Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/31/23: Critical Debt Vote Today, Conservatives Threaten McCarthy Ouster, China and US Pilots Near Miss, Secret Abortion Poll, Millennial Misery Ignored, Ted Cruz Defends LGBTQ, James Comey Defends FBI, Pentagon Slush Funds

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Krystal and Emily discuss the critical vote on the Debt Ceiling occurring today, Conservatives threatening an ouster of McCarthy over his handling of the deal, a Chinese jet buzzes a US pilot in a Near Miss, a secret poll showing Abortion crushing Republicans in swing states, Media Elites downplay Millennial Misery, Krystal and Emily debate whether Ted Cruz is really a Gay Ally after his tweets supporting Ugandan LGBTQ, Emily looks into James Comey's crazy defense of the corrupt FBI, and Krystal looks into DC celebrating the record Pentagon slush funds.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I?

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give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Welcome to CounterPoints. I'm joined today, of course, by Ryan Grimm, who's looking lovely. Actually, now Ryan's out for one more week, and Crystal is filling in. Thank you so much, Crystal. Yeah, you guys have stuck with me all week, so apologies for that.

But we have a lot of good stuff to talk about today. We've got big developments with the debt ceiling. Emily has some inside scoop about what the Freedom Caucus is thinking. Right? That's fair to say, right? I think so. A little insight, I guess. Yeah, so we'll get into that big day for whether that is going to pass or not. We also have some escalations in terms of U.S.-Chinese tensions, including sort of interaction between two fighter jets that we have some video of we can show you.

Also, this is perfect for Emily, a deep dive into what is going on in the state of Wisconsin, especially Republicans sort of despairing there about whether they're going to be able to win back the state, especially with the politics of abortion. So we'll talk about that. Some new numbers about how millennials are doing in terms of their finances and the factors that, you know, student loan debt weighs into all of that, Ted Cruz getting in some hot water, I guess, with his own base over some comments he made about that horrific law that was just passed against LGBTQ people in Uganda. So we'll talk about that as well. But we did want to start with the very latest in terms of the debt ceiling, Emily. That's right, because it continues to change on a minute-by-minute basis, as obviously the House is expected to vote today. Kevin McCarthy now reportedly wants to get to 150 Republican votes for this deal that was brokered by the Republican Speaker of the House

out of 222 House Republicans. So that means he's expecting or hoping at best to lose some 70 members of his own conference. We're going to get into in a little bit why so many members of the Freedom Caucus and of Kevin McCarthy, not even just Freedom Caucus members, but people like Nancy Mace are upset with this deal. But for now, let's start with Jake Sherman. You can put up A1 here. He's saying, this is Thomas Massey. He's a libertarian member of the Freedom Caucus. He's saying, quote, he anticipates voting for this rule. That is, as Jake Sherman says, big for Republican leadership because Kevin McCarthy needs Thomas Massey, needs people like Thomas Massey to kind of fall in line on this vote in order

to potentially get to that 150 number. Obviously, if you've been following this story, Republicans were feeling good about it. They passed their budget earlier this year. They felt really good about that budget. Obviously, it was a nonstarter with the White House. The White House said, we're not negotiating at all. Ended up negotiating. Democrats are unhappy about that. It's now on the floor of the House today. And the Biden administration actually isn't that upset about what is going to be passed. We can use a two here. This is from Lauren Fox. Now in the Senate, John Thune here has said, this is also a really big quote. He's confident there will be at least nine Republican senators who support the debt ceiling

bill, assuming it comes to the Senate. Oh yeah, Thune told CNN when pressed on if there would be enough GOP votes to clear a 60-vote threshold in the chamber. All right, so not only does the math then check out in the House, the math checks out in the Senate, and President Biden is cool with the deal. Let's actually roll, or we'll take one look actually here at what Speaker McCarthy, this is a, you can put up the next element, A3. We have a lot of like rapid fire reactions that have been coming out over the course of the last day as there's been a little bit of a revolt. This is Kevin McCarthy kind of taking a W here, saying President Biden claimed he'd never negotiate. Leader Schumer insisted

there'd be a, quote, clean debt increase. They were wrong. Republicans fought to spend less, block Biden's new tax proposals, claw back unspent COVID money and fully fund our veterans and defense priorities. OK, so there you have Kevin McCarthy saying expectations were low and Republicans met them, essentially, is what he's saying. And one thing I've heard from some folks is that it's one thing to say, listen, we have little leverage. We don't want to play default chicken. So this is the best we could do, working with the president. On the other hand, trying to sell this deal as a big win is a totally different choice. And that, I think, is definitely what's rankling some folks.

So a couple things. First on the mechanics, they passed the first hurdle through that rules committee. That was the Thomas Massey situation. It was like the swing vote there, and it passed out of the rules committee 7-6. That was the first hurdle through that rules committee. That was the Thomas Massey situation. It was like the swing vote there, and it passed out of the rules committee seven to six. That was the first hurdle. Now they're looking to have an actual vote on the House floor. And I don't think anyone doubts that there's a majority of House members, both Republicans and Democrats, if you put them together, who would vote for this debt ceiling deal in Greece situation. The challenge for McCarthy is that

he has to have a majority of his caucus. And as you're pointing out, Emily, he's actually setting the bar a little bit higher than that. He doesn't want to just barely have a majority of his caucus. He wants to have the bulk of his caucus, something like two thirds of the caucus behind this deal for him to feel comfortable. Why? Because as we're about to talk about, if he doesn't, his speakership could be in jeopardy. You already have rumblings and more than rumblings from some members of the House Freedom Caucus about being very unhappy and upset with this deal. So that's the mechanics of it. Those are the big hurdles. Still remains to be seen how many Republicans go along with this, given the fact that you have not just the House Freedom Caucus, other members, as you point out,

like Nancy Mace, and also a lot of conservative media and people like Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, a number of like mainstream Republican figures and a lot of conservative media that have come out against this deal. So that's sort of the lay of the land. Do I think it's going to pass? Do I think he's going to get the numbers? If I had to bet, I'd say yes. But I don't think it's at all like 100 percent certain. So that's kind of where things stand. What I'm interested to get from you is, you know, I think it was a mistake the way that Biden and the Democrats played this from the beginning. I think it was a mistake to say we won't negotiate and then to cave.

I think it was a mistake to take off the table things like the 14th Amendment and other workarounds because that completely stripped the White House of their leverage. Like, it became very clear Biden was determined to get a deal, and that's why Democrats and people like me expected there to be a lot more extracted out of his side of the bargain than ultimately was. I still think this deal is bad. I have all kinds of issues with it. But it's a lot less bad from my perspective than what I expected. So what do you think happened here? Like, seriously, like, is McCarthy close to Wall Street? And they were freaked down about what going over

the cliff might mean. Did he just, you know, was he like charmed by Biden and Biden's really that great of a negotiator or something? Like, what is the explanation for why the deal ended up being a lot less than what I expected and what a lot of Republicans expected they might be able to extract out of this situation. Yeah, I think it's not wanting to play default chicken at the end of the day. Kevin McCarthy, I think, understands that the media is going to take Biden's side. It's not going to take his side if an actual default looms. And this is all happening in the context of the X date, right? Which Janet Yellen first pegged to June 1, which would be, what is that, Thursday? So, so coming right up.

So tomorrow, that's why the vote is happening today because there's this, she then sort of said it might be more like June 5th. It's sort of a subjective figure, but that's not wanting to play default chicken, learning or looking back on the Tea Party years and all of the times where that did not go well for Republicans, either with voters or with the media, probably because of the media in some sense, I think is what made everything become rushed, urgent, and put the ball in Biden and the Democrats' court.

And we see clearly that Biden and the Democrats know the ball is in their court. We have some sound we're going to play in a bit. But it's been very interesting to see Republicans spreading all of these messages from kind of establishment Dems saying how happy they are with the deal. Yeah, it's interesting. You see two very different communication strategies. Biden even came out and said, we played this with Sagar yesterday. He even came out and said, like, do you really think it would help get this deal through if I was out there, like, singing its praises and how great it was and, like, throwing about what a great deal Democrats were able to achieve? strategic decision to keep things kind of quiet and not rub Republicans' noses in the fact that they didn't get everything that they wanted. Again, I think the deal is bad and I have issues with it, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Republicans, on the other hand, Kevin McCarthy, we showed his comments earlier, he's really out there trying to sell like,

oh, we really showed the Democrats and they didn't get anything and here's all the great cuts that we were able to achieve. So even that is kind of a tell of which side really feels like they got the better end of these negotiations. That's a good point. Well, yeah, let's put up a four because to Crystal's point, Newt Gingrich is out there sort of trumpeting the what is Nancy Pelosi call herself a master legislator, the master legislating of Kevin McCarthy. He said the debt limit deal is a dramatic victory for Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans before they passed their history-changing bill. No one would have believed it possible to cut spending, reestablish work requirements,

reform permitting for energy and infrastructure, and more. There's some truth to that, which I think some people in this moment, there's a little bit of negotiation theater, which is inevitable in any type of deal like this that's happening on Capitol Hill, or even if you're trying to buy a used car, or if you're playing poker, right? You have to have your poker face. There's some measure of theater that's happening. And so there is some part of the Freedom Caucus guys that they're saying, like, listen, go back to the negotiating table. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, said, go back to the negotiating table. This is unacceptable to see if they can get Kevin McCarthy back to the negotiating table. But he does not have much leverage. He has never had

much leverage. And so the likelihood of something like this being the deal was always pretty high. Now, could it have been better? I think absolutely, yes. I don't think anybody is wrong to be upset about this deal. There is, though, truth to the fact that when you don't want to play default chicken, if you don't want to be blamed for that because you know the media is going to say it was those dang Republicans, then, hey, you have no leverage at all, basically, when you don't control two-thirds of the government. Yeah, so McCarthy, I guess, in the end, wasn't able to posture as being as crazy as the Freedom Caucus types. Truly, I mean, that is one frequent tactic in negotiations that's very effective.

I mean, Trump used this sometimes, where you had to appear like you're crazy enough to actually take the thing over the cliff. And, you know, I guess he decided that for political reasons or for Wall Street reasons or whatever reasons, he wasn't really willing to be as wild eyed and as crazy as, you know, maybe the Lauren Boebert's and the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the Matt Gaetz of the world would want him to be. It is interesting, as I said before, the Biden White House has tried to sort of be a little quiet, just let this thing all roll out. And there are a lot of Democrats, too, who have been expressing like their dissatisfaction with the deal, especially the cuts to the IRS,

some of the work requirements stuff. Although it just came out that on the SNAP, that's the food stamp program, work requirements addition, once you net out all the changes that were made to SNAP, you're actually going to have an increase of 78,000 additional recipients on SNAP. So I don't think Democrats can be too mad about the changes that were made there. And the reason is because while they're increasing work requirements on single men between 50 and 54, they are eliminating work requirements for veterans and homeless people. So that's why you have this net increase. In any case, you did have

a Biden economic advisor who went on CNN to sell this deal a little bit. Let's listen to how he's speaking to it. We're confident that it will get to the president's desk. I want to emphasize that it accomplishes three main things. Number one, it takes the possibility of a default off the table, which means we avoid an almost certain recession because of a first ever debt default. Number two, it protects all of the key pieces of legislation that the president signed into law in the last two years. New investments in clean energy, new investments in semiconductor manufacturing, new infrastructure investments that are being seen across the country. And third of all, it protects Social Security, it protects Medicare, it protects Medicaid, all these important programs that Americans rely on.

What we are trying to do is preserve those investments, preserve the progress that we have made. And we've done that by essentially locking in the wins that we've gotten over the last two years. So a big piece of the negotiations, Republicans in their bill that they passed originally from the House had really taken an axe at the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of tax credits to move towards clean energy transition. None of that was touched. And I do think that that was an important win for the White House, given the fact that I think their whole approach to the White House from the beginning was really stupid and ill-advised, et cetera. Agree.

But given that they put themselves in a really bad position, the fact they were able to protect all of the Inflation Production Act, which is the signature achievement of President Biden and of some of the more progressive folks in Congress, I do think that was an important part. Absolutely. And that's one of the big things that Freedom Caucus members are looking at and saying, we passed this budget. This was important to us. And here we are. We're at a place where none of that was touched. The IRS, what this bill does with the IRS, I mean, it rescinds 1.4 billion in IRS funding. But that's really like that's not what people wanted, because that was also a huge cornerstone of Biden's agenda. When you're adding 87000 new employees at the IRS, some of whom will be agents, not all 87000 will be agents. But that was a huge, huge Republican talking point.

And most of it didn't happen. And most of it, I don't think they're seeing Kevin McCarthy fight for. And I think that's probably what's upsetting them, because not only are they not seeing him fight for it, they're also not seeing him say, listen, this is the best we can do and sort of be kind of blatant and obvious about the problems. He's really trying to act like this is a great deal to, you know, Newt Gingrich, who is an ally of Kevin McCarthy, to the point that he tweeted that out. I think that tells you kind of what the problem is, acting like this is a huge win as opposed to saying this is the best we can do. Yeah. Well, let's transition to talking about the House Freedom Caucus and some of their reaction because, you know, there are two questions. First of all, were they going to vote for the deal? Most of them are not going to vote for the deal, but McCarthy doesn't need them

either. If most of the rest of the Republican caucus hangs in there, then he'll be good in terms of getting it passed. But one of the provisions that was in that original deal to make Kevin McCarthy speaker was to make it easier to kick his butt out if they didn't like what he did. And so you're starting to hear a few of them float this idea of, hey, maybe McCarthy's not the guy. Maybe we need to get him out of there. Go ahead and speak to a little bit of that, Emily, and what the dynamics are. Yeah, this is really interesting. It's some of the same dynamics from the speakership battle folks will remember from January when it took, what, 19 rounds to finally elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker, in which he had to ring concession after concession, or they rung concession after concession out of Kevin McCarthy, including the motion to vacate, which is something that Nancy Pelosi torpedoed after she saw what happened to John Boehner back in the Tea Party years.

And now that is a very real threat for Kevin McCarthy, because when you have most of the Freedom Caucus really upset about this, that's more than enough people to call for a motion to vacate the chair, which would oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker and put Republicans back in another pickle where they don't really have a consensus candidate. They don't really have anybody that could unite enough votes to become the next Speaker. So this threatens the entire House Republican conference, not just the bill itself. To Crystal's point, I think the math is pretty safe for Kevin McCarthy. He wants to put up more. He wants to get at least 150 of the 222 House Republicans. That means he's

expecting possibly to lose more than 70 members of his own conference. So we'll see what the math actually works out to. But I think that's important context for this next clip. We can go ahead and play A6 because you see how serious this is getting for Kevin McCarthy here. How much, I mean, how much confidence do you have in the Speaker right now? None. Zero. What basis is there for confidence? You cannot forfeit the tool of Republican unity. It was not necessary to do. Is the Speaker lying about the way he's characterizing this bill? Yes, he's lying. But the bill is chock full of things that are cosmetic and artificial.

All right, so that's a motion to vacate threat. And we've seen that come from several members of the Freedom Caucus over the last 24 hours. Again, it seems like it's one of those things that every hour you're seeing a new Freedom Caucus member threaten the motion to vacate. Let's go ahead and play the soundbite from Chip Roy, who has emerged. He certainly emerged during the speakership battle. He's actually a former Hill staffer himself. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he worked for Ted Cruz, actually. And he really emerged as a leader of the Freedom

Caucus folks and in the Republican Party during the speakership battle and has taken up the same sort of role in these negotiations. Here's what he said yesterday outside the Capitol. My colleagues, be very clear, not one Republican should vote for this deal. It is a bad deal. No one sent us here to borrow an additional $4 trillion to get absolutely nothing in return. But at best, if I'm being really generous, a spending freeze for a couple of years. That's it. That's about what you get. And frankly, you're going to make things worse. And my Democratic colleagues know it. That's why they're supporting it. That's why they're going around gleeful. All right. I have a quote that I want to read from a senior Senate staffer. This is exclusive to Breaking Points. It's a great quote.

McCarthy had historic unity and massive leverage to demand a deal. He fucked it up bigly. The bill is horrible. My fear was that we would get a bad deal. This is an objectively horrible one. And so not only, if you take that expectation, right,

like there's not a lot of leverage, it's probably going to be a bad deal. But then you take what Chip Roy just said, which is it's basically just all you're getting here is a spending freeze. And you try it for like a year, and then you have a 1% increase the next fiscal year about. When you take that and try to sell it as a huge win,

man, are you losing with the people that you really can't afford to lose. And this could turn out to be sort of the best of both worlds for the Freedom Caucus because they get to vote against the bill. They get cover for that because there's enough Democrats to vote this and pass it and avoid a default. So they get to vote against it. They get to go out and hammer McCarthy. Now, where it becomes a potential L is when if they oust Kevin McCarthy, it's possible you have someone much, much worse than Kevin McCarthy for the Freedom Caucus folks in that

position because McCarthy listens to them and takes them seriously. If ousting McCarthy ends up with another establishment person taking that seat, you're in big trouble, too. Yeah, there's a few things there. So first of all, you know, if I'm putting myself in the shoes, attempting to put myself in the shoes of a Chip Roy or a Dan Bishop or your Senate staffer who thinks they effed up vaguely, part of this deal is not just that we're going to lift the debt ceiling until, you know, after if Joe Biden gets reelected. So it pushes us out past the 2024 elections. That's one part. There's also provisions in here about how the budget process will unfold that basically says if we can't come to a deal on the budget appropriations,

then we have, you know, an automatic freeze. And this was the Thomas Massey thing, a one penny cut. That's actually not that bad of a deal for Democrats. And it denies Republicans leverage on the next budget fight going forward. So if I was, you know, these individuals and had the worldview that they have, that probably would be the piece I'd be most upset about. Because it's like, OK, not only did you kind of cave here and not extract everything that Biden left himself open to being extracted, foolishly in my opinion, but he left himself open to having a lot more extracted. You also have made it so that in the normal budgeting process, we have no leverage. They're not going to negotiate. We're not going to be able to get any of our priorities here. And that's the other part of this that is just so perplexing is effectively everything

they got, they could have gotten through the normal budgeting process. And it didn't require this whole theatrical threatening the entire global financial system to achieve it. So, you know, I think that in from my view is probably part of why they are so upset. But my other question, Emily, is like, how much of this is theater? Because, as you said, McCarthy is probably going to be able to get together enough of the caucus combined with the Democrats to get this thing through. Yes, they are saying they're very upset and they're sending out tweets, calling it like a turd sandwich and whatever, and having press conferences, et cetera. But even if they were to call a motion to vacate,

they probably don't have the numbers to Alice McCarthy. There's no other alternative, really. And this is a group of people who have made it their political brand to be, you know, in there railing against leadership and at least having the aesthetics of fighting and bucking the Republican establishment. So they get to do that. They get to like posture the way that their base wants to see them position themselves. But are they, do they actually have any teeth here really? I think, well, the messaging in and of itself is really important because we've seen this happen with John Boehner, with Paul Ryan, none of whom were necessarily like Tea Party darlings. Of course, they never really were. But when the Freedom Caucus folks and sort of grassroots activist type Republicans turned against them, it became a movement. It became

like an anti-Bahner, anti-Paul Ryan, and Republicans have been, Freedom Caucus folks have been very good at mobilizing the grassroots and conservative media in particular to take down somebody who's like a symbol, an avatar of the swamp, the political establishment, which is really interesting to see being used against Kevin McCarthy, who has had a very close relationship with people like Jim Jordan because he takes the time. I mean, when I interviewed him back in September, he was emphatic and very detailed about all the time that he's taken to woo Jim Jordan and to develop really sincere relationships with those guys and how he sees that not just as the right thing to do, but as a strategic win. And that's been true. So if this is a real break with those folks, his ability, I mean, he's made, maybe it's sincere, but he's made a lot of concessions in the way that he talks about the FBI, the way that he talks about a lot of different issues now. And for all of that to go out the

window over this debt ceiling fight, if he's not able to kind of get them back on his team, give them something. You know, maybe there's something that he can do after the debt-stealing fight to placate them, to appease them, to appeal to them, to avoid a motion to vacate. But I think once that sort of genie is out of the bottle and you have signaled to the Republican base that Kevin McCarthy is a swamp creature. Yeah. I don't know how you put that back in the bottle. I think that's well said, because if he becomes a villain to the base, then whether the sentiment against him is genuine or not genuine among this handful of Republican House members, it becomes to their individual political benefit to try to oust him, to try to fight with him, to try to buck him at every turn and make his life

miserable, whether they're able to oust him as Speaker or not is another question. So when you have that political incentive in place and you have a lot of ambitious people who are elected members of Congress, someone is going to seize the opportunity to be his primary antagonist if he comes to be seen as this just like thoroughly swamp-like villain to the Republican base. Right. Your average Republican voter doesn't give a damn about this procedural specifics and the detailed breakdown of negotiations on Capitol Hill. Because, first of all, that stuff is extremely hard to understand, even if you cover it and you follow it. And secondly, it's your team or my team, right? And it gets broken down in that really easy way. And the last thing I want to say before we

move on is just a comment that I heard from somebody on the left, baffled by the hills Republicans chose to die on in this fight, saying, why not go after the Pentagon? Why not go after X, Y, and Z? And Crystal, you're talking about the Pentagon. Some of that stuff is ripe. It would have been such a target-rich environment to make Biden defend his surveillance programs at the Pentagon, defend some of the obviously ridiculous items in his budget or federal spending that anyone can go to the federal budget, left or right, and look at some of the obviously ridiculous items in his budget or federal spending that, you know, anyone can go to the federal budget left or right and look at some of the spending agenda and be like, what the hell is this? Like, this is insane. Make Biden defend that stuff, like the excessive, like what people would call like the excesses of woke ideology that's become baked into the

federal budget. Why are they not fighting over that stuff? Why are they not fighting over these new things that Ken Klippenstein reports on every week that are popping up at the Pentagon that are surveilling average Americans? Instead, they're increasing the defense budget. So it's just been a very strange, not strange for how the Republican Party operates, but post-Trump to see the Republican Party dying on the hill of work requirements and freezes to the federal budget without talking about very specific things, increasing defense spending, it's just strange. Yeah. And last question for you, Emily, is Trump has been notably quiet about this deal and cyber-theorized, and I think this is correct, Kevin McCarthy probably called him and begged him to keep his mouth shut. Because Trump's not an idiot. He can see where the winds

are blowing. He can see that if you want it to be on the right side of the Republican base, like DeSantis and Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy and the others who have come out against it, who are running for president, they're on the correct side of this issue in terms of the vibes and the sentiment of the base. So notable that he has stayed quiet. And clearly he and Kevin McCarthy are allies. My Kevin, you know, and he helped Kevin McCarthy get across the line in terms of his speaker's deal. How much does it matter that McCarthy

has the sort of tacit backing of Trump? That's a great question because Trump can make life hard for basically anyone. Although I think in a primary his power to do that is going to wane because if you're splitting off, you know, the kind of MAGA folks into DeSantis and Trump, I think Trump doesn't lose his 30 percent grip on the Republican, your average Republican primary base. He's got 30 percent grip. If he can make that, if he can make life difficult for Kevin McCarthy with that 30 percent, that's definitely meaningful. On top of Sager's theory, something you said, that he sort of senses where the wind is blowing. Trump wants to be on the side of the winner. So he's not necessarily ideologically going to say this is right or wrong. Oh, he doesn't care about the

details. No, he's waiting in the wings and he's going to see where the winds blow. And I think it's up in the air. It's been up in the air for the last week or so as Republicans, like the Freedom Caucus felt really good about their relationship with Kevin McCarthy until like a week ago. Oh, really? Yeah. It was like they felt like they were things were moving along well. And then he settled on this deal with Biden over the weekend. And really like that, it was really, really bad and really quick. And so I think Trump was waiting in the wings, seeing what was going to be the winning side of this argument. And I think when that becomes clear to him, he'll jump in and say something.

So is your assessment that the anger and the upset that is being portrayed coming from the Freedom Caucus is genuine, that they feel they actually feel betrayed here? Yeah, I think it's a little of both. I think it's there's a broad, genuine upset over being left behind by Kevin McCarthy. But then there's a layer of, you know, that that's becomes an opportunity. So feeling genuinely sold out by McCarthy can then become an opportunity for some, A, negotiating theater and B, you know, broader like political theater. So they can play up their genuine emotions for a receptive and willing audience. Yeah. All right, well, today's going to be a big day for the debt ceiling,

so we'll keep an eye on it because this is supposed to pass through the House. We will see what happens. It will be very interesting, not only whether or not it passes, but what the numbers are in terms of the future for McCarthy. So we'll keep an eye on that. In the meantime, we had some significant updates with regards to our relationship with China. Number of different pieces here. So the very latest, let's put this up on the screen. You had a Chinese J-16 jet fighter, which flew directly in front of an American surveillance

plane that was flying in international airspace over the South China Sea last Friday. That forced the U.S. Air Force plane to fly through the fighters' wake turbulence and caused the U.S. aircraft to shake. The Pentagon felt so strongly about the aggressive nature of this incident that they actually released the video, which we have. Let's go ahead and take a look at this. I'll just do my best to narrate. You see the jet. You see it very close to the American jet. It comes through. You can see since the camera's in the cockpit of the American jet, you can see the way that it is shaking as it goes through the fighter's wake turbulence.

So that is the incident that is at question. This comes at a particularly fraught time in U.S.-Chinese relations. Things have been going sideways ever since that whole, like, spy balloon situation. So here is the latest on that. Go ahead and put this up on the screen from The Wall Street Journal. They report that China rebuffed the Pentagon chief, blunting push for rapprochement. U.S. had proposed a meeting. China accused the U.S. of insincerity.

Here are the details here. They say they rebuffed that U.S. request for a meeting between their two defense chiefs on the sidelines of an annual security forum in Singapore this coming weekend, showing the limits of that tentative reproachment. The decision by China formally to inform the Pentagon shuts the door for now on a meeting between those two defense secretaries, which the U.S. had proposed. They also said China's dismissal of the proposal was termed in an unusually blunt way. These diplomats have, you know, this is the way we communicate these things, and this is the fashion we communicate, and they felt that this broke typical decorum, apparently, and was unusually blunt.

And this was an interesting comment here from a think tank official about their assumption of how the Chinese were viewing things. They said the Chinese believe they have the most leverage when dealing with officials who handle economic issues. So they are prioritizing those engagements over ones involving national security. Also pulled for us the South China Morning Post to give the sort of Chinese version of these events and why they rebuffed this meeting. They said, put this up on the screen, China says the U.S. must correct its mistaken actions before top defense chiefs can meet. This is per their foreign ministry spokeswoman. They say Washington should earnestly respect the sovereignty, security, and interests of China and immediately correct its mistaken actions to show its sincerity to talk.

And they pointed, Emily, in particular to the fact that their defense chief is actually under U.S. sanctions, which the U.S. doesn't have any intention of lifting. But I also think that's kind of an excuse for them to, you know, have some justification for why they didn't want this meeting to go forward. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's the journal that notes that they still haven't rescheduled that Beijing trip that Blinken was supposed to take during that initial spy balloon upheaval. That was supposed to coincide with a trip by our secretary of state to Beijing. Right. And they said, you know, we're going to table this and reschedule it. And that was our move. The United States made that decision because the Biden administration was taking so much flack for not shooting down the spy balloon. And they still haven't rescheduled it. And it's months later. And it's interesting. Also, the spy balloon started

drifting over the United States in another situation where there was a planned meeting. That's also obviously echoed by what just happened this week. And I think worth noting, too. Yeah, I think it's a real shame that that meeting didn't go through. I think it's a real shame that they pulled the plug on this meeting as well. And within the Biden administration, the reporting is that you do have sort of dueling views of how to approach the relationship with China. Obviously, some of Biden's signature initiatives have been designed to try to claw back some productive capacity here, especially with regard to semiconductor chips. And so they've taken that approach from an economic perspective. And you have certain folks within the administration, those who are more focused

on the economy or who are more focused on climate, who say, listen, if we're going to tackle these challenges, especially around the climate crisis, we're going to have to work with China. And so we need to have these open lines of communication. You also have, you know, Pentagon and military press who just feel like, all right, in order to avoid any real, you know, dire mishaps or misunderstandings, we need to make sure that we're in communication. But you also have thinking within the Biden White House that, you know, wants to take a more sort of hawkish and aggressive and adversarial relationship with China. And so you see them kind of oscillating between these two approaches, I think, back and forth. And, you know, China now at this point, I guess, over the spy balloon situation and just wanting to assert themselves here, sort of thumbing their noses

at the U.S. That's so interesting about the internal dynamics of the Biden administration, because, you know, you see it in just a very, I think, confused policy towards China. And to your point, if that's reflective of internal debate about what the right course of action is, I mean, maybe this puts the Biden administration, maybe this forces their hand, maybe it puts them in a position where the people internally who are fighting to take a more hawkish stance on China inevitably are winning out

because if you hit that brick wall. It definitely strengthens their hand. Yeah, when you hit that brick wall and diplomatic relations are strained to the point where you can't have these meetings anymore, then that's when you start to get to a, I mean, I would say a dangerous place. And I think there's obviously good reasons to have the hawkish instincts towards China, especially when you look at, you know,

exactly what the video clip that you just showed. Yeah, there's, it's understandable, but at the same time, that puts us closer and closer to a hot war. Yeah. Which, you know, would be a disaster for us, for them, for a lot of people around the world. And China has long taken this approach. That's why I found that comment so interesting about how they're most interested in dealing with officials who handle economic issues. I mean, they really sort of understand our society and how much it is driven by, like, capitalism and by capital. And so this was noteworthy. Elon Musk is actually just visited China. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. And we have some notes here from the

Financial Times about that meeting. China calls for stable ties with the U.S. and meeting with Elon Musk. Billionaires audience with the foreign minister highlights complex relationship with Beijing. So the fact that this meeting is coming at this time, I think is also noteworthy and fits with this idea of, you know, they feel like the way they can pull our strings is through economics. And it's not just us, too. I mean, this is why they're, with their initiatives in Africa, you know, lending a lot of money to build out ports and roads and bridges and fund their infrastructure, also, by the way, loading them up with debt as their own sort of version of imperialism. So they're very skilled and adept at using their own economic

power and might as a sort of power play, both with us and with some of our leading entrepreneurs, but also with countries around the world. Here are some of the details from that meeting, in addition to calling for that stable and constructive ties. In a statement, the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Musk as comparing U.S.-China interest to conjoined twins, saying Tesla opposed decoupling of the world's two biggest economies. They face some internal concern about Musk's relationship and Tesla's penetration within their market, because they saw in particular the way that SpaceX satellites using Starlink were utilized in the Ukraine war. And so in the same way, like we're having this

whole conversation here about TikTok and what is China, what like Chinese are doing with our data and all this stuff, they're worried that his satellites could be used to spy on Chinese citizens. And so there are defense hawks within China who are not comfortable with, you know, the level of interaction and the level of market penetration that Musk has through Tesla. But this was a reaffirmation that at the highest levels, the government embraces, you know, Musk and Tesla. And it has also been really useful for them in terms of shifting their economy towards electric vehicles, which has been phenomenally successful by all accounts. Yeah. And I'm sure

the audience will be shocked to guess who else is in China this week. None other than, of course, our real Treasury Secretary, Jamie Dimon. And we've seen over the course of the last six or so months, all of these real president, I would say, the real president, Jamie Dimon, and our real Secretary of State, Elon Musk, together and China at the same time. No, I think we've seen business leaders—we've definitely seen business leaders flocking back to China post-pandemic. This is both—I believe it's Elon Musk and Dimon's first trip to China post-pandemic. China, by the way, facing another wave of an outbreak and not locking down, which is another kind of interesting piece of context in the broader geopolitical conversation. China's recognition that dealing with economic people and people in positions of economic power

in the United States and economic diplomacy with the United States is probably their best bet to make inroads. And they're like, we know who really holds the keys to the kingdom in your country. They're not wrong. They learned that from WTO and everything after that. And it's still, you know, there's still people who refuse to learn the lessons. Well, they know the lessons. They've just benefited from everyone else's misery. Yeah. At the same time, you know, so Musk is tying in the Musk piece. He had commented previously about the Chinese space program, saying that it was far more advanced than a lot of people realized. But this last piece up on the screen and we just got an announcement, China launching a new crew for space station. They are planning to land people on the moon by the

end of this decade. You know, this is classic, like sort of national projection of power and prestige. So China officially, you know, really going into the space game. And there's a lot of competition. You know, we're used to talking about like the economic competition between the U.S. and China and potential military competition between U.S. and China. Part of that military projection of power is increasingly in space. So this is also kind of a bold statement to the world and to us in particular about their ambitions. Yeah, that's a great point. And what we're seeing happen in space is it's eerily reminiscent of the race during the Cold War.

You know, it's obviously China has been... More than echoes, yeah. Yeah, it's actually kind of eerie of how much, not just space, I mean, space in particular is a very on-the-nose echo, but there are obviously so many other things that happen between the United States and China, the West and China in general,

that feel just ripped from the 50s, 60s. And we'll see if anyone has taken to heart the lessons of those very painful and deadly years. Yeah, indeed. All right. At the same time, back here at home, a lot going on. Wisconsin Republicans really in a state of angst, Emily. They sure are. They're really in their feelings right now. Yes, Crystal flagged this long Politico magazine reported piece from Wisconsin. We can go ahead and see one up on the screen. The headline from Politico is, quote, numbers nobody has ever seen, how the GOP lost Wisconsin. interesting glance into the dynamics in a state where a lot of people were surprised to see the liberal Supreme Court justice win that election not too long ago, when Wisconsin Republicans and the media really took this narrative from Wisconsin Republicans were

riding high for more than a decade after Act 10 in 2011, the election of Scott Walker in 2010, 2011, you have Act 10, the recall that was won. And then this really, this presaged the Trump era in general. You had people like Sean Duffy winning Wisconsin's 7th District, which had been David Obie's district for 40 years. You had a Democrat in that district for 40 years, super rural. You had, you know, paper mills that were shut down because of bad trade deals and all of that stuff, problems with opioids, drugs, addiction, all of that. And in 2010, that district flipped Republican. So six years before Donald Trump. So Wisconsin Republicans have been making those kinds of gains for years. And then it culminated in Trump's narrow victory in the state of Wisconsin and Hillary Clinton sort of famously

not going to Wisconsin. And now you have a really difficult situation for Wisconsin Republicans. Ron Johnson barely eked out a win over someone Republicans saw as eminently beatable. Well, and Democrats kind of gave up on that race. And if they hadn't, it might have actually gone in the other direction because they stopped focusing on it. They thought it was a lost cause. And then Ron Johnson barely squeaks through a victory. Right. And so Politico is looking at how you have Protasiewicz, the liberal Supreme Court justice. How does she win? And Politico is coming down the side and saying, you know, actually quoting state Democrats. This is from the Democratic Party chairman in Wisconsin.

He said he referred to an internal Democratic poll conducted after the election, shared with me later by a Democratic operative in the state, that showed abortion, while slightly more resident an issue for voters in the Democratic-leaning media markets around Madison, Milwaukee, and Eau Claire, La Crosse, was the main vote driver for Protasiewicz in every market in the state. It was an issue that wasn't just working for Democrats in big cities, but in rural areas, too. That is really important, because for Wisconsin Democrats, you need to have huge turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, basically, because that's where the population of Wisconsin is. The rest of the state is pretty scattered and rural.

But if you can also bring rural voters into that coalition, you're taking away the Republican voters who were brought to the party. In some cases, this is lifetime union Democrats. People have voted for David Obie for 40 years. If you can't get them, maybe they actually vote them, but maybe they just don't vote. If you can't get them, you're in big trouble.

Well, and all you have to do is eat into the margins. You know, you don't have to win rural counties. If you're Democrats and you're, you know, driving up the numbers in the suburbs and you're pulling in huge numbers in the cities, if you just eat into the Republican margin a little bit in rural America, then you're really in business here. And I did think that was the most interesting piece. There were two parts of this article that I found most interesting. First of all, Democrats have really bet on this like new growing demographic. That's why they've focused, you know, they've sort of given up on Iowa. Instead, they're like, we're going to win Georgia and we're going to win Arizona. We're going to go places that are really diverse and that have a large college educated population because that's where we're

having our easiest time sort of growing our base. Wisconsin is a different model, though. And this was one of the places that, you know, some of the sort of lazy assumptions of, oh, well, if things are headed in this direction, they're going to keep heading in this direction was first it's Wisconsin and Michigan and then it's going to be Minnesota and you're going to all these blue wall like traditional Midwestern industrial states. They're all going to become solidly Republican. That was kind of the assumption because you have a population that has a lower percentage that's college educated, more white. And so it looks like it was a place that would be right for the picking for Republicans, not just in 2016, but it would kind of continue to trend in that direction.

And it looks like, you know, first of all, that didn't turn out to be true. Biden ends up winning Wisconsin in 2020, even before Roe versus Wade is overturned. But with abortion, you've actually significantly pushed things back in the other direction. And so what was shocking about the win of that liberal Supreme Court justice was not just that she won. I mean, Wisconsin's a closely divided state, so that's not crazy. It's that she won by 11 points. And the issue of abortion, it's not like they can just sort of write it out and hope this thing goes away. It's continued to show real salience as more horror stories comes out, as more laws are passed across the country, as it's a hot topic of debate within Republican presidential politics about are we going to do a national abortion ban?

And I thought it was really interesting because there was actually a polling memo that put this up on the screen that somebody accidentally left behind from a Republican group. They say left behind polling memo shows abortion hurting outlook for the GOP at the Greenbrier. Someone put this in the trash at the Greenbrier. Which is this West Virginia resort that Republicans, it's owned by Jim Justice, by the way, who is currently governor and going to run for Senate against Joe Manchin. By the way, I saw a poll that has him up by like 20 points on Manchin, so we can talk about that another time. It's swanky. It's very swanky. It's very nice. It's beautiful there. So anyway, they left it in the trash there. And the numbers here are quite dire. They say there's been a six point swing in just the last year on the generic Senate ballot

from R plus three to D plus three. This movement is led overwhelmingly by independent and new voters that identify abortion as one of their top issues. It's according to a national issue study by coefficient, which was in the news recently. So they found similar findings on the House side. Ten point swing in just the last year on the generic House ballot, where previously Republicans were winning on the generic ballot by six points. Now Democrats winning by four points. And they say reproductive freedom is the number one issue among those that did not vote in 2020. So this has been an incredibly activating issue. In Wisconsin on election day with that liberal Supreme Court justice winning, there were all these sorts of anecdotal reports

about how strong the voting had been in college, like university towns there. And after the fact, we've gotten the numbers that that has, in fact, been the case. Young people are very classically unreliable in terms of their voting behavior. But that's what they're finding is not just in the college towns, but across the state and in all the states where this issue is super relevant. New voters are turning out. It's really motivating independent voters. And it is a significant problem for Republicans. It's a huge problem for Republicans. And I've actually been skeptical of the theory that abortion was what killed certain candidacies in the last election.

But this is, the more this evidence emerges, I mean, you have to keep an open mind with this stuff. And I think this evidence, this polling evidence, has really, really shifted the weight of the argument to the fact that abortion is genuinely dragging down Republicans. If even Republican pollsters are finding these like six point swings, I mean, that's significant stuff. And I think that's not to say that I think it's necessarily a losing issue for Republicans. I think there's the old Ronald Reagan mantra. He

talks about painting with bold colors, not pale pastels, which is really like that's how he ends up winning the youth vote in huge numbers. And there are a lot of people who didn't agree with everything that Ronald Reagan said. He was seen as this like movement conservative activist type Republican, an ideologue for sure. And yet people voted for him. So I think there's a way for Republicans to talk about abortion more honestly, that may drag them down in certain areas, but in other areas, maybe helpful if you have a certain kind of candidate. Ron DeSantis puts up big numbers in Florida with people who haven't always voted Republican. And I think partially that's because he doesn't shy away from the issue. He doesn't try to hide the issue and be apologetic about his beliefs on abortion. So if I were a consultant for Republicans, I would say you just need to be honest about what

you think. That said, it is absolutely true that if you can't match, if you can't put up higher numbers as opposed to the ones, the new voters coming in, if you can't motivate, for instance, in Wisconsin, we were all sitting here on election night not too long ago looking at the numbers in Wisconsin. And we were seeing, for instance, in what's called the wow counties, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington, always like a bastion of like hard Republican voting. These are suburban areas, right? Suburban Milwaukee. Yep, absolutely. And the numbers were obviously Republicans were

winning those areas, but the numbers were down, the margins were down. And that's because millennials are now moving to the suburbs and they're sure as hell not voting Republican in the same numbers as other people were. So it's a it's a real, real problem. But, you know, even with the DeSantis example. So before he gets reelected, he signed what it was either a 12 or 15 week abortion ban into law. And he felt pretty comfy with that. The six week abortion ban that they just passed through, he clearly felt like politically he had to do it, passed it like on a Friday evening, did the press conference, like literally at midnight, it was like, let's not talk about this.

Let's just try to move forward. And I think that's, that illustrates the problem that Republicans have right now is they have won on this issue in the past when they've successfully, first of all, their base was super motivated to get Supreme Court justice on an overturned Roe versus Wade. Okay. Well, that energizing factor is now gone for them. And the other thing that they did, which was successful for them is they would paint the Democrats as the extremists, you know, partial birth abortion. And, you know, uh, what the latest, what's, what's the Democrats as the extremists, you know, partial birth abortion and, you know, what the latest what's what's the one that they claim that like after the babies delivered that Democrats want and they just claim Democrats are like really

extreme on the issue. And they put the focus there on the most sort of fringe examples that Democrats will support very effective politically. Well, now, given the way that the landscape has changed necessarily because Roe versus Wade was already kind of the compromise position. So the compromise position is gone. So now necessarily all the fronts that they're fighting on are extreme and are French. So, you know, a six week abortion ban or the heartbeat beat or the personhood stuff like these are very these are very have very limited popularity. It's a very small part, even of the Republican base that supports some of the most stringent restrictions here. Certainly

a nationwide ban is like wildly unpopular. It's like less popular than defund the police, which is famously, you know, as a slogan, very unpopular. But that's the only ground that's left to fight on. And the pro-life base is very organized. They are not content with Roe versus Wade being overturned. So it's sort of like necessarily the turf that's being fought on is very extreme in terms of Republicans. It makes it a lot easier. I know they've been trying to pivot to like, let's talk about partial birth abortion again. But it's hard when the current stories that are coming out of, you know, women who are like being told, go bleed out in the parking lot. And when you're on death's door, that maybe will treat you. Those are the sorts of things that are now happening every day

because of the restrictions that are being passed into law in these states. So I don't know how you get out of that without, you know, just like shifting your stance on the issue. Yeah. And you're right. I mean, that is absolutely the strategy because, and by the way, just like shifting your stance on the issue. Yeah. And you're right. I mean, that is absolutely the strategy because and by the way, people like Ralph Northam and Andrew Cuomo make it really easy for Republicans to point to examples of like, listen, this is this is a so called like moderate centrist Democrat who has some some pretty unpopular positions on third term abortion. And that, though, we've seen. First of all, you have to talk about that proactively. You can't wait for the media to start, like, jumping on you. You have to, like, actually be going after that,

want to talk about abortion and want to say X, Y, and Z, which most Republicans don't. Like, Ryan and I were on air together when Roe v. Wade, the decision, or the Dobbs decision was handed down. Yeah. First thing I said was, the Republican, people over at the RNC right now are scared out of their minds. They hate this. Like, they're not happy about this at all. Yeah. First thing I said was the Republican and people over at the RNC right now are scared out of their minds. They hate this. Like they're not happy about this at all. Yeah. To your point, that was always the thing that they could say, I support this. Right. And when you when

you lose that, you have to go on offense. Otherwise, you're going to look terrible. You're going to look like you're hiding from the issue, like you're a secret extremist. And that's what we've seen Republicans do. So the pro-life movement right now is really trying to get Republicans to rally around that Lindsey Graham bill, the 12-week thing. And there's a lot of hesitancy on that because some people want to go further and some people think it goes too far. And it's a huge albatross, I think, right now because nobody knows how to talk about it and nobody knows what they actually believe because for a long time, and I think this is still true, those people at the RNC, they don't know what they believe on abortion.

And if they do know, they probably wish Roe were still in place. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Trump picked up on this right away. Yes. Reportedly, he said right away, this is going to be a major problem for us. And you can see, you know, he's pissed off a lot of the pro-life groups by being like, listen, I'm going to sell what I did when I was in office by putting these justices on there. But am I going to commit to anything else? No, because politically, this is incredibly toxic. And it's part of why, you know, in the 2024 race, there's this assumption

like, oh, Ron DeSantis would be more electable than Trump and maybe, but I'm not even a hundred percent sure about that because this issue has become so potent and so toxic. And he now has this six week ban hung around his neck and has taken a more like aggressively, overtly right wing stance in terms of abortion. I do think that'll make it more difficult for him if he makes it to a general election and cuts into his electability case. And actually, I don't know if it's related to this or not, but I actually just saw some numbers that the Republican base thinks Trump is a stronger candidate to win in a general election. So this central pitch from DeSantis, maybe he still is able to make it land with the base. Maybe that becomes the thing that they're most concerned about and they're persuaded by his

argument. But as of today, he hasn't been able to win that debate. Yeah. Then there's, you know, there's some evidence on that side, which that Donald Trump was always able to pick up voters that Republicans never were. And those are people that are probably not going to vote for just your average Republican career politician. And, you know, the last thing I'd say is that actually Trump's, one of Trump's best political moments is when he went on offense in a debate against Hillary Clinton. And whether or not you agree, if anyone agrees with what he said about abortion, he was, he painted a very vivid picture and just went in on Hillary Clinton. And that is, I think, an example of where going on

offense from a strategic messaging perspective for Republicans can be really strong and really valuable. But then you if you have six week bans, for instance, it makes it much harder. Like that takes some of the power away from doing that. So there's no question. It makes it much harder to shift the focus. I mean, I've always said Americans, I think on this issue, you obviously have you know, you have your ideologues who this is their number one issue and they're clustered at the extremes and they drive most of the debate. Most Americans overwhelmingly, they see it as a moral issue. They see it as a difficult and tricky issue. And they have these sort of like mixed and moderate stances on it, which I really relate to and I think agree with, actually. And so whichever party seems to be embracing the most, like, fringe part of this argument,

they're going to be losing on this issue. Yeah. And Democrats have been in that position where they've been effectively painted as the extremists on the issue. And now Republicans, given the new landscape, I think it's just very hard for them to escape that box. And clearly it is very motivating. So interesting data there out of your home state of Wisconsin. That's right. And Chris Christie, by the way, he's in. He's in. It's happening. New news. So while we're talking about politics and elections, Chris Christie's super PAC has been formed. He is actually set to

announce his candidacy in New Hampshire next week. I mean, the details from Axios about how he wants to be, his pitch to voters, I think it's laughable. What are the details? What is his pitch to voters? That he wants to be, I think the word they used was jolly. Okay, all right. I like jolly. I mean, but Chris Christie, I just think it's hard.

Yeah, here it is. That Christie thinks, I can't take this seriously. Being joyful. Being joyful. And a hopeful note aimed at America's, quote, exhausted majority, being authentic, a happy warrior who speaks his mind, and running a national race. A, quote, nontraditional campaign that is highly focused on earned media, mixing up the news cycle and engaging Trump. That is code for we don't have any freaky money because nobody's going to put money behind Chris Christie because he flamed out obviously in 2016 and it has even more, way more issues with a Republican voter base right now in 2023. This is also bad news for

any Republican who hopes to have a binary Trump versus DeSantis race. Oh, that ship has sailed a long time ago. People will still say, for instance, we expect that folks will learn from 2016 and dip out of the race earlier when they realize that their candidacy doesn't have any wings and they'll stop the bleeding so that they can, if it's Trump versus Pence or Trump versus DeSantis, which is probably a more likely outcome, it can just be Trump versus DeSantis. And it's more of like a Hillary-Bernie race where those votes aren't split up in so many different ways. But the more people you have entering, the less chance of that happening. Yeah. And it's a sign of DeSantis' weakness

that so many people decided to jump in the race to be the Trump alternative, because if he had really appeared like a juggernaut, like all this guy, there's no way he could be knocked off, then you would have discouraged some of these folks from getting in the race. And also the fact that, you know, the donors didn't like some of his answers on Ukraine. They didn't like the six week abortion ban to our comments previously. And so I actually do think Christie will have at least some funding behind him. He's set up some of his aides have set up a super PAC to back him. And his pitch previously, now he's leaning into like, oh, I'm going to be the joyful,

happy warrior and national campaign and et cetera. Previously, I think he had a more honest assessment of what his goal was, which is like, I'm going to do to Trump what I did to Marco last time around. I'm good at being the pugilist. I'm good at fighting. I'm not afraid of the bully. Like, I'll go in there and I'll mess him up. And that'll give an opportunity for other people to be able to succeed, whether it's Christie or DeSantis or someone else.

Do I think that's going to work? Do I think Christie has like that kind of traction with the Republican base? No, not necessarily. But I do think that that is an appealing and sensible enough pitch that he's going to get some funders. And definitely if he's launching, he already has some funders behind him. You only need one billionaire to like float your super pack in order for you to be able to get in there and do your thing. Now, part of the problem for him is that, you know, unlike what he was able to do with Marco, number one, Trump is much more skilled political player on a debate stage than Marco Rubio is.

But also, I don't think Trump's going to debate. So you're not likely to have that moment where you can make him look foolish in real time. And that is what Chris Christie, I mean, you guys, I don't know if you remember, but when he was coming to prominence and when Republicans were absolutely loving this guy, he would do these town halls and he would like yell at teachers. And, you know, like he embodied some of that, like, we just want someone who's going to fight energy before Trump came along. And part of what went wrong for him in the 2016 race is that Trump sort of stole his spotlight in terms of the abrasive lane that he was planning to occupy. So he is, I've always thought Chris Christie is genuinely politically talented. I just don't think he has credibility with the Republican base at this point.

But, you know, one of his allies who started this super PAC, he says Mr. Christie is willing to confront the hard truths that currently threaten the future of the Republican Party. Now more than ever, we need leaders that have the courage to say not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. So he's almost on like a kamikaze mission, I think, to try to bloody Trump and make it possible that someone else could succeed. He's also been, though, critical of Ron DeSantis. So it's not like he's in there just to do the dirty work of Ron DeSantis either. Yeah, he criticized Ron DeSantis from his left on Disney or from his like libertarian side on Disney, which is just, I don't know why Republicans think from, from Nikki Haley to Chris Christie to what like Asa Hutchinson. I don't know why anybody thinks, yeah, Trump, that's right. That's the,

the, the elephant in the room. I don't know why anybody thinks that's a winning campaign strategy, but I think with Chris Christie, New Hampshire is actually where he had that moment against Marco Rubio on the debate stage. Oh, is it? I didn't remember that. You can see how, yeah, the pugilism and the more centrism of somebody like Chris Christie, New Hampshire really should be his bread and butter. But that point about courage, yeah, I agree this is a kamikaze mission. I don't think he thinks he's going to be president. I think he probably thinks maybe there's a chance, so might as well run, take down Trump in the process

and have fun on TV, which is the earned media aspect of his campaign strategy. Yeah, which he definitely enjoys. He's got a former Romney staffer. I mean, it's not a recipe for success with today's Republican Party. And his courage message, he is going to have a hell of a time making that pitch when I think he has really covered himself in not so much glory.

It's more embarrassing the way he, what does that media report about how he went to like get Trump's McDonald's orders for him? Well, he's kind of pleased nobody. Exactly. I mean, you've got, you know, the Liz Cheney's of the world, like there's a constituency for them, you know, become the resistance hero and be consistent and strident in your opposition to Trump. Christie's been all over the map, you know, after he after he nuked Rubio, which was much to Trump's benefit. He then drops out and endorses Trump. He gets the McDonald's, does that dance for a while. Sucks up. I actually think the breaking point was

breaking point to do that anyway, was when Trump was using Christie for debate prep and they were in like a hotel room together and whatever. And it turns out Trump, which he probably knew at the time, had covid. And Chris Christie got covid from Trump, from helping him with his debate prep at that time. Chris Christie almost died from covid. I him with his debate prep at that time. Chris Christie almost died from COVID. I mean, you know, he's overweight. He was in the hospital. He really, it was very serious and very grave.

And reportedly, Trump, when he called him, it wasn't like, oh, my God, are you okay? I'm so sorry. It was like, you're not going to tell anyone that I gave it to you, right? It seems like that was the real personal breaking point for Chris Christie. But even if you're going to, but he's not the resistance hero that Liz Cheney is because he was backing Trump all the way up until that moment and carrying water for him and apparently getting his McDonald's and whatever else was required. And now he's completely lost the Republican base because he's been willing to criticize Trump

and made a, you know, a hard break from him. So it's hard to see what his constituency really is, even though, again, I do think that the man, you know, just on like a raw political talent level, I've always thought he's very talented. I think if he had been the Republican nominee in 2012, I think they would have had a much better shot against Barack Obama, but it's hard to see what his lane is here. Emily, one question I have for you is like, do you see a vulnerability for Trump? Like if you were advising DeSantis or any of these other cast of characters, is there an area where the Republican base is like, eh, I'm not sure that you could press on that you could potentially, you know, move them off of him? Or is he just still the sort of beating heart of the Republican party and very hard to supplant, barring some sort of like external factor that you have no

control over? Yeah, I was talking to someone about this yesterday because every little attack, I think other Republicans, the DeSantis camp included, thinks that they end up having on Donald Trump. It's like, well, listen, the guy isn't running on policy. He does run on some of these really broad policy issues. You know, his tune on Ukraine, for instance, that sort of like fits with his broad narratives on foreign policy. He runs in one position on immigration. He runs in one position on the media, and you know, those are like kind of policy flanks, but they're not specific. And so, yeah, Trump, you know, getting attacked on specific policies or things he may have said, like, you never have him.

I'm sorry, but like, you just, you never have him. It's never going to happen. But I think he does come in with one serious disadvantage, which is having been president of the United States and losing. That takes the wind out of his sails of the kind of winner argument, which is having been president of the United States and losing. That takes the wind out of his sails of the kind of winner argument, which is why he clings to the election fraud argument, the lie about a stolen election. I think that's why, which was not stolen. I think that's why, you know, he, I think that's why he really clings to that narrative in particular is because being a loser is toxic for Donald Trump. And then also coming into office, not building the wall, you know, not he has a lot of things that he said he was going to do.

He'll say it was because, you know, he was taken out of office by a stolen election. But I still think that's, you know, even even if you think the election was rigged, not stolen. I think that's a really tough argument to make for Trump. So that's definitely a disadvantage. And that's one thing he's never had as a presidential candidate before, is that he lost. And this is the time to test it out. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, he's made it very difficult because, unfortunately, overwhelming majority of the Republican base believes the Stop the Steal stuff. So they don't see him as a loser. They think he was robbed, but I do see DeSantis trying to sort of like gesture at that when he's talking about, Hey, we should have done, maybe we should have done mail-in voting. Maybe that would have worked out for you better than what actually happened, which is just like indisputably true. Yeah. And that's where Republicans are on this. Most Republicans, most like activist Republicans or people in D.C. agree with that at this point. Crystal, let's move on to millennials. We're both millennials, aren't we? Yeah, I'm barely, barely. I'm like an old millennial.

You're an elder millennial. Yes, I am. I'm a senior millennial. Well, this article caught our eye because it crunches some new numbers on how millennials are faring. And I know a lot of our audience is definitely in the millennial camp. Take a look at this tear shade. It's D1. This headline in particular, people were circulating it on Twitter because it seems shocking. The headline from Business Insider here is, Meet the average American millennial who's a parent and homeowner with a net worth of $128,000 and hoping for student debt relief.

The article says, and here's where some of the numbers get interesting. As of 2019, the median millennial household income when adjusted for inflation was roughly $10,000 higher than those of median Gen X and boomer households at the same age. So this is comparing millennials, a snapshot of millennials right now to the same snapshots of Gen X and boomer households at the same age. So this is comparing millennials, a snapshot of millennials right now to the same snapshots of Gen X and boomer households at the same time. They say it's taken millennials some time to catch up to prior generation when it comes to wealth. The Fed in St. Louis, they did an analysis of 2016 data. It found that families of older millennials had a median wealth of about 30% lower than people of prior generations at the same age. But by the time 2019 data was available, that gap had shrunk to 11%.

And then an analysis of 2022 data found that, quote, young Americans, so that's people from about 33 to 34 millennials, had roughly the same average wealth adjusted for inflation as Gen X did at the same age. Now, that's a very specific cohort, 33 to 34. That's not millennials more broadly. And I think that's some of the problem with these numbers is that you can find numbers that are very specific, like 33 to 34, as opposed to millennials that are like 27 to 40 at this point, and jump in at a specific period of time, pull that number out and say, listen, millennials are fine.

But homeownership, millennials hit the majority homeownership rate. Actually, according to Rent Cafe, that was, what was that, last year? And apparently, so the average millennial was 34 years old when the generation reached that milestone. Gen X and boomers were 32 and 33.

So, again, you have business insiders saying they weren't that far behind. But, again, that's actually not accurate either because we don't know until millennials are, like, we actually don't know until we have a clear information on, like, the 27-year-olds, right? Like by the time they've reached the age, they're not 34 yet. They're not necessarily at the average yet. So I don't know. I think this is all really premature. And I had to include this National Review article. We can put the next element up on the screen because this, to me, playing semantics with the word crisis, saying the student debt crisis doesn't actually exist, saying it's bad, but it's not a crisis because Americans have all kinds of other debt that we don't call a crisis. It's just an absurd- Maybe we shouldn't call that other debt a crisis.

Right, yeah. Certainly the medical debt is a crisis. Exactly. And here's the line that really I thought was such a tell and just incredible quote. The vast majority of student loan borrowers have manageable debt burdens of 5,000 to $40,000. Oh yeah. Real manageable $40,000 in debt. Super manageable. I don't care if you're going to be a doctor coming into your, which is not the case with,

with most of those people. And by the way, there are a lot of outliers among millennials who have crazy amounts of debt, like pushing six figures. Oh, yeah. And those are for degrees that are not going to make it easy to pay it off. But even if you're talking about an average from $5,000 to $40,000, the average, I think, graduates with closer to $40,000.

So whether or not it's $5,000 or $40,000 right now is a different question. We've seen poll after poll show millennials saying that has made them put off marriage. It has made them put off homeownership. It's made them put off all kinds of different normal milestones. And so yet having to scrape by for years and years and years where you are, for instance, Limestone has crunched numbers over and over again showing women have fewer children than they say they want. Yes.

That's really freaking sad. And that is a consequence in some ways of putting off marriage, of putting off home ownership and all of these different milestones because you were bogged down in debt, student loan debt in particular. The polling has found that is an influence on this. And the same thing goes for, like you're saying, medical debt and all those other things. It is a crisis, whether it's student loans or medical debt or anything else. It's absolutely a crisis. And it does prevent people from having lives that they wanted to see themselves have. Yeah. I mean, this is part of first of all, let's think about the framing of this article. That's like older millennials. It's not even all millennials. Older millennials

have maybe started to catch up to boomers. Yeah. Is that our standard for our country? That like younger generations may possibly at some point in their lives be able to achieve the same level of success as older generations? It has always been the opposite. It's always been the aspiration. Of course, you want your kids to do better than you do. So the very fact that we've lowered our goals to be like maybe one day by the age of like 45, you'll have a shot of achieving what your boomer parents and grandparents were able to achieve. Like that's a sad statement in and of itself. But I also think, you know, part of what is missed in this analysis is how much the landscape has changed in terms of, as you're pointing to, Emily, like housing is

wildly unaffordable. So those milestones in terms of homeownership get pushed back, which means that you have many fewer years of like building wealth as a homeowner. So that gets pushed back. Since you don't have that ability to own a home and be financially stable and secure. You wait to get married. You wait to have kids. Healthcare has become wildly more unaffordable. Education, wildly more unaffordable. So all of those sort of bedrock pieces of a middle class life have become so much more expensive way before we started talking about inflation. And some of those pieces are not really reflected in this analysis that make up like, how do you just have a stable middle class life? So I also think, you know, the picture is very different for younger millennials versus older millennials. And so the data is also a little bit

cherry picked. They say the typical millennial earns between $52,000 and $62,000 a year. But again, that really depends on whether you are at the upper end of that age spectrum or the lower end. And overall, I think you have a generation that has just been made so much more precarious by the fact that some of these core pieces of a stable and thriving life have become so unattainable. And we see the way that the life milestones get pushed back and back and back. And sometimes that gets sold to us as like, oh, that's just the way the kids want to live these days.

But then you go and ask women like, okay, but how many kids did you actually want to have? And it's more than they were able to have. And you can see this isn't because of some life choice. It's because of the economic circumstances that were forced on them. I will say though, they point to data from 2016 that showed millennials way further behind where boomers and Gen X were at their age. And

there seems to have been some catch up over the years. And I do think, you know, part of what happened with the pandemic recovery programs is it did really help. It helped a lot of millennials. It helped a lot of people who were at the lower end of the income spectrum. They were able to save a little bit of money. They were able to change jobs, move locations. Remote work has made it possible to live in more affordable locales so that they can also save more money or have just better quality and balance of life. So I do think that some of those programs have continued to contribute positively

to the life trajectory, particularly for young people. And I think that speaks to where some of this is very polarized, like the pandemic economy was great for some people overall, millennials included, and really bad for some people overall, millennials included. And that's similar. I mean, the article talks about obviously millennials, many of whom graduated as the Great Recession, was either about to happen or had just happened. And that's, I mean, that put a lot of people off on a very bad foot. And they've been trying to, and that's also Americans in general, net worth has not recovered from the Great Recession still. It is still not where it was before, which is, I think, a huge

factor underestimated in why people are like, listen, the economy is fine. Maybe it's fine for Jamie Dimon and his friends, but it's not as good as it was. People are not in as good of a position as it was to your point about like why we're celebrating millennials catching up as opposed to exceeding where everyone else was. And I think it's really interesting to see libertarians downplay the level of student debt people graduate with, because so much of that has to do with government subsidies putting the price of our college educations wildly out of whack. So it's not even just that people are in debt for a wonderful, fantastic, great education. It's that because the government subsidies have flooded, you are going $40,000 in debt on average for a terrible education that is

led by all of these bureaucrats that now outnumber teachers on college campuses. So it's just rich to see that downplaying happen because that's never, ever been how we approach generational growth in the United States. And it's just sad to see us cheerleading and picking numbers where you say, oh, the average millennial is married and they have kids. And it's like they probably got married way later than they wanted to. And they may have had a whole lot of emotional scarring on the way. They probably wanted to have more kids. On average, we know that's true of women.

And even if they own a house, they might not be really happy with the house that they own. That did happen with the pandemic. You had housing prices go down. A lot of millennials take advantage of it. But now those millennials who didn't take advantage of it because they were, you know, 23 or whatever, I guess maybe 25. Good luck.

Good luck to them. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And just to wrap this up from the libertarian perspective, I mean, if you're in that kind of debt, like you're not free. Like talk about like freedom and ability to chart your own course

and make your own path. And that's reflected in the numbers of young people who say that that debt burden specifically from student debt keeps them from launching the businesses and becoming the entrepreneurs that they want to be because they got to have that steady check to be able to make sure they're still servicing that debt. So in a very real way, it really limits people's choices and what they're able to do with their lives. Don't tell me that's not a crisis. I certainly support debt cancellation. You don't have to support that,

but you can't pretend that this isn't a crisis and just wish your way out of it and not have some sort of a solution for what is hobbling now Gen Z and millennials. And what a waste of energy to play semantics with the word. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You can't deny reality. So this is an interesting one. I wanted to get Emily's take on. So Ted Cruz got himself in some hot water for what I consider to be a rare W here. Put this up on the screen. He tweeted out about this anti-gay Uganda law that is incredibly, just brutally

punitive. He says, this Uganda law is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque and an abomination. All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse, hashtag LGBTQ. He took a lot of heat over this from, you know, fellow conservatives and from some of his base, but he stuck to his guns. Put this up on the screen. This is from Mediaite. It says, Ted Cruz doubles down on condemnation of barbaric Ugandan law, criminalizing homosexuality after being compared to Bud Light. On Memorial Day, they say that he quote tweeted that New York Times article with the tweet that

I read to you before. One of Cruz's harshest critics was Jenna Ellis, who they described, I think accurately, as the disgraced attorney who assisted Trump in his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. She says, you can condemn a law that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality without being pro or LGBTQ. Like Bud Light, you should have just said nothing, not this. She continued, for the commenters, I stand with Uganda on this because the definition of aggravated homosexuality subject to the death penalty is raping children. Why would Cruz be against this anyway? He replies, Jenna, not sure why you're defending this barbaric law. It imposes life imprisonment for consenting adults who engage in gay sex. That is insane. That's ridiculous. You or me,

I may not agree with their choices, but consenting adults should not go to jail for what they do in their own bedrooms. One thing that, you know, this go to jail for what they do in their own bedrooms. One thing that, you know, this brought to mind for me, Ted Cruz is no hero of like the gay community. He still opposes the Obergefell decision, which made gay marriage legal. He's still opposed to gay marriage. He thinks that decision was wrongly decided. So this is not some like, you know, Pride Month gay ally or champion. He is a gay icon.

Now he is apparently. But it demonstrated to me, Emily, and I wanted to get your thoughts on this, on how much the landscape has shifted within the Republican Party. Because you'll recall back in 2016, Trump ran and he was okay with gay marriage. And they actually didn't just like, you know, kind of like push that under the rug. They actually sort of celebrated. I remember doing segments with some of his surrogates who'd be like, this is the most pro-gay president ever elected. He's the first, and this is technically true, the first president to run for the first time supporting gay marriage. Because when Obama ran, he was against gay marriage. So they sort of celebrated that. I even saw someone passing around. I'm not 100 percent sure whether this was real or not, but make America great again hats that were like rainbow colors to celebrate, you know, pride. And now if you even come out

against a law that is just like insanely, horrifically barbaric, you get a huge pile on from the Republican base. So it, to me, demonstrated the way that the Republican party has sort of regressed on these issues. And it's no longer okay to even just be fine with like the gay marriage status quo. Yeah, it's actually, so this is sort of a stupid conflict because I think it was mostly like media picked up on it because Jenna Ellis, who I don't think is super popular among the Republican base, started going in on Ted Cruz. I don't think she even knew that the law was broader than this aggravated homosexuality question, which is why Cruz comes back and says it calls for life imprisonment. This is per the New York Times. For anyone who engages in gay sex, anyone who tries to have same sex relations could

be liable for up to a decade in prison. The aggravated homosexuality thing is in the bill. It decrees the death penalty for anyone convicted of it, and that is defined as acts of same-sex relations with children or disabled people, those carried out under threat or while someone is unconscious. And the offense of attempted aggravated homosexuality, that is a hell of a law, carries a sentence of up to 14 years. They added, they went back and added language to make it clear that anyone suspected of being a homosexual would not be punished unless they engaged in same-sex relations.

The New York Times continued. And again, here's what's really interesting about that is Jenna Ellis says you can support or you can oppose the Uganda law without coming out and talking about it. Right. It's so interesting because I think post-Trump, conservatives and even non-conservatives, this like, the kind of backlash, people who find themselves in this like anti-woke base, they feel as though it's like a it's a signal like people are really sensitive to these signals now because if you signal opposition to it's like, why are you bothering spending your time on this when, you know, you could have sent a tweet, you could have used the time you spent on this sending a tweet about Bud Light or sending a tweet about the like radical parts of the transgender agenda in the United States, why would you weigh in on this? And it's like, well, this is like the United States actually does have leverage on these questions of human rights. It's a sitting senator. It's a law that calls for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in gay sex. It's a serious thing. And so for Jenna Ellis, I think to kind of reflexively,

where she didn't even seem to know the contours of the law kickback, I think speaks to how visceral this stuff has gotten for Republicans where you and for conservatives where you are like just to see somebody wait in and use the hashtag LGBTQ feels like a betrayal because they're so sensitive now to being betrayed. Doesn't make it right as an explanation whatsoever, but I think people should be aware this is going to be a driving influence in our politics. It's why I think the boycotts of Target and Bud Light have worked because Bud Light was about one dumb influencer can, and what the marketing executive had said on Zoom calls and all of that stuff, it feels like a betrayal of people who always thought Bud Light was like, you know, something that you could drink in middle America, be fine with, and they didn't hate you. But as soon as, you know, you just have one little signal, it's just really visceral now.

Well, they're going after Chick-fil-A for having a diversity and inclusion. Years old, years old news about Chick-fil-A for having a diversity and inclusion officer. Years old. Years old news about Chick-fil-A. Right. And apparently Ford, they dug up some like two-year-old Pride-related Ford commercial. And this is why I'm saying like it feels, I don't think it just feels, it is a regression because these ads, this corporate virtue signaling stuff went largely unnoticed and uncommented on and was no big deal. And people were generally like accepted that gay marriage was the law of the land. And still, I think if you, if you pull Americans overwhelmingly, people are comfortable with gay

marriage. So for a really like banal tweet about it, just like objectively horrific law in Uganda to spark this kind of conservative backlash, I think it's really telling. And we talked last time about, you know, there was a sort of revelation that there's this, the way conservatives have framed their concerns around trans issues has primarily been around, like, kids, you know? Even the Target thing was like, oh, these bathing suits, the tuck-friendly bathing suits are close to kids' stuff. So this is really all about protecting the kids. But when you see this kind of backlash to even just, like, people being gay and living their lives and being okay with that,

you can see it has gone much further than wherever the original locus of concern ultimately was. And I think it ties in also with the abortion conversation, because there's also more sensitivity now to with Roe being overturned to rights that have been sort of taken for granted being taken away. And Roe explicitly in some of the language of the decision, that Dobbs decision, opened the door for, hey, maybe we should take another look at Obergefell. Maybe some of these things that were decided should be rolled back. And Ted Cruz was on the side of, yes, they should be. But I think you're talking about, you know, conservatives feel more sensitive about these things. It feels like a betrayal. I think for a lot of not just like Democrats or liberals or just like normal Americans, the specter of things that we took for granted may regress,

may roll back. I think that feels very visceral. And there's a real heightened sensitivity to that as well. I think it's pushing a button that's going to be critical. That's going to be like a fault line. Sager has been really smart in, I think, outlining the kind of barstool conservative faction of Republican voters. And when I was doing reporting out in Loudoun County, talking to parents that were part of the like, uh, Yunkin revolution in Virginia. Um, it's very funny to think of that guy as a revolutionary, like, uh, Mr. Patagonia vest, private equity, Carlisle group,

just a real revolutionary, but radical. A lot of those folks in never voted Republican didn't usually vote definitely would fall into like, I don't know, maybe the barstool conservative camp, like people who were brought over because of the excess of some of these cultural issues. That means they're going to be in tension with the sort of moral crusaders, the real conservative moral crusaders that they have made, you know, an alliance with at the moment to sort of get Glenn Youngkin elected or maybe even to get Ron DeSantis elected. But when push comes to shove, specifically that question of like same-sex marriage is going to be a huge dividing point. Abortion, same-sex marriage, those are going to be huge dividing points ultimately, I think, if Republicans keep winning elections

like Youngkin and DeSantis, because that is a very bitter dividing line between those two camps. And I think, I mean, I mostly just saw Jenna Ellis weigh in on this. I don't know that I saw other people pile on Ted Cruz, although I think people were like— I saw a lot in the comments. I saw a lot in the comments. And that's interesting because I think it speaks to being visceral. And that might not be productive politically for Republicans to start boycotting Chick-fil-A and to pile on Ted Cruz and all of this stuff. I mean, people were even going after the show The Chosen,

which is hugely popular. Christian sort of brings to life in the sort of prestige TV model, the story of the gospels and is by the son of the guy who did Left Behind and all of that. It really, like people going after that because I think like reportedly somebody had a pride flag on set. And it just speaks to like people do not, Republicans feel betrayed by bringing it full circle, Kevin McCarthy. They feel betrayed by the corporate class who used to be their allies in

these tax cut fights. And so it's just going to become really, really reflexive and visceral, and that may not be productive ultimately. Well, I know a lot of Republicans, chiefly Ron DeSantis, they talk about the woke mind virus. But to me, this is representative of the anti-woke mind virus, where even someone, you know, something that should not be controversial, even just signaling any kind of support for, yeah, it's okay for people to be gay, triggers this intense reaction or a pride display at a department store or

a two-year-old pride commercial or a diversity officer at some major corporation, it becomes like, oh my God. And you start engaging in this like goofy over the top like behavior with regard to it, which is the polar, you know, it's like the mirror image of the people who go way too far in the woke direction and are constantly policing. It's a similar form of sort of like desire to censor and desire to control everything and tendency towards authoritarian behavior that leads to, you know, we got to get in there and ban the books. We got to pass laws against protest. We got to make sure that, you know, we have it legislated what things are allowed to be said and what things are not allowed to be said.

So I think there's sort of like mirror images of the same general like instinct and impulse in politics. Yeah, and tribalism. I agree with that totally. And I think we'll see only more of it in the future. All right, Emily, what are you looking at? Renowned novelist James Comey responded to some questions about the Durham report on MSNBC Tuesday. And yes, I said renowned novelist. He was out promoting his new novel. And in the course of this promotion, he was interrupted by some tough questions that should have been probably much tougher by Jonathan Lemire and Willie Geist over on Morning Joe.

It's pretty interesting, actually, how he responded to these questions because Comey, remember, actually declined to cooperate with the Durham report. He was not interviewed by John Durham. some questions from Geist and Lemire that push a little bit on this and says right off the bat here that Republican calls to defund the FBI or take a sledgehammer or blowtorch, whatever it is they say to the FBI, quote, are just a continuing series of attacks on the rule of law. They're taking a flamethrower to the FBI and DOJ because it's a threat. That's really rich coming from James Comey. And this is exactly why I wanted to talk about it today, because the more anti-populists criticize populists for legitimate points of argumentation

and legitimate gripes with the political establishment, the more populism they're going to get. It's remarkably counterproductive and self-serving and also just plainly stupid and bad for the country. But to hear James Comey say that the FBI and DOJ is a threat, it's like, yes, absolutely that is a threat to a duly elected president of the United States, that would be Donald Trump, who you targeted by breaking the rule of law, as the Durham report clearly showed. And that's the value in talking about this. I said a couple of weeks ago

that when people start going deep on the Durham report and the FBI and the CIA and Danchenko and all of this, my eyes will sometimes glaze over because it's intentionally convoluted. It was intentionally involving all of these shell groups and you have to know FISA law and you have to know everything about Carter Page and George Papadopoulos and

all of these names. It's Watergate-esque and even more complicated to fully understand the scheme that was perpetrated. But the more you dive into it, the more disgusting it looks. And I think just the surface level comment by Comey in contrast with what the Durham report has from emails and all of that stuff on Comey himself is a really perfect reason to focus in on the broad takeaway of the Durham report, which is that no policy, you know, there may be some tweaks you can make to the FBI, but Durham concludes, and this is like a lifetime,

respect it, I mean, that even Chris Murphy from Connecticut where Durham was working when he was appointed to do this investigation and then made special counsel, said was respected. Someone that had, you know, pretty bipartisan appeal. Durham says, short of basically an overhaul of FBI personnel suddenly rediscovering their sense of integrity, you're going to continue having problems at this institution that has vast powers, extra constitutional powers over the average American. And you get back to the John Adams quote, which is, you know, our constitution

was made wholly for a moral, I think he said also in religious people. There are all kinds of quotes from the founders talking about how the small R republicanism, constitutional republic only works when you have like a moral consensus and a good moral consensus. And James Comey, his idea of what constitutes rule of law is laughable. It fails on its face. And we can get into a little bit more of why. Comey continued to say in this interview, I think Trump poses a near existential threat to the rule of law. He will do everything he can in a new term to try to tear down the institutions that he sees as threats and to dismantle them and the people who occupy them, the apolitical people who occupy them. Apolitical, okay.

So there's a lot on the ballot in 2024 if he is a candidate, but the rule of law, in my view, is at the top of the list. Okay, so you get Chuck Ross over at the Washington Free Beacon who's covered this stuff really effectively, who says in response, in reality, the Durham report revealed extensive evidence that Comey was far more involved in Crossfire Hurricane, that was the investigation into Russian collusion, and the push for the phony FISA than he has previously claimed, that's the FISA into Carter Page. The report also revealed that Comey refused to cooperate with Durham. Okay, don't let your eyes glaze over yet because we can go even more to the 30,000-foot level and just put this really simply. Durham found that Comey had a very different

standard for how he treated the Clinton investigation and how he treated the Trump investigation. That is to say, the FBI under Comey and including Comey checked a lot of more boxes in investigating Hillary Clinton than they did in Donald Trump. Comey was repeatedly asking, where's the FISA? Where's the FISA to Andrew McCabe when it came to Carter Page? We know, I mean, someone was actually convicted of fudging an email. That would be Kevin Clinesmith in order to illegally surveil an American citizen, Carter Page. But there you have the rule of law right in itself. Rule of law means equal enforcement of the law.

That is part of our legal and cultural understanding of what the rule of law is. So when Durham shows pretty persuasively that James Comey and the entire FBI under his leadership had provided very different and unequal treatment to Hillary Clinton, one presidential candidate, Democratic presidential candidate, and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. That in and of itself shows that he violated the rule of law. He basically just shattered it in pursuit of this. And then you can add how the FBI under his watch illegally surveilled an American citizen and violated the spirit of FISA law, if not the actual law itself. And there you have the rule of law out the window. So when Donald Trump comes in and says, I'm going to take a

flamethrower to the FBI and DOJ, that's Comey lamented, it's because of you. It's because you broke, you violated the rule of law that populists are now saying there needs to be a flamethrower taken to the FBI and DOJ. And guess what? They're not wrong. They're not wrong that the FBI and DOJ are fundamentally broken institutions. Even again, John Durham came to that conclusion after years of investigation. Somebody who had pretty bipartisan sense of respect, has worked around the FBI for a long time,

if you have even that, and if you have persuasive evidence that you, James Comey, violated the rule of law, that your staff violated the rule of law, and you are the ones, you're griping about populists coming in and saying the institution that you led, and that conclusively failed to

uphold the rule of law, for you to come in and say that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to it when you have already been the biggest threat to the rule of law because you actually, in a position of power, violated it, people are of course going to start to want to fight fire with fire. They're going to start justifying violations of the rule of law in order to get back to a position where we can uphold the rule of law, and that's wrong. But it's because of you, James Comey. It's because you violated the rule of law first.

So if you're worried about it, be better. And that's exactly what John Durham prescribed in the Durham report. That's the scariest part of all of it. He concluded that, you know, those tweaks can be made, but no policy alone is going to fix the FBI. It actually needs to be full of people who wield their power responsibly. So long as you have James Comey out there

talking about he, you know, he made a couple mistakes and, you know, some boxes weren't checked that they should have been. That's not the full picture because when you compare it as Durham did to what they did for Hillary Clinton versus what they did to Donald Trump, you see very clearly where they failed to uphold the rule of law. And I just think this is worth talking about because that one big takeaway from the Durham report from John Durham himself, somebody who's been a career in this type of position, a serious person, says short of having an integrity revolution at the FBI, these problems are not going to go away. That matters for the average person because the FBI wields enormous power over your life,

and they're out here saying basically that Donald Trump is the only threat to the rule of law. Not them, even though it's pretty clear that they violate the rule of law. All right, Crystal, what have you got for us this week? Well, we were just talking about somehow the, you know, cutting the FBI budget didn't come up in the debt ceiling deal. Another thing that didn't come up, and actually the opposite of came up, was defense cuts. You may recall at the beginning of the House Republican

caucus, when there was the speakership fight, put this up on the screen, the first element, there were actually some members, I think Jim Jordan among them, who were floating, you know, as part of this debt ceiling hostage taking. One of the things we want to extract is actually cutting the Pentagon budget. They say they're from responsible state crop, McCarthy wing, $75 billion defense budget cut in quest for speakership. And so this was like a genuine live issue that was being debated. There was a lot of freak out from some of the defense hawks, some of the typical characters, but there was actually this idea that was taken seriously by the media of like, oh, maybe they actually want to cut the Pentagon budget. Lo and behold,

when the deal actually comes down, not only do they not cut the Pentagon budget. Lo and behold, when the deal actually comes down, not only do they not cut the Pentagon budget, they actually increased the Pentagon budget by quite a significant amount. And this is not a story about the Republicans being bad and evil. This is a story about the uniparty in Washington, Democrats and Republicans, always having no issue inflating the Pentagon budget to astronomical record-breaking levels, literally no matter what. Judd Legum over at Popular Information, his substack had a good piece on this. Put this up on the screen, guys.

He talks about the numbers here. The compromise reached Sunday includes a small decrease in domestic discretionary spending and a record $886 billion for defense, a 3.3% increase over the current year. The money allocated for the defense budget is exactly what Biden requested in the 2024 budget. Notably, half of that money will go to defense contractors. In 2015, just for comparison, the U.S. spent $585 billion on its military. The U.S. has added more than $300 billion in military spending in less than a decade. Okay, really take that in. So all the people who are out there, we're so concerned about the debt, we're so concerned about the deficit, et cetera, et cetera. Guess what? They don't bleak an eye when you increase the military budget by $300

billion in less than a decade. That apparently doesn't count somehow. And it's not like the Pentagon has been making incredible use of these funds to keep us all safe. First of all, just the amount, sheer volume of the dollars compared to other countries. Put this up on the screen. This is also from Judd Ligon's report. We literally spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. So it's not even close between us and everybody else. But also, we know from recent reporting that they are getting price gouged. By that, I mean we, the taxpayer, are getting price gouged by these military industrial complex defense contractors in an insane way. Like you can't even wrap your head around this. Put this report up from 60 Minutes that has some

of the details here. They did a long report. I really recommend you watch all of it. If we played some of it, they would hit us for copyright. So that's why I'm just going to read a portion here. But they say how the Pentagon falls victim to price gouging by military contractors. Just one example here. In 1991, there used to be more competition for military contracts. There was a wider array of defense contractors. They had to genuinely compete against each other. And lo and behold, the cost of one shoulder-fired Stinger missile was $25,000. Current cost for that very same item, which has become very relevant in the Ukraine fight, $400,000. Even when you account for inflation, they point out that is a seven-fold increase. The amount of slush fund cash we are rooting to these defense contractors is truly disgusting. So this is not getting us more

national security. It's not keeping us safer. It's just lining the pockets of a bunch of astronomically wealthy executives. You wonder why Washington, D.C. is one of the richest places in the entire world. And by the way, these companies, what are they doing with these astronomical profit margins that they're able to reap at this point on the back of the U.S. taxpayer? Are they investing in research and development or are they hiring even more workers or paying the workers they have better? No. You know what they're doing? Stock buybacks. To increase their share prices, they actually have more of their money, more of their profit margin going to stock buybacks than to research and development or capital expenditures. So it is a truly disgusting state of affairs. The last piece of evidence I'll offer for you here, which I think just says it all,

put this up on the screen from Responsible Statecraft. We just recently got the news, which we covered here. This was a few months ago. The Pentagon, for the fifth time in a row, failed their congressionally mandated audit. Congress passed a law that said every federal agency has to go through an audit. The Pentagon fails theirs every single year. And let me tell you something, it's not even close. It's not like they're a few dollars off. They only managed to account for 39% of their $3.5 trillion in assets. They can account for less than half of their $4 trillion roughly in assets. And yet Congress, Democrats, Republicans, they all look at this situation and they're like, you deserve a raise. Let's up your budget to even more historic record-breaking levels. And Emily, it's just such a tale as it holds time.

Crystal, it's been wonderful to have you here on CounterPoints the last couple of weeks, especially as we part ways and say goodbye to the brick prison. Listen, don't besmirch our brick walls, Emily. All right? It's too soon too soon um but i have enjoyed the vibe here i've enjoyed my time with you and i'm sure we'll be doing it again thanks ryan for uh asking me and giving me the opportunity and hope you enjoyed your day um doing whatever i don't actually even remember what he told me he had to do but it's important not to ask so hopefully something nice with his family and all that good stuff. So thank you guys for watching.

Listen, if you haven't already, subscribe on YouTube. We're getting close to a million subs. So close. Yeah. Kyle's got his, like, million sub plaque hanging up in our place now. I'm a little bit jealous. So make that happen, number one. And number two, help support us in terms of being able to build out this set.

It is a huge investment, as Sagar and I've been discussing. Super grateful to everybody who's already signed up as a premium sub. As you guys know, you get the show early, you get the whole thing ad free, but also you just support some of the investments that we are making or continue to make for the election season. So thank you guys. We love you. If you haven't signed up yet, breakingpoints.com. I will be back here tomorrow with Sagar for our Thursday show. And Emily, we'll see you guys next week. Sounds good. See you guys then.

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