Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/28/25: FBI Arrests Judge, Bernie Claps Back At CIA Dem, India Pakistan On Brink Of War, Trump Saves Canadian Liberals
Episode Date: April 28, 2025Krystal and Ryan discuss FBI arrests judge after ICE raid, Bernie claps back at CIA Dem, India Pakistan on brink of war, Trump saves liberals in Canadian elections. David Doel: https://www.yout...ube.com/@therationalnational Siddharthya: https://x.com/siddharthyaroy?lang=en To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
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All right, let's go ahead and move over to some of the latest things that are happening
with regard to immigration and deportations. We touched on, you know, the increasing unpopularity
of what Trump is doing and how he really has already lost public trust with regard to his immigration agenda. Let's go ahead
and put this latest event up on the screen. So a judge in Wisconsin was arrested by the FBI
after she had allegedly directed an undocumented immigrant out of a side door that is usually used for jury members.
And she was upset that ICE agents had been coming to the courthouse, coming to her courtroom,
and waiting for immigrants to finish their hearings and then sweeping them up and arresting
them. She was upset about that reportedly. And so she directed this one immigrant and his lawyer
to go out a side
door. Now, the side door apparently led into a public hallway and he was ultimately arrested
anyway. But Ryan, they have now arrested her and charged her for, you know, they're claiming that
she obstructed their ability to arrest this particular immigrant. Yeah. And this happened
to come or I don't think I wouldn't say happened to come, it did come shortly after another judge in New Mexico was also arrested.
And so it created this feeling of like, okay, there's a crackdown now on judges.
The other one, though, was this utterly bizarre case.
This is a magistrate judge who had actually stepped down because of this scandal that he ended up getting arrested for.
Magistrate judge in the county means like you're handling like very low level disorderly conduct cases and stuff like this.
This is not somebody who has, you know, is out there like stopping ice buses from deporting people.
So it's completely separate. This guy is Judge Jose Luis Cano, and his bizarre case was he had three guys living in his guest house in New Mexico who were like handymen.
He'd met them as handymen for his property. In February, there was a raid and it was claimed that the three men, and they say they have lots of evidence beyond like, oh, he was wearing a Chicago Bulls cap, like actual evidence that they were Tren de Aragua members.
And so they arrest those.
And then they arrest the guy and his wife for hiding these men that Trump had declared a member of a group that are now,
you know, that Trump declared them a terror group while he's in office. So like after they've kind
of moved into his little guest house. So his defense was, I had no idea. Like, they're just
handymen. Right. Like, okay, are they? And he even said, like, I've got grandkids who come over here
and played with those guys. If I was told that they were gang members, I wouldn't have let my grandkids play with them.
What they were arrested for was tampering with evidence.
We don't know exactly what evidence they tampered with.
You know, judges, you know, innocent until proven guilty.
But in general, like some people, when they find themselves in trouble, they quickly are deleting all of their text messages or something.
And that's easy to see or whatever.
Who knows what, if anything, they did.
But they didn't even charge them, it seems like, with housing them.
But anyway, the first case, since we don't have Sagar Emily here, we normally have somebody trying to defend the case.
Let me see if I can make the best case.
The best argument for the fact that she committed a crime is that she was quite hostile with the ICE agents, absolutely did not like them in her courthouse.
Yeah.
And was like whispering in the courtroom like, hey, come here, come here, come here.
Like, go out this way in a way that suggests like some consciousness of trying to like usher them out. Now, your point federal law. Whether that law should be constitutional or not,
I think, is open to question.
I don't think it should be,
because I think you should be able to... I think if...
Like, it's called...
Basically, it's like a harboring and immigration fugitive.
And I guess, you know, on one level,
if there's, like, if there's a murderer running around
and you're, like, hiding the murderer
and you know they're a murderer,
okay, I guess that should be a crime.
But there's another case, I don't think we have it in here, that's going on,
is it Tennessee? Did you see this one? Where, no, maybe it was in Virginia, actually. Oh, in Charlottesville.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. You want to talk about that one where they're trying to prosecute like a
couple activists who are like-
Yeah, put C4.
Oh, we do have it here.
We do have it. Put C4 up on the screen.
Because you've got these plainclothes
kind of thugs who are just grabbing people and you have a prosecutor and then you have a couple
activists who are saying, let me see your warrant. Let me see some ID. And they're standing in their
way. Who are you? Show me your badge. Right. Because there's I wish we had grabbed the video,
but we showed it previously. We played it because it's quite chilling. I mean, there's no law that prevents ICE from making these arrests in courthouses, but it used to be like, you don't do that.
Right.
Right. And now that has been explicitly like there was, I think, a memo that went out for the Trump administration, like, nope, you can go to the schools, you can go to the courthouses, you can go to the churches, et cetera. And so you see these plainclothes individuals, one of them completely masked, who come in and are kind of aggressively arresting this guy. And yeah,
I assume his lawyers and these activists are saying, where's your warrant? Where's your badge
number? Who are you with? And they're just being stonewalled on nearly all of these questions.
And so now they're charging these individuals who are just saying, hey, what is
going on? Like, are you just kidnapping this person? Like, what is happening here?
Well, they haven't charged the activists yet, but they're investigating them.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So in any case, you know, this comes amid also, it's important, the context.
You obviously have the Republicans constantly say, we're going to impeach the judges. What
was Stephen Miller?
We got to get these communist judges out of here. Like Trump asserting that, you know,
he is effectively the personal representative of the will of the people. And so if courts
are disagreeing with his lawless actions, then they are thwarting the will of the people and
they are therefore illegitimate. We see this administration, obviously, like outright defying court orders, whether it's turning the planes around or refusing
to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return, even though the Supreme Court said you have to do that.
So it's amidst that climate that you now see this, you know, look, I'm not a legal expert.
I want to talk to Pisco or someone else about the strength of this case. But to my reading, very weak case leading to the arrest of this judge. And they also did it in a
very provocative public way where, you know, I mean, no one thinks this judge is like a threat
to public safety or whatever. You could have, if you wanted to charge her, you could have had her
voluntarily surrender and not have the images of the handcuffs and all this sort of stuff.
So there's no doubt.
I think there is no doubt that this is an intentional signal that is members of Congress have done, which is just about getting people paid.
Literally, here are your rights. Here's what you can do and here's what you can't do, et cetera. Ken Klippenstein has reported on how Seb Gorka, who is the counterterror czar, has a significant position within the administration,
saying that he believes that people who protest the Trump deportation policy may be aiding and abetting providing material support to a terrorist group,
which would also indicate criminal potential charges against activists or others who would resist the direction the Trump administration has gone in.
Yes, if you ever read any journalism or history about any authoritarian government throughout history,
for hundreds of years, as soon as the idea of terrorism became a thing,
authoritarian governments seized on terrorism as the reason that they were cracking down on their enemies.
Right.
And saying, okay, this is, and so here the case would be, okay, whether it's Trendre
Ouagwa or let's say Hamas.
Like, okay, you are protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza.
That is supportive of Hamas.
Therefore, anybody involved in any of that can be surveilled.
And by the way, the Democrats deserve an enormous amount of criticism for this,
for expanding surveillance authorities, which allows the NSA to basically collect
information and communications of people who are here on student visas or green card holders.
And so they're basically able to surveil every WhatsApp group,
assuming they can get through whatever the encryption is onto your phone.
And then if there are American citizens on there, then they're reading their stuff too.
And they're doing it all in the name of fighting terrorism.
And it's exactly what Steve Miller said.
We're going to get these terrorists off your streets. That's not actually how people understand immigration, even mass immigration,
or even mass deportation. I think people understand it as these people came here illegally and we're going to deport them, like the supporters of Trump's immigration policy. I don't think they're terrorists. One of the innovations of the Trump 2.0 campaign
is previously, even, you know, I would say Trump 1.0, there was a mixture of this,
but Trump 2.0 was more of the pure embodiment. Previously, the conversation about immigration
was like, they're taking your jobs, you know, J.D. Vance, they're causing the cost of housing to go up, etc.
Trump talks about immigrants almost exclusively as criminals.
Right.
And so, you know, they really sought to betray this group, even though we all know the data that undocumented immigrants have a lower crime rate than the native-born population and documented immigrants have an even lower crime rate than the native-born
population, but he really sought to portray every immigrant. And you see this in this administration
very clearly as a criminal and a terrorist. And, you know, that is, I think in real time,
people are realizing that was not accurate because if that was accurate, you wouldn't have trouble.
You wouldn't be having to round up, you know, Andre, the gay makeup artist who had a mom and dad tattoo or the autism awareness guy
and throw them in an El Salvador dungeon, hoping that no one would be able to figure out who these
people are and actually dig into the fact that they have no criminal records. They are not gang
members. They're the only thing. And some of them actually had followed the government process
and were in the midst of seeking asylum and had done everything right that they were supposed to be doing in that process.
If there were, you know, if we were overrun with millions of criminal gang member terrorists, it wouldn't be so hard to find 200 of them to be able to ship off. And even though, you know, on a principal ground, you should still not support anyone, even if they did have criminal charges, being sentenced with no due process for
life to this torture dungeon, I'm under no illusion that the public would really object
too strenuously to that having been done. So I think it exposes the lie upon which they built
this whole anti-immigrant hysteria. And, you know, so in
addition to your point about the way that this is being used to erode everyone's rights, and they
really make no secret of this, especially with Trump making the connection to, hey, this has
happened for immigrants now, homegrowns, quote unquote, are next, and the crackdown on universities
that already directly impacts U.S. citizens, their ability to pursue a degree, their ability to marry the believes that they are, you know, they are
pursuing a quote-unquote alien enemy, so it doesn't require any sort of process or anything like that,
if they believe they're pursuing an alien enemy, they can go in your house without a warrant
to look for migrants. So that is an extraordinary, I think, I mean, to me, it's blatantly
unconstitutional. But as we all know, it think, I mean, to me, it's blatantly unconstitutional.
But as we all know, it takes time for these challenges to make their way through the courts,
et cetera. But, you know, if you don't think that this applies to everyone, then I would beg you to
consider what we've already learned about the way that they have gone about this policy and the way
that they will, you know, they'll snatch up anyone. We've got, you know, U.S. citizen kids who are being deported now with little to no due process, etc.
That's C2, if you want to put that one up.
C2, we can put this up on the screen. One of them has cancer. Another one, a judge is already saying,
I think with the, I think with, it was a four-year-old, the judge is, the four-year-old,
I think, has cancer. The two-year-old, I think, is the one that dad was, you know,
in the process of arguing, no, this child should stay here in the U.S., not be deported alongside her Honduran mother and sister.
So, yeah, I mean, this has implications not just for the immigrant population, which in my opinion you should care about, but certainly has implications for the entire population here. And I feel kind of just stupid, like saying,
couldn't you do your far right wing policy without doing this?
It's like, I guess you can't.
Like, it's kind of, you know,
the cliche during Trump one was that cruelty is the point.
And it's like, you can't, if you can't do this
mass deportation policy, I mean, it's not even mass, actually. It's just a spectacular deportation
policy. Because mass would, you're not reaching anywhere near the numbers. Like you've got
DHS celebrating, you know, if they, you know, get over like a few dozen deportations, if you can't do it without
deporting a four-year-old with cancer or, I don't know the details if it was the four-year-old or
the mother or something like, but if you can't, if this, and if this makes up like a significant
portion of your deportations, then you, then yeah, you sold it wrong. And that's the key point.
Like he sold it based on a lie, which is that these are all criminals. Therefore, you have to
apply a kind of criminal justice standard to it. And it doesn't work. And so you have to then
put cuffs on a four-year-old. Right. And yeah, and vanish them before anyone can have a chance
to look into the veracity of your claims. Right. Oh, well, that's a shame. They're in Honduras now.
Yeah. They're in. What can you do? It's not in our problem anymore.
Just to reiterate your point about the use of terrorism designations to claim power in
authoritarian regimes. I mean, we already see this with, you know, multiple groups, not just obviously
immigrants. That's really clear cut with supporters of Palestine, with the hands-off
protesters, according to Ken Klippenstein reporting. Also, you know, they're looking
at hands-off protesters. So basically any resistance to Trump as being, you know, as being
terrorists, domestic terrorists, you're, you know, the,
anyone who would oppose the deportation policy, anyone who harbors ill feelings about Tesla,
anyone who's on their Luigi posting. These are all groups that this administration
is beginning to view as domestic terrorists. And we also have seen the way that they have used basically emergency or national security powers to consolidate power in the executive.
Alien Enemies Act, perfect example of that.
You were supposed to be at war, right?
It's only been used three times.
All three were very clearly War of 1812, World War I, World War II.
Those are the three times the Alien Enemies Act has been invoked prior to this.
And we declared war then.
Yes.
Congress declared war.
Yes.
And they're making this preposterous claim that we're at war with Venezuela because they had Trendo Aragua invade us.
I mean, I hope and expect that this will likely eventually be struck down by the courts.
You never know with the Supreme Court, you know, stacked as it is.
But I expect that will be the courts. You never know with the Supreme Court, you know, stacked as it is, but I expect that will be the case. But not only that, the tariff powers are also claimed through
a national emergency. And, you know, I think this is the playbook for Trump 2.0 is that they
use these supposed terrorism or national security or national emergency assertions,
which courts have previously granted presidents broad
discretion to be able to invoke, they're using these assertions to be able to circumvent due
process, to be able to grab powers for the executive that are really clearly delegating
the case of terrorists to Congress and be able to, you know, sort of unilaterally effectuate
their agenda. So that has been the playbook for Trump 2.0, and it goes far beyond, you know, sort of unilaterally effectuate their agenda. So that has been the playbook for Trump 2.0.
And it goes far beyond, you know voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my
daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along
now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends
are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo,
your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me
just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really
important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so
the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general.
Let's talk about the music
that moves us.
To hear this and more
on how music and culture collide,
listen to We Need to Talk
from the Black Effect Podcast Network
on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison
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Senator Alyssa Slotkin had told Bernie Sanders and AOC to stop using the word oligarchy because
they're confusing our simple little American public.
Bernie Sanders was asked about that on Meet the Press. Let's roll his response.
Democrats should stop using the term oligarchy because it's a phrase that doesn't resonate with all Americans. Are you missing a chance to speak to a wider audience, Senator?
Well, geez, we had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado.
We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California, which is kind of a rural area.
I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Larkin thinks they are.
I think they understand very well when the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%,
when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in
an oligarchy.
And these are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about.
Are you living in a democracy when Mr. Musk can spend $270 million to elect Trump and then becomes the most important person in government.
Or AIPAC and other super PACs have enormous power over Democratic candidates.
Those are issues that we have got to talk about.
That is the reality of American society today.
The very rich getting richer.
Working class people are struggling.
800,000 people sleeping out on the streets.
If we don't address that issue, the American people will continue to turn their backs on
democracy because they're looking around them and they're saying, does anybody understand
what I am going through? AOC's response, we can put up D2 here, was simply to put up the
dictionary definition of oligarchy for anybody who need it. Although surveys showed
that actually people don't need it, that people were asked if they could define it and they
basically could. It's not that complicated a word, like a bunch of billionaires running everything.
Well, and Alyssa Slotkin, many pointed out, had no problem using the word oligarchy when she was
applying it to Russia. Oh, yes. They are all sorts of posts of her talking about Russian oligarchs and oligarchy or whatever. It's only when it's
being applied here at home that the former CIA spook has a problem with it. Yeah. You know,
I'm always on the lookout for the left adopting some faculty lounge language that might be
kind of off-putting. I don't think that's what's happening here,
but I'm curious for your take. But for me, it works in two different ways because it works for
independents who feel like the system is rigged and is kind of controlled by billionaires. It
works for people on the left who buy into the entire thing, But it also works with kind of resistance libs who have been
really energized around defending democracy. And the left and some others kind of scoff at that,
this whole like, oh, democracy, that's not real. It's a distraction from,
you know, fighting for the working class and for improving people's material conditions. But oligarchy is a frame that covers
that. If you are somebody who is worried about our democracy eroding, who's the one eroding it?
It's the oligarchs. So you capture everybody under that umbrella.
I think that's really well put. And the proof is in the pudding. Like we know who is turning up to those Bernie AOC rallies. It's not just, quote unquote, you know, Bernie
bros from 2016 and 2020. It is a lot. And we talked to Dave Weigel about this. It is a lot of
normie Democrats, which is why AOC is shooting up in the polls in terms of who is the leader
of the Democratic Party. And so, yeah, I think it's an incredibly helpful frame.
As you said when we were talking about this on Friday,
I think voters actually appreciate being treated as adults
who are capable of understanding concepts like oligarchy,
which I think we are all getting a rapid lesson
in how that takes shape and what it means for all of us.
So, you know, political consultants have been trying
to come up with this like sort of focused grouped language about how do we connect the fight for
democracy with like people's, you know, with the price of eggs or whatever. And usually that ends
up in a very tortured direction where you're not really making a good case either about the
material circumstances or about the genuine threats to democracy.
And I think the framing of oligarchy really does serve those ends incredibly effectively,
incredibly effectively. Like you can see the no one else in the Democratic Party has the level, has garnered the level of energy, attention, and excitement as AOC and Bernie have.
You know, I would, I guess next I would put like Chris Van Hollen
taking a genuinely, I would say, courageous action
going down to El Salvador,
like actually doing something out in the real world.
I will say a lot of liberals are very excited
about Cory Booker's speech.
That one didn't speak to me personally as much,
but I do want to say a lot of people
were really excited about that
because it at least showed some sort of fight.
But, you know, viewing what is happening in the Trump administration through this lens of oligarchy,
I think really does unify the left, the liberals, and creates a sort of powerful coalition that
is also somewhat oppositional to the like think tank driven abundance conversation that Alyssa
Slotkin, I don't know, she like calls herself like an abundance person, but she would be more
in line with that. And the last thing I'll say about it is AOC, and you could speak to this
better than anyone, she has really positioned herself previously as wanting to work within
the boundaries of the Democratic Party and not wanting to get too crosswise with leadership,
et cetera. The fact that she and Bernie are both taking a much more directly adversarial position vis-a-vis Alyssa Slotkin firing back,
I think is also kind of a sign of the times and a sign they feel that the public is on
their side.
Yeah, because a lot of times in the past, the party establishment or Slotkin types would
fire at Bernie or AOC or people in the squad, and they wouldn't even fire back. That's right. They would
just take the arrows and be like, we're being part of a team. Not as well. What kind of team is this?
That's just constantly shooting at you. But now they're feeling better. Like they're, they're,
they're feeling their oaths and they're, and they're, and they're ready to fire back.
On that front, we have news out this morning that Justice Democrats is making
its first endorsement, not just of the 2026 cycle, but even of the 2024 cycle. Well, not that they
didn't endorse anybody in the 2024 cycle, but they didn't recruit anybody to challenge sitting
incumbents because they put all of their energy into protecting the squad,
four of whom they, you know, survived, two of whom famously, Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman,
after tens of millions were spent, did not. So this is the first time that they're going
back on offense. And it's Donovan McKinney, who is a state rep in Detroit, who's running against Sheree Thanadar, who we'll talk about in a moment.
And is quite a fun, fun guy.
He's a character.
He's quite a character.
So this would give you two Justice Democrats in Detroit because Rashida Tlaib is there as well.
He's a former climate activist, grew up working class in Detroit, and he talks about that in his biography.
Which let's let's roll his launch video, which is which is rolling out this morning just to get a sense of, you know, where kind of the Justice Democrats left is in one in thinking about their their positioning against an incumbent Democrat.
So let's roll this opening ad.
People across this country and even the world know Detroit, or they think they do.
They know our music, our sports, our struggle. But what people always forget is none of this
is possible without our people. This district is one of the poorest places in America, but the
money 13th knows hard work better than anyone. It's the people who clock in
generation after generation, shift after shift, that get forgotten first. Somewhere
along the way, we got convinced we should settle for less from the people we elect
to represent us. I'm running for Congress because we deserve better. We deserve a
Democratic Party
that leads the fight
against the billionaires
robbing us blind,
that stands up
to corporate pats.
Our country
and our children
can afford nothing less.
People like our congressman,
Sri Tananar,
are the problem.
A multimillionaire
who spent millions
to buy a seat in Congress,
who has more in common
with Donald Trump
and Elon Musk
than people like us.
I was born next to smokestacks.
We moved 13 times as a kid.
Sometimes it was an apartment.
Sometimes it was a family member's house.
Sometimes it was even our own car.
But wherever I was, my mom and grandma
made sure it felt like home.
I spent my life trying to give back
to help the place and people I love.
I've never forgotten my roots
or the true purpose of why I serve.
So always put the people first.
When things are darkest, it's when you fight the hardest.
I'm running for my wife, mother, and grandmother,
and all women who deserve a Congress
that fights for their rights.
I'm running for my baby boys
because the block you live on should determine how far you'll go. I'm running for you that fights for their rights. I'm running for my baby boys because the block you live on should determine how far you'll go.
I'm running for you because like all of you, I know we deserve better.
This is my home.
This is our community.
This is our future.
And the choice is ours.
I'm Donovan McKinney, and I'm running for Congress to take back this seat for us, always with the people.
So what do you make of that messaging?
I mean, the touch, the vocabulary, Green New Deal, Medicare for All,
that type of stuff that was stuck in 2018 wasn't really in there,
but what did you think of the messaging?
Yeah, it's a class framing.
This guy's out of touch, he's in there,
he has more in touch with Donald Trump and Elon Musk than he does with you and me.
I'm connected to this community, and I'm going to be the one who's there to actually fight for you.
Now, the funny thing is who he's running against.
You just can't make this guy up.
So roll the next element.
Zed Jelani busted this guy in absolutely hilarious fashion in 2018 when he was running for governor of
Michigan. He was actually the front runner for governor ahead of Whitmer when Zedd wrote this
story. And the story was that he met with a bunch of consultants ahead of the race,
both Republican and Democratic, and they asked him, like, tell us about yourself. Like, if we're going to represent you, what party are you going
to run as? Like, are you Republican or Democrat? He's like, you tell me. Oh, my God. He's like,
I want to be governor. Tell me what I need. What's the lane? What's the lane and tell me what I need
to say? Like, he was, like, confused. Like, wait a minute. I'm going to tell you this?
You're the consultant.
Oh, my God.
You tell me what I think.
And the one thing that was consistent in his conversations with these consultants was that he had a visceral disdain for Bernie.
But Bernie was hot then.
So he ended up running as Bernie.
He was going to do Medicare for all for Michigan.
And, like, he did a whole Bernie campaign and was spending his own money.
And as a result was at the very top.
And then this came out as like,
and then other things like he was just,
it's just a complete mess.
So then in 2022,
so the Bernie branding initially actually was,
it was working.
It was actually working for him.
And then he faded and Whitmer and Whitmer wins.
Then in 2022, he runs for Congress and spends millions
of his own money as a leftist again. Oh, first, I guess it was 2020, he won like a state rep seat
or something. So he buys a house in the legislature. Then he runs for Congress. When he was in the
legislature, he signed on to resolutions that called Israel an apartheid state and said that it should not get any U.S. funding.
It's a popular position in Detroit.
He runs for Congress saying similar things.
AIPAC spent like $4 or $5 million in 2022 trying to beat him.
And he overcame it because he spent
so much of his own money so he's then elected to congress after he's elected to congress
apac takes him and his family on a trip to israel and he comes back he's reformed does a complete
180 oh my god so then in 2024 activists in det Detroit recruit somebody to run against him.
And AIPAC spends millions defending Sheree Thanadar.
Because now he's a full-on pro-Israel guy.
That's so funny, though, that he had already defeated them and then capitulates.
Like, you know, the move is to be John Fetterman and just be like,
I don't want you in my race.
Let me just capitulate
it from the jump.
They have now spent
like $10 million on him.
Half of it against him.
Half of it for him.
His opponent,
her name was Mary Waters,
she raised only
about $200,000.
So she didn't really run.
She was serious,
but she didn't have
the money to compete. Gotcha. So what you're telling me is Don she was serious, but she didn't have the money to compete.
Gotcha. So what you're telling me is Donovan is going to be facing millions of dollars in.
He's definitely facing millions, but he has already, the other thing that makes this a
much different justice Democrats race is that he already has the support of like a ton of like
establishment Democrats. Interesting. Just because Sri Thano is just a ridiculous figure.
Interesting. It's so weird to them. And it's just not helpful to them to have a member of Congress
who you can't trust. You don't know what he's going to believe a week later. So even if you're
just a machine politician, that's not helpful for you. He's almost like the George Santos of the
left. Yes. And there are allegations of fraud, which you can find. It's a real Santos of the left. Yes. And there are allegations of fraud, which you can find.
It's a real Santos of the left kind of situation. And so even regular Democrats, and I think
sources in Detroit say that this could be the first J.D. candidate out of the gate to actually
have organized labor support, which is like that's the coalition that you need. You need the kind of, you know,
DSA or whatever you call it, you know, plus organized labor, you know, to, like, actually
take over the party. So how much offense is Justice Democrats in a position to go on this cycle?
Not a ton. And they've never picked their spots. And they've never really, you know, the first year when they did AOC and Cori Bush and Shida Tlaib and Hillel Omar, all the others,
they endorsed like 100 plus people. They've never done that since then because they couldn't,
all they could do is endorse. Right. They could only really go in on a couple. So we'll see. Now,
if they team up with our guy, what's his name? The DNC vice president.
Oh, David Hogg.
Yeah, David Hogg, who's talking about spending millions of dollars going after incumbents.
He's recruiting candidates as well.
Yeah, and they're threatening to kick him out of the DNC for doing this, which he's got to leave the DNC, right?
If he capitulates and walks back from that, that's the end of him, right?
I mean, in my opinion.
I guess it wouldn't be the end of him as like a party functionary.
You could be a party functionary.
That doesn't seem to be what he wants to be.
Yeah.
And he has enough of his own profile.
He doesn't need the DNC.
Right.
Yeah.
That's what I would think as well.
DNC vice president.
Vice chair.
What is that?
I doubt he even gets paid for that. I have no idea. Yeah, that's what I would think as well. DNC vice president. Vice chair. What is that? I doubt he even gets paid for that.
I have no idea.
Yeah, I have no idea.
It gets you like, you know, you get into the suites with the fancy corporate boxes and whatever.
Yeah, I guess you get some boxes.
Yeah, so Donovan McKinney taking on Sri Thanadar.
It'd be interesting if he knocks him off, but in some ways it would not be.
Like when AOC took out Joe Crowley. Yeah. That was a blow to the structure
of the Democratic Party. Now they replaced him as caucus chair with Hakeem Jeffries. So the
structure restructured itself. But taking out Shereet Thanadar, eh, nice. But it's like. There's
plenty of establishment Democrats who would be on board with that as well. Gotcha. Okay. All right.
We wanted to make sure to cover what is unfolding in India and Pakistan because, you know, these are two nuclear powers always at odds with one another.
But tension has ramped up significantly after a horrific terrorist attack last week.
So let's go ahead and get to our guest.
I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop.
It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop it's black music month
and we need to talk is tapping in i'm nyla simone breaking down lyrics amplifying voices and digging
into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives my favorite line on there was my son and my
daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes yeah now i'm curious do they like rap along
now yeah because i bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are
starting to understand what that type of music is.
And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.
Like he's a legend.
So he gets it.
What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family?
It means a lot to me.
Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.
Like that's what's really important.
And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives
for the better. So the fact that my
kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really
happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk
about the music that moves us. To hear this
and more on how music and culture collide,
listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect
Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast.
Let me tell you something.
I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave.
My superpower?
I've got the voice.
My kryptonite?
It don't exist.
My podcast?
The one they never saw coming.
Each week, I
sit down with the culture creators
and scroll stoppers. Tina knows.
Lil Nas X.
Will we ever see a dating show for the
love of Lil Nas X? I'm just gonna show all my
exes. X marks the spot. No, here
it is. My next ex.
That's actually cute, though. Laverne
Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love.
And Chapel Rome.
I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now.
We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies.
Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened
when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Indian and Pakistan continue to be at the break of all-out war, it feels like.
And joining us to discuss it is Dropsite News South Asia correspondent Siddhartha Roy.
Joining us from, are you in Delhi now, Sid?
Yep, I'm in Delhi.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I want to start with this Donald Trump clip on Air Force One where he was asked about the rising tensions.
Let's roll this.
Any message for them? Are you going to be talking to them?
I'm very close to India and I'm very close to Pakistan, as you know.
They've had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir.
Kashmir's been going on for a thousand years, probably longer than that.
And it was a bad one yesterday, though.
That was a bad one.
Over 30 people.
Are you concerned that there's now tensions on the border between them?
Are you concerned?
How are you concerned about that?
There have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years.
So, you know, the same as it's been, but they'll get it figured out one way or the
other. I'm sure that there's, I know both leaders, there's great tension between Pakistan and India,
but there always has been. So not sure about Trump's history lesson there, but the proximate cause of the tensions is a brutal terrorist attack
that was carried out last week, which killed, I believe, 25?
26.
26.
Almost all Hindu tourists.
All Hindu tourists.
All Hindu tourists.
And the details of the attack are absolutely chilling.
The gunmen going person to person asking, basically, are you Muslim?
Are you Hindu?
And if they find a Muslim, just executing them on the spot, including one Christian as well,
who was killed after some mention of Gaza,
apparently, as well. So just absolutely horrific. My understanding is in India,
they're talking about it as kind of our October 7th. And we know what happened in
Israel after October 7th. So Sid, from your understanding, are we going to get war here?
I hope not.
I hope we're not, India and Pakistan decide better than to go into war with each other,
because this is not an Israel-Palestine conflict.
This is a conflict between two nations who are pretty much armed to the teeth with nuclear stockpile.
So a war, if it breaks out between these two countries,
the escalation will go to really bad places.
But it's not just hope that I'm counting on.
It's also history.
It's also reality of today.
A direct war doesn't really help either the ruling dispensation of India or that of Pakistan.
These formats of attacks, you know, what they call proxy war in these parts, this has been happening for quite a while.
And usually we see a pattern that there is some terror attack, as they call it. Then the victim country, the leadership there,
starts making big statements that we're going to go to war,
we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
Completely diverts or deflects attention from the fact that there has been a massive intel failure,
a massive security failure on their side.
And then it goes through this dangerous game of brinkmanship.
And they start pulling out,
they're piling up their forces and tanks and everything. But we haven't really seen a full
on escalation. And may I mention here that India sent out its navy towards its big warship towards
Pakistan day before yesterday, but that ship is now back in the docks. So no,
I don't think there is an immediate chance of escalation. Let's go ahead and put E3 up on the
screen. Guys, you wrote an incredibly prescient piece for Dropsite saying Modi's Hindu nationalist
project in J&M and Kashmir has become a nightmare for Hindus. Really, sadly, Prashant effectively predicting some sort of horrific
terrorist attack as the one that we just witnessed last week. Perhaps you can explain a little bit of
the recent, if you want, the longer term history. I can give President Trump here a little bit of
an education on where the tensions actually originally stem from, not 1,000 or 1,500 years
in the past, as he asserted there.
But what is the different approach that Modi has taken with regard to this region?
And what have some of the consequences been?
Why were you able to predict that we would see something as horrible as what we did just see?
Well, unlike Trump, or for that matter, Mr. Modi or General Asim Muneer,
some of us journalists actually spend time in Kashmir and trying to understand what's happening on the ground.
That's why we are able to see certain patterns.
The principal thing that Modi did was he scrapped a very important part of the Indian constitution,
which granted a very large amount of autonomy to the state
of Jammu and Kashmir.
When he scrapped that, he made a sweeping declaration that the scrapping of, as they
call it, the abrogation of Article 370, it would usher in a need of absolute peace and
terrorism would finish once and for all, very much like what we keep
hearing President Trump saying every once in a while.
Instead, what happened is that the abrogation led to the suspension of the elected civilian
government in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and it became completely controlled by New Delhi, which in turn meant that the
Intel networks, the ground level human intelligence networks, which actually worked to feed information,
preemptive measures were taken based on that information. They died out slowly.
Principle among them is, it's not spoken about very widely,
but one of the biggest sources of intelligence for the New Delhi government
are the political parties who work on the ground in Kashmir.
When you have suspended elections, when you have effectively debarred them,
taken away their franchise, they do not want to cooperate.
And that's what happened here.
Last but not the least, we have to understand what sort of politics Mr Modi espouses.
It's one which is unbridled hatred against the Muslim population.
Even if he may not say it in as many words anymore, his teams are out there abusing,
demeaning, defaming Indian Muslims all the time.
How does he expect the local population to cooperate and give him intelligence of these
thoughts?
That's what we spoke about in our story, in our investigation.
And I wish it wasn't this way. but yes, we did tell the world so.
And can you talk a little bit about the group that initially claimed credit for the attack,
but then very oddly kind of backed off of that a few days later, and what is understood in India to be the backing of this attack?
So the group is called the Resistance Front. The Resistance Front appears to be, from all
our sources, from all government records, nothing but a rebranding of the Lashkar-e-Taiba,
one of the largest militant and terrorist organizations in the world,
which is based out of Pakistan primarily and is focused on secessionist activities in Kashmir.
What we saw not only in this attack,
even in the previous attack, which we've mentioned in our report,
Rayasi, I think it was,
where the TRF
claimed responsibility and then said, oh, no, it wasn't us. But that doesn't really matter.
That's not something we need to look into too much. Because if the TRF is merely the Lashkar
Attaiba, then they've been around for a while. The Indians, technically speaking, have not given any proof on the table showing direct involvement of Pakistan.
But even a cursory history, a look at history of how the LAT operates.
I mean, the chief is sitting and alive and under the protection of the Pakistani government, though he's under several international sanctions.
This is the all roads kind of lead
back to Pakistan.
And the Indian population is quite convinced.
And interestingly enough, even the most bitter opponents of Mr. Modi across parties, they
have voiced their anger and condemnation against Pakistan for enacting this attack.
And they've likened it to the 26-11 attacks in Mumbai.
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic because on the one hand, like you said, there's no evidence
that's been presented that Pakistan had any direct role in this particular attack. But of course,
the fact that the organization exists, is armed, and is so strong, can't be separated from
its relationship with Pakistan. So I asked Waqas Ahmed, who is Dropside's kind of Pakistan
correspondent, you know, for his take from the Pakistani side on what the role of the Pakistan
government was in this. And he had, I thought, a pretty nuanced and interesting
response. And we recorded this as a pre-interview. So let me roll a little bit of this and then get
your response to his analysis. So far, India has not presented any official evidence that Pakistan
may have backed this terror attack. But interestingly, the Pakistani interior minister
called for a neutral inquiry into this attack. And the Pakistani interior minister called for a neutral inquiry into
this attack.
And the Pakistani defense minister called on Russia, China or a Western country to be
a part of these investigations.
And that's not normal.
Pakistan had actually been trying to get closer to India for the past few years.
Pakistan had been abiding by the ceasefire agreement brokered by General Bajwa in 2020.
And as you also reported, that Pakistan had been looking the other way as Indian intelligence
carried out a string of assassinations inside Pakistan targeting former Kashmiri militants
and Sikh activists.
So it seems unlikely that Pakistani military will break the ceasefire for nothing.
That brings us to the more interesting question.
Why is the Pakistani military the primary suspect whenever something happens in India?
And that's the core of this issue.
There's this dynamic that has existed between Pakistan and India for a long time.
India and Pakistan have used proxy war as a strategy against each other.
So automatically, whenever there's an attack in one country, the other country is blamed.
And this is a knee jerk reaction at this point.
So every time this happens, there is a threat of escalation between these two countries.
The problem with this particular conflict is that the escalation ladder goes as far
up as nuclear. Hence, the only way out of this issue, this threat, this danger to the world is this long-standing
unresolved dynamic between these two countries must be resolved.
But with the far-right borderline fascist government in India with Prime Minister Modi
and this totalitarian military regime in Pakistan, it seems impossible
that either side has the will or the imagination to resolve this issue once and for all.
So Sid, an interesting point there that on the one hand, Pakistan doesn't immediately,
it kind of clashes with Pakistan's more recent kind of conciliatory approach to India.
Yet at the same time, they have been funding these proxy, funding and backing these proxy groups for many years. So of course, they're the top suspect.
What's your response to what you heard from Waukast there?
Waukast is absolutely on point. And what he is saying is, and I agree that India has technically
not put any evidence on the table. But if you note that the ministers from the Pakistan side of Kashmir,
the Pakistani-occupied side of Kashmir, they did a press conference right after the Pahalgam
incident. And in that, you can hear the ministers are on record saying that you can't be funding anti-Pakistan activities in Balochistan and then expect your civilians to be safe.
For every civilian you kill here, we will make sure we kill Indian civilians.
So this very well could be a tit-for-tat.
And may I add here, with due caution, because this is only preliminary inputs we are getting. Two of our sources in
Pakistan have mentioned that this attack was in retaliation of the Jaffar Express hijacking
that had happened recently, just a couple of weeks back in Pakistan. So this is very much true that
this proxy war or tit-for-tat was a thing between India and Pakistan.
Yeah, it's like they want to have it both ways.
Sid Roy, thanks so much for joining us.
I'd encourage everybody to go read his piece for Dropsite News.
Just Google Dropsite News and Kashmir, and I think his piece will come up, and you'll
have a good sense.
And if you would have read it when it came out, you would not be surprised that this
had just happened.
So, Sid, thanks so much for your reporting and for joining us.
Thank you.
I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop.
It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in.
I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.
My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.
Yeah.
Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?
Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me.
And he's getting older now too.
So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.
And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.
Like he's a legend.
So he gets it.
What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family?
It means a lot to me
just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really
important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so
the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's
talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to
Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is your girl T.S.
Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live
and in color from the
Outlaws Podcast. Let me
tell you something. I broke the internet
with a 22-inch weave.
22 inches.
My superpower?
I've got the voice.
My kryptonite?
It don't exist.
Get a job.
My podcast?
The one they never saw coming.
Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers.
Tina knows.
Lil Nas X.
Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do
a show with all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute,
though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to
love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now.
We turn side eye into sermons, pain into punchline,
and grief, we turn those into galaxies.
Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce,
I'm going right on the phone right now and call her.
Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.
I know a lot of cops,
and they get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes,
but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that Taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1.
Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Canadians are headed to the polls today
in what has turned out to be
an absolutely extraordinary election,
which has a lot to do with our own president
and his trade war and what's going on there.
So to break it all down for us,
very happy to be joined by David Dole,
who is host of The Rational National. His YouTube channel is absolutely blowing up,
and it's great to see you, David. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. Thanks.
Yeah, of course. So let's go ahead and throw this first element up on the screen that just shows
the polling trends between the conservative and liberal party here. You can see the liberals
really were down and out. And then suddenly Trump launches this insane trade war and their fortunes changed significantly.
So now they go into Election Day at least somewhat as the favorite here.
Just break down for us the contours.
Who's running?
What are the dynamics?
What accounts for this dramatic shift?
Yeah, so the liberals have been in power since 2015 under Trudeau's liberals overtaking a conservative government at the time.
Came in with a majority government, have been in power for nine years.
And then up until, you know, a couple of years ago, polling really began to shift post-COVID due to the affordability crisis.
And I think largely as well due to people just being tired of having the same people in
power seeing Trudeau every day. And then it got to a point where in December, it was like they
were down and out. And Chrystia Freeland, essentially Trudeau's second in command,
decided to come out against him and resign from her post as there was about to be a cabinet shuffle
and she didn't want to change her position. So that was sort of the first thing to drop.
And then after the new year,
Trudeau decided to step down and have a leadership race.
So there was a race between Chrystia Freeland,
Mark Carney, and a few others.
Carney ended up winning that.
And ever since, so it was a combination
of both Trudeau stepping down
and people being tired of him,
as well as Trump and just the ongoing threats, the threats of annexation, the 51st state, Governor Trudeau, all this garbage.
So that combination led to this dramatic shift, which, you know, I'm reading the analysis of the history of Canada and these sorts of elections.
There has never been a shift like this this quickly in our history.
And how much of this is the trade war and how much of this is Trump's 51st state barbs? Where at first you're like, ha ha, that's kind of funny, right? You're joking, right? This is a gag.
And it's like, oh, wait, I'm not so sure this is a joke anymore. Because if you look at that
polling collapse, it predates him
even being sworn in. It dates back to him making all of his 51st state jabs. So what's been the
response there? And if you had to weight the two things, the tariffs and the trade war,
and the 51st state stuff, which is kind of more significant. And obviously, they blend together in some ways.
It's really more of the 51st state stuff, the annexation stuff that like the trade war is an
issue, but I don't think people are really necessarily feeling it right now. Essentially,
I mean, you know, there's been so much back and forth on on the tariffs that it's hard to even
know where things currently stand with that. But it's the threats for sure that where it was just like, you know, even people
that didn't already or didn't like Trump already were sort of surprised, myself included. Like
there wasn't a whole lot of talk of Canada in the U.S. election prior to Trump winning.
And all of a sudden, you know, there was I think there was a comment or two about potential
tariffs, but there wasn't much about, you know, 51st State, Governor Trudeau, any of this stuff. So that, I think, really led to this sort of defense mechanism in Canadians where there's all this national pride that we didn't know we had before that has come out.
And we're sort of banding together and deciding that, no, we don't want this.
And we want somebody in power who's going to be stable.
You know, Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party, for the past two years, as he's been leader, he's been running
essentially against Trudeau. And once Trudeau left, he was sort of left scrambling to try to
apply his prior arguments against Mark Carney, who is a completely different person, isn't even
currently an MP. And it's hard to make the same arguments against him when Trudeau and Carney
are different leaders. So Pierre Polyev's inability to really find a coherent message,
in addition to the fact that he is far right in terms of Canada, has been endorsed by people like
Elon Musk. So when you have those sorts of connections to a Trump administration that is so
deeply disliked, it hasn't helped his case.
Yeah, I'm sure you get the Elon Musk endorsement at this point. You're like,
thanks, question mark. To that point, I pulled a Carney ad and I pulled a Poliev ad. Let's go
ahead and start with the Poliev ad. And what was notable about this is that he actually doesn't
appear in it. So I want to get your reaction to that and the way that he has had to quickly scramble and reorient himself and his campaign.
This is F3, guys. Go ahead and play it.
How's your son, David?
Well, it's been a tough few years for him. He just can't seem to get ahead.
Yeah, we had to pay for Sarah's down payment last year. Things are tough for her, too.
You know what Mark Carney says.
Come on,
do you really think that a fourth liberal term is going to change anything? You know, I've been thinking the same thing. Are we really going to give these clowns a fourth term? I'm voting
conservative. There you go. Yeah, for a change. Your reaction to that particular ad? They have purposely taken Pierre Polyev out of their ads.
So this is not often explored, but even while Trudeau was unpopular, even while the liberals were really unpopular,
if you look at Pierre Polyev's actual numbers, just the approval of him and how people felt about him,
he was not doing well. He was still underwater.
So the lack of liberal support before Carney came in was largely really due to the combination of
the affordability crisis and people being tired of Trudeau. It wasn't because people loved Pierre
Paglia. So when that became even more clear during this election, essentially the last week,
last couple of weeks of the election, the
conservatives have put out three new ads, all of them not featuring Pierre Polyev, either
his face or his voice.
So that's the one ad you saw there with the golfing.
Another one is former prime minister, Stephen Harper, you know, saying I worked with both
Carney and Pierre Polyev and I support Pierre Polyev, which of course he is.
He's the former prime minister as a conservative.
So like the, and then another one's, you know,
a few people discussing how terrible things are.
But Pierre Polyev is so unliked
that they had to completely remove him
from their advertising.
And it's just like, it goes to how inauthentic
Pierre Polyev is.
This is another element that people often,
you know, aren't attuned to, is just
the fact that Mark Carney is oddly authentic.
Even, you know, he's a former governor of the Bank of Canada.
He's a central banker, but he's authentic to that.
He's not pretending to be anybody else.
He's an authentic, like, technocrat, liberal, yes, banker.
He's running as a guy that led Canada through the 08 financial crisis and then went to the UK to help the UK through Brexit. He's running as a guy that that led canada through the 08 financial crisis and then went to the uk to help uh the uk through brexit he's running as that guy whereas pierre polyev
has a 20-year record in parliament he's been in parliament for 20 years 20-year record of fighting
against the working class fighting against labor and now he's coming out to pretend that he cares
about the working class and he's going to make life more affordable like where were you the past
20 years?
It comes off as so fake that people, even if they don't realize what Pierre Polyev's
record is, you can feel it in his speeches and the way he comes off that he's not an
authentic individual, whereas Mark Carney is who he is.
Does golf code different in Canada?
Like, I can't imagine a candidate who is trying to position themselves as pro-working class
being like, you know where I need to go? The driving range go the driving even trump who loves golf wouldn't put that in his head
yeah it's it is odd like i think the that message there is they're they're afraid of losing the
older vote which they are like it what's kind of been surprising with this election is if you look
at the breakdown by age 65 plus is well in support of the liberals. Like it's not even really close.
Whereas it's really under 35 that has that where the conservatives have a slight edge. And again,
that's really, I think due to the last 10 years of affordability and millennials and Gen Z really
being hit by that and not really knowing where to put the blame there, but everybody over 35,
big support for, for the liberals. So the attempt there, I think, was really to connect to older voters who have kids who are struggling and people that can relate to that and think that, yeah, we need change.
But like good change or what sort of change are we talking about here? has the, I would argue, the best housing platform out of all of the parties, even to the NDP,
which have no chance at all of forming government. But Mark Carney has a plan to make or build
500,000 homes per year, essentially start a crown corp to overlook all of the building of the housing and doing it in a way where he is
focusing on both affordability and prefab housing to essentially be able to build houses at a
faster rate, also focusing on Canadian lumber and Canadian jobs. So there has been a real focus on
investment from the Liberals, which I think benefits them in terms of the NDP vote.
As the NDP, the floor has completely dropped out of the NDP.
And a lot of those voters have moved to the liberals, seeing as both a rejection of the conservatives, but also a, you know, supporting what Mark Carney is arguing.
In addition to the fact that I think Mark Carney comes off as somebody who is a stable leader as opposed to, you know, Pierre Pelliot.
And it's an interesting point because if a central banker told me that he's got a plan
to build 500,000, you know, houses a year and he's going to do it,
here's the labor supply, here's the wood supply, and he's sketched it out,
I'd be like, okay, actually, you know, I trust you could actually probably pull that off.
This isn't, you're not trying to, do something like, like that, that out of
the ordinary here. It's like you're building houses and you should be able to do it. On the
authenticity point, the funniest thing I think I saw in this race was Pierre Polyev getting out
and having a press conference right after Trump started going after USAID. He held a, I don't
know if you remember this, he held a press conference saying that he was going to end all of Canada's foreign aid.
It's like, come on.
You like the U.S. is barely doing anything when it comes to foreign aid relative to our spending.
Canada, stop.
And now it's half.
I guess he's cut that to now we're going to cut half of U.S. or half of aid, which is
again, there's so many cues from Republicans that Pierre Polyev has taken
that, you know, have added up to the point where it, it doesn't, it hasn't benefited him.
Like if, if nothing had changed in terms of the, in terms of the, the liberal leadership and Trudeau
was still running, I think it's very likely you'd be looking at still a conservative majority,
maybe at worst a conservative minority. But you have a situation
where Pierre Polyev has spent years aligning himself to MAGA. And now, you know, the chickens
are coming home to roost. And you have a situation where people really do not want Trump-style
politics in Canada. And he's the face of it. So it's not worked out well for him.
Yeah, I would have to think at this point with the trade war being so important to
the fact that he's a central banker and has some deep understanding of the bond markets and their
impact is an affirmative benefit for him as well. But I mean, how do you handicap the race, David?
I saw the polls have tightened some coming down the stretch, giving conservatives some hope that they may be able to prevail.
What do you think is going to play on or what are the odds of what's going to play out?
Based on everything I'm reading, it's really appearing to be a liberal majority, at worst,
a liberal minority. And it's important to note that even if the conservatives had a slight lead
in the overall vote in polling, they still likely would not be able to win a minority government,
just the way that the seats play out and how the Conservative vote tends to be concentrated.
So the cons would really need, you know,
several point advantage in polls to be able to be in a situation where they're going to form government.
And they're just not anywhere near that right now.
Now, of course, we've seen polling be a little off in the past, but Canadian polling tends
to be fairly accurate.
So I'm really, it'll be curious to see how it holds up this time as, you know, you could
argue maybe there's sort of this hidden conservative vote that we've seen in the U.S.
and maybe that's going to come out, you know, this time in Canada.
But the way things look right now, it's liberals should be pretty
confident that they're going to be able to form government. Let's finish with a Mark Carney ad to
see, you know, kind of what his message is. Let's roll that here. No, people are anxious right now.
President Trump has created a crisis. News from Wall Street. React to the sweeping tariffs.
Well, I've led people through crises my entire career. I've worked with prime ministers from both parties to solve big problems for Canadians.
And right now, we're facing the biggest crisis of our lifetimes.
And we need serious leadership and a real plan.
Is that pretty representative of what his approach has been throughout this short campaign?
Yeah, stability, leadership, and he's been benefited as well by, you know,
people like Premier Doug Ford in Ontario, who is a conservative.
I mean, he's the head of the Progressive Conservatives.
I know that's a confusing term for Americans to hear.
But he is a conservative.
And, you know, countless scandals.
I've done many videos about how terrible Doug Ford is.
But he's somebody who is able to read the room.
Yeah.
And has been very forward in being very, you know, against Trump.
Has been on all, you know, U.S. networks discussing.
We've played some of him here.
Yeah.
Yeah, his approach.
So, and he's not endorsed Polyev.
He's kind of stayed out of the race.
He's somebody who, you know, him and Polyev don't really have much of a relationship.
So the fact that Ontario is so important in the election and he doesn't have the support of Doug Ford in any capacity, I think has hurt him as well.
Interesting.
All right, David Dole, everybody go subscribe to David's channel.
And I'm sure you'll be covering whatever happens with the Canadian elections today.
So thanks so much for breaking it all down for us.
Thanks for having me.
All right, guys, thank you so much for watching.
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