Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/30/25: Trump Tariffs Back On & Israel Sabotages Ceasefire

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Krystal, Ryan and Emily discuss Trump appeals courts tariff block & Israel sabotages Gaza ceasefire dealDan Cohen: https://x.com/DanCohenSays To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Oh, hi, Ryan Grimm. How's it going? It goes. I got my earbuds figured out. Nice. The phone kept insisting that it was going to take the earbuds. So I told phone, guess what? No Bluetooth for you. So now the earbuds have no choice. When you learn your lesson, you can get Bluetooth back. Yeah. Well, I was just recounting the travails of my face. That's all you missed so far. I know that story. Yeah. So anyway, there's a lot to get to this morning. I think what we're probably

going to do, we're going to go through the latest with the terrorists, which are like on and off again. And who knows what's going to happen there? Ryan, how have you? Just like Ryan's earbuds. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We'll have Ryan give us big updates on Israel and ceasefire negotiations and what's going on there. We've got some new Zoran Mandani polling out of New York that is looking interesting. I'm starting to believe he could pull it off. What do you guys think? It's looking good. I'll never believe it until it happens.

You'll never believe it. No, and Cuomo will run like Buffalo style in the general election against him. So he's going to have to beat him twice. What's the name of the woman? What's the name of the woman? I'm forgetting her name. Yeah, it's a Buffalo mayor. That's um we're all totally blank such boomers i covered

that so closely too but in any case she beats the like corrupt incumbent major uh underdog victory grassroots like people-powered victory and then they just turn around and run this dude in the general election did he run as a republican or an independent? I don't remember. I think even a Republican. I think he did. And he's able to win in the general. So I could see Cuomo pulling the same. And I think there's a good possibility it would work. There's no laws in New York City that would prevent that. Well, he already has a ballot line because New York has like a hundred different parties, the Constitution Party and this party. So he actually he doesn't even have to do anything.

And he's already on the ballot for the general if he wants it. Damn, that's crazy. By the way, a star is born with Zoran. Yeah. He's been launched. Yeah. We covered his first campaign when he ran for. Oh, did you really?

He was not on my radar. He was part of this wave of DSA candidates who won in the cycle after, like, AOC and the squad won in 2018. And then this whole wave of DSA candidates won state senate and state house and city council seats in 2020. Yeah, I remember that. And he was one of them. DSA and also, I'm sure, Working Families Party backed. Yeah, they had a great track a great a great track record a great like election season right in that um in that era um so we'll do all that i think probably then for premiums we're gonna do um you've got the pollster who did the like abundance versus populism poll

yeah we're gonna talk to which i'm excited about um i need to take a look have you guys seen the uh abundance world criticisms of this poll? Because I do want to ask him about some of those. So I've got to take a look. Yeah. So basically, the criticisms are hilarious. One is that, well, this is not electoral. It's not supposed to poll well. But they explicitly say it's like a political project. I mean, I've asked Eric about that. I mean, they say that quite explicitly. So that's funny. And then they say, whenever somebody with an agenda designs a poll, you can't trust it. And so the people who organized the poll said, OK, look at the wording.

It's your wording. Tell us precisely how you'd like to do it, and we'll redo it. So we can talk to Dan Cohen, the pollster, about that. Because they said, give us your words. You write another poll that is the most lopsided pro-abundance poll that you can think of. And we'll test it. Let's see. They feel that confident in the results. I mean, I think fairly so.

And then I've been excited to have this conversation with the two of you guys. Ben Shapiro taking shots at Theo Vaughn. I mean, listen, obviously it's because he's not happy with Theo Vaughn being like, this is a genocide in Gaza and I have a problem with it. But I do think some of the content, like putting that aside, some of the content of what Shapiro said about the number of grown adults who aren't acting their age, I thought that was kind of interesting. And I wanted to get your thoughts on if there's any there there they're putting aside the like, you know, the Israel bias, like that piece of it. So wanted to get to that as well. But let's go ahead and start with what's going on with the tariffs. So last we left off, the tariffs were off because the court ruled this,

this, what is it? Court of International Trade ruled that the tariffs exceeded the powers of IEPA, the authority they were using to do the across the board Liberation Day tariffs. Now we have another court that has weighed in that has said, listen, there's an appeal process that is going to play out. And in the meantime, we are going to reinstate those tariffs for now. So they say a federal appeals court on Thursday granted the Trump administration's request to temporarily pause a lower court ruling that struck down most of President Trump's tariffs. Trump administration had early told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit it would seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court as soon as Friday if the tariff ruling was not quickly put on pause. So they are headed to the Supreme Court.

There's one other piece of this I want to put up before I get to start with Emily's reaction, because I'm very interested in what you have to say about this. the Federalist Society, which is involved in vetting all of these judges and specifically tears into Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society, who is so influential in conservative circles. And Emily, I know you'd be able to speak to that better than anyone. Here's Hinenia's commentary on this, which I also think is sort of astute. He says Trump now denouncing the Federalist Society, saying he doesn't want their judges anymore. Pretty much the last tie to conservatism as an ideology. We're getting judges from now on who act like sycophants in the administration. But anyway, I won't read this whole thing.

But this is just him like really going after Leonard Leo and calling them backroom hustlers and all these sorts of things. So, Emily, tell us, you know, how is this being received in a conservative world and what is your view of the import here? This is how a lot of conservatives actually feel about Leonard Leo now. Oh, really? MAGA conservatives. There's a difference between the sort of old conservative movement that is still really loyal to the Reagan crew and the Reagan years and the Reagan legacy. And then there's MAGA world, which has been frustrated, particularly by Amy Coney Barrett, sometimes by Brett Kavanaugh,

and then also by some of these lower judges, lower court judges. And so it's not really surprising that Donald Trump has had that planted in his ear and that he would even like kind of organically feel frustrated by that. It's just a matter of time before that you know even boils over further but um it was interesting in that true social post because he also says he doesn't even really think it's leonard leo's fault like he spends the first half of the truth social post unloading on leonard leo and then being like but actually like these judges it's these these judges are just a complete and total disaster. So it was weird.

Stephen Miller says they're communist judges. Communist judges. Right. Which certainly would have nothing to do with Leonard Leo. So anyway, all I say, it's pretty like I wonder where this goes from here in conservative world, because the Supreme Court all day, the White House yesterday was saying, we're going to take this up to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court, we are utterly confident we'll decide in our favor. Well, the Supreme Court, Donald Trump, when he says Leonard Leo helped him pick judges, he's talking about dozens and dozens of people in lower courts, but also the Supreme Court. Every single person on the Supreme Court that is a Trump appointee or Trump nominee was picked from the list that Leonard Leo gave him in 2016 in order to get conservative votes.

That's the law. We go back to 2016. Trump needs to get the support of the conservative movement before the election. And so Leonard Leo gives him a list of judges that he will pick. And Trump picks every single judge and justice from that list. And so now most of the conservative majority is Leonard Leo Trump picked in the White House is saying they have every bit of confidence in them. So it's contrary. It's a self-contradiction, of course. It's wild to think, too. So first of all, I mean, I certainly would not surprise me if the Supreme Court upholds the decision that the tariffs exceed the statutory authority, because part of the Federalist Society was cultural issues, and part of it is being very pro-business, and business is not excited about this tariff regime, would not surprise me at all.

If that was the finding, I don't know. And also, I just, I mean, I think on its face, it is preposterous to imagine that you can, as executive claim this much unilateral power for yourself when the power of the purse is happening. And he's at risk of losing the evangelical right. And there's like a real, you know, potential split in the foundation of his coalition. The way he shores that up is by putting out this list of like federalist society. Like here are the Supreme Court justices I will consider. Like I'm locking it in now.

These are the people and they're your people. And that's an important part of how he's able to keep his coalition together and secure victory. So it's wild to now fast forward to now and see him going after them because they're not just doing everything he wants them to do. You know, to Hanania's commentary there, I agree and I disagree because obviously Trump is his own animal and it's just like the cult of Trump. But when you look at the primary accomplishments that he has effectuated in office, it's like destroying the administrative state. That is a big, you know, traditional Reagan type conservative goal. It was a big Leonard Leo goal, actually. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, Russ vote is deeply steeped in the conservative movement. Like this is not some rando who hasn't been in Washington before. Right amount of break that trump is that trump's administration in practice has represented from republican administrations of the past ryan what do you think about that sort of thing yeah this like trump is really going for um a basically a clean break, not a clean break from, but complete domination over all factions of conservatism. Yes, that's the way to put it. So it's not necessarily an ideological break, but he wants complete domination over. I think that's the way the way to put it. Right. It's like, OK, you evangelicals have this these politics. You Fed Soc people have these politics. You Chamber fed soc people have these politics you chamber of

commerce people have these politics you america first or jd vance types have this going on so you all serve me and and this is and trumpism is what i say it is and that's that's how it's going to be and so yeah this because if he gets his tariffs shot down by the Supreme Court, that's a pretty radical rebuke to to him, his policy and his domination over the over the entire coalition. So he seems to be really going for it here. Emily. Oh, sorry. I was going to say I forget who posted this this week, but someone posted like this is outer borough mob shit. And it's a really good way to put it, because I think a lot of people try to shoehorn what Trump is doing into an ideology. But it's actually Trump is trying to sort of shoehorn, Trump is trying to force the ideology of the right to be deference to Trump. And there are times where it overlaps with the goal of Russ vote or the goal of Leonard Lee or whatever, but particularly Russ and, you know, creating the unitary executive and

restoring executive power and all of that. But there are times when it's also just like Donald Trump isn't overlapping with the ideological goal. Donald Trump is just Roy Cohn as president of the United States. Yeah, that's right. Emily, you had pool duty yesterday. And so you were there for all of, you know, everything there was to get out of this administration in the world simply look at the court decision, the court was clear, as I said, that the president had broad authority to oppose tariffs. They took issue with the particular statute we used. So there have been other indications, too, that they're going to try to move forward in some way. You know, what did you make of those comments from Navarro and from other administration officials as well?

Well, in that last part there about the particulars of the statute from Peter Navarro is why the argument will be met with agreement from conservative Supreme Court justices because it's not quite as simple as just, oh people are very skilled at getting their questions asked, like they raise their hand super loud. If you talk to White House reporters about their tricks, it goes down to like how they smile and make eye contact. It's a real craft. Yeah. It's like trying to get a drink at a bar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ryan Grim knows what's up. Low cut blouse. Does that help? So anyway, it was the question is just if part of the problem from this kicking through the court system is that it creates complete uncertainty. Again, you can kill two birds with one stone here and go through Congress. Why would the administration not pass the slate of tariffs or even like a slightly reduced slate of tariffs through Congress, because then that brings certainty to investors and it removes the problem of the courts. But of course, they know that they can't pass these through Congress. They have no confidence that

they would be able to get, you know, Ron Johnson and Susan Collins, the sort of hardcore fiscal conservatives, but also moderate conservatives. Even this is a perfect continuation of what we were just talking about. Even in the kind of cult of Trump era of the Republican Party, tariffs are a line too far for a lot of traditional Republicans and moderate Republicans. So they're stuck with having to, as you have pointed out many times, Crystal, rely on Trump kind of waving his magic wand, which he definitely enjoys. But that's because it's actually this is why Congress, why the founders delegated this power to Congress, because it's not supported by the representatives of the public. It's supported by the president. And so it's a huge problem. And the other reason why this is delegated to Congress is the exact reason why Trump doesn't want to have to go through Congress, which is he wants people to achieve here, not to mention, you know, all the like, oh, potential development deals that can be thrown his way, or if he wants to do a favor for Elon and make sure they get Starlink or they're partnering with Palantir or whatever it is

that's in his basket, you know, of goodies wishlist, then that becomes much more difficult to effectuate if you're actually going through the legislative branch. And just, Ryan, you can respond to this because I think you might have thoughts. It's one of the questions people were asking throughout the day is, doesn't this destroy your leverage? I mean, doesn't going through the courts destroy your leverage when you're going to other countries? I mean, just yesterday, Kevin Hassett was saying they expect many, many deals to be coming in the next few weeks. But who's going to make a deal with you when they don't even know whether the courts are going to block your tariffs from being implemented?

So, Ryan, I feel like what leverage should they have if they're talking to India? I don't actually think that that plays that significant of a role because I think the U.S. has leverage because it's an economic superpower uh at the same time countries are that were already reluctant to strike deals with us because we just trump just renegotiated usmca with canada and mexico just a couple years ago right and then and then they're already tearing it up and it completely abrogates it the united states cuts an iran deal they abrogate it down. They're talking about going back into it. So the idea. This ties into Israel and Hamas as well. Yeah. Make some claims with Hamas and then totally turns around to something different when they talk to Israel.

So the courts are like the 70th wild card thrown into a deal with the United States, which is just becoming like a completely arbitrary and capricious country. And other countries are trying to uh move move away from it um you know just real quickly on the yeah my take on the founders is like they never really even thought of the president as making policy at all like that was supposed to come from congress and tariffs for the first hundred plus years of the U.S. were major policy. It's like where huge portions of our federal revenue came from. Once we kicked in an income tax and we had a federal reserve, the economy and the treasury were run with tariffs as a real kind of sideshow. And so that's why Congress then delegated, you know, the kind of moving of the dial to the executive because the policy was already set in place. What Trump's doing is a brand new policy. It's like bringing tariffs back to a central place

in our economic policymaking like they were in the 19th century, and that you you can't do unless Congress allows you to do it would would be the argument. It's just all power, though. to your point, Ryan, about how we're just like this rogue nation at this point and every other country is just figuring out how to adapt. And he says, this is bizarrely received almost zero coverage in Western media, but it's actually a massive deal. China, the countries of Southeast Asia, ASEAN, and the Arab states, GCC,

just held a summit in Kuala Lumpur to forge what could become the world's largest economic bloc, covering everything from free trade agreements and de-dollarization to Belt and Road connectivity. Together, these countries have over 2 billion people, 30% of the world's GDP, and crucially about 55% of world GDP growth in PPP terms. Here's their joint statement. They agree to massively develop free trade, bypass the dollar, that's an important one, Belt and Road expansion, develop a cross-regional digital economy framework, including an AI and energy markets coordination. So one more sign

that the rest of the world is trying to adapt to the U.S. rogue actions. And like I was saying, maybe this is a good thing for everybody. In a world where the U u.s is still the lone superpower and and also sees the rapid development of ai like we know how that world ends like with a like just a plutocracy of like a few trillionaires controlling everything that's that like i i'd love to say that dsa and and the remnants of bernie are gonna like put the brakes on brakes on that. I don't see it happening. And so if it has to be us, like, committing suicide and handing over power to these other countries who at least they might have a better shot at making a slightly more egalitarian world out of this, on the other side of this, whatever this AI development is. Yeah. We need to have Yanis Varoufakis back on because he also is tracking both the de-dollarization that ties into the deals that are being struck here that Arnaud is highlighting, along with the US's embrace of, quote unquote, stable coins.

And so he sees a world in which you have two competing monetary systems, one that is sort of more traditionally backed by governmental central banks like public currencies that would be emblematic of like the BRICS arrangements and what's happening with ASEAN and China and the Arab nations. And then one that is this private digital currency, you know, and with the quote unquote genius act and these stable coins, which are not stable, actually, and the trick there dollar as the alternative. The trick there, if people aren't connecting the dots, is it buys you, say, another 10 or 20 years of being able to kind of float endless amounts of treasuries into circulation because the Bitcoin people, the crypto people, will have to buy the treasuries as the collateral for their stable coin. So it's basically a way to, it's kind of

a pump and dump for like the entire United States. That's cool. Yeah. That sounds like it's going to work out really great. It'll be good for 10 or 20 years. And that's longer term thinking than our economic planners are usually getting into. So let's give them at least credit for that. Yeah. I mean, you know, Trump and the other gerontocracy people will be dead, I guess, by the time it collapses. So what do they care?

Yes. This was a good piece from from Giannis that people should check out that he wrote on this recently, which I definitely have. I just closed it. Sorry. It was called Trump wants big tech to own the dollar. Yes. Really. Yeah. Sounds right. One more one more piece on this again, highlighted by Arnaud. So Marco Rubio announced they're going to start revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party, or studying in critical fields. And he says, RIP American AI industry, according to a recent study by the Paulson Institute, 38% of the top tier AI talent working in the U.S. are Chinese, more than Americans themselves.

So again, I guess, right. So that's a win. For those of us who are very concerned by ai development we should be like yeah i guess good work this is this is trump's real plan we didn't even see it coming this is the 5d chess that's right see it coming this is all a plan to topple the empire's ability to thrust us into AI, into the dystopia of AI. So well done, Mr. President. It is wild. It is wild to see the very obvious consequences of these actions in any case. Anything else there, guys? Are you ready to move on to Israel? So, Ryan, you guys have been doing the best reporting on what is going on with the ceasefire deal negotiations. So I'll pull up here the framework, the text that you guys published of the term sheet delivered to Hamas

by Steve Witkoff. And you can talk us through some of the details here and also the larger context. Yeah. So the the original deal, understanding as Hamas described it, that Jeremy reported on last week into early this week, was that there would be a 60-day ceasefire. The Israeli forces would withdraw to their March 2nd positions. There would be five captives released on day one, and then five hostages released on day 60. And the idea there was that breaking them in half and spreading them out forces Israel to abide by the ceasefire for that entire 60 days. And during that 60 days, the U.S. would guarantee the stability of the ceasefire and would pressure Israel to negotiate towards a long-term truce, that the war would not start up again on day 61. The new agreement,

oh, and how that unfolded, Jeremy was able to get the details of this and publish that there was an understanding between Hamas and Witkoff that Israel immediately comes out and they don't want to do this. They say they don't want to do this. Witkoff then calls Axios, Barak Ravid, and says, I'm really disappointed in Hamas's reaction to this. And so blaming Hamas, even though Hamas had accepted the terms. So then Witkoff goes back and he's like, okay, what can I tweak in this to get Israel on board? Which again, tells you that Jeremy's reporting was correct because the deal would not have gotten more favorable to Israel if the original one was okay with Israel, but not

okay with Hamas. So now they have a new deal, which instead of the five, the second half of the captives, and there are believed to be 20 living captives remaining in Gaza. So the five, instead of being released on day 60, would be released on day seven. And the language around Israel kind of withdrawing back to March 2nd is much vaguer. And the language about a long-term truce is vague, giving Israel the ability to restart the war. Netanyahu met yesterday with hostage families and audio of it immediately leaked, which people in Israel, reporters in Israel were speculating or just guessing that this was a deliberate Netanyahu leak.

And so in his conversation with the hostage families, he was telling them, we're going, we're going to restart the war. Like it's happening. Like, I'm sorry. Like, and we hope we get the rest of the living captives out, but we'll see. And just letting you know, we're going to break this deal. Yeah. And the thinking of Amir Tabon, our columnist who's been on our show, his analysis is that Netanyahu put that out to pressure Hamas to reject the deal. Like his preference is that Hamas reject the deal rather than accept it and then Netanyahu has to break it. Because even though he's willing to break it, it comes with a political cost. The world has completely lost its patience with Netanyahu and his genocide. It's like Europe is 20 percent of its trade. Even Germany is telling Israel that this is that this has gone too far. So on the one hand, you could imagine why Hamas is still debating this internally. You can imagine why they would reject this deal because it may be seven days of a ceasefire.

Right. And then right back to where they were. Right. On the other hand, you can imagine why they would accept it because if Netanyahu wants them to reject it, you could think, okay, whatever Netanyahu wants us to do, like we should do the opposite. And, and, and it would further isolate Israel internationally if they once again broke another ceasefire. And so the question, you know, for Hamas is, is, you know, what is, what is a seven day or a 60 day ceasefire worth to them? Um, if they, and if they're, because they're, as they say, their, their remaining leverage is, is there the 20 hostages that they hold, if that's down to 10 and increasingly maybe

shrinking as, as Israel's relentless bombing campaign, um, you know, you know, puts their lives at risk on a minute-by-minute basis. So there was a lot of hope in Gaza. You saw people, you know, almost like pre-celebrating the possibility. And this was just such a poignant and painful thing to see, because the expressions of joy are a reflection of the depth of the pain. Right. But there's what we don't know yet how this will go. And to me, it's pretty hard to predict. Ryan, what do you make of, like, what can we read into Witkooff and the trump administration's role here and their

preferences because i mean you know as we sort through all these details which are really important at the end of the day um the you know probably the critical factor is what the trump administration is willing to do to compel bb2 and the war yeah and it doesn't seem like they're willing to do much because if they had just kept the arrangement something similar to, all right, five on day one and five on day 60, and Netanyahu is publicly saying, screw you, I'm going to restart the war as soon as I can,

at least you're then forcing Hammas to ask the question of what is a 60-day ceasefire and a flood of aid worth it to this population that is being pushed into total anarchy like at this point um whereas when you say is seven days worth it it's like well you know they might not even let much they'll barely let any aid in for seven days and then start bombing again so okay they agreed to 60 but like they're being very uh public in their in their you know confidence that they don't have to abide by it so yeah without um you know without without Witkoff pushing it for slightly longer, it does suggest that they're not willing to do that much. It's interesting that from, let's just say, from Netanyahu's perspective, he probably feels like he is on the precipice of a generational opportunity for like Mara Gaza.

He has said that repeatedly yeah totally but then also the flip side of that is a the the alternative is the reconstitution of hamas with any type of again from his perspective any type of ceasefire so he thinks that he's on he's walking this like very very fine line between getting exactly the like fantasy scenario from the Israeli far right's perspective or losing it and having Trump and the United States go into a future that is much more skeptical of Israel and has a much more skeptical alliance with Israel. And I guess it's sort of like they feel like they're on a tightrope. And I don't know. I mean, I don't think they realize that the more skepticism of the alliance future is kind of already here. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot to that. And I think this ties into it as well. They're, you know, rapidly moving to enable the additional expansion,

major expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank. You know, they're worried that there will be international, real international pressure for some sort of a, you know, Palestinian state to be recognized and some sort of a two-state solution to be forced upon them. And so, and look, like Bibi grew up in the United States. I mean, these are people who deeply understand American politics. They probably understand it better than almost anyone, to be honest with you, and where the pressure points are and how to get their way and when the clock's ticking and when it's not. And so, look, they can read a poll as well as anyone else and see the way that, first of all, the privilege that they enjoyed of having

lockstep, unified, bipartisan support, it is going to come to an end. You cannot sustain a situation where the base of one party, the Democratic Party, is so dramatically at odds with the elected leadership of that party. And that's going to come to, I think, is going to come to a head quickly in 2028. I think this will be a litmus test and that you will not get through a Democratic primary without having a very different position on Israel than, you know, Joe Biden and every other Democratic president has had in modern American history. So they know that that bipartisan consensus is going away. And even within the Republican Party, you know, older Republicans still have very positive views of Israel. Younger Republicans do not. So, you know, Ryan, how much of the actions

that are being taken now, you know, the attempt to actually consolidate some sort of like wild greater Israel project, the dramatic expansion and the dramatic like escalation and oppression and violence in the West Bank, obviously the attempt to do the final solution in Gaza. How much of this is a realization of like, this is our moment. And if we don't go for everything right now, the landscape is going to be different for us in the future. Yeah. And I think there's almost a break from reality among the political class and a lot of the population in that there's a real impulse now of Israelis saying we don't need the world. The world has abandoned us. And it's a break with reality in the sense that for 20 months, the entire world, Western world, has financed and armed their war against this small militia in Gaza. Endlessly, like in unlimited capacity in a way that no other small country has gotten. Yet they feel like the

world has abandoned them and that the world has turned against them. And so their response to that is we don't need the world. We have this startup nation. We've got all these high-tech firms. They do make like a non-trivial amount of their own weapons. Like they have their own weapons manufacturing capacity. So they're like, we don't need the world. We're going to go it alone. There are some who are like, we're just a couple million people here. And we don't want to like never leave.

And also like we're dependent on international trade. We're dependent on all the favorable terms that we get from the from the U.S. We don't have just the demography to keep up endless wars on the north and the northeast and the south. something like 17,000 wounded. And then they're talking about tens of thousands more with debilitating PTSD. They're recruiting people suffering from PTSD back into Gaza, like back into service. Well, and they have major long-term demographic issues because the- The Palestinians made up a lot of their labor force. That's true too, yeah. And the economy is struggling.

And so people, you know, people who can leave or leave, like a lot of them have American passports, European passports, and so can leave. And the ultra-Orthodox don't want to work or serve in the military. They don't want to work either. They have a lot of kids, but they don't want to do anything. Yeah, it's going to be just them and the Palestinians that stay behind. Or who survive. to this greater Israel accomplished through endless war, and the reality of their demography and their economic base, are very far apart right now, and I think kept alive by war fever.

Think of how that's influencing the donor class, that influences the Trump administration. Actually, politicians on both sides of the aisle, but since they have the keys to the car right now, the Trump administration, that, I don't want to say paranoia because that would imply that it's irrational or unfounded, but that almost desperation. You can sort of sense it, I think, being pushed to the politicians as they're hearing from people who they've taken a lot of money from and have seen as great allies for a long time. It's sort of been like the Republicans has just sort of been natural and a very unquestioned alliance and like a marriage, really.

Yeah. And meanwhile, the Netanyahu government announced 22 new settlements in the West Bank yesterday, which the government explicitly said the purpose of which was to prevent and make impossible the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. They're just saying this out loud. So the path they're choosing, they are desperately hoping to go down as this one of endless war, when the world really, despite their paranoia, does not have any sympathy for Palestinians. And if Israel today said, we accept this term and we accept Hamas's long-term truce in Gaza, and we accept a technocratic government to run Gaza with the support of the, you know, Gulf Gulf countries and then let Ireland and Spain

and some others recognize that little rump as a Palestinian state, and they just stopped bombing and starving the Palestinians, the world would be like, that's fine. That's good enough. From a perspective of global justice, it would not remotely be good enough. But the world would be fine with that. The world would just like Israel to stop humiliating the West when it comes to its hypocritic values, but doesn't really have have much concern for the actual Palestinian people. Yeah, I think that's very apparent. But and to Emily's point about the, you know, increasing desperation here in the U.S. In particular, we have this new announcement from Marco Rubio saying the U.S. is implementing a vigorous new visa policy to prevent foreign nationals with anti-Israel views from traveling to the U.S. This is the job that Laura Loomer is auditioning for. At the same time, you know, even given the costs of pro-Palestinian protests at this point, you had a large, you've continued to have large protests at graduation ceremonies in particular. This was, you had one at Hunter College.

I can pull this up on Dropsite again, share this. Rely on you guys so much. Students protesting the administration. You know, if you listen to this, it's quite. And Talia Jane is great. What's her? Talia OTG. People should follow that one. She's great. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, so they, you know, this was a quite significant protest. If you watch this video and the, you know, percentage of students who were involved here. So even knowing the incredible consequences that students have faced. The MIT speaker. Like when you've lost MIT.

And Israel has to be watching this and shuddering. These are the future elites of this country. That's right. Who believe that this is their primary moral cause. I mean, that's part of why there's such a panicked authoritarian reaction is because they don't see it as just, you know, oh, these like college kids and they don't really mean it doesn't really matter. And this is so impotent. again an indication that the writing is on the wall and that even in spite of your incredibly authoritarian, anti-free speech, illegal, unconstitutional crackdown, that they're still willing to protest and speak out and stand for what they see and what I see and what most of the world sees as right. It's the most IRL version of the beatings will continue until morale improves

that I've really ever seen. And the, the more the beatings have continued, the worst morale has gotten. Yeah. That they're willing to continue to do push these protests in the face of indefinite detention of protesters, people, you know, the NYU guy losing his diploma.

We have, we have a little petition going at drop site for the NYU speaker who they are withholding his diploma. That's insane. It was like 30 seconds. He just said something very basic. Yeah, 30 seconds of like, don't do terrible things to civilians. How dare you? Yeah.

Outrageous. And in the face of that, to see all of these kids still doing that. Yeah. It's like the beatings are going to have to really increase. Well, I also, I meant a lot to hear from Abu Bakr that, you know, he and other Palestinians in Gaza have been tracking those protests and found it very heartening as well. Yeah. Let's go ahead and talk a little bit. Oh, we've got, actually, we've got Dan here. So we go ahead and, um, talk to Dan about the polling. Then we can, um, we can push Zoran off until, until after we talked to Dan. Yeah, let's do that. Okay.

Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for doing it. Appreciate it. Ryan, you want to set this up? Yeah, do this um do i do i let me find this uh let me find this axios poll you know so yeah dan while i'm looking for this poll um so you uh you were the pollster basically who ran this uh this viral poll um that was published first in in axios uh that has caused all sorts of, uh, discourse back and forth about polling, about abundance, about populism. Um, so, uh, just frame up for people kind of what the question was that you wanted to get from, from voters. Like, what were you trying, what were you trying to figure out? And then I'll, I'll pull up some of the discourse. Yeah. So when I was approached,

uh, by demand progress about this, the, the idea was to, and they're, they're a kind of, uh, out and then i'll i'll pull up some of the the discourse yeah so when i was approached uh by demand progress about this the the idea was to and they're they're a kind of uh populist like left left right like more on the left but like they work in coalition with the right a lot um yeah so the idea was to just test kind of the resonance of all of this, you know, the arguments around abundance relative to what we look at as more traditional populist ideas and look at, you know, in terms of people's understanding of why there are economic struggles that, you know, that working class and middle class people are dealing with, you know, what do people think is the cause of that? Is the cause more within the abundance framework or the populist framework?

What do people want to hear candidates for office or president for Congress talk about, you know, the same kind of split? And then what do people think is the best way to solve those things and address the concerns of middle and working class people? And we put it together to just make sense of it. The purpose was not to go public to try to prove anything. I was skeptical from the beginning because it's not, you know, they're not mutually exclusive concepts. And I, you know, it's much easier. The ultimate goal of populism would be to have abundance for all, right? Absolutely. Right. So I'm skeptical going in, but the idea, we just wanted to get a benchmark since people were arguing about it and there didn't seem to

be some good data, just kind of placing where things fall. The interesting thing that happened when we got the results back was overwhelmingly, like across the board, the traditional populist ideas resonate far more. People's sensibilities about the cause of their economic anxiety and challenges for working class people completely fall into a thing where a lot of us have been talking about a lot. Now, that doesn't mean to the exclusion of some of the abundance ideas. And I think it's important that there are places where people do understand that there can be regulation that has unintended consequences to hinder, to artificially shift the supply curve and cause problems there. So again, they're not exclusive, but if we're thinking about how to realign where Democrats credibly talk to the electorate to win elections and implement stuff, there is no question that that populist framing is the stronger way to

go about it. And that can include aspects of abundance. Yeah. Give us the top lines on that and then we'll get into some of the criticisms of it. Yeah. So the most straightforward thing that we did was we tested, we laid out the whole framing of what the abundance argument is, you know, based on, you know, the book and the literature, what people are saying. We tried to be, you know, really good faith capture what it is that they're talking about. And we asked the question. I pulled it up here. At least the first sentence of the abundance framing versus the populist framing. Yeah, great.

So overall, we asked if a candidate for Congress or president made that abundance argument, would that make you more or less likely to vote for them? Overall, 12.6% said much more likely. 30.9% said somewhat more likely. So it's a total of 43.1% said more likely. Almost 30% said less likely overall. So that's not super strong. The populist argument, which focused on corporate power primarily, the much more likely to vote for a candidate using that rhetoric was 26.3%,

the somewhat more likely 29.3%. So a total of 55.6% more likely and only 24.2%. Now that, again, like that was primarily among Democrats, but independents very much. To the extent that there was an appetite for a lot of the abundance arguments there, it felt not exclusively, but disproportionately toward the Republican side. And independents acted more like Democrats in these frameworks. Interesting. And then one of the important things, right? So then we just asked the question, well, now that you heard both of these perspectives, which one do you agree with most, even if neither is exactly right. The abundance got 29.2%. The populace got 42.8%.

Unsure got 28%. And that goes back to one of the amusing things about how all of this went viral and there was all this debate on social media for the past couple of days, where it's like this is not the end of the story or the end of inquiry into these issues. This is one poll. And there, you know, and a lot of the stuff that came up, a lot of the critiques, people were like, well, did you try pulling this language?

Like, oh, like we will in the future. We'll continue to look at this and other people will in the future as well. But the striking thing is how people are telling us in this. They think the cause of their economic anxiety is corporations having too much power. There being too much corruption in the levels of government. And even when we ask later, and this is stuff that hasn't gotten public yet, we ask to the extent that there's excessive regulation, is that the fault of big corporations using their influence for their own profit? Or is that the fault of activist groups? Overwhelmingly, more people said it's the fault of the big corporations. Interesting.

Even when we get into the – Apportioning the blame for these bottlenecks. They're like corporate power. Yeah, right. Absolutely. And so that's why we ended up going public with this stuff because we were like, actually, these results are really striking. Of course, it's not going to be the final word on any subject, but it's a pretty important thing to get out there. Ryan, can you put back up –

Yeah, put back up the eric levitt's um tweet here and let's just get you to respond to this he's got a thread here yeah yeah to this critique he says this poll is shamelessly hackish yes and populist rhetoric is definitely more resonant than technocratic critiques of zoning in nipa three the political case for abundance is that voters will punish you if shit gets expensive, not that fight bottlenecks next is a popular message. And this is, I think, consistent with a number of the critiques that I saw you you sort of reference. So there were critiques about the language could have been different or, you know, another one we saw is basically like, well, this wasn't really meant to be. And Eric is kind of getting at this like abundance messaging isn't meant to be the most politically potent messaging. It's about delivering for people. What did you make of

some of the points that are raised here, though? Well, my favorite is his first point that the poll is, what was it? Hackish. Hackish. Yes. Absolutely. And every single person, part of this debate on any side is absolutely hackish. This is not being discussed in corporate break rooms. You know, this is completely in the realm of hacks. His second point is like, okay, so then we're in agreement. The populist framings are far more resonant than these rather technical budget framings. So like no disagreement there.

That's what we're saying. Right. So then, I mean, that to me raises the question then, is the goal to run as a populist challenging corporate power, but then to abate and switch where the actual program is like zoning reform? Because that seems like a recipe for also political disaster of people being like you ran on something and you didn't deliver on what you promised and the way you positioned yourself. When when this poll came out, I had numerous friends text me and go. So the solution is to run on populism and then do abundance.

And I was just like, I think the reality is and this is an important thing when we talk about what the message should be. There's been all this discussion there was during the previous presidential race and going to midterms. What should the Democrats message be? Message requires that you have credibility. And if people don't believe that you're actually going to stand up to corporations and fight corporate power and do all that, then it doesn't matter if you're, you know, it might be marginally better to say you are, but it doesn't ultimately help. You have to be doing it. And I don't know anyone who doesn't believe there are some regulatory changes that would help in certain industries of certain places to reduce the price of things and to create more goods, like, which is in the abundance

wheelhouse. Like, I don't know anyone who disagrees that there's not places to do that. But that has nothing to do with where are you insisting taxes come from relative to the working class to the very rich? How are you dealing with those other policy things? So I think the solution is build the confidence of the voters by running on populist ideas, doing concrete populist things. And also when you find that someone who's in the abundance camp goes, hey, here's a regulation that's actually like not doing what it intended to and is like mucking up some economic system, of course, then take care of that. Yeah, I'm sharing this post from Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy, who has dabbled in trying to, I guess, make the Democratic Party's message respond to the populist moment. He says it's a weird juxtaposition because why not craft a message where we aggressively reduce concentrated corporate power and we fix bottlenecks and build more stuff? And Dan, this brings us to, I think, an interesting question as to whether sort of mainstream establishment Democrats, and I think everyone has to include Chris Murphy in that group, are capable of adopting the messaging of populism.

And we could talk about in substance, as you just said, marrying it messaging of populism. And, you know, we could talk about in substance, as you just said, marrying it with genuine populism and abundance downstream after being elected because voters say, we trust you and that message is appealing to us. But can they actually pull it off given the way Democrats tend to approach these questions? Do you have a take on that? Like, what would this look like in practice for a mainstream establishment Democratic politician who's not Bernie Sanders? Kamala Harris tried to do this a little bit to actually embrace that type of messaging. It seems pretty hard. Yeah, I mean, look, ultimately, when elections are happening, they are run by candidates and not parties. So it's really case by case who would have credibility kind of carrying that populist water.

And I think that people who have been viewed as part of the larger democratic establishment to date are going to have a hard time doing that because the voters clearly, and we, you know, tested some of that in the beginning of this, just to get some benchmarks that people don't have great confidence in either party to really carry that water. You know, I think if there's an immediate lesson, it's, you need new faces talking about, you know, some really traditional classic ideas, but highlight the successes where that's, that's working. And I mean, that would be my advice generally. If you're starting from a point where voters have so little confidence in you, but you feel like you've got a winning message and a winning agenda, you have to, first of all, mean it. And I'm sure everyone could debate for hours whether most of the top level Democrats really give a shit about this stuff. Senator from Connecticut.

Yeah. But it's like if you really want to build a populist based Democratic Party, then you need to uplift leaders who are credibly carrying that water to some degree already and keep kind of amplifying that. Yeah, I think that's such an important point. It's why the Bernie AOC oligarchy tour has been so effective is not only because the message resonates and is consistent with the populist messaging that you're testing here, but they're both people that have some credibility in the space, Bernie Sanders in particular. And so I think people sometimes miss that is an important part. You can't just you can't just we appreciate pollsters, appreciate the work that you do. But there has to be some some credibility to back it

up. The thing that, you know, was the funniest dodge to me was the claim by some that abundance in like I said, Eric Levitz and his critique, they're kind of gestures at it, that abundance isn't really meant to be a political platform because that's- While you're speaking, I'll put up a couple- Examples of this. Yeah, because the, I mean, I had Derek on breaking points. I got to engage with him on a bunch of these points. I explicitly asked him the question, okay, well, is this a set of policy reforms? Because that's one thing. Or is this like a central message and political platform and movement? I've read the book, by the way. You know, I read the whole book. I've engaged with the critiques. I've engaged with the defenses, all of those sorts of things.

And they're consistent in saying, no, this is yes, it's some specific policy ideas. But this is really about how we think the National Democratic Party should be oriented. And this is, you know, in evidence by the fact that Ezra Klein is like meeting with the Senate Democratic Caucus. If you were most interested in like the, you know, local level zoning reform, you wouldn't be going to the National Political Party, you'd be going like, you know, to the San Francisco board or mayor or, you know, other localities where you think that this program really needs to be effectuated. So that was to me, you know, an interesting almost admission that they recognize that, well, actually as a messaging device to organize a political project around, there are some weaknesses here? I think that people were arguing that point from different sides, at least in the little firestorm online. Yeah. Because there was a lot of focus on, oh, if you had used this slightly

different language, maybe it would have pulled better, which was also an amusing criticism because we use the exact language that the leading proponents of abundance have been putting out there. So if the argument is that that language actually sucks, like maybe you should talk about the proponents of abundance. Can you just elaborate on that, Dan? Where did the language come from? So a lot of the frameworks in the book, like for instance, the concern about using bottlenecks and the suggestion of using red tape, like a couple of things on that. First off, like sure, in future polling, like we'll test red tape, like cutting red tape, like no problem with that.

The language itself came from largely the book, which mentions bottlenecks at least a dozen times. And to my understanding, does not mention cutting red tape once. And we do talk about reducing regulations. But the other point is like in understanding polling, like we're not testing words. We're testing a political program that uses those words. So if someone reads a full paragraph explaining a set of policy ideas and one word is different from

what you think the ideal word, that's not going to substantially change the results because people understand what the concept is. So a lot of the focus on that one word and one term, sure, we can test things differently, but that's really not going to be like, you know, the magic bullet that suddenly makes abundance the thing everyone's clamoring for, because especially when it wasn't close, you know, if this was like a 52, 48 kind of a proposition, maybe, but it was pretty clear, especially when you're talking about a Democratic base, which is this is an intra Democratic party fight at this point. Yeah, I mean, but what's so important, and I don't think this is like a new addition to the discussion about how the Democratic Party should rebuild itself. It's an intrademocratic fight right now that requires for ultimate success that's credibly resonant with independence along the way.

Right. And that's the thing that really stands out. Like the fact that the Democrats are falling on like, what does like a more traditional yet populist liberal, I think that's not surprising, but the number among independents are just really clearly falling along the populist line as well. Yeah.

That's a great point. That's a great point. Got any other questions, guys? You want to throw it, Dan? My last one would be, would you commit to if Jonathan Chait or somebody comes to you with a better question? Can you put it out in a poll? I mean, I just can't emphasize enough, like, my skepticism about this initial project from the get-go. You know, some people were, like, mocking, like, oh, this is obviously not disinterested. I was both disinterested and uninterested. I didn't even want to do this whole thing. The perfect combo.

So, like, for sure, if there's any subsequent, you know, research we do on this, like, a lot of the stuff people have brought up, you know, as suggestions and criticism, like, yeah, we'll throw all of that in the mix. Can you also poll how many people know the actual difference between disinterested and uninterested? Just throw that question in. I think people will get confused answering that though.

And for everybody watching, let's do a public service here. Disinterested means you're like unbiased. You're like you don't have an interest. And by interest, it doesn't mean you're not excited about the thing. It means you don't have a financial or personal vested interest in the thing. You are disinterested. You're outside as an observer. Class time with Ryan Graham.

Different than uninterested, which means you're bored by it. So just everybody get that. We're going to do a special show just for Ryan where he just spends an hour defining relevant terms. Yes. You've heard of the Peterson Academy. I'll do it if you do that poll question. Okay. It's a deal.

We'll record on that poll question. I would love to come back and be part of that lesson. Excellent. All right. Thank you, Dan. Great chatting with Excellent. All right. Thank you, Dan. Great chatting with you. All right. He was great.

Yeah, he was great. Did you know him, Ryan? You've talked to him before? Yeah, I talked to him about some polling in the past. He's done a lot of work with David Siegel and Demand Progress. He's really good. Gotcha. Nice.

Yeah, fun talking to him. We'll have to find other excuses to have him back. Should we circle back to Zoran? Because I actually feel like... All right, guys. Thank you so much for watching the free portion of the Friday show. We're going to move into some premium bonus content. So if you want to watch that as well, make sure to go and subscribe at breakingpoints.com.

And for all of you guys who are already premium subscribers, that portion is going to start right now. This is an i start right now.