Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/19/22: GOP & Dem Primary Results, DHS Board, Baby Formula, NATO Disparity, Dem Civil War, George Bush, & Peter Zeihan Interview!

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the Dem and GOP primary results, GOP Gov nominee in PA, Madison Cawthorn losing, DHS board shutting down, Baby formula action from Biden, NATO countries free riding, Democrats civil war, and an interview on geopolitics with Peter Zeihan.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/Peter Zeihan: https://bookshop.org/books/the-end-of-the-world-is-just-the-beginning-mapping-the-collapse-of-globalization/9780063230477  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve

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so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have many, many very interesting election results to dig through,

both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side. On both sides, there are races that still are not called, that are going to recount. We will bring you all of that. Also, Madison Cawthorn is part of that. He did lose his seat. We'll tell you. He's out.

It was ultimately pretty close, but he did lose. We'll tell you about all of that. Also, the Ministry of Truth board. It's folding. Yeah, that didn't take long. The Biden administration, I guess to their credit, was like, you know, let's just press pause on this one. But in some ways, the real story here is the way that the media, read Taylor Lorenz, is covering this, which I have to tell you, the article that she wrote about this is literally one of the worst journalistic products I have ever read in my entire life. It is psycho.

It is truly insane. So break that down for you. Also, Biden administration making some big moves with regards to baby formula. He is now at last invoking the Defense Production Act. They also have a plan to fly in baby formula from Europe. Obviously, those shortages have been devastating for moms and babies and families.

Just a terrible thing that people have been going through. So we will bring you those details. We also are excited to bring geopolitical strategist Peter Zaihan onto the show. He can talk Ukraine and Russia. He can talk China. He can talk the world going forward. He's got a new book out called The End of the World is Just the Beginning, which is not exactly a hopeful read, but maybe an important one nonetheless. But we wanted to start this morning with the big primary results. And Sabra, let's go ahead and start with the Republican side of things. Yeah, we were hoping that we would be able to give you full results, but unfortunately, the count continues in Pennsylvania. Let's put this up there on the screen. David McCormick and

Mehmet Oz continue to be locked in the race for the GOP Senate nomination. Now, in terms of where the things stand literally right now, honestly, it is almost certainly going to a recount because it is within the 0.5 percentage. Now, the McCormick team and the Oz team are both saying that they have this thing in the bag. Dr. Oz appeared on Sean Hannity. He said that he's almost certain that he's going to pull it out. But, you know, the top strategist who works for David McCormick just came out this morning, and here's what he had to say. At the end of last night, Dave was down 2,700 votes. Today, out of the 10K of the 33 absentee ballots that were counted, we continue to average a plus 10% victory. We have closed the gap by 1,500 votes. Dave is now only down by 1,200 votes with an

estimated 20,000 GOP absentee ballots left to count. Dave is almost certainly going to win. That guy works for Dave McCormick. So here's the thing. That's a spin on both of them. At the same time, in terms of the outstanding ballots, we don't actually know where a lot of those outstanding ballots come from. Jeff Rowe is not wrong that the outstanding ballots have been going plus 10, but the late arriving absentee ballots, which are most of these, seem to be ones which break a little bit better for Dr. Oz. I think that the actual result of this is you are not going to know who won this race for like a week. Yeah. Because it's so within the margin of error.

You know, I'm talking about, you know, Dr. Oz is 31.3%. David McCormick is 31.1%. This is one where recount theoretically actually could change the results. And, you know, there's going to be all kinds of legal battles. Both these guys have a ton of money in the bank. So we are just simply not going to know what happened in this race, Crystal. Yeah. So right now the differential is about 1,200 ballots that Oz is up on McCormick. And I watched Steve Kornacki's analysis this morning. And the dude is a savant when it comes to all of these like election ballot counting stuff. And so basically what he said is

there is some outstanding election day vote, both in one of McCormick's strongholds over in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh area, and in one of Oz's strongholds over towards Philadelphia. So that sort of seems like it will more or less cancel itself out. The big question is, according to Kornacki, there's probably about 15,000 absentee mail-in ballots left to count. And that's the real question mark because what Kornacki was saying was that those have been coming in more like 7% in favor of McCormick, not the 10% that his dude is saying. See, there we go. Anyway, I mean, it really genuinely could go either way. Very likely that this thing comes down to a few hundred ballots.

It is just that close. Yeah. So it really is. It really is pretty remarkable. It's also interesting that the Trump-backed candidates sort of consistently have done better on Election Day in-person voting versus the mail-in vote. So it continues to be a holdover from his whole mail-in balloting and fraud and all of that. Yeah, that's also a fun one, which is that McCormick and all these other guys who think that the election was stolen are like, well, when all the mail-in ballots are counted, we're sure that we'll win. It's like, well, that's how Biden won Pennsylvania, morons. So now we're good with mail-in ballots.

Whatever. I'm not the first guy to make the point. I know it's a Boomer Lib one, but, you know, it actually is pretty interesting. Sometimes they're correct. Sometimes the Boomer Libs have a point. Okay, let's go ahead and put this next one up on the screen. This is pretty funny. Trump is urging Dr. Oz to declare victory,

speaking there as the neck and neck vote continues. And in terms of how exactly Trump candidates fared, I think this is a pretty important one. Let's go put the next one up there, guys. So here's where things stand right now. So J.D. Vance, obviously he won. By the way, J.D. was actually asked yesterday. He thinks Dr. Oz is still going to pull it out. You know, we'll see how that works out. He wants to just tow the Trump line, too. I guess that's fair. So look, everybody's got it out. You know, we'll see how that works out. Yeah, but he wants to just tow the Trump line too. I guess that's fair. So, look, everybody's got an agenda.

I'm just telling you, you know, this is such a nail-biter. We truly have no idea. Gilbert, he won at 29%. Herbster, 30%. He actually lost. Madison Cawthorn, he was the loss and he was an incumbent. Hines, he won at 32%. Obviously, Dr. Oz, we don't yet know.

McGeechan, he's down, who had only 25%. Sorry, 25%, and she actually lost. But then Mastriano obviously did win. So that we're going to cover fully in our next block. I do think it is- Put a hit in that one. Yeah. I think the major takeaway from the Senate race is that Kathy Barnett, for all of the hype, didn't even come close to winning this thing, Crystal. So a lot of that really was driven by a single poll. A lot of it was Cope. I also think that Kathy Barnett probably did cost Oz the nomination if he did lose,

just because a lot of people who are MAGA couldn't really bring themselves to vote for Oz, and that McCormick is really slipping in as a result out of that. No criticism. I'm just saying that's almost certainly how he kept that lane of the Pat Toomey, pro-business type Republican. Well, it also was the case that in the final stretch, rather than them going hard on McCormick, they actually switched and trained their fire on Kathy Barnett because she seemed to have the momentum was rising quickly in the polls. I mean, she's still finished. She's finished in the 20, it was like 21 percent or something like that, which was still much higher than where she had been in the polls. I mean, she's still finished. She's finished in the 20, it was like 21% or something like that, which was still much higher than where she had been in the polls. So I don't think they were wrong that she was surging, but yeah, by focusing and training their fire on her rather than staying focused on McCormick, they let him kind of sneak in here. And also you can see, I

mean, he must've had a pretty effective organization to have banked all of these mail-in ballots early on before the final stretch of the campaign. So it is interesting. I mean, Sagar, we were talking a little bit about, by the way, I think the fact that Trump is saying, hey, Oz, you should go ahead and declare victory. And he said something like before they find the mail-in ballots and, you know, make you lose or whatever. To me, that's almost maybe the best indicator we have that they actually do think McCormick

may pull this thing out in the end. Who knows? Maybe he doesn't know anything more than we do, and he's just sort of getting ahead of this thing in case it goes south. But that to me was maybe the best indicator that actually the hedge fund ghoul McCormick may end up on top. And then we were talking, I'm interested in your thoughts, Sagar, which one of these candidates, Oz or McCormick, is stronger ultimately in the fall?

Because you hear a lot of sort of mainstream pundits theorizing because they had the example of Glenn Youngkin, McCormick is kind of a similar model of financial ghoul who's able to signal to the MAGA base but not go all the way in on the election conspiracies that potentially that's a path to victory in the fall. But I personally think Oz, just because he is such a well-known and famous figure, especially among just like regular people, I think he could have a lot of crossover appeal and be very difficult to defeat in the fall. That's a very conventional take.

You know, I completely agree with you, which is that there seems to be like a lunacy here in Washington, which is that the boring hedge fund guy is going to be run better in the state of Pennsylvania. I mean, here's the thing. David McCormick worked for Ray Dalio and ran the hedge funds with pioneered shipping jobs over to China. And Federman knows how to make that. Pennsylvania. And we'll be running against a guy from steel country Pennsylvania. You tell me whether that guy's going to do better or is the

guy who is one of the most famous people in America who also has massive crossover appeal, especially with the suburban women in the mainline Pennsylvania area, which are disproportionately Democratic now. You tell me. You know, we were also talking about this during the primary. Oz did not beclown himself. He'd had no major Kathy Barnett-type interview. Obviously, he sucked up to Trump, but I mean, who didn't? At the end of the day, he is actually an extraordinarily good communicator. You know, his major issues were like COVID, talking about inflation, all of the stuff that he stuck to. Very centrist, high-level appeal.

Now, look, personally, I think both McCormick or Oz is going to beat Fetterman simply because of the national environment. All politics is national. Candidate quality matters, but relatively on the margins. And I don't think that margin can be overcome. But I do think that Dr. Oz is a safer bet. And I think ultimately what sunk him in this primary is really the demands of the MAGA base in order to have higher standards than they have for Donald Trump. That's the part I don't understand. They're like, Oz used to be pro-choice. So is Trump. Oz is pro-gay. So is Trump. Oz used to be a liberal and hang out with Barack Obama.

Trump literally donated to Hillary Clinton and was friends with the Clintons. She was, what, at their wedding? At the wedding. I mean, this is what drives me insane. I don't understand. I'm like, look, from a purely strategic perspective, do you want a legitimate A-list celebrity, one of the most famous people in America, or do you want David McCormick,

who obviously was also liberal in the Goldman Sachs-like sense and is now fake inventing himself as some Harley riding. Which nobody ever buys. Both of these guys are rich carpetbaggers. Actually, Oz is worth $400 million and he's probably the poorer man in that race. Yeah, almost definitely. You know, you make a good point about the Pennsylvania electorate versus the Virginia electorate.

Virginia is, the electoral map of Virginia is completely dominated by Northern Virginia. So Fairfax, Loudoun County, Prince William County. This is all, this is like the whole ballgame in terms of Virginia politics at this point. So yeah, for those people, Glenn Youngkin apparently was a good fit and a good candidate. Pennsylvania has a very different electorate. It is much more of a blue collar state at this point. And, you know, I agree with you that, listen, it's still Democrats have really tall hill to climb. And so you would still say probably advantage Republicans in the fall.

Right now, the state is rated by most ratings like as a toss up right now. But you do have to say Fetterman is probably the best candidate the Democrats could possibly put up. And we'll get more into him in a moment. But he does come from steel country. He was a mayor of a steel town. He still has that every man shows up in his basketball shorts everywhere he goes. And not as some like fake McCormick like I'm the country guy now. Like this is genuinely you can tell it's very legit in who he is and who he's always been. He's also very well known in the state and very well

liked. So I do think Democrats have put up the most formidable candidate that they could in the state in a landscape that continues to be very difficult. If it's Oz that he's up against, I think that's almost impossible to overcome without some major issue from Oz. If it's McCormick, I think he's got a shot. Yeah, I think it's certainly true. I think Fetterman has a shot regardless. When I say probably, I'm talking percentage-wise, like 60% or so. So that's generally where it's at. Let's throw this final one up there, the New York Times tear sheet, which is that the primaries really do show the limits and the depths of Trump's power over the GOP base. And I would really put it this way. I've talked a lot about the concept of variance on the show, which is that the Trumpiness of the Republican Party means that in Trump-y states, a la Pennsylvania or Ohio, his endorsement is

going to matter a lot. Also, his endorsement in a state like Georgia, which is not Trump-y, could also either have a negative effect or in the case of Brian Kemp, be very embarrassing, hence why he lost the state of Georgia in the first place in the presidential election. So the Trump takeover of the Republican Party doesn't mean that he is powerful in the entire Republican Party across the entire country. He's very, very, very powerful and influential in Trump country, but in places that are more on the margins, traditional Romney-style Republicans. Actually, the Deep South is a good example. Those places are going to have independent power centers and more, I wouldn't say forward-thinking, but just more independent-minded GOP voters than the people

who really, really, really love Trump in the industrial Midwest or in West Virginia, Appalachia-type place. So that's just the way to think about it, when and why the Trump endorsement matters. I think if Trump did not intervene in the Pennsylvania race, first of all, I don't think Oz would have had any chance. No chance. Because there was clearly a lot of skepticism of him with the Republican base. And his unfavorable rating continued to be quite high among the Republican base throughout the primary. So I do think Trump put him in the fight, whether he's able to prevail or not. Probably if Trump doesn't intervene, you could see a world where Kathy Barnett then is the one who's able to take the thing by storm. I think he really kind of

killed her campaign in the final weeks by coming out and, you know, directly saying, because she was really relying on being like, I am the Trump candidate. And she definitely had the credibility. And you can see the way that her partner in crime, Mastriano, you know, not only won, but easily won in on the governor's side of the map. And that that really didn't owe to Trump because Trump didn't. Trump got in after Mastriano had already surged and the writing was already on the wall there. So I do think, listen, his endorsement is still extremely consequential. Georgia may be a special situation, especially because you have an incumbent there in Brian Kemp, who apparently people more or less like, at least on the Republican side. So that makes it more difficult. They're not just evaluating what Trump says about this candidate.

I think in these open seats where you have a variety of candidates that are somewhat unknown, I think that's where he has a huge, huge impact. On the Democratic side, on the other hand, and we'll get to this in just a minute, Biden's endorsement apparently means literally nothing. Literally nothing and maybe like net negative. Let's go ahead and put the big headlines here from the Democratic side. You've got Fetterman, who easily won from his hospital bed, won every single county in the state. He will be the Democrats Senate nominee. And then you have Josh Shapiro on the gubernatorial side in Pennsylvania. That's going to be a very closely watched race. Now, both of

these candidates have won statewide before. So I closely watched race. Now, both of these candidates have won statewide before. So I think that matters. They're both relatively well-known by Pennsylvania voters and relatively popular. I actually didn't know much about Josh Shapiro. So I was talking to Sirota about him, who apparently has known him for a very long time. And he's more impressive than I expected. So he was the one you guys might remember when he was AG of the state. He did the big report digging into the abuses within the Catholic Church. Very difficult and very brave thing to do at the time. It was a big deal.

He went after people who were exploiting students and charging them unfair amounts. And he was able to get a settlement there. He's gone after corporate America. So anyway, he's actually less of just a generic Dem and has a little bit stronger of a footprint in the state and more of his own identity than I ultimately expected. And he also has gotten crosswise with Larry Krasner, who's the Philly DA, who's been very aggressive in terms of criminal justice reform. And Shapiro has been on the sort of more moderate side of that divide, which could also bode well for him in the state. So both of them ultimately easily win. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen of part of the reason why I do think

Fetterman is a formidable candidate, even as I continue to say, like the wins are very much against Democrats in all of these races in all of these states. They describe here Fetterman's plan to win Pennsylvania, taking his populist message to Trump country. And he says, they say in this article, Fetterman is as idiosyncratic in substance as he is in style. In his campaign, he has stressed bread and butter issues. He supports $15 minimum wage, is firmly pro-union, sells t-shirts in favor of legalizing marijuana, endorsed Bernie in his 2016 campaign, opposes COVID-19 mask mandates, he criticized Philly for briefly reimposing one last month, and broke with Biden on immigration saying the Trump-era Title 42 policy should remain. Wow, so I didn't even know that. That's big. Yeah, so whatever you think of those

policies, I think it's a very appealing package in terms of a swing state and how Pennsylvania is culturally positioned. And again, Fetterman has a lot of credibility in just, you know, how he came up, how he connects in steel country, his every man sort of working class persona. So again, I think it's tough, regardless of whether McCormick or Oz ends up as the Republican nominee. But I do think Democrats have put their best possible candidate in the race. I also have to say here, Sagar. Yeah. Conor Lamb, congressman.

Yes. About to be former congressman. Former congressman almost. He is the vanquished candidate here. And to me, that is very sweet because this guy, he was held up by the Democratic establishment. He's like this blue dog, totally corporate type. He was held up as like, oh, this is the next big thing. He got every mainstream endorsement, not even only nationally, but in the state.

I saw someone tweet out the list of Conor Lamb's endorsements versus like the eight people on the list of Fetterman's endorsements. And this guy didn't just lose. He got crushed. Like it was not close. And he lost to a man who was literally in a hospital bed. Yeah. Getting a pacemaker put in on the day of the election. So, you know, it was a big rebuke and not just in this one, but I'll go through a couple of others of the establishment sort of Joe Manchin wing of the Democratic Party. And in fact, voters told New York Times and other outlets that they saw Conor Lamb as, quote, just another Joe Manchin. And so the fact that you have Manchin as this completely villainized figure in the Democratic Party now has made it so that people have a very visceral

sense of what it means to be a centrist, and they're not impressed with it. And I think that's a theme that comes up a couple of times. So he got endorsed by Manchin. He was bragging about it. It turned out that was the thing that Democratic base voters wanted nothing to do with another Joe Manchin. That's very interesting, actually. It doesn't bode well for like a Kyrsten Sinema or any of that whenever election time comes in terms of the primary itself. Yeah, definitely. So I guess my real question, look, with Fetterman, who knows? I'm not saying the guy doesn't hold positions, but I've also said here, he does not seem capable of opening his mouth without saying LGBTQ. And we'll see. I mean, look, he's going to get hammered. And whoever McCormick or these people, they have a lot of money, both him and Oz, they're going to

blanket the state and try to paint him as another woke Democrat. Will it work? I mean, I don't think he does himself a lot of favors in terms of his primary campaign, especially in the latter times, because the guy was very clearly going to win. And if I was him, I would not have been going down that direction. I don't know. And this is also people I've spoken to who actually live in Pennsylvania. They all raise the same concern. They're like, I don't know. He seems like he might be too culturally far left.

So like I said, steel country, no question that's where his roots. But the more that he's gone statewide and more national appeal, he's become a lot more woke in his overall orientation. So this will be a big test also of populist economics versus a cultural message. I personally don't think it's going to work. And like I said, national environment, so this is the thing about wokeness too. If Biden were popular by 10 points, it wouldn't matter either, you know, in terms of the candidates. So like he still could win. This is, I just think it goes national, then culture, and then we'll see exactly how it goes. But Biden overall is just going to be such a massive sink on everybody. But there are other Democratic candidates I know that you wanted to point to about who are also defeating the Democratic establishment.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd have to see more specifically what you're referring to in his language. I mean, even when we interviewed him, he always says LGBT. It's like you said it like three times in a 10-minute interview. Gay rights are popular, though. Okay, fine. And also, remember, too, that— Is that on the ballot in Pennsylvania? But remember, too, that, of course, these rights are always on the ballot.

I mean, it's a national election. Of course you have an impact on those things. But let me also say, too, that I think the cultural grounds have shifted to where there are going to be a lot more questions about abortion rights, where Fetterman is going to be much more in step with the population than the Republican Party is at this point. And I think he's helped, too, by the fact that Republicans have nominated someone who was so fringe for the gubernatorial candidate. So we'll see how it all ultimately shakes out. that Republicans have nominated someone who was so fringe for the gubernatorial candidate. So we'll see how it all ultimately shakes out. But there was another race that was very closely watched that pitted Summer Lee, who is a sort of lefty Bernie Sanders-type state rep in the Pittsburgh area,

against this union-busting lawyer, literally, on the other side who's relatively unknown. And this is for an open congressional seat. And originally, Summer had been up by double digits, like 25 points, somewhere in that range. And so multiple of these anti-Palestine, pro-Israel groups came into the race, dropped $3 million. This was the most money that they spent in any race. And clearly shifted the dynamic and really closed the gap here. Ultimately, and the ironic thing here, too, is that it was like, so Summer supports conditioning aid to Israel, which I also support, by the way. But they didn't run ads on that. They ran ads saying that she was like not a real Democrat

and that she was going to try to undermine Joe Biden and all of these sorts of things, which is exactly the playbook that they had run successfully against Nina Turner in the past. Of course, Nina had said that like half a bowl of shit comment, which didn't help her and help them to be able to make that case. So they spent millions on this race. And as of now, and this is one that's definitely going to a recount because the margin is so narrow, Summer managed to eke this thing out by a few hundred votes. Like it is as close as it possibly could be. So she will be, you know, a new squad member. And I think she'll be very well known nationally, not just because she's going to be another addition to the squad. This is a blue district. It certainly will be the

Democrat who, you know, ultimately wins in the fall, but also because she definitely has a presence and a charisma. And I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a sense of that because I think you'll be hearing more from her in the future. This is a little bit of her victory speech on the night of the election. And I also thought it was interesting how she really carried a largely populist message as well, talking about the multiracial working class and a lot of bread and butter issues. Let's take a listen to that. working people. We can't say that we can't win for clean air and clean water. We can't win for Medicare for everybody. We can't win for black women can't win. Here we go. We show them today, we show them throughout this race, that when we build coalitions,

that when we cross all over the county, when we cross and build a multiracial, multigenerational movement of people of all religions and all genders and all races, all ages that when we come together, we can't be stopped. I want to say thank you to each and every one of you, no matter why you vote at every single vote, counted in this race, and we will say that every vote matters, that when we show up, that we're going to knock one door with every vote matter in this race. We will say that every vote matters. And when we show up, then we're going to knock one door with every vote matter in this race. Every single staffer matters in this race. And I just have such a gratitude for you all. We got a lot of work to do.

So it looks like she ekes it down, like I said, going to a recount. But that was just one. You'll be hearing more from her, no doubt. That was just one of a string of pretty significant victories for the left, though. I mean, you've got to count Fetterman in that, dispatching with Conor Lamb. Conor Lamb's seat now is open. Open. And in the primary, Bernie Delegate also prevailed in his district.

You also had, let's go ahead and put this next one up on the screen. Looks like, this isn't final yet because it's Oregon and it takes a long time for the mail-in ballots to come in, but it looks like Kurt Schrader, who was described as the Joe Manchin of the House, has lost to a progressive challenger, Jamie McLeod Skinner. This is a major upset. I mean, this is an incumbent Democrat who the establishment went all in for. Joe Biden endorses him, and it looks like he's getting waxed by Jamie McLeod Skinner, who ran with the grassroots backing and support. of how she ran her campaign saga, but the ad that I watched just eviscerated Schrader on his pharma ties. This is the dude, one of the key players in terms of killing the Medicare prescription drug pricing reforms,

and she just hammered him for that in this ad. So again, a populist appeal that seems to have worked out in this primary, and it's so humiliating for Joe Biden that you wade into this race. He hasn't made many endorsements. You weighed into this. You endorsed this guy who, by the way, has stabbed you and your agenda in the back. And you still have zero impact, ultimately, in the race. There's another interesting one. This one we should probably talk about more at another date because it's a whole layered conversation. But

we had talked to Ryan Grim before about this crypto billionaire who is throwing his weight around to the tune of millions in a lot of congressional primaries, especially in particular on the Democratic side. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. Well, his candidate that he spent something like $13 million to back lost, and it wasn't even close, to another progressive World Roster's candidate. 41 to 19%. I mean, it was brutal. Like, they spent $13 million to try to push forward this sort of, like, crypto-backed candidate. And this is also interesting. Not only did the crypto pack

come in for this dude, but the House majority pack put a million plus into this race, which is an open primary. Like, what are you doing? Why are you getting involved in this race at all? Meanwhile, they didn't back Schrader, who was an incumbent who probably had a better chance of winning. So the crypto billionaire also goes down to defeat. There were a couple of lefty challenger candidates in North Carolina who also had those millions from the pro-Israel PACs come in that did end up in defeat. But overall, I think when you look at this, it comes back to what I said earlier, which is that the Democratic base is really disgusted with Joe Manchin. And when you can tie a centrist or corporatist candidate to Manchin, it is a really devastating blow to their electoral chances. And this has got to be a real rebuke of the Biden administration and the way that they have failed to really deliver on their key promises across the board.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, that Oregon district in particular, the one of Court Schrader, that is actually a little bit of a conservative district. So it's going to be a good test case of progressive rhetoric on whether they can win in a GOP area. I know some people from the area, and they think that Kurt was basically the only guy who could win that. But at the same time, like you said, Crystal, the Democratic base is just not happy here with Joe Biden. So they're kind of in a real pickle where their own base is turning against them, but that they're not, look, they have to nominate candidates then who can also win, not only with the base, but with everybody else. So it really is, it's a tough situation for the democratic establishment. You just hate to see it. Also in the crypto community where there are these things called top signals, as in like, that means we're officially at the top. I think Sam

Bankman Freed having serious losses is a very big top signal for people. It's like, all right, it's peaked. We all need to get out of here. All right. Let's move on. Mastriano. This is an important one. So the Republicans have truly outdone themselves there.

We've got to stick back with Pennsylvania. This really deserves its entire block. It's a good test case. Stop the steal. Does it matter to voters or not? Let's put it up there on the screen. Doug Mastriano, he is somebody who's shot to national prominence because of his willingness and want to challenge the Pennsylvania election results. And he is somebody who came to really embody the grassroots stop the steal movement.

He's from South Central PA. This is a guy who, you know, he says he was never broke the law. It's very, it's up in the air exactly why he was passed a police barricade on January 6th. And he said he did absolutely go to the rally. So we know he was there on that day. Mastriano himself flirted with QAnon. You know, we've pointed towards all of the other crazy stuff that he's done. But I think stop this deal is arguably the most consequential thing because, look, now he's officially the Republican nominee for GOP governor in the state of Pennsylvania, which should be a very easy pickup. And we should take Mastriano, I think, at his word. Something that we would always point to during actual stop this deal under Trump is like, look, it's not actually in his hands. You know, all these senators, like it's not

any matters. I was like, but look, if an actual governor who in the state of Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state actually did try to decertify their election results or send their own electors, that actually might happen. And that's something that's very real as a possibility. Let's put this up there on the screen here from the Washington Post, because it's actually a pretty good analysis. During Trump's 2020 efforts, Mastriano explicitly endorsed the idea. The state legislature has the, quote, sole authority to reappoint new electors given, quote, mounting evidence that Biden's win was compromised. But Mastriano continues to insist that, and he even pushed the Justice Department to issue a guidance that would allow him in order to make sure that he could push the pretext of fraud. Now, this means that Mastriano adheres to the notion that the mere

claim of fraud is enough to justify the certification of presidential electors in defiance of the popular vote outcome. And as governor, he would actually be in a position to operationalize this principle because the secretary of state, who I mentioned, is somebody who certifies the election results. And then the governor is the one who has to sign the certification of the winner's electors. And the state legislature has a constitutional role in determining the, quote, manner of appointing electors by passing a law that creates this process. So what that basically means is that if a Democrat wins the popular vote in Pennsylvania in 2024 and Mastriano were to declare widespread fraud, he could actually have his secretary of state decertify the election results. Now look, where things are currently trending, I don't think a Democrat's going to win the state of Pennsylvania. But it's possible, and the mere prospect of it

is pretty nuts. And I think that this just shows you that in a highly winnable election, inflation, you know, the cultural tides are turning. There is so much happening on the ground. There's never been a better time to be a Republican in this country that they would put up somebody in swing country, 50-50 Pennsylvania, who actually wanted to overturn the entire election and would now is asking the voters for the power to do so. So obviously I think it's completely and totally insane. And this really just shows you the damage that Trump can do to a highly winnable race. You know, the Roy Moore thing was a good example. This is a great example too. Yeah. Of the run amok Trump phenomenon

and what exactly it will wreak in these races. Now look, I'm blackpilled enough, Crystal, to think that this guy could still win given the national environment right now, which shows you a whole host of other problems in this country. Possible, possible. But I do, I mean, this is a problem for Republicans in terms of taking this governor's mansion. And it matters a lot because, obviously, of the election stuff that you just pointed to, also because of what they might do on abortion. It's very significant. It also could potentially have bleed over impacts to the Senate nominee.

And if you have a very weak candidate, the top of the ticket for governor, that is not a good thing for your other candidates down the line. I think that I hope that we have a reputation here of not being alarmist about election and insurrection and any of those things. But as you laid it out, that is exactly the case. This guy with his secretary of state could literally be in the position and have the power to say, your votes that you cast, all of you Pennsylvanians, we don't care about that. We're going to decide who ultimately won the state based on even the allegation, unproven allegation of fraud. So that is extremely, extremely significant and very, very troubling. He also has, you know, I mean, he's a he's far right across the board on every issue, including on abortion, which I do think will be a significant issue in the fall, especially with the statewide ticket. Democrats, I don't know what they're thinking here, because as you pointed out, you would not like, I think that Republicans have made it much more difficult for themselves to be able to win in the fall, but have they completely

made it impossible? No. No. And Democrats helped to engineer Mastriano's win. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. Now, he may have won anyway because ultimately this race was not close. But according to Politico, Mastriano's rise can be partly attributed to Democrats. They viewed him as the easiest Republican to defeat in the general. And so the state Democratic Party sent out mailers boosting him, helping him rise above other GOP candidates, including former Representative Lou Barletta. So Democrats wanted to run against this candidate. Now, I want you to think about their rhetoric about the sort of existential stakes of people like this holding power. And yet out of hubris, they helped to make this person closer to holding this position of power. How did it work out with Trump?

How did that work out with Trump? Now, it has worked out in the past. In some instances, Claire McCaskill famously helped to get Todd Akin the nomination. So listen, they have pulled this maneuver successfully in the past, but they are playing with fire here. And I think it is an incredibly dangerous and foolish thing that they have done to prop up this candidate. Now, again, he won by such a margin. I don't know that the Democrats were the ones that made the difference here, but they were a part of giving him the funds when he didn't have the funds, frankly, to get him to a broader audience and cause his rise. Look, Crystal, I just checked. Average gas price right now in Pennsylvania is $4.76 a gallon.

That's pretty high. Let's say election day is $5.50. You really think that Doug Mastriano still can't win? I do. I mean, I think that all he has to say is Joe Biden has made the gas price too high and I'm going to do something about it. And if you make things existential enough, you know, per your point about existential politics, well, the Republicans can talk about existential food and gas inflation, which I'm not saying

they're going to do anything about it, but Pennsylvania frat country, you know, there's a lot of they're on the line as well. All they have to do is at least talk in the election. And that seems like a pretty winnable race to me. And there's a byproduct of that, which, look, like you said, they elevated somebody who legitimately believes this. So if he does win come November, Democrats will have had a part in that. And I think that's nuts. It's completely insane. I look at this guy.

It's completely insane. And like you said, I want to reiterate this, because I already know the Trump trolls won't care. But for those of you who are on the fence, you ever hear about the January 6th committee on this show? You ever hear about some stupid-ass text messages or whatever? Now, I'm talking about Ginny Thomas, about some of the other ones. Do you ever hear about constant, oh, the Justice Department?

Listen, in terms of all that stuff, we focus as much as we can on the FBI, on the DHS, on fomenting division. But this is serious. Like, if you have a person who's going to be the governor in a swing state who legitimately wants to decertify the election results, and I think we are willing to call it out when it is the most insane and an actual threat to democracy. And part of my criticism of the media and a lot of people in the Democrats is they overuse that language and don't say it and cover it when it really matters. Here, I think it matters a lot. And frankly, I think this is an existential threat to the actual integrity of the Pennsylvania vote. So, you know, it's very bad. You're playing with fire here. You're basically trying to tee up a constitutional crisis and not like fake, like, you know, hair on fire every night on cable.

This is a real serious problem. And never underestimate the ability of Democrats to take something that should be winnable and completely shoot themselves in the face, the foot, and everywhere else. So watch this one. We will keep a close eye on this one ultimately. Another one that we wanted to give its own special space is Madison Cawthorn. Notorious, I would say, Republican congressman, very young man who kind of came out of nowhere, won this congressional district seat. Wasn't he the youngest ever elected congressman? At the time, he was. Really seemed like he was this big up-and-coming star and had sort of, you know, repeated problems time after time after time.

We didn't cover all of them here. Frankly, not all of them rose to the occasion of being worthy of coverage. But just to give you a sort of list, the first thing that really sparked the ire of the establishment was when he sort of casually floated that he'd been invited to orgies and that he'd seen people doing cocaine. Do I think that there could be orgies and cocaine use happening in this town? Yes. Was he willing to name names? No. He quickly got very uncomfortable when he was pressed on this and it very clearly looked like he just made it up to make himself look like, you know, oh, I'm this crusader. Make himself look cooler than he is. Exactly. So that happened.

Then you had multiple instances where he's driving with a suspended license. You had two instances where he brings a gun to the airport. Then you started having people who clearly had previously been aides or friends leaking all sorts of things. A picture of him wearing women's lingerie after he's, you know, he's positioned himself as this, like, manly male. Whatever. Do whatever you want in your free time. I really don't care. There was a nude video that was leaked that also was like, I don't really care there.

Anyway, there was a lot going on there. Ultimately, go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. So he did end up losing in the primary. It was very close. And his opponent, a state senator named Chuck Edwards, he really had the backing of a lot of establishment Republicans in the state, including Senator Tom Tillis. And ultimately, you know, all of this, all of the things that had come out about Madison Cawthorn, I think, basically convinced the Republicans in that district that this guy's just not really up to the task of serving as congressman right now. We're going to go in a different direction. Washington Post had a long piece on sort of inside the GOP campaign to take down Madison Cawthorn. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. They say the 26-year-old congressman has, in his few years in politics, sparked public outrage with his support for former President

Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, inflammatory speeches, repeated driving and gun infractions, and even a nude video. But his falling out, and this is really interesting, his falling out with top Republicans in North Carolina and Washington also arose from more humdrum blunders, such as neglecting constituent services and insulting party elders, according to GOP officials and operatives in the state. If you go on and read this piece, it becomes very clear that really, like, all of the, you know, outlandish things that were reported about Madison, all that stuff, really the thing that did him in was the fact that he wasn't nice enough to Tom Tillis and other senior Republican figures. They didn't really care about the election stuff.

They've got a bunch of members of Congress who are doing that sort of nonsense. They didn't care about any of his, like his violations of the law or any of that. They didn't like that he didn't bend the knee to them. And I don't want to make him say, I'm good with Madison Cawthorne losing. This guy was ridiculous. His politics are extreme. He's clearly an unserious person in terms of being in there and actually standing for anything other than his own like self-aggrandizement and Instagram presence. But it is telling that the thing that the GOP actually hated him for was that he was not sufficiently deferential. Yeah, you know, I think he beclowned himself while he was in office, but a lot of people beclown themselves while they're in office, right? Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt, I mean, Matt Gaetz is like cavorting

with prostitutes, right? And none of the people down there seem to care. It's very strange how, why exactly they singled him out and decided to just make sure that he was completely going to get out of there. I mean, you have a lot of crazy members of Congress. You have people who are going to like white nationalist rallies and the people don't seem to care, but somehow this guy really got under their skin. So it's one of those where, you know, it's kind of like Ron and Rock war. It's like, I wish both sides the best of luck. Yeah, I do feel that way. But, you know, you see what's happening. And I guess the establishment does still have quite a bit of power. At the same time, I mean, Trump did endorse him. He came very close

to actually winning the race. Yeah, it was narrow. It was incredibly narrow. Who knows? You know, he might come back in 2026 and he definitely probably could win, it seems. I think he needs a break on a personal level. His life is clearly in shambles. He had a divorce after like seven months. Like he had his gun stuff, his personal life, all these weird videos. People in his life are obviously turning against him. It feels like a person who's kind of in free fall. His personal life is clearly in shambles. You know, just take some time off. I know he likes to go to the gun range. Go do that. Blow off some steam. And just take a seat for a couple of years, and we'll see where things shake out.

Focus on yourself. Get into a good space mentally. Do some yoga. Then we can talk. Yeah, there you go. The one other thing I want to say about this is, like, I mean, it's not, like, given my politics, you're probably going to have somebody who has basically, like, the same bad political, like, stances, who's just much quieter about it in this dude, from my view,

that's not necessarily a net gain. Because, I mean, Madison was very loud and obnoxious about his bad politics. And in some ways, that's kind of useful if you're someone who opposes that. That's a good point. I'll just throw that out there. Okay, let's go to the next one. This is a very important story. So this is the DHS Secretary, or the DHS Ministry of Truth. Now, there are two sides to this story. Both the fact and the headline is it's shutting down. So that's good news for all of us.

What's the official name? The Misinformation Governance Board? Disinformation Governance Board, also known as the Ministry of Truth. Here's what's interesting, though. Here's how the Washington Post reported it. Let's put this up there on the screen. Taylor Lorenz, of course,

is the one who got the scoop. She says how the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts. A quote-unquote pause of the DHS newly created board comes after its head, Nina Jankowicz, was the victim of coordinated online attacks as the administration struggled to respond. As you said at the top of our show, what the hell is going on at the Washington Post? The clear headline news of this is Biden administration, quote unquote, pausing, aka shutting down the disinformation governance board as a result of public outcry. Just say that. You can even characterize it as a bad faith right wing attack in your copy if you want to why is it no i don't support that look i'm saying by the washington post standards yeah i'm not saying i don't think

it's my issue that's my issue is it's just not even factually accurate yeah yes there was a lot of right-wing criticism of her there was also left-wing criticism of this thing there was also civil libertarian um and civil liberties groups that criticized this board. So to just say, oh, this is a right-wing smear campaign, that's not even accurate. Like if you're just going by the facts and you're supposed to be reporting the news. I mean a lot of people had concerns over this. And, you know, I mean at this day, you know, even saying free speech is apparently coded right-wing. But I'm saying even within their twisted framework, this is a terrible story.

So the background of all of this, obviously, Nina Jankowicz, she worked with the Wilson Board. I played that cringeworthy video of her singing Mary Poppins about disinformation and how it's quite atrocious. So bad. It's one of the worst, most cringeworthy videos I've ever seen. As I said, as a former theater kid, we need to see theater kids mugged by reality. So she is somebody who needs to have that happen to her. That has happened, I think. And it finally has. So Nina, please quit the moaning Myrtle Band and Harry Potter fan fiction. Quit doing the Mary Poppins TikToks. Grow up a little bit. Now, exactly what happened here is

that the Washington Post, though, is reporting that this is a result of the Biden administration folding to these quote unquote right wing attacks. And what I love is reporting that this is a result of the Biden administration folding to these quote-unquote right-wing attacks. And what I love is that they actually quote a group within this crystal who characterizes this as a right-wing attack as the group itself which funded the P-Tape Steele dossier. So I'm like, you are literally quoting a group which funded and pushed official disinformation and quoting it and saying that this is a result of a right-wing attack against the so-called disinformation board. Just call this what it is. It's a censorship board. You want establishment liberal point of views to dominate

in the United States government and on technology platforms have to control the flow of information because you don't trust citizens to make up their minds. But they can't just come out right and say that. So they have to frame it as like, oh, we have all these concerns and we've played all those videos before where she's like, it's actually liberals who are the ones who get censored. And it's like, no, as we said, it's not liberals, it's leftists to the extent that anybody on the left gets censored whatsoever. And actually it's mainly dissonant voices, left and right, who are always the ones who are being kept out of here. So I just think it shows you very clearly that the press is on the side of the disinformation governance board because they don't believe in parsing that. And they actually have an official point of view, as Taylor Lorenz does, that she wants to dominate on the internet.

So there's a lot of troubling things that are happening with this, but God bless. I'm glad it's gone. There is so much to say about this article. First of all, she doesn't even mention the fact that one of the primary issues that people took with Nina Jankowicz is that she herself was a purveyor of significant misinformation, including buying into the whole like, oh, it's the Hunter laptop story is just like Russian disinformation. So that's number one. Number two, she goes to great lengths to try to convince the audience in this piece that these were coordinated attacks. And I think that language is very intentional because if it's a coordinated attack, like that sounds really nefarious.

Then you start thinking about bot farms and, oh, this is some like, you know, this is some underhanded dirty trick to take down a good woman. When in reality, even what she tracks here is just there was a big account that posted something critical of the board and of Jankowitz. It struck a nerve and people did what they do on Twitter and they talked about it. That's not a coordinated attack. That's just how Twitter works. And if you didn't expect that you would be mocked for your, like, you know, cringe Mary Poppins video, I don't know what world you're ultimately living in.

You could also, there's the dishonesty of just framing this as coming from the right, which, listen, a lot of it came from the right, but it was not exclusively from the right. That also is very dishonest within this piece. And then the issue that I consistently have with Taylor Lorenz is, you know what? If you want to write this as an opinion piece, fine.

I don't agree with it. Yes. You're entitled to your perspective. This is framed as a news article. It is based in zero facts. It is so, it is pure propaganda. And she tries to convince people that there was this coordinated plot, which did not exist. So that is really, really disingenuous. And to the point of like the pieces that she leaves out, go ahead and put this New York Post

piece up on the screen, which, you know, New York Post was actually way more honest here in their portrayal. They say that Biden puts disinfo Mary Poppins on ice, which is funny. But they actually have the honesty to point out that, you know, among other things, she had the terrible idea of letting verified. So blue check Twitter users edit other users tweets. Terrible idea that we're getting from this quote-unquote expert on misinformation. She repeatedly tried to spread doubt about New York Post reporting about Hunter Biden's notorious laptop, telling the AP in October that it should be viewed as a Trump campaign product. She also pushed the since-debunked claim in 2016 that then-presidential

candidate Donald Trump had a tie to Kremlin-linked Alpha Bank, an allegation at the center of an ongoing trial of a Clinton campaign lawyer. So all of that is fair game. All of it is fair game. I'm not a big fan of like digging up everybody's old tweets and like judging them for life. But when it's relevant to the job that you have been appointed to, yeah, that actually matters. Of course. The last thing I'll say about this that really irritated me about this entire conversation, not just Taylor Lorenz, but especially Taylorurens, is she tries to have it both ways. She tries to say, I don't know what people were worried about. This board was no big deal. They don't have any real authority.

And also, though, frame it as like this is some grave blow to the fight for truth. You can't have it both ways. Either the board was no big deal and you don't know why people cared about it, or this is a big deal, it has significant power, and so it really matters whether it happens or not. You can't have it both ways. That's a very good—actually, I didn't think about it that way, but it's very important. So it's like it's either it was a fake board that didn't matter, or this is a big deal that she's been taken down.

And, you know, here's the other thing, too. It's not like the Biden administration is all of that responsive to criticism. This obviously folded not because I think of just public outcry, but I think anybody on the merits could look at this woman, what she has said and say, yeah, this is just a bad fit. This is just not going to work out. You're not going to be a neutral actor. Exactly. We don't trust you to be a neutral actor. You can't be orbiting information for the United States government whenever you are such a clearly partisan actor.

It's not just folding to politics, folding to attacks. On the merits, it was a terrible idea to have it in the first place, and it was a terrible idea in order to hire her. So it folding is a victory, and I think that anybody in the press should not want a disinformation governance board, period. So the fact that they are using and defending it and that it's Taylor in particular that makes it somebody who's a proponent of it just shows you their actual ideology and their agenda. I want the government to be responsive to public criticism. Yeah, I wish.

They rarely are. Right, yeah. They actually were responsive to public criticism here and that is a very good thing. And the next story, actually. Such a bad idea. And yeah, that segues perfectly to the next story, which is Biden has now announced they are taking some pretty dramatic steps here to try to end the baby formula shortage crisis. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

I know parents all across the country are worried about finding enough infant formula to feed their babies. As a parent and as a grandparent, I know just how stressful that is. I want to provide a few updates on our work to get more formula into the United States and on the store shelves so it's available to you. Today, I'm invoking what they call the Defense Production Act to ensure that manufacturers have the necessary ingredients to make safe, healthy infant formula here at home. The Defense Production Act gives the government the ability to require suppliers to direct needed resources to infant formula manufacturers before any other customer who may have ordered that good. I'm also announcing Operation Fly Formula. That's to be able to speed up the import of infant formula

and start getting more formula in stores as soon as possible. I've directed the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services to send aircraft, planes overseas to pick up infant formula that meets U.S. health and safety standards so we can get it on the store shelves faster. And I've directed my team to do everything possible to ensure there's enough safe baby formula and that it's quickly reaching families that need it the most. This is one of my top priorities, and I'll continue to keep you updated on our progress. So two big things there, just to summarize. Defense Production Act, to make sure that the ingredients are available.

Long overdue. Glad to see they're doing it now. And flying in formula from Europe. Also long overdue. Glad to see they're doing it now. And flying in formula from Europe. Also long overdue. Glad to see they're doing it now. Shows you what the government can do when they actually want to. Yeah. I mean, look, better late than never. That's exactly what I wanted to see happen. I think that's exactly what I said on our show on Monday. I was like, invoke the DPA and go to Europe and fly using military planes, fly it over here and give it away to parents. Great. Thank you very much, President Biden.

Now do the same thing on gas and on food. That's my only ask. I guess this one is just so discreet and so outrageous. Like the idea of parents of tiny little toddlers, especially ones who are working moms. You know, actually, that was one. This made me so upset, which is that you have these moms who don't actually have a lot of maternity leave. Yeah.

So they have to wean their kids off at a very, like, early stage, like eight weeks or something like that. They literally have to use baby form. They don't have a choice. We have- Because they have to go back to work. We have zero guaranteed days

of paid maternity leave in this country. A loan among developed nations. Zero. So, yeah, if you're a working mom, you've got to go back to work immediately. They literally have to go back. So what are they supposed to do? What are you going to do? I mean, there are many women who want to breastfeed and are unable to.

There are many women who are working, and it does not work in their schedule whatsoever. There are people who adopt babies. Don't know if you know about that. There are gay couples who adopt babies. I mean, there are so many reasons why people need formula, why infants need formula. And this was the other thing that really upset me is like the mom shaming that was going on here too. Like, you know, you could just give them the natural product. Shut the F up.

That really made me lose my cool. Just, you know, knowing how difficult and what a strain this can put on families ultimately. But, you know, the other piece of this saga is Abbott, which had the recall. Yeah. And there are only so four manufacturers of baby formula produce about 90 percent of the country's supply. So you take one of those offline. It is a big deal. So that's part of the problem here. The FDA has apparently come to some agreement with them to address the safety concerns, but that's probably still going to take months to get that plant and equipment safe for the babies who are dependent on their product, they instead decided to give themselves billions of dollars in stock buybacks,

which is just the most sociopathic, disgusting example of corporate greed that I have probably ever seen. Yeah, and you know, even in terms of how this all happened, nobody really knows. Like, even the CDC says there's no conclusive evidence that Abbott was the one responsible. Obviously, Abbott is pushing that very hard. I have no idea what happened in terms of this. But what I do know is, look, Abbott, you shouldn't be buying back $6 billion of your stock, period. And in general, we should have a lot more facilities. Also, the regulatory capture on this is something that we absolutely have to address. Never thought I'd know this much about baby formula before I had kids,

but it's very clear to me that European baby formula is far superior to ours. So I actually hope that we have a breakthrough in terms of at least ensuring that parents who are in that scenario where they are not able to breastfeed their kids are able to access much more natural and better baby formula recipes on the commercial market, which basically don't exist here. That's another, you know, this is a very good view into how much of our food supply chain is tainted by these major monopolies and by these, who asked and made it? Did you vote that all baby formulas in America have to have plant-based soy additives? Why is that? There's no good explanation except for the fact that there's a big lobby and that these companies have actually used an intense amount of their lobbying power

to make sure that European natural milk protein baby formula is not available here. There's also apparently a goat milk alternative, which is very good. I'm just saying, you know, let people give their kids whatever they want as long as it's safe. As long as it's safe. As long as it's not going to poison them. Give them, you know, let parents make the decision for themselves. The other problem here is that the FDA funding has been so stripped that it makes it very, very difficult for them just to do the basics of guaranteeing food safety that we expect them to do. And I just have to point out on the

hypocrisy front. So they put up, they want to vote on awarding $28 million additionally to the FDA so that they can beef up their regulatory ability. And Republicans say they are going to vote against it. Of course. So it's like, you know, they're out there raising hell about this.

Good. It's deserved. But that, and they're pointing fingers directly at the FDA. I mean, that's been the the locus of a lot of the Republican criticism.

And for pharma, too. And then there's like, okay, so let's do something about it. Like, nah. Yeah. I mean, look,

this is always the issue. Yeah. And actually I do want to say this. So producer James during the show went ahead and checked. There are two bills on the floor in order to pump money into the baby formula, formula supplementation appropriations act. 192 Republicans voted against it. Four Republicans and one Democrat did not vote.

12 Republicans did buck the House GOP leadership and voted for the bill. So you've got Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Anthony Gonzalez, Trey Hollingsworth, John Kotko, Adam Kisinger, David McKinley, Tom Rice, Chris Smith, Michael Turner, Fred Upton, and Ann Wagner. Now that was one bill. There is a second bill, also, the Access to Baby Formula Act, which passed by a vote for 414 to 9. So I think that's a different and a separate one, but they did pass the $28 million in funding there. But I do think that it is very important to show you that there were a lot of Republican talking points at the time of the $40 billion to Ukraine, which I oppose and which I'm doing an entire monologue on, but who said we can't even give baby formula

to our kids. But then when they actually can vote to give baby formula to kids, most of them don't even vote for it. Yeah, and the ones you named were not the people who were loving it. No, they're not. They were more centrist. Marjorie is the one who said that. And I even said, I said, okay, Marjorie, let's vote for it.

Let's see it. Let's do it. Let's do it. So there you go. All right, Sagar, let's get to your monologue then. What are you looking at? Here we go. Well, as I've covered here extensively, Finland and Sweden have both officially submitted a joint bid to NATO yesterday in a seismic geopolitical move that will likely have ramifications

for decades to come. Finnish and Swedish entry into NATO was not even thinkable four months ago. The majorities of both populations did not even want the move. Obviously, what's changed here? The Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has spurred both Finland and Sweden to try and join NATO, with Switzerland also even considering breaking its centuries-long commitment to neutrality and considering NATO application as well. But of course, a hidden part of the debate is this. Finland and Sweden have no right to join NATO. Nobody has a right to decide that we have to go to nuclear war for them.

That responsibility is up to us. And it's a sacred one that we considered holy during the foundation of NATO itself when we extended that protection only to our closest and most strategic allies during the Cold War. That extension came with conditions. Conditions which, after the fall of the Soviet Union, have just simply not been yet. A lot of this became political when Donald Trump began talking about this in 2016. But the story is basic and true. In 2014, all NATO alliance countries committed to spending at least 2% of their GDP on national defense. Of course, for decades, they basically refused to do that, especially the largest countries in Europe, like Germany and France, spending well under 2% while they maintain their massive welfare states.

And look, that's fine. You're welcome to do what you want. But to do so while the U.S. is underwriting their entire existence, that seems pretty insane. And this has been the status quo in Europe for 30 years. The United States has cared more about the security of the European continent than the Europeans themselves. We have been underwriting tens of billions in weapons, defense, deployments for a sector of the world whose GDP and national affairs continues to have less and less impact on us and on the global economy every day. It's not 1910 anymore. Ask yourself at a basic level, is that fair? Is it just or is it not? And then, of course, all of this is brushed under the rug during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You have all of

Europe, they're beating their chest. France and Germany and the UK, they're finally going to step up and actually fulfill their NATO obligations, spending the bare minimum of 2%. That's great, I guess, but the same fundamental dynamic remains today. Really consider this. To date, the United States has sent more money to Ukraine than it has to Israel and Egypt. When the Ukrainian aid package does pass the Senate, it will total nearly $50 billion. That is more than we have sent to any other country in total since 1946. Now, perhaps you say, yeah, Sagar, no shit.

Russia invaded Ukraine and we support Ukraine. I agree. I think the Ukrainian cause is just. I hope they win. But let's consider our nearly $50 billion in the context cause is just. I hope they win. But let's consider it our nearly $50 billion in the context of what our supposed allies are coughing up. Let's review. The United Kingdom, which historically has been willing to spend more than their continental brothers, has not even broken $5 billion in total assistance to Ukraine. The entire European Union

lags behind then. And then, in order, Poland, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Japan, and Estonia. The Estonia figure is actually most shocking to me, considering that they literally share a land border with Russia, and they have actually been conquered by Russia before. None of the other Baltic members of NATO even crack the top 12 in terms of donation. Now look, to be fair, if you include the share of GDP, they certainly have contributed a lot more, even more than we have. But I would posit that absolute dollar terms actually matter a lot. It's outrageous for the United States to be outspending the largest states in all of Europe by a margin of 10 to 1. They are the ones whose actual physical security is

threatened. Take the Baltic states and the Europeans at their word. If they legitimately feel like supporting Ukraine, weakening Russia, and having a strong NATO is vital to deterring Russia, don't you think they would be spending a hell of a lot more on their national defense and on supporting Ukraine? If there was a country that had the means and the past of Russia on our border, and they invaded somebody near us, I'd be up here telling us we need to spend 25% on national defense. And yet, these people won't even spend 2%

when their physical security is threatened, and when we foot the entire bill to actually support Ukraine, that when they're in need, they do it because they can. They know we will foot the bill, that we extend and guarantee their physical security with our nuclear arsenal so that they can continue to spend lavishly on their own citizens. It is the scam of the century. It has been now for some time. And I'm pro-NATO. It's great as long as they contribute too.

But they don't. And they won't as long as we continue to blindly go along. Which brings me to Finland and Sweden. As I've said, I think Finland and NATO are great. Or Sweden are great. Despite my brief and disgusting dalliance with Finnish food. I think they deserve peace and security. But their entire claim for joining NATO is that they are afraid of getting

invaded by Russia. Totally rational in my opinion, and I would be if I were them. So again, how much are they spending on their national defense? They have one of the largest in all of Europe in Finland, and they still only spend 2.3%. They have committed to more. But look, again, if they're going to think you're going to get invaded, wouldn't you spend like 5 or 10? And the answer is no, because their solution is for us to spend 3.5% of our GDP on defense and guarantee their physical security. Finland is honestly even worse. In 2020, sorry, Sweden is honestly worse. In 2020, they spent only 1.2% of their GDP on national defense. Now look, they claim they're going to raise it to two, quote, as soon as possible. Yet they submitted a NATO application before even committing to the 2%. Ask yourself this, is it fair for countries with the most robust welfare

states on planet Earth to outsource their defense to you, the American taxpayer, who does not have such a welfare state. I think all of us can agree that we have and need an alliance with Western Europe and that we want to see Ukraine obtain victory on the battlefield. But this is not right. This has become a predominantly American-led and funded conflict, which really buttresses against the Russian justification. They are claiming that Ukraine and this entire conflict is a proxy thing with us rather than Ukrainians and Europeans fighting for their physical security. If Europe really thinks it's on a war fitting, they should act like it. The U.S. Congress should not bail them out time after time after time after

time because the day may actually come when Article 5 does get tripped. And what then? Well, what then is that these so-called allies, who have much smaller and lesser capable militaries than us and don't stand a chance, we will once again have to come to their rescue with our overwhelming arms, materiel, and lives. We did it before, and the promise was we wouldn't ever have to do it again, but they would help us by shouldering some of the burden. That has simply not been the case. It's not the case today, and if the current hysteria remains, it will not be the case tomorrow, and the status quo is not going to change. You're getting ripped off as you have been

for decades. I think that that conflict tells you everything. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? While Dems fear an extinction-level event, that is the headline of a New York Times article describing what might be the ultimate showdown in Dem-on-Dem violence. Open civil war breaking out into the open thanks to the shameless power grab of one top Dem in leadership bigfooting a first-term Black progressive. Now, this is a little bit of inside baseball, I confess, but trust me, the drama of it is well worth wading through the details here. So, New York has been working through lawsuits to arrive at a new post-2020 census congressional district map. And a tentative map has been working through lawsuits to arrive at a new post-2020 census congressional district map. And a tentative map has been released, which is likely to be finalized tomorrow.

But already, all hell has broken loose within the New York congressional delegation and the National Democratic Party. No fewer than five pairs of incumbent Democrats have been drawn into the same districts, putting numerous incumbents on a direct collision course. Among them are Carolyn Maloney, who lives in the same district now as Jerry Nadler, Hakeem Jeffries, who lives in the same district now as Yvette Clark, and progressive Jamal Bowman, who lives in the same district as progressive Mondaire Jones. Now, this is where things get really interesting, because although Jones lives in the same district now as Bowman, the overwhelming bulk of his current district, pre-New Lines, was drawn into a different district, New York 17. That's going to become really relevant. And in New York, there is no law that says you have to live in the district where you're running. So, seems like a no-brainer. Jones should

run in the district that includes more than 75% of the district that he already represents. But there is a gigantic catch. The current chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC, Sean Patrick Maloney, the guy who's charged with raising the money, forging the strategy, and wrangling the endorsements to protect Democratic incumbents, he instantly announced that he's going to run in that New York 17 congressional district. This in spite of the fact that the bulk of Sean Patrick Maloney's current district is in a different newly drawn district where there is no incumbent. So why is he doing that? Because the New York 17 district

is a few points more favorable to Democrats than the other district. And apparently, the dude who's supposed to be guiding swing district Democrats on how to win is so insecure about his own prospects in a swing district that he's worried he can't win in a district that Biden won by five to eight points. Maloney's move has already pissed off a bunch of people. Here is Politico. Quote, Maloney's decision to abandon

a newly redrawn version of his current swing district and instead run for a seat that includes most of Representative Mondaire Jones's turf is raising private concerns from across the party that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chief has put himself in an inappropriate scenario, leading the party's midterm strategy while potentially battling a fellow member. That is a very diplomatic way of saying the caucus is in total meltdown. Jones is clearly extremely pissed. In an interview, he said, Sean Patrick Maloney did not even give me a heads up before he went on Twitter to make that announcement, and I think that tells you everything you need to know about Sean Patrick Maloney. Wow. Jones has yet to announce, though, what he is ultimately going to do. Is he going to run against his fellow progressive? Or is he going to take on the guy who controls the Democratic caucus fundraising purse strings?

But just think about this. Maloney is supposed to be the person in the caucus most committed to maintaining the Democratic majority. And he has just all on his own made it more difficult for Dems to prevail in that already monumental task. Incumbents normally have an engine holding seat, so by crowding himself into Jones' district, he left that other district that he currently represents completely open. As I mentioned before, it's a Biden plus 5 to 8 district, which he as an incumbent would probably hold even in this climate. As an open seat, though, it could easily be in danger of being picked off by Republicans. So even the people who

claim they're all about the party, when it comes down to it, they look after their own interests at the expense of anything and everyone else. Speaking of having no principles, Maloney also threw in some low-key racism just for good measure here. His allies are arguing that Jones is more, quote, ideologically suited to the district that Jamal Bowman represents versus the one that already has 75% of his district in it. Translation being, why don't you go represent the Black district and leave the white Westchester district to me? Nice segregationist vibes there. Which brings me to another point. Think of all the things that these Democratic elites have said about their support for communities of color and especially their emphasis on representation. Now, personally, I care a lot more about whether the policies are going to be good for people than which demographic group the members of Congress

happen to personally reflect. I will take Bernie over Kamala every damn day. Thank you very much. But Dem Party elites, they lean into the representation-only version of progress, the hollowest form of identity politics, at least until they don't. Imagine how much a white leftist would be smeared as racist for jumping into the district of a black corporatist. But Sean Patrick Maloney just made it much more likely that the caucus becomes less diverse because of him attempting to Bigfoot Mondaire Jones, who happens to be a black man. See, identity politics was all well and good until it came to their own power. Same with the millions being spent by establishment Democrats and their allies to destroy progressives, frequently people of color, in primaries across the country.

Summer Lee is literally set to be the first Black woman to serve in Congress in the state of Pennsylvania ever. But she has a history of challenging establishment Democrats. So millions in super PAC spending from top establishment Democratic allies, AIPAC, and Democratic majority for Israel, that was dumped on her in order to try to prop up a dude who's not only a white guy, but who also literally led the union-busting shop at his corporate law firm. Women of color Erica Davis, Nita Alam, and Jessica Cisneros have received similar treatment, as did Jamie McLeod Skinner, who is set to become Oregon's first LGBTQ congressperson. Joe Biden even waded into that race to endorse her white guy opponent. Again, I don't really care who these candidates sleep with or the shade of their skin color. Diverse representation is a bonus, fine, but it does not in any way make up for bad policy.

But that is not what the Democrats have been selling you. And it's not just on identity that they are completely full of it. Every single one of these instances I just mentioned, they're actually backing candidates who are at odds with the policies they claim to support. Going to the mat for the remaining pro-life Democrat over a pro-choice Latina. They lined up behind the now vanquished, likely, Kurt Schrader, who tanked Dem drug pricing legislation over the trailblazing lesbian. And they backed a union-busting lawyer over Pennsylvania's first Black congresswoman. Why? Because they gotta crush the left. They gotta guarantee that all the little sheep will fall in line

and that every vote goes in the right direction on the one thing that really matters. The leadership votes. Sean Patrick Maloney's little play to push out Mondaire Jones is just the tip of the iceberg of their hypocrisy, their willingness to do anything to snuff out any possibility of dissent. Every person of good conscience needs to take note. They don't care about identity. They don't care about policy. And they don't care about you.

They just want power at any cost. So, ladies and gentlemen, let the Dem disarray begin. This whole story— And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. By very popular request, joining us now is Peter Zaihan. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The End of Globalization is Just the Beginning, Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. It is—The End of the World is Just the Beginning, sorry, Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. A very thought-provoking book.

Let's put it up there on the screen. Peter, I've been familiar with your work. I've read some of your previous books. It's really interesting just to talk to you in the context of really a flashpoint in geopolitics. So give us the both preview of the book in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian and Chinese seeming alliance, the current Finnish and Swedish prospect of joining NATO. How does this all track onto your general worldview? The overall theme is that we are at the end of an era that globalization was a moment in time

that the United States created artificially in order to generate alliance to fight the Cold War. And in the eight elections since the Cold War ended, the American population has always gone with the candidate who was less globalist and more populist. That includes Biden. So we've been moving this way for a long time. It's not an aberration. It's a pattern. And without globalization, most of the major economies in the world have to, at a minimum, retool. And for many of them, that's the end of their systems. The other piece is depopulation. We've finally passed the point where the problem is no longer overpopulation. The problem is that as globalization took hold, everyone everywhere was able to move off the

farm and into the town. On the farm, kids are free labor, and in the town, they're really expensive annoyances. And adults aren't dumb, so they have fewer of them. You carry that out for 75 years, and you don't just run out of children. You run out of 20-somethings and 40-somethings. Most of the major countries of the world have now aged past the point of no return. And this was always going to be the decade where they moved into mass retirement. You play these things two together and the whole system starts to spin apart. The Ukraine war is a piece of that. Countries looking to attach themselves to a superior power is a piece of that. The evolution of China and Japan and Russia are pieces of that. And the whole point of the book is to show what happens on the backside in terms of the major economic sectors, whether it's

transport or finance or agriculture. Let me ask you about one little piece of what you said there, which is you made the case that Biden is actually more populist and less globalist than Trump. What is your sort of lay out your view of that? Because I think that would go against a lot of conventional wisdom. Oh, it certainly does. Everyone assumes that Trump, since he was the one who threw the fits and broke trade deals, is the one who's the more populist. And I don't mean to suggest that he wasn't. He certainly was.

But what Biden has done is fundamentally different. Trump would tweet out that we're pulling out of this or that or we're leveling tariffs on countries, and then he would walk away. Sometimes he'd even fire the people who were responsible for making those policies happen because he was a relatively volatile personality. Biden is coming in,

and Biden is reinforcing every decision that Trump made on trade with actual code, with actual executive orders, with actual bureaucrats to enforce it. So Biden and Trump from a foreign economic policy point of view actually have the two most similar foreign policies in this country's history. The difference is that Biden is making it stick. Can you just give one very specific example of that? Sure, China tariffs. The phase one deal never really went through because Trump never really implemented it. All the tariffs stayed in place. And Trump and his trade czar, Catherine Tai, have basically extended those into perpetuity and formed a bit of an alliance with some of the other Western countries to make it not just an

American thing, but global. And that's one of the reasons why companies like Huawei are facing such a catastrophic problem. Everyone assumed that as soon as the Trump administration went away, this would all just fade away. And instead, it is now fully embracing the American trade law. Right. And Peter, I think one of the interesting things you said there was what the end of globalization looks like on the back end. I mean, give us a 20-year or so preview here of going forward. What can Americans see change geopolitically in their lifetimes, given the fact we've already seen such a major geopolitical change in what, just the last, I'd say, 10 years? It's changed the landscape dramatically. It's been a really last three months from my point of view. But yeah, the whole book

is on that topic. So for example, transport is international safe and cheap transport is the foundation of all manufacturing supply chains, the entire global energy market, and the entire global agricultural market. There are now parts of the Black Sea that have already become a no-go zone, which have taken the world's largest wheat exporter, Russia, and the fourth largest wheat exporter, Ukraine, off the market. The Russians are having a similar problem with their fertilizer because it is exported through that same no-go zone. So we are already looking down the law of a global wheat crisis that this year is going to at a minimum

triple, probably quadruple wheat prices. At the same time, we have a global fertilizer shortage, which is going to reduce yields on a global basis. We're not going to have to wait 10 years. We're looking at that right now. Part of the core of your analysis focuses on demographic decline. And you referenced that, you know, the fact baby boomers didn't have, you know, nearly as many children, that people keep having fewer and fewer children, not just in the rich world, but also in the developing world. Could you just make the case for how that works? Like you sort of arrive at very catastrophic consequences from this demographic bust, but just get very specific about how this happens and what it actually

looks like, and if there are countries that have already gone through this that can kind of serve as a model. Sure. So, as you move off the farm and into the city, you have fewer kids. You play that forward for a few decades, and fewer kids becomes fewer young workers becomes fewer mature workers. I think a great case study is South Korea. South Korea is a country that wasn't industrialized at all, certainly wasn't globalized when it got independence from the Japanese at the end of World War II. They started to develop in 1950, and steadily over the course of the next four decades, they went from the most rural country in the world to the most urbanized country in the world. And they're now, 30 years after that, in an environment where they have more people in

their 60s than their 50s than their 40s than their 30s than their teens than children. For a while, that works for you because if you have a lot of workers age 30 to 50, but not a lot of kids, all the money that is normally spent on school and diapers is instead spent on cars and condos. And you get this massive generation of economic growth from the consumption side. At the same time, the higher investment and tax levels from those more mature workers can be building out infrastructure and industrial plant on the industrial side.

And so we've seen this story over and over again in Germany, in Korea, in Japan, in China, but it's a bit of a starvation diet. Because if you then fast forward another 10 years, you're talking about that bulge that right now is in the 50s, being in their 60s and then retiring. And in that sort of environment, you just have a complete collapse of production and investment and consumption all at the same time. And we're now looking at about half the developing world going through that process right now. So the growth we had from roughly 1995 to roughly 2015,

the fastest economic expansion in human history, was about all of them being in that magic demographic moment before they flipped. Now they're flipping. Right. And so, Peter, one of the key points I think that you make in the book and have talked along about in the past is just the way that the unique American role of superpower played in the development of the globalization system. Now, with the decline of globalization, as you say, energy markets and manufacturing, all of that predicated entirely

on the free movement of goods. What does a return to an almost more like 19th century war for the high sea, I don't mean a physical war, although it could certainly turn into that. What does that actually look like in the context also of this demographic decline in consumer, a shrinking of US power? Are we going to see the return of great power conflict, of multipolarity within the system? How is that going to play? That's like nine questions there. I'll do my best. Okay. So as populations decline,

the capacity for them to participate in normal economic activity collapses because you have to have sufficient young people to get it going. And that's no longer an option for a lot of countries. So the model of capitalism or socialism or fascism or communism, whichever ism you happen to be a fan of, they were all designed for the market getting a little bit bigger every year, and they can't cope with a market that's in terminal decline. In terms of global affairs, if you don't have safety on the high seas, and the U.S. is the only country that can even pretend to guarantee that, the steps that allow for modern manufacturing supply chains, the complexity that brings us the goods that we use every day, that breaks down. In that sort of environment, individual countries will feel forced or out of a sense of opportunity to take matters into their own hands and try to generate regional manufacturing hubs, regional spheres of influence. The problem is that the

resources you need to fuel a modern industrialized post-globalist world are not equally spread out around the world. They're very concentrated. So oil in the Persian Gulf, cobalt in Congo, nickel in northern Russia, for example. Not everyone can reach everything. The United States should be pretty much okay because we're going to be combining the Western Hemisphere with maybe the Japanese in Southeast Asia. But for everyone else, you're looking at sharply truncated capacity to access the inputs that allow modern life to happen. So we're seeing some of this going on right now with the Ukraine war. There are a number of countries who are completely reliant on globalization to allow them to import energy. China's probably at the top of that list. And in a world where Russian crude is going offline bit by bit, that means the entire map of where crude can go is going to reshuffle. So it's probably

going to look something like this. As the Russian crude falls offline, the Europeans, who are the primary customer, are going to go back and reinterface with countries closer to them that they have better relations with, primarily former colonies. That's North Africa and West Africa. There's enough there plus Norway to supply the Europeans. But that means that Russian crude is going offline and North and West African crude is going offline. That means there's not enough left to go to East Asia. Now, the Japanese have a navy. They can reach the Western Hemisphere,

work with the Americans, still get supplies in. But China can't. China's a good example of a country that's absolutely screwed from this new sort of environment. They've mined most of their own country out, and the resources that they need from further abroad are concentrated in certain footprints that the Chinese can't reach. So China and a lot of countries in the broader world will not be able to access affordable and ample energy supplies to maintain their current system.

And they also can't reach the cobalt and the nickel and the copper that is needed to maybe try their hand at the green transition. In that sort of environment, you're not just looking at a trade breakdown in East Asia and a population bust. You're looking at a loss of the inputs that are necessary to maintain today's economy, much less the future one. And that suggests a screaming reverse in economic activity and a de-industrialization of the system. That doesn't simply make the Chinese no longer rich. It puts the Chinese in an environment where they have to go back to subsistence rice paddy agriculture just to prevent their population from dying out. Some version of this is going to play out in large parts of the world. I'm specifically concerned with sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, a little bit in Southeast Asia.

I'm sorry, a little bit in South Asia, and absolutely in Central Europe. Wow. So talk a little bit more about China because it's another part that very much goes against conventional wisdom. A lot of your thinking does. But, you know, the counter case is they've got a massive population. They've been very clever about the Belt and Road Initiative. They've been down securing mineral deposits in Congo and elsewhere so that they could be ahead of the game in terms of the Green Revolution and that they are the U.S.'s main geopolitical competitor.

Obviously, much of our industrial capacity went to China and they have all the factory towns now. So what's wrong with that analysis? Almost everything. So let's start with the demographic picture since we've already kind of established that. The one-child policy has been in place for 40 years, and that means that the Chinese are running out of 30-year-olds. That's just how math works. Anyone who suggests that the Chinese think long-term or are good at math really needs to take a closer look at their system. Also, with the more recent census data that has come out, they are now admitting

grudgingly that they've overcounted their population by in excess of 100 million people. Now, the Chinese system, as of two years ago, before this new census data had come out, they were already the fastest aging and fastest demographically collapsing country in human history. And now with the new data, it suggests that the Chinese population will be less than half of its current size as soon as 2050. So just from a demographic point of view, this is the last decade of China as a unified nation state. They're a dead man walking. Let's go beyond that. Okay, one belt, one road. This is an outcome of something the Chinese do with their financial system. So we give the Fed a lot of

crap for monetizing and printing currency and all that good stuff. And on average, we do print a substantial amount. But the U.S. dollar is used as the lubricant for the world's largest economy. We have another 20-odd currencies in the wider world that are linked to it. And it is the sole currency for international trade and the primary currency in terms of store of value. As such, the American increase in the money supply actually broadly correlates with those other factors combined. So do we play a little fast and loose with the rules? Sure. Will we pay for that down the road? Probably. But the Chinese, which is not, the Chinese yuan is neither the store of value nor the currency of exchange. And yet the Chinese

in any given month print two to five times as much currency as we do. Their overall money supply is over twice what ours is, and it's not internationally exchanged at all. They use that money to lubricate their systems to force capital into any company that might be able to employ people. So for us, the money supply is primarily an economic issue. For them, it's a political one, and it's treated appropriately. And that means that the Chinese are brimming with huge volumes of liquidity. And if you're someone in the know in China and you have access to that, it's a goldmine because if you can get that currency out and exchange it for something else, anything else,

even if the price is ridiculous, that means you've gotten some capital flight out and you have your rainy day fund. That's exactly what One Belt, One Road is on a global basis. Whenever you see the Chinese bidding $8 billion for something that's only worth $2 billion, that is not a sign of national strength. That is a sign of a corrupt bureaucrat who is establishing his nest egg. And they've now done that on a global basis.

Now, there's lots of other impacts from this over-financialization financialization system but overall it does mean that each individual chinese company of size could not survive in the global environment unless that money keeps coming other countries have tried various versions of this japan probably is at the top of that list they're the ones who kind of designed the model but eventually you have sufficient exposure that you can't compete and you start going down a japanese style economic malaise that in this case has lasted 30 35 years already and the chinese or shooting the japanese economy today is about the same size that it was in 1994 before the decline really got going that is the best case scenario for the future of China, a slow,

long stagnation. But there's a lot of reasons to expect it to be a lot worse. Wow. This is really fascinating. This is why I love reading your books and why I think everybody should go pre-order, buy your book right now. We're going to have a link down in the description. I've gotten a lot out of this conversation. Could talk to you for hours. So Peter, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Yeah, it's our pleasure. My pleasure. Absolutely.

All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We got one more, Sagar. Oh, oh my God. We got one more. You're right. We came across the wires last night and we could not let the show go. Thank you for catching me because I just remember

this is probably one of the most important segments we will ever do. Exaggerating. But pretty bit of, how would you even describe this? Slip of the tongue? Freudian slip? I don't know. A little bit of unintentional, brutal honesty?

Unintentional honesty. Very few ways in order to describe it. President George W. Bush accidentally saying, imagine one man invading unlawfully Iraq instead of Ukraine. Let's take a listen. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. Iraq, too. Anyway. Oh my god. You're right. He later goes on to say

I'm 75 and the audience laughs. There's actually really nothing funny about that at all. That's the part that is the worst. I mean, I understand people in the audience are just, like, uncomfortable, but you destroyed an entire region. You killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. You sent our men and women to fight and die for lies.

Right. This isn't—it's not funny. And the fact that he said that is really something. I mean, it's just something I guess exists. You know, it's like an old programming chip that just came back. I don't know. You know, I saw a tweet once,

which I have never agreed more, which is that Fauci is a guy who, and look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but just bear with me, which is that Fauci is a guy who basically ruined the lives of a lot of younger people by pushing a certain type of ideology

and changed our world forever. And he said, like George W. Bush, I don't think I could ever shake his hand. And I've been thinking about that in the context of Bush, which is, you know, I've always generally been and erred on the side of collegiality, but there are certain types of figures like him who ruined so much of what I loved about America and ruined so much about both our, I think, political awakenings, the entire world. I mean, watching and seeing, and I've seen refugee camps and others as a result of both the Syrian crisis, which is, you know, a direct effect of Iraq. And I can't, I don't think I would ever be able to shake George W. Bush. I don't think I could ever be in a polite society

conversation event like that and just laugh hilariously. Even today, whenever I see guys like Paul Wolfowitz or Scooter Libby or others, and I've been in the same room, I can't even go and speak to them. I literally look at them, and I'm like, you ruined this country. You don't even know. Douglas Feith, all of those. I look at them, and I'm just like, you did so much damage to the world, to America. You ruined so many lives. I know people who lost limbs, you know, in these wars.

And that's on W at the end of the day. And that he was resuscitated in the Trump era as some sort of like, you know, oh, that's back when the Republicans were reasonable. There ain't nothing reasonable about Biden. You know, you can have a critique

of Trump and like accurately portray how bad he is without reviving war criminals like George W. Bush. And so what does it mean that that fell out

of his mouth when he was supposed to be talking about Ukraine? I don't know. I don't know. We have to get a psychologist in here to say. I mean, it almost makes you, like, it just makes you wonder. Clearly, that's still very much on his mind on the tip of his tongue after all these years.

I read W's biography by Gene Edwards. Gene Edwards is a great biographer. He wrote a couple of really good ones, one on FDR, one on Grant. And he actually did a bio of W. Yeah. And, you know, W doesn't think about it at all. Well, that's the thing. He is totally at peace. I almost imagine that happening with someone who actually has some remorse. But this man has never showed for a minute, even a second of reflection or remorse. I remember some of the reporting at the time too, and I take it for what it's worth, but reading the letters of soldiers and whatever, there just wasn't that deep concern.

It didn't land with him. Well, it would land with him in the context if he would feel very bad for the people but he was always 100% secure he has a very strange world view he's like got the evangelical born again thing where he's 100% secure in his decision making even today would defend the decision

to invade Iraq and I think that he genuinely does sleep very peacefully at night which you know that bothers me some kind of way for a lot of the moms, parents, people out there who lost people who fought and died, not to mention many of the Iraqis as well. So I don't know. I mean, he's always been a complex figure in that probably responsible for the single worst foreign policy act in the history of the United States, has no remorse over it whatsoever.

And is still welcome in polite society. And it resuscitated. Not just to give his thoughts, but to opine on foreign policy, which is what he's doing here. I told you he had that meeting with Zelensky. And I was like, hey, Zelensky, that's actually a terrible look and you should not be with him. I'm like, you should not be in the business of meeting with people who are invaders, and, you know, Bush is up there. I just think it was a monster. It's such a monstrous act that has been lost in the time, in my lifetime, which I didn't even think possible back in 2006.

I was like, we are going to remember. I mean, look, I was a teenager, and sure, I was like full buster. I was just like, this is so bad, like so awful. And yet, you know, people here are apparently willing to move on. The freaking lady and Nicole Wallace, who helped him and sold his war propaganda, is now on MSNBC. Now a liberal hero. You know, sometimes I have to grapple with it. Up for a potentially primetime gig.

Anyway, there you go. Anyway, that was really something. W in a very revealing moment. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It was a great show today. Just thank you all so much for your support. We're thinking about all of you who have stuck with us over the years as we come up on the one-year anniversary of Breaking Points.

Premium subscribers. We've got a very great State of the breaking points video, which is coming to all of your inbox, as well as a letter from Crystal and I detailing exactly what we've done over the last year and where and how we want to grow. And if you want to be part of our mission, you can help us out. We've got a link down there in the description. We really appreciate it. I'm really excited for that one year anniversary and we've got big announcements for everybody on that day. Indeed. Love you guys so much. You are amazing. Enjoy your weekend. We'll see you back here next week. Got some great partner content. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know,

some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7.

Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

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