Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/13/22: Inflation Record, Gas Prices, Gun Legislation, 2024 Election, WaPo Chaos, Societal Decay, Jan 6th Hearings, & More!

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the inflation numbers and gas prices, bipartisan gun deal, Biden 2024, Trump 2024, WaPo in disarray, liberals prioritizing J6 over economy, widespread societal decay, and a reflection on the January 6th hearings!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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Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. As you guys know, the big January 6th committee hearings have commenced. We will break down for you what happened last week and what is expected for today, as well as Sagar and I both have our takes on our sort of macro view of the whole thing. Sagar causing a lot of trouble online. I'm sorry, Crystal. I always get in trouble. And me getting the blowback from it. Anyway, we'll get into all of that.

Also, potentially a deal on guns. Yes. Chris Murphy, who has been leading the bipartisan negotiations with 10 Republicans. So, you know, that's how many you need in the Senate to actually get something passed. They have come up with a framework. We will tell you what is in that and what the likelihood of that actually becoming law is. We also have some grave new numbers on inflation with the Federal Reserve Board meeting this week. Very, very dire economic indicators there that we will get into. We've also got sort of both sides of the coin in terms of 2024. Increasingly alarmed Democrats questioning whether Biden's going to be too old and whether he is really the best candidate to take on potentially Trump and also

some indications on the Republican side of the aisle that Trump is also not clearing the field. And that especially Ron DeSantis is considering taking a run at this thing as well. Color me skeptical, but we will give you those indicators as well. We've also got the very latest from the whole WAPO in disarray, both in terms of Taylor Lorenz and that column she wrote that was filled with lies. And then they had to put it on an editor's note, and the editor's note was still not correct. Their own media columnist taking aim at that column in the Washington Post, handling of it. Also, Felicia Samnez, who was the reporter at the center of the whole Dave Weigel situation, has now officially been fired.

So we will tell you about all of that as well. But we wanted to start with your pocketbook and the extraordinarily dire numbers that came out the end of last week on inflation. Yeah, most important issue in the country. There's just no way around it. So we're filming this before the stock market opens. But right now, all indications of the S&P 500 is poised to drop at least by 2.5 percent, possibly up to 3.2 percent, which the Wall Street Journal says would officially put it into bear market territory. So it doesn't – I mean, look, these are all semantics.

You know, they have technical definitions to exactly how much is down. It means 20% down from a recent high. That's right. So 20% down from a recent high. But look, even if it's down 17, like, it's not great. And all of it is spurred by the most recent inflation numbers, which, look, no way getting around it. Complete and total disaster. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that we now know that the year-over-year inflation is now up to 8.6% in May.

That is the highest in the United States since 1981 and the new post-pandemic record. So that includes gas prices, food prices, and shelter costs, which drove the majority of the May increase. And there is no sign of a slowdown. In May alone, inflation was still up by a whopping 1%. And I think that driving into some of the other major indicators that show you how inflation is just nuking Americans' pocketbooks, put this up there on the screen, the next one, please, which just shows you groceries are up 11.9% year over year. That's the biggest increase in take-home food since 1979. Chicken is up 17.4%. Some very interesting

stuff on the chicken supply chain. Restaurants up 9%. Fuel oil, 107%. So if you're in a rural area and you have to pay for fuel oil based on contracts, you're getting absolutely nuked this winter. Electricity is up 12%. That's the largest increase since 2006. Rent is up 5.2. I do want to say that is the national average. From what I'm hearing, the urban averages can be up to 15 to 20%. So that is just the national average in like Podunk, wherever, where if you include where the largest renter areas are, it's actually much, much higher for the majority of the population. Now, airfare is actually up 37.8%. That again is a purely both pandemic demand driven and jet fuel. I mean, jet fuel, if you think gas is expensive, jet fuel is like even

more expensive. And then finally, and this is also extraordinarily troubling, is that services are up by 5.7. So the fact that the service economy is also jacking up prices just shows you that inflation really is, even at the most modest level, like 6% there. But in many, many critical areas, you're seeing double-digit inflation in the most critical areas of life, Crystal. I just want, those were going up because they're having trouble shipping the goods seamlessly around the world because we've set up such a sort of fragile supply chain. That is all still true. But now you're seeing that inflation hit every single sector, including services which don't require those global inputs. Yeah, absolutely.

So you conclude all of that. And we have a big mess on our hands. What's the White House's response? President Biden, he was actually at the port of Los Angeles, which is the genesis of some of these issues. Who do you think he I'd like to speak about my top economic priority, fighting inflation. I understand Americans are anxious and their anxious is a good reason. I was raised in a household when the price of gasoline rose precipitously. It was the discussion at the table. It made a difference when food prices went up. But we've never seen anything like Putin's tax on both food and gas. Well, did you know, Crystal, that Putin personally is taxing food and gas?

You know, it's funny. I've been seeing comments like, man, Putin is raising rent prices in, like, Ames, Iowa. You know, who knew the reach of the Russians? All powerful, all knowing. Just be honest with people. I mean, just be honest, which is we have a supply chain crisis. Look, obviously we had crazy demand inflation as a result of both stimulus, but also just cooped up people going out and then spending. We have the

summer driving season and beyond that, beyond what went wrong, what are you going to do about it? Like really try and give a plan to the American people. But they just have, it just mystifies me that they continue to think that this is the one area, which is the area of the public, which we have some polling we'll show later in the show, that they least blame inflation on. The public knows actually what's going on. Yeah. Well, and there are all these pieces out now that are like, Biden is so frustrated that, you know, they want to do everything they can about inflation, but there's just not that much they can do. And all the quoting, all these economists like, ah, what are you going to do? I mean, okay, let's take the Putin price

hike thing at face value because it is very silly to think that's all the entirety of what's going on. But there's no doubt that that is a piece of it, especially when it comes to food prices and gas prices because of, by the way, our own actions and deciding to embargo Russian oil. OK, well, it's not like we're totally hands off from that conflict and we have nothing to do about it and there's nothing we can do about it. In fact, we could be putting pressure on both sides to come to the table and negotiate a compromise so that that war ends and that Putin's price hike goes away. So even that is extremely disingenuous, like, oh, it's out of our hands, the war in Ukraine. We're shipping tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. We are deeply involved in this thing at every single level.

We could be putting that pressure on, but we're not. So even on that front, even if you take the Putin's price hike thing at face value, like there are things that we could do there. Oh, yeah. Even beyond that, and let's put this next piece up on the screen here from Jeff Stein about who Americans blame for inflation. And they're not wrong about this, by the way. The number one area they place the blame on is actually corporations trying to increase profits. That's not 100 percent of what's going on either. But yeah, that's a lot. And that is an area where the White House, again, could have a direct impact. And I think it was Jeff

who did the reporting about how there were, you know, there were some people in the White House who were saying, listen, go out and go after the corporate price gouging, call them out, use your power as the presidency with executive action to take aim at these corporations and the way that they're hiking profits above and beyond their own increase in costs. And we know that's the case because their profit margins went up extraordinarily last year. But they didn't want to do, they were nervous about doing, they weren't sure that was the right thing to do. So, you know, the obvious things they could do that are in their hands, they have taken off the table entirely. And unfortunately, Christine, I did that whole monologue on this. A lot of the corporate price gouging, they got most of what they could already. And this is another issue

with the Biden administration. By not acting a year earlier, he actually could have tamped down on the profit maximization that was happening in the stock market in 2021. But already, the reason that stocks are down and the reason that corporations can't hike prices even more is they've basically gone to their full extent. And now they're losing money. That's part of the reason why the Dow has dropped. By the way, if anybody wants a deal, go to Target. Target has a disaster right now because there's way too much inventory on its hand. and it's slashing its prices by like 40%. Might be good for you in the short term, but target stock is dramatically down, and it's indicative of consumer prices. But the point that I'm making is that Biden, by not acting or even not even floating action until now, makes it so that many of the things that were on the table to stem some of the ties of inflation when it was 3%, 4% are almost impossible whenever you're

talking about 12%. Here's the other issue. Is anybody really going to give Joe Biden credit from dropping from 12 to 8? I mean, 8 is still a disaster. So by not getting out ahead of it, he's screwed himself politically and actually resigned us really all to pretty much runaway inflation. And I think my scariest thing that I saw this morning, which is from Bloomberg, which is that this is a headline, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is facing an increasingly grim calculus. He probably has to push the economy into recession in order to regain control of prices. And look, this is Biden's fault. I mean, to allow things to get so bad and to have the political system essentially break down that now all we have left is the Fed.

Well, the Fed has – it's a blunt tool. You know, it has one instrument. It has always been the knowledge. They can push us into recession. That will certainly drive demand down. And sure, it'll take care of inflation. But then we're going to have unemployment to 7%, 7.5%. I mean, it's a disaster. And it's not like,

you know, even by pushing the economy into recession, let's say that we do drive price demand of gasoline. Okay. I mean, now it's right now it's $5. What are they going to push it to? $4.50? $4? That's still very high. I mean, by not dealing with the supply problems, which is the job of Congress and of the president, they're truly, I mean, we could have a stagflation type scenario. I think we really are back in the 1970s. Yeah. And again, just one more point on there are things that the Biden administration could do. All right. He's already, you know, war in Ukraine, pushing to end that. We didn't have to embargo Russia's oil, but we made that choice. Biden made that choice. You didn't make that choice. Biden made that choice. Okay. That's, that's one thing. They've already flipped on

their Saudi policy. So they're now bending the knee to MBS to get, try to convince OPEC to increase. Yeah. To increase oil because Saudi oil so much more humane and so much, yeah, so much more humanitarian than Russian oil. All right. There's that one. You know, it wouldn't fix the whole problem, but you could do the Iranian nuclear deal and also have, you know, access to Iranian oil. But then the Saudis won't pump oil. You could. That's true. There you go.

The Venezuelans that you also. So it's not like there's nothing that you could do that's on the table. But it is gas is probably one of the more difficult things ultimately for them to deal with. And if you look at the numbers, Biden's approval rating goes slides down and down and down as the gas price goes up and up and up. So, you know, as you hear pundits talking about all of the various things that are going on in our politics, you would be hard pressed to find a more direct indicator of how Biden's doing than what the gas price ultimately is. With regards to the Fed, the Fed meets this week. We will have an announcement later this week as to what their

next move will be. Prior to this report, the expectation was that they would hike interest rates by another half percent. And now there are a number of analysts who are saying because of this report, their expectation is that we will have a 0.75 percent rate increase. So that's part of why it's actually a big part of why the markets are kind of in freefall right now is because they recognize that those inflation numbers will push the Fed towards more aggressive action, which I mean, that's what the whole point of that is to tighten the supply, to make money, you know, to make it so that people have less money, are less able to purchase and less able to take out loans, to slow the economy. And to ultimately, I mean, it is looking increasingly likely that it is going to be impossible to have a soft landing and we are headed to a recession. There's no soft landing. They're going to have to destroy the housing market and they're going to have to do something called demand destruction, which is basically raise rates and make it so impossible for capital in order to borrow that they can't have any investment. And I honestly think that is the worst possible outcome because we're going to destroy our housing

market. I'm not saying that it didn't need to cool down, but capital expenditure is going to go way down. What happens in the middle of recession? People don't invest in anything. They just start cutting costs. So we're going to be pushing businesses back to the incentive of just-in-time delivery, just at a moment where we shouldn't have just-in-time delivery. We actually need to make it cheaper for corporations in order to indulge in inventory. Because part of the issue that we all fell into in the pandemic was that inventory became a nasty word, having it on your book. So corporations did just in time. And then the supply chain crisis hits and boom, we all get hit with a massive price increase. So we're actually reverting away from where we should be. We're going to be in a much more precarious economy. And ultimately consumers, you know,

I was just reading this morning, food at home cost as in grocery store food is somehow higher than restaurant food. Somebody needs to explain that to me. It's 11% inflation for food at home, and it's only 7% in a restaurant. I don't know what's going on. I think the government should investigate that. But beyond that, I was reading some 35%, 40% of customers are now engaging in different price and price sensitivity for grocery stores. They're not shopping in the way that they normally were. They're buying half gallons of milk instead of gallons of milk. People are like pouring water into, I mean, this is 1930s Great Depression level. And this is like little kids.

Oh, here's the other thing. Shrinkflation is happening. Cereal boxes are now 17% less than what they were like two years ago. So you're getting less cereal for the money. Now you're having less milk to give to your kids. It's a real, like, you know, that stuff leaves real scars on families for a long time. Kids grow up with that, you know, remembering how their parents had to scrimp and save. It's not good in the richest country. Well, we talked about how since the expiration of the child tax credit, half of families, half say they're struggling to feed their families and feed their kids. And it's, you know, a large part of that is loss of the child tax credit, which, you know, the foolish calculation there was, oh, Republicans will

definitely join us to reauthorize this, or it'll be a great issue for us in the midterms. None of that worked out. But, you know, families are really struggling because of its expiration. And then the other part, obviously, is prices going up. And so the money that you do have is just not going as far as it used to or anywhere close to that. And as we were just saying, I mean, the gas price piece is so extraordinarily difficult. And what you're seeing is all of the things that make up the largest percentage of working class people's budgets, gas, rent, food, are some of the highest levels of inflation across those categories. And it's just brutal. I mean, there's no other way to put it. Let's go ahead and put the gas price piece up on the screen so you can see. Hit that $5 mark. I mean, it really is. I'm actually surprised that we aren't seeing more direct unrest from $5 a gallon gasoline. And I think it's just so baked into people now that,

oh, well, this is the landscape. This is what we're facing. Well, it shouldn't be. I mean, you guys know how to track this very closely. So the average American consumer is going to be spending somewhere like $400 a month just on gas. $400 a month in outlays just on gas, which is up over 100% from what they were spending about a year and a half ago. So really consider just how much that is going to impact the bottom line. California right now is at $6.43 a gallon, okay? There are 40 million people who live in California. That's 12% of the US population. And we have multiple states now that are pushing $5 a gallon. You can see there who are just watching, the West Coast is getting destroyed. Oregon at $5.50, Washington $5.50, New Mexico $5.30, Nevada $5.60. Washington, $5.50. New Mexico, $5.30. Nevada, $5.60. Alaska and Hawaii are both pushing

$5.50 as well. Now, there's a state called Illinois. Somebody may want to tell me if it's politically important at $5.50 a gallon. Indiana pushing $5 a gallon as well. And you can see there are multiple states in the Midwest. Michigan at $5.20. Ohio is pushing $5. Pennsylvania, where they have some very important elections, is over $5 a gallon. New York is at $5 a gallon. Massachusetts, so the Midwest. Cheapest gas in the country remains in the state of Georgia. I still have not been able to figure out exactly why, but kind of interesting there. And the Sunbelt in the South, you know, below $5, but still, even in my own home state, Texas, with a ton of oil refineries, they're at $4.66. So this is a national story. Everybody in the country can feel the crunch that is happening

with the gas price, and it is just demolishing folks. I mean, to their credit, actually, the Today Show over at NBC News just went and interviewed normal people at the gas pump, and they were like, hey, like, how is this affecting your life? Let's take a listen to what some of those people had to say. The average price for a gallon of gas has now hit five dollars, according to AAA, the most expensive in history. It's totally insane. I was actually dreading coming to the gas station because I know it's going to be one hundred dollars once I pump. Stock markets down on the news that inflation is up 8.6% year over year,

worse than the previous month, now hitting the highest levels in 40 years. I think it's really strangling to people. And Americans are feeling the squeeze at every turn. Even in that report, they talked to, these are the guys I really feel for, the owner operators of these truck rigs. These guys have, you know, they were already floating on razor-thin margins. And actually, you know, even right now, there's, the diesel price is much higher. It's actually 570 a gallon. And diesel futures, I've explained before how middle distillates, diesel and jet fuel, and all of them have been separating from gas in price, which is actually making the supply chain worse because that stuff is baked into your food.

That stuff is baked into all of your logistical costs. And, I mean, their margins are dead. I mean, these guys are – I doubt they're even breaking even at this point. Or if they are, I mean, they're just having to charge more and more and more, and that's just contributing even more so to runaway inflation. So gas and diesel are destroying a lot of the pocketbooks of Americans. If you include food, people are substantially poorer today than they were two years ago. I mean, to the tune of almost like 16 or 17 percent. Well, and then we also wonder why, oh, why don't we have enough truck drivers?

Oh, yeah. Because they're losing, literally losing money, you know, in the contracts on those. A lot of those owner-operators are extremely exploitative to start with, and then you add in the gas crunch. It's just completely intolerable. I don't know how we get out of this one. Like you said, I'm honestly kind of surprised. You know, California is one. I cannot imagine paying $6.50 a gallon.

And in the city of Los Angeles, some of those people are paying near seven. Like I said, Mendocino County. There are counties in California where the average price of gas is $7, which is nuts. I mean, when you start to dig out, I think it's, yeah, Mono County, California, is it $7.20 a gallon? I mean, up in Northern California, like Humboldt and, well, I'm not even going to try and say that, but some $6.70. So look, you're pushing seven, even $7.80 in some places, like the Alpine County, California, $7.79 a gallon. Like I said, there's a lot of people there. And California, in a lot lot of ways has been over five. It really is the future.

But also we're not seeing demand destruction in California. People are still driving. They still have a lot of stuff that they have to do. They've been cooped up there for two years. Well, they have no choice. Yeah, well, especially there you have no choice. Yeah, and then you couple this with a lot of bosses who are like, get your asses back in the office for the white-collar workers. She's not helping things either.

And, yeah, I mean, our public transit in almost all of the country is complete shit. So people don't have any other option. What else are you going to do? You have no other choice. So it's a dire situation, and we'll be watching closely what the Fed does this week, as everyone else will, because ultimately, in a lot of ways, our fate is in their hands too. 100%. So everybody stay tuned. Okay, guys, a big announcement from Senator Chris Murphy on a potential bipartisan deal to address the mass shooting epidemic that we've been suffering in this country for a

long time now. Let's go ahead and put Chris Murphy's thread here up on the screen. I'm going to read through all of this so you get all the details. He says, we have a deal by partisan group of 20 senators, 10D and 10R, announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence. So the first piece here is major funding to help states pass and implement crisis intervention orders. Those are the so-called red flag laws. Billions in new funding for mental health and school safety, a Republican priority there, including money for the national build-on of community mental health clinics.

Next piece, and this one directly relates to guns, closed the, quote, boyfriend loophole so that no domestic abuser, a spouse, or a serious dating partner can buy a gun if they're convicted of abuse against their partner. First ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing should make a difference to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities. Enhanced background check. This one is kind of a key part. For under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check, young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed. So they're not lifting the age that you can buy the gun, but they are instituting a more sort of intensive background check process for buyers under 21. And there will

be a pause there. So I guess that means you can't just like, it's not the instantaneous background check that exists now for those who are under 21. They also mention clarification of the laws regarding who needs to register as a licensed gun dealer to make sure all truly commercial sellers are doing background checks. That's something they looked at last time around with the Manchin-Toomey bill as well. He closes by saying, will this bill do everything we need to end our nation's gun violence epidemic? No, but it's real meaningful progress. It breaks the 30-year logjam, demonstrating Democrats and Republicans can work together in a way that truly saves lives. The Republicans who are involved in this, just so you know the names, are Cornyn, Tillis, Blunt, Burr, Cassidy, Collins,

Graham, Portman, Romney, and Toomey. So those are the 10 Republicans that have signed on. Obviously, that's a key number because if you get the 50 Democrats, which we assume they'd all be on board, plus the 10 Republicans, you're able to break the filibuster and actually get this thing through the Senate. Biden reacted. He issued a positive statement. He says, each day that passes, more children are killed in this country. The sooner this comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, the sooner we can use these measures to save lives. He says some things about, look, this doesn't go as far as I want, but at least it's an important step in the right direction. Also, a relatively positive statement from Mitch McConnell is somewhat noncommittal, but generally positive from McConnell. Go ahead and put this next piece up. He says he supports gun proposal negotiations

and again, reiterated sort of his priorities there, that it addresses key issues like mental health, school safety, respects the Second Amendment, and earns broad support in the Senate. So, I mean, what's being proposed here on guns is extremely limited. It's, you know, basically the enhanced background checks for those who are purchasing and are under the age of 21, closing the so-called boyfriend loophole, beefing up the straw purchasing laws, which I do actually think is really significant. I talked before about those numbers of how many of the small number of stores that sell the overwhelming majority of guns that are ultimately used in violent crime. So that does actually matter. Listen, I said before, is this like everything that I would want it to be?

No, of course not. But I feel it's so important just to get something done so the American people have some sense of like, oh, we actually are able to react and enact legislation after something horrible happens where there's overwhelming public support in favor of doing something. So from that perspective, I certainly support it. There's still, though, Sagar, a lot of question marks whether it will actually get through. This is not, the legislation hasn't been drafted. This is a framework. And the other piece here is Republicans want the money for mental health, these community clinics to be offset by other budget cuts. Where

will that come from? So that's a big question mark as well. Classic, yeah. We always have to play deficit fakery, but not whenever we ship arms to Ukraine, of course. Of course, yeah. That's totally different. We love Americans' priorities here, of course. Look, like I said, I mean, I've voiced my own concerns about red flag laws. That being said, it's not a terrible bill because what it does is it provides funding to states if they want to pass a red flag law. So it's not forcing a national red flag law. It says that they will implement crisis intervention orders and fund those centers if the states choose to do so. So look, you know, I'm generally a supporter of federalism. So if that's what they want to do, then I think that's fine. You know,

it's up to the states like Connecticut, New York, or others, or Florida, and how they want to have enforcement. And ultimately, that has to be litigated at the state level. The rest of it, I mean, beyond the, and that's, if this thing falls apart, it will almost certainly be on the red flag provisions, because they actually write in the provision that it has to be contingent with civil liberties. I looked into this a little bit. It's kind of wonky and all over the place, which is that the standard is different state by state on different red flag laws. So some have much stronger civil liberties due process, due process provisions within the state. I think Colorado is one. But there's actually a much

higher barrier to proof on mental health commitment than there is on the red flag due process part in states like New Mexico. So anyway, that is going to be a point of contention. higher barrier to proof on like mental health commitment than there is on the red flag due process part in states like New Mexico. So anyway, that is going to be a point of contention. That's where the NRA always points to, by the way, whenever they come out against these things. I do actually think that this one about the juvenile background checks, that one's great because even though it doesn't raise the age to 21, it makes it so that you're allowed to look at juvenile records and have a more further investigation for people who are buying under 21. Given that we have these limited number of

instances with the Nicholas Cruises of the world and the guy who shot up the Uvalde school, and they both had some past instances, brief whatevers with law enforcement, and were known having some sort of investigative period, you know, without also infringing on people's rights to buy a gun. Overall, I think it's like not a terrible piece of legislation. Like I said, you know, as long as it leaves it up to the states to be able to do what they want. And I actually do think it's going to pass, Crystal. I do. Even though it is these 10 Republicans and it has some possibility to fall apart, the weakest link in the chain is

going to be John Cornyn, given that he's from the state of Texas, and Texas does not support red flag law whatsoever. So he is probably the most likely to fold there, given political pressure. The rest of them are either retiring, or they're very much in kind of a more centrist position, like a Lindsey Graham or Bill Cassidyidy or even a Tom Tillis in North Carolina. He comes from a more conservative state. But the rest of them, actually, Susan Collins could have some shakeup there. Maine is a very pro-gun state, actually, because it's more rural. So we'll see, like I said. But overall, I mean, I think that NRA and gun orgs will probably come out against it, given the red flag provision. But I don't think they're

going to fight as hard. It doesn't ban anything. Right. I mean, NRA is against literally everything. So, I mean, they're not a constructive partner in any of these talks or discussions. I also, I'm interested in seeing the details of the mental health provision because, you know, I do think that's extremely important. People having access to mental health resources. We know that mental health is a massive and growing challenge in America because of a whole host and range of issues. And the fact that we don't have universal health care obviously makes it so you've got a lot of people who are completely disconnected from the medical system altogether who certainly don't have coverage for any sort of mental health care. So expanding, you know, a network of community mental health clinics.

And that could be, you know, so the details there matter. How much money is put towards that? How significant will that be in terms of getting people the help that they ultimately need? So again, listen, there are a lot of other things I would like to do. But if you can even take a few positive steps forward to curb some of the deaths from suicide, domestic abuse, homicides, and mass shootings, if you can even curb them by a small percentage, given how high the number here is in America, I think that's worth engaging in and worth taking that step forward. Let me read Matthew McConaughey's reaction, the most McConaughey reaction of all time from his Instagram. Is it all right, all right, all right? It's even better. It's very poetic. What's the best change you can imagine? I asked the senator the course of my 30 bipartisan meetings. Something, he replied. I laughed. He didn't. For the first time in 30 years, something has happened.

The senators agreed on a bipartisan framework. Something has been done in an effort to stop some of the deranged individuals. With every horrific act, abuse, and hijack of the Second Amendment, something has moved that we can hope we can deliver on our shared effort to make the loss of so many lives matter. I do offer a firm handshake and a sincere thank you to the members of both sides who came together. Camilla and I would like to specifically thank the Republican senators. Let's recognize that today's announcement doesn't mean that we have a solution, but it does support more responsible gun ownership.

Just keep living, McConaughey. It's longer, but it's written also in like, I don't know, it's not iambic pentate. I forget what it's even called, but it's written like in center script, almost literally like in prose, like a poem. So go to his Instagram. It's on his Instagram story. I mean, that does kind of capture how I feel about it. Like, just show the country that you're able to do something in response to just unconscionable, horrific tragedy. That alone, I get it, that bar is very, very low,

but that alone I think is worth taking the step forward for. So I guess I have a little bit more skepticism than you that ultimately it comes to pass just because of how many times I've been burned getting my hopes up about legislation here in D.C. before. There could always be some sort of fly in the ointment that dooms the whole thing. But this is a very positive sign of rare bipartisan progress in Washington. Yeah, I mean, I think it would be the first gun legislation to pass since 1998, which is pretty nuts. That's right. Think about it. That's more than 20 years. Well, there's been lots of movement in the other direction, especially at the state level, you know, loosening gun restrictions. So this would be the first time that we that we're saying all right let's take a step more towards making sure that these weapons

are ending up in the right hands i mean that's ultimately what this is about so this has that at its core kind of the principle it really matters who it's not so much what the weapon is but whose hands it ends up into and i think that that is uh i think that's a wise approach ultimately. Yeah. OK, we have some new interesting noises coming from the Democratic Party. This is really pretty significant. Big write up in The New York Times about whether or not Biden should run in 2024. Go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. So the headline here is, should Biden run in 2024? Democratic whispers of no start to rise. They say in interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the president's ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans. And Sagar, they very gingerly in this article suggest that maybe Biden is not quite as with it as he once was. Okay. So I guess that taboo is now sort of going off the table now that it's manifestly clear to everyone. Listen, this is an old guy, you know, I mean, he's not, yeah, he's not, he's not where he was. Let me read you a couple of the

quotes here, because this is, this, is extraordinary, especially coming from The New York Times, which is kind of like, you know, they're they're channeling the right track would flagrantly depart from reality. Mr. Biden should announce his intent not to seek reelection in 24 right after the midterms. So that's one. You've got another one here from a woman named Anne Hart. She's a Democratic Party co-chair in an important county in Iowa. She actually endorsed Biden in the 2020 caucuses. She introduced him at a campaign stop in her area. And she says she can't imagine how Biden manages the presidency at 79 years old. And she talks about how she's in her 60s and she can't even herself imagine handling that job. She says, I get asked to run for things. Are you kidding? I'm 64.

We need youth. So I kind of admire him wanting to take this on. I hope he'll pass the torch. Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race. She said that can't be Biden. But the real attention grabber here was from former Barack Obama aide David Axelrod. Go ahead and put this one up on the screen, this is pretty extraordinary stuff. He says the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than he would be to 80 at the end of a second term. And that would be a major issue. He goes on to say, and I thought this was, I don't know.

He says Biden doesn't get the credit he deserves for steering the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing historic legislation, pulling the NATO alliance together, blah, blah, blah. And part of the reason he doesn't is performative. He looks his age and isn't as agile in front of a camera as he once was. And this has fed a narrative about competence that isn't rooted in reality. So there's a lot going on there in that quote. First of all, I mean, he's trying to give the most favorable narrative for Biden possible. But even within that extremely favorable narrative, he admits that, you know, there's a performance issue here. But I just think, I don't know, I'm seeing all these takes lately about how, oh, he's not getting the credit

he deserves and voters just don't understand. And why don't they care about the things they're supposed to care about, like January 6th? And it's like, listen, maybe the problem isn't their messaging or isn't their like not getting the credit they deserve. Maybe the problem is that they're actually not delivering for people. Maybe that's the issue is the substance, not the messaging or the sloganeering. Shocking. And look, on Biden's age, you know, Nate Silver put this out. I think journalists and political elites are, for the most part, too polite about discussing the age of candidates. It is quite reasonable for voters to be concerned about someone in their late 70s or older, given the demands of the job. Look, Biden would be 86 years old at the end of his

second term. Oh, my God. That's crazy town. Like Like I had dinner before the election with a guy who was 78 and he looked at me and he was like, I'm 78 years old. He's like, I am at the twilight of my life. He's like, the idea that I could assume the most stressful position in the free world and do it competently every day. He told me this quote is bat shit crazy. He's being self-aware. And listen, I'm not saying that some old people can't do the job. It's obviously very hit or miss once you start to push like 75. But it's crazy to me that the senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, is in open decline and clearly has dementia. Sad. Really sad.

It's such a sad because that assumes that it's all about her. I'm sorry. This is public service. Like, the idea that 40 million people are not having their interests adequately represented on Capitol Hill is frankly bullshit. Like, you cannot hold that position when you're 90-something years old and you can't remember people's names. You just can't do it. We would never, if you were the CEO of a publicly traded company, which is far less of an important job, the board of directors would say, we thank you for your service, but you got to move on in the interest of shareholders. We're all shareholders in the U.S. government, and yet we are not allowed to speak as openly about this. The fact that the president would be 80-something years old when he's running

already for reelection, that's nuts. I mean, it's just frankly nuts. Now, look, we may be judging it against Trump, who is himself obese and also nearly 80 years old. So, you know, look, look, that would certainly be a consideration, but we have to talk about it. We have to. That gets to the crux of the problem here, because it's like, well, okay, that's definitely an issue, but then who's your alternative? And, you know, for Democrats, that's really the problem.

I don't think there's any illusions now about how the Biden presidency is going. Yeah, that's right. Like, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at the numbers

and say, this is not working out well. And he clearly is, you know, partially in hiding. I mean, he does many fewer interviews than other presidents have done. The only interview he does with Jimmy Kimmel. Right.

What is that? He's very, I mean, he's very inaccessible. We just don't see that much of him. And that's clearly because, you know, when he does make comments, oftentimes he says something that then his aides are having to clean up and they're very uncomfortable with his performance. It's just very clear that it's halting and not commanding presence at this point. But then you're like, OK, so then Kamala Harris. No, that's that's worse. Like I would vote for if my choices were 86 year old Biden or however old Kamala Harris is, I would definitely pick 86 year old Biden. Right. If my choices are 86 year old Biden and 80 year old Trump, or however old Kamala Harris is, I would definitely pick 86-year-old Biden, right?

If my choices are 86-year-old Biden and 80-year-old Trump, I'm picking 86-year-old Biden. I mean, so that's the problem that you end up with is like, you know, we have a political class that is disgustingly hollow and vapid and motivated by all the wrong things. They're not sending their best, as you might say. And so that's kind of the logic that they're locked into is like, you know, they might engage in these fantasies of, oh, what if we replaced him with, I know that the one they would really like is Pete Buttigieg. But they don't really know how to pull that off. And so I don't know. I really don't know how it's all going to play out. I think Biden is truly committed to running for another term.

I think if he is at all like capable of formulating a sentence, I think they're going to prop him up because I do think, you know, they can't they're not going to be able to figure out a way to hopscotch over Kamala. I personally don't think that Pete would be particularly better electorally. And certainly I don't think he would be better in terms of actual governance than Biden. So yeah, they're kind of stuck. They may know that they're screwed, but they're still kind of stuck. Yeah, I've been toying with this idea in my head about a prisoner's dilemma for both parties, which is that Joe Biden is a Democrat and he's historically unpopular. He would almost be beaten by any generic Republican in 2024. But no generic Republican can beat Donald Trump in a primary for the GOP. Also, only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump in a general election. So it's like one of those things where, yeah, Biden is the very historically unpopular Democrat,

and any generic R could beat him, but that person could never beat Trump. And then the only Dem that I see on the national scale that even has a chance against Trump is probably Joe Biden. So you really get yourself stuck in a bad situation. It's exactly the choice that we face in 2020. It's extraordinarily likely that's going to be the choice that we face in 2024. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, they really boxed himself in with Kamala. You know, I'm reading that book, This Will Not Pass. And the delusion within these people, the idea that Kamala was going to add something to the ticket is insane. And really, they just got boxed in by identity politics. They got Jim Clyburn and Al Sharpton and all these people.

You've got to pick a black woman. And it's like, okay, well, when you pick somebody solely based upon their identity versus their actual political skill and what actual black people want, well, I don't know. That's how you end up in this situation. Kamala and Pete are the future, and I don't think any of them would even crack like 47% of the vote. Yeah. No, it's a dire situation for the Dems. It really, really is. And I think the flip side, you know, they tried to make this case in the article, obviously, I'm not buying this, but just to tell you what the other side of the story is, is like people, you know, Obama's approval ratings were bad going into 2010.

He got shellacked in the midterm. So this is just a lot of hand wringing. But there was not this level of angst among Democrats about Obama. No, I mean, it was, yes, I actually ran for Congress in the 2010 midterm, so I can tell you it was ugly for Democrats, no doubt about it. But Obama was always and continues to be extremely popular with Democrats. He was a great politician. And I mean that in his own right. Right, like, I mean, he was, yeah, he was skilled.

There was no one musing about like, oh, the fact that he can't handle an interview and he's got a presentation problem. No, there was definitely. There was no one musing about like, oh, the fact that he can't handle an interview and he's got a presentation problem. No, there was definitely none of that going on. And so this is decidedly different. I remember Bernie kind of sort of like flirted with maybe running against Obama, and there was just no appetite for that whatsoever. A sitting incumbent president subject to this level of rumors and angst about whether the incumbent president, who has a massive advantage in terms of reelection, is the right candidate to put up next time around. That is that really is extraordinary. despite how disastrous he was on almost every level, there was never any speculation about whether he was going to run again. I mean, he filed for reelect right away, but there was never

any Republican hand-wringing about, ah, I don't know, this guy's really on, this may not be the right guy for the next go-run. No. To have a sitting incumbent president and you're not sure this is the right one to move forward with, that's pretty unusual. I completely agree. Let's move on then to the Trump section, because this really gets to the prisoner's dilemma that I was talking about earlier. Let's put this up there on the screen from the Washington Post. Very interesting reporting about how the shadow race is now underway for the GOP nomination. And this is a direct quote from one of Trump's own pollsters, quote, they're all going to run against him. And so the people that they point to that are openly musing about taking on the president possibly is number one, his own VP, Mike Pence, who's publicly broken

with him, who has come out and endorsed Brian Kemp, did a rally there right after Trump. So clearly putting himself on different sides of stop the steal. The Jan 6 hearings allege that Trump apparently affirmingly said that they should hang Mike Pence. I mean, he says he didn't say it. He said, well, no. Okay. So what they allege is that he said of Mike Pence, like maybe who are people in the Capitol were chanting like, hang Mike Pence. That part we know. They build a gallows outside. That part we all know, right? The reporting was that Trump said, maybe our supporters have the right idea. Oh, okay. All right. So he denies that he directly said, hang Mike Pence, but nobody was saying that he said directly hang Mike Pence. Okay.

Do I believe that he said it? Yeah, I do. Yes. Okay. All right. Anyway, going back to this. So Mike Pence has been openly huddling with some of the DeVos family about his donors and his vision for the Republican Party. Number two is actually Tom Cotton. He's been developing a PowerPoint presentation about how previous candidates failed. He's been showing it to donors. And recently, Tom Cotton was actually booked for an appearance in Iowa. And then number three, I think the most formidable possible candidate in this race is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been talking about the margins for his 2022 re-election. Remember that he ran three points ahead of Trump, actually, in the state of Florida. And look, DeSantis is an extraordinarily popular governor. He razor-thin won the election in 2018. Now he's got a 60 some

percent odd approval rating. He became a national Republican icon during the pandemic during the lockdown strategy. He's been pioneering a lot of these own the libs bills from don't say gay to CRT, which have been very popular in the state of Florida, no matter what you think about them. He has raised teacher pay actually. So, so the teacher's unions are kind of cool with him. He has raised teacher pay, actually. So the teachers unions are kind of cool with him. He's been trying to save the Everglades. So, you know, you can't really put him in a box in a lot of different ways. He's a very, very popular Republican figure. And I would say he's kind of the I would say he's like the poor man's Trump choice for a lot of the D.C. elite. They have reconciled themselves. They're like, well, Trump, I can't stand Trump. But like, Ron,

you know, he's OK. He's like dollar store Trump. He's like a dollar store Trump. But here's the thing. I mean, can he actually beat Trump in a head to head nomination? Let's put this up there on the screen. There was a lot made of this straw poll of the Western Conservative Summit. DeSantis actually beat Trump in that straw poll. He won 71 percent of the vote compared to Trump's 67. So, okay, that's interesting. That kind of shows you amongst the conservative faithful. My friend Jason Willick, let's put this up there on the screen. He's been tracking the prediction markets. So you can see, you know, DeSantis is now actually ahead of Donald Trump in the prediction markets.

Yeah, but they got Nikki Haley number three. That tells you how seriously to take these things. Yeah. So, look, if you were to short that, I would short it. So I'll just say what I think, Crystal, and I'll get your reaction. Yeah. I think it is cope and fantasy that anybody could beat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup. Do some of the GOP not like Trump? Yes. Does he still have an extraordinary level of affection, faith, and love within the base? Yeah, he does. A tremendous amount. So even today, in an unfractured race,

let's say it's DeSantis versus Trump, and many people might even like Ron DeSantis, but the idea of moving on from Trump, I mean, the way I would put it is like this. Trump is a celebrity cultural figure, iconoclast, who also happens to be a politician. DeSantis is a politician, and he is not even close to the level of, like, it's hard to describe, but, like, you don't see people walking around with Let's Go Brandon t-shirts that seem to align with Ron DeSantis. Like, it's all about, it's the Trump movement. He created new voters. He inspired, but I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just giving you an analysis. Trump himself inspires tremendous loyalty beyond the idea of politics, which I think is conceivable to a lot of DC elites. And so they feel comfortable to say like, oh, Ron DeSantis could

beat him and they'll point to some poll here or there and they'll show that Trump can't transfer his popularity to David Perdue. Neither could Obama, but Obama was still tremendously popular, you know, amongst Democrats. So I think Trump is an even more Obama-like figure within the Republican Party. He really is the next Ronald Reagan in the idea that, you know, people are not putting Ron DeSantis' face on t-shirts. Like, they're just not. Ask yourself, even as maybe Trump's endorsement doesn't mean everything that it used to mean, whose endorsement would you rather have, Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis? Yeah, exactly. It's not even close. It's not even close. Yeah, I mean, DeSantis is like a Trump copy. He is like, like you said, a poor man's version of Trump. I mean, he's stylistically

different, but I'm not sure in a way that's actually beneficial for him. I mean, Trump is extraordinarily gifted politician at certain things. And DeSantis doesn't have that level of charisma and sort of like personal appeal. So I think it is cope, and it's like a cope horseshoe of like the sort of Republican elites, you know, and the type of activists that would be at a conference like this who want to, you know, fancy themselves as really committed to the ideas.

That's the whole sort of idea of getting behind Ron DeSantis is like, oh, it's the Trump ideas, but without the Twitter account or whatever. And then elite liberals who also want to believe that maybe the Republican Party could move on from Trump. So it's this sort of like horseshoe of cope that feeds this type of narrative. I also just don't really think that DeSantis would be dumb enough to go up against Trump in a primary. You think he's high on his

own supply? I don't think he's high on his own supply. I don't think he has another shot. So for example, the lesson of Chris Christie was he should have run in 2012. And he made a massive mistake by waiting until 2016. Look, DeSantis is hot right now, whether you like it or not. He's got the juice. He's got all these people in Florida. He's got a tremendous voter base. He's got a national ID. Four years is a freaking eternity in politics. So if DeSantis waits that out, he'll be this old two-term governor sitting in the mansion. Maybe the moment will have passed him by. I mean, personally, I think the most rational choice that DeSantis could make is to run. Black Swan events could happen, right?

Trump is 79 years old, something like that. He could drop dead tomorrow, and we have no idea. He could have a heart attack and die. What would Ron DeSantis, what would his critique of Trump be? So I've seen, here's what DeSantis' soft critique and the first one that he's ever floated publicly against Trump is Trump is the one who instituted these lockdowns and I'm the one who pushed against him. But here's the problem, lockdown juice, there's no juice really in that today. Like, I just, I can see in my head Trump ridiculing DeSantis in a primary, on the stage.

Meaning like he grovels like a little girl for my endorsement, and now he's here talking about me. He probably has like audio of Ron DeSantis begging him to do something, because he's a vindictive man. He hates Ron DeSantis. He wants to be the king of Florida, and the idea that anybody wouldn't bow completely to him, which Ron has kind of refused to do so far, drives him crazy, especially, and this is a rightful thing.

Trump saved Ron DeSantis' ass in the primary in 2018. You know, DeSantis was down like 32 points in that primary. He endorsed DeSantis. DeSantis shot up, won the nomination, and eventually he won governor. So DeSantis does actually owe him for his endorsement back then, which mattered a lot more. And it was a very close election. Everybody thought Andrew Gillum was going to win. It was kind of a shock. It was close, too. Yeah. Anyway, more what I'm saying is Trump has the credibility to say, DeSantis asked me for his endorsement, and now he acts like, groveled to me like a little girl to come in. I can just see it in my head, the way that he would ridicule him. And look, DeSantis, I'm not denigrating him. I think he'd be a way better president, I think, than Trump. He's not crazy. I would happily vote for the man

if he were to get through a GOP primary, but I don't, I just don't see it. Like, I don't see any possible way. I mean, like I said earlier in my prisoner's dilemma for people who are just watching this in clips, I think DeSantis would beat Biden easily by like 53, 54 percent of the popular vote. That being said, I have seen no way that he could get through a GOP primary. So I really don't know. I really don't know how I'm just giving you the analytical view. I think it's Trump's party, period. Yeah. Everybody just has to reconcile with that. Even the, put the last element that we have up for this about this Politico article. Yeah. Better than Trump, DeSantis' clout swells in the West.

This goes into that straw poll that we referenced earlier. And even, so the straw poll is weird because it was like, DeSantis bested Trump 73 to 69 or something like that and was like, those numbers don't add up to 100. The way that they – the question they ask is who – do you want this person to run? So it's not even who would you pick in a head-to-head matchup. It's do you want this person to run for president? And so because Trump is a more divisive figure, it makes sense to me that he might get a lower number than DeSantis, who within the Republican base, I mean, he is divisive in terms of nationally, but within the Republican base is a less divisive figure. But that doesn't answer the question of, OK, if your choices are

Trump or DeSantis, who are you ultimately picking? And to your point, the fact that Trump has a much more loyal following. And plenty of average Republicans across the country don't even know who Ron DeSantis is. So that will enable Trump to be able to define him however Trump decides to define him. I don't see what the DeSantis critique of Trump would ultimately be. I just can't imagine how he like separates himself and makes a real case for why people should go with him instead of the former president. So yeah, I don't see it. And I am, I am much more skeptical that he will ultimately jump into the race, but who knows? I mean, the, the crux of that first article we showed was basically

like Trump is not clearing the field. I don't know. I think you'd have to, you'd take a look at the numbers and you'd be hard-pressed to really think that this was a worthwhile use of your time this time around. But we'll see.

Here's the thing, though. Who wants to be Chris Christie? I mean, look at him. He's denigrated to ABC News. Is DeSantis, he runs for Relact. He's running right now

for Relact? So I, I guess he's... So he'd be in, so he'd still be a governor, you know governor next time around. He'll be the governor regardless. But it's more saying, look, four years from now, the narrative is not going to be anywhere even close to COVID.

Florida right now is rightfully booming. I think that's the thing is that at the end of the day, DeSantis could make a positive case. He's like, look, I got Florida through this pandemic. Our economy is doing better than every single other one. The liberal media hates me. So that's all the credential that you really need. And so I see a world where if Trump doesn't run for some health reason, I think DeSantis, I think he would probably win the nomination. But like I said, I just don't see any way that Trump doesn't run. And barring a black swan health event, which look, you obviously can't rule out,

but you never know. Unlikely, Trump seems to be doing, he honestly looks skinnier than he did while he was in office. It's probably a much healthier lifestyle than out of the White House. He looks much better than, you know, when he was in the White House. The sun seems to agree with him. So given all of that, you know, you just have to assume that he's probably going to run. I don't see a world that he would beat him. That being said, if I was him, I would run. I don't think that you don't have a chance. Like, you going to be, you're going to be much older. The real lesson is that politics is a moment game, but you also risk,

you know, being dramatic, losing, losing and humiliating. I don't see it because if you, if you run, then you become persona non grata to the whole, to Trump and the whole Trump movement.

That's true. And that, you know, forecloses any sort of a administration position. I mean,. And that, you know, forecloses any sort of administration position. I mean, that's just, you know, then you're really spelling your political death. Whereas if you stay out, then you can live to fight another day in, you know, the next go round. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Let's move on to The Washington Post. WAPO in disarray. All right. So we had you you guys, just a brief overview. We had two big

stories that happened. Number one was Taylor Lorenz. So she smeared two different YouTubers, LegalBytes, and I think the umbrella guy to LegalBytes who we had here on our channel. She's a member of LawTube. Taylor Lorenz basically smeared her and him and said that they were grifting off of the Amber Heard trial and insinuated that they were doing so purely for money. And then she wrote that without contacting them. She put, though, in the story that she had contacted them for comment. Now, both Legal Bytes and the Umbrella Guy were able to prove that that was not true, and there was a messy correction that was issued. Taylor Lorenzo officially then comes out and says, it wasn't me, it was my editor.

Oh, it's never her fault, is it? It's never her fault that she's lying and gets caught being unprofessional online and as a journalist, is it? Very interesting. So, okay, Eric Wemple, the media critic over at The Post, he's done a good job of this. He begins taking fire at his own paper. So here's his little investigation. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Taylor Lorenz said an editor was to blame. Is that okay? So here's what's really interesting. What he points out is that not only was this against Crystal Washington Post policy in order to blame editors for a mistake, but it also, whenever this happens, what he's pointing to is that not only did she violate the internal policy, but that the current investigation that he's done reveals that the editor's note at the top of the story still contains a demonstrable material falsehood because they point out that by Lorenz's own account,

she didn't contact either YouTuber for comment until after the story, a circumstance which is in conflict with the current editor's note. Now, when Wemple actually asked the Washington Post for clarification, they said if the Post can't nail down the facts in an editor's note, where else should we trust it to do so? They said, quote, that stands as is. We won't be able to get into what the internal discussions are. So I think that that is very extraordinary because, and this is what he says, according to three sources in his meeting, one reporter asked the editor of the Washington Post,

editor-in-chief Sally Busby, saying that the colleagues had learned that she had offered this new editor a job but then rescinded the offer. And as a result, she didn't deny that timeline. So now a guy is basically going to lose his job as a result of this story. It's not at all clear, Crystal, whether this is that editor's fault at all and whether Taylor Lorenz lied to her own editor

and is throwing this guy under the bus. But also, isn't it basic journalistic practice to reach out to people for comment? Yeah, well, if you're going to mention somebody in a story, and you're especially going to make an insinuation like that, you absolutely have to do that. Yeah, so I don't see how this, even her explanation, even if it is true that the editor inserted this, well, yeah, the editor inserted it because they assumed you did your damn job and actually reached out to these people, but you didn't. So then to just like throw the editor under the bus like that, I think is, I don't know, that's pretty gross. Wemple even says that the way he phrases it is blaming editors can be a craven act. Yes. So he doesn't come right out and say this was a craven act, but he says this can be

a craven act. But yeah, I think the larger issue here, which is an organizational issue and not specific to Taylor Lorenz, is your correction and your, they now have labeled it an editor's note. It's still wrong. Yeah. It's still a lie. And not only are you not explaining that to the public, your own media reporter is like, hey, this is not right. And they're like, no comment. I mean, that's—so he puts it in exactly the right way. Why does this matter? I mean, this is like kind of a nit, you know, this little like detail on this one story and the timeline of when they were reached out to you for correction.

But it does sort of raise this foundational question. We're supposed to be relying on you for the facts. And if you can't, after multiple revisions, come to the actual truth about something like this, like that does undercut your credibility on literally everything else you're publishing in your paper. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, really what he's pointing to is that, look, if we can't even count on you guys to fix the editor's note properly, then how can we count on you to tell us the truth? And I think the truth is, see what I did there, is that you can't count on them to tell them the truth. I mean, Lorenz herself at this point has beclowned herself to a degree which is unfathomable in her short tenure at the Washington Post. She doxes the

lives of TikTok woman. Then she comes out and breaks the news that the disinformation governance board is shutting down, but she frames it as a result of bad faith campaigns. She's not able to do any actual reporting. And this is just the latest example, which is that she's going after defending the integrity of Amber. Can you imagine using your platform of the post to defend the integrity of Amber Heard? Like, why? You know that particular article that we had legal byproducts talk about? It really pissed me off because the article specifically went after these couple of creators who extensively covered the Heard death trial, which we did not. But implicitly, she's going after the entire independent media. And the law team in particular. Right. I mean, that's but that's the whole implication is that if you're operating in these nontraditional areas, it's just a grift. You can't be trusted.

She talks in that column about how you don't have journalistic standards in the same column where she herself is caught lying and multiple times violating journalistic standards. She has the gall to say, oh, these independent creators, they don't have journalistic standards. So it really, that column was part of her war against independent creators. And that's why it pissed me off so much. So that's kind of the overall context for which, you know, this whole thing plays out against. And she's so sloppy. There's also now there's leaks coming out that I think Wemble sort of alludes to about how within the Washington Post, people are also getting really frustrated with her, too, because she's this big name star reporter brought in with like a splashy press release and all of that stuff. And then

she's making these extremely basic mistakes and making all of them and their work look bad. So I think there's not a lot of love for her with her colleagues at this point either. Yeah, but you know. Not that they're going to say anything about it because they're too afraid. People are cowards. They're not going to say a damn thing. And they're watching their paper just basically get completely lit on fire. And that's actually a good transition. Let's go to this next part. And let's put this on the screen, which is we brought you the drama regarding Felicia Samnez. Well, she has finally been

fired by the Washington Post. She was fired over email on Thursday. Here's what they said. Samnez was told by the Post that her employment was ending immediately, quote, for misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online, and violating the Post standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity. The email said that she had public attempts to question the motive of your co-journalists. We cannot allow you to continue to work as a journalist representing The Washington Post. So look, if you ask me, it was far too late that this even happened. She did tremendous amount of damage to the institution while she was there. I think we should really go back to the timeline, which is that Felicia Samna spent an entire week

maligning the integrity of her colleagues on Twitter, and she was told repeatedly not to do so. Her person that she maligned, Dave Weigel, his crime of the century, was retweeting the stupid joke which was, every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it was polar or sexual. Well, he found out which ones that he works with over there. And he was fired. I mean suspended for that without pay for an entire month. An entire month without pay. That's crazy.

I mean nobody can go a month without a. That's crazy. I mean, nobody can go a month without a paycheck. And that was his major transgression. She was never disciplined until she flagrantly violated internal policy over and over and over again. And she encouraged, you know, the worst thing to me is just this insubordination amongst their staff, two guys in particular, two people in particular, one of them, Breonna Muir, who I explained, her colleague accidentally referred to her as Breonna Taylor in a tweet three months ago. And she emailed that staff-wide and said that that was part of a harassment campaign, which made it difficult to do her job because three months ago, somebody

mistakenly referred to her by the wrong name, deleted the tweet, and profusely apologized for it. And another one was this 22-year-old Stanford grad, Holden, who we've talked about Holden and his eating disorder. But Holden also is online counting the likes of his colleagues and maligning them essentially as racist, saying, why are white males coming out against Felicia Samnez whenever she's speaking up? And that's why this behavior really just needs to get nipped in the bud. And I just think it's really gross to watch all of this happen because this is the second most powerful newspaper in the country. That's what we just talked about in the tale of the rents block. Why does it matter when you can't trust the mainstream media and you see so clearly how insane these people are? That's not a good thing. You know, we don't revel in that over here. I don't, I wish that we didn't have to do this job. But like, this is the reason why this all started in the first place.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not a big advocate typically for workers being fired. But in this instance, she was truly destroyed. I mean, you talk about a toxic work environment that gets thrown around really loosely all the time. But there is no other word for the environment that she was creating over there. I mean, it's completely insane. Go repeatedly. I mean, her timeline was completely unhinged. Tweet after tweet after tweet, going after this reporter and that reporter and anyone who dared to say, remember that one person replied just like, please stop. And that set off a whole other firestorm. So eventually the Washington Post comes to the right decision there that this person cannot be a part of your organization. But yeah, it took them a while. It took him multiple days of her behaving like a complete crazy person and nuking multiple of her

colleagues before they ultimately were like, all right, this is not going to work out. And would not be surprised either if she sues them again. Oh, she's going to sue. For being fired. 100%. Yeah. Unfortunately. So, all right. Well, actually, not unfortunately. Bezos should have to pay for allowing this stuff at his newspaper.

So, actually, Felicia, you go, girl. Keep going. Get him. Yeah. Go get him. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, I broke one of my cardinal rules on Thursday in a pit of frustration. Never tweet. I'm exaggerating, of course, but are you looking at? Well, I broke one of my cardinal rules on Thursday in a pit of frustration. Never tweet.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but I honestly just could not contain myself. We had just done breaking points. My Twitter feed was endless with journalists talking about January 6th committee hearings as if it was the most important thing since Watergate, as if it would be a country-changing experience. I genuinely felt like I was taking crazy pills. So I returned to my old ways and I punched this out. Quote, gas is $5 a gallon, people. Genuinely can't imagine giving a shit about these January 6th hearings.

Like any great viral tweet, it both took off and it elicited some very strong reactions. The negative reactions overwhelmingly by liberals and allies in mainstream media are actually very revealing. And what do they tell us about what liberals mean when they say democracy? So I thought that we could get into it here. First and foremost was this pushback. What's auger? People can't multitask? That is a fair question. But have you paid attention to the US government recently? The government actually cannot multitask, and the media especially can't either. In fact, remember our maxim here. The most pernicious form of media bias is not what they choose to show you, but what they choose not to show you. Every second

of airtime, resource, money, time, explanations spent on January 6th by both the Democratic Party, the media, and by Congress is by definition something that could be spent somewhere else. So the current strategy of trying to make this into a big national event is therefore a conscious choice. That was the most practical feedback I received, what I thought the most reasonable was. But let's move on to the part that I really want to focus on, captured in this tweet by Iman Moyaldin. He works over at MSNBC. He responded, quote, this is nothing to be proud of as a country. It is an indictment of our priorities if the price of a gallon of gas is more important than the attempted overthrow of our democracy. Okay, let's put the overwrought language aside. That is an incredibly revealing tweet.

Because what Amon is saying is that people like me, and perhaps like you, who actually do care more about the price of gas being at sky-high levels, somehow have our priorities wrong, more so than a riot that occurred at the Capitol over 16 months ago. And what I love most about that is it actually reveals the core mindset of what the overwhelming pushback to me was. What? Sagar thinks the price of gas is more important than democracy. And my response is that if you're trying to make people care about our capital D democracy more than focusing on the problems that they're actually having in their lives and begging politicians to fix, then you, not me, are the person who is against actual democracy. When I say capital D democracy, I mean it in terms of how it's being

used by the press, protecting the higher-minded institution. It's what the Washington Post loves to put at the top of its paper. Democracy dies in the darkness, which Democrats and Biden are always talking about. But what they like to ignore is little d democracy. Democracy as in the people's government, where they make their voices heard through their votes, and they attempt, being the key word, to get their representatives to act on their behalf. Overwhelmingly, we see today in the obsession with January 6th that by focusing on that instead of gas prices and high inflation, the issues that voters continue to tell pollsters and cry out as their number one priority that the U.S. government solve, what the obsession with January 6th shows me is the Democrats are unserious about acting democratically.

Let's take Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. Mastriano is actually crazy. He believes in stop the steal. He pushed a plan to appoint fake electors in 2020 to try and swing the election. If he's elected governor of Pennsylvania, he gets to appoint the secretary of state, potentially try and change the election results. I agree with the Libs that that is an actual attack on democracy. And yet, they don't seem content on trying to persuade people not to vote for him for any reason beyond that. You know why? Because while, yeah, I think most voters can agree, that sounds pretty crazy. If Doug Mastriano is also out there talking about

inflation and gas and rent and cost of living and chaos and people's lives, and the other side is just screaming about what might happen in an election a few years from now, voters might just take a chance on the guy because one is real and the other is hypothetical. We saw this repeatedly in the 2016 campaign. Hillary's, our children are watching ads. Trump was vulgar. While Trump was out there making a real case, look, it's turned out to be a fake one, but at least it was. We're rooting out corruption in Washington, restoring America's trade fairness scheme, restoring American jobs. And voters said, yeah, you know, I don't particularly care about the

tweets. I care about the plan. That's what democracy actually looks like. But to most liberals, the idea of actually trying to win through democratic or at least constitutional means today appears to be a fantasy. If you think Trump and the GOP and Doug Mastriano are such threats to democracy, then beat them through democratic means. Mastriano is the best example. There's no cope for people about the Electoral College in a statewide popular vote election. You either convince voters or you don't, and it's a swing state. The same is the case with many of these Jan 6 crazies that are GOP nominees across the country. If they win, that is on you for being so pathetic that you cannot convince voters otherwise.

People in Washington and in the media are obsessed with the word democracy, but the reaction to my tweet really showed me it's all in the media are obsessed with the word democracy, but the reaction to my tweet really showed me it's all fake. They're obsessed with high-minded discussions of democracy because they have no actual small-D democratic plan or case to make to the American people to solve the most pressing issues before them. The discussions of democracy are really just a catfish to hide the fact that Biden and the Democrats have been in office at this point for 18 months and to date have done basically nothing about the problems that most people have in their lives. Thus, they will be punished. That's democracy. So I'll end as I began with the same sentiment. When the people in power are not doing anything

about the most pressing problems in your life, then who gives a shit about an event that 16 months ago, where the facts of what happened were pretty clear as day within just a few weeks of the incident? If you actually believe about American democracy, then convince people to vote for you. And if you're too big of a loser to beat Trump or a guy like Mastriano, then sadly, that is a pathetic commentary on you and really not on anybody else. So I just really think it was worth going into. 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, over the weekend, 30-some members of a white nationalist group were arrested after packing into the back of a U-Haul wearing matching uniforms, toting riot shields, and at least one smoke grenade, and headed to a Pride event. Last week, a man called 911 on himself after showing up at a Supreme Court justice's house with a gun, a knife, zip ties, and, according to himself, an intent to murder. Upset over a looming abortion decision and gun debates fueled his crazed actions. And this week, hearings will continue into the events of January 6th when thousands of conspiracy adult Trump supporters stormed in the Capitol with violent delusions of overturning the lawful election results of 2020. Now listen, every era has their wrongdoers,

their villains, their criminals, the conspiracy theorists, their cranks, their chaos agents, all of that. But it's kind of hard to deny looking at the landscape that the American project is coming apart at the seams. Taken together with a hundred other signs that I could point to, these are dispatches from a fracturing nation. Try to take a step back from the details of the riots and the rising political violence and existential cultural battles. Try to view all of this as if you're an outside observer or, say, a historian. It's really not hard to figure out what's going on that has led us to this point of precarious rupture. The middle class has been hollowed out. Inequality has grown to its most extreme levels in history. The means of peacefully redressing this through democratic representation have been almost completely closed as politicians

have become increasingly captured by a thin slice of elites, and as the structure of our existing institutions locks in power for a minority faction. Then, add in the specific details of our current economic stress, the high inflation driven by the most critical items for working-class families, gas, food, rent, and you have got yourself a real powder keg. Now, the signs of our failing state are all over our economic data. We call ourselves a rich nation. Of course, in certain ways we are. But why then do we have the highest level of credit card debt in history? Why then do half of all families struggle to feed their kids? Why do so many struggle to afford even a minor emergency? Why do we cycle through bubbles and recessions at an accelerating clip?

The signs of our failing state are also written all over our communities and all over our streets. The tent cities within every city. The rise in senseless violence. The epidemic of addiction murdering tens of thousands of our fellow citizens. The mechanisms of our democracy are failing. But even an authoritarian leader with no pretext of democracy might struggle to survive concentrations of wealth as extreme as the ones that we are witnessing. But upending the political order through mass action, well, that requires the masses to be on one side against the system and its representatives, which have created this intolerable situation. The Wall Street financiers, the corporate CEOs, their media enablers, and the politicians who serve as their

tools to keep all of the gains flowing to the top. But unfortunately, we aren't all on one side, are we? Instead, we're kept intentionally divided against each other by lines of race, gender, education status, geography, anything else they can come up with to keep people from seeing the problem and the solution clearly. Problem isn't the Karen who didn't wear a mask, the kid you grew up with who posts QAnon memes on Facebook, the desperate immigrant or the trans teenager competing in sports, or things that are hopelessly fixed, like the country's immutable foundational sin of racism? And the further we get down this road of failed state, oligarch-owned, empire-declining dread, the more unhinged our fellow citizens do start to behave,

making the plutocrat's message that the real problem is with the character of your fellow countrymen a much more plausible explanation. They threaten violence. They riot. They believe in goofy conspiracies with the zealousness of religious faith. They dabble in authoritarianism and a cult-like belief in a favored strongman leader who will punish the wrongdoers and set things right. And so that's the backdrop that I view the January 6th hearings against. It's not that I'm not disturbed. I am. It's not that I don't believe the people involved have personal agency and deserve accountability. They do. It's actually that I'm so alarmed by the state of the country, I think we've got to act to deal with the underlying conditions driving the spiral of violence and despair, and we have to act

urgently. We are headed in a truly dire direction. January 6th is a symptom. And when you're dealing with a grave illness, you do deal with the symptoms. Don't get me wrong. We've done some of that. The Justice Department has charged some 800 people. Media outlets have dug into the details of what transpired, compiling footage into montages of the most violent and menacing acts of the day. The government's laying out in detail what some of the main instigators from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys did to help instigate the lawlessness. But what you've really got to focus your energy on is the root of the problem. And it's really not complicated. The problem is a wildly unfair distribution of resources. America has always gotten away with a higher level of inequality than other countries

because, frankly, we have a lot of powerful mythology around our meritocracy and the American dream. We convince people that if they were struggling, it was because of their own failing, not a problem that required collective action and government redress. This was as much of a fairy tale story as the mythology of like divine right or of the caste system. All human inventions to explain radically unfair distributions of wealth and income. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty who believe in the powerful American fairy tale still, but after the banks destroyed the economy and got bailed out and regular Americans got the shaft, it became a lot harder not to see through those layers of bullshit that we've been fed for years. So that's why I do roll my eyes a little bit at the January 6th hearings. Where is this energy for the corporate criminals jacking up prices just because they can?

Where is this level of political outrage in the 20 million viewers? For the Wall Street villains buying up entire communities and pushing more people onto the street? Where is the multimedia production for the crooks who knowingly profited off of creating a mass addiction epidemic over the fossil fuel executives who've known for decades about the climate crisis and lied and covered up the truth? Where is the commission to help us understand how our whole government was captured by the very top and every institution is run almost exclusively for their benefit? Because, guys, the future here looks pretty grim. But none of the coming clashes, unraveling, and potential violence, none of that's written in stone. We know how to handle moments just like this because we as a nation have done it before.

We did it in a similar moment of instability when fascism was on the march around the globe. We responded, forging an entirely new economic order here at home, the New Deal order. Roosevelt was explicit that his goal was to be radical for a generation in order to rescue the country and prevent revolution, and it worked. Backed by labor activists and trade unions and the masses, we created decades of solid working-class, middle-class stability. Oh, it had plenty of imperfections, from outright discrimination to programs that were poorly conceived to overreach in the 70s that led to a massive backlash that we are living with today. But if we want to avoid another January 6th, it is no mystery what we need to do. We need to change how the resources are divided to give the working class some personal, family, and community stability.

A new New Deal era that once again rebalances the economic scales. The path to this outcome looks like electing truly dedicated reformers who are actually committed to this end, not those who will say the right thing, but they're really mostly committed to whatever their side is in the culture war. We need a robust union movement that provides a mechanism for power in the workplace and an organized method for holding those elected officials accountable. We need media that is beholden to the masses and not to the corporate crooks. We need you to remember who the real enemies are. And the LARPing revolutionaries at the Capitol are not primetime in that story at all. Actually, they're only a national sideshow. So that's my own view of why.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We did want to go through what they talked about at the Jerry's Exclusive because there were some new revelations. And, you know, I think it's important you know what people in Washington here are talking about and focusing on. So the structure of the January 6th committee hearings, if you didn't watch, you have the chair, Carson Benny Thompson, from the Democrats. And on the first night, it was Liz Cheney who actually did a lot of the talking, sort of laid out comprehensively the presentation for their last night. One of the big sort of revelations here was how direct then Attorney General Bill Barr was in disputing the election claims and in his words saying that he viewed them as bullshit. Let's take a listen to that. Three discussions with the president that I can recall. One was on November 23rd. One was on December 1st and one was on December 14th. And I've been

through sort of the give and take of those discussions. And in that context, I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want to be a part of it. And that's one of the reasons that went into me deciding to leave when I did. I observed, I think it was on December 1st, that, you know, you can't live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that the election, that there was fraud in the election. So listen, Bill Barr, no hero. He did nothing to like really, you know, take the case public and,

you know, express that he came out and he gave that statement. Remember, he said that we found no evidence. I think very police. I also think he's sort of extraordinarily ideologically evil. This is a guy who really believes in like an all power executive. So up to the point of apparently, you know, when you actually decide I'm just going to take and hold on to power. But what's really significant about this

is the fact that this shows there were people directly telling Trump this stuff is completely bonkers. Like this is literally bullshit because there was a question at the time of like, does he really believe this? Or is he you know, is he really sort of down the conspiracy rabbit hole enough to be buying what Sidney Powell or whoever is telling him. And I think that there were multiple indications that, no, he knew that he was lying. He knew that this was fake. And he was just leading his followers along

because he was willing to hold onto power at any cost. Yeah, and I think he does believe it now. Or maybe he doesn't, I don't know. I mean, does it really matter what he believes relative to what he knows at least gets a reaction, what his own ego can stand? So the other clip that came out of that was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, saying she believed Bill Barr that there was no fraud. Let's take a listen to that.

This is the president's daughter commenting on Bill Barr's statement that the department found no fraud sufficient to overturn the election. How did that affect your perspective about the election when Attorney General Barr made that statement? It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying. Okay, so the president's daughter says that. But then what was particularly funny is that

Trump comes out the next day and starts on a big truth spree. Let's put this up there on the screen. Now trashing his own daughter, saying that she had no idea, she had been, quote, checked out, was not involved in studying the election results, and that she had no idea, basically, what she was talking about. So she had long checked out, only trying to be respectable of Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General. Quote, he sucked for not doing that.

So, look, Trump, you know, he'll hold a grudge against anybody if it goes against his public view. But don't worry, it's not like him. Family dinners are going to be awkward now? No, not at all. Because, what, every single time he always bows to Ivanka and to Jared.

Jared will be right back in the White House if he wins again. Anyway, so what's happening, though, on Truth Social, aside from what Trump is pushing back when users on the platform want to talk about it. Let's put this on the screen. Oh, it turns out that they're being suspended for posting about the January 6th hearings. And remember, this is a quote unquote free speech platform. They were suspended or quote experiencing technical difficulties after they were posting about the January 6th committee hearings. So look, just goes to show you that when they say free speech, at least over there, what they really mean is, you know, ability to float election conspiracy.

And I'm somebody who even thinks that Trump should be on Twitter regardless just because he's the sitting president. And that Twitter actually did him a great gift by taking him over. But it's always just funny just to see how full of it these platforms actually are. It just shows you. I mean, you know, it goes back to my favorite Mike Linnell, the MyPillow guy, when he was starting his social media platform. I don't know if that ever even really happened. It might still be up there. Free speech, that means no profanity, no taking the Lord's name in vain.

I was like, that's not really, I don't think our definitions of free speech are quite the same. And they do have the same line in the truth social terms of service as every other social media site. They say, we reserve the right to, in our sole discretion, without notice or liability, deny access to and use of the service, including blocking certain IP addresses to any person for any reason or for no reason. So they want to, you know, preserve their ability to monitor and crack down on speech just in ways that they find to be favorable to them. I think that's right. And so look, takeaways, I mean, the bill bar, I don't know, what were your takeaways from it? I mean, the clips are interesting. It's always nice to see that people are out there saying that they told

Trump the truth, but now we're going to have, I think there's 10 more of these things. In terms of the ratings, we were talking about this. I'm still not sure where I end up. So 20 million appears like a lot of people, but apparently the actual ratings on the major network news was much lower than normal for their primetime. At the same time, the cable ratings were actually much higher on MSNBC and CNN. MSNBC garnering like 4 million, CNN like 2.6. Fox didn't end up showing it, but then ABC, NBC, and all them other actually carried the hearings live in the primetime sector. But their ratings were down.

So I don't really know whether it was high or low. This is the number, overall number 20 million is in the ballpark of events like a Sunday night football game. Okay, all right. I mean, that's a lot of. That's not terrible. Listen, there are very few events that like, we just don't have the media ecosystem now where it's like all Americans tune in for this thing. So certainly MSNBC and CNN, their ratings were very high for, of course, that's a low bar, but very high in comparison to what they normally ultimately get.

I did think the way Fox handled it was really gross. I don't know if you saw this. I didn't watch it. They didn't carry the hearings. All right, whatever. That's their right. There's plenty of other places you could watch them. But not only that, they didn't, during the whole two hours of the hearings, they just randomly didn't go to commercial break.

And you know how extraordinary that is in cable news. Because they didn't want people to turn away from their non-January 6th coverage to go to the January 6th coverage. And remember, I mean, Fox News personalities are directly involved in this thing, especially Sean Hannity. Right. And so for them to just have, like, you know, blanket complete ban on it and, you know, really go out of their way to try to make sure their viewers don't see anything coming out of it, I do think that's very interesting.

Well, it's just weird. I mean, look, no matter what you—by the way, look, you know, I don't think people care out of it. I do think that's, I do think that's- Well, it's just weird. I mean, look, no matter what you, but by the way, look, you know, I don't think people care. I actually said that. I still watch it because it's my job. I mean, if you're watching, you know, like the live news channel,

you kind of have to watch it or like you kind of have to show it just because it empirically is like the news of the day here in Washington. Look, we cover news very differently here. You know, we're summarizing things for people who get their news in a very non-traditional way, but they're locked into a model, so very different. So yeah, I definitely think they should.

I mean, and your own talent, and Laura Ingraham was involved too. Yeah, that's true. So they would like – they'd have some of the videos that were like playing a VO in the background or whatever. And whenever anything that was violent because some of the narratives on Fox are like, oh, they were just tourists and whatever. Like that clearly – there was some violent aggression happening, windows being broken and people getting bloodied and officers being knocked unconscious and that sort of thing. So anytime there was any kind of violence that was being played in the hearings, they would cut away from it. Oh, okay. So I mean it was really maximum level propaganda for the Foxes. Just show the damn thing. I know.

People still won't care, you know? I know. I know. So, anyway, that's the overall view. I think tonight testifying is Bill Stepien. Yes. Remember, he was the— Well, no, no, no.

So apparently his wife is having a baby, so he can't testify. Oh, really? Yeah, she literally just went into labor. Just happened like 20 minutes ago. Trump campaign manager they were planning on having on. And I think the idea of the narrative they want to talk through tonight is like how much Trump knew going into it and kind of continuing down this path of like he was well informed about the fact that on election night that he was going to lose, that he didn't have a chance in spite of all the, you know, lies that he's told since then. Yeah, I mean, everybody, they keep trying to set it up. Listen, we all know the whole story, which is that Trump denied the truth, said he won the election, encouraged these nut jobs like Sidney Powell and Giuliani to prosecute

their idiot case on national television. Then on January 6th, a bunch of people came here to Washington and he said some version of we're going down to the Capitol. You can parse the language however you want. That's what he said. And then people went there and they broke into the Capitol. And there's a lot of, I mean, it's the most basic story of all time. I really don't know what there is to make. They're like Trump, we're going to make the case that Trump personally incited it. Yeah, no shit. Of course he did. They never would have gone in there. Now look, there's a democratic means through which you could decide that you're going to do something about that. It's called impeachment. They tried even at the height of

the emotional case and it didn't happen. So you think the justice department is going to bring charges? It's like, this is why I find the whole thing maddening. We already know everything there is to know. Did people act shamefully? Yes. Do people care? Apparently not. And look, there's not much you can do about that. Like, there's just not. Trying to convince people and unearth all this stuff, it's like there's not a broader crime in the way that there was with Watergate. Like, we just knew.

I think we really need to sit with the fact that the Democratic strategy post-January 6th to sort of like take down Trump and make sure he can never be president again was to focus on the events of January 6th, to not focus on delivering materially for people, and also to get him kicked off of these social media platforms. That has led to him having a higher approval rating now than he did before January 6th. I mean, that's like, you need to sit

with that and figure out why did that happen? Like, what is it in your response that led to that reaction? And the answer, like, the American people just suck is not an acceptable one. Like, that one's not going to work out because this is the country you got. And it's not apparent to me that the character of the American people is like, you know, degraded from other countries or from other times in our past. So, you know, I just think that requires some reflection. Ultimately, there is one path out of the terrible mess that we find ourselves in today, and that is to actually materially deliver for people. That's it. That's the job. And if you aren't doing that, then yes, you are enabling people who are nefarious, who are liars, who are willing to take power by all those things, you are enabling them to be put back into power. So yeah, that's how I feel about those things.

I don't think it's quite right to say the American people don't care about January 6th. I think it's because I do think that there was a lot of interest in like, you know, the day was so crazy and how did how do we come to this? But in terms of how they're going to vote and what is impacting them in their day to day lives, we know the answer because because they never tell pollsters January 6th that they're top. Very true. Yeah, look, when I say people don't care, I mean, they don't care as much. Of course, I mean, look, I cared. I was horrified by it.

But it's just difficult to try and parse that when we're talking about material conditions for people's lives. People vote accordingly. They're telling you that over and over again. And I will never not get hung up on, we know the facts. It's not difficult to figure out. Most people are very familiar. So at this point, you can either move

on, we can issue like a final report, you know, with the timeline. I think that's great. But in terms of time spent, it would be, you know, a hell of a lot better spent. This kind of reminds me of Benghazi, which is Republicans focused so much on Benghazi, like what happened in this four hours. How about the fact that Libya was falling apart? You know, it's like, how come there was no actual investigation of that? They became obsessed with this tiny thing, and they actually blew the political opportunity to make the case that the administration had bungled and destroyed this country, and it had fallen apart, becoming a vacuum of terrorists and weapons are flying into Syria. It's like focusing on one thing at the expense of a much bigger picture. Except this time, it's our own country.

Like focusing on January 6th instead of like how exactly the country gets to this point. Nobody wants to talk about that. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah, it's a lot less comfortable. All right. Thank you all so much for watching. We really appreciate it.

We brought you as much as we could to January 6th. Tomorrow we'll have a guest back to our regularly scheduled programming. Although apparently it looks like the Supreme Court abortion decision could break. So who knows? Maybe tomorrow could be a big show in its own right.

Thank you all so much for watching. We really appreciate it for supporting us. Like we said, we got a big announcement this week that is coming up about our live tour

and how people can start buying tickets. It's going to be a lot of fun and some other fun things that we'll be rolling out as well. And we'll see you all tomorrow. Love you guys. See y'all tomorrow. This is an iHeart Podcast.