Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/27/22: Roe v Wade Overturned, Political Fallout, Liberal Rage, Barstool Conservatism, Ukraine War, Airline Dysfunction, & More!

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss Roe v Wade being overturned, political fallout of the decision, various responses from politicians, Ukraine war movement, Liz Cheney's desperation, Barstool conservatism, Dem base, & airline dysfunction with Derek Thompson.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Derek Thompson: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/derek-thompson/ https://www.theringer.com/plain-english-with-derek-thompson-podcast   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. Obviously, lots and lots of big news, starting with that monumental era-defining decision overturning Roe versus Wade, and that is where we will start the show. But there's a lot to talk about with that. We've also got some new insight into Trump's reaction to that. What he's saying publicly, a little different from what he is saying privately about the political impact, at least. Also, some big developments with regards

to Ukraine and Russia. G7 meeting this week that is levying more sanctions on Russia, trying to deal with the fact that the sanctions thus far, especially the oil sanctions, have only actually enriched Putin's regime. So we're trying to figure all of that out. We also have some new details. Liz Cheney, who is very much on the rocks in terms of her Republican primary. And she had said, no, I'm not going to court Democrats. I'm just going for Republican voters. Now she's sending mailers out to Democrats, explaining to them how to switch their vote. That seems to be the only shot she has at ultimately getting through that primary. Also, I wanted to spend just a minute reflecting on Nancy Pelosi's incredible response to the overturning of Roe versus Wade. I know you guys are really going

to enjoy that one. So that's something to look forward to. Also, I have Derek Thompson back on the show. He's been digging into the airlines are a complete mess. I don't know if any of you guys have flown recently, but the number of canceled flights and it's completely preventable. They know that they don't have the staffing, the crews to fly all the flights that they are booking people on. So it's completely egregious. The person who is in charge of the agency that should be dealing with this is Pete Buttigieg. He, of course, is like MIA on all of this. So Derek's going to dig into all of that. But we wanted to start with that decision overturning Roe versus Wade. And in particular, we have some new polling that breaks down just

how Americans feel about this. And overwhelmingly, the picture is, of course, Republicans broadly supportive. Independents and Democrats feel very, very differently. And overall in the country, this is a very unpopular move by the Supreme Court, further undercutting that court's legitimacy, which was already at record lows. Let's put this first part up on the screen. This is from CBS News and YouGov. So they asked whether overturning Roe v. Wade is a step backward for America, a step forward for America, or neither. 52%, so an outright majority say a step backward. Only 31% say a step forward. The remainder, 17%, say neither, sort of indifferent. Next one, let's put this up on the screen. This is what I was just referencing about the sort of partisan breakdown here. So look, it's kind of predictable. Democrats

overwhelmingly disapprove of the decision, 83 to 17. Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the decision, 78 to 22. But if you look at the ones that count, the swing voters, the independents, 62% disapprove of this decision. So no doubt about it. However, you personally feel about the overturning of Roe versus Wade, there is no doubt that this decision is dramatically on the wrong side of public opinion. And the last piece we wanted to show you here about how this might impact the midterm elections in particular, of course, Democrats have been suffering from a lack of enthusiasm as compared to Republicans who are super revved up to vote in the midterm elections for, you know, sort of historic reasons.

You always want to vote against the party in power, all that sort of stuff. So you have 50 percent of Democrats saying that this decision by the Supreme Court makes them more likely to vote. That's opposed to just 20 percent of Republicans. So, you know, I always am a little skeptical of these things because even people's impression of how they are going to act based on things people don't always know really terrible judges of what yeah exactly how they're actually going to act on this decision but i think if you look not just at this polling but if you look at the way and we're going to talk about this in a minute some of the really radical and extreme measures that Republicans are leaping into right away, there is no doubt that this is going to shift the direction of the midterms a bit in favor

of Democrats. Now, do I think that's enough to overcome what were dramatically long odds and what looked like a total disaster for Democrats? No. Do I think on the margins or with some particular candidates it might make a difference? Yes. I actually like the way that you put it at the top, which is an era-defining decision, because that is the better way to conceive of it. You know, the things that have ramifications, they don't necessarily immediately occur. They don't just happen. What happens is that when you live in a new era, you have a whole new set of challenges, of coalitional differences, of the way that politicians are going to have to react to different incentives. We'll talk about this both in Trump, and I'm going to be talking specifically a lot about this in my monologue. What I think it is, is that this creates an entire new set of political conditions, which introduces a dramatic amount of uncertainty

into the system. Now, currently, the 2022 midterms, I think those are locked in. I mean, I don't see how that could possibly have an impact. That being said, this those are locked in. I mean, I don't see how that could possibly have an impact. That being said, this could be in the long term a decision that will put Republicans, what I think very much on the back foot of having to defend some extraordinarily unpopular decisions, what is still, though, a very, very powerful part of their political coalition. And I think that underlying this is a huge break in what traditionally defined the American right. Social conservatives and many others were willing to go along with the big tax cut Republicans and with others because they were promised that Roe versus

Wade was going to get overturned. It was the singular promise of every Republican president since Ronald Reagan came into office. Now, though, that has completely scrambled court politics, both in the ways that Donald Trump was elected almost entirely on an inter-coalitional basis by selecting Mike Pence and saying, I'm going to overturn Roe, which is why those Republicans, those evangelicals, were willing to walk over broken glass in order to vote for him. Remember this, only 3% of the electorate in 2020 was voting on abortion, and over 97% of those people voted for Trump. Now, what's the reason? I mean, I guess you want to go ahead and award somebody for doing what they said, but let's be honest, you know, overturning something, taking the action is the immediate impetus for a lot of these people to

vote. And I already saw this, you know, no matter what you think, Josh Hawley has been, had made a really interesting comment, which is he said, for years, social conservatives were willing to go along with the tax cuts and the trade deals and all this stuff on judicial philosophy. That is over. We'll see in terms of how he votes and how he comports himself. I do think there's something there, which is that for a long time, there was this idea in Republican Reagan politics specifically called like a three-legged stool, which is neocons on foreign policy. Then you had the tax cut, you know, art laugher types who were really not socially conservative at all, those two groups. But then you had, you know, the evangelicals.

And those three kind of made up the coalition. Trump scrambled that a little bit on foreign policy, obviously, in terms of the way he governed, both as a neocon-ish and then same whenever it came to tax cuts. But the social cons kind of remain that. With the stool, one leg is now gone. So what does that mean in terms of how you navigate a primary, how these people are going to vote? That's why I think looking at it as an era-defining decision in terms of how the Republican Party is going to have to operate. Also, the Democratic Party.

I mean, there's major fissures. You and I were talking about this yesterday. I've never seen the amount of kind of like PMC women who are repulsed by the major Democratic Party. That's a totally new phenomenon in terms of their like faith, I guess, and the Nancy Pelosi's. And I mean, look, if you were an RBG stan and you had an RBG bottle head or a bobble head or whatever here in dc her face is everywhere i mean there's no person whose narcissism more is responsible for this decision by her inability in order to or inability to retire when she should have under obama if she had not done so then justice roberts is on record saying he would have stuck with a 15-week ban so very much where he

wanted the score that's where he wanted it to go He wanted the Dobbs actual ruling to be the law of the land under Roe versus Wade. So you have nobody but RBG to thank. I think a lot of people are coming to this realization politically. I think so. I think so. And this is part of what I'm going to talk about in my monologue that, you know, I've spoken before about my politics and why abortion isn't necessarily at the center, even though, you know, I do find this decision, frankly, I find it horrifying. I mean, and I do think this court, they really don't care what public opinion is. They really don't care how it could damage the institution of the court. And I don't so much have an issue with that because I'm not a Supreme Court fan anyway. I think even though obviously in certain instances, Civil Rights Act being a great example,

the court has moved the country forward more often than not. They've made terrible decisions, which are reactionary and regressive. This being clearly one of them, in my opinion. On the Republican side, you know, I wouldn't say that the third leg, the evangelical, like, religious right is gone. I mean, we see them springing into action because even though the court's logic here is let's just let's let the states decide. That is not what most of the religious right wants. They want this to be national nationwide policy. I mean, Mike Pence, who is one of the key clear leaders beloved on the religious light. Right. The first thing he says is, hey, you know, national ban. We got to go there. There's already been legislation introduced by Republicans in the House and the Senate to do exactly that. So they're not going to be satisfied. It says everything that they leapt into action not to say, like, now we need to have affordable child care and make sure no baby grows up in poverty. No, what they leap into action to do is to say, like, you know, let's get DAs to prosecute women who now cross state lines to try to get an abortion

in states where it is illegal. So, you know, there's a lot of demands for governors in states that have already more or less banned abortion to call a special session and ban it even harder. There's pressure on DeSantis down in Florida, who just passed what was, you know, already an extraordinary and contrary to Roe ban, 15 week abortion ban. Well, there's pressure on him now to call a special session to a six week abortion ban. Well, there's pressure on him now to call a special session to a six week abortion ban. So I think that the momentum and the energy from the religious right is still very much there, very much focused on this issue. And it really shifts the locus of the culture wars. So whereas we have been, and I think you're going to get into some of this in your monologue, we have been having this discussion about woke overreach and cancel culture and policing language, which I think Republicans had a major advantage in that conversation, even though personally I think they're hypocritical in a lot of those things and ways that we've talked about. But there's no doubt that they sort of leaned into this.

We've got to have free speech and people have got to be able to say what they think. And it was working in terms of prosecuting the culture wars. Well, now you got a very different issue on their hands. Who wants to go out and defend criminalizing women who are trying to, you know, not even just like get an abortion in their state, but cross state lines to get an abortion as unpopular as defund the police was. This shit is even more unpopular. So good luck defending that. And that because this is such a powerful part of the Republican base and because so many congressional districts are drawn in a way that these are safe Republican districts, they're not worried about

a Democrat or a moderate Republican. They're worried about challenges from their right. So you have a coalition that is organized, that is determined, that is feeling confident because they've just scored this, you know, huge multi-decade victory that they've been working for. They are not going to stop here. And I think it is a real wake up call for, you know, people who are against this decision that, you know, this these kind of rights that we've taken for granted for generations can be rolled back like this. And there's been a lot of liberal complacency that, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice that I think has just been completely overturned. Even things that, you know, we've kind of put behind us, take for granted, certainly gay rights, you know, right to contraception behind his take for granted, certainly gay rights, you know, right to contraception, all these things that Justice Thomas said in his concurring opinion that agreed with the majority, but laid on his view. He says, hey,

if we're going here with abortion, we should be going here using the same logic with all of these other issues. So it is a real eye opening kind of a moment. I have more to say on the Republican part, but why don't we save that for later? Yeah, let's get to the Democrats because there is an interesting kind of fissure here. I mean, you've got Biden coming out. He gives a speech, you know, saying all the right things. But then when it comes down to, OK, what are you going to actually do? It's crickets.

And look, Democrats have a trifecta right now. They have not been willing to push the bounds of whata right now. They have not been willing to push the bounds of what they could do. They haven't been willing to get rid of the filibuster. You know, they haven't been willing. He hasn't in other issues been willing to use executive power. And there are a few things he could do by executive order here as well. But Karine Jean-Pierre, the new press secretary, being asked about, well, how does he feel about the filibuster now? Let's take a look at, this is a tweet. According to the transcript, she said, she basically says, go vote. I mean, look, if we got more members of Congress who support Roe, then the thinking would be that we'd be able to

pass a law to get that done. Get that done, meaning codifying Roe at a national level. I don't think the filibuster would play a role there. I mean, listen, we're not stupid. Democrats are not going to be able to hold on to the House or likely the Senate. You think we're going to be able to get a super majority of Democrats? Come on, come on. And that's where this just completely breaks down. And there have been AOC and Elizabeth Warren, I think, have been sort of the most aggressive in kind of calling out the inaction on the Democratic side and the fact that the first reaction from Democrats, from Pelosi in particular, and we'll talk about this a little bit more later, was like to send out a fundraising email, chip in your $15 now to send more Democrats in the House. It's like people who are liberals feel like we already did this. We gave you a trifecta.

We already went and voted for you multiple times, not to mention going back to the Obama era when we voted you in with a supermajorityar, down in Texas, pulling him across the finish line by a couple of hundred votes. And then you have the nerve to turn around and say, like, oh, you've got to elect more of us. You've got to trust us. And we're really fighting for you when the evidence just is not there that they actually mean that on this issue or many other issues, by the way. And so here's a little bit of what AOC has been saying and getting a lot of support for. Go ahead and put this tweet up on the screen from AOC. She did a long tweet thread, and this is just the beginning of it, kind of calling out Democratic inaction. She says, here's how Dems can and must do more than wait for an election. She lays out, listen, the sort of lack of legitimacy of the court. In her view, she says, let's start with why seven of

the nine justices were appointed by a party that hasn't won a popular vote more than once in 30 years. One of those seats was stolen. Several lied to Congress to secure their appointment and goes through some specific actions that she thinks Democrats need to take other than just fundraising. And she even says something to the effect of, she says, president and Dem leaders can no longer get away with familiar tactics of committees and studies to avoid tackling our crises head on anymore. She also says, if you spent the time after we learned that this was coming from the leak, fundraising more than coming up with a policy response, you need to rethink your priorities.

And then she also shared, let's put this up on the screen, this clip that kind of went viral. I have the full clip in my monologue you'll get to see. But these young women who were at a protest and they were really pissed off that the first thing Democrats did was send out a fundraising message. And her quote here is, my rights should not be a fundraising point for Democrats. AOC shared this favorably saying, we've been sounding the alarm about this for a long time. Some may want to go after the messenger, but we simply cannot make promises, Hector people to vote, and then refuse to use our full power when they do. We still have time to fix this and act, but we need to be brave.

She has been, listen, she's gotten some pushback from all the users who said, oh, this is Jill Stein's vote, this is Susan Sarandon foe. You people, you're, you know, I know. How is that not bad? I know, it's insane, right? There's still, I was tagged on lists of like, these are the people who are to blame for Roe being overturned. Yes, that's right. Not RBG, of course. Complete insanity. But it was notable to me that there are a lot of liberals, a lot of blue wave emojis in the replies saying you're 100 percent correct. And so this is the biggest liberal progressive split on the Democratic Party that I have really seen, where for the first time there really is it's not enough to just be like, oh, well, the Republicans

are worse. OK, yeah, sure. Fine. If this is your issue, no doubt about it, right? But it's just so blatant, the inaction and the complacency and the using of this issue just for fundraising and campaign points rather than an actual commitment to it, that it's just undeniable even for people who are sort of staunch vote blue no matter who. I'm curious to see how much of this is going to be a top issue. But like I said, only 3% of the electorate voted on abortion in 2020. I think something similar, maybe slightly higher, in 2016. I wonder how much of that is going to be Democrats problem for them is they just simply don't have the votes on Roe versus Wade in the House. So Roe versus Wade, the last time that it came up in May of 2020, fell by 51-49. Joe Manchin now comes out and says, however, that he would support codifying it. At the same time, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski also there. So I think that's a majority at like 52. But then, of course, you know, neither Murkowski, Collins or Manchin will commit to

using the filibuster on that, not to mention the president. So obviously that's not going to happen. I do think it is interesting because the Biden and the Dems and Pelosi, all of them, they don't really have anything that they can say. The one point that they could make is, OK, what we would need is you have to go and deliver us seven more seats in the Senate come 2022. That's not going to happen politically. So I think that they need what their own framework of what the right has had over the last 40 years, which is the Federalist Society. Like they need to implement some sort of plan and be like, look, I mean, you know, I can tell you this from my friends who are very pro-life. They have all been aware, both of them. They knew the ins and outs of every law in this country for the last decade. They're like, oh,

the Dobbs decision, it's written specifically to preempt the Supreme Court and force their hand. There was coordination all up and down the line from Washington to the way. I haven't really seen that. And somebody made a good point to me, which is that the head of Planned Parenthood actually immediately reacted to the decision, like not from work, but in a hotel room. And I just, that really struck me where I was like, wow, like, you know, she knew this decision was probably going to happen. Why is she taking it seriously enough? And it does seem to be, I mean, again, this is anecdotal, but here walking the streets of DC, you see the human rights campaign or the ACLU and they're all raising money. They're like, hi, do you have a moment in order to protect your board? Like it seems to have turned into

a fundraising mechanism without the action that the groups like family, I forget the family research council here in Washington, the Federalist Society. I mean, they're not just well-funded, but well-organized organizations, political organizations. I don't see that level of seriousness right now on the left. Nope. In order to come up with a legitimate plan. Nope. Yeah.

I mean, no. There's not. That's a major political failure. I mean, listen. Part of this, part of the reason the right has been able to score what is a generation-defining victory in their view is because they teamed up with capital. I mean, federal federal society isn't just about abortion, right? It's about like, you know, corporate power. And abortion is kind of like, the social issues are like the window dress. I mean, very important for the constituency that

cares about it. But so they team up with capital and they're able to get their way. So, I mean, that pathway is not going to be open for the left if you're going to have a movement that's about more than just kind of like the surface level cultural, the cultural rights. I don't want to dismiss those as unimportant, but you see what I'm saying here. But, yeah, I mean, listen, the organizations that do exist, like the Guttmacher Institute, we talked to Ryan Grimm about how they're like in meltdown mode, in fighting, you know, progressives like inter-fighting, sniping, canceling each other rather than focusing on the mission. And there's been a total lack of funding and focus on the long term. So there's no doubt about it. I think the response on both sides of this issue is extremely telling. The Republicans are saying, what's next? How do we get to that nationwide ban?

How do we, even in states like Texas and Missouri, where we already have the bans in place, how do we go even further and make sure that women can't go out of state to get abortions also? How do we crack down on abortion pills? How do we, you know, in states that have a 15-week ban, how do we push forward for the six-week ban? They are focused on what's the next step? What's the next action? How do we organize to get there? Public opinion be damned, by the way. And I think that's important, too, because there's been a lot of talk on the left about popularism and all this sort of stuff. Listen, they don't care if it's popular or not. They care about their agenda, and they're going to do it come hell or high water. They're going to figure out the lever to use power to get done what they want to get done. And the response on the Democratic side is like, chip in

$15 to send more Democrats. You're already there and you didn't do anything. So what's going to be different this time around? No plan, no strategy, no nothing, even though, again, Democrats have the people on their side. They have certainly the Democratic base on their side, but they also have independents on their side and 22 percent of Republicans on their side, too, in terms of how they feel about this decision. And yet, is there any grand strategy to, you know, try to roll these things back, to try to get the other side on the defense? No, not at all. I see that as a major political failure.

I really do. Oh, 100%. Especially because, like I was saying, these proliferationist groups, like ultra-violence. Why were they spending time trying to cancel Joe Rogan three months ago? I knew this decision was coming. So did you.

We talked about it here. The day that the court accepted it, I was like, this is it, guys. From what I'm hearing, it pretty much says Roe is dead. Why are these organizations spending time talking about pregnant people and, you know, making a laughingstock of themselves by picking fights with other liberal groups or tweeting out clips of Joe Rogan when they should have been doing this? So I think it does show a fundamental lack of seriousness. As you said, say what you want about the Fed sock, but, like, they knew what they were doing over the last 40 years. How organized. No doubt about it. of seriousness. As you said, say what you want about the Fed sock, but like they knew what they were doing over the last 40 years. And these Catholic groups for life and all these people,

they spend a lot of money and they draw a lot of attention. I mean, I remember, I think it was in under Trump. There was a justice who had not even said she was pro-choice, but had not been like wholesale, like I'm a hundred percent pro-life. And they almost vetoed her actually to make sure that she didn't get onto the, I believe it was the D.C. Circuit Court. This caused like a big brouhaha in Republican politics. I don't see any level of seriousness on that level of organized opposition. All these girls that were supposed to be there to push Biden left. Yeah, right. It's a joke. I mean, they've just disappeared. They really have. And I do think that, I don't know that it's 100% of the issue, but I do think a lot of it is this like CIA op that has caused progressives to spend all their

time fighting with each other and like, you know, deciding who's the real progressive and who's woke enough rather than actually pushing any sort of mission or agenda forward. And it lets Democrats get off the hook. I mean, and so now you do have maybe a little bit of an awakening of some liberals of just the extent of the failure and, you know, and the rot on the Democratic side. Does that turn into anything? I have no idea, but it is kind of an interesting moment in terms of Democrats grappling with how we got here. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on here and talk about the Republicans. This is a really fascinating, like I was talking about earlier, split in the coalition. Let's put this

up there on the screen. It is not an accident that Mike Pence, the moment after this decision went ahead and came out, said that he wants to call for a national abortion ban by former Vice President, several other Republicans, not just praising the end of Roe, but signaling the major plan. He said, quote, today, life won by overturning Roe versus Wade. The Supreme Court has given the American people a new beginning. He went on to declare, Roe has been consigned to the ash heap of history. A new arena in the cause of life has emerged. It is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and support for women in crisis to every state in America. Having been given a second, we must not

rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land. Translation, that is a national abortion ban. And as I said, I will save some of this for the monologue, but a tiny preview, that currently polls at an all-time low of 13%. Some 87% of Americans are supportive of abortion in some form in some cases. So not in the Roe versus Wade architecture. The Dobbs decision, the 15 weeks, which is broadly, you know, fits with the contours of where European abortion laws stand, is actually basically dead center for, I'm talking a vast majority of the public, not just the majority of the public, but like the vast 87% some people in the United States. So if you consider just how out of step with public opinion is,

that is what the real next battle is going to be. Let's throw this up there on the screen too, from the Times, which did a decent job here of summarizing how these states, specifically the 13 different states that have road trigger laws to ban abortion in the immediate wake of any Supreme Court action. They also point to, as you were talking about, the underlying efforts in state legislatures all across the country in order to reach even further. So the major battlegrounds are now going to be things like abortion pills in the mail to people who want them, the ability to have interstate travel. You know, that actually came up in the Roe decision. Justice Kavanaugh saying he's like, I do not support any ban on interstate.

But that is not part of the actual decision. So this all is going to get litigated to high hell. But what I talked about previously in terms of the era defining and creating new choices is like, look, you have a lot of evangelicals in like six states in the South, and they're frankly going to do some crazy shit. I mean, we're already talking here about, I already saw this this morning, which is that Yassili Vega, who's the Republican nominee running against Abigail Spanberger, downplayed the possibility of becoming pregnant as a result of rape when asked about her stance on abortion at a campaign trip. Look, she probably didn't have a chance. That's my district now. I'm going to my district, Abigail Spanberger.

You better vote and you better donate to the former CIA op. Literally, she used to work in the CIA. Yeah, true. Anyway, my point that I'm making is now you're going to have this all over the country. And just like defund the police, even if you don't support it, you're going to have to clarify your position. That's kind of why I want to return to what you were saying earlier. I agree that the third stool, the evangelical stool, is going to remain, but they're not united on the goal anymore. Right. Like, here's the truth. Most elite Republicans are liberals. They do not, like socially They don't support they don't support a nationwide abortion ban.

They don't barely barely were on board with overturning Roe versus Wade. So to have to be in the same coalition as the people who literally want to outlaw abortion, that's going to be, I think, difficult to swallow, not just for elites, but for voters. I mean, we're about to talk about this with Trump, but there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump, one third, in fact, in 2016, who are pro-choice. So what are they going to do when it comes to how, if that is significantly on the ballot? Second, every Republican president from here on out has got a tough as hell time. So you have to try and satisfy, you can't just promise evangelicals, yeah, we're going to overturn Roe. Now they're going to be like, no, you need to put a vote on the floor and sign an executive action that bans this as much as possible. Well, guess what? Most people don't agree with that. So it's going to be hard, you know, to the extent that you can already win in the electoral college,

you're going to have even more of a trouble winning, I think, or at least governing in that form without some sort of major popular backlash, especially in some of the states that you can point to that are on the edge. I mean, Pennsylvania, yes, they have some Catholics there, but last time I checked, you know, it's a legitimate 50-50 state. Michigan, same thing. I actually think the industrial Midwest might be easier. The Sunbelt, people forget this. There's quite a bit of suburban liberals who live in Arizona. They're the ones who delivered Biden that state. They're not necessarily on board. Suburban-ish voters were like moderate, kind of. Same in Georgia, the Atlanta suburbs, Nevada, same thing around Las Vegas. People were looking at that as a pickup.

New Hampshire is another one. I mean, many of these states, which are right on the edge, which Republicans would have to flip in order to keep some sort of advantage in the Electoral College and the changing map, specifically Trump. This is going to be difficult to push because you have the overwhelming amount of energy from this previously beloved part of the coalition that had a singular goal, which now has divergent political wishes from the rest. So I do think this will change Republican politics now for all time. The decision to has actually shifted the country more into the pro-choice camp. So pro-choice identification is near all time highs. And it's very generational. The younger you get, the more pro-choice you are. The number of people who support abortion

in all or most circumstances has gone up, which is unusual because since the decision, those numbers have been pretty static. And so the fact that you have a significant shift in favor of the pro-choice position is notable. And to underscore your point here, Sagar, I'll give you two perfect examples. As I said before, Ron DeSantis in Florida, they already passed something that was pretty out there. 15-week ban, which already went beyond what Roe said was permissible. That was basically the debate at the court over Dobbs. So he already put that in. Well, now he's under pressure to go six weeks. Okay. How's that going to impact his ability to win a national election? I'll give you another example. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. Virginia, of course, had trended blue. Biden won it by what, he got pressed on abortion on the campaign trail, but he really just kind of avoided the issue. Well, now, the minute that this decision came down, he's out

there saying, hey, we want to do a 15-week abortion ban. If this had been the live issue when he was running for governor, I don't think he wins in Virginia. I don't think that he ends up winning in Virginia. I think you might be right. Yeah, because, I mean, instead of having the conversation about schools and that, the cultural debate was all around that. And the northern Virginia suburbs, remember, that was the big shift towards Glenn Youngkin. Do those women vote for Glenn Youngkin when the overturning of Roe and how far Virginia is going to go in that regard is the live issue? I don't think so. So you can see the way that this already makes things very difficult. When it comes to abortion, even though you have had more people move into the camp of legal in all or most circumstances, most Americans are kind of mixed.

You know, it's a complicated moral issue. I really do understand that. I get that. And so the party that is winning on this issue is going to be the party that seems less extreme. With the overturning of Roe, the focus of this debate is no longer going to be on these edge cases that are uncomfortable for Democrats, partial birth abortion, late term abortion, that sort of stuff. It's going to be on the radical fringe, bleeding edge of pushing for DAs to prosecute people who are helping women travel across state lines,

going after corporations that are, you know, as part of their benefit package, providing the money for their employees to travel across state lines if abortion is illegal in their states, cracking down on abortion pills, pushing the nationwide ban on abortion going from 15 weeks to six weeks. At six weeks, most women don't even know that they're pregnant yet. I mean, it really is. So that's where the debate is going to be now. And those things are very unpopular, very hard to defend. As I said before, like there's been a lot of conversation about just how unpopular defund the police as a slogan is. No doubt about it. This stuff is way less, is even less popular. So, you know, good luck defending it. And again, this group is very organized, very determined. They are energized. And so they are going to be putting a lot of pressure on these Republicans to follow them down.

Increasingly, you know, extreme pathways that lead them further and further out of step with the American public. And the one person who understands this is Donald Trump. So let's go ahead and move on. I read this story with great interest and I really was paying attention. I'm like, how is Trump handling the overturning of Roe versus Wade? So let's put this up there on the screen. So on the one hand, publicly, he's like, he's taking credit for the decision. On the other, Trump had probably one of the most muted responses to the entire thing in the immediate term. And apparently, behind the scenes with the people that he has been speaking to, Trump has been telling friends and advisors that it will anger suburban women, a group who helped tilt the 2020 race back to President Biden, and would possibly

lead to a backlash against Republicans in the November midterm elections. Trump has told people that measures like the Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks are, quote, so stupid, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussion. And the Supreme Court let that measure stand in December of 2021. I also think that you can see immediately in the reaction, Pence was on the ball, had the tweets ready to go, calling for the ban. It's very noteworthy. That is not what Trump said at all. He apparently has been all over the place. So in May, whenever he was interviewed after the leak by the New York Times, here's what he had to say whenever he was asked if he was going to take credit for the decision. Quote,

I never like to take credit for anything. So I pointed this out. Yeah, that's what he's known for. This is the man. Humility, that's what this guy's known for. Yeah, yeah. He's the most humble guy on Earth. Trump took credit for fewer airline crashes while he was president. Okay, so I'm just going to say that, and as they point to,

Mr. Trump, who has spent his career fixing his name to almost anything that he possibly could. In some cases, buildings that he did not even own and only license his name to in order to increase their rentability. Anybody with the brain knows that that is clearly Trump having a very difficult time knowing exactly what to do with this. He put the statement out saying it was a victory lap, but he did not go on TV. He hasn't done an interview. And in the immediate term, it's very notable to me. Put that quote up there, by the way, about the credit. It's just so funny.

I never like to take credit for anything. But go to the next one because, you know, this again points to me to something very direct. His immediate reaction in an interview with Fox, again, not on television, with a Fox News reporter, he said, this is following the Constitution giving rights back. They should have been a long time ago. And he said, quote, God made the decision from Trump, who definitely is a very strong Christian. And, you know, you also even point to this. He said in in the interview and in the reaction, he said, quote, I think it will be good for political instincts than the rest of the GOP. After all, he's the only Republican who actually could win in 2016. So I think people should really understand why he is personally uncomfortable. Look, Trump was pro-choice as soon as like, what, 2011? We're donating Planned Parenthood. Go back to what, you know, that segment that we did about Texas kicking out the gay log cabin Republicans. That's a harbinger because you saw that Donald Trump Jr. was like,

hey, why are we doing this? Why are we kicking out these gay Republican groups whenever we should be united against the left? The Trump family, they're New Yorkers. At the end of the day, their ability to win the presidency had far less to do with social conservatism. And I'm talking about the national electorate, not the GOP primary, because those are two distinct things. Had much more to do with a backlash against political correctness, corruption, elite hatred against Hillary Clinton than it had to do anything with abortion. Hence why one third of the people, there are far more people who voted for Donald Trump who are pro-choice than vice versa who are pro-life who voted for Hillary Clinton or who voted for Joe Biden. They understand that. Anybody with a brain understands that can look at a crosstab. Now,

this, I think, will face some issues for Trump because he also can't stop but love the adulation, right? He's going to be a rock star amongst evangelicals for the rest of his life. So I do think he's probably going to lean into it a little bit when he realizes the pop that it's going to get amongst those crowds in the South. But he's not dumb enough to understand, he's not dumb enough to say, oh, that's the entire electorate. The only chance that Trump has with all of this is to just say, we're moving on and I'm not going to do anything more. But how can you do that when you're going to get pummeled from the right by the Ted Cruz's, the Mike Pence's, and the social cons who no longer have an affirming reason to vote for you in such a primary? This scrambles Ron DeSantis's chances, Trump's chances.

It really does actually create maybe like a permanent 22% or so of the Republican primary electorate, which is up for grabs by whoever's the most, you know, the most Michelle Bachman or whatever, most Mike Pence on abortion. So I do think it poses big challenges for Trump personally in terms of his politics. I mean, the only thing I will say is to your point about because he was the president who put these justices in place and got it done, maybe he gets some latitude. I think he will. From the evangelical right on these issues. But yeah, there's no doubt he's uncomfortable. And if you recall back in the 2016 campaign, it was kind of a journey for Trump to get to the place where then he puts Mike Pence

as his vice president and then releases that list of Supreme Court justices. That was all in sort of like the fallout after the grab or buy the whatever comments. And there was a worry that, you know, the evangelical right was just going to collapse and they were going to leave. And that's what puts out the list of justices. It kind of locks that in. But he made all kinds of weird comments about abortion throughout his campaign that showed this was not an issue that he really had thought about. He clearly didn't even really understand what the social conservative position is. Remember when he tried to go too hard and he got asked a question about whether women should be criminalized? He was like, of course, there should be a punishment.

The evangelical right is like, no, no, no, we don't say that. We don't do that. We don't go there. And he had to clean that up. So, you know, there was clearly a sort of lack of understanding, lack of comfort with the issue and instinctive understanding, too, that this is just, you know, when you get out there on the fringe where the Supreme Court has now put the debate, this is dramatically unpopular. The other thing I wanted to point out from the polling that we looked at in the first part, is if you look at demographic groups, of course, Republicans very excited about the way that they've been performing with Latinos, hoping they can bring Latinos over into their coalition. Well, two-thirds of Hispanic Americans disapprove of this decision, way more than white Americans. So I know sometimes there's an

assumption that Hispanic Americans are sort of more socially conservative, not on this issue. It's about 50%, just over half of white Americans disapprove, two-thirds of Hispanic Americans disapprove, three-quarters of black Americans disapprove. So this also puts you at odds with the constituency that, you know, you were starting to win over, that people were starting to get excited about bringing into the tent. So it's, yeah, it definitely makes things a lot more complicated. And it gives a very, if someone like Pence wants to challenge Trump in the 2024 primary, it gives them a very clear issue where they can get to his run. I'm not saying they're going to win, but they could push him in a direction where he'd have to adopt something like this, which could then come and hurt him in the general election. I'm reading the timeline of Trump's pro-life.

It's so funny. I've forgotten some of this from 2016. 1999, quote, I'm very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still, I just believe in choice. Then sometime between 99 and 2011, at CPAC, he just says, I'm pro-life and against gun control.

Then in one of his first interviews after his announcing his candidacy, Jake Tapper says, so are you pro-choice or are you pro-life? And he says, I'm pro-choice. And Tapper goes, are you pro-choice or are you pro-life? And he goes, I'm pro-life. I'm sorry. And then he had the debate where he talked about, he had the debate where he talked about women need to be criminalized. And he's like, oh no, I take it back. So look, the man is all over the place as to what he personally believes.

I'll let you make the decision for that. How it matters in terms of politics, I think we have laid out a pretty convincing case that he understands it could be bad for him. Who knows how it all works out? Look, politics is crazy. You know, people say one thing. Oh, yeah, I'm definitely going to vote today. Who knows if any of it's actually true? Yeah.

There's really no way to know. I guess just to sum up my thought, this is a massive wild card that has entered the political system. Yeah, it's big uncertainty. That's exactly right. It would have been impossible to predict the way that Roe upended politics for 50 years. And I think it's very hard to see, to predict how this is going to upend politics in similar ways and create a lot of challenges for where it's going to matter and where it's not going to matter and which elections it's going to matter and which it's not. Because, listen, the other thing that we've seen happen in other countries, and this is just, I mean, it's 100% going to happen here. You're going to have instances where women die in horrific, tragic circumstances because of this decision and because of the laws that are being passed at the state level.

And there will be instances where those become flashpoints and just total national outrage. Remember, like, Carrie Schiavo? Right. Yeah, it's an instance like this in Ireland that really shifted the way that they were, you know, and ultimately changed their laws. So, so you are going to have those incredibly just raw, emotional, horrific results because of the decisions that have just been made that are going to focus the public's attention in a way that's going to be extremely hard for Republicans who are disproportionately impacted and influenced by this part of their coalition.

They're going to have a hard time responding. All right, let's talk about Ukraine. Obviously, that's still important. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Severodonetsk, that major standpoint between Ukraine and Russia, really on the front line, has finally fallen to the Russians after probably the war's bloodiest fight so far. I mean, thousands and thousands of casualties on both sides. We don't know the exact number because they're not being really released. But the Ukrainians are saying that they were carrying out a, quote, tactical regrouping by pulling its forces out of the city. And really what you're seeing here is a victory for Russian-style war of attrition. They have bombarded the city, almost leveled it,

really, with artillery, and they're moving artillery forward. They have several more supplies than the Ukrainians. They've changed up their own supply lines. And they seem committed very much to this strategy, which is just a long and a blinding war of attrition, moving the front line back and back and back. And we have to be honest here, you know, given even with all of the weapons that we've shipped to Ukraine, the manpower even that they've been able to draw on, they just have an inferior force in the face of this level of armament that the Russians have. One of the things we had to emphasize is that, yes, the Russians embarrassed themselves by not being able to take Kiev and really showing the world that they're not a first-class military. But that doesn't mean they're a third-class military either. And when

you're a second-class military with nuclear weapons, you're still something to be reckoned with. And you still can win some military tactical victories on the battlefield. So I think this is noteworthy in terms of how it's going to impact the ongoing discussions right now between the G7 leaders who have decided to push some more sanctions on Russia. At the same time, the Russians making a big show of things in response to the G7 summit, let's put this up there on the screen. They went ahead and struck what they claim are Western-supplied tanks in some Kiev airstrikes. So the airstrikes were very much meant to rock the world. Kiev had not been under the similar level of bombardment as in

the early days of the war for quite some time. And I think it is just to show a force in order to show the West, like, hey, we still have this capability. We can do it anytime we want. We don't care about the ramifications. Screw you. Screw your sanctions. And if you continue to ship arms here, we're going to bomb the hell out of them. And that hasn't necessarily changed any of the calculus currently among the G7 and really amongst the West. Because if you consider the story that we're about to show you in this context, as we have always warned, which is that as the public loses interest and as wars go on, the amount of things that can go wrong and the changes in what's happening on the ground that we don't sign off on and which can escalate in the gray war, which could come back to bite us,

are significant. So let's throw this up there. Now, the New York Times now reporting that a secretive operation involving U.S. special operations forces, CIA assets, and other NATO troops inside of Ukraine is not just continuing, but is coordinating the flow of weapons. So what they say, and again, you have to take this all with a grain of salt, who knows how much it is true, is that CIA personnel remain on the ground in Ukraine, specifically in Kyiv, directing most of the intelligence that the U.S. is sharing with Ukrainians, which they use to take out some Russian assets, some kill some Russian generals, but also other NATO special operations forces. I think that is the most noteworthy one to me, which is, yeah, there aren't U.S. troops there. As we always remind you, we have an Article 5 treaty with all of these countries.

So what happens if—and I'm going to read off the countries that have special operations inside—Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania. So we have four NATO allies who have troops on the ground in Ukraine. What happens if one of those guys gets killed? I mean, we really don't, nobody knows the answer to that question. I was always worried about this when we had special operations guys on the ground in Syria. And I was like, man, what if a Russian airstrike kills one of these guys? Like, what is going to happen? People don't remember. Turkey actually shot down a Russian jet in 2015, which shocked the whole world. And, you know, thankfully there was some

diplomacy between Erdogan and Putin and everything was, everything worked out. But, you know, Turkey is also in NATO. So you had a NATO force shoot down a Russian plane. These are all things that can happen on the margins of the Great War. So one of these guys gets killed. It could be an escalation on our part. And look, these things are not ending anytime soon. That's the point that we're making by starting with the fall of Severino-Donetsk is because the front line, yes, has been pushed back, but there are still months, possibly years left just fighting over in medium and long-range missiles on behalf of the Ukrainians. I'm not sure what the other G7 economies are doing, by the way. Last time I checked, the whole point of the G7 is you have the world's largest economies that are all getting together. Why can't they buy them? That's a great question that somebody should ask them. But we are providing them billions of dollars of even more weapons, more artillery

towards the front line, and it's going to continue in coordination with NATO with having our guys there, and not just our guys, but our allies, and if they get into a scrap, I think as we have now shown the world, we will bear the significant cost and brunt of this military action, as usual for this region.

Listen, there's a lot to say about this, but if there was any doubt remaining in your mind that this was a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, I think the CIA operatives on the ground tell you everything you need to know. And we've been trying to, because these little accounts appear in the press. And the funny thing is, the people who are leaking this, they're bragging about it. Yeah, of course they are. They think the American public are going to be like, that's great that there's CIA operatives on the ground. I'm sure there is a large percentage of the American public who probably does feel that way.

But you get these little glimpses where they admit they've done offensive cyber attacks, where they admit just how much they're coordinating the intelligence and how responsible they were for some of the top targeting in terms of killing Russian generals, taking out that— The ship Moskova. Exactly, yeah. So we're learning even more about just how in we are. And so I want you to keep that in mind when Biden says things about how, like, oh, we just want to support whatever the Ukrainians want. No, we're driving this train. There is no doubt about it.

This is a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, and it is an extremely dangerous game that we are playing here along with our NATO allies. Because Russia has learned their initial strategy of like the lightning strikes and going into Kiev and all that didn't work out. They've adjusted and now they've landed on something that is working very well. The article that we had up there before says this is likely to be seen by Russia as vindication for its switch from its early failed attempt at lightning warfare to a relentless grinding offensive using massive artillery in the east. Also, the strikes that Russia launched at not only Kyiv, but other parts of the country that hadn't been hit recently, these should be seen as a response to not only the G7 summit, but also to the U.S. delivering those longer range rockets. Remember, when we said we were going to do that, Putin told state television they would hit fresh targets in Ukraine

if we followed through with it. Here's the quote. If such missiles were supplied, quote, we will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting, said Putin, who's believed to be closely involved in military decision making. He did not specify exactly what, although logistics points would be amongst the most logical targets. And that is exactly what

they are saying. Any way that they hit, the Ukrainians are saying that they were something different. So keep in mind, when we act, when we escalate, Russia has options as well. And so we keep playing this extremely dangerous game and seemingly no end in sight here. Yeah, that's right. And on the diplomatic front, Crystal, things are not as great either. No. So a couple big pieces to report this morning. So first of all, last week we brought you the news about Kaliningrad. It's this sort of like this strange piece of territory that is- It's an exclave, by the way. I misspoke. Not an enclave, it's an exclave. An exclave.

I've never heard that word. It's a good word. So it's separated from Russia. Yeah. And a lot of their goods, but it is part of Russia, a lot of their goods to get into Kaliningrad have to go through Lithuania. So Lithuania has now, they say,

pursuant to EU sanctions, blocked some of what is going into Kaliningrad. Now, there are competing claims about how much is being blocked. Russia seems to be using this as sort of like a focal point and a lightning rod for their own population to say, see, look at the length that these Westerners are going to. NATO is specifically doing. Yes, but there, exactly. But there's, there's no doubt that some goods are ultimately being blocked. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is not anywhere close to resolved. The headline here is from the BBC says Kaliningrad row, Lithuania accuses Russia of lying about real blockade. The Kremlin is condemning the sanctions as illegal and

unacceptable. Leader of Lithuania is saying that passengers are still able to travel freely across Lithuanian territory and only about 1% of Russian freight was affected. So, listen, the point is, and also here's another piece that's important. Further sanctions are actually due to kick into place in August and again in December covering things like luxury goods and crude oil. So whatever they are blocking now, they're set to block even more in the upcoming months. But really, whatever the reality of the situation is, this has become another one of these flashpoints soccer that with very unpredictable ultimate outcomes. Yeah. And so right now, actually, the G7 announcing new sanctions on Russia. Let's put this up there. They're going to go ahead and ban imports of Russian gold. And that's in order to try and go and impose even more costs on the Russian economy. This was kind of an

expected one that they were going to go ahead and say because gold is actually the second largest export from Russia after energy. It's a major source of revenue, actually, for Putin and for Russia. But I just think it always comes back to this. Okay, yeah, the G7 can ban it. That's fine. But guess what? The G7, while comprising a significant portion of the world's economy, is not the entire world economy. And as we have learned with oil, unless you have all 195 or four whatever other countries on board, well, it's not 100% clear that this will work. I'm not going to say that the sanctions haven't been effective in some means. You know, Russia did just default actually on its debt for the first time.

This was a triggered default of debt as a result of blocking them from being able to pay certain times in enumerated U.S. dollars. But the Kremlin is saying, look, we didn't default on our debt. They're doing it because they were not able to pay it based upon the sanctions that you've given us. So it's not like we're unable to pay our debt. It's just that you won't let us literally pay it in our denominated currency. Right. They want to pay it in rubles. Yeah, they're like, we want to pay it in rubles, so why don't you just take a ruble, which right now is floating actually quite high to the thing. Anyway, so these are all instruments in order to try and hit back against the Kremlin's managed currency, which

they're doing everything they possibly can in order to keep the ruble high. And just remember, I mean, they're printing money on oil, printing more money than they have ever seen before, far more than they actually need in order to conduct the war. Even in terms of their consumer economy, I hate to say it, but they seem to – they're certainly suffering. But McDonald's over there was taken over by a Russian chain. Apparently, they sold more burgers than they ever have in their history. Really? On their first day that they reopened.

They have some Russian name or whatever for it. I'm sure it doesn't taste as good. But look, so they still have McDonald's. Some of the other state assets or some of the other private assets that we left behind, Western companies, are just going to get nationalized, kind of like what happened in Venezuela. But I think part of the problem is always going to be is this isn't Venezuela. Russia is a second world, almost first world country. They have a major intellectual, technical know-how. They are going to be able to operate these in some form.

The Iranians got by for 40-something years by being sanctioned to death. It's got a very powerful friend in China as well. Right. They have some equipment in China. They're going to be able to—yes, it's going to scramble the global supply chain, especially for oil. And they're not going to be able to have the same parts they've usually been able to rely on. But they also know that if their gas infrastructure goes down, the West's gas prices go up. So there's a lot of interplay that I think is still happening at the bottom level. But the most significant part that we really have to focus on.

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. There's one other piece on the sanctions front that I think is important because I think the West has realized that the oil sanctions have – a lot of these sanctions have backfired, as you were saying. Like Russia is – Putin's regime richer than ever, raking in record-breaking oil profits. And so they're trying to figure out how to deal with this. And one thing that they're floating at the G7 is what they're calling a buyer's cartel. So basically the same way that OPEC colludes to set what oil prices are going to be and how much they're going to pump, whatever. It's the same idea, except on

the other side. So you get a bunch of countries together. They band together and say, we're only going to buy at this price to effectively cap the price that they're paying for oil. Now, it's complicated how this would ultimately work, if it would ultimately work. I think a lot of people are concerned about what the ultimate impact could be and whether this is going to be effective. But there's a clear recognition here, number one, Europe very dependent on Russia for energy. And so they're kind of trying to have their cake and eat it too by saying like, we're going to get your energy, but we're going to get it at the price that we want. Because that's how it works when you buy stuff.

Right. Well, and I mean, again, I said this last time. I do think it's funny that like, you know, if we, if you said the word price controls here in the US, you'd be treated like a knuckle dragger. Like you can't, you know, this is insane and against every economic, whatever, whatever. But then when it comes to like trying to punish Russia, they'll throw their economic orthodoxy out the window and do whatever it whatever. But then when it comes to trying to punish Russia, they'll throw their economic orthodoxy out the window and do whatever it takes. So they're considering, apparently pretty seriously,

trying to implement some kind of regime like this. Now, I mean, Russia could just say no. Yeah, it could be a game of chicken. Yeah, and they could say, listen, we got buyers over here in China and India that we're happy to do business with, so we're not playing your games. So it does create some risk there as well.

But that's what's being floated right now. It's basic econ. You're like, hey, I'm only going to pay you X. You're like, okay, well, I'll fulfill your demand up to the point where it makes sense for me. And then I'll fulfill demand somewhere else. So, okay. I mean, this is, look, this is effectively what it's going to do is it means that the Europeans will burn even more coal because they've decommissioned a lot of their nuclear plants. And even right now, Germany is already talking and floating the idea of possible blackouts come winter because they won't have the energy capacity in order to mean it.

They're already paying sky-high oil prices. By the way, what do you think the price of oil globally did at the moment they started discussing this? Went up again. So, look, this is going to have significant impact on Brent crude. It's also going to disrupt the oil markets even further. I just think it will have the same impact, which is the Chinese and the Indians are like, hey, sell it to us. We'll pay $100 a barrel, which is cheaper than the world market. And then the Indians will turn around and sell half of it to us.

Sell it back to us at a premium. At a higher price. And there's some guys in New Delhi just washing their hands and balling out in Mumbai. So I think that's probably the net effect of what is going to happen on this entire thing. On the diplomatic front, let's go ahead and throw this up there. Yeah, this is wild. Okay, so we had—it didn't get a lot of attention in the mainstream press. But remember, we had reported that when Boris Johnson went to Kiev and met with Zelensky,

Ukrainian press reported that part of his message was, we do not want you to negotiate with Russia. And that was during a time when talks were live. They were meeting, you know, their emissaries were meeting together, I think in Turkey at that point. Not that there was great hope they were going to come to some deal, but Boris Johnson personally went there to deliver this message to Zelensky. We are not ready for you to end this war. Well, now we have news that Boris Johnson, when he just spoke with Emmanuel Macron. At the G7. At the G7, also said, we do not want a Ukraine settlement.

Politico's headline is, Johnson warns Macron not to attempt Ukraine settlement now. They say that settling the conflict in Ukraine would only cause, quote, enduring instability, according to the UK government. In a British account of the Paris Sunday encounter at the G7 summit, disputed, by the way, by the French side, Downing Street said Johnson had told Macron such a for a, quote, bad peace as Russia's war drags on, called on Western powers to give the Ukrainian strategic endurance. That means it's going to last a long time, adding that my message to my colleagues is now is not the time to settle and encourage the Ukrainians to settle for a bad peace, for a peace for which they are invited to give up chunks of their territory in return for a ceasefire. UK and the US have been pretty much in lockstep with this message, with their policy, with how they think the thing to do is keep this war

going and try to bleed Russia dry. You have France and Germany that have been on the other side of that saying, no, we should be pushing for peace. We should be pushing for diplomacy. And I would submit that if you are interested in peace, if you are interested in avoiding the possibility of nuclear war, France and Germany are correct that we should be pushing with everything we can to get these countries to the table to negotiate a settlement. And the last thing I will say about this is, again, there's a lot of rhetoric from the U.S. government that's very hands-off, like, oh, we're just supporting what the Ukrainians want to do. Total, complete bullshit. Boris Johnson makes it clear we are pushing them in one particular direction, and that direction is for this war to last indefinitely.

Right. I mean, look, if the Ukrainians want to pursue peace, we said this before, how would Zelensky play that in the Anglosphere? If you have the U.K. and the West being like, no, we don't want you to. He has one interest, remaining in power and continuing the war effort. So his billion dollars, multi-billion dollars spigot, let's be honest, is going to be turned off completely the moment he goes and tries to meet with Moscow. So we don't have the incentives in the right way. Once again, the Germans and the French are the ones who are bearing the brunt of this from an energy crisis perspective. It really is an Anglo versus continental split. And in this case, I'm not a huge fan of the continental Europeans, but their security is far more at threat, both energy-wise and national security-wise, than ours is. I do think we should

listen to them on this front because they're the ones who are in the driver's seat. And they're the ones who have to live with Putin in their either backyard or front yard in the Germans' cases. Not us. We're over here. We're fine. So if you consider it in that perspective, the split here is very important. And I also think this is part of the reason I wish the Europeans would step up more. They have no credibility in these discussions because they don't buy anything. They don't do anything whenever it comes to the conflict. We're the ones who are footing this 11 to 1 from a cost perspective. So of course they're not in the driver's seat. You know, Macron can get on the phone and say whatever he wants. Same with the Germans. So they don't show up militarily. They don't show up economically. And then we get to dominate the entire discussion.

I don't think that we should be the sole determiners of what happens on the European continent. And I mean, apparently they don't either, but they're not really willing to put their money where their mouth is. So I think it's an unfortunate situation. Indeed. Okay, let's move back here to America, to simpler times of Liz Cheney, what's happening here in her primary. This is a very telling thing, you know, post Jan 6th committee, which kind of got washed over by Roe versus Wade. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Liz Cheney is now sending mail to Wyoming Democrats with instructions on how to switch parties to vote for her in the state's August primary. So she sent out these mailers which say, how do I change my party affiliation to register as Republican so I can vote for Liz?

And it go ahead and it lists the exact process. How can I get an absentee ballot? When does it need to be returned with the exact instructions? And I think it's noteworthy because just in February, she told the New York Times she would not make a concerted effort to reach out to Democrats to ask them to change parties to save her. Quote, that is not something I have contemplated, that I have organized, or that I will organize. And now her campaign is sending out direct mail, Crystal, to Wyoming Democrats. I think that is probably as close to a, what, that is as close to a indication of how bad things are going for her in the state. She outright reversed herself, said I won't organize it, and now her campaign is directly doing it. I mean, listen, I'm no expert on Wyoming politics, however. I don't

think it takes a genius to figure that out. I would say that if you're depending on Wyoming Democrats, what are there, like five of them? Yeah. To try to win your Republican primary? That's probably not a great political situation for you. They had some numbers in this article. I think it's a New York Times article. They said between January and June, the number of registered Republicans increased by 1,689. Number of Democrats and unaffiliated voters dropped by a total of 1,300. So there's some indication that maybe you got 1,000 Democrats to switch. Congrats.

That's not going to do it. To be fair, there's only like half a million people who live in Wyoming. True. to switch. Congrats. That's not going to do it. To be fair, there's only like half a million people who live in Wyoming. True. You know. True. They even have a quote from some like Democratic party chair or something like that in the state. And he said, even if every Democrat in the state switched over, I don't think it'd be

enough to help her. Her approval rating much higher with Democrats now than it is with Republicans, which is like sad on every level for the country because she is a lockstep, you know, right Republican voter, voted with Trump. I don't remember, 90 some percent of the time. So if you're Republican, it's sad that the reason you don't like her is because she actually for once in her life did the right thing in terms of like being honest about Stop the Stealing, what a bunch of crazy nonsense it was. It's sad on the Democratic side that you would have like that that's your bar is just like say the right thing about Trump and then we'll love you. And I saw this. I saw some of this discourse online during the January 6th hearings where people were like, I mean, I get it. But do we really have to lionize Pence and like act like he's some hero? Like there was some discomfort and there was a

lot of like cope of, but I understand it's for a better cause. So yeah, I think she's not in a great position here in her primary, which again, I think the status of Liz Cheney says a lot about the state of our politics and how Trump ultimately became like the most important dividing line in terms of how people feel about candidates more so than any policy or any issue. And she's also gotten a little crosswise with some of the her potential Democratic base. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. Her tweet here in the wake of Roe being overturned, she says, I've always been strongly pro-life. Today's ruling by the Supreme Court returns power to the states and the people of the states to address the issue of abortion under state laws.

They're really leaning into the states' rights thing, even though there are plenty of Republicans who actually want the national ban. But she was really getting kind of raked over the coals from her new resistance liberal base who were shocked to find out that, guess what? Liz Cheney. She's actually pro-life. Not your friend, guys. Turns out she's pro-life, pro-Afghanistan war forever, pro-deficit cutting, pro- She's a Cheney. I mean, she has openly said, I agree with almost everything my dad did while he was in office.

Well, I think you should remember that come office time. I'm not saying whoever the kook who's running against her is so much better, but that doesn't mean that— Definitely not. Look, I'm not going to shed a tear for Liz Cheney. I do think it's funny also to watch her scramble for her re-election chances. And on her way out, look, she's going to be fine. She'll go get some board seat or whatever. She'll be on the board of Raytheon or something.

Raytheon, yeah. Lockheed Martin. Those will be both ones there. Raytheon or something. Yeah, or Lockheed Martin. Yeah, it's like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton. Remember those discussions? She'll be all right. I mean, there's no one to cheer for in this story. I just think it's more interesting as like an indicator of where our politics are. 100%. All right. And the last one for you here. Nancy Pelosi responding as only she could to the overturning of Roe versus Wade. Keep in mind, once again, I mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again. This is a woman who just went to the mat to make sure an anti-choice lawmaker, Henry Croyar, won by like a couple hundred votes. And now here she is rending her garments, clutching her pearls about the overturning of Roe versus Wade when she is one of the people in a position of power

to actually do something if she cared to. Her response was classic. You know, this is also the woman who brought out what, Lin-Manuel Miranda. What was that on the occasion of January 6th? Is that it? She brought the show tunes in for that occasion

while in response to the overturning of Roe, she had this poem to read. I am personally overwhelmed by this decision. From time to time, I quote this poem by Ehud Manor. He's an Israeli poet. I met his wife when I've been in Israel. He says, I have no other country, even though my land is burning. Only a word in Hebrew penetrates my veins, my soul with an aching body and with a hungry heart. Here is my home.

I will not be silent for my country has changed her face. Country has changed her face. I shall not give up on her. I shall remind her and sing into her ears until she opens her eyes. Clearly, we hope that the Supreme Court would open its eyes. Wow. I really don't care how you feel, Nancy Pelosi, whether you're personally overwhelmed or what poem it makes you think of. I want to know what you're going to do. I want to know what the plan is. So, unless you're talking about that, I really don't want to

hear it. And, of course, we know what the plan ultimately is, because in concert with the poem, she also sent out a fundraising pitch. You can go ahead and put this up on the screen. Our friends over at Gravel Institute, Nancy Pelosi just sent out her first email fundraising off the decision over Turing Roe versus Wade,

and this puppy went out fast, too. They had it queued up, ready to go. I need your immediate attention. We can rise up, meet this once-in-a-generation moment. Can you chip in $15 so we can win these midterms and finally codify reproductive rights into law?

I'm sorry, but you already have majorities. Like, you, it makes no sense. I think back to Obama. I mean, he said in 2008 that he would codify Roe versus Wade. He probably had the best chance of everybody. He had a super majority. He had a super majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Easily actually could have done it if they wanted to.

Or at the very least, you know, whoever the pro-life Democrat – I'm trying to think of who they were at the time. Maybe like Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, I think that was his name. Anyway, it would have been a fight at the time, but they didn't even try. Yeah, look, I think that immediately just issuing like the poem and then it's like the grief. I just don't understand who this is landing with. I see everybody sharing that quote from the dissent. They're like, on behalf of the millions of women, we dissent. As if that's a piece of action. I don't understand who this is directed towards.

It just brings me back to what we talked about previously. I see all of these groups all over D.C. fundraising millions of dollars. It's like, what are you guys doing? What's the plan? Yeah, I was like, what is your plan? What are you trying to do here? I mean, it really is just a perfect encapsulation of the politics of like personal narcissism and virtue signaling and like that that's an end in and of itself when, yeah, this happened because of 50 years of conservative organizing and determination and they, you know, to get to this result. So what's your equivalent of that? And not just on this, but on any number of issues.

What is actually the plan? I don't care about your plan poem. I care about your plan. That's the bottom line. I think it is going to be tough for her and for Democratic leadership come next time. When they're in,

if they're in the minority, if by some crazy chance they do get into the majority, because they clearly have a very difficult time playing the coalitional game and even having a plan kind of whatsoever.

I mean, if you look at Biden, there's nothing being proposed. So even if there is energy to that extent, like to what end is it going to be applied to? Republican voters knew what they were voting for. The only thing that can bail them out is like, again, they'll go to the well of, but the Republicans are worse. So like you have to keep us here, even though we're not going to do shit, at least we're not going to pass the national abortion ban. Right. I mean, that really. Yeah. And but there are a lot of signs that this is increasingly falling flat. It's especially falls flat with younger Americans. I mean, Biden's approval rating is at like 25 percent with the youngest cohort. And this is the group that supported him the most in terms of the presidential election. At the beginning of his presidency, had very high approval ratings with that group.

And they just see through all of this and see how hollow it ultimately is. So I don't think I don't think you're getting that back. I don't think they're going to be satisfied with just the Republicans are worse. Now, does that mean they're going to probably what it means is they're either going to put their energies into, you know, candidates that they feel are going to be a challenge to that system into the grassroots labor movement, or some of them will that system, into the grassroots labor movement. Or some of them will just say, this isn't for me, I'm checking out. Yeah, they certainly could. That is very sad.

That is very sad. There could be a big checkout. I see that. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, if you were to ask me what I care about most when it comes to politics, it's arranging the economic conditions of people's lives so they can do whatever they want, leave their kids better off than they were. That's mostly it, followed closely by hoping that woke ideology gets destroyed wherever it is, because I believe that wokeism and its capture of elite institutions is the chief

opponent of well-ordered and desirable economic and social arrangements in favor of race or identity-based ones. Abortion, to be honest, has never really figured that highly in it. As I famously said, much to the chagrin of our more liberal audience, I would rather gouge my eyes out than talk about abortion. But I work in the news business, so fine. Let's discuss it in the framework, in the context that I've advanced on the show, that's in serious trouble these days. Or is it? Barstool conservatism.

I first laid it out, really, at a mass level on the Joe Rogan Experience, more than a year ago. It's a political theory that the culture wars of the 1990s have mostly passed in favor of a war over political correctness, language manipulation, gender ideology, and other battles over the woke framework, instead of gay marriage, etc., the fights of old. You get the idea. That type of political orientation was best exemplified by a barstool founder, Dave Portnoy. He celebrated Donald Trump in 2015 for one reason alone, piss people off. Dave is pro-choice. He doesn't care about any of the other past social issues. Yet he was pro-Trump. He was anti-lockdown. By his own admission,

he was going to vote Republican. So how does that happen? Why does it matter? Because Portnoy actually represents a new and a very powerful political constituency. One not of evangelical Christians and suburbans, but non-woke bros, for lack of a better term. People better described as socially libertarian, as in do what you want, but leave me alone, rather than socially conservative, who want to regulate the behavior of others. That's an important framework. That framework is how you explain how the pro-choice Elon Musk, for example, said he's going to vote Republican, how Joe Rogan somehow became identified with the right by the media. How Bill Maher and many other old school lefties find themselves really adrift in modern politics. They represent millions of people, mostly men,

but women too, who across racial lines have drifted to the right for various reasons that vary from woke politics to anti-lockdown to general hatred of elites who are overwhelmingly capital L liberals. The key to that story, though, is that most of those people are secular, or if they're religious, they're not Catholic or evangelical religious. They're mostly pro-choice or they don't care about abortion. All of that political analysis about how the right could find political success if it moves on from those culture wars of the 90s, of course, is predicated on actually moving on from the culture wars of the 90s. And course, is predicated on actually moving on from the culture wars of the 90s. And now, with the repeal of Roe versus Wade, for good or for ill, that is obviously not going to happen. Look, no further of a sign of how this might affect the

Barstool conservative outcome than the founder of Barstool himself, Dave Portnoy. Here's what he had to say in reaction to Roe versus Wade. I feel like I have to speak on this issue. I already talked about it a little bit. To me, this is just pure insanity. Pure insanity. We are going backwards in time. We are literally going backwards in time. It makes no sense how anybody thinks it's their right to tell a woman what to do with her body.

I just don't get it. To take away the ability to make informed decisions on how they want to live their lives is bananas. Keeps going, but you get the idea. Dave followed it up with political analysis of his own, saying, quote, I honestly think Republicans were going to win the White House in a landslide because of how pathetic the Biden administration is. But I do think this will bail the Dems out. It sucks for everybody. Interesting indeed for my thesis, right? Now, I actually think Dave is correct with this caveat. The politics of Roe versus Wade and the fallout are very likely to be more long-term than short-term. In the short, you cannot rely on Roe versus Wade to save you

when gas is $5 a gallon, inflation is out of control, and the president can barely speak a cogent sentence. Some things are simply insurmountable. But in the long-term, the return of Roe and the battles among them means Republicans find themselves on the backside of public opinion in a big way. Here's the truth. Much to the chagrin of my religious friends, we live in a much more secular country than we have at any time in our history. Most people think abortion is icky but are okay with it. They don't want it celebrated like the Lena Dunhams of the world. They're adamantly opposed after the first trimester. But the status quo was pretty

solidly in line with majoritarian opinion. The bad news for Republicans is not only are they now on the side of maybe one-third of the public at best, the people who really care about this, the religious right, are way, way past that and more energized than they've ever been before. Most people focus on Clarence Thomas's dissent. I focus on Mike Pence calling to ban abortion in every single state in the country. Now, it was denounced not by a single Republican. And guess what? Support for a ban on abortion in all cases stands at 13% of the American public, a literal all-time low. Banning abortion nationwide is about as well

regarded as defund the police. And yet, you have not just some screeching activists pushing it, but the former vice president of the United States. Just like with defund, even if you don't support it, you're going to get tagged with a fallout from it, regardless of what you actually think. Right now, Texas legislators discussing legislation to allow DAs to prosecute people involved in abortions in neighboring counties or criminally punish people who want to help a woman get an abortion in another state. Just like the GOP focused for a year on stupid liberal cities cutting their police budgets while crime exploded, you will be seeing these types of stories day after day after day for years to come now. And just like the defund police movement,

every GOP politician is now going to get asked, what do you think about that? They're in a tough spot. The religious right will crucify you if you dissent, and so will the biggest figures in GOP media, who are overwhelmingly much more religious than their actual voters. The feedback loop that existed for the left during BLM is frankly even more entrenched for the right. The right at a time when it finally found itself in a majoritarian orientation for the first time since 1980 has dealt itself a potentially fatal blow in the long run. If you don't want to believe me, believe Trump. Trump, to his credit, has been a much more savvy politician than anyone else in the GOP. He's the only one of them that actually could win, after all. And per recent reporting, he has been telling anyone who

will listen around him, Roe versus Wade ruling will be, quote, bad for Republicans. When he was asked a few weeks ago if he would take credit for the decision, he said, quote, I never like to take credit for anything, considering how insane that is from the guy, as I said before, who took credit for fewer airline crashes while president. Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, anyone in 2024, is going to be asked explicitly about the Clarence Thomas dissent and about Mike Pence's comments about that proposal. All sorts of legislative ideas which will repel the new GOP constituency that were on the table before Roe. No serious person can say that will not have major consequences for the GOP.

For me personally, it's actually funny to find myself in this position. I got into politics being opposed to the Iraq war and opposing the suffocating evangelicals that I grew up around in Texas. It is somewhat comforting to return to my roots and how it will be very interesting to see how this all plays out, both for me and for the Barstool conservative idea. So that's really where I wanted to leave it, Crystal, which is that... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, it is officially done. After 50 years of focused activism, as we've been discussing,

from committed right-wing radicals and their well-heeled allies, Roe has been overturned, allowing states to ban abortion completely. Over half of all states are certain or likely to take the opportunity to do exactly that. The response from both partisan sides has been entirely predictable. Republicans have responded with further extremism and Democrats with total impotence and excuse-making. In fact, Democratic response is actually so sad and their failure so undeniable. I actually wonder if this moment might shift the mindset of more than a few liberals, opening them up to a critique of the party that they just had not been ready to hear until now. More on that in a minute. Let's start with the GOP side. So not satisfied

with leaving abortion policy up to the states, former Vice President Mike Pence, you know, the guy who's supposedly the reasonable and honorable alternative to Trump, he chimed in immediately to push for an absolute nationwide ban on abortion. He wrote, quote, having been given the second chance for life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land. Listen, Pence is hardly alone. House and Senate Republicans have already introduced legislation to ban abortion nationwide. House version has 164 sponsors. The Senate has 19. Every Republican will now be under pressure from the same organized forces that just secured the overturning of Roe to codify this result

nationwide, forcing Mississippi laws on everybody across the country, up to and including Californians. At the same level, Republicans are also leaping, at the state level, Republicans are also leaping into action. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed into law a 15-week abortion ban, but Republicans in his state, they're not satisfied with that. They're already pressuring him to call a special session into order to enact a six-week abortion ban

when a lot of women don't even know they're pregnant yet. Meanwhile, Texas and Missouri lawmakers, having already banned abortion in their states, they're planning new ways to criminalize those who help women to cross state lines to obtain an abortion. And Asager also said, if y'all thought defund the police was unpopular, that is nothing compared to this crazy shit. Other activists are plotting ways to criminalize abortion pills and block companies from providing employees with transportation to states where abortion is legal as a benefit of employment. Notably missing from all this

Republican energy supposedly about protecting precious babies is any effort to make sure those babies have access to, I don't know, quality education, child care, and don't grow up in poverty. But I digress. How have the Democrats responded to this assault on something they claim to care dearly about? Here is a small sampling of their responses, courtesy of Shu. Nancy Pelosi sent out a fundraising email and read a poem. House Democrats saying God bless America outside the Supreme Court. And that dude on the right, Democratic Congressman Andy Levin, took a moment to publicize his self-care, posting pictures of him doing yoga in his congressional office.

I am not kidding. Biden sent out one of his typical tweets in the vibe of, geez, I wish someone with some power would do something about this. This is terrible. But really capturing the ethos was Vice President Kamala Harris, who literally sent on a picture of herself watching protesters on TV from Air Force Two, along with some hollow tripe about how we're all in this fight together. Nothing says I'm there for you like a powerful politician watching cable news from a private plane with a feigned look of concern and no intention to do a single thing more than that. Peak narcissism, virtue signaling, fake impotence. On the face of victory, Republican leaders, they organize, they meet, and they plot.

Democratic leaders, they clutch their pearls, they fundraise, and they develop their list of excuses for their many, many failures. They are telling everyone they must vote dumb in the fall, per Pelosi's fundraising email, quote, can you chip in $15 so we can win these midterms and finally codify reproductive rights into law? Unmentioned in that email is why they don't do this right now while they have a trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House, or why they didn't do this during the periods when they not only had a trifecta but a supermajority in the Senate. It's not like the right kept their goals here a secret. And at the very same time, Dem leaders are saying, you've got to donate and keep Dems in power. They are also literally telling you

they will not do what it takes to codify abortion rights. Biden has already ruled out expanding the court or nixing the filibuster. So even if by some miracle Dems keep control of the House and the Senate, not a single thing is going to be different from the fake helplessness in an action that is the hallmark of their reign right now. Enraged young people are calling their bluff. Listen to what protesters in Texas had to chant. They were chanting this at Beto O'Rourke. Democrats, we call your bluff. Voting blue is not enough. Or take a listen to what this young woman has to say about how much it pissed her off that Dems were immediately fundraising off the decision. So I received a text message from Joe Biden's campaign yesterday saying that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe versus Wade and that it was my responsibility to

then rush $15 to the Democratic National Party. And I thought that was absolutely outrageous because my rights should not be a fundraising point for them or a campaigning point. They have had multiple opportunities to codify Roe into law over the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and they haven't done it. And if they're going to keep campaigning on this point, they should actually do something about it. Amen. And you know, I got a real sense that something has kind of broken loose in the Democratic coalition. Sure, the base sucked it up and voted for Joe in the Democratic primary.

But the deal they accepted was that Biden would stand as a bulwark against the right and crucially that he was the only candidate who could be sure to beat Donald Trump. Now, it's clear that this deal was built on a pack of lies. Under Biden's fecklessness and failure to deliver, the right has grown stronger than ever. Under Biden's political malpractice, Republicans are set to sweep into power in the midterms. And under Biden's thorough inability to keep any of his promises and secure stability and fight for material well-being, he has paved the road right back to Trump in 2024. The latest polling has Biden losing to Trump by five in a rematch. Better, though, than Kamala, who would lose by eight.

Biden promised nothing would fundamentally change. And you know what? Ultimately, that, too, was a lie. Because in chaotic times like these, fundamental change, that's a near guarantee. The question is only what that change is going to look like. So if one side fights to stay in one place and the other side fights to pull the country hard right, guess which direction things are ultimately going to go. The abortion fight is not particularly the center of my politics, as you guys know, but

it has been the center of Democrats and their liberal base. The failures from Dems here are so obvious, the hypocrisy so glaring that they just can't be denied. That's why AOC has been hailed as a truth teller by plenty of liberals for calling Dem hypocrisy out directly and demanding more than just fundraising emails and exhortations to vote blue. I saw a lot of people with some Ukraine flags and blue wave emojis in the bio enthusiastically retweeting her comments. And I saw a lot of liberals who were appalled by the lack of urgency from either the president or the vice president. But what's more, the disaffection of the college-educated liberal,

it's likely only beginning. Keep in mind, a college degree doesn't guarantee you shit these days. Not a middle-class job, not a decent retirement, not a home, not healthcare, nothing. And unfortunately, as we head into a recession that is only going to become more true for more people, there are going to be a lot of people who thought they were okay and then have to watch their home values collapse, their 401ks disappear, and their kids graduate college to go to work as a barista. Nothing will radicalize you faster than learning that the stability you thought you had was a lie. Dem failures in response to Roe, it could be a gateway drug to seeing clearly how much the party has failed you and failed your families. What do they do with that energy? Well, that's a good question. It could go to the endless hamster

wheel of rage watching cable news and rage posting on Facebook. Could lead to dropping out of politics altogether, joining the already massive ranks of the non-voters. Could be channeled into the sort of liberal street protests that frankly, ultimately have also gone nowhere in the era of unresponsive government. You see how much good the Women's March did, right? Or it could be channeled into something real. It could be channeled into an electoral challenge, the Democratic establishment embrace of the grassroots labor movement that continues to be the most hopeful thing that is happening in America right now. The labor movement, ultimately, it's crucial because it has power to mess with capitalism. It is't impotent. Then the politicians will sit up and take note.

The current Democratic Party elite have proven themselves thoroughly and completely unequal to the moment. Unable, unwilling to match the needs of the time with the action that is necessary. Who could possibly look at that photo of Kamala with her fake look of shock, watching other people protest and feel any different. Reality is coming home hard and fast. This is a question mark for me, is how the Democratic base responds. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, the aforementioned Derek Thompson. He is a staff writer for The Atlantic and also host of Plain English Podcast. Great to see you, Derek.

Good to see you, man. Great to see you guys, too. Yeah, of course. So we've been tracking a little bit of what is going on with the airlines. Huge amount of canceled flights. You had Pete Buttigieg, who, of course, is Secretary of Transportation, had some meeting with airline executives and was like, you guys better do better, but didn't seem to really actually do anything about the problem. Can you just talk to us about what is going on, why there are so many canceled flights and what the government could potentially do about it? Sure. Great. Yeah, I'll do a quick thesis statement and then we can get into the details.

Basically, flying is really messed up right now. It's messed up because there are cascading cancellations. It's messed up because there are more delays. It's messed up because security lines are out of control. I mean, there are airports now where security lines are stretching into one, two, three hours. I mean, good luck making your flight if the security line is two or three hours. So why is this happening? It's happening, honestly, for the same reason that so many other things in this economy for the last year haven't worked. It's the same story over and over again. You had a demand crash

in 2020. As a result, a lot of different industries pulled back their supplies. So in the airlines, for example, they decommissioned a lot of planes. They parked a lot of planes. They fired late off, offered early retirements to a lot of pilots and grounds crew. Then all of a sudden, demand surged way faster than they thought it would. They thought they might be in a recessionary climate for flying for like five, six years, 10 years. Instead, demand came surging back within one or two years. As a result, they don't have the capacity to meet the level of demand that we have. Leisure travel right now is setting a record.

That's like ordinary sort of budget travelers who aren't even sitting in first class and people who aren't flying to Paris or Hong Kong or whatever. Domestic leisure travel is an all-time high and the capacity to fulfill it is not very high at all, which means when anything happens, when there's a storm, when there's a cancellation because some people got sick, there aren't reserve pilots you can call, there aren't reserve grounds crew you can call, there aren't reserve grounds crew you can call. There aren't reserve planes that you can move into JFK and fly people out to Miami. And as a result, cancellations cascade and you have all the problems you have today.

Right. And so, Derek, one of the things that we had pointed to in the past is about how airlines will book flights that they not necessarily have the capacity in order to fulfill? Are they doing this knowingly? And is there any way in order to either get them to stop? Is there a way that we could kind of fix this problem from what you've identified? Yeah, so the complication is multifold, as I understand it. Number one, a lot of these schedules are set six months ago, 12 months ago. So it's really, really hard to turn that rudder, right? Number two, you know, the airlines are, especially the airlines that have a lot of cancellations right now, which weirdly enough, by my research, isn't Frontier or Spirit. It's Delta and JetBlue and American. It's a lot of the major carriers. Why are they doing the cancellations? Because they didn't cut back their summer schedules. They were like,

we're going to try to meet all the demand that we possibly can. But as a result, there's no one understudying these flights. There's nothing in reserve if these flights are canceled because they don't have enough pilots or planes or grounds crew if some people get sick. So they're trying to meet demand. They're trying to schedule as many flights as possible. But whenever anything happens, you have these cancellations that are cascading. That's one problem as I understand it. Another problem, I think, is, you know, to the extent

that we want to be really critical of these airlines, if you recall in 2020, we gave them a $54 billion bailout. We were like, here's $50 billion so that you won't do all of this, so that you won't fire all of these or offer early retirement to all of these pilots and grounds crew. But they did pull back. Delta, I believe, laid off 30 percent of their workforce. I think other major carriers did the same. And if you lay off 30 percent of your workforce and then you try to hire back during a quote unquote great resignation, labor markets are really tight and quits are really high, you're not going to be able to do it. So what are we seeing right now? We are seeing that we are also like living in the bed that the airlines made for us, right? Yeah. I saw some

numbers too. There was a great American Prospect article breaking this down that actually, you know, said there really isn't a pilot shortage. There's actually a lot of pilots in the marketplace who are available. But yeah, since you laid off or pushed out a lot of your workforce, of course, it takes time to bring people back in. So are they undergoing concerted efforts to sort of staff up to deal with this problem? And, you know, are there things that the government can do to basically force them? Because, I mean, it really is fraudulent to push for, put forward the schedule to the public consumer that you basically know there's no chance you're really going to be able to fulfill. It's kind of like, let me answer the second question first and then I'll answer the

first question. So you know when you're traveling, sometimes you'll go to, let's say Los Angeles, and you'll say, okay, in the morning, we're going to eat at this restaurant in the Valley. And then we're going to meet up with a friend in Venice at 11 a.m. And then at one, we're going to go to see a museum. And then at three 30, we're going to do this. And at five o'clock, we're gonna do that. And you put together this schedule and you're like, if everything goes right, if everything goes right, we'll be able to do this. But if one thing goes wrong, your day is destroyed, right? That's what the airlines have done. That's what the Americans and Deltas and Jet Blues have clearly done because they're canceling last weekend. They

canceled 10% of their flights on Thursday and Friday. We're canceling. Good luck if you're flying those carriers. So they put together this schedule. It's not necessarily unrealistic. It's not impossible to accomplish this with like, you know, 1% normal cancellation rate. But if there's weather and hello, it's June, there's going to be weather. If anything goes wrong, the cancellations cascade. word fraudulent, but we're on the same page that they're putting together an unrealistic schedule to meet consumer demands. And as a result, the failures of these companies are being outsourced to us, the flyers, the consumers. On the pilot issue, I really did hear from all the people that I talked to that there is a pilot shortage. And one reason that we know that there's a pilot shortage is that pilots aren't being hired from the labor market pool. A lot of the nature carriers are hiring their next marginal pilot from the regional carriers, right? So now that means the regional carriers don't necessarily have enough pilots and they're having a lot of

cancellation problems as well. So from everything that I've heard, and I might not have the full story here, the pilot shortage is real. And it's caused by the fact that we offered early retirement to a lot of very, very accomplished flyers who now at the age of 60, 63, aren't coming back to the market because they're like, I got early retirement. And it's hard to staff up pilots because there's a 1,500-hour regulatory requirement for practicing, for pilot training. That's the word, training, not practicing. And it's really hard to sort of accelerate 1,500 hours. You literally can't fast forward through time. So we are in a bit of a shortage. And so if we talk about in the context that what you opened with is the nothing works syndrome, I mean, just expand on that a little bit more, which is the effect that all of this has had on our economy and what it reveals about kind of the underlying infrastructure around it and what we need to do. Yeah, well, you know, I said that we're in a sort of nothing works syndrome situation with the economy right now because you look at the oil markets where prices are rising, but oil companies don't want to necessarily drill or explore more.

You look at the baby formula shortage where there's lots of baby formula in Europe, but we have rules that say that we can't necessarily import it. And we have this flying crisis right now. It just does seem like from industry to industry to industry, things aren't working the way they should. They're breaking down. And the reason they're breaking down, I think, is really, really interesting, because if you diagnose it accurately, then you can possibly point to the problem, to the solution. They're breaking down in almost every respect because demand is outpacing supply. So what we need right now isn't just policies that are on the welfare standpoint redistributing income. Of course, we should do that. Of course, we should raise the floor of income in this country, and we always should. But what we need right now to solve these acute problems are supply side responses. So I'm trying to think through,

and I have this sort of thesis that I've been working out at The Atlantic called the Abundance Agenda, trying to think through supply side solutions to these acute problems. How do you increase capacity in airlines? How do you increase capacity in baby formula? How do you increase capacity in energy? Because if you can do these, if you baby formula? How do you increase capacity in energy? Because if you can do these, if you can accomplish these things, you can solve some of these problems. But it really does, I think, call for us to focus on supply side solutions, not the old fashioned Reaganite supply side conservatism, but something more like a supply side liberalism. Yeah, very interesting. And, you know, one that is impacting a lot of people as they try for the first time to take their kids or where their family on vacation again and are just being met

with absolute nightmares at the airport. So it matters to a lot of people on there. Derek, thank you for breaking it down. Thanks, Derek, as always. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thanks to all the premium members who are out there buying tickets, proving to the industry that we can and will sell tickets here at Breaking Points. That's what it's all about. As a reminder, premium subscribers only. There's a presale going on for the first week. Lots of tickets are selling, so we deeply appreciate it. If you want availability not only to this presale, but all presales in the future as we book other venues, become a premium subscriber today. We hear from our representatives that we're doing quite well, so let's keep blowing it out of the water. Let's show Austin and LA, San Francisco,

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