Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/1/23: Debt Deal Passes W/ No Conservative Support, Biden Votes Doubt Him For 2024, DeSantis Rips Trump As Failure On Covid, Ukraine Attacks On Russia, Car Dealers Hate EV Plan, Anti Woke Mind Virus, Author of 'Pandora's Gamble'

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Debt deal passing with no conservative support, Biden Voters doubting him for 2024, Mike Pence set to run for President, DeSantis rips Trump as a "Loser" that failed on Covid, Leaked DeSantis audio shows disastrous polling, the West refusing to condemn Ukraine attacks on Russia, Saagar looks into Car Dealers saying "Screw you" to Biden's EV plan, Krystal looks into conservatives losing their mind over Rainbow Capitalism, and professor/author Alison Young joins us to talk about her new book Pandora's Gamble which investigates lab leaks throughout history. Finally, we give one last goodbye to the old set and reflect on the journey that Krystal and Saagar have taken with all of you.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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big news breaking this morning. First and foremost, the debt ceiling bill did pass through the House of Representatives. We have all the numbers on that and what happens next and also some behind the scenes and side deals cut and all the things you need to know about that. So we'll break that down for you. Also have some big updates on 2024, a new entrant into the race next week, Mike Pence going ahead and giving it his shot.

So not a big surprise, but still interesting. Lots to do over there. Also, New York Times focus group for Biden, it was Biden voters talking about how they feel about him. That was bad for him, but in some ways even worse for Trump. It was bad for everybody. Yeah, I mean, it painted a very dismal portrait, I'm sure one that you probably can relate to,

of the state of American politics. So we'll break that down for you as well. Also, new war of words between DeSantis and Trump. Some updates on how American officials and other officials around the world responded to those Ukrainian drone strikes within Russia. Obviously, very, very dangerous situation. And some noteworthy comments from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that we will play for you as well. It is our two-year anniversary. It honestly feels completely surreal to the fact that we were.

I was just looking back at our tweets from two years ago about launching, how excited we all were, the crystalandsauger.com, the MailChimp. We have a- Oh God, MailChimp. We'll save all of this. The very last segment of the show today will be reflecting. We have a fun highlight reel of the producers

and all of them put together. But I want to give a special shout out to Scarlett Murray. She was the first premium subscriber that we got. Scarlett is particularly impressive because she somehow was able to sign up before anybody else did. Yeah. Like hours before. We hadn't even announced the website or anything.

We didn't announce anything. We had to send out an email. Some text loose and was able to figure this out. It was amazing. Scarlett, I don't know how you did it, but you did figure it out. So I just want to say thank you to you. And also to Christine McConnell, one of our Lifetime members who has been more than generous. She absolutely deserves a special shout out from us here today.

But really, it's not just obviously about them. It's all of you, I mean, who signed up and backed us from the beginning exactly two years ago. So many of you were so excited about the show. And I only hope that we've been able to deliver on some of that promise. And we're just getting started. It's the very last day here at the desk. Again, we'll save all of our sappy reflections for the end. That part feels very surreal, though.

Like, I don't actually believe that it's real, that this is our last time on this set with this desk. Goodbye to the brick. Goodbye to the, you know, the very special desk. To the desk. Very special, very expensive. To the shelves. Custom-made desk.

Yes. Calvin and Hobbes. All of that stuff. All the decor. Some of it will make the desk. Very special, very expensive. To the shelves. Custom-made desk. Yes. Calvin and Hobbes, all the decor. Some of it will make the transition. But I am super excited about the new set. It's a huge investment for us. So, yeah, we'll save some of that for the end of the show.

Our producers have put together a little reflection that we actually haven't even seen yet. So, excited to watch that as well. But let's go ahead and get into the news this morning. As I mentioned before, Kevin McCarthy able to successfully shepherd that debt ceiling bill, that compromise deal that was struck with the White House through the House of Representatives in spite of some vociferous opposition from within his own caucus. Let's go ahead and put the final vote here up on the screen. There's a couple of things that are noteworthy here. First of all, the House passed the debt ceiling bill 314 to 117. Not close at all in the end. Getting over 300 votes for passage

is an impressive feat. The one note here, though, for McCarthy is you actually had more Republican opposition than you had Democrats. 71 Republicans voted against the measure and only 46 Democrats voted in opposition. So he in particular, Sager, needed Democratic votes to get past to pass the rule that would bring this thing to the floor. There was some reporting, I'll get to this in a minute, that he actually cut a side deal with Hakeem Jeffries in order to get the Democrats that they needed to be able to get the rule to pass. So we don't know. This is like one of those backroom deals. Nobody actually knows what was in it. They're actually denying that it happened, but we'll

put that aside for a moment. Let's get a little bit more detail about who were the opponents of the debt ceiling bill within the Republican caucus. It can put this next piece up on the screen. This is from our friend Kyle Kondik. He notes that there were 21 House Republicans who did not support McCarthy on every speaker vote back in January. Per the New York Times tracker of the debt ceiling vote, 20 of the 21 were no on the deal. So all of his opponents in terms of the speakership, anybody who put up any resistance to him being speaker, they all voted against the deal. Lauren Boebert apparently missed the vote, so she probably would have voted. I know for a fact she would have voted no. That's what she said publicly if she hadn't inexplicably missed the vote, but whatever. So most of the opposition for this really came from that sort of hardcore

group, Freedom Caucus members. We played you yesterday with Emily. We played you some of the comments from Dan Bishop, Chip Roy. They seem to be genuinely upset about the way that this all went down. But, you know, at the end of the day, most of the caucus remained with McCarthy and was able to get, you know, he got a majority of Republican votes, more than a majority of Republican votes on the final vote through. And I think there were a couple of pieces here, Sagar. Number one, if they voted down this deal, there was no plan B. So then you're actually facing like, okay, we're actually going over the cliff. And you have some part of the caucus that's like, hell yeah, let's do it. But I think the majority of them were like, that's a little bit much for me,

including McCarthy. And then the other piece is Jim Jordan, who obviously very respected among a lot of the sort of hard right, especially fiscal hard right conservatives. You know, he's anxious to get on with his like weaponization of government stuff and Hunter Biden stuff and wants to lean more into that as we head into election season. We're already in election season. Then this like tussling over the debt ceiling. the fact is, is that as Kyle Kondik points out, if you have 20 of those 21 who voted against McCarthy in the first place, their entire reason for why they caved and ended up allowing McCarthy to be the speaker was we got concessions so that we can get what we want. Well, no, you didn't. You actually all just got humiliated. And like, you know, they were guaranteed all these so-called procedural things like the rules committee or, you committee or the motion to vacate and all that. So, well, they haven't done a motion to vacate yet. We'll see. I've only seen one member

or maybe one or two actually even float it. It doesn't seem to be a real idea. I mean, the truth is, is actually kind of what I said at the time. I'm like, the fact that when you vote for him, it's like he's the speaker now and he's in control. And now really the gauntlet is thrown to you. Are you really going to do something about it? I don't think so. I mean, they seem upset, but they told their base and the Freedom Caucus guys and all these other Republicans who didn't like McCarthy, don't worry, we have all these things inside of the deal that can make sure that we have all this leverage and control. It's like, well, not really, because every single one of you voted against the deal and it still passed. So then how exactly did you get it done? Like you gave away the store and you didn't end... McCarthy,

I gotta give the guy credit, he actually ended up giving way less of it away than it appeared on paper. Or he was able to maneuver them very expertly. Either works, I guess, or is deal-blown.

Yeah, well, they're claiming... I mean, it's kind of weird because they'll send out a tweet, like Dan Bishop or whoever will send out a tweet that's like, we agreed that it has to be a unanimous vote in the rules

committee. And it's like, well, maybe you did and maybe you didn't. You don't have it on paper. None of this was disclosed publicly. That's what I said. I said, why didn't you write it down then? And there were other things like that too, that was like, they said we were going to have, you know, it had to be more Republicans than Democrats voting for the bill for something to be brought to the floor. First of all, that doesn't even make any sense because how are you going to block a vote from happening based on the vote that's going to happen? Like, that's not even logical, but maybe there was some sort of a handshake agreement. And again, maybe there wasn't, but guess what? The public didn't know about it. It wasn't written down on paper. So at the end of the day, it proved to be worthless. One thing I was asking Emily about,

because, you know, she's like well-sourced and has her finger on the pulse of some of this stuff is how much of their upset is this genuine sense of betrayal and how much of it is them posturing for their own base that wants to see them, you know, play acting that they're upset and they're fighting and they're standing up against leadership, et cetera. That's a real open question to me. I would say the fact that you only have a couple of them, one or two, maybe seriously floating the idea of getting rid of McCarthy for speaker. I think that kind of reveals that some of this from their perspective too is a bit of posturing and is a bit of theater. Because if they genuinely saw this as the betrayal that they're portraying it as to their audience and their base, then I think they would be more seriously contemplating those things.

Oh, I think you're right. Yeah. I mean, look, life is a stage, right? I mean, this is especially in politics. It's all theater, right? Yeah. Yeah, they're all like, oh, complaining and all. It's like, well, then you guys,

look, objectively, you absolutely lost. There's no way to look at it and say that you didn't lose in terms of, not even in terms of spending. They literally expanded the food stamp program. Like, if you're one of those people that's like a nightmare, how can you possibly say that that didn't work out? And then procedurally, none of the so-called backstops that were supposed to ensure your veto power ended up existing. So now it's in the chamber of the Senate. We'll see. I mean, it looks like it's, I wouldn't say easily going to pass.

Yeah, but I think the action was mostly on the House side. You know, obviously the Senate is in Democratic control. So you will have more Democrats who are willing, I think, to vote for it there than even in the House just because of like partisan weird reasons. But John Thune had very confidently stated that they had more than enough Republicans to get to that 60 vote threshold as well. Just one other note on kind of the politics of this. You can see the way that, you know, different ideological factions are viewing this debt ceiling vote. A lot of the Democratic no's were from the progressive side in the California Senate race. You know, you have three contenders. You got Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice. So she's trying to like make sure

Jerry rig him him in. He voted for the deal. He's considered to be more of a centrist, certainly very pro establishment, pro the Democratic powers that be Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, et cetera. So he votes for the deal. The other two who are more progressive, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter, they vote against the deal. So that's interesting on that side. Put the next element up on the screen in terms of Republicans, how they were viewing this. Ten Republicans rated as toss-ups. So these are Republicans in actual swing districts. They all voted for the debt ceiling, except for one, that would be George Santos, who, you know, I don't know that you'd really call his thing a toss up at this point, given that he's been criminally indicted. And I think his prospects look a little bit dim. So he's doing whatever he feels in the

moment without any concern for the politics of it. But so that's the way that different ideological factions were viewing this vote. One other piece that we wanted to share with you here is about the potential side deal that was cut between Hakeem Jeffries and Kevin McCarthy. Put this up on the screen. They say their offices both deny that there was any deal to save the debt ceiling, but there was reporting suggesting four Democratic lawmakers said they had been told of a deal, two saying they believed it involved boosting federal funding for projects in Democrats' districts known as earmarks or community project funding. If Democrats voted to advance the bill, that was that rules vote that McCarthy ended up needing to rely on Democrats to get across the finish line. So, I mean, I would think it was more likely than not than some kind of deal was cut there with regard to earmarks or something else, which I think just underscores, you know, part of what has been complicated with regard to the actual deal that was cut in terms of as an analyst trying that have to do with in the future, these budget, you basically call them gimmicks, that the Republicans agreed to pass that would help lift some of the domestic social safety net spending that is on its face cut in these deals.

And so it has been a little complex to wrap your arms around exactly what's in this deal. I mean, another area where there's a lot of conflicting information is on how draconian the cuts to the IRS are. This obviously is a huge Republican priority. The cut that passed in this bill was relatively slim. It was $1 billion. But again, there's reporting that there's this sort of side agreement that is actually going to be $20 billion. But then again, the White House is saying, don't worry, we can backfill that. So it's actually not going to make that much of a difference. So it makes it very challenging to actually analyze what was passed, what it means and what's going to happen. Yeah. On the IRS piece, I actually did a lot of digging. Yeah. Basically, they failed completely.

What they wanted to do was to claw back the current initial ability of the IRS to expand. Instead, what they did is an overall cut, which will take place theoretically sometime in the future, the $20 billion, to what you're referencing. We already did many more multiples of that. This will not impact IRS current operating capacity at all. It also does not include any of the provisions which they talked a big game about, about making sure that they don't go after anybody who is less than $250,000, which in my opinion should be in there, ironclad given the behavior of the IRS. It theoretically cuts it in the future, which I mean, as you and I know, Crystal, what is stopping the government from just backfilling that the next time the Democrats have control? They're just going to do that plus probably times 10, and then we'll have a fake

game where we claw back like two years. It's all BS. That's why this whole deal, this whole deal to me is just nonsense. Like it's nonsense on its face. I guess the only people

who got taken care of are the Pentagon, the government of Ukraine. Always. Always. The Pentagon, the government of Ukraine and then the rest of us,

almost none of our lives are going to change. Yeah. I mean, just to zoom out to the big picture here because it can get lost in some of the details talking about how does the IRS funding work and how's this going to go with the budget appropriations process. The fact that we are in this place at all is just absurd. I mean, especially, in some ways, especially because they ended up not getting really anything more. That's my key. Than what they could have gotten through a normal non-hostage taking situation

where you aren't threatening the entire global financial system and threatening, by the way, like, you know, if we defaulted, then you're having to weigh, okay, do seniors get paid? Do veterans get paid? Do bondholders get paid? What does this all look like?

I mean, all of this was on the line. This is not a joke and it's not a game. You're talking, you're playing with millions of people's lives and jobs and, you know, their basic security. So that in the end, it ends up as this sort of just like pathetic, confusing mishmash is it's insulting. I think the Biden White House, there was a lot of celebration of like, oh, the deal for them is not as bad as it could have been. Okay, sure. But they misplayed this from the beginning. And in fact, that's what was surprising was that McCarthy didn't extract even more from them because he certainly could have.

They played their hand so poorly and in such a weak position. They gave themselves no other out than to pass some kind of deal with McCarthy. But I think at the end of the day, McCarthy was also very fearful of going over the cliff, even though he's got these renegades in his caucus who at least act like they're crazy enough to do it. He did not share that sentiment whatsoever. And so, you know, he was also most interested in getting to a yes and averting this whole catastrophe that he was forced into as part of the speakership deal. Now, that's all on him. I'm not, like, you know, removing the blame from him whatsoever.

But it's not like from the beginning he was enthusiastic about this fight. He was forced into it. I forgot to add a winner, by the way, to Wall Street. Because I don't know if people know this, but the uncertainty in the debt ceiling has spiked Treasury bill rates to, like, near all-time highs. And so, by the way, it's a great opportunity for free money if you're interested. And you know what that means? That means like it's more expensive for the government to borrow. Really, in the reality, all taxpayers are paying out huge premiums to Warren Buffett and to all these other guys who are printing tax-free money gains off of treasury bills.

And now Wall Street not only got to profit off of some of that initial uncertainty, now they don't have to deal with any of the fallout from the debt ceiling. So I would be remiss if I didn't say a lot of billionaires were actually very happy by way of it. Very, very good and important point. And by the way, if you're worried about the interest payments and the level of debt, obviously that's wildly counterproductive that you've just spiked the cost of government borrowing. The last piece we have here for you, just to preview the fight in the Senate, which again, I think is going to be smooth sailing. I don't think they're going to have any trouble passing this debt ceiling deal through the Senate, though you don't know.

One thing that was interesting I saw this morning, Rand Paul is going to sort of get Republicans on the record, force a vote on a larger cut that would potentially include, he says, Social Security would be off the table, but Medicare would be on the table. So that's a difficult political vote that Republicans will have to take. But I do think this thing will get through the Senate probably without much of a problem. However, we did get a statement from Bernie Sanders, put this up on the screen, expressing, I think, effectively expressing here the progressive stance and upset with this deal. He says, I cannot in good conscience vote for the debt ceiling deal. Among other things, he says, the fact of the matter is that this bill is totally unnecessary.

The president has the authority and the ability to eliminate the debt ceiling today by invoking the 14th Amendment. I look forward to the day when he exercises this authority and puts an end once and for all to the outrageous actions of the extreme right wing to hold our entire economy hostage in order to get what they want. He also name checks here, you know, the fact that as part of this deal, again, supposedly the concern is over the debt and the deficit, which everybody knows that's not really the case. There's just an ideological agenda against certain of these programs. They take off the table closing the carried interest loophole, which would obviously raise revenues. They take off the table any sort of hike for the richest among us and for corporations.

That's all, you know, considered not even close to being a part of this deal. They take off the table things like negotiating drug prices, prescription drug prices through Medicare, which again would raise revenue. So he points to some of those pieces that expose the hypocrisy and the fundamental unfairness of the deal itself. But also I think the bigger point is the one about how unnecessary this whole crisis and this whole quote unquote deal ultimately was. And Bernie was the first Democrat to come out against it. Jeff Merkley has also come out against it. We'll see how many others actually come out on the record. But as you said, there may be some procedural hijinks about forcing votes and stuff on amendments. And we may have a bit

of a delay, a 30-hour debate rule without unanimous consent. But you got four days till the so-called, you know, till the soft deadline, which, you know, you could probably stretch that out if you need to. So very likely not going to see any crisis, but we'll keep everybody updated. This whole thing was kind of frustrating and enraging, and I'll be very happy to not talk about it again for quite a while. Good riddance. Two years. We'll cover it on our four-year animals. There you go. There you go. Apparently that's what we're added towards. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about some new data we're getting out about the likely presidential matchup between former President Trump and current President Biden. Put this up on the screen for The New York Times.

They did a focus group of 11 Biden voters and, you know, always take these with a grain of salt. It's just 11 people. But it's always interesting to hear what actually actual voters are saying about how they feel about the state of the country and the man that all 11 of them actually voted for, but are feeling kind of shaky on this time around. So keep this up on the screen, guys, because I'm going to read off. They asked, one of the questions they asked is, if you were giving the weather forecast for how things are going in America, what would you say? Here's a sample of the answers. One said, icy, stormy, I think we're headed in the wrong direction. Next one says, cloudy with a chance of tick, tick, boom. That's a very literary person. I think there's going to be an outer force of danger that is going to unite us kind of like 9-11 did. Oh, that's kind of dark too. The pendulum has to swing the other way. Another one said,

my forecast is very cloudy with a chance of a heavy downpour and maybe a tornado. You know, just to recap, and we've got some other graphics we can show you. They asked this group a series of questions about, you know, how do you feel about Biden? And is he doing a good job? And is he a good leader? On a number of questions that, you know, had positive attributes about Biden, no one agreed with the sentiment. So they asked, is Biden a good leader? Not a one of them raised their hands. They asked, does he share my values? This actually surprised me. Not a one of them raised their hands. They asked, you know, did he do better, worse, or the same than you expected?

No one said he did better than they expected. They asked, is he up to the task of being president through 2028? No one said yes. And they asked, how do you feel about his handling of the economy? And no one had a positive feeling about his handling of the economy. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. So they say, what is one word you would use to describe how you feel about the November 2024 presidential election? You are not going to be surprised by, well, maybe there's one that you'll be surprised about. They say, the first person says, is shit show one word or two? How about circus? Next one says anxious, apprehensive,

scared, I think, unforgettable, scary, eager. Okay. Confused, geriatric, South Park episode and defeated. Put the next graphic we have up on the screen here as well. See another piece of this. They say you're all in this group because you voted for Joe Biden in 2020. That doesn't mean that you love what he's done or that you support him now. It just means you voted for him in 2020. So why did you vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election? One person says it really was the lesser of two evils.

Felt like the only thing I could do. Another says I just couldn't stomach Trump. Another says I hate to say it, but pretty much the same reason. And another one says, I didn't vote for Biden. I voted against Trump. And Sagar, this was a consistent theme. Every one of these people said they are not impressed with Biden. They don't think he's up to the task of another four years. They're disappointed. They're unhappy with the economy. They see the outlook as stormy. There are all these sentiments, right? But then when you ask them, well, who are going to vote for this time? Almost all of them said Biden again, because Trump or DeSantis, in our opinion, is worse. Now, there was one person, I think, who said that they were very likely to just not vote. And I do think those people, you know, these are people that all voted for Biden

last time. It was a narrow election. So he really needs to win all of these type of people again. So the fact that you have even any of them saying, you know what, I may just not vote. I may vote third party. I'll see who the Republicans put up. The fact that you have any of that going on is actually a bit of a worrying sign for Biden. And they are concerned about there's a higher percentage this time around than last time who say they would consider voting third party or independent. And, you know, that was part of the complex set of factors that led to Hillary Clinton losing in 2016 when you had a lot of people who just literally would not stomach either Trump or Hillary and voted for Johnson or Stein in that election. So I thought that was interesting. On DeSantis, I'm not sure it was all of them. I think it was only, what, three or four, right, who said that they wouldn't vote for him. But my personal favorite was this one from the Nick,

what do you mean by South Park episode? He says, there was an episode in South Park from 2004. There was a mock election. Everybody just keeps voting for the vote for the lesser of two evils. They're voting just to keep someone else out. I hate that because that becomes a scenario. I have committed to vote for a third party this coming election.

I thought that was really interesting. This was Nick. He's a 37-year-old from Iowa, a white guy, independent and business manager. So that's actually a good guy, independent and business manager. So, you know, that's actually a good glimpse, I think, into, you know, kind of like who and what are thinking about the election and the despair and all of that that they feel. I think what becomes very clear is that Trump himself does have, and I think this is what his supporters always underestimate, which is as much as you love

Trump, which is, that's the thing with Trump. He, he gets more love than any politician probably that I've ever seen in my lifetime. He gets an equal amount of hate from a lot of people too. Yeah. And those balance out, you know, in terms of the positive number of people who are willing to come out and vote. And then in some cases, not even just balance, like there are even more people who are both repulsed. And then when it comes time to pull the lever, decide not to. Now, look, there's obviously a hell of a lot that can go on. And he almost did win the 2020 election. He came incredibly close, as we pointed out here, and DeSantis did too. If he just encouraged mail-in voting, he literally would have won.

So that's a whole other narrative that is out there. So I don't want to underestimate his strength, but you shouldn't underestimate some of his weaknesses either. And the weakness is very full on display here. And at this point, you know, Biden is incumbent president. That comes with significant advantages because people find, you know, change and switching horses, mainstream or whatever that, whatever that saying is, they find that unsettling. And so incumbents, and you have the bully pulpit and, you know, you are in the office of commander in chief, so nobody has any trouble envisioning it, that comes with a significant advantage. And so that makes it more difficult for Trump. On the other hand, at the time, last time around, you had the immediate specter of Trump in office, just doing a horrific job managing the pandemic and, you know,

people dying and it was a very bad time in America. So you had this immediate example of what it looked like to actually have Donald Trump as president of the United States. You know, one of the things that did surprise me was that no one said that Biden shares my values because one of his political strengths, and the man obviously has political strengths because he is president of the United States and was previously, you know, vice president for eight years and well-liked during that time. One of his strengths has always been that people do feel like he shares their values, that they do feel like he's sort of like an empathetic person and gets their struggles and what they're going through. So I was a little bit surprised by that perspective offered by 11, all 11 of these individuals. One woman who is a black independent who's not working said, I think Biden is the corporate

elitist type person that camouflages himself as a regular guy. And that was her answer for why she didn't feel that he shared her values. There was another portion, Nick, who's a 37-year-old white independent business manager. He was talking about the economy and said there's not enough being done to help shoulder some of these increases. When you see these other companies posting record profits, that's concerning to me. Continuing to line the pockets of the elite while everyone else is struggling is not OK. And I thought those were interesting because what a lot of people would take away from a focus group like this is like, oh, you know, we got to come to the center and we got to be more moderate. And a lot of people express sentiments like that.

But then when you ask them specifics about what they want, it's actually like, it's actually, we got to go after the elites. It's actually not sort of the classic view of what a corporate centrist moderate position would look like. So media's definition of what moderate is and actual voters, how they articulate it tends to be very, very different. Another thing that I thought was interesting, Sagar, is when they asked people, what was it that you liked that Biden did? A number of them were like, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. Like, I'm not really sure. But the people who were able to name things, a few people named student loan debt relief. That was something that was very tangible for them. And I think one of them named infrastructure.

So I thought that was interesting, too. And it kind of makes some sense because if you're a person who's going to benefit from student loan debt relief, that is like really measurable, really impacting your life. It's going to stick with you. It's not something that, oh, it's some amorphous bill that passed and now I can't even remember the details of it. It felt very real and very concrete and was the thing that most immediately came to mind for a number of the people that they interviewed here. Kind of interesting. I love looking into the views of just like how people actually vote, you know, in terms of the pundits and everybody thinks that people are so iconoclast. They're really not.

Like they're just complete. They're really they have contradictory beliefs of which they would never find contradictory. They don't fit neatly into a box. A lot of it is personality-based, but a lot of it is also policy-based. And you just can't cast a wide brush. It's something I love about this country. I really do. Bottom line, I would say from this poll, not poll, focus group, small caveats, remember all of that. But the general sentiment

is pretty much backing up the theory of the case that the Biden White House has, which is, yeah, people don't really particularly like our guy. His favorability is in the toilet. People are disappointed. They don't feel great about the direction of the country. But when push comes to shove and they're faced with our guy versus Trump, they're all going to come home. They're going to vote again, once again, for what they view as the lesser of two evils. And they're going to have no other choice than to come back into our camp. And, you know, based on these responses, I'd say that it's frankly, it's not a bad bet. Yep. I think you're right. Okay. At the same time, we got some news about another contender entering the Republican side of the equation.

This would be former Vice President Mike Pence, who's been signaling for some time that he was very likely to launch his own presidential campaign. Let's put this up on the screen. He is eyeing a 2024 campaign launch next week. The source said Pence's team is finalizing plans to launch his campaign for the White House, joining the expanding GOP primary field with a forward-looking video announcement and speech that makes the case for his candidacy. I guess he is going to say no thanks on the Elon Musk Twitter launch. Yeah. Given recent experiences, he's going with the— Not sure it would be offered either. True.

I guess it technically was. Yeah, he theoretically was like, oh, sure, I'd talk to anybody. Anyway, I don't know that there are going to be a lot of takers on that offer at this point. Pence going with the more traditional announcement. He is expected to put a lot of his focus on Iowa, they say, which hosts the first caucus of the GOP primary calendar. And also of note, he is participating in a CNN town hall in Des Moines on June 7th. So that is next week being billed as a presidential town hall. And, you know, for those who are, I guess, looking to bolster the Pence case, there was a poll that found that, you know, a majority of Republicans said they would consider supporting him.

Now, they don't support him, but they would at least consider it. So he's not completely off the table here. So that's kind of the lay of the land for him. Now, they don't support him, but they would at least consider it. So he's not completely off the table here. So that's kind of the lay of the land for him. I mean, the Iowa focus saga, I think, makes a lot of sense because you do have a very well-organized sort of evangelical right in Iowa that he has spent a lot of time cultivating and making inroads with. That's why he's leaned into things like, you know, his support of a national abortion ban. We noted right away that he was maybe the first major politician after Roe versus Wade was overturned in that Dobbs decision to come out affirmatively for, hey, we need to get on board with the national abortion ban. It's a very extreme position

that has very low support among the public at large, but I think we'll find an eager audience within the Iowa caucus faithful. Yeah. Who won the Iowa caucuses in 2016? Ted Cruz. You know why? Evangelicals. I've got the breakdown right here in front of me. Evangelical Protestants make up the second largest religious group in all of Iowa. Combine them with Catholics and you've got another 18% and you're literally looking at almost a majority of the people in the state who are going to have at least a sympathetic view, well, I guess technically on abortion. Or at the very least, people were very motivated to vote in a GOP primary. It was very key to the Ted Cruz victory in Iowa was to go and mobilize the evangelical community. They had the Ted Cruz camps, is what they were called at the time.

Oh, really? Personally would have had a better name. That's kind of creepy. In my opinion, a little weird, but it worked out. So I guess, what can you say? For the Iowa caucuses, this is going to be the key. And it is also not a surprise that Mike Pence has not trained his fire on Donald Trump because he's not really competing with a lot of votes for him in Iowa. Who's he competing with? Ron DeSantis, who, as we speak, is in Iowa right now. And we're going to show you some clips in a little bit from his speeches there. He needs to take out DeSantis and to compete there if he wants to see any sort of victory in the state or place in the top three, which is why he actually took a shot at DeSantis

in a very recent interview. Let's take a listen. I like Walt Disney, not woke Disney. And I fully support what Florida did in challenging a left-wing agenda for children under third grade. In fact, I'd like to see them expand that in the interest of families in Florida. But where I took issue several months ago was as a limited government conservative, I don't believe it's the role of government to then essentially go after corporations that differed with them in the political process. So look, Mike Pence is basically trying to run the Reagan 2.0 playbook, just not as charismatic and not as good of a politician. So, you know, we'll see. I do think, I'm not going to say he'll be formidable. I think he'll place, I think he's probably good 8% to 10% of a decent amount of ceiling in any of these places. And a lot of the polling bears that out. Put this up there on the screen. This is our latest 2024

tracking from Morning Consult, and it shows you in the polling. Number one, Donald Trump at 56%. Number two, Ron DeSantis at 22%. Mike Pence at five. Sounds about right. Maybe double that in Iowa because you got more evangelicals and you got more Catholics, but you can't forget a lot of those people, they love Trump too. Because in a debate, not that there may be a debate, we'll see whether Trump deigns to go on the stage, but if he's going to hit back, he's got the greatest attack of all. I got it done. Mike didn't do anything. He didn't stand up for me on January 6th, and I'm the one who got it done. DeSantis also, frankly, has a good, credible legislative case of, I signed the six-week ban in a purple state. I actually got

that done. So once again, to that community, you're looking at two people who've actually done something and then one guy rhetorically who is not necessarily there. So looking at all that, I think Trump and DeSantis have a very credible case to make to the evangelical Protestants. And they're gonna have to compete for it. If anything, Pence is just a spoiler

for the Ron DeSantis campaign. That's it. It's hard to see a pathway to Mike Pence being the GOP nominee. You know, he, the Trump people, the hardcore Trump people have no love for him because he didn't back Trump on January 6th and has, you know, castigated him somewhat mildly for his actions on that day. The hardcore never Trumpers have no love for him because he didn't because he, you know, carried water for Trump for all four years. And then even after you had this mob running around threatening to hang him, he still could like barely muster an attack on Trump over any of that. But I do think he's a real problem for Ron DeSantis, maybe more so than some of these other characters, because I do think he has a solid 5%, 5 to 10%, and especially in a state like Iowa. And remember, Ron DeSantis is really

betting the farm on Iowa, Iowa and New Hampshire, but in particular, Iowa, because if you don't come out of the gate strong and you're him and you're facing down the juggernaut of Donald Trump, it gets real dicey real quick. So the fact that Pence has any sort of traction in that state, and I do think he has some limited traction in that state, those are votes that are coming not from the Donald Trump pile of the voter base. They're coming out of the DeSantis group of voters. I would very much doubt that there's a lot of overlap between the Trump and the Pence voting base at this point. So this comes directly out of DeSantis' share of the pie. And when you already have Donald Trump over 50 percent in certainly nationally and in a lot of these early primary states as well, you not only

have to coalesce all of the other voters that are out there, you've got to be able to eat into the Trump margin as well. Having Pence in the race just complicates the situation. You know, Emily and I covered yesterday too, Chris Christie getting in the race. Not that I think Chris Christie has a shot either at this whole thing, but the fact that you have so many contenders jumping in shows number one, DeSantis' weakness. He didn't scare them out of the race. He didn't do whatever was necessary to get everybody to coalesce behind one Trump alternative. And I just think that that really makes things difficult for him. It makes it much more like 2016. I know we've said this over and over again, but especially when I see like the way that they're all positioning themselves as I'm the true conservative, like Mike Pence is doing that. DeSantis is doing that. Tim Scott is doing that. That's what was tried in

2016. It was the best case they could make against Trump, and it wasn't enough. Not even close. It actually didn't work. Let's go to Ron DeSantis then, because it actually bears talking about. This is one where I'm not so, look, I'm not sure it'll work. I personally don't think so. But if it was ever going to work, it is going to look something like this. DeSantis, unlike Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, who's kicking in various directions, Vivek Ramaswamy, all these other people, is actually taking Trump on head on and casting himself as the only other legitimate challenger, which I think is true, and is rhetorically not really letting any of the Trump attacks go unanswered. It's no longer silly season, apparently. He has actually decided to come

out and confront Trump, at the very least, on some of the attacks that have been levied against him. And, you know, I've been impressed by it, especially with the way he's been able to take it on in Iowa. Here's what he had to say on the ground, keep in mind, in front of Republican voters. Let's take a listen. I do think, unfortunately, he's decided to move left on some of these issues. If you say Cuomo did a better job with COVID than Florida did, first of all, that's not what he used to say. This is like new, like six months ago, he would have never said that, right? He used to say how great Florida was. Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship. Are you kidding me? It's also the case that we're proud of what we've been able to do in our state. We won the biggest election landslide that Florida Republicans have ever won. And did he ever say anything like, attaboy, good job? No. He attacked me three days before the

midterm election. And then he started attacking after that. And so I'm just thinking to myself, you're a Florida resident. If I saw an election landslide where we swept every statewide office, super majorities in the legislature, elect 29 conservative school board members as a Florida resident,

I would be cheering for that. If you put the mission first, you would definitely be cheering for that. What can you say, Crystal? He's right. He's obviously correct. A, you moved to Florida, your whole family became residents. And the second one is I still believe that is the strongest attack against Trump, which is I'm an actual winner. I won big. You are the one who cost us. He actually even said later on, he said we would have had 55 Senate seats if it wasn't for all that nonsense that was going on. Also possibly correct, right? Given what the wins were and all that. Who knows with Roe versus Wade. Let's put that aside.

The problem for DeSantis is for him, for the GOP base to overall coalesce around that message, they would also have to believe that Trump was a loser. And they don't believe Trump was a loser. I don't believe that. That's like, and I've said the Gordian knot before. I really think it is. Because I watch that and I'm like, man, that is such a compelling general election case. But we're not in a general election. We're in a primary. And he has got to make, he's got a project on his hand, which is always the hardest thing to do. You have to change the way that voters think. You almost never can do that in politics. You usually have to come and meet voters exactly where they are. He has to change their, he has to change

their thoughts from Trump won and was unfairly stolen to Trump is a loser and I'm an actual winner. I personally just feel that's such a titanic task that it's not able to accomplish. But I think if it ever could be, it's gonna look something like that. Nobody else has been willing to say something. Nobody else has been willing to take him on this way. Well, he tried the other approach of staying quiet. And it failed.

And he saw his polls go like this. So I think he looked at that state of affairs and said, all right, well, that strategy is not working, especially because everybody else in the race or even theoretically going to get in the race, they were all taking shots at him, not at Trump. So after watching that all unfold and seeing that it wasn't a winning strategy for him,

he's decided to go on the offense. And I think that makes a lot of, you know, logical, rational sense. I saw this morning, Trump just put out this mashup, I think over on True Social of Ron DeSantis just kissing his butt to try to get his endorsement going on Fox. This is the greatest Republican president that we've had and going on and on. Oh, he's the art of the deal and he knows how to negotiate and the whole bit because he was desperate to get Trump's approval and get his endorsement. I mean, that part is actually true that Trump says about him.

And, you know, that sort of stuff, it's kind of more visceral than this like theoretical, ideological policy distinctions that he's making here. I'm going to be interested to see. I genuinely don't know. I'm going to be, you know, humble about making any predictions here. I want to see, does DeSantis going on the offense, does it move the polls at all? It's really open. In my mind, it's really open, whether it changes anything, whether it causes him to go up in the polls, or it actually could cause him to go down. Very easily, this could have a backlash. There's a reason why every other candidate has decided, I'm not even going to say anything about Daddy Trump

because they're fearful of that backlash. And we've seen many instances in the past where people, you know, come at Trump and it ends up being too very much to their detriment. So I wouldn't be surprised by that outcome at all. I think he's got to do what he's doing right now. I think it is, you know, he's got to take a shot. You can't just sit there and continue to take on water and take all the hits from Trump and not say anything in your defense and not try to push back. But, you know, I continue to be skeptical that it's really going to work out for him. That's why I admire it, because it's genuinely risky. You know, look, I mean, remember how many times we were talking during the 2020 primary with the Democrats and like Bernie Sanders refuses to hit, you know,

Joe Biden because he personally likes him. And even though techies are like, oh, it's existential, but also he's my old friend Joe. It's like, listen, you very rarely see it. You very rarely see somebody who's a legitimate contender, number two, actually go after the number one because of their overall political popularity. It's actually – usually you see it from like the number five and the number six and all that. And then there's all – because, I mean, here's the reason why, which is that the number two preference for Trump voters is 100 percent going to be Ron DeSantis. And all the second choice data will back that up. Vice versa in terms of DeSantis.

A lot of the people who like DeSantis, the big portion, not the I'm done with Trump, are I like Trump. I'm willing to consider somebody else. Well, those people, they're going to have Trump as their number two. They don't really like to see party infighting, the whole Reagan rule, thou shall not attack or whatever, a fellow Republican. And DeSantis has decided correctly, I think, which is, look, kissing his ass all the way to the finish line, it's not going to work. As you saw by his sinking like a rock in all of these polls. The only way is to draw a contrast. High risk, because also he could flame out.

You know, he could lose, go down, and then never be seen as a credible alternative to Trump in the future. And Trump will not only win the primary, but then ridicule and make fun of him for the next eight years. You know, so this is a very risky strategy, which is again why I respect it. It might work. That's a good point. A lot of the other people that are in the race, yeah, they'd like to be president now. They'd like to be Trump.

But they're also positioning themselves for like, maybe I'll get a cabinet position. Secretary of Treasury. Maybe, if Trump wins, then he can only serve one term. Maybe I'll be next in line. And if that's the strategy you're pursuing, the most intelligent thing to do is to basically praise, I liked Trump's policies and he was a great leader. I just think it's time to move on or say something generic like that. Like,

that's kind of the Tim Scott approach, for example. And so, yeah, DeSantis has put all his eggs in this basket because very likely if you genuinely go on the offense against Trump and it doesn't work out for you, you may be dead within Republican politics in terms of ever running for president again, certainly in terms of getting any sort of like plum post ambassadorship or cabinet position or whatever in a future potential Trump administration. You could be crushing your entire political future. Yeah, he's only 44 years old. He's not playing it safe. And, you know, personally, I like it. Yeah. All right. So let's go to the next one here. It's a, it's a bit of a problem for Ron, you know, after we just praised him a little bit, put this up there, Rob, Rob, let's put this up there on the screen. Leaked audio from a Ron

DeSantis donor event is very bad news for his campaign. This is a reporter over at the daily beast. He got his hands on some leaked audio from inside of this. But it actually shows data, internal Ron DeSantis data, which is really not that great. The data that they showed, showed both Trump and DeSantis, quote unquote, virtually tied. Now, of course, they're trying to show the silver linings. But really what they did is they presented data showing him with better favorability in some of these states. But they also had a presentation where they try to explain why DeSantis is not running stronger against Trump. But that means that the governor has not faced any current substantive attacks as president. They show that his favorability ratings actually

might be inflated because he hasn't been fully attacked and defined by Trump on this. And it's also shows you that his favorability rating, Trump's, is still so high in every single one of these places. And not only that, according to their internal data, it's almost immovable at this point. And to that, I think they're right, which is what can you possibly say about him that has not been said? Everything exists. Every person in this country has been bombarded for the last seven years with X Trump, good things about Trump, bad things about Trump. It's exhausting. And so you're never, I really believe at this point, you will not change the way that anybody

feels about Trump. You may like, no, you could change somebody who goes, I like him. I don't think it would be as effective as a president. Again, I did, I just did a whole segment on this where I'm like, I don't, I think that's a very tall order, but maybe that's something that could actually happen. But when you're looking at some of his internal data here, even in the early voting states, to basically admit that your favorability ratings aren't as high as Trump and that you're basically trying to show that a lot of this is even pre-hotly contested primary, that's not necessarily the bad thing. Yeah, so all campaigns will do this.

They'll cherry-pick data to present to donors. That's like their best theory of the case. And so Daily Beast gets their hands on this leaked audio. And the problem for the DeSantis camp is that it's sort of obvious by the way they're cherry-picking things and what the numbers are on the other side that they have a pretty, that they got a tough road. And then in some ways, the data that they picked actually made a better case for Trump than it made for DeSantis. One of the pieces that I found particularly interesting is DeSantis' team presented data showing voters

believe the governor to be more conservative than Trump. A fact the presenter can be heard in the leaked audio saying, quote, is really important in a Republican primary. Indeed, DeSantis is considered very conservative by half of likely GOP voters in Iowa, 43% in New Hampshire, 45% in South Carolina. But the problem is Trump is actually winning voters who say that they are very conservative. So even though voters in the GOP base think DeSantis, by and large, they think he's more conservative than Trump, even those who self-identify as like, yeah, that's my lane and that's how I identify myself, many of them, majority, are still voting for Trump. So DeSantis, the way he's positioned himself is, I'm going to hit Trump from the right. I'm going to position myself to the right on key issues like abortion, for example.

And that's going to be my way of sort of stripping some of his voting base from him by persuading them that I am the real conservative. But at least at this early stage in the game, he has successfully convinced voters that he is more conservative than Trump. But they're still like, yeah, but we still like Trump. I mean, that's pretty damaging in terms of your prospects. And the other thing that you were pointing to, Sagar, that I think is really important, Trump's favorability, which is high among Republicans, is as solid as it could possibly be. It will not change. It's not going to change. DeSantis has a high favorability among Republican voters, but people know him a lot less. And so his is a lot softer. So it's unlikely it's going to go up. Very possible that it goes down. So that is, yeah, he also hasn't gotten into the full melee of a presidential campaign where ratings almost always go down rather than go up because you're just taking on so much water from everybody else. It's also worth talking about favorability to

Republicans. You know what that actually means? It means how much the liberal mainstream media hates you. That's basically it. And it's like, Trump, you can say many things. He is the king of being hated. Sure, the media hates DeSantis, but they don't necessarily hate him in the same visceral, like he's a fascist and all these other cringe takes that have been flying around now for seven years. Trump is the king of that.

He's the person who invites more emotional reaction than any single human being probably in the United States, which by the other, the contrast is a huge number of Republicans love that about him because he pisses off their enemies more than anyone else. DeSantis, you know, part of his whole thing about like, I'm getting serious, part of seriousness is not engaging in Mika Brzezinski's facelift and pissing people off. So that's difficult, you know, for your favorability ratings. Again, that's a great case. Most of the general election and most Americans are exhausted by that.

But Republicans specifically actually love it more than anything. Now, are there enough of them who are exhausted by it? None of the data currently indicates that. That's the issue. Also, by the way, Republicans think that Trump is more likely to win in the fall. Now, whether that's the case or that wasn't from this leaked audio. That's from other polls. They see him as a stronger candidate to defeat Joe Biden. Whether that's true or not, literally don't know. I think that DeSantis, some of the ideological positioning he has done has made him more vulnerable in terms of a general election

and compromised some of his electability case to voters, in my opinion. But who knows what the whims of voters are at the end of the day. I really don't advise you all to be thinking about candidates in terms of trying to play pundit and predict which one is going to win and which one is not going to win. Um, but you know, that is also an issue for him that his two key cases are I'm the true conservative and people are like, that's true, but we still like Trump. And, uh, I'm more electable and people are like, yeah, we don't really buy that. We think Trump Trump. We think Trump did win. We think he you know, we obviously won in 2016. We think he won in 2020. We think he can win again. And we want to stick with our guy.

I think, you know, picking up on on one comment you made, Sagar, which I think is very insightful. The most successful politicians. Yeah, they don't change people like what they're already thinking. They speak to something people already feel but maybe haven't fully articulated. Maybe hasn't, you know, no one has really grabbed onto the sentiment and been able to run with it. So it's something that's there bubbling under the surface. And they're able to harness that and really capture that. I think Trump is a perfect example of that in 2016, speaking to, you know, the carnage and the Rust Belt. And I mean, there was a lot, in my opinion, very ugly, like xenophobia that was packed into that. But there was a genuine sentiment of the

area that I live in, my prospects for myself, my prospects for my kids, like no one is really speaking to these challenges. And Hillary Clinton was the perfect opponent for him to go up against to make the case of like, these are the people that sold you out. So he really spoke to something that was already there that no one was capturing. And I just don't see any sign that DeSantis, in order to overcome Trump, who is a juggernaut within the Republican primary, he's a juggernaut in American politics, period. In order to do that, you are really going to have to have that same spidey sense of what it is bubbling underneath the surface for the Republican base

that isn't being harnessed, isn't being articulated, isn't being spoken to. I personally don't see that he has managed to pull that off yet. But I'm also not a Republican voter, so maybe he has more insights into this than I do. Exactly. Look, I mean, at this time, it's really a wait and see game, and we'll just see how it

works out. Let's go to the next part on Ukraine. There's some big, important developments that have been happening in the Ukraine conflict. One of them, of course, was the Ukrainian presumptive Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory on Moscow that government striking Russia and residential areas and potentially even with US equipment after they promised that they would never do so when you provided them with F-16s. And she didn't have a real answer. Here's what she had to say. Does the president believe that Ukraine risks losing the moral high ground in this conflict if it strikes at potentially civilian targets in Moscow? So look, I'm going to be very clear. We're gathering information. I'm not going to get into hypotheticals from here. We do not support the use of U.S.-made equipment being used for

attacks inside of Russia. We've been very clear about that. Oh, we've been very clear about that. We don't support it. We're still gathering. But here's the issue. The U.S. is not the only one who's involved in this conflict. And in fact, our so-called cousins, I guess, across the Atlantic, if you think our press and our country is crazy about Ukraine, as I found out while I was over there, we got nothing on the U.K. Put this up there on the screen because it includes an important quote from the British foreign secretary, so effectively their secretary of State, James Cleverley. He says, quote, Ukraine has the right to project force beyond its borders. And also, a spokesperson for the German government said that international law, of course, allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory in self-defense. But then added that Berlin opposed the use of German weapons for such attacks. The Brits actually did not use the qualifier that they shouldn't use theirs. And this is why it's so messy.

No one is saying that they don't have theirs. And this is why it's so messy. No one is saying that they don't have the right to project force beyond their borders, which is what, you know, cleverly seems to be using this as. And no one is saying that. You can do whatever you want. Now, the idea though that you should do whatever you want with the stuff that we give you is a whole other conversation. And actually just this morning, Crystal, ironically, in the Washington Post, they published a story, which is, you know which people are already freaking out about because it just tells the truth. Quote, Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin's red lines. And here's what I love.

Here is how the U.S. defense policymakers put aside problems with red lines. U.S. officials say the dynamic reason for brushing aside the threats is that since the opening doors of the war, Russia's president has not followed through on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine. His bluffing has given U.S. and European leaders some confidence they can continue doing so without severe consequences. But to what extent remains one of the most dangerous uncertainties. So basically their argument is, well, they haven't done anything yet, so we'll just keep upping the ante and giving the Ukrainians whatever they want. I will once again remind everyone that we are literally openly crossing Putin's red lines in all this.

Maybe that's worth it whenever Texas is at stake or a real ally like NATO or any of these other people. We're talking about the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine. In what world does it make sense to potentially drag us into a world war by Biden's own work, like not my words, his words over a scrap of territory in a place we have no formal agreement with and literally has zero importance to the global economy. This does not mean that I do not have deep empathy for the people who live in that region, who have been flattened and who have been killed, for all the soldiers, and for all the people in Ukraine who've been unjustly bombed and who've been killed by the

Russian machine. That does not mean that we should then put ourselves, though, in a place where we need to risk our own national security over this area of the globe. These are basic cost-benefit analyses, which only make sense to people, Crystal, when you start using terms like democracy or autocracy versus democracy, when we forget that one of the places that was invaded is one of the most corrupt countries on planet Earth. Invaded, by the way, invaded is one of the most corrupt countries on planet Earth. Invaded, by the way, by one of the other most corrupt countries on planet Earth. I mean, we're using Ukraine as a pawn in our great power game. It's ridiculous. That's what we're doing.

It has nothing to do with the sanctity of democracy or national sovereignty or our love for Zelensky or anything like that. It's we see an opportunity to weaken a country that has been a rival, still have this like Cold War mentality baked in there. We're fearful of their alliance with China. We don't like Putin. He doesn't, you know, cede to our wishes. And, you know, he's gone rogue since we like handpicked him for the job, by the way, originally. And so they see it as an opportunity to push him out. And they're using Ukrainian lives as like, you know, fodder for our war games. I think it is disgraceful that I don't agree that Ukraine has a right to just do whatever they want, because you're talking about targeting residential civilian buildings. And I don't think that that's acceptable. I mean,

in any instance, I don't think it's acceptable. I don't think it's acceptable when Russia does it. I don't think it's acceptable when we do it. You know, these are regular Russian people who, you know, didn't start this war and some of them may be adamantly opposed to it. So, you know, it's the same thing as saying like we'd be fair game because of our like individual civilians in America be fair game because we started the war in Iraq. So I don't accept that framing. But, you know, do I understand certainly the idea of like Ukraine projecting and doing everything they can to win the war on their, of course, right? That doesn't mean that our interests coincide with theirs. It doesn't mean that it's not incredibly risky and dangerous escalation. And if you're Russia looking at our reaction to the targeting of residential apartment

buildings in downtown Moscow, and we can't be bothered to even like come close to connect, we say this theory, oh, we told them not to use our weapons for these strikes. Yeah, you're going to just be furthered in your belief that this is in fact a proxy war and that we are in many ways enabling these types of attacks on their soil. I mean, not in many ways, we effectively are enabling these types of attacks on their soil. And it's also very likely to harden the Russian population and make them more committed to the war effort and willing to sustain and endure more hardship and, you know, difficulties in order to be successful. So you can see that the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, he told reporters

Russia would have preferred to hear at least some words of condemnation and said, we will calmly and deliberately think how to deal with this. I also always just reject this idea that's floated in the Washington Post and by the Biden administration that like, oh, Russia hasn't responded. I don't think that's true. I think they have responded. I think they have escalated. They did a draft. They've continued to expand operations. They've stepped up their bombing of Kiev, which is horrific for the people that live there. And they have just recently started talking again about nukes.

Some of that talk had sort of like faded away. Now it's getting back into the official statements. And I think we, even if there's a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny percent chance that you know, that's a possibility It's something we have to take deadly seriously Of course you have to take it seriously these people have once again these people have nuclear weapons and everyone's like, oh you're supposed to Just back down. I mean no whenever we're talking about again Berlin Well, yes, maybe when we're talking about a scrap that literally has no effect on any of our lives here whatsoever And look at the way this is is Medvedev, put this up there on the screen. He was supposed to be the reasonable one. Look at the way that these people

are talking now. They've gone nuts. He says the UK's foreign secretary cleverly has stated Ukraine is a legitimate right to project force. According to him, legitimate military targets beyond Ukraine's borders are part of its self-defense. The goofy officials of the UK are, quote, eternal enemies, should remember that The goofy officials of the UK are, quote, eternal enemies should remember that within the framework of the universally accepted international law, of which they, of course, ignore, their state can also be qualified as being at war. Today, the UK acts as Ukraine's ally,

providing it with military aid in the form of equipment and specialists de facto is leading an undeclared war against Russia. That being the case, any of its public officials who facilitate the war can be considered as a legitimate military target. I mean, basically, openingly threatening assassination and death. I mean, look, this is scary stuff. And people will say, oh, he said it before. Yeah, he has said it before. Maybe say it 15 times on the 16th time. You're right. And the risk of being right on this, or the risk of being real on the 16th time, so high that you should probably just do everything in your power to make sure that it doesn't happen and that you only breach and get up then on Ukraine, she's not saying much. She was confronted by a reporter, Liam Cosgrove, yesterday on Capitol Hill and said, hey, are you willing to reconsider at

least your support for Ukraine if they're going to be bombing targets inside of Russia? Here's what she had to say. If there is escalation where Ukraine is now fighting inside of Russia and causing lives to be lost in that regard, then, you know, we would have to make a different calculation. I got some comments from Jerry Nather last week, and he said kind of the opposite. He said he personally wouldn't care if they do attack Russia with our weapons. So you disagree with them on that? Oh, certainly. I think, you know, for me, my support for Ukraine has always been to preserve lives, for them to be able to have the resources that they need to minimize the number of people that were being killed because Russia invaded. And, you know, in that space, I only want people in battle to be heard.

So if there are Ukrainians that are now attacking Russians in Russia, that changes the calculation. And so last question for you, would this change your decision on continued support, continued funding and military support? I would have to learn more, but certainly it does change my calculation in the way that I think about supporting sovereignty and preserving lives. Interesting comments. Interesting.

Listen, I think she deserves well-earned criticism for supposedly being anti-war and then shipping and voting for weapons to Ukraine and all this, but you got to give credit where it is due, at least willing to come out and say it whenever it's out there. And credit to the guy also for asking. And let me say, you know, I think the calculation on these things is difficult because especially the early packages of aid. I mean, I supported some of the early packages of aid when you're

talking about, you know, Russia invades them. it's an illegal war, they're trying to defend themselves, like that's a very sympathetic cause and one that someone who is anti-war could genuinely support. When you get to this point and you've had the Biden administration really clearly spell out that this isn't about just Ukrainian sovereignty, this is about let's try to topple the Putin regime. When you've had not just this instance, you've had multiple instances of the Ukrainians attacking Russians on Russian soil and, you know, increasingly brazen strikes, including one on the Kremlin that, you know, it was sort of like a rather pathetic attempt at an assassination if it was, but still you're striking the Kremlin. Like that is pretty wild. That should at the very, cause people to pause and reconsider their calculations. What I want to say is, you know, I wish more journalists were pressing politicians

in this way and framing it in this regard. In almost every instance, they're getting pushed from the other perspective where it's like, why didn't you send the F-16 sooner? And what about, you know, what about the no-fly zone or whatever? It's usually, it's always pushing in the other direction. So it's nice to see a journalist who is framing questions in this way and pushing in the other direction of what about, you know, I'd love to see more. What about diplomacy? Remember when Ryan asked a question about diplomacy? He was like the only one in the White House press briefing room who ever asked a question about, hey, what can we do to enable diplomacy here? We need a whole lot of that

because ultimately, you know, if you get politicians on the record and you force them to sort of grapple with what their positions are and how they align or misalign with their stated principles, it can be a powerful force. I agree.

Shout out to him. Liam Cosgrove is his name. You guys should go follow him on Twitter. He's done a couple of good things I think he also he got those comments from Jerry Nadler

he did he also got the comments from Nadler so hey we support he also asked the State Department an interesting question

as well so go throw him a follow we like to support people who are doing interesting work stuff like that here alright Sagar what are you looking at

well last week I did a monologue delving into the price of used cars and what's driving the price up. The usual suspects all appeared, demand, quality of cars, but really it pointed the finger at the financialization of car companies and of car dealers themselves. I've always been obsessed recently with car dealers.

They're business models now for a few years, and it all traces to a little notice study that I came across, actually, which opened my eyes as to who the so-called blue-collar rich in America are. Everyone knows people in finance and Silicon Valley as rich, but what the other rich people who don't work in those sectors, who are they? A 2019 study of the 0.1% earners in America, defined as those who make more than $1.58 million cash per year on paper, revealed that the most common occupation among them was one,

car dealer. In fact, one estimate finds 20% of all car dealers in America have an owner making more than $1.5 million. Now, how is that possible? Well, a new dispatch actually from the National Association of Car Dealers meeting, it tells us a lot about it. Car dealers spend tens of millions of dollars per year to lobby federal, state, and local officials. They do a few things that are very important to them. Number one, they regulate land so that nobody else can start a rival dealership. Two, they regulate licensing to prevent the same thing. But now an urgent and important initiative that they care about most of all, preventing direct sales of vehicles to

consumers by manufacturers. The latest threat arose with the prominence of Tesla, which got rid of the dealer model for its cars, and it allows consumers to buy directly from the company. Naturally, they took issue with that. Car dealers have now spent millions of dollars successfully passing laws in states banning consumers from buying cars directly from manufacturers. They do this only because not only does it mean their survival, but actually puts a moat around their ability to extract as much profit as they can from their existing sales. Now, recall a study I showed you before by the Labor Department. It finds that between 2019 and 2022, dealers use their regulated monopoly status

to dramatically drive up the price of used cars. The Labor Department actually found dealer markup alone accounts for anywhere between 35 to 62% of all inflation in vehicle pricing across the United States. Now, as I've said, that's great work if you can get it. By all accounts, all the auto dealers in the country actually made more money in the last three years than ever before, meaning that if they were making $1.5 million a year on average in 2019, it might even be double that today. All of this on display at the latest meeting of this National Association of Dealers, where they were remarkably candid about how well that they did over the last three years and about worries and what them the most in the future. The answer is simple, electric vehicles. As I mentioned before, Tesla's direct-to-consumer model actually woke a lot of people up, not

just in the EV world, but for companies like Rivian, which has been floated, it's also been floated by company CEOs like Ford and others who secretly would love to ditch the dealers. But the dealers are not idiots, and they know this. They have dropped the hammer and money on every politician in America. In fact, as Slate found, in Florida, there are currently two dealer sponsored bills making their way through to the Ron DeSantis desk, which by all accounts, he will likely sign. It will make it illegal for car manufacturers to set transparent prices for

their cars, and it would allow buyers to order EVs from legacy manufacturers online. It would disallow that. But even with that moat, EVs still represent a real threat to dealer profits. The vast majority of dealer profits don't come from the sale of cars. They actually make it from financing and from servicing. EVs, no matter who makes them, have far less component parts. They don't need oil changes. They don't need as much servicing. In fact, EVs generate some 40% less aftermarket revenue for dealers. On top of that, as Slate explains, you can't just repurpose a regular old mechanic to work on an EV when they come in. It actually costs a lot for specialized training, so they make less

money and they have to pay for specialized labor. Not a genius then to see why they all hate it so much. It's reflected in the numbers. Right now, two-thirds of U.S. car dealers in America don't have any EVs to sell. 45% of dealers say straight up, we will never sell them, no matter what happens. Over and over again, you see massive resistance within the dealer community to EVs. What research I did for this monologue taught me is that the current Biden plan for EVs has a deep flaw. It only focuses on manufacturers and on consumers, but it forgot dealers basically run this country. Like it or not, we've got to get some programs in place to incentivize uptake amongst dealers for EVs, or they will just rig the market and the local laws to prevent them from being sold.

What this represents is the reality of dealing in the car business in America. It also demonstrates another hole in the EV uptake strategy. Remember that according to the state of dealing in the car business in America. It also demonstrates another hole in the EV uptake strategy. Remember that according to the state of California, all new cars, trucks sold in the state in a little over a decade must be electric. How is that going to work? Alongside the Biden administration's pledge that half of all new cars sold in the U.S. must be electric in 2030. That is seven years away and we're only at 10%. The infrastructure to support these cars for long haul driving is nowhere even close, unless you own a Tesla. We have major,

major work to do if you want to make this a reality. And increasingly, it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. You can either have an electric future or you can have a colossal boondoggle. And right now, the latter just looks more likely than ever. I'm curious what you think, Crystal. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well guys, there is a new anti-woke hit topping the charts, literally actually, including a video wherein the artist peruses the aisles at Target in search for any item that might be construed as LGBTQ friendly. Take a look. Anyway, you get the point there. This comes amid, of course, a rash of conservative freakout over various corporate pride gestures.

All started with the campaign against Bud Light for their use of a trans influencer, but now clout chasers are looking for all manner of meaningless corporate pro-gay virtue signaling to freak out about. One movement is focused on the fact that Chick-fil-A, a notably conservative corporation, has a diversity officer. Someone dug up an old Ford Raptor ad from like two years ago in an attempt to spark a Ford boycott. Target, of course, has been taking huge incoming over a store pride display. Let's be clear, these companies have no ideology outside of making money, no agenda other than selling like more trucks and more chicken sandwiches. But some segment of conservative media figures and their followers have thoroughly lost their minds on wokeism in general and on gay

rights in particular. For example, as Emily and I covered yesterday, Ted Cruz was trashed by Republicans, including former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, for daring to signal opposition to a Uganda law that would literally imprison all gay people for life. What is wrong with you people? Let me just insert a little bit of political reality into this discussion. Here in 2023 America, gay rights are actually really popular, and it's by a lot. Support for gay marriage has now reached a record-breaking 71%. In fact, acceptance of gay marriage is so widespread, even a majority of Republicans support gay marriage now. And I haven't specifically seen polling on life in prison for all gays, but I'm gonna go ahead out on a limb and guess it's pretty unpopular. Now, support for trans people has also risen dramatically in recent years. 66% of Americans

support allowing trans men and women to serve openly in the military. Large majorities support laws that will protect trans people from discrimination. Independence on balance tell pollsters they see trans people as a net societal good. Corporate America has embraced generic displays of LGBTQ support because it's popular, and thus they think it's gonna help them make money. Now, the right does have majority support on a few issues. They're with the majority on questions about trans girls competing with cis girls in sports,

and on a general level of discomfort around kids transitioning. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are in the phase of the movement one might call wild overreach. It's easy to forget that in the ancient times of 2020, Trump was actually selling pride hats with a rainbow-colored MAGA logo to honor his LGBTQ supporters. But between now and then, a politically strategic pushback on wokeness and a narrow focus on the nexus of trans issues and kids, it has morphed wildly into an all-out assault on anything with a rainbow that might smack of tolerance. This looks like a mirror image reaction to what people

like Ron DeSantis called the woke mind virus. Liberals, they were on solid footing when they were fighting for civil rights and colorblindness, broadly shared values across the society. But when the push for tolerance slid into authoritarian demands for equity complete with word policing, censorship, and enforced groupthink, it was disastrous for Democrats, and it was actually a key component of the appeal of Trump. Republicans have now quickly slid from a critique of woke overreach into their own spiral of extremism and insanity, driven by their most rabid and most online base. It's an anti-woke mind virus.

This has resulted in book bans, forced speech laws, and state-mandated ideologies in school curriculum, and has resulted in the current vogue in Republican circles of dredging up any and all pride-related virtue signaling for boycotts and pearl-clutching meltdowns, having panic attacks over all nods towards any sort of diversity. It's also pretty clear at this point that even the original, more narrow focus on kids, athletes, and schools, it wasn't a particular political winner for Republicans. After some promising results in Virginia, Republican candidates across the country leaned into trans panic in races from coast to coast. Groups sprung up to back school board candidates explicitly running ideological campaigns against so-called gender ideology and critical race theory. It didn't actually work out that well.

Republicans, of course, wildly underperformed in the midterms, and many of the right-wing crusading school board members ultimately lost. Now, I would chalk this up to two primary factors, first and foremost. Just wasn't a top issue for a lot of voters. Not a lot of folks heading to the polls to notch their opinion on the, like, one trans kid playing high school sports in their state. And two, the overturning of Roe v versus Wade handed Democrats the most potent issue electorally that they have had in a very long time. And the abortion dynamic, it's actually instructive.

Americans have very complex, conflicting feelings on the issue, just as they do on trans issues. With the Dobbs decision, all of the ground Republicans are fighting on now is extreme ground. Things like six-week bans and national abortion bans. Whichever party plays most aggressively to their extremists on cultural issues, that party is likely to lose. And with plenty of Republicans eagerly lining up behind the most deranged anti-gay, anti-trans parts of their base, they've taken what was an okay issue for them and turned it into a very clear liability. In 2022, Republicans, they seemingly had everything going for them. Inflation was high, the president was really unpopular,

overwhelming majority said the country was on the wrong track, and yet the red wave never materialized, and there was really one overwhelming reason why. In cities, suburbs, and small towns alike, voters were repulsed by the GOP's ideological extremism on abortion and on Stop the Steal. Now you can add another issue

where Republicans are increasingly aligning themselves with an extreme anti-gay panic that is less popular than defund the police. Long story short, this whole thing you guys are doing here, probably not gonna help you if you actually wanna beat Joe Biden. And Sagar, I wonder what you think of all of this.

And if you wanna hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is journalist Allison Young. She is also a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, but importantly, for our purposes, author of a new book on lab leaks, Pandora's Gamble, Lab Leaks, pandemics, and a world at risk. Allison, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Great to have you, Allison. Thank you.

So you came to notice we've been covering lab leak now here for a couple of years, but I've also been doing some deeper dives for a piece that you published about anthrax that you were able to reveal in your book, Pandora's Gamble. Maybe first just give people an overview of the book, and then we'll delve a little bit into anthrax that you were able to reveal in your book, Pandora's Gamble. Maybe first just give people an overview of the book, and then we'll delve a little bit into anthrax itself. Sure. So I have been an investigative reporter covering laboratory accidents for 15 years. I mean, everyone's interested in lab leaks right now. But the issue of the kinds of problems that are in these high containment labs has been a problem for a very long time. And so Pandora's gamble is looking at the whole question of did COVID-19 come from a laboratory

accident in the larger context that these kinds of accidents happen all the time. Can you elaborate on that? When you say these kinds of accidents happen all the time, what are we talking about and what is it that leads to viruses escaping the lab? Sure. So there are a variety of levels of laboratory accidents. I mean, you have people get bitten by infectious animals. They stick themselves with needles. They cut themselves with scalpels. They splash infectious fluids on themselves. Various sort of airflow systems that help keep microbes inside cabinets or inside facilities,

those systems fail. Wastewater systems leak. There are all kinds of issues in these facilities. The good news is the majority of time people don't become infected. But that's really a matter of luck. And the question is, you know, how long will our luck last and has it actually already run out? Yeah, and I think that was so important, which is that, you know, Wuhan, we can focus all day on that. And I think, you know, basically at this point, it almost is tedious to go through the details.

The more interesting part is like how many more Wuhans are there? How many Wuhans have actually happened here in the United States. You really opened my eyes to this piece about did a military lab spill anthrax into public waterways focusing on a 2018 accident. Can you give us some of the details what you're able to uncover exclusively in your book? Yes, so on the Friday before Memorial Day in 2018 at Fort Detrick one of the premier labs run by the US Army, USAMRID, they had a wastewater tank, a 50,000-gallon wastewater tank, which, by the way, was rusting and had a variety of other problems. One of the pipes burst on it, and it shot over a containment wall as much as 3,000 gallons of unsterilized laboratory waste. And in the weeks before that happened, those labs had been working with anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus, I mean a variety of the most dangerous

pathogens in the world. So that's bad enough, but one of the bigger problems is that that incident has been kept secret until now. The Army only admitted late, a few weeks after the incident happened, that they had had flooding and that there had been a leak. But they didn't say there were 3,000 gallons in that leak. And that's a huge omission. And these kinds of omissions and the secrecy that surrounds these accidents is pervasive. Yeah.

And so what was the fallout from that incident? What is the fallout today from that incident and, you know, what should be learned from it? So at the time, this was one of a series of problems at that facility. In 2019, the federal government took the rare step of suspending USAMRID's ability to work with what are called select agent pathogens. But why that happened, other than that there were various safety issues, was not known until now. So there is now starting to be fallout from the revelations of the book that it was 3,000 gallons. I mean, there's a citizens commission in Frederick, Maryland, which is just north of the Washington, D.C. area. They were not aware.

They had asked questions of what had happened in this incident, and the Army didn't tell them. And so they're learning about it from the book as well. One of our camera guys lives there, so he's probably finding this out live. And the thing for people who are not in this area that they don't realize is so this all happened in an area where there was an open storm drain that went into something called Carroll Creek. And that's the centerpiece of downtown Frederick. It's a beautiful area, an entertainment district. Well, and so Allison, one of the things I respect so much about your work is that you're looking at this dispassionately and you're reporting very basic facts. You've published previously about near misses at the UNC Chapel Hill and high security labs and accidents with coronaviruses.

So once again, put Wuhan aside. Why is some of this research, why does it lead to these types of accidents? This particular one, coronavirus research itself, seems to be at the tip of some of the worst accidents that we've seen in labs. The thing that's really concerning about accidents with coronavirus or various kinds of avian flu viruses are that those are pathogens that can spread from person to person. As we have all learned with the current pandemic, you want to be sure that you have high safety standards there. The accidents that occurred at UNC show that these accidents happen everywhere. And the question of why is we're human beings.

Yes. Accidents happen. Right. And so with that in mind, you know, what do you do? Do you just stop researching things? You know, are there ways you can tighten up the security procedures so that accidents are much, much, much less likely? Because as you state, I mean, it seems like there are so many ways that something can escape the lab that it's very difficult to make sure that every single thing is locked down. Yeah. There are a couple of things that have been proposed for a very long time.

One of the things I think that surprises people is that there is no universal regulation of biosafety in laboratories. Now think about that, okay? A lot of it is sort of a mixture of guidance. There are some regulations of various sort of piecemeal, but it's fragmented, and it largely relies on these labs policing themselves. The other issue is that unlike in a lot of other areas, there is almost no transparency for the public, which transparency is a key component of accountability. And so it not only shields the mistakes and lax safety practices of labs,

it also shields those organizations that we, the public, are trusting from the accountability to know that they're doing their jobs. That's been such a difficult part of this. I've seen it with members of Congress. Most of them don't even know about any of this research. They don't even know about the money that they are appropriating in bills to fund this. So have you seen, you know, obviously COVID woke the entire

world up to this dynamic. Yet, you know, money-wise, it seems like the canon is still going towards this. Do you think we've made any meaningful progress or can, you know, with the release of books like yours or even public awareness around the release of COVID? What do you think? Well, this area right now, there is huge public awareness and concern about the issue of did COVID come from a laboratory accident? And I think it's important for the public to start thinking about this, as you've said, in a wider sense, that if whether or not COVID-19 came from a laboratory accident, the government accountability office, which is a nonpartisan, not a hysterical organization in any way, they have been warning for more than a decade that the growing number of labs, the more research that we're doing is increasing the risk of a catastrophic accident. And to your point, this research is really important.

And so the issue is how do we do it safely? How is there accountability that's put into it? And one of the things on the funding is there is a lot more funding for research because of COVID. There are more labs being built because of COVID. But what is not usually earmarked in this legislation and in this funding is funding for biosafety. There are biosafety officers, but they often don't have the funding to do the kinds of safety oversight. Is that part of the issue for reform too, that a lot of people do have, you know, their careers and their, you know, their ability to make money and publish papers and whatever is wrapped up

in this world and in this research? Is that a barrier to significant reform? There are huge conflicts of interest in this area. So if you're looking at where there are oversight mechanisms currently, the organizations in the federal government that either have guidelines or some regulatory power, those same organizations fund the research and they do research themselves. And so in the case of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Which is one of the agencies that oversees some of this research their labs have had some of the worst accidents Okay, so I mean those are the same people and they have an interest in secrecy and and not having public transparency, so One of the one of the issues that various experts have put forth is should there be a separate independent entity outside of the research community, but obviously grounded in science, that is overseeing this?

I mean, a great analogy is how nuclear, the nuclear industry is regulated. Right. That's such a great point. And lastly, I think Sagar's right that it is sort of tedious at this point to go over all the details of the COVID lab leak or not lab leak. I'm curious though, just given your expertise that you've been studying this for so long, when you first started to learn about coronavirus and to think about what its origins might be, like what were the thoughts that were going through your head initially? Yeah. I mean, initially I have to say, like most people, I'm like, this couldn't be, you know, this couldn't be. But the more I looked into it and especially I thought it couldn't be because some of the world's leading scientists came out of the gate saying this is absolutely not a lab leak.

Very intentionally so. Absolutely. And as you know, we have later learned there were a number of secret meetings where they discussed their own concerns that this was not only a lab leak, but of a potentially engineered virus. And so that disconnect between what was being discussed privately by top scientists and what we were being told in the public was very concerning. And so once I started having a greater awareness of that, obviously with my background reporting on this issue for 15 years, it was always plausible to me that this could be a laboratory accident. That's exactly why we need Trent, because you can't rely on these people. They're human beings.

They're not special. Nobody can police themselves properly. Allison, you have done such an excellent job here. Really, thank you in such a professional manner. I encourage everybody to go and buy the book. We'll have a link down in the description to go ahead. Pandora's Gamble, if you're just listening, go ahead and search it. Buy it wherever you buy your books. And thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Absolutely. So guys, as we mentioned at the top of the show, today is officially two years. Two years. Here at Breaking Points, here at the desk. Yes, two years since we got the desk. Very famous desk.

And it's kind of one of those weird things, like it feels like it flew by, but it also feels like a lifetime ago that we were even at Rising, doing the thing. You guys know the story. You know, we decided to make the break, go out on our own. We put our trust and faith that you all would be there for us, and you have come through in the most amazing way possible. So now as we get ready to, you know, move on to year number three and to say goodbye to our beautiful set here and hello to a beautiful, even more beautiful, professional

new set that you all made possible, our producers, and we haven't watched this yet. Yeah, not yet. They put together a little, I guess you call it like a highlight reel of Sagar and I's time together. So we will be viewing this live along with you all. Let's take a look. Joining me now is Sagar Njeti. He's White House correspondent for The Daily Caller. So let's jump right in. Thanks for having me, Arthel. Yeah, that's a very interesting question. You know, Senator Ted Cruz has already come out against this bill, saying that it's just simply a nonstarter for him and for many of the other conservatives in the Senate.

This week's election destroyed more than the Democratic majority in the Senate. It also shattered a number of myths, myths that have enabled Democratic elite complacency. The last myth and the one that will doom Democrats in 2016 needs to be busted right here. That myth has to do with the inevitability and electability of a Hillary Clinton presidency. I think for me, the new left is a Democratic Party that actually puts the interest of the working class at the center. What is the new right? It's a departure from the free market consensus. It's about your family and it's about putting policy in place in order to make it so that you can live a successful and meaningful life. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed we do. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Still a convention show. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. All right, Sagar, what's on your radar?

Full confession. I had an entire other radar written and it was ready to go for today. But then something happened that made me so hopped up and mad, I literally dropped everything I was doing. All right, Crystal, what's on your radar? Well, as Twitter amuses itself with horrified reactions to Pete's cringiest, whitest dance of all time, it's really quite simple. Like, you're not saying you love everything I say. I'm not saying I love everything you say. But there are these two new coalitions rising in America.

You can either deal with that or you can try to ignore it and isolate yourself increasingly into these ideological corners. And I just think that is fundamentally the wrong approach. Well, it's foolish. We also have some big news, which is that today is going to be our last day at the Hill doing Rising Here, which we feel a lot of praise about. We've had an amazing run here. It's almost two years to the day since I believe I officially became your co-host. So tell everybody, why'd you leave the Hill? What do you think, Crystal? Why did we leave the Hill? We wanted to live our values. We talk all the time about how much we believe in the new media ecosystem,

how much we believe in independent media free of any sort of corporate influence. And so even though I have to admit, like, I'm really nervous and it feels very uncomfortable, but in a good way, we wanted to step out and go independent and do a show of our own. Here's the thing with Rising, we loved it. It's amazing that they let us get away with as much as we got away with for two years. True. At the end of the day though, I wanted to do a better show. You guys are honest.

I mean, we were talking about that earlier, like it's so rare. You say what you feel and that is so valuable today. Hold on, I'm about to make my entrance. There he is. The one and only Matt Taibbi, of course. The best friend of the show. Of the show. Glenn Greenwald.

Joining us now, we have Ken Klofenstein. David Cerda. Great to see you, sir. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Joining us now, my friend Jeremy Korbel, friend of the show. Congressman Ro Khanna had come out and called for her to resign, something that we considered quite courageous, given that you are a fellow Californian and you've taken quite a bit

of heat for those comments. We're lucky to have you in studio today, sir. Great to be back. Big breaking news regarding lab leak. Yeah, and a news that should absolutely shock anyone except over at MSNBC. Let's put this up there on the screen. The lab leak, most likely origin of COVID-19 pandemic, the Energy Department now says. All out assault on Ukraine, land, air, sea, cyber, truly just a shock and awe effort from the Russians, and we are going to cover it from every angle. Hello, Chicago. Hello, hello, Austin. Howdy, as they say in these parts. Hello, Boston! Hello, Boston!

You guys are fired up tonight. I love it. You guys inside into what you are helping us pay for. This is what you have been helping us get. This beautiful box of lights is one of almost a dozen boxes that we have here in the studio. I want to thank all of the yearly and the lifetime members, Crystal, who have signed up for helping us. This is the biggest expense ever in the history of Breaking Points, and it's costing a hell of a lot of money, but the reason that we are doing it is because we know how important it is not only to you to have

something that looks and feels important, but something that you can share with your friends and your family and it will help us. When we launched, we only wanted to do it if we could do it the right way and continuously improve with your support. We believe in you guys. We believe in the show.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for this box and the many more like it. And can't wait for you to see the full set. I think you'll be as excited about it as we are. Shout out to Griffin and Mac for going through all of, they went all the way back I'm going to go. Correct, and one of the many cringey things that I said while I was at MSNBC. I don't even want to think about it.

I was like, I need a shot of whiskey even watching the original clip. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think about. Two years exactly to the day. Almost actually, it's 10 a.m. here on the East Coast. This is exactly whenever we were attempting two years ago, Crystal, to go live, and we were screwed by MailChimp. We were over an hour and a half late. We were panicking.

Because MailChimp just decided not to an hour and a half late. We were panicking. Oh my God. Because MailChimp just decided not to let us send our email out to everybody. So yeah, we were absolutely losing our minds. That day was a real rollercoaster. Literally, yeah, what is it, 700 something or whatever days ago. But that was interesting what we said in those clips that it was almost two years to the day that we were rising together when we broke off and now almost two years to the day that we're here launching kind of a new, you know, I mean, it's the same show, but it's, the set is really quite different. So June 1st is the exact four year anniversary of the day I officially became your Rising co-host. So, cause I was looking back through my phone. There's a photo, the first photo I like ever found of the two of us together from that time. I was

like, wow. You know, like the iPhone memories. And I was like what a crazy time it was actually us eating beef jerky oh it's are falling behind us I think that's a sign yeah I guess it's ready to go yeah I guess so you know I one of the things that I really reflect on watching back that montage is how much the show has grown, how much we've had to adjust to the news. I mean, when the Democratic primary, which, you know, that was like a key part of what we're focused on and what that really made, you know, the interview with Andrew Yang and the fair coverage of the Bernie Sanders campaign and all of that, like that really sort of built us up. And then in an instant, COVID, that was over and it was COVID. And that was the first time that we're like, all right, we got to, we're going to really find out what we've got here. Like, are people just here to hear us like, you know, shit on Biden and like, you know, people were there for that. I really

enjoyed that, the panels and all that stuff. Or is there something more sustainable that we can build here? And so, you know, we went all in on trying to understand what was happening and trying to analyze what the political response to it was and what the reality was going to be for ordinary Americans versus what was being given to elites at the time. And I think when we were able to make that transition, that's when I knew that we would be able to do the show for the long term and that there was an audience there that, you know, really cared about the core values, not just the horse race of the politics of the day. And since then, there have been a lot of other obviously major twists and turns in terms of the focus of the show and what's happening in the world and our coverage, the Ukraine war that they played, you know, when Russia invaded Ukraine initially. That was another big moment, obviously, in world politics, most importantly. But in terms of huge shift and focus of coverage here, we both did all that we could to sort of bone up on our understanding of what was happening in the world. And I just want to say, like, first of all, sorry, I'm incredibly

grateful to you. Likewise. You know, I've had a lot of co-hosts in my time. I'm lucky I never did. I can tell you. It's like, it's a challenging relationship. And, you know, you make it easy. Like, it really is easy. We've had some gnarly moments. But overall, especially since we launched here, smooth sailing. We're an amazing partner.

I couldn't be more fortunate and grateful. And then also to you guys. Like, through all those twists and turns and, you know, different focuses of the show, but maintaining the core values. Like, you guys have been there, and you've put your faith in us to try to interpret what's going on in the world as best we can. And I'm just so grateful for that. Oh, same. I mean, we can't say it enough. And I'm sorry, you know, you only have to hear about the set for one more week, and then it's there. We'll shut up about it and all that.

But for real, I mean, it's just crazy to think, you know, two-year anniversary to the day. I mean, you know, you and I, we put this whole set on our individual credit cards. We have no idea if this thing is going to work out. I'm like, am I going to be broke? Like, you know, like what's going to happen? Like it's one of those where we left all this money on the table, health insurance, all of the easiness that comes with being attached to a corporate organization. It was a huge risk.

I mean, it's the biggest risk we'll probably ever take in our lives. And yet, it's one of those where not only did it work out, but it actually built something, in my opinion, that we could have never imagined. And that's what the new set looks like. And I also want to tell everybody we take it so seriously the responsibility that we have to all of you every day when we wake up and our team

the way that we think about it is like you gave us your hard earned cash and your money because you support and you believe in something that is a leap of faith which we do not take for granted and also I know that there's so many things that people still want to see about the show. We try to be humble. We have made so many mistakes,

and we will always try to not only own up to them, but improve upon them. So on the new set, you're going to see many things which I know people have asked about. We've already got a panel that is booked for the very first week. We've got politicians that are going to be coming in here. We are going to be coming in here. We are going to try and level up and take things exactly to where you always wanted it to go. So consider it a building period, a learning period for the two of us. I mean transitioning from just two people who show up to running your own company was an insane transition, I think. Just at a very basic fundamental level.

And then also having to sit here and continue to do the show. Like, so many different things changed. Yeah, and, you know, I want to say Ryan and Emily joining the fold and what they've put together with Counterpoints, which I, you know,

I'm a fan of. I enjoy watching it. I enjoy when I fill in for Ryan, too. You know, they have their own dynamic and energy. A lot of times they're issue-focused, a little different I'm a fan of. I enjoy watching it. I enjoy when I fill in for Ryan too. You know, they have their own dynamic and energy. A lot of times they're issue focused, a little different from ours. I think it has been so additive to the overall what we've been able to do here. And that just sort of like, you know,

came together in a way that has been really exciting. You know, our whole crew that supports us every day. Like, thank you guys so much. You guys have been amazing. Anytime we want, you know, we come up with these crazy ideas. Let's do a live stream. And you guys so much. You guys have been amazing. Anytime we want, we come up with these crazy ideas. Let's do a live stream for whatever.

And they just do it. All right, let's figure it out. Here's how it's going to work. Griffin and Mac both knew this year. And let me tell you, they have really stepped up. Both of them, Mac is really integral

in everything we do. But in particular, he's taken a particular focus on counterpoints, has done a phenomenal job building them up. Griffin has really spearheaded this new set development, which is a whole thing, and I can't tell you how grateful I am to not be parsing through all the details there

and to have the confidence that he just has it handled. Those two guys, absolutely amazing. Yeah, they changed the game for us. Totally top-notch, and they really have brought so much to the table in terms of development of the show. And it's just getting started. Exactly. And you're the ones who made any of that possible. You're the only reason that we can even pay for real talent to come in here.

That's right. And it's just, you know, all the guys in the control room. I remember our very first set, everybody said, hey, the audio sucks. It's like, hey, guess what? Daily audio, we pay for it now thanks to all of it. We don't even think about it, too. It's one of those where it's like a baked-in cost. It's not going to change. Anything, whenever it comes to the quality of the show, it's not something that you and I blink twice at spending money on. I was just looking at the

original computer that we bought, and we were talking to the guys in the control room before the show about how much we had trouble with all that processing time. And that was the first real purchase that we were able to make, that iMac, being like, we have an M1 iMac that can actually before the show about how much we had trouble with all that processing time. And that was the first real purchase that we were able to make. That iMac, being like, we have an M1 iMac that can actually process. Now we've graduated to some gigantic monstrosity, which barely even looks like a computer

to be capable of handling 4K and all these brand new cameras that we're looking at. I mean, it's slow and steady, but also when you think about how much has changed over the last two years, it's remarkable. So I think that's a good place to leave things. BreakingPoints.com, if you're able to help us out throughout all this, if you made it this far,

if you're watching this video. And just programming reminder. This is our last, these are our last moments on the set. Yep, last time. Take a look around the brick. Yeah, the Calvin and Hobbes, the TV. All of this.

All of the shelves. We do, it's a little preview on the new set does have little shelves too. They're a little smaller for our, you know, our little mementos.

So that, some aspect will carry over. But yeah, this is it for this set. We're going to do the show remotely next week while everything gets built down and while we test it

and make sure everything is ready to go. And then, assuming all goes according to plan, week after, new set. And don't forget, there will be a surprise little event for premium subscribers where they will get the first look at the set

and they will get it well, well before anybody else. So if you want to sign up, breakingpoints.com. Like I said, otherwise, we will see you all remotely next week. Love you guys. See you soon. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever.

I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms, but not your mommy.

Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast.

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Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.