Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/19/23: Unions Back Biden Despite Betrayals, Voters Reject Trump Biden Rematch, DeSantis Attacks Trump On Abortion, Blinken Says No Taiwan Independence, Tucker Attacks Fox, Streamer XQC Gets $100 Million Contract, Newsom Plots Against Biden, And MORE!

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss unions backing Biden despite his recent betrayals, voters rejecting a Biden v. Trump rematch, DeSantis attacks Trump on abortion, Trump leads Biden post indictment, Blinken takes trip to China, Tucker and Trump attack Fox News, streamer XQC gets $100 million contract from Twitch competitor, Newsom plots against Biden, US shifts right on culture war and No Labels joins the show to defend their 2024 potential bid.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots going on here and abroad. So some big political news. President Biden actually hitting the campaign trail. Unusual for him. Speaking to a labor audience and claiming once again with some disputed facts there that he is the most pro-union president in history. We'll get into all of that. We also have some

interesting word clouds. How people feel about all of these men who are running for the presidency. We got some new polls out that show where DeSantis and Trump and all the rest stand within the Republican Party and how that is going. We have Tony Blinken overseas in China. We'll tell you the results of that big meeting, much anticipated, long awaited. Fox News and Tucker Carlson, war kicking up to the next level or whatever. We'll break that down for you. And this is really interesting. So biggest streamer in the world, XQC, is making a big move away from Twitch. We'll tell you what that means for the entire video streaming landscape. And we have a guest on from No Labels. They are planning a third party bid, much to the consternation of a lot of Democrats who are very concerned that this

might take away from Joe Biden's prospects of reelection. So we're going to talk to them about exactly what it is that they are up to. But before we get to any of that, guys, we are getting extremely close. Dangerously close. To a million subs on YouTube. Very, very close. And I also have to let you in on the fact that Sagar is planning to go away and actually get married. Yes, that's right. I'm going to India in a couple of weeks, or it's actually two weeks. Wow. It actually keeps saying a couple of weeks. So if you could help us hit a million while I'm still in the country, that would be great. I don't want to wake up, you know, jet lagged at 3 a.m. in the middle of an Indian hotel room and just be like, oh, gosh, we finally hit a million. It'd just be a little anticlimactic to hit a million subs if you're not here.

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It's everything down on the shelf below. It's also on our website, breakingpoints.com. You can also become a premium member there if you are so inclined. But why don't we start with the most pro-union president in American history, Crystal? You know this one really irritates me. Okay, so Joe Biden has not done much of anything since officially launching his re-election campaign, but he decided to trek to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to speak to a union audience and to tout his economic and labor record there. Let's take a listen. And I'm more, excuse me for being a little emotional, I'm more honored by your endorsement than you can imagine. Coming this early, it's going to make a gigantic difference in this campaign.

You know, there are a lot of politicians in this country who can't say the word union. Because you know I'm not one of them. I'm proud to say the word. I'm proud to be the most pro-union president in American history. I promised you I would be. But what I'm really proud about, what I'm really proud about is being reelected the most pro-union president in history.

Obviously, this makes me want to puke for a whole variety of reasons. Yes, he can say the word union, but apparently can't do a whole lot to bolster union membership outside of listen, things that I've given him credit for his NLRB has been genuinely useful in terms of the burgeoning grassroots movement. But as we'll get to in a moment, obviously there have been many failures and broken promises with regards to unions. And at this point to claim he's the most pro-union president in history is just like, I mean, that's just an outright lie, factual inaccuracy, et cetera. What he's referring to there in terms of the endorsement, put this next piece up on the screen, is the AFL-CIO did officially vote to endorse President Biden for reelection. Now, important to note,

this isn't the membership, the rank and file of the AFL-CIO. This was the general board, the head honchos of the AFL-CIO. Let me read you a little bit of this. They say representing 60 unions, more than 12.5 million workers voted today to endorse Biden and Harris for reelection. The endorsement vote marks the earliest the AFL-CIO has ever voted to endorse a presidential election, triggering an unprecedented mobilization that will engage millions of working people, et cetera, et cetera. Let me give you a little bit of the quote here from new AFL-CIO president Liz Schuller. She says, there's absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes. From bringing manufacturing jobs home to protecting our pensions, making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy,

and education, we've never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out. We've never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers' fundamental right to join a union. Now it's time to finish the job. The largest labor mobilization in history begins today. And actually, I have to say, Sagar, sadly, it is probably correct that Biden is the most pro-union president in my lifetime. In history, no. Ridiculous, absurd, disgraceful. But given the fact that Democrats have joined in many instances with Republicans to crush unions or at least let them watch them as they wither on the vine for my entire lifetime, the fact that he says union, the fact that he, you know, has passed a few things that may be useful to them and included some provisions in like the Inflation Reduction

Act to try to bolster union membership. Those small, you know, peanuts that he threw at the union movement probably pathetically does constitute the best labor president in history. But it is woefully less than what is needed and woefully less than what he promised when he was campaigning last time around. Right. So we're comparing Biden to the neoliberal era, but, you know, comparing him to previous presidents like FDR, one of the books behind us, Freedom from Fear, or even Harry Truman. Well, Truman, I guess, is more complicated in terms of breaking and all that. But anyway, at the time, union membership was, you know, sky high.

It was something that was dramatically encouraged by the Roosevelt administration, even under the Johnson administration as well. Really, when union membership combined with the 1950s kind of middle-class dream, President Biden does not compare in any way to that. And actually, I think the decline in overall union membership,

with the lowest level in over a century, combined actually with the fact that when you look at the way that the union vote has begun to split dramatically away from where it used to be, almost monolith towards Democrats, that in and of itself, Crystal, is part of the realignment that we've talked about here now since the very inception of even our past show, Rising. We were constantly looking at the way that membership, union membership specifically, broke in 2016 and continued really to break in 2020. Yeah, that's right. And let's talk about the most blatant betrayal here in terms of Joe Biden and the labor movement. Put this up on the screen.

You had rail workers who really weren't asking for a lot. I mean, this had to do with their own health and safety. It has to do with all of our health and safety, wanting just the basics of paid sick leave. And what did Joe Biden do? He sided with Capitol. He sided with the rail bosses. He imposed a deal through Fiat, through Congress on these rail members. And the rail unions were furious with him, as they should be. And anybody, I think, who supports labor was furious with him. Here's one of the quotes from Hugh Sawyer, treasurer of Railroad Workers United. He said, Joe Biden blew it. He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation

to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers. Sadly, he could not bring himself to advocate for a lousy handful of sick days. The Democrats and Republicans are both pawns of big business and the corporations. But that's far from the only failure or broken promise from Joe Biden when it comes to unions. He famously, you know, he ran on the PRO Act, which would be significant in terms of helping to bolster union membership and helping to reverse this decline that we have seen over decades in union density and union membership. He sort of floated it and then immediately backed off of it. We haven't heard anything about the PRO Act in months and months. And labor unions, especially AFL-CIO, which again, this endorsement comes from the top, not from the rank and file. These unions used to

pretend like this was really important to them and that they were going to really hold politicians to account if they didn't get the PRO Act passed. But now they're, you know, they're just pretending like none of that ever happened, apparently. And then you also had when Biden was running for president at Sager, he pledged that he would end every contract to union busting companies. Well, it seems to me like the federal government is still doing billions and billions of dollars in business with Amazon, which has aggressively looked to union bust the workers who are organizing at their warehouses across the country. So yet another failure there. So it's really sad on a lot of levels. I mean, listen, Joe Biden, no question he's better than Trump and better than DeSantis

would be in terms of unions, just in terms of who he would put on the National Labor Relations Board. So I don't want to make a false equivalency here. But for the AFL-CIO to come in early in this way, and by the way, also, and this was really sad for the left to see the National Nurses United, who had backed Bernie before because of his support for Medicare for All. They also endorsed Biden, a man who has said he would veto Medicare for all. It just shows you that, you know, it's not enough just to have unions. You have to have unions with democratic representation so that rank and file workers actually get to have their voices heard in terms of union leadership. And the lack of representation, at least democratic representation within the unions, has always caused a lot of consternation within their membership. A lot of

them also have been upset in the past about the way that they've inserted themselves, like you said, almost on the side of the establishment Democrats. And that manifested in a Trump vote last time around. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is the exit polls that actually show union membership, households with a union member. Forty-some percent voted for Trump in the 2020 election. It was actually a little bit higher in 2016, only 57%.

If you compare that to households without union members, of course, Trump won dramatically more of the vote. But we are comparing this to monoliths like Democrats. John Kerry, I was just looking at the results of the 2000 election of Al Gore. Al Gore only, I'm sorry, George W. Bush only won some 20-something percent of union households in 2000. So compare the doubling effectively in just 16 years over that time period. And that's insane. It also explains how huge portions of the industrial Midwest felt left behind by establishment Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton around issues like TPP, trade deals, NAFTA, the USMCA. Trump also culturally is at least in touch with, you know, a decent portion of some of these people. And so, you know, we talk a lot here about when you strip away some of the economic message, you only leave culture.

Well, then people who are union members and they say, well, neither of these guys are really going to do a damn thing for me or at least very much on the margins. I might as well vote for the guy who agrees with me on the Second Amendment. Cultural issues. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of people vote that way. And I'm not going to tell them not to. That's the death of material politics is what you're speaking to. Where it's like, all right, well, both of you are going to be a disappointment.

I don't expect either one of you to actually materially improve my life. So, yeah, why shouldn't I vote on the cultural issues that I care about? I mean, I think it is important to note, looking at those numbers, that whether or not you're in a union or whether or not your family member is in a union is still one of the primary determinants of which direction you're going to vote. But there's no doubt that over years, over the neoliberal era, and especially with the realignment that's occurred under Trump, you have much less strength among union households for Democrats. And I think Biden's pitch here is a case in point of why, because it's not like he's even running on any affirmative agenda, right? All the talk of like, I'm going to increase the minimum wage. I'm going to pass

the pro act. I'm going to cancel union busting contracts. That's all gone. Now what he's running on is haven't I done a great job on the economy? Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. Because, yeah, you've got your talking points about job creation and no doubt the economy is a mixed picture. You do have a tight labor market. But you ask workers, you ask the American people, are you on the right track or the wrong track? Overwhelmingly wrong track. You ask them how they feel about the economy and wait and see how they actually, because it is not matching up with your rhetoric here about mission accomplished and we're doing so great. So this shows you why you have that erosion in union support for Democrats, because ultimately he doesn't even feel like he needs to run on anything. And you know what? It might be the right bet because it's not like they ran on anything in the midterms. And with Trump being out there and very likely to be the Republican nominee, you have, you know, people have very hardened and very negative feelings about him.

And God knows there's good reason there. They're disgusted with extremism on, you know, abortion, on stop the steal, et cetera. In fact, in the midterms, Sagar, part of why Democrats did better in the industrial Midwest than they had been is actually on the issue of abortion, not a lot to do with economics. There were some, you know, some factors there that may have made the Midwest stronger for Democrats in terms of economics, but most of the movement had to do with abortion and not anything that he's talking about here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, unfortunately, I'm telling my whole monologue on this day about the rise of the new culture war, kind of what it indicates and where the culture is headed and all of that in the direction. But the point being still is that that is the reason why the Democrats won in 2020.

It wasn't because of anything that they delivered. If they did have an economic message, it was mostly I will not take away your Social Security and your Medicare. But it's like not taking away something is not. I mean, yeah, I guess like it's a fine reason to vote for somebody. But you know, if you look at the grand scheme, it's not the best reason to come in and say, well, that person is not going to do this terrible thing that I don't like. It's almost like a negative orientation of politics rather than a positive orientation. We haven't had a positive orientation actually for quite some time.

That's right. Yeah. So let's get to how the American people are feeling ahead of this election and what they think about these various gentlemen that are running. Put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. They are calling this the election of dread. And they say no one is looking forward to the 2024 presidential election. Trump's indictment and a low approval rating for Biden are leading to voter dread with 16 months to election day. They've got a lot of, you know, great quotes here from actual voters about how they all feel about this. None of this will surprise you all because you probably feel exactly the same, which is looking at the choice of if it's going to be Biden versus Trump, just pure disgust, disillusionment, disappointment. There's nothing hopeful about a rematch between

these two elderly gentlemen. I mean, neither one is going to run on a really affirmative agenda. It's all just existential politics. I'll be a bulwark against the other side. And there's, these are aged individuals. You already know what you're going to get with both of them. So any of that sort of excitement, hope, optimism that frequently does exist in American politics as you head into a presidential election season has just been robbed from people. Here's what they say in this piece. They say the two men are universally known, robbing the electorate of the potential to fall in love with someone new. We know based on past performance what you're going to bring to the table. There is nothing

more to learn, said Patrick Gray, a Democrat in Bay City, Michigan. I'm tired of it already. Within their own parties, they say Biden and Trump stoke plenty of anxiety to match whatever enthusiasm they can generate from the faithful. Polling suggests a substantial majority of Democrats do not want Biden to run for office again. Trump remains the dominant force in the Republican Party, but many say they are open to someone new who does not bring the president's combative divisiveness or the distraction of a grueling court battle. And no one can claim with a straight face that Biden at 80 or Trump at 77 represents the youthful vigor or embodiment of America's bright future that many have found appealing in past presidential candidates. I mean, I think for Trump, there's still plenty of enthusiasm for him within the Republican base. There's no doubt about it. I mean, I don't know that it's like the level of rock stardom and just, you know, over the moon excitement that he had in 2016 with the base or even in 2020, but they still are psyched about Donald Trump. With Biden, his

big problem is with the Democratic base that are just like, really, dude, you're not going to hang it up. Trump's bigger issue is in the general election where you have more than a majority of the country that is just like, we want nothing to do with you. Like the chaos, we're exhausted. You're a criminal. You're indicted. Like, why are you even running? You've got a majority of the American people who say it should drop out of the race because of the indictments. So that's the landscape that we're looking at.

My favorite quote was actually this from a voter in Michigan. He says, quote, we know based on past performance you're going to bring to the table. There is nothing more to learn. I am tired of it already. He's talking there about Biden and about Trump, saying about both. And I actually loved that quote because it's with Trump. How many people in this country are undecided about how they feel about Donald Trump? He's dominated our lives for almost seven years. Biden, too, has been on this. He's been our vice president. I mean, if you think somebody like me, I saw Joe Biden when I was in high school. I'm 31 years old. He's been literally at the forefront of our politics since then for almost, yeah, basically half of my life. No, my entire life.

Not even just yours. He's been in Washington. I'm saying he's been either vice president or at the center or the president. And when you consider Washington, I mean, that is actually, I believe, the vast majority of the lives of the entire American electorate. So when you consider it that way, like, look, it's been in office since 1970-something. He has obviously, you know, he ran for president before I was even born in the 80s. He had his own, you know, scandal. He has had several moments at the very fore. Like, how can you possibly at this point not know how you feel about President Biden

and same about Trump? And that's part of what I think leads to the doom loop is you are not gonna change how you feel. Mostly you're gonna get to the election. You're gonna get to the box and you're just gonna be like, which one can I stand the least? Which one can I least stand and then not vote for that person?

That's the unfortunate part. It's just really depressing because it speaks to a country in decline. Yeah, it is. I mean, that's what it is. You look at this and you're like, I guess this is where we're at. I guess this is the election that our country deserves at this point is, you know, kind of the overarching sense. And there's another focus group that sort of echoes what a lot of other focus groups who've covered here have to say about this matchup. Put this up on the screen. Axios covered this. This was with swing voters in North Carolina who voted for Biden.

They voted for Trump previously. They voted for Biden this time around. And all of them are say that they are concerned about Biden, that he looks exhausted, that they lack confidence in them whenever they watch him trip over his words or over a sandbag. They say there's really nothing that he could even do at this point to ease their age worries. But although they are hyper-focused on his older age, nine of the 11 said they would still vote for Biden in a rematch against Trump, who turned 77 on Wednesday. Now, Biden did not win North Carolina, and it is unlikely that it will be a top target for Democrats this time around. So even if they held on to all 11 of

the focus group participants, they're probably coming up short in North Carolina. But yeah, none of this speaks to an election where people are affirmatively voting for their candidate of choice. It's all just lesser of two evils and which one can I, which one do I hate the least basically is what people are looking at. And we've seen the same dynamic play out in multiple focus groups all over the country where people have all kinds of concerns about Biden. But then when it comes down to it, they're like, well, I'll go see who's better than Trump. So I guess I'll suck it up. Yeah, it's really pathetic, Crystal. And also, I mean, you found this phenomenal graphic of word clouds showing how

voters feel about the focus groups and voters and how they feel about our various candidates. Put the first one up there on the screen about how people view Biden. What's that word cloud of when they're asked to describe him in a single word? Oh, old. Number two, incompetent. I also love all of the other ones surrounding it. Corrupt, bad, failure, idiot, puppet, smaller type, trustworthy, helpful, adequate, but also- Those are my favorite. I mean, effective, kind of small. Pedophile, I guess, is on there. That's interesting.

What else do we have that I could see? Weak, useless. I mean, clearly people are not that happy. Now, you know, I don't want to just cherry pick. There are some honest, some competent, some leaders, some presidentials that do make it. But overwhelmingly, what's the word that comes through? Old and then second, incompetent. That's

why I think the word cloud and the averages of how these people responded in this poll are so important. You know what was funny with Biden, and we'll get to, they did ones with DeSantis and Trump as well, and they broke it out by, so the word cloud you're looking at here was among all voters, and the number one word is old. Even if you break it out by just Democratic voters, that's still the number one word. Because he's old. Yeah, whereas, actually, guys, put the Trump one up on the screen. That's the third one in the list.

So with Trump amongst all voters, the number one word is criminal. I can certainly, I certainly sympathize with that take. You also have liar, evil, dangerous, crazy, asshole. And then the smaller type, the positive words you have here are leader, patriot, strong, awesome businessman. And so what's different here is actually, if you look at independent voters with Trump, it's a very similar word cloud. You've got criminal, liar, evil, et cetera. If you look at Republican voters, though, they have very positive associations with him still. So I think some of the top for them were like patriot, leader, businessman, awesome, were some of the strongest ones for Republican voters of Donald Trump.

Whereas, again, with Biden, even with Democrats, the number one word was old. And what that shows me is not that, oh, that means Donald Trump's in stronger position than Joe Biden. It just is, again, reflective of the fact that Trump has much more enthusiasm among his base and his core group of supporters than Joe Biden does. If Biden wins this general election coming up, which I think there's a good chance that he will, I still think that he is likely the favorite just because of incumbency and because people are so done with Donald Trump and he's under multiple indictments and all that stuff. But it won't be because people are super psyched about another

term with Biden. It will be basically a vote against Trump. I mean, and that's what is so obnoxious about our politics is everything is just about how do you feel about the human being named Donald Trump? It really is not much about the issues, not about what anybody's going to deliver for your lives, as we discussed earlier with the union messaging and all of that. It's just literally a referendum. How do you feel about Donald Trump? Yeah, unfortunately. And that's the Trump effect really on our politics, but it's also the most likely. Speaking of the Trump effect and how it is all manifesting in our polling. Well, guys, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Almost a little bit of a counter

what you were just talking about, Crystal, from Newsweek, a new poll showing that former President Trump holds a sizable lead over Democratic President Joe Biden, actually in a hypothetical 2024 election mashup. So that actually was carried out after Trump was indicted specifically. That's part of why the poll is so important. This is a Harvard Harris poll, pretty reputable pollster from June 14th to June 15th. Of the 45% said that they would vote for Trump, only 39% that they would vote for Biden in the race if it were held right now. Now, importantly, of course, 15% of the people in the poll said that they were not sure which candidate that they would vote for. Currently,

the voter support for Biden and Trump actually decreased from the overall poll in May. I found that pretty interesting, that people who had supported Trump before in May had gone down slightly. At that last poll, it was 40% of respondents saying they would back Biden, 47 Trump. So you can say that this poll may have a bias towards Trump. It's certainly possible. I'm not going to say that it is representative, but as you look at it, it does show the tremendous weakness where yes, the country may be sick of Biden, but also everybody is not sick of, sorry, sick of Trump. The country may be fed up with Biden, think he's old. They are willing to vote for him because they are annoyed so much by Trump and the amount of chaos.

But you're only one event away from people also holding their nose and voting for Trump as well. The 2016 effect. Or staying home. Or staying home. Voting third party. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a lot of options when you get to that ballot box. If you, you know, if you even decide that it's worth you showing up. And I think it's always important to remember, yes, in these focus groups over and over again, you have

voters, the majority of the ones that voted for Biden last time saying, yeah, I'd probably suck it up and vote for him again. This was a really narrow election. He really can't afford to lose anybody from those focus groups. So this poll, you know, this is maybe a bit of an outlier, but it accords. We've seen other polls that have Trump up as well. Basically, if you look at the overall polling, if you look at the averages, it's effectively a jump ball right now. And that's embarrassing for Democrats because we had four years of Trump. We know what that looked like. It wasn't fun.

And this is a man who, again, is under multiple indictments. And, you know, even if you have some principled position about, like, you know, former president shouldn't be indicted or should be handled by the political process or whatever, no one can really defend the actions that he was taking with regard to the documents and lying about it and covering it up, etc. So the fact that it's at best a jump ball for Joe Biden at this point is really pretty pathetic. Oh, it is pathetic. And also, I mean, here's the other reason why we have to spend so much time talking about this. All of our current indications so far are that Trump is doing better in the Republican primary. Let's put this up there because in the same poll, they also tested Republican voters and they show DeSantis at or below 15% with Republicans in the 2024 race. That's actually worse than RFK Jr. is going against Joe Biden. They say the new poll shows him actually with his weakest support yet. Trump boasting 59%. DeSantis staggering 45 points back at 14, actually losing 2% in the same one. Behind DeSantis is Mike Pence at 8%. He actually showed his doubling from 4% that he was last time the

poll was taken. And then Nikki Haley at 4% leading the rest of the field. Look, I mean, how can you possibly look at this and say that this is the best? Also, Crystal, in terms of their second choice, one of the problems for DeSantis is while he remains at 41 percent, the majority second choice, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are also nipping away. He doesn't even have the majority second second choice amongst Trump voters that are there right now. Again, actually showing you the diluting effect of Mike Pence, of Nikki Haley, and all of these other candidates in the field. They're not taking away from Trump. Overwhelmingly, they are taking away from Ron DeSantis.

And DeSantis was unable to make enough of a case to say, I am the only and the clear alternative. With all of these other people jumping in, they're nipping away at his potential support, his donor base, and just making it even more likely that Trump is probably going to win the nomination. Yeah. I mean, this poll, it's an outlier, let's be clear, but it's not that much of an outlier. I have the RealClearPolitics averages in front of me. The poll before this was from The Messenger and HarrisX, and it has Trump at 53 and DeSantis at 17.

The poll we just showed you had DeSantis at 14. So it's not that much of an outlier. And the one before that was Quinnipiac, and it had DeSantis at 23 and Trump at 53. There has been certainly no bump for DeSantis since he launched. If anything, you know, post-launch and especially post-indictment, it seems to be eating into his standing here. With that Harvard Harris poll that we just showed, I mean, not only is he at 14, he's not even that much ahead of Mike Pence, who's at eight. So I just think this is a very difficult landscape for DeSantis or anyone to be able to overcome because you've still got the guy who defines all of our politics. He's still there. Republican base still loves him. He can get away with, you know, all sorts of things that other candidates

can't get away with. He's able to position himself on abortion and other issues in a way that Ron DeSantis, for example, is unable to sort of finesse and get away with. And with more indictments likely on the horizon, this is just the dynamic between now and when people actually start voting in the primary. So very difficult. At this point, it is not in Ron DeSantis or anyone else's hands. If Trump is going to be knocked off, it's going to be some external factor that we can't even think about or can't even predict right now. It'd have to be something like that. Otherwise, there is no messaging path to defeating this man. I just don't see it. And let's just say that's not a terrible thing. Trump has a lot of risks. He's got the DOJ on his back. He's got all of these potential indictments. He's obviously facing serious legal challenges. He's old. Like, you can't write these things off.

It's still not a bad bet for Ron DeSantis, but it is still a bet where the odds are severely stacked against him. And I always think it's important to take that away. DeSantis, though, is trying his best right now in terms of his attacks against Donald Trump. One of the ones he's really pursuing is kind of a Ted Cruz strategy. Don't forget, Ted Cruz did come in second in the GOP primary in 2016. DeSantis is effectively running to Trump from the right, saying that Trump is not

a true conservative. He's not with the real movement. DeSantis actually just came out in a new interview with an evangelical channel to call out Trump on the issue of abortion. Here's what he had to say. You know, right to life. We were able to deliver the heartbeat bill, which was a big, big deal. And, you know, while I appreciate what the former president has done in a variety of realms, he opposes that bill. He said it was, quote, harsh to protect an unborn child when there's a detectable heartbeat. I think that's humane to do. I think pro-lifers have been wanting to see, you know, good pro-life protections, whether it's Florida or Iowa under Kim Reynolds. Very important that you're able to get this stuff done.

You mentioned abortion. Do you feel the former president's going soft, then, on abortion a little bit, especially in this area that you mentioned earlier? Well, I think so. I mean, I was really surprised, because he's a Florida resident. And I thought he would complement the fact, you know,

that we were able to do the heartbeat bill, which pro-lifers have wanted for a long time. He never complimented, never said anything about it. Then he was asked about it, and he said it was, quote, harsh. But you know, these are children with detectable heartbeats. And I think to do that was very humane. And I think it was something that every pro-lifer appreciates that we were able to get that done. So what do we take away from that?

How many times did he say the word pro-lifer over and over again, trying to identify himself with the pro-life movement? Smart play, actually, because they're so active in the GOP primary, but specifically in the state called Iowa. And that's also why he kept noting that's the same bill that they have in Iowa. Governor Kim Reynolds, the Iowa governor, he's betting the house on Iowa. David Brody, the interviewer there from CBN, was actually an interesting figure because he's evangelical media, but he's also kind of a Trump booster. So for him to give airing to DeSantis on this issue of abortion, specifically targeted to the most evangelicals who would watch his channel and who consume that content, I do see that as significant.

At least at the Prairie O'L for seeing some sort of betrayal by Trump. Now, at the same time, Trump is on the right side of majority public opinion, but not necessarily even GOP primary public opinion. So I would say this is probably the only real, the only real, what would I say? Like the only vulnerability that Trump may have. And I'm only gonna say may,

because at the same time, he still has the ultimate Trump card. What can he say? I'm the one who got it done. You would never have Roe versus Wade destroyed without me, which if you look at the polls and the who evangelicals are supporting, majority of them still support Trump in the primary. Yeah. And it also, because it has been made so clear that positions like the one Ron DeSantis has staked out with the heartbeat bill, that they are wildly unpopular with the general electorate. It also eats into his electability case, which is part of why you see Republican voters. I mean, Ron DeSantis' strongest pitch is like, you know, Trump without the chaos and I'm the guy that can beat Biden. Republican voters don't actually see it that way. A majority of them still think Donald Trump is their most effective candidate to attempt to win back the

White House. So it's not working out well in that regard. And then the other thing that I found really noteworthy that we covered on last week of the week before is some of DeSantis' own internal polling that was leaked showed that, yes, voters do actually, they've taken in the messaging that he is very conservative, that he is more conservative than Trump. But guess what? Even voters that identify, self-identify as very conservative, the majority of them are going for Trump. So even though he staked out the ideological ground, which is a hit to his electability, even though people have taken this in like, okay, yes, we see what you're doing. We see that you are to the right of Trump. Doesn't matter because ultimately the very conservative voters, they're willing to give Trump a pass on this issue and a variety of other issues

and still stick by his side, even though they feel like ideologically maybe DeSantis is more aligned. Voters just don't frequently vote with like a checklist of like, let me go through issue by issue and see which candidate is closer to my position. It's a much more complex process that has a lot more to do with vibes. And do I like the affidavit of this person? Do I get the sense they're a fighter? Do I get a sense they're going to fight for me? Then it is this sort of like issue by issue checklist that a lot of politicians, DeSantis included, sort of approach it as. DeSantis is prosecuting like a conservative policy case. Let's put the next one up there on the screen, please, because it's important as well. You can see he says, quote, we must repeal the jailbreak bill that allowed this to happen. He was linking to a Fox News article saying that

a terrorist financier released under the First Step Act says that he would be proud to fund terrorists again. So this is part of a new case that I've been seeing bubbling up against Trump. Ryan Gerduski actually in our panel brought this up in terms of Trump's major accomplishments was one, a major tax cut for the rich. Two, was the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform. What's interesting to me, Crystal,

is how much they are calling it and messaging on using this by tying it actually to a rising crime wave, What's interesting to me, Crystal, is how much they are calling it and messaging on using this by tying it actually to a rising crime wave, which of course GOP voters are very upset about and are, well, not just GOP voters, but I could say more animated about. Talking specifically about the criminal justice reform and actually tying Trump to the issue. The problem actually for Trump is that he himself has refused to defend the law. In the past, anytime he's been asked about it, he said, oh, I did that for Jared because that was part of Jared Kushner's big push in the White House. Jared Kushner teamed up with

Tim Scott to go up against that. Interestingly to me also is that DeSantis can run up against both Tim Scott, who something we haven't noted is that while he doesn't have a large amount of support in the current polls right now, he has a very high favorability rating for Republican politicians. Amongst the GOP base, he's actually the only politician other than Trump with an overall positive trend. It's DeSantis, Trump, and Tim Scott. So it's a smart play to be able to go against the only other two people in the race who have a high favorability rating over like 45 percent. Yeah. And Tim Scott is kind of hard to hit because he just he does have that nice likeability factor. Apparently he's well liked with his. I mean, listen, ideologically, I'm obviously like in a very different place than him.

But voters really like him in South Carolina. His colleagues really like him in the Senate. And I did think it was interesting. I took note of the fact that when we interviewed, her name is what, Shelby Talcott. She is very in touch with, you know, a lot of the Republican aides and advisors and campaign operatives and whatever. And at least what the Trump people were telling her, whether this is what they accurately believe or not, was that they had their eye on Tim Scott as a potential threat as well. And so, yeah, it makes sense for DeSantis to be sort of taking shots both at Trump and Tim Scott here just to make sure that he remains the top contender should Trump fall. Control Room, I wonder if we could put the Ron DeSantis word cloud up. That would be A7B because I think it

also speaks to some of the issues that he could have in terms of electability, which, again, is like really the core case here. Yes, he's positioning himself to the right of Trump in terms of the Republican base. But really, the pitch is I am a winner. I can win. Look at the scoreboard. Right. He famously said so. The views of DeSantis amongst all voters, not a pretty picture here in terms of if you think this is your electability guy. Number one is unsure. OK, well, that's maybe hopeful because you can fill in the blanks for people and maybe you can portray a positive message there.

But some of the other ones that are top are fascist, idiot, racist, terrible, evil, dangerous. I like the one that just says, nah, and age is like, nah. Um, so listen, how are we feel about Rhonda Santis? Whether you think that these adjectives are accurate or the way that you would describe him, it certainly paints a picture of someone who is not a luck for the presidency, not a luck to be more electable than Donald Trump. And that's the way the Republican voters view it. They're not confident that he actually would be a stronger general election candidate. So to the extent that that's something that they're weighing in their voting, which I've always been skeptical that that would be the top priority for the Republican base, but to the extent that this is something that people are really looking at and

care about, the case is far from clear cutcut that Ron DeSantis is the guy. Absolutely. I think he's got more vulnerabilities, certainly, than people let on. He's not the golden ticket, I think, to election. I do still think he would be a stronger candidate just because Trump does have so much baggage, but it's important to look at all of them on the merits and just see what the real case and the test would look like. Let's go to the next one here. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is currently in Beijing. He was meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping after hours of meetings with the foreign minister in China. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. It was just a preview of what happened. This is a fascinating and a big development on the global stage, arguably the most important meeting

Secretary Blinken's career so far. After months of the cold shoulder, China welcoming Anthony Blinken to Beijing, it's the first visit by a US cabinet official to China since 2019. During the pandemic, Chinese officials currently have all played up the notion that the US is the most eager to meet.

But behind the scenes, this meeting is very important because Beijing really wants Xi Jinping to actually be invited to an Asia-Pacific leaders conference in San Francisco in November. And they also want a separate meeting with President Biden himself on U.S. soil. Now, in terms of what they are talking about, the meeting actually quite literally just broke. So we can get a few of the details after they're briefing the press. Here's what they have been asked so far. Secretary Blinken had a couple of different initiatives that he really wanted to establish, Crystal. We shouldn't forget that the original meeting of Secretary Blinken and Chinese President Xi Jinping was scheduled in February during the Chinese balloon incident.

The infamous balloon gate. The balloon gate. After we shot down the balloon, Secretary Blinken had to cancel his trip to Beijing. It caused international consternation. Beijing and the Chinese called it out, saying that we were behaving thuggishly and their words and insults were flying. But I guess things are better now. One of the important things that actually happened in February was the cutoff of military

to military deconfliction channels between the U.S. and China. Here's why that's important. Even currently in the war in Ukraine and more, we have seen multiple near misses of spy pilots, of Russian pilots, and of U.S. pilots over the Black Sea that result in potentially dangerous incidents. The same thing has happened with Chinese overflights. So what we have always long tried to have is de-confliction military to military channels where the chairman of the Joint Chiefs can call the head of the People's Liberation Army and just say, hey, just so you guys know, we're doing drills in this region.

Don't take it as a threat. They have refused to pick up the phone since the February shoot down incident. Beijing has still, even after this meeting, it's a bit of a snub to Secretary Blinken, refusing to set up the military to military communication channel. We should all want that just because you don't want an accident to incite a major international incident like Hainan Island in 2001. Yeah, I always thought it was a real shame that the whole balloon situation derailed that meeting with Blinken. And it really did lead to a sort of downward spiral in terms of relationship and certainly in terms of communication. You'll recall also recently we had requested a meeting between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and with his counterpart in China.

And China was like, no. Yeah, they're like, no. They denied it. And so real blatant snub there. But at the same time, the Chinese have a few goals here in terms of trying to thaw relationships. They really want to be able to achieve a meeting between Biden and Xi. So that's one thing. Another thing is they have their economy is on the rocks. Yeah, they're not doing well. They're not doing well. They have very high youth unemployment. They've got debt issues. They've got a lot of problems going on domestically in terms of their economy. So they're also very anxious to have

economic meetings with, say, Janet Yellen and with Gina Raimondo. And so part of why they wanted this thaw is to achieve some of their economic objectives and not just with us, because in some ways, you know, Biden has already imposed some import controls. There's already an aggressive, more hawkish posture with regard to economics in particular vis-a-vis China. In some ways, that ship has sailed. And I sort of feel like regardless of whether Biden or Trump or Santa's or whoever wins the next election, they're going to continue in that direction. We saw how vulnerable we were during the pandemic, the fact that all of our supply lines were overseas. So far too slowly, in my opinion, we're trying to bring some of that back. And I don't see us really reversing course there. However, the Europeans

have tried to strike a different tone and take a different approach. So part of China trying to demonstrate their goodwill here vis-a-vis us is also a message to the Europeans of like, we're good guys. You can work with us. We are actually interested in peace with regard to Russia and Ukraine. We're interested in mutual cooperation that can be both to all of our country's benefits. So part of the desire on the Chinese side for them to have this meeting was not just aimed at us and what they might be able to accomplish in terms of our relationship and further communications, which I think is extremely important.

I'm glad to see that this happened, but it's also aimed at the Europeans to try to keep a friendly relationship there. Exactly right. So another update from Secretary Blinken, who's literally speaking live with reporters right now, saying that currently the U.S. actually pushed not only for better lines of communication, but also asked for increased Chinese efforts to stop Chinese fentanyl being sent to Mexico for inclusion by the drug cartels into, you know, obviously making its way across our border and then, you know, being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American citizens in the last several years. Perhaps most noteworthy crystal right now is

Secretary Blinken came out and said, quote, we do not support Taiwan independence. We do not support any change to the unilateral status quo, saying that they are concerned by some Chinese moves made against Taiwan. Here's why that's important. It is a rhetorical gift towards the Taiwanese, also, though, without changing any U.S. government policy. The Taiwan Relations Act says that we recognize the current China, the People's Republic of China, as the only China. We do not, however, change or want any support for Taiwanese absorption into the overall Chinese state. And we still effectively support their sovereignty without recognizing them as their own nation. So it's a very convoluted system. But it is a rhetorical gift by Anthony Blinken in order to try and set engagement by not offering up any real

policy change, but still coming out and saying we do not support Taiwan independence. And it's one of those where obviously you still have to read it also in the same move of President Biden's comments, where he said repeatedly in the past he would actually support Taiwan if the Chinese would ever mount a military invasion against them. Exactly. So the fact that you have a direct answer here, no hedge, no dodge, coming on Chinese soil is significant. And, you know, all indications are in terms of lowering the temperature here, the meetings were successful, that they were more successful than the last meetings that happened on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Oh, yes. And there's another piece that's, and part of why those conversations

were considered to be not so effective is because that came at the very same moment that the US released some intelligence, leaked it to the press, that they thought China was considering sending lethal aid to Russia, sending weapons to Russia. The Chinese were very angry about that, partly because of what I was saying before. They really want to keep the Europeans persuaded that

they're actually interested in peace, that they're not overtly taking Russia's side, even though I think that's entirely questionable. So that was part of why those talks got derailed. There was a big question mark hanging over these talks because there's new intelligence reporting about what exactly happened with that whole balloon situation. Like, was it just an accident? They claimed it was a weather balloon. Was it really a weather balloon? I think we already know the answer to that. And there was a question of whether or not the Biden administration was going to release that intelligence. Republicans are very much pushing them to do that. And they're painting it in, you know, they're painting what is revealed in that report.

None of us have seen it or know exactly what's in it. Publicans are painting it as like this was bad and this was intentional on part of the Chinese. The Biden administration, Biden in particular, has tried to downplay it as this was more of an accident than an intentional provocation. And that, too, helped set the stage for lowering the temperature and having more successful talks. Whether it's an accident or not, the current leaks that actually have come out about the balloon. Yeah. You know, look, value judgment aside, something that drives me crazy is everyone like, oh, it's just a balloon. You know, what could they possibly get?

The current, you know, actual analysis of the balloon says it was more high tech than actually anything the U.S. has. And they were deeply impressed at the level of technology. Well, we gained something from grabbing it, right? But there is a consistent, in my opinion, underestimation of Chinese abilities of their, like people have often said, like I have some sort of bias against the Chinese. I guess it's possibly true only in that I respect them. I see what they have done and look at it with clear eyes and say, this is not some backwater, almost like a racist view of this rising nation, which is operating in some two-bit program. This is a highly sophisticated technological society, deeply

ideologically committed to a vision of supplanting and changing the global order and specifically of reclaiming total sovereignty and hegemony over East Asia and possibly the rest of the world. It's a program that they've laid out for decades. They write it very clearly. They also write it in English so that people like us understand exactly what they think. And instead, we almost look at it as some bumbling balloon that was almost unsophisticated. Whereas our current analysis of it, whether it was an accident or not,

obviously, technology like this will drift off crows. We're apparently looking at the spy tech and we're like, wait, this is better than anything that even we have. And it's like, yeah, guys, while we're spending $100 billion or so over in Ukraine, what we are currently seeing with the Chinese is they actually come to us and they're like, why are you predicating our relationship on what's going on in Ukraine? They're like, we are the two largest economies in the world. Our bilateral relations should rely on our economic ties and the potential of averting military conflict between our two sides. So it's an interesting geopolitical question as well. Yeah. I do have questions about like, what, I mean, I have to think it wasn't, because this didn't work out well for the Chinese, you know?

Yes and no. The Chinese system is very complicated because it's not like the US government. There are factions within the PLA. One outright wants war. Xi Jinping basically is like torn between that side and then the previous economic side. There were new, effectively the neoliberals of China who said, look, who cares about Taiwan? We're all in this for the money. We're corrupt. Let's make billions. And they did. I mean, they became some of the richest people literally on planet earth. Xi has effectively come and nuked many of those people from the party, but he still has to satisfy the billionaire. Effectively, if you think American oligarchs are powerful, the Chinese oligarchs both are always at the mercy of

literally being killed. But before that, they are power centers very much in their own right. So they're torn in very different directions too. In many ways, in comparison to the US state, it's just non-democratic in the way that they operate. Yeah. So anyway, whatever happened with the balloon, they're trying to smooth the waters now, seem to have had successful talks. And I genuinely think that's a good thing in terms of averting any sort of near-term conflict. I very much hope so, especially when we're bogged down in Eastern Europe right now. Let's go to the next part here. Fox News and Tucker Carlson at war. This is a very actually interesting one.

It came in Chiron War. So now that we have our own Chirons, I guess I could sympathize. Can you? Although I've always thought this entire clapback Chiron thing going on in primetime is deeply silly. It's embarrassing. when we do our chyrons we just want it straight so that somebody who's watching it on their phone or their TV can just look up and have a very content knowledge of like okay that's what the segment is about

by the way guys in case you don't know the chyron is just like the banner you put on that says whatever you're talking about Tucker declares war yeah there's no editorial judgment in this we're just like Tucker is going, okay. But we are being descriptive in our editorial judgment.

We're not saying like, Tucker declares war on Fox News. Falsely. That's something that CNN used to do during the Trump era. They would live fact check him in the chyron, or fact check, you know, fake fact checks in the chyron. And then secondarily, though, there was a chyron that appeared on the Fox News program while President Biden was speaking, while President Trump was also speaking after his indictment, in which they called Biden a, quote, wannabe dictator. That Fox News producer who made that chyron was later fired from Fox News after they had to issue an apology. And it turns out he actually used to work for the Tucker Carlson show. Tucker, of course, coming to the defense of his former staff

and also viewing it as a contrast in a way to show that Fox News has gone woke and is no longer can be trusted. Here's what he had to say. Beneath those videos at the bottom of the screen, Fox's banner read this way, quote, wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested. Those words were up for less than 30 seconds, but the effect was immediate. Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked. First, they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He'd been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately. Then the company issued a

public apology for the 27-second-long wannabe dictator line. Quote, the chyron was taken down immediately, Fox's PR department said, and then added ominously it was, quote, addressed. That was all true, but it was not enough to save Fox News from the ensuing scandal. So why does that matter? Because it shows you that Tucker obviously still very upset at Fox for firing him, using his position, especially whenever they are issuing cease and desist letters and there's an ongoing legal war as to whether he's literally allowed to do that show at all. But the reason why it's important, I think, is it shows a growing alliance of the online right, Tucker Carlson, and also Trump against the preeminent conservative program that's out there right now. Let's put this up there because Trump also joining the fray,

going ahead and saying that he's joining actually Fox News, or sorry, joining Tucker Carlson in going after Fox News as disgraceful, says that Tucker Carlson is right, and twisting the knife after MSNBC actually beat Fox News. He, quote, called himself the king and demanded they bring back Trump allies and MAGA. So the reason why, again, is that he says, it happened as I predicted.

The golden goose that has been so beautiful is being slaughtered by fools. MAGA has left Fox for more promising prairies. Prairies in quotes. Don't ask me why that one's in quotes. Long live the king. The only solution for Fox is to bring back Trump allies. And MAGA, backing no personality,

Ron DeSanctimonious has been a disaster. Also, do not broadcast negative ads against Republicans and conservative candidates by perverts, misfits, like the failing Lincoln Project. Roger Ailes never allowed that. Man, the character limit really was a blessing for Trump. These long tweets and also long tweets. It was a blessing for everybody. It really, you know, it requires like a, it requires a live editing and an economy of words, which I find very important.

But I think that the main point remains that Fox News is increasingly losing its cachet amongst hardcore GOP primary voters who have access online down to the Tucker Carlson show, also to Trump on Truth Social. I'm not saying that this is going to be some great revolution, but it has brought down Fox so they are no longer the kings of cable, of which they were claimed the mantle for decades of our politics, Crystal. I mean, the irony, I don't know that it's an irony, but the truth is Trump is right. Yeah, he is right. You know, Trump is the most singular force in American politics. I think that's terrible.

I think it's bad for the country. I think it's bad for politics. I think it makes it so our politics end up being about nothing and about, you know, it's just like existential, lesser to evils. There's no policy. No one feels the need to run on anything affirmative. I think that sucks, but I think it's also reality. And you see it with CNN. When they tried to pull back from, you know, what they had cultivated over years of this resistance focused, very Trump focused audience. When they tried to counter program that, it's been a disaster for them. And so the one channel that has stayed in the like all Trump all the time lane is MSNBC. And they have been benefiting from it. Put this up on the screen. They actually dethroned Fox News.

After years-long ratings dominance, MSNBC turned in a few performances that were actually higher than Fox News. This is nearly unheard of. Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday showed that Fox's primetime 8 to 11 p.m. viewership averaged about 1.504, and the average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over that same primetime hours was 1.520, so narrowly beating

out the conservative network. But that's a huge deal. Fox normally dwarfs MSNBC. It's not even close. But guess what? Guess why MSNBC is doing so well? It's all about Trump. He got indicted and they went all in. And, you know, CNN has sort of like broken the trust with their liberal faithful. And so they migrated over to MSNBC and know they're going to get the like Trump centric coverage that they want and desire and have been trained to expect. And so, you know, MSNBC ends up on top because over at Fox, I mean, listen, Fox is still very conservative. They're still in certain ways, very pro-Trump, but there was an overt attempt to make a break and push Ron DeSantis and that,

you know, and then all the text messages that came out during the Dominion lawsuit about the way they really felt about Trump and what was going on behind the scenes, the way they were manipulating their viewers. And then you've got competitors now in Newsmax and One America and also in online independent creators. So people have choices as well. I think it sucks. In terms of a cable news audience, if you're just looking at ratings, there's simply no doubt that all Trump, all the time, either pro or against, is the way to go. It's sad. It's very funny. It's sad.

It also shows you that Fox, the biggest reason why I think that they made a big mistake is they were trying to do what they had the ability to do in 2008 today. So for people who don't know, back in 2008, Fox and Roger Ailes specifically said, we have one mission. We're going to take down President Obama and we are going to guide the movement against Obama and reelect the next Republican or elect the next Republican president. What they did is they effectively created the Tea Party by featuring their guests on all of the time and giving them a central platform to be the organizing face and force of the actual GOP. They also did that in 2004 for George W. Bush and then famously beat the war drum in Iraq. That time where they effectively had a monopoly on conservative messaging,

it's just over. And I see signs of it everywhere. I see Republican politicians going on the Tim Pool show. I see them going on the War Room podcast with Steve Bannon. Matt Gaetz, sure, he goes on Fox News, but he goes on a lot of other stuff too. And watching that happen really in real time has been fascinating because they don't need Fox in the same way. And then when Fox could not really stand to lose some of its people or did not have the monopoly, it also went in for Ron DeSantis, who just simply is not the same force as Donald Trump and doesn't have that level of support. So they tried to act as if they were still kingmakers. For those who watched Succession, there was a scene where they're like, let's go pick the next president. And I just remember thinking like, this is such an outdated model of how it works.

Like cable presidents, Rupert Murdoch and them, they don't pick the president anymore and they haven't in a long time. So they're still just not waking up to reality. Maybe they're just so old that they literally have forgotten. Certainly on the Republican side. Unfortunately, I think on the Democratic side, there still is just a lot of trust for cable news and mainstream press and whatever. I mean, we're talking about a multi-decade long project to divorce the conservative base from mainstream networks. And so for Fox, that makes you vulnerable to when the new upstarts come along, you being painted as the mainstream dinosaur that your base already has a lot of skepticism and antipathy towards. So yeah, it creates a real vulnerability for them.

Now, what they argue publicly, I think sometimes, and definitely privately is basically our viewership is really old and they don't even know how to find these other platforms. And so they're stuck with us. That may have some truth to it, but you really want to bet on that. The bottom line is their monopoly on the conservative base and on conservative viewership is over. It's a new era. It's a new ecosystem. Are they still a force? No doubt about it. Do politicians still want to go on there and make their case? No doubt about it. Do they still have personalities that, you know, garner views and have trust and all that good stuff? Yes, absolutely. But, you know, just like these other cable news giants, they're suffering from the same sort of managed decline and end of an era where they are just not

going to be as dominant a force as they used to be in terms of American politics. That's probably a good thing. Yeah, no, I think that's very well said, Crystal. All right, so we have some other really interesting media news, but now returning to the alternative media space. So this massive streamer previously on Twitch, XQC, put this up on the screen. He just landed a massive streaming contract worth $70 million. It's actually over the two years close to $100 million to move over from Twitch, which is right now the dominant video streaming platform, over to Upstart Kick, which just officially launched a few months ago. So over on Twitch, he had 12 million followers. Now he's moved over to Kick.

I took a look last night. He was at like 224,000 followers. So there are many, many fewer people on Kik. But Sagar, clearly this new platform, which is owned by like Australian Bitcoin gambling concern and had originally positioned itself as like we're going to be the free speech alternative, kind of the way that Rumble positioned itself vis-a-vis YouTube, they are clearly making a big, big money play here to become a mainstream alternative to Twitch and not just a sort of like side project. And part of what I read into here, put this up on the screen from Fortune, is they think that

there's a real vulnerability to exploit because Twitch pissed off a lot of their creators. The article here from Fortune says, video game streamers are rebelling against Twitch's lower revenue split and moving to a four-month-old platform run by a crypto casino operator in Australia. An upstart platform called Kik is emerging as a threat to Amazon streaming crown jewel. I think that we're a long way from it being a real full rival just based on the numbers. I was looking at who's on the platform, how many people are on the platform, how much they're actually watching. But part of why they think there's a vulnerability here is because Twitch changed the revenue share with their creators, basically being like, well,

where else are you going to go? You're stuck with us. Pissed everybody off. And they also have had aggressive content moderation, quote unquote, or censorship approaches that have created some tension with some of their creators as well. So they've moved to try to smooth things over. They've made it so they put the old revenue split back. But just for the very top creators, it doesn't seem to have done a lot to calm the waters and XQC trying to capitalize. Yeah, I think it's actually fascinating. One of the reasons we wanted to cover it, too. We're lucky to have gamers on staff who keep us updated.

I will confess, I do not game. I'm not part of the live streaming Twitch culture, but I'm not an idiot and I'm up enough with the times to know that this is obviously a dominant sector, specifically of people who are under the age of 25. And actually even people who are under the age of 18 who live and die with Twitch streaming and are willing to watch like 10, 12 hours a day. What's fascinating to me about the development

here is the way that their content moderation standards has not reached the same scrutiny that YouTube and other, I guess, more established forces, people like us or the other political YouTubers who we all might know, like we're long, and most of our audience at this point is familiar with the content moderation issues, but I have seen people like Hassan get taken off for some ludicrous reason in the past. I've seen other political, you know, people who I don't even necessarily know them, but I'll see it bubble up in my feed about, you know, oh, they were taken down for the extra reason. It's totally ridiculous, capricious. Their content moderation standards are ludicrous. And of course, you know, we need to pay attention to that. If the newer generation is watching their stuff on Twitch, on this platform, then obviously how political discourse on that platform is

moderated makes and is going to be very important for the future, especially as these people come to vote, but also as a source of entertainment as well. I mean, this is the new source of entertainment for a huge portion of not just our youth, but really global well. I mean, this is the new source of entertainment for a huge portion of not just our youth, but really global youth. I find that interesting too in gaming media that part of the reason they're able to command such high, such high like dollars is that it's not just like American teenagers or what it's like Indian teenagers, Filipino teenagers, really like anybody who speaks English across the entire world, who are also playing the same games on the same platforms and then watching people kind of talk,

both play those games, talk about those games, and then also see some of it bleed into political commentary. So the fact that this is happening is very interesting. And also our producer Griffin was telling you, Crystal, about what it also may mean in terms of Amazon and its bet for the future, why they may not be as upset as you might think about this deal. Yeah. So on the business side of this, number one, I think the mainstream press is going to start taking a lot more note because of the dollar figure. Yeah, you have to. When you're talking about $100 million, I mean, just to put in context, this is the way New York Times described it. This is like the type of money that LeBron James gets. You know, this is like top tier superstar athlete type of money. So a hundred million dollars is real money that's being thrown here at a top creator. So I do think

they'll start to pay attention a bit more because, you know, they pay attention to money. The other piece that's interesting here though, is Twitch is owned by Amazon. Okay. Now it appears we don't have Twitch's revenue stream and their net profits or whatever broken out to know for sure, but it appears that Twitch is not even profitable. So for Amazon, this global behemoth, Twitch is not even all that important.

What they care a lot more about are like the cloud computing services that they sell and the technology that they sell also that enables video streaming. And interestingly, put this next piece up on the screen, and again, thanks to our producer Griffin for flagging this, Kik is actually built on the Amazon Web Services video streaming platform. This individual, Blake Robbins, on Twitter goes on to say, Kik is quite literally subsidizing Twitch by paying to use the Twitch video system via Amazon Web Services.

It also explains how and why Kik has been so stable relative to their growth and scale. So basically the point here is if Amazon wants to kill Kik, it can at any time by just pulling the cloud computing services, pulling the video streaming services. But why don't they want to do that? Well, because they're much more interested in having an overall monopoly over these services and growing out this highly profitable business than they are in really investing in Twitch and caring what happens there. Put this next piece up on the screen from Rich Cabrera. He says, here you are for all those that think AWS is the only crowd service provider, only 9% more than Azure. And by the way, YouTube and all Google services run on Google

Cloud. But the big thing here is you have a chart that shows you cloud market. AWS dominates, then comes Azure, then comes Google Cloud. So this is the much bigger business for Amazon, and they're much more committed to being the monopolistic player in this sphere as they are in other spheres than they are ultimately to protecting their asset in terms of Twitch video streaming. Yeah, it's fascinating to see it from that perspective and just be like, oh, well, maybe they don't care because as long as they own basically the pipes of the internet and of all of live streaming, they're like, okay, whatever. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

I had been looking into a lot with YouTube gaming. Obviously, we care a lot about YouTube. It's the platform that we were born on, even though we exist on several others, including especially the podcast platform. We've seen a lot of success. With YouTube, they are investing many of their tools in terms of gaming and in terms of live gaming reaction, the chat features, the bot features, your ability to do super chat.

All of that is not built for people like us. It's built for gamers. Right. And that I didn't know is that gaming has actually been multiplying by YouTube almost by like 100% and 200% per year in terms of the traction. So it's a growing, massively growing audience as people, especially younger kids, get onto YouTube and are watching and consuming that content. It may feel saturated, but it's really not. It's actually still skyrocketing. It may actually be, as seeing with the dollars here, the next multi-hundred billion dollar industry that people in the

mainstream really don't pay a lot of attention to. And that's what we're trying to do here. I mean, my 10-year-old son, who loves all this stuff, he and his bestie got together this weekend, and they were talking about their favorite streamers and YouTube creators. I mean, and it's a whole other world. The other part is just like the fragmentation of media and how XQC can be the biggest streamer in the world, and like many, many millions of people have never heard of him and he can command this type of money. So anyway, it's a fascinating

development for a lot of reasons and something to keep an eye on and to see whether Kik is able to, you know, put any sort of challenge up to Twitch. I'm sure other creators will be looking very carefully at what happens here with XQC getting this many millions of dollars. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Last week, Sean Hannity hosted California Governor Gavin Newsom for a lengthy debate. And look, not a big fan of either one of these guys, but this was far more productive than 99% of cable news. Both functioned as respectful and effective spokespeople for their partisan teams. Here was one of Newsom's stronger moments. Take a listen. The honest way to be the fourth largest economy in the world.

What are you arguing for? Mississippi's economic policy? Is that what you're arguing for? If I wanted the Kansas policy, I mean, it was a debacle. No economic growth. 71% of the GDP in America are blue counties. 71% of the GDP in America are blue counties. Progress would take their... 71% of the GDP in America

are blue counties. Progressive policies. Okay, that are paying high taxes. 71% of the country's wealth. Seven of the top 10 dependent states are your states. Let's say you... No, we're subsidizing your states, Sean.

Because of your policies. I'm in New York. You're not subsidizing anything for me. But you're a philosopher. I'm getting the hell out of New York, though. Mississippi, Alabama, I'm all for it over New York or California. I love Mississippi. The governor leaves me one. I'm sure. Look, this is not personal.

Well done there from the governor. But the context for why Newsom is doing this interview and everything he can to grab the spotlight is actually extremely dark. You might have noticed the California governor has been going out of his way to assert himself on the national stage. In particular, he's made a point of fomenting a big national rivalry with Florida governor and 2024 contender Ron DeSantis. In the run-up to the midterms, Newsom spent some of his campaign war chest running ads in red states. He targeted Florida in particular, where he went after DeSantis' laws on abortion, on voting rights, and on book banning. In recent weeks, Newsom and DeSantis have returned to this feud after DeSantis pulled one of his stunts flying migrants to Sacramento, California. In response, Newsom threatened his rival with kidnapping

charges and called him a, quote, small, pathetic man. Pretty clear what's going on here with all the positioning and media seeking. Newsom is trying to create a national fight between a man and Ron DeSantis, trying to be the future of the Republican Party and himself, a man who clearly desires to be the future of the Democratic Party. It is the proxy fight that Newsom is allowed to wage as he reviews the actuarial tables and watches Biden decline. Basically, Newsom is circling Biden like a vulture, ready to swoop in the moment that there is an opportunity. He's trying to grab the lead in the shadow primary of candidates ready to pounce if Biden dies or is otherwise incapacitated. Like I said, it's really dark. Hannity is clearly aware of this subtext. So in his debate, the Fox News host pressed Newsom on his own presidential ambitions. Here's how that exchange

went. I don't think Joe Biden is mentally, physically capable of being the president of the United States. Hang on. I suspect if I took your phone and I took a look at it, not that I believe in privacy. I would never do that. I would bet on a daily basis that there are people urging you to run for president and primary him. Am I wrong in my assumption? Well, my phone's been lighting up how well he did with the UK prime minister. My phone lit up and how he schooled McCarthy on the debt ceiling.

Does your phone light up? My phone lights up with Republican friends saying, you know what? Despite all of the rhetoric, these bipartisan bills he keeps passing on infrastructure and the CHIPS and Science Act, the bipartisan work he did on gun legislation reform and around the debt ceiling. Make me feel maybe he's done a little bit better job than some. That wasn't my question. Does your phone light up with Gavin? You need to get in this primary. He's not able to run. He's not up to the job. Look, everybody has their quiet chatter and everybody's out there rooting for America. I'm rooting for our president. I have great confidence in his leadership.

Newsom is a slick one and he seems to know it, insisting his phone is lighting up with praise and admiration for the president. Okay, sure, dude. We can all see the game that you're playing. Play acting unfailing loyalty to dear leader while privately licking your chops and praying for the grimim Reaper. It is quite something to behold, this level of brazenly Machiavellian posturing. And it's as cynical as it is ultimately cowardly. I personally cannot stand this type of slimy game-playing politician. If you think Biden is too old to do the job, come out and say it. If you think you'd be a better president, which clearly you do, tell us why. Get specific. Actually get in the arena rather than pretending that you're the loyal soldier while you scheme

and plot behind the scenes. Now, we've made a lot of fun here of Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and all the rest for being too afraid to really go after Trump, bending the knee to him on his indictments and completely indefensible conduct, kicking forwards, not sideways, or whatever Nikki Haley is doing. But hey, at least they got the stones to actually run in the primary against Trump. Newsom is too afraid of risking his good standing with the establishment powers that be to actually do what he desperately, clearly wants to do

and actually jump in the race. DeSantis started selling shirts mocking Newsom that read, stop pussyfooting around and you gotta say the man has a point. It's gotta be killing Newsom and Pete and Gretchen Whitmer and a whole bunch of other ladder climbing Democratic politicians. They can smell the blood in the water. Biden's terrible approval numbers, his feeble public persona, the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters crying out for alternatives.

They seek the weakness in his polling, even against two contenders that they all consider to be unserious gadflies. They see the historic blunder Biden made by trying to put South Carolina first and in the process pissing off Iowa and New Hampshire and all but guaranteeing two early state losses. But Newsom and all the rest, they cannot escape the prison that is entirely of their own making. These are people who built brands and careers by playing for the establishment team and winning plaudits from the corporate media. Democratic Party elites and their media allies have fully committed themselves to a democracy-free coronation this year. The minute you dissent from that core commitment to a Biden anointment, you will be as dead to them as Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr. So the best that these

people can do is to thrust themselves into the limelight and secretly harbor their morbid fantasies about the commander-in-chief. Frankly, it's pretty gross. And for all his silver-tongued skill, Newsom may find that ultimately voters are instinctively repulsed by his serpentine maneuvering, his intense lust for the crown, ironically serving as the biggest impediment to the title that he really seeks. Newsom might think he's being quite clever here, but his plotting is naked for everyone to see. And I enjoy the exchange with Newsom and-

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. All right, so what are we looking at? Well, something bewildering about our culture war today today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, something bewildering about our culture war today is how much of it is a mix of old and new. When I was growing up in the 90s, it was actually pretty simple. It was gay marriage, guns, and abortion. Now, obviously, the Supreme Court ended the gay marriage debate in 2015, but guns and abortion are still with us. The crazy thing, though, in 2023 is that the issues of guns and abortion, they didn't go away, but we still have had new entrants to the discourse.

Mostly transgenderism, racial identity politics, authoritarian political correctness. The political valence of each of these topics is actually fascinating. Many liberals rightly point out that they mostly won the original cultural wars of the 70s through the 90s. As evidenced by our most recent midterm elections, the vast majority of Americans are pro-choice. The majority of Americans, including Republicans, have no issue with gay marriage. The public has basically remained the same,

if not slightly more liberal, in favor of gun control. On the new fights, though, it's a very different question. And it highlights what I have long identified as the new culture war, a new strain of conservatismism I believe is untapped, largely unrepresented in the Republican elected base. I laid it out a few years back on the Joe Rogan podcast, borrowing Matthew Walther's term, barstool conservatism. It's a very simple concept. A new strain of people who call themselves or feel right wing, are fairly liberal on gay marriage and abortion, but are resolutely opposed to transgenderism, to racial identity politics, and are pretty libertarian whenever it does come to guns.

The new strain of conservative is largely secular and is probably best described as socially libertarian combined with a deep hostility to liberal political correctness. The name Barstool conservative is derived from Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, but it represents just a male audience largely that gravitates towards his content and those like him in our political zeitgeist. I'm laying this all out because it's important to the chart I'm about to show you. How do you interpret it? New data released by Gallup shocked a lot of liberals. It shows in 2023, Americans find themselves more socially conservative than ever before. 38% of Americans for the first time in years say they are, quote, very conservative or conservative on social issues. 5% more than in 2022, 8% more than

2021. Meanwhile, a corresponding drop in socially liberal has occurred. Those who identify as very liberal or even liberal on social issues has dropped in 2021 from 34% to 29%. The important thing to understand here is that it's not Republicans getting more socially conservative. It is actually an overall swing amongst every single political and demographic subgroup, from men to women to every racial identity. Those that have gotten the most conservative, however, are very interesting. It's older millennials and Gen X, those who are aged between 30 and 64, who identify as socially conservative now by double-digit margins more than they previously did. The question is important. What the hell does that mean?

Because in the very same poll, Americans by a 71% margin, as I said, they support gay marriage. A large majority of Americans say they identify as pro-choice. So how can it be possible that Americans find themselves more socially conservative ever while also being more liberal than ever on abortion or gay marriage? And the answer, as I said, is that social conservative today now has a very different meaning to a lot of people than in the 1990s. It has to do with the emerging fights about gender and about race than does have anything to do written in the Bible. Church membership in the U.S. is actually at an all-time low. More importantly, the trend is clear. Even

those who grew up religious are not attending religious institutions anymore. Only 20% of Americans attend a religious service weekly. The vast majority of Americans say they only attend seldom or never, with numbering at a full one-third of the entire public who don't attend at all. U.S. Christian identification is an all-time low. U.S. non-religious identification is only a full 20%. We are still a more secular country right now than ever before, and it happened incredibly rapidly. My biggest problem with our current culture war is how captured that I find most organizations and institutions who are actually engaged deeply in it by the people whose actually beliefs are deeply unpopular.

For example, if you're like me, if transgender ideology targeted towards children drives you crazy, how often do you find yourself agreeing with someone who is talking about it, only to then discover that in reality they're a religious zealot who you completely disagree with on almost all other fundamental issues? Or maybe you're sympathetic to adult trans rights. You think the discussion around the issue is a moral panic. And then you find someone engaged in the fight who insists it is moral and righteous for a naked drag performer to shake their genitals in a child's face. To me, the most interesting thing about all the data is how clear the recent push, mostly

by the college-educated elite, to police speech around gender and race while pushing their views on it from all of our higher institutions is very clearly backfiring. Americans on old culture war issues are more liberal than ever, but their embrace of the socially conservative label shows that they find our current moment far too liberal for their liking. So what to do with this data? For me, it's actually a roadmap to settlement and a very happy medium. Whichever side wants to emphasize individual liberty for adults will win.

That is why Democrats win the abortion message. Secular Americans in particular are repulsed at having their behavior policed largely by a religious ideology that they don't agree with. It is also why cultural leftists are increasingly losing the broader public. The new culture war relies mostly on authoritarian control of speech, with. It is also why cultural leftists are increasingly losing the broader public. The new culture war relies mostly on authoritarian control of speech, whether it be around race or gender, and it relies on that control and propaganda from the commanding heights of cultural power. The more people silently will get fed up, if someone does not give soon,

we are going to be truly doomed though, because we will have a seesaw of power. Republicans could win temporarily on a popular issue, but then they'll enact unpopular legislation. And then the Democrats will do the exact same thing. And the longer that goes on, the more split that we all become. And maybe it's actually designed that way from the very beginning. So anyway, I'm curious what you think of the data. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Ryan Clancy. He's the chief strategist of the No Labels Group. Ryan,

it's great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right, Ryan, so why don't we just get to the specifics here? What are your group's plans for the 2024 election? Lots of consternation around it. So get specific with us. Yeah, so we've been working for over a year to get ballot access in states across the country to create the opening, to nominate a unity ticket potentially next year. There's a lot of concern from the Democratic side

that your group, if you run a third party candidate, could serve as a spoiler. The idea being here that Donald Trump supporters are largely locked in, that it's the Biden, pro Biden, anti Trump coalition that could potentially be split by your effort. Now, your Democratic co-chair, Dr. Ben Chavis, recently addressed this. He said no labels is not and will not be a spoiler in favor of Donald Trump. Going on to say if we find the polls are changed and Joe Biden is way, way out ahead, then no labels will stand down. So can you explain that? Because that was

a little confusing to me because it seems to me like the spoiler potential would be greater if the polls are closer versus if the polls are far apart. Sure. So from the beginning, there's been two bars that we have to clear to nominate a ticket. One is the two major party nominees need to be considered bad enough in the view of the public and a potential alternative ticket needs to be considered good enough that it could win outright in the electoral college. Obviously, if Biden were holding a big lead, that would probably close off the path for an independent ticket. And this is where a lot of what we've done has been so mischaracterized. You see comparisons to Jill Stein or Nader or something like that. We will never nominate a ticket like that.

Nobody wants to fuel a protest candidacy. So if it's not a protest candidacy, let's go and put this up there on the screen, guys, please. New York Times tear sheet, the alarm by Democrats that we have seen Joe Manchin being held up as a potential at the top of the list here for a ticket. Why do you see this as, as you called it, a unity ticket? Why is the country crying out for a Joe Manchin presidency, if you will, or like-minded politician? Sure. I mean, I don't know that they're crying out for Manchin or anybody else. What I know they're crying out for, which you both know they're crying out for, is something different than what they're almost certainly going to get. So you've all seen the polls. Two thirds or more people do not want to rematch the 2020 election. And yet our system has absolutely no way to adjust to that. So we're in this position now where the major forces in both parties are basically saying that two thirds of the country, tough luck, you're going to have this election, even if you don't

like it. And in the end, we don't even care if you like our candidate, as long as you hate the candidate on the other side more, we know you'll come home to us. And we just feel like the country can do a lot better than that. Sure. I mean, we certainly do agree with that. However, the specifics really matter because a lot of the people that are frustrated with Joe Biden, for example, they are more of the Cornel West or Marianne Williamson or. They would like for him to have moved further to the left on a variety of issues. So can you get specific about what your complaints specifically with Joe Biden are and how your theoretical candidate would reflect a different policy valence than what the Biden administration, which I view as very centrist and very moderate, which is you guys' brand, what they've put forward. So this is something that we've been very clear about since the beginning, which is we are not doing this because of subjective judgment about how

good or bad Biden is or a judgment about Trump. What we're doing is something that nobody else in the political system seems to be doing, which is actually just responding to what the public clearly wants. Now, they have obviously different reasons for not liking Trump right now or not liking Biden. But the one thing we can anchor in is that they want a better choice. And in our view, having the ballot and in July, we're actually going to be putting out some ideas. What that's going to finally do for the first time in a long time is there's this huge common sense majority in this country that gets ignored, that both parties don't feel like they have to be accountable to. And this is actually going to force them to be accountable to them. And if in the end they put forward candidates or platforms that make it so there's no room for a

no-labels ticket because they're appealing to the vast majority, great. We'll stand down and double down on the work we've been doing in Congress for over a decade. So Ryan, something I'm interested in is why not any of the current people in the field, as Crystal mentioned, Cornel West, Marianne Williamson, RFK Jr., he's mounting a very serious threat right now to the Biden White House, enough so that they've gotten the same times coverage that you guys have over there. So why not back somebody who is in the race and is actually primarying Joe Biden actively as we speak? Because we're not working to undermine Biden. We're not working to intervene in the Republican primary. That's the problem. No label's ability to influence either party primary is very limited. As you know, turnout there is pretty narrow. It's often controlled by a

lot of party officials in the states. We're just going to bypass the primaries entirely. And here's why that's so important. And I know we haven't talked about issues much, but all these issues that we know the public wants solved, and we even know the outlines of what that could look like. You look at issues like immigration or education. We know why those issues can't be solved. It's because people on both sides, the leaders in both parties, are deathly afraid of crossing their primary voters and the interest groups that have the most power in the primaries. So if you start to look at issues and you wonder, why can't we have sensible gun safety legislation, even though 80% of the country wants it? It's because of the influence in the gun lobby on the right. Why can't we have school choice? Why do we force kids into failing schools year

after year? It's because of the influence of the teachers unions on the left. And you see that on the issue. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit more policy specifics because I think that's important. I mean, first of all, public education, traditional public education, public schools is very broadly supported by the public. So I would dispute the fact that that's some sort of common sense majority and that that's not, you know, that that's entirely driven by union support. But put guys up on the screen G4, which shows the views of Americans with regard to taxation. So you have huge majorities. I'm talking 83 percent of Americans who say corporations, they're worried corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes. Similar vast majorities, 82 percent, say that they're concerned the wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes.

So is taxing the wealthy part of your mainstream agenda, given that it has 80% plus support among the American people, both Republicans and Democrats? So we've got a huge section on the budget, which, of course, is completely out of control right now. And in our policy agenda that we're putting out shortly after July 4th, we make very clear that for any progress to be made on the budget, everything has to be on the table. And that includes taxes. And that includes spending. There is no way to cut your way out of this, to tax your way out of this. Both parties are going to have to come to the table and give things that they haven't wanted to give up until now, or we're just going to keep having these deficits, which are completely unsustainable.

So your party would commit to increasing taxes on the wealthy because there have been other instances where No Labels has teamed up with Kyrsten Sinema to make sure, for example, the carried interest loophole doesn't get closed, to make sure that pharmaceutical companies don't have to negotiate with the federal government in terms of prescription drug prices. So do you all commit to the idea, based on this common sense majority of 83 percent, that the wealthy should pay more in taxes? Well, wait, Kristen, I want to correct the record there.

So we never teamed up with Kyrsten Sinema to knock down the carried interest poll or get rid of prescription drug negotiations. In fact, one of the things you'll see, again, in our agenda coming out in July is we call for more prescription drug negotiations because that's what the public told us they wanted in this mega poll we did of 26,000 people. I think what you're referring to with Senator Sinema, if you go back to a couple of years, yes, no labels did not support the partisan passage of the full Build Back Better bill in the same way we didn't support the passage of the Trump tax cuts. Well, but let me ask you about that, because the individual elements of the Build Back Better bill were extremely popular, including closing

the carried interest loophole, including affordable child care, including universal pre-K. Each of these things was supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. So it very much seemed like there was a common sense majority in favor of each of those elements. So then why would you oppose that? Well, there's two things. First of all, it's very easy to pull individual ideas in isolation. So then why would you oppose that? Well, there's two things. First of all, it's very easy to pull individual ideas in isolation. So if you ask people, do you want universal child care? Sure. Sounds good. Do you want prescription drug pricing? Sure. Sounds good. Do you want climate subsidies? Sure. Sounds good. The problem is, if you look at those

things in their totality and what that would cost, then you can also ask the public, how do you feel about our fiscal situation? Do you think Washington needs to be doing less spending? Do you think they need to be bringing our budget under control? And they'll tell you, yes, that's a huge priority for them. So it's not something you can sort of look at in isolation. Yeah, they like some of these ideas, but when you pulled it all together, what you saw is a $5 trillion package that was going to be passed with one party support. And it's the same reason, as I said, we didn't support the Trump tax cuts, because when you do huge policy like that, it doesn't last until two, four years later, the other party comes in, they try to undo it. Yeah. So it's more, it's a political case. I understand that you're making here. So why do you think that the, your third party candidacy

would be able to solve that? Like, let's say, even if you do win the presidency, you're still going to have a bipartisan Congress of which that you best described as in why is this run kind of the bandaid that you think it is to the major structural problems that you're laying out? Because it all comes back to who do politicians think they're accountable to? And the problem is, is whether you're talking about the president, whether you're talking about House or Senate leaders, they only really care about what their primary voters think. That's all they worry about. The narrow slice of voters who are going to put them over the top in their elections, and then they get to the general,

and they don't really have to worry about that anymore. So here's how that manifests on an issue like immigration. You look at our polling, 80% of people would get behind a compromise that, one, made significant investments in border security, but two, provided a path to citizenship for the dreamers. Why can't we have that? Well, here's why. Because if you're in the Democratic Party today and you're for any kind of border security, you get accused by your base of wanting to put kids in cages. And if you're a Republican who's for anything other than deporting everybody, then, well, you're for amnesty. And that's why we can never get anything done on these issues.

But, Ryan, let me ask you, though, because AOC is not president and Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders, they're not president. Joe Biden is president, and he has maintained actually a lot of the Trump immigration policies. And by the way, Democrats have put forward legislation which does basically what you suggest. Pathway to citizenship, increased dollars for border security. So I'm just confused, frankly, why Joe Biden isn't your guy. Look, he's not my guy. I'm ideologically to the left of him. I think he's failed on any number of promises to the working class. But not only, you know, put it on immigration as I laid out, he passed an infrastructure bill with bipartisan support.

He passed the CHIPS Act with bipartisan support. He passed the Inflation Reduction Act. He got that through. He was able to do the PACT Act to help toxic burn victims from our men and women serving overseas. So he's like fetishizes bipartisanship. That's his whole thing. So do you see him? What is your specific grievance with him, number one? And number two, do you see him as equally sort of extreme in your language as Donald Trump is. No. So and we've our co-chairs put out a statement to this effect. Dr. Ben Chavis,

Joe Lieberman headline was Donald Trump should never again be president. So we don't have any illusions about an equivalency between the two of them. But again, Crystal, I come back to this. If you look at where the public is at, why is President Biden's approval rating is under 30 percent among independents? It was over 60 when he was inaugurated. So obviously something has happened between then and now. And in our view, when we look at our polling, some of that is he probably hasn't governed as the unifier that the public expected. Well, actually, actually, I mean, when his approval ratings were the highest, were at the beginning of his administration, when he was doing the most and taking the, you know, with the stimulus at the beginning, dealing with the end of the pandemic, you know, cutting checks to American citizens, That's when his approval rating was the highest. When he has, you know, sort of taken a step back and obsessed over bipartisanship and

not done a whole lot, that's when his approval rating falls off a cliff. So the idea that the move is to the center, that there needs to be more like the bipartisan infrastructure deal type of stuff, well, they already did that. It clearly didn't give Biden much of a bump in the polls. So I would just dispute. I think we have a very large difference of opinion about the frustrations that the American people have with Joe Biden in particular. But the other piece, you know, you've talked a lot about, you know, the American people and what they support and what they're looking for and who politicians are responsive to. Your group reportedly has a lot of very large donors. A number of billionaires, including Harlan Crowe, have been reported and Stephen Schwarzman have

been reported as giving big money to your group. But you all won't disclose your donors so that people know what interests you might have at stake and what they might be signing up for if they do affiliate with your group. So will you commit to revealing your donors so that the American people can have transparency around what this third-party effort is about and who it is backed by? So first, Crystal, a lot of the donors that have been reported that support no labels, they don't. I mean, I really don't know where they're getting the names from, including. Well, Harlan, I mean, we can. Can you just confirm or deny, you know, the two of them so that we can have some more information? Because, again, this is all based on what people are able to report out rather than it would clear up the record if you just made all the donors public.

No, here's why we don't do that. And we never have. So we've been around for 13 years. We're not a political party. We're a C4 like AARP or legal women voters, and they don't support their donors either. Because the way this works today is a lot of the people that are attacking us, they sort of get behind the mantle of transparency and good government. They say, oh, just, you know, just reveal all your donors. Of course, they don't reveal any of theirs. What they want to do is go through a donor list and just attack those people, all the people that support us on both sides, and then try to intimidate them to leave no labels. That's how the game works. We're not going to play it. If in the end, we nominate a ticket, that ticket will

have to disclose everything to the FEC just as any ticket would. So if you want to know what does no label stand for, I'd say look at two things. One, what we've done the last 13 years. And two, as I mentioned, in July, we'll be out with common sense. That's going to be our policy agenda. And I think you'll see in there a broadly appealing agenda that has nothing to do with pushing special interests, corporate interests. We do not take corporate money. So we feel very good about how we handle our donors. All right, Ryan. Well, we appreciate you joining us, talking to us a little bit. Whenever it comes out in July, make sure you send it our way. Maybe we'll have

a fun discussion again. I will say, though, I feel like all of you should have to disclose your donors, not just you, but everybody else. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit later. Anyway, appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Thanks so much. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed it. We enjoy having people there up on the big screen, having fun conversation and all that. We will have a great show for everybody tomorrow. You can support us at breakingpoints.com. 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.

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