you. Remember, Sagar and I will be joining

Emily and Ryan tomorrow for CounterPoint. So we will see you there.