Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/11/23: Trump Says "THUG" COP Shot Jan 6th Protestor, Trump CNN TownHall on Debt Default, Ukraine, Abortion and more, Saagar and Ryan Debate Border Crisis, Tucker's Twitter Show Plans Revealed, Is New Breast Cancer Guidance Scam?, JD Vance Interview

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Saagar and Ryan discuss the CNN Townhall where Trump made statements on Jan 6th, Stop the Steal, the E Jean Caroll allegations, Debt Default, and his position on the Ukraine-Russia war. Also, we have a debate on the Border Crisis as Title 42 ends, Tucker's Twitter show plans revealed, Saagar looks into the new breast cancer guidance that might be a scam, and Senator JD Vance joins us in studio to talk about his new Rail Safety Bill.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Ryan Grimm is in for Crystal Ball. It's great to see you, man. And to make this show even more amazing,

what we decided to do is stack a live audience with Trump supporters who are going to hoot and holler all show long. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be incredible. Ryan is referencing a CNN town hall last night of which we have the best and the greatest moments from all of that, multiple different avenues that we're going to be talking about. So everybody, please don't worry. It's not just about Trump.

We have some of the more insane moments about Stop the Steal, E.G. Carroll, and all of that. Then we're actually going to talk about policy, about the debt ceiling, and we're going to talk about abortion. Then finally, his answer on Ukraine before we do some segments about Title 42, about the ending today at the U.S.-Mexico border and the migrant crisis and everything that we know about that. And then finally, a little bit of updates on the Tucker Carlson media empire, but also some Elon Musk invitations to Don Lemon. I'm actually doing a monologue about mammograms. I decided that since Crystal's gone, it's the bro show. We might as well do a monologue by a male about breast cancer. You will be shocked, by the way, about some of the things that I have uncovered. Thank you. Shout out to Dr. Vinay Prasad, actually, for flagging this to me.

Some of you will be very, very interested in this. It's a big story about big pharma and all of that. And then I have Senator J.D. Vance, actually, who's going to be joining us here in the studio. I always do have the need to do this. Full disclosure, Vance, longtime personal friend. That said, he is joining the show. We will be talking to him about the Railway Safety Act that he introduced about East Palestine, Ohio. And we will be getting all the details from that in which he will be talking about the Republicans in the Senate

caucus who do not support that bill. And we'll get into it. But I always do feel the need to do the disclosure, Ryan. And that actually gets us before we get to all of the Trump insanity from last night over at CNN. I just want to say once again, thank you all so much to the premium subscribers who have been signing up, helping us out as we're rebuilding our studio, getting to a point where CNN is not the only place that has to do a town hall with the former president, has that capacity. If you want to see the ability to do things like that, you can sign up, breakingpoints.com, to become a premium subscriber. Next week, we're very excited. We'll very likely have RFK Jr. here live in the studio, of which we will be able to do a long interview. And this is exactly the level up of what we want to get to. That's why we're getting the new studio. That's why we're building out our infrastructure, getting amazing partners like Ryan Ken Klippenstein, who broke that incredible story. So many other people that we're proud and able to support because of all of you.

So once again, monthly, yearly. Take a good look at these bricks because this might be it for them. That's right. Listen, I love the bricks. Actually, Crystal more than anybody loves the bricks. We'll throw her under the bus for the bricks. The bricks are gone, most likely. We'll see. Maybe they'll make a comeback. I actually fought for them, but we'll see. All right, let's go ahead and get to Trump. What do we have, Ryan? A moment of complete insanity, 70 straight minutes of Trump almost live on CNN. The clashes, the fact-checking, the stop the steal, so much happened. So we decided to start and break it down by, I guess, not only the timeline of how it began, but really in terms of content. First, we are going to start with Stop the Steal and with January 6th. Obviously, Stop the Steal on January 6th, noose

around the neck of the Republican Party on the general election. But as I have always said here, with Trump, you get exactly what you see. And here's the thing, he's not going to change his mind. No matter how many times you ask him whether the election was not stolen or not, no matter how many times you want to fact check him live. And as you can see, not only from his answers, he believes this stuff in terms of every possible conspiracy theory. But second, the Republicans who are in the audience, they believe him too. Take a listen. I actually say we did far better in that election.

Got the most that anybody's ever gotten as a sitting president of the United States. I think that when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you're a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people, a lot of the people in this audience and maybe a couple that don't, but most people understand what happened. That was a rigged election. That, by the way, just so everyone knows, that was the very first answer to the very first question. Now, I do want to say, we'll bring this up later with the focus groups.

Everybody was like, oh, he immediately, listen, they're the ones who asked him about the stop the steal. And they spent the first half an hour on all of Trump's personal problems, which I think is a huge programming mistake. That said, once again, if you do ask him about it, which of course the media will be asking him about it, Ryan, he hasn't changed his mind. He doesn't think he did anything wrong on January 6th at all. There was a famous cinematic moment where he's like, you want me to see the tweets? And he literally pulls out the timestamp of his tweets, which actually just vindicate the timeline that the CNN interviewer was asking about. But it doesn't matter because to the audience, they were eating it up. They loved it. And I actually thought, Ryan,

that the Stop the Steal answer and how it was supposedly repulsing Republicans. Again, I am not talking here about independent voters or Democrats who do genuinely hate Stop the Steal and find it repulsive and abhorrent, at least electorically, as we can see in 2022. What is the very second question that is asked at the town hall? Will you pardon the January 6th rioters? We have some of that. Let's take a listen. My question to you is, will you pardon the January 6th rioters who were convicted of federal offenses? I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can't say for every single one because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.

So probably they got out of control. A couple of them, one or two. So, okay, stop this deal on January 6th so far. What are you making of it? So by the way, we know that most of you did not watch the town hall. We did our best to compile some of this stuff together. But if you do have the time, go watch the 70 Minutes. We're going to try our best here to put as much of a narrative and all that. But I do encourage you, if you have the time, to go and watch the full thing for yourself. All right. So, on the one hand, I understand the criticism of the media here. And the focus group called out CNN. Like, why does he keep talking about 2020? Well, your first question was about 2020.

Your second question is about January 6th. Gee, I don't know. Why does he keep talking about it? That's true, yeah. However, on the other hand, the guy gives those answers. So you're like, wow. And I think it's important for the American public to see that. Oh, I thought it was great.

That is who he is. He is by far the frontrunner for the American public to see that. Oh, I thought it was great. That is who he is. He is by far the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, likely to be on the ballot against the sitting president. He's the former president of the United States. He's not just celebrity apprentice guy at this point. He's a former president. And if he's going to say that he is going to probably pardon most of the January 6th rioters, that is newsworthy.

No, not only newsworthy, but I think what it gets to is there is a level of highbrow stop the steal, which drives me insane, which Senator Hawley is absolutely guilty of. Many of these other people, Ted Cruz, they're like, well, you know. The commission, my commission idea. Not just the commission, Ryan. They'll be like, but did you know that the Hunter Biden laptop story? And we're like, yeah, of course we knew that. And by the way, you know, who has covered that more than we have here?

We did an entire segment about it. And in fact, if the Trump town hall hadn't happened, we would have done an entire another segment about it. We're very happy to and we will be covering it on our Monday show. Congratulations. The point is, is that he doesn't believe that because the Hunter Biden laptop story that the election was stolen. And that is election interference. We can absolutely say that. But he believes that the votes were specifically rigged and changed in multiple different states.

And that's what really hit from the town hall. He'd be like, well, in Milwaukee in particular. You know, every city he has a story. In Georgia, he has a story. Milwaukee, he has a story. In Georgia, he has a story. Milwaukee, he has a story. In Philadelphia, he has a story. And I already know the MAGA bots are going to be in the comments being like, well, did you see this one video? It's like, well, okay, prove it in court.

You know, and guess what? As they brought up last night correctly, they lost every single court case. If you had such compelling evidence, then presumably one judge, you can't even, if pro-life people can get some crank judge in Texas to take down the, what is it, the abortion pill for like a week. And you can't get one judge, not even a state guy to go along with your nonsense. What does that tell you about you? And this could be a good moment to do something for the YouTube censors here. What I'll say is Lindsey Graham. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. This could be a good moment to do something for the YouTube censors here. What I'll say is Lindsey Graham made the point that this was not stolen the night of January 6th, early January 7th.

Go watch his speech. It was incredible. He's saying what Sagar is saying. He's like, you guys say 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia. I asked for five. I got none. You guys say that 60,000 Mexicans voted in Arizona. Show me four.

You said 100,000 people in Milwaukee turned out, you know, that voted twice. Like show me 10 of them and I got zero. So that's Lindsey Graham. And so to your point, right, he doesn't believe that it was unfair because the CIA like coordinated with Hunter Biden and persuaded people to vote a different way.

Exactly. He thinks that Hugo Chavez's ghost came in. Yeah, he literally believes that. And so, by the way, if you believe that, I think, you know, I mean, I think you need help. And I think you're wrong. But I guess at least you're honest. You're more honest or as honest as Trump. You're dishonest, though, if you're a Republican senator here in this town and you're singing a different tune about why the election was stolen, but not in the way that Trump says. And actually, you brought up a good point,

just so everybody knows. Every single time that we air a clip where Trump says that the election was stolen, we, according to YouTube guidance, have to make sure that we also say that the election was not stolen. Now, frankly, I mean, I don't think I should have to do that because even though I don't believe that the election was stolen, I still have to say it because apparently that's what the content policy is. They think that viewers, as long as you and I say it, then the viewers are like, oh, well, okay, never mind then. It's not like you're smart enough to figure it out for yourself. That's what I think. Anyway, that's the YouTube policy.

And also become a premium member because that's why this is why things are precarious as they are. Let's go to the final clip here. Probably, honestly, the most shocking moment. Trump not only talks about January 6th, not only defends Ashley Babbitt, the protester who was shot dead at the Capitol, calls the cop who shot her, quote, a thug. Let's take a listen. Over 140 officers were injured that day. And a person named Ashley Babbitt was killed.

Yes. You know what? She was killed and she shouldn't have been killed. And that thug that killed her, there was no reason to shoot her. At blank range, cold blank range, they shot her. Whew, Ryan, that's something. And what you can see from Trump there, not only defending Ashley Babbitt, he said that protesters at January 6th had, quote, love in their hearts whenever they arrived.

Look, I mean, in terms of litigating all this, I do think it is a little interesting that the Republicans around the Ashley Babbitt case basically become the level of BLM activists whenever it comes to Ashley Babbitt, but not so whenever it's any sort of cop shooting. I do think we should be consistent. And I actually think it's totally legitimate. Which is what, cop shooting? I think it's actually totally legitimate

to be like, hey, was this a legitimate use of force? Like, you have this, and she broke through, whatever, she broke through the window, right? And he immediately shot through the window. So then when we're talking about self-defense and all of that, I actually think it's a legitimate conversation just about how we should handle these things. What do riot situations look like? What are the breaching rules and all that? That said, I mean, I think there's a lot of inconsistency here and we're basically playing like cop identity politics in terms of when

protesters, it's okay and what's not. But I mean, regardless of that, media wise, you know that this is probably, that probably triggered them more than anything else from the night. You make a really good point because if you compare it to other police shooting videos where you will have 10 officers surrounding one unarmed person. Right. And the unarmed person is kind of freaking out because they're like getting conflicting orders. Put your hands behind your back. Put your hands behind your head. Get on your knees. Don't don't move. No move. And then they move a little bit and then they all shoot him dead. Shot him. Yeah. And they say, well, we were all in fear of our life because we saw him reach for his waistband. Right. Ashley Babbitt was part of a mob that was kicking its way into

Through the doors into the speaker's Lobby there the idea that The person who saw somebody reach for their waistband was totally justified in ending somebody's life But that this person should have you know de-escalated this situation in a different way I might agree that maybe it would be nice if there was a way to de-escalate that. But I think that's a really good point to compare it to other police shootings where the same types of people are like, that was justified. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Correct. Yeah. Well, listen, I think that's actually why I get so, this is why I think the discourse around this is so poisonous. It's like, we're all criminal justice reform advocates

whenever it comes for Jan 6th protests, which I do think many of them were very unjustly treated. But at the same time, it's like some lock them up thing for any crime that they don't like. Gotta be consistent. That's how the law works. And then finally, Mike Pence moment. This one is shocking too. He still truly believes that Mike Pence had the ability to change the election results on January 6th, even though he had no, absolutely zero capacity to do so. Here's what he had to say. One person who was at the Capitol that day, as you know, was your vice president, Mike Pence, who says that you endangered his life on that day. I don't think he was in any danger. Mr. President, do you feel that you owe

him an apology? No, because he did something wrong. He should have put the votes back to the state legislatures. And I think we would have had a different outcome. Should have put the votes back to the state. Once again, he doesn't have the capacity. I also do love Trump's his explanation for why he could have done so. He's like, well, he could have done so because they tried to pass the Electoral Count Act afterwards. And he was like, oh, they strengthened it. Well, what they took out is any shred of legal ambiguity around it. So, you know, it is just one of those

where he believes it, people. That's the biggest takeaway. He believes the election was stolen, that Hugo Chavez's ghost and Chinese dominions and all these other people individually conspired and acted together while Mike Lindell apparently is the only guy who's ever been able to find out about it

to go in and change election results. And if you sign onto that, this is what you're signing onto. This is why I actually think this was a great service for all of us. This is it. This is Trump. He's not going to change. He will never, ever, ever change. And that's probably the most evergreen thing that we learned about him. So anyway, let's go to the second part here because it's not like we couldn't get enough from Trump. They also had to ask him,

of course, but you guys did a great job, by the way, talking about the E.G. and Carol verdict, what it was, what it wasn't, all this. A bit complicated because, what was it? They found him liable of defamation, liable of sexual abuse, but not liable of rape, which I'm still personally trying to wrap my head around. Trump also had his response to that verdict. There's a rather graphic answer to that. Yeah, the good point. If you're watching this with children, you should, you know, earmuffs. All right, let's take a listen.

Just so you understand, ready? I never met this woman. I never saw this woman. This woman said, I met her at the front door of Bergdorf Goodwill, which I rarely go into other than for a couple of charities. I met her in the front door. She was about 60 years old. And this is like 22, 23 years ago. I met her in the front door of Bergdorf Goodman. I was immediately attracted to her. And she was immediately attracted to me. And we had this great chemistry.

We're walking into a crowded department. So we had this great chemistry. And a few minutes later, we end up in a room, a dressing room, of Bergdorf Goodman, right near the cash register. And then she found out there were locks on the door. She said, I found one that was open. She found one.

She learned this at trial. She found one that was open. What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up, and within minutes, you're playing hanky-panky in a dressing room, okay? Crowd was eating it up there, Ryan. Crowd was eating it up. Everybody was like, oh, Trump, you know, Messiah. I'm like, yeah, first time?

Like, first time you've ever heard Trump? They also tried to get him on the, what was it, the answer that he gave in his deposition about when you grab him, you know, they let you do it. And he's like, well, you know, it's fortunate, or unfortunately, or fortunately. And he's like, well, you know, it's fortunate or unfortunately or fortunately. And he's like, well, you know, that's something that has always been kind of the case for famous people. What did you make of his response? What do you think? Well, it was interesting that he wanted to re-litigate Access Hollywood.

That's how he is. Yeah, that's how he is. And he wanted to zero in on the word let because what he was trying to say it seemed like was that let implies consent ah okay okay and that unfortunately or fortunately powerful rich famous people are able to get consent like that that was the whole riff that he was going in on but it's just bizarre that he wants to relitigate that but it it's very Trump. And to me, it was disturbing to watch the crowd hooting to his like mockery of E.G. and Carol. That was the part where I was like, oh, this is just, that was the part where I thought CNN was like really getting,

now maybe what they wanted because it's gonna be ratings, but it was just horrifying. But it's like to think of an entire crowd of people like mocking that moment while he's mocking it on stage. It's just, it does not kind of portray the world that I wish that we lived in. Well, it's certainly not.

Unfortunately, you know, in the eyes of a lot of these people, everything is politicized and everything is, if you're gonna turn this into politicization, then this is gonna be a joke, and I'm gonna treat it like a joke. I think, unfortunately, that's how a lot of people think about it.

I think that's how people who are, I'm sure, against sexual assault and rape in their daily life, they think it's all politicized, and so therefore, but a lot of people watching it, I think, do not have the same Twitter brain that we do. That's a Rorschach test. That is genuinely a Rorschach test on hyphen. I don't judge anybody who feels either way. You also got a point to just the crowd and the level of which they're loving the, that is vintage classic Trump, right?

Well, another one was going after the moderator, Caitlin Collins, at CNN, calling her, quote is a vintage classic Trump, right? Well, another one was going after the moderator, Caitlin Collins at CNN, calling her quote, a nasty person. And again, the crowd is eating this up. Take a listen. That's the question that investigators have, I think, is why you held onto those documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then had given you a subpoena to return them. Are you ready? Are you ready? Can I talk? Yeah, what's the answer? Can you mind? I would like for you to answer the question. Okay. It's very simple to answer. That's why I asked it. It's very simple to, you're a nasty person. I'll tell you. You're a nasty person. Okay. And again, the crowd, they can cheer. I mean, this is also where, you know, it kind of

get to your point, Ryan, which no offense, but there's a lot of pearl clutching going on where people are like, I can't believe the crowd would cheer. I'm like, here's what you people need to understand. They hate you. They hate you so much. They hate you so much. The reason that they vote for this vulgar, weird,

famous billionaire from New York is because of moments like that. They will never understand it. I think you were intellectually capable of that. And that's why watching that, I couldn't help but almost just, because I'm like, wow, like that right there, that is why 70-something million people voted for him in 2020.

They can never get enough of Trump v. the media because the only person less popular than him is them. But also, we say Trump can't change But that was woke Trump. Oh, did you notice? No, I didn't see oh, he said nasty person not nasty Right Hillary Clinton was nasty. Well, it was Hillary Clinton He's gone woke now. That's good. He's like this is not a gendered. Yes insult that I am leveling here. I like that I like so Well, I want him to start yet

But we'll create got's right we need to stop him from saying things like the dumbest man on television the dumbest person on television nasty person not a nasty woman uh but uh yeah that's trump trump trump is trump and that's just really my maybe because i covered him for so long you know it was in in all this literally watched this play out on a day-to-day basis. Not a single thing that happened last night surprised me or shocked me at all. It just seemed like right back, return to where things are. Lots of media, like I said, pearl-clutching around this.

But I think that the fundamental question for everybody to ask, for everyone who is involved and finds this repugnant, is how do we get here? How do we get to a point where people are laughing at the E.G. and Carol thing? How do you get to a point where people are cheering whenever you call a nasty person?

I remember some of the biggest cheers that he used to get is at his rallies is when he would look at the back. He'd be like, you see those red lights and they're turning away. They're not showing the crowd. He's like, there's fake news. CNN and the crowd would go wild. Have you ever been to a Trump rally and you've seen the press at the barricade in the back, and they became, I mean, by the way, they love this too, just so everybody knows. Jim Acosta would be there and he'd be like, look at the way that these people are treating me.

It's a bi-directional thing. The crowd loves hating you and he loves being hated by the crowd. It helps him sell books. So don't act also like there's not a lot going on here, but it's self-perpetuating cancer. I can tell you that. I was at the dawn of this. Were you at Sarah Palin's speech at the RNC? No, no, no. I wish I'd been there. Yeah. It was electric in a kind of terrifying way. Yeah, this way. McCain gives his acceptance speech. It's like a normal political speech. The rest of the Republicans throughout that convention. Country first. Just normal stuff. Right. When Sarah Palin hit that stage and she started coming, I forget what she called us.

It wasn't fake news. It was something else. I know what you're talking about. She called out the whole press area and you could feel the energy of that room turn toward the press. I remember being like, whoa, this is something else. This is a different thing. These people hate me right now. There's another good clip, if anybody wants to go watch it, of Newt Gingrich going after the media in 2012, similar time period. So it's 2012 in the primary.

Gingrich, it's like the CNN actually town hall or debate or something like that. And they opened it up by asking him whether he wants to apologize to his ex-wife or something like that. And they opened it up by asking him whether he wants to apologize to his ex-wife or something like that, for genuinely doing scummy things, like very scummy behavior. Oh, I remember that, yes. And he was like, well, I think that the media, how dare you, and the biggest threat to this country is the, and the crowd went wild.

And Gingrich actually popped in the polls after that. That was one of the biggest precursors to what would eventually happen in the 2015 primary. So all of the breadcrumbs were there. The Sarah Palin hockey mom speech, if you remember that, it's like, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull lipstick? And the crowd is like absolutely losing it. Gingrich, well, that's how we got to- And Spiro Agnew. Where we are. Spiro Agnew, that's true.

The nattering nabobs of negativity. Yes. That's a good, you know, people should go read about that too. That's some we got to where we are. Spiro Agnew. The nattering nabobs of negativity. That's a good, that's a good, you know, people should go read about that too. That's, that's some good stuff. All right. Part three here. So we have alluded to this. Media figures, Democratic politicians, some of them named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

losing their minds at this CNN Trump haul. Not for any substantive reason, because to them, platforming it was anti-democratic. And the anti-democracy of all of this was just so irresponsible. AOC appeared on MSNBC's If They Love Democracy So Much to denounce the CNN town hall. Here's what she had to say. I know you said earlier that you will not comment

on the platforming of such atrocious disinformation, but I would. I think it was a profoundly irresponsible decision. I don't think that it would, I would be doing my job if I did not say that. And what we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk, that put that person at risk in front of a national audience. And I could not have disagreed with it more. It was shameful. It was shameful, Ryan. What she's referencing is she was on the Stephanie Ruhle show. And actually, Stephanie Ruhle opened it and be like, we will not be discussing or talking about this at all.

Really? Because you're in the news business. Why not? If you think it was shameful, air the clip. Air it forever. That's what we just did. You make up your mind. You make up your mind. Why don't we have enough trust in people that if Trump says that Venezuelan Chinese dominion stole the election, they go, yeah, you know, I don't think that that happened. And then come voting time, whenever he gets a bunch of Republicans who endorse that on the ballot, they're like, yeah, you know, I really hate Joe Biden.

And even though I live in Arizona and I hate the Democrats, I'm just going to vote for one. Anyway, democracy works. It works when you let people make up their own minds. I think, right, I think have more faith in the American public. That Democrats, I think, ought to have been saying thank you for this. Yes. Yeah, you're right. The smart ones were saying that, actually. Right. Because it did a couple of things. One, it

continued to scare away a bunch of independents and kind of Democratic leaners, the ones who may come out, may not come out. That didn't play well at all to them, I don't think. We'll find out. But secondly, Trump thinks it played great. And Trump's base thinks it played great. So they're going to lean in. They're going to be like, oh, we need to make fun of E.G. and Carol Moore. We're going to make that a regular part of my stump speech. I need to continue talking about pardoning the January 6th rioters. I need to continue questioning the election results because that all worked for me, not realizing that, yes, it worked to fire up your base. Excellent. Excellent. But it's only going to bury you further. And so have faith that if Trump lets his freak flag fly, that enough of the American public is going to be like, you know what,

we don't, I'm not sure we want the Sleepy Joe guy, but if this is the choice, we're going with Sleepy Joe. Which is literally what happened in the 2022 election. I actually thought Biden had the best response. You know what he tweeted? It's simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that? If you don't, pitch into our campaign. Perfect. Perfect response. Instead of, oh, democracy, democracy is being destroyed. One Rick Wilson, who you will remember from the grifting Lincoln project, has taken a break from the grift off of their Democratic boomer donors and has instead decided to come on the air and just on Twitter and denounce with almost tears in his eyes about what happened.

Here's what he had to say. We're in a break now from the presidential town hall with CNN, Caitlin Collins, and whatever the fuck they thought they were going to get out of this, they instead have set a match to democracy once again. You are letting an insane person stand there and make people giggle and laugh when he jokes about rape.

You make people giggle and laugh when he jokes about abortion, when he calls an African-American police officer a thug. This insanity should be pulled off the fucking air. Chris Licht, you should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed of yourself. Morning Joe was on this morning, Ryan. Here's what Joe Scarborough had to say.

CNN's town hall was disgraceful on every level. The most shocking part was seeing the audience lapping it up. What I saw last night was as chilling as anything that I've seen on TV since January the 6th. So if seeing Republicans love Trump is as triggering as Jan 6th, then you're in for it, my man. Our politics are actually disgusting. Yeah. Welcome to America. And shameful. And so what is the other option? Yeah, exactly. Like we can't make it.

You and I can try as much as we can to make a better politics. Nor should we have the power to do so because no one person or two people or whatever should ever have the power. Right. It's weird because what do they think their role is? Like if you don't, to use the word platform, if you don't platform the Republican basically nominee for president, he's still on the ballot. Exactly. So what are you accomplishing exactly? If you think that people can't handle his views, what if then they get a distorted idea about what he believes and they think that he's actually moved on? Correct.

And he's not going to pardon the January 6th riders. Then they vote for him. He gets in and does all the things that you were keeping him from sharing with the public that he was going to do. How does that serve democracy? So tell me about this. There was a huge debate. Let's put this on the screen, though, by the way. The CNN actually cut their town hall short.

It was scheduled for 90 minutes. The actual event was to go as long as 75. They stopped less than 70 minutes in. They could have gone longer if they wanted, which is usually what executives do with big ratings draw. I think they personally thought it was a disaster. So according to the commentariat online, the biggest mistake that Caitlin Collins made

is she didn't fact check him enough. Now, I wanna know what you think about this. I've interviewed Trump four times. Guess what? Every time you fact check him, it derails the conversation. You don't get it. If you keep doing it longer, he'll just cut it off. So you're not going to get information. But in general, when I interview politicians, I let them talk. And if they say a lie, we can talk about it afterwards. Maybe we can gently be like, hey, you know, this isn't another opposing view. What utility is there to the constant fact-checking to somebody's face?

And just so people know, I do this with Democrats and Republicans. I've interviewed a dozen, Pramila Jayapal, all these Democrats who I don't agree with at all, who in many cases I find repugnant, at least on a policy level. But I'm not going to sit there and show my disdain to their face. I'm just going to ask them a good question. I'll do the same thing with Republicans when anybody really is, because I enjoy letting people talk and I believe in letting people judge for themselves. You know, I can try and add some context, whatever, and I don't think I'm going to change anybody's mind. What do you think about the whole fact-checking conversation? I'm kind of with you on that because to me it goes to what is the role of the media. We are interlocutors. If we have strong opinions about something that somebody is saying and how they'll contradict it, we can run for office.

That's a path that is open to us. And so if a person is running for office, I think it's our job to question them, probe at their views. But setting yourself up like you're in a debate with them on a debate stage, like one-on-one, you're in different roles. So that doesn't quite make sense. And then to your point, pragmatically and tactically, it just doesn't work. Like the whole 52-mile thing was just so exhausting. Caitlin said this last night. She goes, we can't let you say that. And I said, really?

Did somebody elect CNN? Like who? What? CNN's air is more powerful than the president. Are they on YouTube or something? Yeah, exactly. What do you want, YouTube? Because we actually can't let you say that. Literally, we can't. Oh, yeah. But the point is, like, you know, who elected you? Nobody. Like, your job is to get info from Trump. And you know, another thing I'm going to note, because we're going to spend the rest of our show on policy on Ukraine. The audience members asked the best damn questions the entire night. The best questions that came from Trump were about January 6th. Like you said, they were also about the stolen election. It's not like those people didn't want to ask questions. What else did they ask about Ryan? Ukraine, abortion. Every single one of their questions

was fantastic because the audience members want to get to what's really going on here. They're asking about, hey, I'm having trouble paying my bills. And these are Republicans, just so everyone knows. But even normal Republicans, they don't want to sit and mire in this 2020 election stuff.

They want to be like, what are you going to do for me? What's going to happen? Even their backward-looking January 6th question was forward-looking. Exactly. Are you going to pardon, what are you going to do for me? What's going to happen? Even their like backward looking January 6th question was forward looking. Exactly. Are you going to pardon me? Are you going to pardon me? Rather than what did you think of like the way that they ransacked the Capitol or can, you know, would you like to apologize to Mike Pence? It's like, right, it's forward looking. Yeah, because these people, you know, who are, the people in the audience,

they're smarter than us because we're probably still two in it, right? We live and breathe politics. They are living their lives. They're the ones who actually vote at the end of the day. And they're the ones who pick their own president and their nominee. And they had better questions that served all of us. So we will be spending the bulk and the majority of the rest of the time actually talking about that. But we could not let this final thing go, which is, as everybody at Breaking Points know, Crystal and I, we love a good focus group, especially with a focus group,

basically just slaps the media in the face. Here we had CNN, a bunch of Republican voters who were with CNN after the town hall, in which they stunned the actual interviewees because they didn't give them the answers they expected. Let's take a listen. Does it bother you that he keeps talking about 2020 and not 2024? I'll ask you first. This is Jonathan Leslie. He's 40, Republican, voted for Trump twice.

How do you feel about those lies? So I feel like part of it's also the media narrative as you guys asking the first question at the town hall about the 2020 election rather than current stuff. So don't you think you could say it's time for me to start talking about 2024 and not lies that aren't true? Couldn't the media ask him a question about 2024? Well, there were questions, but you're right. That was the first thing that that's something that was on our mind.

And that's why I was asked first. What I want to ask you, first of all all is do you think, show of hands, anybody think Donald Trump looks better after this town hall? Any of you think he looks worse? Any of you think the same thing about him as you did when you walked in? So all of you feel that way? There you go. They're like, why we kept saying all this stuff about 2020?

It's like, well, you asked him about 2020. And they're like, shouldn't you talk about 2024? They're like, well, why didn't you ask him? That's a great question. It's a great well, you asked them about 2020. And they're like, shouldn't you talk about 2024? They're like, well, why don't you ask them? That's a great question. It's a great question. As usual, they know so much better than we do. And my personal favorite at the end there, like, raise your hand if you feel better about it. Raise your hand if you feel worse about it.

Raise your hand if you feel the same. I've talked about it here before. Debates and these types of things, statistically, political science data, we have like 60 years of analysis, have zero impact on the election. Zero. It's almost always about more structural factors. Personal stuff, it can matter, it can, it's difficult to predict. But this is also what gets to my whole thing around the fact checking. What is the point of constantly being like, no, actually, sir, this is 52 miles of wall, not 450. Guess what? The people who believe that Trump built the wall are never going to change their minds,

even if he didn't build a scrap of wall. And then also people who believe that there was not a single mile of wall built are not going to change their minds after you're like, well, actually, there were 52. What you feel about Trump is baked in. He's been on the national stage now since 2015, almost 10 years. We're coming up on a decade of the Trump era in American politics. It's all here at this point. And the limits of fact-checking were so exposed by that exchange too, because they were so obviously talking past each other. Exactly. Thank you. What he was saying, he's like, look, I rehabbed a bunch of like rusty

old crappy fence and they wouldn't count that in my 52 miles. And she would just say, look, I rehabbed a bunch of rusty old crappy fence, and they wouldn't count that in my 52 miles. And she would just say, well, you did 52 miles. Secondly, it's like— They're both right, actually. They are both right. But then secondly, it's like, well, you guys don't want that wall anyway. So why are you kind of criticizing him for not building enough of the thing that you don't want him to build any of? Yes.

So the whole thing—because when you get into fact-checking, it takes the kind of ideology and ideas out of it. I don't believe in neutral fact-checks. I actually think that outside of literal math, like 2 plus 2 or whatever, or physics, I don't think that there is such a thing as a fact-check. Everything is relative. Everything is basically up for debate. Everything is at the level of argumentation. We were talking about the stolen

election. It's like, yeah, well, if you just put it that way, then somebody can say about this. If you put it the way Trump does, then okay, you can get into that. But even then, the point is about changing people's minds. And I think that the news, at best, what I like to do when we meet people out in the wild, what's the most edifying thing they say say you make me have sense of the world hey help help my relationship with my parents because I felt like we were talking past each other and instead we watch your show together we come away with different takeaways we sit down and we're like well here's what I agree with what Sagar said or Crystal said it Ryan said or Emily said it but I realized that because they could talk together afterwards that you and I can talk now as well. I mean, the point is that you can even start from the same show and come away with two completely different opinions.

That's humanity. And I think you've got to worry about getting too rigid. When Trump said, well, why did I make that call to Georgia? Because I was questioning the results of the election. He just says it outright. And Democrats are going to be like, well, that's insane. You should go to prison for that. But I also think Democrats are going to regret in the future setting a standard by which it is wrong to question the results of elections. What if

Republicans in Arizona or Wisconsin, Alabama, Democrats are kind of in conflict here because on the one hand, they're always accusing Republicans of voter suppression and trying to steal elections. And then at the same time saying that you can never question the results of an election. So I bet in our lifetimes we're going to have a point where Republicans are going to straight up steal some election somewhere. And Democrats are then going to be handcuffed a little bit in the way that they're able to point to the ways that it happened. Stacey Abrams was allowed to do it in 2018, but then immediately after the Trump thing, they were like, hey, Stacey, shut up. If you want to be able to continue selling books and, you know, grifting off Michael Bloomberg and all these other people, you got to shut up. You got to accept it and just kind of walk away after you lost a couple more times. Anyway,

I thought that these are our big personality, I guess, takeaways. We're going to go ahead into the policy now. Let's get to it. This, Ryan, in my estimation, was some of the best that came out of this because Trump took a position in the debt ceiling fight, which is going to have massive ramifications in terms of how Republican voters and also the actual Republican policymakers respond to everything that's going on here right now. Let's take a listen to this question about how the Republicans should handle the debt ceiling, how Trump feels about the debt, and also about what Republicans should do in said defaults type scenario. Let's take a listen.

What do you think about the United States' current debt situation and how can we move forward? Such an important question. So we're at $33 trillion, a number that nobody ever thought possible. When we had our economy rocking and rolling just prior to COVID coming in, like literally we were making a fortune. And oil, we were going to make so much money from oil, we were going to start paying off debt. But then with COVID coming in, we had to do other things. We had to keep this country alive because it was so serious. But we have to get the country back. We have to lower energy prices.

We have to lower interest rates. Interest rates are through the roof. Energy has to come down. It all has to come down. And we have to start paying off debt. You once said that using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You said that when you were in the Oval Office.

That's when I was president. So why is it different now that you're out of office? Because now I'm not president. They couldn't get enough, Ryan. They loved it. That's hilarious. That is hilarious. You know what? This is, again, part of his appeal. Because he'll just, when other politicians are inconsistent, they're like, well, technically things were different. He's like, no, I just don't.

He's like, I'm inconsistent because I'm a ruthless politician. My power position has changed. Yeah, like, okay. away from that exchange was that Trump actually would appreciate a default because it will hurt Biden and hurt the economy and guarantee his election if there's enough of a hit. So for Trump, he gets to talk tough, but he also wants the car crash in this game of chicken. Because if the cars crash and you get unemployment back up to 6% by November 2024, Biden has a very difficult time getting reelected. Yeah. I mean, listen, this is part of why this entire conversation drives me nuts. Trump, under Trump, the national debt increased by $7.8 trillion from 20-

Nobody thought it was possible. He started the administration with $20 trillion in debt after the Obama years. That was in 2017. That was after an increase from $10 to $20 trillion. So then it went from $20 to $28 trillion after the end of the Trump presidency. Now, I guess, to be fair to him, only $5 trillion of that was pre-COVID. So half of it was post-COVID. I mean, and listen, you're looking at

two people who don't have that a lot, who don't have that many objections to deficit spending, or who probably have very, very different views on default and debt, deficit spending and debt, on national debt specifically, as in it's not the same thing as a household balance sheet because we're the world's superpower. So there's a little bit of a difference. We're not like Bosnia or something like that. But if we were going to speak the language of what he's talking about, we have to get our national debt under control, all this other stuff. Well, then it's a little hypocritical whenever you're going to sign one of the largest corporate tax cuts. And I actually, that's part of why, as much as I enjoyed the moment where Caitlin was said, you know, well, you said as president, it's actually better to hit them with the genuine

policy hypocrisy here to be like, listen, you literally signed one of the largest corporate tax cuts in history. Which he talked about and bragged about. Which he talked and bragged about. And the case that you made was it was going to boom the economy. And I mean, it kind of did. It also increased the deficit. So, and that's fine, in my opinion. A lot of people's opinion too, as the voters who mostly were okay with that. But, you know, you can't then say that we got to get our spending or whatever out of control. I actually think the most effective tactic that I've heard yet is not objective to the spending overall. It's what people said, you're spending money on X, Y, and Z. Like spending money on an unpopular program like the IRS, for example.

That is actually a way to get people to be like, yeah, hold on a second. Maybe we shouldn't spend so much money on the IRS. And even that, I think, is up for debate. So yeah, what do you make about his answer there on the default? I think you're right that the way to go after him is to hit that wedge in between the kind of Paul Ryan Republicans who wrote that tax cut and Trump who kind of signed that tax cut into law. Because how can you, on the one hand, brag about this gigantic tax cut and then on the other hand say, isn't it such a shame that we now have $33 trillion in debt?

There's a great clip actually of Trump back in the day talking about real estate. And he's like, I'm a real estate guy. I love debt. Debt, you know, debt. Which, you know. He's right. Early on in his presidency, like the one thing that he really does understand is interest rates. 100%.

Because his whole real estate scheme was just skimming cash flow off of real estate. Cash flow, refinance, you know, refinance this property, buy this property, take this property, cash out, refinance on this madness. I don't really know how those people sleep at night, but just like from a stress level perspective, because that sounds insane to me, but I guess it worked out for him. The thing though, is on the interest rates, it again, Trump has these savant moments where he understands consumer economics, I think, better than a lot of people who do this for a professional living. And in that answer, he specifically targeted interest rates. And while he was president, I don't know if a lot of people remember this,

he ruthlessly hammered Jerome Powell and the Fed chair. He was like doxing him. Constantly. On Twitter, he was like, he needs to bring down the rates. And that was when rates were like, what, like 0.2% or something like that? He's like, bring them bring down the rates and that was when rates were like what like what point? 2% is like yeah, he's like bring him down more make it zero make it negative make it so that MBS Yeah, and pot exactly. Yeah, he he had this again savant like knowledge of the way that Americans interact with the economy which at the end of the day is basically gas prices and Ability to buy stuff and not just and ability to buy stuff. And not just that, ability to buy stuff downstream from the ability of large corporations to also take out large amounts of debt for debt financing,

unfortunately, in some cases, stock buybacks, but at least hopefully, at least in some cases, it trickles down in some way by letting people hire them and at least floating your payroll. That's what we see, right? And that, again, is where he displayed his ability to target in on what a lot of voters really care about whenever it comes to the economy.

It reminds me of a very famous answer that Bill Clinton gave in 1992 in the presidential debate. A black woman asked him, well, how do you think about the national debt? There's something about the national debt. Clinton intuited, he's like, this answer is not about the debt. You're asking about the economy. And he goes, I know people who lost their jobs. This administration, we've had 12 years of failed trickle-down economics. It's a

failed economic theory. We're going to get people back to work again. I remember, it's in my head because one of the best political debate moments, I think, ever that's ever happened because it's about taking what somebody is asking about and not answering it on the face and getting to the core of how the voter really thinks about it. In that, I actually thought he did a good job. But now, in terms of the policy and what it means, here's what matters. Trump endorsement of the McCarthy position gives McCarthy tremendous more leverage within the Republican caucus because he can go and say, why are you going against Trump on this? Trump endorsed me last night. He strengthened his negotiating hand whenever it came to Biden because this is the leader of the Republican party, the former

president of the United States, the most popular Republican in the entire country. Here's what he thinks we need to do in this specific instance. So it could actually help him from getting people to walk away. Now, at the same time, some of the people who would walk away are coming from like Biden plus five, plus 10 districts. So it's not like they need to hold down the fort for the general election. But anytime you have Trump on your side in a debate like this, it's going to be better than not whenever you're in an intra-GOP fight. Which to me is more reason for Biden to just walk away from the whole thing and do the 14th Amendment and say, forget this. Or mint the coin. Or mint the coin, do whatever. Say,

we're not playing these games. And just say, look, Trump called for a default. Trump wants you guys to default with me. And I'm not playing that game. I'm done. I'm moving on. Okay, let's go to the next part here, abortion. This, again, was a very important moment during the town hall. The reason to me, Ryan, before we even play the clip, watch here how rambling, nonspecific, and how twisted in knots Trump is whenever it comes to the subject of abortion. Let's take a listen. If you are reelected and you're back in the Oval Office and you get legislation to your desk, would you sign a federal abortion ban into law? What I'll do is negotiate so that people are happy. But the fact that we were able...

I was able. I'm so proud of it. We put three great justices on the Supreme Court. We have almost 300 federal judges on the Supreme Court. So you... Just to be clear. Just to be clear, Mr. President, you would sign a federal abortion ban into law. I said this. I said this. I want to do what's right. And we're looking and we want to do what's right for everybody.

But what's right? But now for the first time, the people that are pro-life have negotiating capability because you didn't have it before. They could kill the baby in the ninth month or after the baby was born. Now they won't be able to do that. But I think this is a really important question for you to answer because this is something every Republican, including those who are running against you for the nomination, are being asked about is would you sign a federal abortion ban into law? And many of them are going to give you the same answer as I.

I am, first of all, I am honored to have done what I did. And a lot of people said, they said in 150 years, he's now the most consequential president because he saved so many lives. And I'm honored to have done it. Honored to have done it, Ryan, coming to a democratic ad near you. You will watch that over and over and over and over again. And that is exactly why he's in a real bind. Do you appease the pro-lifers who want more? Frankly, they want way more. They want the abortion ban. They want to go, you know, six week and all these states and all that, which are not politically popular at all.

And then he's, he's not an idiot. And look, I don't, I will never psychoanalyze anyone. I'm just going to say personally, I don't believe that Trump is actually pro-life. Me personally, I don't think so. I don't think that personally, I don't believe that Trump is actually pro-life. Of course not. Me personally? I don't think so. Of course not. I don't think that he had some crazy change of heart in his 60s. I mean, I guess it's technically possible. Anyway, the point is that in his heart of hearts, at least the political one, he knows people hate this, which is why he's twisting himself like a pretzel being like, well, I believe in the exceptions. And then the Democrats and the late term abortion. And I'm honored to have done Roe versus Wade, but now it's up to the states. It was two and a half minutes almost just, he didn't settle on anything. And then she was like, well, what are you going to do? Like, are you sure? Like, what about the ban? Would you sign a ban? He's like, well, we'll see.

Some people have good ideas. I haven't made up my mind yet. What does that mean? You've had, what? When did Roe happen? June, right? It's been almost a year. It's been literally 11 months since this, maybe something like that, since this has all come down. How have you not made up your mind yet?

You know why? Because he has made up his mind, and he knows privately it's an electoral disaster. Anyway, so I saw that and I was like, man, Trump, he knows this is his kryptonite for 2024. And not even that privately. He was fairly open during the midterms saying like, look, this is not going to be great for us, even though he plays such a significant role. And then he blamed abortion for the election results. And he blamed the abortion. Which he was right.

Yeah. So that's why he has to, he's trying, Susan B. Anthony came out recently saying that they would not endorse any candidate, you know, very powerful organization that wouldn't endorse. Can you explain that to people? Yeah, Susan B. Anthony may be the most powerful kind of pro-life group in the country. And they want a national abortion ban. And they said after Trump refused to commit to one. They're like the Planned Parenthood pro-lifers. And so, and they came out publicly and said, we will not work for, we will not endorse, we will not support any candidate who refuses to, you know, stop killing babies. And so that's

who's in Trump's head when he's celebrating his overturning of Roe v. Wade, but then the polls are in his head when he's refusing to kind of commit to a national ban. Later in that clip, he says, you know, Lindsey Graham has a nice bill, and Lindsey's 15 weeks or something. Because that poll's a little bit better, but it's still not...

15 week, ironically, Ryan, was actually much more popular pre-Roe and now is much less popular. So Roe actually, well, it kind of gets to something. One of my core beliefs in politics is just don't take anything away from people. Like once you take something away, like it's not going to be good for you. I remember that, you know, like Obama. Obama was like, well, we're going to take away your health care, but everybody's going to get better health care. I'm like, yeah, but you shouldn't screw with my health care, man, because I hate it. And that was, you know, he paid a huge

electoral price for it, even though, you know, by the numbers, technically more people got health care, but it was a mess. Even I, you know, how many Obamacare plans you saw? My current plan is like, I have like a $19,000 deductible or something. I'm like, well, I guess I hope I don't get hit by a bus. But point with that being that a lot of people like their healthcare plan, the whole, like, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. Wasn't true. Well, I think that the very much the same thing kind of came with our abortion policy. Everyone's like, yeah, it's icky, but you know, it's relatively whatever it's done and we'll just keep it that way. Right. And if the 15 week ban was it was national in the sense that you could get an

abortion up to 15 weeks anywhere in the country, then you might have a little bit more support for it. But what 15 weeks says is no, this is- That's the cap. That's the cap. That's right. But states- Sorry, that's the ceiling, not the floor. Right, so other states can then make it six weeks or ban it completely.

And so then Democrats and abortion rights advocates are like, well, we don't need that. Because all you're doing then is putting a 15 week abortion ban in New York and California. Exactly. Why would a Democrat vote for that and allow cloture like here in Washington, D.C.? I'm pretty sure that you can get late term abortion, like basically whenever you want. Now, I think that's I don't agree with that. But my point is, like, why would somebody who lives in a state who has like late-term abortion sign a 15-week ban? They're like, no, I'm going to campaign against this because you're basically making it so that everybody can go under if they want to but not over if they want to.

I actually kind of do believe in the whole leave it up to the states thing because if you genuinely did leave it up to the states, quote-unquote, like genuine no abortion would really only exist in like four states in the whole – maybe five, like in the whole country after the democratic process kind of works its way out. I think, you know, at the end of the day, ironically, and this is what I've said, I've told this to my own pro-life friends, we probably will end up with more contraception and more abortion access in the United States post-Roe, let's say 10 years from now, just given the way that look at what just happened with the FDA. The FDA just approved over the counter birth control. That has never happened. That in no way that happens without Roe versus Wade. Although there's been a pretty successful effort to close abortion clinics and people forget about, people think about it just on a, on a policy level and a legal level, but there's also a kind

of structural operational level that you have to have doctors who are trained to perform abortion services, and then you have to have clinics that are able to actually serve clients. And as you have the laws in all of these different states constricting them, they're closing. And then you lose a lot of legacy expertise. And so for that reason, you may end up with much less depending on how things go. But yes, in 2024, this is going to be a huge issue. In my opinion, this is the issue. And I don't want it to be. I never wanted it. I think the more you argue about guns and abortion, the more I feel like I'm five years old living in Texas again. But you're the ones who overturned it. So you've got to defend it for the American people.

And I think that that is one where we have seen now state after state, referenda after referenda, election after election, abortion mattered so much more, frankly, than I ever thought possible or than Crystal thought possible. Maybe you too, going into 2020 when we were all here at the desk. Who thought that when the midterm results were happening? And throughout Trump's first term, whenever he was in a jam, if you noticed, he would turn to the evangelical movement. Absolutely. Those were his people. They had his back. Because he loves nothing more than loyalty. Whether he agrees with you or not, I think he has complete contempt for them,

but he loves the fact that they're loyal to him, and so they became his favorite people. Now I think he's bothered. He's like, what is going on here? Why are these people not loyal to me anymore? I gave them everything they want. Because he can't get in their minds that they are just ideologically and religiously driven movement that is not stopping because it doesn't poll well.

Okay. Look, it's going to be a, it's going to be a bind. Been saying it now ever since the 2022 election results and Trump's answer. I, I. You know why I find this so interesting? I respect Trump as a politician. So when I see him floundering like that, I'm like, man, you got 11 months and that's the best he could come up with? Because there is no good answer. This is not going to be good for you. Because he can either do the politically smart thing.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Which is to be for abortion rights. But he can't do that. He can't do that. He can't totally disavow what he did. So yeah, he's in a jam. It's going to be a tough gig. All right, let's go to Ukraine. This, again, was actually one of the best moments of the entire night, policy-wise, and possibly the most consequential should Trump ever become president. Again, it started with a voter.

It's interesting how that works. He was very concerned about the amount of money going to Ukraine and wanted to know what President Trump thought about it. And then Caitlyn decided to insert herself into some sort of win-lose situation for Trump's policy whenever it came to diplomacy. Here's the full exchange. Let's take a listen. The current administration has made it clear that we should continue to provide military equipment to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves? Do you support this decision? And how would you deal with the increasing threat posed by Vladimir Putin? First of all, thank you very much. It's really nice. And it's an important

question, so important, because we're giving away so much equipment. We don't have ammunition for ourselves right now. We don't have ammunition for ourselves. We're giving away so much. Absolutely. Do you want Ukraine to win this war? I don't think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people and breaking down this country.

Can I just follow up on that? You said you don't think in terms of winning and losing. Mr. President, can I just follow up on that because that's a really important statement that you just made there. Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war? I want everybody to stop dying. They're dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I'll have that done. I'll have that done in 24 hours. I'll have it done. When it comes to what's happening there, when you were in office, you said that you respected President Putin.

Do you still respect him today? He made a tremendous mistake. He was a smart guy. I remember I said he was smart, she was smart. Putin made a bad mistake, in my opinion. What was his mistake? His mistake was going in. He would have never gone in if I was president. We used to talk about it. Okay. So he made a mistake. He's not endorsing the Russian position. By going in. Well, first he's like, he never should have done it and never would have happened if I had been there. Of course. So that's the starting point. Second, he made a huge mistake. Third, this was

the most thoughtful answer I've seen a US politicianS. politician make yet. There is no winning. I want people to stop dying. Whenever he says, the other, you know, funny thing is, is that if you say, quote, I want Ukraine to win this war. Well, what does that mean? Do you want Ukraine to invade Russia? Do you want Ukraine to fully take back all of its territory pre-2022 or pre-2012? Because those are actually, or, yeah, which borders, you know, what it's like talking about Israel, but like with settlements, I'm like, well, 67, 45, whatever, you know,

it's like Balfour declaration. There's a lot of different ways that we can talk about it. Right. And that's why it's a nuanced answer. It was the best answer I've heard yet. I want everyone to stop dying. I want to bring the conflict to an end. And actually the admission by the press and by the freak out over this is that any thing that you say where I want the war to end and not necessarily 100% on the terms that Ukraine wants is some sort of capitulation towards Russia. That's the ludicrous part of the, of the reaction. Yeah. To say I don't think in terms of winning and losing is a genuinely kind of nuanced and enlightened way to think about war and peace. Right. Taking a controversial anti-death position.

Right. That he wants people to stop dying. Right. back to the Vietnam era, you would see the media coming after a president who was against the war saying, you don't want South Vietnam to win. Right. That's right. What does that mean, South Vietnam to win? Does it mean we're going to take over all of South Vietnam and run out all of the grills?

Does it mean we're going to take over North Vietnam and unify the country? Good point. If you said at the time, I don't think in terms in Vietnam of winning and losing. I think of stopping the death. Right. And you accomplished that policy agenda, there would be millions, millions of Vietnamese that were still alive as a result of that.

Yeah, or think about the Korean War or any of these others. These are messy conflicts. The borders move and change. South Korea never won. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, in my opinion, they did. They ended the war

and they became one of the most prosperous nations and developed nations on Earth. They literally sell us cell phones and cars. I mean, it worked out for them. After a whole bunch of military dictatorships

and death squads. True. Okay, but I'm just going to say, like, you know, at the end of the day, like, they first, and they gave me K-pop, all right? There you go.

They gave me BTS. So at the very least, they absolutely did win. People, you know, in North Korea, I'm pretty sure they're cracking down on k-pop because they view it as some sort of cultural my point being that like win lose if you talk to people in south korea today they're like yeah absolutely we're glad that it came to the conclusion that if you go to vietnam today yeah they don't even care about us they don't think about the war there's gigantic coca-cboards. You're like, what was this war over? We lost, but it doesn't look much different than it would if we won. And, you know, I think the most gracious thing about the Vietnamese is that they really don't hold it very much against you, which I think is nuts. You know, having spent some time in

Southeast Asia, I personally could not imagine, you know, having, yeah, exactly. And not that long ago. I mean, you know, life, not for example when i when you watch uh the ken burns documentary and you're watching the people who fought in the vietnamese war both on the american side but on the vietnamese side and you're like wow they're they're just they're talking like they're boomers yeah they don't even exactly they're lewd but they probably got 20 30 years left uh i know i actually have uh well future family members who fought in vietnam and you know it's actually kind of interesting for me because i'm like hey tell me what was that like you know 1968 like what was america like and life like kind of at that time but the fact that i could do that

about that conflict and then you know 50 something years later still be in a place um where those people who you know descendants maybe fathers even grand grandfathers, who were shot, killed, maimed, burned to death, whatever, don't hold it against. I think really what we're trying to say is these are messy. Making policy on deterministic statements like win-lose, miss the point, unless you're Ukrainian. And I think that's where I can have some sympathy. That's absolutely right. If you're Ukrainian, you are free to do whatever you want. And if I were you, by the way, I would think the exact same thing.

But I'm not you. You know, we're us. We could decide, like, to the extent that this marginal conflict matters at all to our lives, to our national policy, to these billions of dollars, and to our own national security, how and what we treat that. And that's, you know, people don't like to hear that, but sorry. I don't know what to say. Ukraine really doesn't matter to the fate of America, either way. It's nice when you help them, but that's pretty much it. I think if Biden can get the war to a resolution over the course of the next year, so that's, you know, just from a crass, cynical electoral perspective, he'd be in better shape.

There's no question. To strike, if he can strike some kind of... To help gas prices, supply chain. After whatever this counteroffensive is. Everyone can breathe some kind of, gas prices, fight chain. After whatever this counter offensive is. Everyone can breathe a little bit and be like, ah, okay, yeah. On the counter offensive,

we don't know how it's going to work. Doesn't mean there won't be another war in 10 years. Yeah, then what? Another hundred years. But, you know, there's, you can't stop that anymore.

To the point about the freak out, we probably should have put this up there earlier. Put this up there on, but we're having such a good time. We're talking. Adam Kinzinger, you know about the freak out, we probably should have put this up there earlier. Put this up there on the screen. But we're having such a good time. We're talking. Adam Kinzinger, you know, the freak out on the Republican side. For Trump not to say he wants Ukraine to win is insane.

Chris Christie calling him Putin's puppet. Donald Trump says he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Despite how ridiculous this is to say, I suspect he would try to do it by turning Ukraine over to Putin and Russia. Hashtag Putin's puppet. Chris Christie taking a little bit of a book out of Boomer Mom's Resistance Twitter. How's that going to work out in a Republican primary? Interesting, right? That struck me as his signal that either he's not, definitely not running for president, or thinks that there's some lane that doesn't exist. What did you make of that Putin's puppet? Oh, I just thought it was so foolish and outrageous, ridiculous,

both on its face and politically. I think Chris Christie loves the one thing that he's always been pretty good at, and that's called attention. And guess what? We're talking about it, and so was all the major networks. So now he gets to go on ABC as a contributor and CNN and everywhere else, and they all get to do segments about how Chris Christie called Trump Putin's puppet. And I think that's really the only

currency he's ever cared about. So I guess congratulations to Chris. Congratulations. Enough of Trump. Let's talk about the news and Title 42. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The United States is currently finalizing asylum restrictions to ramp up border deportations after Title 42 collapses. Let's spend some time, Ryan, first on Title 42. What is Title 42? Title 42 was the emergency, quote unquote, emergency policy that has been in effect now for three years at the southern border, which gives the United States, based on pandemic CDC-related guidance, to expel migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, regardless of their asylum status, return them to Mexico. Basically, pre-Biden, we were at

a status quo during COVID of the Remain in Mexico policy combined with Title 42, which significantly reduced the number of border crossings. Now, what is Remain in Mexico policy combined with Title 42, which significantly reduced the number of border crossings. Now, what is Remain in Mexico? Because this is also something that we need to discuss. Remain in Mexico is a policy through which Central American migrants, or really migrants from anywhere, who travel through Mexico to the United States to claim safe harbor status, must instead of applying for asylum in the United States as previous law and policy dictated, where they would remain, again, remain in America, eventually through some sort

of catch and release program were basically released into the wild and said, show up at a court in four years, something like that. A lot of them didn't show up or a lot of them would show up to one hearing. But then when they found out that the asylum hearing wasn't going to take it, then they wouldn't show up at all. And it was a basically backdoor illegal immigration. All right. So that was the previous policy. Remain in Mexico was instituted by the Trump administration. That said, you cannot apply for asylum in America. You have to remain in Mexico while you do so. U.S. asylum officers and others would hear your claim. It would be adjudicated in the United States. And whether you got asylum or not would then happen

in America and post-asylum status, if granted, you were allowed to remain. If not, otherwise, you return to your country of origin. All right. So Biden came into office and said one thing. I'm going to end remain in Mexico, but I'm going to keep Title 42. Title 42, in my opinion, was a political blessing to him because he didn't have to deal with it for two and a half years. He basically got to continue the policy of expulsion, of not as much catch and release, and all that. Then what happened? In the latest congressional session, there was an official end to the pandemic. By ending the pandemic, the emergency pandemic, you also end and sunset Title 42.

Now, with the end of Title 42, tens of thousands of migrants from across Central America and even South America, a lot of these people are coming from Venezuela now at this point, have transferred via Central America, via Mexico, and are on the other side of the border waiting for today because they know that they can no longer be expelled under pandemic authority. Now, a flood

of migrants was predicted. The reason why is because we were going to previously, if the change had not come into place, return to catch and release policy, where these people would come to the United States, they would be given a court date, they'd be like, I fear for my life, or something like that. And they were like, okay, show up at court in four years. And by the way, here's a work license and you can go do whatever you want. Now, what Biden has done is the one thing, Ryan, he promised not to do. He has effectively brought back the remain in Mexico policy by using the asylum restriction that we just showed you, where the new restriction will ramp up swift deportation of migrants who come across the U.S.-Mexico border by deploying U.S. asylum officers and saying that they will

have to basically go to Mexico and request refugee status, quote, in another country on their journey to the southern border before they will be heard, their asylum case in the U.S. So Biden promised on the campaign trail not to do this. He tried every which way to get out of it, to get this way, that way, and all that. And now we're basically right back to where we started after three years of Biden saying he's not going to do anything that Trump did at the border. And on top of that, Ryan, he's deploying 1,500 active U.S. duty military troops to the southern border. Can you imagine the freakout if Trump was president, if that was happening? Well, we don't have to imagine it. Your reaction.

There was a freakout. Yeah, yeah. Fair. Appropriately so. I think one tweak, I'm not 100% sure on this. People could maybe correct me in the comments. Sure.

I don't think you can get a work visa when you get released. Maybe we can figure this out. Catch and release. I mean, it depends on the status. It's like a work permit, just to be clear. So here is the investigation, permit, just to be clear. So here is

the investigation, the ones that would be harmed. Basically, the Biden administration denies it is granting employment authorization. However, recent articles suggest that at least some of migrants are being issued work documents at the time that they're being released from CBP custody. I'm not 100% sure. Under section 235B of the Immigration and Nationality Act, DHS is required to detain all aliens from the point at which they are encountered to the time that they are removed or granted status in the United States. However, with the increase of the border emergency catch and release policy, it has led to some instances through which work permits and work authorization

is permitted on a case-by-case basis. So that's where we're at. And to me, if somebody's in the country, they should have work authorization. Like, it's bizarre otherwise. Well, it depends. If you're here illegally, I don't know about that, right? Because then that basically is the incentive is like,

as long as you can get here, then you get to work. And you get to pay Social Security and all that. I mean, personally, I have a problem with that in terms of our immigration law. I was going to do my monologue today on sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela. Yes, please break that down for me. Which we dumped it for, in terms of our immigration law. I was going to do my monologue today on sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, which we dumped it for, so that we could talk more about the town hall from last night.

So there was a letter, and we talked about this briefly with Ro Khanna yesterday, who signed this letter. So Veronica Escobar, who is the congresswoman from El Paso, so one of the border towns that deals with this. Basically in a state of emergency right now. So she led this letter, So one of the border towns that deals with this. Basically in a state of emergency right now. Yeah. So she led this letter. And it comes after a report by the Center for Economic Policy and Research that expansively studied the consequences of sanctions and found that they do not perform the political function that people are claiming that they're going to perform, which is to pressure a government into bending its will to the United States.

But they do immiserate economically the population of the country. They don't really hurt the elites. They only ensconce the elites. Venezuela's envoy, Venezuela's opposition envoy, so this is the pro-U.S. dude who's here in Washington trying to rally support for whoever the next Juan Guaido is, who we're going to back in whatever coup attempt we try again in the future. He came out and said, I really do not think that it is a good idea if these sanctions on Venezuela continue,

because what you're going to do is you're going to create a political issue for Florida politicians. Which is true. And you're going to ensconce the Venezuelan elite and leadership in power. The claim is that you're going to be hurting Venezuelan political leadership with these sanctions. But in fact, it just stunts the economy and it stunts any ability for that economy to grow, which is kind of a prerequisite for producing an opposition. And it otherwise creates a calcified situation. If sanctions and embargoes were going to do anything, you would not have the same government in power in Cuba that you had 70 years ago. And Ben Rhodes, who was Obama's national security advisor,

now a pod save bro. The pod save bros have been on a roll lately on a bunch of stuff. And he made a great point. And he gets listened to in the Biden administration. So it's important what he says. He was like, so we currently have a policy of producing economic catastrophes in Cuba and Venezuela that then produce out migration flows. And then we're going to close the border and punt them back to Mexico. It's like, what? I mean, now I'm sure some of you are like, we don't close the border. It's wide open. Whatever. The policy is that they're not Opening the border and and granting asylum to every Cuban and Venezuela yet. We're also producing migration crises out of those countries He's like do one or the other so his argument is like enough with these sanctions like these countries I agree with that the only reason why I do think it is cope at least on the part of a lot of liberals is This comes to the heart of the idea that we are solely responsible for whatever's going on in Central and South America,

to which I just fundamentally reject. Crystal and I have had this debate a million times, but listen, it's like the CIA-Sandinista coup was like 50 years ago, or what, 40 years ago. Actually, maybe more, now that I think about it. I just don't think that that is the major cause of migration to the United States. Like, El Salvador being drug-infested is its own problem. Like, that's a problem that, yes, America has contributed to somewhat, but democratically, they have decided

to come up with a solution. You may not like that solution, but they have it certainly in place right now with what's going on there. And I look at it multifaceted. I don't even disagree. I actually do think we should probably remove these sanctions if that is what's contributing. At the same time, though, to me, it's ludicrous that we don't have something called a safe third country agreement with Mexico. So what people don't understand is if you were to traverse the United States and go to Canada to request asylum, they would reject your asylum claim because America is a safe third country. As in under UN, the UN refugee asylum law or whatever, if you are declared a safe third country and we have an agreement in between states, they would say, no, we're not accepting your asylum claim in Canada

because you should have applied in America. Well, the reason why people are able to traverse Mexico and enter America is that Mexico is not a declared safe third country. Now, unfortunately for our businesses, to get is not a declared safe third country. Now, unfortunately for our businesses, for to get Mexico to become a safe third country agreement, we would have to get them to agree they're a safe third country. And why would they agree to that? They don't want to deal with all the asylum down on their Guatemalan border just as much as we don't want to deal with what's going on down there too. So I would look at it two things. Agree we should reduce migration, but I also think

the idea that these people are quote unquote fleeing for their lives is ludicrous because here's the truth. Ask them yourselves. They're coming here for economic migration and that's legitimate. That's fine. My parents came here for economic reasons, but they had to go through a legal process. And my point is that you don't get to just decide you want to come to America. You have to apply. It's onerous. Now you can just debate whether it should be easier or not. I think that the way we do immigration is stupid because it's mostly family-based called chain migration. It should be more based on skills and on merit. But my point is, is that we all need to be more honest here. They're coming here for economic reasons. That you're not, you know, like the people are like, oh, we're fleeing violence,

fleeing domestic abuse. By that standard, any person who's ever been in a domestically violent situation would qualify for asylum in the United States. That's like a billion people, right? I mean, it's just not going to work. It's not practicable for having a genuine system. Right. And if that's true, then we should just lift the sanctions. I'm with you, man. Yeah. Right. And I'm sure you've then we should just lift the sanctions. I'm with you, man. And I'm sure you've had this argument a thousand times, like you said with Crystal, but I would just add that Hillary Clinton's

basically coup in Honduras was about 2009. The Guatemalan dirty war didn't end until the 1990s. El Salvador's gang problem comes from the mass deportation of gang members from the United States. Yeah, but they were here illegally. Like, we're not supposed to deport them. Why were they here illegally? Because we backed the dirty war in the 1980s. That's, I mean, we also, they had their own problems, Ryan. They had big earthquakes and all these other natural disasters, which crashed. I'm just saying, it's not all America's fault.

First, this is why I always point to, why is Costa Rica doing so well? We didn't coup them, and we didn't create a dirty war there. Costa Rica's in the same place geographically. They have the same, you know, they have no military. They have no problems going on. Exactly. No U.S.-backed military. Well, I mean, to be fair, we basically guarantee their security.

So it's not like America doesn't have it. So let's do that everywhere. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I wanted to guarantee security for all these places. Well, you're, you're, you don't get anything for free. Like, and this is also the coming, coming to roost of our hollowing out of our middle class. So because the deal that we made with our middle class and our manufacturing base was that we're going to destroy our capacity to like produce here in the United States. But in

exchange, you're going to get a lot of cheap crap, cheap toys, cheap bananas. Which is mostly made in Mexico or China. And it's going to be made in Mexico. And then once that gets too expensive, it's going to be made in Central America. And in order to make it in Central America, we're going to have to prop up vicious right-wing dictators who are going to run death squads, they're going to kill union organizers. And we're going to make sure that unions and leftists cannot gain power in these countries because that would raise the price of consumer goods. And if consumer goods are more expensive, then we can't hollow out our industrial core.

And so the result of that is these kind of desiccated Central American and South American countries, which are now sending people flooding north. Certainly. Yeah, look, I'm not going to deny that America didn't have a role. I don't think we're the sole cause of all their problems. But I also think here's the other issue, and I always think about this. By the idea that if it was America's fault that Central American nations are all this way, then why is it fair for Central Americans to be able to come here and get asylum just because they can walk here and not Iraq? I mean, by that standard, every Iraqi should be able to get asylum

in the United States. They've had way more of a right to it, I think, than anybody else. I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm saying, though, by that standard, it's not really fair because Iraqis can't just walk here. They probably would come if they could. Actually, some people at the border are actually from the Middle East, ironically enough. So anyway, I think that ideologically, I understand where people are coming from. Nobody's saying you don't have compassion. I got compassion for anybody who wants to come to this country.

I've been all over this world, and anytime you meet somebody, especially in a developing situation, I was like, wow, America, I would love to go there sometime. And I think that's great. I really do. But that doesn't mean though, that everybody does have the right to come here. And I think that is where a lot of people have the presumption. And if we have the standard of which, well, if you're fleeing, you know, third world status, I mean, that's, there's what, 4 billion people or whatever who live in that. So we got to have a law. You got to have a standard. And then we get to decide what that standard is or whatever who live in that. So we've got to have a law. You've got to have a standard. And then we get to decide what that standard is. We did so in 1965.

That's the last time that we really had a wholesale change of our U.S. immigration system. And I think everything should be up for debate, everything they were talking about here. So I appreciate the conversation, though, Ryan. It actually was, I think, was thoughtful. And people will— We can agree on lifting the sanctions, right? Sure, absolutely. I think actually a lot of right-wingers outside of the Florida people.

And you guys are done because it's not a swing state anymore, so we don't want to hear from you. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think. Okay, let's go to the second one here. Unless you're from Florida. Not interested. Unless you're from Florida. Although, trust me, my DMs get very full of Cubans every time we talk about this. All right, let's go ahead to the last part here and talk about Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Elon Musk,

and everything that's happening there. We don't want to make it all just about CNN, did we? So ironically, after Tucker announced that he's coming to Twitter, I did that breaking news segment for everybody. Elon actually is now inviting Don Lemon onto the platform. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Elon invites ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon to host a show on Twitter. He replied

to one of his tweets, have you considered doing your show on this platform? Maybe worth a try. Audience is much bigger. And this all comes amid questions around how the Tucker show is going to work and Elon making Twitter into a place for long-form video and podcasting. Cards on the table. I am personally skeptical that this is going to work out. And listen, I think Elon is a legendary engineer and all of that. If anybody could do it, maybe it could be him. Here are the reasons why it would be trepidatious.

Number one, they already tried video on Twitter and Facebook. It was called the pivot to video. I actually lived through it and watched it fail. There was a show called AM2DM, which was by BuzzFeed News, that was on Twitter. It was like a morning show on Twitter. It was a horrendous failure. It was a disaster. Now, that said, those hosts were not talented.

And Tucker is, you know, look, you can hate the man, but you can very least you have to agree he's good at what he does. So generational talent, much better at what he does, built-in audience, built-in elite interest that's going to be there, not in the same way. My question is about the long-term sustainability. You know, the hot news around launching, that only lasts, I mean, how long did it last here at Breaking Points? Maybe two weeks before we were into, you know, kind of a rhythm. You gotta have the tools and the platform,

the ability to be able to watch long-form content and consume long-form content. And my concern around Twitter is, is that when you're scrolling, especially Twitter video, like if you watch Twitter video, what are the videos you watch on Twitter? For me, it's news clips and then like brawls

in the middle of students randomly getting- Yes, lately a bunch of brawls. Yeah, brawls, like so-and-so smacks so-and-so in the face. Or a camel walking across the street. Or a camel or like a turtle, or if my fiance's DMing me, cat videos. As I'm watching these, but here's something universal I've noticed with my Twitter

video consumption. I very rarely listen to the clip. I hover over it. I watch what happens. I grin and then I keep scrolling. That's not really what's happening here on YouTube. The vast majority of the people who are watching this clip clicked on it and are doing so intentionally. A lot of them are watching it on their phone. They've got their earbuds in. They're sitting there and they're locked into what you and I are saying. They're locked into a long form thing. They don't even have the ability really to scroll if they don't want to, unless I guess you have YouTube premium or whatever.

The point being that whenever you are watching a YouTube clip, the platform is designed around watching and retention. Twitter is designed for something else. Not saying, again, he can't do it. Just that Facebook tried this too. Their whole pivot to video, they had the Mike.com, you remember this? All those shows. When I worked at the Daily Caller, oh my God, guys. They were showering money on news outlets. We were going all in on Facebook. And then overnight, they decided to just drop it and

nuked a bunch of companies. So what do you make of it? Because you let, you lived through all of this just like I did. Yes. It's, it's goes to the question of first screen, second screen. And, uh, so YouTube is like a first screen where, or, and your television is like a first screen. It's like, that's the thing that you're primarily watching. Your second, second screen app is something that you're messing with on the side. Twitter is a second screen app. It is fed content, which Tucker knows because he said that. He said in his video recently that cable produces the material that we then talk about on Twitter. So it raises the question, if you're watching Tucker on Twitter, how do you tweet? That's a good point. Yeah, how do you clip it out? And people's fingers are going to be like

shaking because as people are watching on YouTube right now, if they have thoughts about what we're saying, they go over to Twitter and be like, can you believe what Ryan said? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Yes. And people do it all the time. But if you are watching it on Twitter, then you have to leave what you're watching in order to tweet. And people's, I think, impulse to post is so strong in this distracted, scattered time that we live in that they're not going to be able to maintain their attention through a 10-minute talker monologue because they want to comment on it. Here's a good point, too, to what we just made. 80% of all Twitter users are on a mobile device. 80%. So then you've got

to think about whenever you're in the Twitter experience in the app, I'm watching a video, but I also have tweets going by maybe underneath. Do I have a comments? Am I able to tweet underneath as a comment? How does the comment system work? Can we upvote, downvote, retweet, reapply, and all that? We have all that figured out on YouTube, on Rumble, on Odyssey, any of these video platforms. And the thing is they're designed for video. So it's just, it just looks different to me. Once again, I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just raising all of the engineering, like problems at a very first principles level that raised my mind of like, Hmm, I don't know about this. Like I, this, my immediate reaction is, wow, that's a

gamble. A lot of, some people contacted me though. Like it's not a gamble. Like Elon knows what he's doing. I'm like, I'm not even saying that. I'm just like, it doesn't exist yet, right? So by definition, it's a gamble. Come on. Elon stance, come on. I'm willing to see. I mean, right now, I'll tell you what the main thing that annoys me is.

I can't speed up the clips. Drives me nuts. I never watch a YouTube video at 1x. For your life draining out of you. Oh, I'm just like, oh, my time. I have so many other things I could be doing at this moment. But I'm one of those freaks who listens at 3.5 speed. So what do I know?

Not on YouTube, on Spotify. Because thanks to them for giving me that ability. And Sagar speaks in 2x. I do speak in 2x. People have told me that before. I speak in like 0.5x. Well, then we balance out. So that means you should listen to us at 1.5.

And you'll get it at a very good speed. Let's go to the second part here, which is important. Put it up there on the screen there, guys, please. Semaphore, inside Tucker Carlson's new media plan. So this is pretty interesting. Really, it gets to one of the biggest questions, which is why did Tucker go to Twitter in the first place? And there's actually a fascinating contract piece which debuts inside of this. Inside of Tucker's contract with Fox, according to his people who leaked this to Semaphore, he had a provision of his contract, Ryan, where he was allowed to have personal control over his Twitter account. So because of that, they have a better argument

as to why a show on Twitter is not a breach of contract or non-compete. And so what do we come to the conclusion of? This is a major reason why, not on top of the free speech and all that stuff that he talked about in his relationship with Elon, why he might've chosen to go with Twitter in the first place

was specifically because they believed that, A, they could sue Fox for a violation of contract, but B, that Fox would have a harder time in court with some sort of cease and desist if they were to debut on Twitter in the first place. It actually makes perfect sense whenever you think about it. Right, and whenever Fox signed that contract, A, they didn't think they'd be firing Tucker,

but B, they didn't think Elon would be buying Twitter. Because Elon buying Twitter opens up the possibility for this to happen. Even if it's true, which I don't necessarily believe that they don't have a deal. Right. Even if that's true, the old Twitter would probably be like throttling him. Oh, of course. Yeah. And it would take him down. Deplatform him. And so it wouldn't be the kind of avenue that it is for him now, right? And they also didn't see Elon's kind of pivot to video coming didn't see Elon coming. So with all that we said about the Problems with Twitter as a first screen kind of video platform if that's all you got because of this loophole in your contract then Yeah, I all means.

Go for it. It'll produce viral clips. Yeah, there's no question. Which perhaps is all he needs in order to stay relevant until he can get back on whatever. Here was the quote that they say, Tucker prioritizes influence. Twitter allows him to not just be another podcaster, to get in front of a large influential audience. He can get back to talking about the news quickly there. So that is frankly the only piece I totally disagree with. And I am not saying that we have any influence. I wish we had more influence.

I would love that if I did. But my thing is that it's like Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan seeks no influence, but because of his audience size, he has influence. So saying just another podcaster, in my opinion, is a little bit derogatory. Not at us. I'm talking about the podcasters who do have, I mean, Charlamagne Tha God is technically a podcaster. I mean, guess what? He's an influential figure and his clips go viral no

matter what. So I think what he's getting at is Republican politics. But here, once again, I want to quibble. Matt Walsh is a podcaster. In my opinion, he is probably the single most important person in the GOP outside of elected officials today. That's not an endorsement. I'm saying like, if you think like, Libs of TikTok is like a count associated with Matt Walshism. Walsh, with the What Is A Woman documentary, with his Twitter account, he basically single-handedly kind of started the Bud Light thing.

You can't deny the results. So that would be like saying that Matt Walsh is just a podcaster and has no influence. No, I mean, influence is not, being a podcaster has nothing to do with influence or not. Influence itself does. Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is one of the most influential people in Republican politics today. There's no question. In terms of the amount of young Republicans and others who consume his content, it's off the chain. Tim Pool, all these other people. And the way I know that Tim Pool is influential is I see

Republican politicians on his show. Guess what? They wouldn't be going on his show if they didn't think that it mattered if i see matt gates on his show i'm like yeah he's influential uh steve bannon is a podcaster do you believe that steve bannon doesn't have any influence jd vance who was on our show he was on war room yesterday right why because of. That's the reason. So influence is what you make of it, not what you whether you're a podcaster or not. That's my only major quibble with this. It is maybe a day. It is it is exposing, I think, Tucker's somewhat dated like view. It is. It's very cable news view. He's a Washington creature. And I and I that's not a criticism or not, because I'm a Washington preacher too. But so he has a little Washington brain there, and he still thinks of Twitter as the place where pundits, politicians, and the elites are gathering,

and it's interesting to hear him kind of still want that. Even what he said in his video, remember, when you brought up, where he said, "'Twitter is the place we talk about cable news.' It's also the place that we talk about Matt Walsh. It's also the place that we talk about Ben Shapiro. It's a place where clips of all kinds go viral. Our clips have gone viral before on Twitter, not always for the best reasons, but they go viral. Can't control that. People often actually will react. Most of the time,

when elites are reacting to our show, it's because of some stuff that went viral on Twitter. None of them actually would watch the show. But my point is that Twitter is just a place to debate and to distribute and to have influence. It's not just about cable. Sometimes it's about cable. Cable is fun to dunk on. But people dunk on, you know, YouTubers are dunking on each other on Twitter all the time. And my point is that it's just more about the function of the medium more than the clip itself.

Also worth noting, Elon, according to Elon, let's put this up there on the screen, says he wants to be clear, quote, We have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules and rewards of all content creators. Rewards mean subscriptions and advertising revenue share, quote, coming soon, which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising views associated with the content. That actually gets to something we were just talking about, Ryan. Building out the ad share system that YouTube, I mean, the YouTube ad program is, what, 10 years in the making? Maybe more. And the algorithm and the cut and the way you think about all that is very difficult.

I would also say if I were Tucker, I don't ever would want to be in a situation where I'm reliant on advertising revenue ever again, given the amount of advertisers that boycotted his show. So how do you know that advertisers aren't going to boycott on Twitter or are going to be like, don't you dare serve my content on the Tucker card?

Now you're in the exact same boat. I mean, hopefully he has enough money. He doesn't have to worry about this, but it is a concern. His show is kind of the peak example of the thing that advertisers are scared of. And Fox is out there claiming that they're now getting all this extra advertising revenue into the eight, eight o'clock hour. But broadly politics in general is advertising kryptonite. Correct. And as we see this on YouTube, for example, all the time. I'll take people inside. When I talk to YouTubers who work in tech, their average CPM, as in the amount of cost they get paid per video, not so that's RPM, revenue per million or whatever. See, their average CPM on advertising in terms of the dollar amount that they're allowed to sell

is double and sometimes triple what we sell here on Breaking Points. We don't sell anything. YouTube obviously does. And you know why ours is less? Politics. Politics is toxic. The brands are like, yeah. This is a reason we don't rely on advertisers because, you know, the only advertisers who care about politics, who are they, Ryan? People who want to influence the political process. I ain't taking any big pharma process. I won't be taking a dime from them either in terms of our support for counterpoint. So yeah, the point is, is that that's not the way we run our business. Hence, we have a subscription revenue. Why there are pitfalls in this all in the first place. And yeah, it's a very, very interesting time. I've often said here, COVID opened my eyes to the corruption of the medical system.

Before the pandemic, I thought some doctors' organizations were acting like idiots whenever it came to the culture war, like gender ideology. But, you know, on most other areas, they could by and large be trusted, right? I knew pharma was corrupt on the drug front, but my eyes were not open to the totality of corruption in the entire field. Doctors both socially and financially doing what's in their best interest, medical journals being used as tools of the establishment, abandoning real science, and most important of all, the pervasion of money into the very root of the system.

Since then, my eyes are now open. My default position now for doctors is, when you make a recommendation to me, prove it. Why do I actually need something? Why is it not part of a larger money-making scheme? And it's with that orientation that I saw an interesting piece of news pop up yesterday from five years ago I never would have thought anything about. Quote, Now, according to them, because of increasing rates of breast cancer in the 40 to 50-year-old demographic, they're increasing screening recommendations for everyone. Pre-COVID saga would have been like, okay, whatever, sounds reasonable on its face.

Post-COVID, though, immediately I'm thinking this. Sounds like a multi-billion dollar gift to the mammogram industry and the doctors and the nurses who perform these procedures. So, am I right? Let's think about it a little bit, shall we? It only took me like 10 minutes to find

that not even 10 years ago, doctors involved with women's health were singing a very different tune about mammogram screening. In 2015, a major study in health affairs analyzed 700,000 women from 2011 to 2013 between the ages of 40 to 59 who had routine mammograms. 11% of these women had, quote, suspicious mammograms and were subjected to further testing, including repeat mammograms, ultrasounds, and needle biopsies. Quote, for nearly all these women, 98.6%, cancer was not confirmed in further testing. Now, that's crazy, right? But it actually gets crazier. The study authors found that false alarms for women for the entire female population over 40

was costing the United States $2.8 billion each year on follow-up test results for suspicious results that were not cancer. And that's just the dollars. Overtreatment was actually even more of a concern. They said that even when cancer was detected, those tumors might be of low risk to the patient, but that once suspicions were raised, overtreatment was the result, including mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation in women who may not have needed any medical treatment at all otherwise.

A similar finding actually occurred in a major study of Danish and Norwegian women. Just last year, they found that, quote, the advantages of breast cancer screenings have steadily diminished to the point where they are no longer outweighed by the cost associated with over-diagnosis and over-treatment. The study reasoned that, quote, one in five women receive a superfluous diagnosis because

of screening that they would never have noticed or felt that they had breast cancer during their entire lifetime, which leads to painful over-treatment and higher costs of tests. In fact, the Breast Cancer Action Network is a group based in the US, which is entirely premised on providing women with an average chance of breast cancer with facts like this. Consider this graphic that they actually produce. If a group of 1,050-year-old women is screened over the next 10 years, 100 will get a false positive, 23 will get breast cancer, five will die with or without screening, 1 will die without screening, but 5 will be diagnosed with cancer. That will never be life-threatening or require treatment,

to be clear. The group and people who are raising awareness about this actually do care a lot, though, about preventing breast cancer. But instead, they want people to focus on what prevention will actually look like and stop it in the first place. That will be less toxic and more affordable both for them and for all of us. That's the final and most important point. The average cost of a mammogram in the United States is somewhere around $500. Now, considering the biennial recommendation, that's $250 a year for women from the age of 40 onwards. That is tens of billions of dollars a year paid in fat insurance premiums to the health insurance companies who give it away to the healthcare

industry, and none of it makes the difference that they say that it will make. That's the issue with our medical system in a nutshell. We don't even focus on real prevention. Everything ranging from exercise, obesity, proper diet, a myriad of prevention techniques, which other doctors like Dr. Vinay Prasad can tell you about, reducing all-cause mortality on cancer specifically. And instead, though, we're spending billions on programs supposedly to help, but may do just as much harm instead. This is a common theme these days with so-called screening practices recommended by doctors. It reminds me of colonoscopies. That practice was recommended to millions of men now for years as massively effective. It didn't really work that well though at all when it had a gold standard trial.

It only reduced their colon cancer risk by one fifth, way below the previous estimates of the test's efficacy and quote, didn't provide any significant reduction in colon cancer mortality. Modern medicine is premised on the idea that technology has conquered biology. It's what justifies their secret knowledge and their primacy in society. In some cases, that is true, but it's not always true. And this case highlights why all of the US and all of us must take back responsibility for our own health. Doctors and medical associations do not get to make decisions for us. We do.

It is on everyone. Do research. Ask questions. Because if you don't, we are going to keep getting swindled in the name of keeping us all healthier. What did you make of this, Ryan? It's something that I'd never thought about. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Let's get to our interview with Senator J.D. Vance.

I do want to say this because I believe that this is ethical. I have a previous prior relationship with Senator Vance. I think that anybody who sees me interview him should know that. We were personal friends years before he ever ran for the Senate. That being said, I tried my best in this interview and Ryan Grim was there to help me be accountable. Let's get to it. Joining us now, our guest, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. It's great to see you, sir. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the Railway Safety Act. We're actually going to talk about some

policy on television. It's a shocking thing. It's going to put it up there on the screen. President Trump actually endorsed the bill. He said, Crooked Joe Biden has still not visited the incredible patriots of East Palestine. Our movement will be their voice. We will never forget them. J.D. Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make sure something like this never happens again. That's why it's so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act. So, J.D., tell us a little bit about this bill that has now been uniquely endorsed by President Trump and President Biden. Never seen anything like it. Yeah, So first of all, it was one of the weird ways in which President Trump has sort of reoriented the Republican Party. It's hard to imagine a

Republican president 10 years ago coming out and endorsing a legislation like this, but it's pretty simple and straightforward. So number one, East Palestine had this terrible problem, terrible train crash and a chemical fire afterwards. And the firefighters had no idea what they were dealing with as they went in to fight the fire. Changes the notice requirements change that. The second thing is it enhances the safety and inspection requirements. So hopefully the next East Palestine doesn't happen in the first place. And of course, this has caused the railway lobby and the usual suspects in Washington, D.C. to come out against it. And in a lot of ways, I think it illustrates a broader fight that's happening within the conservative movement right now, which is do we stand up for the people who

sent us to Washington or do we stand up for the people who sent us to Washington, or do we stand up for the special interests who have dominated conservative politics for so long? I'm very gratified that we've got a lot of good bipartisan support. I think we're going to get it out of the Senate, and then, of course, onto the House. Okay. Well, what I'm interested in is the intra-Republican fight. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, please. We've got Ted Cruz coming out saying he will not be, he's going to oppose the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act. I know that there was some discussion in Markup in which he called what he was saying ridiculous. Talk and break down a little bit about why what he was saying was ridiculous. Well, Ted Cruz is a friend, right?

He's one of the few people that I knew in the Senate before I got to Washington. But I think the fundamental argument here that Ted made is he doesn't like the fact that the bill gives any discretion or any authority to the Biden administration, right? Well, the Biden administration enforces the laws. So I've been saying for the past three months, and a lot of Republicans have been echoing me, that Biden administration needs to do more. So here's a piece of legislation that forces the Biden administration to do more. You can't, on the one hand, say they're not doing enough, and on the other hand, fight a piece of legislation that forces them to actually take action.

There's a deeper problem here, which is if you think that we're going to have to fight back against corporate America, against big tech, against the pharmaceutical industry, if you think we're going to have to do these things, well, the government's pretty much the only path in town. That is the representation of the people. That is the entity that has the actual authority and the power to go after something like a big tech or like the railway industry. So you've got to be willing to use the power that the people gave us under this constitutional system. And I understand people are reactive. And look, sometimes, of course, the government, oftentimes, the government does things it shouldn't do. Sometimes it fights progressive battles that it shouldn't fight. But if we're going to win the argument, we have to be willing to actually use the levers of power

and use what the people gave us. That's what this fight is all about. And I'm wondering about the partisan politics a little bit, because about six years ago, Rob Portman, former senator from Ohio, was working with Democrats on an opioid treatment bill. And Democratic leadership really did not want Democrats working with him on this because they didn't want him to get a win in an election year. Sure. And I'm wondering, you know, Sherrod Brown is one of your co-sponsors on this bill. He's up for reelection. Have you gotten any pressure from kind of Republican establishment forces saying, what are you doing? You're just going to help, you're going to help Democrats get elected here.

No, not at all, actually. I've, I've, I've wondered about that, but everybody's pretty much given me the line of, look, you have to serve your constituents. This is a very, very important issue to the people of Ohio. And so you have to work on it. And so I've gotten no pressure on that front. I mean, look, I'm a Republican. Sherrod and I have worked on this, but I'm going to endorse Sherrod's opponent. I'm going to try to work to get that Republican elected. Nobody doubts that. But at the same time, you have to do the business that the people sent you to do. You can't use partisan politics as an excuse to not do your job every election cycle because, I mean, hell, we're in the election cycle pretty've looked a little bit about, Troy Niels and the other committee members, and this is where the bill probably will face most of its opposition from,

again, inside the Republican Party. Now that President Trump has endorsed that, do you think that that will make a difference in the way that you can try and move this bill through? Well, it definitely makes a difference. The question is whether, you know, three months down the road after we've already had the debt ceiling fight and hopefully successfully resolved it, where are we actually at on railway safety? The one thing I've realized about this town, I'm a new guy, right? I've been here for five months, is that it's very important to get things done when the town's energy is focused on a particular issue. We were really focused on East Palestine two months ago. Yeah, that's right. We're a little focused on East Palestine today.

I'm very focused on it, but the town is focused a little bit on it. Where are we at in three months? That to me is going to be the biggest hangup. Trump gave us a lot of momentum. The question is where do we actually land in a few months? Okay. There will be another kind of union railroad executive contract struggle in a couple of years from now. You just missed, right? The last vote by a couple of weeks. I'm curious, but there was some hint that there might be some Republican support for the union, for the rail workers. Are you sensing any more? And would you, do you think you would, if you were in the Senate at the time, would you have voted with the workers? Do you think you would in the future if the contract fight comes to the Senate? So one, I would have voted with the unions. Two, to his credit, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, a few others actually

aligned with the unions there, which was exactly the right thing to do. Look, whether you like the unions or you don't like the unions, it is not the job of the U.S. Senate to do a bailout of the rail industry by settling their labor dispute. It is between the union and the rail industry. Let them settle it. And this is one of the arguments I've actually made about this particular bill is if you're going to, as a U.S. Senate, as a U.S. Congress, bail the railways out of their labor disputes, you can't then come to me and cry free market when we try to force those union or force the railways to observe some proper safety standards. The other crazy thing about this is I can't think of any industry that has such a socialized risk-loss business model. If the rail industry crashes a train or sets off a chemical bomb in a place like East Palestine,

the taxpayers pick up a huge amount of that tab. If we're going to pick up the tab, we can demand some common sense safety standards. Well, pharma would give them a run for their money. So we're talking here about railway. And here is a bigger question, I think, and kind of gets to the philosophy. You referenced the debt ceiling fight and whether we're going to get through it. Before we walked in here, President Trump actually endorsed saying, if we don't cut spending and default, how do you as a Republican who is, you know, I would say divorced at least somewhat from previous conservative orthodoxy, how do you think about the debt ceiling and how do you think about spending? Well, look, I mean, you know, I'm one of the few Republicans who during my campaign,

you know, I endorsed critical parts of the social safety net. I've endorsed the idea that every American should have health care, though I may disagree with Bernie Sanders on how we actually get that done. But we do have a massive problem of way too much money going into the economy, which is inflating the prices of a lot of things. And that's actually emissarating a lot of people at the lower and middle income. So I actually do think that we have to get some control of the federal budget here. And I think, look, Joe Biden doesn't like what McCarthy has done, okay? I guarantee you the 217 House Republicans who voted for McCarthy's package, every single one of them could have picked something that they didn't like about that package, but they at least have advanced

a solution here. The thing that really bothers me about the president's posture is he sort of stepped back and said, my way or the highway. Well, you can't do that. You have to negotiate with these guys. I think we have to cut spending. Basically, the way that I think about it is 2019, the federal government spent $4.4 trillion. Now we're talking about spending $6 to $7 trillion. We can get back to pre-COVID spending levels or something like it without causing immiseration of the poor, and that should be the goal. And Biden's response to Kevin McCarthy saying, isn't there anything we can cut, was like, hey, look, we can do more on Medicare, prescription drug negotiation. There's corporate tax cuts. I mean, there's corporate tax cuts we could roll back. There's tax cuts for the wealthy we could roll back.

Where do you come down on that? Look, I think everything should be on the table here. We have to pay the country's debts and everything should be on the table. Though I think it's interesting President Trump during the town hall last night endorsed a negotiating posture, which is fundamentally rooted in reality. I think the headline is President Trump gives financial advice. He's telling everybody just go ahead and drive things off the cliff. Allow the default. I didn't take that as what he was saying at all.

He's talking about the negotiating posture here. You have to be willing to go right to the end if you're in a game of chicken. And so that was sort of how I took that. But look, I mean, if McCarthy and Biden come up with a deal, that is the deal that's going to work for the American people. The one thing that the Senate, at least Senate Republicans, have been pretty consistent on is, look, we don't control this system, right? We are the minority party in the Senate. This fundamentally has to be a negotiation between McCarthy and Biden. The deal they come up with is fundamentally the deal that's going to pay the country's debts. Final question for me, J.D., President Trump, the big town hall, we're spending a bunch of our show on it. There's a lot of hand-wringing in Washington and New York

City today about democracy, all that you've endorsed President Trump. Anything changed from the town hall, from the E. Jean Carroll, and all of that as to your posture towards the president? No, nothing's changed. I went on to CNN last night, first time I've been on CNN in a while, and gave a full-throated endorsement to the president. I thought he did a very good job. What I really liked last night is that was Trump in his very best. He was funny. This town is absurd. A lot of what goes on here is absurd. The people who are sort of pearl clutching and talking about the end of democracy, they're the ones who are going to drive this country off a cliff because everybody else looks at this and says, you know, it's kind of ridiculous.

We should be able to make fun of it. And I think having a little bit of self-awareness and a little bit of humor makes it easier to govern, not harder. Well, I think the audience agreed with you. As we kept saying, Republican voters like Trump. Certainly that particular audience. That particular audience. That audience liked him, yeah. I meant that audience, not necessarily our audience. I'm sure you'll get some hate, but I do too. So it is what it is. Thank you so very much for joining us, sir. We really appreciate your time. Good to see you guys. Thank you. Ryan, by the way, I thought you did a great job

in that interview. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, and I just want to say, oh, go ahead. No, we were talking just before that. I wasn't sure

if he would remember it or not. And like, whenever he was, he had finished up Hillbilly, he had come to the Huffington Post to promote it. Yeah.

And Arianna was like, you need to talk to J.D. Vance. He's such a wonderful young man. And we had a long phone call where I gave him tips on how to promote the book. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Well, it worked out for him, huh? And then it was like six months later, the thing's like a national bestseller.

I'm like, well, obviously those tips worked. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's all right and grim. That's why J.D. Vance is in the Senate. I want to say thank you, man, for sitting in. You and Emily are such a fantastic addition to the team. You guys do a really great job.

I really love hosting the show with you. It's a great time. How was the right-wing show? Oh, we loved it. Well, I wasn't right-wing. I'm the liberal. There you go. According to my MAGA critics, I am the liberal here on the show.

You can never please these people, which is why you shouldn't even try. There you go. Anyway, look, thank you to everybody who helps support the show, helps support the work that we do. We're building this new studio. We had Senator Vance here. I look at that CNN town hall and I look at something that I don't want that to be only in the domain of cable. That's got to be in the domain of people like us for the ability to convene. We have RFK Jr. hopefully right here in the studio at the desk that we'll be able to question him and treat him in a professional way, but in a challenging way if possible. We should pack it with RFK Jr. fans.

Yeah, that's right. We should have only RFK Jr. fans here. But my point is, is that there's no reason why they need to be the ones making news. It can be all of us. So help us support our work, breakingpoints.com. And otherwise, we will see you all next week. See you then. We'll see you next time. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep.

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