Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/15/23: Fed Stuns With Rate Pause, 20 Dollar Minimum Wage, Huge Push For Ukraine To Join NATO, Cornel West Flips To Green Party, UFO Whistleblower Stonewalled, Amazon Smart Home Locks Man Out, Hot Girl College Sports, Panel Debate: Trump v DeSantis

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Fed stunning with an interest rate pause, shocking polls showing $20 dollar minimum wage overwhelming popular, a huge push for adding Ukraine to NATO, Russia deploys nukes closer to Ukraine, Cornel West flips to Green party, Biden panics over 3rd party bid, Alien UFO whistleblower stonewalled by Media, Amazon locks Smart Home for "Racism" Allegation, the Truth about "Hot Girls" in College Sports, and our first Panel in the new studio on Trump v Desantis with Samuel Mangold-Lennet and Ryan Girdusky.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? and subscribe today. his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024.

You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody.

Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big things going on in all corners of the world. We have some big Federal Reserve decisions. What does it mean for now? What does it mean for the future? And also some new rankings about just how poorly the U.S. fares in terms of rights for workers. No big surprise there. Also some new developments with regard to Ukraine. A lot of pressure being brought to bear on the Biden administration to lay out a specific path and timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO. Doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but we'll talk about it. Also, some new developments on the third party front, both some polling and also Cornel West is switching to the Green Party and the White House is looking to block a potential no labels bid. Excited to bring back the panel.

It's back. Long awaited. Going to be in studio. We've got two great guests. Super excited to talk to them. One who is all in for Trump. One who is all in for De in studio. We've got two great guests. Super excited to talk to them. One who is all in for Trump. One who is all in for DeSantis. We will respectfully hear their views and what they have to say. Hear it out. We'll air it for the audience. Exactly.

But before we get to any of that, thank you guys so much for the incredible comments and your excitement and enthusiasm about our new home here. We're still working everything out to make sure the shots are perfect and it looks exactly the way that we want to. But I have to say, watching back at some of the show, it looks amazing. Oh, it looks amazing. It's already been such a massive improvement. We're doing a little tinkering here and there.

Everyone's having a lot of fun with the camera angles, as you can see, where to look, what to do, how to dial the lights. And that's kind of the fun part of all of this is that this is a completely built studio by you guys, you know, our premium subscribers, you helped us out with very small team relative to the hundreds of people who work on these over at the mainstream media. But luckily for us, that's the way we prefer it. So breakingpoints.com, if you're able, you can help us

out with our expansion, continue all that. Also, we've got our great new merch shelf on YouTube for our YouTube viewers. It should be right there below all of all that. Also, we've got our great new merch shelf on YouTube for our YouTube viewers. It should be right there below all of our videos. Everything that we sell is made in the USA and in a union shop, which we're very, very proud of. So anyway, take a look. It's all been beautifully designed, our beautiful new logos, which you can see everywhere. I'm told the bucket hat is selling very well. Is it for real?

Much to our consternation, Crystal, I did wear a bucket hat. I was in Lake Travis in Austin over the weekend. And I got to be honest, you know, 100 degree heat and you're in the middle of the lake. It does have a function. It does have a use. So I did wear the bucket hat, you know, even though I've crapped all over it here on breaking points. I was like, hey, you know, look, it works.

It works. All right. Let's talk about the Fed. Can't argue with results. Can't. You can't. All right. So let's talk about a big decision taken from the Fed yesterday. They decided to hold interest rates where they are, but there was a bit of a surprise in their announcement. Let's put this up on the screen. So they're going to hold rates steady for now, but they say two more are likely coming later this year. Let me read you a little bit of this. The market's apparently surprised a bit by the expectation of more rate increases.

There's a quote here in the CNBC article from some trader analyst dude who says people expected a hawkish pause and they got a very hawkish pause. Given the strong labor market, the Fed has room to crush inflation and they don't want to miss their chance. Go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen. This is part of what informed their decision making. So we got new numbers with regard to inflation rose at a 4 percent annual rate in May. That is the lowest in two years. So the top line number there looks pretty good. You dig into the numbers. It's a little bit more of a mixed bag. Part of what led to this slackening, I guess, slowing of the pace of inflation was a decrease in energy costs. But you still have significant increases in terms of housing that actually made up about one third of the index's weighting. You had a 0.6% increase in shelter prices. That was the biggest contributor

to the increase for the all items. Elsewhere, where there was significant inflation, you had used vehicle prices that increased 4.4 percent. Transportation services were up 0.8 percent. There was a little bit, Sagar, of good news in this report for workers, which is for most workers, their wages have not been keeping up with inflation. There are, you know, it's like a little bit mixed down at the lowest end of the spectrum. They actually have been keeping up with inflation. There are, you know, it's like a little bit mixed down at the lowest end of the spectrum. They actually have been keeping up with inflation. This was the first time that overall you had average hourly earnings adjusted for inflation rising 0.3% on the month and on an annual basis, real earnings up 0.2% after running negative for much of the inflation surge that began about two years ago.

So why does all of this matter in the context of the Fed? They obviously are raising rates because they think that's going to be the solution for inflation. It hasn't worked all that well to this point for reasons we've discussed. Greedflation, supply chain issues, these are all things that the Fed can't really deal with. But if inflation starts to cool, they're going to feel less pressure to continue hiking rates. So that's where we are. We got a pause, but what is being described as a quote unquote, very hawkish pause, which means they're not expecting any rate decreases and they are expecting to increase the rates in the month. Yeah. And I always think it's, you know,

worth taking a step back. Like, why are we even spending any time on this? It's because it's the impact on the overall interest rates for credit cards, for mortgages, for car loans. I mean, we're seeing a record amount of debt. We've over a trillion dollars in credit card debt outstanding right now for the average American consumer. And in general, we have very rarely seen any sort of real wage increase, especially whenever you factor in over the last two years. So to me, the fact that the housing market, you know, we did see a cool as in it did not go up as much, but the price did not come down on the overall supply of housing, Crystal. Same whenever it comes to the credit card debt. I mean, we expected, especially

everyone was like, oh, stimulus checks and all that. It did wipe it out for a time, but actually what's happened is a total resumption of consumer finance patterns, and we have seen a record increase with people taking out the same amount of debt, but also servicing it at much higher rates, which are going broke. Also, as I understand it, student loan, the pause that the Biden administration had agreed to in their debt, that's going to expire now in two or three months. So, you know, most some 95 percent of people actually did not pay down some of their debt while the pandemic was there. Obviously, there's a lot of confusion over whether the debt was going to get canceled or not.

Given where we are right now with the Supreme Court and the overall administration of the project, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. So resumption of debt payment is also coming back. I mean, that's going to hit, what, 40-something million households. On average, it's like $200 or $300 or maybe even more per month that they weren't including in their overall household budget. So don't make this report out to seem like, oh, this is rosy and everything is fantastic. Things are still bad, at least from what I can see in the overall, you know, the core numbers. The only real reason that things are going down is, yeah, gas prices have come down. But, you know, let's be honest, like they still haven't come to a very comfortable place

of where they were during the pandemic or even right before the pandemic. So we still have an overall increase in price pretty much across the board. It's just not going up as exponentially as it was at some point. Yeah, that's right. And the economy continues to be a very mixed bag. I mean, we've covered this week how there are a lot of signs of potential cracks in the economy. You've got foreclosure rates going up. You know, we continue to follow the housing market very carefully.

We continue to follow the commercial real estate market really carefully because I think that is where the largest risks for the broader economy exist. And then we also can't forget, like, we just had a number of bank failures of banks of fairly significant size. And maybe those are just complete outliers and anomalies because of the way that they happen to be structured and the, you know, types of clientele that they happen to focus on. But no one is really too sure about that. So that's why the Fed is treading carefully here. Up to this point, there's really been unanimous agreement about this extremely hawkish, I mean, you know, very remarkably aggressive pace of rate hikes in recent history. There's been pretty much unanimity about it. Now there's starting to be a lot of divergent opinions on this panel in terms of what they

should do going forward. The markets also responded in kind of a mixed way yesterday because, again, they were surprised by the fact they expected the pause, OK, that the rates wouldn't change. They're keeping them high. OK, this is not like, OK, they're backing off. They're keeping them high. That means mortgage rates and other things are going to continue to be high. That means money is going to continue to be expensive. That continues to put the brakes on the economy. But what they were surprised about is this trajectory that was laid out, the expectation that will be multiple increases in the future in this year when they had even floated before, hey, maybe he starts to, you know, maybe starts

to pull back. Maybe they start to lower interest rates. There are some other significant economic news that we really wanted to bring you as kind of an update in terms of working people. So I covered my monologue that you've got 350,000 UPS workers who are right now, they're organized under the Teamsters. This is the largest private sector union contract in the entire country. And they're right now voting on whether or not to authorize a strike. Now, authorizing a strike is different than going on strike, just to be totally clear. And it is expected that vote will pass because if you don't authorize a strike, you don't really have negotiating leverage in terms of your contract negotiations.

But because they're organized as part of a union, they've already been able to win a significant concession. Let's put this up on the screen. Now, let's be clear that it shouldn't take any fight for workers who are delivering our packages to get air conditioning and other heat protection in their trucks when you're talking about, you know, thanks to the climate crisis, but thanks to just hot summers in Phoenix, Arizona as well. Temperatures in those trucks were reaching up to 150 degrees. You literally had hundreds of workers, UPS workers, who were falling out from heat stroke, having to be

hospitalized. You had some near kidney failure, had one who actually died. So the Teamsters, in negotiation with UPS, have been able to secure air conditioning for the UPS fleet in a major, what they're describing as tentative deal. This is from the Teamsters. They say they've agreed to tentative language to equip the delivery and logistics company's fleet of vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans. Just to give you some of the specific numbers here, this agreement would require in-cab air conditioning in most UPS delivery vehicles purchased after January 1st, 2024. Two fans would also be installed in packaged cars, which the union said make up most of the company's 93,000 vehicle fleet. So they're not retrofitting the vehicles they already have, but new vehicles

will have air conditioning. The old vehicles will have additional fans and other heat protection in it. The union and the workers consider this to be a huge win. And again, Sagar, I mean, to me, I just look at it and I'm like, thank God they're doing this. but also it's ridiculous that 350,000 workers would have to threaten a strike and a total shutdown of the company in order just to get, like, the basics of their day-to-day safety protected. Yeah, it's really stupid. And it actually does come at a time when Americans are more supportive right now of better wages and protections for workers than at any time really in modern history. Let's go ahead and throw this up there on the screen, guys. We have here voters strongly supporting raising the minimum wage to $12, $17, and $20 per hour. And this also shows, you were referencing, Crystal, that right now the U.S. is at the bottom in every category on labor policies. Currently, quote, the wealthiest

country in the world is near the bottom of every dimension of the index and the worst ranked amongst the 38 OECD countries on worker protection. So look, I mean, some of these are smaller European nations, but some of these are also like major dynamic economies as well. And so when you consider like when up against some massive, like some peer competitors, which also have, you know, pretty good dynamic market economies. That's something that everyone I think is genuinely aware of for these workers, like UPS workers and others, whenever they're striking. We saw this in the railway unions, even though the railway strike, the bipartisan consensus was to come in and basically crush them in the deal. The overall

American people were with the railway workers, especially when they heard, I mean, we've played that famous clip of the Newsweek, the Newsmax anchor, I'm sorry, whenever he was like, oh, so he's like, why are you guys striking? What's going on? And he's like, well, we literally don't get any sick leave. And he's like, wait, really? And he's like, oh, that's pretty bad. Yeah. Imagine if this was like an airline pilot. Yeah. When he heard that, you know, live on the air, it was just a hilarious moment. You know, somebody predisposed to say this is totally ridiculous. And he heard the truth. He's like, yeah, that's he's like, you can't you can't have that. But then, of course, the government just

came in and crushed it. Yeah. Well, that's, I think, a really key point, because what you see here is a failure of democracy when When you have the public, overwhelming majorities, bipartisan majorities of the public who want one thing, and the actual policy implemented by elites is at the polar opposite end of the spectrum, what can you call that other than a crisis and complete failure of democracy? So in terms of that report of the U.S. ranking last in basically every category with regard to labor rights, there were a number of metrics they considered here. They considered wage policies, like what's the minimum wage?

What kind of unemployment support is there? They consider worker protections, things like health care. Do you have paid leave, as you were discussing with the railroad workers? Is there equal pay across genders and different identity classes? Is there childcare support? Are there pregnancy accommodations? All those sorts of things. They also considered the right to organize.

So that's, do you have sectoral bargaining? Do you have, are workers really able to exercise their rights to collectively bargain? Are they really able to exercise their rights to join unions and organize within a union? And across literally nearly every category, we were at the bottom, at the bottom. And again, this is not because this is what like the American people have decided. That's just, we're going to have this rugged free market

capitalism and sorry, workers like go out there and fend for yourself and care more about low prices or quote unquote freedom or whatever. No, this is not what the American people want. Put the last element here up on the screen with regard to the minimum wage that Sagar was referencing, just so people can see the numbers. 60% of Republicans support raising the minimum wage, not to $12 an hour, not to $15 an hour, to $20 an hour. Three quarters of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour. And understandably so. And we've been having the conversation about, you know, the fight for 15 for over a decade now. Prices have gone up, as y'all know, quite a bit. So yeah,

$20 per hour, if you're thinking about just being able to live and be able to afford the rent, be able to afford food prices, like just the basics of living, $20 seems like the absolute minimum at this point. And that's certainly the way the American people feel. And then you contrast that with, you know, the Democratic Party, the Republicans forget about it. Many of them will say they don't even think there should be a minimum wage, period. Lawmakers, at least. Democrats will pretend that they support maybe a $15 minimum wage, maybe over some time period. But do they fight for it? No. I mean, just to relive recent history, for those who have forgotten all the slings and arrows of this, the one concession, supposedly, that Bernie got out of Biden when he conceded, he did this whole like

hostage video and was like, do you support a $15 minimum wage? And Biden's like, yes, Bernie, I do. They put it to, you know, to try to get it through reconciliation. Parliamentarian says, no, that's the last we've heard of it. That's it. They didn't say, you know what, screw this parliamentarian. We're going to get someone who is going to agree that the, you know, this is okay for the American people. They didn't say, all right, we're going to try to get this into these must pass bills. We're going to work it into our deal with the Republic. And no, they just gave up on it. And so again, when I look at these numbers, what I really see is a complete hobbling and crisis of democracy. When you have 75% of the public saying, here's where we are, and you have the

entire political class say, screw you, we don't care, we're not going to do anything about it, other than maybe sometimes pay lip service to it. That's where you start to understand how faith in all our institutions has crumbled, how people are so disgusted with the political process, how they don't feel like their vote counts, how they don't feel like their vote matters, how they don't feel like it matters whether they show up to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or anybody else. So, you know, it's astonishing that we're at a point where just for workers to be able to get air conditioning in their trucks so they don't die, they basically have to threaten to shut down the entire economy. But that's where we are.

And people forget, you know, we often look at this as a partisan issue. But, you know, the Florida, Florida, the state of Florida, we talked a lot about this in 2020. On the night that Donald Trump won it by more than President Obama did in 2012, in 2020, in the contested election, Florida, who went for Trump and then later on went for DeSantis, they passed a minimum wage by some 60-some percent. So there is a huge overlap between people who are willing to vote Trump, Ron DeSantis, who are willing to vote Republican, and who do support an overall minimum wage. And that's why it's also important to understand, too, whenever you look at the minimum wage that is in many Republican states, you know, like in Alabama and in Alabama, for example, it's $7.25 per hour. And that's actually the case across much of the industrial Midwest, in Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, which is the overall federal minimum wage, Louisiana, same federal minimum wage,

Mississippi, New Hampshire, even North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma. Now, look, in some cases, you know, we've talked before about the minimum wage. We did a lot of discussion of this back on Rising, if I remember correctly. Regional minimum wage and all the discussion around that I actually think is totally reasonable. Yeah, sure. But there is no saying that $7.25 is actually enough in most of these places where it doesn't even meet the poverty line. And the problem, too, is everyone's like, well, you know, if it's the minimum wage, it's like, why should we spend so much time on that? Well, unfortunately, unfortunately, we do have millions of people who actually do make

the overall minimum wage. And so it would have a genuinely big impact. There's also been some discussion too around whether the corporations and some of them could absorb it. Everybody talks about small businesses. I've even seen previous proposals and discussions around like phase-in times for the level of employees and times that you have. So there are a lot of ways we can work around this. Like, there's a lot of discussion that we can have about making sure you absolutely not only minimize but completely reduce any impact overall on small business and small firms to the corporations that can obviously afford to pay them, people like Walmart, Amazon, and all these others, even if Amazon is what is $15, it might even be $19 an hour. It depends on where you are right now. But of course,

you know, sometimes they will actually raise their minimum wage to also stop from having to do health care, to increase churn and remain and have total control over their overall hiring process. These are the fights that are most critical right now, given how our economy is—how it exists in the current moment. We have a tight labor market. That's a good thing for workers. That means that they're less afraid to take strike actions. They're less afraid to vote to unionize.

They're less afraid to push back on their bosses in individual cases, because there are jobs out there. So, the question isn't, are there jobs available? The question is, are there good jobs available? And that's where, you know, these fights over are right. What's the floor going to be federally? What is the minimum wage going to be? What can you actually support yourself on at this point? I mean, this this is the basics of the American the what the American dream and the American bargain should be, that if you work hard and you play by the rules, you're going to be OK.

And right now, millions of workers. I mean, they're so close to the edge. I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but we just got some dire numbers about the number of people who couldn't afford a $400 emergency expense. It's just insanity. So in any case, I think to me, the biggest takeaway is the distance between the political class, what they consider to be radical. I mean, I don't even know how many members of Congress, if any, have come out in favor of a $20 minimum wage, even the furthest left, right? And yet three quarters of the American people and 60% of the Republican base are there. Always a good reminder what the actual divides are in this country. It's not what you would think if you were watching any other news channel. Let's go to Ukraine. There's some really interesting stuff going on

behind the scenes, which is absolutely going to explode into the top of the news. That's a debate inside of the NATO alliance. Should Ukraine be put on a pathway to NATO membership or should it be just given an extended outright NATO membership right now? So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is kind of a New York Times TikTok behind the scenes of all the jockeying that's happening. What they say is, quote, President Biden taken every opportunity over the past 16 months to celebrate NATO's unity on Ukraine. But on one topic, he finds himself somewhat isolated within the alliance. When and how Kiev would join? Mr. Biden, who has been cautious about getting NATO into a direct

fight with Moscow, has sought to maintain the status quo of more than a decade. Quote, a vague promise that Ukraine, now arguably the most powerful military force in Europe, will eventually join the alliance, but with no set timetable. Now, there is a huge debate among the allies putting pressure on Biden to, quote, support a significantly faster and more certain path to membership for Ukraine. Much of this is actually coming from the Baltic states, including Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and I'm forgetting one of them, Lithuania, of course, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania I'm forgetting one of them, Lithuania, of course. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and also the new, you know, members of the NATO alliance as well,

kind of weighing in, trying to bring Ukraine into the overall, into the actual formal alliance. Now, why does this matter? Well, you know, depending on who you believe and what narrative and all that, let's just say that the pretext given by Vladimir Putin for invasion of Ukraine in the first place was that he could not extract a promise both from Ukraine or from the United States, so they would never become a member of the NATO alliance. Now, the Latvian, the Lithuanian, the Baltic argument is that there is no way to guarantee long-term peace to Ukraine without extending them membership and effectively saying that if the war in Ukraine does continue or we decide on some sort of line, that it will escalate to some full-blown

nuclear conflict. The problem is, is that, Chris, a lot of people don't talk about this. It's not just Putin. Many Russians, at least according to some of the independent polls that we have been able to get out of there, nothing is perfect. But many Russians actually do agree with the overall, you know, with the overall idea that Ukraine should never be inside of NATO, given their long history and the border and how they feel about collective security. I am not justifying that. I am only saying that is how Russians feel, including not only Putin, but many of the people inside of the Russian government. So that sets up the question of like, is this an idea which could actually make things much worse? And what to me is so fascinating is that Biden is the only guy, apparently.

It's Biden and the Germans who are like, well, hold on a second here. Maybe this might be a bad idea. This actually could get us into some sort of insane nuclear conflict. And also, I don't think it's an accident that the people pushing this the most are the people who are in the Baltic states already. This is where I get very frustrated, Crystal. These Baltic states, they have nothing to lose. If there's some sort of conflict, it's game over for them anyway. In America, actually, it's a choice for us as to whether we're going to go nuclear over the Baltic states and whether we're basically going to annihilate some of our world-class cities, our economy, and all of that in a conflict, which may, maybe not, actually have something to do with us and affect not only our economy, our people, and our overall strategic interests. So I get why the Baltics want to do this, but there's no reason why we would want to do this. And actually, if you consider, or if you at least

take it at their word, the Russians, that this had something to do with it, you know, not in the immediate invasion, but the 2008 promise Ukraine will eventually go into NATO, then why would you want to accelerate the timeline, especially when there's an ongoing active war in the country right now. What does the tripwire even look like? Like where and when do you invoke Article 5? Is it the current border? Is it if the Russians gain 10% more territory? If you cross this river, but if you don't cross that river, it's like this is where things get very, very murky. And all of us, all of our lives really are on the line. Yeah. I mean, listen, what they would argue is, look, Russia hasn't invaded NATO allies. And there's a reason for that, because they worry about that Article 5 protection.

And so this would be a way to prevent future wars. And so that's the case they would make. But I look at it and it's like, this is a way to guarantee that we actually go to World War III over Ukraine if this happens again. And, you know, the Biden administration's position seems pretty reasonable. They're like, hey, we don't even know where the borders are right now. That you like you can't admit or even like set down a specific timeline for admission of any country when you don't have set borders and when you're in the middle of a full scale war.

So the fact that every other country except the U.S. and Germany is like, let's do it anyway, it just kind of boggles my mind. But, Sagar, I think to your point, the fact that it's, you know, the burden is overwhelmingly on the U.S. Yes, we pay all the bills.

Right. So that's why they're, for them, it's like a free rider situation. Of course. They're like, yeah, bring them in. No problem. Let's do it. For us, it's like, wait a second. What are we committing ourselves to exactly? And so some

end characteristic restraint from the Biden administration. It looks like, though, they're under enough pressure that they feel like they have to take some sort of like a half measure here. Put this next piece up on the screen from the Financial Times. They say Western allies plan to provide long term security assurances to Ukraine, bilateral agreements to formalize level of military and financial support for Kiev. And of course, Zelensky is also pushing for that timeline for NATO membership. So Biden and the White House under a lot of pressure here. And effectively, what they are likely to do is to reach an overarching political declaration with Ukraine.

They said that under the Umbrella Declaration, Ukraine would conclude bilateral agreements, formalizing that current level of support and establish it on a more long-term footing with space to expand if deemed necessary. But neither the framework document nor the bilateral agreements would have the status of legal treaties and they would be signed outside of the NATO alliance. So this is like the, I mean, I don't want to say this is just like a bone they're throwing. This is significant in and of itself. Yes, it's still significant, right. That they were, you know, pressured into making some sort of longer-term security guarantee and commitment here,

which I do think makes sense, some sort of a longer-term security agreement, but I think it makes sense in the context of a resolution to the war. Yes. Not before then. Well, yeah, look, I actually I wouldn't even say I would say it's way more up for debate because right now, I mean, look, we have no obligation to do anything inside of Ukraine. Anything that we are doing right now in terms of aid and all of that in terms of of formalized legal agreements, nothing. And that's why it's very important to understand we should not get into anything formal or legal about in the future. I'm talking about Senate ratified agreements without very, very careful consideration,

because it could literally lead to a nuclear exchange in the future. And I just think that argument that you laid out from the opponents are so foolish. Oh, well, it hasn't happened yet. It's a 16-month-long war. You can't say rule anything in or out. Anything could happen. If you look at timelines in terms of the way that long, drawn-out conflicts like this go, it would take years in order to see what the full spectrum of what the actual possibilities are. So first of all, I can't rule that out. Second, what they point to here is this Quad agreement, which would be a non-binding agreement, which would be effectively, you know, kind of make aid to Ukraine. They would say like, oh, the U.S. and the other Quad countries,

U.K., Germany, and France would, France, would formalize a current level of aid. But for the UK, Germany, and France, that's not much off their backs. They're not the one who are paying 95% of the military expenses. It's the United States. So the current issue that we have overall is the free-riding problem from all of the nations inside of NATO that are not the US and the UK, which are the only two like genuinely great, great powers with military in terms of their military capabilities. France and Germany too are powers in their own right, but they're more like regional powers on the continent. Everyone gets mad when I say this, but you know, Poland's like, well, we pay 2% of our GDP. I'm like, yeah, well, you know, your GDP is literally like less than Alabama

or something like that. It's just on absolute terms, it really doesn't matter. Same in terms of the Baltic states. And what drives me nuts is that those are actually the most hawkish nations who are trying to get us embroiled in the conflict. You know, if they care so much, okay, spend 100% of your GDP on that if it's so existential to you. But they're not. And they literally don't even have the capability. They want Washington to go and pick up the slack for them. Well, we should also not lose sight of the fact we have said a million times here, and I'll say it again. The Russian invasion is horrific. It's unconscionable. It's illegal. We are completely opposed to it. The Russian position with regard to NATO

is eminently correct and reasonable. I mean, there was an expectation. There was at least an understanding that NATO would not expand towards their borders. We did it anyway. I mean, we knew that we have the cables that say our diplomats knew that it was a red line to even talk about Ukraine admission into NATO and Georgia as well. We did it anyway. So it's not like there isn't a point here in terms of Russia's view of NATO. So just to put this in the most simplistic terms, their

public position, Russia's public position, is that part of why they invaded Ukraine is over these tensions around NATO. And so our response to that is like, let's up the ante and make it even more concrete. Like, let's thumb our nose at you even more. I just think that is reckless and wildly dangerous. But to show you what kind of pressure the Biden administration is being put under here, there's a report in The Guardian that some NATO countries are talking about sending their own troops directly into this conflict. The polls in particular, they said if NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility some countries individually might take action. He argued that the polls would seriously consider going in among others.

So that's why they've really put the screws to Biden and why they feel like they have to at least do something here at this next NATO meeting to provide some kind of security assistance and guarantees to Ukraine. Otherwise, I mean, this would be this would be wild. You know, my response is go for it. Sign away and say that if you incur any sort of problem as a result of that, then that's your issue. Guess what? They will never do it. If that actually was the case, because they feel confident that we are going to back them up through our nuclear umbrella. That's, again, it's like you need to make strategic decisions such that you are factoring in both risk and reward. They bear none of the risk. We're the ones who have to back up and backstop

all of it. So yeah, look, if you want to send your troops into Ukraine, literally that's on you. Go for it. You know, I wish you the best. But if things go south, then that's also on you. And should, you know, it escalate into some broader problem, you deal with it. That's not going to be up to us. Unfortunately, though, that's not the way that Article 5 works, at least in terms of the way it can be invoked. So this is why we all have to spend a lot of time on this. And why we dedicated literally the top of this is because arguably this is 10, well, it's 100,000 times more important than whatever is going on with the Ukraine counteroffensive, whatever village changes hand here or there.

Whether they get NATO membership or not, which is what Zelensky wants. And by the way, what most NATO countries want, apparently, that will decide whether we ever really do escalate into a broader war, in my opinion. And I have absolutely, I have very little doubt that we would get embroiled in some massive conflict if we were to ever confer genuine NATO membership onto Ukraine. To me, and from everything we've seen so far, given that Putin literally invaded the country, it actually does look like an actual red line. So I guess everybody should decide, you want to go to a full-scale war for Ukraine or not? I personally don't. I don't think it's worth it at all. All right, let's go to the next part. This also gets to exactly why we should have some trepidation around these. And let's go and put this up there on, please, on the screen about

Belarus. Belarus is currently taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons, forward deploying them much closer toward Ukraine. This is according to President Lukashenko himself, says the country has been taking delivery of the tactical nuclear weapons specifically, some of which he said, quote, were three times more powerful

than the atomic bombs that the United States dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The deployment is actually Moscow's first move of such warheads, tactical nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield outside of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. So that is why, you know, this was downplayed really in the Western press. They're like, oh, it hasn't had. It's like, no, this is the first time literally in 30-something years they've ever moved nukes outside of Russia. It's a direct response to what's going on in Ukraine.

They're moving them closer towards Ukraine. No, that doesn't mean they're going to use them. Yes, it does mean that things would change significantly. But it also lets us return to something that we talked a lot about during the tactical nuclear weapon discussion, Crystal. There's no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Strategically, that escalates things to a whole other realm. And as Lukashenko himself said, even these, quote, tactical nukes that are, yeah, they won't annihilate, you know, the entire globe in a single bomb. So three times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That's where we're at. That's what, quote unquote, tactical means. I think that's so important for people to understand because you hear that term thrown around like, oh, it's just a little nuke. No big deal. It's like, no, we're talking about something that is extraordinarily powerful, dangerous, and puts us on a chain of escalation that nobody knows where it will ultimately go. I love the way that they downplay this, too. I mean, even in this piece, they say the U.S. has criticized Putin's decision, but said it has no intention of altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons, has not seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

Like, don't you consider this a sign? Yeah, that's a sign. That they might be considering use of nuclear weapons? They go on to say the Russian step is nonetheless being watched closely by the U.S. and its allies, as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. I do think that part is significant. But it also speaks to another lie that has been told in the press, which is that, like, oh, we keep shipping more advanced and longer range weapons. And the Russians, they don't respond. They don't escalate.

So all these fears of, oh, they're going to escalate are overblown. What do you call this? I call this an escalation. I mean, I call a lot of what Russia has done an escalation, you know, in returning to attacks on Kyiv, on drafting their own people and upping the ante in terms of this war. A lot of that, I think, could very clearly be called an escalation and is in part in response to the actions that we have ourselves taken here as a country. So, you know, this is the whole ballgame right here, ultimately. Will nukes ever be used in this conflict? Are we going to end up accidentally stumbling into World War III?

The danger might be small. It might be, you know, 1%. It might be 0.1%. If there is any risk of that at all, it should be the number one thing that we're concerned about here and around the world. Yeah, of course. And also the idea that NATO says that they're not worried is actually just completely wrong, because what just happened? Put this up there on the screen. Literally, the very same time that Russians are moving nukes into Belarus, NATO just held its largest air force drill ever in history to demonstrate alliance capabilities and, quote, solidarity against Russia. The war games officially launched and are called the 2023 Air Defender Military Exercise, also included Finland, as well as many other countries,

includes 12 days, 250 aircraft, 10,000 personnel, the largest deployment in the history of all of NATO, all that was happening such to make a very strong message towards them. And actually, the funniest part to me, Crystal, is that if you look at the actual quotes of what they are saying is, the trigger for me was the capture and the annexation of Russia, and that since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, NATO members, eastern flank, want the assurance that they will defend it should the Kremlin turn its sights on them. That was the German general who was in charge of the exercise himself and said, while he painted it, quote, as purely defensive in nature, behind the scenes say that they hope

it will show President Putin for that the alliance is not backing down in support for Ukraine. As Kiev begins, it's counter-offensive. So clearly, this is in response to Russian, not only the invasion of Ukraine, but also the deployment of these nuclear weapons and the increased fear

that this could escalate into something. If they didn't have fear, then they wouldn't have the drill. The drill is quite literally being held as a response to what's going on right there. So once again, you cannot say with a straight face that you are not worried about this escalating to anything. That's why we sent thousands of troops to NATO's eastern flank in the first place after this response, why we literally inducted two or tried to induct two new members, successfully inducted one into the alliance, and then now having this ongoing air drill that's happening. And also literally at the same time you and I are talking, all NATO defense ministers are gathered right now in Brussels, hammering out more agreements, running over more types of

exercises and things they can do. So it's not like strategically that things aren't moving and they aren't changing. Yeah, I think the whole point of this is just to underscore for people, you know, we can feel, it can feel a little bit like the frog in the boiling water. You just keep hearing this news over and over again and increase escalation and the next step on the ladder. And now we're sending F-16s and now, you know, the largest war games in NATO history. And now we're talking about a timeline for Ukraine to enter NATO. And now Russia is moving nukes into Belarus. It can feel exhausting. It can be hard to hold on to that sense of alarm at where all of this is heading. But I think it's just really important for people to keep in the front of their minds what a

dangerous, volatile and unpredictable situation we continue to be in so long as this war continues. Yeah, that's well said. Okay, guys, let's get to some domestic politics here. So I wanted to start with what's a really interesting poll about how Americans feel about a potential third-party effort. Put this up on the screen. Now, keep in mind that these numbers are not based on any specific third party candidate. They give people the option of Biden, Trump or third party and Biden, DeSantis or third party. So it can be like this is basically like the third party candidate of your dreams is the way that voters would interpret this. And this is from Suffolk University, USA Today. You know, well-respected pollsters to the extent that such a thing exists anymore.

Biden, they have at 34 over Trump at 32, third party taking 23 percent of the vote. And interestingly, actually, the margin is wider for Biden if he's against DeSantis, 33 over DeSantis' 26, with a third party at 25%. So you basically have in this poll a reflection of the fact that people are really not excited about any of these choices, to be perfectly honest with you. And even though you have a lot of hard partisan loyalists in this country,

you also have a lot of people who would theoretically be open to a third party candidate. Now, of course, there are a lot of barriers in the U.S. to third party candidates running, to them having success there are a lot of barriers in the U.S. to third party candidates running, to them having success. It's not easy to obtain ballot access. There are only a few organizations that do. But as I said, I think this really reflects how you have higher

interest in this election, in third party efforts than I believe you did last time around. I think the levels are more consistent with the third party interest we saw in 2016 when people were really not excited about Trump. And there were a lot of people really not excited about Hillary Clinton. And so you had Gary Johnson, you had Jill Stein in those elections. Now, liberals will tell you Jill Stein was a spoiler and she got enough, et cetera, to throw the election. I would personally say that Democrats should have done a better job appealing to voters if they wanted to win that election. But there is no doubt that there is a heightened interest in a third party effort this time around. And so you see some burgeoning third party efforts. We've already covered here how Dr. Cornel West, who is, you know, on the left, he's really well respected, well known political thinker and academic. He had initially announced that he was going to be

running as a People's Party candidate, which people, including myself, found quite perplexing because they don't have ballot access in most states. They don't have any track record of fielding a candidate or having success fielding a candidate. And so if you're running just as People's Party candidate, you're basically a glorified right in which the limits of, you know, the efficacy of that is going to be quite limited. Well, he just announced that he is going to be actually pursuing the nomination of the Green Party. Put this up on the screen. I think Ryan and Emily covered this yesterday as well, but I thought it was important for us to chime in on this too. Cornel West says, in the spirit of a broad united front and coalition strategy, I'm pursuing the nomination

of the Green Party for president of the United States. Go to CornelWest24.com for more information and continue to support this unprecedented effort to empower precious poor and working people here and abroad. I thank the volunteers of the People's Party for the initial launch. And Sagar, I got to tell you, I think this is a like I think the Biden administration should be pretty concerned about that. Yeah, they should. Because Cornel West, Dr. West, is a powerful person. He's a powerful orator. He has a voice of moral conscience and moral clarity that is incredibly compelling to people, even people who disagree with him on some of the issues. He's very effective at talking to people who don't agree with him exactly on the issue. I mean, he used to go on Fox. I don't know if he still does. Oh, I remember.

Fox News all the time. He's known for, you know, being willing to reach out to anyone who's willing to have any sort of legitimate or honest conversation, even some people who aren't willing to have really a good faith conversation. He's a very compelling figure at a time when people are desperate for any sort of alternative to what is a really depressing choice between Biden and Trump. So I think this is quite significant that he's decided to pursue a Green Party effort because they do have ballot access in almost all of the states. So it's a much more serious organization that will be behind it. Exactly. So now that he has ballot access, at least in all 50 states, it will mean that, look, he's got much higher name ID,

arguably than even Jill Stein did at that time. He's got a significant period in order to force the issue, force media coverage. All he really has to do is, you know, at least not even place necessarily, but, you know, get some media attention, have some real events and that's it, like game on, especially if you start showing up in the polls. I mean, overall, the Biden administration should be terrified. I was just reading this morning politically. Yeah. RFK Jr. is very likely going to win the first two states in the Democratic primary. Iowa and New Hampshire. Iowa and New Hampshire, because they are likely to go forward and not treat South Carolina as the first, even though the DNC changed the

rules. Biden is likely not even going to be able to contest in those states. Now, the media and everybody else will do their best to just downplay that and say it didn't happen. A win is a win, okay? When you win something, you have to cover it. So you have two Kennedy wins in those first two states going into South Carolina. Okay, Biden probably will do well in South Carolina. But guess what? Then, Crystal, we're right around the corner from Super Tuesday. And when you have got all that media attention, then you could have high third-party initiative.

You could have Kennedy literally winning the first two states. And all of a sudden, you're in a way weaker political position than probably any modern president since Jimmy Carter ran in 1980. And remember the drumbeat from the media. Biden's opponents aren't serious. They're not qualified. I mean, they have done everything they can to just pretend like it's not happening. And that's necessary because otherwise, you know, the fact that the DNC is saying we're absolutely not going to have any debates or any real like small D Democratic process becomes completely unconscionable.

You know, overwhelmingly voters, including voters in the Democratic Party, think there should be debates, think there should be a real process here by which voters can evaluate Joe Biden and RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson and anyone else who gets into the Democratic primary race. So, yeah, the fact that you have the two early states, I mean, as much as they will want to ignore and just pretend like that didn't happen either, and there will be some chunk of the electorate that's like, yeah, you're right, that doesn't really count. You can't just completely dismiss out of hand if the guy who's in the White House loses the first two early states. And so to get back to Dr. West and his role here, you know, the reason I say that I think it's a problem for Biden, these things can be complex about which party a third party candidate actually

takes away from. But Dr. West is clearly on the left. And Biden has a real weakness on his left at this point, because especially post Ron Klain leaving as chief of staff, their whole strategy has been to pivot towards the right. Right. I mean, they crushed the railway workers as one example. They struck the terrible situation with the debt ceiling and the deal that they end up striking with the Republicans. They've just on issue after issue chosen to pivot to the right because, I assume, electorally they think, oh, this is what we've got to do in order to appeal to the quote-unquote center for a general election. But now you've got an issue where you've pissed off environmentalists. You've pissed off a lot of your progressive base on the left.

They're actively looking for other alternatives. And now you not only have some strong contenders in the Democratic primary, you've got a really powerful force coming at you in the general election as well. So listen, do I think a third party effort could succeed and actually, you know, Dr. West become president of the United States? No, because not because of any fault of his own, but because of structural barriers that exist in American politics. Could it really reshape the quality and tenor and direction of this election? There's no doubt about it, especially with him pivoting to a Green Party run and with the fact that the Biden administration still, even with, they think they've crushed the left. They think that the left will

show up, that they'll vote blue no matter who left. They think that the left will show up, that they'll vote blue no matter who, because the alternative is so bad. I mean, they this genuinely, I think, is how they see it, that they don't have to do anything to win over the young voters who are disgusted with Joe Biden, who are on the left or disgusted with Joe Biden. They think they don't have to do anything. And, you know, we saw them make that calculation in 2016 and we saw how it worked out for them. That's not, so there is a third party effort that they are concerned about though,

even though they haven't paid any mind apparently to Dr. West or to any of Biden's primary competitors. So put this up on the screen. There's been this nascent effort from no labels, which is this like grotesque corporate Wall Street monstrosity of an organization with really no popular support. But they have lots of money, so they hang around anyway. And they have been sort of shopping around this idea of, well, maybe we'll run a candidate. And, you know, Jamie Dimons gets floated here. The CEO of Chase, JPMorgan Chase.

Joe Manchin gets floated here. It's like for the people who think that Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren't pro-Wall Street enough, this is like the candidate for them, which, again, I don't—that's like, you know, people who work on Wall Street and no one else. But you have kind of a panic from the White House about the possibility of a no-labels candidate running and splitting the quote-unquote anti-Trump coalition. The headline here from The Washington Post, Michael Scheer, Democrats meet with anti-Trump conservatives to fight no-labels 2024 bid. Biden allies seek to undermine an effort they see as a threat to the president's re-election. You had a lot of high

level Sager figures who were at this meeting, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, DNC senior advisor Cedric Richmond, Stephanie Cutter, former campaign advisor Barack Obama. They were joined by former senators Doug Jones, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill, along with representatives of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, former Weekly Standard publisher Bill Kristol and Lucy Caldwell, former Republican consultant who now advises the Independent Forward Party, according to people present at the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. You also had there Dimitri Melhorn, who is a big donor advisor for Reid Hoffman and has really been very central. Ryan did a fantastic and very revealing interview with him that I would encourage people to check out over on Ryan's podcast. But their whole theory is that the way to win is not to, you know, deliver materially for the American people and do a good job as president so that you have a

high approval rating and people actually want to reelect you. Their whole idea is we're going to make it so all of the people who hate Donald Trump are united behind the same candidate. We don't really have to do anything other than not be Donald Trump. And that is our path to victory. Let's be honest, it worked in 2020. Let's be honest, it basically worked again in midterms. But the margins are extremely thin and extremely narrow. So even though this no labels effort is not going to have a whole lot of popular support, if they draw even a tiny bit of support and split this theoretical, quote unquote, anti-Trump coalition, the White House is very concerned about what it would actually do to Biden's reelection chances. I feel like everybody is forgetting Biden only

won the presidency by some 150,000 votes across three or across five states and actually 30,000 against three states. Yeah. I mean, it literally rains a little bit in Georgia and things go very much different. Yeah. If, you know, I don't know if it rains in Maricopa County, but let's say it did in Arizona. Well, you know, once again, we're talking about like 10,000 votes or something like that. I mean, that's total madness whenever you have that low of a sliver. Sure. Things worked out in the midterms.

Who knows what things are going to look like in 2024 come that election. No labels then. The reason why they have to take it so seriously is because they're not strong. That's the issue. And my suspicion is, is that should Cornel West's campaign get some traction, then they are going to be pulling the knives of everything you've ever seen in order to get him off of the ballot in every single one of these states, suing them. That's why they're doing right now, the Arizona Democratic Party already sued to take no labels off. That's why they're freaking out inside of the White House. They cannot take any third party real contender whatsoever. They don't actually believe in democracy. I mean, that's like really clear. They don't actually believe in democracy because if you did, they're a very simple answer

to this. It doesn't involve like suing them or, you know, with with regard to the corporate efforts, their play all nicey nice. They have them to the White House. Let's talk. Let's work it out. Let's negotiate with regard to the left wing efforts. It will be like smear them as fascist enablers and Putin's puppets and whatever. They'll be just like disgusting attacks against them. There's another strategy though, which is to like actually do a good job as president and then people will want to reelect you. You know, it's not that complicated.

That's how it could work in a democracy. You have a lot of power to do things that would be good for the American people. You've already missed a lot of chances at that, but it's not too late. You still got a shot to actually win people over and not have to go the path that Ron Klain laid out, which is, I've brought this up a million times, but this is their strategy. When Emmanuel Macron won in France and he had like a 30%

approval rating and Ron Klain, former chief of staff, tweets out like, oh, interesting. He was able to win because people were so disgusted by the alternative. That's their only play. And so anything that disrupts that whatsoever, they hit the panic button over because they have no they will do anything to win except actually deliver for the American people so that they want to reelect them affirmatively rather than just as an alternative to like a horrific choice in Donald Trump. That's too difficult, Crystal. It's too difficult to actually do any work.

All right, let's get to the next topic. UFOs. Had to shove this one in there just because there's just, it's too good. And there's so many developments. So let's back up a little bit. As I outlined, actually, to RFK Jr. when he was like, are you aware of this whistleblower? I was like, brother, who do you think you're talking to here? Yes, we're aware.

Dave Grush, the whistleblower, has come forward from the intelligence community alleging that there are multiple alien spacecraft inside the U.S. government possession. Okay, so that interview has already come forward. It's been over an hour long. It's been released. I encourage everybody to go and watch it. That's on News Nation. It's on their YouTube channel as well. Many of the allegations in there are absolutely stunning.

So the next question is, how are Congress going to handle it? Part of what Dave Krush is saying is, you guys were lied to, is that the Pentagon is quite literally lying to you about all of these existence of the programs, about the developments inside of the building. Well, actually, they've gone ahead and actually been asked about it. So let's put this up there with some really revealing quotes. These are all compiled by Matt Laszlo over at Wired, who asked some really revealing quotes. These are all compiled by Matt Laszlo over at Wired, who asked some of these senators. Senator Warner, quote, there's been a lot incoming. Frankly, I just need to find out more information on this. But here was the really

interesting quote from Senator Hawley, quote, I'm not surprised by these latest allegations because it sounds pretty close to what they kind of begrudgingly admitted to us in the briefing. It's not good. None of it's good. We want to get to the bottom of this. I think it's disturbing. Senator Gillibrand also, who's been a real leader on the topic, says, quote, I have no idea. I'm going to do the work and analyze it and figure it out.

We need to look at whether there are rogue special access programs that no one is providing oversight for. The goal for me will be having a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these special access programs that no one is providing oversight for. The goal for me will be having a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these special access programs actually exist. So if there are special access programs out there that are somehow outside of the normal chain of command and outside the normal appropriations process, they have to divulge that to Congress. Now, the reason why that is so important is that one of the allegations here that's come forward, Crystal, is that there is actually basically rogue spending and budgeting going on outside of the normal system in order to cover up what Gillibrand is alleging there, which are unique special access programs that the American people have never been notified about,

nor do they have any oversight of, including of Congress. This kind of gets to maybe why the Pentagon can't pass any audits. I'm not saying that this isn't just, it's just UFOs. Like, that's the entirety of it. I'm saying things are designed in such a way such that assessing and auditing and taking an actual note of where the money is going is probably to the benefit of several black programs that are out there. And what really Dave Grush is alleging is that this may be going on for decades, which would fit with a pattern of cover up of

inside of the Pentagon. So that's number one that I wanted to bring everybody. Number two is an equally fascinating piece from Vanity Fair. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. And it gives a little bit of the background. Why did the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico not publish the report that was brought forward outlining Dave Grush's allegations? So as they lay out, you know, Ralph Blumenthal spent 45 years on staff at the New York Times. Leslie Keen literally, you know, wrote with Ralph Blumenthal the 2017 story on UFOs that debuted in the New York Times. Why did they turn it down? Well, according to Charlotte Klein, she's a media reporter over there who spoke with some people

behind the scenes, the Times straight up decided not to publish this piece, Crystal. They just decided, nope, we're not touching this. They tried to report it, but weren't able to get to the bottom. The second thing is the Washington Post is denying. They're like, we didn't turn it down. They're like, what it is, is that we were reporting it out. As in, they had accepted the piece, or not accepted it, but they'd looked at it and they were like, well, we want to hammer this out. We want to ask some more senators and stuff about it. Well, what Leslie Keen and Ralph Blumenthal are saying is that the reason why it ended up here in the debrief is that Politico and the Washington Post

did not want to allow enough time or wanted to allow way more time to add more context and facts. Right. The issue is that Grush's identity apparently was beginning to leak out in the UFO community. And he was getting contacted by some interesting people who were out there. And so Leslie Keen and Ralph Blumenthal said it was of the utmost importance to get this out as soon as humanly possible because his identity would otherwise leak. They would lose, you know, the scope of the story and the control on the story. That's ultimately why it ended up over there at the debrief. But it is clear the Times just straight up turned it down, which, you know, look, this could be the scoop of

the century, you know, if it all ends up being true. And for some reason, there's clearly a lot of squeamishness that's going on. You know, I'm in contact with people in the UFO community, researchers and others. I know that sounds funny, but these are very serious people, okay? And what they've told me too, Crystal, is behind the scenes, a lot of media outlets, individual reporters, they're interested. But from the top down, they're like, no, you can't cover this. You can't have any real scrutiny of this at all, which, you know, to me, I'm reading this quote from Holly, from Jillo Brand and all this. I mean, it seems pretty real. It seems very real that they're taking – I mean, show me one of them that says this guy sounds like a crank.

Every single one said, hey, we've got to take this real seriously. I mean, they know. They know cranks from non-cranks whenever they have to look at it. They have a lot of interaction with cranks. Yeah, including many of their colleagues. Facts. Yeah. My guess is that there's just, there's such a, so much like decorum and like appearance humping over at the New York Times.

Well said. That they're just like afraid of looking ridiculous, you know? And so even though they could have reported it out, even though they're, I mean, these are serious, credible reporters with a track record who ended up reporting out this piece. So this isn't just like some, you know, crank weirdo who's obsessed with UFOs. Like these are, you know, real legitimate journalists that the New York Times has experience working with too, by the way. And so that would be my guess, is they just, like, they're afraid of looking ridiculous. They're afraid of stepping outside of the bounds of what you're supposed to think and what you're supposed to say.

So they just take a pass. I mean, they didn't even come up with an excuse. It was posted in Politico. We're like, yeah, we totally would have done it, but just didn't have the time. Here's another reason why it's so important. You know, look, you cannot dismiss some things that are just straight up facts. Friend Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, they released actually one of the forms of the disclosure of urgent concerns and the complaint of reprisal actually from Dave Grush, which is signed by him,

completely unclassified and also signed by his lawyer. Let's go ahead and put this, please, guys, up on the screen. This is a screenshot from what Jeremy Corbell released over on the Weaponized podcast. And as you can see here, I mean, read the allegations that Dave Grush says here. Mr. Grush previously served as a fully cleared member of the United States government UAP task force. He has direct knowledge that certain IC elements have purposefully and intentionally withheld and concealed UAP related classified information from the U.S. Congress. He has direct knowledge that this classified information has been withheld and concealed by the involved IC elements to purposefully and intentionally thwart

legitimate congressional oversight of the UAP program. UAP is another way of saying UFO. And he said specifically that in July of 2021, he confidentially provided UAP related classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General. This is literally almost over a two-year process that has been playing out behind the scenes. And we have here his genuine signature by his lawyers that he's testifying before this that has been brought forward as part of a whistleblower complaint given to the inspector general, which was then received and said that they were urgent and they needed to be looked into. I mean, I don't know what else we can really lay out for people. And yet behind the scenes also, what we have seen is the Pentagon

is continuing basically to call him a straight up liar. The Pentagon and the UAP task force, Susan Goh, who's one of the spokespeople over there, she came out and she was just like, yeah, this is totally untrue. There's no existence of any of these programs. United States Air Force came out with a statement just being like, yeah, look, ever since Project Blue Book and all that closed the door, there's no reason that we should even be looking into this. I mean, the cover-up is happening in plain sight. The only hope we have are these congressional representatives and whether they're actually going to get to the bottom of it. But I mean, really what we're looking at here is a vast conspiracy of people who have been covering this up now for decades, special access programs, or Grush is straight up psychotic. All these other

people that have come forward to Michael Schellenberger and all that. Look, yeah, maybe they're just stone cold crazy. It's very possible. It's certainly possible. But watch the interview. Maybe, maybe. Look, I've seen hucksters out there before. But this many people, this level of seriousness, the testimony to his character and all of that, the fact that he was vetted by Jeremy Corbell, by Leslie Keen, by Ralph Blumen,

these are all people who've met a lot of crazy people out there before. And they don't just bring these things forward without any recourse. I believe him. I believe him whenever he talks. So what do you say to, like in Vanity Fair, they were like, okay,

you have a track record of a credible person, you have other people who are corroborating your claims, but where's the evidence? You know, where's the, like, where's the photo? Where's the material? Where's the something? Because I do think it's reasonable

for people to say, like, okay, this is an unbelievable, like, it's a literally unbelievable claim. And so in order for us to take this seriously, you're going to have to give us a little something more than just some chitty chat.

Well, guess what? It's classified. I don't think everybody keeps forgetting that. He has to come forward through the official whistleblower process. He can't just leak classified information. They're going to lock him up. They're going to throw him in jail. So he can't, first of all, he even said, I never saw anything.

I just saw the existence of the program. That's not what he's alleging. What he's alleging is, I know that these programs exist. I'm not saying I saw it. He's never claimed to be some sort of eyewitness. He said, I've seen people would testify the forward. Okay, so we need those names and we need to get them under oath and bring them before Congress. But what he has claimed, first, I'm glad that you brought that up. He has to deal with the US government and their classification regime. If he leaks something like that, it's the easiest pretext in the world to throw him

in jail literally for the rest of his life. Look at Edward Snowden or Julian Assange about what's happening to them. Would you have confidence about bringing that forward? No. You absolutely can't. Although they could even go after him just for what he's already revealed. Well, I mean, from what I've understood, it's not like they're making his life all that easy right now.

So, look, let's just keep all of this in mind, you know, as we move forward and as we continue to ask our congressional representatives to actually take up the mantle and, you know, maybe try and get to the bottom of this. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, if you were to go back to the original days of the World Wide Web and the promise of the internet and tell everyone what the world would look like today, they would be stunned. They would be dismayed. The web in its original conception was to be a free marketplace of ideas and a tool for destroying established institutions to circumvent the centers of power. At first, that was kind of true. But over time, we saw that established institutions either co-opted the web or worse, that the new institutions of the web from the early days became their own centers of power. The Googles, the Facebooks, the Microsofts, the Apples,

the Amazons, they replaced the original major institutions. They became behemoths in their own right, touching the lives of almost every American citizen and often the lives of almost every citizen of every developed country on the globe. This isn't just a touch either. We're talking about our ability to communicate, to enter our homes, to remit payment, to use transportation. All of this these days relies in some ways on these companies. And so these companies' impartiality is vitally important. For the first two decades or so, their existence, it really wasn't even an issue. It wasn't thought of. They seemed to just be utilities. Your ability to be a customer of Apple or Amazon or Google didn't have anything to do with your social or your political views. But then there was a great awokening. It happened.

Everyone had to take a stand. The election of Trump only poured gasoline on that fire. Suddenly the companies themselves, they're not just utilities anymore. They started to kick people off their services for reasons that had nothing to do of whether they could pay or not. And this set up a new dystopia, an almost private social credit score system where at any time, for any reason, your ability to exist as a normal human being in 2023 can just be cut off for wrong think or even alleged wrong think. The latest example is so crazy, it is almost difficult to even wrap your head around. It revolves around a Baltimore man's recent experience with Amazon. Brandon Jackson, he's a Baltimore resident,

who on May 25th found himself in a weird predicament. He couldn't log in to his Amazon account. And it wasn't just a nuisance. The issue was his Amazon account was linked to his smart home devices. It was run by the Alexa system. No Amazon, no smart home devices. It was run by the Alexa system. No Amazon, no smart home. So he did some digging. It appeared he had received an email the day before from Amazon from an executive asking him to call the company. He was mystified. Since when do you

need to call Amazon? It almost seemed like a prank or a phishing scam. After he gets on the phone with the Amazon executive, he discovers the delivery driver of a package on a day before reported hearing a, quote, racist remark as he dropped his package off at Jackson's home. Now, it's important to understand a few things here. Number one, Jackson himself is a black man. Number two, he was living in a Baltimore neighborhood, also predominantly black. Number three, most important of all, Jackson was literally not at home, nor was anyone else in his household at the time of the delivery and alleged incident. Luckily, he was actually able to gain access through a third party to his smart home doorbell footage, and he verified that the automated response after delivery driver rang

the bell was, quote, excuse me, can I help you? The driver reported the remark was also wearing headphones at the time of the incident. Jackson believed that he somehow had misheard it while wearing those headphones. Jackson compiled multiple video angles from directions to verify nothing had occurred, and he submitted this evidence to Amazon. But he had to wait days before his account was restored. All of this was verified by YouTuber Luis Rossman. Now, the company did not even apologize to him. They did not acknowledge any fault, quite literally rendering his entire system useless that he used to run his home.

Now, I know that people out there who can't even get into their house without Alexa or can't even use their TV, what would they do? And for what? The guy didn't say anything. The moronic delivery driver misheard an automated remark. Does that mean from now on, all of us are literally at the mercy of hearing an Amazon delivery driver drive on how, what they might or may not hear onto whether our account can exist

or not? It's easy to say, yeah, this guy's an idiot. Why is he relying entirely on Amazon for his house? But realistically, how many options do you really have out there for a smart doorbell that's easy to use? Sure, you can use your own. You can do your own research. You can rig everything up locally. Who has the expertise and the time and the money to do that? Or take Smart Home and Amazon out of it.

What is it about your iMessage account for if you use an iPhone, your Gmail account, or your Google Drive, or your Microsoft account that you may use for your business? All of us, it seems, are simply one fake accusation away from being cut off from a vital part of our lives or our business. The world really saw how precarious this all was after January 6th. You can hate what happened. You can still be alarmed, though, that Parler, a social media site we now know is not really central at all to planning the January 6th attack, was simultaneously nuked from the Apple App Store and basically removed from Amazon Web Services. Prior to that incident, most people didn't even know that was possible.

Amazon Web Services was like a utility, but it's not a utility because it's not governed by any laws. It's a private company. It can do whatever it wants. Same with the way that our payment processing companies like Visa and MasterCard are. They can simply just not accept you as a customer if they don't want to. And right now, their services have been pulled mostly from fringe actors. But that's just how it starts. The architecture for a private social credit score system, it's already here. You can be locked out of your phone and your smart home, your bank, and you will have no right or recourse to contest what happens to you.

In many ways, you actually have more rights when you are accused by the government than you do when you're threatened by the might of corporate power in this country. In the meantime, remember, anytime you willingly sign up for any of these services, you're signing up for something else, too. That's the iron hand of fake justice in the event should you ever be accused. How crazy is this? He didn't even say anything. The story is so wild.

He did not say anything. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, once upon a time, student-athletes at top colleges were treated more as indentured servants than as the remarkable competitors that they are. While their schools and TV networks all profited off their hard work and grueling schedules, the athletes themselves, they were denied any opportunity to share in the fruits of their labor. Then everything changed. In 2021, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of student-athletes who were challenging limits on internships and other educational benefits that schools could use to lure them. And that decision opened the door for a whole lot more.

As Justice Kavanaugh wrote at the time, traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA's decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. The NCAA is not above the law. Now, the NCAA, seeing the writing on the wall, decided that rather than being forced into actually directly compensating student-athletes, they would change their rules and they would allow athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness. So athletes could nab sponsorship deals, they could monetize their social media, thereby enabling at least some of them to earn real money off of their prowess,

including athletes in sports that don't have a professional league waiting to pay them big bucks after their college career. And they all lived happily ever after, right? Well, not quite. Did you actually think capitalism was going to lead to some noble, perfect meritocracy? Come on, guys. This is America at the height of influencer culture, and sex sells a whole lot more than your actual athletic prowess. According to a new report from the Free Press, the top female in particular, college athlete earners, are not the top in the sport. They're the hottest girls with the savviest social media presence. The reporter dubs this dynamic the NCAA's hot girl problem. In particular, they highlight the Cavender twins, lean, blonde, twin basketball players who transferred from Fresno State to

University of Miami in order to be closer to the limelight. Just to become a Division I college athlete, let's be clear, it's a really impressive accomplishment. So I'm not trying to take anything away from these ladies' ability. But they're clearly not being paid for their basketball skills so much as their skill at frolicking in a bikini on a beach. After all, as the article points out, top women's basketball players average nearly 30 points per game. Now, Haley Cavender scored about 12 points per game. That's pretty impressive, her last year at Miami. Hannah averaged about four points per game. Another top female earner, Olivia Dunn, is an excellent gymnast who has distinguished herself at Louisiana State on

the uneven bars in particular. But it's not like she's Olympian caliber good at the sport. She is, however, Olympian caliber good at Instagram, where she posts exactly like your typical Instagram model and has racked up over four million followers. The branding incentives on the men's side are apparently a little bit different, seemingly a bit more related to actual athletic performance. But even here, ultimately, it all comes down to your ability to brand. And for the guys, having a famous last name, that seems to be the ultimate trump card there. The top earners on the men's side are LeBron James' son, Bronny, and Peyton Manning's nephew, Arch. Of course, none of this should have been remotely surprising to anyone who actually thought it through.

In fact, I remember years ago there was kind of a similar panic about the fact that tennis player Anna Kournikova was one of the best-known and highest-paid female athletes in the world. Even though her tennis ranking topped out at eighth in the world and she never actually won a singles title. But she was gorgeous and she was blonde and she knew how to work a camera, even though this was the pre-social media age. Now, a casual scroll through the list of top paid women's athletes today reveals a remarkably simpler dynamic. Sponsorship deals aren't just about appearance. It's more about overall brand. But being hot certainly doesn't hurt. Just ask number three on the list, freestyle skier Eileen Gu, who is both an incredible Olympic gold

medalist and also exceptionally beautiful. Number one on the list, actually in 2022, was tennis player Naomi Osaka, who has a look and a story that fashion mags fell all over themselves to feature. Brands ate it up completely. She's currently ranked in the 400s in tennis, but as of last year, at least, she was at the absolute top in terms of female earnings. Now, I don't think any of these people, not the Kavinder twins or Osaka or the cute gymnast girl Instagram model, I don't think they should feel bad about any of this. As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game. Twins Haley and Hannah, they were asked about the fundamental unfairness of their fame and fortune as opposed to other superior, more impressive athletes.

And they were appropriately apologetic about the system and about their privilege. Hannah told the Free Press, quote, I mean, obviously, yes, this is a touchy subject, but I think that we are privileged in a way. Obviously, we don't deal with the same things that other women deal with or other people deal with, and that's just how our world is, and it's awful. They also expressed an awareness of how fleeting their Instagram model coom sports star celebrity might actually be. After all, they just graduated and they are not headed to the WNBA. So an uncertain future in a

fickle capitalist marketplace where relevance can die in an instant, that's already staring them right in the face. To me, the whole situation is pretty revealing. Shows the distance between what we tell ourselves we value, merit, hard work, excellence, and what we actually value. After all, these sponsors and these athletes, they're just responding to what the human beings who make up the market actually want. It also shows you the kind of twisted, supposed meritocracies are actually built, even in the best of cases, in the free market. On Wall Street, for example, we would theoretically, in an ideal world, want to reward stability, ethics, competence. Instead, cheaters and reckless risk-takers win the prize. In corporate America, we, want to reward stability, ethics, competence. Instead, cheaters and reckless risk takers win the prize. In corporate America, we would want to reward

innovation, concern for employees. But instead, we reward the biggest ladder climbing psychopaths who are best at rigging markets into monopolies. So don't be mad at these girls for getting their bag. Still better that at least some athletes can monetize their labor in some way. But let's not pretend this is anything approaching economic power for the vast majority of extraordinary student athletes. Sagar, as you know, I would. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We're very excited to have the panel back here on Breaking Points. It's historic. It's a historic moment. Many people are saying we've got two fantastic guests.

Ryan Gerduski is a political consultant and author. And we've got Sam Mangold-Lennett. He is a staff editor over at The Federalist. Guys, we've been hyping this one up big. So we appreciate you. You're our first in-studio guest. I already think it looks pretty nice. Let's go and see that beautiful wide shot, people.

Oh, that. Oh, boom. It's so much less awkward than the old set when we would have guests on. I'm loving it a lot. Okay. So the reason we guys are here is we wanted to do a panel about America first, the case for Ron DeSantis and for Trump. And it's, I think, an interesting way to approach it because the way that most of the media talks about this, they leave kind of the policy out and they just focus on the politics. We're actually going to put the politics second and focus a little bit on policy. Brian, I want to start with you. You're somebody who's been active in the movement now for quite a long time.

You're somebody who- Just call me old. No, you're not old. He's not old. It looks great here on the camera. But Ryan, you were somebody who were making the case on America First, even very early days, 2015 onwards, somebody who's voiced some support now for Governor Ron DeSantis. So I think it'd be valuable to start with you and kind of lay out what is America First and why does Ron DeSantis kind of fit into that vision? Well, I think that we've had now several decades of the people running our government putting working class people last and oftentimes working for their own ideas and their own narratives about globalism or international organizations, international peace missions.

And lost in that is the fact that working class people in this country, they have died earlier than they have in decades. They're poorer than they have been in decades. They don't have real material wealth as they had. A lot of their children who have fought in these wars are now coming back addicted to fentanyl. I think that Trump did a great job at breaking through the Republican narrative, the longstanding Republican narrative that dates back to Reagan. However, when he was president, he didn't do many of those things. He hired people that he either was related to

or that was brought to him by the RNC. And that was really, really bad for a lot of things. We never got a wall. We never got most of his immigration policies. The factories, the jobs that had come back, they didn't go to the Midwest. We didn't get infrastructure. I mean, Washington loves spending money. He couldn't even get them to spend money on infrastructure. And I think we need somebody more capable and more understanding of how to use the levers of power in the direction we want to go.

And I think that's Ron DeSantis. Sam, why don't you go ahead, America first. Do you disagree with anything that Ryan just laid out there? And then give us the case for Trump within the America first framework. Yeah, so I agree with what Ryan said about the left behind Americans. I think of it as a complete and utter prioritization of the people who really are the bedrock of the nation. You know, working class Americans grow the food, they build the stuff here, or at least they used to build the stuff here before we stopped building

stuff here. I think there are valid concerns about staffing in the former Trump administration. And I think a lot of those concerns will be remedied moving forward should Trump be the 47th president. But I do understand the concern. I think it's also imperative to note that the political moment we're in in the conservative movement is entirely because of the mega movement. It's entirely Trump's paradigm that's built around his brand. Well, not his personal brand, but his political movement. So, Ryan, let me push you a little bit on DeSantis

here. And obviously, like, I don't really have a dog in this fight. You guys are on a different team than me. But in terms of DeSantis, his legislative track record is very much of that standard conservative. You know, he's many times talked about how he wants to cut Social Security and raise the age. He wants to cut Medicare and, you know, debt and the deficit. And, you know, it was very much in line with sort of the standard views on foreign policy, the kind of John McCain type neocon views on foreign policy. So and even now, it's not like what he's running on is a restoration of the working class. He's running, you know, we're going to make Florida's the place where woke goes to die. And he's fixated more on the cultural side of the conservative spectrum.

So what makes you think that he fits with that working class vision that you have? Well, when he was governor, one of the things that he did, Florida is a very expensive state to live in now. There's a lot of people who move there. He did the hometown hero's law, which is if you're a nurse or if you're a firefighter or a policeman or a teacher and you have to live close to a vicinity of a very expensive place, the state helps pay for your down payment of your house. He suspended sales taxes on baby items for working-class mothers. They did a lot of stuff that was towards working-class people. Is he running and messaging on it the correct way?

No, I'd like to see him do more. But I think that the intentions and the conversations that he's having, I think if there's something capable of actually executing that, it's going to be DeSantis more so than Donald Trump. Well, so that's, Sam, let's talk about the staffing that you were telling. Ryan and I were quite literally covering a lot of it at the time. I personally observed, interviewed Trump four separate times. He always seemed to care much more about his own personal issues than really kind of the movement issues that you're talking about. You described it as his movement of not as personal. What makes you think that, given the way that he demands loyalty tests and

hiring, you know, his relatives who don't necessarily face the- They're Democrats. Who don't hold the- They're closer to the crystal than they are to money. Let's just, yeah, I will let Ryan say that. I'm not going to say it. But, you know, I think that's a fair criticism. What gives you the confidence that Jared Kushner is not going to come right back into the White House? Reince Priebus won't be the chief of staff again.

Why do you have such confidence in a second term rather than what happened in the first term and we all saw it? So in regard to Jared Kushner, I think he's distanced himself pretty far from this go around just for whatever personal reasons. There's also the whole, you know punished Trump arc aspect of it There's the whole drive for I don't say revenge, but they're the want for a a comeback type thing They are he's surrounding himself from my understanding with people who are better able to sniff out the landmines which Frankly should have been from the get-go, but being a political outsider, there's a bit of naivety with that.

So my understanding is that with a healthy dose of skepticism and cynicism, they'll be able to better place their feet than they were the first time around. Ryan, what's your response? I totally disagree with that. I mean, he's got Chris DeSavida, who is his chief political person,

the guy who was from Paul Ryan's campaign, and he ran Tony Gonzalez for Congress in Ohio, who voted for impeachment. He's his number one political guy right now. AFPI, American Principle, America, whatever the whole AFPI think tank is, they're going to staff the White House. They were created from Jared Kushner's number two in the White House. So it's all Jared Kushner people left and right. And Trump's demand for an arc, for a redemption is not that he's going to finally give into his base. It's going to finally earn love from the media. That's who he's really appealing to. I

mean, Trump would much more care about a positive headline from Maggie Haberman than from the Daytona Weekly. And like, that's just the truth. So when he gets in there, I mean, what was he working on right before he left office? An amnesty. There's no evidence whatsoever that he wouldn't just do that because he's finally gonna get the love from the media. Morning Joe will have a great segment on him saying, wow, Donald Trump, he finally did it.

He'll get all the love he finally wants from the people who hate him the most, which is all he craves. And there's that sociopathic cynicism that he just can't help himself. He can't control his fingers on truth socially. He can't control his mouth in public. There's no evidence whatsoever he's going to be able to control anything. And, you know, and Jarrah will be going to foreign countries, probably bribing them for more money like he did with the Qataris and the Saudis. So, like, he's hunter-biter without the kids and the hookers. Like, that is basically what you're looking at with the Trump family.

And there's only so much more that we could sit there and say, no, this time he's going to get it right. He's 77 now. That's the magic number. What do you say, Sam? I mean, I totally understand the cynicism. Yeah. But I would just highlight that I don't, I mean, not to, you know, bring the personal personalities into it. I don't see how a, any Republican administration would be

able to avoid any landmines put by bureaucrats or the deep state or whatever. I just don't see how a DeSantis administration can better sniff things out. That actually kind of gets to the question I wanted to ask both of you guys, which is, it's hard for me to see why you have any faith in either one of these guys to actually deliver for the working class when, you know, we've seen post-Trump, first of all, Trump's major accomplishment in office is a giant tax break to like the wealthiest Americans overwhelmingly. Well, he let criminals out of prison too. Don't forget that. I support criminal justice reform, but I know you have a different position on that, but I mean, that's his biggest accomplishment in office is a giant tax cut. Why? Because that's all the infrastructure that backs the Republican Party. You know, they had that tax cut. He's incompetent,

but they had that tax cut locked and loaded, ready to go. And those are the still the institutions that run the Republican Party. And you see it with, you know, the current House Republican caucus. Yeah, they were sort of shamed into claiming, oh, we're not going to touch Social Security and Medicare. I see a headline today. They're plotting like, OK, well, how can we actually cut Social Security and Medicare? The elites in the Republican Party have not changed. Ron DeSantis is backed by those elites. I mean, his you know, he's very it's very much a donor play from Ron DeSantis. Trump has more grassroots based support, but there's no track record for him actually delivering on any of the things that might help working-class people.

So it's just not clear to me why you would think either of these people would deliver on it. But if it was a donor play, DeSantis would not have done E-Verify. The donors are screaming, don't do it. They wouldn't have done the pro-life thing. Yeah, but look how he folded on Ukraine, right? I mean, he got pushed back on Ukraine, and he flipped along, and he was uncomfortable. But that wasn't a policy. That clearly was pressure from the donor. Just look where he gets, right? I mean, he got pushed back on Ukraine and he flipped off and he was uncomfortable. But that wasn't a policy. That clearly was pressure from the donor. Just look where he gets his money.

I mean, that's why I'm saying it's a donor play. It's just, listen, we all know how Washington works, right? I get it. You know that those are the people whose calls he will take. Those are the people. Well, he doesn't make anyone's calls, which is why they complain about constantly. He's not even running on the things that you want him to run on. So what makes you think that he's going to like. But I don't want his PR.

Sure, but what makes you think that if you're not even—if you run on it, there's like a small chance you might do it when you're off. You're not even talking about it. Like, it's not going to happen. Okay, there are three things that the donors said don't do this year. Disney, he did it. E-Verify, he did it. Abortion, he did it. So what evidence is there that he's going to kowtow to the donors?

And Nikki Haley's criticism to him was, you got money from them. How could you possibly hurt them? Come to South Carolina, Disney. That was her little, like, how dare you defy the donors? That's her attack. So if he's bowing at the donors, he's doing a bad job of that. That's a fair point. He's kicked on some of their stuff. Crystal's right that he did fold a little bit on Ukraine, which was different. He doesn't have a very, very well thought out policy. And he said, point blank, it might be over by the time I become president. So I've got, you know. Well, we hope so. Unlikely, unfortunately. So given that, though, Ryan, in terms of the donor support, it is, you know, Ken Griffin, many of the other elites, billionaires in the Republican

Party, they do support Ron DeSantis. How do you, why do you have confidence that he will be better able to kick their influence than Trump did? If you look at what donors have said about him, it's the constant, he doesn't take our phone calls. That's what the billionaire from New York, the Greek guy, he's like, I'm not giving him because he doesn't take my phone calls. He doesn't return my phone calls. There's a constant complaint about him. He's not personable. He doesn't show up at my event. This is the thing about him being, like, socially awkward, basically. But it's not socially awkward.

I mean, it's not what it stems from. Well, that's the accusation. I mean, I've met him. He wasn't that socially awkward. I know people way worse. But go to the streets of Washington, D.C. They're not running for president. Yes, that's true.

But it's not that he's not social. It's that he's not owned by them. And if he was, I mean, E-Verify is one of the hardest things you could do in Florida, between the agricultural lobby, the tourism lobby, and the construction industry. And he still managed to do it. And they were all pressuring him and the Florida GOP. And he did it. And he was like, no, you can't have illegals stealing jobs from American workers. And I mean, it got passed amazingly because they didn't think it was going to. Right. So, Sam, I think that's also a fair point, though, is that while Trump was in office, Steve Schwartzman's on the phone. Rupert Murdoch's on the phone. He loved getting the praise from all of the donor class while he was there.

I actually personally witnessed it whenever some of these guys were there and the way he would suck up to them, the Fortune 500 CEOs. Why do you have confidence that's not going to happen this time around? I want to push back on something real quick. I think a major reason why DeSantis was able to accomplish a very successful and great legislative agenda was because he had a very ideologically aligned Florida legislature. There's no guarantee that success would translate over to Congress. That success was able to be achieved because Florida was aligned with him and coalesced around him. I am very skeptical that success could be achieved at the national level. I hope it could, but I don't think it would be as smooth as butter as it was in Florida.

Absolutely true. But what you could do is you could do a Schedule F and start firing people who are bureaucrats. There's things an executive actually can do that can fire bureaucrats. They can move agencies to different locations and let the bureaucrats not want to go to the middle of Omaha or wherever. For sure. And that's what Trump did for that one, I think, was Interior or something. I think it was BLM, the Bureau of Land Management. Yeah, that's what he did. He moved them out of D.C.

And people did not apply for their job again. I mean, there's things that you could sit there and do as the executive. You could do schedule. There's a couple of schedules you could do to sit there and get rid of bureaucrats who defy you and hold you back. That's totally possible. Is it possible to get every legislative agenda through with a 60 vote threshold? Probably not. But with a lot of the issues that I care about, immigration, trade, foreign policy, you don't need Congress.

Let me just—the last thing, Ryan, on this part, and then I want to move to the horse race part and look at the polls and all that good stuff. But I guess, Ryan, when I look at DeSantis and try to take my own ideological view out of it, I just see a guy who's trying to find the spot for, like, he's twisting in the wind. I mean, when it was cool to be a Reagan conservative and a neocon, that's what he was. Now he sees the rise of Trump. He's like, ah, that's that's the thing I need to get in on. So let me try to be that thing. And let me try to copycat Trump and even his like mannerisms and whatever he would try to copy rhetorically. And so what gives you confidence that if, you know, the worm turns a little bit more and some of the issues that you care about fall out of fashion again and he's under pressure from whoever, from the public, etc., that there's actually a core ideological commitment to any of this? Well, a lot of people try to be like Trump after 2016.

And what they thought being Trump was was being an asshole on social media and being loud and abrasive and still voting for tax cuts. And that's it. Like the MAGA Inc. brand that some of the worst politicians in the country have on them is literally just Bushism with a different bumper sticker. And a lot of governors do the same thing too. DeSantis didn't do that. DeSantis really reformed education. It wasn't just about black in school choice and don't worry about it and whatever. He got into the policy wheeze. I do my school board elections. I have done over 300 nationwide. The only two elected officials have ever called me to ask me about it. And one was DeSantis. He was the first one. So he really does care about process and in-depth things. And he does not have to go as far as he has.

When did we ever think, as in the 2000s, that Florida would be considered the free state and Texas wouldn't? That's a massive change under one person's administration and only one person's, that's Ron DeSantis. Sam, I want to actually give you a similar version of that, which is with Trump. Like we said, we've all had experience with Trump. We've watched him change his mind constantly,

both on the core issues to Republicans, from like Reaganite Republicans, but also even on trade, on many of these immigration, any of these issues, amnesty. Considering that, why do you have confidence that this man will actually do even some of what you want him to do when he's in office, when we already had four years? We didn't accomplish much of it. It wasn't just staff. Much of it was also up to him personally. I think on trade in particular was one of the more consistent aspects. I think that's really his strong suit is the economic populism. And that's part of the reason why so many working class Americans are hopeful because of him. He actually represents, at least culturally, what they need, what they yearn for.

You know, there is no, obviously no guarantee in anything in politics. I'm not going to bet the house on anything. Yeah. But I think there is, that is his strength, is going to war for the economic populism. We got the USMC trade deal out of him. True. And that renegotiated NAFTA, which gutted the Midwest. I think that's a major reason to be optimistic for a future Trump administration.

All right, let's turn to the politics and control room. I actually want to start with, I think it's the third element, showing Trump's losses in the midterms and how his candidates struggled. Because for any of this to matter, your guy's got to be able to win an election. And one of the cases that the DeSantis team is trying to make is like, well, listen, we are the we don't have all of this ingrained hatred of more than half the country against us. We think we could win back some of the suburban voters or whoever it is that we want back in the coalition. So we are a better bet for the fall. And in fact, there is some evidence of that, given the fact that in the midterms, the Trump-backed candidates performed very poorly.

The candidates who were, you know, the most in on Stop the Steal, that appeared to be a real albatross. And on the other hand, Ron DeSantis won in Florida, which not so long ago was a swing state, and he won really easily. And actually, all Florida Republicans did quite well. It was quite a standout, as opposed to the rest of the country. So what makes you think that your guy, as he's facing multiple indictments and all of this other chaos that constantly swirls around him and makes a whole lot of people hate him, what makes you think he could even make it back to the White House? Well, I mean, the midterms were very disappointing.

I don't think anybody would deny that. I don't think it's necessarily because of Trump himself. I think a lot of it is the political environment we were in. You know, you did have people who campaigned way too heavily on Stop the Steal, on It Was Stolen, things like that. And I do think Trump threw punches he shouldn't have thrown. Like I think it was Dan Boddock in New Hampshire. Yes, thank you.

That was a fight that was totally unnecessary. But, you know, that's just how things shook out. In the case of Arizona, you know, there were funding issues and general campaigning issues. In Michigan, there was the abortion ballot referendum that really boosted Gretchen Whitmer and hurt Tudor Dixon. Yeah. And then there were just, you know, quirky personalities on ballots across the country. Quirky is a good word for it. A little too many memes on the official campaign pages.

Yeah. I think the culture is a big driver for Trump. I think people are increasingly less motivated by actual nuanced political issues. I think they're more motivated by... It's all vibes. Yeah, by vibes. No, I think you're right. Yeah. No, I actually agree.

There's a reason why he got a boost after the indictment. After every single negative news cycle... Well, he got a boost in the Republican primary. Right, yeah. With the general electorate, it's, I think, a very, very different deal. Right. Yeah. Ryan, I see you want to jump in the bit.

What was the question? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. It was just... I think on the DeSantis front is... I do think that his strongest case, at least to somebody like me, is like, I'm a winner. He's like, you can call me whatever you want. But as you just said, he won Florida by 20 points.

That's insane. Well, it's not just that he won Florida by 20 points. He has never in his entire political career ever underperformed an election cycle. So when the nation was a D plus eight wave year in 2018, he won by less than one. All right. In his congressional runs, he always outperformed the nation. So let's talk to you about the primary. Let's go ahead and put the poll up on the screen of where things stand today. That's the first element. Donald Trump at 59 percent. And this is with the broader field. But it still has him up over 50 percent. Ron DeSantis at 19 percent.

This is according to Morning Consult. Listen, the polls, you know, they're take them with a grain of salt. But consistently, the polls show Trump at this point with quite a sizable lead. In fact, the polling looks pretty close to Biden versus RFK Jr. at this point in terms of where Ron DeSantis stands. So one of the things we've talked about here is when Trump gets indicted, as Sam just pointed out, it really seems to harden and coalesce Republican Party around him. You know, they see him as under threat. They want to rally to his side. He sucks up all the media oxygen. DeSantis is put in an impossible position of basically having to like, you know, bend the knee to him on the indictment stuff and make it even more about him.

So how do you actually win over the Republican Party and convince the base that they should want to move on from someone who they still really love and admire? Well, the polls show that DeSantis is not negatively viewed. He's very favorably viewed. And he is everyone's second choice. I think that the electorate on both sides of the aisle is very reactionary. They love who the media tells them to hate. And it is, they're not telling them

to hate DeSantis anymore. And that I think is part of it. And also, time has healed the wounds of Trump's losing in 2022 so badly. People have just kind of forgotten. Oh, yeah. He nominated that insane man in Pennsylvania who said we should imprison women who want to get abortions and kick everyone off the voting rolls. That was the plan.

It was like, we're going to clear the whole voter rolls. And we nominated that crazy lady who vacuumed for him in Arizona. That's servant leadership, Ryan. Yeah. And, like, I mean. I didn't even see. Carrie, like, vacuumed for him in Arizona. Hey, that's servant leadership, Ryan. Yeah, and like, I mean. I didn't even see, Carrie like vacuumed for him? Before he walked on, she personally vacuumed. I don't know how I missed this.

Oh, it's just, and he just nominated the Wisconsin guy who was like drooling from the mouth. And the lady ran for Secretary of State of Alabama who is now running this, Michigan rather, who is now running the state party and she's completely insane. And yeah, everyone's forgotten. Like, oh yeah, he lost, and he lost bad,

and he lost all these people. And every state that he lost in 2020, all of his candidates lost, with the exception of the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Herschel Walker didn't even want to run for office. He was like, yeah, I'll do it, I guess. I mean, I got nothing going on on Wednesday. That's literally the team that he assembled.

So I think that we have to, I think DeSantis should be taking more adversary interviews. So how would you, I think he has to because he has to take risks. Yes. What do you think of like how he's handled the indictment? How would you advise him to handle these indictments? Because I do think it creates sort of an impossible situation for them because so much of the media focuses on it. It does. I agree with you. The base response to like the media hates this guy. So we love him. And, you know, not only does it suck up the oxygen, but if you're trying to defeat this person, but you're spending a lot of time

having to bolster what they're the arguments that they're making, how do you get out of that? Well, I think the problem with the well, this indictment, the one in Florida is much different than the one in New York. The New York one is a complete nonsense joke, but the one in Florida is very serious. It's much more serious, for sure. Paragraph 60 to 62 and 30 to 34 of the indictment is literally, I don't know how he's going to get out of it. But I think that having said that, I think that the one thing you said, people are mad

at the indictment, not because they think Trump is a, you know is a boy scout and he's so honorable and wouldn't do this. Right. It's that why isn't Hillary Clinton in jail? Yeah. That's what frustrates them. Right. I mean, DeSantis should sit there inside with press, the FBI, and my DOJ to reinvestigate Hillary Clinton, breaking up information with hammers, and also looking into Joe and Hunter Biden. If there was an equal level of justice,

people would not be this upset. I think you're right, Ryan. So let's talk, though, Sam, my last thing on politics of it. The indictment is a problem, as Ryan said. I mean, you laid out, and look, both of us were very critical of the Manhattan indictment, looking at all this, being like, listen, this is BS, especially when you compare it to Florida and with the classified documents case. In the general election, we have to admit there is still a lot of faith in the rule of law. And when somebody is indicted, they're like, oh, my gosh, an alleged felon, all this. How can Trump politically get past this specter, as you pointed out previously?

It's about movement. It shouldn't be about him. But almost all of the coverage is about him and his personal issues. How does he get past that to a general election, to the suburban voters who he actually lost in 2020 and were ultimately the reason why he lost the election? I think it's going to rely on alternative media, frankly. I think it's going to rely on the Internet because obviously corporate media isn't going to cover it. It's not going to—you're not going to hear anything about, you know, actual policy from CNN or MSNBC. No arguments here.

But they exist, right? And a lot of people watch. A lot of boomers specifically watch them. And those are the people who vote. And so, you know, for those people, you know, the people who—I forget what the district is called. The things like Omaha, Nebraska 2 or something like that, which Trump ended up losing in 2020. I mean, these were big stunners because these were people who otherwise were also voting for Republicans. They were like Mitt Romney type Republicans who were willing to vote and cross for Biden for the first time in their lives.

Those people, they get pissed off about it. Can I just say one thing? From 2010 to 2016, Republicans won the independent vote in every single election, and they have not won it since 2016. Part of the reason Trump won was because America truly hated Hillary Clinton. And we have to just admit that that is part of it. They do not hate Biden the same. They think that he's too old. They think that he is too inefficient. They think that he is probably senile, and they have absolutely no love for Kamala Harris at all. She is, you know, black Asian Hillary. So that is— She's not—anyway.

We don't accept her. Depending on the day of the week, she's black or Asian. So she's black Asian Hillary, and that is problematic. And if the election is about Joe Biden, he is not going to win re-election. The only person who could take the attention away from Joe Biden is Donald Trump. I think to kind of circle back a little bit, I think a way for DeSantis to majorly boost himself in the polls would be to, you know, offer a hypothetical pardon should Trump end up. He's already done that. Yeah, he said, I will pardon Trump from this. And

I mean, if we're going to give everyone the Richard Nixon status quo and say every president's not going to go to jail, we're not going to be like other countries, even first world countries where presidents go to jail. Right. Then that's then that's the standard. Then everyone just this is just get out of jail free. We don't we haven't seen at least I don't believe we've seen the ceiling of DeSantis is pulling. It's still very early on. And, you on, and this morning consult, consult, geez, said this was near the bottom of where he was polling since it started tracking. So the ceiling, I think, is far from being reached,

and it's still very early on, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. Well, I think that's fair, and this kind of gets, Ryan, my last question to you. Can we throw the second element up there, guys, please, on the screen, where they were talking about how whether DeSantis is the wine track candidate or not. What they get to

here, and it's actually an intelligent point, Ryan, is that so far, the vast majority of DeSantis support, or really of non-Trump support generally, comes from college-educated Republicans who are much more likely to vote for Romney. So ask someone who has worked on the side of wanting to push the Republican Party in a more working class direction. You don't work for the Santa's campaign. What would your advice to them be? How do they make sure that they don't have a wine trap? I would say stop talking about Florida so much. Interesting. I'm so tired of hearing about Florida. I really am. Florida, right? I don't want to move. If I was going to move there, it's a great tourism to sit there and say how free Florida is, how DEI is dying in Florida, whatever the case is.

I need a big national vision. It wasn't in his book. It wasn't in his campaign thus far. You need to sit there and say, what are you going to do? You can't plant palm trees in Michigan. That's just not a possibility. So what are you going to do for the rest of the country that doesn't want to live in Florida, the other 49 states. That has not been articulated that as well. And that vision has to include the fact that certain things have happened in the last eight years, including under Trump's president in four years. Violent crime up for 30 years highs. Fentanyl deaths up 30 years highs.

The cartel is still not being taken care of. The wall was never built. All these big things that are really part of both. I mean, even Biden has now taken up a lot of, you know, Trump stuff, which is like infrastructure, whatever. But a lot of those jobs, they're not going back to those places in eastern Ohio or western Pennsylvania or northern Michigan. Those towns are still decaying. They're going to, you know, Atlanta. You know, exactly.

So it's got to be something different like that. And Sam, similar question to you to close things out here. You know, if you were to give advice to the Trump campaign about, yeah, they're in pretty strong position in terms of the primary. But how do you take the edge off for a general election so that you got a shot at winning the Electoral College, at least ideally winning the popular vote when you have emotions so hardened against him? Kind of like what Ryan said, I think focusing on a national vision is imperative. There's the Agenda 47 videos that he's been putting out that I think are pretty fascinating. They're pretty optimistic. Some of the things like flying cars I don't think are quite achievable per se, but I think there's a lot of reason for hope in those videos. He is painting a vision for restoration, for renewal. I think giving people a reason for hope in those videos. He was painting a vision for restoration for renewal.

I think giving people a reason to hope is part of Trump's major appeal. Like you said, it's vibes necessarily, not policy nuance. And that's part of the reason why he was such a attractive alternative to Hillary in 2016. And I think continuing to juxtapose himself to decay, to such aggressive decay, and presenting himself as the golden tower of renewal,

hopefully not a tower of Babel, would be a great opportunity to do so. Okay, well guys, we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you both for coming in the studio. Super appreciative to both of you guys for coming in and really appreciate both your contributions. Yeah, welcome back on the show anytime. I think the audience enjoyed the panel return.

All right. That is it for us today here on Breaking Points. I hope you guys enjoyed it. BreakingPoints.com if you want to go ahead and help us out. Otherwise, we will see you all next week. Love y'all. See you next week. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early

and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, today. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep.

Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.