Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/25/22: Uvalde Massacre, Primary Results, Housing Market, Trump Rage, World Economic Forum, Climate Politics, & More!

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the mass shooting in Texas, primary results across America, PA GOP Senate ballot counting, housing market downturn, Trump raging on TRUTH Social, Jen Psaki joining MSNBC, World Economic Forum agenda, & Australian elections!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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along with two of their teachers. Others are wounded as well. We heard from Governor Abbott yesterday about what we know thus far. Let's go ahead and take a listen. The shooter was Salvador Romas, an 18-year-old male who resided in Uvalde. It's believed that he abandoned his vehicle and entered into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun, and he may have also had a rifle, but that is not yet confirmed according to my most recent report. He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher. He is he he himself is deceased and is believed that responding officers killed him. So here's what we know thus far. And I do want to warn everybody. First of all, obviously, this is extraordinarily horrific event.

So those sensitivities always are to be considered. But also, as I've covered a lot of these mass shooting events, the details, as we learn more, can always shift. So just take the reports that are coming out right now immediately in the wake of those events. With a grain of salt already, we have seen some key details, including the number killed, including the type of guns used, including the response from law enforcement on type of guns used, including the response from law enforcement on the scene, have been moving and shifting. So I just want to put all of that out there. Go ahead and put this first tweet up on the screen. So what we know about the shooter is that he apparently on his 18th birthday or the day after went out and bought an assault

rifle. The very first person that he shot was his grandmother. Now, this tweet says that his grandmother was killed. The reporting I saw is that she is in the hospital. She was wounded, but she is still alive, at least at this point. So that is the reporting we know. Then, and let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen from the Daily Mail.

Then he drives near to this elementary school, crashes his truck. We saw pictures of the truck sort of crashed into a ditch. Reporting says that law enforcement was engaging him at that point, you know, shooting probably between both this murderer and law enforcement. He goes into the school and goes room to room and starts shooting children before ultimately being taken out. In advance of the killing, some of his social media presence has come out. His Instagram profile in particular featured pictures of him with assault rifles, also other pictures of guns that he apparently had just purchased on his 18th birthday. One of those, and this is bizarre,

he had tagged a sort of random woman on Instagram who apparently he had some tangential connection to. And he wrote her a message that said, I got a little secret I want to tell you. Be grateful I tagged you. To which she replied, no, it's just scary. Adding, I barely know you and you tagged me in a picture with some guns. So that is what we know at this point. And of course, this is the deadliest mass school shooting since Sandy Hook. And, you know, the nation once again is shocked in an absolute grief coming so shortly to on the heels of that horrific shooting we just covered in Buffalo from a racist killer there, Sagar. Yeah. I mean, some of the details here, like you said, it's very unclear. So we already showed you that video of Governor Abbott saying that a handgun was used.

That no longer appears to be the case. It appears to be two legally purchased firearms from a licensed dealer on his 18th birthday. Now, again, too, in terms of what happened in the initial moments, I think there needs to be a lot of scrutiny on this. Indeed. Current Texas Department of Public Safety says that, and this was on CNN last night, said that the shooter shot his way past the school district

police officer and then two additional cops from local PD who appeared to be on the scene. So what they're saying is that there were

three officers there who had engaged him before he even got into the school. Now, obviously, he had his body armor on, but we don't know what the status of those three officers are. I have a lot of questions about what exactly went on down there. And then even, frankly, Crystal, the circumstances of the killing of Mr. Ramos are also unclear.

So the initial reports I saw was that a Border Patrol tactical agent who appeared to be in the city. Who was in the area. In the area, off duty. Yeah. Rushed in there with no backup and is the guy who killed him while there were also other cops on the scene. So there needs to be quite a bit of scrutiny here on the law enforcement response and what exactly happened here. Like you said, I mean, we were talking earlier, like you have three cops. I don't know what's going on in terms of the shootout.

We cannot second guess what happened. I'm going to reserve judgment, but you do have to look at this and just go, how the hell did this guy get into a school? Well, I think about what happened at Parkland and the Broward County Sheriff's Office, and then that guy who clearly, you know, was, I'm not, you know, disparaging these people's character. I have no idea currently yet what happened, but that is where a bulk of my attention is also on the social media site. I mean, apparently the grandma is alive. We should have a lot of questions for this woman. If she is the one who he was living with and clearly was a disturbed guy, I mean, in terms of what he was posting on social media, a lot of the reports out there saying that he was

bullied for wearing eyeliner and for having a lisp. I mean, you know, these are like kind of classic 18-year-old problems, I guess, in high school, but it's obvious that given his social media presence and others, these things don't happen in a vacuum. And there are probably people around him of which I also have quite a bit of questions in terms as this investigation all unfolds. And obviously this has ignited a massive conversation

in the country around gun control once again. And I do think we owe it to America to really give people the facts here, which is that Salvador Ramos was an 18-year-old American citizen. He, per the law of the land, was able to go and to purchase these two firearms legally. That is the case. In terms of fixing that, it's a difficult problem to fix because, and we were talking about this, in terms of, look, you can think whatever you want about the Second Amendment, but at least under the current Supreme Court, we have a constitutional right in order to have a gun. And personally, I think that that is the correct interpretation. But also, we were talking earlier, the current initial response from a lot of celebrities is we need to pass H.R. 8 and have universal background check. I think universal background check is great. I have absolutely nothing against it. But to explain

to people, universal background check, Salvador Ramos did pass a background check. So background check system for universal background check is simply to apply in the private gun market for private gun sales, right? So H.R. 8 would not have stopped the shooting. Now let's also talk about assault weapons bans. And this is again, a very tricky subject, but we did ban assault weapons in this country in 1994, the Brady Bill. Well, the Columbine shooting took place in 1999 while the assault weapons ban was in effect. And I don't want to argue about policy, right? I just think we should owe it to people to be like, what's on the table here and what happened? Here's what I will say. And I would say that my views on guns have somewhat evolved over the course of me being super engaged in politics. I don't think there's any

denying just the bare facts that America has more guns per capita than any country on the planet. Yes. I think 400. That's right. We have more guns than we have people country on the planet. Yes, I think 400. We have, that's right. We have more guns than we have people. That is wildly outside of the norm. And it is not an accident that we also have more gun deaths per people. This idea from the right that, oh, we just need more good guys with guns is dramatically disproved by this situation,

but also just on its face. If that was the case, we would have no gun violence because we already have more guns circulating in the population. Now, I think the honest case in favor of lax gun laws is effectively, listen, this is important to our culture. This is part of our way of life. This is something we consider a right. And we are willing to accept the consequences of that. I think that is the more honest position of the right because this whole good guys with guns, this is complete nonsense. There are some basic gun control

measures that are almost universally supported. Universal background checks being one of them. Closing the gun show loophole is another one of them. There are a few others that are sort of universally supported. I think why this debate always crashes into the rocks is for a few reasons. Number one, you have a gun lobby that is very well financed and very well organized. Number two, you have a minority of the population that is very strongly in favor of lax gun laws. And they are really the only constituency that votes solely based on this issue. Okay. And they are overwhelmingly powerful in Republican primaries. So when you're talking about a state like Texas, that's still very much a red state, that faction of voters ends up being

extremely powerful. And then the other piece of this, though, that I think is more difficult to be honest about, which is what you're getting to, is that those measures that are on the table in terms of being overwhelmingly politically popular and have some bipartisan support, I think there's skepticism among the public that they would really do that much in terms of curbing these types of mass shooting events. Now, listen, I believe universal background checks, putting some of these barriers and obstacles in place to make it more difficult to curb the sort of casual acquisition of firearms, I think that would likely have the most impact on the suicide rate, on the amount of killings and domestic violence. Those gun deaths also matter a lot. And so I don't want to say, oh, it wouldn't matter whatsoever. Who cares? Right. But I think what you're pointing to, and this is something that our friend Igor, who runs an organization called Guns Down, and takes a more radical position here, is he even would say from the left, you have to be honest that if you're actually going to do anything about

this problem, you're going to have to take more extreme measures. You're going to have to have, like they did in Australia, gun buyback programs programs where you're actually not just saying, okay, we're not going to sell any more of these types of weapons. You're taking them out of circulation so that you are actively decreasing the number of guns on the street. And the political reality right now is that there is little appetite for those types of more radical measures. And so I think that's what happens is you have, on one hand, you have a very organized and well-financed and dedicated political faction that says, we don't want any of this. And on the other hand, you have a broad public that's interested in some reforms, but is not as organized, are not one-issue voters,

and are not convinced that these reforms alone would actually solve the problem that we're facing. And at the same time, let's put this New York Times tear sheet up on the screen here. You have the U.S. buying, American citizens buying more guns than ever before. The U.S. is in the middle of a gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since the year 2000. We saw this escalate in particular during the pandemic years. I would say this goes hand in glove with the fact that you have people who just, I mean, this is a sign of societal breakdown. People don't trust the government to keep them safe. They don't trust institutions to keep them safe. They have fueled by the media and by the worst people in the country, this idea that your friend and your

neighbor and the people down the street are out to get you. So you have basic societal social trust breakdown. And when you see that, you see things like the number of gun purchases skyrocket. So that's the landscape. And all of this happens with the backdrop of—go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen—the NRA is literally holding their convention in Houston this Friday. At that event will be Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, who you saw speak earlier, Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Dan Crenshaw, and Donald Trump. I do think it's disgusting the way that the NRA and these politicians stand against even those basic reforms that, while I agree with you, it is unlikely would have stopped this killer, would at least help on the margins to curb some of this gun violence. And, you know, it's going to be a disgusting affair to watch how these politicians and how the NRA handles this when they have taken such a

radical doctrinaire approach to this that is, I have, you know, coming from a family that gun culture is a big thing, that is wildly out of step with where your average responsible gun-owning American actually is. Yeah, let me say this about the gun lobby, which is that they are definitely powerful, but it's also not 1995 anymore. I mean, we had Tim Mack on our show talking about the decline and the complete destruction, really, of the NRA as a major political force. And I would just dispute that it's the gun lobby that stands against major—so the gun lobby is against the universal background checks. But, you know, I pulled a lot of the data this morning that we were both looking at. A support for a handgun ban has never been lower in modern American history than right now.

In 1961, 60% of Americans supported it. In 2021, it was 19%. Now, in the last just two years, the 2021 data said that 5 million new people purchased a firearm just in 2021. The estimate is that it's between 5 to 10 million between 2021 and 2022. Go to a gun shop, there's a line out the door. And, you know, I am very hard-pressed to say that that doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, David Shore, looking at the Pew Research data just in Gallup of 2017, where Democrats had a plus eight identification, said that Republicans in America had a plus four trust advantage whenever it came to guns. And I think that the most salient point

of which you pointed to is that, look, we have rising crime rates, we have broader social societal trust. In the last two years, our president literally tried to stay in office, you know, and denied the election results. And also a bunch of cities burned to the ground. I mean, I think that's probably the best environment to not give up many of your gun rights. Not to mention the COVID regime. I mean, looked at what happened in Australia. Yeah, they had gun buybacks and then they literally threw their citizens in camps with very little civil rights recourse. I don't know that those two things are related, but I think it's-

Well, it ain't going to happen here for a reason. And I think that that's an important thing. Well, again, I think the bare facts of the, like, just to make this really simple, there is no denying that the U.S. is an outlier in terms of the number of guns we have and that we are also an outlier in terms of the amount of gun violence that we have. Yes. Those things, there is just no denying that those two things are correlated. The question is, will the measures that are on the table significantly curb that? Again, I think that we should have universal background checks. I think it's insane that we don't. I think another thing that we've talked about is the fact that some of these shooters, there's no indication that this is the case with this particular individual, although we don't know all the details yet, should have been flagged when they went through their background check process.

I mean, look at New York, right? But the databases were not updated. Virginia Tech, the Virginia Tech murderer, same thing, should have been flagged, should not have been able to purchase. So, you know, updating the system, closing the gun show loophole that, you know, allows you to purchase them in private sales with no background check whatsoever. Those sorts of things, I don't have any doubt that they will help on the margin. But to your justified. Some of it completely ginned up by the media, caused us to hate each other,

caused us to fear our neighbor and our cousin and our uncle and think that those people are the ones who are out to get you. And until we deal with those deeper issues, it's background checks ain't going to fix it. I guess that's what I will say. I think that's, and I think we all have to be honest about that. And I'll be honest about this too. I support gun rights. And here's the thing, we live in probably the freest Western country on earth. And when you do that, there are significant consequences. And I, you know,

that sounds incredibly callous. And I, look, you know, I'm glad Salvador Ramos is dead. I wish he'd been alive so we could have killed him in Texas. That being said, I mean, look, this is the consequence of living in a society where we have 400 million guns. And I think the people who are pro-gun should also say that. I should also say on the NRA, I resigned my NRA membership in 2016 whenever they did not defend Philando Castile because I was really pissed off about that because he was a legal gun owner and he was shot by a cop even though he didn't do anything wrong whatsoever. And I'm still very upset about that. So, you know, they have their own problems. I'm never going to support them after they didn't speak out for him. So I think we should all be clear that the people who support to support all of our points of view are full of it. And sadly,

though, I do think the country is headed once again back into the melee where I don't think there is a lot of honesty. Up here, at least you're going to see it from the political conversation. And this is sadly, you know, this is what the president decided to go with in his immediate reaction. Let's take a listen. Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? We're in God's name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies. It's time to turn this pain into action for every parent, for every citizen in this country. We have to make it clear to every elected official in this country, it's time to act.

I mean, I don't have any issue with what he's saying there. He did not lay out specific action items. But like the Manchin-Toomey legislation, for example, totally popular, supported by a broad swath of Americans. And just because you can't solve every mass shooter issue doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to do things to save some lives on the margins here. So, you know, President Biden there channeling the anger and the grief that I think the nation is feeling and that has, you know, that we've had to live through far, far too many times. And looking around the world and saying, why are we the only nation that routinely suffers through these horrible killings, these horrible shootings at schools where, you know, you can't

as a parent send your kid to school and feel like they're going to be, that their safety is going to be provided for. Yeah, that's horrible. Look, I agree with you. And look, I mean, even on the margins, I would certainly support it, but I'll just explain, which is that we live in a zero trust society. I mean, given what we've all been through over the last couple of years, I have no idea how you could want to give the government more of an ability in order to infringe upon your ability to protect yourself, especially after the last, you know, given the political environment and what happened in 2020. So given that, I mean, I just don't think that there's an organic, this is what I mean about the lobby. There are literally 10 million or more Americans, roughly, in the last two years who thought that they were going to have to kill somebody. That's why you

buy a gun. I mean, let's be honest, right? Okay, but here's why the lobby matters. And I've seen how this works in, you know, West Virginia and Virginia and rural America. So even the NRA's own membership does not overwhelmingly support their point of view in terms of their extremism with regard to no even a universal background checks, no even a closing the gun show loophole. Their own membership does not back those positions. But what they do is they, you know, they rate politicians, they give them a grade. And so then for voters who care about, who are in the Second Amendment into gun rights, they send out little postcards that say, this one's with us and this one's against us.

Without getting into those details of like, oh, well, this one's actually, what they're against is a background check, which you actually support. And so that's how they've been able to wield disproportionate power, particularly in Republican primaries. That's how you end up with a situation where even though something like universal background checks is literally supported by like 90 percent of the population, it doesn't ultimately happen because they are able to so thoroughly control and dominate on that issue. And you can see on the politics of it. I mean, Joe Manchin is from probably the most gun-friendly pro-gun state in the country.

I mean, it's probably like West Virginia and Texas. Those are probably the two places. And he didn't pay any price for not only signing on to, but really leading the charge on this gun reform effort in the wake of Sandy Hook. So the NRA in the extreme position, there's no doubt that is out of step with where the American public is. Now, you do have to balance that with the fact that, yeah, there is a lot of fear. There is a lot of social breakdown in trust that is leading more and more Americans to just buy more and more guns. That has led to, you know, continued stripping of any kind of regulation in these

states. In 2021, Texas became the biggest state in the country to let people carry handguns in public without a license or any mandated training. Most people, I think, if you poll the country, would say, you should probably at least have some training. Like, these are serious deadly weapons. And the gun owners that I know would agree with the idea that this is not something to be done casually or willy-nilly whatsoever. But even those very narrow basic reforms are put off the table. And that's why I say that the lobby and the money behind it is so important. And also, you know, they have an interest in ginning up fears and making people feel like their only answer is a firearm and, you know, that everybody's out to get them. And of course, they always play up like, oh, the Democrats are

going to get your guns, which literally never happens. And we haven't had any significant gun legislation in this country federally in years and years. So that's kind of where we are. Yeah, no, it's, oh, God, it's a horrible situation, obviously. And, you know, top of mind is just going to be the Uvalde family, the kids who all were actually killed in all of this. And, you know, the national debate around this is very important. I do think that the way that we talk about it is also important, which is that what you're talking about and understanding it. I just think, you know, we have to really understand here where a lot of people are in their lack of trust in all society, government, the media institutions, something that we delve into here every day. And I think a landmark moment really was Beto being

like, we're going to take your AR-15. He's like, damn right, we are going to take your AR-15. And, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, I saw an immense amount of people like Igor, who we talked to on Rising, who were like, look, we have to be honest here. The only way to solve this is to take away people's guns. And it's like, well, if you think that, if you really think that, then you should be honest about your intentions. That's what I always appreciated about him. I appreciated about him as well. But I don't think a lot of lawmakers and people in the media who, whenever they say common sense, I think we all know exactly what they mean. And sadly, that leads to a lack of honesty and extremity, really, on both sides because the extremity, I think, of the NRA and of a lot of people, including myself, who are highly skeptical of basically any gun, even on ghost guns. I look at it, and I'm like, yeah, I don't necessarily believe you whenever it comes to the ATF and their so-called justifications for why we want to crack down on it. I think a lot of

it is about control. And a lot of it smells of the agenda of we want to come through and make sure that we always have the ability in order to go after this, given the change in political regime. And also, we know that the ultimate goal for a lot of people in it, and I would say that's the median of the people in the gun rights groups or the gun control groups. They genuinely do want to take away people's guns. And, you know, it's an intrinsic issue of culture. There's so little political will and ability to go further than these basic reforms that that did want to bring up that I think is important because for years and years, we weren't even allowed to collect data on guns and what was out there and what was being sold and from where. It was banned effectively under the Bush regime, which I think is crazy because at the very least, you should have some transparency about what's going on when you do have this problem of crime, violence, gun violence,

gun deaths being such an epidemic in America. So we just recently, thanks to, I believe, an executive order from the Biden administration, got a report. And one of the things that it identified was the fact that at least in the state of Pennsylvania, you had six relatively small firearms dealers that overwhelmingly supplied the number of guns that ended up being used in crimes. It was six retailers that sold like, it was like 11,000 guns that ended up being used in crimes. Do you know what they did or why they did that? So the theory is that these are places that basically look the other way on straw

purchases. Straw purchases when you go in purporting to be the person who's going to buy and own the gun because you can't buy a gun on somebody else's behalf. You have to buy it for yourself. So you go through the background check. And so the thought is that these are places that are basically known to look the other way on straw purchases. These guns get purchased, sold into the black market. I mean, something like cracking down on those retailers and just enforcing the existing law, which already bans straw purchases, but has been made impossible by the lack of transparency. That would be one place to start that, again, is it going to solve all our problems? No, but we can't just-

That's a good one. We can't just say like, we can't do anything and we just have to accept that kids are going to get murdered in their kindergarten classes. I'm personally not willing to do that, even though I'm a moderate. I am not actually a radical on gun control issues. I'm a moderate. I grew up in that culture. I understand the mindset. I understand the pieces that you're talking about here.

But to me, it seems insane to just say, like, we have to accept it exactly as it is and there's literally nothing we can do. I think landing on this at enforce the current law seems like a pretty good one in order to say. And that working against that is eminently ridiculous. I also want to say about the shooting, I got a lot of questions about law enforcement. Was he known to Uvalde police? Was he ever flagged by somebody, which has happened in Buffalo, in Charleston, church shooting, Parkland. It just happens to be every single one of these guys was known to law enforcement beforehand. I just want to know how the hell he got into this school.

And also, I mean, I'm not in favor of this idea of, oh, well, let's just arm the teachers. But at least at my kids' schools, the doors let's just arm the teachers. But, you know, at least at my kids' schools, the doors are all locked during the day. You have to go to the office and get, you know, and tell them who you are and get buzzed in. I mean, I live in this little rural county that has almost like no crime and has never had any major issues of this regard. And so I'm just, I'm pretty shocked that there wasn't that basic level of that he was able to just rush into the school, but we don't know all the details yet. And so again, I don't want to cast too harsh a judgment here without knowing those details. But as you said,

I do have a lot of questions for what happened. Yeah, really, I just want to say too, Uvalde is such a beautiful part of Texas, such a cool place. Majority, you know, has a lot of history in terms of America. One of our former. Majority, you know, has a lot of history in terms of America. One of our former vice presidents is from there. That's where Matthew McConaughey is from, right? Matthew McConaughey, Cactus Jack Garner, who was vice president under FDR. It's such good people. So yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and move on here. Let's talk about the primary results. Let's put this up there on the screen. We'll start here with Brian Kemp. So here's what happened last night. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp doesn't just win the GOP primary. He absolutely obliterates David Perdue. 72% of the vote to

Perdue's 22% of the vote. And you guys will recall David Perdue famously said, we may not win, but we're not going to lose by 30. Well, he was right. He was actually down by 50 in that race. I mean, there's no other way to describe this except a complete and utter humiliation of David Perdue, who was once a high-ranking member of the United States Senate on the Republican Party, and of Donald Trump. Let's put this up there on the screen.

This is a great Politico report, actually, on how we're going to go effing scorched earth, how Brian Kemp crushed Trump in Georgia. And what they point to is that Kemp is honestly a very savvy politician. He never said a goddamn word about Trump. He just did what he had to do. He moved on from the election. He courted the base on every issue, CRT, voting, all this stuff. Then he actually strategically appointed many of his biggest critics

to high office in the state of Georgia. He never really addressed any of Trump's major concerns. And I think the Republican base was said, yeah, we want to move on from 2020. They're like, yeah, I guess we think the election was stolen, but you know, Brian Kemp, he seems like a good guy. And I can't help but come back to this, which is that I love whenever this happens, just to show you that people are not automatons. They don't just go, well, Donald Trump said to vote for him, so I'm going to vote for him. People think for themselves. Americans are smart. They could look at David Perdue and say, this guy is a moron. He literally

doesn't want to be governor for any other reason except his own personal vanity. And because of whatever happened in 2020, this guy, Brian Kemp, at least, you know, purports to do what we asked him to do. And so we're going to vote for him no matter what Trump has to say. So a massive rebuke of Donald Trump here in terms of how much he can translate his personal political brand to issues which people do not care about. Yeah. I think that's the number one thing you can say. Stop the steal is not enough. Yeah. It's just not. I mean, listen, I never want to overstate these things because Donald Trump's endorsement is still the most important and most powerful endorsement in all of politics. There's just no doubt about it. I mean, you know, he endorsed Vance at kind of the right moment when Vance was already rising the polls. That's right. But, you know, he did help him get over the finish line. It appears that he may have given Oz the boost that he needed to get over the finish line. I do also think that partly these executive offices are a bit of a different deal than federal legislators.

So to your point about Kemp, this guy, I mean, this is a very right-wing guy. He checked the box for the Republican base on literally every issue from guns to abortion to CRT to voting. I think taxes too. I think he lowered taxes. He lowered taxes. And so when it came time for people to vote, they said, okay, that's nice. Donald Trump, you're not real happy with him. But listen, we've seen who he is and we kind of we're good with him right now. And so you really see the limit, like the size of the pure stop the steal Donald Trump vote. And it looks to be around 20 percent. The other one that is really incredible is maybe even more remarkable is Brad Raffensperger, who is the Secretary of State, who the only thing that you would ever know this man for is his opposition to Donald Trump and

stop the steal. I mean, what else do you know? You don't know a Secretary of State. That's the only thing that they really have to do with. And so Donald Trump has his handpicked candidate, Jody Heiss. This thing in the polling looked like it was going to be very close. Raffensperger not only won, but he won with over 50% of the vote. Also avoiding runoff. Meaning that he avoids a runoff. To me, that's almost more humiliating than what happened here with Kemp. Because yeah, Kemp had other things that he could lean on, other things people knew him for. This was just a pure kind of litmus test of how you feel about stop the steal and Donald Trump. And ultimately, he comes up dramatically short. Trump's endorsements

in a couple other governor's races, and I think we're going to talk a little bit more about this later, also failed. Notably in Idaho, he endorsed the sitting lieutenant governor against the incumbent governor. And she also came up, I mean, she did very, very poorly in that Republican primary. So listen, as I said, the man's endorsement still matters a lot. Jody Heiss wouldn't have even been in the game. David Perdue wouldn't have even been in the game without Donald Trump pumping and supporting these candidates. But ultimately, it's going to take more than just saying stop this deal over and over again to entice even Republican-based voters. And that is a warning sign for him for 2024 because he is obsessed with this and almost to the exclusion of everything else. Yeah, and that's why it matters, which is

that if this is his only pet issue on whether you're MAGA or not, or whether you've gone woke, as we'll talk about in a bit, with respect to Mr. Mo Brooks, well, voters are gonna say, you know, Donald, it was a long time ago, and we've got inflation, Biden is president,

we have all sorts of problems in this country, and in that case, we're just gonna go ahead and vote with the guy who we kind of agree with. And I personally think that that is a very welcome and good development for this country. I mean, look, Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp both obviously did the right thing. And every once in a while, the good guy or, okay, the person who does the right thing and then is attacked explicitly for doing the right thing does pull it off in America. And it's nice to see because what you can see here is that people, even the people, the MAGA faithful, which I think the majority of – here's a good one to square. GA primary voters voted to keep three politicians in office yesterday, Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, Marjorie Taylor Greene. So even people who vote

for Marjorie are willing to say, I'm going to vote for Brian Kemp. I'm going to vote for Raffensperger. And she won easily too, by the way. And she also won easily. Yeah, I know. That was also Cope in order to the idea. But my point being here is that even so-called MAGA faithful and all those people are not going to follow him down a path that they just do not care about. So as much as they like Trump, as much as they trust Trump, it has to be in an area which aligns already with the things that they care the most about and not a personal vanity project, which ultimately that's what all Stop the Steal actually is about. So let's move on also to Texas because you and I were following this very closely and it's really fascinating. Let's put it up there on the screen, which is that Ken Paxton, he was the indicted Texas AG under FBI investigation. We covered that,

remember? Of course. Yeah. For a corruption allegation, has defeated George P. Bush, a scion of the Bush family, son of Jeb Bush, in the GOP primary for Texas Attorney General. This race I found absolutely fascinating. And there was actually even a chance that George P. could have come close, although the ultimate results didn't really bear that out. It's very lopsided. The Journal went ahead and wrote this up, which was kind of fascinating, which is that George P. Bush, just put it up there on the screen, please. It was George P. Bush fights Ken Paxton to win conservative voters in Texas. He was actually attacking Ken Paxton as some sort of secret

liberal. But of course, what really had Paxton's back is that a lot of Republicans in Texas, they remember the Bush family. They don't recall it all so nicely in terms of how that all went down and how W gave us a bad name after he became president. And, I mean, look, this is a benefit in my opinion. There was a time in Texas politics where the last name Bush really meant something. They even elected the idiot president's son to become the governor because he owned a baseball team. And yet, you know, that faded away. You know, and this is maybe the one benefit that Trump had given people is he destroyed the Bushes and removed them as a scion of the Republican Party, at least in terms of their national

aspirations. And I also want to say, too, on George P., this guy is a complete narcissist. Like, even after Trump went after Jeb Bush, his literal father, he was out there trying to get his endorsement, meeting with, I mean, that's disgusting. Okay, you stand by your dad. Well, I remember when he said some stuff about Jeb's wife to you. Yeah, his mom.

That's literally his mom. It's literally his mom. And you're like, please, Mr. Trump, that's disgusting. Look, something, these people have a lot of money. Some things are actually more important than winning national office. Apparently not.

And, you know, you come from my parents or a member of my family, I basically don't care, even if you're in my party, whether you're going to say something about it. Yeah, but look at Ted Cruz and the things that were said about Heidi, too. It's not that these people won't do it. I'm just saying I personally look down on any person who is willing to do something. I do want to say, going back to Georgia, too, I wonder if part of Kemp's appeal was actually that he didn't cut himself to Trump.

Oh, definitely. Maybe you're right. And I do think that that matters too in terms of how Republicans position themselves going forward because it does cut into this idea that, oh, you just can't cross Trump whatsoever. You have to be with him on every single stupid last insane thing he's doing. Kemp decidedly did not do that. Raffensperger decidedly did not do that in a very, you know, publicly revealed way. And ultimately were able to not just hang on, but win handily. So I'm not sure that all these Republicans that go out of their way to just completely embarrassingly cuck themselves to Trump are ultimately really doing themselves any favors. With regard to this George P. Bush situation, I mean, there's no one to cheer for in this particular race. Like, Ken Paxton continues to be, he's indicted. He's under FBI investigation

currently for corruption allegations. He also has been all in on Stop the Steal, joining lawsuits. And he filed that idiot lawsuit. Yeah. So, I mean, there's, again, no one to cheer for here. And it is interesting, though, because Jeb was really, Jeb, exclamation point, was really the one that killed the Bush name. Because already, obviously, there was a lot of disenchantment with the legacy of George W. Bush, Trump willing to say things during the 2016 primary that sort of like, you know, spoke the truth that the base was thinking, but nobody had really had the balls to say yet. But then the fact that you had up there on stage next to him, this totally like weak, mealy mouth, just perfect emblem of the, you know, a rotten husk of the GOP

establishment Bush elite standing on stage next to him that he could just thoroughly humiliate like on a personal level over and over and over again. That was the dynamic that really ultimately destroyed the Bush name. And so this was the very last gasp, at least as far as I know, George P. Bush is basically the only one who still had real political potential still hanging out there. And so this is kind of the final thorough, very clear crushing of the Bush dynasty, which that part of it I certainly cheer for.

Like I said, there's no way I can support Ken Paxton, who is basically bad on every level. Yeah. Well, George, it's time to go back to Kennebunkport. Yeah, you can't cry too hard for him. He's going to be just fine. Let's move on. Mo Brooks, let's put this one up there on the screen. So this one we talked a little bit about, which was the Alabama Senate GOP. And actually, it looks like it's going to a runoff here because Katie Britt, who was the Trump-endorsed candidate, she was the, what was it, the chief of staff to Senator Richard Shelby. Yes, that's right.

You see that they're replacing, garnered 45% of the vote. Mo Brooks and Mike Durant splitting the rest of it. Mo coming in 29%, Mike Durant at 23%. So I don't know, Crystal. I mean, I'm curious what your thoughts are. It's obviously going to go to a runoff. She did come awful close at 45, but clearly there were enough people who voted for Mike Durant, who apparently was having kind of a switch off with Mo Brooks, there's enough people, clearly over 50, a constituency who might be willing to back Mo Brooks over Katie Britt, which would also be a big rebuke to Trump

given that he went so far as to call Mo Brooks woke for saying we need to move on from the 2020 election. The worst smear possible of anyone coming from the right. Yeah, I mean, as you said, it seemed like the two of them, Mo Brooks and Durant, were kind of sharing the same pool of voters. So if you add their totals together, you get 52%. Britt was at 45%. I could see him pulling it off.

I think so, too. That's very possible. I almost feel like during this primary, Trump has continued to be outspoken and kind of slamming Mo Brooks. I wonder if he's going to kind of back off at this point, not say a lot about this thing. Maybe that gives Brooks a chance to rise and collect not just the votes from Durant, but also eat a little bit into Katie Britt's lead here. I would still say, obviously, because she pulled in so many more voters than he did during the initial primary, that she would certainly be the favorite. But he looked like he was dead.

I mean, that's why Trump pulled his endorsement in spite of whatever he had to say about, like, stop the steal and, oh, he went woke. The real problem was he saw Brooks falling in the polls, and it looked like he was going to end up in third place and then come close to making a runoff. So this is a bit of a comeback for Bo Brooks and, as you said, a bit of a humiliation for Trump. And I also think, look, with the learnings of Georgia and the fact that Trump doesn't appear quite as formidable and scary as he once did, you may also see some more fundraising and, you know, sort of GOP figures rallying to Mo Brooks' side. That could give him some support here as well as he goes into the runoff. The runoff time period, I think, is relatively short. Yeah, it's quite short.

I think it's a couple of weeks. I was just actually reading about it. But, you know, whenever you think about Alabama, it's difficult to say because obviously there is the poll, but she came so close that all she has to do is peel off 6% of Mike Durant voters and then she can go ahead and poll herself at 51 and win the runoff. So if that's the case, then obviously Mo Brooks literally needs almost all of the people who voted for Durant to come to his side. That certainly could happen.

I mean, you don't vote for Durant or for Mo Brooks unless you're dissatisfied with Katie Britt and generally kind of more of an anti-establishment, and that even includes Alabama Republican establishment type Republican. So Mo Brooks had that interesting moment here that we covered on the show about revealing the corruption in the congressional system. And he does seem to have some sort of like appeal on that front in terms of I'm the actual conservative in the race. You have people like Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions, or sorry, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul coming in and stumping the state for him. So he's got kind of the rabble-rousers of the Senate. She's kind of the chamber of commerce. She's the Mitch McConnell candidate.

I mean, that's not a good thing to be whenever you're in the Alabama Republican primary. But, you know, Tommy Tuberville did destroy Jeff Sessions purely based upon Trump's backing. And Jeff, he represented that state for, what, like 30 years or something like that? And they still kicked him out. And was the original. I mean, he was sort of Trump before Trump was Trump. Yeah, I mean, the Sessions endorsement was a landmark political event at the time.

A lot of people don't even really remember it. But he was a sitting United States senator, not even just a congressman, who was like, he put on the MAGA hat. I mean, he sent Sessions down to Mexico, I remember at one point. His politics, his political views were in a lot of ways the kind of roadmap for what was Trumpism before Trumpism just devolved into conspiracy nonsense. Yeah, before, stop this deal. Okay, why don't we get to the Democrats? Okay, so the big race on the Democratic side, another sort of war between the establishment and progressive wings of the party is Henry Cuellar sitting incumbent, really you have to call him sort of a conservative Democrat, maybe the most conservative Democrat remaining in the House, versus progressive Jessica Cisneros. This is her second time taking him on. She's made it very

close every single time. And this one, still this race has not been called. The very latest, per Steve Kornacki, is that Cuellar leads by 177 votes. That's it. There's still, he says, a very small number of provisional ballots to be counted. And there are several counties that could still have a few uncounted votes. And a recount certainly looms. So NBC is not yet calling the race. What is extraordinary here, Sagar, is if you look at the map of this district, this district goes from San Antonio down to the border. Yep. And it was very divided in terms of the vote. Overwhelmingly, those border counties, which is Cuellar's base, went for Cuellar.

Overwhelmingly, the more northern parts of the district that are close to San Antonio went for Cisneros. And those margins hardened from the original primary and from this runoff, which raises the question of whether potentially Roe v. Wade and the question of abortion rights sort of hardened and furthered the divides in this district. That's interesting. But it is very interesting. Now, Cuellar, for those of you guys who don't know, not only is he pro-life, he supports, you know, he's opposed to Roe versus Wade. So he's culturally conservative on that issue. He also is the only Democrat in the House to vote against the PRO Act. So he's also anti-union. He's very close to big oil. He gets a lot of donations from the oil and gas industry, which is kind of like, you know, given where his district is, that makes sense.

He also, his office and his home was raided by the FBI, seemingly for some very questionable dealings with Azerbaijan. Yeah, it was Azerbaijan. Yeah, he and his wife both. She has some businesses. He's like been the leader of the Friends of Azerbaijan caucus. As one does. Anyway, and the FBI said they're not going to clear him before Election Day. So that also was looming over this.

Now, there was a lot of big money that came in for Cuellar from the places that we have been seeing big money come in to try to crush progressive candidates. In particular, DMFI, Democrat Majority for Israel, and what appears to be a sort of aligned super PAC backed by billionaire Reid Hoffman called the mainstream Democrats that came in big for him in the final weeks. And if indeed this less than 200 vote margin holds, that may have ultimately been the difference. Now, I do want to say, Sagar, the other thing that's interesting here is unions also despise Cuellar. CWA in particular has a beef with him. And so there was also union money that came in on the side of Cisneros. So she did have some backup in terms of independent expenditures in this thing, but it is as close as it possibly could be. Right now, it looks like Cuellar is going to be able to narrowly hold on,

but pretty extraordinary dynamics here. Oh, yeah. I mean, this part of Texas, I love this part of Texas. Again, so much history. It really is kind of the last vestiges of the frontier west in terms of how it works down there and, you know, in terms of the history. So just to give people context, some of the counties here that we talked a lot about back in 2020, Zapata County and Starr County, these are those South Texas border towns, which either went for Trump in the case of one of them or came within five points. So Joe Biden only won Starr County by about five points over Donald Trump, even though Hillary won that by 58 points. So a bit of a swing in terms of how it worked down there.

These are places where there really is kind of an emerging GOP-ish coalition with a lot of these voters. And I'm looking at the map, and it makes total sense the way that you broke it down, which is that the Texas border counties came in for Cuellar at like 70% of the vote. I mean, talking, you know, in Starr County, 80% Cuellar. Zapata, 88% Cuellar. Jim Hogg County, 78%. Jim Webb County, 70%. Duval County, 68%. But then those surrounding more urban areas around San Antonio came in equally hard for Cisneros.

You know, the one nearest Guadalupe County at 91%, Bexar at 85%, Atatasca at 67%, and McLaughlin at 52%. That was a little bit more of a split. But that just shows you just how different the dynamics are, even though, and this is what I do love about Texas, this is a majority Hispanic district. Like most of these people are Hispanic. But culturally, if you live near the city, you're more likely to be liberal. Culturally, if you live down on the border town, you're more of a vaquero Texas mindset. these two distinct Texans, disproportionately likely to be Hispanic, is just on display in the same way that it's on display across the entire country. And it just splits so hard.

I think that's the crazy part. It really is pretty fascinating. I think also for Cuellar, he's just got very deep roots in those border communities. And so I think, you know, that certainly bolsters him in that area. I was talking to our friend Colin Rojero, who's done a lot of work in that region and is one of the better Latino strategists on the Democratic side and was actually doing some of the union IEs in this particular race. And I was asking him, you know, kind of tell me about the typical voter in these border counties. And he said,

they do tend to be obviously more culturally conservative, but that's not necessarily, like abortion isn't necessarily the voting issue. But he said, you know, they both are very, are sort of pro-worker rights and pro-labor, but also very business-oriented, very entrepreneurial. So it's just a different cultural dynamic than you're going to find in almost any other part of the country. And then to see the divide in this district so clearly, and that's why it's so hard to say definitively what's going to happen here also, because if there's another little pocket of voters in the San Antonio suburbs- Yeah, then she wins. Then she wins. If the remaining pocket of voters is down in Zapata County or Starr County, that's going to go overwhelmingly for Cuero.

And then he's going to have a more clear victory on his hands. So that's why this one is still too close to call here ultimately. But, you know, this is also, Cuero looks like he's going to pull it off. But it is embarrassing for the Democratic establishment that they go all in with this dude. Nancy Pelosi and Clyburn, and they can barely. I mean, their endorsement just counts for less than nothing. Biden stayed out of this race, even though he's endorsed out there. Like, he endorsed Kurt Schrader.

My guess is because Biden's approval rating is so dismal in the region that it probably wouldn't really help Cuellar. It might not really be a benefit to him. He may have said, just like, I got this. Why don't you just go do your thing in Washington? I'm not sure it would have ultimately been useful, but definitely a fascinating race here on this one. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to see more of it. I really do love this part of the country, and it's fun to see it all play out.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on. We'll talk about McCormick and Pennsylvania. Another one that's still too close to call. Still too close to call. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We always go with local news whenever we can. GoErie.com. Love those guys.

David McCormick suing over counting mail ballots in the Pennsylvania Senate race. So this is the dispatch from Harrisonburg, PA. The campaign of McCormick, who is obviously very close and near recount territory or in recount territory in the race with Dr. Oz, is suing and asking the state's Commonwealth Court to require counties to promptly count mail-in ballots that lack a required handwritten date on the return envelope. This is a direct return, Crystal, back to 2020, back when there was a lot of consternation amongst senators who were not from Pennsylvania about Pennsylvania election law, whether such ballots in them should be counted. And it's kind of a significant, I would say, it is the most legitimate, and I say that in quotes, part of the high IQ Stop the Steal movement. They're like, well, these ballots shouldn't have been counted, all of this. And so the Pennsylvania GOP has made it really one of

the cornerstones of, they're like, no, we are not going to be allowing these ballots to be counted. Now, McCormick, because he's in the fight of his life, he's like, I don't care. Now it's good, even though I still think the election was stolen for this very reason. You're going to go ahead and riddle me that one. But now the Pennsylvania GOP and the RNC are moving against David McCormick for this move. Let's put this up there on the screen because this is pretty important. The RNC is actually intervening against McCormick's campaign by saying that they are actually filing and insisting to make sure that these types of ballots are not counted. And they're doing that alongside the Pennsylvania GOP, both condemning the move. I don't know how

much legal ground they actually have, given that this is going to rely on the campaign lawsuit, and it ultimately is a decision from the third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But in the meantime, those ballots are being set aside. So let's put this up there from Steve Kornacki. The Pennsylvania Secretary of State is telling counties, you should count mail-in ballots that were signed but not dated and set them aside for the time being, pending the results of the litigation. But I do think, you know, at the top of the line, Crystal, we don't know necessarily if these ballots will even come in for David McCormick. Because I think this is a sign of desperation, which is that, look, with the current ones and all the caveats, we still don't know, recount, etc.,

Oz is still basically up by about 1,000 votes. And that's where things stand right now. Right. The big blow for McCormick, who overwhelmingly dominated the mail-in vote but didn't do as well on Election Day, was when some of the late Election Day ballots were counted in his home turf in Allegheny County. And they actually boosted Oz by even a little bit. And he was hoping that that batch of ballots would help to narrow the gap and then put him in play with these remaining mail-in ballots and provisional ballots and all those sorts of things. So it's pretty interesting. You know, the court has already ruled that these type of undated ballots should be counted. So if they're consistent with what they've ruled in the past, you would think that McCormick would win on the legal merits. But as you're pointing out, the bigger question here is if there are enough to actually catch him up to Oz, it's looking less

likely that that will ultimately be the case here. The other thing that's interesting in this race is Trump was urging Oz, who was, of course, the candidate that he backed, to just go ahead and declare victory. Right. And he didn't do that. McCormick hasn't done that. Good. Yeah, so they're actually, you know, I mean, this is legitimate. If you have a legal challenge, you can work that through with the courts.

Clearly, the RNC has decided to back the, you know, Oz campaign on their side of this issue. But, you know, working out through the courts, that's the way that this is supposed to work in a democracy. There is no, like, nefarious wrongdoing here. Just question over interpretation of the ballots. As I said, I think the courts. That's the way that this is supposed to work in a democracy. There's no like nefarious wrongdoing here, just question over interpretation of the ballots. As I said, I think the courts probably, based on what they've ruled in the past, will fall on the side of McCormick, but we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, let's see how it goes. And I will say it at this,

I didn't think I'd praise these gentlemen, but thank you for not doing that and for not inflicting a wound upon the country to once again drag them through some stolen election nonsense, which continues to plague us, although was rejected, thankfully, on primary day in the state of Georgia. Finally, okay, let's move on to some more of the deeper problems in American society to housing. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is very significant economic data. U.S. new home sales have plunged to the lowest since the start of the pandemic. Now, the purchases of new single-family homes have fallen by most since 2013, but the median house price continues to set a record as housing inventory is improving. I think there's only one culprit

in this entire thing, Crystal, and that is the Federal Reserve. But the reason why that this matters is what did we all find out in 2008? It turns out the housing market is deeply financialized and you can say whatever you want about Dodd-Frank and all of that. It still continues to be massively financialized. Big money, big capital is moving in here. And actually, the current rise in interest rates, while yes, it will slow the housing market, I mean, how much of this is basically going to guarantee that millennials will be a relative permanent rentier class? Because if you could not afford a home during the pandemic, which obviously it was crazy, boomers were paying cash and all this stuff, but at least the interest rates were low. We're talking

like two to 3%. How the hell are you supposed to do so when the interest rate is at 5%, which it was last week, 5.25, increase up from three, which is the single highest increase in the mortgage rate in modern American history. And it's only going to, look, we all know inflation is going to be here now for years. It's for a variety of reasons, supply and all of that. And the only blunt instrument we have is the interest rate. I mean, what are they going to jack it up to? 8%? In that environment, it's not going to be possible. If you were a young person out there and the mortgage rate is 8%, I mean, just say goodbye. Well, I mean, you're like screwed either way because if the housing market continues to be extremely hot, the prices continue to escalate.

And you can't afford that. And you can't afford it. If they jack up the interest rates, then just to give you a sense of how much this matters in terms of your monthly mortgage payment, in April, the monthly mortgage payment on the typical home jumped to almost $1,500. That's assuming a 30-year fixed rate mortgage with a 20% down payment. That's up 34% since December and 53% from just a year ago. So that's how much it matters. Because it sounds like a little, oh, it's just lifted a couple percent. It's like, no, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This has increased the monthly mortgage payment by 50%. So it makes a huge difference. And the housing market is actually what the Fed is directly targeting because it is such a large percentage of the economy. And because it is the one thing that these mortgage rates are very sensitive to whatever the Fed rate ultimately is. Whereas the Fed can't do anything Whereas, you know, the Fed can't do anything about a supply chain crisis directly. So it's less likely to have as much of an impact there. There's some signs that as opposed to previous times when the Fed has tried to use the lifting interest rates to cool the housing market, there's some signs that there's a little bit of resistance here. More

buyers say that they don't really care what the interest rate is. They've decided they want a home and that's that. Now, ultimately, when the rubber meets the road and they're looking at their payments, they get afforded, that might change things. But the other piece here is that so much of the housing stock is being snatched up by investors and by permanent capital that are less price sensitive, that that also could make it more difficult to cool the hot housing market. Corporate individual investors accounted for 21% of home purchases in December. That's up from 17% just a year earlier. So as we've discussed before, the fact that you have permanent capital coming in, in some cases, buying up entire communities en masse and attempting to turn millennials and

Zoomers into a permanent renter class has also contributed to just the complete inability of first-time home buyers to get into this market. And, you know, it matters a lot. You guys know this. I mean, I don't have to explain this to you, but because asset prices have appreciated so rapidly and gone up and up and up in this country, really the only way to get your foot into that sort of stable middle-class life is to be an asset owner, be a homeowner. And for the people who are locked out of that, that puts them on a lifetime path of precarity and never building their own wealth, but always lining the pockets of the landlord class. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can't emphasize that enough, which is that boomers are flush with cash right now from the ability to sell their houses,

the ability to take loans based upon their assets, on their stock portfolios, which they're now being able to access. I mean, the amount of money that they have relative to most other young people in this country is insane and astronomical, even when you compare how much money they had at that time in their lives versus how much money we have at this time in our life. So it's a very tough situation. And the worst thing is, is what did we all learn from 08? When the housing market flips, it took what? A decade, 12 years to come back? I mean, if you're on the older side of millennials, you're like 35, 38, something like that.

I mean, 12 years, you're going to be 50 years old. That will mean that you literally will be nearing retirement without being able to buy a house. That's insane. And you'll have two basic depressions slash recessions that happen in your lifetime. And even when we were technically out of the recession in 2012, I mean, I don't have to tell everybody who's watching this show, that is really when we started to get hollowed out. 12, 13, 14, 15, you know, the latter parts of the Obama administration. That is when the majority of the money was, the last parts of the money that in manufacturing and more that we even had here was going away.

So the current thing that we're looking at, a downturn in the housing market, which is the real way only that you're going to be able to build wealth, combined with the decline in retirement portfolios and the stock market and all of that, which, again, you may not make money on the way up, but you will lose money on the way down because of the ripple effects in the economy. It's really bad. I even look at retailers. We're looking at Target and Walmart. I mean, they're getting hammered because people are not spending money anymore. Like people just don't have disposable cash. And I see it everywhere. Every day I drive home, the gas station is, you know, first it was $4.50.

Then it was $4.75. Now it's up to $5.10 a gallon, even here on the East Coast. Yeah, if you hunt around, you can find some which aren't too bad. In the Bay Area, in Menlo Park, California, there's a gas station there with $7.75 a gallon. I mean, that's crazy town. So when you consider the just dramatic reduction in disposable income that Americans are experiencing, so on the wage side and then the inability to build wealth, we're looking at a very, very bad picture, I think, over the next decade, unfortunately.

Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, it'll be very difficult. The Federal Reserve wants to bring us in for a soft landing. That's going to be almost impossible because, I mean, the tools they have are blunt tools. They are, you know, there's a delayed response to them. So it's hard to see any path forward other than paying, which the American people already know. I mean, we've been covering the numbers of 70 plus percent,

expecting a recession, saying the economy is on the wrong track and feeling that they're getting a pay cut every single week. They know. Yeah, they're not stupid. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So let's give you a little update on the former president's social media habits here. Obviously, he is no longer on Twitter

as of today. However, he has apparently picked up his usage of his own social media platform, Truth Social, which does actually seem to work now, at least,

so it has that going for it. And it's interesting. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. It's interesting the things that he's saying over there. You won't be shocked to learn it's mostly like ranting about Stop the Steal, scolding Mo Brooks, sharing a kind of a call for civil war. I'll read you that one just so you know I'm not kind of taking this out of context. He shared this from an account. It's a very weird tweet. It is a very weird tweet. Shared this from an account called Magaking Thanos.

Thanos. Thanos. Is that a Game of Thrones tweet? No, it's a Marvel thing. It's a Marvel thing. Okay, listen guys, I'm totally culturally clueless. You should just know that about me. Anyway, President of El Salvador apparently said that the most powerful country in the world was falling so fast and something so big and powerful can't be destroyed so quickly unless the enemy comes from within.

And this MAGA King account person re-truthed it, terrible branding, and said civil war, which Trump retweeted. Okay. He also tweeted at Mo Brooks, can't do that, Mo, after Brooks was caught trying to still sort of insinuate that he was endorsed by Trump. Okay. Can't do that, Mo.

Oh, I understand. Yes. Well, we have some images. Why don't we put that up there? Put those up on the screen. On the screen. This is exactly how cringe Truth Social looks. Oh, I understand. Well, we have some images. Why don't we put that up there? Put those up on the screen. On the screen. This is exactly how cringe Truth Social looks.

Yeah, you can see the weird Civil War call. That's up in the top left. Yeah, the top left one. At least on our screen. Still talking about Jussie Smollett. Jussie Smollett. Yeah, this is about January 6th thing. So he says, free the January 6th political prisoners. Reminder, Jussie Smollett is a free man.

Alec Baldwin is a free man. Hunter Biden is a free man. Alec Baldwin is a free man. Hunter Biden is a free man. But grandmother who took selfies in the Capitol is in jail without bail. So it gives you a little window there into what his obsessions continue to be. You've got some ranting about Twitter. He said, Twitter's in big trouble, has lost all credibility, is unlikely to see Elon Musk close his ridiculous deal with them after having learned so much about the massive number of bots and fake accounts, etc., etc. Well, he doesn't want Elon to buy Twitter,

because that would mean that his entire social media company is irrelevant. Yes, indeed. Here's a fun one from this morning, Crystal. He's trying to spin a bunch of the losses that he suffered in terms of his endorsements. Oh, you got a new one? Yeah, brand new, just as we checked three minutes ago. A very big and successful evening of political endorsements. All wins in Texas, 33-0, Arkansas and Alabama.

A great new senatorial candidate and others in Georgia. And others in Georgia. Overall for the cycle, in quotes, 100 wins, six losses, some of which were not possible to win, and two runoffs. Thank you. Congratulations to all. That's an interesting way of spinning one of the most humiliating losses so far in the state of Georgia. Sure, Herschel Walker won, but I mean, it's just so funny, you know, returning to the Brian Kemp thing. He literally said that he only had one goal, which was to defeat Brian Kemp and Liz Cheney. And he was like, I know where I'll be two years from now. I'm going to be here in Georgia campaigning against your governor.

How did that work out? Doesn't Cheney also have a chance to survive? Maybe. It's unclear. I will say their Wyoming GOP has very much turned against her. She doesn't have the same level of institutional backing. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of – the RGA, the Republican Governors Association actually did back Trump. But I think what is really important about this is, yeah, it's funny and we're amused and we're laughing.

But did you hear about it? Not really. And the reason why is he's just become increasingly irrelevant to a lot of our national conversation. There was a time, Crystal, when the Civil War retweet would have been like, you know, how many think pieces, New York Times and MSNBC about that. Everyone's just like, eh, whatever. We got life. Life is moving on. I thought there was a good analysis of kind of the state of Trump influence from Financial Times.

Go ahead and put this up on the screen. They say, this is not an obituary of Donald Trump. He still has a plausible shot at becoming the first ex-president to be reelected since Grover Cleveland in 1892. But politics is about momentum and the energy behind Trump is dissipating. The bad news for Trump's detractors is that his MAGA base is not fading. The Kraken lives on. It just no longer shows such deference to the man in Mar-a-Lago. Trump's handicap is that he's obsessed with one issue, that he was cheated by Joe Biden of his rightful election victory in 2020. Most Republican voters share in that belief, which is a litmus test for candidates. Yet, the stolen

election myth is their politics starting point, not his be-all and end-all. By confining himself to rigged elections, Trump is forgetting MAGA's animating spirit, which is hatred of America's cultural elites, which I thought was very well said. And I was thinking about this with regards to social media, because on the one hand, Trump being off Twitter has been great for him, because it has allowed the broader public to kind of forget what an obnoxious, like, shit-disturbing asshole he is on a daily basis. And so that has kind of smoothed some of the rough edges, allowed people to look back at his time in office with a little bit of rose-colored glasses and forget just what it was like every single day. On the other hand, because his superpower was always being able to control those media cycles, get attention, make all the people that are the most hated people in the country lose their minds on a daily basis, total symbiotic relationship, the loss of that power I think has mattered in terms

of the extent of his hold on the Republican base. He's still extremely popular. He's still the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination. There's no doubt about it. But, you know, if he had been continuing to drive news cycles in the same way in the run up to Georgia, in the run up to Alabama, in the run up to these other races, the result might have tilted more in his favor. There may have been more loyalty towards him from the MAGA base and less willingness to kind of track their own, you know, chart their own route. Oh, absolutely. And we see this, too, inbernatorial primaries. Let's put it up there. A Donald Trump endorsed primary candidate has now lost the gubernatorial for the third week in a row. Herbster lost in Nebraska, Janice McGeehan lost last Tuesday,

and David Perdue lose tonight in the state of Georgia. So his hold on everything, look, you know, don't exaggerate it and say he has no power, but the power that he once had certainly does not exist. Okay, let's move on to the fun segment. Yes, indeed. So it is now official. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. You guys have been waiting for this. I know you're excited. Jen Psaki announces she is thrilled to join the incredible MSNBC family this fall. Breaking down the facts and getting to the bottom of what is driving the issues that matter most to people, Sagar, in this country has never been more important.

Go ahead and put the New York Times tear sheet up on the screen as well. The details here, none of this obviously surprising. She's going to be a host and a commentator. I think she's going to be hosting a streaming show that is expected to launch next year, so not right away. I mean, listen, there's a few things to say about this. I mean, overwhelmingly, this continues the trend of former Biden officials going on and waltzing over to MSNBC, a network that, you know, used to complain about the sort of revolving door between—

State TV, Fox News, which was true. Which is true and fair, but also applies here as well. I would be very shocked if I saw Jen Psaki or Simone Sanders really taking a hard line with regards to any Biden administration decisions ultimately. And, you know, they join a sort of predictable chorus of voices from that network defending any and all Democratic establishment party actions. And that's, frankly, why their ratings are so bad, because it's just boring. It's predictable. It's not interesting. If you wanted to hear what the Biden administration line was, you could go directly to the Joe Biden Twitter account or to

his officially hired hands there in the White House to know it. But they give the game away in the New York Times story. They say that Ms. Psaki is popular with Democrats and left-leaning voters and that she bears resemblance to Rachel Maddow and to Nicole Wallace in love of its current viewers. Their current viewers love Jen Psaki. And I also love— I just want to say about that, though. I very seriously doubt that that love actually translates, though ratings or like a you know actual sort of political they love her up there like giving it to Peter Doocy or whatever

but does she have an actual following this is what they get confused about we've already had Jen Psaki as this is not her first go round as political commentator she was on CNN previously and she was nothing special she wasn't like a fan fave she didn't have any of those big viral moments or anything.

They certainly didn't see her as a potential future host of a show. So, you know. Rachel, for all of her many faults, has a real following of people that show up for her. Will Jen Psaki be the same? I seriously doubt it. And they know that, which is why they're putting her on the streaming channel instead of the real network. I think that was the other point I was going to make, though, which is that in her streaming debut, and this is what I really love, obviously they're just going to hide how terrible her show is going

to do on Peacock, as we've seen with Mady Hassan's show and others. They never tell you what the actual ratings of these things are, and it's because it's all fake. And even whenever they do count views, it's probably me scrolling past it, you know, on the Peacock app trying to get to the Office superfan episodes or whatever. Or be like, where's Yellowstone? No, I don't mean MSNBC show to go and try and find it. And you can see in here, she says that her show will be fact-based and thoughtful conversations about the big questions on the minds of the people across the country. You say what you will about Jen Psaki. I think having fact-based and thoughtful conversation is not something that she was known for. I actually will say this. I thought she was okay

at her job. Not bad. She parried and was par for the course in terms of pushing people back and hitting back with the Biden talking points. But being a good, paid propagandist is actually probably the opposite of what it should be whenever you're on television. I mean, you and I take a lot of pride in really taking independent stances and really looking into nuance and trying to say like, okay, here's what I think and it's based upon this and here's my thought process and we bounce it off of each other. I'm not saying that isn't unique or so that doesn't, uh, I'm not saying that that is present on cable at all, but casting yourself as fact-based, thoughtful conversation, it's the opposite of the truth. That's actually an interesting point. I do want to say, Mehdi is the only one who says anything

that sort of diverges from the democratic establishment line. I don't think it's an accident that they bury him over there on Peacock. But in terms of Jen Psaki and Simone Sanders, being the paid spokesperson to recite the talking points of your boss is actually the polar opposite of the job of- Well, should be. Yeah, should be. Yeah. But in terms of being interesting and compelling, helping people understand the truth of what's going on, it really is a polar opposite skill. So I think I'd be very bad at the White House press secretary job because I'm not used to having to like memorize what I'm supposed to think and what I'm supposed to say and not go into areas that are controversial or uncomfortable. Breonna Joy Gray, and I've talked to her about serving as press secretary, even for Bernie

Sanders, someone whose agenda she was like all the way on board with. It was a difficult skill for her because she's so used to just actually speaking her mind. And so it is a very different skill being the capable Spock versus being the analyst who has something interesting, different, potentially controversial, to say that the audience is going to find worthwhile to show up for. I can't imagine. I mean, you were actually a candidate, but, well, because you were speaking for yourself, so it's different. Like, I'm me.

You know, like, even if there's a, there are a lot of politicians I agree with somewhat, but I could never be like, hey, he's never done a single wrong thing in his life. I'd be like, yeah, that's a good point, you know. Right. I don't have it in me. And no one has, yeah, exactly. No one has, and you're never also going to be 100% aligned with a politician on every single issue

and everything they think in every single way that they want you to say it and spin it. So that's one skill, being able to sort of imbibe the briefing book and be able to regurgitate it without getting yourself or your boss into trouble. It doesn't make for a very interesting or compelling TV. It's terrible. When we used to have campaign representatives on, we were like, this is so boring.

It's so uninteresting. And so the job for Jen Psaki previously was basically to be uninteresting. And I have a feeling that she's going to have trouble breaking out of those uninteresting shackles. Yeah, I mean, any time we would talk to those Trump campaign people, I was like, this is useless. It feels like a waste. Just so behind the scenes, the hell really liked those segments.

I hated doing them. Yeah. And it's because every once in a while it was interesting. I will never forget the very last one with Steve Cortez where we were arguing about whether Trump said very fine people on Charlotte. This was like two days before the election. Which he brought up.

We didn't bring it up. Wait, you want to litigate this on the eve of the election? I was like, I remember I was like, dude, is this really what you want to talk about the day before the election? And the answer is yes. It was a harbinger, by the way, of Stop the Steal, of the most, you know, just being obsessed with,

you know, oh, he didn't say it the way that you're, it's like, guys, is that what the election is about? Really? Really? But apparently, yes, that's what they ended up going with. And actually, you know, look, no disrespect, Steve, or many of the other people, none of these people are particularly good at TV. I think the only one who's fine is Bannon. But, you know, Bannon's always, always kind of been a renegade, war room and all that. He does

definitely have his own thought. He's a Trump sycophant in that he never criticizes him, but he also elevates people who go against Trump all of the time. And he has his own legitimate agenda. So that is probably the only one of them, just because he was himself already a media figure long before he ever even went to go work for Trump. He's one of these people that, like, I think with Mo Brooks, but in some of these races where he feels like

Trump made the wrong endorsement. Yeah, and he'll say it, basically. He'll say it, but it's always couched in this, like, all these people around Trump are leading him astray. It's like, you're one of the people around him. He's making his own decisions here. Come on. But it's never Trump's fault.

It's always the nefarious cabal around Trump that's steering him in the wrong direction. Yeah, I love that one. I'm like maybe Trump is just a moron and he doesn't actually believe anything except having vanity in himself, who occasionally does align with a political agenda. But hey, whatever. Yeah, indeed. All right, Saga, what are you looking at? Well, to start with, I just want to say, this is not a low IQ conspiracy theory monologue about

Davos. In fact, I think the dumb conspiracy theories about Davos and the World Economic Forum have done more damage to people who want to legitimately describe how dystopian the Klaus Schwab Great Reset theories and economic agenda really are. This is actually a global elite of billionaires who are in planning, not secretly, but in reality out in the open to all of us, revealing their ideology in all of its glory. The ideology is masked in similar terms as the Great Reset, grand language, grasping for changing the world, and masked always in responsibility. It takes finesse to see it, to read past it, and to realize how crazy a lot of it really is. And that's what I've been thinking about now, especially over the last day or so,

as I saw separate instances that reinforce just how important it is to protect America from these people. And how, when I say things about how in Europe and in Australia they are only free to a certain extent and then those people get upset, how this really proves my point. We're going to start with Julia Inman Grant. She is the so-called e-safety commissioner for the country of Australia, speaking on a panel yesterday titled, Ushering in a Safer Digital Future. Let's take a listen to what she says about free speech. We are finding ourselves in a place where we have increasing polarization everywhere, and everything feels binary when it doesn't need to be. So I think we're going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online,

you know, from freedom of speech to the freedom to, you know, to be free from online violence or the right of data protection. Recalibration of freedom of speech. Fundamentally, that is the mindset that dominates the entire non-Western world, except here, where they do not have a First Amendment codified into their constitution. Their systems of law say you have freedom of speech within the boundaries that they get to decide. Those that they do get to decide give the government overwhelming power then to police their citizens, to crack down on

dissent, to shut down the media, and as we saw in Australia during COVID, literally throw their citizens into camps for testing positive for a virus, which was probably not going to kill you. Watching that mindset pervade the richest and most powerful people in the world at Davos is important because it underscores just how much of the current elite liberal regime in America desperately wants to import European-style thinking and security laws to our shores to get around the First Amendment. A perfect example of that thinking was actually Twitter before Elon Musk became involved. Parag Agarwal, he's the CEO of Twitter, explicitly said before he took the job that his job was, quote, not to be bound by the First Amendment. He said instead that harm reduction, which is a buzzword of these people,

was the overall goal of the platform. That is why only days after he took that job at CEO, he imposed a new policy which said that Twitter will not allow the sharing of private media, such as images or videos of private media, such as images or videos of private individuals, without their consent. Now, that sounds nice, right? Until you think, wait, under this policy, you could not post the George Floyd video or any police murder. You could not take videos of people who are harassing you or who are doing something untoward and public and then post it without their consent. In other words, you are constrained to be a dissident. They frame it under harm reduction. And the reason this

matters is that the Twitter policy is a direct derivative of European-style privacy laws. They went into effect four years ago, which prohibit posting film of someone without their consent. Now, why do I mention this? Because this also came to head at Davos when Jack Posobiec of Human Events, he was present at Switzerland to attend the conference, presumably to report on what was going on. He was surrounded by police officers. And look, do I agree with everything Jack Posobiec says? No. But that's not the point. He's an American citizen. He has a camera. He runs a media outlet. He's a journalist. Watch here how the Swiss police

and explicitly branded World Economic Forum police surround him for questioning and then use their privacy laws to try and shield themselves from what they're doing to an American journalist. Excuse me, can I ask you why you're detaining this journalist? Can you put the phone away, please? Can I ask you why you're detaining this journalist? I don't answer your question. Is it not uh we're not able to report here okay can i ask you guys yeah you can can you yeah can you um please stop filming then we can talk why do i need to stop filming because i ask you to it's the it's my personal right because i don't like to be filmed and it's a ride in switzerland um if i don't like to be filmed. And it's a right in Switzerland.

If I don't want to be filmed. But can I ask why he's being detained then? I won't point the camera at you then. There it is. Police can surround an American journalist, someone who comes to ask them, what is the very first thing the Davos cops say? Put the phone away. Stop filming. You have to because of the laws in Switzerland that give them the right to tell you to stop filming when you're the cops. Look, you know I'm not some BLM bleeding heart leftist,

but it should be an ironclad right that you can film whatever you damn please during an interaction with the police. And of course, who does that law benefit when you're up against someone who's more powerful than you? It's the cops. This is why so-called recalibration of freedom of speech and the whole Davos mindset on what it means to have free speech online is so fundamentally important. They tell us openly what they want to architect the system and definitions in a way that let the powerful be more powerful and rig the rules of the game to guarantee outcomes

like you just saw when the cops surround a journalist with no pretext. As I showed you with Twitter, make no mistake, this is coming here. Here is the New York Times just last month pushing European-style tech laws on Americans, pushing so-called privacy bills and regulation. And I am not even against regulation. But the regulation I favor is something that guarantees the right of Americans to be free online of censorship for any reason outside of the bounds of First Amendment case law, which has been rigorously debated over the last 200 years. The ones they want are the opposite. They are the laws which you see in Europe and are beloved by the global elite, which allow government regulation at the speech level of what you can and cannot say online.

This is how you have a situation, like you literally did in Europe and in Australia during they easily, without any passage of law, can import these dystopian future to our shores even when we've never had a say on it. That is the danger of Davos, why it's important that we also pay attention, because it could be a glimpse into our terrible future. I mean, you watch that clip. How quickly they're like, hey, look, we have a law here. Switzerland. 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?

Well, friends, the downfall began with a devastating political screw-up and a brutally telling gaffe. While Australians were suffering through the worst bushfires in history, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison decided it'd be a perfect time to take a little vacay to Hawaii. So as Australians were watching in horror as their lands and homes burned, and in certain cases fleeing for their lives, Morrison was blissfully watching the waves crash on the beach. Now, once public outrage set in, he then hurried back to his post. But his

reappearance kind of only made things worse. Instead of expressing the contrition and regret that voters were presumably looking for, he instead bristled at the criticism and dismissed the concerns, insisting that his absence during the fires was just fine because, quote, I don't hold a hosemate. He also continued his beach going once back in Australia and was caught on camera in this little number. Sorry, everybody. I had to see that pic during my research, so now you also have to suffer with it too. Little did he know that soon enough, voters would send him packing on a very different trip indeed, because Morrison's troubles did not end with the climate crisis-fueled fires and his failed response to them. Far from it. There were

also catastrophic issues with vaccine rollouts, leaving some major cities to be locked down for as many as nine months. There were corruption scandals that fueled voter concerns about government integrity. There were belated and tone-deaf responses to sexual harassment and assault scandals. Based on the polls and the voters that I heard interviewed, it all added up to a perception that he was completely disconnected from the issues that voters actually cared about, that he was a chameleon who adopted the persona he thought was most politically advantageous, that he was constantly shifting blame and denying responsibility for critical decisions, and that on a basic human level, he was really just a total jerk. So when election day arrived, voters handed him and his Liberal Party coalition of

moderate, center-right, and right-wing candidates a drubbing at the polls. Now listen, I'm far from an expert on Australian politics, but there were two big trends that jump out of these results that have some echoes both here and around the world. So the first thing that is pretty clear is the rise of the independent voter and the downfall of both major parties. It's yet another rejection of the markets-over-everything politics that have dominated over the past 40 years. Now, Australian politics has basically always been a contest between the center-right liberals and the center-left Labor Party, with few other parties playing anything other than a marginal role. And Labor, the main center-left party, was in fact the

major beneficiary of Morris' scandals and his failures. Their man, Anthony Albanese, was sworn in as prime minister on Monday, ending a decade of right-leaning governments. But it was hardly a soaring endorsement of center-left neoliberal governance. Both the Labor and Liberal parties suffered huge declines in their first preference vote totals. You can see here the blue line, that's their traditional center-right party, which has seen a huge decline. The red line is the Labor Party, which somehow managed to win in spite of receiving its lowest ever first preference vote total. Australia uses ranked choice voting, so that's what that's all about.

But equally interesting is that bottom black line, which is climbing higher and higher. That line represents the rapidly increasing share going to candidates who are not in either of those major parties. Two parties stood out among those independents. First, a group of women calling themselves the Teals. They ran in wealthy areas, traditionally strong for liberals, and they proved to be extremely successful at appealing to voters who were typically liberal voters, but disappointed with the party on corruption, women's equality, and in particular, climate change. Now, these women had a huge night, even ousting some high-level liberal officials. The other independent party making historic gains was the Greens. They ran on an all-out left populist platform, including bold action on

climate, and they notched their best results in history. Not only did they grab their highest ever vote totals, but they could hold as many as five seats in the lower house. Now, that might not sound like much, but it actually made the largest minor party stake in Australia since 1949. All of this also sounds a lot like what we just saw in the French election, where the traditional center-right and center-left parties were complete non-starters in the presidential race, and where the left-wing candidate outperformed expectations, nearly making it into the runoff by surprise. It also sounds a bit like how voters are feeling here, frankly, although obviously we don't have a parliamentary system. Both of our major parties and their leaders, Trump and Biden,

are held in contempt by most voters. And what's more, an astonishing 58% of voters said they would prefer an independent over Biden or Trump if faced with that particular matchup again. People are done with these dudes. We just regrettably don't have a whole lot of alternatives here. Now, the other big takeaway from Australia, though, is that even with inflation, major foreign policy issues, and disgust with the handling of COVID, the number one issue which proved determinative was climate. Because for Australia, the climate crisis got extremely real and extremely terrifying over the past few years. They suffered through droughts and floods and those massive fires unfolding while Morrison, of course, lounged in Hawaii. According to NBC News, polling in the lead-up showed that eight out of 10 Australians wanted great climate action from

the government. 70% of respondents Australians wanted great climate action from the government. 70% of respondents said they believed climate change was already impacting the country, and environment was the most mentioned issue on social media during the campaign ahead of the economy and ahead of corruption. Here, Australia is also part of a broader trend. Green parties have been steadily building their vote totals and electoral power across Europe. In fact, Green Party vote share has increased in at least 13 different European countries in their last elections. In the U.S., of course, the picture is a bit different. While the youth-led climate movement has dramatically shifted the contours of our debate, the entrenched two-party system keeps our own Green Party extremely marginal.

And entrenched corruption and coziness with the oil and gas industry keeps significant climate action perpetually out of reach. But there is no doubt that that climate movement has risen in importance with groups like Sunrise pushing candidates on climate issues and helping to elect candidates like AOC and like Ed Markey. Obviously, what happens in Australia politically, it's ultimately all about Australia. It's the characters, the history, the culture, the speedos. I simply cannot imagine an American politician surviving the scandal of that bathing attire, but I digress. But when you see trends go global, it is worth taking note of. And in election after election, voters keep sending the message that one way or another, they are done with inaction and disgusted with the status quo. And that was the part that really

piqued my interest. Yeah, it's fascinating. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. Look, it's all, I mean, you talk about dead kids, there's nothing worse.

I'm not saying it's about me, but waking up, seeing this news, having to bring it to all of you, it's really just the most heart-wrenching part of the job. And always thinking about people, Evaldi, the victims, families, to everybody else out there. Thank you all for supporting us and giving us the flexibility to be able to do the show the best way that we possibly can. Just only

one programming note. I know premium subscribers, since we moved over to our new email system, there have been some snafus, but we are basically at the same open rate that we were previously to the switchover. If you have not gotten your email, please reply to the last email that you received from us, and we will get you sorted with our customer service team. We're already getting to a better open rate and, more importantly, free of MailChimp away from the corporate control. My parents have been asking me about this every day. We got it. Because they're in the camp. Actually, I've been told that they were personally reached out to

by the Supercast. Okay, well, they better. Shout out to the Supercast. Yeah, they're getting a real white glove treatment. But yeah, I think, you know, to sum up what is a roller coaster of a show, I mean, we live in troubled times. We just do.

I mean, on every front. And we're really grateful to you guys for allowing us to be able to cover the news, whatever is happening, wherever it's happening, to build out our programming so that we can have people, you know, covering events on the ground even. And we just want to continue to be able to expand and provide you as the best product that we possibly can. That's ultimately our goal. So thank you for sticking with us through all of this. Thank you for bearing with us as we switch up the schedule a little bit this week, both because we wanted to be able to cover the primaries, but also primarily because I wanted to go to my daughter's eighth grade graduation. We love you guys, and we will see you back here tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Thank you. Terima kasih telah menonton! Thank you. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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