Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/31/22: Ukraine War, Inflation Policy, Gun Control, Stock Ban Stalls, Burn Pits, Shock Election, Gas Prices, Student Debt, & More!

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Krystal and Saagar give an update on the Ukraine conflict, inflation policy, gun control debates, stock ban frustration, burn pit victims, shock Colombian election, war on normal people, & Biden's student debt proposal!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/Jeff Stein: https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A lot of big stories to talk to you about today. First of all, there are some big developments with regards to the war in Ukraine.

We will bring you all of those updates. Also some moves from the Fed. The president putting out an op-ed regarding his plan on inflation. He's also meeting with the Fed chair. So we'll talk to you about that. Some new developments just breaking this morning about what Democrats are planning to try to do with regards to guns and the strange position the White House is taking on all of this. We also have some developments on the lack of movement on the stock ban, which seemed to be gaining momentum. Some new indications that one Nancy

Pelosi might be standing in the way of progress. I know you are all shocked to learn that. We'll talk to you about that. Also, bringing a little bit of Jon Stewart from Memorial Day, talking about the long overdue passage of some sort of relief for veterans who've been afflicted with various illnesses, including cancer, including death from exposure to toxic burn pits. So we'll tell you about that as well. We've got Jeff Stein back in the house detailing Biden's plans for student debt relief. But we do want to start with the war in Ukraine, some significant developments here. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. So

The Guardian reporting that Biden has said no to Ukraine in terms of supplying them with long-range rockets that can hit Russia. Let me go ahead and read you a little bit of this. They say the U.S. will not supply Ukraine with those rockets that can reach into Russia in an attempt to ease tensions with Moscow over the potential deployment of long-range missiles with a range of about 185 miles. The White House has been weighing pleas from Ukraine, which is losing ground in the battle for Donbass, of course, that's that eastern separatist region of Ukraine, for multiple launch rocket systems to offset Moscow's increasingly effective use of long-range artillery. We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia, Biden told reporters. However, it is a little bit ambiguous exactly what he means

there because those U.S.-made systems come in many different variants. They say could fire missiles up to 185 miles away. Those definitely seem to be off the table, but there are also other rockets with shorter ranges of 20 to 40 miles. So exactly what that means is unclear. Go ahead and put this next tear sheet up on the screen because the context here is really important. As I just referred to, things are not going well for Ukraine right now in the eastern part of the country in Donbass. Russia has just been shelling the hell out of that whole region. And the Ukrainians are saying that they are completely outgunned.

Russia continues to make progress there. They've particularly focused on the city of Severodonetsk. That is the last major Ukrainian support in that region. They've been working to, the Russians have been working to try to encircle that city, which used to have about 100,000 civilians in it. Most civilians have fled the region at this point. And so Ukraine is saying to the U.S., we need more, we need more, we need more. Of course, the U.S. has already sent an extraordinary amount of arms. And Biden at least drawing the line with regards to these missiles that could clearly reach into Russia out of fear.

You know, something we've talked a lot about here, that Russia would see that as a direct threat and as a direct escalation and could put us in a direct conflict with them. Yeah, his comments actually came after Medvedev, who was the Russian president, you know, during that weird interim period where Putin was out. Medvedev said very clearly, he said, if these weapons are sent over, we will target the center of which they came from. I mean, you can interpret that of which they want. And this is part of the problem, too, with Russian bellicosity. They're always threatening nuclear war as if it's some sort of a joke and showing their strength that it's hard for us and probably for the White House too to say like, well, where is the line here? Exactly. Clearly enough in Biden's mind that the Ukrainians at least may use those weapons perhaps accidentally. This is always the problem with miscalculation. And from what I'm reading here, things are not going well for

Ukraine in that battle in the Donbass. And the Donbass also is a critical region of Ukraine in terms of the export of grain. Zelensky yesterday is accusing Russia of stealing half a million tons of grain from the region so far because those Ukrainian ports and others export a huge portion of the world's grain. It's known as the breadbasket of Europe. You put it all in context and you can see this is basically where we thought things were going to end up very sadly, which is that this region of Ukraine has been at war since 2014. The Russian invasion and their ambitions have basically retreated to this Eastern separatist part. And now a very brutal, long, and grinding war will occur in the region in which both sides are experiencing significant losses. I mean, obviously, we don't know how many soldiers have been killed on the Russian side. The NPR reporter here even says, you can see the toll that is being taken on the Ukrainians. The hospital is full of wounded soldiers. Some of the younger

soldiers that they're speaking to there said that they had only two weeks of training in World War II-style weapons before they were even thrown to the front line. So the Ukrainians also giving it everything that they got. And, of course, the war brigade here in Washington is outraged over on MSNBC that Biden would not give these missile systems to Ukraine. I mean, first of all, here's the thing. The Brits are actually giving them a very similar type of weapon. So in my mind, yeah, maybe they can step up for once and we'll get to the Germans and how exactly they're stepping up or lack thereof in terms of their increase in military funding. But second, I mean, it's very clear here that the worst thing we would want is to fuel the idea that this is a U.S.-Russia conflict.

And if Russia is going to look at it that way and then they, the Ukrainians, were to use our missile systems, maybe even intentionally, and, you know, who can blame them? If they were to fire on these long-range artillery, which at least some indication some of that is being housed in Russia, That's exactly how you get on the spiral of miscalculation. And that's a really important point because Ukrainians have every incentive to draw us directly into this fight. And let's be clear. I mean, this is already a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. has been providing not only these weapon systems that we've heard a lot about, but also direct intelligence, which, I mean, that was a bombshell report that our intelligence helped the Ukrainians target some of these high-level Russian military generals and also target that flagship in the Black Sea that was

also an incredibly significant loss for the Russians. So we have been supporting them. They've all but said, the Biden administration, that this is effectively a proxy war. They've also been very clear that they don't actually want the war to end. They want it to go on to try to weaken Putin, to try to weaken Russia. I'll tell you in a minute, that is beginning to create some splits within the alliance, actually, the U.S.'s posture and the U.K.'s posture versus France and Germany. But your point is really correct because the Ukrainians have every incentive to actually use those long-range weapons to strike within Russia and draw us directly into this conflict.

I mean, this is an existential— And that's rational. Yeah, this is not to slam or to slide. That is the rational calculus and incentive that they have in this situation. We should understand that and know that we have different interests and our interest is very much not to get drawn directly into this conflict and to maintain some fig leaf of plausible deniability in terms of our involvement here. So, of course, as you say, you know, Biden does one decent thing here and he gets completely smeared and slammed for it by the media. Former Russian ambassador Michael McFaul, who's been just like perpetually wrong and terrible on this entire conflict, he put out some tweet criticizing, goes on MSNBC. He says this is a foolish decision.

His plan is, why don't you just get a little agreement with the Ukrainians saying they're not going to use these missiles to fire on Russia? Okay, yeah, like that would reassure absolutely anyone. So he's getting hit for actually making the right decision in this particular instance. I referred earlier to there's a little bit of a split in the alliance in terms of how they are approaching this war at this point. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. So Macron of France and Germany's Olaf Scholz have had a long conversation with Putin, and they actually urged him to hold direct negotiations with Zelensky. Let me read you a little bit of this. So they urged him to hold direct serious negotiations. That was the quote. It was an 80-minute conversation.

The two European leaders insisted on an immediate ceasefire and a withdrawal of Russian troops. Macron and Schultz urged Putin to have serious direct negotiations with the Ukrainian president and find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. As for Zelensky himself, he said he was not, quote, eager for talks, but did add that they would likely be necessary to end the conflict. So you are at a place now where it is conceivable. You can imagine how both sides might have an incentive to come to the table. Now, we're a long way from that actually happening, and there actually being a resolution to this war. But on the Ukrainian side, you know,

they're multi-months in, they're sustaining losses in the east. It looks like Russia, you know, in terms of the eastern region is starting to gain a little bit of ground. They look like they're on the verge of taking the city Severodonetsk that I referred to earlier. From Russia's side, I mean, they clearly have suffered massive losses. This has not gone the way that they thought whatsoever. They had to actually lift the age that is eligible to even join their military. They're spinning that to their population as, oh, we're going to get these seasoned experts in. No, they're desperate for more manpower because of how many have been killed in this war. They've had to admit to their population that these young

conscripts have, in fact, been sent to fight and die, something that they denied at the beginning. So they've taken on major losses. You can imagine a situation where Putin is able to take Severodonetsk and then is able to spin that as a win to his people and maybe potentially come to the negotiating table to end this thing. Like I said, we're a long way from that. But you can see how France and Germany pushing in that direction of let's actually try to get to a peace. Meanwhile, the U.S. is very much on the other side of that and has made it clear in multiple statements their interest in keeping this conflict going. What does that mean? That means more death and destruction of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Well, unfortunately, the British are really on that side, too. There really is a

real split inside of NATO, kind of with the Anglosphere and then the rest of continental Europe. Let's put this next one up there on the screen, which is about how the Biden administration has apparently been telling Ukraine, you're like, hey, there's a real danger of escalation if you strike deep inside of Russia. The U.S. and diplomatic officials are leaking that to Reuters. And look, this is exactly why inside that $44 billion package, one of the things I warned about is that buried inside of it was a complete discretion on the part of the president to give whatever weapon system that he wants to the Ukrainians, including, and look, he made the right decision this time. He's 80 years old. What if he drops dead tomorrow? Now Kamala Harris is president. Do you have confidence in her ability, which is now

enshrined in law in order to determine whatever the Ukrainians get on the battlefield? And what they point to, look, the Russians are not dumb. So they're like, okay, we're fighting in East, so we'll just store our long-range systems in Russia and fire it from there. And then if the Ukrainians use U.S. arms, then we have a pretext in order to have escalation. And also, you know, there's a rational decision on everybody's part when it happens. So then we have to consider what does that mean for us?

And we're seeing that the more that we give them long-range weaponry, including long-range howitzers and more, what are we seeing? Which is that we have to give and get some sort of verbal agreement on their part that they won't do it. can you ensure that Zelensky's order will go down to the general and then down to the field commander and then down to the individual who has to pull the trigger all the way at like the non-commissioned officer level? All of that means that you're going to have to have a tremendous amount of command and control and over that military, which we already know is full of conscripts. And then also that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some rogue person who's in charge. And again, totally understandable. You're like, hey, we need to kill the enemy. The enemy is killing us. They're firing from Russia. We should hit them in Russia. But of course, that has bigger strategic implications. So just look, it's a high balancing act. And I think we're really entering the kind of Syrian civil war

type of this level of this conflict where we are years away, unfortunately, I think, from any sort of actual resolution here. And an absolutely brutal and savage campaign is about to happen over the extended period of time. A lot of people are going to die, Ukrainians and Russians as well. And the way that we consider how these weapon systems are being used is going to require a lot of thought so that five years from now, things don't come back to bite us in the ass just like they did in Syria. Just like they did in Libya. Just like, I mean, I can go all the way down the list. Yeah, that's right. There's one other thing that I want to say about this, which is that this is a region that, of course, has been at war for years now.

Not quite on the level that they're experiencing now. You see the pictures in the video that is coming out of the Donbass. I mean, these cities are just they're just destroyed. I mean, it's just rubble. There's there's no one left. Everyone that could flee did flee. It's it's incredibly, incredibly sad. And, you know, a lot of people in that region, I saw interviews and I saw a little bit of sort of like, you know, rough public sentiment polling. The plurality view was basically we don't even care whether it's Ukraine or Russia.

We just want this to be over. And I think it's important to lift up that sentiment because, again, listen, I agree with you. Probably where we're headed is a long, brutal stalemate with the continued just utter decimation of this entire region. But if there is any chance to come to the table, negotiate a peace, the direction that France and Germany have now put themselves on the side of. We all ought to be urging for that sort of peaceful resolution, which is in the best interests of the US, in the best interests of the world, and in the best interests of the Ukrainian people as well. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to this European part. So this is very important geostrategically. The European Union, let's put this up there on the screen, has now agreed to phase out Russian oil, but is exempting pipeline

deliveries. So if you're wondering what that means, it's an interesting question, which is that, yeah, they're going to try and phase out Russian oil over the last two years. However, they are making an exemption for pipeline oil, specifically a concession to Hungary, which has been buying actually Russian oil very, very cheaply and has been actually kind of a boon to that country, which itself is kind of throwing a wrench in terms of how the entire EU is looking at this. So what the EU has agreed is that seaborne deliveries of Russian oil within months will be phased out. Pipelines will continue to flow. Now, several countries, including Hungary, Germany, and others, will get extensions or

exemptions for this Russian oil. So is it a true embargo? No, that's the answer. I think what's kind of fascinating is that they find themselves just between a rock and a hard place. And we've talked about here, Germany decommissioned all of its nuclear plants or had plans to do so. They dramatically increased their reliance on Nord Stream 2 and on Russian oil and gas. Now you have not only Russian oil, the people need to remember this. It's not just that Russia produces a tremendous amount of oil, they also refine a tremendous amount of petroleum product. And so they were getting a ton of refined product, both in diesel and in terms of gas from Russia. So when you have that, you're getting cut off not only from the product, but from the actual infrastructure that

deals with all of this. And as you phase out, that's exactly why we have such high gas prices, high diesel prices, and all sort of crazy supply stuff, which is happening here in America and Latin America, India, China, all over the world. I think what it really does point is that the EU remains in one position where, yes, they want to do something. They want to take the maximalist position, but they just simply can't for an economic and energy reality. I mean, look, they're going to try and build new LNG terminals so that US LNG can go over. That stuff takes a long time. And in the interim, you're in this crazy period where the European Union and Germany

and others are effectively saying that Russia is a pariah state, not welcome the community of nations, and they're doing billions of dollars of trade with them per day in terms of energy. So a colossal really just – it's a cluster, I think, is the only way to describe it. And I really can't blame the Hungarians. No, I don't. I mean, Orban said that – and I'm no fan of his – but a faster phase-out would be like dropping a nuclear bomb on the Hungarian economy. And listen, I don't – I mean, that's, I'm sure, a bit of an overstatement, but I have no doubt that it would be devastating consequences. And so I can't blame them whatsoever for saying like, we're not ready to go all the way with you on this one. Not to

mention, I mean, I have a lot of reluctance about the just all out economic warfare that has been declared on Russia, which is unlikely to end even whenever this war does end. I mean, Sagar, would you have ever thought, even as we recognize, like, is it a full embargo? No, there's all these carbon, if it comes in a pipeline, then that's okay. But would you have ever thought at the beginning of this that they would even go this far? No, absolutely not. No. I mean, it's so, I just always have to remind us, back at the beginning when we were like, if they do the swift banking sanctions, that would be crazy. And how far beyond that we have already gone is really, truly extraordinary. You know, in terms of how this will impact Russia, they, because of rising prices,

they have actually continued to earn the same amount of money from fossil fuel sales as they did before the invasion, even with this partial ban on oil that'll be phased in over time with the EU. Moscow can lean more heavily on Asia to buy their oil, buy their product to help backstop some of the losses. It's still going to be a hit to their economy, though. There's no doubt about it. What they said in this article is to find buyers with enough appetite to replace the EU market is going to be extremely difficult. And also, you can't just like flip a switch. You've got to reconfigure the entire energy export system and the attendant infrastructure, which is a major, major project in and of itself. So this will bite, there's no doubt about it, the Russian economy. But they do have some mechanisms to try to ease just how painful this will be. Yeah, look, if China's

going to buy the oil, they're the number one importer of oil in the world. And if you think that the Indians and the Chinese aren't going to take cheaper oil than the global market, then I don't really know what to tell you. They clearly are going to do that. Right. And the other problem is, look, in terms of defense spending, this gets back to what we were saying earlier. Put this up there on the screen, from Politico EU. I mean, this is the stuff that doesn't penetrate our media at all. The German government has now agreed to spend $100 billion on new defense spending. Oh, great. What's the subhead say? The special fund will be used to revamp the army, but does not commit

to spending 2% of GDP on defense every year. And this is what drives me absolutely insane, which is that when you look at what they are saying, their new investment is going to buy $100 billion worth of US F-35s. Okay, cool. But they refused to enshrine in their constitution what they had pledged to do whenever this entire conflict broke out and actually just meet their NATO obligations for defense spending. And it's just so obvious that the opposition party and even the center-right are unable to get this enshrined in legislation. Here's what their spin is. They're like, well, some years we'll spend over and under years we'll spend under, and eventually we'll average out. It will average out to 2%.

Yeah, okay, maybe. I don't believe you. There's no reason to believe you in the post-Cold War era. They have never once able to step up and actually meet their obligations. Remember that chart that I put in my monologue, I think a couple of weeks ago, just about how much we outstrip the rest of Europe? It's insanity. I mean, we are outstripping the European Union by eightfold, the Germans by like 16-fold, the UK by 15-fold in terms of just the amount of money and arms that we have spent over to Ukraine. Germany is not that far away from Russia. They have actually fought wars with each other twice in the last, more than that actually, in the last couple of hundred years. They have every incentive in the world to actually pay for their own defense, except that we pay for it. That's what just absolutely gets me. And in terms of the sacrifice and all that they're willing to make, no, it's, it's BS. Now, listen, if I was German, I wouldn't either. I'd be like, I don't want to cut myself off from all of this energy, but they talk a huge game about the

existential threat to Europe and why America and NATO is so important, but they don't want to sacrifice. They want cheap oil like everybody else. So they refuse to spend the amount of money that they actually should be spending. This is a very prosperous country. Last time I checked, one of the juggernauts inside of the European Union. And then, you know, they want their cheap gas and their oil because I think this is what now what's happening. I think people are really starting to grapple with, Crystal, that, you know, I'm doing my monologue on gas. I know it's a meme again, but gas here is $4.60 a gallon, okay? Over there, it's even higher in terms of whatever the leader petrol price is in Europe. They are now recognizing they're going

to have to live with this for years. And their economies, I mean, at the very least, aren't going to grow and possibly could contract as a result of this. So we're now seeing like with the long period of this supply crunch and all of the insanity with COVID and all that is wreaking on people. And actually, a lot of these states are in – it's no surprise in a long-winded way saying why the German chancellor is one of those people who's pushing very hard for peace. They need this thing to come to an end. But there is no current indication that that's happening. And a lot of us are going to suffer as a result. Yeah, I mean this is all part of truly a sort of global realignment

and a new order, post-Cold War, post-unipolar world where, yeah, the Europeans, I mean, Russia has certainly forced the Europeans to do a complete rethink of what their security status looks like, what their energy situation looks like. You see this with, you know, Finland and Sweden both wanting to join NATO at this point. So they have sort of forced the hand of the Europeans at this point. You know, one other thing that I wanted to update on is we had talked a while back about, remember there were some overtures to Venezuela? Yes. And, you know, to try to, okay, well, you know. That has worked out. Yeah, we're taking Russia off the table. Maybe we can get Venezuelan oil back in. There was actually some movement on that that we kind of missed last week, which is the Biden administration announced that they would slightly loosen those crippling economic sanctions on Venezuela's government.

They're allowing Chevron, which was the last major American oil company with significant operations in Venezuela. They're allowing them to negotiate again and have dialogue with the government. Under current sanctions, Chevron was prohibited from doing business with the Venezuelan government at all. It's only allowed to carry on essential maintenance work. They also removed sanctions on a former Venezuelan state oil official and nephew of the first lady. So it seems like all of this is done to try to sweeten the pot a little bit, to potentially, eventually get us back to some sort of a workable relationship with Venezuela. But it's a small change in the posture, and I think we're a long way from any real resolution.

I absolutely think we should do that. Unfortunately, I've said this before, but part of the problem with infrastructure is, and I've looked into this, is that Venezuela has a specific type of, it's called like extra heavy crude or something. It's harder to refine. So the problem is that because we've been cut off from the system for so long, it's harder to refine, and it's not that easy to just get things spinning. Their oil infrastructure has also really severely decayed over the past number of years. Their nationalization scheme and all that was a

disaster, really, for their infrastructure. And so their inability in order to export oil, on top of, obviously, Western sanctions have made it so that they, anyway, they can't plug the gap. There's only one country in the world that can do it right now. It's called Saudi Arabia. So, you know, they just don't want to help us out. And yet we still spend them $100 billion worth of weapons every year. So somebody can go and riddle me that. Let's go to the next part here, which is something that, look, it's a rumor. We want to be very clear here. That being said, there are now some credible thought to the fact that Vladimir Putin could actually be quite ill right now, or at the very least in some sort of recovery. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is from a FSB spy who says that Putin has been given three years to live by doctors due to a, quote, rapidly progressing cancer,

that the strongman has been ailing, that he has been of ill health for some time. Now, the FSB officer said that the Russian president's condition had a severe form of this progressing cancer and that this kind of illness was something that was part of a secret message from a Russian agent to a fugitive and former FSB agent, Boris Karchapov. Look, there are types of these rumors

that are always out there, but there has been a lot of speculation here in the last couple of years of, well, what the hell is wrong with Putin? I mean, clearly his mind, he's thinking very differently than he did previously. He's taking gambles. These could be he's got very puffy cheeks, which people have looked at as possibly he's on prednisone or he's on some other sort of like hormone or steroid. Something else is going on there. And I think that combining it actually with a recent interview that Oliver Stone, no matter what you think of Oliver Stone, he did spend a lot of time with Putin, the Putin diaries,

and driving around with him in a car while interviewing. He actually revealed in a recent interview with Lex Friedman, again, per Oliver Stone, he says that Putin actually had cancer and was in treatment for it while he was over there a couple of years ago. Let's take a listen. Mr. Putin has had this cancer, and I think he's licked it, but he's also been isolated because of COVID. And some people would argue that the isolation from normal activity, which he was meeting people face to face, but all of a sudden he was meeting people across the table 100 yards away or whatever, 10 yards away. It was very hard. So here's the thing.

What Stone is saying there very clearly is that Putin has at some time had cancer. He doesn't know if he overcame it. And I think, look, to be clear, Russia denies all of this. Of course, they have an incentive to deny it. I don't think anybody can look at Putin, his behavior, you know, at the long tables. Very odd behavior. Two years. Yeah, there have been some physical ticks that have been picked up on camera, which have been speculated about.

Yeah, I mean, if you consider this, look, like Putin was the strongman. You know, a lot of Russians didn't even want to get the vaccine. So for Putin to be kind of a COVID obsessive is very out of character for kind of the way that he would want to play it. Everybody knows what's happening whenever he's here and then another guy is like 20 feet away from him or his generals and others are seated in a massive room, you know, 20 some odd feet away from him. All of his speeches he's giving from his office, you know, at his desk, not in front. All of his speeches he's giving from his office, you know, at his desk, not in front of a lot of people. He's not around people. He's clearly inside of a COVID bubble, well past where the general population of almost any other country

in the world is. No, the idea that he would have some sort of immunocompromised disease makes a lot of sense. Oliver Stone says he did have cancer at least in some form while he was over there. And Stone, listen, people could certainly accuse him of being

too pro-Russia. But I mean, that's part of why he's kind of credible on this because not only did he spend time... He was with him. Yeah, he spent time

with Putin and he certainly has not been interested in like painting Putin in the worst light. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, so I mean, he says that Putin, he says, I think he licked it, right?

But he doesn't know. And this was 2015 to 17. But then you also consider that cancer, especially at the age, Putin is 69 years old, has a high, they can go into remission, but it can come back often. That's very common amongst cancer survivors. So anyway, it would make sense that this is certainly the case.

And I think it is something that we do have to consider in terms of when we think about how much of a disaster the invasion really has been for Russia. But also what scares the hell out of me is who comes next. I mean, is it Medvedev? I don't know. There's a lot of reports that they thought he was too much of a Europhile. I think that's a really important point because I'm not big

on the like Putin psychoanalysis. There's like a whole cottage industry predicting what he's thinking and what he's feeling like and all this stuff. I mean, number one, though, you have to think that

someone at the end of their life, they're playing for their legacy, right? Wants to leave his lasting marks at Russia up for whatever future greatness he, you know, imagined might be possible for the country. But then number two, that's a real question is who would come next? And there, I think, is a lot of wish casting in the Western media that, oh, it might be someone who's like more favorable or more, you know, sort of, yeah, more of a Europhile, more favorable towards NATO, more favorable towards our interests, it's more likely that you get someone who's even more

of a hardliner than Putin actually is. So that's not necessarily something to ultimately hope for and wish for. Right. And actually, so I forgot to add this part, which I have in my notes, which is that the head of Ukrainian intelligence has actually said this too, Cyril Budanov. He had said that, I mean, again, you know, they have an incentive, but they have come out and said they believe that he has, quote, several serious illnesses, one of which is cancer. And so the FSB spy and others that are being quoted here by the Daily Mail and by the tabloids in the UK, it's all kind of an amalgam of several people who might know, again, might know, who say that Putin does have some form of cancer and possibly even terminal. And if you do consider then his medical history there, who has been said by Oliver Stone, these things are difficult to go and parse. But people

have done the same with North Korea, obviously, with Kim Jong-il. There was a lot of discussion around, you know, the disease that he had. Same with Kim Jong-un, whether he has gout, you know, he's tremendously obese and he's losing weight. I mean, this stuff all matters whenever you're the head and the sole person of a nuclear-armed state. And that's exactly why I think we're spending some time on it. So. There you go. Indeed. All right. We also wanted to update you on some major economic news. First of all, a little update on just how the American people are doing.

Put this first part up on the screen. There was a lot of talk about how during the pandemic, there's a big savings boom. In part, people weren't going out. They were at home. So there were fewer things to spend money on. But also the pandemic era programs, the relief checks that sort of padded a lot of bank accounts. That era is officially over. The savings rate fell to 4.4 percent in April. That's actually the lowest level since 2008.

So already the sort of Fed attempts to slow the economy and the end of all of those COVID relief programs, that has hit bank accounts, savings accounts in particular, in a very serious way. This comes as we have comments from another Federal Reserve board member that indicate this one in particular really wants to take a pretty aggressive approach to tightening the economy. Go ahead and put this Wall Street Journal tear sheet up on the screen. The headline here is Fed official supports raising interest rates at fast clip for several meetings. This particular board, Fed Governor Christopher Waller, made these remarks in Frankfurt on Monday. He said, I support tightening policy by 50 basis points for several meetings and went so far as to say that he wanted to keep going until the rates were so high they stunted the economy. Now, you have to kind of, you know, dig into the Fed jargon here. But what he said was, quote, the unemployment rate will increase, but only somewhat because labor demand is still strong, just not as strong.

And because when the labor market is very tight as it is now, vacancies generate relatively few hires, thus reducing vacancies from an extremely high level to a lower but still strong level has a relatively limited effect on hiring and on unemployment. So he's trying to sort of justify the fact that he intentionally wants to go so far with lifting the rates and at such a rapid pace as to actively stunt the economy and raise the unemployment rate. Those are pretty dramatic comments and landed with a pretty heavy blow within the entire sort of economic thinker community. There's another big development here, which is that Biden is actually meeting with Fed Chair Jerome Powell today. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. He's going to hold a rare Oval Office meeting today on Tuesday amid the highest inflation in decades, which has angered Americans and hurt his standing with voters. They say the two will discuss the state of the American and global

economy. According to a White House statement, it is the first meeting between the two since Biden in November announced his intention to nominate Powell for a second term as the helm of the U.S. central bank. And the reason this is extraordinary is because, of course, I mean, there's a lot of criticism of Trump when he was out there, like, directly telling the Fed what he wanted them to do. I kind of liked that, actually. I mean. Yeah, I will tell you. I mean, and so Biden, and this is kind of funny, too, but this last piece up on the screen.

So Biden wrote this op-ed about his plan for inflation. This is from Kaylin Collins. She says, President Biden, who's meeting with Fed Chair Jay Powell tomorrow, publishes an op-ed on inflation where he says he welcomes debate on his plan and will work with anyone Democrat, Republican, or independent willing to have an honest and open discussion. He goes out of his way in this op-ed to say, of course, I'm not going to meddle with the Fed. Trump did that. That was bad. But I will tackle high prices. And in this op-ed, he lays out Sager, his quote unquote plan for dealing with inflation. The first one is the Fed.

Yeah, exactly. So he's saying, oh, I'm not meddling with the Fed, but also, hey, Fed, like you better act here and I'm going to have you over to the Oval Office to make sure you know what I want. The one thing you could say about Trump is he did understand how intrinsic low interest rates were to the bedrock of the economy that he presided over at the time. And, you know, I mean, look, I think that monetary policy has actually for too long kind of been kicked up to the higher thinkers that be over at the Federal Reserve. No, this is the people's policy. This goes back to William Jennings Bryan and the idea of being crucified on a cross of gold, which is we had entire uprisings and movements in this country about how exactly we were going to both regulate commerce and how to conduct trade at the very basic level of currency. I think that's okay. I think that's a good thing and that people have

forgotten their legacy. And the other problem I have with this entire BS op-ed is if you're going to do it, then do it. Do what Trump did. Be like, no, you need to keep the interest rates low. You need to do this. You need to do that. Instead, it's all this mealy mouth nonsense. I mean, his second thing that he says in order to make things affordable, this is what he says is his plan for inflation, Crystal. He says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's been an entire paragraph. And he goes, my plan would reduce the average family's utility bills by $500 and accelerate our transition from energy produced by autocrats. That's your selling point? This is like when Paul Ryan and them were like,

you're going to save $120 from your tax return. It's like, that's a Costco membership. It's like, this is so cringe. I have already put out the data. Already, as of right now, Americans are on track to spend 73% more on gas than they did just last year. That's 4,800 versus 2,300. So your 500, nothing relative to how much that actually is. Same in terms of we're going to reduce the cost of goods by fixing broken supply chains, improving infrastructure, and cracking down on fees of foreign products. First of all, why haven't you done that already to the full extent of your ability through executive action? There has not been one executive order on any single one of these, except one on the meatpacking plants about a year ago where they said, we're going to look into it.

What's happening? Still waiting on that one. And the third one, and look, I don't even disagree. He talks about reducing the price of prescription drugs so that they can negotiate. Listen, I support that 100%. Take a look at a chart. Prescription drugs are not even close in terms of what the largest drivers of inflation are. Are they too expensive? Absolutely. But it is not having a significant impact relative to how it was previously than gas, energy prices, new cars, rent, so many other things. So his inability to even identify the top drivers of inflation, which is gas and food, and not really tell anybody what exactly he's going to do about that makes the whole quote unquote plan obsolete, moot, and frankly, stupid. The only part of this that is actually going to happen

is the part that has nothing to do with a democratic system, which is the Fed. That's the only part. Because the rest of this, whatever you think about it, it's all things that were in Build Back Better that didn't pass and are not going to pass. I mean, I would love for you to do the prescription drug price thing. I think that's great. You've been literally running on that for over a decade and it still hasn't happened. So do I have any confidence that that's going to be any different? Put aside whether it would have, which it wouldn't, any significant impact on inflation. So, I mean, this is messaging. And he talks about, what's his face, Scott? The Republican plan to lift taxes. Rick Scott. Rick Scott. Yeah. I want to say Scott Walker. Brain is melting this morning. Anyway, we'll throw back there.

Rick Scott's plan to like lift taxes on people and sunset Medicare, Medicaid every five years. So he's realized like a year too late that inflation is a big issue. Americans are really struggling with it. They're very upset about it. It is the number one reason why Democrats are set for a massive shellacking in the midterms. And so here we are, May of 2022, and he's trying to come up with some kind of messaging to say, well, you may not be happy, but my plan's better than the Republicans ultimately, even though we know that, you know, none of this outside of the Fed is actually going to happen. The clean energy tax credits one is kind of funny, too, because the way he wrote this, he says Congress could help by passing clean

energy tax credits. A dozen CEOs of America's largest utility companies told me earlier this year my plan would reduce the average family's annual utility bills by $500. Keep in mind that those largest utility companies, when you're talking about clean energy tax credits, that's a giveaway to them. So also, like, they have a big incentive to be like, yes, this would be great. People would love it. In any case, none of this is particularly is going to happen. None of it's particularly serious. And he continues to leave off the table the thing that he could have the most control over, which you alluded to earlier, which is part of the, but it's not the whole problem, part of the problem is corporate price gouging. Because you have these consolidated monopolistic industries where they're able to use the specter of inflation to then go ahead and boost their

prices beyond what those price increases would, that inflation would demand, that's the part that the White House could actually have some impact on through executive power and also through the bully pulpit. And there continues to be, you know, no willingness basically to call that out or try to do anything about that. Let me return. I was just pulling this up on the savings rate. So yeah, the savings rate has now fallen to the lowest level since 2008. And what the Biden people try to spin is, yeah, but people still have a lot of savings because people's pandemic savings

was actually gone up to sky high. But what do we already know? Especially with the decline of 401k and more, which is that the savings has gone down significantly just within the last year. So yeah, you may have saved a lot two years ago, but when the saving rate declines, that means that your disposable income

that you have right now is dwindling. And even worse, as inflation gets more out of control, you're gonna have to continue to dip into your savings in order to pay for your basic household goods so that one year away, I think all of us can look at a credit card bill relative to what it used to be. How many people are going to the grocery store and you buy five things and you're like, I can literally not even believe that this is how expensive it is.

Right. Yeah, I mean, that's what's happening every day. It chips away. And then people come times to pay your credit card bill or time to check your balance and you have to move stuff over from your savings account. This is what millions of people are having to go through. And it's going to chip away constantly. So when the savings rate drops like this, it's actually a future indicator that past savings are going to go away. And we're all going to be in a much more difficult and precarious financial situation. And unfortunately,

given the prevailing economic thinking in Washington, kind of typified by this guy who's like, let's just nuke the entire economy with very, very high interest rates. Apparently, that is actually a completely fine thing to hold. But look, that is definitely, I would say, the center thinking amongst people who run the Fed. Now, they're going to try and balance it, public opinion. And Jerome Powell will say, yes, but we have to target unemployment. But the political pressure right now, both from Biden and from others, in order to do something, they only have one tool, and that's to basically slow the entire economy down by making money a lot more expensive, which can nuke the housing market. It can basically destroy a lot of new small business investment. I mean, some of the

stories that I'm hearing, again, from private markets are insane. You have companies that had billion-dollar valuations based upon X amount of money that they were willing to raise. They've cut it by one-third, maybe one-fourth. And so now their valuation in the private market is like $250 million. I mean, that stuff has real-world consequences for whether you can make payroll, whether you can take loans based upon that on the banks. I mean, there's an entire financial house of cards that was architected on the back of low interest rates and where things are right now. I mean, I look at the housing thing. I mean, it's 6%. Well, didn't you tell me it was like hundreds of thousands of dollars relative to the same

interest rate for the price of a house that you're going to buy. I mean, we could be entering the era of the 90s and the 80s and the 70s where you're getting 9%, 10% interest rate if you try and buy a house. The monthly mortgage payment for the median home price has gone up by 50%. Oh, my God. I mean, so, yeah, it's already been hugely impactful in terms of what people can do. And, yeah, so, I mean, you literally have a Fed governor saying, it is my goal to make the unemployment rate worse. Like, that is my goal. Yeah.

And, obviously, that has massive consequences. And one thing, obviously, we've tracked really closely on this show is the labor movement and the energy there and how workers feel like they have this power, even though the economy sucks. But there are a lot of jobs. The problem isn't a job. The problem is getting a good job. And so that has contributed to this wave of organizing that has been extraordinary. I mean, Starbucks across the country, Amazon, Apple, all these, you know, Target now unionizing efforts. And all of that is also very much in danger if you have a high unemployment rate, because then people get afraid of, God, I can't, I can't rock the boat in this job because I just need a job, any job versus, you know what? I can stay here and I can actually have the bandwidth to fight for a better job.

So listen, you guys know there is a lot at stake with all of this right now. Oh, absolutely. The president talking about gun control. It's just amazing to me, Crystal, that on the one hand, all of Washington is talking about universal background checks. Some stuff that may happen probably still won't happen. But the president and the vice president are now endorsing outright bans of guns at probably the most maximalist position, and especially here by President Biden on Memorial Day speaking to reporters where he wants to ban, quote,

high caliber nine millimeter handguns. Let's take a listen. And they showed me an x-ray. He said a 22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lungs. And we can probably get it out. We may be able to save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body. So the idea of these high caliber weapons is just, there is simply no rational basis for it in terms of, you know, about self-protection, hunting, I mean, I just, I don't remember. The Constitution of the Second Amendment was never absolute. So, first of all, 9mm handgun, probably one of the most common weapons in the entire United States. In terms of banning them, that's just not going to happen,

given Supreme Court, specifically D.C. v. Heller, whenever it comes to what it looks like whenever you do try and ban a handgun. The state of New York, or city of New York, not even trying to appeal some of its case law to the Supreme Court specifically because they don't want to enshrine this right under court anyway. So that's not going to happen both politically and under our guise of law. But I just think it's weird, Crystal, that for all of the talk of we're going to do common sense, whatever the hell that means, you have the president and the vice president here coming out for one, number one says we should ban handguns, which is crazy. And then the other person says we should ban assault weapons. Okay. I mean, definitely

something we have done in the past. Not as crazy. I mean, personally, very against it. I mean, I don't think it validates any of the ability, although maybe it doesn't matter at all. That's the other one. Well, I mean, probably true because none of it's going to happen. But, yeah, they've just taken the dumbest possible approach. Right. Because, well, he's out there saying something that, listen, on all of these background checks, raising the purchase age to 21, gun storage law, all these things, you know, cracking down on straw purchases, all of these things, extremely, extremely popular. So you go out and put out a position that you know the right is going to see something freak out about. On the other hand, you aren't even doing

anything about anything. We'll put this next piece up on the screen. So first of all, he still lives in this delusion. He says, Biden says McConnell and Cornyn, they're rational Republicans. There's a recognition on their part that things can't continue like this. Everyone's getting more rational about it. Okay. And by the way, he has not talked to a single Republican. So he's just invented this alternate reality in his mind where, oh, McConnell is a really good faith actor and he's going to work with you. No, he's not. None of these people are going to work with you on anything whatsoever. They aren't even willing to go, put this next piece on, they're not even willing to go on the Sunday shows to advocate for a single position, just kicked it to Congress,

said, you know, we're leaving it up to Congress to act. So on the one hand, you rhetorically signal this unpopular maximalist position, which, you know what, if that's what you really want, like, get out there and fight for it, make the case strong and see what you can do. But you're not even going to try to advocate for the things that have not just overall majority support, but actually majority support even among Republicans. And that's the other frustration here is there's some news this morning about what the House Democrats have put together a bill that they want to pass through quickly and it will likely get through the House. It's got, you know, all of those things that pull really well. Lifting the purchasing age on semi-automatic

rifles from 18 to 21, banning high-capacity magazines, grandfathering in existing ones, banning bump stocks, again, grandfathering in existing ones, requiring ghost guns, back-to-ground checks on ghost gun sales, beefing up penalties for gun trafficking and straw purchases, something that actually could really matter, establishing new requirements for storing guns at home, something that is so basic I cannot imagine a single person that doesn't support it. Every single one of the things I just listed, not only majority support in the public, majority support among Republicans. And yet, number one, Biden's not going to do anything to actually try to pass any of these things. So number two, you know it is

dead on arrival in the Senate. There is no interest in actually governing or getting rid of the filibuster so that they can actually govern. And so, you know, I think I guess your original point of like, does it matter at all. No, probably not. Like probably all that's going to happen is Biden's comments are going to make people buy even more guns. Oh, nothing is going to pass through the House or the Senate, both because you have a completely broken system and because the money keeps the Republicans, politicians locked into a position that is out of step even with their base. And so it's hard not to feel pretty like hopeless and nihilistic about the entire situation and the complete, like the repeated desire of Biden to sit back as president of the United States and pretend he has no power in the situation just blows my mind every single time. You know, here's another thing I would speak on

behalf of leftist friends, which is there has been a lot of criticism by the center for defund the police and all that. I mean, this is defund the police level unpopular, you know, so I just pulled the data. 2021, I've talked about this before, the support for a ban on handguns in the United States is at 19%, the all-time low in the history of this country. Now, maybe there is a temporary spike. Let's consider that it goes up to like 25. I mean, that's still three-fourths level unpopular. That's insane. On the other side too, keeping the current system in terms of the lack of age limits and the lack of background checks is also defund the police level unpopular. I mean, Republicans, 80, it looks like

85% support requiring a background check on all gun sales. You know, if you look at banning gun sales to people under 21, again, Republicans, 75% of Republicans support these things. So, you know, I know there are a lot of different feelings about all kinds of different gun legislation. There's this kind of also just instinct that, like, any attempt to do anything on guns, like, they're going to come for our guns completely. Well, it doesn't help when the president says that you want to take the most common handgun away. But putting all of that aside, I think it is so depressing that on something where you have such overwhelming support among both parties for something so simple and there's like not a prayer that it's going to happen. It's extremely depressing. It is an indictment of our entire political system. I get it.

I'm just going to, you know, I'm broken record. It's going to come back. Our neighbors to the north not validating anybody's concerns. Justin Trudeau is putting a national freeze on handguns, including a required

buyback program. It's not that far away. But you just said you know it's not going to happen. I mean, it's not going to happen today. It doesn't mean

it's not going to happen a decade from now. That's why. We can't even get universal background checks through cyber. Yeah, today. We're not anywhere close to banning handguns. It's not going to happen a decade from now. That's why. We can't even get universal background checks through Sager. Yeah, today. We're not anywhere close to banning handguns.

It's not going to happen. I mean, even if you want that to happen, it is not on the table, both from a Supreme Court point of view and also from a political point of view, when you can't even have background checks or safe gun storage in the home. I hope so. I think all of this is a little paranoid. I hope you're correct. You know I'm correct. You just said you know I'm correct. I hope so. I said I hope you're correct. Come on. I don't know what country you're going to live in 20 years from now. You said earlier that you know none of this is going to happen. Today. Today. So this is why, look, I'm just,

again, I'm trying to represent people who rightfully can understand how when an infrastructure is built, that it enables people to have power. I never would have thought that before the pandemic, with all these public health laws, lockdowns, et cetera, that all of that would have been used to the extent that it was. So I'm just saying, I understand a paranoia, especially in the context of the president and the vice president, say that they legitimately do want to ban people's guns. I think these bumbling fools are going to get a goddamn thing accomplished.

I do not. No. 20 years from now, I think that there may not be a bumbling fool who's in the white. I mean, this is the common thing about Tom Cotton. People are like, oh, he's an actual competent Tom. We have had the most horrifying mass shootings that anyone could possibly, I mean, slaughter of kindergartners and nothing happened. The slaughter of fourth graders as police officers, dozens of them, stood by and did nothing.

And nothing happens. Like, Democrats have a majority in the House and the Senate and the White House. You have public sentiment where I said, and still not even background checks. So the idea that we're anywhere close to banning handguns, let alone, I mean, assault weapons, let alone handguns, I think it's fanciful. Well, I hope you're right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the stock ban. This is something we've been keeping a real eye on, which is that what's happening right now is what unfortunately we predicted was going to happen. Now, the stock ban gained a lot of momentum. At one point, it was even possibly going to be included in the President of the United States State of the Union, where he was going to endorse a ban on members of Congress

trading stocks. It reached a real national level of consciousness. You have apps and TikToks now about people following congressional stock trades. It has entered popular culture in a way that very, very, very few things in politics ever do. Well, Congress is doing what it does best, which is just, yeah, yeah, sure, I support it, which is what Pelosi said, even though she said it's a free market, we live in a capitalist country. Let's put this up there on the screen from Business Insider, which is that inside the true believers, there is a major frustration that they're trying to run out the clock. Remember, Congress resets

at every election, which means that you have to restart from scratch if you haven't been able to pass a law. And what the people who are in charge are saying is that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are really putting the brakes on any ability for some of these stock bands to actually go through Congress. So one of the people behind this, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who is not some, you know, like progressive leftist. I can't stand this lady, to be honest with you, but she's good on this one issue. She's like Madam Centrist in the— Yes, exactly.

I mean, like former, I think like— I think she was in the CIA. She's a former CIA ghoul. I've talked about her. Anyway. Even this lady supports the stock band. Okay. Yeah, anyway. Even this lady supports the stockpile. Okay, well, she says, and again, she's a Democrat, avoids naming Pelosi, but insists that it is being stonewalled, quote, by anyone who has the ability to move it forward. So that's in the House where the Speaker and apparently the chairpeople of the relevant committees are making sure that this thing doesn't even get a hearing so that way it doesn't get voted on, so that way it doesn't make it wait to the floor.

And therefore, even Pelosi then has to decide whether something that comes to the floor actually gets voted on. Then, of course, over in the Senate, there's a bunch of Democrats, bipartisan groups also, who have proposed major stock ban legislation. And yet, what they point to is that in the Senate, especially in the current political environment, we are at a place where the committees themselves have not even began to hold hearings on these things. And what they're saying is that it is very clear that there is pressure from the top in order to make sure that these things do not only make it out of committee, but never get voted on. And so I think part of the issue is that there isn't a truly united caucus,

because on the one hand, you have Democrats and Republicans who have co-sponsored bills, but on the other, you really just have it so that nobody even close to leadership is really pushing this stuff. I mean, on the Republican side, right, it's like Josh Hawley, Ben Sasse, they have no connection to leadership. Chip Roy, same thing. I mean, McCarthy hates Chip Roy. And then on the Democrat side, you know, it's even Spanberger, not beloved apparently, at least on this by Pelosi and the others, is Pramila Jayapal, who also, you know, she may take orders, but is not beloved also by Pelosi. A couple things to say about this. So according to this report, it looks like Pelosi

is the real problem. Because Schumer doesn't actually even own any stock. I didn't realize that. He's very poor, actually. Yeah, he and his wife both, they, you know, took what was the Biden position, too, by the way, when he was in the Senate saying, listen, I'm not going to trade any stock while I'm here, which is very honorable, but should be required of every member, obviously. And so you have Pelosi, who obviously has a different view. And what they say is, well, yeah, she's publicly expressed openness to a ban. Her quote was, if members want to do that, I'm OK with it. She had initially, as you guys I'm sure recall, had a very different take on this, that this was just the free market and why shouldn't people be able to participate in it.

And obviously, her husband's what they describe as frequent high volume stock trades, have fed suspicion that she is not actually interested in addressing the issue. And yet we show you how much Pramila Jayapal has just completely bent the knee and shown complete fealty to Pelosi. As in some ways, Spanberger, Abigail Spanberger, who, as you said, is like a Madam Centrist, went further in criticizing Pelosi than Jayapal does. She says, you take the statements that people make and, you know, you continue to push. She told me she was supportive, so I'm going to take her at her word, Sagar. I mean, it's so embarrassing the way that she has just completely sold out any value or principle because she has some fantasy in her mind that she's going to get some kind of a leadership spot within the Democratic Party that's never even going to happen.

It's really, it's just embarrassing at this point. That's the only way I can put it. And all of this comes against the backdrop of another report that the very limited regulation that we have on stock trading, which is none, it's just like a little bit of transparency around it. Even that, some senators cannot bring themselves to follow the law when it comes to the Stock Act. Let's go ahead and put this report up on the screen. Three more senators violated the Stock Act. At least two more Democrats put this report up on the screen. Three more senators violated the Stock Act. At least two more Democrats and a Republican senator failed to report stock transactions last year as a ban on congressional stock trading flounders in a Senate working group. And we get

a little bit of insight here, Sagar, into possibly why it is, quote, floundering in that Senate working group. One of the senators who broke the law violating the Stock Act is Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat who has considerable influence over whether the Senate will move this year to limit stock transaction or ownership by its members because he is chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where two of those stock trading reform bills have been referred. Oh, and by the way, the Homeland Security Committee Chair, Senator Peters, reports owning stock in Raytheon, not to mention numerous assets in the fossil fuel industry. So a little peek of why it

might be floundering in committee. The really wild one to me is Hickenlooper here. Actually, when you start to read these details, listen to the stuff that John Hickenlooper is up to. Okay, five transactions his household made in 2021. Two sales of between 100K and 250K worth of stock in the Liberty Broadband Corporation by his spouse. A sale of between 100K and 250K by his Liberty Broadband in September. So another sale of between 250 and 500 by his wife in November. Why are they so hard up for cash? Why do they own so much stock even in this company in the first place? Do they have any insider knowledge?

Now, what are they putting all this money to use? They are purchasing between 15 and 50K in a Denver bar and music lounge. Now, look, I'm just going to submit this. Should you really have – and this is just as bad as the Trump Hotel stuff. Yeah. Why do – when you are a public official who clearly is extraordinarily wealthy to be selling hundreds of thousands of dollars, nearly a million dollars worth of stock even in a single year in just one private stock, which isn't even the full some holdings of your entire net worth. Why are you putting money into a Denver bar and music, a place where you live? I mean, that means that any proceeds then from that go directly into your own pocket. I mean, who's dining at this restaurant? It is like the Trump hotel thing. It's egregious. It's a smaller scale. Right. But yeah, this gives you a direct way

for people to line your pockets directly. They know that they go to this restaurant, they spend a bunch of money, they know where that's going, they know if they run up a big enough bill that... And here's another one. What if he uses his campaign dollars to have campaign dinners at his own restaurant? So then now are you funneling campaign dollars

into your own pocket? I mean, is anybody actually going to go and track that? Yeah, I think we all know the answer. So this is why you should just ban it in the first place. If you want to serve in Congress, the least you can do is not own a share in a Denver bar. Just serve in Congress. Like you're supposed to be a public servant. You're not supposed to be there to cash in or what did Crenshaw say?

Better yourself. Better yourself. By which he meant get fabulously wealthy off of the backs of the people that you're supposed to represent. Right. Just don't do that. And if that's what you want to do,

find another line of work. Absolutely. Okay, let's go ahead, move on. This is a very important one. We saved the important story. Yesterday was Memorial Day. Jon Stewart, somebody we both very much admire for his advocacy,

both previously on 9-11 first responders, but now on burn pit victims of our veterans of foreign wars, gave a great speech yesterday at a rally. Let's take a listen to what he said. Those that took up arms in defense of this country and its constitution suffered grievous harm in that defense. And when they came home, we put them on trial. You got cancer?

Prove it was us. Well, I slept next to a burning field of shit with jet fuel. Yeah, I don't know, but you also, you know, you smoke Camelite. So how do we know it was us? You shouldn't have to prove it. You shouldn't have to be a defendant in a court case about your own health. When we met three years ago,

we sat in a room, when people could still sit in rooms, windows closed, on each other's laps, and we just said, what would fix this? And we went around the room, and everybody said everybody said well we need presumption for these cancers we need a process at the VA that doesn't make it so that they're an adversarial insurance company

we need expertise in environmental medicine and toxicology because toxic wounds aren't treated as wounds it's not treated like an IED that goes off in your body seven or eight years later which which is what it is. We said, all right, so that'll, that'll fix this. And he said, yeah, but we're not gonna be able to get that. So here's what we were thinking. Maybe we could get priority six for like battle veterans, or, or maybe we could just get in there with like asthma because the system had taught the veterans community to negotiate against itself because the system had taught the veterans community to negotiate against itself because the system had shown itself to be so unworthy of their sacrifice that it was nearly impossible to even imagine that the thing that they needed would be provided

wow i mean look the perfect way to it, and exactly what he's talking about, negotiating against yourselves. Our friends over at Responsible Statecraft have a great piece, let's put this up there on the screen, never forget how the landmark burn pit measures couldn't come sooner for a lot of these vets, and how 15 years of fighting for this, and for the health care benefits for toxic exposure, you know, finally coming to an end, at least with the passage of this act and with the endorsement there by President Biden. But why did Jon Stewart and these guys have to fight for years and years? And we saw that, I'll never forget that interview with Denim's McDonough, where he was being interviewed by

Stewart. And he's like, I don't care what you think. And he's like, yeah, but I'm speaking on behalf of the vets who you refuse to speak. And he goes, listen, if there was something that I could do. And he goes, no, there is. You can sign this piece of legislation. You have the decision. To me, he goes, I promise you, John, it's not that simple. So apparently, it is a little bit more simple than that. But, God, I mean, the way these guys

have been treated, it's just like the 9-11 thing. It's just shocking. You call them heroes, and you treat them like shit whenever they come home. The military knew as early as 2006 what these burn pits were doing to people. Did they then, did they make sure everyone was taken care of? No, not even close. It took 15 years to have some modicum of relief for the grievous injuries that these veterans have suffered. And specifically what this, there was a bipartisan agreement in the Senate that will provide sweeping measures to finally give veterans suffering from toxic exposures, broad unrestricted

access to health care and disability assistance. Specifically, what it does, among other things, is more than doubles the number of, quote, presumptions to 23. Those are conditions and illnesses the VA recognizes as service-connected. Up until this agreement, more than 80% of veterans who have tried to get benefits for these illnesses. And we're talking about everything from a rash to terminal cancer. They have been turned away. The other thing I want to say about this is that, you know, it took basically two things. It took Jon Stewart just relentlessly shaming every politician that he possibly could. We talk about never forget on Memorial Day. He truly embodied that.

Just going to the Hill, rallying, talking with survivors, pushing advocacy, direct law, all of that. Using his celebrity in one of the most effective ways I've ever seen. Oh, absolutely. And I think is also like, you know, kind of shames other celebrities who pretend to be activists. But, you know, it's mostly about their own like virtue. Exactly, right? That kind of advocacy.

Here he had an achievable mission. He shamed politicians. He remained laser focused on it and used his celebrity to actually get it done. The other thing, Sagar, that it took is, you know, I actually didn't connect these dots, but in this piece they talk about, I mean, Biden's son, Beau, was exposed to burn pits and he died of brain cancer when he was quite young. And so do we know that it was directly connected? No, but I'm sure if you're President Biden, that connection also remains in your mind.

So it took Jon Stewart and that entire community of veterans just 15 years of shaming politicians into doing the basics of their moral responsibility to those who served overseas and having a president who actually lost a son potentially to this very thing to ultimately get this done. I shouldn't take that, you know. Not at all. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, another election, another absolutely stunning rejection of the establishment. I've already broken down the French election and the Australian election. Now we move to another corner of the globe, to Colombia, where voters have just unceremoniously tossed out the traditional political class in dramatic fashion. In fact, Federico Gutierrez, the ideological successor to their current right-wing establishment president, and the heir to that whole political project that has been dominant in that country for more than two decades, that guy did not even make it to the runoff. So in the first round of voting in Colombia,

a leftist, Gustavo Petro, was the top vote getter. That in and of itself would be a really surprising turn of events given that Colombia has elected exclusively right-wing governments for all of its modern history. But the surprises did not end there, because a right-wing populist businessman, Rodolfo Hernandez, virtually unknown until like a few weeks ago, that guy surged ahead of the political establishment pick to make the runoff alongside the leftists. It's as thorough a rejection of the current government and political project as you could possibly get in a country that continues to struggle with cartel violence fueled by our war on drugs, and which has been the U.S.'s most reliable security partner on our various imperial projects

on that continent. It also appears to be part of a trend. Now, the surprising rise of the left in Colombia is part of a broader shift to the left in Central and South America. Progressives and leftists have been winning elections across the region, buoyed by millennials focused on inequality, poverty, social justice, and the climate crisis. So, as examples here, Bolivia overwhelmingly elected Luis Arce, the former finance minister under socialist Evo Morales. Peru elected a rural school teacher promising to take on mining interests. Chile elected a former student protest leader on a pledge to tackle inequality and environmental degradation. Lula is back in Brazil and commanding a large double-digit lead right now in the polls over current right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. In Colombia, the current left surge started with a 2021 mass protest movement sparked by a threatened tax hike and plans to privatize health care. It did not help that Colombia suffered with massive COVID outbreaks and also, of course,

economic fallout during the pandemic. Discontent is boiling over in Colombia. At least 24 people are dead after eight days of protest and a brutal crackdown in that Latin American nation. Now the interior minister has come out to say that the government does not condone violence and that any police officer violating the law will be held to account. The demonstrations were sparked by a proposed tax hike that the president has now cancelled,

but protesters are not letting up. Colombians are desperate for better lives after COVID made an already dire economic situation even worse. This stunning statistic perhaps puts it into perfect perspective. More than 40% of the population now is living in poverty. So those protests and the violent, deadly crackdown on those protesters galvanized the left, who lined up behind Gustavo Petro. He's a senator and actually a former low-level member of a guerrilla movement, something that has very much been used against him by the right. He's promising to reform the country's brutally unequal economic system in favor of

a jobs guarantee and universal health care. He also ran on fully implementing a landmark peace deal with the Marxist guerrillas of FARC, including promised poverty alleviation for rural Colombia. In moves that will likely irritate Washington, he has also pledged to revisit Colombia's trade deal with us and to restore relations with Venezuela and to change tax in the war on drugs. And if he was up against the successor to the much-hated incumbent, Petro was looking pretty good to win this whole thing. But the rapid emergence of Rodolfo Hernandez has thrown that outcome into major doubt. So Hernandez is a millionaire, construction magnate, former mayor who apparently

has a very colorful presence on TikTok. He is routinely described as a right-wing populist because he ran aggressively on anti-corruption, but his views are kind of all over the place. So he's apparently opposed to that peace deal with FARC. He's opposed to a higher wealth tax. He defends Colombia's notoriously violent riot police, but he's also pro-choice and anti-fracking. But he also doesn't really seem to have a firm grasp on any particular policy agenda or project. And for all his talk of being against corruption, he himself is under investigation for corruption. So just to give you a taste of his style, here's a little bit of his interaction with the Washington Post in an interview. Quote, Hernandez predicted he would win because his fervent base knows he is,

quote, the only one who is capable of removing the thieves from power. He then went on to describe his effect on supporters as messianic and compared to them to the brainwashed hijackers of September 11, 2001, who destroyed the Twin Towers. Asked if likening his supporters to terrorists was problematic, he rejected the premise, saying, what I'm comparing is that after you get into that state, you don't change your position, you don't change it. Okay. This dude literally came out of nowhere to surge right by the powers that be and land in the runoff. And now he has got a very solid chance of winning the presidency as Gutierrez, the aforementioned right-wing establishment pick who lost in the first round, has already thrown his support behind the surging Hernandez. Economic and political elites in

Colombia are absolutely panicked by the idea of a leftist actually rising to power and they will do whatever it takes to stop Petro's rise. But what has happened already is really extraordinary. Voters in a traditionally quite conservative country have just overwhelmingly opted for a change election. off, pitting a former leftist guerrilla ready to challenge their lockstep relationship with the U.S. and reform their economic system versus a Trump-like drain-the-swamp businessman with a bit of a casual relationship towards basic democratic rules and norms. In a trend that is now thoroughly global, it is just one more country thoroughly disgusted with the status quo and grasping for something, anything different. This one is really pretty surprising. 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, everyone, I know

it's basically a meme at this point, another gas monologue from Sagar. But look, I'm a man obsessed every day. I hear from people all over this country getting absolutely destroyed on gas prices, and I don't really see a lot of politicians or the media speaking to their concerns. Yesterday was Memorial Day. It officially kicks off driving season in this country, and it is going to usher in a new era of pain for American households. Sadly, to go along with Memorial Day and the beginning of the major driving season, was yet another record gas price across the country, nationwide average of $4.62 a gallon, with continued price growth out west. California tops the nation, has an average of $6.15 a gallon, reports of some outlier stations having gas as expensive as eight in Los Angeles and even Menlo Park in California. So how exactly is the media and popular culture responding to this crisis?

Well, I read with great interest a new report from the New York Times. Why are gas prices so high? The Times starts with Putin's price hike. But then, when they start to discuss structural issues, what do they go with? Is it refinery capacity? The Jones Act? Foreign oil dependency? Price gouging?

Which are the obvious ones? No, no, no, no, no. They decide to blame you. Blame you. They write, quote, Another reason for high gas prices is that despite them, motorists have not done anything to burn less gasoline. Analysts said people appear to have a robust appetite for hitting the road

as the U.S. recovers from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. They then quote a so-called expert who says this, quote, Fixing the problem means people would have to drive less. Tom Klaza, the global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. But people are saying, I'm sorry, I've been in lockdown.

I'm taking my vacation this summer. Yeah, fixing the problem means we have to curtail our lifestyle, according to this expert. Not, we need to pump more oil, fix the oil markets, look at our exports, look at our production. No. The only possible fix is that you, average American, must suffer. You must live a less prosperous life to fix this problem. This is how little that they think of you. It is a war on normal people, both in its lack of coverage and worse in how it is covered and betrays the elite mindset. That they cannot fail, only you can fail them. It is a baked-in assumption on the part of a lot of the media in their discussion of gas.

And I showed you this before. The very first question to Joe Biden at a press conference was not, what are you going to do about gas, but why are you not telling Americans to drive less? Today you have retail gasoline prices and diesel prices at record highs. Yet you have yet to ask Americans to consume less. You're a trained guy. Have you ever thought your administration asking Americans to drive less, to take public transport? Well, if you ever raised a family like mine, you don't have to tell them. They're doing everything in their power to figure out

how not to have to show up at the gas pump. Well, at least a decent answer there from Biden. But they think this way because they live in cities or they're rich enough to ignore the price. But the hilarious part is that once you actually continue reading the New York Times story, buried very several graphs down, is the actual reason for high gas. The Times can't help but also have to explain what I've talked about here, which is that gas inventory is low because we have no refinery capacity in America because of onerous regulation and because of the globalist solution, which is to let third world countries refine gas and deal with the byproduct and import it rather than have any capacity here. But of course, they don't quote anyone about how to fix that problem because it's counter

to their narrative. I have watched with genuine alarm as this anti-American life sentiment has pervaded on social media and amongst our elite class. It's best typified here, there was a viral tweet by a city planner and an urbanist, his name is Brent Todorin, who at one point actually served as a city planner for the city of Vancouver, so he is Canadian. But he has a real following with those who want to import his mindset to America. Let's take a look. He tweets this.

It's a photo of a pickup truck with a bicycle in front of it. And it says, quote, one of these is a problem, one of these is a solution. If you don't know which is which, you have no business being involved in decisions regarding society in any way. And again, just consider this. The answer for him is for you to get around on a bike. Maybe we should explain we live in America,

not Holland, not having a truck. Brent does not seem to know many people actually need pickup trucks for work, or many people, poor people especially, often have to drive dozens of miles to work and back every day because cost of living where they live is so high. And let's go past that. Why shouldn't you be able to drive a pickup truck? We are blessed with an absolutely gigantic and a beautiful country. Why shouldn't you be able to drive all over it in a massive car? The answer is you should. That's the promise of America. Why the car? The SUV and the truck are intrinsic to our way of life in a way that is not the case anywhere else. There is no reason for you and our citizens to have to curtail their lifestyle because of the failures of our elites or the media.

The solution is for us to have cheap, abundant energy. Yes, fossil fuels for now, but if possible, a fully electric future, in my opinion, powered by nuclear, with yes, some solar and wind when appropriate. To achieve that future actually requires hundreds of billions of dollars, but harder, it is a change to our ideology.

The culture of cancel culture and shaming and nihilism and more pervades elite liberalism today is actually anti-human. It is one that celebrates tearing things down. Now, I have plenty of disagreements with Ezra Klein, but even he, who is a neoliberal to his core and who probably agrees with the pickup truck guy, had this to say. What America needs is a liberalism that builds, Klein declares. And he rightfully points out how much of the current democratic apparatus is populated by lawyers who are obsessed with obscure, process-oriented goals

with caveats, carve-outs, bureaucratic language, and the lack of a simple ability to articulate an awesome future. It's why whatever you think about his politics, why the vast majority of Americans like people like an Elon Musk, because Tesla and SpaceX are unambiguously cool. They like Bezos for the same reason. Amazon works. Now look, I'm not a libertarian. I don't think the market can make up in any form the ability to do what our policymakers actually can. But the point is,

is that our spirit as a country is dying when the people who run media and our elites can only come up with an answer that we should all live worse lifestyles rather than continue the undying chain of technological progress that got us to where we are today. I just think it's amazing, Crystal. Very Pete, very Tara. And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. And joining us now is economics reporter for The Washington Post, the aforementioned Jeff Stein. Great friend of the show. Great to see you, Jeff.

Thanks so much for having me. Okay, so you have the latest details on what the Biden White House here is planning with regards to student debt relief. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Latest White House plan would forgive $10,000 in student debt per borrower. So just break this down for us. What are they actually planning on doing and when are they planning on doing it? So I want to be careful here to avoid being too definitive because like many things in the White House, there will be plan after plan after plan, and then we won't see the fruition of that plan. We can go down the list of dozens of things for which this has happened. But I have reported, as you guys demonstrated, that the White House currently has a plan that I know that the

economists have been working on, that is their current iteration to cancel $10,000 per borrower below an income threshold of around $150,000 for singles and $300,000 per couple. There's been an outcry. You know, Senator Schumer and Senator Warren have been calling for up to $50,000 in cancellation per borrower. The NAACP called our story that they reported $10K in cancellation, throwing a bucket of water on a forest fire. So there's been an immense pushback from our story to this reported amount. On the other hand, people would say, this is three times the amount of the annual child tax credit that did so much to alleviate poverty. Close to half of student borrowers owe 20,000 or less. So this would be a very meaningful cut to really a huge population,

20 million people or so. But the key question remains, is Biden going to do this? We think, you know, he has indicated publicly that he wants to do this. We have ample reporting that the White House itself has been preparing this. But I just want to be very clear, so you don't yell at me. Right. Because I'm not in charge of this. Not your fault. Not my fault. It's still possible that Biden changes his mind at the last minute.

I don't think that's going to happen, but it's still theoretically an option. I want to stick with this because this is fascinating to me. Let's talk about some of these past things. They didn't materialize. Why? I mean, based upon the people that you talked to. What is going on

inside of this building where it seems that the decision-making process is extraordinarily haphazard? They always want credit for something that they're gonna do, but then they don't actually end up doing it.

So what is it like? Just describe the process for people here who are like, why does nothing seem to be getting done inside of this White House? Yeah, I know you guys want

like the insider, juicy tidbit. Sure. I think there seems to be a pattern of a sort of crisis of decision making in this administration. I think the tariffs are a really good example where we've seen basically since the administration began that there was pressure, that Democrats were freaking out about the tariffs imposed by Trump on China, that they were essentially attacks on consumers, that they would raise costs for middle class families. And yet, most of those tariffs remain in effect. Right. Despite inflation, you know, many economists that are close to the White House will say this is the administration's number one lever to deal with inflation. You take the tariffs off. I mean,

obviously, there are people who say you need that to counter China. But it's been months and months of deliberations and indecision over this. And I think what brought this student debt question to a head right now is that on the most important thing that they have said that they're going to do and haven't done, in my opinion, on the economic front, the Build Back Better Act fell apart, right, in the fall. I think I was on the show saying correctly over and over again that, oh, they're about to get a deal, you know, right, in the fall. I think I was on the show saying correctly over and over again that, oh, they're about to get a deal, you know, Jeff Wooden's coming. And then I would say, like, my sources are telling me it's coming soon. And then that would turn out to be wrong and wrong and wrong. So when that fell apart, there was this sense that, and we can, I kind of want to discuss this with you guys, I'm curious what you think, but there was this sense that we need to deliver something because the economic promises we've been making, housing, health care, climate, prescription drugs, all, and even though Manchin gave them a $1.8 trillion offer that they didn't take,

that has really made it seem like they need to push this process along. Well, and it seems too like, you know, we've covered the polls here that show, and this is pretty extraordinary for a Democratic president, his lowest approval rating is with the youngest demographic. And it was the exact opposite at the beginning of the administration. His highest approval rating was among the youngest demographic. Now that is completely flipped. The older you go on the age spectrum, the higher the approval rating for Joe Biden. So, you know, you ask yourself, like, this is something they could have done on day one.

Why did they wait till now? It seems pretty clear that they're looking at the fact they're probably not going to get any other big thing through Congress, at the fact that their approval rating is a disaster with young voters, and saying, well, at least we could give them something. But in the same respect, it seems like what they're proposing is like tailor-made to kind of piss everybody off. You know, it's not universal. It's means tested. It's a lower amount than what, you know, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, you know, that bold progressive were pushing for. In the same respect, you're going to have people on the right who say, oh, this is inflationary.

And what are you doing? This is a giveaway to elite college grads. So, and they also seem to have this habit. This was also during Build Back Better, where you'd announce these popular programs or you'd flirt with them publicly. And then you just sort of like, you know, get people's hopes up and then ultimately shoot the thing in the head so that it would have been better if you never said anything about it to start with. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I really wonder if they had just come out and just done this instead of now we're on- Building up for over a month. I mean, April 28th, Biden said publicly, we will have a decision on this,

I think in the next couple of weeks. That's a paraphrase. Yeah. And it's almost June. And so, you know, they have had events that have derailed them. But to your point, we've had now months of internal fighting within the Democratic Party

about what this should look like. And it has gotten people very upset in a way that I think if they had just come out and said this, you know, said this is the policy, people would have been excited to hear it. And as you said, not built their hopes up. And now if they don't do anything at all, I think the reaction is going to be horrendous. I mean, I wrote those same polling numbers down before coming here because I thought they were so illustrative. The oldest voters have gone between, you know, the oldest generation, they basically remain flat on Biden. The baby boomers are down 7% on Biden, but millennials and Gen Z down around 20 percentage points each on Biden. That's catastrophic, not just for the midterms, but for Biden's potential election, and also for the Democratic Party long term.

So yeah, I think I'm curious in particular about Sager's take on whether you think this is sort of deepening the impression that you were just talking about, about Democratic Party solidified as the party of elites and the college educated, because it seems simultaneously true that the caricature of the student debtor as like a liberal arts major at a fancy college who just didn't want to get a real job, like that is a part of this but probably a pretty small part, like most of the student debt is held by people who went to public or

for profit college. Especially people who didn't finish college those are the people who get especially hosed I mean, I think the way we talk about it is that in the absence of everything else it's going to be very difficult to combat that attack, right? Which is that in the absence of help for everybody and for a lot of people, then you do have a selective bailout. I'm not saying I'm even against it, but given the fact that it doesn't change the university incentive system and, you know, a lot— Without fixing the underlying flaws and bailing it out, you are effectively bailing out mostly upper middle class people in this country. I like your point about the fact that it comes in this broader context.

Yeah, it's a bigger context. Because if this was part of a package that was head-on addressing child poverty and public housing and lack card access in red states. I think you could say that this is going to mostly benefit many lower middle class people who desperately need this help, tens of millions of people who are struggling with their student loans. But in a context where all of those things are not happening, this is the only group of people that are getting targeted relief. It looks completely different. And I think it doesn't mean they shouldn't do it, but it does raise the question of what are they going to do for people who didn't go to college and are struggling with the highest price increases in four decades? Yeah, I think all of that is fair, and I would like to see them do more for everyone.

That doesn't mean that I don't think they should help the group of people that they have a ready tool to be able to help. And the reality is that young Americans in particular really sold a bill of goods on college. Even the college wage premium now is diminishing. The people who, as you point out, got the most screwed are people who went to like these, you know, scammy for-profit colleges or weren't unable to finish college because of, you know, whatever reason, whether it was an economic reason or another reason. But there was this promise of like, okay, if you go to college, you're going to be good. And not only do the prices skyrocket and you're saddled with this debt for your entire life, most of which is, you know, much of the student loan debt is never going to be ultimately repaid. But then the promise of this sort of like stable middle class life also doesn't come true. So, you know, I think for younger Americans, that's why this has been such a pivotal issue,

is not just because of the debt burden, but also because of the sort of lie that they were sold in terms of the trajectory of their life. But, you know, Jeff, go ahead if you want to. I saw a really interesting statistic that I thought kind of captures some of what you're saying, which is you would think that this issue would be divided sort of on, you know, educational lines when you look at the polling. And it is to some extent, but a lot of the numbers the White House I know have looked at actually shows that this is just almost purely generational. Generational, yeah. That even people who didn't go to college, have no student debt in our age cohort,

overwhelmingly support this even if it doesn't materially benefit them, because they see exactly what you're talking about, that this was a bill of goods that people were sold that turned out to be completely phony, and that the student default rates, especially for black borrowers, people of color, are astronomical. And so when you look at this broader question, is there a systemic injustice being done at the core of our education system? I think people would rightfully say that there's something there. And I just find that fascinating that young people, even if they aren't personally affected by this, have sort of this sense of solidarity because they know someone who is. And for older people, even if they may have a little bit of student debt, they don't see it as this society-wide crisis in the same way.

Well, because they just never had to experience it. This is where I'm most – whenever I hear them talk about how much they paid, I'm like, yeah, well, it doesn't work that anymore. Yeah, I paid off my college debt with like three shifts in the cafeteria. It's like, okay, well, I think that's awesome, and I think that should be available to everybody, but it's not. So let's just all be honest. Yeah, I mean, my dad grew up in, like, the Great Depression in West Virginia.

He lived in a one-room trailer that his dad built. And he was able to go to, you know, a solid public university at West Virginia University and, like, pay for it himself and ultimately become a PhD physicist and work for the government and like do good things with his life. That's just, it's gone. I mean, that's just, you know, and listen, let's acknowledge like the privilege of being a white man at that time and all of those things, but that path is gone. And so this is like, would be a tiny step towards at least acknowledging that people have gotten completely screwed. But Jeff, I am curious, like, some of the things the White House does or just the way they approach it, it really is perplexing to me. What do you think leads to them, you know, doing this dance where they sort of leak something? We might do something, maybe not. And it's very amorphous. And then people end up disappointed. And there seems to be a lot of their actions are more reactive

to events rather than asserting like an affirmative vision, going out and fighting for it, even on, I know this is not your lane, but on the gun debate, you know, Biden puts out, makes these kind of maximalist comments about maybe we should get rid of handguns. But then in terms of actually even wading into the congressional debate, he hasn't even talked to a single Republican. They won't put a representative on the Sunday shows to even advocate for things like universal background checks, which are overwhelmingly popular. What's the vibe there? What's the political thinking? How is this all, how is this happening? I think if I were to take a step at a a non-personality based answer to that question,

because I think there must be sort of idiosyncratic character traits that explain what you're referring to. But I think the broader thing that's happening is that like there are tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party that Biden, you know, maybe this is part of the reason that he won the primary, but that he is on a different page than a lot of prominent members in the party, including members of the White House that are staff, White House at very high levels. So I think there are people who are advocating forcefully for things like student debt cancellation that Biden has for decades been skeptical of, right? He has, he's been public that he is uneasy with this idea, but the demands of leading legislative coalition

bring you to places that you may not necessarily support, you know, and I think that's maybe at the bottom of what seems like a fractured approach a lot of the time for the White House. I would also say that Republicans like to say that it's Ron Klain and the White House Chief of Staff, that he is the core problem and that he's the one that's leading Biden to sort of flail. And I think people, you know, discount to what extent Biden himself is like actually really involved in all these decisions and like in the room and was hands on. I have a story hopefully coming later this week on this question about how did Build Back Better fall apart. But I think Biden himself, you know, is more involved than people think in a lot of these

questions. Yeah, it used to drive me crazy under Trump, too. You know, people would do this. Oh, Jerry. I'm like, yeah, Jared, but also, you know, Trump is the president. Like, you know, it's just like the same thing here. Like, oh, Ron Klain and Susan Rice and all these people. I'm like, yeah, but Biden is the president. He actually has a significant say in what's happening here and how exactly things go about.

I mean, to the extent that there's dithering and there's chaos, I mean, look, that is a direct indictment of him as a manager. I don't think he can get around that. It's also consistent with reports of how he ran his Senate office and also how he ran his vice presidential office, a little bit of which I had sort of direct brief insight into, which is that he is both a micromanager and incapable of making decisions. I didn't realize you worked for Biden. That's incredible. So I didn't directly work for Biden, but I was involved in the early discussions of him running in 2016. And so I got to see a little bit of the dysfunction up close and personal.

And yeah, I mean, that was effectively the problem is he wants to be involved in every decision down to the minute detail, but he is incapable of like actually making a decision. And so you end up with a group of people who are just completely hamstrung. I mean, that's the worst of all worlds in terms of a manager. You can either be a great delegator and you put great people around and you trust their decision making, or you're super hands-on, but you're on it and you're capable of making decisions. And so, you know, it was always sort of interesting to me during the campaign. There was this idea of like, oh, the adults are going to be back in charge. It's going to be competent.

I was like, have you actually observed how Biden has run any of his political offices before? Because there are a lot of positive traits you might use to describe how he's been in Washington and, you know, the sort of like genuine warmth and affection that people have towards him personally. But managerial competence was not a key Biden trait ever in his 40 years in Washington. And that was the key selling point of the campaign, right? Yes. aside your passion, your ideological commitments a little bit, and you go with someone who's trusted, who will maybe share some of your goals and work with you to enact them. But his pitch to Young Voters in particular was, I know how to do this. Right. Well, we're all finding that out.

He does not. It turns out. Jeff, we always appreciate your insight, your reporting. Excellent. Everybody go follow Jeff on Twitter. Read his stuff over. Are you just at Jeff Stein? I mean, I follow you.

Jay Stein Wapo. Jay Stein Wapo. That's right. On Twitter, guys. Read his stuff over. Are you just at Jeff Stein? I mean, I follow you. Jay Stein Wapo. Jay Stein Wapo. That's right. On Twitter, guys. Give him a follow. We always lean on his reporting for our economic analysis. We lean on him significantly. And thank you all so much for your support.

Looking over at this camera. We really appreciate it. One year anniversary is tomorrow. Can't even believe it. We're going to have a special highlight reel of all the cool stories that we've covered. We're going to be back here, reel of all the cool stories that we've covered. We're going to be back here obviously on Thursday. Premium subscribers,

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helping us out. If you want to help us on this mission, link is in the description and we will see you all on Thursday. Love you guys are really helping us out. If you want to help us on this mission, link is in the description. And we will see you all on Thursday. Love you guys. See you Thursday. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's is not the father.

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