Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/30/23: DeSantis Trashes Republican Debt Ceiling, TX Attorney General Ken Paxton Impeached, LA Real Estate Collapse, Wall Street Weeps Over Biden-Trump, MSNBC Smears Marianne As Spoiler, Homeowners Uninsurable, Men Flee College

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss DeSantis and Vivek trashing the Republican handling of the Debt Ceiling deal, a dystopian AI project that was hidden in the Debt Deal, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton impeached for corruption, a doom loop in LA Real Estate as commercial buildings value collapse, DeSantis flips the script on Trump's Disney support, Wall Street cries over the potential Biden-Trump rematch, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan smears Marianne Williamson as a Spoiler candidate in the Democratic primary, Krystal looks into how Homeowners are getting screwed as vast swaths of US are "uninsurable", and Saagar looks into how Mens are fleeing College by the millions.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of news breaking just this morning. We have drone strikes that have been reported in residential areas inside of Moscow. This is obviously a dramatic new development in the Ukraine war, so we will tell you about the fallout from that. We also have more conservatives going on the record, trashing the debt deal,

but Trump remaining conspicuously silent, which is kind of interesting in and of itself. You all might have followed this. There is a big political situation unfolding down in Texas where the attorney general has been impeached in the House. This will go to the Senate where his wife is a senator and may be voting on whether or not he is convicted there for a host of alleged violations and crimes. So we'll break that down for you. We also have more updates for you on that commercial real estate potential debt bomb looming over America's cities

and the country at large. DeSantis and Trump going to war on a few more things. Disney and also Trump's connections to Saudi Arabia and MSNBC really doing their thing with regard to backing up establishment Democrats on full display in a new interview between Mehdi Hassan and Marianne Williamson. So we will bring you that as well. Before we get to any of that, though, thank you so much to everybody who's been signing up as premium subscribers, helping us get that new set built, and it is imminently arriving. Yes, imminently. We're looking at these gigantic televisions.

We are looking at all of the equipment that's arriving to the scene. Last week here at the desk, which we're a little bit sad about. It's sad. It's sad to say goodbye to something that meant so much, but it makes it easier because we have so many new and beautiful things to look forward to.

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And also to convene a lot of big interviews, which we already have scheduled and continue to work on. Some of the things that I know people have missed a lot, like panels and other things, like some pretty high impact stuff you're all going to see on the new set, the new studio. So I think it's a reason to be excited. Yeah. One thing we're psyched about is getting a Trump person in and a DeSantis person in. It's going to be fun. Yeah. There's a lot obviously to look forward to with that. And so the way that it's going to work is they're going to start installing the set in the studio starting this Thursday. So next week we'll be doing the show all remotely while they build out the set here. And then the week after that we will.

We will debut. Assuming everything goes smoothly. Don't forget that it will be revealed to the premium subscribers first. So maybe another reason to go ahead and to sign up. So BreakingPoints.com. Anyway, let's start with the major news that happened overnight. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. We had a drone strike attack all across the city of Moscow early this morning, or I guess early Tuesday, Moscow time. According to Russian authorities, the first attacks hit

civilian areas in Moscow, and it is, quote, a potent sign that the war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia. It's not exactly a mystery as to who is responsible for this, especially, Crystal, because the Ukrainian intelligence service released a statement yesterday saying we will retaliate for the missile attacks that are currently happening on Kiev. And of course, this is a terrible development because it's not just Moscow. It comes after Moscow, which this is the first time, is raining missiles and drones down upon Kiev and actually killed somebody just yesterday. This was the resumption of two straight days of missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital. And, you know, I just think it underscores the real death spiral about

what's happening here. Now, luckily, nobody was killed in the Moscow attack. Well, I guess depending on which view you take, nobody was killed in the Moscow attack. So, but I mean, you can only imagine. Like it's one thing I think to target the Kremlin building to hit a flag. Once you start hitting civilian buildings, which once again, you have to be fair.

It's not like Russians haven't been killing Ukrainian civilians left and right all across parking lots, shopping malls, and all that other stuff. So they're getting a little bit of a taste of their own medicine. But there is no question that this is almost certainly going to harden and increase support inside of Russia. I mean, can you only imagine if war ever came to the doorstep of the United States of America like that? I mean, we have not tasted anything like this in ever. So it's almost difficult to even wrap your head around what this is going to feel like for the average Russian civilian, the populace, the way that the media and Putin and all of them are going to run with this. And unfortunately, only likely lead to even more

of an escalation spiral where you can continue to count on even more drone and missile attacks on the city of Kyiv. We tried to vet some video and stuff coming out of it, but we don't want to be responsible for showing anything that's not right. You know, some things that were floating around out there, but this is the best of what we have right now. We know that some of the drones were shot down by Russian authorities, but not all of them. And they ultimately did target residential buildings. Yeah. I talked to our friend Yegor who lives in Moscow about what his experience is there on the ground.

As best as he knows, there were no deaths and no one even sent to the hospital. The impact here appears to be purely psychological and I think it could be a really significant impact. I mean, imagine you living in a city that was being bombed by drone strikes from an adversary and this is, remember, at the start of this war, Putin went out of his way to try to shield the population from any impact. Obviously, we're in a very, very different place now. According to Yegor, it appears, again, this is all unvetted based on the account and the reporting that he's able to

take in there on the ground. It appears that wealthier areas of the city were targeted. Those drones appear to be the ones that were largely shot down successfully. But there was a drone strike that did hit a residential apartment block of, you know, more sort of like middle class or working class people. And again, fortunately, there were no deaths. I think just to be really clear, whether your cause is just or whether your cause is unjust, targeting residential civilian areas is wrong, period, end of story. And, you know, so you could look at it and say, okay, but, you know, Russia did it to them. Yeah, no one is justifying that either. Like the toll on civilians in this war is horrific. So what does this mean? I mean, I think you're probably right. The most likely outcome in terms of the Russian populace is that it hardens their position. It makes them more supportive of Putin's war effort. It sort of strengthens his hand in terms of the population. If he needs to do another draft or if there's additional sort of economic suffering that the population has to

endure, it probably strengthens his hand. There is a chance that it goes in the other direction and people say, you know, this is insane. I didn't sign up for this. And now my apartment building is being, you know, potentially under attack from Ukraine. It could theoretically go in either direction, but I think you're probably right, Sagar, about the way people are going to respond to this. People have thought that ever since World War II. And guess what happened? It's like Hitler was like, I will break the back of the British by bombing London. What ended up happening? They were like, oh, screw you.

Every single one of us will go and hide in a tunnel and then we will fight this war until the bitter end. By the way, the same thing happened whenever the Allies also bombed Germany. It didn't actually do all that much to weaken the Nazi regime, at least in terms of their political support. And if you go and you take it further, what? We dropped more bombs in a single mission on

North Vietnam than we did in all of World War II. Did it break the back of the communist resolve? No, actually it hardened the civilian populace. And this is a message to both sides, really, because we know that the Russians, they're the ones who have taken indiscriminate bombing and have mastered the practice, basically, in this war. And it's like, well, what do you think is going to happen? Yeah, of course, the Ukrainians aren't going to buckle. If anything, they're probably a more strengthened polity than they were before the war. So congratulations to that one. You forged a Ukrainian national identity, you know, like made it stronger than ever. So congratulations. But then, you know, got to do the other counter, which is, hey, just so you know, every time somebody thinks they could take on Russia

and they bomb them, they're like, oh, they're just about to fold and all of that. What do they do? They buckle down, they crack down on their entire civilian populace, they criminalize any dissent, and then they throw everything they possibly can at you. And this is a great power nation with millions of people, with a major industrial base, a real economy. And the consequences of that can be much, much more dire than what we have already seen in Ukraine, which is already a human catastrophe with tens of thousands of people who are now dead. So there's no cheerleading here, only to just say, like, this is bad. And any time you see any escalation in terms of the terms, you can only expect just more death. And possibly even more risk to us also, which also scares.

That's a really key point, especially at a time when we've just greenlit F-16s and, you know, Zelensky promised. Well, he said he won't use them. Yeah, okay. You know, you can take that for what it's worth. I'm sure there will be and already are people on Twitter who are saying maybe this is a false flag.

Listen, I mean, you never know. But every single time we've had one of these events, the bombings of various activists, bloggers on the ground, the drone strikes on the Kremlin, like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing, at the end of the day, after a little while, we get the news, oh, guess what? It was actually Ukraine. But as far as I know, they haven't actually taken responsibility for the attacks yet. So I do want to put that

out there. They're not going to take responsibility. They lie every... Look, this is where I get annoyed. I'm not even going to qualify it. It's obviously Ukraine. What, Russia bombed its own populace? No way. Its own residential buildings after our own intelligence committee is secretly like, oh yeah, actually it was the Ukrainians. Such a shocker that bombed the Kremlin. In every way,

it's very obvious who is behind the attack. They're not going to take responsibility because they never officially acknowledge that they were the ones that were behind the attack. It's actually Ukrainian policy at this point. And you can also take that one to the bank whenever they come out and say, oh, we had nothing to do with it. And it wasn't us. It's like, well, why should we believe you? You say you're not going to use our F-16s or our made F-16s on Russian territory. There's absolutely no reason to believe you, especially when the stakes get higher and higher for the Ukrainians as they're continually waiting for this spring offensive to shake up.

From what I've been reading, it looks like the ground is beginning to get drier. We're getting to that period where they will be able to launch without having to worry as much about the mud. So this is it. This is the put up or shut up moment. You know, depending on the result of this, it could basically swing the war in either direction. Yeah. And the danger of broader conflagration of a larger escalation continues to exist. And that's why these actions are really dangerous from our perspective as well. But also, again, whether your cause is just or unjust, don't target civilian residential areas. It's just wrong. Okay. Let's go to the very latest we know about the debt ceiling. As you guys know, McCarthy and Biden had this worked out this deal. I think it's very likely the Democratic

side is more or less going to accept it because it is less bad. It is, in my opinion, still bad that they negotiate on this at all, but it is less bad than what I think a lot of Democrats were expecting. Republicans on the other side, not too happy. We did get some comments from President Biden about how he sees this all shaking out. Let's take a listen a little bit of what he had to say. Who got the better deal, Democrats or Republicans? The bipartisan deal. Will this get done by June 5th? Oh, yes.

No question. Well, you guys, you realize you're not in the real world. No question. There is no reason why it shouldn't get done by the fifth. I'm confident that we'll get a vote in both houses and we'll see. And look, one of the things that I hear some of you guys saying is, why didn't Biden say what a good deal it is? Why would Biden be saying what a good deal is before the vote?

You think that's going to help me get a pass? No. That's why you guys don't bargain very well. So two pieces there. Number one, June 5th is the new X date that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that is when the Treasury is likely to run out of money. It's actually amazing. People have crunched the numbers of like there are a lot of billionaires in the world right now that actually have more money than in the United States Treasury, which is kind of money. It's actually amazing. People have crunched the numbers of like, there are a lot of billionaires in the world right now that actually have more money than in the United States Treasury, which is kind of crazy. So June 5th appears to be the drop dead

date. So the reporters are asking like, you know, with legislative maneuvering and the 72 hour waiting period, are you going to be able to get it done by June 5th? And he's like, get real. You all don't live in the real world. Of course, we're going to get it done, which is probably true in terms of they can always find shortcuts when they ultimately need to get something through quickly. So that's that piece. The other one, Sagar, I want to get your thoughts on. There's been some discussion of like Biden's strategy in all of this, and he's been very sort of non-communicative during this whole process of the negotiations. I was critical of him previously because it led to Republicans really

getting the upper hand in terms of messaging, where the public was very divided about who would be to blame if the country did go over that fiscal cliff, which I think is a real loss, given that clearly it was the Republicans who forced this whole crisis situation. But he lays out there very plainly what his strategy is. He's like, it would not be helpful to getting this thing through a Republican House if I were to go out and talk about what a great deal it is. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut, which, you know, is probably the right strategy. Yes and no. So it actually requires kind of thinking about it on a strategic level and then like on an operational level. So operationally, I think he was correct because he did get a better

deal, especially if you compare his deal to President Obama's deals back in 2011. But rhetorically, who won in that fight? Well, we actually have a lot of polling to compare. Ten years ago, President Obama 100% was on the upside of public opinion. Public opinion was like, no, we blame the Republicans. We are pro-president. He messaged relentlessly around it, although he did on substance get a worse deal. President Biden, on the other hand, I guess on substance did get a better deal. But rhetorically, if anything, he probably normalized this behavior. And beyond that, let's remember and think about this. He has now said it so that the politics of this are an equal playing field. Now, it may be to his immediate political benefit for his reelection. But in the long run,

he might have actually just signed away any real bargaining power that he has in two years if he is to be elected. And we shouldn't forget, you can put the shoe on the other foot. I mean, now at this point, what is stopping the Democrats from doing anything like this? They basically did. There was a shutdown. Because they're wimps. And they never used their power. and no. But there was their own like reticence to do anything. But don't forget about the government shutdown. It was like a three week shutdown under President Trump whenever he wanted to do the border wall funding. President Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi basically stared Trump down the eyes. And he Trump is ultimately the one that buckled. Anyway, my point is, is that these these tactics have now become so normalized. And I think Biden may have had an opportunity to try to get around it, which

is ultimately just really weakens the chief executive. So I'm of two minds in terms of his like what he thinks. As you know, I think this whole thing has been a disaster. I think it played it wrong. He played it wrong from the jump. I think the point you made is the most important one outside of the details of this specific deal, which is that it has normalized this type of behavior. You can take it to the bank that the Republicans are going to do this again in two years if Biden is the White House. There is no doubt about it. And there also are real consequences, even with this kind of showdown that, you know, they are even if they are able to pass the deal, just having this kind of brinksmanship is really damaging to the economy, let alone the very real threat of actually going over the edge and the potential

chaos that could be unleashed for that. I mean, in some ways, the fact that the deal doesn't have a whole lot for Republicans, probably the biggest win they got was significant cuts in terms of the IRS budget. But the fact that it was actually things that they, by and large, could have achieved through a normal appropriations process, in a sense that even more normalizes this kind of behavior because they're willing to throw this tantrum and throw the whole global financial system into turmoil over very, very little. So I definitely agree with you there. On where we are with a potential vote, we've seen hardening opposition from not even like the far right of the Republican Party, but opposition is sort of spreading to more mainstream corners of the Republican Party as

well. Put this up on the screen. This was the sort of whip count of the House Freedom Caucus members who, as of yesterday, had come out as in opposition to this deal. And not like, you know, tepid opposition, but quite strident opposition. You've got Dan Bishop, Keith Self, Chip Roy, Ken Buck, Ralph Norman, Bob Good, Matt Rosendale, Andy Biggs, Andrew Clyde, and Lauren Boebert. So that is 10 members who are on the record saying that they will not vote for this thing. Now, by and large, McCarthy can easily afford to lose 10 members because Democrats look like they are going to vote for this in overwhelming numbers. But there are a couple of procedural hurdles that make this a little bit

trickier than you might think, because I think there's no doubt at this point they have a majority of members of the House who would vote for it. That seems very, very likely, because all you would actually need is all the Democrats and five Republicans. But McCarthy has said, not bringing this to the floor unless I have a majority support within the Republican caucus. He probably has that. It's a little bit of a question mark. So there's that piece. But even more critically, this has to go through, I mentioned this yesterday, this has to go through the rules committee. Okay. This sounds very archaic, but it becomes highly relevant because during the negotiations between McCarthy and the House Freedom Caucus for him to become speaker, one of the things they demanded is we are going to have some key seats on that rules committee

because it effectively controls what can come to the floor. So put this up on the screen. This is from Chip Roy, who is on the rules committee and who is a House Freedom Caucus member. He says, a reminder that during speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass rules committee without at least seven Republican votes and that the committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes. So he's saying that they made some agreement, which is possible. I don't think we heard about this at the time. So Crystal, I don't think this is true. Really? Because, well, remember so much of this was behind closed doors. It's impossible to know

what they actually agreed to. McCarthy and them have come out, not McCarthy himself, but his allies are like, that's not true. We didn't agree to that. And then Trip Roy was actually pressed about it last night in an interview. And he was like, well, you know, we agreed to a lot of things. It was a handshake deal and none of it is written down anywhere. I'm like, look, dude, as anybody who's ever done anything in terms of contracts, especially if you're, if you're striking a deal with somebody who you don't trust, ostensibly that's these people and McCarthy, if you don't get it in writing then you didn't have anything and of course like look maybe it was dishonorable but also maybe he didn't say it and he kind of hinted at it and you

took it away something very different and now you're getting upset and you're coming out in public and saying something which is not written down and which is not confirmed. So anyway, I'm not calling him a liar. I'm just like, maybe they misunderstood. Could be a miscommunication there. I think it's a miscommunication, 100%. A sort of theoretical, yes, in principle, there has to be seven votes. But in reality, now that he needs this done, he's going to toss that to the side. Washington Post had some reporting about this rules committee and the numbers and the way that they break down. You can go ahead and put this up on the side. Washington Post had some reporting about this rules committee and the numbers and the way that they break down. You can go ahead and put this up on the screen. They say it's often

called the Speaker's Committee because it's made up entirely of appointees from the House Speaker and the minority leader. It's tilted in such an extreme way. Nine members of the majority party, just four from the minority that the speakers always get their way here. Traditionally, the four members of the minority always vote against whatever the majority wants. Now, that also is not written in strong. It's just sort of like convention for whatever reason. But that also could be changed. But you already have a number of members here from the right who have said they are opposed to the deal. So in all likelihood, it could be Thomas Massey, who is ideologically aligned with the, you know,

deficit hawk, House Freedom Caucus, but he has been personally relatively loyal to McCarthy. McCarthy also gave him some goodies in this deal, things that he had, like his own personal, like, preferences in terms of how appropriations work. I won't get into all the gory details here, but McCarthy specifically mentioned Massey, I think, because he knows he is such a key vote. Massey hasn't said 100% which way he will go on the deal, but he posted something on Twitter that indicated he was like, well, doing this kind of deal is one way to get things done. Another way is through the appropriations process, seeming to indicate that he was kind of willing to accept this direction with the idea that he would be able to achieve more through that appropriations process modified to suit

his whims and what he has been pushing for. So I think where we are is it's more likely than not that it is going to pass, even as you have sort of hardening Republican opposition. You also have Ron DeSantis coming out and in opposition to the deal as well, which gives you a sense of where the winds are blowing from a grassroots conservative perspective. Let's take a listen to what he has to say. Well, prior to this deal, Kayleigh, our country was careening towards bankruptcy. And after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy and to say you can do four trillion of increases in the next year and a half I mean that's a massive amount of spending I think that we've gotten ourselves on a trajectory here really since March of 2020

with some of the COVID spending it totally reset the budget and they're sticking with that and I think that that's just going to be totally inadequate to get us in a better spot. So what'd you make of that, Sagar? Yeah, I mean, look, he's smart because obviously the base is going to be again, the base doesn't, they want to see Biden crushed and fail. They don't care about the substance of it literally at all. This goes all the way back to 2011 politics. This is when the Freedom Caucus guys were all over Fox News. And Boehner actually went to Roger Ailes and pleaded with him. He said, please take these guys off the air.

You are destroying me. And Roger was like, hey, man, that's what the people want. And I mean, he's right. Like, really what it is, is that you have an undercurrent of a lot of the Republican base who not interested. They don't they wanted no wins for Obama. They want no wins for President Biden. There's no reason to suspect why the dynamics have changed. Vivek Ramaswamy also put out something against it. Let's put this up there on the screen. He's calling out, quote, other GOP candidates stand on the debt ceiling. Jumping on the anti-woke bandwagon is easy. True. It is harder to take a real stand on the hard stuff. Debt deal, bank bailouts, pardoning peaceful Jan 6 protesters, criticizing the Trump indictment exiting Ukraine. If you can't speak candidly here at home, you're not ready to sit across the table from

Xi Jinping. So that's where we're at. Right now, we have Vivek Ramaswamy and Governor DeSantis out against it. Crystal, our show, we waited and held out for a Trump statement. We have not yet received anything. President Trump has not put out anything about this. Haven't seen Nikki Haley weigh in. Haven't seen Tim Scott weigh in either. Interesting because Scott actually does have to vote on it. He has to vote on it.

So that one will be very, very interesting to see which way he decides to go because that will be an indicator of presidential politics. Overall, I actually thought it was a smart move for DeSantis. I increasingly am viewing him as the Ted Cruz of the race. He is running against Trump from the right, from a true conservative kind of, a true conservative like ideological lens. People shouldn't confuse this with political talent because it's not the same thing. So his attacks on Trump are very much Cruz-esque. And don't forget this either. Ted Cruz came in second in the GOP primary, won the second most amount of

votes, and frankly, was probably the single most credible candidate other than Trump in 2016. So it's not a bad play considering how it went down. Also, he did lose, though. So, you know, it's complicated. Correct. He did lose. Ted Cruz notably also has come out against the deal. So to your point about DeSantis being in the Ted Cruz lane, I think that is true. Uh, DeSantis' attacks on Trump have a very 2016 Ted Cruz-esque echo. The other comparison that's been made is like to Elizabeth Warren with the wine track. Like, I've got a plan for that kind of vibe. There's a little bit of that going on too. But I think with Trump, you'll recall a little while ago, he was sounding very, you know, tough about the debt ceiling deal. He said, I say to the Republicans out there, Congressmen, senators, if they don't give you

massive cuts, you're going to have to do a default. And I don't believe they're going to do default because, sorry, an ad popped up because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don't want to have that happen. But it's better than what we're doing right now because we're spending money like drunken sailors. I mean, put aside the fact that this man blew up the deficit like crazy with his frigging tax cuts for the rich. But, you know, he was sounding really like hawkish on we're willing to go over the cliff and we got to do it and we're spending too much. So it's very notable that now that a deal is struck, not a word from him. And it's not an accident. I mean, he's in this tough political bind because he, better than anyone, has his finger on the pulse of the Republican base.

He knows the popular thing to do would be to say this is a bad deal and we shouldn't accept it and it's a disaster and we're going to, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But he also has backed Kevin McCarthy and, you know, calls him by Kevin and helped him get over the finish line in terms of the speaker's race. So he doesn't necessarily want to go against someone who has turned into a key ally for him and who he has bolstered. So he has calculated that the safest move for him

is just to zip it and keep his mouth shut. An uncharacteristic wisdom there from presidential. My suspicion is that Trump desperately wants to tweet against it and that McCarthy called him and begged him not to. That if I had to bet money, I bet you that's what has happened. That is my expectation as well because that is the one thing. If Trump came out really strongly against this deal, that could actually sink it.

And it could really put the Speaker's gavel on the line for McCarthy as well if he continued to push forward. So yeah, I think it's a giant gift to Kevin McCarthy and massively increases the likelihood that this deal will get through, that Trump has remained silent, which also shows you the pull that he has with the Republican base and the Republican caucus continuing versus Ron DeSantis, who can come out and say this, and you're still likely to have a bulk of the caucus be like, yeah, but we're going to go along with it. So I wanted to flag this. This is kind of interesting. So obviously we've been focused a lot on AI, on chat GPT, on these large language models. We talked yesterday about these couple of instances where

you had a professor assigned to his students this assignment where they were supposed to generate an essay from ChatGPT and then fact check it. And every single one of the students, 60 papers, found glaring, they call them hallucinations. ChatGPT just made stuff up. And there was a lawyer that foolishly relied on ChatGPT to create a legal brief. And ChatGPT just invented like a dozen different cases to back up whatever claim this lawyer was trying to make, all completely fake, you know, completely fabricated. So there are a lot of problems still with chat GPT, the LLMs in general, AI, et cetera. So we've been talking about, okay, what would it look like to regulate this stuff and what are the dangers, et cetera. And our general view has been, all

right, lawmakers don't really have their heads wrapped around this. They don't really understand it and they're not really taking actions that they need to to figure out how to have AI that is actually beneficial for humanity. Well, tucked into this debt ceiling deal, there actually was some language about AI. But rather than being like, let's curtail AI, it was like, let's see how it goes to incorporate this more into government and to try to, quote unquote, streamline the process for these environmental impact assessments by using AI. So David Dayen flagged this. Take a look at what we've got here. So he says you could certainly read this part of the permitting section of the debt ceiling bill as studying the feasibility of AI reviews for this National Environmental Policy Act, which based on current technology probably goes well as AI legal briefs, which is what I just referred to. Keep this up on the screen. I'll just read the language here, and though it's a little bit technical, they say,

permitting portal study. The Council on Environmental Quality shall conduct a study and submit a report to Congress within one year of the enactment of this act on the potential for online and digital technologies to address delays in reviews and improve public accessibility and transparency under Section 102.2c of the National Environmental Policy Act, including but not limited to a unified permitting portal. And then it goes on from there. So what do you make of this, Sagar? Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, at the same, on the one hand, it's not like a definitive we're going to use AI, but it's more about appropriating government funds and saying that we will conduct a study for the potential for online and digital technologies.

Now, once again, the reason why we should all be just a little bit suspect on this is that it means we will see a total fusion of AI and government in the future, which if possible, if it's good, maybe that will make it more effective. If it's bad, it will be just as bad as the lawyer brief. Given the history of the government here, I'm just going to go ahead and say I'm a bit skeptical as to how this is going to go. And also in terms of the content,

I mean, we've already gone over this so many times, but you know, when you think about the tax system, it's like if the IRS sends you a bill and like you owe five, you know, you have no ability to contest that. Or for example, we live in the state of Virginia where they, you know, this is one of those insane states where they decide to tax your car, like a property of your car. And they send you a bill based on the assessed value. You have no ability to contest that. You're like, well, actually the market is different or, oh, actually it has, there's like, nope, they're like, this is what you owe us. And that seems very likely to be the type of scenario where the environmental impact review, for example, I think environmental impact reviews can be important. I also think they've been dramatically misused.

There's a recent Supreme Court case that was around this, around this couple that wanted to build something on their property. It's complicated. But my point is that you could see in the future where AI or some government program just looks at input-output variables. They're like, nope, that's actually just not what we're going to do. And then you have to spend years of your life, as this one couple did, having to fight it in the Supreme Court. They spent 16 years in court and they won 9-0. But they had to wait 16 years to try and build something on their own property.

That's an example of like, that's how the system already is with humans involved. With technology, like who knows? What you're pointing to here is that you already have a problem with faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy within the government. And adding a layer of even more mysterious and un example, which obviously is placing a big bet on AI. And they're constantly working to get these little provisions stuck in that almost no one notices. And so at the same time that we're going, all right, what are lawmakers like? How are they going to grapple with AI and what are they going to do? While we are having that public conversation behind the scenes, Microsoft or whatever other companies have an interest in plugging AI into the federal government as this new giant customer, they are working to get their provisions in. Like, their thing is very effective. So, you know, is this like the end of the world? Is it a huge deal to have this study into using AI within the permitting process?

Probably not. Although, again, as David Dayen points out, it's not just explicitly limited to that. They said that, you know, it could go beyond that. But I do think it's very telling about some of the dangers here, some of the ways that this could become omnipresent without any of us even intending to or noticing, and also just the way that Washington works in general. Yes, absolutely. Well said. Okay, let's go to the next part here. My own home state of Texas. Lots of stuff going on, a historic event. The Texas Attorney General has been impeached by the Texas House of Representatives, of which a trial will now take place in the Senate.

The impeachment process is very much like our own for the President of the United States. And yes, will be put on trial before the Senate and be tried. The jurors will be the senators themselves who will eventually go ahead and vote. So let's actually get into the details. We actually covered this quite a long time ago on Rising, whenever the FBI launched an investigation into Ken Paxton. This one is actually more consequential and important because not only is it taking place in the state of Texas, but it's directly being led by investigators attached to the house

of which they launched their own investigation and impeach Paxton based upon the findings of that investigation, not the FBI investigation. Let's put the details up here on the screen. This is from the Texas Tribune. So the Texas Tribune lays out there are over 20 impeachment articles that were actually filed against Ken Paxton. Almost all of it goes back to a gentleman by the name of Nate Paul. So Paul is an Austin real estate investor, is a friend and a political donor to Paxton. What the Texas House alleges is that Paxton, in his capacity as the Attorney General

of the state of Texas, basically pursued actions that were beneficial to Paul, abused his official capacity, including diverting senior employees to perform work that benefited Paul, some $72,000 in taxpayer-funded labor costs, misuse of public information, allegedly providing Paul with an internal FBI file related to an investigation into that developer, misapplication of fiduciary property for allegedly hiring an outside lawyer of $25,000 to work inside the attorney general's office without the knowledge or the consent of senior staff to perform work that principally benefited Paul himself. They also allege that Paul, as a return for favors, helped, basically helped update the house of Ken Paxson that he was living in. And in some of the salacious details, he also hired a woman who

Paxson allegedly had. I think it's acknowledged. I don't even think it's allegedly. Had an extramarital affair with. So it's messy, I guess, as the kids say about what's happening here with this situation. Like I said, as the kids say about what's happening here with this situation. Like I said, the charges that I laid out, those are just the felony charges. They don't include everything, but they're probably the most serious. Yeah. Well, the other piece of this is so, you know, allegedly he was engaging in all of this, just like over the top favoritism and giving out of government favors and even using his own staff to do work for this developer, et cetera, and getting things in own staff to do work for this developer,

et cetera, and getting things in return, like having him hire this woman that he was sleeping with and bringing her to Austin and doing a floor to ceiling renovation of his home. Okay. So very clear, like favor trading here. And there were whistleblowers within his own office who, again, these are not like liberals. These are conservative Texas Republicans who were whistleblowers about this misconduct. And he fired them, which is also illegal under Texas law. So it's both the crime and it's the cover up and the retaliation against these whistleblowers that is that is, you know, at stake here and at issue here. It really is a pretty grotesque, alleged pattern of misbehavior and just incredibly brazen the level of favors

and, you know, trading that he was willing to do with this Austin-based developer. I feel like the developers oftentimes, like these are, you know, the Cuomo, there was stuff with the developers too. Like it does show you how much financially you can gain from having someone who's on the inside who can like clear the red tape for you and give you a leg up in terms of the bidding process and all of that stuff. Go on wherever you live. Go look at who donates to the local

politicians, people like comptroller, mayor and all that. Nine out of 10 of them are going to be the biggest city contractors. Almost every single, where I'm from, that's the case, especially in Texas. Doesn't matter if it's Democrats or Republicans, they'll donate both sides of the aisle totally equal opportunity. Yeah, they don't care. You think they build those houses, you know, for free?

Or those roads or any of those other infrastructure, those no-bid contracts or those sweet deals? All the kickbacks. It's like in the Shawshank Redemption, man. Let's go to the next part here, just about the actual vote, because the vote itself was stunning. The House actually voted 121 to 23 to suspend the Attorney General and referred him to the Senate for trial. The first impeachment in the Texas House since 1975. And this shows you that impeachment was also

supported by 60 Republicans. It wasn't all just Democrats, including the speaker of the Texas House, who himself was involved in a spate with Paxson. Paxson accused him of being drunk and actually called for him to be impeached. So obviously this has all been behind the scenes. This has been building now for quite a period of time. Eventually, we will see how the vote falls in the Senate. But I mean, I'm not quite sure yet that he's done. And I think the reason is that he obviously beat, he was the ability to beat the FBI investigation once. The Senate may not have, as I understand,

and I asked some people back in Texas, and they were like, well, it's not going to be necessarily as much of a slam dunk. It'll be closer in terms of a vote. At least that's where things currently stand, you know, with the information that we have right now. He still does have a lot of political support in the state. And the reason why is because Trump loves Ken Paxton. Put this up there. He has actually slammed Texas quote rhinos over the impeachment effort. He went ahead and actually praised Ken Paxton and condemned the quote radical left Democrats and the rhinos for voting against him. As he says, I love Texas. I won it twice. Watch as many other friends, including Ken Paxton, one came alongside me. Hopefully Republicans in the Texas house will

agree. This is an unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed. I will fight you if it does. That's part of the reason why some people think things could happen or change in the Senate. Yeah. Also, Paxton has the support of Senator Ted Cruz. He says, quote, what is happening to Ken Paxton is a travesty. For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest conservative AG in the country, bar none. No attorney general has battled the abuses of the Biden administration more ferociously than Ken Paxton. Virtually all the information in articles

were public before election day. Voters chose to reelect Ken Paxton by a large margin. In my view, the Texas legislature should then respect the House of the Texas voters. So there you go. He's got support from Ted Cruz. He's got support from Trump. I still think he might survive. I really do. I actually think he probably will survive. You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict. And apparently, I did some digging. I was like, what's going on here? Why did they turn on this guy? And apparently, this is symbolic of a broader split within the Texas GOP, almost between the old Bush wing of the party that's sort of class know, sort of like classically conservative,

very cozy with business, very cozy with the oil industry, you know, in favor of low taxes, like that vein of conservatism versus the more sort of like performative culture war Trump wing of the Republican Party, which also will go after corporations they consider to be woke. So there's a different there aren't a lot of real hard policy ideological differences, but there's very different like vibe and aesthetic. And these, obviously Texas is dominated by Republicans, both in the House and in the Senate, even as it has shifted some, you know, and made it a little bit more purple, but this is still a state legislature that's very dominated by Republicans. And you have this real divide between these two wings of the party. And one of the sort of representatives of that more traditional

conservative wing of the party is this guy who's Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan. And he's the one that Trump was like ripping to shreds. And in general, in Texas, it's considered the House is more populated with those type of conservatives. And the Senate, where he would have to be convicted, where his wife also sits, is more populated with the sort of new Trumpier conservatives. So that's why you shouldn't be surprised to see Trump and Ted Cruz, who's just, you know, goes wherever he thinks the winds are blowing, backing Ken Paxton and all of this, and also why I wouldn't be surprised to see him acquitted in the Senate, even though the details here are really damning. I mean, you'll know with both Trump and Ted Cruz, neither one of them is actually defending him on the merits and saying like, oh, there's nothing,

he did nothing wrong and this was all above board, et cetera, et cetera. The best they can muster is, well, voters already knew that he was a corrupt SOB before they reelected him, which is probably the strongest case that you could possibly make for him. And he did win reelection quite overwhelmingly. I think it was actually up against like George P. Bush or somebody in that reelect. So he sort of soundly defeated personally that more traditional Bush wing of the Texas Republican Party. But that's why you're seeing this schism right now. And that's why I don't know, but I think it is less likely that he will actually be convicted in the Senate because there are more

of his ideological allies in the Senate, including his wife, who may or may or may not recuse herself. Apparently, with regard to the affair, it was a few years ago. She found out in 2019 they were apart for a while. They've since reconciled. So theoretically, you know, water under the bridge, I guess. And she may be back on his team. I don't know. All right. So I wish them luck, as Trump used to say. All right. Let's talk about commercial real estate. This is actually a fascinating one. Crystal, you flagged this. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I know you've been diving into this a lot. LA's office towers have on average $230 in debt per square foot. The only building that actually sold this year went for $150, $4 per square foot. So that's obviously a huge delta. The biggest landlord in Los Angeles,

which is called the Canadian giant Brookfield, has actually defaulted on more than a billion dollars worth of loans already this year. And so really what they're pointing to is that this massive debt bubble in commercial real estate and the lack of people, especially in cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. could absolutely blow up in all of our faces. And really the time that it would start is now because they've had, they've used a lot of their cash. They've tried to weather the storm.

Leases are starting to go up. And a lot of people are like, yeah, I'm not signing or I'm not paying. Sorry, my employees aren't coming back to the office. And they don't have the same level of cash flow or future value that they once had. And the dramatic drop in all of that backstops a lot of loans and then commodities on Wall Street. So Los Angeles is a ticking time bomb with their decline in the downtown. Washington, D.C., where you and I are, Crystal, right now, I mean, I don't think people understand that. Washington, D.C. is a ghost town compared to what it once. I spent my whole professional life here, especially in the downtown area. And when I go now, it is at best one-tenth of what it once was. And really, I mean,

anybody who commutes or takes the metro or any of these can tell you that. And the city has changed even the traffic patterns. Rush hour is at 3.30 now, which is crazy. It's like everybody's leaving the office at 3.30, even on the three days or whatever that they do happen to come in. New York is a little bit different. Commerce apparently demands people to come into the office more often, but flexible work has still dropped things by 40%. San Francisco is donezo. From my family, I've been to many of those neighborhoods in San Francisco, which were once thriving business districts, or at the very least had a lot going on from everybody I know who's visited since has completely either abandoned or they've moved to different parts of the city. And it's not a surprise. I was in downtown LA not

that long ago. It was basically me and a bunch of other people who were there for a conference and nobody was actually there for any other reason. Well, the hardest hit and the most likely to be hit very soon are the West Coast cities because on top of the pandemic trends of people working remote or having hybrid work schedules, they also are dealing with this massive tech session, which impacts them more than any other cities in the country. So in San Francisco, put this next piece up on the screen. I mean, this is really ground zero. They say this is from The Guardian. They say vacant skyscrapers, empty trains.

Can San Francisco once again reinvent itself? They cite in here a study out of UC Berkeley comparing mobile phone data across 62 downtowns in North America. They found that San Francisco's recovery is dead last with only 31% of the activity that it had pre-pandemic. Some of these major tech companies are leaving downtown. They don't need the office space anymore. This has obvious massive ripple effects incalled doom loop of, you know, once these office buildings go vacant and you have a lot less business in the city, then you have a lot less tax revenue, and then you can't keep up, you know, public transportation and infrastructure spend, and the whole thing starts to decay and decline. So they are frantically trying to figure out what they can do. I mean, one thing in San Francisco that's really obvious is they have, perhaps worse than any other place in the country, this massive housing crisis of wild unaffordability and a lack of—they need way more affordable housing is the bottom line.

So there has been this thought of, OK, we'll take all these giant office towers that are now vacant and transform them into residential apartments so that you can deal with your housing costs, you can bring people back to the downtown, you can maintain vitality. That is theoretically possible, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way of that happening. First of all, a conversion like that is not simple and straightforward. It's a complex from like a just development and architectural perspective.

Dean Baker, who's the co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, he said the city is set up to serve a large commuting population. That population is gone and not coming back. It will be a doom loop if the city doesn't make it a top priority to convert commercial to residential. California, and I think San Francisco in particular, is also notorious for making it very hard to do construction. There's like a long permitting process, zoning, all this stuff. So they need now to aggressively rethink what the city is going to look like before they get behind the eight ball and have, they already have big budget deficits that are looming and that are only going to get worse with time.

So it is quite a dire circumstance for them. Budget, crime, like they have everything that could possibly go going against them. It's expensive and it's not a nice place to live. That's basically because I loved San Francisco. Oh, it's a great city. Yeah, it is a great city. I mean, look. Vibrant and interesting and, you know, culture there.

Restaurants, like it's beautiful. People get mad when I say this, but California wins on all the fundamentals. Look, I like Texas. It's where I grew up. But listen, the ocean is nice. And so is weather where it's hot, but it was also not crazy amounts of humidity. And also the sun shines. I mean, look, you can actually go look.

I'm obsessed with these. There's like temperate charts, which shows you the only real zones in the US with the best weather. And the way that they define that is like X amount of days without clouds, X amount of days without rain, X amount of days with sunshine. Almost all of them are in Hawaii and in California. The Bay Area is one of them, Los Angeles, San Diego. There are certain areas on the East Coast.

I think it's like Georgia, South Carolina, Cape Cod, and others. But they really only qualify because they're super nice in the summer. But during year round, there's no beaten California weather. Sorry, everybody. Yeah. But part of the issue is that that's why they're the biggest state in the country, and there's a lot of people who live there. Now there's a disaster of governance, taxation, and so much more. The downtown areas, as you were pointing to, is a real problem.

And the other issue is that they have net population decline. So a lot of the people who did leave are exactly the type of folks who would be in these office buildings, you know, in another world. And they moved to Texas. They moved to Austin. Most of them who even moved there aren't even going to the office. A lot of those people are working either fully remote or in some sort of hybrid situation. So overall, I think it's a very bad time to be a commercial real estate developer or a commercial real estate landowner because another thing that they point to is this entire industry floats on debt. None of these people have large reserves of cash. It's literally the name of the game is you price your rent right here, like a little bit above where your debt servicing is, and then you just hope and pray.

And then over years, you become a billionaire, and you use a bunch of depreciation and other nonsense in order to write all this stuff on your taxes. It's a crazy business. President Trump gave you more of that too. I don't understand how I could, I don't understand you can even breathe when you're that, you know, close to bankruptcy constantly. Some people live for that. Yeah, I guess they do. Some people live for that. Good for them. One thing that's an important note, just on like the economics of this is you're probably thinking, for those of you of knowledge of like the local rental and real estate market, like rents haven't really come down. So there are estimates that these buildings valuations

are going to crash by something like 40%, which is, I mean, that's an astonishing fall in value. But so far rents haven't come down that much. Well, why is that? It's because if you drop the rent to reflect what the actual valuation is and what you might actually be able to get tenants in, well, that's going to immediately crash your appraisal. So when you are then up to renegotiate your loan and try to take out a new register, try to be able to roll this thing over, your appraisal is going to come in way lower. You're just dramatically underwater then. And so it's a disaster for you. So a lot of developers calculate, understandably so, that it's better to keep rents where they are and take the hit in terms of a lost tenant for the time being in hopes that they'll be

able to roll over those loans. Now, that also becomes much more difficult because of the mortgage rate increases, which, you know, not only impact residential loans, but also impact these gigantic, you know, loans for skyscrapers that become wildly more unaffordable as well. Not to mention the banks aren't stupid. They're looking at this and potential, you know, massive drop in valuation and they're not feeling too excited about renegotiating a lot of these loans as well. So that's why we're sort of in this, you know, in between zone where everybody's just holding their breath and hoping that conditions improve for them by some sort of unforeseen magic. And it feels a little bit static, even though there's a ton of pain and collapse and

potential devastation just underneath the surface. So that's part of what is going on here as well. But, you know, this story of how downtowns will reinvent themselves in a new era with less office workers is going to be one of the things that, you know, this is going to be a major trend over the coming decades. Cities that are able to figure this out, that are able to get ahead of it, that are able to, you know, I think the key is going to be building out affordable housing to bring people back to the downtowns so that while they're working from home, they're working from home in their apartments, in their condos, in their houses, in your city. And the cities that get on top of that fastest and anticipate the need the soonest, I think,

are going to be the ones that succeed. Yeah, that's right. 2024. We can't miss any of the election news. There is fascinating stuff going on between DeSantis and Trump around the Disney issue. Some people switching sides, but it also kind of shows you how central this is. I think to some of the GOP primary, I saw some polling very recently that the ability to combat wokeness is literally number one for some GOP primary voters, and especially for people who

are on the fence between Ron DeSantis and Trump. So DeSantis, once again, got to give the man respect, actually hitting back against Trump, especially on the Disney issue during his Fox and Friends interview. Here's what he had to say. We obviously have a lot in common with Iowa in terms of what Florida's done and what they've done under Governor Kim Reynolds. And I think the groundswell of support has been really, really strong. And, you know, we're going to press the case. I mean, you know, they had mentioned there may be some differences with me and Donald Trump. And I think that those differences were down to my benefit in a place like Iowa. I mean, for example, you know, he's taken the side of Disney in our fight down here in Florida.

I'm standing for parents. I'm standing for children. And I think a multibillion dollar company that sexualizes children is not consistent with the values of Florida or the values of a place like Iowa. Hey, you got to give the guy credit because what did he say? First, he shouts out Kim Reynolds, who is the governor of Iowa. He said the word Iowa, I think, three times during that short clip, making it clear that he's trying to contrast himself directly with Trump in that state. The news also just broke this morning, Crystal. He will be attending the Joni Ernst's summer Iowa event. Joni Ernst, for those who don't know, she's the senator from Iowa. It's called the Roast and Ride. It's a kickoff for the 2024 campaign in Iowa. And obviously,

she's very important and somebody that they have to woo. Everybody tries to, if they are hopeful to attend some of her events. Trump right now is unconfirmed for the event, but DeSantis says he absolutely will be there. This underscores his early state strategy. Now, Trump has actually changed his tune. At first, he took Disney's side, and he said, oh, well, why is DeSantis going after Disney?

Now- He's getting humiliated by Disney, something like that. He said humiliated by Disney, but he also basically implied that he shouldn't be going after Disney at all and also hit him on the job case. Now, though, he's actually changing his tune. Put this up there on Truth Social. He says, Ron DeSanctimonious just stated without correction on Fox and Friends that I was backing Disney. Wrong. Fox should have read my posted truth on Disney, but that's not the game they play. Also in the polls, I am beating Biden by a lot. Rob is not. So he obviously live tweeted.

Yeah, DeSanctis, Rob, all of that. But actually, what was even more interesting is that the same truth that came before was that he said that Disney has become a woke and disgusting shadow of its former self, people actually hating it. It must go back to what it once was or the market will do damage. This all happened during the governorship of Rob DeSanctimonious.

Instead of complaining now for publicity reasons only, he should have stopped it long ago, would have been easy to do, still is. So now he's like, well, it happened under DeSantis' governorship as if he somehow controls Disney. And he's like, no, actually, it should be stopped, but DeSantis is ineffective. I actually think that's more of an effective attack on the Disney issue is that he tried to do it and he failed after Disney was able to outsmart him on the Reedy Creek governorship board. Yeah. I mean, on the merits, you know, the Disney fight, I sort of hate because there's no one

to cheer for here. Like, it is true. Disney is this, like, gigantic, unaccountable corporation that's been gifted massive tax breaks and benefits in Florida for decades now. I think the reason that DeSantis is going after them is stupid and it's just political posturing. You can see my monologue yesterday about the giveaway that he's giving to, gifting to Elon Musk to see that this is not a critique of corporate power.

It's just a war on certain corporations doing things that he doesn't like ideologically. On the other hand, like the arguments that Disney is using in court are kind of insane and not anything that anyone who has a critique of corporate power should be cheering on. So that's on the merits of this. I mean, with regard to Trump, like this is, again, one of the ways Trump is graded on a curve. He can say one thing one day, workshop that, see how it goes for him until he changes tune and say something completely different. And not get called out for it.

The other day. And even if he does get called out for it, you know, ultimately people just kind of go along with it and buy into whatever the latest line of attack is. I think for Ron DeSantis with the Disney fight, the risk is not among Republican based voters who I think generally like the idea of, like you said, they're into fighting against wokeness, whatever that means. And they like the specter of him, like taking on this quote unquote woke corporation. The issue for him is more with the donor set that do not like this. And Disney has already said they're pulling out some investment in the state. How will that impact the state of Florida, et cetera? But the donor class is very uncomfortable with this fight, and that is a key part of the DeSantis constituency. So that's where I think this is the

trickiest for him, not as much with the Republican base. However, to the extent that Trump has an effective attack here, the idea that DeSantis is losing and getting humiliated by Disney, I think that is the strongest line of attack. That's definitely the strongest one. That said, DeSantis also is sticking Trump in the eye. Put this up there on the screen. I actually love this. DeSantis meets with 9-11 families who have bashed Trump for the Saudi-funded golf tournament. He spent Memorial Day with the families of 9-11 victims who had bashed President Trump

for hosting the Live Golf tournament at the Trump property, hosted 500 veterans, Gold Star families and relatives who had lost loved ones on September 11th at the Florida Governor Mansion, and then specifically went out of his way to meet with eight of the 9-11 families who had talked to him about this issue. All those families came out and were singing his praises, saying how happy they were to be able to meet and to have their concerns voiced after Trump went ahead and had that tournament and obviously had a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia.

And he also did it as more of a stick in the eye, not just politically, but put this up there. We also know that there currently is a part of the DOJ investigation into one of the myriad of investigations is actually specifically looking into Trump's ties to live golf around foreign influence and Saudi Arabia and financial ties. So it's not, it was a dual-pronged attack and it was a smart play. It was a good headline for DeSantis, no question about it. Listen, if you actually care about government corruption, foreign influence, like if you're

worried about Hunter Biden's ties, for example, this is so brazen. The live golf is funded directly by the Saudi government. Trump is getting an undisclosed amount of cash directly from them, not to mention Kushner's deals over there, et cetera. So yeah, this should be investigated. And yeah, if you actually care about government corruption and wanting to make sure that the president of the United States is actually serving U.S. interests and not doing the bidding of whoever is like lining his pockets, this is definitely a big deal and something that should be looked into as part of the myriad of investigations that are going on here. I thought it was funny in the letter that those families of 9-11 victims sent condemning Trump for hosting these live golf, Saudi funded golf events. In addition to expressing their extreme

pain, frustration and anger, they actually included a quote from Trump's 2016 comments on the 9-11 terrorist attack from a segment that he did on Fox & Friends. He said at that time, who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn't the Iraqis. It was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia. Open the documents. We ought to get Bush or somebody to have the documents open because, frankly, if you open the documents, I think you are going to see it was Saudi Arabia obviously sang a different tune once he was in office and continues to sing a very different tune now that he is getting an undisclosed large amount of cash directly from the Saudi government. Yep. Well, I think it's an issue and I despise all of the, there's so many live golf defenders

like Normie. I had never, I'm not a golf guy. I went to a driving range recently and that was fun, but I've encountered golf bros who love live golf because like, yeah, the players are getting their bag and all that. I'm like, okay, look, it's not about the players. It's about like disgusting foreign corruption. And this isn't even a defense of PGA. From what I understand, it sounds like the PGA actually do suck and do not treat the people well. There are many reasons for why they should be dissatisfied. Shocker.

It's just like every other league and big business. Maybe, and I absolutely think it should be reformed. Do I think it should be reformed by the Saudi Arabian government? Right. No. And like that is where it's like I don't understand how you could possibly defend it unless you are a midwit moron. So anybody, just putting that out there. I already know the amount of golf bros who are going to be in the comments on this one is going to drive me crazy.

Kyle bashed you on this one. I hope he does. I've learned more about golf than I ever intended to. We are absolutely the minority. I mean, he's an actual golfer. Again, I only have peripherally connected to the golf world. But what I'm saying apparently is very controversial in the golf community. There's a real divide.

I actually think a majority is more on the side of PGA and is like, screw you. I hope so. That's my impression. Maybe the silent majority is with the PGA. I think they are, but I don't really know. I'm personally, I just like Tiger. Anyway, let's go. Let's go to the next one here and put it up there on the screen because this is also important for the 2024 race.

And actually, possibly might have the most impact on everything. If we got a chance to not have a Biden-Trump rematch, it won't be because democracy wants it. It's this headline, Wall Street dreads Biden-Trump rematch. Jamie Diamond, Joe Manchin, the finance set is casting about for a more business-friendly challenger. So according to the Wall Street Journal, on a farm in upstate New York, Wall Street types groused about the upcoming presidential election in between rights of roast pig. Billionaire money manager Mario Gabelli and banker Ralph Schlossstein were among the guests at a chief executive carnivore's ball, a celebration of all things meat that featured, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, featuring lively discussions of potential business-friendly candidates who can shake up the 2024 race. They floated people like

Secretary Gina Raimondo, who's the cabinet secretary. They said that they were dreading a Biden and a Trump rematch and that neither were quote business friendly enough for them. That is so insane. Yeah, it is insane considering how much handouts that they've gotten from both of them. They were on, they liked Ron at first, but now that he's chosen the side against Disney, they're against him. You have people like Bill Ackman, who's tweeted his support of Vivek Ramaswamy, who himself is a multi-hundred millionaire after the sale of his company. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Nikki Haley are also absolutely beloved by this donor set. People like Steve Schwartzman and others.

Don't forget, actually you weren't here for this, but Larry Ellison was very prominently at Tim Scott's announcement as the VIP guest of honor, the multi-billionaire, obviously going to underwrite the entire. Yeah, the donors love Tim Scott. There's nobody that they love more, in my opinion. So they've also considered this no labels attempt at maybe launching Joe Manchin. But I saw this and I was like, man, this is the only actual threat to the Biden-Trump rematch that probably exists, is if these Wall Street billionaires don't like it, well, that actually might have some impact. Well, this was, I mean, this was the play for Ron DeSantis, is for all of Capitol to get behind him. But now, both with his comments on Ukraine and also his war with Disney,

that he's sort of fallen out of favor. And so they're casting about for some, I mean, this is just insane to me. Like think of how much these people got from the Trump presidency. Like he rewrote the whole tax code on their behalf, didn't close the carried interest didn't do any of that sort of stuff. Just giant gift after giant gift. Joe Biden was known as like the, you know, Senator from the credit card capital of the country for his entire career. This is hardly someone who's some like radical renegade from the left. This is a corporate friendly Democrat as much as you could possibly get. But the thing they don't like about Biden is they say his aggressive stance on antitrust enforcement

has turned off potential backers whose profits depend on a healthy supply of corporate deals. Do you understand what that means? They're admitting up front, they basically need monopolies. Like they're not looking for some free market competition. They're like, he's not letting us rig the market to the extent that we want. So we're mad at him. That's their beef with Joe Biden, which is astonishing. And by the way, just follow Matt Stoller on the number of Wall Street Journal editorials trashing Lena Kahn over her antitrust stance. It's like 41. I mean, it's an insane number. They have a complete jihad against this woman because they hate the fact that they might have some semblance of actual competition in the marketplace and not just

a series of gigantic monopolies who are able to price gouge all of us and et cetera. So it is incredible to me that if these people don't get every single thing they want at every single second of the day, they pitch a complete fit and, you know, go desperately searching for some more friendly alternative who's actually going to literally give them everything they want. It reminds me of during the Obama administration, another very Wall Street, very corporate friendly government. He made some one speech that was like mildly critical of Wall Street at a time when they had just crashed the entire global financial economy

and destroyed our, and they were so, oh, they were so in their feelings about how could you criticize us? And they were, you know, openly weeping about how hurt they were over his like mild critique of them. These are the most fragile, egotistical people in the entire planet. So if you're wondering, I don't know if you've seen, we haven't covered a lot of this because I don't think there's a lot of legs behind it, but there's been all this chatter about no labels, fielding a presidential candidate, and Joe Manchin appears to be the person they would most likely to put in there because he is, if anything, just completely beholden to corporate America over and over again. He's proven his bona fides there. They actually have been working on, this is well-funded because it's backed by these type of people. They've been working on getting

ballot access. Democrats are very worried that if they do field some sort of third party candidate on the no labels ballot line, that this could hand the election to Trump. This type of maneuvering is where all the energy from that comes from. There is no organic interest in the country out there for someone to be even more pro-Wall Street and even more pro-corporate, but they delude themselves consistently into thinking that they represent some sort of silent majority too,

which is also just incredible and shows you the bubble they live in. It's certainly a majority of their peers, but that's the only majority that they're talking about. Yes, indeed. All right. All right, so we got a little update for you on what's going on over there on MSNBC, which is struggling to grapple with the fact that yes, Joe Biden has a healthy

lead in the Democratic primary, but the contenders against him, Marianne and RFK Jr. have been a little bit stronger in the polls than probably they're comfortable with. They've gone out of their way. All of media, to say they're not serious and Biden doesn't have a real contender and he's just going to be anointed and all the action is on the Republican side. So MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan had Marianne Williamson on his show,

presumably to talk about her campaign. Just take a listen to the way that Mehdi, who is supposedly like a progressive and a leftist, the way that he sets this up on MSNBC. Listen to the way that Mehdi, who is supposedly like a progressive and a leftist, the way that he sets this up on MSNBC. Listen to this. So what do you say to those who point out that, yes, you are popular with younger voters and on TikTok, but you can't win a Democratic presidential primary? You're essentially a spoiler candidate. And so by primarying Biden, all you're doing is weakening him in the general and making it easier for a Republican to beat him in 2024 in what will be a very tight election. Well, there are two things about what you said.

First of all, you said I'm a spoiler candidate. I'm not a spoiler candidate. I'm running in a primary. So you can't be a spoiler if you're running in the primary. The second thing you said was this narrative you can't win. Isn't that what people said about Donald Trump? I will win if people vote for me. I believe that in a democracy, people should have as wide an array of options before them as there are candidates running on agendas. That's what

a democracy is. We need to protect our democracy right now. That's obvious to everyone. The way you protect your democracy is by using your democracy. Candidate suppression is a form of voter suppression. So this idea that I'm a spoiler, no, I'm not a spoiler. I'm a candidate in a primary. And it's very important, I believe, that the president debate me, that the president debate any other people who are challenging him. At a time like this, when the fascists are clearly at the door, we should be having a very serious conversation about what it will take to defeat them and not just accepting what the DNC has to say, because a few elites have decided it's going to be Joe Biden.

So he says you can't win and you're a spoiler, which she rightly is very confused by because the previous definition of spoiler was a third party candidate. Like we were just talking about the no labels thing, which I dispute even that, right? If people want to run third party, it's your job to appeal to voters. They have the right to do it. Okay. But at least with a third party thing, you can at least see the case that they're making here. She's running an RFK Jr. running in a democratic primary. These are the same people who spend all day, every day saying democracy is at stake and democracy is on, vote like democracy is on the line because it is. And the minute you're like, okay, I'm here for the democratic process though. How could you, how dare you? You can't win and you're a spoiler, et cetera, et

cetera. Now, specifically the role that Mehdi is playing here, I think is particularly gross because he acknowledges Sagar at another point in the interview, like, I actually agree with you on policy. All of his objections are number one, I don't think you're qualified and serious. Well, guess what? It's not up to you to determine. Voters should get the chance to determine that through a democratic process. So he says he agrees with her on the policy, but then he's giving cover and permission for people who are ideologically aligned with her to come up with some excuse for voting for some corporate-backed candidate that has been, you know, failing from a progressive

perspective and from just a, like, general American perspective. So I think it was really gross and unfair, and he didn't give her any chance to, like, discuss, like, what she actually thinks in the campaign. It was all this stuff about, like, oh, you're not serious and you're not qualified and you can't win. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was really bad. And also it's just not the problem. It's also, look, with MSNBC especially, they have very little time to actually interview. So why would you waste your time actually asking a question like this about being a spoiler? Why don't you actually just delve into, you can ask strategy, you could ask differences, you could ask many other things. I mean, you could even ask it in a different way and be like, look, one of the

criticisms against you is your spoiler. What do you say to things. I mean, you could even ask it in a different way. Be like, look, one of the criticisms against you is your spoiler. What do you say to that? I mean, that's actually a more neutral way of saying it. Instead of coming in and over the top and saying you are a spoiler. Like, you don't get to determine it as an interviewer. It doesn't even make sense to this idea she or RFK Jr. are spoilers. They're running in a Democratic primary. So, I mean, this is, to me, just me just like does not compute. It's utter at MSNBC to break with the line on

things like, you know, Israel, Palestine. He's good on other foreign affairs issues. I don't want to take that away from him. But at the end of the day, if you're going to be on MSNBC, you're going to freaking back Democratic leadership. You're going to back Joe Biden. You're going to carry water for him. You're going to be in service of that. And in fact, it makes him a more effective propagandist that he does break the line occasionally on these other issues because he gains credibility as being this like honest broker and a true representative of the left. So then when you do something like this and it's like, well, even leftists don't support Marianne, then you are providing cover, providing a justification for people who should be her ideological allies to just get, you know, sucked up into the, whatever the DNC wants them to do. Vote blue, no matter who it's a, it's, it's a mind disease. I guess that's the one they say it.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, as you know, Donald Trump has been relentlessly hitting Ron DeSantis with every attack possible, throwing it all against the wall to just see what sticks. But somewhere between slamming his lack of loyalty and alleging that he's a groomer, Trump threw an interesting critique into the mix. In a post a while ago on Truth Social, Trump wrote, quote, Ron DeSantimonious is delivering the biggest insurance company bailout to globalist insurance companies in history. He's also crushed Florida homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the hurricane. They're getting pennies on the dollar. This is the worst insurance scam in the entire

country. Now, if you don't live in Florida or work in the insurance industry, you could be forgiven for having no idea what Trump is talking about here. But whether or not this particular attack on DeSantis sticks, there is actually a lot to say about the underlying problem that Trump is wildly gesturing at. It's an issue that is increasingly relevant not only in Florida but in states across the country. Due to climate fuel disasters, vast swaths of America are becoming essentially uninsurable. Homeowners are getting gouged. State insurance funds are collapsing.

And private insurers are demanding bailouts and engaging in some instances in outright fraud. It is a mess with huge implications for homeowners and looming costs for the entire economy. Just take a look at these headlines. You've got some insurance companies pull out of Louisiana and Florida in hurricane season. State farm stops home insurance sales in California, citing wildfire risks. Colorado's wildfire risk is so high some homeowners cannot get insured. Whether it's wildfires, hurricanes, or floods, the increased threat of extreme weather, especially in states along the Gulf Coast and in the western U.S., has made homeowners insurance a losing proposition for a lot of actors in the private market. In fact, the CEO of one of the largest insurance

companies in the world recently issued a dire warning to a U.S. Senate committee that these disasters have completely destabilized the insurance and reinsurance industries. For those who don't know, reinsurance is basically insurance for the insurers and backstops the losses from particularly catastrophic events. PLC President Eric Anderson testified that reinsurance companies, quote, have been withdrawing from high-risk areas around wildfire and flood in particular. He continued, just as the U.S. economy was overexposed to mortgage risk in 2008, the economy today is overexposed to climate risk.

Anyone with a mortgage is required by banks to have an active homeowner's insurance policy. So what happens in this very unsexy-sounding market can have huge implications for housing affordability. In high- risk areas, premiums have been absolutely skyrocketing. In fact, after Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida as one of the most expensive extreme weather events in history, Florida homeowners have watched with horror as their premiums have gone up an astonishing amount. One analysis projected that Florida homeowners can expect a 40% rate hike this year alone. And that is if you can get insurance at all.

Many states, including Florida, have watched as large insurers abandon the market altogether, leaving taxpayers as the insurer of last resort. In Colorado, desperate homeowners and would-be homeowners have been begging legislators to intervene in order to establish one of those state insurance funds. Up until now, they didn't need one, but wildfire risk has made areas close to forests in particular difficult or impossible to insure. California's state insurance plan has a massive $332 million deficit thanks to an influx of new policyholders due in part to an increase in wildfires. Now, every year that state seems to set a new record for the expense and the damage of those wildfires. Now, every year, that state seems to set a new record for the expense and the

damage of those wildfires. Overall, state-sponsored plans across the country have seen a 29 percent increase in policies in just a three-year period. It is an unsustainable situation, and something has got to give. And to bring it back around to Florida, the Sunshine State might be the best cautionary tale of what it looks like when the whole thing starts to give. According to a Washington Post investigation, Florida's insurance market began its descent into chaos in 2005 when devastating storms caused several large insurers like State Farm to flee the state. This left smaller, less financially stable firms to come in to try to fill the gap. The next big blow came in 2017, one of the most expensive storm seasons in history.

Most recently, the destruction and cleanup of Hurricane Ian, which I mentioned before, tipped that system from crisis to catastrophe. Left in the wreckage, of course, have been homeowners desperately trying to rebuild their lives after intense storm damage. Insurers have been caught engaging in outright fraud, denying legitimate claims, or paying out a tiny fraction of the actual incurred damages. The Washington Post uncovered a scheme among insurers to systematically delay and underpay policyholders in the state. Meanwhile, insurance lobbyists ran to the Republican-led state legislature to demand additional protections in the bailout that Trump referenced in his attack on DeSantis. And, you know, the man does actually have a point. The Florida legislature decided to create a taxpayer

funded $1 billion bailout fund for the insurers to tap if their losses were too great. They also made it more difficult for stiffed and defrauded homeowners to sue scam insurers who are ripping them off en masse. And the legislature limited who can get policies through the state-run insurer, forcing more customers into the hands of these price-gouging criminals. Hurricane Ian made landfall in September of last year. As of March of this year, 33,000 Florida homeowners still have open claims

linked to Ian that have received no payment. Another 125,000 were closed without ever receiving any payment. The unmitigated march of climate crisis has forced a series of terrible choices on state governments and on taxpayers. You could have taxpayers subsidize the cost of insuring homes in disaster-prone areas. You could continue trying to muddle through with a mix of private insurers, rising premiums for everyone, and occasional industry bailouts and rampant fraud, or you can basically abandon the large and growing regions which are uninsurable due to extreme weather risk. Without dealing with the underlying crisis, our options are only set to become more painful.

This is a huge deal in Florida. It's a huge deal in Texas. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, while it's certainly a downside to live in interesting times, one of the more exciting things about the last few years is the feeling that just anything is possible.

I especially felt that way when Trump was elected in 2016, against all odds. I felt that way as I watched millions of people pick up and move in the middle of the pandemic. I feel it now. People are asking questions, making decisions they never would have dreamed of before out of fear of not doing, quote, what you're supposed to do. College attendance has for years now been in the category of what you're supposed to do. Millions of Americans a generation ago who never would have considered college decided to go,

even if they didn't have the money or even if they didn't have a clear idea of what they wanted to do. They spent tens of thousands of dollars. They went into debt on average. And in many cases, they did not see the once promised wage premium. By and large, despite decades of the same behavior and an entire generation of people who were going broke, this trend still continued right up until COVID, when suddenly a few things became very clear. One, schools really were not charging you for the quote-unquote college experience. They not only did not cut tuition, but actually raised it during literal Zoom school from home, showing that the only thing you're paying for is that credential. Two, despite the fact that demand remained relatively stable, an entire generation

of young men just decided, you know what? Screw this. The number of new young males entering college dropped dramatically in 2021, even as campuses reopened, and they put us on track for a troubling trend. Sometime in the near future, women will outnumber men on college campus, and not only that, but outnumber them two to one. Given the way that our current higher elite is largely composed of the college educated, it will mean a dramatic misalignment of women and men, and will have profound social effects on our dating culture and future marriage rates. Despite all of this data on collapsing male interest in college, elites have refused to stop their tune. They still insist student debt cancellation is the only answer, not holding the colleges criminally liable for lying to people. They still insist our debt cancellation is the only answer, not holding the colleges criminally liable for lying to people.

They still insist our broader culture doesn't have a bias against men, especially at the higher elite circles. And they continue to insist a college degree is the only way to get ahead in this country. Unfortunately for them, men are just not listening to them anymore. College enrollment rates for high school graduates between the ages of 16 and 24 dropped a stunning 4% overall in the last four years, new Labor Department data reveals. Unsurprisingly, this coincided with the lowest teenage unemployment rate in 70 years. On record, a massive increase in wages paid in the hospitality sector and across the lower-skilled economy. The tight labor market has made college a worse trade than ever for millions of people, especially men. This puts the current college enrollment rate at a place

it has not been at for more than two decades. The vast majority of this decline is attributed to male matriculation. Female college matriculation remains at 66%. The male college rate is 10% lower. It is not like these guys are just sitting on the couch either. Many of them have taken up apprenticeships, which are up 50% or more year over year. They're filling the huge shortage of roles that we have in trades and skilled labor positions across the economy. Now, across the board, the entire US population is losing faith in college too. Only 52% of respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal poll said college was worth the cost, and a record 56% said it's not. Again, the male-female differential here is worth noting.

Men are much, much more likely than women to say college is not worth it, and express delight at the ability to make a better wage than before without having to go to the trouble of going to college. Make no mistake, on a long enough timeline, this is going to dramatically reshape the face of America. College is not just about education. More and more, it's really about ideology and lifestyle. Whether you have a four-year college degree or not is the best single approximator today for how you vote. If you attended college, you are likely a Democratic voter and vice versa. Of course, there are many important exceptions, and I am talking about averages, but the point remains clear. If you went to college, you are much, much more likely to have very different cultural tastes than if you did not, including, but not limited to, the type of music that you

like, the TV shows you watch, where you go on vacation, where you shop for groceries, what you consider a societal problem, whether you know anyone in the military, so many things like this. If you don't go to college, you will be very different in your preferences and your desires in almost every single one of those categories. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. No, as long as both sides are not trying to police the other. But the issue is what happens when those separate dramatically by gender and class lines. We already have lots of data to show that the mismatch between men and women in college is having a huge effect already on the potential dating pool, for college graduate females especially. It is leading to a major

loneliness crisis for a number of men who are having very, very hard times finding a female mate. Young female depression gets all the headlines. But as I've laid out here before, it's really young men who are in crisis. Young men commit suicide at four times the rate of young women. They make up 80% of all suicide deaths of male versus female. Furthermore, young men who remain single for prolonged periods of their life suffer worse health outcomes. They achieve lower wages. They report lower life satisfaction. Generally, they are not thriving. Structurally, you're in a tough place right now.. Generally, they are not thriving. Structurally, you're in a tough place right now. Men understand that they are mostly not wanted at college or that it is not a good deal for them. But the working class wages that they are seeking are not high enough in the long run or show enough promise to actually set them up for middle class or upper

middle class life in the future. Thus, they remain in this odd middle ground gray area. They're not thriving enough to attract many women who are themselves college graduates, who also find themselves lonely and miserable. What you need is a total reset of this whole system. The college education expectation needs to drop. Our working class wages need to rise even more than they currently have. Trades need to be seen in the same level that we see a bachelor's of accounting, for example. And the entire idea of what you should be doing needs to be redefined in every high school in the country. Until that time, unfortunately,

we are in for it socially, despite how predictable the doom spiral of all of this really is. We cover a lot of this stuff here. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Great show for everybody. Thank you all so much for joining us. We really appreciate it and for helping us out, become premium members and help build out this new set. We're really excited to show it to all of you. We're going to have fun debuts. Make sure you guys are checking your

emails. We're going to be sending instructions and outlays in terms of how we're doing it. As Crystal mentioned, we will be remote next week while the studio is completely redone here with all the renovations that take place. You're the ones who are funding it. You're the ones who are helping us out. BreakingPoints.com if you're able. Otherwise, we'll see you all on Thursday. We've got a great counterpoint show for everyone tomorrow. Oh, and actually, I'm in for Ryan tomorrow. Oh, I didn't know that. Cool. You all are stuck with me tomorrow, too. It'll be a ladies show. We can talk about men in crisis, Emily. Yeah, you should do it. You should do it. But yeah, so I'll be in for Ryan tomorrow and I'll be here on Thursday. So I'm, you know,

pulling over. It's like kind of making up for Ryan filling in for me while I was on honeymoon. It's nice of you to do that, but I don't think you have to. All right. See you guys later. So fun ladies show for everyone tomorrow. There you go. See you then. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive.

But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.