Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/27/26: Iran Vows Retaliation, Prof Pape On Negotiations, MAGA Texas Blowout & MORE!

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Ryan and Emily discuss Iran vowing retaliation after US strikes, IDF hunted by Hezbollah drones, Prof Pape on latest negotiations, markets predict increased gas prices until 2032, MAGA blowout in Texas, Dems last ditch effort to screw Platner. Randy Villegas: https://www.villegasforcongress.com/  Jeremy Ben-Ami: https://x.com/JeremyBenAmi?s=20  Robert Pape: https://escalationtrap.substack.com/    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Nice. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're

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We have an amazing show today, don't we, Emily? An amazing show. Big election results that we're going to get to in just one moment. We're excited about that. Now, just a reminder, we're on Supercast now. Back on Supercast, happy to be there. If you are having any issues connecting your account, go ahead. Email support at supercast.com.

Support at Supercast.com. they're there to help. We'll take care of it. Don't worry. We hear you working on all of those kinks as we make the transition. Like I said, happy to be back at Supercast. So check your spam. Check your spam. That's really important too. So we will be sure to help if you email support at Supercast.com. It'll be good. You're getting your Spotify link faster, much better. Yes. A little transition process, but it'll be smooth sailing. So we appreciate it. Yes. Thanks for sticking with us, everyone. All right, Ryan, Nettonia. and Trump had a phone call yesterday.

We're going to break down the details. Incursions further into Lebanon, no surprise there, but we have some drone footage that we need to show you guys. Robert Pape is going to be joining us to break down some of these latest developments as well. Interesting, actually, developments in Gaza that we're going to be talking about. Man, one of Donald Trump's economic advisors, Kevin Hassett, you've seen him before, is — got grilled actually by Maria Bartaromo on consumer sentiment plummeting.

We have video of his response. We're going to talk about the elections, as mentioned earlier. Interesting, Ryan, with Graham Platner, we have a little bit of stuff to talk about with Auchin-Clos. We're going to have a guest in that block, somebody who's running in California as a Democrat, to walk us through how those dynamics or what we can glean from those dynamics. Yeah, we'll be talking to Randy Villegas, who has the endorsement of basically the entire kind of progressive world, including like Bernie Sanders, progressive caucus, all these,

running against the D-Triple-C-backed candidate, Jasmine Baines. D-Triple-C is trying to put its thumb on the scale in a bunch of races, and California is next week. Which, by the way, is what the NRC did in Texas. Yeah. And so we have those details about Paxson. It's not great effect. Man, this race is already... How much they burn? 80 million? It's so much money. I thought it was, we'll look it up. We'll look it. But it was, I mean, that race is shaping enough to be utterly insufferable. That's my take. But anyway, we'll have more on that. And Ryan, you have an interview that you're going to air on J Street. Yes. Yesterday, after yesterday's show, Crystal and I sat down for an hour with Jeremy Benamy, the executive director of J Street, which is, describes itself

as a quote, pro-peace, pro-Israel organization. And we talked to him about the kind of uncomfortable place he sits in with the Israeli ambassador recently calling them a cancer. And on the left calling, you know, they frequently get called enablers of genocide, although even he now acknowledges what's happening as a genocide. So, I found the conversation very interesting. I think people will, too. All right. Well, looking forward to it. Let's start with Trump and Netanyahu. We can throw this first element up on the screen A1. It's a Times of Israel headline. Netanyahu, Trump said, talking after security cabinet meeting ends. So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is speaking on the phone with U.S. President Donald Trump.

According to Hebrew media yesterday, they say in the times of Israel, the reported call comes after the end of the security cabinet meeting amid an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. We're going to talk more about that in just one moment. And as the U.S. has reportedly barred Israel from striking Beirut. So as to not sabotage, the U.S. Iran talks. Ryan, this also comes, as yesterday A2, Iran was threatening retaliatory strikes after what the U.S. said were defensive strikes,

help us understand a bit about what we know regarding the Stentanyahu Trump call and the timing in the middle of all of the uncertainty yesterday. Yeah, and Israel, and we can talk about this more, has continued to strike Beirut, despite Trump pushing him to. What the Iranians are insisting that the war in Lebanon has to end as part of this broader war.

The Israelis are insisting it absolutely will not. The reporting out of Iran is that the U.S. has effectively agreed, we'll talk about this more with Pabe, to a lot of the Iranian red lines, which is that effectively they're not going to move the highly enriched uranium out of the country, but they'll kind of downblend it and destroy it instead. And that the U.S. has told Iran, we need time to manage, this is what Jeremy was reporting yesterday, that we need time to manage domestic, the domestic politics.

Which, good luck with that. It's going to be hard. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be ugly. That is really a reference to the Netanyahu supporters in the United States. So this is where the call comes in. Right. Yes, exactly.

So Iran, though, is like, you know, skeptical, as always, of U.S. assurances, even though, this is what they're saying. And then into this comes what you just mentioned. you had the U.S. launch quote-unquote defensive strikes against some what is what Iran says were civilian vessels what the U.S. says were some, you know, Iranian Navy gunboats. Laying land vines, right? And you would think that Iran has to be telling the truth here because according to Trump, the entire Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the sea. So why are we attacking a navy that he has already destroyed. Unless it's possible that Trump wasn't telling the truth about that.

Yes. One thing, both things can't be true at the same time. I don't even want to entertain that possibility. I know that would be disillusioning. Some people are saying that perhaps Trump exaggerated. More on the back and forth yesterday. This is again from the Times of Israel, talks between the U.S. and Iran on an initial agreement extending the ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hormuz will take several

more days, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday as Tehran threatened retaliation overnight for U.S. strikes, which would call the violation of the truce and a sign of, quote, bad faith. The U.S. military characterized Monday night strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying targets included missile launch sites and mine-laying boats, and said the U.S. acted with, quote, restraint in light of the weeks-long ceasefire. Speaking to reporters after the strikes, Rubio said there's, quote, a lot of talking back and forth going on about specific language in the initial document. He says it'll take a few days and then added the straits need to be open, unimpeded, without tolls.

Now, Mark Levin, this is a post from yesterday, let's put A4 up on the screen. He just writes, looks like we may need a lot more, quote unquote, defensive strikes on Iran, Ryan. It is funny to think of defensive getting used all the way to include even strikes, like on Iranian soil. They also, the U.S. also hit some kind of positions along the Iranian coast of the Strait of Hormuz. Yes, Mark Levin, very excited. Do we put up A2 yet? Yeah, let's put a A2. So put up A2. So in response to these back and forth clashes, Iran is actually saying that they're going to respond more to this, that they feel like this was a significant enough breach of the ceasefire that doesn't actually exist. because the ceasefire expired weeks ago.

But they feel like it's a significant enough attack. They don't consider it to be defensive, because that's absurd anyway, that they're going to retaliate. So whether that happens or not, we'll find out in the next hours and days as the U.S. continues to hammer out what Rubio says, like you said,

just words away. Just like they've got one sentence left. that they need to like work out and then once they do that's gonna work out meanwhile lindsay graham is absolutely losing his mind at the pakistani's again tell us more uh he's he's he's saying he doesn't trust the pakistani's the pakistanis the pakistanis are hiding iranian planes uh they're you know he's basically calling them jihadists and uh that in in league with with pakistan he previously attacked uh the umanis who were the mediators said you know those are uh you know biased mediators against them. He has attacked the Qataris as mediators in the past. The way that my

colleague Maas put it was that, you know, there was a way to to kind of demobilize the American empire in a rational fashion, which the JCPOA was part of. It was an attempt to kind of put the region at some ease so that the U.S. could back away from it and focus on other things and reach an agreement and normalization with the countries there. That didn't happen. So now they're at the phase of just shouting at the referees. Like, it's, and it's kind of comical to think from the, from the U.S. perspective, that you're getting steamrolled by, I'm sorry, Pakistan, Oman, Qatar, like.

You can shout at the referees or you can escalate. I mean, that's, those are the options right now. Shout at the, right, exactly. Take a deal or escalate. Or do shout at the referees and take a deal or escalate or escalate and shout at the, either way, they're going to be shouting at the referees. That sounds accurate. I also wanted to ask you, Ryan, about this.

Trump is now pushing for, I'm reading from Politico, quote, Muslim majority countries to join the Abraham Accords as he seeks an end to the Iran war. That is, quote, being met with laughter, dismissal, and often silence. That's, again, according to Politico, which writes, it could endanger the prospects of a possible deal, but many aren't taking the push seriously. Iran for its part is walking a tightrope of trying to get financial relief for its strained economy while also not seating enough ground to give Trump a victory. They've also started restoring internet access.

As of yesterday, it looks like some significant internet access. Internet's back there. They're going to get to see those Lego videos. It's, although they'll be in English, so most people won't understand them. But, you know, the cultural power of them pops through, I think, no matter what language you speak. So what should we think of this Abraham Accords? Yeah, so I make fun in Barack Reveed a lot, but he had a really fun little nugget in one of his pieces where Trump first was like, okay, guys, like I'm reaching this peace deal. And he's got everybody.

He's got, he had Turkey, he had Egypt, and then he had all the Gulf on the phone. And he's like, okay, great. And then he's like, oh, and I need you all to sign the Abraham Accords. Remember those? And Ravid's characterization of it, it was just silence. And then you get that funny moment where Trump's like, you guys still there? You still? They're like, yeah, well, we're here.

Did it break up? We're here. And of course, Mohammed bin Zayat, it's like, it's great. You're we're in. They're already in on that. But then everybody else is like, no, we're not doing that. Saudi Arabia put out a pretty clear statement saying, We have been, you know, 100% clear that we are not signing a peace agreement with Israel until the Palestinian issue has been resolved.

Yeah. That's our, that's been our position. That remains our position. So Trump... That would be a domestic nightmare for them, I would imagine. I guess. I mean, it's a dictatorship. Yeah. I mean, Eric Spring was a lot. Yeah. It would be a domestic problem for them, for sure.

And it would be, you know, they consider themselves to be, you know, and they jockey for position as the kind of leaders of the kind of Muslim world. And, you know, they would be sacrificing that for sure. So the prestige that they generate from Mecca would, you know, be out the door if you're like, recognizing Israel without, you know, while they're continuing to occupy Gaza. and they're now working this bill through the Knesset. It's an antiquities law that would basically put all of the West Bank under their like antiquities law. And, you know, they go around and be like, oh, look, here's a coin with Hebrew on it. Like, this is all ours now.

Out. So to recognize them while they're doing that is, yeah, is not possible. So it feels like Trump is grasping, I don't know who suggested this was something worth even suggesting. because Jared Maybe I guess But it's like Jared should know better Like that's not happening

Mm-hmm It wasn't happening before It's definitely not happening now So you're just proposing it Not to get it But maybe the idea is like I don't know Because you had a whole bunch

of Trump's defenders Being like absolute genius move Boss Like incredible Like again Like art of the deal It's like well He's not gonna get this

So he's just taking another public L. Or he's playing 40 chess, that Ryan Graham chess master, who plays some of you on his chess. You can't quite follow. No, he's too advanced. Yeah, and there was some reporting that we were escorting ships through the Strait of Fremuz,

put in A3, it turns out not true. But the Iranians have said they actually have issued about 25 ships through in the last 24 hours. So like, where is that reporting coming from? Who is telling people that? I actually, because this keeps happening. It does keep happening.

There's someone who keeps putting that. Is it coming from the Pentagon? That would be my assumption if people are reporting this, but it could be the White House. Yeah. It is very strange. So reporters out there, like, check with the ships. Good luck. Don't just take the White House's word for any of the things related to the straight information.

Or tell us that it's specifically coming from the one-ass. That would be helpful. Yeah, so then we can be like, oh, okay, never mind. That's not true. Our new Mick Cafe Crafted Soda's Just Drinks or something more, like Spriteberry Bliss, creamy strawberry Coke and Orange Dream, all swirled with fizzy flavor and topped with silky cold foam. Only at McDonald's.

At participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, new? Huge news. We created our own podcast called. Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast?

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it.

Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about Lebanon, because a lot of news to break down out of Lebanon.

We can go ahead now and roll B1. This is going to be a VO. Ryan, tell us what we're seeing on the screen. This is from Hezbollah. This is drones targeting the IDF. Yeah, so they've been releasing a lot of these videos almost on a daily basis. And so this is one where they're chasing an IDF troop convoy. In southern Lebanon.

In southern Lebanon. And these are these first-person drones that have fiber optic cables. connected to them. So in other words, they have up to like 25 kilometers of what looks like fishing line that connects then to a laptop, which prevents them from being jammed, and then allows the operators to then run through. Now, this is this one here is a thermal drone, which is the first one that they released showing, you know, offensive drone activity at night. And if you notice in that clip... So this is showing offensive drone activity. from the IDF.

No, that was Hezbollah. You're saying that, okay, but this is in southern Lebanon. Right. Yeah, I mean, you can call it defensive, but they are actively taking the initiative here. Yeah, I see. And if you noticed,

that soldier didn't appear to even hear it. Mm-hmm. You know, the IDF has its own drones going constantly, so, you know, it may be that there's, you know, kind of too much noise going on or whatever, and they're not very loud. Mm-hmm. But when they, what I'm told by people, you know,

who've experienced it, when they do dive, they make more noise. Right. They're quieter as they're floating. But yeah, he didn't, that soldier didn't even seem to notice it. Totally haunting videos. I mean, some of the videos that have come out of the battlefield and the Dombas, just haunting.

The lack of noise, but also the terror that you see people realizing at the last minute. Ryan, we have another element here. This is from electronic intifada posted this. There's netting. where the Israeli troops are in southern Lebanon. That's a lot of defense mechanism, yeah. Right. So we'll roll it and then you can break it down for us.

Another innovation here by these areas, look at the netting dragged across the neighborhood here. This is their solution. But watch when this drone turns back and looks at the village. They basically just have this fishing net, essentially. It's not even appropriate netting. They just draped it over the neighborhood as if drones fall like raindrops, I guess. That's the only way you're going to protect it.

because you can clearly see that you can just fly under them. So I'm not sure what the Israeli plan is with these nettings, but this is ridiculous what we're looking at here, just draping it all across the neighborhood, so you know exactly where every Israeli troop is in there. This, they think, is a little more effective, except that the drone doesn't care that you have netting over top of your base. It's just going to fly under the netting and hit your vehicle.

So there goes another Humvee. And the numbers here, they're not on Israel's side. So 140 FPV drones launched in this 30-day period of time that are taking out a vehicle for each one of them. And that's only 140 drones. They have thousands of these drones. It's changed the battlefield. The argument was that because they're laying this netting, not only can the Hezbollah drones fly under the netting, but also it is telegraphing, where they're They might be.

Go find the giant blankets. That's what we were looking at, basically. Yeah, and John Elmer is the best in the business at this over at E.I. He's, when it comes to kind of analyzing the tactics and the kind of military equipment that the different sides are putting into the field, this has, this is blowing up, no pun intended, Israeli politics as well. You're having an enormous outpouring of criticism. of Netanyahu and of the civilian leadership from the military saying,

you have put us into this position now in which we have no solutions, and we are sitting ducks, and we are being just slaughtered. The idea of isn't used to losing one or two or more soldiers a day. And setting aside the material losses of the tanks and the vehicles and the transport equipment. And on top of that, they're saying it has massively inhibited their ability to move throughout southern Lebanon. Ben Gavir has said that what they need to do is take down one residential building in Beirut for every drone that's launched. Yeah.

Which is just pure terrorism. But, you know, wouldn't be the first time they took Ben Gavir's advice. They just, the Knesset just approved, I think, $700 million in funding for a kind of technological unit to study the problem and figure out ways better than, you know, fish netting or netting. That they, you know, there are, like, people are throwing around all kinds of hairbrain schemes. The netting is like the rope dome. Right. And so. But except you can get under it. Yeah.

And in the UAE, they're putting cages around, like, everything. They've got, they're putting cages on tanks and trucks and other things. So, like, if the drone hits the cage, then at least it, like, reduces the kind of blast impact that it has. There are some hairbrain schemes of, like, firing some type of a cannon at a drone that would then somehow wrap around the fiber optic cable and snap it. Mertaza was telling me that, like, in Ukraine, you'll have. soldiers actually like going into the field with scissors trying to like finding the fishing line on the ground and snipping it so we'll see what they come up with their 700 million dollar you know investment but as of now it has really transformed the the battlefield

in in Lebanon meanwhile they are I don't know if we have the element for this Iran one no we let's let's get back to that in a minute the the that they're launched offensive outside of their security zone, outside of their kind of comfort zone in southern Lebanon, which has included an attack on this dam. And so this is, this was, this was, this is scaring a heck out of everybody. This is the Karoan Dam in the Bakar Valley. It produces 10 to 20 percent of electricity for Lebanon. But more than that, if it was destroyed, as, as you see it getting bombed there, it would put tens of thousands of people at a risk of getting washed away. Like, just, it would just be an absolutely catastrophic humanitarian disaster.

And here they are, you know, bombing this damn multiple times. Just scaring the hell out of everybody. We put up B7. Yesterday, Israel killed 31 people. 31 across Lebanon Four children and three women According to drop site here

Yeah and the number of medics and journalists Killed continues to climb amid these attacks It has really affected the way that rescuers can work Because if they know that if they go to a site of a bombing They try to pull people out of the rubble The chance that they're going to get hit Increases almost to a guarantee

And in Gaza we put up B-Safe yesterday they killed 14. And one of the strikes was near a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, right? Yes, yes. So there's B6, some details from Dropside on the 14 killed across Gaza yesterday. And in both Gaza and Lebanon there are technically ceasefires in place. Now, you may have seen, and we put up B5 here, Israel, some of these people were killed. when the new Hamas military chief, Mohammed Ode, was targeted and killed.

His funeral is today. So it's been confirmed that he was killed. And Netanyahu and the Israeli government celebrated that they had killed this new commander after he'd taken power, taken office just after 11 days. And I think people who aren't totally immune to the way that these things unfold are, like, Hold on a second. You're, what did he do? You have a ceasefire that you signed with Hamas.

Like, if you wanted a section in the ceasefire that said, we will agree to a ceasefire, except whenever we feel like it, we will attack you, then you should have tried to negotiate for that. There's just so little dignity and integrity in agreeing to a ceasefire deal. and then without even arguing that there's been any breach or you have any justification for doing it, just killing a military commander and his wife and everybody around him. The Israelis are claiming he was the head of Hamas intelligence during October 7th. Yeah, right, but... There's a ceasefire.

What I was also going to say is that this is, the goal of the war was to eradicate Hamas, right? That's what Netanyahu said over and over again. I believe it's what Biden said over and over again. And we've been covering for years now the unlikeliness of actually eradicating Hamas. And I do think it's interesting that somebody who was the head of Hamas intelligence is alive or was alive to lead, as Israel is claiming he did, a renewing of the organizational structure. That's a quote. from, that's according to a Saudi outlet, now in 2026. Right, right.

And that the only way they can fight back against that is illegal assassinations that go against their own agreement, which they keep saying like, ah, Hamas hasn't disarmed. Hamas didn't agree to disarm. And we covered this. So they're insisting on things, like including disarmament, that were not agreed to. And then they are killing people. despite the fact that they agreed to a ceasefire. And they've killed more than 800 people since the ceasefire in October,

which is, it's just like, what kind of, what kind of ceasefire is that? This is a horribly morbid thing to even speculate about. I wonder if that's lower than what it otherwise would be. Oh, absolutely, lower. You're killing 800 a week before that. But it's still so grim to think about it in that sense. Yes. And maybe we should have had this in our Rumbla.

actually. But yes, but it's also an interesting kind of military innovation, so it does fit here. I just want to keep people up to date. You can put up this VO, this is B3. Iran finally released video of them getting a radar lock on an F-35. And the U.S. has spent like a trillion dollars or something on this. F-35 platform on the notion that you can't do what you're, watching be done right there, which is get a radar lock on an F-35. Shot down a Reaper drone, too, didn't they? And two of them, yeah, shot down two Reaper drones. They're like, you know, 100 million, 50 to 100 million bucks a piece or something like that.

Trump change. Yeah. It's chumny. How many rural hospitals have closed in the last month? Yeah, it's what's crazy. Yeah, 56.5 million for an MQ9 Reaper. The number of, the amount of money that these rural hospitals close for a short. shortage of is heartbreaking.

Like one of those drones could keep a rural hospital open for like five more years. And make it free. So I think to bring this full circle, my last question for you, Ryan, is when we see this is obviously asymmetric warfare in southern Lebanon, this is the example from Iran,

I think, underscores what's happening in southern Lebanon or underscores the level of threat or the lack of control that the IDF has right now in southern Lebanon. and the difficulty of doing what they want to do there. How does this, now we're talking about Abraham Accords, we're talking about Lebanon, we're talking about Iran, how does all of this go into the various negotiations

that Trump and Rubio right now are trying to, and Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner are trying to hash out not just with one country and another country, but apparently with the Arab world because that's what it would take for them to achieve what they say their ends are. So if we're looking at this incursion in the southern Lebanon, that's another huge piece on the chess board

that is barely getting attention from the president. Yeah, and what had Ben Gavir say yesterday, that he will not allow, that Netanyahu should not allow Trump to make a peace deal with Iran that includes a peace agreement in Lebanon. Israel shouldn't allow it. And Israel, unless the U.S. does something about it,

can just continue waging war on Lebanon. And so what that would be doing is asking Americans to continue to pay $5 a gallon for gas, to continue to have the global economic dislocation that we're suffering, mortgage rates, way up in the sticks. Also, Israel can continue to go to war with Lebanon. I was like, how is that our concern? Why should we be sacrificing for that? How about you withdraw from Lebanon and reach a,

peace agreement with your neighbors. And gas and mortgage rates can go down. How about that? It seems wildly unlikely. I guess so. Yeah. Well, let's bring in Professor Robert Pape to help us understand where this could be going in the future. We'll be right back with Professor Pape.

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Santa Canada. Hey, it's us the Jonas Brothers and guess what, we have some big news. What's the news?

Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to us.

people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. We were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down?

Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, for people to be. call in and say, hey Jonas, and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. We are joined once again by Robert Pape. He is, of course, University of Chicago professor of political science. He directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, and he's the author of Bombing to Win and writes the substack, The Escalation Trap, has been many times on this show recently to discuss recent developments out of Iran. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we were just talking before we went to air. You helped organize a great event last week at Bus Boys and Poets here in Washington, D.C., that people can go check out on YouTube. It's on the Bus Boys YouTube. It's full of really interesting perspectives from folks like Wajahat Ali. I did a panel with Joe Kent and Trita Parsi. So Professor Pape, it seemed like a great success. You addressed the crowd.

The crowd was loving it. They were very excited to see you in person. So that kind of bridging of the left and the right was an interesting experiment on foreign policy. It was important in a lot of ways. So first of all, actually going from online to in person, very, very important to do. And also to see the amazing reception. We had hundreds of people who were trying to get into those seats, and it was just incredible to see that. And what that really shows is that there is a crying hunger for a better foreign policy, and that is true across the political spectrum.

And that's something that's very, very important as we go forward. So there will, of course, be lots of things we're going to disagree on. This isn't about trying to get people to vote for the same candidate. That said, what we need to do is understand that there is a common understanding that our foreign policy here has simply been a disaster. And we're very unhappy before the Iran War. We're much more concerned now because it's touching our lives in a personal way. So this is now not just simply a principal issue where something to be five or six issues down the totem pole. This is a front and center issue that's going to affect people's jobs, people's livelihood,

what they can eat, what they cannot eat. This is really a dramatic, and it's happening because of a foreign policy decision. And that's what we really want to lean into going forward. And I hope that we'll have more events there. I'm going to have an event here in the city of Chicago, and I'm going to try to do a number of these in-person events where we bring people from across the political spectrum to talk about this need, because as we're trying to, as we comment on all the details, and I'm sure we'll do that now, the fact of the matter is there's something bigger going on here, and that bigger we need to move into and not just assume this will all somehow magically take care of itself once we just have a new round of elections. It's only been a few years since we got out of the last forever wars, and we're right back on the end in another one. This is showing you we need more, and that big guardrail is actually us, the people. Well, let's start with this post from Monday

that you made, and we can put this up on the screen on the screen. You said Trump just made a major concession on the nuclear issue. Words that move closer to Iran's position, good for a deal you were referring to this post on true social where Trump said the enriched uranium, nuclear dust will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed, or preferably in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or at another acceptable location with the Atomic Energy Commission or its equivalent being witnessed to this process event. And you said, but the U.S. military just attacked missile sites in Iran,

daring the IRGC to respond, bad for a deal. With this chaos, why should Iran believe Trump's promises? And obviously, we are still potentially waiting on a response from the IRGC. So as things stand right now, Professor Pape, help us to understand why, I mean, if you're Iran and you're looking at this, you're looking at Trump conceding on the nuclear issue, then attacking missile sites in Iran. To them, do you think this all just seems totally fake and, like, posturing? I think that it seems totally chaotic if you're looking at this from Iran's perspective.

And what you see, if you're in Iran's shoes, is that President Trump is trying to essentially communicate with all these different audiences, including Iran, here, and doing it on truth social, and then, of course, with bombing, which is also communication. And these are not adding up in a way that is producing anything like stability here. So we need to understand that this is a situation where Iran is in the driver's seat. So this is chaos by Trump in a situation where... It's the United States that has suffered a major strategic defeat in this war. And that is something that not just Iran believes, but other leaders believe.

You see that President Trump himself is making concessions to Iran's position. So President Trump may not say it, but he understands that he's got to move to Iran's position. But at the same time, he is seeing that if he owns the L, Crystal, and you heard this on Friday night, that the big problem with the escalation trap is that as President Trump gets closer to owning the loss, then that puts enormous political pressure on him because it causes him to lose the current support he has, or at least whittle it down further. So if you say he's got a solid lock on 30, 33% of the country, and you see that in the primaries, that can actually be whittled down because that 30 to 33% believes he's a winner. And if he goes to being a loser, then that is going to be a further drift down. And I think that's what is what you're seeing with President Trump. He knows he's in a losing position here.

and as he tries to navigate the escalation trap to wiggle out of it, it keeps pulling him back in. And the truth is, he needs to, I think, focus on a narrower set of issues. So what I would maybe talk about this, but I think that this idea that he's just going to photo around on all these different issues and find some way to get a W that he can claim here is just getting him deeper into the escalation trap. And look, if it was only his presidency, we could say, who cares? But the problem is it's not just his presidency. This is impacting negatively all of us listening to this.

And by July 15th, those inventories are running out, folks. So we're going to hit a triple time bomb here where inventories are going to run out. And this is just going to hurt even more in the coming weeks. Yeah. And just so people understand the kind of concession that Trump was floating here, I'll just read it again. He says, you know, you either turn over the quote-unquote nuclear dust to be brought home and destroyed or preferably in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which I notice

he switches around the language that he uses when referring to Iran depending on kind of his posture toward a deal at the moment. He says it would be, the nuclear dust would quote, be destroyed in place or at another acceptable location, which is another word for, you know, downblending it. Which is exactly what Iran's position was on February 27. So just what I mean by him moving to Iran is this was exactly the position that President Trump rejected on February 27 in that Oval Office discussion where he then chose to do the bombing the next day. And so what he's done in that post is he has given up the positions that he's had before. he's effectively moved to Iran's position, and that would mean, to be clear, what Iran was saying

is it would dilute what it had above 3.5 percent, so all of it would be 3.5 percent enriched, which, also, to be clear, would gain a few extra months and how quickly that material could be produced into a working nuclear weapon. So it doesn't solve the nuclear weapon issue. It is a way this is why Iran wants that enriched uranium capability and keep 3.5 percent, because that would allow it within about a year or so to then fashion somewhere between 10, 15 nuclear weapons with the current amount of material here, and that would mean it would rise to become the fourth center of world power as the oil hegemon in the Persian Gulf. So Trump was moving to that position. I've called that stage four of the escalation trap. And then the problem is, of course,

as soon as he announced it here, then he's being attacked here politically. And these are people who are his supporters. So they are telling him, if you own the L, which is what he was saying he was going to do, then you're going to lose that next level of support. And maybe no surprise, we see bombing then a few hours, you know, not too long after that. This is what I've been defining as literally the escalation trap, where it's not that there are, you know, words or deals you could talk about, but the politics of the trap is what pulls people to the trap. And that's what you saw right here. President Trump is having a hard time owning the L here, and that's what's keeping him in the trap. And I'm sorry to say, this could bound.

back and forth folks, if we keep to these set of terms, this can go back and forth for months, even when we hit the wall in the middle of July, when we run out of inventories and those gas prices shoot up even higher here, we can bounce back and forth. That's why I'm suggesting we sort of narrow the ambitions here to try to find a way to squeak out of at least a piece of the trap. Well, right now, as we're awaiting the IRC's potential response to what the United States is calling these defensive strikes in the Strait of Hormuz. I wanted to get your take on, Professor Pape, your take on what we could expect to see from the

RIGC on a kind of technical level, what response is possible, just as we also then try to expect what we see in response to that response from the United States. Now, President Trump has said the Navy has been destroyed. Ryan pointed out earlier in our show that it doesn't make a ton of sense to say their Navy has been destroyed. while at the same time say that they're laying landmines in the strait of Hormuz, but they've said basically missile capacity has been severely damaged. We'll see, Professor Pape, what do you expect to come out of maybe the next 24 to 48 hours,

if anything? Well, I think that, first of all, we need to see that there is a small possibility that Iran may decide to not give up a chance to react at all, but to do it in a more modest way. I don't think that's likely, but I don't think it's really quite off the table here, because after all, Iran was moving Trump toward their position. So I think Iran probably saw that tweet where Trump is giving up the resistance to their February 27 position, and they're saying, actually, President Trump is trying to surrender on their terms. So I think that this is something to not dismiss.

That said, I think that what? But Iran has established since February 28 is that there would be some kind of a quid pro quo. And often, though, it's not directly a quid pro quo the way we might understand it. So remember, the attack against the UAE oil facility was a way that Iran thought about. And it wasn't a direct attack. It was sort of a near-miss. It was kind of a brushback pitch to remind everybody that it could do more to damage the supply of oil to the world.

And I think that's really what I'm more expecting here, because that's their leverage. Their leverage is very specifically now about the supply of oil to the world. And so I think that this would be completely within their strategic mindset right now. And so that's the most likely attack that I would see. And so earlier in the conflict,

you had said that the escalation trap was going to kind of inexorably push the U.S. towards ground troops in Iran. Other than that weird kind of weekend rescue of the two down pilots, of which we've heard nothing since and haven't learned who the pilots were, there hasn't been, there haven't been American boots on the ground. Why do you think that was? And do you still think the escalation trap pulls in that direction? So long as the nuclear issue remains front and center here, I think that the issue of U.S. ground forces to go in to get that enriched uranium remains there.

The exact timing of that. So I know the public wants escalation to be linear, that it wants it to be on a schedule here. But we need to recall that when I did the modeling, I started not with the modeling where we did a February. 28 attack to change the regime. The modeling I've been doing for 20 years starts with the U.S. bombing Fordo in the nuclear facilities. And then saying about a year or two after that, we would do regime change bombing, which in fact happened. And then a period of time after that would be the limited ground operations here to get the nuclear material that dust that he calls, it's not really dust. And I think that that's really still there. And you've, you've

pressure from Netanyahu for that as well. So I realize the public wants things to be like a light switch. Either it's all, escalation is all on or it's not. But what you're really seeing is the way real war works. Real war are these long periods of boredom where costs are mounting indirectly punctuated by very short bursts of essentially sheer terror. And that is, unfortunately, what you're likely to see here. And I describe this as instability bouncing between the escalation track, a military escalation, and then the allowing Iran to rise to become the fourth center of world power. And I don't really think you're going to be able to end that unless we, again, I do think that there's an important thought here that I want to get across today, which is that I do think there's something that we should focus on in the

negotiations. And if it's okay, I'd like to, because I just posted a big piece on this, on Substack, I'd like to bring this up. So I think that it's not really going to be possible to end this escalation trap altogether. I think that's what everybody wants. And I think that that's probably not right. However, I do think that there's something that the negotiations should be, focusing on more and they're not, which is literally the price of oil. So right now, we're seeing negotiations about a whole host of these zero-sum issues here, whether Iran's going to have nuclear material or not, whether it's completely opening or moves or not. What matters to the public, what matters to that crowd at Bus Boys and Poets, though, are not.

all of these details, which, of course, the experts like us will talk about here, but what really matters is the price of gas, what they're really paying. And I think that it would really behoove the Trump administration to cut to the chase about whether Iran is really willing to commit to returning the price of oil down to the pre-war level. So you haven't heard that language yet. And I think it's important because I can well imagine we get a lot of sort of these MOUs and so forth. And then we discover that as months go by, the price of oil is still $90 or higher. And it's because Iran has lots of tools at its disposal here, including with the Houthis, with proxies, to find ways to keep that price.

and that risk premium high, even as some ships are passing. And so I think unless we focus like a laser on the issue that really matters right now to the world's economy, which is literally the price of oil here, I think that we're going to be sadly surprised when we find out that whatever deal might come is not actually that much of a deal, you see, because otherwise Iran, will just simply continue to deal with all these details when the bottom line for most Americans is what's really happening to that price of oil? And I think that this should be the front and center issue as the negotiations go forward, which is call Iran out.

Is Iran really willing to have the price of oil come back to the pre-war levels of, say, the mid-60s for Brett? And if not, why not? And that could actually be helpful over time because then you really could have a conversation here with China, with Russia, with the Europeans. Now you have something you're actually talking about that's concrete. And if we don't have that concrete issue, I think we're just going to be bouncing back and forth. There's too many big balls in the air all at the same time. And this is just just just a prescription for a dead, dead negotiations. And we have some breaking news here where Iran State TV is putting out what they're calling basically an unofficial framework that has been agreed to by both sides, that they're continuing to hash out. The details are the U.S. military would withdraw from the vicinity of Iran.

U.S. Navy lifts its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran commits to restore the number of commercial transit ships through, the strait to pre-war levels within one month, though it doesn't say anything about whether or not they'll be charging or tolling or what. Iranian state media says military vessels are not included in this draft agreement. The managing of the ship traffic would be handled in cooperation with Oman. Oman just today announced a lot of new kind of trade and financial agreements with Iran, kind of preparing for a post-US world, so that fits with the idea that they would maybe

continue charging tolls. And then number six, if a final deal is reached within 60 days, that would involve the nuclear dust and the other stuff. The agreement would be approved in the form of a binding UN Security Council resolution. So that's what the Iran State TV is put up. That's right. So that was in line with on Saturday. I posted, that was coming out from Iran's media, actually.

So I posted this on X, that's roughly the same. And that's what I meant that those have always been Iran's terms. This is similar to what Jeremy Scahill reported Friday night. Yeah. So this is exactly what I mean by those are Iran's terms. And what you see is President Trump is having to move to Iran's terms, which is effectively surrendering on Iran's terms, you see. And that includes the toll.

So this would be Iran becoming the fourth center. of world power. What I'm adding to that is that what's missing here is we're negotiating those six points is the actual issue that I'm putting my finger on, which is the price of oil here, because you could end up with a situation where even with that deal, the price of oil does not remain near $90 a barrel, you know, 20, 30 percent higher than it was before the war. would have lots of reason to want that extra money. Russia would have reason to want that extra money, even for a year, China might be willing to go along with that. So over the next year or two, this is the critical issue here. So what I would say to President Trump is that you could agree

to all of those six points, but then I would point out that the real thing that needs to be focused on is getting the price of oil back to close to the pre-war levels and as a commitment by Iran. So if for some unknown reason, price of oil fluctuates, Houthis, for instance, decide to attack a pipeline, there will be an agreement that Iran will already understand it has to make adjustments, allow Saudi Arabia, the UAE, to ship even more ships through the Persian Gulf than before the war where the key goal is not exact number of ships. The key goal is the price of oil. Right. All right, Professor Pape, always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, we're going to try to see if there's a way to wiggle out of this trap.

I told you, we'd be working on it, and there is a way to try to wiggle out of some of this. Need a lot of oil. Let's hope we can do it. Yeah, I take it easy. Okay, bye-bye. Thank you. like Spriteberry Bliss, creamy strawberry coke and orange dream. All swirled with fizzy flavor and topped with silky cold foam. Only at McDonald's. At participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what?

We have some big news. What's the news, Nick? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a... We're the first people to do podcasts.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.

I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, Jonas, and offered it up as a, potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trump's top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, was grilled by Fox Business anchor Maria Bartaromo and Fox News anchor Maria Bartonomo. Yesterday morning over consumer sentiment did not go well for Kevin Hassett. Let's roll D1 here. What would be your business? best expectation in terms of the impact and how quickly an impact of a fallen oil prices might have on the consumer? Oh, it'll be right away. And again, like the 300 nautical mile thing is the way you think about Europe and Asia and everything else. But in the U.S., you know, we're basically self-sufficient in energy. And the reason why that gas prices have been going up, for example,

is that jet fuel prices are so high because of the disruption, say, in Singapore, that our refiners have been turning the knobs towards jet fuel it away from gasoline a little bit. They can stop that pretty much as soon as the oil starts to land in Singapore. And so I think that we should see very quickly energy prices, gas prices go back to where they should be. And the thing that I've seen when I look at credit card data and other things that I can get for the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they've been spending more money on everything else, which means that they're still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy, and they should be. If you look at GDP now, right now, it's north of 4%. And so despite this

disruption, all the momentum that we built with the big, beautiful bill, and AI, and everything else is really, you know, what the main economic story of the U.S. is. Television's Ryan Grimm is cracking up next to me. But wait, there's more. Let's roll the next clip. Consumer sentiment fell for the third straight month in the month of May. It was at a record low of 44.8. The Iran conflicts, unnerving people, fueling some worries about inflation as higher costs and elevated oil prices show up in people's pocketbook. What is the most important messaging that you can put out there for consumers to help sentiment here? Well, they call it consumer sentiment, but I don't think those words mean what they think they mean anymore. We looked at the political affiliation of the people

who were responding, and we found that, like, at the peak of Biden's Stagfellation, with inflation running out of control, that Democrats in the survey had a sentiment index that was way above 100. Right now, they're at 30 something. And then Republicans have stayed relatively steady throughout. But we find that basically the consumer sentiment indicator at the University of Michigan is just a political survey. And in fact, the correlation between what independents say and Democrats say is 0.8 or 0.9. It's almost exactly perfectly correlated. So what they've done is they've somehow devised a political survey that tells us how Democrats are feeling about things. If you want to look at how people are thinking, you should go to the conference board consumer confidence.

That's the consumer confidence measure is actually the most reliable thing. And right now, it's the highest it's been in a year. Right. Listen, the consumer is happy because the consumer is spending more. And also the survey that shows shifts over time, it's just reflecting Democrats. shifting sentiments about the consumer from the perspective of the consumer over time. But then he also said that Democrats and independents had basically the same answer when it came to consumer sentiment.

Yeah. And so it's been going down with Republicans for a while too. But he says, well, so because Democrats and Independence both are way down on the economy, we should not listen to either of them for a gauge of reality. We should actually only look at the Republican sentiment score, which he didn't. actually even mentioned, but if, as he said, Republican sentiment is kind of similar to what it was under Biden, Republicans were unhappy about the economy under Biden.

So if they're still at the same level, that means Democrats and independents are unhappy about the economy and Republicans are unhappy about the economy, but they're showing their optimism by spending more. So people think when they're at the grocery store and a bag is costing like $90, that that is frustrating to them. No, in fact, that is a sign of your optimism in the economy. Yeah, that was a bad one.

That you're paying for that. So we appreciate the hope you have and the optimism in the American dream. What greater expression of the American dream could there be than a four in front of your kind of grocery tab? Well, he's talking about consumer confidence. Let's read from Axios. The conference board's monthly consumer confidence index fell 0.7 percentage point. in May to 93.1, but it ticked down to a level that is still above where it stood as recently

as January. So it's going down, but he thinks just because it's slightly better than where it was in January, that's better than looking at... Yeah, what is the consumer confidence again from that from the board? They have it at 93.1, but it's down 0.7 month over month, still higher than where it was in January, which is apparently what Kevin Hasse is happy about, but let's also note, I mean, I'm reading from the Independent here. In April, for instance, the price for food eaten at home rose 2.9%, the highest year-over-year inflation rate for the category since August of 2023. Food away from home also increased 3.6% over the last year.

And 16% of Americans rate the country's current economic conditions as good or excellent. That is the lowest figure since 2023. According to Gallup among Republicans, the Independent goes on to cite an AP Norke poll taken recently. Approval of Trump's handling of the economy actually has fallen from 68% to 78%, I'm sorry, to 63%. That's a pretty big drop for Republicans during a Republican presidency, Ryan. Yeah, and I'm looking at the chart that he sent us to. But it doesn't look like people are happy. Compared to the Biden era. Yeah. I mean, so they're slightly happier than a few months ago. Yeah. But like they're back to where they were and they're under where they were in like 2020.

one. Yeah. Well, and people were happy during the pandemic. And Trump won. Look how people happy people weren't Trump won. But I think that's, I'll send this to the producers so we can put it up this little chart. Yeah. So this is an important point though, because Republicans spent the Biden years making a very, actually a very reasonable argument that it was politically disastrous for Biden and then Kamala Harris to run on their economy when consumers didn't feel great about it. When consumers were upset about inflation, the Biden administration and then Kamala Harris, we're trying to say, your eyes are lying to you, right? Don't believe what you think you see in the economy. Don't believe what you say you're feeling. Just believe us. Things are good.

That's a mistake that the Trump administration is making now as they try to substantial bleeding from the midterms and offset problems from the Iran War, which they thought would be, I mean, they thought Iran War aside, if that had never happened, they thought people were going to get their tax refunds in April and May. and feel really good about the tax cut bill. And now, most calculations show that the rise in gas prices because of the Iran War has offset the savings from the quote, one big, beautiful bill for the average American and gas prices. This is another clip we want to bring you from a CNN analyst.

What is going to happen in gas prices, even if there is a lasting ceasefire negotiated D3? So how long is it going to be before we actually start to see some relief? Look at this. This is where we were before the war started. This is where we are right now. There's a huge amount of time that it's going to take, according to the futures market, before we get back down to that sub-70, an oil level.

Look at this. 20-32. Two. So you want $3 gas again. You're going to have to wait maybe six years. And so what does that mean for everything? Look at this. Produce, clothing, airfare, gas, shipping. All of these rely on high gas prices, high oil prices. All of them are going to continue to be more expensive as long as this lasts. I'm sorry. Did I hear you correctly? Did you say 2032? Yeah. So if you look at this, this tells you. what the oil market is predicting prices will be in the future. We don't get back down to this level until 2032. That's the prediction. Wall Street correspondent Ryan Grimm, standing by now to react to these oil futures. What do we think? Is that a reliable metric of what we can expect to see? I mean, we'll see, but those high numbers are going to push an enormous amount of investment

into clean energy. Ironically, because Trump, as one of his first acts, overturned the IRA and ripped out all of the government support, the previous kind of neoliberal approach to addressing climate change was to do a carbon tax, which would increase the price of all carbon-based fuels, and oil, gas, and that increase would then kind of pressure consumers,

and businesses to move into the clean energy market. Like, that was the original approach. People rioted in the streets over it, and so policymakers were like, oh, actually, like, making people's lives harder is not a popular political thing to do, and so our project is going to fail. Let's instead just do a lot of government investment and incentivizing into the clean energy industry, and then Trump ripped that apart. What Trump has done is gone back to the original carbon.

tax. What he describes on the screen there is a six-year unrepealable carbon tax that was passed without going through Congress, without the president's signature, and you cannot repeal it. So the carbon tax is here, and it will have the policy effect of encouraging consumers to use less energy because they'll be broke, to buy more energy-efficient vehicles, and and other devices, and also for businesses to have some certainty to say, oh, well, the price per kilowatt of electricity is this. I can actually jump in with my clean energy investment here. So Trump, again, one of the greatest eco-terrorists to have ever lived.

The greatest, actually. Thank him later. He's not one of the greatest. Like, he's in a league of his own. there was that book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Just elect Trump. He blew up them all. You didn't just do one pipeline.

Yeah. Well, okay, so on that point, Ryan, what are some of the reasons that it's going to take a long time? Actually, even just as we're talking here, U.S. oil falls below $89 on report Iran agreement would restore Hormuz traffic in one month. That's literally the headline on CNBC right now, as I'm reading from a headline we're about to talk about. But why is it that it's kind of like turning the Titanic around to restore gas prices to where they were? Well, it's been the greatest disruption of the oil market in the history of since the Industrial Revolution. And the technical aspects of getting refineries back up, like in the Middle East. And like the depth, strategic reserves are like, have been burned through pretty significantly.

Huge criticism of Joe Biden, by the way, from Republicans. And so, and then Trump has been releasing them like crazy. The Asian, Asian markets have been pouring out their strategic reserves. China has been, you know, keeping its domestic. And so, like, the amount of dislocation is more than we're feeling at the pump. Like, we're seeing a slight increase, but we're not feeling like the depth of the shortage that is out there. So you have to fill that. And we blew up a whole, we and Iran blew up a bunch of oil and gas. infrastructure throughout the region that produces oil and gas. Meanwhile, Ukraine has destroyed, what, like 40% of Russia's oil and gas infrastructure and it's blown up its export capacity in the Black Sea. These things in the physical world matter. We're also seeing it reflected in D4. The one way that Americans put more money in their pockets is as they get more equity in their in their home they refinance and pull a little money out gives you some breathing room uh demand for refinancing dropped 18 percent according to uh CNBC as mortgage rates hit their

highest level since August if you look at January and my wife's a realtor so we tracked this pretty closely like things were January February like things were finally starting to calm down and like rates were rates were pushing to five like high four wars. Like that's that was about to like uncork the real estate market and we're now back to well over six. And so it's and it's frozen again. Things are tough and Republicans are in an even tougher position having to pretend they're not tough if that's what they choose to do

because they have to defend an unpopular war as people are telling them it's showing up in just about every poll like pretty much every single poll that they're unhappy with the state of the economy. This is obviously true. And again, during the Biden administration, Republicans had a political advantage in saying Democrats are downplaying what you say you feel and what you're experiencing.

And so they're now finding themselves in the exact same position. Yes, indeed. All right. Well, Ryan, let's bring in our guest, or I'm sorry, let's talk a little bit more about elections. Then we're going to bring in our guests to talk about some elections as well, some really interesting stuff happening

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Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast?

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a... We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys?

I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. We were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.

I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast.

Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, some historic results in Texas's Senate primary last night. The campaign between James Talarico and Ken Paxton is already on. We're going to bring you some of how both campaigns are already going after each other. But first, E1, let's just marinate for a moment on what happened to John Cornyn, a multi-term incumbent, a very, very,

establishment Republican, very, very neo-conservative and hawkish, he got absolutely blown out by Attorney General, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was endorsed at the last moment by Donald Trump. He would have won without the endorsement in all likelihood. Trump right now is also already offering some kind words for John Cornyn saying that he's his friend, I think is what he said. He's still his friend. But the results here were really, really interesting. And it's setting up what could be a competitive race for Democrats. We'll talk about that in just one moment, but let's start here with this clip of Fox News. This is Bill Hammer explaining Trump has already, you'll be shocked to know, posted screenshots from this segment on True Social,

because Bill Hammer is walking through Trump's track record of endorsements in the 26 primaries. And we talked about Massey. We've talked about that Massey race a lot. We talked about it last week when it happened. We've talked about Bill Cassidy. Let's zoom out and look at exactly how successful Trump has been in 2026. This is his scorecard, okay? He has endorsed eight governors.

Now, some of these races weren't real close and had a lot of competition, but some of them did. I mean, we saw what happened in Louisiana, the primary of Bill Cassidy. We saw what happened a week ago tonight with Tom Massey in Kentucky. And now we're seeing it again tonight, okay, in Texas. Governor level, Trump endorsed eight, he won eight times. U.S. House, 101 endorsed. He won, yeah, sorry, 101 endorsed in the House, and he won 101. Let me put on the pencil right here and show you this.

U.S. Senate, Sean, he has endorsed eight candidates. And prior to tonight, he had won eight times. And now you can take the endorsement from eight to nine endorsed and from eight to nine winner. Ken Paxton was outspent nine to one. Got the endorsement from Trump, got the endorsement of Wesley Hunt, a congressman who got knocked out two and a half months ago. And now we got this set up in taxing in Telarico.

Many Republicans felt if John Corning could win tonight that he could be an easy winner over Telarico. We'll never know that now. And a lot of Republicans felt that they could save a lot of money to if Cornyn won. But that did not happen. Here's what will happen, Sean, in November. Texas, probably the most expensive Senate race that we have seen ever.

So Trump posted that on true social by saying thank you to America for, what does this, let me read it exactly. Thank you, America for this unprecedented support, President DJT. Now, he also said, we'll explain a little bit why in, again, just a moment, he congratulated John Cornyn for having run a strong and powerful race. Just keep that in your mind. We're going to watch now how candidates, Paxton, Cornyn, and then Talarico responded to these results last night, which, again, were an absolute blowout. My opponent is the most extreme radical that Democrats have ever nominated. He's even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is.

He goes by a few names that you may all have heard of. Some people know him as tofu Tala Rico. Some people call him six-gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talofriko. And others refer to him simply as low Tateau. I've spent most of my time in the Senate building the Republican Party in Texas and in the U.S. Senate. And I've always supported the Republican ticket. And I intend to do so again in this general election.

I've said throughout this race that I trust. the voters of Texas, and they've made their decision. Ken Paxton embodies everything that's wrong with our political system. He was impeached by his own party for using his public office to enrich himself and his donors at our expense. And that kind of corruption is the rot at the core of this broken system. It's why we can't afford anything. It's why we can't get ahead no matter how hard.

We work because billionaires buy these politicians like Ken Paxton, and then these puppet politicians turn around and rig the rules of the game in favor the billionaires at our expense. And so this has been happening for 50 years in this country. Mega donors and their puppet politicians have been stealing from the American people, from the people of Texas, stealing the wealth that we created through their bribes, their bailouts, and their billionaire tax breaks. and so I look forward to not only running against Kim Paxton,

but running against the broken system that he embodies. Now, this is an almost 30-point blowout. Right now, as the results are, as the results stand, we're talking Paxton margins in the 60s. Cornon margins at 36.3%. Paxton right now is 63.7%. Last I checked, Cornyn had actually barely won Dallas, which is shocking, but, I mean, it's not shocking,

but it's shocking if you're John Cornyn. A couple of points that Taniel made on X. He said, as a couple of weeks ago, no U.S. Senator had lost re-election in a primary since 2012. Now, GOP voters have ousted two senators in over 10 days, over 10 days. Cassidy in Louisiana and Cornyn in Texas, Daniel added, Cornyn is on track to suffer the largest defeat for a U.S. senator in a primary since 1978. And in that 1978, that was a Democratic primary in Montana won by Max Baucus. The defeated incumbent had just been appointed, nothing like the longtime Cornyn, Seth Keschel on X, also added the Paxton margins in El Paso, Hidalgo, Harris, and most of the Rio Grande Valley

are outrunning his overall statewide margin and are highly suggested that a MAGA candidate retains high Latino support in trends in line with trends developing over the past six years. That's a pretty interesting point, actually, and we'll see how much that stands, but at least some evidence here. And Ryan, there's so much more. we could talk about the dynamics between Paxton and Tala Rico. I'm sorry, Paxon and Cornyn. Very interesting. Paxon has a colorful history, to say the least. I do want to put E4 up on the screen. This is the Heritage Action Scorecard of John Cornyn. He has a score of 35% in this most late in this latest session.

That is basically just a barometer. His lifetime score is 68% pretty low. That's just a barometer of how often he is voting with the kind of grassroots. Heritage Action isn't the same as the Heritage Foundation. It's obviously part of the Heritage Foundation, but it scores on largely a lot of grassroots votes that senators are taking to be in line with the base. The NRC came in for Cornyn. They came in for Cassidy. National Republicans put their support behind corners. They thought he was more electable. So let me just stop with this info dump and get your reaction to this blowout for Paxton. Yeah, Cornyn, he is a very talented politician. It's like kind of like, He's an oil guy.

He came out of the kind of legal, Texas legal world, which is its own kind of mafia. Country club Republican type. Yes. And... Very hawkish on Iran, very hawkish in Ukraine. He's a lot of his... Old country club Republican, yeah. Yeah, his heritage score, I was looking at.

Some of it was his ongoing support for the war in Ukraine, which was being scored as a negative. Yeah, that would track. And, you know, number two in the Senate for a stretch, nearly became, you know, a majority. or minority leader. Just a year ago. To see him get, you know, he beat Paxton in the first round by like seven points or something like that.

Yeah, it was split with Colin Allred. It was a three-way race. And it looked like Trump would might endorse Cornyn and push Paxton out. And Paxton was like, I'm staying in no matter what Trump does. And then Trump had this crazy thing like, hey, if you pass

this like, you know, the Safe Act, the voting, reform he wants? Yeah. That he would endorse Cornyn. Yeah, he said he would drop out of the race. Yeah. And oh yes, that Paxton would drop out of the race and that really worked on Trump because Trump was like, yeah, do that.

Well, worked on voters too because I think what people see in John Cornyn is this guy who's been in the Senate for the sake of power. Right, and he doesn't really care about what they care about. And Paxton doing that endears himself to Texas Republican voters. If you're voting in the Republican primary in Texas, you are probably somebody who cares about the

And here you have somebody who appears to be, I mean, it's obviously a campaign move, but he appears to be sort selflessly putting his own campaign on the line to get something that they care about past. And it's very interesting with Paxton because there's a, I always cite that Thomas Massey Crazy's Son of a Bitch in the Race line. That's what Paxton is seen as. People don't love Ken Paxton, but the NRC, for example, has been already, they're already embracing Paxton, of course.

But they were running against Paxton on a very personal level. I'm looking right here at a July 10th, 2025 rapid response release from NRC giving some background on Ken Paxton, who they said, quote, put his family through. What he's put his family through is truly repulsive and discussing. No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has. And we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family during this difficult time. They said, yes, they've scrubbed a lot of this from their websites. I went and checked this post yesterday because this. guys from American Bridge, accurate. They are scrubbing from their website, their attacks on

Paxton. So NRC, for example, said Angela Paxton's divorce petition accuses Ken Paxton of adultery and says the couple stopped living together in June 2024. Paxon's former chief of staff testified that Paxton confessed to her and other staff members he was having an affair with his mistress. Impeachment articles in the Texas legislature alleged Paxton used the alias, Dave Pee, for a fake Uber account he used to secretly see his mistress. Paxton was also accused of using secret emails and burner phones to try and cover his tracks. Paxton allegedly used his pal, Nate Paul, who was recently convicted of bank fraud to help hide his affair and provide his mistress with employment in Austin so that Paxton could be closer to her.

20 articles of impeachment were filed against Paxton in the Texas legislature over alleged bribery, abuse of power, obstruction of justice. Paxson was indicted on security fraud charges that were later dropped after he paid $300,000 in restitution and completed community service. He's got a mugshot. And finally, from the NRC, Paxon refused to disclose multiple out-of-state properties and his 2023 financial disclosure, including $1.6 million luxury hideaway. Okay, so this is what James Talleyco now has to work with.

To be clear, he would have had a whole lot to work with John Cornyn. There's absolutely no question about that. John Cornyn is so pro-war, so, so very pro-war. He has all kinds of things that are problematic with, Republican voters, but also probably with the general population. So, Ryan, Tala Rico is now already trying to make, he's trying to make amends with coordinate voters. He said last night, you have a place in our campaign.

This is the Senate map. This was updated last night. Texas now lean are, not likely R. And Ryan, we have some polls from around the country that show, I mean, how seriously the Senate is in jeopardy for Republicans? There's a lot of time left in this race. Iran Workin'n, things could change. We talked earlier in the show about how hard it is to turn the ship around.

But there's just no question that this puts Texas in play. I would still say it's one of the least likely to flip, but it's definitely in play. And they have to flip, what, four seats because they're down three. They have to take J.D. Vance out of that catbird seat. I still find it hard to believe that Democrats are going to win Texas. But good Lord. if Democrats were ever going to win Texas, like this would kind of be the way to do it.

Now, Tala Rico may have, you know, too much kind of 2020 era, you know, woke funny stuff that they can hit him with. Yeah. Because Tala Rico's big thing is I'm going to win independence and some Republicans, but then when they see his like past stuff, vegan and like, yesterday he's like, I eat barbecue. I've been eating barbecue for six generations. But then there's the clip thing.

We did a vegan campaign. And that's going to work on some Texans. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The mask isn't going to help, even though that was, you know, during the time people were masked up, but not most people in Texas. A lot of people in Texas were not.

Yeah. We'll see. So be a tough one for him. So, yeah. So, and while two Senate Republicans have been beaten, I would even put the number at three because Tom Tillis, the North Carolina Center was, you know, forced to. basically retire as a result. So we could put up E10. This is North Carolina polls. The latest poll has Roy Cooper up by 11 in North Carolina. Making it is maybe the most likely flip that Democrats have

and then Maine being this maybe the second most likely opportunity. But interestingly, Alaska, which you saw on that map was leaning Republican. New Pole, we can put up E-9 here. Mary Peltola, very popular, former member of Congress. She's not in Congress anymore, right? And she's still in Congress. Anyway, she's running for Senate, and she, remember she won her Alaska House. Oh, yeah, she's been out since 25.

Yeah, she won her Alaska House race as a pro-fish candidate. which I kind of love. You're a former fishing guide. Yeah, I love. I'm pro fish. Although, I kill a lot of them. So some. Not catch and release in Ryan Grimm's boat.

Some hypocrisy there. Plenty. Catch and release too. So New Pole has her up 4844. Ooh. That's margin of error, I think. Alaska polling's hard, but yeah. But so, you know, certainly in the race, Ohio, we can put up E-11,

Sherrod Brown, very popular Democrat in Ohio. Ohio, E11 though has him. He's been up in a couple of polls, down in most of them. Ohio might be just too Republican to overcome even despite this, you know, despite the blue wave that we're likely to see. And Brown is getting older. He's not the same guy, not the same campaigner that he used to be. And then, of course, there's E12, which is in Nebraska. The fascinating poll came out in that race, showing that if Pete Ricketts, the Republican, was put up against the Democratic nominee, he'd win by something like 16 points, but he was down five or so to Osborne, five or six to Osborne, and the Democratic nominee has dropped out and endorsed Osborne.

Interestingly, that that Democratic nominee, Cindy... She said she's going to drop out. She just endorsed the independent candidate in Nebraska 1, Austin Allman, who was my old intern. No way. At the intercept. He launched, but in that, there is a Democratic candidate. And so Austin did this differently. Osborne was always the independent candidate, and Democrats were like, all right, we can't be reggots.

We're just going to give up. Yeah. Well, and Osborne always had. support from, like, what's the same people backing Platner, right? Some of the same consultants. Fight. Yeah. The consultancy is called fight. Populist left. But Osborne himself is not a leftist. Right. It would be fair to say. He has some heterodox positions for sure. Yeah. But I actually think that's, I mean, a sign of Democrats understand, not Democrats, but some in the consultant class starting to understand a bit more how to knock down Republicans like Pete Ricketts.

Yeah. And it's the same thing with Republicans like Susan Collins. There's almost a like, like a maturity to it. I don't want to sound patronizing, but there was so much just inability to overcome some of these cultural gaps between a guy like Dan Osborne who might be literally working on the factory floor, what was Kellogg's, right? And has just different cultural opinions than most elite Democrats and most leftists, frankly. There was a lack of like ability or willingness to overcome some of those, like to build some of those bridges. And now I think that's kind of been like out the window or at least in some of these races they're realizing hey there's a better way or yeah they're like you know what we have zero chance so what do we have to

lose right he's kind of the economic leftism and cultural centrism or like center rightism that's reflective i think where a lot of americans are right now especially in states with heavy rural areas um and big like agricultural interests and that sort of thing so it's really that that is i think this is one of the most interesting races to watch. I definitely want to do a Nebraska trip as we continue covering this race. Our guy, Julian was just out there. Yeah, I saw. I saw. A couple of the Texas races. Yeah, I was going to ask. Al Green. Yeah, so we put up E7. Long time anti-Zionist, among other things, Democrat, Al Green, faced a challenger who had a

bunch of crypto money and had the support of pro-Israel lobby and was being. beaten fairly handily. Al Green, a very eccentric kind of... So, St. Louis, he was like waving his cane at Trump during the State of Union. I saw somebody pointing out that there were five... So when Marjorie Taylor Green introduced her ban on weapon amendment to ban weapons sales to Israel, five people voted for it. Marjorie Taylor Green, Al Green, Thomas Massey, Yep.

Summerlee and one other. Who was the other one? You're like Rick Perry right now. Or would she get to leave maybe? Or Ilhan Omar. Yeah, that sounds right. And Marjorie Taylor Green, Al Green, and Thomas Massey gone. Summerlee, I guess the good news out of that,

Summerlee played a huge role in electing Chris Rebb in Philadelphia, who would add to that vote total. Right. I guess Talib and Omar didn't both vote for him. I'm going to look that one up. So the New York Times portrayed it as like this generational divide, like Al Green's old and the crypto APEC person's young. It's like I think there's something more going on than just age in this one.

And then Jasmine Crockett came in for Christian Meney. Do we have that? Al Green's opponent. I don't think we have the video, but Jasmine Crockett cut an ad for Meney. For the crypto groups. Which is amazing because one of the big criticisms of Crockett in the Talarico primary was that she was a crypto. Right. Congresswoman.

Crypto spent like $5 million, I think, in this race or something, some insane amount of money. Yeah, and they're doing that with certain candidates around the country. They have like endless fake money. So they're like. Yeah, it's a little San Banking Free D. Yeah, let's get this crypto critic out of here. Marine Galindo E8. I don't know that we covered, or Crystal and Sager covered the story.

It was so bizarre. She was saying weird things about wanting to put Zionists. In concentration camps? Yeah. Weird, weird candidate. Some strange last-minute money came into this race. From Republicans. Yeah, from Republicans.

So she lost, right? She lost by about 20 points to Johnny Garcia. So Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief. They did not want to see her sneak into the general election. And leftists started to pay attention. I saw Hassan was coming out against Galindo and other Sam Piker and other people. Yeah, really? Concentration camps?

Yeah. Get out of here with this. Yeah. We should also mention Chip Roy E6, just to, again, come full circle with what we were talking about in regards to Trump endorsements. Chip Roy is one of the most people are going to get angry at me for saying this, spiritually MAGA Republicans in Congress. Because Chip Roy is sort of like a Mike Lee. He was Ted Cruz's chief of staff, actually, here in D.C., but he lost his primary for Texas Attorney General. You can see his voters supported him, like in his.

district, that's what the map shows on the screen, but he lost pretty, you know, pretty, by a healthy margin to a MAGA-backed candidate because Chip Roy did come out against Trump a couple of times, like occasionally, I think is how Politico described it, but in ways that made people in the MAGA base feel like he didn't, he wasn't listening to them, he was giving them the middle finger, he didn't care about them. And that is, I mean, MAGA is extremely sensitive to that. And just to be charitable for one moment, the reason MAGA has some of these litmus tests, just think pragmatically, is because in Trump's first term, there were people who were genuinely, like, trying to subvert his quote agenda, including his chiefs of staff,

like John Kelly, who turned out to be disloyal, very disloyal, as Trump would say. And so that's actually why MAGA goes along with Trump on some of these litmus tests, even if Thomas Massey and Chip Roy are kind of more MAGA than Trump sometimes, which is a misnomer because Trump is maga, but are sort of more down the line, in line with economic, not economic, but with kind of right-wing populism, how it's defined. Chip Roy is, you know, he's gotten, I think, I saw A-Pack tracker, like $17,000 from A-PAC over time, but he's also gone against the Republican establishment on a lot of war questions, a lot of spending questions. He's a fiscal hawk. He was like the last remaining member of the Freedom Caucus that kind of represents what the Freedom Caucus used to be

It's just he's out he's out he couldn't even make it through the primary Is it all Trump it's just the cure Trump a little bit of criticism with Trump and that's it for him Yeah, I think that's really all it was because it feels like you might be someone that can't be trusted And this is again I'm just it's I actually have have always admired Chip Roy because he's one of those people who's very Prince Bold like he's not going against some of the people you believe one of the very very few people, you believe he believes what he's saying. So you can disagree with him, but you're not doubting that Chip Roy believes what he, he says he believes. And then he votes as he believes, like unspending and those sorts of things.

And so he's massy-like in that sense, but more conservative and less libertarians. So it's when you criticize Trump, people say, all right, then you're going to undermine that you might undermine the Trump agenda. And I'm not taking that risk anymore because they believe the left has gotten to a point where they want to subvert the left at every single stop with every breath. And they don't want someone who might be siding against Trump. It feels like that means they're siding against them. And people take it really personally.

So that's what's going on in MAGA. I don't agree with a lot of it. Obviously, I just said, you know. How are MAGA voters going to figure out what to think when Trump stops telling them what to think? He will not stop telling them what to think. He will do it from beyond the grave. There will be Trump, GPT. Like Lenin, like reading through.

Exactly. They will go. Trump will be entombed like Lenin and people will go there. thing. So anybody who wants to cite Trump will be able to cite him. Yeah, that's true. Also, there will be Trump GPT. You just wait. It'll tell us. All right, that was a long block, but there were so many interesting races last night, both on the left and the right. But I think it's, it's fair to say, Trump's 100% record Senate House primaries right now tells you where the basis.

And we ironically don't do enough kind of election content here, so we're going to make sure you get more than your fill today. Let's move on to an interesting race in California that pits the D-Triple-C against the progressive populist world, and Grand Platner getting hit by the Democratic establishment. A little too relaxed during yoga? That's embarrassing.

You know what's not? Debt. Consolidate your debt with a loan from FIG. No early repayment fees and low interest rates, so you can pay off your debt faster. Borrow better with FIG. Visit FIG, Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what?

We have some big news. What's the news, name? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. And, well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down?

Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel

and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In just a moment, we're going to be joined by Randy Villegas, who is a Democratic congressional candidate in California, trying to flip a red seat. He's opposed by the D-Triple C in that race, but is actually polling a little bit ahead. He has the backing of the Working Families Party, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Progressive Caucus.

And so it's a real establishment kind of outsider contest. the same kind of contest we saw in Maine between Graham Platner and Janet Mills, which we all saw how that one ended with Mills suspending her campaign and Platner cruising to victory. But some in Washington are not yet willing to take the L. One of those is Jake Ockin-Claw, who represents a very blue district in Massachusetts. The idea that somebody from Massachusetts is going to have influence in Maine without moving there is a little bit comical in its own right. There was one cycle he didn't have an opponent,

but apparently he has thoughts on how to flip a red Senate seat. So here is Ockin-Claas getting himself in a little bit of trouble with some elements of the Democratic Party. Find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying. I hope Maine voters agree with me. I think there would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to think that Graham Platner's brand of of the Democratic Party is what wins us durable majorities throughout this country.

Wow. Massachusetts Congressman Jake Ockin-Claas, thank you so much for being with us. And so the next day yesterday, he cleaned up some of these, some of those comments and said that, you know, if Grand Platner does eventually win the Democratic primary, which he hopes he won't, then he will oppose Susan Collins, but he kind of didn't really come out and say that he would support Platner. You also then had a couple of other Democratic officials kind of agreeing with him. Let's roll F2 here. This is a Biden administration official.

Are his past comments disqualifying for Democrats? And if they're not, should they be? Well, I agree with Congressman Jake Ockin-Klaas, and he runs a Dem Majority PAC. So he spends a lot of his time not only representing his district, but also crisscrossing the country, talking to local Democratic coalitions. And so he knows what will get people elected in the Democratic Party. And he's also a Jewish man.

So I don't think there's anybody in the Democratic Party who should feel pressure to support Graham Platner. I certainly don't. And just because Senator Elizabeth Warren says that that's her kind of man doesn't mean that has to apply to everybody. My kind of senators are the ones that come from Georgia,

Senator Ossoff and Warnock, and they have different principles and values than Graham Platner. So I think that Bernie's, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will just have to carry that themselves. So vote blue no matter who, unless it's somebody you don't like. Another one, Melissa DeRosa, who was a former chief of staff to Andrew Cuomo, famous for many things, or infamous for many things, among them leading a smear campaign against Cuomo's sexual harassment victims. She believes that her ethical compass

does not point towards supporting Platner. Let's roll F3 here. No, absolutely. I mean, the main race really demonstrates the civil war that's happening within the Democratic Party. And there are a lot of Democrats, moderate Democrats, like myself, who will not cry tears should we lose Maine. I mean, that would be a pickup to begin with. Emily, first of all, as Ben Dreyfus pointed out on Twitter, cry tears? What else do you cry? She's not going to cry tears. Tears of blood?

She's going to cry. She's going to cry. Yes. So the Republicans have done, as Dave Weigel pointed out, a pretty good. good job of like ginning up articles about like new Reddit posts that they've found. And generally and and setting like oh at Democrats are in disarray. And this is just the beginning. And so Aachenclos, De Rosa and the former Biden administration official, what's her name? Yeah, she has. Yameseaga Boalai, I believe. She, you know, they kind of feed into this idea.

But I think, and I'm curious for your take on this, I think they are all doing advertising. Yes. For Plattner. 100%. A Massachusetts, a smug Massachusetts guy doesn't support the main candidate. A Biden administration official doesn't support the main candidate. And Cuomo's chief of staff. On Fox News.

On Fox News. People say judge me by my enemies. I feel like if you're an independent or even a Republican, if you're a Democrat in Maine, you're already locked in on Plattner. If you're an independent or Republican and you're seeing that these party hacks, are against Platner, yeah, to me, that's like, that actually helps Platner because a real risk for him as if he gets lumped as just actually just some standard Democrat. Yeah, and I think it's going to depend on how much the Democratic primary dynamic between Plattener and Mills translates into the full state dynamic. And my guess is that it'll actually be somewhat similar because Susan Collins is such a, she is such a, like, avatar of, of the DC political establishment in so many ways.

Now, she has the good flip side of that coin and that she can convince people, it's all for their benefit that she has been, you know, she's genial, she's been in the Senate and has been able to bring things back to them, back to Maine, which is not something that every establishment hack actually can do. Like, this was a huge problem for John Cornyn. People just felt like, no, I don't even think

that you give a damn about me. Susan Collins is a little bit, I think as a talented retail politician, a little bit more capable of making that case to people. But I agree with you completely that it's advertising for Platner because Platner is not trying to act like he's some third-way candidate at all. He's doing the Ronald Reagan, bold colors, not pale pastels, test. Like, that's what he's putting into this campaign is that I am unvarnished

and I detest the establishment. They are lying. They are bad. He's not trying to do a third-way thing. So I actually think a lot of the dynamics we talked about in the elections block. I mean, it reminds me of Thomas Mass. quote when he's going around Kentucky during the Tea Party years, thinking everybody's getting very excited about limited government and libertarian values. And he says, actually, it turns out,

they were just looking for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. Some of that is happening on the left right now, too. They want to, like, blow up the political establishment figuratively. They want someone to give a middle finger to the political establishment. And I don't, I think it would be a mistake to say that's just on the left. So I think what would be a mistake. So I think One of the big questions for Platner is just whether he can, whether his economic message is going to resonate more with people who might have reservations about where he comes from on some cultural issues. But if Collins, I mean, Collins doesn't ever want to run a cultural war campaign. So I don't think she's going to want to touch a lot of those issues, to be honest. I don't think she's going to want to talk about.

They can still do the ads, right? They can do the ads, but I don't know that Collins is going to want to lean super hard into that. And it's also a very favorable environment for the economic message of Graham Platner, who is not Sarah Gideon. It's much better, I think, messenger on the economic stuff than Sarah Gideon. So it's just you're totally underestimating how angry your base is, if you're Melissa DeRosa or Ockin-Claas. Yes, do people necessarily want democratic socialism? Do all Democrats necessarily want that? No.

but they want anything but the status quo. Anything but the status quo. And the culture, maybe the culture war is tough for her because of her, she's outwardly pro-choice. She voted for Kavanaugh, and she swore to everyone that she trusted Kavanaugh that he would not overturn Roe v. Wade. He promised it was settled law.

This is the first time she's run since then. So, yeah, if she tries to do too much culture war, it leads into that uncomfortable moment for her. Yeah, that's a good point. Because again, I think, and this is something I've been talking about with Platner, is I actually think he has a better message dealing with some of the, he hasn't talked much about it, but dealing with some of the, like, trans sports questions, whatever it is. I think we asked him about this once, actually. I have to go back and look, but he's not like apologizing or trying to do a third way thing on it. Whereas with Collins,

she really does not want to talk about what she thinks on some of these culture issues. So while most of Maine may disagree with Graham Platner on that issue, they're going to believe that he believes what he's saying. And that's different with Collins, because people are going to say, well, then why did you vote for Brett Kavanaugh? Why did you lead to the overturning of Roe? And she has a hard time triangulating on that because she doesn't want to talk about what she really believes. It gets her in trouble, whereas Platner is just totally yoloing, like, because that's what people want to see is just something that's a little bit more authentic right now. And so Alkin Claus, here's his climb down.

He said, Susan Collins is a rubber stamp, because he was, tons of people were calling for him to be primaried and discovered that he has a primary challenger. Jordan Poulos, I think his name is. Doesn't have much money, but now has a decent amount of attention. Susan Collins is a rubber stamp. This is Alken Claus. Susan Collins is a rubber stamp for the worst administration in history.

Claims that I would endorse her, implicit or otherwise, ignore my track record, supporting Democrats to take back both chambers. As I said months ago, I find Platner's Nazi tattoo and his commentary about it personally disqualifying. If it were me, I'd vote for someone else in the Maine Democratic primary. Regardless of what happens in Maine,

Democrats need to take back the Senate, and I'll keep working hard to make it happen. So basically, he's sort of grudgingly saying that he will support Platner when he wins the Democratic primary, which is like weird because it's also like, who cares if you do? Like, people only care, people only care if he's against him.

Yeah, that's a good point. If he went and campaigned for Platner in Maine, it would hurt him. Yeah. Just go back to neutral. Yeah, I mean, people represent different areas of the country, and it's fine. But, and so last week, you guys might remember, we talked about the Iowa Senate race, where Chuck Schumer has spent $9 million. Mm-hmm.

And the Super PAC, a conglomerate called Majority Democrats, was arguing that Schumerant, candidate was more electable based on the fact that he had flipped a red district. But that was a chat GPT and Wikipedia error because they actually renumbered the districts and he actually had never flipped a red district. Alkin Clause is the chair of majority Democrats, that organization that made that $9 million blunder. So, you know, spare us this political expertise over here, Jake. All right.

Well, Ryan booked a very interesting candidate here to discuss some of these dynamics. Thanks. Ryan, let's bring in our guest. Joining us more to discuss this is Randy Villegas, who is a Democratic congressional candidate out in California, a professor and an auto shop owner in Bakersfield. Randy, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Auto shop owner in Bakersfield sounds like a very fun job. But hot. I bet hot. I bet hot in the summer. Good Lord. 100%. Some cool cars that come in, I bet.

I'm sure. I'm sure. So we're going to get to your race at a moment. D-Triple C has endorsed Jasmine Baines, your opponent, whereas you have the endorsement of like Bernie Sanders, Progressive Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, like a whole range of kind of progressive groups that have consolidated behind you. It's really pitting the kind of D.C. establishment

against the kind of, you know, growing kind of populist progressive movement. But I wanted to get your reaction to what we saw unfold in Massachusetts in Maine, where you had Massachusetts, it's Congressman Jake Ockin-Clawfulf, the head of this Super PAC conglomerate called Majority Democrats, kind of ironically coming out against the majority for Democrats by saying that Platner is disqualified because of the tattoo he has now. He's done some cleanup since then about that. But he's not alone among a couple of other establishment, like adjacent figures going on Fox or CNN, and, you know, griping about Plattner and saying they wouldn't be crying if he lost.

What do you make of, first, the recruitment of Janet Mills against Plattner, then, you know, he beats her so handily, she has to drop out. And now this kind of resistance to consolidate behind the presumptive Democratic nominee, which is kind of the opposite of what is demanded when the left is beaten in a primary. Yeah, I think you're seeing something similar to play out in my race in that it's just another classic example of DC elites and insiders who are completely out of touch with what's actually going on on the ground and people's sentiment on the ground. The fact that you have, you know, these DC insiders trying to put their entire hand on the scale to, you know, tip the scales in the favor of their candidate is just ridiculous and outright undemocratic of the Democratic Party. And, you know, we're seeing that people are ready for an economic populist. message that says that these billionaires and organizations like APAC don't give a shit about you.

And maybe that makes some members of Congress uncomfortable and maybe some members of leadership uncomfortable. But it's the reality of what people are feeling here on the ground. And, you know, people have growth. I think, especially as we're starting to see young people and more millennials and Gen Z running for office, you know, whose records on the internet maybe, you know, started from when they were toddlers. People, I think are also. waking up to the fact that we're not going to have these, you know, candidates who are perfect by any means and that people are actually capable of growth, both as individuals, as human beings, on people's policy positions. And so we actually need to make sure that we have fighters in Congress

and Democrats who are going to stand up to this administration and not fold like we see so many establishment Democrats doing. And actually, I'm super curious about your experience just as a business owner in Bakersfield, what you hear on the ground, and now you're a candidate, too. So you're hearing a lot from different people in the community. What you're hearing on the ground, how is it different from what you hear from national democratic leadership about what needs to happen or what voters really want or how to communicate, what sort of policies to offer? Is there quite a disconnect? It seems like you were just implying that there was between what you're seeing and then what you hear from kind of national Democrats in Washington, D.C. and other places.

100%. People are struggling right now when it comes to housing, when it comes to gas prices, and that's why, you know, our platform has been resonating with people on the ground. And, you know, a populist platform actually resonating across the political spectrum. You know, I've talked to Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike who recognize how the economy and our health care system is rigged against the working class. You know, I'm very blunt when I talk about health care. Valley fever, diabetes, cancer doesn't give a shit who you voted for in the last election. It does not care what your party ID is, but we know that everybody gets sick, which is why we need

healthcare for all, in my opinion, Medicare for all. And same thing when it comes to housing, you know, your rent, your mortgage, your utilities, don't ask you for your party ID and neither will this campaign because we're truly focused on fighting for every working class person. I think a great example of that is housing, for example. I want to make sure that when I get to Congress, I'm fighting to stop and ban corporations from buying single family homes before our families can. You know, you have Wall Street buying up entire neighborhoods trying to force people into becoming renters. And it's ironic. You know,

who agrees with me on this issue? President Trump, who tweeted her truth about this a couple months ago and who disagrees with me on this issue, my corporate-backed Democratic opponent. When there was a bill in the legislature and the California legislature to limit corporations to only own up to a thousand in single family homes, she voted against that bill. And so again, I also have the endorsement of a local Republican mayor. It's not this fight about left versus right. It truly is us versus them, you know, working families in the Central Valley and across this country who've been left behind by politicians in both parties who will cater to the highest bidder. And so Jasmine Baines, your opponent, actually, I want people to just appreciate this for its for its own right without

describing it. Let's roll this thought of your opponent. Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Yes. Yes. Thank you both. So Jasmine Baines was asked, as you saw,

is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Answered yes. Was then subsequently endorsed by Democratic majority for Israel, which is an APAC offshoot, and backed off of that and said, you know what? I think I think I heard the question wrong. The irony is that in 2023, she spearheaded a resolution in the Assembly in California, declaring the 1984 killing of 30,000 Sikhs in India to be a genocide.

So what has been the effect of the DMFI spending? I know Amar Kampanajar, another Democrat nearby, who's also endorsed against D-T-Rble-C as endorsed. against him, has had, I think, millions at this point spent by DMFI against him. What are you seeing in terms of kind of the money coming against you, both from Democratic Party itself, but also DMFI and pro-Israel groups? Yeah, it's clear that, you know, the D-Triple-C getting involved in this race, they are looking for somebody who's going to bend the knee to party leadership, it's a corporate PACs, and they know that I'm not going to be that.

I'm going to be a strong and independent voice for the central vass. And just like you saw in this clip, Jasmine Baines walked back those comments, claims she misunderstood the question. I don't know how you misunderstand a genocide, especially as a doctor. When we have doctors on the ground right now trying to save lives of innocent children and women in Palestine and across the world. But they know clearly where I stand on this issue, right? I signed on to a ceasefire letter as a local public official during the Biden administration. Sadly, that was considered controversial at the time. but I don't think it should be controversial to say that our hard-earned taxpayer dollars

shouldn't be spent bombing innocent schools and communities across the world and should be spent building schools and communities right here at home. And that is why the Israel lobby is terrified of someone like me actually getting elected into Congress and why they're spending roughly a million dollars, not over that at this point, through DMFI and through 314, which is historically funneled money for APEC. But let me tell you, even Jasmine Baines knows that you, she's wrong on this issue. She doesn't even list DMFI's endorsement on her website, right? And it's just another classic example of politicians who are, who or say anything, depending on who's in the room, and who are willing to sell their policy positions out to the highest bidder.

Now, the counterargument from the Democrats in Washington, they say she's more electable. And the thing, one thing they point to is we can put up F6 here. So the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is the kind of House Republican Super PAC has actually spent, not a lot, but in the tens of thousands of dollars, kind of boosting your campaign. And so it seems, at least from House Republicans' perspective, that they agree with the D-Trouble C,

that they would rather run against you than against Jasmine Baines. So why are they wrong? Yeah, I don't think anybody should, be trying to meddle in this election, whether it's the Democratic establishment, whether it's the Republican Party or any of these super PACs that are spending against me, people should be allowed to elect the candidate of their choice. And, you know, you have the Republican Party sending mailers, you know, saying I'm too liberal and sort of things like that, which is ridiculous. You know,

they're trying to define me before the general election because they actually know I'm the stronger candidate to take on Jasmine Baines. And clearly the D-TCCC recognizes this as well, because if they thought that she could win this race outright on her own, they wouldn't be trying to flood the airwaves at the last minute or endorsing her just as ballots are dropping, you know, to try and save her because they know that our campaign is resonating on the ground. I mean, in the latest poll, we're actually leading by four points, which is why we're seeing this outflux of, you know, outside money pouring into this district. Well, yeah, it's kind of interesting.

You mentioned you have the endorsement of a local Republican mayor, and then at the same time, you have CLF pouring money into the race, as Ryan said, a modest sum of money into the race to to back you. So there's something interesting going on where on the one hand, national Republicans, probably a little bit like national Democrats, they don't think, they might not recognize what's resonating on a sort of grassroots level. Final question for me is just how you're dealing with kind of maybe the cultural war gaps between Republican voters in the Central Valley or even like independent voters in the Central Valley, people who go Democrat, they go Republican, you're trying to build your case in a primary right now. But I imagine that involves

talking to some independence and people around the community. I bet immigration is something that you hear about a lot. How do you kind of, there's obviously a gap right now. So how do you handle those types of conversations? Yeah, we're knocking on doors for Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. As you know, California has this jungle primary where the top two move on. So we're talking every voter. And our message is universal to say whether you are a Republican, Republican, a Democrat or independent. You deserve housing that you can afford. You deserve health care. You deserve child care in this country. And these are all not questions of whether we have the financial means to do these things. New Mexico has universal child care. New York is moving in this direction.

Vermont was able to figure this out. It's not a question of whether we have the financial means to do these things. It's a question of whether we have the political courage and the moral clarity to actually fight for these things. But, you know, these solutions aren't going to come from politicians who are funded by the same corporations, the root of all these problems like my opponents. And people here in the Central Valley, you know how many people have asked me about trans athletes or any of these cultural war issues? Zero at the doors. I am not lying to you. Zero. But you don't know how many people I've talked to at the doors who tell me that they will drive seven to eight hours to Tijuana to go get cheaper dental work done, to get cheaper prescription drugs or even now cheaper health care. And that should

be happening in the richest country in the history of the world, which is why we're going to win, not just this primary, but the general election, because people are fed up with the status quo within both major political parties who are in bed with corporate interests, and they want somebody who's going to fight for them. Yes, and to be clear for the audience, I don't think we specified this at the top. David Vallado, the Republican incumbent, currently occupies the seat. So this would be a flip. This is different than, you know, the candidates we talked to last week who are, you know,

fighting it out, and whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to win an easy blue seat. This is going to be a tough race to flip, and it'll be interesting to see if somebody, you know, backed by the Working Families Party, Bernie Sanders, AOC, the Progressive Caucus, you know, can pull that off. So, Randy, thanks so much for being here. And I guess the election is on Tuesday, right? Yep, June 2nd. I guess you're looking forward to that. But then it's not over if you're in the top two. And you've got another few months of this campaigning thing. But thanks so much for being here. Of course, thanks for having me. And for folks who are interested in helping us out, head to Randy.com,

donate your time, your money, whatever you can to help us win this fight. So thanks so much for having me. You got it. Talk you later. Hey, guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick.

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