Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/8/23: Saagar's Cameo In Trump Deposition, Biden Losing in Trump Head to Head, Proud Boys Conviction, How NYC Failed Jordan Neely, Hunter Biden Criminal Charging, Tucker Declares War on Fox, American Life 50 Years Ago, Dem MegaDonor on AOC

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Saagar and Ryan discuss Krystal and Kyle's wedding over the weekend, Saagar's name making a cameo in Trump's recent deposition on E Jean Caroll, new polls show Biden losing in a head to head with Trump, Symone Sanders declares on MSNBC there will be no debates in Dem primary, the troubling precedent coming from the Proud Boys conviction, how New York City's mental health services failed Jordan Neely, decisions around charging Hunter Biden as a criminal, an FBI whistleblower saying Biden guilty bribery, Saagar looks into how American Life was better 50 years ago, and Ryan looks into his recent interview with Democrat MegaDonor that claims AOC is no threat to the establishment.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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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, 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 Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Ryan, we have you sitting in for Crystal.

Thank you very much for joining us, sir. It's my pleasure to be here. Would never miss a bro show. Yes, the bro shows. The people are loving the bro show. We got some very, very ambitious crossovers. Some are saying the most ambitious crossovers in the history of the Breaking Points universe

happening this week. Why are these crossovers happening? Well, our very own Crystal Ball wanted to say congratulations to her. She had a beautiful wedding on Saturday to Kyle Kalinske and we put together a little photo collage we can exclusively share here. It's kind of like People Magazine. Let's go ahead and put these up the

screen, gentlemen. These were curated by Crystal herself, everybody. So don't worry. I did check with the bride before we were able to share these. Just absolutely stunning photos. Having the paparazzi out there pay off big time. Yeah,azzi, a.k.a. me and our camera guys that we had up there. I personally, my favorite part, aside from the dress, of course, ladies, you guys can go to that. It was the flowers. Crystal, for people who don't know, is obsessed with flowers. And that was one of those things that it was just like icing on the cake at the wedding. Kyle also looked great.

I personally, personally, just my opinion, I like the hair better this way. Just me. My wife is all about the flowers, too. She's very discerning, too. So whenever she throws out a compliment, it's like real. Oh, that's big. She was like, oh, wow. She's like, these flowers are like.

Right. Now my fiance is like, hey, now we need to have nice flowers. I'm like, yeah, hold on a second. We'll talk about it. Anyway, so we just wanted to say from our whole team over here at Breaking Points, from behind the scenes and in front of the camera, how much we are so happy we are for Crystal. And she's going to have a great honeymoon with Kyle. She'll be back in the chair next week.

We love her and we miss her very much. I already do, to be honest. So it was a beautiful ceremony. Also, shout out to Marianne Williamson. I will say this. The best vows at a wedding ceremony I have ever heard. Absolute best. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, she's quite the have ever heard. Absolute best. Yeah. Anyway.

Yeah, she's quite the emcee. She is very much so. So I'm taking notes. Everybody else should as well. Marianne told me that apparently her vows are available in one of her books. So this is me saying it. Go check them out. I'm serious.

If you have a wedding ceremony or whatever coming up, very much worth possibly incorporating. Anyways, once again, everybody leave a comment, premium subscribers and everybody. Congratulations very much to Crystal. We will miss her very much dearly. Okay, let's go ahead and get to the show. We got a lot of fun stuff. First of all, I made an unexpected cameo in the Trump deposition. So we'll break that down for you, start that off. Biden, also stunning new poll coming out, which is honestly humiliating for him, showing him losing to Trump. Of course, we wanted to talk a little bit about that terrible situation that happened on the New York City subway, which resulted in the death of a homeless man. It's ignited quite a bit of discourse

across the internet about whether it was justified or whether it was a lynching in cold blood. And actually, I think Ryan and I are going to try and get to a place where we're going to get past much of the culture war and actually get to what the proposed quote unquote solutions are outside of, you know, discourse about crime and all that and be like, okay, well, we all agree you got to do something about this, right? But like, what is it and what can be done? How we balance liberty? I think you guys will enjoy it because it's gonna be a more nuanced discussion than you're gonna hear anywhere else. Developments with the Hunter Biden investigation and his own problems and fights with the White

House. And then finally, Tucker Carlson indicating he may wanna declare war on Fox News. I also do wanna say before we start the show, just thank you all so much to the premium subscribers who've been signing up. It just helps us so tremendously as we're building out this new studio, not only with the lights, but with so much more, the graphic design. It's really gonna be a brand new package. And as I've said before, this is just stage one.

We're watching the failures of Buzzfeed and Vice Ryan, and one of the big mistakes they made is they got way too big too fast. And we are very much committed. Even with CounterPoints, it was like, okay, we've got breaking points down. Now let's do CounterPoints. We're gonna refine that, right? Andpoints, it was like, okay, we've got breaking points down. Now let's do counterpoints. We're going to refine that, right?

And then the four of us, like we're all working together. We've got our partners and all that. Then we're going to the studio model. And again, all of this is completely financed out of our budget. We're not borrowing any money. And we are very cognizant that it's your hard-earned money that is helping us out. So if you are able to, breakingpoints.com to become a premium member's monthly, yearly, and lifetime.

I will only just say from a cash flow perspective, it very much helps the yearly and the lifetime at this time as the bills are shelling out. So enough of that. Let's start with the deposition. Ryan, you actually helped to curate this one a little bit. For those who don't know, I interviewed Trump back in 2019. And during that interview, we talked about a lot of subjects, Iran, you know, Iran and the Iran deal. There was the Vatican. There was a lot of stuff that was going on there. The very last question, though,

Sarah Sanders came to me because that day, E. Jean Carroll, who you might know, famous actress, had accused Donald Trump of rape. And as right before, I'm about to walk into the Oval, me and this guy, Jordan Fabian, who used to work at The Hill. She's like, hey, let's just stay away from that. And Jordan and I looked at each other. We're like, yeah, totally. We're like, we're totally not going to ask about that. And then, so what we did, this is a tried and true tactic. Yeah, obviously you have to ask about it. So, well, we were like, uh-huh, absolutely. Let's just go on in there. We'll see, right? And of course, so a tried and true reporter tactic, as you know, Ryan,

is you say what is most likely to be the most incendiary part very last. Because if they kick you out, then you've already asked everything else that you want. So we can notice that his team is kind of wrapping us up. And they want this all to come to an end. I looked at Jordan and we're like, yeah, let's go. So we ask him about the E. Jean Carroll thing. And we were the first, of course, to get his response, iconic now, in which he said, quote, she's not my type. And that's actually the very first thing that he said. He said, first of all, she's not my, I will personally never forget that moment. It was

absolutely surreal to see him sitting behind the resolver desk and saying that. Now though, E. Jean Carroll is actually suing him in a civil court and actually got a deposition, much of it being funded by the billionaire Reid Hoffman. We'll talk about that a little bit later during Ryan's monologue. However, my name made a cameo in that, which then led to an iconic moment where Trump appears not to recognize his own ex-wife, Marla Maple, and mistakes her for E. Jean Carroll after saying she's not my type. So we put together a little package for you. Let's take a listen. You have in front of you, sir, a document, five-page document. The first page says in bold

type, exclusive, Trump vehemently denies E.G. and Carol allegations, says she's not my type. It's from a publication known as The Hill. It's dated June 24th, 2019. And it's attributed to the gentleman, Jordan Fabian, or maybe not be gentleman. It's attributed to two people, Jordan Fabian and Cigar and Gentee.

You see that? Yes. Okay, so maybe not the gentleman, I guess. That's so good. As to whether I'm a gentleman or not is up for breaking points to decide. What do you make of that before we get to the Marla Maples thing? Yeah. Well, my favorite thing about journalism really is these accidental stumblings into history that we end up making

because you look back in your life and like these these things probably would have unfolded if i was never born but on the other hand yeah i played a role in this thing like it's very small like if i deal if i don't ask him about this right he doesn't make this absurd claim although maybe he makes it eventually in a rally or something i think yeah i ended up later dead. But then it winds up in a deposition, and then it winds up, and I was like, Sagar, you're a man of history, because we've got to play this next clip, because this is what it leads to, which is just incredible. So roll this second one.

I don't even know who the woman, let's see. I don't know who. It's Marla. You're saying Marla's in this photo? That's Marla, yeah. That's my wife. Which woman are you pointing to? No. Here.

That's Carol. Oh, is that? The person you just pointed to was E.J. and Carol. Oh, I see. Who is that? Who is this? Just point your way. And the person, the woman on the right is your then wife, Ivana?

I don't know, this was the picture. I assume that's John Johnson. Is that Carol? Because it's very blurry. So he confuses Marla Maples with his, sorry, E. Jean Carroll, the woman who was accusing him of rape and who with his ex-wife, Marla Maples, after saying, quote, she's not my type. Anyway, I've never seen anybody's credibility undermined more thoroughly than that. It's very, very hard to get caught in a not my type kind of lie until you then say, oh, yeah, that's my wife. But then he's like, it's very blurry. So there are several options.

A, possibly she is his type. Look, ask the accusation itself. Who the hell knows? It's happening like 1980, whatever. As I said, being funded by the billionaire Reid Hoffman. Trump is actually not even mounting a defense. He's basically like this entire thing is BS and I'm not going to participate in this. He was forced to eventually testify.

From my perspective, as far as allegations go, like she told a decent number of people at the time. Her story sounds credible. His story keeps falling apart. Like every time he makes a claim, I've never even been to Bergdorf or whatever. It's like it falls apart. Oh, that's – trying to litigate a Me Too thing from the 1980s? Whatever. Okay.

Let's put that aside. The irony here – obviously, of course, it's actually pretty extraordinary to get a former president to be deposed, part of why I suspect Reid Hoffman, the billionaire donor, funded the case in the first place. Second, though, just leading to this very amusing interaction. So I think we have a possible possible explanations. A possibly she is his type. That's one. Two, though, is that might be a little bit of a Biden moment. That might be a little old man moment there. Losing Ryan confusing his ex wife from the 1980s with this other woman. But, you know, that's like a classic one. We haven't seen as many Biden moments from Trump, of course, but who knows? He is 78 years old, so he's not that far away from Joe Biden. That's true. It is wild that the 78-year-old man gets to go into the race as the spring chicken.

Yes, absolutely. Trump would be one of the oldest men, I believe. I guess he'd be tied with Biden, should he hold the Oval Office. Just an amusing aside there to see my own personal role in all of this. I will never forget that moment when he said not, because he did it in the most Trumpian fashion. He leaned back in his chair right behind the Resolute desk, put up the hands, and he was like, not my type. It's burned into my memory. Did it feel like he had that ready? No, it was totally spontaneous.

It was totally spontaneous. Also, I could tell that despite the fact that Sarah Sanders had told us that she didn't want us to ask it, he was begging. He wanted it. I think he had it ready. I think he had it ready in his head. You can just tell it was one of those things he was flipping through channels that morning. He said,

her? She's not even my type. That was like the first thing that came to his head and that's what he decided to go with. And yet, despite that, as despite that, that is the person who is running against Joe Biden. It should be easy, right? And yet it doesn't appear all that easy. Let's go ahead and put this poll up there on the screen. OK, so what do we see here? Well, things are not so good here, Ryan. What do you think? Who do you think did a better job of handling the economy? Donald Trump when he was president or Joe Biden during his presidency so far? Trump, 54%. Biden, 36%.

Neither, 7%. Not an opinion, 3%. The reason why this is so important, Ryan, is that all throughout the 2020 election, every single time that we heard, oh, Trump doesn't have a chance, Trump doesn't have a chance, he's losing head-to-head Biden, losing head all throughout the 2020 election, every single time that we heard, oh, Trump doesn't have a chance, Trump doesn't have a chance, he's losing head-to-head Biden, losing head-to-head Biden, the Trump campaign and several other polling people who got it more right than they were always said, but look at the economy number. And all the way up until the day of the 2020 election, Donald Trump led Joe Biden on the economy. And that economic figure ended up

being a far better predictor of the 2020 outcome in the race, specifically in the battleground states. Now, of course, Biden won a very narrow victory, only 30,000 votes across three different states. But the more important thing is that not only is this Biden v. Trump in terms of their economic numbers, Biden's numbers are actually lower in battleground states, places like Pennsylvania, in Arizona, in Michigan, for example, Wisconsin, across the industrial Midwest, making it much more of a jump ball than people are willing to realize. And I think he has to be the least popular incumbent president

going into reelection that has unified party support and the belief among party leaders that he's going to win. That's smart. You've never had that combination before. Normally, it's like Jimmy Carter, unpopular president. A lot of people are nervous that he's going to lose to whoever Republicans put up in 1980. And you even get Ted Kennedy running a primary against him to have LBJ in 1968. Absolutely, 1968, yeah. He's deeply unpopular. And the party elites are like, you know what?

He might lose. And that opens up possibility. But now party elites just believe that he's going to win. And they don't care what poll numbers. They don't care what the American people say about whether or not they're going to vote for Joe Biden. They just are head in the sand, confident. You know what? Biden's got this. And therefore, there can be no challenge to him. We can't think about any other alternative process here. We can't gently nudge him aside. There's not even the remotest kind of talk of that. It's a really striking moment. And maybe it has to do with the hyperpolarization

that we're now in, which we were not in in 1968 and 1980. Those are times where lots of people are switching parties from every four years. Richard Nixon launching the EPA, stuff like that. And so because everybody's so polarized, it's like, well, I'm a Democrat. This is our guy. And that's it. And that's it. Done. Conversation's over. And we'll talk about Simone Sanders. That's basically the response. And unfortunately, though, is that this is still manifesting in deep unease for a lot of Americans. This one also, you can't just put this stuff in a bottle, put this up there on the screen. You know, right now, 63% of people say that Biden does not have the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president. And that just shows you, do you,

even vis-a-vis Trump, Donald Trump is at 54%. Majority of Americans, you know, many people don't even like Trump, but they're like, yeah, he's got the mental acuity and he's sharp enough to serve. Well, for Biden, it's only 32%. I mean, when you've only got a third of the country that thinks that you are sharp enough to be president. Now, listen, I mean, I think that people probably felt that way, at least in some part in 2020. But I think that the important thing is that the only 43% of Americans felt that way about Joe Biden in 2020. But I think that the important thing is that the only 43% of Americans felt that way about Joe Biden in 2020, 54% a year ago, and now up to 63%. So it doesn't take a genius to see here that we're going exponential in the amount of the American people that think that he's way too old to be president, or at the very least doesn't have the mental acuity to serve. And again,

only exposure is going to make that worse. One of the reasons that number has gone up is because in 2020, he didn't do anything. All of his old man moments during the pandemic were confined to the basement. Well, now it's like you can try and hide in the White House, but it's inevitable. You're going to talk. And he has all kinds of crazy dad moments, like not even dad, like great granddad moments, like every other day, which are bad for him. Yes, and there's some of them I can't even watch.

Just for the, like, it's very bad. So yeah, I mean, the idea that only 54% of people think Trump has a mental acuity is staggering. And then to see that he's beating Biden in a landslide on that. And we have a year and a half left to go. Good point. And the problem for Biden here is that everyone in the world has experience with people in their 80s and 90s. And we all know that some of them are extraordinarily crisp and you would trust them with surgery even.

Right. We also know that some of them, not so much. And we also know that you can decline quickly. And this is not something that anybody had to go to college for or be able to read scientific papers. It's just from our own experience of life. It's very human, yeah. I mean, just the other day I was walking my dog and this woman was crossing the street and this very elderly woman just wasn't

paying attention and came inches away from hitting this woman. And she started crying. I could see her like holding her hand. And I was just like, look, this is really sad. She, she just realized in that moment, it's like, lady, you are way too old to drive. I'm sorry. Like, it's just not like you, you came inches away from taking another person's life. And we all know the story of the person who refuses to stop driving because they don't realize it when you're in the car and you're like, are we going to be okay here? Like, this is not so great. You know, it's, and it's uncomfortable. Like I get it. And you know what the solution is. I honestly have no idea. Maybe mandatory testing over the age of 75. Just throwing that out there.

Let's put this up there on the screen, though, which is that this is manifesting politically. Because right now, in the general election matchup, Trump has the edge. This is it right now. 36% say they're definitely voting for Trump. 9% say they're going to vote Republican on top of that. 18% are undecided. And then only 38% of people say that they are definitely voting for Joe Biden

or the Democrats. I mean, this has Trump up on Joe Biden in a head-to-head poll. Now, listen, is that the major predictor? No. What did we all learn in 2022? Polls are totally wrong. They're wrong in the other direction. In 2020, they were wrong in the Trump direction. Here is my personal bias,

as everybody knows, here with polling. I think that when Trump is off the ballot, polling somehow seems to normalize back to the 2012 world, like where polls were actually pretty accurate. If anything, they underestimated Obama. You know, they were there. But when Trump is on the ballot, he seems to have some sort of magical effect where you kind of just have to apply a price in like R plus five or something like that whenever I'm looking. So anyway, my point is that when I look at something like that, I'm like, actually, Trump is probably even more head now, though, as I just said, you could make the opposite case. Like, what are you talking about, Sager? Stop the steal just got crushed all across the country.

Roe versus Wade, historically unpopular. You know, these idiots can't even win a referendum in Kansas. You know, it's like, how do you think that's going to work out? So I'm not really sure where I fall, but I just think, like, I see signs of peril. On the fundamentals, it's not good for Joe Biden. Yeah, and a lot of progressives looked at this poll, and whenever either side gets a bad poll, they lift the hood up and they become polling experts. Oh, yes. It was overweighted in this one particular.

Yeah, they're like, oh, the young people. On this one, the thing that they were dunking on the poll for was being of all adults rather than either registered voters or likely voters. But there's crosstabs inside it that are for registered voters. And it's not much better for Biden in there. Like by a hair, it's slightly better. And they polled over a thousand adults. So you're going to have a sample size of plenty of registered voters. So, you know, the fact that the kind of first justification or defense of the poll from progressives kind of fell apart as soon as you kind of looked closer to the poll. Now, like you said, it's just one poll. Nobody should change

their mind about an election that's 18 months away based on one poll. But nobody should think that this is going to be the slam dunk that it's going to be. I think the reason that Democrats have that confidence that I was talking about earlier is that basically every time Biden's been on the ballot since 2016, sorry, Trump has been on the ballot since 2016, he's gotten hammered. 2018, 2020, and then again in 2022 when they were able to kind of nationalize the election around Trump by raiding Mar-a-Lago and getting him in as like the boogeyman that would get Democrats out to vote. So that's three elections in a row where Democrats have felt like Trump was on the ballot and they were able to bring out enough turnout and beat him. So they really are thinking like, that's, we're gonna be fine again.

Listen, it's a good case. It's certainly possible. The whole point is, is like, possibility does not equal eventuality. And the probability is so high of Trump being able to win that you really just need to make you need to make your peace with that and then try and fight a contested election. Put the next one that is up there on the screen. This is just the general write up. Really, what they say is just that Biden faces broad negative ratings at the start of the campaign.

Now, all of this can be solved. Don't get us wrong. Lots of things could happen. 18 months from now, the war in Ukraine could be over. Gas prices could be back at like $2.50. I think people are going to be being like, COVID who? The economy could be, you know, the Fed seems to be pausing. Maybe the economy will get back.

Who knows? Here's the other option. The war in Ukraine is a horrific disaster. It's finally spiking gas back up to five. There's a recession because we have more supply. Both of those cases are easy ones where you could see things changing completely. So this is in no way saying that this is going to predict the results. It's only that he faces a real problem.

And if I were him, I would be doing everything possible to try and work myself out of this problem. But that's the one thing I know also that Joe Biden refuses to do. He barely works. He only works for four hours a day. Your gas price point is key because who controls gas prices? Putin and MBS. And so MBS, every single time he's been asked by Trump has done what is beneficial to Trump. So expect gas prices, I think, next summer to go back up to $4 a gallon with MBS restricting it so that he can get Biden out of there. It's amazing that they have this incredible economy right now. Lowest unemployment rate in like 50 years. Lowest black unemployment rate in history. We're down to 3.4% for the overall unemployment rate, where wages are rising at 4.4% while inflation is cooling. Yet if you talk to a lot of voters, they'll say, what has Biden done for me?

And I think it goes back to his failure to increase the minimum wage. That's not just beneficial to millions of people around the country, but it would be a symbol that he could point to. Like, what did I do? I raised the minimum wage and they fought you on that. And they had a chance to do that. They had a chance to put it in the American Rescue Plan, but oh gee, the parliamentarian. Gotta respect the parliamentarian. And so because of that, he can say, okay, unemployment's down, but then people say,

okay, well, unemployment's down, How much credit do you get for that? And also inflation is up, so I'm not so excited about the jobs market because I'm still nervous about inflation. If he had something to point to, like I raised the wage. I agree with you. That would be just a knockout blow. Right. Instead of, well, I'm going to make sure that they don't take control so they might not pass this unpopular thing on abortion. Although, listen, it has going to make sure that they don't take control so they might not pass this unpopular thing on abortion. Although, listen, it has worked, as we have found out for Democratic gubernatorial candidates like Gresham Whitmer and others. You can do a terrible job and you can still get reelected. So, you know, it's like don't put that outside your own.

Very, very easy. Now let's go to the next one here. Just a mask off moment on MSNBC, which I just love, you know, in terms of the whole Biden propaganda nature of this. Not only do they hire the ex-press secretary. Now they have the first started by hiring Kamala's ex-operative, Simone Sanders. She goes on Morning Joe's MSNBC and says definitively there will not be a single Democratic debate. Let's take a listen to what she said. Bobby Kennedy Jr. doing well. Let's take a listen to what she said. Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Doing well. He's at 19%. Hasn't really gotten that much out there. I mean, it's, and I'm starting to hear more and more talk about him. Are we going to actually have a challenge here? I'm trying not to laugh, Joe. There's not going to be. Can I just, can I stop you for a second?

Do you know how many people said the same thing about Donald Trump in 2015 on this show? Yes, except I will note. The same exact thing. Yes, because there was going to be a Republican primary. But I really think that the mealy-mouthed Democrats, as I like to call them, and some of my progressive friends who would like to live in a fantasy land, they need to come back to reality. And the reality is this. The sitting president of the United States of America is a Democrat. A Democrat that would like to run for re-election so much so that he has declared a reelection campaign.

In that case, the Democratic National Committee will not facilitate a primary process. There will be no debate stage for Bobby Kennedy, Marine Wood, Marianne Williamson or anyone else. So we're going to have another Bobby Kennedy in an empty chair in the debate, right? There will be no debating. The Democratic National Committee administers the debates and they're not going to set up a primary process for debates to for someone to challenge the head of the Democratic Party. As you point out, and I have as well, I literally have the RFK book right behind me. It's not like there wasn't precedent for this in history. RFK says we need to save the Democratic Party from LBJ, Vietnam. The country is a disaster.

Richard Nixon is going to win if I don't do this, comes in. You know, obviously, it was tragically his life was cut short. Who knows how that happened? That's a question for another day. We can ask his son. We will ask his son. His son does not believe. We will ask.

Honestly, I think he's raising some good questions. Anyway, so we put that to the side. Then we have literally the primary process facilitated, as I understand it, Ryan, by the DNC in 1980 whenever Ted Kennedy decided to challenge Jimmy Carter. And as I've pointed out here before on the show, I'm curious what your read on it is. I think Carter was a doomed candidate no matter what. That said, I think he probably did a better job in the 1980 presidential election against Reagan because he had to challenge and defend his beliefs against Ted Kennedy by definitively winning the primary. He maintains that it made him weaker. I think he was weak no matter what going into that election, but Ted

Kennedy's challenge towards him made him affirmatively have to make the case to his base and to Americans about why he should keep the standard bearer of his party. So what is your take? I think there's two separate questions when it comes to Kennedy's influence on Carter's reelection. One is the actual primary itself. And then second is Kennedy's role after the primary and in the general election. And I think you're right that Carter was made stronger by that challenge, by having to rise to the occasion there and make the case for himself. But then Kennedy, by kind of basically not endorsing him

and not bringing his coalition in behind him, he's very sort of endorsed him, but like. It's complicated, still very dramatic. And he gave this like tear-jerking speech at the convention where he's like, this guy killed all the puppies, but the dream will never die. Yes, yes. So vote for the dream killer. Yes.

Because one day in the future, the dream will rise again. It was like, you couldn't watch Kennedy's acceptance speech and come away, if you're a Kennedy supporter, anything but hating Jimmy Carter. Like, how could you kill this wonderful man and his movement? So if he had, and this is, you'll hear the exact same thing from Hillary Clinton, that it wasn't necessarily the Bernie Sanders primary, but it was the fact that instead of dropping out in March, April, May, like he did when he endorsed Biden, he didn't drop out until the convention. They will say he only lukewarmly endorsed. I think it's BS. did when he endorsed Biden, he didn't drop out until the convention and very, you know, they,

they will say he like only lukewarmly endorsed. I think that, that part is a BS, but you do, I think Bernie has internalized that. Like, and if, if you watch how he comported himself in 2020, as soon as he dropped out instantly was like, I'm supporting Joe Biden. And he's, and he writes in his book that he didn't want to be blamed and we didn't want to do anything that could be interpreted as undermining Biden. So if you have a primary that then results in the parties coming together, then I think it is beneficial to the party. But if you have a primary where the winner is kind of a jerk to the loser and the loser's like, well, then screw you. Then, then it does, I think, hobble you going into the general election. That's my take on it. I think that's fair. Uh, but there's no evidence that, you know,

Bobby Kennedy or Marianne would even do that. And, and by the way, even if they did, I mean, you don't owe it to anyone, right? It's like, uh, to endorse them. They ultimately, to be fair also to, uh, Kennedy, it's not like Carter was all that nice to him after the primary. He was a huge prick. Exactly, and egos get so deeply involved in this. Carter didn't do what he needed to do to pull Kennedy in.

Everybody's got responsibilities and duties and obligations, and nobody met them. Yeah, and if anyone's interested, I read Jonathan Alter's biography of Jimmy Carter. It's actually fascinating. It's called His Very Best. Highly recommend it. Yeah.

Not usually a figure who you would spend 800 pages on, but you learn a lot about the guy. Our only engineering president, which, you know, is actually kind of revealing if you ask me. Let's go to the next one here. Very interesting what happened with the Proud Boys. We wanted to make sure that we got into the verdict that came down, which genuinely is historic. As we had laid out here previously, both on the Oath Keepers and on the Proud Boys, who were charged with seditious conspiracy.

Seditious conspiracy is a very, very difficult charge to prove. The last time that the FBI had brought that case, it's like a domestic terrorism incident in the 2000s, they actually lost quite handily. So Crystal and I were very skeptical that the jury was going to be able to find these claims credible. Ultimately, though, the FBI and the DOJ, the Biden Justice Department prevailed in this case. I think it's worth spending a little bit of time on what happened there. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is the release from the Department of Justice. They say the jury in the district returned guilty verdicts, multiple felonies against five members of the Proud Boys, finding four of the defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy for their actions before and during the breach of the U.S. Capitol

on January 6th. Here was the case, basically, that the DOJ laid out. The defendants plotted to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power to prevent members of Congress and the federal law enforcement officers to help protect them from discharging their duties. One of them, Enrico Tarrio of Miami, the former chairman of the Proud Boys, they list the rest of the defendants were guilty then of seditious conspiracy and the obstruct conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Now, I think it's interesting, Ryan, and I know that you have some background on this, about the way that the seditious conspiracy charge was proven. A lot of it rests on text messages that were actually sent by Tarrio to the rest of the Proud Boys about what

they were entering in. Now, around the jury and the way that they arrived at this, there was actually a fascinating interview with the jury members in Vice. And one of them flagged to me, now I'm not questioning the jury, I'm literally just using their own words about how they ended up at this charge to put this up there on the screen. They say, what evidence convinced you that the Proud Boys had entered into conspicuous and seditious conspiracy? Here is exactly what they said verbatim. It was all the chatter, all the chats, parlor telegram, not just the chats, but also the private texts. I think what it boiled down to, what they had to say prior to Jan 6 and the fact that they wanted to do something in secret. And that's why the government couldn't present too much evidence that they had already deleted because it was unrecoverable. So they didn't

definitely want people to know. They didn't want everybody to know the plan, the Proud Boys, because then I guess it would have gotten out and they didn't want it to get out. What did you make of this, Ryan? A lot of people who are civil libertarians picked up on this to say, well, you're basically saying that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, Donald Rumsfeld quote, see what I'm going for there, and convicted them on sadistic conspiracy based on this, that they were trying to cover it up. Obviously, it doesn't make it look good, but it also isn't necessarily the direct evidence, at least in the way that many civil libertarians are looking at it, for why that should have been charged. Once again, the jury can do what it likes and it didn't reach its decision. We're just here talking about it.

It's a deeply, deeply disturbing rationale to say that, well, if you were trying to maintain your privacy, that there must be some reason. Like that is- That's why I was worried about it. That's so antithetical to American values. But I think what you also saw later in that interview is this clash of two American values. One was the sanctity of free elections and the peaceful transfer of power. And she says in that interview, we wanted to send a message that this is not okay, that if you do this,

you'll be punished so that nobody in the future ever does that. And they were willing to bend that fundamental kind of bedrock American principle that the government has to present evidence. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt. And that juries in the past have been proud to say

we're conflicted about this not guilty verdict, but it is the responsibility of us as citizens to force the government to bring forward evidence. Even if we feel like in our guts the person is guilty, they didn't make the case. And so therefore, we're going to rule this person not guilty because that's how our American system of criminal justice works. And here they kind of, according to her, are discarding that and saying, well, they probably did it. And the fact that they deleted all these messages suggests to us very strongly that they did it. And it's more important for us to err on the side of punishing them so that nobody tries to bust up an election again. And I don't want people to accuse us of cherry-picking this interview.

She literally said this. She said, did it matter that there were significant amounts of messages deleted? Quote, it showed an absence of evidence of standing down. No one says, no, don't do this. We're not going to do this. There was none of that, and that was probably because they never said it. The things that were affirming they were going to be violent, they just kind of let it happen. They point to one of the defendants was actually acquitted on sadistic conspiracy and they ask for the difference.

And they say, well, he wasn't in leadership and he only joined the Proud Boys in November or December of 2020, so he didn't have a whole lot of time pre-January 6th. They have different tiers that they were talking about. We actually deadlocked on one of the defendants at first, got through that and said not guilty. Another factor was that he wasn't the brightest bulb

on the porch and may not have been bright enough to really know about the plan. So I said, well, poor guy, he should have listened to his father-in-law who told him don't go. Pretty much everybody should listen to their father-in-law or anybody else who told them not to go because now these guys are facing

some serious, serious jail time. And let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Associated Press actually did a decent explainer here. And again, I want to just reiterate, why are we spending time on this conspiracy charge? This is one of the rarest charges and very, very tough ones for governments to be able to prove. I mean, historically, most juries have rejected it in the past when the US government brought this, even in cases of major domestic terrorism.

So just keep that in mind. And the reason why is it was intended for basically extremists and others like in the post-Civil War era. I mean, you can imagine the context of what happened. What the Associated Press and all of that point out is that this post-Civil War law was to arrest Southerners who were still fighting the US government. Very rare in modern American history. What they basically said is that they had to prove

beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was a conspiracy not just to storm the Capitol, but explicitly to block the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. Now, as I've pointed out here previously, outside of the recent January 6th cases, the previous ones that were brought in government all came to acquittals. That was in 2012 against that so-called hate group because they said that prosecutors relied at that time specifically only on hateful diatribes against the First Amendment and didn't actually prove, as required by the law, that they ever had detailed plans for rebellions. And so the reason why we're spending time on the detailed plans is that the detailed plans and their government's ability to prove those detailed plans are at the heart of a successful suspicious conspiracy charge under the statute in the U.S. federal law.

Yeah, and so often when you're debating the questions of these political crimes, there is a crime that underlies it where you don't even need this extra political crime in there. So in other words, like, did a bunch of these guys, not Torrio because he was already under arrest, but did... Well, and maybe... And maybe a Fed. Yeah, not maybe. It genuinely was a federal informant, which is kind of wild because he still got convicted anyway. Right, what's the point of having all these federal informants

if you can't stop this? What's the point of being a Fed if the Feds are still going to charge you? There is also that. So these guys did sack the Capitol and they did do so with the intent of blocking this transfer of power, like blocking this proceeding. So you've got them on that. Conspiracy to obstruct. Charge them with that and lock them up for that. Great. If you're going to then pile on the extra political charges, I feel like you really do need to have the evidence

to back that up. And if they deleted it before you could get it, then that's too bad for the prosecutors. And it's so often the case that you already have the law in place that you need, but people just want more. And so I forget where I was reading this, but after John Brown raided Harper's Ferry,

it was Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Senator of Lincoln, Douglas DeVaiths, who said, we need tougher laws. He said, you don't need tougher laws. He killed people. You've got him. He led an insurrection. Now, to me, good for him, and he's a hero.

Well, the reason Stephen Douglas and all of them did that is because Brown became a political symbol of rebellion across the world. He ignited the flame and all of that. And not only across the world, but obviously in the North. Prior to that, the idea of armed rebellion over slavery was basically unthinkable. And it also spawned, it was like the, it's kind of like people who pray for disaster. The Southerners, they're called fire eaters at the time, people who wanted to break away from the Union. They were like, Brown was everything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams about what the North really wanted to do to them. Yeah, and even Lincoln was like, look, we hang the guy. He has some quote where he's like, we could hang him ten times and they wouldn't be satisfied. So Doug Lincoln was like, look, we hang the guy. Yeah. He has some court rules.

We could hang him 10 times. Right. And they wouldn't be satisfied. So Douglas was like, well, how about more laws? It's the exact same political system. That's what would happen today. You'd have people just proposing new laws

because hanging him once isn't enough to satisfy the cable news pundits of the time. The reason why this is an important point is you can't fix what happened on January 6th in the law. It's not a law question. It's a political question. It's a question of political legitimacy of Biden, of Trump, of Trump questioning the democratic process of the democratic will of the people and who they elect and whether Republicans still choose him as a leader, even post that. These are all cultural, political questions that can only be resolved through the democratic process. You cannot legal your way out of John Brown of January,

but I'm not comparing the two. They are not in any way similar. But what I'm saying is just that these big, you know, events like this are not matters of we need new laws to make sure this doesn't happen. By the way, they did have new laws through the Dred Scott decision and all of that. And all of the eventual political compromises that were made through law to try and prevent the Civil War. And it didn't work because it was not a question of law. It was a question of human dignity, of power, of slavery, and all of that that eventually resulted in a clash of wills and of arms where one side had to be subjugated. I hope we don't come to that. I pray that we don't.

But the point is that we can only solve this through means way, way above the law, at least just in my opinion. Right, and it's not as if John Brown, if Stephen Douglas had written the Sedition Act before that, would be like, well, then I'm not going to go for Harper's Ferry. That's the thing, too, about Brown. Brown actually rejected all the compromises that I'm talking about. He thought that they were wimps and that they weren't doing what they needed. If you're against slavery, there's no... I mean, it's kind of like that Louis C.K. joke.

He's like, yeah, the abortion protesters, they think there's murder going on in there. He's like, what would you do if you... And I was like, you know, I think that actually coded for liberals the way that many pro-life people who I've met as well, the way they think about this, it's always just important to get in the mind of somebody that you don't understand. As to why this matters now, seditious conspiracy versus just the obstructing a government proceeding that a lot of the other Jan Sixers have been convicted on. Let's put this up there on the screen. The leader of the Oath Keepers is now facing possibly 25 years in federal prison. Stuart Rhodes was convicted already of seditious conspiracy, where they were, I think, more easily able to prove the detailed

plot. Although even there, again, it all comes back to whether it was a genuine plot to actually stop the transfer of power versus a riot, which is basically what the defense said there. At trial, they painted him as a terrorist. Now they are saying, quote, that a harsh sentence is critical to deter political violence. And they said that what Rhodes believes has done, they wrote that Rhodes believes he has done nothing wrong and still presents a threat to American democracy and to American lives should he not receive the 25-year sentence. So that's why, again, it's important is because, you know, seditious conspiracy, you, I mean, theoretically, you could spend your life in prison after being convicted of this charge. Right. And in the old days, you'd be hanged. You would, yeah.

Like you'd come for the king. There was some justice for that. You come for the king and you'd miss. Yes. So, you know, a lot of me has not a lot of sympathy because of that rationale, that everybody knows that if you come for the king and you miss, or what are you best not to miss? And they missed.

Yes. So, you know, they effed around and this is the finding out period. Usually it's just me quoting Omar from The Wire here. Right. So it's good to have another Wire guy here. There you go. But these extremely long sentences, I think we don't realize how out of the civilized world

we've gotten. Up until the early part of the 20th century, it was extremely rare for people to get even 10-year sentences. That's true. Some of that was because you were much for people to get even 10-year sentences. That's true. Some of that was because you were much more likely to get capital punishment for murder, and then everything else underneath that, there were shorter sentences. You probably know this.

When Stalin moved from kind of typical 10-year, they call them 10ers, 10-year sentences to 25-year sentences, the entire globe was shocked. Like, you're giving 25-year sentences out? Like, this is barbaric. That was during the purges in the 1930s. And so this is not that long ago that the entire world considered 25-year sentences to be completely barbaric. Life expectancy was lower, I guess. That's true. Those were life sentences, especially in Russia at the time.

But now they're dropping 25-year sentences all over the place. And a lot of people did a lot less than him, serving more time. Yeah, actually very true. Anyway, so keep that in mind as we're thinking about this. There's always, what we always try to do here is bring, you know, this isn't, there's no defense of the proud

but I'd be saying the same thing or whatever if it was some like the, you know what's a good example? Is the weathermen. the Weathermen bombers. They don't need 25 years. You guys want to know why the Weathermen didn't ever serve – even though they literally bombed the Capitol? I think people forget that. You know why? Because the FBI was illegally spying on them.

And we easily could have convicted every single one of them for life, even for murder. In some cases, some of them were convicted, but they weren't because J. Edgar Hoover and others violated their civil liberties and the determination was made because their civil liberties were violated. Even though these people genuinely did commit acts of domestic terrorism and wanted a violent insurrection against the U.S. government, that's still the principle had to hold within U.S. law that civil liberties and violations by the state shall not trump the ability to go after them. Same with Ellsberg.

They would have gotten him. The only reason he got off. The only reason he got off is because the Nixon administration spied on him. Yeah. Yeah, which is incredible. So always keep that in mind whenever we're thinking about these things. Okay, let's go to the next one. Just such a tragic event happening on the New York City subway.

Lots of discourse around this. Jordan Neely, he was a Michael Jackson impersonator at one time. There was an altercation on the subway. Now, we don't know a lot of the details. There's conflicting things that are coming from the witnesses. What we do know is this. Mr. Neely was very terribly mentally disturbed. He was a mentally ill person who was on the New York City subway,

who at some point lost his composure while he was there, either asking for money or violently threatening passengers. That's what some people are saying. Other people are saying he didn't violently threaten. Eventually, he was restrained by a man named Daniel Penny, who was on the New York City subway. Penny maintains that he was protecting himself and others whenever he put Miss Neely into a chokehold. Eventually, he was held, Neely, not only by Daniel Penny, but by two other bystanders who were there

as Neely was trying to free himself. After 15 minutes of being held there and they were trying to alert police officers, he eventually died as a result, probably from restriction of his airway. So anyway, lots of discourse around self-defense. Should these mentally ill people even be there? How exactly should we deal with this in the future?

And the overwhelming consensus, I think, Ryan, from a lot of outside of the self-defense is like, okay, I think we can all agree it is menacing to have mentally ill vagrants all over cities. Then the question comes, it's dangerous. There's a woman here in Washington, D.C., I forget her name, who was stabbed to death randomly. This is fairly, or sorry, has become fairly noticeable basically across all urban areas. I've traveled basically all across the country in the last couple of years and I've noticed from, I mean, I will still never

forget personally Skid Row. Skid Row is probably the worst thing I have ever seen. I've been to, I have seen people missing limbs in Cambodia, street slums in Bombay. And I'm telling you, I really think Skid Row might be one of the most, one of the saddest things I've ever seen, like a genuine human tragedy. But Skid Row, Los Angeles, San Francisco, of course, is famous, but they're not the only ones, you know, go on down by the lake. In Austin, there were homeless encamp, but they're not the only ones. Go on down by the lake. In Austin, there were homeless encampments, at least there for a time. Here in Washington, I'm sure you and I have noticed this. I've noticed it basically everywhere. So this is becoming a metropolitan problem generally for America. Whenever it comes to the question of mental

health, the idea comes of we need more mental health resources. And the presumption for Mr. Neely was that there were no mental health resources. But here is the crazy part, and this is why I think it's a discourse breaker. He was well known to New York City homeless advocate authorities. Put this up there on the screen. Not only had he been arrested over 40 times and released, but outreach workers in New York City said he was on the top 50 list, which is a roster maintained by the city of homeless people who were living on the streets

whom officials consider most urgently in the need of assistance and of treatment. And the reason why I think this is a discourse breaker is that not only was he on the top 50, I guess, worst homeless people list or whatever for New York City, he was taken to hospitals numerous times, both voluntarily and involuntarily. So then the question comes to this. You have a person who's been arrested 40 times or so, well known to police. Now we can agree, you know, it's inhumane to throw mentally ill people in prison where they're obviously not gonna be rehabilitated.

So then it comes to the question of, well, how do mental health authorities rehabilitate, or even frankly, just deal with people who are this mentally ill? But we have to balance that with civil liberties, with the fact is, Nealey is an American citizen. I've talked a lot here about, part of my objection to some red with civil liberties, with the fact is, Neely is an American citizen. I've talked a lot here about part of my objection to some red flag laws is, you know, basically it's like a

quasi depriving you of your constitutional right through a legalistic process where you haven't actually done anything. You haven't actually committed a crime yet. And even when you do commit crimes, like we have, you know, sentences laid out and all of that for a reason. So I don't really know what to make of this, Ryan. It is clear here that mental, he had mental health resources. Everyone's like, oh, what do you mean mental health? Look, I mean, if you're on a list and you've been arrested more than 40 times, the city knows who you are. But they even involuntarily had committed him. And then it's a question of like, well, should we have past past like lifetime involuntary commitment that's a system we moved away from in the 1980s you know specifically to balance civil liberty concerns

but also funding there's a lot of questions um about that so i don't know what to make of this i'm curious right and then the question is like what does the commitment look like because the times writes about how uh nearly most of his arrests were the nuisance things that are like associated with with homelessness yes urinating in public jumping the turnstile which we've all seen if you've ever been in new york but then but then there was one maybe a year or two ago or so where he punched a woman in the face broke her nose caused a lot of damage to her was it was arrested charged with a felony for this and as the and they worked out a plea deal where he would agree to commit himself basically, take his medication, enter into this particular program, trying to get his life back on track.

He and the judge and the prosecutor and defense attorney, everybody works this out. And he only lasted a few days. And he kind of slips out. So then the question is, what do you have to do when it comes to security at these mental health institutions? Because if you are, and then are you in prison? Because like a hospital setting is not a prison. Yet he's committed to go to this setting.

He needs it. He understands in his kind of lucid moments that he needs it. And it is preferable to the alternative, which is the conviction for the felony and getting sent away to prison. That doesn't help anybody. But then he then he just walks out. And then police encountered him multiple times after The Times article is really worth reading. I recommend people read this. This is, again, we are not trying to get into like, oh, should you defend people when you're, should you even be in this situation? We're like, hey, everyone agrees we should have more resources. How do we balance resources with civil liberty concerns?

I have no answer. I actually don't have an answer. I don't know what it is. I can only look at this and just be like, wow, what a tragedy, man. And one, there were multiple failures where officers were called because he was out one time, he's peeing in the Coney Island end of the subway. Another time he was doing something else that brought cops out. And none of those times were they able to link the fact that he had this warrant out. Right. Well, because he doesn't have id yeah so then it's right like but they but they also know who he is like at this point right but it it is interesting

when you think about this top 50 list because as we know that in in every universe a very small number of people are responsible for a huge amount of things whether it's like comments on a YouTube page or whether, you know, exactly. Yeah. It reminded me of shoplifters in New York. I got to find this. Yes. A tiny number of shoplifters commit thousands of New York City theft. So nearly one third of all shoplifting arrests in the city last year involved just 327 people. That I think genuinely is a question of just lock them up because I don't think that those people are, maybe they are mentally, I don't know, maybe they have some like shoplifting disease, but that possibly could come to prosecutorial discretion. I'm curious what you think. I know you're a criminal justice reform advocate.

How do you deal with something like this? So there was a rise in this idea of swift and certain punishment along with the criminal justice reform movement that I think is still getting implemented in some places but it lost a little favor in the kind of face of the rise of abolition and which runs counter to it. But basically what swift and certain means is that too often people who are in the

criminal justice system don't have any certainty about what their punishment is going to be. And they wait forever to find out what it's going to be. And so if you get caught shoplifting, you may get no penalty at all. It might take five years for them to run you through the system, or you might wind up getting some weird judge who gives you like, you know, three years if you're over like a felonious like level of theft. And they say, what that does to people is that they, then they just take their chances. Because I, you know, the gamble at that point is to not worry about the consequences. What swift and certain means is that if you commit the crime or you you violate probation or parole the punishment is gonna be like immediate like you're you're doing a weekend and

it's always going to happen you don't have like there's no question about it and so as you're thinking through the your decision matrix that is in that is in your mind but it also then is much shorter like Like the idea is like you're only going to do a weekend. Oh, I see. And the idea is that people don't want to go to prison, period. Yes. Now, some people who are so far gone, like Neely, who are like in the throes of a mental health crisis, I don't care if they send me to Rikers. I don't care. Like I'm so miserable. I'm so like out of it at this point. Those there, I think, we deinstitutionalized our mental health response over the last 20 years. And I think the pendulum swung so far that now there is really a gap.

If you have ever tried to get somebody into treatment, what you'll find calling around is there just aren't beds. Yeah, this is the one where I have, again, I don't know how to solve it because you're pointing out a very important point about beds and hospital capacity. Because we have an insane healthcare system, mental health beds are very limited. Do you want to know why? There's no profit. There ain't no profit in mental health. So we have- They're uninsured people for the most part. We got tons of ICUs because we can print money off people with ICU who are in critical health or kidney disease, whatever, heart disease, any of that. Those are very, very profitable industries.

But there's basically no money, recurring revenue, especially in mentally ill. So when the deinstitutionalization movement happened, we basically kicked it to a private, quasi-public private healthcare system, which increased funding cuts. Obamacare has a role in this as well. Even though people have coverage, a vast majority of people who need them don't have coverage. And then it comes a question of like Medicaid reimbursement, which the rate is very low. So a lot of doctors don't want to be involved.

So it gets kicked to this basically catch and release type program for a lot of mentally ill homeless people. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think about the institutionalization movement. And on the one hand, obviously, it had some benefits. Like, you know, people like Neely and all of those would be institutionalized, would be health cared for by the state. Basically, the public menace would be balanced with him hopefully getting the best care possible in someone like

that condition. On the other hand, how many stories you read from the 1920s and 1930s of they're like, this woman wants a job. We got to institutionalize her. And you're like, wait, what? What's happening here? She's got newfangled ideas about voting. These are real stories. I'm not joking about the way that the institutionalization was actually weaponized as a tool of political repression. So that actually, I'm trying to think, it's like Sherman, we were just talking about the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman, they're like, he's lost his mind because they thought that the, they're like, he's gone mad because he was like, no, this war is not going to be swift. It'll actually be very long and terrible. He literally thought he had lost his mind as a result of that. He's like, I'll make sure it's terrible.

Yeah, exactly. So the point is, is that I don't know. I don't know how you balance those two things. I'm thinking, though, looking at this is probably got to get back to some level of institutionalization. I mean, I'm really at a point now where I've been taking the Schellenberger pill for people who, and I know you don't like Michael Schellenberger, but I do. I read his book. He's an interesting guy.

I think San Francisco is the best possible policy solution yet that I have seen around this entire thing, which is, we should acknowledge a couple of things. We have a mental health crisis. We have a mental health crisis, which is compounded by drug use, specifically fentanyl, which is leading to mass death amongst a couple of things. We have a mental health crisis. We have a mental health crisis, which is compounded by drug use, specifically fentanyl, which is leading to mass death amongst a lot of people. The answer, in my opinion, is that over-criminalization clearly

is not working. It's just not the answer. Also, though, it is deeply inhumane to let people just get shoot up on the streets and who are raping and killing each other, as I referenced in Skid Row. The answer has to be some level of effectively involuntary commitment where, like, look, we're not going to lock you up, but you are going to rehab, and you're going there for a long time. And it's basically the Portugal model of drugs are not legal, but try shooting up in a park in Lisbon. It's not going to happen. The cops are going to be like, all right, you're going to prison or you're going to rehab. You have no choice. And we have to, the way I've heard it described is you need paternalistic, a paternalistic

libertarianism here, where it's like you are free to do what you want within the bounds of not being a public menace. But once you cross that threshold, there are swift and clear consequences, as you were saying. Yeah. because you also have to realize that the people who are in those crisis situations are not, they're not happy, they're not living meaningful lives. Watch the Soft White Underbelly channel. It's dangerous to them, it's dangerous to others. And so, yeah, I do think you, like, I think Portugal is a really interesting model to think about. If you've gotten to a place where you're regularly basically out in public, you probably have gone too far. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And are not in a place that is making you contented either. No, yeah. I mean, that was really the saddest part. I recommend I just reference it. The Soft White Underbelly channel, Mark Lida, has done a fantastic job of, I watched that and I was like,

yeah, this is not really, I'm like, to the extent this is a mental health problem, I'm like, these people are just drug addicts. And I'm not saying that in a derogatory way. I'm like, these people

are hardcore drug addicts. To which, the more fascinating thing, actually, was listening to interviews of people who are diagnosed mentally ill and who talk about how the drugs make it 10 times worse. I listened to a guy who had schizophrenia and he's like, yeah, whenever I'm not on drugs and I have schizophrenia, it's like more the hallucinations and the vivid ideas in your head are not as dangerous, where

he's like, when you pair it with speed, he's like, it makes, it literally made me commit murder or not murder, like an assault. And I was like, wow, like, you know, the compounding nature of these two things is actually probably what produces the most dangerous people, you know, in society. And people in those situations will say, it's not as if I can decide tomorrow. Yeah, that's right. Let's say you could kick your habit and determine that you are going to turn yourself around. You're going to get a job, get housing. You can't get a job because of the record that you've racked up over the years. And housing, people with jobs are having a hard time getting housing. So unless we create an actual pathway for people out of that situation that is credible to them,

because right now there isn't one, like you can't lie to them and claim that there's some way to turn this around, then to them the rational thing is just to stay in this cul-de-sac of misery. Look, I mean, many of them, yeah, like you said, unfortunately are making the rational choice if you do want to support your drug addiction.

It's just, you know, turn downtown Los Angeles not only into a hellhole, and I don't mean it, again, in terms of just get rid of all of them. I'm like, watching this? I don't know. That one really scarred me. I'll tell you, I've seen some bad stuff, and that one, that is still one of the worst things I've ever seen. Let's talk a little bit about Hunter Biden. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Prosecutors are currently near a charging decision in the Hunter Biden case. Now, I find this a little bit of a ridiculous leak, Ryan, because it's like prosecutors are nearing making a decision. It's like, well, make the decision. What's the decision? Because the decision is the one that matters, okay? What has happened is that there was a pivotal meeting between the prosecutors and Hunter Biden's lawyers toward the end of an

investigation. Now, people might forget what is the end of this investigation. We've heard a lot here about Hunter Biden and President Biden. All of it comes back to back taxes, which he was not allegedly not paying, and a gun charge. Now, according to the people who are familiar with the matter, this has been a basically years-long investigation that was mounted by the Biden Department of Justice. This is actually in the hands of the U.S. attorney, David Weiss of Delaware, which is a little bit of a conflict of interest because the Bidens basically run the state of Delaware. And the question is, is he going to view this case under the letter of the law? Which, I mean, it's very basic. What came out from the laptop

is very clear. He 100% lied on his application for a gun. 100% in terms of crime, background check, and all that. Forget laptop, his own memoir. Yeah, exactly. Right, the application for the weapon says, are you currently basically abusing drugs? And he literally, we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, because there's video, that he was using drugs that time. Might have been high when he filled it out.

Very possible. And I'm not, you know, again, I have deep sympathy for him, as we were just talking about with the Jordan Neely situation, for people who find themselves in the midst of that level of addiction. But dude, you did lie, and you did illegally purchase a firearm. There is just no, there's no getting around that. It'd be an amazing thing to watch the right rally around charges of illegal purchase of a firearm. You'd be surprised, actually. A lot of the biggest gun people are advocates of strict laws that are already on the books for people who are like, we just need to enforce current existing law, and a lot of us

would be safer around guns, at least from my bros in the 2A community. The question, though, around the taxes is actually probably one of the more interesting ones because the tax crimes here relate to unpaid, alleged unpaid back taxes around, quote, overseas business ties and consulting work. or many U.S. citizens I've met abroad realize that if you are a U.S. citizen, no matter how much money you make, Uncle Sam is going to get their cut. And that includes $50,000 a month or possibly $80,000 a month payments from Ukrainian energy companies or Chinese industrial state companies or your stakes in Chinese investment firms,

which you were sitting on the board of and receiving said capital gains from. Jewelry, watches. Jewelry, watches. Jewelry, laptops. Yeah, exactly. Like just because somebody gives you something in kind doesn't mean that you don't have to pay a tax on it. And that is something he may be finding here out the hard way because, as we've already showed, he already has his allies point out, though, that he had to pay the back taxes.

So he, by paying the $2 million in unpaid back taxes, he's acknowledging I did not pay my taxes. Here is another crazy part that I think not a lot of other people are focusing on. Hunter did not pay this $2 million back taxes with his own money. A buddy did, yeah. His friend paid his back taxes. A quote, Hollywood lawyer and novelist who befriended him in 2019. So you meet a guy and a year later, he pays $2 million in back taxes.

I got you. And you don't think that that is a massive conflict of interest. You think that he'd be paying your back taxes if you were not the president's son? Ryan, if you and I did what this man did, we're locked up. It's not even a question. IRS already came to your door. It's over. Your house is gone. I have great friends. None of them have $2 million who's going to be able to pay my back taxes. I would never even put myself in this situation. But this is one of those where

it just seems so clear that if he does not get charged, he's getting protected by the US attorney. In defense of Weiss, the attorney and his conflicts of interest, he's a Trump guy. Like he was, so there's a Trump holdover. But you're right that Delaware, but then again, what are you gonna do like it's it's delaware right this is it literally is the if anyone's ever been to delaware it's basically a highway no offense delaware and no offense intended sorry yeah offense okay all right offense through delaware all right uh well my my future in-laws went to the university of delaware it's complicated um anyway there is a the only thing of note, in my opinion, is the massive rest stop, which says the Biden Rest Center. The Amtrak. Yeah. Right. Biden

Station. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And they want like $5 per square mile for you to drive through their state. There you go. That's true. So they can have no income tax. Make a lot of money on the tolls. Yeah. It's pretty annoying. Anyway, let's go to the next part here because Hunter Biden's defense, legal defense, is actually putting Biden in a little bit of a hard place, put this up there, from Axios. They say that aides with President Biden are actually clashing with Hunter Biden's teams over his dealing with legal battles because Hunter is moving towards creating a legal defense fund and hiring ethics advisors. Now, high-level Democrats are really worried about the idea of the president's son soliciting money to pay for his legal troubles. This is another thing that I keep coming back to.

This guy printed millions of dollars off of his dad's name for 30 years in public. Where did all of the money go? The big guy had to take his money. It's like, where is all of the money? How do you spend millions of dollars on crack? I mean, is that even possible? Millions, millions of dollars on crack. If you're in Vegas, you can blow through that.

Hundreds of thousands, I'll believe. Millions? Like millions of dollars? Like millions of dollars on crack and European prostitutes? You're getting bottle service uh maybe you're right you know obviously i'm a member of the uninitiated uh so from what we can see here is that they are very worried that he will be publicly raising money from who knows maybe people like sketchy hollywood lawyers who happen to have two million dollars around paying his legal funds basically what it has come to is that Hunter is still very upset that he has become a household name. He doesn't believe

he's being fairly treated when in reality it's well beyond fairness. He'd be a locked up, he would have a 20, he would have a three strike minimum if he wasn't the kid of literally any of the president of the United States and a former very powerful senator, what it basically comes back to is that he is in a real ethics bind because he reportedly has, quote, millions of dollars remaining in legal debt that remain on his books. So he would have to use and solicit donations probably from Biden allies to be able to pay for all of this. So I just think it's a nightmare scenario for President Biden. And also, you know, the headline is not going to look so great for him. We are nearing the period where they probably do have to charge

him if they are going to charge him. Either way or not charged, like even not like not charging is political, is a damaging headline for Biden in the same way that Hillary getting not charged right before the election was actually turned out to be damaging for her. The attorney that he's talking to that has the Biden camp annoyed is Abby Lowell. So I'm sure you know. He represented the Kushners. Of course. I remember him. He's kind of a brass knuckles kind of guy.

And the Biden team is like, let's keep this out of the headlines and keep this chill so who are you thinking about using he's like abby lull they're like they're like no like we can't deal with this are you kidding me yeah uh so the it was reported that he recently met with anita dunn and the other members of the team to try to get on the same page about abby abby can you please not humiliate us, what he's going to do? Like, that's like, his interest is in defending his client, not in, you know, the president of the United States. It's a big political complication and headache for all of them. Let's go to the next part here, which I wanted to spend some time on, because I know quite a few of you are interested.

There has been a new allegation from House Republicans and the Senate, let's put this up there on the screen, who are subpoenaing the FBI for alleged Biden records. Now, the White House has gone ahead and denounced this as innuendo, but the subpoena itself is kind of interesting. They are saying that Christopher Wray, the FBI director, is asking to be provided for records that relate to President Biden and his family. They say that there has been a new surfaced allegation based on an unnamed whistleblower made to Congress, specifically alleging that the Bureau has a document which describes a criminal scheme involving President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy

decisions. In other words, pay for play. Biden was vice president and relates, includes a quote, precise description of it. This seeks all of the forms accompanying attachments and documents that are around this investigation. The lawmakers quote, use the term alleged throughout the opening paragraph saying that they're not saying this is necessarily true, just that there is a credible whistleblower disclosure around this. The FBI has not yet responded for comment. Likely, they're going to say it's an ongoing investigation. We don't release documents or whatever related to this investigation, which could eventually lead to the release of the, or possible exposure of the whistleblower, which in my opinion to the release of the, or possible like exposure

of the whistleblower, which in my opinion would be great. But the Biden White House is calling it innuendo. What do you make of this, Ryan? What do you think? Fascinating stuff. They should, I think they should release the document because typically the FBI would say, well, look, we're not releasing all of our kind of case material from every investigation that we're doing. Yeah, well, not every case material investigation involves the president of the United States. And so even if you felt as the FBI that you didn't have enough to go forward with charges around this claim that somebody brought forward, you didn't find them credible or whatever. At this point,

it's up to the American people to make that decision on a political basis rather than as a criminal basis. So let us see what this evidence is. Who presented this evidence unless it's some source that is going to get capped or something? It's interesting. I'm actually speaking with Glenn Greenwald tomorrow. I had talked to him quite a bit about anthrax, the anthrax investigation. And I am starting to learn that so much of our current problems, media, you know, terrorism, FBI, lawlessness, a lot of it stems back to that investigation. Because this is what reminded me of it, where the FBI is like, well, we don't release stuff. And it's like, well, after their prime suspect died, they basically

were like, yeah, he did it. And they declassified all his – it didn't prove it at all beyond a shadow of a doubt. And you're like, well, hold on. You just released – you never charged this man. He never even had due process. He ended up killing himself, according to his wife, because the FBI was hounding him. No defense of Dr. Ivins. Only saying, like, his guilt is definitely not an open and shut thing that the way that the FBI would have us believe. And it really revealed to me that there's tactics of smearing people, going after people, all of these Hoover-esque type

things that were said to be abolished by the church committee. They kind of go to the very root of the original 9-11 period where that's when a lot of that stuff began and now manifests itself today. It's fascinating you bring that up because at The Intercept, we're working on an investigation of that very incident. Really? Oh, I can't wait. I didn't even go further than you. I don't think there's any credible evidence to say. You don't think I visited?

I don't think so either. And also, looking back, that moment also produced all of the biodefense and biowarfare funding over the next 20 years. That's actually why moment in history that's why i was interested in it was that the anthrax literally the anthrax attack facility i did a whole monologue on this people want to go watch it was the gateway drug to 40 billion dollars in bio defense which is what loosened the regulations around gain of function

research which is what gave fauci aush fund, which is how the money ends up at the Wuhan lab in the first place, which is how COVID gets leaked. And they haven't even figured out who did it. Yeah, well, I mean, they might have. But we should talk more offline about this. I'm still very into anthrax. I might do an entire monologue.

We have a future guest actually coming on the show who's gonna talk about a possible anthrax leak from 2019 that the government covered up. So always keep that in mind. Okay, let's go ahead to the media block here, Tucker Carlson. Interesting release from Axios. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. They say, quote, scoop, Tucker Carlson is ready to torch Fox News. That includes the very first quote from Tucker Carlson's lawyer. He says, the idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous. Much of this comes to effectively a contract dispute now at this point,

where Carlson's contract runs, according to insiders, up until 2025. The issue is that they are still paying his contract. It's called, what is it, pay for not play or whatever. Pay to not play, I guess, where because they are still fulfilling the legal terms of his contract by paying him his salary and not having him on the air, he's kind of in some sort of programmatic lockup. Now, what happens in January 2025? Oh, right. It's after the 2024 election. So there is a lot of speculation that Fox is actually dragging out any legal negotiation with Tucker and his team because they believe that they might benefit from silencing him, from keeping any future voice of his or project of his to go up so that they have time to rebuild the millions of people that they have lost in his time slot. Remember this. They have the worst ratings since pre-9-11 in Fox primetime right now.

It's a horrific nightmare content place that is happening over there. Some of this also was leaked to the New York Times. Clearly, there's a lot of back and forth going on behind the scenes between Tucker and his team. Put it up there on the screen. It says, Tucker Carlson wants to return to TV before 2025. Will Fox let him? Basically, the speculation is this. Either Fox will just drag it out and say, no, we're not going to negotiate with you all. We have you completely within the terms of the contract. Or we may just not pay you. He might have to forfeit all of his salary, not have some sort of exit package the way that Megyn Kelly had. There's been a lot of crazy disclosures happening from behind the scenes of these videos. We've covered some of them. I

know you guys have as well, his text messages. I mean, Fox claims they're not leaking it, but it's so, I mean, who, who, who, what? It's not Tucker. Come on. Yeah, yeah, he's gonna leak, is it? Maybe Dominion leaking it just for fun. He wouldn't, how would they have access to the video? Oh, they don't have the, they don't have,

and they also don't have the redacted texts. The banned video, it only exists in one place, people. Fox servers. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out. I love that it went to Media Matters. Right, yeah, of course they gave it to Media Matters. Genius. I mean, in many ways, they're allies because they're like, oh, well, we would never do it.

And then they sent some sort of like cease and desist letter to cover up their tracks. It's just laughable. It's obviously you. We all know what you're doing. I don't know. I mean, I don't know why they think it's working. If anything, the right is only coalescing even more around Tucker, and they don't think that Fox is legit anymore. They don't understand their audience if they think that that's going to hurt Tucker with that audience.

Yeah, it's just so foolish just to even think about. But I think it comes back to the fact is legally it is a bind because they do have him within the terms of the contract, and they basically have to acquiesce to letting him go and to do his own thing. We have seen people who are on his side, people like Megyn Kelly, actually come out and go after Fox and has actually been telling Tucker to take them to court. She says, Tucker should walk away and forfeit the pay. Let Fox take him to court over the sole issue of silencing him for the rest of the election season. The man they fired and smeared relentlessly while he stayed silent. See how their dwindling audience repays them for that. So that would, of course, be like trial of the century, right? If Fox takes Tucker to court explicitly to keep him within the terms of the contract. But at the very least,

big time media battle gearing up here. Also, can I just say this? Non-competes are BS and they should be illegal. Crystal and I had a real problem. Yeah, I'm 100% behind it. Crystal and I can't talk too much about it. Had a real issue with non-competes. Had breaking points and all that that caused us a hell of a lot of stress. And it's not even just about us. We're fine. There are a lot of people out there, you know, we've spoken previously about like grocery store chains. We're like, yeah, if you bag for us, you can't go bag for somebody. It's like screw you on a legal principle. Jimmy John's had them. Jimmy John's. That's exactly right. That's what I was thinking of. It's screw you. You do not dictate where I

work elsewhere. You pay me to perform a service and that's it. Everything else beyond that is a matter of my individual liberty. So it really bothers me. The amazing of a worker was like, I will take this job, but you cannot hire another worker. Exactly. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. They'd be like, that's insane. That's not how this works. Like, oh, okay, cool. Then I'm not signing a non-company either. We're not talking about the welfare of $25 million salary cable news pundits. We are talking specifically about why legally this is an idiotic framework to conduct yourself. Is there a deal to be made where Tucker agrees to not disparage Fox and they let him out?

How do you see this ending? I don't know if he would do it. I mean, here's the thing. They have so unceremoniously fired him and treated him. I mean, they didn't even give a chance, right, for anything amicable. Two days after he's gone, they're leaking his text messages. They're leaking his text messages and leaking videos of him behind the scenes. They're kind of the ones who shot first.

I mean, first they fired him. And then second, immediately, their chief PR is a woman named Irina Brigenti, who used to be very powerful in the tabloid days, but in the age of the internet now looks like a clown. Yes, that's what I said, Irina. And what it is, is that she thinks she's like this behind the scenes mastermind who determines Fox. It's very like Roger Ailes in terms of we wield power. But what they don't understand is you're not the only place to go anymore. Nobody cares at this point whether they get to go on cable television or not. I know a lot of young people who are coming up in the media industry. Not one of them still cares about going on cable. Whenever we were coming up,

Ryan, it was the only way. It was the only opportunity that we had. But the moment the internet happened, I jumped ship. I can tell you that. In terms of my opportunity, so did you, so did a lot of people. Yeah. I remember getting a couple angry calls back in the day from Irina Briganti. She's a real screamer. That's kind of weird. Yes. What are you looking at today? 2023 is a really interesting time to be alive. If you went back 50 years ago and you asked Americans what it would be like, they would probably light up with wonder. They would have visions of the future and technological progress man could hardly imagine. Just think about back to the future, too.

In 1985, they believed 2015 would be a land of different dress, of hoverboards, of technology, which would radically transform the American way of life. The real answer was far more depressing. 2015 really wasn't all that different from 1985. The cars were more fuel efficient, we had the internet, and our economy became 100 times more financialized. Wages were mostly flat, most people's work schedules were exactly the same. But more importantly, the pace of technological progress did not catch up in the way that we envisioned. In the words of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, we were promised flying cars. All

we got was 140 characters. The characters, though, being a reference to Twitter, which I guess today, if you pay for Twitter Blue, it's unlimited. But you get my point. This has been my view of the world now for quite some time, and it's why I was not surprised at all with a recent poll that took some neoliberals by great surprise. More Americans today say that life for people like them is worse today than it was 50 years ago. Some 58% in 2023 versus just 42% in July of 2021. This crosses party lines and now maintains a sizable majority of Americans. You dig deeper and you actually see more signs of rot. As Pew notes, quote, sizable majorities of U.S. adults say in 2050, over 25 years away, the U.S. economy will be

weaker. A United States will be less important in the world. Political divisions will be wider and there will be a large gap between rich and poor. As for how people think things are going, quote, Americans' negative views of the nation's future are influenced by their bleak assessments of current conditions. Only 19% say they are satisfied with the way things are going. 80% are dissatisfied. Ratings of the economy remain largely negative. and increasing share of public expects economic conditions to worsen over the next year. This is bleak stuff, but it bears investigation. If most people think the country isn't doing well, who actually thinks that it is? The answer won't surprise you. The only people who believe the country is doing well and will continue doing

well are those above the age of 65, especially boomer Democrats. Now, you might ask, why would boomers have such confidence in the U.S. and the current system? It's easy to have that confidence when you have a paid-for house that you got for cheap, retirement savings, which boomed over the course of your life. If you're my age at 31, good luck starting at the same place as the boomers. You rightfully should have zero confidence that you will likely get to where they are or even the same with the same amount of work or possibly even more. That's the fundamental divide. It's one that the people who need to internalize who run this country.

To propagandize you, they're going to throw many things at you which are technically not wrong. Like for example, but life expectancy is so much better. Yeah, true, a couple years more. And yet, in recent years, we have seen the worst decline in life expectancy in the US since World War I, many of those deaths having nothing to do with COVID. They'll say, yes, but GDP growth is better than ever. Again, technically true. And yet, wages have grown only by 17%, while productivity has grown at 62%. In other words, real wage increases have not captured the actual economic gains of the economy and fall far short of the previous wage and productivity growth from the pre-1970s era.

They want you to believe that because TVs are cheaper and you have a smartphone in your pocket, that you are so much better off, or that because you will technically live two years longer, then that's everything. Yet medical costs have gone up thousands of percent since that time. Don't think that life extension is free, is it? If anything, you will die a few years later, but much, much unhealthier today than you would have been in 1973. And it brings me back to one of my favorite graphics of all time from the website W2F happened in 1971. Here's 1971 cost of living. A brand new house in 1971 was 2.5 times average income. Today, the average price in the US, home price in the US is five times the average income.

A new car in 1971 was one third the average income. Today, a new car price is about 56% of the average income. Average rent in the United States in 1971 was $150. Adjusted for inflation, that's around $1,100 today. Today, the average rent for an apartment is $1,700. Harvard tuition in 1971 adjusted for inflation was about $19,000 in today's money in 1971. Of course, Harvard's tuition today is $54,000. Since Harvard is an outlier, consider yearly tuition for college in 1971. For a public university, it was $3,200 in today's money, yearly tuition. Today, average public university tuition is $25,000. Should I go on? Don't let people gaslight you. Sure, 50 years ago, you wouldn't have a cell phone or an LCD TV.

On average, life was not all that bad. Just ask the silent generation and the boomers. It worked out great for them. The point is, it's not working out that well for us. So don't blame us for saying that things are not going to be great in the future and that we would rather live in the past. Our futures were mortgaged, squandered in the name of globalization and sold under false pretenses to the American people. And this will be the defining issue of our time. If not at the top, if this is not at the top of mind for every single politician

today, they don't belong in their jobs at all. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Ryan, what are you taking a look at? So when it comes to Democratic Party politics, big money made a huge comeback in 2022, more than matching the surge in small dollar contributions that had been kicked off by the Bernie Sanders campaign back in 2015 and that threatened to reshape the party. Now, one of the leaders of the big money counter-revolution is not a household name. He's a tech executive named Dimitri Melhorn, whose largest source of power comes from his connection to his college classmate, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire founder of LinkedIn,

who, as Sagar was mentioning earlier on the show, financed the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit and otherwise has spent tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on Democratic Party politics and going after Trump. But Dmitry, as Democratic insiders all call him, using only his first name, has been good at organizing other like-minded mega donors as well, which means that he can now move tens of millions of dollars with the flick of a wrist. He has directed much of that money in alliance with the group Democratic Majority for Israel, targeting progressive Democrats in primaries, burying them under an avalanche of super PAC spending.

So I interviewed him for my podcast, Deconstructed, which came out this weekend, and he laid out his explanation for why it is that he's been so heavily invested in undermining the left. And I asked him if he was going to continue that crusade in 2024, and his answer, I think, was revealing. Take a listen to this. How are you thinking about 2024 Democratic primaries? Do you guys feel like, and I've written about this before, but mainstream Democrats, the group that you mentioned, plus Democratic majority for Israel, which works very closely with mainstream Democrats, really kind of transformed what was possible for, I think, progressive left-wing candidates in Democratic primaries in the last cycle. I'm curious if you think you have essentially tamed the left to the point where

you're kind of moving on from Democratic primaries, or are you guys gearing up for another test in 2024 that if you see progressive candidates that you think are too progressive popping up, that the super PACs are going to come out guns blazing on them? I think we're okay now. If you run a no-label centrist like a Joe Manchin in every state, you will split the anti-Trump coalition, and therefore Trump will win. That's the risk. And I think it's a huge risk. It is one of the top five ways that Trump could get reelected is if Nancy Jacobson and Mark Penn and Joe Lieberman continue in this path and put this ballot line in every state.

When they launched this effort, this absurd, venal effort, one of the things that they did in their video promotion is they talked about how bad the two parties were. And the visual images they included were Donald Trump on the right and AOC on the left. And so they're ignoring the existence of Biden. Now, I don't think it works. I actually think No Labels has a real risk of collapsing in this effort, and I hope that they do. And I think that in general, if you listen to the way Bernie Sanders is talking about endorsing Joe Biden, I think I'm quite confident right now that the actual extremes of the left are pretty severely marginalized. That's that's in general at the margins. It's a little bit like, for example, when a judge gave a ruling that was really unhelpful.

This is the judge with the abortion pill at AOC comes out and says we should just ignore the ruling. Like AOC is siding with J.D. Vance. You know, the two of them are both like, yeah, rulings that we don't like, we shouldn't we shouldn't do. And it makes it hard to build a coalition of donors around the rule of law. But in terms of general voters, I don't think it's a problem anymore. And I don't think we need to do more to fight back against it at the moment. Well, they're good news and bad news for the left. They won't get bombed by a super PACs, but that's because they've been thoroughly beaten down to the ground. Yes. There you go. Congratulations. So two things to talk about here. Let's do the left first. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today

at breakingpoints.com. Thank you so much for watching everybody. We had a fantastic time here. Bro show. Ryan will be back on Thursday. As I said, we have a very ambitious crossover, which I'll leave to be a surprise for tomorrow's show, which I think everybody is really going to enjoy. But with all of that, thank you so much to the Breaking Points Premium subscribers who've been signing up, helping us out, build here the new show.

With all of that, we will see you all tomorrow. See you guys soon. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

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