Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/16/22: Buffalo Shooting, NATO Expansion, Elon's Plans, Electoral Outlook, Netflix Turmoil, Economic Collapse, & More!

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Buffalo mass shooting, NATO expansion moving forward, Elon's Twitter purchase, polling data on the state of the country, Netflix's cultural change, Biden's new slogans, economic collapse, and the electoral forecast for PA and beyond!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/J. Miles Coleman: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/author/j-miles-coleman/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Go to breakingpoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big stories breaking for you this morning. First of all, Finland and Sweden inching even closer to joining NATO. We will tell you what obstacles remain, what the potential fallout will be, and our thoughts on all of that.

Also, Elon Musk sort of signaling maybe he's not 100% going forward with the Twitter deal. It could be a bargain. We'll see. Anyway, we'll tell you about what's going on there. New polling reveals exactly how abortion may impact the midterm election. So far, I would say that our analysis has been vindicated that it may help Democrats on the margins, but is probably not going to be the game changer

that they would need to avoid some pretty devastating losses this fall. We also have a very interesting memo coming out from Netflix, basically telling employees, if you don't like all the content that we are publishing, you feel free to go get another job. We have an analyst on, first time on the show, talking about the primaries that are unfolding tomorrow, some big ones in particular in the state of Pennsylvania, but also in North Carolina. So we will get to all of that. But we wanted to start with what is just a horrific tragedy and act of pure evil coming out of Buffalo mass shooting over this weekend by a racist white supremacist. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the

screen. Buffalo supermarket shooting. What do we know so far? So they say on Saturday afternoon, a white 18 yearyear-old wearing military gear and live streaming with a helmet camera opened fire Saturday afternoon at Topps Friendly Market. It's one of the only supermarkets in this neighborhood. It's a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. Ultimately, 10 people were murdered by this man. Three more were wounded. 11 of those individuals were black. Two were white. The gunman live streamed the shooting to a small audience on Twitch for several minutes before the platform cut off his feed. According to police, the gunman began shooting in the parking lot, then moved inside the store. A heroic security guard, Aaron Salter,

fired multiple shots trying to protect the innocent shoppers who were there. None of them, unfortunately, penetrated the gunman's armor. He also ultimately killed Salter and then stalked through the aisles shooting shoppers. He apparently published a manifesto online that, you know, is purportedly attributed to him where he takes credit for this mass violence. It is, I actually read a good bit of it, at least the ideological parts of it. And first of all, it's kind of exactly what you would expect, a bunch of completely racist claptrop talking about the so-called great replacement theory that whites are being genocided by people who are quote unquote replacers coming in from the outside. He lumps in black people as one of these replacers. Lots of pseudo, you know, fake race science about how black people

are inferior and they're not intelligent and they're criminals. Bunch of racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And ultimately, it turns out a lot of this was actually plagiarized, Sagar, from the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter that, you know, massacred Muslims in 2019. So dude couldn't even write his own racist manifesto. Horrific, you know, accounts from eyewitnesses there on the scene. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. You could hear where the gunshots were, how close they were coming. And it wasn't all the way to me yet. I don't know what made me get up. I just kept saying, you've got to get up, you've got to get up.

I literally jumped up. Everything fell off. I had keys on my elbow. They literally came off my wrist, hit the freezers. My shoes were off, and I just kept running. At this point, where is your daughter? She's in the front. Still in the front? Still in the front, crouched at register six,

because I never looked behind me until I got all the way to the back. I turned around. She wasn't there. And I said, where's my baby? Has anyone seen my baby? Where is she? I didn't know where she was. And then I just thought, if she's gone, I've got to get out of here. She's got babies. She's a newborn, and she has a 3-year-old,

so I still had to get out if I went back for her. If she was gone, I would be gone too. And they would have nobody. So I still ran. And ran out the back. I mean, there are few things more heinous than people, innocent, powerless people being targeted just for who they are. And I cannot begin to imagine the horror that was experienced by the people who were there in that supermarket. And who are now grieving the loss of loved ones and community members,

fathers, daughters, sons. It is truly horrible. Yeah, no. I mean, there's no other way to describe it as act of pure evil. I think you put it really well. And so now the real question is, is, like, who is this gentleman? I'm not going to say his name. I also, unfortunately, had to read the idiotic manifesto,

which, you know, I read the Christchurch person. Turns out it was the same one in many of these respects. Look, if you spent any time on the dregs of the internet, none of this is all that surprising to you. And this is just one of your classic, like, absolute losers within society trying to blame everybody else for their problems. And the question arises, though, and I think at a very serious level, is we have heard a lot about domestic terrorism here in the United States. It's been supposedly in a major priority of the Biden administration, of law enforcement, you know, over the last two years. Well, why did we not catch this person? And let's put this up there on the screen.

Well, you know, as it almost always comes out with these things, it turns out that the alleged gunman had threatened a shooting at his high school as shortly as last year. And he was actually sent for a mental health evaluation that lasted a day and a half. Now, I think that we are going to learn quite a bit more about all of this, Crystal, because what they said is that he had not only threatened this mass shooting, but that the police say the suspect had made threats to carry out this shooting as early as June. So less than one year ago, while he was in high school, near the time of his graduation, he was even taken into custody by state police and obviously sent to the hospital for evaluation. So then the question arises, how exactly did this person legally acquire a firearm if that is in fact the case? If it was illegally acquired, there's not a lot you can do about that. But it has very commonly been the case that many of these people with past

mental health problems, which should immediately be flagged from the FBI, especially in the commission of a crime or in this particular case, being so serious as to be taken into custody, well, what's happening here? And sadly, you and I went through the record. This is an all too common occurrence with people who are either mass shooters or domestic terrorists. So we put together a mashup of just how many of these cases there appear to be. Let's start. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. What do we see? Sun Sentinel. How the FBI botched tips about the Parkland shooter. A lot of people remember that one. Dominated our politics very much in the same way that this one may.

Well, one of the most undercovered aspects of that, not only the failure of Broward County Sheriff's Department, but the FBI had a very clear tip about the shooter in that case. Let's go to the next one that we have up there on the screen. FBI had closely scrutinized the Orlando shooter before dropping that investigation. Omar Mateen, the guy who shot up the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016. Let's go to the next one that we have here. The FBI had a breakdown in its background check system, which allowed Dylann Roof to buy a gun. He, of course, was the white

supremacist who went and shot up the Charleston Church. Let's go to the next one that we have up there, which is that, and actually didn't even remember, you're the one who flagged this, Sung-Hyu Cho, who was the Virginia Tech shooter based on mental health law, should never have been able to acquire a firearm and yet was legally able to acquire multiple firearms, which he used at that time to commit one of the most deadly mass shootings in American history. Let's go to the next one, which we used at that time to commit one of the most deadly mass shootings in American history. Let's go to the next one, which we have up there. The text, I actually covered this significantly at the time.

I don't know if you guys remember this, but an evangelical church in Texas was absolutely massacred by an absolute nutjob. Well, it turned out that the Air Force, he had actually been put into prison for domestic violence, and that a breakdown in reporting mechanisms for the FBI background check system, having been known to law enforcement, he also should have been barred from illegally owning a gun. And finally, what we have here is that the FBI knew earlier of the Boston bombing suspects. By the way, this is not an exhaustive list. There are several others that we could have put there.

That one, I had forgotten the details. Russia actually warned us. Oh, yeah, yeah. They were like, these Zarnayev guys are problems. Because they had traveled to Chechnya. They said they, you know, they're sort of in league with militants here. So Russia had actually warned us about them. Anyway, I forgot the details of that.

But, yeah, I mean, you look down this list and the people who are supposed to be keeping us safe, when it really counts, they seem to have dropped the ball over and over again, apparently sold this murderer his weapon. And he at least claims he did the background check. Nothing came up. Every time. So, you know, I mean, I don't think this man, you know, he seemed like he was telling the truth. And so, yeah, he had no reason not to sell this murderer a weapon that he ultimately used to massacre 10 people and injure three more. And this comes on the heels of, you know, just a year ago, him threatening a mass shooting at his high school. Like, this is completely insane.

I know. And this is something, again, which—and look, this is where I have to go after some of the Republicans. You know, to his own credit, John Cornyn, after the evangelical shirt shooting, tried to pass the Fix NICS Act, which is the background check system, which would have allowed. Well, it actually I mean, it's not funny, but it turned out that the U.S. military had not been reporting any of the domestic violence crimes that they were throwing people into jail for, meaning that literally, you know, millions of people could be acquiring firearms despite the fact that they're not supposed to. So if it was adjudicated in the military justice system. Exactly. Even though the FBI system says that if you're prosecuted for a crime that qualifies under being barred from acquiring a firearm, they had not just been reporting it basically to the national – I forget what it stands for, but the background check system. But there was all kinds of breakdowns in the background check system. This is something Cornyn pushed at the time to fix NICS Act. I don't believe that it ever passed. Look, I mean, at its very basic level, you know, I'm a proponent of firearms. What I look at it is that most of the people who are in the gun

community are going to say that very clearly here, you know, everybody starts calling for gun control. You can have your thoughts on that if you would like. At a basic level, I think we should be able to agree that the existing laws on the books for the background check system should be enforced. And to me, it seems like, once again, a major breakdown in the investigative chain. And it's like you just said. So what exactly do these people do all day? I mean, I'm not going to say that you're going to have to have a perfect system, because we have to balance civil liberties and all of that. Of course, yeah. But this was not even the case where you had some, you know, quasi-entrapment scheme and then it all fell apart or he was a known informant. It's like,

he threatened a school shooting, got taken into state police custody, had a mental health evaluation. Who's the person who cleared this person for a mental health evaluation? Why was there no follow-up whenever it came to this? He recently became an adult. Was there any sort of flag system here happening? How exactly does this person legally acquire these firearms, which appears to be, and the guy who ran it, you know, we have no reason to disbelieve him that he ran the background.

I mean, he would be, any gun store person will tell you, like, if you sell somebody a gun and you did not, and they use it to murder somebody, you didn't go through the checks, like, you yourself are going to have some serious problems. So we don't have any reason to deny that. I think it just goes to show, once again, that there are massive holes in the existing system

that there already are. And I don't think there's a lot of discussion about that, unfortunately. Yeah, and instead, you know, they've spent a lot of time in things like during the whole war on terror era, sort of concocting and inventing plots to entrap Muslim men. We, of course, covered here the, and we can put this up on the screen, the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot that lots of FBI resources were expended to effectively like create this plot and then ultimately disrupt it.

And this is, there's a reason why these types of concocted plots are ultimately what they spend resources on, because there's a lot of political benefit to having the big press conference and, you know, disrupting this scary plot. Whereas the blocking and tackling of following up on these tips and making sure the background check system is working properly is a lot less sexy. And there are a lot fewer sort of political careers that are made out of that type of law enforcement work ultimately. You know, I do want to say, because there's a lot of conversation about the manifesto and what the inspiration for this guy was and how it fits into a broader sort of right wing media and political ecosystem. And, you know, we both did look

through this manifesto because I think it is important to understand what is the twisted, ugly, hateful thinking of someone like this that leads them to this place. There's no indication that he was mentally ill. There's every indication that he was just radicalized by a hateful and vicious ideology. What he claims in this purported manifesto is that during COVID, he was bored. He spent a lot of time on Reddit, spent a lot of time on 4chan, ends up immersed in this, you know, complete garbage around, you know, this racial ideology, white supremacist ideology, and becomes convinced that there's this, you know, cabal of global Jews who are

trying to replace the white race and that it's a white genocide and all of this. So standard issue, great replacement theory, nonsense, which has been used and cited not only by him, but Tree of Life Synagogue, down in El Paso, that shooter, and as we mentioned before, the Christchurch shooter. Now, there's been a lot of conversation about Republican politicians and Tucker Carlson in particular, who have given sort of a wink and a nod to this type of rhetoric. Tucker has talked specifically about the theory they usually offer is that Democrats are trying to legalize undocumented immigrants and bring in more immigrants, bring in more refugees to try to gain an electoral advantage and replace classic Americans or they'll use some sort of like whitewashed language like that ultimately. And what I just want to say is I don't think it's fair to draw a direct line between, you know, what one killer does and political rhetoric used by anyone. I don't think it'd be fair to do that to the left. I don't think

it's fair to do it here. I do think it's totally fair to inquire, as we do routinely on this show, what type of rhetoric is good and healthy for society and places blame in the correct places, and what type of rhetoric divides us and convinces us that ordinary powerless people are the real enemy. And I don't think that there's any doubt that there has been, you know, routine sort of scapegoating rhetoric from Tucker, from politicians on the right. And whether or not that was any sort of fuel for this individual, there's actually no evidence that he took any direct inspiration from Tucker or from any of the individuals that are being cited right now. But I think it's totally fair game to ask the question about what type of rhetoric is ultimately good for society? What are

accurate reflections of what's actually going on in society? And I think that those questions can lead you to a deeper conversation about the roots of hatred and extremist violent ideology in America than just the cheap and easy answers, which would be, we need more internet censorship. Let's take down one particular cable news host. And that's not to say, because media, you know, media does have an impact on society and the rhetoric actually, you know, really is significant, really does matter. But it's too simple to just, you know, these trends are ultimately a reflection of sort of like deeper rot and deeper problems in American society. So politicians and media figures who cynically out of their own ambition, like give a wink

and a nod to that rhetoric, they're more a reflection of these undercurrents that are going on than they are some sort of leader or pioneer. They see what is fueling clicks, what's creating rage, what's creating emotion, and they feed off of it. I think the deeper question that we need to ask ourselves is where that animus ultimately comes from, which is, you know, something that I'm going to be thinking a lot about and continuing to try to explore. Well, I'm glad that you said that, because I think that there's a really disgusting parade on right now, which is all like, oh, this is all the fault of people who might be concerned about mass immigration. It's like, look, I look at this as a much more derivative of a sociological problem. And I think I and many of the people who would watch the show can see this in the broader context of what are some of the major stories that we've covered in the last week? Opioid

debts up 15%, alcohol use up 40%, mass loneliness, friendship crisis. You have COVID, which caused massive social isolation. And I'm not saying that's a justification, but one of the things that you learn in social science is that when you have an overall trend, the major outliers that are a result of that trend are going to be really nasty. Like, you know, when you have millions of people using these types of drugs and fentanyl and heroin, then you're obviously going to have the tail end of that. More people are going to be able to die. Same with social isolation. Same whenever it comes to loneliness and the lack of friendship. And also with COVID.

I mean, he even literally blames lockdowns here for the reason, now look, we should not take this person out. It's word, it's obviously. And one of the things that we learned in the Christchurch shooting is that there were intentional trollish things that were listed within the manifesto in order to try and spark a backlash. And there's some signs of that here as well.

Exactly. So trying to blame like eco-terrorism. Anyway, my point is don't take it literally, take it seriously. So the serious thing that we should take here is that this person murdered nearly a dozen people in cold blood and live streamed the thing and apparently had zero remorse for this entire killing. What happened here? What is this a result of? Like you said, is it tied to broader political movements and to broader political rhetoric? Yeah, I think so. But is it also, as you said, is it tied to broader political movements and to broader political rhetoric? Yeah, I think so. But is it also, as you said, the politicians are the downstream of the culture, or do they shape it? And what I would say is that I think a lot of it is a downstream

of major sociological dents in our actual civic life, which I don't think a lot of people want to fix. And I think the current backlash against this, if you want, I mean, I saw a Rolling Stone article, for example, which said that the Republican shooter was a he wasn't a lone wolf. He was a mainstream Republican. It's like, OK, so you think that the 70 something million people voted for Donald Trump all agree with murdering black people in a grocery store? Good luck with that, because you're actually going to make those people even more radical. And what does that justify on the other side? Exactly. I abhor scapegoating rhetoric, period. Innocent, powerless people in this country, be they immigrants, refugees, Trump supporters,

whoever they are, they're not the problem. And so I think you can look at Tucker's rhetoric about replacement and, you know, the way that he, I mean, he engages routinely in the scapegoating rhetoric. And I think you can call that out and abhor it in and of itself and say that it is bad and it's divisive and it misplaces the blame in society and leads to an ugly division. Can you draw a direct line between this mass murderer or the Tree of Life mass murderer or the El Paso mass murderer and that rhetoric? I don't think it's fair to draw a direct line. Do I think it's fair to abhor that rhetoric and say this is ugly, that you shouldn't be giving a wink and a nod to this stuff? Yeah, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that ultimately.

And the other thing that I would say is just like, you know, this idea that Latinos coming in across the border are just going to like automatically be Democrats is clearly false. Like, I mean, it sits very uncomfortably with the fact that Republicans are actually gaining a lot of ground with Latino voters. So maybe just try to appeal to voters, even as demographics continue to change, which, you know, unfortunately, as someone who's on the left, I think Republicans have been succeeding in against their best efforts. So anyway, I do think it's complex, but the other conversation that's already starting is this is another reason why we need more internet censorship. Oh, yeah.

And that's the other one that, I mean, not only is that like a cheap and easy answer, but it ultimately is ultimately going to be counterproductive. What you want to just push people further and further into the shadows, into the corners. You want to make their ideology even more like sort of sexy and rebellious. No. You know, I was even irritated that it was hard to find this manifesto to read. Yeah, that's right. And I don't agree with that because, again, I think it was important for both of us

to be able to actually read it, not just how the news media was characterizing it, but be able to judge it for ourselves and see what he's saying. And again, you should, you know, these are the words of like a killer and one of the most, you know, who perpetrated an absolutely evil act. So you have to take it for what it is. But I think it's more important to dig into these things and try to understand the roots of this and how you could come to such a vicious and ugly place as he ultimately did. Yeah, you know, actually, I had a lot of frustration with this during the terrorism times.

I used to read Al-Qaeda's Inspired magazine. I would read ISIS propaganda. I would read especially the stuff. I was really fascinated. I'm like, what is it with these Western Muslims in Europe? I'm like, how are they getting all these people to go over there? So I read it. I just read the forums, the magazine, the reporters of like, oh, brothers, this is what it's like in the caliphate. Now, you know, it actually helped me really understand. I'm like, wow, you know, this is part of a much broader problem in terms of displacement and culture. And like I was just talking about in terms of the tail end effect of

when you're going to have, you know, millions of people who are kind of quasi rejected by the dominant culture, that's going to have some extreme effects on the worst side. And you see exactly how Al-Qaeda and ISIS and all that was exploiting that. I thought it was very important. Like I said, I watched, unfortunately, I watched a New Zealand Christchurch video. Again, I wanted to force myself because I'm like, okay, what is actually happening? And this is sickening. But it's important, I think, in order to engage with this stuff. I watched a lot of ISIS stuff as well when I was covering it. And yeah, look, I mean, I would point to the same thing. But I would also say, look, you want to go down the road of saying that it's a legitimate point of view in this country to say that there are problems with mass immigration and that we should have controls on that.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think there's – and this is where it's – where it becomes tricky because I think every single society is going to have some debate about what their immigration system looks like. Especially in the West, yeah. What are the limits? How do you determine it? I mean these are totally reasonable grounds for policy debates, and we can come to different conclusions.

Obviously, when you go down the path of making this argument that people are being brought in to replace other people and you make it this existential threat, and again, you're using this to scapegoat immigrants like they're the source of your problems. That's when you end up, you know, in an ugly place.

So that's how I view all of this. One other thing that I think is interesting, and I also think it's important to note, like, none of what we're saying here about the underlying factors denies any, like, blame and culpability of this clearly, you know, evil, horrific individual who was radicalized by an extremist and violent ideology. So I just want to make that completely clear. But some of the roots of the modern white power movement actually come out of the failures of the Vietnam War. And in fact, if you look throughout history, it's at the end of wars that you have a spike in violent white supremacist movements. Because ultimately, I mean, you think about in a war, soldiers are taught to basically dehumanize their enemy. So if you've already sort of dehumanized one group of people, and then you come out of Vietnam, and on the right, there was a narrative about like, the government failed us. If we had just been allowed to do our thing and hadn't had

all these rules on terms of engagement, we could have won. And, you know, also the feeling that soldiers were spat upon and that their service wasn't honored when they came back. And you have a bunch of, you know, armed young men, trained young men who have now lost all of their purpose and meaning, that can create fertile conditions for this type of militant extremist movement. And so, in fact, you saw coming out of the Vietnam War, this new resurgence in white power movements, also, of course, in reaction to like the cultural changes of the 1960s and all of that ultimately. So, you know, it's just when you think about these issues, there's a lot more going on than just what cable news hosts are saying or whether Internet is censored or not. There's a reason why America is such a violent society ultimately. And I do think part of it is, you know, violence is normalized through our endless wars that we repeatedly engage in as one particular factor, not to mention the loss of meaning as we've

shipped jobs overseas and we've made it very difficult for people to be able to have that family unit that is, you know, such a core source of like meaning and purpose for a lot of human beings here and around the world. So it's a complex conversation. I guess that's just what I'll say. Okay, let's go to the next one here and talk about NATO. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So this is very important. Both Finland and Sweden moving much closer towards NATO membership.

Sweden's ruling party, which is the Social Democratic Party, is paving the way for the Scandinavian country to submit a joint bid with Finland to join NATO. This is actually very important because Sweden in particular has 200-year history of military non-alignment on the European continent, which goes back almost as far as Switzerland in terms of its reputation as a neutral country. And for a long time, they kind of pursued a strategy of strategic autonomy, specifically because they were caught between their cultural ties and business relationships with the West, but also their obviously geographical proximity towards

Russia and their view as a place within a semi-traditional Russian sphere of influence, although obviously all these things have changed hands many, many times over the years. But you can't deny geographical approximation. Same, obviously, with Finland. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Finland is also set to apply to NATO, like I said, with that joint application. And Finland also, frankly, may be the more provocative, I think, of the two, given the fact that Finland and Russia had actually fought a war before, you know, back in the 1940s. This is somewhere where there's long been kind of a cat and a mouse game between the two. People remember, you know, the 1939 Winter

War between Russia and Finland. And in Finland in particular, we saw this in the polling data, most of their population did not want to join NATO before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They were like, listen, we don't want any of this. We see the Russians. They're crazy. We don't necessarily want to see any sort of thing like this. I think strategic autonomy and our massive welfare state, that's good with us. Well, what's really happened here is that, and this again, you know, this is exactly what I predicted, the day of the Russian invasion. I was like, what Putin has done is he has united Western Europe in a way it has not been united since the threat of the Cold War. And he somehow pushed neutral populations like Finland and Sweden, who did not want to join NATO. They're like, all right, we got to get into NATO here. So I think that, you know, in terms of a strategic backlash

against Russia, which the entire purpose that they say that they were expanding into or going and invading Ukraine was, oh, well, we have had NATO push up against our border, which is true. You know, this is something where it's becoming a Western client state. We have to go in and have a military op integration to prevent this. Well, now you've invited these own democratic populations in order to try and join NATO. Now, that's one side of the conversation. I think the other side of the conversation that we should also focus on is we also have a choice. There are 37 member countries in NATO.

Do we want to extend the United States nuclear umbrella to Finland and Sweden? And this is going to be probably the most controversial part of this, and I know there are a lot of people going to be upset by this. But I think we should have a very serious discussion as to whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella should be extended to Helsinki and Stockholm. We should really have a conversation around this. mean that we should be willing to go to the brink and possibly pass the brink of nuclear war in order to protect these far-flung borders, which are not even in Western Europe, but all the way to the edge and bordering along Russia? We already have that in the case of the Baltic states, in the case of Poland. Obviously, in 2008, we invited Georgia and Ukraine in order to join NATO. That didn't end up materializing, but that was a key moment within this. And now with the expeditious nature that this is moving, this is a conversation

that we need to have in real time that we did not have in the 1990s and the 2000s when we extended NATO membership to the Baltic states, despite the fact that there were a lot of voices at the time who warned against doing so. And just to show you how bipartisan this is, go and put this up there on the screen, which is that Republican leader Mitch McConnell just visited, he visited Kiev and he met with Zelensky, where he told him that he had the support for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Now, why does that matter? NATO is a treaty, which means that you need two-thirds of the U.S. Senate in order to ratify the new NATO treaty to allow these new countries into NATO. Now, obviously, I think a lot of the Democrats are basically on record as saying they might do so,

but a lot of the Republicans, it has a relatively open question. There are people like Rand Paul and others, and we'll get to this in a bit, who had objected to the Ukraine bill. But he saying that the majority of his caucus supports this makes this a de facto conclusion that this is absolutely going to happen. However, there is also a geopolitical part to this, which is also kind of interesting. And there's a lot of reasons as to why this might be happening. Let's put this up there on the screen. People forget, you know, Turkey is in NATO. It's under a dictatorship by Recep Erdogan. And Erdogan actually, despite previously telling the Finns and the Swedes that he was kind of okay with them joining, he's now gone ahead and said that he may be against Finland and Sweden joining NATO. He did not say specifically that he would issue an actual objection because he would probably be the only country in order to deny doing so. But, you know, this is also a country which is in NATO, which has done military trade with Russia. I think they have

like an S-300 missile system that they bought from the Russians, and they have their own crazy relationship with the Russians given what's happening in Syria. His objections against Sweden and Finland classically have to do with the Kurds and the PKK. So it's, you know, for domestic political reasons, he might be trying to force a chit from those two countries in order to allow them in. But also just shows you that if there is any opposition to this, it ain't happening here in America. I think that's a tragedy. We supply the vast majority of the arms within NATO. Recently, Europe, just so people know, only appropriated the EU 500 million euros to go to Ukraine. How much did we just approve? 40 billion. So that's 80 times what the Europeans are sending over to Ukraine.

You might want to ask that question. I mean, we don't live in Europe. Last time I checked, it's a much bigger of a threat to their security than it is to us. I don't really know why we're footing the bill for the entire security of the continent. So I think this just masks a, look, I have complete sympathy for the Finns and the Swedes. If I were them, I would want to do the same thing. But we got to look out for what's good for us. And I don't think this is necessarily the best decision.

Yeah, I mean, listen, this would about double, roughly double the land border that Russia shares with NATO because Finland shares an 830 mile border with Russia. This is an extraordinarily significant decision in terms of overall geopolitics and in terms of the United States specifically. And it is being presented by the media as a fait accompli, like you have no say, like it's a done deal. And also it's being done very casually, like this is no big thing. When, listen, ultimately, as we've said a million times, Russia and Putin specifically, not the Russian people, but Putin and his Kremlin cronies specifically, are responsible for the unjustified invasion of Ukraine. It is wrong. It is bad. It was also completely predictable by our decision to expand NATO. Another thing that happened with almost no public debate. And this is why we have to push back on this anti-populist, pro-elitist way of doing governance, where they

just present to you something like this as it's a done deal. And don't worry your pretty little head about it. And we know what's going on here and we know what we're going to do. And, you know, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer are both on board. So let's go ahead. Are you ready to extend Article 5 protection to two more nations? Are you? And the fact that it's not that question isn't even raised so that people can be informed by the news media is extremely, extremely disturbing. And it's a pattern, not just with NATO expansion, which we can now see has been incredibly consequential in terms of global security. Right. But I mean, you see it with regard to Fed policy. You see it with regard to almost everything where it's just trust the experts. We got this. Don't dig into the details. We're

going to present it as a done deal, as if there's no even room or space for public debate on the matter. And I think that is completely insane. Yeah, you know, I never thought I'd be this guy, but I have been increasingly appreciative of the vision of the founders and what the things that they saw at that time was that we do not want to get entangled in a lot of these foreign alliances, that if we are to do so, given the destabilizing nature of American interference and quasi-alliances with the West and how that really shaped their worldview, it's actually crazy how little has changed, which is that the reason why they put that two-thirds majority in the Senate is they said this has to be ratified by a supermajority, two-thirds of the people's representatives inside the United States Senate, which should advise and consent. And we should also remember this. We have a long period in our history of rejecting international agreements, which our presidents and which the ruling elite at the time thought were great ideas like the League of Nations and Lodge's 14 points.

There were real, I mean, Woodrow Wilson, people forget this, went on a stump tour of this entire country on the back of a railroad, on the caboose, stopping in town to town, preaching why we need the League of Nations. And then Henry Cabot Lodge and the Republicans went after it and they had a huge debate. I mean, something we would barely recognize over an actual policy matter. And I am calling for the same thing on this one, because being just slept walk into alliances of which you and I and our children may have to all one day pay the price for is not something that we should do so half-heartedly.

Well, because the elites, it won't be their kids who are fighting and dying these wars. That's definitely true. I mean, that's what you have to keep in mind is, are you willing or are you willing, ready to send your sons and daughters over to fight and die in these potential wars for, you know, Finland and Sweden? I mean, that's the core of the question here. Well, let me give the opposite. And so I had a big argument with Marshall over this.

I'll give you his. I, let me give the opposite. And so I had a big argument with Marshall over this. I'll give you his. I think somebody should give the pro view, which is that it is likely inevitable that any war where Russia invaded Finland or Sweden is going to draw the United States in. And I think that's probably accurate given the current state, especially what happened in Ukraine. And especially if our NATO partners like the UK and France and all of them were to get involved. And I kind of do think they would probably go to war if that were to happen, that the United States would then be dragged into this war, regardless because of the current alliance system. So we might as well extend the deterrent factor to Article 5, to Stockholm, and to Helsinki. Not a terrible argument. I'll tell you why I disagree with it, which is that I would rather us get pulled in, kicking and screaming into a war for Helsinki and Stockholm than to have no choice. I want every single senator and congressman to vote. I want to send American troops to fight and die for the capital of Helsinki and Stockholm. And if they vote,

so be it. I'll even sign up. I guarantee you that. If we go to war over those things and the people's representatives think, I would be happily in order to stand in that because that's something that I believe in. That being said, this is not that vote. And this vote does not carry the consequence that it should of the height of there are Russian missiles raining down on Helsinki. Now, you can argue then that it's America's job in order to defend those two capitals. And I accept that. I think that's a fine, legitimate point of view. But I would much rather every single people's representative vote to send us all to fight and to die over there than to just have it just get backdoored article five there's two things there

number one is the point you're making which i think is really important which it's very different a vote that's in the abstract with the we come to their defense okay yeah sure right versus no no right now are you willing to go and fight and die i think those are two very different questions that land very differently with the american people so So agree with you on that point. I would also question the idea that it really serves as a deterrent versus as an irritant and an escalating factor. Because, I mean, the expansion of NATO thus far has not served as a deterrent to Russian aggression. In fact, it has exacerbated and made that aggression predictable and much more likely. Again, not taking agency away from Russia and the bad things that Putin is doing. So I would dispute the idea that this would really serve as an effective deterrent

versus being yet another escalatory step. And in fact, what the Russian foreign minister has said is that they would have to take some sort of retaliatory action. And that it would be a grave mistake. And that it would be a grave mistake. And I think that we should take their words very seriously and consider what those consequences are as well. Just because they're a military joke right now in Ukraine does not mean that they have an immense amount of force in order to bring to bear. And of course, they remain a nuclear armed power. I mean, look, I don't know how many times I have to say it. They have been beaten or they have been looked beaten and downtrodden and all of this many, many, many, many times in their history. And they always come back in order to remind us that Russia really should not be underestimated. So look, I think, you know, we'll try to give you more of the all-side, the debate we're gonna have somebody on tomorrow to talk about this in a bigger, grand strategic context.

Because I do think that the, no matter what, even if you do support it, these Finns and the Swedes, if you join, you better pay up. Because I don't wanna see those people, you know, they have the biggest welfare state on the planet, which is fine, but why should we subsidize it? By supplying you all these arms and military equipment and all—we're backstopping the entire security of the European continent by 80 times more than they are.

And they are rich countries. They have their own GDPs and national societies. So no matter what happens here, these people better be willing to pay because it is not fair to our tax payers, to our citizens in order to backstop so much of their country. Well, Sagar, you brought up earlier what Europe has sent to Ukraine versus what we have sent to Ukraine, which I think is a good transition to the next piece.

Even the Washington Post is now questioning the billions in new military weapons that are set to be sent to Ukraine upon passage in the Senate, potentially this week. Let's go ahead and put this Washington Post tweet up on the screen. They're writing, the unprecedented influx of arms to Ukraine is prompting fears that powerful weapons could fall into the hands of Western adversaries or reemerge in faraway conflicts. There's some really important analysis and pieces of information in this article that I want to highlight for you. So one thing they point to is the fact that Ukraine for a while now has been a hub of black market arms dealing. So they write, Ukraine's illicit arms market has ballooned

since Russia's initial invasion in 2014, buttressed by a surplus of loose weapons and limited controls on their use. One arms control expert says it is just impossible to keep track of not only where they're all going and who is using them, but how they are being used. Of course, and, you know, they point to some of the ways that we've already potentially harmed nonproliferation. In particular, you know, we talked about when this happened that the U.S. boosted their involvement in Ukraine by announcing they would transfer a fleet of Mi-17 helicopters to Ukraine that it originally purchased from Russia about a decade ago. Well, when we originally made that purchase, we signed a contract promising not to do exactly this,

not to transfer any of the helicopters to any third country without the approval of the Russian Federation. Russia denounced that transfer, saying it grossly violates the foundations of international law. And arms experts say that Russia's brutal aggression, they say it more than justifies U.S. support, but that the violation of weapons contracts can chip away at the foundations of counterproliferation efforts. Again, these are things. So, number one, the fact that Ukraine has now for a while been a hub of illicit arms sales, that hasn't really been discussed yet. The fact that this particular transfer, this didn't come up at all when I didn't know these details until reading this article that this actually violated the terms of the contract and could undermine the

foundations of counterproliferation efforts. And, you know, just on the sheer numbers of this, so that you get a sense, the assistance that we are providing to Ukraine exceeds the peak year of U.S. military assistance to Afghan security forces during the 20-year war. This is according to the Quincy Institute. They say in that case, the U.S. had a major presence in country that created at least the possibility of tracking where weapons were ending up. By comparison, the U.S. government is flying blind in terms of monitoring weapons supplied to civilian militias and the military in Ukraine.

No one here is saying that the entire Ukrainian military is made up of Nazis. Of course not. That's ridiculous. Is there an extremist faction, fringe faction within these fighting forces? That is 100% the case. Not to mention some reports of foreign fighters flowing into the country, not to mention a documented history of Ukraine serving as a hub of illicit arms dealing. And there seems to be, again, no curiosity about this from very few of our elected officials, very close to unanimous support, completely unanimous support

on the Democratic side, which is really disturbing and disgusting. And again, back to the theme of the NATO conversation, none of this is being explained or submitted to the American people for consideration here whatsoever. Like I said, our last show, why is Congress giving $40 billion when the administration asked for $33? So what does Congress know that Biden and the Pentagon don't know or that Zelensky doesn't know? Can anybody answer what's in that extra $7 billion? And in that $7 billion, that's a lot of weapons. This is the point that we don't really seem to emphasize. $7 billion, this is kind of like the whole Bill Backbatter conversation where you're like $3.5 trillion.

Now it's $2.5 trillion. Hold on a second. $1 trillion of what? That's what it means to me. When I hear $7 billion and then I read the appropriations, I think, wow, that is nearly a tenth of the modern increase in the defense budget, and it allows President Biden, with zero congressional approval, to ship $11 billion worth of whatever he wants over to Kiev. Now that's an issue for me because how many times do we have to have this conversation? Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, how many of these times in, I just named things that happened in the last 20 years where we shipped billions of dollars worth of weapons and military aid and all this stuff. And some of it, not all of it, although in the case of Afghanistan, a lot of it ended up in the hands of the black market and a lot of the illicit places, in some cases, in the hands of the Taliban, in Iraq, in the cases of how it was basically sold off to a lot of these militias, these Sunni militias, happened to also have some ties to ISIS and al-Qaeda. Don't talk about that one. In Syria, oh, so-called moderate rebels, next thing you know, it's up in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, which is an al-Qaeda spin-off, or in the hands of some other extremist militia, which is on the ground. These things change hands, and they all just happen to come from Lockheed Martin or any of these other defense contractors. So that's the point.

Will this destabilize security in Eastern Europe? I think the answer is unambiguously yes. Now, is it worth it? Sure, maybe. We can have a debate on that. And yet there is no tracking. There's no congressional oversight of this. One of the most important things I learned in history class was try to understand the conception of people who are living in the times and what they were thinking. But one of the most important things is that since we're living through this historical period is should we not incorporate our lessons of the past?

In the past, in the 1986, I could see myself being a Charlie Wilson type figure and be like, yeah, you know what? This is a just cause. Got to get these Afghans, all this stuff. But then how can you live through the breakdown of Afghanistan in the 1990s and the entire U.S. military experience and say, yeah, you know, we should probably really vet our partners in the midst of this war just in case some weapons fall in the cans of somebody who is illicit? Because, oh, I don't know, that might really come back to bite us. And, you know, it's just again and again, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. You know, as you said already, Libya was already a hub for illicit weapons. So was Ukraine.

You think there's not a lot of sketchy characters in Ukraine who are somehow stealing some of this stuff and selling it on the black market? You'd be crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing U.S. military supplied Ukrainian weapons in Africa in some crazy civil war that's happening down there. That trade has existed for a long period of time. So it's just, look, we're going to grapple with this five years from now. And you just remember the temporary insanity that has taken over everybody's mind here. That's such a great point. It's such a great point because you can't even remember when Ilhan did earlier on say like one thing of like, maybe we should think about people like you're horrible and you're somehow racist against white people.

I mean, just like the ugliest things you could possibly. And then, of course, if you question any of this, you're like Putin's puppet and you hate Ukrainians. It's the terms of the debate become very reactionary, truly, and extremely simplistic. You know, when you even raise the question of do we really need to send like $54 billion to Ukraine and what's going to happen with this money and where is it ultimately going to go? And to that point, you know, I'm not a huge Rand Paul fan, but he does occasionally do things that I think are interesting and worthy. And this is one of those instances. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. So he's actually stalled the $40 billion in aid to Ukraine, broken with Mitch McConnell on this because there is mostly overwhelming bipartisan support. But in the Senate, of course, as one senator, you can really hold things up.

Now, what he is asking for is he wants an amendment to be included in the final bill that allows for an inspector general to oversee how the funds are spent. So he's not even saying don't do it. He's saying, how about we have some accountability for what's happening with this money and who these weapons are going to? And can we get some kind of a tracking system in place so that we know what's going on here? And by the way, some of the reports that came out of the inspector general with regards to Afghanistan really— I was about to say, it was one of the best things that ever—the U.S. government ever did. And you'll never hear me say that. Yeah. I mean, listen, it didn't like stop the horror of what was happening, but at least provided some transparency so that you could educate the American people about the misuse

of these funds and what they were actually going to. And I think that ended up being very important in ultimately forging the end of that war. So go ahead. Yeah. I was just going to say, for me personally, SIGAR is one of the most important organizations in the government that ever existed. That was the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. They were doing reports back in 2010. I remember being in like college and watching Vice documentaries where Shane Smith would go, you know, to some Afghan gas station that we paid like $300 million for. And John Sopko, who was the head of CIGAR, was the person who reported on all that. All Rand is saying is, hey, let's have the same thing on Ukraine.

No, no, no, you can't have that. Let's at least have an accounting. Let's say this stuff ends up in the hands of somebody really bad in the future. You don't want to know about that? Well, that's the thing. They don't want you to know about that. There's nothing that would not make this more expeditious. And again, I just have to underscore, it's not that the cause of the Ukrainians is unjust. Listen, in 2003, it was a just cause, right? Oh my God, Afghanistan, women's rights, all this stuff.

Let's prop it up. We're going to train these military. It's all going to work out. What happened? So this is my point. You know, things can go south both really quickly and in the long term. And as a government, you want to set yourself up such that you can understand the consequences of your actions. But the people in charge today don't want to be able to do that. And it's even worse than that because ultimately the only thing they're interested in is flooding the country with weapons and keeping the war going. I mean, that is the policy of the U.S. government. They are not pushing for peace. They are not pushing for a negotiated settlement. They want to weaken Russia. They have, I mean, you have Democratic

congressmen admitting that they are fighting a proxy war. There was somewhere another politician that basically came out and admitted- I think it was Steny Hoyer. Steny Hoyer, yeah, another Democratic congressman who admitted the same thing. They are fighting a proxy war against Russia. Did you sign up for that? Did we have a public debate about that? Because if you had said that at the beginning, you would have been considered to be crazy, outrageous, Putin's puppet, all of this stuff. And now here we are. And again, all of this is being presented as just a done deal, fait accompli with very little public discussion, debate or input. And I think that's pretty disturbing. That's right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on here on Twitter. So

this is still some pretty big news that Elon dropped over the weekend. Let's put it up there on the screen. Elon tweeted something cryptic. He said that his Twitter deal is, quote, on hold. And as a result of that, what he said is it was temporarily on hold because of concerns about fake accounts. Now, there's been a lot of behind the scenes kind of parsing about what the hell all of this means. So let's put this next one actually up there on the screen because it's very important. And what Elon is pointing to is that whenever he agreed to buy Twitter, what he said is that he would do so subject that Twitter disclose what exactly and how many fake accounts that they actually had. Now, Twitter disclosed in their filing that they had about 5% or so of users that they believed were fake accounts. Now, obviously, spam and fake are

something that are a widespread industry challenge. But what Elon is basically challenging is saying that he thinks that Twitter's analysis there is flawed and that it may actually be much, much higher because they keep pointing to their previous statements. And I think that the reason why is that Musk is saying that he's going to take a random sample of 100 followers of Twitter and he's going to go ahead and invite many other people in order to do this because it could challenge both the ability of the price but also underscore that Twitter and them might be much more of a paper tiger than they were trying to let on in their initial public filing. So there's a lot of stuff going on here because, number one, the stock market, if you may not have noticed, is significantly down, something that we have commented on. This affects Musk's ability in order to tap billions of dollars in loans against his existing stock. Also, it affects Twitter's stock price. It could be subject that the entire price deal goes down if their ability or have the ability to renegotiate. Now, I want to emphasize

the head of Twitter and the chairman of the board over there said that they are still committed to an acquisition. Elon said he's still committed to an acquisition. There could be some behind the scenes jockeying in order to reduce the price significantly, given the fact that everybody's equity has gone way, way down. Twitter stock also getting hammered in the result of all of this. So it could be both the financial play, but also it could be that Elon really has them caught in at least an internal analysis of, oh, these guys have been lying

about the number of fake accounts and users that are actually on the website. And that matters for advertising and business purposes that he's already, as we know, promised his existing investors multi-billions of dollars worth of returns, which would matter in terms of the number of users. Yeah.

What do you think are the percent of spam or bot accounts? There's no way to know. I mean, yeah. I've noticed on Instagram, I'm not sure if you have, I mean, the amount of auto-reply. There's a lot, yeah. Like, porn bots and all this weird stuff. Everything you post ends up with a number of them in the comments. Like, oh, you want to earn money?

Yeah, exactly. And I have to go and delete them. I don't want people, I mean, I should probably trust people not to fall for that stuff. But still, I mean, first of all, I think it looks annoying. But second, yeah, I mean, I notice, like, I'll post something. I don't delete them. Sorry, guys. You're just going to have to weed through that yourself. Yeah, but I post on Instagram, and then within two minutes, I have like 10 comments. And most of them are bots with auto-likes and stuff in order to propel it up there.

I think this is a lot more sophisticated and a much bigger number than we'll probably ever know. I think it's an entire industry problem. I guess the thing with Twitter, though, I don't know that—obviously, bot accounts are annoying and a problem. But the true value proposition of Twitter is that it's the hub for elite discourse. And whether the bot account number is like 5% or 8% or 10% or whatever doesn't really change that. So I don't know. I mean, I guess I could see it as sort of like a bargaining position. I could also see it as a potential excuse and way to get out of the whole

thing. So I don't really take Elon particularly at his word because he's thrown out a lot of stuff in the past that ends up not coming to fruition. So I guess my view on all of this is just kind of a wait and see. Yeah, it is a wait and see. I do think there is something going on here in terms of the financial backroom stuff. Yeah, the internal negotiation. I mean, there's been a significant drop in the price of Tesla as the stock. Obviously, the entire tech sector is getting hammered from what I heard and what we've recently opened with.

There are so many economic downturns happening in the tech sector, which is way outpacing the S&P 500. And then if you think about the private markets, this affects actually a lot of people's ability to tap wide swaths of capital, which they usually get on loans. So the underlying assets that they're borrowing against are a lot down. All I would say is there's probably a lot more going on behind the scenes. So you're saying his personal finances and his financing is on somewhat shakier ground. I think everybody, and Twitter too. At the same time, Twitter is based on their market cap worth a lot less than they used to be. So this is a way of saying, we got to cut the price. And it's kind of seizing on something that they may have misrepresented in their filings that gives him an angle to try to push that.

Or, I mean, it potentially could be an ability for him to just walk away altogether and say, you know, it wasn't as represented, so I'm moving on. The only reason I don't think that'll happen is that to walk away, he would have to personally eat a billion in cash, which just – there's a billion-dollar termination fee on the entire deal. So that just seems, I mean, that seems very high. I mean, that being said, he's worth, I forget exactly what he's worth right now, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 billion. So it's not, I mean, recently sold, I think $9 billion worth of stock, but I don't know the last time Elon Musk just chucked a billion dollars away for no reason whatsoever. So there you go. That's all sides of kind of what's happening here. I encourage people to do a little bit more investigation because I do think the financing angle on all of this

is the deepest part, which is not really being explored in the mainstream press. Okay. Interesting new polling about how the midterm landscape is shaking out now that we know the end of Roe appears to be imminent. New polling from NBC. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They say support for abortion rights hits new high as midterm outlook is grim for Democrats. So they've kind of got it all in the headline there that, yeah, people support abortion rights. They are by nearly two thirds to one third opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade. So Democrats definitely on the correct side of public opinion on the issue of abortion. However, things still not looking great for Democrats.

In particular, listen, the economy is the big story here. You have President Joe Biden's job rating had fallen now below 40 percent. And you have and this is incredible, 75 percent of Americans saying the country's headed in the wrong direction. Now, the one positive indicator here for Democrats is that Democratic base voter interest in the midterms has increased. It went from 50 percent in March saying they had a high level of interest to 61 percent now. So an 11 percentage point gain. So that kind of fits with our analysis of saying, look on the margins, are Democrats going to be more energized? Probably so. But Republicans still outpacing them in terms of enthusiasm. They were at 67%. Now they're at 69%. So the

abortion decision hasn't really changed the game for them, but they were already at higher levels of interest for the election than Democrats. So now Republicans at 69% interest, Democrats at 61%. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Another warning sign for Democrats. Voters are split over who they want controlling Congress 46 to 46. Now you might say on its face, like, well, that seems okay. I mean, if they're basically tied, then how could that be so bad? But in 2010, Republicans had just a two-point lead on this question. They ended up gaining six Senate seats and 63 House seats. Because of the way that these district lines are drawn and because of the way rural voters have disproportionate power in terms of the Senate, that means Democrats have to outperform on that generic ballot test in order to just sort of maintain control or stay steady with where they

are. Yeah, I think that's right. And let's put this next one up there on the screen, which just shows you, you found this really interesting in terms of the most important issue in congressional vote. And you can just see there that the economy remains very, very high. The difficulty for paying groceries and other bills. But abortion also remains up there as well. This is in comparison to 2018. The biggest difference I see is that in 2018, as you can see, healthcare was the top issue. It's so funny too, because at the time, and I'm sure you remember this, the mainstream press was trying to make it all about Trump. And the reality was, is that Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare was the number one policy issue in the election. Like if you wouldn't have asked people, why did you vote for Kyrsten Sinema over Martha McSally? They're like, well, Martha McSally tried to repeal

Obamacare. And Martha McSally even said that she's like, my vote on Obamacare is killing me. The second one there was immigration, which was very hot there at the time. The whole migrant caravan conversation, yeah. Well, I think it was legitimate conversation. But you go and put that back up there because I do think it's important. Look at how high the economy and abortion

remain in this election compared to the previous ones. And these are just unquestionably ones where as long as people care about the economy more, that's going to be the main driver of the conversation. But abortion being so high as previously where it was only at 9% in 2018 is going to give Dems, I think, the edge in states where it might have been on the most bleeding edge of a Republican wind crystal. I think like in suburban areas, this helps Democrats avoid some significant losses.

I also, and we are starting to see this and we'll talk more to our election analyst about this, but Republicans are in danger of nominating some pretty extreme figures, including who may have like fairly extreme views in terms of abortion that are really out of step with swing states, you know, a state like Pennsylvania, which I thought was pretty much not going to be in play for Democrats, could potentially be if Republicans nominate the wrong figure. So you do have, and there are some gubernatorial races also in Pennsylvania, a gubernatorial race there where the candidate who's in the lead who just got the Trump endorsement is pretty fringe in terms of their views and has made a lot of very incendiary comments that may not play well in the suburbs in Pennsylvania. So I do think that on the margins, it will help Democrats stem what could have been like historic losses for their party.

Is it going to turn things around for them? No, not really, because ultimately, you know, you have massive numbers of people saying that the country's on the wrong track, that the economy is getting worse, that are fearful of a recession, who are being hit really hard by inflation. And I just don't see that reality. There's no messaging that can overcome that. Right. I mean, I know Joe Biden is out there trying with this ultra-mega agenda and the Putin price hike, and Sager is going to be breaking all of that down in his monologue. But it's really not a messaging issue, and the reality is not going to turn around for people by the fall.

So that's where things stand. I just checked. Gas price just hit another all-time high today. The average price of gas in the state of California is $5.98 a gallon. Okay? That's crazy town. In Texas, gas is $4.15. The cheapest gas in the country is in Georgia, where it's $3.99 a gallon,

which means that basically the cheapest gas in this country is $4 a gallon. And for millions and millions of people, myself included and yours as well, here on the East Coast, we're paying well over $4.50. And in California, they are just getting completely hosed. So as long as that remains a reality, they're going to have a tough time in the election. Diesel also remains at $5.50 a gallon, and food inflation and all that stuff isn't going away. It's a basic problem. You can either focus on that or you can blame Putin, and I'll talk about that more in my monologue. Let's go to the next one here on Netflix. This is an important story, an interesting one in terms of the culture and how this is all working

out. Let's put this up there on the screen. Netflix basically issued a memo to its entire staff, where in a very polite way, they say- It's not actually that polite. It's basically, if you disagree with what we are putting out, you can leave. So here's what they say. As employees, we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you. And that went out to all of its staff.

Also, with the basic acknowledgement that a lot of the people who led these internal revolts around the Dave Chappelle special have already been fired. And I think it's actually an important demarcation line in some of these culture war fights, which is that at the end of the day, the vast majority of the people who work at these companies do not care either way. Are they liberal? Yeah, probably. Did they really object to the Dave Chappelle? Maybe. But did they perceive it as personally harmful to their ability in order to conduct their jobs? No. This actually same happened at Disney when this whole Florida speaking out against this, which has led to a massive decline in their popularity. Right now, they only have 53%

approval, which is nuts considering it's probably one of the most beloved brands in modern American history. Then you also look at Apple, which forced out my friend Antonio Garcia Martinez based upon some things that he wrote in his book a decade ago of which Apple was aware of. And a tiny, small percentage of Apple staffers who, you know, called him a misogynist, they fired him. And now they fired all the people who went and organized that petition. And like I said, it's always been a tiny little percentage of these companies

which have held them majority hostage. And I think a lot of people, I think maybe also this has to do with the declining stock price. I'm curious for your view, which is they don't have time to screw around with this stuff anymore. They can't indulge people's feelings.

They're like, listen, we got to produce whatever we need to produce in order to up the stock. Yeah, because they're bleeding subscribers. They're canceling all these shows. Megan Markle shows are canceled. Yeah, they're considering an ad-driven model instead of a subscription-driven model. Yeah, which does kind of suck. I mean, listen, I support the sentiment. What I would say, you know, my own personal ideological view is I believe in democracy in the workplace as well. And so I think to your point, if you had, you know, workers with more of a say in the runnings of these companies, you would have a sort of internal process for handling these disputes and handling these grievances. And so it wouldn't have to come down as just like a fiat from on high from some like CEO dictator.

And that really struck me when another part of the memo, the newsletter reminded laborers that the company does not intend to treat them like family members, but rather like lion-hearted sportsmen on an award-winning athletic dream team, one on which any player can easily be benched or booted. So basically just kind of typical, like, using corporate spin to say, we can fire you at any time for any reason, which unfortunately is the landscape in America. I think that's fair. And I totally, obviously, you know, I'm on the side of work with rights. I know, yeah, I know. But I do think there is something to ending this family dynamic for a lot of people at these major tech companies.

Well, this can be kind of abusive as well. Yeah, because they're like, you're our family. We eat dinner together. And by that, you better be at this office in order to have dinner at 8 o'clock. That can also be very manipulative because then it's like, and you see this in the union busting rhetoric that they'll use. You'll have a manager come in and be like, oh, how could you do this to me? I thought we were like family, like how I treated you. They'll use this sort of like guilt and emotional manipulation to have you work ridiculous hours or

do things that make no sense whatsoever. So yeah, in general, I just, you know, I support workplace democracy and workers have to stay in the workplaces. And to your point, I think if that happened, this very, these very small fringe viewpoints could be heard, which they, you know, fine for them to be heard, addressed and dealt with. And I think it would be more clear that actually the majority of workers don't feel the way that they do, you know, but there should be a process for that. Yeah, I think that's right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

I'm not being hyperbolic here. It really does feel like everything is falling apart. Gas, all-time high. Diesel, all-time high. Can't buy a new car or a house if your life depended on it. There's a supply chain crunch on stuff that people need to keep tiny infants alive.

The entire political system is broken. A geriatric president presides over the most chaotic period in modern American history with no plan, no ability to unite the country, and seemingly do anything about it. I'm really struck by the feelings of chaos with the new poll. It found that only 16% of Americans think that the country is on the right track,

which is officially the 13-year low in the history of NBC News. Americans are not stupid people. They know in their bones everything is wrong. They've known it for quite some time. And look, there's plenty of debate as to why all that is. But one thing I think we can all agree on is that the White House strategy of blaming it all on Vladimir Putin is not only intellectually dishonest, extremely cringe, but also just wrong. This idiotic talking point, though, has permeated all Democratic messaging, though, in recent weeks. Let me start with the Putin price hike.

So because of the actions we've taken to address the Putin price hike, we are in a better place than we were last month. We expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to Putin's price hike. We have to address the Putin price hike, gas hike. Since he started amassing troops earlier this year, the price at the pump has gone up 75 cents. We're doing everything we can to minimize the Putin price hike at home. What especially this reveals is the idiocy of the Putin price

hike talking point. Of all the talking points out there, this is the one the American people buy the least. It is also least likely to be true. Most people think COVID, supply chain disruptions, corporations, and the American Rescue Plan are more to blame for inflation than, you guessed it, the war in Ukraine. So in other words, Putin's price hike is both the least credible and least believed option by the American people, and thus, of course, it remains the singular talking point of this administration. The cringeworthiness of Putin's price hike reveals something deep about the Biden administration. They really think we are this stupid, dumb enough to be cajoled into an easy explanation when the multifaceted one has been staring every American in the face for over two years. Of course, it is no coincidence why they picked Putin's price hike either, because Putin is not named Biden. And a guy named Biden has something to say or do with every single other reason that I showed you on the previous chart of reasons why

inflation is occurring. Worse, it demonstrates at a very basic level, why are these people so bad at politics? Putin's price hike is obviously not it from a basic branding perspective. It is something I've noticed too in their latest cringe iteration that you may too have seen, one that Biden and the Democrats have been rolling out recently. The ultra-MAGA Republicans who seem to control the Republican Party now, the other path is the ultra-MAGA plan. But he's also not going to stand by and not call out what he sees as ultra-MAGA behavior, ultra-MAGA policies. If you're on the other side of that, you're supporting an ultra MAGA position in the president's view. Ultra MAGA, where do they get this stuff

from? According to the White House, Biden came up with it himself, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki even saying he came up with it to give his speech, quote, a little extra pop. Thus, we have been cursed with the phrase ultra MAGA dominating our political discourse for the last week. Except it turns out Biden and the Democrats not even come up with their own cringe slogans on their own because it was quickly revealed it was all part of a bigger plan. The Washington Post reported that Biden's attempt to appropriate MAGA to ultra MAGA was part of a six-month research effort by liberal polling groups. Per The Post, Biden advisor Anita Dunn was at one point connected to Harvey Weinstein, did extensive polling how the word MAGA was viewed by the public.

Other phrases they tested were Trump Republicans, and a piece of data inside their polling said it would be twice as many voters would be less likely to vote for someone who is described as a quote MAGA Republican. What Biden and the Dems don't foresee though is that Trump apparently, per this story, is gleeful about the phrase, telling everyone around him he loves it, that the Democrats are terrible at branding, and actually, if you think about it, it helps him solidify his hold over the Republican Party, something Biden of course has said he would like to break away from. In fact, the ultra-MAGA label was trotted out to describe Senator Rick Scott's plan to raise taxes on the middle class and sunset Medicare. I mean, that's not ultra-MAGA. That's actually just standard Republican policy of the last three decades, all the way from Ronald Reagan to Paul Ryan. All this shows is the lack of

imagination and political skill that the Biden team have. In their political strategy, they seem to take all the blame off of themselves and blame either Putin or Trump, or in some cases, both, instead of just making an affirmative case to the American people. It reveals they need poll-tested messages to try and shift blame when the only poll they need to look at is this one. Americans really hate inflation. 70% see it as a big problem. 23% a moderate problem. There is not a single other issue area that falls into that space. People don't want to hear excuses. Biden runs the country. His party holds the seats in Congress. Do something about it and you win. Don't and you

lose. There is no slogan which can obfuscate the fact that gas, food, and everything else is a hell of a lot more expensive. Why exactly that is so difficult to understand over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue remains quite a mystery to me. But I do know this, in November, we're going to be looking back at Biden's strategy at this time and call it that of an ultra loser. You see how cringe it is when you just add ultra onto something? And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, there are three seemingly unrelated stories out right now fueling desperation,

erasing life savings, pushing you out of middle-class stability that I think actually fit together perfectly to illustrate the rot at the core of our society. The immorality, venality, and I'm-going-to-get-mine individualism, which has eclipsed every other value that you might organize a society around. These stories are not just warning signs, but for those impacted are dire and destructive forces spreading misery from coast to coast. Now, the first is one that's burst into the news just recently, the extreme shortage of baby formula. Now, there's a number of compounding reasons why new moms are facing such a frightening inability to obtain at any price the formula on which their infants' lives depend. But as we've dug into the root causes, the story is familiar and it's predictable.

Monopoly consolidation, revolving door government corruption in this instance from the FDA, and good old-fashioned corporate greed. Our friend Brianna Joy Gray laid out this part quite well over at our old stopping grounds. Back in October of 2021, an employee at Abbott Nutrition Production Facility, known as the Sturgis plant, sent a whistleblower letter to the FDA. It alleged, among other things, that management had failed to fix failing, among other things, that management had failed to fix failing, worn-out machines that had become breeding grounds for a coronabacteria outbreak that had led to four baby hospitalizations and two babies dead. Food and Safety News reported that, quote, for several years, some of the equipment associated with the drying process

at the Sturgis site was in need of repair. As a result, a number of product flow pipes were pitting and leaving pinholes. This allowed bacteria to enter the system and, at times, led to bacteria not being adequately cleaned out. This in turn caused product flowing through the pipes to pick up the bacteria that was trapped in the defective pipe, and it ended up in baby's food. Why did Abbott Nutrition let its machinery get so compromised? Well, it's probably not the case that they didn't have the money to update their facilities. A couple of months after the whistleblower report, Abbott Laboratories authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, a practice by which companies' profit is used not to improve the business or to pay workers, but to enrich shareholders. Now I bring this up because I

know some listeners might take the position that markets are generally efficient, that businesses make good decisions about what to do with their profits out of a sense of self-preservation. They must invest in their internal infrastructure, right? They'll pay their workers well to attract and retain good talent. They'll only distribute profit once the bases have been covered. After all, why would a company behave in a way that ultimately hurt it in the long run? Now, one of the core promises of our economic system was that the free market would ensure that we do not have food shortages, that we wouldn't face the bare shelves and long lines for basic goods that were common in places

like the Soviet Union. And yet here we are, unable to provide the most critical sustenance for our most vulnerable population. It is hard to overstate what a core failure this is. And that failure is not in spite of our economic system, but directly because of it. As we have gone further and further down the road of unregulated capitalism, we have allowed the seeds of destruction of that system to be planted.

The whole idea of the system is that it would reward the best and the brightest, those with the best products, the best price, the best productivity. But rigging markets, it turns out, is a lot easier and a lot more profitable than actual free market competition. And as our society became less and less equal, it meant that the profiteers at the top could more easily buy and capture government,

leading to unchecked monopoly consolidation, anti-competitive guaranteed government contracts, and every incentive to simply give money away to the already wealthy executives and shareholders, rather than invest it in workers, innovation, or even the basics of maintaining their production facilities at a sufficient standard. When competition is little and the regulators are in your pocket, you don't have to worry about producing a quality product. You only have to worry about financial engineering to your own benefit. Life and health of babies be damned. The greatest rewards in our system were supposed to flow to the greatest innovators. Instead, they flow to the greatest sociopaths and the most determined cheaters. The perfect cherry on top of this particular dystopian

hellscape story is a Barron's analysis that while baby formula shortages are bad for parents, and presumably for babies, it might actually juice the stock of the very company whose crimes helped to precipitate this crisis. If that isn't late-stage capitalism, I don't know what is. But as horrifying as this story is, Baby Formula is really just the tip of the iceberg of our tale of decline. Our next parable showcases an all-out assault on another essential of human life, shelter. In Brevard County, two Goldman Sachs-backed investment funds just teamed up to buy an entire neighborhood for $45 million. That move has alarmed a coalition of local faith-based organizations who have been fighting for affordable housing for their

community. The leader of one of those groups told reporters that, quote, investors come in and, of course, invest. Property just goes off the roof, which marginalizes a whole lot of people who just can't afford it. This is, of course, part of a larger trend we've covered here. Permanent capital buying up single-family homes, pushing young buyers out of the market, looking to turn all of America into a land of renters, and driving up housing costs for everyone in the meantime. Now, if you're already an asset owner, a homeowner, this is all well and good, but everyone else is getting screwed. Yesteryear's first-time homebuyer

is being pushed into rentals where they cannot build wealth. Renters with middle-class incomes are getting squeezed harder and harder, making it impossible to save up enough to ever enter the homeowner class. Low-income renters and seniors on fixed incomes, they're getting pushed out of the market altogether

and sometimes onto the street. In fact, there is not a single state in the nation where minimum-wage workers can afford a two-bedroom apartment. And about half of Americans cannot afford even a one-bedroom apartment. Financialization of everything means permanent capital is free to buy up the nation's increasingly scarce housing stock and become America's landlord, closing off one of the few remaining pathways to a stable middle-class life. As I've argued before, perhaps the most salient class divide now in the country is between homeowners and non-homeowners. Goldman Sachs and their Wall Street buddies, enabled by corrupt politicians, are locking more and more of Americans into a precarious renter underclass, pushing the white picket fence American dream permanently out of reach or bastardizing it. Now the American dream isn't yours to own. It's only

available to rent at a high price from the money changers on Wall Street. But for true late stage capitalism, you got to look at the rise and fall of crypto. Now, crypto hypers played on exactly the loss of meaning and community that had been created by the soulless, rapacious system. The original promise of crypto was that our system was hopelessly beyond reform, so perhaps it could be supplanted by an alternative order operating outside of the reach of a corrupt government. That original promise then collapsed

into little more than a Ponzi scheme cash grab. Crypto as a way to join the speculator class. After all, if you can't beat them, join them. And why shouldn't you? It's not like the financial engineers on Wall Street were creating anything real. It's not like the stock market was some actual reflection of intrinsic value. Maybe, just maybe, you could get in on the ground floor of the next big thing and be one of the people for whom the system is rigged rather than one of the people who is constantly getting the short end of the stick.

This is exactly the system that crypto billionaires like Sam Bankman-Fried are trying to shore up, jumping into the Washington game in true Wall Street ghoul fashion, schmoozing regulators, buying off politicians, flooding money into congressional races to make sure his particular grift gets the official stamp of approval. Now, for a while, it actually seemed like it just might work. But as of now, the crypto dream has officially turned to nightmare. Crypto losses are now equivalent work. But as of now, the crypto dream has officially turned to nightmare. Crypto losses are now equivalent to the housing collapse of 2008, except without the benefit of a single real asset backstopping them. The fallout has been completely devastating.

Investors who lost everything, as one particular stablecoin called Terra lost its peg and then completely collapsed. They flooded a Reddit forum with messages so desperate that forum moderators pinned suicide hotline numbers at the top. Now, the entire forum has been shut down, presumably because most of the commentary was revolving around suicide. In the end, crypto turned out to be just a new and novel way for regular people to be manipulated, exploited, and ultimately completely crushed. It's too early to say whether the contagion is going to spread to the real economy as well. So food, housing, meaning, opportunity, all are under assault by a system so corroded that it's turned completely upside down. The villains in scofflaws win. The honest and law-abiding get screwed. The basic promises of our system, low prices, reliable supply, predictable

path to basic stability, turn out to be as empty as a UST wallet. And Sagar, you know, it kind of fits with what you were saying about how everything... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now to talk about primaries in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, we have J. Miles Coleman. He is an analyst for UVA's Center. What is it? Saboteau's Crystal Ball. I know it's very similar to my name at the UVA Center for Politics. That's what I was about to say. It's good to meet the other Crystal Ball. Yeah, no relation, although I did go to UVA. So Miles, welcome to the show. It's

great to have you for the first time. Give us a lay of the land. Let's start in Pennsylvania. Just give our viewers a sense of what some of the key races are there and what the polling looks like, how things are shaking out. Sure. So Pennsylvania, you know, of all the primaries this year, it may be sort of the craziest. And that's saying a lot. So in the Senate race to replace Pat Toomey, who's a Republican, we have an open seat race. Most of the drama is on the Democratic side. There are three kind of main contenders that are Dr. Oz, who really needs no introduction. He has Trump's endorsement. Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick is another Republican who may have something of a geographical advantage of being from the Pittsburgh area.

Most of the opposition is from the momentum is Kathy Barnett, who has been who has been starting in polls. So it's basically a three way tie on the Democratic side. Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is probably the front runner on the Democratic side. You know, as if this race wasn't crazy enough, he had a stroke on Friday, but seems to be doing okay. I'd be surprised if he doesn't still win with a pretty comfortable margin. And on the governor's side, it is another kind of interesting situation. who got a Trump endorsement over the weekend is state senator Doug Mastriano, who is a Christian nationalist, as he's been described by other groups. He's been basically on a ticket with Barnett in the Senate race. He would probably be the weakest of the Republicans. His main opposition is former Congressman Lou Barletta, who interestingly was one of the first few congressmen who endorsed Trump in 2016.

He's kind of getting a shaft this year. I saw that there was – he was doing some rally over the weekend. His supporters were like, OK, well, where's our loyalty from President Trump? Well, I think with Trump, loyalty isn't exactly a two-way street. Yes, that's right. And on the Democratic side, it looks like Josh Shapiro, who's the state attorney general, is probably going to be the Democratic nominee. And I'm sure he'd be very happy to face someone like Mastriano.

So let's go into that then a little bit, Miles. So Kathy Barnett obviously surging in the polls, but Trump also came out with a statement over the weekend saying that she cannot win, that she's untested. Given what we know about the Ohio primary, and it's somewhat analogous here, divided race, everybody's being Trumpy, but one person has the Trump endorsement. How much should we take into consideration what that means for Dr. Everybody's being Trumpy, but one person has the Trump endorsement. How much should we take into consideration what that means for Dr. Oz's chances and the explicit statement from Trump saying, absolutely not, Kathy Barnett can't win? How much does that matter? How much is it going to matter tomorrow? Yeah, it's, my thinking is it may be a bit too late because there seems

to be a lot of momentum behind her. I mean, it is really looking like a three-way race. You know why we were talking about David McCormick earlier, how he may have a geography advantage. What I mean by that is primaries in Pennsylvania tend to be highly regionalized because if you're running for office there, your home county is next to your name on the ballots. So that's sort of an X factor. How much of a regional boost is McCormick going to get from the fact that he's the only Pittsburgh-area candidate? We'll see. But it just reminds me, I've seen other races over the years where it's, you know, in this race, it's basically been Oz and McCormick trying to tear each other down these past few weeks. I mean, it created a good circumstance for someone like Barnett to rise up. So we'll see if she still has the momentum.

Why is it that a lot of kind of establishment Republicans are concerned about the electability, both of Barnett, who Trump is now trying to quash, but also Mastriano, who Trump is boosting for governor? Yeah, sure. Because Pennsylvania is about as 50-50 of a state as it gets. I mean, Biden carried it by about one point in 2020. This is a contest or really both of these contests, given the national environment right now, which is, you know, not very pro Biden. These are races that they should, you know, be maybe favored in, if not 50, 50 at minimum. But I think if they

nominate Mastriano, I would assume he'd be at least a slight underdog to the Democrat Josh Shapiro. So, you know, it's almost like 2010 where it was a great Republican year, but they screwed up some races just because they nominated some candidates who are unacceptable. And I think there's been this last ditch effort in both of these races to avoid that. So we'll see how that ends up. What are the other primaries that we got going on tomorrow? Sure. So the other two other primaries I'm watching are for the Senate in North Carolina. That looks like it's probably going to be, at least on the Republican side, a pretty clear win for Congressman Ted Budd, who has a Trump endorsement. You have a decent candidate on the Democratic side in Sherry Beasley, who was a former state Supreme Court justice. North Carolina is one of those states where Democrats have compete, but they can't get over the hump.

So we'll see if it's any different this time. And one contest I'm also watching that is in a state that usually doesn't get too much attention is in Idaho. The incumbent governor, his name is Brad Little. You know, he's basically a John Kasich, Mike-don't-dewine type Republican. Well, he has a Trump-backed opponent in his lieutenant governor, Janice McGee, who has embraced a lot of Trump's conspiracy theories. It's a multi-way primary. So I think if she can pull it off, that would say a lot about the direction that the Republican Party is headed in Idaho. That's interesting. Yeah, that one wasn't on my radar.

Thanks for bringing that up. Talk to us a little bit about the overall picture for the Senate. Obviously, Democrats, you know, have the edge right now, 50-50. Republicans very much wanting to take back control. What states do Republicans need to win in order to be able to take back control of the Senate this year? Sure. So I think one advantage that the Democrats have this year compared to, say, 2014, which was Obama's last midterm, is they're not defending members in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Dakota. Most of the key states are going to be states that Biden very narrowly carried in 2020. So if I'm a Republican, I would be very interested in trying to knock off someone like Mark Kelly in Arizona, Raphael Warnock in Georgia, and even Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. I think given the national environment, you know, kind of with Pennsylvania,

we'll have to see who the Republicans end up nominating. But those are kind of the key races that Democrats are playing defense in. On the other hand, if I'm a Democrat, I would very much like to go after someone like Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who a lot of times with some of the stuff he says, it's like, you know, are you trying to lose? Because he says all this weird stuff. But, you know, I think at this point,

the Senate is, you know, still probably 50-50. You know, maybe with the national environment, there are Republicans. I'll say this. It's almost like 2010 in that the Republicans should have a very clear path to take in the Senate, which they ultimately may. But they're going to have to nominate candidates who can capitalize on that. Yeah. Really well said. Yeah, that is well said. Miles, thanks for joining us.

Great to have your analysis today. We're really grateful for it. Great job, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. And Sagar, one thing that Miles mentioned there, which just broke last night, which is big news, is in the Democratic side of the Pennsylvania Senate primary, John Fetterman,

who was a Bernie backer, he's the lieutenant governor. He's a very sort of charismatic figure. He was the mayor of Braddock, an old steel town. He has been the front runner against kind of blue dog corporate type Conor Lamb, who's a member of Congress. Fetterman has had, you know, 30 point lead in recent polls. The Democratic Party almost told Conor Lamb, like, to stand down on some of the more aggressive attacks he was levying against John Fetterman. Fetterman has come out and said that he was hospitalized, that he had a stroke. So, you know, as Miles indicated, it seems unlikely that it will upend the dynamics of that race. I saw Conor Lamb had

surged from like a penny to four cents. Oh, on predicted? In the predicted betting market. So he did get a little bit of a bump from the news. Of course, the most important thing is that we hope that John Fetterman is doing well. And by all indications, he is feeling much better, but certainly kind of a shock in that race. Yeah, he put out a video yesterday and a statement. Let's put the statement up here on the screen. He says, on Friday, I wasn't feeling really well, so I went to the hospital to get checked out. I didn't want to go. I didn't think I had to, but Giselle insisted, and as usual, she was right. I hadn't been feeling well, but was so focused on the campaign, I ignored the signs and just kept going. On Friday, it caught up with me. I had a stroke

caused by a clot from my heart being in afib rhythm for too long. Fortunately, Giselle spotted the symptoms, got me to the hospital in minutes. The amazing doctors here were able to quickly and completely remove the clot. Reversing the stroke, they got my heart under control as well. It's a good reminder to listen to your body and be aware of the signs. The good news is I'm feeling much better, and the doctors tell me I didn't suffer any cognitive damage. I'm well on my way to a full recovery, so I have a lot to be thankful for. They're keeping him here for observation in the meantime.

Now, obviously, first of all, as I understand it on strokes, the first hour or so is critical. So knowing the standard, I forget. I probably should have prepared. But I know that there's like an acronym or whatever. Do your research. Be prepared in case you're at risk. Second, take care of yourselves. Take care of your body.

Listen to it as well because he ignored the signs and he paid the price for it. We could have paid a much bigger price for it. But politically, a lot of these people have already voted. Early voting has been on for a while. A lot of Pennsylvania Democrats, in particular, are people who are going to embrace mail-in voting. So a lot of those votes have probably already been cast. He had such a high lead. It's not like he's dead. It's not even a heart attack, necessarily. It's a stroke, which they have a complete and total removal. The video he put out seemed fine to me. So he's probably still going to win, but it is kind of like a last minute, like, whoa, holy crap. Yeah. Well, if Bernie Sanders is any indication with his heart attack, he actually like surged. I mean, that was crazy,

right? He was at the time that he had his heart attack. He was at his lowest point in the polls. It was the moment when Elizabeth Warren had overtaken him. So you had Biden and Warren ahead of him in the national polls. And then he has a heart attack. And what Ari Rabenhoff, who we talked to, and Kyle and I also talked to for the podcast, what he says is he felt like it made people kind of like appreciate Bernie more. They like cheered, you know, there's something to cheering for, for the underdog. Um, so anyway, in Bernie's instance, but to your point about the importance of taking these, um, health signs seriously, especially when you're older, like Bernie is, um, you know, he was lucky to have around him people who knew him really well. So they recognize some patterns in his behavior that just didn't fit.

So Ari talks about Bernie's at this event, and he asked for a chair while he's taking questions. Well, he never does that. In fact, he hates sitting while he's, like, speaking to voters. He finds it sort of, like, disrespectful. So that was red flag number one. Number two, afterwards, he didn't want to stay very long to take pictures and interact with people, which, you know, they weren't doing the whole Elizabeth Warren, like, thousand people selfie line.

But they were doing a significant amount of that, and Bernie was like, I'm tired. And then they get in the car, and Ari says to him, like, are you feeling okay? What's going on? He's like, oh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just, like, tired. And he probed enough to get to the point where Bernie indicated he was having some sort of arm pain. There we go. And that's when they were like, all right, we have to go right now to the urgent care.

And if that hadn't happened, then he's alone in his hotel room. Yeah. And he knows what happens. God knows what ultimately happens. So anyway, long story short, pay attention. Take these signs seriously, especially when you're dealing with someone who is older, but also in the case, like, John Fetterman is not ultimately that old. Really important,

so we wish him the best, and we'll see how it all shakes out. So I have the acronym. It's BE FAST. BALANCE. Does the person have a sudden loss of balance? EYES. Has the person lost vision in one or both eyes? FACE. Does the person's face look uneven? ARMS. Is one arm weak or numb? SPEECH. Is the person's speech slurred? Does the person have trouble speaking or seem eyes? Face. Does the person's face look uneven? Arms. Is one arm weak or numb? Speech. Is

the person's speech slurred? Does the person have trouble speaking or seem confused? Time. Call 9-1-1 now. Be fast. So I'm going to have that etched in my memory. Here's your public health announcement, but do not take health advice from me. Okay. Thank you all very much for watching. We really appreciate it. We appreciate all of your support of the show coming up on our one year anniversary, which is really insane. Uh, we have some big things planned, some big announcements plan that our premiums got a little taste of during our AMA. Uh, it's going to be a lot of fun and I really can't wait for that. We also have an upcoming video premiums, uh, stay tuned. We're going to be giving you guys kind of a state of the union on how exactly we've spent the first year and the breaking points. Yeah, state of the breaking points.

Plans for year two, expansion and all of that that you guys are helping or you can be a part of if you want to be a part of that ahead of the major announcement. You can go ahead and become a premium subscriber.

There's a link down there in the description. We really appreciate it and we will see you all tomorrow. Love y'all. See you tomorrow. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kasson, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there.

And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you go to find your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.