Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/18/23: Biden Humiliated In Debt Ceiling Fight, Chomsky Caught In Epstein Money, Housing Market Record Low Confidence, Prince Harry and Meghan's "Car Chase", Tucker Replacement, Public Housing Surveillance, Pat McAffee ESPN Deal, DeSantis Set To Launch

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Biden's humiliation in the Debt Ceiling fight, Doomsday scenarios if US defaults on Debt, Noam Chomsky caught in Epstein money transfers, the Housing Market his a Record Low Confidence, Youth Depression skyrockets post pandemic, the NYPD calls out Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's claims that they were pursued by paparazzi in a 2 hour car chase through Manhattan, the Drudge Report saying Sean Hannity is being tapped to replace Tucker's primetime hour slot, Krystal looks into surveillance being weaponized against poor people in public housing, Saagar looks into Pat McAffee's ESPN Deal to put his internet show on TV, and we're joined in studio by Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) from Semafor to discuss her recent reporting on the Trump and DeSantis campaigns in Iowa and when DeSantis might be announcing. Shelby's recent reporting (https://www.semafor.com/article/05/14/2023/the-real-2024-campaign-started-in-iowa-this-weekend-trump-desantis)To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Lots of drama to get to this morning. First of all, developments with regard to the debt ceiling. We will tell you what is likely to happen there as best as we can possibly figure as we are coming down to the wire. We also have some big developments with regard to Jeffrey Epstein and one of the banks that was happy to have his business for years and years after he'd already been convicted of being a sex criminal. So we will talk about that as well. And also Noam Chomsky caught in- Noam, my man, Noam. I don't even know what to say about that.

That book might have to go, Crystal. I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure we can keep that behind the set now. Not a good look, let's just say that. Also some really dire numbers with regards to the housing market and some overall economic news. And actually some news about just how Americans are doing,

like at the core of their being that we need to talk through as well. Whole Meghan and Harry situation in Manhattan that I just it's like literally the South Park. I I've been upset the moment it came out. I said this is fake. Calling them the Duke and Duchess of Smollett. I'll make you make you can make up your mind for yourself whether you think they're lying or not. I don't think my my view is all that.

I think it's pretty clear what happened at this point. So we'll give you all those details. Also, there are some rumors about what Fox News is going to do now that they have pushed Tucker Carlson out, how they're going to reconfigure their primetime lineup. Also excited to have a political reporter in the show that we haven't had before, Shelby Talcott. She is tracking closely Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump. So we want to get her report from the campaign trail as well. Old friend of mine. She actually took my job, White House correspondent. Oh, that's right.

Daily caller before me. And now she works over at Semaphore. She's doing a very good job. Ben Smith's outlet. The GOP primary. That's right. And by all accounts, I mean, she's allowed to do what she needs to. And she's doing a really good job of just like beat to beat about DeSantis and Trump and all that. And so I'm excited to talk to her a little bit about that. So before we get to that, though, we just want to say thank you to everybody who watched the RFK interview. I know that so many of you enjoyed it. I guess my only regret about it is that we didn't have enough time with the man. He unfortunately had to go, but we talked to him about it afterwards, Crystal, and he wants to come back. And we've even

discussed doing a town hall event or something of some kind that we can try and organize. So by all accounts, you know, we're happy with how that went and we want to make sure that we continue to do more of these. Oh, a hundred percent. Yes. Really enjoyed the exchange with him. I think we, we try to cover as much ground as we could in the time that he had available. Obviously he's extraordinarily busy here in DC. So, you know, grateful to him for his time. Grateful to you guys for watching, engaging with it. And also those of you who signed up as premium subs, super, super appreciate that as we are getting very close to having the new set to reveal. Yeah, we really do appreciate all of you. And, you know, we're going to have more of these interviews. We're going to, we're in the works right now, scheduling Marianne to come. We're

going to grill her as well. And I think that's something we're committed to. We're going to grill every single one of them whenever they have here. And I do think in the future, we're going to push for a little bit more time, though, in terms of this game. Because I'm just like, you know, I really don't like whenever people have to go and all that. But we'll get to that. It's all good. Listen, these are busy folks. Yes.

So totally understand. And like I said, I think we got a lot of ground covered with him in the time that we had available. Absolutely. So super grateful for him for taking the time. And thanks for everybody who signed up. And if you want to continue to support our ability to do that, town hall events, new sets, all that's very expensive. So we appreciate you, breakingpoints.com to become a premium subscriber today. All right, let's get to the very latest with regard to the debt ceiling. Just as backdrop here, again, guys, we have this really weird and

incredibly stupid system where Congress votes to spend money. And then weirdly, they have this separate vote about whether or not they're actually going to borrow enough to pay those bills down the line. Republicans in particular have decided to use this as a point of leverage to try to get through things that they otherwise could not get passed through the Congress. And so now we are coming to a head here. By some accounts, June 1st is kind of the drop dead date. We are going to go through in a moment if we do breach the debt ceiling. What is the potential fallout? I mean, the big takeaway is nobody really knows, but it looks like it would be really, really bad. And obviously it is now May 18th. So we are inching very close to that deadline.

Joe Biden's original consistent stance had been not going to negotiate. Clean debt ceiling. That's all I'll accept. Not going to negotiate with the hostage takers. Well, now he has gone back on what was previously a very clear position. He is, in fact, negotiating with the hostage takers, although he's trying to parse and pretend like he's not. Here is how he is framing things and what he is saying. We're going to come together because there's no alternative to do the right thing for the country. We have to move on. And to be clear, this negotiation is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not about whether or not we're going to, in fact, pay our debts. The leaders have all agreed we will not default.

Every leader has said that. So all have agreed we will not default. Every leader has said that. So all have agreed we will not default. Well, we'll see. I'm not sure I believe that, to be honest with you. Yeah, exactly. And then you can see how he's trying to parse here. He's trying to say, oh, we're not really negotiating on the debt ceiling. We're talking about the budget.

This is all just word games. They are negotiating on the debt ceiling, something that I'll talk a little bit more about in a moment, I think is a dramatic mistake. Because what does this mean? Even putting aside whether you think the GOP demands are good or bad or indifferent or whatever, the minute you give in to this people, guess what? Every time this vote comes up, the whole global economy is going to be held hostage again by, you know, whoever wants to gain an edge and get something through that they could not get through the legislative process. Yeah. I mean, I think

people need, this is also why though, I will say, Chris, I was actually very frustrated several months ago. Cause I'm like, listen, you're going to negotiate. There's no question about it. Like there is no getting around this. But there is getting around it. Like there are other options. There are multiple other workarounds. There is a 14th Amendment workaround where the Constitution says like the debt shall not be questioned. You could pursue that. You could mint the coin. There's another alternative where you can issue premium bonds. So there are other workarounds. Otherwise, God, we're just going to go back to the same dynamic year after year after year. Every time there's a Democratic president, Republicans have one or the other.

I'll rephrase. I meant within the framework that the Biden administration has created. I will say, okay, look on the 14th Amendment. So I've done a decent amount of research now, and I'm not even saying that these aren't feasible. Same with mint the coin. A lot of it actually does come down to whether the market would accept it. So I guess we could talk a little bit about that in terms of what a breach would look. But you could technically mint the coin. And even if the Federal Reserve were to accept the coin, that actually is not a given. There's actually no guarantee that the markets would look at that as a genuine debt ceiling lift. So part of the problem is so much of our feelings around debt are feelings.

And they are backed not necessarily by the technical raising of the debt ceiling, but by everybody just kind of walking around and just being like, yeah, full faith and credit of the United States. It's good. We're cool with it. When that starts to come into question, even with the 14th Amendment, the debt ceiling, the premium bonds, as you said, that uncertainty, you're still likely looking at a crash. I mean, it's one of those where it's a very complicated situation. So I also don't want to take responsibility away from the Republicans because I think we should all be honest about what they are asking for. And they have decided that they want to cut spending and return spending levels to six months ago. When you put it that way, okay, it sounds reasonable. But one of the ways that they want to cut spending almost entirely is they don't want to touch

the military budget at all. They don't want to touch any DOD spending or Ukraine spending. They don't want to touch entitlement programs. or Ukraine spending. They don't want to touch entitlement programs. Well, you just took off the two vast portions of the entire federal expenditure. So what is left? Well, what's left are effectively, you know, you have food stamp programs. They've talked about welfare. They've talked about rescinding some of the IRS money. I mean, I personally have a problem with some of that. But they do want to rescind some of the money taken within the Inflation Reduction Act, some of which has already been spent, some future tax credits. And my other problem with it is they also don't want to raise any taxes. There are actually 10 different tax

loopholes that could easily be closed. We've talked about each one of them on the show. Ad nauseum, the private equity loophole, the carried interest loophole, step-up basis loophole. There are several other corporate loopholes. None of these would ever touch anybody who is including people at this desk. It has nothing to do with small business or middle class. This is all corporate or extremely high net worth individuals, which could raise billions of dollars. And they've taken that off the table. So I want to lay out exactly what the conversation here. I mean, in a sense, like I said, I don't really care what their demands are because I think the whole thing is economic terrorism. And so even if what they were saying was totally reasonable

as a matter of principle, I don't think you should negotiate. But the details matter for another reason, which is that it really shows how disingenuous they are about actually caring about the debt. First of all, there is no sign in the markets that we have any sort of looming debt issue. Up until very recently when the Fed started hiking rates, interest rates have been incredibly low. The market has been very stable in terms of treasury bonds. There's no indication out there that we have this looming debt crisis we have to deal with. That's number one. Number two, if you were genuinely concerned about the debt, guess what you would put on the table? The freaking Trump tax cuts for the top 1%. You could keep whatever little piddling pennies they gave to like the middle

class and the working class. Fine, keep that in there. Roll back the ones that dramatically benefit corporate America that they use to engage in all their stock buybacks. That added massively to our debt. That put a gigantic hole in our budget. Like, if you actually cared about these things, that would be on the table. And of course, they're not interested in that. They're not interested in a tax conversation whatsoever because this is an ideological project. And it's specifically an ideological project to appease one part of the Republican caucus that, you know, extracted their pound of flesh from Kevin McCarthy in order to for him to get his speakership. Let's go and put this next piece from Axios up on the screen that has some of these details. So they're talking about how McCarthy called Biden's bluff, as you were pointing out,

soccer, Biden being a, you know, weak-kneed institutionalist. Unfortunately, the writing was kind of on the wall that ultimately he would cave and he would negotiate. That's exactly what is happening now. They say efforts to peel off vulnerable House Republicans failed. None openly opposed McCarthy's strategy of tying spending cuts to a debt ceiling hike. House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole told Axios they're negotiating now and they weren't doing it before. So again, he caved. Now, the cope here from the Biden side, and this is the politics that come into this, they say, if Biden conceded to direct one-on-one negotiations, McCarthy is prepared to give ground as well. He's open to a deal that lifts the debt ceiling until 2025, beyond the next election. And there it is. I mean, that's the real

Trump card that the Republicans have is they can hold out to him like, we'll make these economic problems for you go away. All you have to do is like throw poor people under the bus, basically. And we'll make this go away until after the next election so that we don't have some sort of global financial catastrophe that is going to hurt you in your reelect bid. And so that's what this comes down to. Right. And he actually spoke a little bit on CNBC yesterday. Let's take a listen. First of all, there is not going to be a tax discussion in this debt ceiling. The president admitted that yesterday at the beginning. Let's curve what we were spending less than we spent last year. Let's go back five months. Let's put in things that make us grow, right? Permitting reform. Cut the red tape. If you like renewable energy,

be able to get the permit to do it. Build the roads. But also the other energy we talked about. Let's help people get jobs again. Let's be less dependent upon China. I think that's reasonable and sensible. But I didn't think it was reasonable that I had to wait 104 days until they finally admit they'd come into the room and negotiate. I actually do agree with him on permitting reform. But on the rest of it, that's always the issue, which is it sounds reasonable. And then you start looking at what's actually being cut. That's why I wanted to lay it out for people. You know, listen, if you do care about the debt and there are reasons that you, you know, maybe should or maybe shouldn't. And there it's a multifaceted conversation.

But if you would, then some there are many other things that should be on the table. As he said, he doesn't want to have a tax conversation. And, you know, then there are many other things that should be on the table. As he said, he doesn't want to have a tax conversation. And, you know, most Republicans are not against raising taxes on corporations or on closing tax loopholes for the financial industry. Most regular Republican voters. I'm talking about actual Republican voters. Versus Republican elite electives. There's reams of polling on this. Republicans don't want to touch entitlements and they don't have any problem with raising taxes on corporations and specifically on wealthy tax loopholes that only benefit financial billionaires. There are many, I mean, this is almost where it's like, just turn it into

a culture war thing and be like, George Soros and all these other people, let's tax them. I'd be like, okay, let's go. That's actually a great idea. These ESG terrorists, which kind of true, should pay taxes. Okay. You know, let's, let's go. There's a lot of different ways. So I, this is always why I just find the conversation very difficult and, you know, look in terms of the debt ceiling and all of that, as you said, I mean, just, I think I come back to this. I think hardcore Republicans are going to be with them no matter what they like a fighter. They like somebody who's going to fight. The question remains, are people real? Like when they hear and understand, let's say your 401k drops by 25% and they're like, wait, we're doing this for, uh, for work per for work reform, work requirements

in the food stamp program, regardless of how you feel or not about that, like, do you feel enough about that to have your retirement portfolio go down by 25? To threaten to crash the entire global economy over it? You know, this is another one. So let's say that last time, 2011, we didn't even go over the debt ceiling. We still had our debt downgraded. That had significant ramifications for pension funds and for T-bills. And a lot of it was erased, the problems for that by very, very low interest rates and the zero interest rate economy. Well, we don't live in that environment anymore. So this actually could only further propel us

into a recession. Now, cynically though, I mean, this is kind of exactly what you want if you are a Republican. Like if you are politically and cynically, at the end of the day, Crystal, I do believe that in the short term, while it would not be good for the Republican Party, and they may suffer some costs overall, that in the net, having a worse off economy is going to be worse off for Joe Biden vis-a-vis whenever he becomes president. Which is an absolutely psychopathic way for them to look at this. I'm just, I'm just, yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I'm not, it's not aimed at you. That's aimed at them. I mean, that is psychopathic for them to look at it that way. But I think you're

right. That is the gamble that they're taking because they're, they're playing with people's lives here. Um, and the, so in terms of the mechanics of how this is going to work, there's been a lot of happy talk in DC this week about, Oh, they're going to come to a deal. Maybe, maybe, but, um, there's still a long way to go before that actually comes together because you have Democrats who are pissed off, progressives who are pissed off. Put this up on the screen from Jeff Stein. You've got a number of Senate Democrats in particular, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others who just sent a letter urging Biden to prep that 14th Amendment solution. Again, the 14th Amendment

saying that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. Because keep in mind here, what is basically happening is Congress is sending the president two conflicting sets of instructions. One set of instructions says, spend this money. And the other says, don't do what you need to do to be able to spend this money. So the basic constitutional argument here is you've got the 14th Amendment, which says the debt shall not be questioned. Take it to the courts and let the Supreme Court make the call as to whether they want to be the ones that crash the economy. And even though the court, you know, very partisan institution, but it's not clear that you would have all of the conservatives like committed to the potential chaos that could

be unleashed by taking that perspective. So progressives are pissed. You're increasingly getting strong words from them about their upset about what the White House is putting on the table, the work requirements, the fact that Biden's been open to work requirements on any of this stuff, the fact that he caved and is negotiating. You're getting an increasing upset there. So that's the Democratic side. In some ways, though, even more seriously, on the Republican side, there were some pretty stringent demands made from the furthest right part of the caucus. And it's not at all clear that whatever deal Biden and McCarthy would make would be acceptable to the Republican entirety of the Republican caucus. So there's still, even though there was a lot of happy talk in Washington this week

about, oh, we think they're getting close and we think there may be a deal, I'm still skeptical that that is really going to ultimately come together because it's not just up, if it was just Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy, I almost said John Boehner, my God, PTSD. If it was just Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy, yes, I think they could probably come up with something that both of them would be comfortable with because they're both basically institutionalists. They're both basically quote unquote moderates. But when you add in all these other factors, it makes it a lot more complicated to actually get to the finish line here. So I think, you know, all of the sort of solutions, the workarounds, all those things

are in a sense still on the table, even as I have a little confidence that Joe Biden really has the spine to pursue any of them. Yeah. My thing is, I am increasingly believe that we are going to default at least in some name only, and that only after that will we see some sort of deal. That's part of what I was talking about. So I think June 1, the likelihood of having a deal between McCarthy and Biden, which is acceptable to Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House, just seems like zero. And remember this also. McCarthy has, what, 20-something votes or whatever to play with. Well, it's not like they have all that many votes on the Democratic side to actually get this through. There are many Republicans who may not even vote to advance the debt ceiling deal out of Congress, out of the Senate for a cloture.

So you have to put that in the Senate and think about where that comes from. But then you have the House of Representatives. Then there's a flippening where there's also a clean debt ceiling, which is on the floor for the House of Representatives. And they, the Democrats, only need five Republicans to sign on for them. So I actually think there could be a likelihood that we get to June 1 and people are like, the markets crash. That's the only time. Let's be honest, you know, until Wall Street gets mad, that's not. They don't care. They don't care. So the markets crash, the hedge fund managers and everybody in the banks all blow up the phones. And it's certainly possible,

given the discharge petition and more, that they were able to get a clean debt ceiling through because five moderate-ish Republicans are like, you know what? I don't want to deal with this. Let's kick it down the road for a month or something like that. Then it would go to the Senate. But then there's no guarantee that the Senate, the Republicans would vote for that. So I'm looking at this on both sides and I just see tremendous amounts of uncertainty. Is it possible? I don't know. But I don't think that the impetus for forcing negotiating power right now is there enough. There has to be a crash of some kind for people to get serious. I don't say this, but I don't want there to be a crash. But I really don't believe that they will genuinely do

anything. Both sides, right? There's no way that Elizabeth Warren and John Fetterman and all these people are going to vote for work requirements unless there's a massive crash. There's also no way that a lot of these spending people who are like, I want to cut the Department of Education. I'm not going to vote for anything until that goes through. There's no way they're going to vote until unless we have a large crash either. I mean, there's a few Republicans in the House who are like, I'm not voting for a debt ceiling increase at all. Right, exactly. So just to show you the polarity of the views here. So just to tie up this part of the conversation before we get to, all right, what could happen theoretically if we do breach the debt ceiling, especially for some kind of extended period of time? The basic paths that are available right now is they are able to

strike some kind of a deal that is acceptable to enough Republicans and enough Democrats in the House and the Senate in order for it to actually get through. That is one potential outcome. And I think we've laid out how dicey a prospect that is. There's what you were referring to, Sagar, this idea of a discharge petition, which is there is a sort of arcane legislative procedure that if you have a majority of members of the House sign on to it, you can bring something onto the floor without permission from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. So that's where you're talking about. If you could get five Republicans to join with all the Democrats on a clean debt ceiling increase through a discharge petition, that is another potential alternative as you're laying out. In some ways, the bigger barrier

there is the Senate because you have to get 60 votes in the Senate still for that thing to go through. So that's the discharge petition. And then you have this raft of workarounds. I think the 14th Amendment one is the one that seems to be considered most sort of seriously within the White House, even though they have expressed to Jeff Stein and others that they're very skeptical of that as well, and they're nervous about what it would mean. There are other workarounds that are sort of gimmicky, like the mint the coin and other directions they could go there. So we'll put that all in the basket of different workarounds. And at this point, you know, I can make a case against each one of those very clearly. And it's hard for me to make an affirmative case for any one of them because they all have major risk

challenges and political, you know, uncertainty. So that's kind of where we stand with things. No, I think you're right. I think we should just tell people like what's going to happen, what's possible. Yeah. Yeah. Those are I think you're right. I think we should just tell people, like, what's going to happen? What's possible? Yeah. Yeah. Those are all the scenarios. Okay, so let's talk about if they are unable to come to a deal and the Biden administration doesn't employ one of these workarounds and we do, in fact, breach the debt ceiling, what is this going to look like?

And the truth of the matter is nobody really knows because even though we technically breached it before, you know, there was a resolution quickly enough that we didn't get to some of the most dire scenarios. Although even in that scenario, this was back in 2011, we lost trillions of dollars in household wealth just from that brief breach of the debt ceiling. So it shows you there could be tremendous consequences here. Go ahead and put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. The headline here is seven doomsday scenarios if the U.S. crashes through the debt ceiling. This was written up by Jeff Stein. Just at the top, you know, they've got quotes from a few economists saying Mark Zandi, a chief economist at Moody's, says it would be a lethal combination. You can see how this thing

could really metastasize and take down the entire financial system, which would ultimately take out the economy. I've seen many other economists say this could be way worse than the 2008 financial crash if allowed to fester for a sufficient period of time. So going through the seven scenarios here, I mean, number one, the first thing that would probably happen is stocks would crash. And you have estimates that stock prices could fall by roughly one-fifth. That's from Moody's Analytics. You would have stocks plummeting on the expectation of a wider

economic downturn. Interest rates would rise. Investors would pull funds out of the market to preserve their access to short-term cash. And that piece, I think, is pretty clear that you would have a rather instantaneous stock crash. And, you know, we did see Sager previously in the when there was the coronavirus crash, which was so brief that people like apparently forgot that it even happened. And by people, I mean, like elites who weren't paying that close of attention because it galvanized forces in Washington to actually act. So it is possible if you had stocks fall off a cliff, then maybe people will get their act together at that point and get something done. Yeah, I mean, looking at all of these, stocks crashing is obviously going to force.

That couldn't be everything. The sudden recession, federal workers in limbo, I don't think, I'm not saying they don't matter, but I am saying I don't think a lot of people are going to care as much. I don't want to just write that one off because you are talking about U.S. military personnel. You're talking about air traffic controllers. You're talking about food safety inspectors. Federal government is the largest employer in the whole country. True.

So that's not a nothing to wave off. And, of course, when you have the largest employer in the whole country basically, like, you know, not paying their workers, then that obviously feeds into much broader economic issues with regard to the instant recession. The one that really hit me was the Social Security. So it was said that it's possible that we could reach a point where 60 million people who get monthly Social Security payments would not be getting some of their payments in addition to federal reimbursement for Medicare. I was like, that is one which actually would really change things. Now, some Republicans have said that the government actually can continue to make these payments, but some budget experts are skeptical that the Treasury Department will have the ability. The other thing is, cynically, if the Republicans are like, no, you can, and the Treasury Department's

like, no, we can't. It's like, well, who has the authority to pay? The Treasury Department, right? So they may do it just to try and force a hand of somebody. Let's all be honest. Nobody really knows how and what to do because what happens is the Treasury Department will still have incoming revenues. All of us will continue to pay taxes, business owners, you know, we have to pay on a quarterly basis or whatever. So we'll pay our quarterly tax estimate. Well, they can use that

money coming in because it's non-congressionally appropriated. So then they though have to go and decide what to spend it on. But that itself comes to a constitutional question of like, you shouldn't be making decisions about what to spend and whatnot. So it's yeah, it is complicated. Right. And also, you know, think about this choice that they would be making. Are you going to pay the debt holders over like the seniors who need their social security. Which is what Wall Street wants. Of course that's what Wall Street wants, 100%. And, you know, to make the other side of this, there are Republicans who say, oh, we've gone through, we've prioritized

how we'd make the payments. So, you know, it wouldn't be as dire as what you're laying out. But again, this is all completely uncharted territory. And so there's a lot of skepticism that however many, it's like billions of payments have to go on from the federal government that you really trust the federal government to be able to accurately like prioritize those in a way that everybody's going to find acceptable.

Very likely they would privilege wall street over like veterans, seniors, et cetera. So, um, so yeah, I think that's a really important one and And this could be a global catastrophe. Why? Because more than half of the world's foreign currency reserves are held in U.S. dollars. Treasury bonds are used as collateral routinely because they're considered to be like the safest possible financial instrument. Sometimes they're considered like safer than cash. This backstops as collateral transactions, major corporate transactions all around the globe. And that's why, again, it's so hard to predict, OK, when that stops being so certain and becomes instantly this risky asset, what does that do? What does it mean in terms of our status as still being the world's reserve currency?

You already have countries that are trying to move in another direction from that. So huge and very frightening question marks about what that would all look like. I always remember, you know, what happened in the UK when you had that mini budget disastrously released by Liz Truss. economic impacts that nobody really saw coming because the global financial system is so intertwined and so complex that even the most intelligent and well-versed economists can't lay out what all of the follow-on effects are. So that's what makes this so frightening. You, of course, would have the dollar drop. You would have U.S. borrowing costs soar, which is the opposite of what you want if you're worried about the debt. That means the debt becomes even more expensive and we're even in a deeper hole. So that's why this is not something to play around

with. This is not a game and it's not something to be casual about. There are potentially very dire and very serious consequences here and they're playing with fire. Let's go put the next one on there because it's important actually, which is they say the consequences from Bloomberg of the debt ceiling are already here. And what they say is that, this is even JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the consequences could be catastrophic. One person that they quote, the former chief of staff at the Treasury Department said, people get the joke that's going on in Washington. It's the strongest economy in the world, most powerful nation. If it's not going to pay its debts when due, you've got to be kidding. And then what they point to is that this could cause global financial panic, as you said,

Crystal. And that's why when you're messing with something which seems so ironclad in the global financial system, you really just have no idea what's going to happen. They point to the $50 trillion capital markets, debt and equity. Any hiccups in repo markets that could take those markets off course have hundreds of billions of dollars in implications, even a couple of percent both ways. And the overnight lending through the banks and financial markets as primary collateral, he says, there could be a huge contraction of credit and capital markets, liquidity that greases the skids of all of those markets, as well as a huge liquidity call. What's more, corporations with AAA ratings cannot be rated more safe than the country that they are hosted in, meaning that corporations themselves could face mandatory downgrades and higher borrowing costs.

That's what I referenced earlier in our show, whenever we had a debt downgrade in the way that we were, you know, all of these things have automatic kick-ins for pensions and for higher borrowing costs. And if we have higher borrowing costs across not only as a government, but for our individual corporations, that bleeds into what they're able to do, what they're able to borrow money for. So yeah, it's just a real mess all around. I think that's the only way you could possibly sum it up. And let me just say again, look, I think Biden has made a catastrophic error here by agreeing to negotiate because I think the consequences of this are so dire. And I do want

to be clear on like the 14th Amendment workaround or whatever. No one is saying that would be painless. It would be, you know, there would be economic consequences to that as well because, Sagar, what you're pointing to, the uncertainty of how this would work out within the legal system and was this, you know, debt really going to be honored in the way that our other debt, that is all really true. But we cannot keep having these hostage situations year after year after year. We have got to find a way to take this thing off the table because this is a potential catastrophic disaster for people in this country and people around the world in the making. And we need to not repeat the errors of the past is what I would say. So

we will see how this all works out if it does work out. Okay, let's go to the next one here. This one, old Noam Chomsky and just the Jeffrey Epstein story. It never really does die, does it? So let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen. This is, it's, you know, it's hard to say for somebody who is certainly, uh, respected the book that we have literally on the shelf, which I've always thought was very important foundational to understanding manufacturing consent and media incentives and all of that by the intellectual Noam Chomsky linguist, somebody, you know, I still do respect, I guess, somewhat intellectually, but I can respect a scholarship. That said, said, we now have proof from the Wall Street Journal that Jeffrey Epstein moved $270,000 for Noam Chomsky and paid an additional $150,000 to an academic named Leon Botstein. So what the

journal says is that this transfer between accounts for Noam Chomsky, the two academics have all been confirmed both by Chomsky as well as financial records that the Wall Street Journal has been able to get their hands on says that Chomsky met with Epstein not just the one time that we had previously said, but actually on multiple occasions. topics. And in response to those questions, actually what they say is that previously, one of the payoffs, this is to Botstein, was 150 grand because Epstein had donated a sum to Barr that year as more than a $1 million donation. A spokesperson then said that they did receive this weird pass-through donation through Leon Botstein. Not exactly sure what's going on there. You know, with Chomsky, he doesn't really have a particularly good explanation. He says he received a March 2018 transfer of $270,000 from an Epstein account. He says, quote, it was restricted to a rearrangement of my own funds and did not involve one penny from Epstein. He explained he

had asked him for help, quote, with a technical matter that involved the disbursement of common funds related to his first marriage. He says, my wife died 15 years ago. We paid no attention to financial issues. We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest way would be to transfer funds from one account in my name to another by way of his office. Chomsky said he did not hire Epstein. It was just a quick and a simple transfer of funds. Look, I mean, maybe, uh, you know, his initial response, uh, to the question crystal was remember whenever they revealed that he'd met first response is none of your business or anyone. Second is I knew him and we met occasionally. So is it possible that it's an innocent explanation? Maybe. But I mean, it boggles the mind to think of a true scenario where

you need a quarter of a million dollar bridge loan from Jeffrey Epstein. We have a legitimate financial system and we have ways to rectify those problems. Why would it make sense for you to transfer money from one account to another guy's account who then transfers money to you? If you do need to transfer money to yourself, why don't you just wire money to yourself or AC, you know what I mean? Like there, I'm just like, it's like, there are many ways to give money to yourself. Very few of them involve me sending it to you to send it to me. And, you know, we have a closer relationship, hopefully, than Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky. So anyway, I think it's a little bit odd.

It just, it lines up with so many of these things that come out where it's, you know, Epstein is doing financial transactions for people that you're like, why was this person in the middle of this? Why were they involved? He clearly made himself in the business of like solving whatever little issue, whatever little problem that people with power or money had. And so somehow I don't understand how or why it makes sense to put himself in the middle of this just transfer of funds between accounts. I mean, we do lots of fund transfers here at Breaking Points. Yes. Never once have we been like, let's get this weird pedophile to help us with the transaction.

Like, let's send it to him and then send it back to us. We just take it out of our account. We send it to the person we owe money to. Right. You put it on a wire. Like, it's not really that hard. You can do it online these days. So that, yes. And at the same

time, there's some additional news about some of the banks and their relationships with Epstein. So he was originally a JPMorgan Chase customer for many years, and they're in trouble over that. And they're facing discovery over their relationship. Jamie Dimon's been subpoenaed and all these sorts of things. So that happened. Then after JPMorgan Chase was like, all right, I think we better be done with this dude. Then Deutsche Bank picks up where they left off. And they had this relationship with Epstein for years after he was already convicted. So there's really no excuse. And they've been in a lot of hot water for ignoring what were like really obviously suspicious transactions that were going on. So put this next piece up on the screen.

We now have Deutsche Bank paying $75 million to victims of Jeffrey Epstein. This is a proposed court settlement, closes, they say, another chapter in the German bank's relationship with the disgraced financier, which began in 2013 and continued up until late 2018. So this was to settle a potential class action lawsuit charging that this financial institution facilitated his sex trafficking ring, according to lawyers who sued the bank on behalf of alleged victims. You had a woman who was listed anonymously as Jane Doe in court papers who filed this suit last year in New York. And this was on behalf of herself and other accusers of Epstein. So, you know, they want to make this go away. And I would say for a gigantic financial, global financial institution like Deutsche Bank, $75 million to them, it's nothing.

Yeah, you're right. And Deutsche Bank has long had problems and links to Jeffrey Epstein. They were one of the originals that were cited by the New York Financial Department for some of the activities that they had taken on behalf of them. And what was revealed actually in the Deutsche Bank complaint and the complaint by them, by the New York Financial Services Department, is basically that they knew that he was involved in sketchy transactions. They knew he was a sex offender. They never kicked him off of their client list. Despite the fact that they knew all of what was going on, they continued to pursue him for business transactions. And really some of the most troubling was that they were facilitating transactions, which would be illegal in any, or not, or which would be flagged

to federal authorities by any other client. So for example, Crystal, if you or I were to go to our bank and we were to ask this question, how much money can we withdraw without alerting the feds? They're supposed to alert the feds. He asked that question. And then after they told him the answer, he would take out basically up until $1 in cash for all of that. His assistants would say that it was for tips. They also were wiring all kinds of crazy amounts of money to Eastern Europe for potential sex trafficking, you know, potential like sex trafficking purposes. There was some financial behavior where no normal person would ever, ever, ever, ever get away with. That's right. And that they knew was sketchy because

they were flagging it internally and continue to do business with them. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And so, you know, they didn't want any sort of discovery with regards to this. They didn't want any of their dirty laundry to be aired publicly. And so, like I said, I think $75 million is them getting off really easy here. Oh, it's easy as hell because I mean, somebody who even knows they might've made more than that just in the fees that they had from banking with them. I mean, they certainly paid a fine there. But even reputationally, as you said, like to expose the level of safeguards that they didn't have in place while this was happening, which these banks all supposedly do have.

Again, for you and me, for somebody who has a, let's say somebody fell on hard times and declared bankruptcy or something. It's like, well, then the bank has all these regulations about how they can and can't do business. But if you are literally convicted sex offender and you have a proven track record of moving money around for trafficking purposes, apparently that's all good as long as you bring in enough money. I mean, that's all it takes to be a client for one of these people. It's so dirty. It really is so dirty. I mean, this is unrelated to Epstein, but Wells Fargo, which has been another really bad actor. And they claim they had that whole fake account scandal.

I don't know if you guys remember that, but it was described. They were opening up accounts in people's names that they never asked for. They were creating fake accounts just routinely as part of their culture. And they just had an issue where their shareholders are accusing them of lying about that they had things under control and that they had cleaned up their act, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, these are so many of these institutions, if not all of them are just so incredibly dirty. Yeah. Dirty as hell. All right. As we said, we had some big and very disturbing news about the housing market, how Americans are feeling about the housing market right now. Let's put this up on the screen from Gallup. You now have views of the U.S. housing market reaching new depths, a new low in the U.S. Say it is a good time to buy a house. Leave this up on the screen

for a little bit, just so people can take in the trend here. You know, back in 1980, you had about 50% of people who said a little bit more than 50%, a majority saying, okay, it's a good time to buy a house. That continues to go up until right about the time that you have the financial crash. It dips down to about 50%. Then after the financial crash around 2010, things pick back up. And now you've been on a basically consistent decline over the past decade, reaching a new low now where only 21% of Americans feel like it's a decent time to go out and buy a house. 78% say it is a bad time to buy a house. Now, it will be no surprise to viewers of this program why that is. You have the Federal Reserve

hiking interest rates that has had a dramatic impact on mortgage interest rates that has made already unaffordable housing even more wildly unaffordable. Now, as home prices have just started to fall around the country, you've got a median of $436,000 is the median home price in 2023. And you do have fewer Americans expecting home values in their area to rise in the coming year. So it's not that prices are like continuing to skyrocket, but because of mortgage rates, it's so wildly unaffordable. And of course, housing prices have been going up and up and up and up. Even before we started this whole conversation about inflation, inflation within housing, health care and education has been out of control for years. So this basic building block of middle class stability has become out of reach for most people who are, you know, even college educated professionals who are earning decent salaries.

If they live in a major metro area, they're screwed. If they don't have a cash handout from mommy and daddy to put down, you know, major cash up front, they're screwed. And they've only become more screwed from the mortgage interest rates. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that the mortgage interest is the biggest problem in terms of affordability because what people do is they're saving up, they look at their down payment and they think, okay, great, I can make this happen. And then they go and they play with one of those tools and they're like, wait, so two

years ago, definitely I could have made that happen. But now I can't because the interest payments are sky high. And then even if you can afford the interest, of that, but why would you spend, why throw away a dollar so that you can save 25 cents or whatever, whenever it comes to your taxes? And that's always one of the stupidest ways that people can think about it. The other one, as I pointed to here, is that when you have a decrease in the housing market and in views of the housing market, it restricts the further supply of housing because home builders and new homes, of which we are desperately in need of, we really do need a lot of new housing. And that is a whole other conversation about how you balance neighborhoods and all that other stuff, which I'm sympathetic to, to some respect. But the question is,

at the very least, the ones that are getting built need to continue. Many home builders are simply dropping their projects or putting them on pause because they, A, cannot afford the building materials, and B, they do not feel that they will be able to sell at their current rate. Or, and we have this right here, let's put this up there on the screen, the housing market is now so unaffordable, builders say, quote, they have no choice but to build smaller homes. Now, again, that's not necessarily a bad thing because in some cases we kind of do need some more starter home inventory. Because some people, you know, not everybody has to buy a 4,000-square-foot house.

I'm not really sure where this came from, but let's put that aside. The idea, though, is that by building smaller, one of the things that they're finding is that it's going to just deeply cut into their profit margin, which would only mean that they will continue to build less and less or they may abandon the project altogether. So there's just like all within the chain of custody, I guess, of all this. It's just a really bad outlook. We'll have less housing and then we'll only have even more expensive payments. Yeah. And one of the problems, too too is people who already own a home

who might've been interested in moving, which would open up their house to be sold and some new buyer to be able to come in, they don't wanna move because they have really low mortgage interest rate. They don't wanna have to take out a new mortgage that's gonna have a much higher interest rate. It makes no sense

because they're not gonna be able to afford even the house that they already have given the way that mortgage interest rates have gone up. Now, they have come down a little bit from their peak, but it's still significantly higher than where it was before. And as you're referring to, Sagar, in terms of the builders, it's kind of a worst of all worlds for them because on the one hand, inflation has made materials very expensive for them in terms of building. On the other hand, even though the Fed very expensive for them in terms of building. On the other hand, even though the Fed has been hiking rates, you know, it hasn't combated that inflation in terms of their materials and their expenses. But it has jacked up also their borrowing costs.

So that's an issue for them as well. in the Federal Reserve Program of hiking interest rates because it has constrained supply of housing and has made the housing situation even that much more difficult. So you have low housing stock. You don't have enough homes. You certainly don't have enough affordable homes. You have decades of prices going up and up and up, making housing unaffordable to start with. Then you layer on top of that the mortgage interest that is just absolutely killing people. And that's how you come to this place where so few Americans feel that it is a decent time to buy a house. Record low feeling like it's a decent time to buy a house. And, you know, we talk a lot about the housing market here. And the reason we do is because it is so central to building basic

wealth and prosperity. I mean, that is the real divide increasingly in America is between asset owners and particularly homeowners and people who do not own assets and do not own wealth. And as Sagar, you cover in your monologue the other day, those problems are only going to get worse as boomers hand down their inheritances to their, you know, lucky children. There's going to be a growing divide between those who can ever dream of getting onto the home ownership ladder versus those who are going to be... Listen, if you love renting and that's your thing, there's no judgment here whatsoever. But a lot of people want to have a home, have that stability, be able to build wealth

through it. And it is increasingly impossible for people to be able to do that. Last piece with regard to housing, you know, just to show you how much the mortgage rates here matter, put this up on the screen from Politico. They had a piece a little while ago that said how the Fed's rate hikes helped drive up mortgage payments. You can see the average monthly mortgage payment for a typical U.S. home has grown 50% since January 31, 2022. So basically in a year, the average monthly mortgage payment has gone up by 50%. Just let, I mean, let that soak in. And so that's why people who already have a home and have a lower mortgage interest rate, they're definitely not interested in selling if they can at all avoid it. They want to stay put until things come back down. If you're trying to get in to the market, this has made it so that what you're able to obtain is going to be so much less than what it was before. And in some cases,

in many cases, it's just going to be completely off the table altogether. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's why that graphic is just so poignant about the 50% increase over two years. And the really sad part is you probably just won't ever go back. I saw a graphic going around that if you were able to get a less than 2% or 2.5% interest rate on your mortgage, it may be the single best trade that you will ever make in your entire life. Wow. Just through fortuitous circumstances. For those who did it, God bless you. Although I guess you can't really leave. But for those who didn't go. Hope you like

your house. You'll be there forever. Yeah, exactly. I hope you like it because you're not leaving. But, you know, for those who didn't get, who did miss out on that, just as a matter of circumstance, it's still not fair. So we got to fix it sometime. Yeah, I'm kind of kicking myself because I started the process of refinancing my mortgage at the time when it was like at its lowest. Yes. And then I like dropped the ball and didn't get my shit together and then the rates started going up. I have a friend who's got a 1.9. Good job, Crystal. 1.9.

Wow. I'm just like, wow, man. You lucked out. So good for him. Yes, indeed. There's another piece that, you know, it tracks with the dire views of the housing market. It tracks with, you know, people's just sense of hopelessness. It tracks with the fallout from the pandemic. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. I mean,

this is in some ways one of the worst metrics of how the country is doing that I've seen in a long time. U.S. depression rates have reached a new high. So people who have been diagnosed with depression, who have ever had depression, who are currently being treated for depression, both of those metrics have reached an all-time high. So at 29%, that's a nearly 10 percentage point hike since 2015. So we're not talking about a long time ago, but we've had a 10 point hike in the percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression. That's at 17.8%. That's up about seven points over that period. Highest recorded by Gallup since they started measuring depression. You have higher rates among women. So over one third of women, 36.7 percent now report having been diagnosed at some point in their lifetime.

That's compared to 20.4 percent of men. Their rate has also risen at nearly twice the rate of men since 2017. You've got young people who also have seen significant increases. So those aged 18 to 29, they're at 34 percent. Those who are aged 30 to 44, they're at 35%. And their depression diagnosis rates have been among the ones that have spiked the most. Now, in some of this is, you know, for example, the difference between men and women, I wonder how much of that is there's actually different differing rates of depression between men and women and how much of it is women feel more

comfortable admitting this and seeking help. And because you have the image of like, you know, masculinity and the strong, silent type of whatever. If there's more of a stigma there around seeking help and admitting you've been diagnosed or admitting you've struggled with depression. I genuinely don't know. I'm just putting that out there for people to consider. But the other thing they point to here is not going to be surprised, which is that, you know, COVID-19 and social isolation and lockdowns and the fact that people were just at their home alone or with just their close nuclear family, that has really exacerbated what was already a crisis in terms of depression. It's also contributed to significant substance abuse. So and, you know, mental health in this country, mental health care in this country is really poorly lacking. So that contributes to this picture as well.

Yeah. So I actually think I'm most concerned about the percent change because the percent change has gone up by 8.4% in the last eight years. For men, it's gone up by 5.7. For women, it's gone up by 10.5. For those who are 18 to 29, it's gone up by 13.9. For 30 to 34, 12.6. 45 to 64, 5.7. 65 and older, it's only gone up by 2%. So the net increase specifically amongst people between 18 to 29 and 30 to 44 just comes from a

general sense of malaise and also your inability to think that you can get out of your current circumstances. And I think that is probably the toughest single thing. And it also explains a lot of our social ills. It's why people are angry so much. A lot of violence right now is just people are pissed. They're like, they're popping off for literally no reason. Ask anybody who works in law enforcement. Also, the amount of road rage incidents is sky high. I actually witnessed two or three today.

Where, you know, you just wanna, you'll be like, I wanna be in the brain of somebody who thinks it's okay to come to the house. I do not want to be in that brain. That's got to be like a horrible place to live. Explain it to me. Explain to me why you're more important than 500 other people who are in line. What's happening inside of you? It's like, how were you raised to get to this point?

And then also, you know, what happened on this particular day? Everybody has bad days. It's okay. But we're having a lot more bad days on average than good days. And then that's the question of like, why, how does this all happen? And I think, you know, it's COVID lockdowns. It just accelerated it. Like it's not the answer. I was also looking at, you know, not only the teen depression rate is also, it's been on the rise now for quite a long time. And I think I have to go back to the phone analysis. A lot of it has, you see a huge spike in depression between 18 to 44 year olds that happened right around 2011. And the

reason why 2011 or 2012 is a pretty good benchmark is because that is when mass availability of smartphones, not just when the iPhone came out, but whenever a massive iPhone 4 really was a jump off Yeah for a lot of people the move from the Blackberry to the smartphone and also the rise of Facebook Twitter and Instagram And all of these other apps kind of right hits that on now, you know, can you live without them? No, wouldn't you literally I wouldn't be here without them. So, you know, it's complicated but it's very complicated It's complicated that said mean, we got to find some sort of balance. And I, you know, here and we see it a lot from people, people feel very not optimistic about starting a family, about even getting in a relationship. Everything has

kind of been gamified, smartphone-ified. And again, you know, you can't go back from where we are right now, but I think acknowledging it at the very least is important. Also, you know, it should open up a lot of discussion, Crystal, about SSRIs. We've covered all those stories about whether SSRIs even work relative to all of the downsides, how exercise itself seems to have the exact same level of upside without any of the risk. I'm totally open now, having watched Michael Pollan's documentary and book about the use of potential psychedelics in a clinical setting. But more importantly, it's like we have to pursue all options with a vigorous attitude.

I do want to point out too that some of the trends that we track here are really unique to the US. This one is actually not. This is actually pretty consistent with global rates of depression and anxiety, which I think also would fit with the idea that, you know, the smartphone has been a major contributor because obviously that's not a U.S. specific phenomenon. So it's very multifaceted. I also agree with you that COVID was an accelerant of trends that were already existing. And, you know, I think this is a major crisis just in terms of oftentimes the only way that the U.S., the U.S. government, media pundits know how to track well-being in the U.S. is like by money or the unemployment rate or, you know, or the stock market, which is a particularly poor indicator of how the country is doing. But to me, core issues like, you know, whether people feel like they'll ever be able to buy a house, how they're feeling about themselves day to day, how much of a struggle it is for them to get through their day, you know, the levels of depression, anxiety, self-reported loneliness.

Loneliness can be really devastating and is under discussed as well. These are the sort of core metrics that I think really make up a healthy society. And unfortunately, we're failing on a lot of them. Yeah. You know, it's one of those where at the very least people need to take it seriously. Yeah. And that's the most important thing. Speaking of mental illness and things that are, you know, really out of whack and causing people to have- You've been workshopping that term for a while. People who have been maybe displaying narcissistic behavior now for years.

There was a fascinating incident that happened yesterday. So we began the day. There was a statement that was put out by the Duke and Duchess, Harry and Meghan, that we may call them here in the United States. Let's put this up there on the screen. They put out a statement. They say, last night, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Mrs. Ragland, that's the mother-in-law, were involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive

paparazzi. This relentless pursuit lasting lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers. While being a public figure comes with a level of interest from the public, it should never come at the cost of anyone's safety. Disseminations of these images, given the way in which they were obtained, encourages a highly intrusive practice that is dangerous to all involved. Hmm. Okay. So we have a couple of questions here immediately about this. Obviously, you know, we should have some empathy for Prince Harry. His mother literally died in an incident where, well, maybe, racing away from paparazzi. Okay. So at least that's the official narrative. Maybe that's what he believes. So if so,

maybe he's going to be sensitive about that. All right. So let's break some of it down. So first and foremost, what are we all asking about? Two hours? Yeah. Two hour near catastrophic car chase in the middle of down Midtown Manhattan. That's pretty interesting for anybody who's ever lived there, who's ever spent any time there. Just so you guys know, Midtown is like Times Square. Yeah, Times Square. So this place has bumper to bumper traffic like 24-7, especially at the time that they were leaving. So that's kind of crazy. How do you have a near catastrophic car chase? Then they say that it had near collisions with other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and two NYPD officers. So immediately, of course, we're like, okay, well, you know, maybe this happened. Let's talk to the NYPD. So here's

what they had to say. Let's put this up there on the screen. Here's what they say. On Wednesday evening, May 16th, the NYPD assisted the private security team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging. The Duke and Duchess arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions, summonses, injuries, arrests in regard. Oh, so no collisions, no summonses, no injuries, no arrests in regard. No officers were put at risk as were originally claimed. So already we have some questions here about the two-hour thing. Now the NYPD basically says that's actually not what happened at all. Then Mayor Eric Adams, who presumably also had been read

in a little bit on the incident, he poured cold water on the entire thing. Let's take a listen to what he said. I would find it hard to believe that there was a two-hour high-speed chase. That would be, I find it hard to believe, but we will find out the exact duration of it. But if it's 10 minutes, a 10-minute chase is extremely dangerous in New York City. 10-minute chase is extremely dangerous, you're right. And unfortunately, though, for them and their version of events, it doesn't even look like even that 10-minute chase happened. Let's put this up there on the screen. Because the taxi driver that they got into a taxi, he says, I don't think I would call it a chase. He says, I never felt like I was in danger. They were quiet. They seem scared, but it's New York.

It's safe. By the way, whenever he says that, what he's actually saying is it's Midtown Manhattan that it's safe. And look, I think that that is very obviously true. Now, furthermore, there's actually been even more reporting since we put these together, Crystal. And in fact, according to police sources who are countering this claim, not only was there no car chase, all of that, but they say that this entire episode lasted only 20 minutes and did not involve the amount of paparazzi that they claim. In fact, the cops who escorted Harry and Meghan out of the event and to their home or wherever they were staying, they say they were home 20 minutes after leaving the event. This entire thing appears to be based

on the full availability of the evidence as it currently exists does not appear to have happened in the way that they said, Crystal. And we can say that from the taxi drivers on record, from the NYPD, from the mayor, from the police forces that have all put this out. From the lack of video. This is Midtown Manhattan. There's people with cell phone cameras everywhere. The video actually did come out from people who showed the paparazzi around the car at a red light, by the way. They weren't doing anything wrong. Then a cop car was coming, except the cop car wasn't escorting them. He just came through and he turned right.

He didn't go in the same direction. So even their version of events on that one is total BS. So look, I mean, looking at all of this, it is very clear that this did not happen, that the way that they said it did, based upon their recollections and all the stuff that is in the public domain at this moment. And it's just a further part of the We Want Privacy tour. Yes. I don't know how many of you watched the South Park episode about Harry and Meghan that they were suing them over, right? Right. The whole- Well, they considered it. They considered it. Oh, they didn't actually sue them? Here's the thing. They're in America. Sorry,

Harry and Meghan. You're not in your BS country where you can just sue people for no reason and may impossible win. In America, we have much better laws. So in the South Park episode, the whole central core of the plot is that Harry and Meghan are going on, people who look like Harry and Meghan and bear some resemblance to them, are going on a worldwide privacy tour where they go and they decide they're going to move to South Park to, like, get their privacy. And they're out, like, picketing. Like, we just want to be left alone. And everyone's like, we're trying to leave you alone. Like, please leave us alone.

That's right. And this is almost literally, like, it is literally the South Park episode. Like, you, okay, there were some paparazzi. I don't think anyone is going to be shocked by that. Paparazzi can be aggressive. I don't think anybody, including yourselves, are going to be shocked by that either. But by wildly overstating this, it's like, yeah, we are trying to leave you alone, but you just keep putting yourself in our faces. Do I want to cover Harry and Meghan? No, not really. But like, this is just too absurd to not talk about.

And the direct contradiction from the police, from the mayor, from like everybody who had anything to, the taxi driver, for anybody who had anything to do with it. The reason I feel compelled to debunk this and to talk about this is because I know that this will just be regurgitated by the page sixes and all of these other people. In fact, the funniest thing is, in Britain, they think that Harry and Meghan are a joke and they are reviled. The only people who believe her in anything that she says are idiots in America who are like, oh my God, it's a real life princess. And that's the issue, is like, we are the suckers, our media are the ones. How much of that sentiment still exists at this point? I'm genuinely asking because I have my sense is that everybody is like, please go away. That's because you're around normal people.

There are a lot of girls out there who love Megan. They think that she told the truth in her Oprah interview, even though there's not a lot of evidence to say that she told the truth in her Oprah interview. I mean, and look, you can hate the royal family if you want to. That's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to believe a complete narcissist. And it's very clear what her game has been to normal folks like us, but not everybody feels that way. And the point is, is that, you know, looking at the way that her claims were reported immediately was as truth. They were like, oh my gosh, this is terrible,

catastrophic, all that. Not one ounce of skepticism,, again, from the Brits and, you know, Megyn Kelly, people like me, and a few others who were like, yeah, I don't think so, man. This whole thing doesn't really add up. I don't want to besmirch page six, which I think does some phenomenal reporting. Right, you're right. I'm sorry. I should not go after. They're only doing what they're told, I guess. Just, you know, technically their entire job. Yeah, I mean,

they trade in gossip. That's what they do. But you would think that there would be a moment of like, do you have a car chase in Midtown Manhattan? Yeah, exactly. No, that's my thing, is how do you say with a straight face that you had a car chase in Midtown Manhattan for two hours? Most of that time you'd be sitting in traffic and all of the evidence that came out from it is people sitting in traffic. So there you go. All right, let's talk about Fox News and let's put this up there on the screen. This is big news being reported by Matt Drudge over at the Drudge Report. Fox News is currently denying it, but Drudge Report says that Sean Hannity appears to be ready to replace Tucker Carlson in a major shakeup. Now, here's what he says from Drudge. He says, world exclusive Fox News sets a new schedule. So Drudge is claiming

that the new primetime gigs will both go to Sean Hannity, to Jesse Waters, and to Greg Gutfeld to stack the primetime lineup. 7 p.m. currently is where they might move him to because Gottfeld is currently on at 11 p.m. and also on the 5 p.m. show called The Five. The reason why that this is a big deal is not only would they say that Hannity, their current higher rated host, is just going to slot in and take over Tucker Carlson's time slot, it's that it would also involve a drop of Laura Ingram. Now, again, as I said, let's put this up there. Fox is denying that any of this is the case. They say no decision has been made on a new primetime lineup, and there are multiple scenarios under consideration. Not really a full

scale denial because all Drudge is saying is a major shakeup is happening. And the main thing that he is reporting is that Sean Hannity is going to the 8 p.m. hour. It's certainly possible that it doesn't happen. I guess it's possible it doesn't. Drudge, though, generally pretty good whenever it comes to internal news, I guess you could say, of the Fox News channel because he was very tight and has a lot of sources there. He actually used to work there now at some point. The real question is, you know, will Laura Ingram get the boot? And then second, this only codifies so much of what I've talked about here is if they're not even going to try and replace Tucker, they're just going to slot in Sean Hannity and move in there. That's an admission of failure. It's a huge admission. It's very consistent with MSNBC's

approach to not even trying to replace Rachel Maddow, really, putting in Alex Wagner, who's just like a, you know, sort of standard issue news host. It's consistent with CNN just moving Caitlin Collins to primetime. I mean, does anyone really expect she's, maybe they're deluding themselves into thinking she's going to be some gigantic star, but, you know, to me, she's just another sort of like standard issue news host, like many of the other ones. So it is consistent with a pattern of effectively managed decline that is quite evident at every one of these networks. We have a non-denial denial about the Laura Ingraham thing as well that we can report. So a network spokesperson said, this is kind of funny,

reports based on various tweets by left-wing activists are wildly inaccurate. Since when did Drudge become a left-wing activist? Okay. Laura Ingraham, the top-rated woman in cable news, is now and will continue to be a prominent host and integral part of the Fox News lineup. Doesn't say she's going to remain in prime time, though, does it?

Yeah, no. So, I mean, it is interesting what is being omitted, and you can bet very intentionally so from these little statements that they're putting out. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting what is being omitted, and you can bet very intentionally so from these little statements that they're putting out. Yeah, I mean, that's actually the big takeaway for me is like, oh, wow, so clearly something is going on over there. I mean, I just think, look, if you're going to slot in Hannity, that is the biggest admission of failure.

Whenever O'Reilly left the network, Hannity stayed in his 9 p.m. slot, and they tried out a bunch of different stuff. I forget exactly what the drama was because, like, Megyn Kelly was leaving, so they replaced her, and then Tucker was moved. 8 p.m. hour, eventually that's where he found his success. But they're only keeping existing talent. They're not even hiring anybody new. Tucker was actually brought in new to the network, at least to the primetime.

To primetime. Before that, he had been hosting, I think, Weekend Fox and Friends. I was going to say, he's only on Weekend weekend fox and friends just completely not the same thing at all so look i mean what you could say around uh all of this is that what you could say is that this is managed decline at its absolute finest and i don't think anybody could say that sean hannity is in any way in the same caliber. I mean, he is just like, you can accuse Tucker of many things, but with Hannity, he is just like copy cut, like cookie cutter, whatever Republican talking point of the day is. No dissent whatsoever. It's like a wind up doll, like freedom and low taxes. I mean, it's just humiliating. It's very predictable.

Yeah, it's humiliating. That's what I would say. He's very predictable. He's always going to be on the side of whatever is the Republican thing of the day. He's going to be on the talking points. It just is what it is. Right. So you're not going to break a lot of ground there.

Obviously, he's had a lot of success with the network for a lot of years. I think he's been there the whole time since the launch of the network. I don't know if he was there at the very beginning. But he's been there a long time and he's held down a stable core of audience. But as we've discussed before, there were only a couple people in cable news who really were a magnet to draw viewers in. And then much of the cable news game is trying to hold on to whatever you get in terms of audience that carries over from the last host. So, you know, Rachel Maddow was a tentpole at MSNBC and Tucker was a tentpole over at Fox News. And, you know, they clearly don't have anyone to to replace him with in terms of that sort of like tentpole draw. What do you make of the Laura, if we're taking this Laura rumor at face value, which frankly, the Fox News statement just to me

almost like confirms that she's being moved down in prime time. She was also caught up in some of the Dominion revelations. You know, I can't remember specifically that, but I know there were texts or messages between her producers and some people who were involved with Stop the Steal. You know, do you think that that could be related to why she's being moved out of primetime?

It's possible. It's certainly possible that she's, that's one of the reasons that she got moved out of primetime. It's also, you know, her ratings may not be the best. They also could, I mean, look, they may want to try and develop talent. Like they've given her several years there and she hasn't made it into some gangbusters thing. You know, it's also hard to work with. I mean, 10 p.m. is not a great time to be on television. And, you know, in general, she's hard to work with, allegedly. Yeah, I was going to say, I know behind the scenes she's not beloved. That's what the people say.

Yeah. Allegedly, according to a rumor mill. So, you know, it could be probably just a combination of factors. The real thing is if you move Gutfeld into primetime, you're taking effectively was one of your biggest stars in the network and somebody who's found success in the 11 p.m. hour, and you're just going to bet on him to try and do that, to bring some comedy or something new, you know, for that. Waters, I mean, listen, Waters, I think he's very much in the same league, Hannity and all that, but all of these people, this has just managed to decline, you know, at its very least. It definitely would be bad for Laura Ingraham, though,

if that's what happened. Yeah, I'm just looking at what her involvement was in the, like, what came out in the Dominion thing. Apparently she and Tucker had been privately discussing Sidney Powell. Tucker called her a nut and said a bunch of other stuff. And then, like, that very, the very next day where Laura is agreeing that basically Sidney Powell is an unhinged lunatic. And then the very next day she's saying she believed the election was rife with problems and potential fraud. So very different what she was saying behind the scenes behind beside what she was presenting to her viewing audience. So was that a factor? You know, who knows? Who knows what's going on? Only time will tell, right? Yeah, or we may never know.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, mass surveillance is class warfare. That is the major takeaway from a new Washington Post report about how facial recognition and surveillance cameras are being used to strip the rights and the dignity from poor residents of public housing projects. So here is that report. The headline is Eyes on the Poor, Cameras, Facial Recognition, Watch Over Public Housing. And it tracks how public housing projects are increasingly using surveillance tech to track every little movement of residents, weaponizing the technology to evict residents over really minor infractions. According to the Post, this is happening in small rural communities and major metro areas alike. Just take a look at this graphic. It shows the number of cameras installed

per resident in public housing projects from New York City to Rowlett, North Dakota. Some of these places have more cameras per person than the Louvre and many casinos, which are famous, of course, for sophisticated player surveillance. Now, there is no tracking of how many residents have been evicted based on these monitoring systems, but evidence suggests that the number is significant and rising. So first of all, overall evictions have skyrocketed in public housing post-pandemic. Princeton's Eviction Lab tracks a portion of these public housing projects. They found that evictions in the 10 states and 34 cities that they monitor have doubled since the end of the pandemic-era moratoriums, rising to 5,576 in 2022. That was a faster rate of increase than evictions from other housing units across the country. What's more, interviews with advocates

suggest that these newly installed high-tech camera systems have been crucial in trying to push people out. The Post spoke with numerous residents who had been tracked, harassed, and kicked out for violating rules about guests or about smoking too close to the building or even for removing a cart from the laundry room. They interviewed one single mom, Tanya Akabu, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who was trying to balance child care with her day job. She's a bus driver, and she was also going to night school training to be a lab technician. From the sound of things, she was trying to do everything right, trying to educate herself so she could get a higher-paying job to better support herself and her kiddos. But given the expense of child care in this country, she had to rely on her ex-husband to help care for her kids while she was at work and while she was at school.

The building accused him of actually living at the apartment, violating their rules, and they used surveillance tech to make their case. The housing authority actually used software to place a digital marker next to a kabu's front door and told the system to retrieve every moment when motion was detected near the marker documents and interviews shown, quoting from the Post here. When her property manager suspected that a Kabu's axe was leaving through the back door, she set up a portable camera in the backyard pointed directly at that door, according to housing authority officials and a review of the surveillance video obtained and verified by the Post. It got to the point where it was like harassment, Kabu, 33, said.

They really made my life hell. She says she presented evidence to the building that her ex was not in fact living there, that he had another different residence, but they didn't believe her and she still was evicted. Now, another 68-year-old woman was evicted when cameras caught her smoking too close to the building and allegedly getting into disputes with the other residents. After being forced down in public housing, she landed on her sister's couch, desperately searching for some other stable living situation. Just when she thought that she had caught a break with another building accepting her rental application, she's back to square one after they talked to the public housing management and decided they did not want her in their building after all. It shows you how a single eviction can really derail an entire life.

So what is behind the rise of this level of surveillance? Now, in part, the installation is a reaction to entirely justified concerns about crime, violence, and theft. Residents and management alike, they want these complexes to be safe and calm, of course, not dens of drug use or gang infighting. A pandemic crime surge has hit poor neighborhoods such as these particularly hard, and public housing projects don't have the resources to do much of anything other than apply a clumsy surveillance band-aid to a gaping national social problem. The problem goes back further, too. In 1989, at the height of the crack epidemic, federal legislators passed $100 million in funding to provide a wide range of social services, drug rehab, and enhanced security to public housing. That funding was

stripped under the Bush administration and replaced with a much smaller grant of just $10 million to install security features, things like cameras, doors, carbon monoxide detectors, and the like. So unfortunately, while it's pretty clear the cameras have been intrusive to residents and have turned their entire lives into a police state nightmare, there is no real evidence that they've been successful in combating crime that residents would want them to. In rural Scott County, Virginia, their algorithm-based surveillance system has only turned up a single match for an individual who was banned from the complex. And these banned lists are in and of themselves actually controversial since people can end up on them without ever having been charged with or convicted of a crime. The person this system matched to had been accused of domestic violence,

though charges were never filed. In this story, we kind of see the perfect storm of societal ills that we're grappling with all across the country. You've got a mistrust of and contempt for the poor that justifies dehumanizing treatment. You've got a post-pandemic crime spike that has disproportionately victimized the poor. You've got a response to that crime spike that lacks resources and will to deal with root causes and instead just further immiserates the poor. A tech surge that is increasingly penetrating even the most intimate of spaces for everyone. And looming over all of it, a housing affordability crisis that squeezes everyone except the wealthy and constantly threatens the working poor with outright homelessness. People don't need Big

Brother watching them. They need health care, a living wage, child care, and perhaps above all, decent, affordable housing. All the cameras in the world are not going to fix what ails us. And that's the rub saga, is a lot of these restaurants- And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's time to check in with the cable ratings. Yes, I know it can seem gratuitous.

My honest answer, maybe you're right. But sometimes I cannot help myself. And the more that we remind everyone just how pathetic and badly they are doing, the better one of the big predictions we made here after Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News comes true, is that this time, it really is different. Fox would have a very difficult time recovering their primetime lineup and has given the median age of their viewers, it is now mid-70s. They just don't have that much time to get it right. Already, that prediction is bearing fruit. MSNBC, for the first time in years, is now consistently beating Fox in primetime across the board. And MSNBC, for the first time in years, is now consistently beating Fox in primetime

across the board. And MSNBC averaged 1.8 million viewers between 8 to 11. Fox averaged 1.7 million. CNN averaged 485,000. Newsmax, 420,000. Now, of course, at least on their face, MSNBC and Fox numbers sound impressive. And CNN, though, is in another league of pathetic. But once again, consider the number of viewers that they have in their key demographic. Even here, MSNBC may beat Fox, but they're still only getting 188,000 viewers below the age of 54. Fox is only able to get 174,000. CNN, 117. Newsmax, 44.

Terrestrial and old TV, cable TV, is truly the last home of the boomer. I recently was told by an insider, and I swear I am not making this up, is that one reason Fox News is not too worried about losing its overall audience is because their audience is so old, they, quote, have difficulty physically handling the remote and changing the chair. I swear, that's a true story

directly told to me by someone with knowledge. That is a direct quote. But even with the last holdout of boomers over our mass culture, here too, there are signs of big trouble. CNN has lost out to Newsmax in its overall number of viewers in primetime on Friday night, and they were only able to pull some 335,000 viewers on average throughout the 8 to 11 p.m. hour. 10 p.m., Chris Wallace was actually able to pull in only 263. This put Anderson Cooper's show also behind Eric Bolling over on Newsmax. Consider how crazy all of this is when you think about

these people's salaries. Cooper is supposedly a household name, a literal Vanderbilt. Surely, he should be able to get some people to watch his show. Yet, year after year, to do so, it still commands some $12 million per year. Chris Wallace, same thing, supposedly a household name, famous dad, huge coup for CNN Plus after leaving Fox News. He's making millions at CNN to do the lowest rated show on cable TV and get beaten by Newsmax. None of it really makes any sense at all,

and it's why I can't stop talking about it, because the absurdity of it all eventually has to catch up to reality. So many people inside the system are so captured by it, they will pretend to be surprised when it all crumbles down. At the same time, over in sports media though, something very interesting indeed is happening. Sports media is important to watch because many of the trends that end up happening in political media start over there. Pat McAfee, the sports juggernaut, in a shocking move is going to air his show

on ESPN. But here's the deal. He's walking away from a $120 million deal with FanDuel for sponsorship of his current show. Instead, he will be now airing all three hours of his show on ESPN, ESPN Plus. But what's surprising here are not the dollars. It's the terms of his contract. All reporting indicates all McAfee had to really give up was the ability to say the F word during his show. His show will remain streaming live for free on YouTube. He will maintain editorial control. His deal is more like a licensing agreement than a full-blown acquisition. Think about what it means. Pat McAfee is so valuable now to ESPN and to Disney. They are willing to pay him upwards of $10 million a year, probably more,

just to have his stuff on their program while you can continue to watch it for free on YouTube. No network deal in history has ever been more friendly to somebody on the internet. Now, the only caveat I'm going to give is if Pat thinks he's getting away just so easy as to stop saying the F word, probably has another thing coming. Just yesterday, for example, news broke that ESPN had dropped a documentary about the Chinese-American tennis star Michael Chang, who won the 1989 French Open as a young man and was inspired by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. You can guess why they dropped it. I'm just sure it has editorial and nothing to do with Disney's parent company's relationship to the Chinese Communist Party. But the broader point that I am making is that a network acquiring a streamer and letting

him continue to stream where he continued to own his IP is crazy. That's how desperate that they are just to squeeze even a few more people watching their dwindling channels. Now, rest assured, that is not going to happen over here, nor do we want it to. It is only just a big sign of how things are going in the opposite direction from the arrogance and the confidence with which the mainstream media consider their role in our society. And it's very fitting. Since Tucker's departure, the only person who's been able to pull real numbers on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow. She only works one day a week on MSNBC, yet she still continues to peddle her nonsense. Nonetheless, though, people love that nonsense. She's basically

the very last of her breed capable of doing that. Tucker and Rachel, in my opinion, I've said before, probably the very last to play the game at this level. And even their numbers, paltry compared to the 10 years ago, as I've showed you all before. The total collapse of the cable news business now in the next decade is all but assured, but it also will not stop a Feinstein level of delusion from remaining on the air. The only question is about power and whether they wake up to how much the world is changing every year and every day. I thought the McAfee deal is actually the most important. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, old friend of mine, Shelby Talcott.

She's a political reporter over at Semaphore. It's great to see you. Nice to be here. Okay, so Shelby, you've been all over the GOP primary, or I guess not technical primary yet, but officially probably primary that's happening right now. We were just talking about news. Ron DeSantis very likely set to launch his campaign

either next week or sometime within that. You wrote a new piece. Let's put it up there on the screen. The Real 2024 campaign started in Iowa this weekend. DeSantis giving us a little bit of a preview of what he's gonna be doing. Tell us a little bit about what you learned, what this primary's gonna look like.

Yeah, I think it's been obvious that DeSantis is running for a long time, but this was the first weekend that I really noticed him kind of branch out of his Florida-focused rhetoric. And so I'm sure you guys saw over the past few months when he was doing his book tour, it was very Florida-focused. This time he started branching out, and he started giving kind of indirect jibes over at Trump.

He did the handshaking and the flipping the burgers for the press. He didn't speak to the press, which was notable because Congressman Feinstein's people were really pushing his team to do so. And they essentially, from my understanding, were telling his team, well, hey, this is how we do things every year. And this is, you know, you're about to launch your presidential campaign. This is how things have to be. But by and large, it was really the first indication I felt like that things are heating up. He's about to announce.

Got it. So how did he do in terms of the knock on him has been like, oh, he's not very personable. He's not very comfortable around people. He doesn't do like the glad handling piece of politics very well. And there have been some indications of that. I mean, there was, you know, the one member of Congress that he met with and then directly afterwards endorsed Donald Trump. You had stories coming out about, hey, I sat next to this dude for years. We served on the same committee and he didn't even learn my name. Do you see any evidence of that on the nascent campaign trail thus far? Yeah, listen, I think and I've talked

to people close to him and they acknowledge that it is not his bread and butter. He prefers to be at home with his family, which I think is completely fine. But for a presidential campaign, you have to kind of branch out. So I'm seeing evidence that he is taking those criticisms and trying to apply them. But I'm also seeing evidence that it's not natural for him. You know, in Iowa, there was a clip of him as he was talking to prospective voters that went viral among the Trump team where he was like laughing really aggressively. And so, yeah, it's a little, it's a little bit of awkwardness. The egregious part to me was the guy who was like, I drove two hours to come see you. And he was like, thanks. And just turned around. I was like, Oh, I didn't even see that. It was not, it was part of the same clip, but that,

that one, I was like, that actually might be worse, whenever you make people feel that way. Tell us about the actual infrastructure of the campaign. We've been covering it now for quite some time. One of the things that we saw was that Trump canceled this event in Des Moines, and everyone was like, oh, DeSantis is going to go in on Iowa. He's going to try and make the early stage part of his strategy. How would you assess the strength of their relative campaigns, I guess, you know, at the starting line right now?

Well, I think it's early on. He certainly had a really tough month last month. And the Trump team was really on point. And, you know, when he came out to Washington, D.C., they announced a whole slew of Florida endorsements right in his backyard. And I think it was a little bit difficult for him because he's been of the mindset, DeSantis has been of the mindset that we're going to keep everything really locked down until we officially announce. I don't know if that's a misstep by his team, given you have political savviness in, you know, after they stayed on the ground, first of all, in Iowa when there was a tornado watch, which I was in the state and it was a little bit rainy, but. It was fine. It was fine.

OK. And then, you know, they after the second event, they went and they posted up right in the backyard of where the Trump rally was supposed to be. And I thought that was that was really smart. And they were outside, you know, indicating, you know, what a beautiful night. So, yeah, there is political savvy there. A lot of his team, his official campaign team is going to be comprised of people who have been around him for a long time. Now, how that ends up expanding, I don't know. I know that DeSantis has been historically very focused on, you know, he's very insular. It's him,

it's his wife, and those are the two main people. And he's going to have to expand that a lot and figure out kind of new hires that he can trust. And I think that's going to be a really big test for him because he's never had to do that before. Yeah, I agree. What is their theory of the case about how to or whether even to go directly at Trump? Because this is one of the things we've been talking about here. There's really double standard. I mean, Trump has been saying all kinds of crazy stuff about DeSantis. He basically said he's a groomer. I mean, just unleashing a slew of attacks against Ron DeSantis, DeSantis will make this little like sort of side jab, like I don't know anything about payments to porn stars, and people freak out about it.

So it's a very different standard he's held to. It may not be fair, but that's reality. Donald Trump gets away with a lot more than other politicians do in basically every sphere of his life and his political campaigns. But at the same time, DeSantis, I think, is going to have to make some sort of cogent argument against Trump that would land with a Republican base in order to supplant him as, you know, the Republican nominee. So how are they thinking about how to navigate that challenge? Yeah, so the big thing, and you noted it, it's not just DeSantis who's kind of sidestepping these attacks against Trump. It's virtually the entire 2024 field. That's right. Nikki Haley's not kicking sideways. She's not kicking sideways. But there's like a legitimate, I think there's a legitimate reason whether or not it should be a

legitimate reason. It is. When you go on the ground and talk to these voters, even the ones who don't want Trump to be president again, also don't want to vote for someone who's directly attacking him. They still like him. They like his record. They feel defensive because of the media. want Trump to be president again, also don't want to vote for someone who's directly attacking him. They still like him. They like his record. They feel defensive because of the media. And so it's this constant, what line can we cross without alienating the voter base?

But I think DeSantis is, from people I've spoken to, his argument for the case against Trump is going to be, look at my Florida record, and he's going to try to get to the right on Trump on almost every issue. We've already seen it. So tell us about that then. So you were on the ground with voters. The voters are the only people that actually matter, not any of our opinion. So what do you hear from them about people who are for DeSantis? What are they saying? What do they look, are they college educated? Are they normal Iowa voters? Like what, who are these people? What do they want from the man? And why do they like him over Trump? I think there's a mix. It's certainly and and I read an NBC article

a few weeks ago that is 100 percent accurate that even with DeSantis's struggles the past month, he's still getting huge numbers of people to his events that they're having to, the Feenstra event, I think was the most RSVPs that they'd ever had. The second event, the GOP County dinner, they had to like extend invites. Like he's, he's, people are very interested in him. And I, I think it's a mix of people, but they like him because they're by and large, they're tired of the drama from the Trump administration. And that's what I'm hearing consistently, is they're like, we like Trump. He did a great job, but we're just tired of the drama.

We want someone younger. Like Ron DeSantis in Florida has been really tight with his messaging. There's no drama. There's no leaks. And they really like that. So really the big thing, in my opinion, from talking to voters is just they're tired of the drama. What do you think of the attempt to

get to Trump's right on certain issues? I mean, the two that come to mind are abortion and entitlements, because on the one hand, those for the right positions may certainly land with a significant portion of the Republican base. On the other hand, they kind of undercut his other argument that he would be more electable than Donald Trump. I mean, we all see the way that the abortion issue has been devastating for Republican candidates who have taken extreme positions. We've certainly seen the way that, you know, touching entitlements in any way is really off the table. And Ron DeSantis talked about that certainly in the past that he was open to cuts to Social Security and Medicare. So how are they

looking at those challenges? How are voters seeing those? And we've also had reports that some donors were upset by comments, especially on Ukraine and abortion. Yeah, I think in terms of how voters are looking at it, they still view him as more electable than Trump because because of the messiness, they view him as being less messy. Yes. And so for them and whether that's accurate or not, I've heard from the Democratic operatives who are texting me saying, oh, Ron DeSantis said this about abortion, like we're going to use this in the future. Yeah. Recent comment about hitting Trump over the abortion thing. They said, you know, this is going to be a talking point for us. So it is going to be a

struggle. Like how far right can you go before you lose some of those independent voters or some of those people who are maybe a little bit more moderate socially, particularly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the, you know, the real problem I think that he has. And it's kind of interesting. I mean, whenever you, okay, well,, let's let's flip to the Trump side You know whenever you talk not sure the Trump campaign the voters that you actually see on the ground. I love Trump Why do they want to stick with him and not DeSantis? What do they say about DeSantis? I like the guy but I love Trump. Like what does it look like? The big message I hear is I like DeSantis, but it's not his turn. Yes

But the thing with the Trump base, when I go to Trump events, it's different than any other candidate that I, that I. This is hard to explain to people. Can you explain that? Because I've been to events like this as well. It's like you go to a DeSantis event and there's kind of like normal voters who are looking into the field. They're not necessarily committed to any one candidate. They're just, you, kind of you know, they like being courted It's Iowa. It's New Hampshire and then you go to these Trump events and these Trump valleys and these are like it's like fans Yeah, it's like a concert. Yes, exactly And so it's very different

Talking to them versus talking to voters at some of these other events. Yes. Yeah Well, I've always tried to hand that home to people It literally is like nothing else in politics and I haven't seen it in a long time. Shelby, thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Really grateful. It was great talking to you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.

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