Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/18/21: Media Lies, Historical Fiction, Hillary Clinton, and More!

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

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Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making us all hate each other less and hate the corrupt ruling class more, we need you to support the show by becoming a Breaking Points premium member

today. You get to watch and listen to the entire show, ad-free and uncut, an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues, participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to crystalandsager.com to become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. We love you guys. Enjoy the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of stuff to get to. Some incredible stories in the news. We're going to talk about Biden's big trip. We're going to talk about new efforts in the domestic war on terror. Hillary Clinton makes a big endorsement, both of our monologues.

We're going to have our first, actually our second in-studio guest because we had Kyle in here. That's right. Pre-taped that for Monday. We've got Jeff Stein in today. All kinds of stuff going on economically. And we both just got back from Texas. Incredible week. It was an amazing week.

Really grateful to Joe for having us on and also for letting us interview him. That's right. Which he does very, very rarely. Very rarely. I believe we're the second. Maybe the second. At least the ones to do it in a studio. Shout out, I guess, to Lex Friedman

for even giving me the idea in order to ask him. We wouldn't have had the courage to ask. I would never have had the courage to ask. So thank you, Lex, for blazing the trail for all of us. Also, you might notice that beautiful new graphic

down there at the bottom. It was inspired by a Redditor. His name is Sean Barley and his Twitter name, this is what I promised him in exchange for being able to use this graphic, is at SOSB, in case anybody ever wants to contact him. Very talented designer. He happens to mock this up. We sent it over to our designer, and he created this. So we don't let anybody say that we do not listen to you, and especially to our premium subscribers who complained about it a lot. And we did it. So there we go. But let's start off with

some very important news about the president of the United States going abroad. Let's go ahead and see how he handled himself with the press corps when he was asked, not even frankly, that much of a challenging question, but like a very slightly one. Let's take a listen. Why are you so confident he'll change his behavior, Mr. President? Yeah, I'm not confident he'll change his behavior. What the hell, what do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident? I said, I said, what I said was, let's get it straight. I said, what will change their behavior is that the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world.

I'm not confident of anything. I'm just stating the fact. But given his past behavior has not changed, and in that press conference, after sitting down with you for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyber attacks. He downplayed human rights abuses. He even refused to say Alexei Navalny's name. So how does that account to a constructive meeting as president? President Putin. If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business. It's a summit with China.

Cool, we need to love. Cool, we need to love. Quickly, let's go. Quickly, cool. Wow, Crystal, having a little bit of a fit there, huh? I don't even know what to call that. It's like a cranky old man moment, really. It's a very high get off my lawn vibe. High Clint Eastwood energy from that movie. No, you're absolutely right. But I think that

what the stunning part of it is not the freak out. I mean, look, Trump used to do that stuff all the time. It's that the press, I mean, was very mildly critical. But then Biden actually walked up apparently afterwards. He was like, I'm so sorry. So he apologized for it. And that is what caused spawning, like it spawned some of the most North Korea level fawning that we have yet seen. Glenn Greenwald, of course, is the one who flagged a lot of these. So let's go ahead and put Natasha Bertrand's tweet up there on the screen. Biden apologizes. I owe my last questioner an apology. I shouldn't have been such a wise guy with the

last answer he gave. But it wasn't really that. It was this one. Let's put this up there on the screen. Jake Sherman and the little tweet that he has there. He says, just now to reporters, you are the brightest people in the country. And as Jake says, Trump didn't say that. And you're right. You know what? In some cases, that would have been fake news, Jake. And I can go on forever. Jeff Zeleny, let's put this one up there. It's my particular favorite from CNN. Joe Biden carried himself with a seasoned air of confidence that new presidents seldom possess. The Biden doctrine will be tested in the months ahead as the relationship he's crafting with Putin and other leaders develops.

I mean, we have one more, which I'll save for you to be able to show everybody. All of these just show Kim Jong-un, North Korea, talking head woman coverage of the president abroad. The truth is, that was embarrassing. That was like a crazy freakout there at CNN's Caitlin Collins, who actually was asking a perfectly legitimate question. And just in general, you can see that now that things are a little bit more open, and even though he is probably the least, I think the most restricted access person to the press,

the modern presidency, in a long time. Remember, he took longer than any modern president, I think in 100 years, in order to hold a press conference. He does not do well under pressure. And the only thing that protects him are the press themselves who complain. And remember, I used to be a White House correspondent. I hear from these people. They complain to me endlessly that they don't have the access that they used to under Obama. Oh, the White House. Biden apparently made him

wait three hours and he took a preselected group of questions from like the five networks or whatever. And Trump used to go and even Obama and they group of questions from like the five networks or whatever. And Trump used to go, even Obama, and they would take questions from a lot of people. He does not do any of that. And yet they still can't stop themselves. They have to bow down before the dear leader. It's embarrassing. There's a lot to say about this.

First, about the actual moment, I just want to say I'm not like outraged that he was crabby and snapped at Kaitlin Collins. But you do recall back on the campaign trail when he was running for the Democratic primary in particular before COVID, because once COVID happened, like, basically normal campaign events were over. You know, then the basement strategy was implemented very effectively. When he was actually out doing campaign events, remember his staff was leaking to the press that, like, we can't schedule him for stuff late in the day. He starts to like be less kind of on the ball. Yeah, he would only do like one event a day in Iowa. There were a number of incidents where he got super crabby with voters. Remember he challenged that dude to like a push-up contest. Yeah, look fat. Famous. And then there was the, what was it, lying dog face pony soldier. Pony soldier. Remember that? So Joe Biden having these crabby old man moments, very typical for him, very typical, frankly, for a man his age. He's been traveling overseas. That's very exhausting. I just got

back from Texas last night at 430 a.m. I can relate if I have a moment like that. I hope you will go easy on me. Granted, I'm not president of the United States. So I just want to say that. But I got to say, even let's put Trump aside. Imagine Bernie Sanders had a moment like this. Oh, yeah, he did. Berating, right? A young female reporter. Oh, forget about it. The takes will be endless about how this shows his misogyny, such a sexist, and and he's so mean and he's so angry, he's such a crabby old man, all of that stuff. So double standard, it's worth pointing out. Now, I will say there was this sort of like competing battle online between establishment journos.

That's right. Some who were like, this was kind of gross and kind of Trumpy. I don't want to say it was as bad as some of the things Trump did, but it was kind of like a Trumpian feel to it. And so some people are just trying to judge it on its merits. And others were like Jake Sherman. Well, at least it was a little better than Trump. It was a little better.

So are we going to continue to grade this guy on a curve? I also think it's hilarious. Biden, even when he apologizes, this is another one of the embarrassing. Biden looked Putin in the eyes. Putin immediately looked away. This was the other thing. He has to add that little thing at the end there. This is the other thing about the Biden Putin summit, which is that all of the like like reading into the theatrics of who looked at who and who squeezed the hand harder and who stared who.

I mean, it's so silly. It's just so incredibly silly, this type of reporting. But the other thing I want to say is, even when Biden was apologizing to Caitlin Collins and he said, like, you guys never ask a positive question, we looked at the numbers and how Biden has covered versus every other president. To think that you're getting unfair coverage by the press for Joe Biden, who's gotten like the fluffiest coverage ever in this entire, from the launch of his presidential campaign until now, to be complaining about the press being too hard on him is just, you know, it's just silly. It just doesn't, it really belies the facts. And again, this isn't a subjective judgment. We've looked at the tenor of the

coverage for Biden versus president's past. Forget about even Trump, but Obama and Clinton before him and the amount of negative coverage is less than all of those. Excellent point. And we covered that, I think, while that story, while we were down in Austin, that Pew Research report, which showed, what did it show? That Biden has the least negative press coverage of any modern president. Least negative. Just think about that. I think it's completely crazy. Least negative press coverage, not necessarily positive, but it's negative space. And as we said, what they choose not to show you is far more important than what they actually do choose to show you.

And in this case, what actually was shown from the press conference the Trump-Putin summits, Helsinki and all that crap aside, because reporters faked cared about things like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or Ukraine, like a settlement or whatever, or the New START treaty, all that stuff, which I think are all very important. And on that, they would try to frame it again as like Trump selling out America. But here it is nothing, absolutely nothing in terms of what what came out of that. What was it? Putin was asked whether he respected Biden and he was like, yeah. Oh, yeah. How do you think they would have reacted if he said that about Trump? And apparently Biden looked away from his eyes. OK, thank you. Thank you, American press. I have to say, I disagree a little bit that they covered Trump better on Russia at all because the press, in my opinion, has gotten everything about the, like, Russia policy dynamic and the reality of who's being more or less hawkish and whether it's even a good thing to be more or less hawkish. Oh, I didn't say it was good.

I was saying on a policy substance, there were at least – some of them found out what New Start was for the first time. But they've gotten—so first of all, the overwhelming consensus among the press is being hawkish towards Russia is good, right? That's their decision. They've just blanket decided that that's the right posture towards Russia, which, of course, I completely disagree with. So they're wrong to start with about their framing that we should all just decide that being aggressive and adversarial towards Russia is the right thing for us and for the world. So they've made that decision, which I think is wrong. But then they only look with both Trump and now with Biden at these sort of like posturing signals. So Trump in the Helsinki summit, which was like, granted, it was really embarrassing, weird, embarrassing and fawning and all of those things. But they only look at his sort of obsequious words towards Putin,

while actually his actions, and again, I disagree with this, his actions in Syria, his actions with regard to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, were more hawkish towards Russia. So they only look at the surface level with him. And now they're doing the same thing with Biden. With Biden, they want to paint the picture of like, he's being really tough and aggressive. So they reach for things like, you know, he stared Putin in his eyes and Putin looked away.

Meanwhile, Biden has actually given Putin had a softer stance. And again, I agree with that. I actually think Biden on the policy, which is the thing that actually matters, has been far better than Trump on Nord Stream 2. So on actually our orientation towards Russia, he has been less hawkish, which I agree with. But the press gets it all mixed up on what we should be doing and on which president did what. And so it just ends up incredibly silly with these like theatrical diagnoses of who was the tough guy and who stared who down and who had the harder handshake or whatever. Right. And when you do focus on policy, what do we actually get whenever he does open his mouth down and down whatever he was after the Putin conference talking about how

America conducts itself on the world. Right. Right. Exactly. That's exactly right. All right. So this this is incredible. I don't know if this is I actually want to hear from you whether you think this is just total historic like blindness or if he knows that this is a ridiculous thing. But here's what President Biden had to say about how terrible it is when countries interfere in other nations elections. Let's take a listen to that. His credibility worldwide shrinks. Let's get this straight. How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engage in activities that he is engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.

And so it's not just what I do. It's what the actions that other countries take, in this case Russia, that are contrary to international norms. It's the price they pay. They are not, they are not able to dictate what happens in the world. There are other nations of significant consequence, i.e. the United States of America being one of them. So he's like, imagine if people around the world saw us as interfering in other people's elections. Where have you been? The whole Cold War. How about even put that aside? No. Yeah. Just focus on the mid 2000s. We invaded this country called

Iraq. How about that one? How about just in the past couple of years, Juan Guaido in Venezuela, this continues on and on. There's this instinct among politicians and certainly among people like Joe Biden to just assume that all of our actions like, oh, they're all excusable. They don't count in the same realm. And so you end up with these statements like this that you're like, how can you possibly say that with a straight face? It's completely absurd. This is the type of stuff which absolutely drives me nuts. And the reason why is we I remember doing this with a lot with North Korea because I, you know, did a lot of investigation on North Korea, nuclear policy and all that. It's like, why do they absolutely zero trust that America will keep its word

whenever it comes to a denuclearization agreement? And they were like, well, you guys, Gaddafi gave up his nukes in 2000 and whatever, I think 2004 after the invasion of Iraq and you guys invaded him and you killed him. I mean, we didn't kill him. The rebels killed him, but like, okay, horrific death. But all that being said, the Kim Jong-un family has one goal, right? Like they want to die peacefully as a regime in North Korea. Obviously, they're terrible people. I'm not defending them or anything. But from a real politic perspective, why should they believe it? Right? I understand that And the problem that we have is that our diplomat This is a very like neoliberal like Hillary Clinton type thing is we would go over there and like we would lecture them and the

North Koreans would be like look we know about Gaddafi We don't we don't believe you and they're like no no that was different like he was doing this or they're like well You know we're right in the Chinese the same thing The Chinese basically memorized the word Iraq and they just say it every single time that we talk to them. And in a way, I'm like, well, I get it. I'm not saying it was good. This is the type of thing where we have to at least be honest about our own conduct abroad. And this is actually just knowing a little bit about how the Russians think.

This is what drives them crazy. They're like, you guys have nonprofit organizations pushing democracy or whatever in Moscow, which again, I think is a good thing. But let's at least say like, yes, we clearly have an ideological agenda, so to speak, that we do push generally on some other countries, some of which is okay, some of which I think has gone way, way, way too far, obviously. But this is part of the problem, which is that we don't – we're not honest about it. And we try to put ourselves in a different standard. And I think that we should be incredibly honest, especially when we're dealing with somebody like Putin and others. Because that's really all they understand whenever it comes to, like, the true, just absolute real politic.

I mean, I heard him talking in terms of the way he was. And on some of the stuff he said, I was like, I mean, you know, I understand what you're saying here. And any honest person probably would say the same thing. We had a policy in this country for decades to overthrow, get rid of, foment rebellion against whatever we could do to get rid of any sort of left wing leader. Right. In the interest of basically serving business and in the guise of the Cold War and all of that. And Biden, that was, those were the formative years of him coming up in politics in the 70s and 80s. And he just completely ignores all of this and makes this silly proposition. And, you know, I'm not one of these people who believes that America is like uniquely evil, right? I think we are, you know, as a global

superpower, as a global imperial power, we've done our more than fair share of bad deeds, founding of the country, all of that. But I'm not one to be like everything about America is evil. But it's equally silly to just ignore all of these pieces of history that go back decades and also continue to this day and are extraordinarily recent as well, that also doesn't serve your credibility on the world stage. It doesn't bolster your honest image as a broker. You have to be able to acknowledge the failings of the past and the mistakes of the past and able to move forward in an effective way. And in order to have any moral standing to lecture Russia about the things that they're doing. And Eric, by the way, we're hearing ourselves back in the ear in the control room if you can press whatever button you need to press to make that stop happening.

Thank you, Eric. Appreciate that. We'll peek behind the curtain here on the TV magic. And I completely agree with you, which is that you can be an exceptional country, which I do think we are, an exceptional country, who is also a country. We're a nation state, like a normal sovereign power, which takes actions, sometimes tribal, sometimes just don't work out very well, in which you have to be very, very honest, especially when you're dealing as the preeminent global superpower. And so this is kind of where I look at the balance between like the Howard Zinn of America is always the worst, which seems to be very in vogue in the progressive left these days, while apparently apologizing for Chinese Uyghur genocide or whatever was going on in Russia.

You can have a balance. You can say, yes, America invaded Iraq, and America screwed with Venezuela, and then whatever the hell happened, what was it, Peru, Bolivia, whatever, one of these elections more recently. All true. That doesn't also erase the bad deeds of many other countries. It's like, I don't understand why we can't look at least some sort of like moral relativism here. And let's have the debate. I mean, I think that's why I'll go up against it against anybody. But it's one of these things where the Biden position is actually one which most Americans

also see completely through, especially in the post-Vietnam Iraq age, as you were talking about. We literally fought an entire war in Vietnam. For what? In order to stop communism, which eventually did win. And also now we're allies with Vietnam. I don't know. I don't think anybody ever talks about that. We're allies with communist Vietnam against China.

Like what? You know, we fought an entire war in order to make sure this regime like didn't take over. So history is complicated. And the way that we talk about it is incredibly flawed. And people like Biden who hold these types of positions, they do us no favors whenever they go abroad, because when you especially when you're dealing with authoritarian regimes, they love to throw the stuff in people's face. I think who was it? The Turkmenistan president, maybe the Uzbek president, who a BBC reporter was asking him about throwing. I think I heard it was Uzbek.

It was one of those, one of the stands out there near Afghanistan. And the president, the British reporter, was asking him about putting journalists in jail. And he was like, how dare you? And he started talking about Julian Assange. And I was like, well. Yeah. No, I mean, that's a great point. It's a similar level of clearly obvious hypocrisy.

Remember when Kamala and Secretary of State Blinken and all the rest were like celebrating World Press Freedom Day. And it's like, you're full of shit. Clearly. Honestly. Tell us about Julian Assange. Why don't you talk to us about that? They have nothing to say there.

No, they absolutely don't. Hey, guys. So remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here I am again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to crystalandsauger.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Speaking of all of this and see-through of everything, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen about the new war on terror that the domestic extremism program, the Biden administration, is launching. There's some really troubling details. So New York Times here is reporting

around the new domestic extremism strategy. And look, honestly, this should scare the hell out of you. They unveiled a, quote, national strategy to combat domestic extremism, calling for, listen to this, aggressive steps such as hiring more intelligence analysts and screening government employees for ties to hate groups. A 32-page plan highlights a shift in the government's approach for counterterrorism. Now, why should you really be terrified? Number one, as we told you, this will be used as a guide in order to expand the powers of the intelligence state 100%. But even worse is that they are actually explicitly calling for in this plan, using the organs of the post 9-11 terror state and terror surveillance and turning it directly on American citizens. A great part of our Rogan episode was actually when we were explaining this to Joe, and Joe was like, wait, who defines domestic extremism? And we were like, yeah, Joe,

exactly. That's the million, oh, actually, multi-billion dollar question, isn't it? The billion dollar question is, who defines domestic extremism? Whoever's in the government. And as you rightfully pointed out, Trump wanted to declare Antifa a domestic terrorist organization whenever he was in office, which would have given him massive surveillance powers over that group. People, I think, rightfully called that out at the time. And now, what is domestic extremism? Is it, you know, flying a flag? You know, is it wearing a mask or not wearing a mask whenever you're supposedly supposed to wear a mask?

Like, who defines these things? And you can make it so that the FBI can essentially do whatever it would like. And this leads to some very, very, very dangerous places in which you have FBI agents will be deliberately instigating or pushing some American citizens who they seem as, you know, possibly radicalizable or whatever, and then push them right up to the door of entrapment, and boom, you're going to jail. This is basically what a police state looks like in terms of past authoritarian regimes, and this is the type of thing where it should really, really worry you, because the entire Democratic and Republican establishment is basically behind expanding the surveillance state for these purposes.

Yes. This is what we've been warning about the whole time. And I think a lot of people on the left could see these abuses really clearly when it came to targeting Muslims and the war on terror. And I don't want to cherry pick here. I did a whole thing back at Rising about the Herald Square bomber. And this was all revealed by the New York Times, right? This wasn't some like weird left-wing rag or whatever that was coming up with this. The FBI informant basically radicalized this young man, talked him into getting involved with the plot. The last minute he's saying, I don't really, I don't want to be a part of this. He agrees sort of to serve as a scout and even says, and this is the kind of hardened criminal he was, he was like, but I have to check with my mom. And this isn't just one instance. The Intercept has done a great job of cataloging each one of these terrorism charges associated with the 9-11-inspired war on terror.

And very few of them were actually plots that would have organically happened on their own that were disrupted by law enforcement. Overwhelmingly, the charges were a stretch or it was effectively plotted by FBI informants. And in fact, and this is uncomfortable to talk about, there are signs that this is already being applied. Those same tactics are already being applied increasingly to citizens who are involved in right-wing movements that I want nothing to do with, white supremacist movements. I mean, these are not good things. These are hideous ideologies. I want to be totally clear about that. But Jackman actually had a piece a while back about, hey, you know, how much was the FBI involved in plotting this Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping scheme, which, again, was abhorrent. Some of those involved were

allegedly on their way to actually kidnap her. They had a horrible plan. But also a number of the people that were in the car when they stopped them were FBI informants. So we need to keep asking the question because here's the thing. First of all, if you have constant news of these plots being disrupted, like the Herald Square thing, you see the Herald Square bombing plot disrupt and you're like, oh, my God, that's such a big subway station. I lived in New York at the time. It's like, wow, this is really scary. It's the second most popular subway station in the country. I mean, in New York.

Right. This is crazy. So it's very effective at keeping the population in fear. Like these plots are unfolding all around us and thank God that they're disrupting them. Meanwhile, the politicians get to have a press conference and say, we disrupted this bombing plot. It serves their career. The FBI informants are involved. We're getting paid. It serves their career. Whoever's in charge of that operation, it serves them. They ascend up the ranks. And so it becomes this industry of essentially manufacturing plots that you can then go in and pretend to disrupt.

And those are the exact tactics that we're talking about expanding increasingly on our soil to more of our citizens, to whoever that government at that point, whether it's Joe Biden now or Donald Trump in the past or potentially frigging Donald Trump again, whoever they decide they don't like and want to create a narrative about how they're the gravest threat to American lives. So that's why this stuff is so dangerous. Look, if people are plotting to, you know, plant bombs or engage in like, go disrupt that, deal with it. Law enforcement already has all of the tools that they need. They already have all of it. Kidnapping is already illegal, guys. Planting bombs, already illegal.

You don't need additional laws. You don't need additional tools. They have so much money and resources already. We've been warning about this from the very beginning because we could see the trajectory that it's going on. And especially when liberals have lionized people like John Brennan and the national security state is like above reproach now among some in sort of establishment democratic circles. And so that

just gives them the ability to claim more and more power, more surveillance ability into your life or whoever they decide that they want to go after and look into their activities, we should all be completely disgusted by white supremacists and we should also jealously guard our civil liberties. Yeah, and you know, to this point, I was talking earlier about defining extremism as we saw with the Islamic extremism. Well, look at this one. Extremist quote, this is according to their assessment, continue to be motivated by narratives of fraud in the recent general election,

the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the Capitol, and conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and conspiracy theories promoting violence. Okay, motivated by narratives of fraud in the recent general election. I thought that the narrative of fraud was bad. That's why we call it stop this deal out from the very beginning. Let's actually see. That's one-third of the U.S. population, maybe one-quarter, actually, if we're going to be charitable and say that some of the people who are on board the whole like full blown Trump train don't actually believe it was stolen or just saying so because Trump says it. Let's say a quarter of the U.S. population. So now a quarter of the U.S. population are extremists. And listen, I think it's bad. I think it's dangerous. I blame Trump. I blame a lot like

Rush Limbaugh type people for pushing this stuff. But that doesn't mean that they're terrorists. And look at this one. Conditions doesn't mean that they're terrorists. And look at this one. Conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and conspiracy theories promoting violence. So what does that mean? Conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As I said, would that encompass anti-lockdown protests? Go and think about how crazy the country was. What was it? May of 2020, whenever those people, and some of it was astroturfed, you know, these anti-mass protests, anti-lockdown protests, all this. Are they going to be infiltrated, organized by the FBI? I mean, technically, some of them did promote violence. Some of them even had guns. Like, I mean, it's a free country. A lot of these places are pro-2A states. But does

that mean that they have to be surveilled? Or does that mean that they would be liable under this new domestic extremism initiative? You see how it gets real dicey real quickly whenever you start to talk about regular American citizens and not necessarily like a fringe ideology. This is where, you know, you could begin to see the beginnings of more police state action, more authoritarian action. And nobody is defending many of these groups. Like we said, who hates the election fraud people more than us? No one. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because many of these people are American.

And actually, if you do this, it will just get 10 times worse. Using the organs of the state against so large of a part of your population and trying to criminalize them, it is not going to work. And if it does, that's even more dangerous. So a couple things. large of a part of your population and trying to criminalize them, it is not going to work. And if it does, that's even more dangerous. So a couple things. Number one, look, you shouldn't, this should just be about principle. It shouldn't be about your team.

And so if someone is really comfortable calling out like, you know, FBI infiltration and the Trump administration and to these right wing groups, but they got nothing to say about what was done during the war on terror. They're just serving a partisan agenda. And the same thing on the other side. If you were concerned about these civil liberties during the war on terror and their application to Muslims, you should be equally, if not more concerned now, right? So first of all, let's just use that as a little metric to see who's actually serious about the principles versus who's just carrying water for one team or ideology or another. Absolutely. Another thing, I actually thought that exchange with Joe during the podcast was really important because he said January 6th was a really, that's

actually really important to get the roots of what happened there. And he's 100% right. The problem is that we know in Washington, a January 6th commission is going to come to no useful conclusion because if you actually want to get to the core of how something so heinous and ugly could happen in America, it implicates far too many of the political class in Washington to include Democrats. And so that piece of like, how did we get here and how can we avoid getting here again? Because that's what Joe says. Look, when these things start to happen, then it just becomes a thing that happens. And we all get used to like, oh, citizens just march on the Capitol and like try to murder lawmakers on a regular basis.

Those sorts of things can't be allowed to go unchecked and just become normalized in our politics. He's 100 percent right about that. The problem is that this whole narrative, rather than being used to get to the root causes of what the hell is going wrong in this country and the core rot that we try our best to speak to here every day, all it's being used is as a partisan talking point to help win electoral seats in the midterms and even more nefarious to expand the surveillance state, to further expand the national security state, to grab power from you and take it for themselves once again. Yeah. And actually that exchange revealed something else.

Joe was a good faith guy who was like, wait, I was horrified by January 6th. Why wouldn't you want to get to the bottom of it? And so what the politicians do is they weaponize that good faith instinct. And that's what we were saying. We were like, look, man, we don't think it's bad. But we know how DC commissions work. For example, anybody want to tell me with a straight face the Benghazi commission was really about getting to the bottom of what happened on Benghazi? No, it was about destroying Hillary and it became a culture war issue and it became like this whole thing. The 9-11 commission was another example. Was the 9-11 Commission really to find out what happened with bin Laden and with 9-11, or was it just a project in order to cover up for all the failures

of the intelligence community and give them billions and billions and billions of more dollars and eventually invade Iraq? Every single one of these things, whenever they become political, they do not serve any interest. They have to actually cover up the complicity, like you're saying, of the political class. And then what's worse is that they weaponize people like Joe, normal people who are like, hey, I was horrified by January 6th. How dare you say we don't need a January 6th commission? I'm not saying it because I don't want to get to the bottom of it and I don't want to examine it. If there was a real effort, I would be all in. But guess what? We know how D.C. works. We know how they're going to use it. This is exactly what, in order to expand the powers of

the national security state amongst huge swaths of American society, which is totally unacceptable. Yeah. Another interesting story we wanted to tell you about. Speaking of Benghazi. You guys probably know, Nina Turner running in a Democratic primary for an Ohio congressional district that was vacated by Congressman Marsha Fudge. And Nina has been dominant in this race, at least according to the polls that we've seen. Look, I mean, it's a special election in one congressional district. Sometimes these polls can be wildly off. But she has been leading the pack by far.

Of course, Nina, friend of ours, showing that we haven't gotten her on here yet. Yes, haven't had her on yet. We will for sure in the near future. But she's most associated with the Bernie Sanders campaign. She was their national campaign co-chair, running on an affirmatively progressive platform, doing very well in this race. Guess who had to wade into the conversation? Who was it? One and only Hillary Clinton.

We can throw Hillary's tweet up here. She says she's proud to endorse Chantel Brown. That's Nina's primary opponent for Congress in the Ohio special election. Chantel made history as the first black woman to chair her county Dem party, and she'll work to help her state and our country recover from COVID. Join me in supporting her. A lot that's interesting here. First of all, I'm not sure this is the win for Chantel Brown that maybe she was thinking. Nina went on to have her biggest fundraising day ever.

Ever. Ever. Which is amusing. But also, it just shows, like, my lord, the 2016 primary feels like a lifetime ago. And yet, still, Hillary Clinton is so obsessed with hating on anyone and anything associated with the Bernie left. I mean, that was one of the things that came out in the Amy Parnes, Jonathan Allen book about the election. Remember Bill Clinton, when Tom Perez was effectively made DNC chair by Obama, crowned DNC chair by Obama, Bill Clinton said to him, you have one job, and it's to make

sure that you crush the Bernie left. I'm paraphrasing. Those weren't his exact words, but that was his exact sentiment. The hatred and vindictiveness there knows no bounds. And so this is just one more instance where, again, I don't really think this is going to be particularly helpful for Chantel Brown. But Hillary Clinton has to wade in because she despises anyone and anything that was associated with Sanders 2016 or Sanders 2020. I think what it does show is that if you cross them once, they'll never forget it. And they will just do everything in their power. They could not, I don't think she could accept that it was a good faith difference of opinion, a good faith difference of the party in 2016. Because they don't operate on policy good faith differences.

For them, it's like, how dare you disrupt the coronation of the queen? And, I mean, that really was the great poetic justice of 2016, right? Is that she got challenged, and then she beat Bernie, and then, you know, she was coming forward, and she got challenged and then she beat Bernie and then, you know, she was coming forward and she was about to be crowned and then boom, like she wasn't. It was like this karmic justice that people had been waiting for for a long time. And her popularity in the Democratic Party is, you know, I mean, it's still fine, but it's not even close to what like Bill Clinton was in his post-presidential years. And she's just a very bitter woman. And you can see how she conducts herself. What are you doing endorsing somebody

in an Ohio congressional race? Does she go out and she speak up and endorse in every congressional race in a competitive Democratic primary? No way! And weren't we told, Crystal, that that was considered, like, bad form whenever other people get involved?

Yeah, that's true. You know, they'll be like, oh, let the primary process play out, but oh, other people get involved. Yeah, that's true. They'll be like, oh, let the primary process play out. But oh, Hillary is now involved. Or when Pelosi, who was that guy she endorsed? Joe Kennedy or whatever. Oh, yeah. She endorsed Joe Kennedy against Ed Markey,

which was so crazy. It was so weird. And you put all these things together, and this is just like a declaration of war. And you would probably be better off, actually, if you just didn't do it in the first place. So really just, yeah, I don't even know what to say. I think it's an astounding display of hubris that she's still so pissed off. I mean, it's been like five years, man. Like, come on, just move on. I mean, in a way, I'm actually kind of for it because I think the more out in the open

the democratic civil war is, the better. Because oftentimes what happens is, like, people like Hillary Clinton, they never stop fighting behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, doing everything they can to crush this movement on the left. Right. And on the left, sometimes they engage. Sometimes they think these people are their friends. So the less that people on the left can imagine that the Hillary Clintons of the world or the Nancy Pelosi's of the world or the Chuck Schumer's of the world are their buddy and working

together with them in good faith, the less that they can like hold on to that illusion, in my opinion, the better. So unpopular opinion. Thank you, Hillary. Maybe you're right. Thank you, Hillary. Really appreciate it. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices because here I am again asking you to become a premium member at crystalandsauger.com guys must really like listening to our voices because here I am again asking you to become a premium member at crystalandsauger.com so you don't have to hear these pleas. And as annoying as I know this is, it's not a Viagra commercial like you're going to see on cable news. So go ahead and count your lucky stars.

As you're about to notice, the free show does not include the discussion after each of our monologues, which is one of our premium benefits. Help us beat the corporate media today. Get access to the full show. Take care, guys. Crystal, what are your breaking points today? Well, I really, truly had a great time heading down to Austin with Sagar and also with Kyle this week to talk to Joe Rogan for his podcast and also to get to interview him for this show. Love getting to talk about you guys and breaking points, UBI, drugs, all kinds of things. But something really struck me while I was there that I think says something bigger about the

left beyond just the movement's feelings about Joe Rogan. So while I was down in Texas, the right-wing outlet The Blaze celebrated Rogan's recent comments on defund the police. Apparently, in an interview with another comedian, Rogan complained about crime and homelessness in LA. When defund came up, he said that the defunding of the police in Austin has been a disaster too, and New York's been a disaster. It's terrible everywhere. It's a terrible idea. Now, do I agree with Rogan on his rather simplistic comments about defund? No, I do not. Crime is up in virtually every city, whether or not they've touched police budgets. So everyone reaching for a simplistic narrative on crime, they're just not dealing accurately with the situation. But what I found really interesting was the response by ideological media. While The Blaze

pulled out the comments to applaud Rogan and effectively claim him as their own, progressive outlets, they did the exact opposite. They covered the comments to try to tar Rogan as a right-winger. In fact, overall, left-leaning media outlets have covered Joe's right-wing comments almost exclusively, whether it's his comments on vaccines or apologizing for spreading a false story about Antifa starting a wildfire. Just to be clear again, this isn't about siding with Joe on defund or vaccines or Antifa. It's about an editorial decision that was made by many outlets and commentators on the left to only focus on right-wing comments, in effect, pushing away the number one podcaster on the planet. In fact, this dynamic has been playing out repeatedly ever

since Rogan said he supported Bernie Sanders. Now, you remember what happened there. Rogan, very casually, said that he would probably vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary. Those comments were smartly seized on by the Bernie campaign as an endorsement. After all, who wouldn't want even an offhanded and casual endorsement from one of the most influential people in the country? But bad faith actors in the Democratic Party, in an attempt to undercut this win for Bernie, they decided to grab a bunch of Joe's jokes out of context and make it out like he was some evil bigot that no one should have anything to do with. Ever since then, every right-wing comment made by Rogan has been endlessly amplified both by right-wing voices who want to claim him and by left-liberal voices who want to trash him. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize the

guy. No one's above reproach. He gets things wrong and he does have a really powerful platform. But the net effect of all of this has been to wildly misrepresent where he actually is on the political spectrum, and in a way that is only good for the right. What do I mean? Well, over the course of this week, between our time on Joe's podcast, our interview with him, chit-chat before and after the episode, and sitting in on Kyle's episode with him as well, I probably heard well over eight hours of Joe Rogan discourse on politics. And of all of those hours, maybe 20 minutes could be classified as centrist or right wing, and that's being pretty generous. In our episode with Joe, we talked about Amazon's outrageous treatment of workers, the way billionaires have rigged the

system to pay next to nothing in taxes, how Bill Gates is shilling for pharma to block global vaccine distribution, and how corrosive it is to a society to center absolutely everything around money and profit maximization. So think about that. We were able to go on the largest podcast platform in the world and talk about Amazon's union busting and horrific treatment of workers. What lefty in their right mind would give up that chance? Also in that podcast, Joe went out of his way to condemn what happened on January 6th, talk about how important it is that we understand how the hell this could have happened, pointing out that there was video of police officers opening the gates for rioters and contrasting that to the insane treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters. Joe brought up on his own the case of a 19-year-old Muslim who was effectively entrapped by the FBI and then charged with terrorism.

He talked about the lie of the meritocracy, the idea that anyone anywhere can make it when clearly the deck is so overwhelmingly and unfairly stacked against millions. In his podcast with Kyle, Kyle made the case for social democracy, telling Joe that he'd like to actually get to a place where everyone's basic needs were provided for and you could actually judge people who are not making it. To my surprise listening, Joe actually got to Kyle's left on that. He argued that even then, when people's basic needs are met, you couldn't judge those who were struggling because you just have no idea what they might have been through in their lives. Now, if you think I'm cherry picking here, go and listen for yourself. Now, Joe's not easy to peg politically, but he told us

his most formative political experience was listening to Ronald Reagan lie about the Iran Contra scandal. I remember the first time I really got interested in politics was when Ronald Reagan couldn't remember whether or not he sold arms to Iran. Iran-Contra. Yeah. I was like 21 years old, 20, 21 years old. And I remember thinking like, what is happening? Because I always thought of presidents as, you know, you have a leader and this leader is trying to do the best for the country. And we all respect the office of the president. And back then that was really the case. Like back then, the 1980s, there was way less inflammatory rhetoric. There was a lot of people that didn't like Reagan, but the level of I don't like Reagan was never like the level of I don't like Trump.

Right. Or now, currently, Obama or Biden, rather, is senile. Like there's a disrespect of Biden that didn't exist back then. So does that sound like the right wing caricature that Joe has been portrayed as? What kind of a dumb ass movement goes out of their way to push someone away who shares most of their goals and values and happens to be one of the more influential people on the entire planet? On the bright side, irrelevant progressives can sleep well at night knowing they didn't associate with anyone impure, even as the people they claim to want to help go to bed hungry for lack of an actual effective movement. Bernie and his team, they had it right here. If you actually want to win, you should be looking to grow the movement. Bring in people who are adjacent and

supportive. Encourage them to be better, sure. But do that instead of naming and shaming and pushing people away. It's literally the most basic concept ever, one that clearly the right understands. The right wing celebrates every right wing Joe comment, and the left wing trashes every right wing Joe comment. So wouldn't it be nice if those of us on the left learned to take yes for an answer and celebrated some of the many easily found lefty comments that Joe makes constantly on his show. And this just, I really, this really hit me this week. It's me again, guys.

We hope that you're loving the show. If you have any questions, you know where you can ask them. Go to crystalandsagra.com, become a premium member, and then you'll get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anything. The link is in the show notes. I know it's cliche, another lab leak monologue from Sagar. Isn't there anything else going on? The answer is yes. That's why I have an entire show full of other news. But I choose to stick to this story because the more it progresses, the more details that come out, the further it is revealed that we are in the midst of the uncovering of one

of the great cover-ups and lies of the 21st century. I did not think I would live to see another Iraq WMD in my lifetime, but that's exactly what's happening today. By now, you're all familiar with the cover-up that the media and the public health establishment pulled on all of us by dismissing the lab leak theory early in the pandemic. But what people forget about Iraq WMD was that really weird one or two year period after the invasion where all the people who lied started massaging the truth and past statements. Rumsfeld and Bush, they all came out and said some version of, oh, well, actually it was about democracy, or we never specified what kind of WMD, or actually some BS rockets that we found we'll try to reclassify as WMD,

which makes this entire, like, hellscape worth it. That's the version of WMD we're at right now. Look no further than the worst actor in this scenario, Dr. Anthony Fauci, trying to cover up his own past lies on the lab leak theory. Let's take a listen. People forget that. But if you go back then, even though you lean towards feeling that this is more likely a natural occurrence, we always felt that you've got to keep an open mind. All of us. We didn't get up and start announcing it, but we've always said, keep an open mind and continue to look. So I think it's a bit of a distortion to say that we deliberately suppress that.

Oh, a bit of a distortion, huh, Dr. Fauci? Luckily, we live in the internet age, and that falsehood is easily disproven. Some of us remember happened this one in May of 2020, in which Fauci definitively said there was no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan lab, saying, quote, everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates this virus evolved in nature and then jumped species. We also know from the Fauci emails revealed earlier this month that at the time Fauci said that, he had countervailing evidence of the very fact in his inbox on January 31st, 2021, from a scientist later involved in the cover-up itself. The virus was, quote, not consistent with evolutionary theory. I know I'm retreading

old facts. I want to underscore this for all of you, the extent to which the people in charge shamelessly lied to us all. And make no mistake, this matters. People were removed from Twitter for floating the lab leak theory. Many people discussing it were given terms of service violations based upon completely wrong reporting from the mainstream media. We saw the full danger of oligarchic power when legacy media outlets get to decide what is true and what is not. And then their allies at the tech companies and elsewhere in our culture enforce their vision of the truth, whatever the facts may be. And my message to all of them, at least those who might

be aware of this show, is this. Have you no shame? Do you not currently have enough egg on your face from this not to keep at it? I'll preface this part and say this. I don't know a goddamn thing about ivermectin, COVID, or spike proteins. I personally believe the vaccine is completely safe. I got two doses of Moderna. I feel better than ever. Crystal got the vaccine as well.

But what I would say is this. At this point, how can the tech companies confidently say they know anything with certainty when it comes to coronavirus? How can they have so much hubris that they are willing to outright censor Dr. Brett Weinstein on this when all he did was have a panel of experts and discuss it a year ago? A year ago, Weinstein was the first and frankly only real voice willing to even discuss the lab leak theory prominently. I have no idea if what he is saying is true or not, only that I know him to be an important

source of information to me personally. But the worst part is this, the people who are telling us that Weinstein is wrong in this case, the people who are ensuring that he will be taken off the platform, and to those that they rely on for expertise, they're the ones who are ensuring that he will be taken off the platform, and to those that they rely on for expertise, they're the ones who lied to us about the lab leak theory in the first place. This is the problem with events like this. Who are we supposed to trust? After Vietnam and Iraq WMD and the financial crisis, most Americans can reasonably say they probably shouldn't trust anything the government tells them whenever a war is involved.

And now when it comes to coronavirus and the outright cover-up of the lab leak theory, we're in a very similar situation. We're in a disinformation crisis, like the media says. The problem is, is the very purveyors of disinformation are those charged with telling us the truth and those who they listen to. It is dangerous times that we are living in, and it is only going to get worse. All right, guys, super psyched to have here in the flesh, in the studio, the one and only economics reporter for The Washington Post, who we rely on here so, so much, Jeff Stein. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I haven't seen you since the pandemic. It's great to see you in person. Way too long. Dude, it has been a long time. I don't

think, we'd actually never met before. We only met him via Skype, so it's fantastic to meet you, Jeff. Have we never had you in the Rising studio? I think this is the first time. This is the first time. And I believe it was on a lark. I was like, I had a pretty good tweet the other day. I was like, got some good instincts. Let's have this guy on the show.

Give this guy a shot. Give him a shot. Let's see how it works out. And it did. See, we keep pairing water for Bezos over there. I know with Joe Rogan, you guys have to figure out some way to keep upping the ante for quality of guests. Right, so that's what we do here.

So I'm happy to fill that role. Yeah, that's why we got you here, which is why we wanted to start with the most important issue, which is how could you possibly choose Crunchwrap Supreme over cheesy gordita crunch, which is clearly the superior

item on the menu. I'm not really sure I can ever be on the show again. Right. You're both crazy. This is the moment where you rip the mic off and walk again. You're both crazy. This is the moment where you rip the mic off and walk out.

You're both crazy you're not getting those Doritos Locos tacos. You know what's actually highly underrated and then we're going to stop

the Taco Bell commercial. We promise. We're anti-corporate. We're not getting paid for this guys. We just have a genuine affection

for their products. Have you had the spicy potato soft taco? It's like a little underrated. The spicy potato soft taco. It's very a little underrated. The spicy potato soft taco? It's very good.

Wow. Add that to your crunch wrap. Yum Brands, if you're listening. That's right. That's right. We will happily accept free tacos here at Breaking Points. I just want to be here and speak for that. But let's get to the serious stuff.

Sagar probably has a serious question for you. Okay, let's throw this up there on the screen. Jeff, we used to have you on all the time from CNBC just about jobless claims. Jobless claims. Jobless claims can show a surprise increase to highest level in a month. There's a lot of discourse around this. We actually talked a little bit about on Rogan, which is that, is this an unemployment crisis? Is that people just quitting their jobs? Is it a great reassessment of work in America? First of all, what do you think? And then more importantly, what do the policymakers think and

what are they going to do about this? So to start with what the policymakers think, they are convinced, and I think it's pretty safe to say at this point, that it's really not just Republicans, it's Democrats and some people in the White House and the business lobbyists that have the ear of Congress, that what is happening is that the unemployment benefits are too large. It's discouraging people from working. And that is leading to people staying home. And also with the unemployment benefits expiring in September, that people might be, you know, availing themselves of that by staying home. Sure. All the workers you talk to say that this is obviously a preposterous notion that workers need to be paid more to be able to come back to work that they had. Many of them had quite a realization during COVID that life is short and that they

don't want to be doing jobs that they found brutal, often oppressive, with terrible bosses. And there's been what my colleague Heather Long, I think very aptly called sort of a great rethink going on right now, not just really in the service sector, but in sort of America writ large, where people, white collar jobs that are rough, you know, even people who are working at law firms getting paid well, a lot of those people, you know, you hear stories about tremendous signing bonuses because people are having trouble finding young associates who are willing to come in. You're seeing in this country that the pandemic opened these sort of new vistas for people to really rethink,

what is my job? Where do I want to work? What kind of job do I want to have? And you're coupling that with a lot of sort of supply chain uncertainty coming out of the recession. A lot of suppliers are really struggling to match demand that was poured in through the stimulus. And I think I'm really glad you guys opened with this because that is a tremendously scary sign. Federal policymakers are, you know, leaning very aggressively towards taking off federal support. And yet we're seeing that, you know, tons of people are still out of work. Unemployment claims are still elevated by dramatic levels from where they were before COVID. And there's really little appetite in Washington.

I mean, there's almost universal consensus at this point that the unemployment benefits need to go away. I get questions about it all the time. You know, can you push lawmakers on this? And there's not even a window for those kinds of questions. It's just not even on the table. There's no talk of a fourth stimulus check whatsoever. It's like the number one question I get. And these unemployment benefits are sure to end in September.

Wow. You know, something that actually Sagar likes to point out, which I think is really important to underscore, is there was a choice made at the beginning of the pandemic for how economically we're going to respond. In some countries around the world, what they decided to do was basically backstop payrolls. So people effectively stayed in the jobs that they had. They stayed attached to those jobs. We took a different course. We pushed people more towards the unemployment program. It seems like that's helping to create this churn and this great reset or awakening or whatever you want to call it. I think reset has other conspiratorial connotations. I forget that I said that one. But this great rethink of how people

want to spend their days. In America, for so long, we've been taught and made to make work our, like, center of our identity. So it seems like at the white-collar professional level, you have people who are saying, you know, I actually kind of liked having time with my kids. I kind of liked—I got used to working from home. Maybe I don't want to live in this giant city. We want to move somewhere cheaper and continue working from home and have less hours and sort of rebalance a life. Lower down the spectrum, you have people who, as you're pointing out, they were maybe in industries that were really hard hit. They lost their jobs. Or they were in industries where they're shoved down on the front lines with very little regard to their own safety, put at risk.

They're saying, I don't want to go through this again. So do you think that those choices at the very beginning of the pandemic from a policy perspective helped create this rethink that we're seeing now? That's a really deep question. I hadn't quite thought about it like that. I mean, I think when the U.S., you know, the U.S. did try to do this. They had the Paycheck Protection Program, which was in theory money to employers that then they would use to keep their workers retained, at least even if they weren't coming into the office, they were still an idle worker But the amazing thing about the US is that our social infrastructure and our economic infrastructure is so decrepit from 40 years of cuts That we didn't have the infrastructure to do what the European countries did by keeping workers at least nominally attached to their jobs And that's what led to so many people as you accurately pointed out getting into unemployment

and I think you're right that that did cause this bit of disconnection between that. That wasn't the case in other countries between the job and people's daily lives. And you also saw, you know, the unemployment benefits came through in such weird and strange ways. And people, you know, even if they got a tremendous amount of unemployment benefits, they went months and months without them. So like a lot of people that I talked to would go like three or four months. And in that period, people would have to move. They'd move back home. They'd take up new hobbies. They'd explore different interests. And that kind of period was, I think, very crucial for people to say exactly what you're describing. I'm not sure that this is what I want to be doing the rest of my life. Especially, you know, you read stories of like, you know, young people who've just worked

at a gas station for their entire lives under a terrible boss. You know, why are they going to go back to that? And, you know, the idea that we might actually be empowering workers to have a little bit of leverage in negotiation with employers is something that's very, very radical, if still so transient and so small and still this brief, tenuous moment that's very radical if still so transient and so small and still this brief tenuous moment that's probably going to evaporate in the next few months. It's a very weird time and an interesting time to be an economics reporter. Let's talk about it in the context of D.C. then and what's next. So we've got infrastructure. There's all these reconciliation packages.

There are supposedly bipartisan groups and then sometimes they fall apart. I can't even really keep up. You sent out a tweet that I read like 10 times. You're like, he stopped negotiating with the bipartisan group, but now he's negotiating with like, it was like- The group of 20, the G20,

and then the group of seven, and then the group of nine. There are too many groups. If the tweets are impossible to understand, you have to keep reading. Yeah, okay, all right, all right. Keep reading. So all of that, what the hell is going on?

Are we going to get an infrastructure package? What's going to be in it? Who are the primary players involved? What is the White House thinking? So for a long time, like my sources on the left have been kind of like hearing from their buddies in the White House that this bipartisan infrastructure play is just a show meant to convince Manchin and Sinema that the White House is really trying to do a bipartisan deal. And I have very, I totally think that's wrong.

Like, I think the White House really wants this. I think they're determined to do what Trump couldn't do, which is to say, I got a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure deal. We're going to fix the roads and bridges. As a little, this is a little like congressional insiders stuff, but one of the big problems right now is that to pass the required measures to do physical infrastructure, roads, bridges, ports, that requires 60 votes for that specific physical infrastructure piece. So there's a lot of people in the Democratic caucus who are saying we have to do the 60 votes to get that part of it, right? But people on the left are saying, you know, the roads and bridges and ports, that's really important, but it's not climate change, which is, you know, remember climate change, like really big deal.

Yeah, it's a big deal. Big deal. And if we don't ensure that we tackle climate change in this bill, we are missing potentially our last chance really to prevent three or four degrees of warming, right? So it might be nice that these people also support the roads and bridges and ports, but they're saying, let's not take this gamble where we're going to go and do a bipartisan deal, get the 60 votes for the roads, bridges, and ports, but with something that Republicans will support, which means invariably it will not have adequate climate measures as Democrats see it. And so that's becoming the core fight right now in Washington.

Can Democrats trust that if they do this bipartisan bill on infrastructure with roads, ports, and bridges, that Cinnamon and Manchin will be there for a second bill that does the climate component? Yeah. That's like, I think, the most important question right now. And I don't think anybody really knows how that's going to shake out. To trust that they will come back and do it is something that you're increasingly hearing AOC, Pramila Jayapal say, like, why are we going to have faith that this is going to happen? We need to say no until we get the climate components in there. So you're going to hear more of that for sure in the next couple of weeks.

That's interesting because that was my big question is the assumption seemed to be if we pass this bipartisan infrastructure thing, then Manchin's going to feel like he had cover. He did the bipartisan thing and he'll go along with another reconciliation. But we don't actually know that that's the case, right? That's just like a theory. I mean, it's possible that Manchin called Biden and said like, hey, I got your back on the next one. Like, I am not aware of that, but that's not been reported. None of my White House sources have heard of something like that. Theoretically, maybe he's giving these private assurances that he's going to be on board

for the next one. But until there's like some indication of that, I don't think we should just take that on blind faith. And then how close are the two sides on even the narrow infrastructure piece, which is Biden's original proposal was how much? Two trillion. And now that it's we're talking about 500 million in new spending. Is that 500 billion new spending? Is that where we are? Yeah, it's about a trillion in total infrastructure spending. Half of that money is new spending, so about $500 billion. So yeah, a big decline from what Biden initially proposed. And do we have agreement on the pay force? Because Republicans were proposing basically an increase in the gas tax, right, which I know Democrats have been opposed to,

and user fees also on electric vehicles as well. Is that still where they are? It is really interesting that one of the ways they're talking about, you know, at this moment of climate emergency, what if we put an additional fee on electric vehicles? What if we disincentivize electric cars? Yeah. You know, I think in general, when you look at the pay for discussion and the negotiations generally, having now done like a few of these, it always looks like no, no, no, no, no. Like they have all these obstacles, all these obstacles. But I think there's like definitely a path for an agreement. The pay for, as you said, is the most tricky part. They released like 11 like ideas for pay fors, but nothing specific, like no numbers behind them.

So among the biggest ones are like repurposing COVID money. That could be dicey, but there's probably room there given that Democrats are seemingly open to taking, you know, leftover money from COVID relief, you know, either unemployment or state aid. Closing the tax gap seems to be one that they could maybe compromise on. Republicans don't seem to characterize that as a tax increase. You know, you just increase IRS enforcement. There's a lot of money there. There could be $500, $600 billion there. So I think there is a window. We are really waiting for details. And the idea of, you know, disincentivizing EVs is going to be something that I think is going to be really hard for a lot of Democrats, I think, to take. But there's a path for sure. So what's the timeline on this, Jeff? I've heard as much.

They said the September deadline is too close, which I found incredible. It just tells you a lot about Congress. Is the August recess still on? I don't know if anybody's going to screw with that. And when is this thing actually going to pass? I know that the original reconciliation window they were looking, that's not going to happen.

So now they're moving to the next one. What's it look like? I think if you measure it like Jeff Stein breaking points appearance. Yes. Three from now. Okay. That's pretty sad actually. That's good. Yeah, you're looking good.

I think there's a pretty good shot of the bipartisan one passing in September. And then we spend like the last year before the midterms and just like knockout, drag out fight over whether child care and taxes on the rich and climate measures get passed. It's like a giant mess for the next year. Got it. And then finally, what are your sources on the left saying about their strategy? We're hearing a little bit of public, certainly complaints, AOC floating, hey, we may not be there for you on this smaller infrastructure deal if climate change isn't involved. Do you think they're actually

going to take a hard line? Have they developed a strategy yet? I think at this point, like if they were to vote on what they've proposed, the squad would vote against it. Most of the congressional progressive caucus would vote against it. But I don't think that's going to be nearly enough to kill it. They don't have the votes. I mean, they get a lot of attention. They're sort of more interesting ideologically to cover than a lot of the centrist Democrats. But the bulk of the caucuses is going to be, especially people, you know, who want to go and, you know, New Hampshire and, you know, swing Senate seats and swing House seats. The thinking in the caucuses, this is a good thing to run on for reelection to say that I helped bring about a bipartisan deal.

I helped fix your roads and bridges in your home community. And that might be a real political incentive, but I don't think the left has the votes to kill this on the climate grounds at this point. Good to see you, sir. And for everybody, thank you all for sticking with us. It's been a crazy week. We were on Joe Rogan. We were in Austin.

Crystal just got back last night, very late at night. I flew like a normal person, like a normal person I got on an airplane. All of that being said, we'll be back next week. All regularly scheduled programming, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday show. Everything is going to be crisp and beautiful from now on. I hope so. Hope you guys enjoyed that graphic down there. As always, you guys can watch this show, not as clips, but fully uncut and an hour early if you become a Breaking Points Premium member. All the links, description, everything there. Ask me any things. You also get to listen to it uncut as a podcast. All that good stuff. 100% powered by Supercast, who we love and has been a great partner to us. And we will see you all on Monday. Have a great weekend, guys. See you soon.

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