Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/11/22: Biden's Abortion Response, Elon vs Twitter, Ukraine Fears, Biden's Age, Buttigieg's Plot, Shinzo Abe, & More!

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Krystal and Saagar examine Biden's response on abortion, Elon's Twitter deal falling through, Ukraine war fears, Biden trip to Saudi Arabia, WH coverup of Biden's gaffe, Buttigieg's blunders at DOT, debates about Biden's age, and Shinzo Abe's legacy in Japan!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/Tobias Harris: https://observingjapan.com/book/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/opinion/shinzo-abe-assassination.html  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. So finally, this administration has taken some small actions with regards to their response to Roe v. Wade being overturned. We have those details for you.

Also, looks like Elon is backing away from the big Twitter deal. We'll give you all of those details. I mean, this has been a while coming. He's been dragging his feet and trying to make a big deal about the bots and whatever. Trump is responding as well. And that's pretty interesting, too. So we will tell you all about that. Also, some new developments with regard to Ukraine, new questions about the U.S. strategy. We have President Biden justifying his trip to Saudi Arabia in a new op-ed, which is pretty revealing. Dramatic turn from what he was saying during the presidential primary. So that is interesting. Also, this is just sort of silly.

Biden making a gaffe in his statement with regards to abortion. White House just blatantly lying to try to cover it up. Not just lying, falsifying the historical record. It's completely nuts. White House transcript. It is a funny, weird, crazy, very revealing story. We also have an expert on to talk about the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe in Japan. Insane that this happened.

I mean, this is a towering figure in terms of world politics, in terms of Japanese leadership. So all of those details as well. Sagar is looking at whether Biden is too old. I am looking at Mayor Pete's future political plans. But we did want to start with that development, the executive order on abortion from the Biden administration. Let's go ahead and put the details up on the screen here. So finally, we did get some specific actions from this White House that has been under great pressure. Still a lot of questions about why this took multiple weeks to come together. Let me read to you a little bit of the details here in terms of what this executive order actually does, which is not a whole lot, to be perfectly honest with you. It says it largely

finalizes what's already been announced by the administration, including instructions to the Justice Department to make sure women can travel out of state for abortion care. We've seen some states, including Texas, floating the idea of trying to criminalize anyone helping women to travel out of state for abortion care. It says it addresses the elevated risk for patients, providers and clinics, which includes efforts to protect mobile clinics that have been deployed to state borders to offer care for out-of-state patients. So again, trying to protect that ability for women to travel out of state. Biden's actions, the White House said, directs Attorney General Merrick Garland and the White House counsel to convene volunteer lawyers and organizations to encourage robust legal representation of

patients, providers, and third parties. So sort of encouraging pro bono lawyers to help people out. And he's also said he'll provide leave for federal workers traveling for medical care, which could set an example for private companies to do the same. So again, nothing too earth shattering here. I think there were some liberal critics of Biden who felt like, ah, at least he's doing something. And the tone of his remarks was a bit more forceful. But in terms of specific action, I mean, we're still, there's no, there's reporting now that the Biden administration did actually consider declaring a public health emergency. Apparently that's still potentially on the table. I wouldn't hold your breath on that one. That is certainly not enacted here. No clinics on federal lands, no clarification that Americans can legally transport abortion pills from Canada. That's something the governor of New York actually wanted.

No plan. And this to me is kind of the biggest one. No plan laid out to divide the GOP caucus on, you know, exceptions, rape, incest. There are a bunch of votes that could be taken here to codify some of those things into federal law, which would be very difficult for the Republican Party to deal with. They don't seem to be interested in doing that. At least there was nothing in this commentary or in these executive orders that would indicate moves in that direction. No encouraging mayors to deprioritize abortion crimes for prosecution. No comment on changing the filibuster to allow Roe to be codified into law either, which was something they had kind of floated, but clearly is not putting any muscle behind at this point.

Yeah, I have to look at it more politically and just would be a sign of, I don't know what these people are doing. I mean, once again, if you say this is your number one priority, which they did, if you say this is one of the reasons they should vote for you, which you do, you know, this continues to be the nature of the main Democratic message. It's like, this is all you got after almost two weeks. I mean, the public interest in this is already fading. In terms of what you see from the Democratic base, there was a big bounce in the original Democratic ballot for the generic polling. You want to capitalize on momentum and try to meet the moment, and they really just don't have much. And in terms of words from the president himself,

it's not exactly inspiring stuff at the press conference. Not even a press conference, really just a reading of his executive order. Here's what he had to say. We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice house to codify Roe as federal law. Your vote can make that a reality. I know it's frustrating, and it made a lot of people very angry, but the truth is this, and it's not just me saying it. It's what the court said. When you read the decision the court has made clear, it will not protect the rights of women. Period. Period. After having made the decision based on a reading of a document that was frozen in time in the 1860s,

when women didn't even have the right to vote, the court now practically dares the women of America to go to the ballot box and restore the very rights they've just taken away. That just highlights what we were saying, which is that that is the central case that they're making for the Senate and for the midterms. I think the only way that you could do it is to actually show what exactly you would do with said votes. I mean, there's no guarantee, right? I mean, I think that the point you made previously is so important because I don't see any real action by the Senate leadership, either the Democrats or even from the White House, to try and push some sorts of votes on the floor, which would, you know, rape an inside. I mean, listen, if you can't pass that, that puts Republicans in a very, very tough spot. And you can highlight those types of stories. I mean, listen, if you can't pass that, that puts Republicans in a very, very tough spot.

Yes. And you can highlight those types of stories. Same, I mean, even at the, you could even go further, actually, from what I've seen. Like 15 weeks, bans are, not 15 weeks, at least guaranteeing the right, quote unquote, up until 15 weeks is extraordinary popular. It's like 75, 80% to be American. You could put that on the floor and then force Republicans to say, no, actually, I'm against that, which would put you on the side of like 15% of the population. But they're not even trying to go for an incrementalist approach. I think it's both fecklessness on behalf of the Biden administration. I also do think it's a failure of, we've talked

about this, these major Democratic groups. I mean, every day, I can't walk down the street here in Washington without some activist from some ACLU or human rights campaign or whatever, be like, do you have a minute to help codify abortion rights? And it's like, well, I should actually stop and interview them. So what are you going to do with my money? What's the plan here, guys? Let's say I'm one of these libs who's walking around the city and I hand you 20 of my hard

earned dollars. What are you going to do with this money? Like, what is the point of donating to you? Yeah, I mean, listen, in terms of the midterms, do I think abortion is the number one issue for voters? No. Do I think that this could be a highly motivating issue for Democratic voters who've been extraordinarily disappointed and disenchanted with this administration if they actually handle it properly? Yes. They are completely squandering that chance. And that is in the midterms. Voter enthusiasm is everything. Obviously,

you're going to have a smaller turnout typically than in presidential years. So whose people show up? Whose people are motivated to go out to the ballot box? The Democratic message here of vote harder, guys, is just not super inspiring when voters can rightly look at the fact that you have the presidency, the House and the Senate. Like we voted, we did the thing that you asked us to do. And you're telling us like, oh, that wasn't good enough. We still can't really do anything. When again, you know, and AOC has been very vocal about this. Elizabeth Warren's been very vocal laying out, here are some specific steps you could take. And they spend most of their time either hemming and hawing, pushing off any sort of action in spite of the fact that they had decades and certainly in the past couple of months, weeks after the leak of this opinion

to prepare for this moment so that they could have been ready to go. There's a new article too from the Washington Post inside this two-week delay before they actually got around to doing anything at all. The headline here is two long weeks inside Biden's struggle to respond to abortion ruling. The subhead says many Democrats were dismayed by his slow footed response, but cheered his more forceful tone and actions on Friday. I don't personally really care about the tone. I care about the specifics of what you're planning to do. And it's interesting here because they point to, you know, there's a couple of really detailed anecdotes in here. One that I'll read for you that just kind of tells the whole story about how flat-footed they were caught.

First of all, as we've discussed before, they didn't anticipate the timing. Which I don't know why they thought that this was going to come out on a different day and had really sort of bet the farm and planned their whole thing around a different day that this was going to come down. But they were wrong about that, so that was weird. But then they say about four hours after the decision overturning Roe was handed down, the White House emailed numerous abortion rights allies, asking them to join a call with top officials that afternoon to hear more about the Supreme Court ruling in the fight ahead. Those invited expected a fiery call to action, a detailed plan from the White House, a roadmap not just for the immediate aftermath, but for weeks and months ahead.

Instead, what did they actually get? Top White House and administration officials stressed the issue was important to Biden. They reiterated the actions the president had already outlined earlier that day, including expanding access to the abortion pill, protecting women who travel across state lines to get an abortion. The call lasted all of 20 minutes and officials took no questions, according to an outside advisor who was on the call. Afterward, multiple attendees complained to each other that the call was a waste of time and they left feeling deflated. Furthermore, they also reveal in this article that in a recent focus group of Democratic-based voters between the

ages of 25 and 39, participants reported also feeling disappointed and discouraged with the White House's response on all of this. So, I mean, that's extremely pathetic. As we've discussed, whatever you think of this decision, this is a monumental sort of turning point in American politics, a truly sort of generation-defining decision coming down from the Supreme Court. And their response is a 20-minute call just sort of reiterating their tired talking points. It really is pathetic. And then to your point, Sagha, which I think is an important one about how were these abortion rights groups prepared for this moment? I mean, there isn't a

lot of evidence that they were super prepared to take this on either, in spite of this being their entire mission, in spite of having weeks in advance to plan. I also haven't seen them really taking the lead and pushing the White House and coming out, you know, and not just in anonymous quotes to the Washington Post, but really directly saying, hey, here's the plan. Here's what we need to do. Let's get on board. And instead, and we'll get to this in a minute, the White House is like castigating the left and the activists for daring to push them to do more than the like pathetic response that they've had so far. I just checked Planned Parenthood in the last couple of months, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, $275 million from Mackenzie Scott, ex-Bezos, ex-wife, alone.

Just this, in the last three months. What are you doing? Like, what are you spending these people's hard-earned, well, I guess some people's hard-earned money on, in addition to Mackenzie Bezos's, or Mackenzie Bezos Scott. Listen, it wasn't easy being married to Jeff Bezos. I'm sure. I guess that seems to be the case so far.

That's the thing I don't really understand in all of this, which is that it is just extraordinarily feckless, their response. And it gets me back to, look, you don't have to motivate the entire base. There's a New York Times poll, which we're going to be talking about a lot tomorrow, which came out and said that abortion is only the top issue for 5% of the American electorate. However, 9% of the people are women as opposed to 1% of those kind of, you know, of the electorate. So you have, I mean, 9%, that's not huge, but that's still millions. And if you get those millions to come out and are energized, the evangelicals always were able to dominate despite the fact that there were like, what, 20-some percent of the population? At best, maybe 10%, 15%, you know, in terms of the real hardcore ones. But they always came out to vote, and they always came out to vote in the primary. They put extraordinary pressure

on Republican lawmakers. There is probably some space for a pro-choice kind of Democrats first in order to fill some sort of space in that, especially given that they punch so high in terms of elite power. But I mean, I'm not seeing any mobilization plan, nothing. But, and the other thing is, I don't even think it's so much about which voters this is the number one issue for. I really think it's about an overall picture

of incompetence, of being unable to react, being unable to meet the moment, whether it's on this, whether it's meet the moment, whether it's on this, whether it's on gas prices, whether it's on inflation, whether it's on any myriad of issues and challenges facing the American people. And this is an incredibly visceral and high profile issue. And it's one, and this is the part that I think is really important, is, you know, I don't think that for a long time voters have really expected the Democratic Party to be there on the sort of bread and butter economic issues and be the, you know, the New Deal era type of Democrats. But the Democratic Party has said this, these type of issues, these cultural issues are the reason that you have to vote for us.

These are the reasons that you have to put Democrats in power so that we can do something on these issues. So it's also just a glaring failure in terms of their own explanation of why it's so important to vote for Democrats. It's this clear, glaring failure on an issue that the party itself has prioritized, even if it isn't a top priority for a lot of voters. So listen, again, it's it's a very this executive order. It's too late. It's too little. It's that you don't see the political strategy. You don't see a congressional strategy. Maybe that's going to come. But I do not understand how you had weeks and weeks and were unable to respond in real time.

And this is the best that you can come up with. And things get even worse. So Kamala Harris is actually being pointed to, and this is how sort of desperate people are. They're like, maybe Kamala would actually do a better job than Joe on this stuff. How's that working out? Yeah, so she got pressed on something really specific here, which is, you know, when Democrats had super majorities in the past, specifically under Obama,

why didn't you codify Roe? You could have done it then. Obama said it was a top priority at the time and it didn't happen. So she gets asked, not even really pressed, just literally asked the question about whether that was a failure of Democrats in the past. Let's take a listen to how she handles that. You don't have to abandon your faith, whatever that might be, to agree the government should not be making that decision for a woman. And so that's why I say, let women make those most intimate decisions. Let people make the most intimate decisions that are about what I call heart and home, which includes contraception, which includes same-sex marriage, let them make that and be free to make those decisions without government interference.

When you look back, did Democrats fail past Democratic presidents, congressional leaders to not codify Roe v. Wade over the past five decades? I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled. Clearly we're not. No, that's right. And that's why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times. I do believe that we rightly believe

what we believe. What does that even mean? Okay. And this is, I mean, any candidate and team worth their salt would know this question is coming. This is not coming out of nowhere. This is something that has been discussed now.

Since the leak initially came out, this was the immediate question of, well, why didn't you do something about this when you had the power before? Like, OK, we get it. You don't have a supermajority now and you can't change the filibuster mansion, et cetera, et cetera. But y'all have had power before and you didn't use it. So why was it? Because you kind of liked this as a political issue and that that was more important to you to use it as a wedge and as a cudgel than to actually deal with it. And I think it's hard to deny at this point that that was the case. I mean, it's so obvious. Listen, I, you know, I could give a better answer than that. Well, you know, Bob, there have been Republicans in Congress that entire time and they would have blocked us.

And at that time we only had two, you know, there were two pro-life Democrats and that's why people need to go out and we have a different party this, and we're going to make it all happen. Why does she even need to own it? Is she even in the Senate at that point? No, she wasn't in the Senate. She wasn't. So why does she even need to own this? She'd be like, I wasn't in the Senate.

That should be a question for the people who were in the Senate at that time. Boom. Move forward. And all I'm looking forward, and that's why we need to elect more Democrats in 2024. Is it that hard? Somebody said that she is like a person trying to write a book report about a book that she didn't read. And that is exact. In every interview. Extending the 500 words to as far as possible. Or like that Michael Scott thing. Sometimes I just start speaking and I don't know

where I'm going to go. That's exactly how she behaves. She's like a Veep character that has actually come to life. I can't believe that she is the vice president of the United States. And as you pointed out, let's put this up there, which is that now she's in the spotlight because they're trying to elevate her as some sort of Roe spokesperson. I mean, it's just so bizarre. The most untalented person in the entire administration, barely capable of forming a sentence, slightly more so than the actual president of the United States. And yet there's no messaging, there's no plan. I mean, she doesn't even seem, none of these people seem equipped with meeting a moment in any sort of direction, lack of leadership. And I think it is just pathetic to watch her, as you said, any person giving an interview knows this is coming. The next time

Obama gives an interview, let's watch because you know he's going to get asked this question. I would love to hear his answer. He'll be able to handle it much better even though he's in the hot seat. Will he lie and obfuscate what his actual record is? Absolutely. Will he do a better job than whatever the hell that was? Because he has some political talent and skill. Yes, he does.

I mean, again, this New York Times poll that we're going to be talking about tomorrow, which has a million things that are worth digging into really on both sides of the ledger. But one of the numbers there, this is stunning. 94% of Democrats under the age of 30 say they would prefer a different presidential nominee. 94%. Because they're looking at this and whether abortion is their number one issue or not, for a lot of, I mean, a lot of young women in particular, it is an important issue. And they're looking at this and they're like, what are you doing? I mean, a lot of young women in particular, it is an important issue. And they're looking at this and they're like, what are you doing? I mean, you could take random people off the street and they would have better answers to this and they would have better ideas of how to meet the moment. It really is pretty astonishing. And so to me, it is just a sign of how bad the response has been that you're now getting articles like this one, like, maybe Kamala could do a better job here?

After we've seen the way that at every moment Kamala Harris has failed to be able to deliver and be able to respond and be able to even be like semi-coherent and forceful in an interview such as this that they would say, oh, maybe she would be better than Joe is a pretty bad sign of the times. And then the last piece

of this that just really irritated the hell out of me is like, you know, after their just manifest failures in terms of the White House's response to Roe that were so bad that even Republicans were like, this is this is it. This is all you've got. Like, why aren't you trying to divide our caucus? Why aren't you like actually being forceful in any of this? Why is it taking you weeks to respond? So after their manifest failures, who do they blame? Oh, the activists. They make sure to punch left even on the day when they're issuing this executive order. This is from Kate Bedingfield, who actually is stepping down as White House comms director. And it's from that article, that Washington Post article that we put up earlier. Their response to questions over the slow response was,

Joe Biden's goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who've been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Okay, listen, it's some two-thirds of Americans who are opposed to the overturning of Roe. The Republican position on this is extremely out of mainstream step with the general public, let alone within the Democratic Party. They need their voters, their base voters to be excited and show up in the fall to make sure that they can keep control of the Senate. And I think the House is, you know, that's a done deal. I think it's already gone so. But maybe you could keep control of the Senate and you're certainly going to need these people to show up again in 2024. And your response is just to like tell them they suck and tell them to shut up and go home when they're all, you know,

energized and trying to push the White House to do something, anything to respond to this classic, classic behavior. And you can't look at the numbers for Joe Biden where what is a 64 percent of the Democratic Party itself is like we need a different nominee and say that this man is behaving in a way that is consistent with the, quote, mainstream of the Democratic Party. Well, what I thought was really odd about this is that these are not activists that are really out. I mean, again, I do think that some of the activists, you know, the groups that are refused to compromise at any in any turn. Sure, they're definitely a hindrance to any sort of action, but considering that your main goal is getting elected based on response to Roe versus Wade, because the economy is so terrible and you basically have nothing else that you can run on.

I don't really see why that you would be punching towards these, this direction. This is like punching towards the most activated part of your coalition while asking them also to come out and vote. To come vote harder. So you need to reconcile yourself with, okay. Do you ever see Republicans shitting on their own base like this? No, never. No, no. Because they understand the basics of politics. These are your people who work for campaigns. These are people who donate to campaigns. These are people who show up and vote. And you're telling them like, we hate you, you suck. What is going to make them want to turn out and vote for you and support you? I think that they're deeply defensive, if I had to guess, which is that the White House, you know, whenever these people, they get together, they really do believe in their heads that they're

doing the best job they possibly can. They don't understand the media coverage. By and large, every time you'll meet somebody who's in power, right or left, they all say some version of the same thing, which is, I don't understand why people don't understand what we're doing. The media is being so unfair to us. I'm like, this is what you don't understand, X, Y, and Z. So they're like, hey, you know, in the past, we've punched the activists on defund the police, which was unpopular, but this is just not the same. I mean, it's also not the same activist pool. It's not the same donor group. It's also, again, just a lack of inability – or it's an inability to meet a moment where you could actually energize a lot of these folks into getting involved into the political system, which is what you would want. And as much as I've trashed Planned Parenthood and all those groups, these are very powerful organizations who are on the Democratic Party organizationally.

They have a huge amount of cultural power for young women in particular. So I don't know why you, I just don't really get the entire strategy behind this. Because if you were going to do nothing and pursue like a, here's a fight that may be worth picking, which is saying, okay, the country's not, we're not going to get Roe versus Wade codified in the Senate. Let's go for 12 or 15 weeks. That would be crazy. I mean, that really would put the, the activists would freak out because they're like, this isn't enough, but that's a 75% position, but you're not fighting for that. You're not doing anything. So then it's like, well, what is the point of being with you at all? If you're going to pursue some sort of

centrist, like middle ground road, fine. I mean, I think that I actually think it'd be very healthy for the country if they tried to pursue something like that and really alienate the most pro-life and the most pro-choice activists and just say, fine, we're going to go with the most median position of what most people are fine with. But again, the whole strategy, everything is scrambled by their just complete failure to do anything. It actually creates bad incentives on every direction because it opens up all sorts of crazy possibilities on the pro-life right. And, you know, the left becomes just rudderless and unmoored and can go in very unhelpful directions, which would probably even help the pro-life right in the long run. Well, and in terms of who are the activists right now, I mean, there are, this has been,

there have been nationwide protests on this issue. So there are a lot of regular mainstream Democratic voters who are extremely exercised over this right now and are marching and demanding the White House do more. So, you know, their definition of what is mainstream in the Democratic Party, if they're if they think that they're sort of lackluster, delayed, flat footed, emotionless, bloodless response here is in step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. They're just not correct on that whatsoever. And there's always a lot of talk about Joe Biden's strength with African-American voters and how they put him in the White House. That is the most pro-choice group of voters if you look by the numbers. So in terms of like your bedrock key

core supporters and where they want you to be, you're not in step with them either. So I think, again, is this the number one issue for a large chunk of Democratic-based voters? No. Does it contribute to an overall picture of them being flailing, rudderless, the great word you just used, just unable. So they're not only just reacting to events, but they're reacting extremely slowly, like in an incomprehensibly slow way to events as they unfold. Yes, I think that's why this issue was really damaging for them and has very much opened up the eyes of some normie vote blue, no matter who liberals who have never really been willing to directly criticize Democratic Party leadership. And they're looking at this and going, oh, you all were full of it.

You, all the things that you said you were fighting for, you're not fighting for those things. Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay, let's talk about Elon. This is a big dizzying story. So let's try and break it down from the top. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Elon, on July 8th, late in the evening, decided to file to back out of the Twitter deal. He said that Twitter has completely obfuscated its business fundamentals, specifically focusing on bots. He said Musk was, quote, terminating the merger agreement that was a letter by his legal team towards the Twitter board. Now, what happened immediately afterwards, it was almost within 10 minutes, Twitter has gone ahead and said, we intend to file suit against Elon Musk in order to try and close the deal. Now, I just want to focus, though, on Musk's filing. Here's what he said. Twitter, quote, failed or refused to hand over information that would help Musk and his team ascertain the true number of bots or spam accounts on the social media platform.

And, quote, sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk's request. Sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified. And sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Musk incomplete or unusable information. So he is going to have an extraordinarily difficult time actually getting out of this. Let's put this next one up there. Excellent Wall Street Journal piece, which is that this essentially sets the stage, Crystal, for probably a decade or more of legal wrangling, if that's actually how it's going to happen. Because here's the issue. The text of the deal as written says that it's very difficult for Elon to get out. He has to be able to close the deal. Twitter even has a mechanism within it in which they are able to get out. He has to be able to close the deal. Twitter even

has a mechanism within it in which they are able to file against Musk to force him to close the deal per the terms of the merger agreement. And a lot of this is governed by SEC rules and regulations as well. The problem is that Elon is going to have to prove that Twitter was in major breach of the contract and prove not only some like hand-waving around, they won't give me enough information on Boss, they were knowingly misled him. This also was part of the problem in terms of his tender offer on Twitter in the first place, is he didn't actually do a lot of due diligence on the company. He just kind of came out and was like, hey, I want to buy it. And they were like, okay, let's do it. So a lot of people pointed out at the time that

they actually could very much work against him in a court of law because he should have done a lot of pre-deal diligence in terms of asking for info before he signed a very onerous contract. That's why Twitter's board is very much in a – I would say they're in the strongest position. Now, that being said, that doesn't mean that they're going to be able to close this deal. It could just be that they may force currently under the contract, Elon has to pay Twitter a billion dollars no matter what. Now they could actually get that to be much higher. But Wall Street has thought for a long time. And I mean, the vibe has basically shifted on this. Nobody's been talking about it. Elon, his tweets, and none of this have really been engaged in terms of trying to actually buy

Twitter or talk about Twitter policy now for the last several months. That's true. In that time period, Twitter itself has been in complete chaos. Their stock trading way below the so-called purchase price. I think the money part of this, too, is very important, which is that the deal itself was closed right before the crash. I mean, Elon's net worth has dropped by about $65 billion after he actually closed the deal. The problem is that a lot of the money that he was actually going to use to finance this outside of cash was going to be loans against his actual holdings in Tesla stock.

And Tesla is down pretty significantly as a result of the crash. And it's not just Tesla specifically. It's everybody. The other issue is that Elon, after the crash, was trying to go out and get other people to basically loan him some money, $2 billion here, $1 billion here, $500 million here. A lot of those cash commitments were just not going to be able to stack up to $44 billion. So I think that the money part of this is huge, which is as long as Elon doesn't have to close a deal right now, he doesn't have to do some serious financial chicanery in order to try. Because I mean, at the end of the day, $44 billion is an immense amount of money.

And even for the world's richest man, it's worth some $200 billion. If he had to sell all that for his Tesla, it would crash Tesla, which is his baby, the foundation of his net worth on top of the company. So there's all kinds of downstream effects. So I would say that, number one, the money is probably the single most important reason why this deal is not getting closed at the current rate. It could be that this could be a negotiation. Oh, you don't think it's just a genuine concern over the number of bots on the platform, Sagar? What? You're not taking him at his word? It's kind of seemed like a BS excuse

always from the beginning. Although I do think there are a lot of bots. I mean, of course. But it was always a ruse so that he could hold out the ability to get try to get out of this deal. And, you know, it's interesting what you're saying, because that does make me realize, even if in a court of law, all the legal experts they quote here are like, he doesn't really have a leg to stand on that they never see that it is very unusual for courts to say basically, like, oh, you materially misrepresented something in a way that could blow up this whole deal. That almost never happens. And it certainly does. He does not have a strong enough case here with regard to the number of bots to be able to really persuade them that that this happened. So but if he could delay the outcome, ultimately, potentially, he'll be on firmer financial footing when this all is ultimately resolved. Or he could just pay less. Right. So maybe that's ultimately the move here.

They actually said, because the other thing he points to is not just the bots. They also, Twitter, I guess, swapped out some executives, fired a few sort of key executives. And he's also saying, oh, that was a material change, whatever, whatever. Legal experts say that argument's a little bit better. But no one seems to think that Elon is going to actually be able to prevail in this fight. But the other question is like, okay, so let's say he loses. What happens? Yeah, now what?

Because can you really force him to go through with the deal? That's not something that's really been done in history. So they quote this expert who says, what are they going to do if there's a judgment? And he says, well, I'm still not going to buy it. They don't really have tools to force him to go through with it. You don't put people in jail because they don't buy something. So, you know, there's also a big question of, okay, so what does that ultimately look like if Twitter is successful in a court of law? Because they can't really force him to do it if he's not willing to do it.

So maybe they just settle on a lower price. Maybe there's a bigger breakup fee. Who knows? But this is going to be, as you pointed out, this is going to be a long time before this all ultimately shakes. So the last time that anything even remotely close has happened was Apollo Global Management, which is a hedge fund, was ordered by a Delaware judge to close a $6.5 billion deal to Huntsman Corp, which is a chemical maker, after they tried to back out. Ultimately, the two sides settled, and Apollo agreed to not take over the company and just pay them a hefty fee instead. So look, a decade from now, it's very possible

that that could be the case. And there you know, there's no jurisprudence to just force somebody to buy something. At best, I think they can hope for a multi-billion dollar payout kind of for their trouble and for the hit to their stock and all of that, and damages, et cetera, and then try to move forward from that. Although maybe he will just buy the company or try to buy the company at some $25 billion valuation instead. That's probably the best case scenario. I mean, I also suspect the money is definitely a key piece of this. I also suspect because the few ideas that he floated in like the little PowerPoint or whatever presentation he put together, this was not really well flushed out. And so I think he probably realized this was a much larger can of worms and time suck and way

more complicated than he initially thought. So I think it lost some of its, you know, the bloom was off the rose pretty quickly in terms of making this deal, of this deal being enticing to him too. Twitter was never a great business. I mean, it's a semi-profitable company. Yes, it's worth a lot of money, but he wanted to triple their profits, which is extraordinarily difficult. It's just ad revenue-based business. Right now, Snapchat's down like 75% or whatever in revenue. Relying 100% on ads, it's not going to work out for you in a downturn, which is what we're in now for at least a prolonged period. So even the hit to their core business on top of whatever cockamamie schemes he had cooked up, it was going to be difficult

no matter what to try and close the deal. Let's go to the next part here, which is kind of hilarious. Donald Trump trumpeting the, see what I did there, in his truth social alternative, let's put this up there, on the screen. He was at a rally in Alaska speaking out against Lisa Murkowski and on behalf of Sarah Palin, who is running for Congress, by the way, undercover story. And he lashed out at Elon Musk and the, quote, rotten Twitter deal. He actually derided Musk on the stage as a, quote, bullshit artist and said that this guy, he was faking what he was doing and went ahead to promote Truth Social as the real alternative,

which is especially hilarious. Let's put this on the screen, though, which is that in terms of how it impacts Trump and the Trump Truth Social, it is both a gift to the company at a time when it's suffering, let's just say, significant legal trouble in terms of the SEC, but also it really throws them into chaos because they really didn't know how they were going to navigate the future of Truth Social, which right now is in a big battle with the SEC. And within Trump world, they were already battling

two Twitter alternatives. There was Jason Miller, who's the former Trump, I think, communications director from 2016. He had the Getter platform, which has all this weird Chinese financing. And then there's Truth Social, which was itself launched through a SPAC. But now, let's throw this next part up there, please. Trump himself is going after Elon Musk in addition to because of the fact that Elon had actually trumpeted Ron DeSantis. This was a good poll from Maggie Haberman, who noticed that Trump has been especially annoyed with Elon Musk recently, not only for upstaging Truth Social, but because Trump, because Elon had praised Ron DeSantis and said he would have voted for him in 2024. He had said also that he voted for Joe Biden, and then he thought that Trump was too divisive. And then just to put a cap on

everything, as always with Trump, you have to remember, it's always about the money. Throw this up there on the screen, please, which is that Trump and his son had to be removed from the Truth Socials board weeks before federal subpoenas were hit with the company over potential SEC violations with going public as a SPAC in the first place and the multi-billion dollar stock and all of that that was involved with the deal. So lots going on here, Crystal, in terms of the Trump story against Elon for political reasons, for business reasons, while he has his own business being investigated. There's always an angle.

Yeah, there's always an angle. There's always an angle. I mean, his thing, like, this guy's another bullshit artist. I guess it takes him to no one. He recognizes the ploys here. And he complained because, remember, Elon had said, like, oh, I've never voted for a Republican, but he voted for that lady in

South Texas, Myra Flores. Oh, that's, well, that was after, but yeah., like, oh, I've never voted for a Republican, but he voted for that lady in South Texas, Mayra Flores. Oh, that's—well, that was after, but yeah. Yeah, but anyway, and Trump was like, oh, he said he never voted for a Republican, but he must have lied to me because he said he voted for me. Who knows who's telling the truth in that one? I would not wager a bet on either one of these men. But yeah, I mean, he's got a personal financial interest in this Twitter deal falling apart. I'm sure he's very happy to see it. Oh, yeah. financial interest in this Twitter deal falling apart. I'm sure he's very happy to see it.

And number two, he's got a political interest because Elon obviously has like 100 million followers on Twitter and his own little cult of personality around him as well. So he's very influential around a certain group of people in the country. And so the fact that he was saying, floating like, yeah, maybe Ron DeSantis in 2024, I'm sure Trump was not too happy about that. No, not at all. There you go. Interesting little war of words here. It's interesting to me because I think Trump could sense that Elon was kind of stealing his energy and for a while had been the, I don't even know how to describe it, like the big bad in politics and the media. And that was really, I mean, ultimately, that's what most Republican voters care about. And at the end of the day, the reason Trump probably cared the most is because Elon was stealing attention not only away from him personally as a brand from his business, which was the whole reason for even starting Truth Social in the first place.

Like, what's the whole point if Twitter was going to be run by, you know, a right wing or center right billionaire and who wanted a commitment to free speech, which is the whole selling platform of Truth Social in the first place. Despite the fact, though, that they de-platformed like January 6th talk and anything else that isn't friendly to the Trump family, which is hilarious. Free speech just means they have control over what people, what speech is allowed and what's not allowed. Some of the dumbest, it's like that's the line, guys, in terms of content moderation, whatever. So important update on the social media platform,

which for better or for ill governs the way that most elites talk about content moderation, whatever. So important update on the social media platform, which for better or for ill governs the way that most elites talk about all politics, not even politics, culture, everything. So kicks very much above its weight, even though not a lot of people are on it. Let's talk about Ukraine. So lots of big developments in Ukraine over the last couple of days. Of course, we saw that the Ukrainians have been withdrawing from major strategic towns in the east. But there are new assessments coming out of Washington with deep fears about what the future looks like in this prolonged war of attrition, both a wearing down of the Russian side and of the Ukrainian side. Actually, some reporting coming out this morning, the Russians may have lost up to 25,000 troops so far, killed in action of the initial invasion force of 300,000. I mean, that's all, I mean, that's big. Yeah. And that's almost

10% of the troops who have been killed in action, not to mention wounded, because right now they're going all over the country trying to, it's a secret mobilization is what people are calling it because they're trying to do kind of a secret recruiting drive in order to replenish the number of troops. I talked previously about how Russia has a tremendous amount of conscripts available, tens of millions of people, if they wanted to ever do some sort of full-scale mobilization. So it's always important to remember that manpower is definitely on their side, if they want it to be, but they're constrained a little bit politically right now. In terms of what's being leaked out, this is probably the single most concerning one that I saw. Let's throw this up there on the screen, which is that you guys might have seen that recent barbaric

missile strike by Russia on a civilian shopping mall. Now, what people are pointing to is that actually that missile strike may actually suggest Moscow is running very low on precision weaponry and that increasingly is turning to the less sophisticated armaments which could hit unintended targets, going back 30, 40 years in the history of warfare. Well, the problem with that is that that potentially could lead to an unintentional strike across the border in Poland or Romania. Yikes. Remember, Russia is not just hitting targets in Kyiv or in eastern Ukraine. They are targeting specifically armament shipments from the west. So, for example, Lviv, which is

right there on the border with Poland, if just one missile goes the wrong way because it's not guided properly, because the commander doesn't know what he's doing, because whoever this conscript is who shoots it doesn't know, you know, it doesn't calibrate it exactly correctly. It could go off course by 10 miles, and now we're in a whole other situation. This increasingly is also risky as Russia's going to continue to target Western armament shipments specifically as they were trying to do, or supposedly said they were trying to do so in Kyiv in the first place, and even in the most eastern parts, or in the western parts of the country. So that's very, very concerning.

You found this quote, Crystal, in the New York Times story from a Ukrainian as well who are getting really disillusioned right now with the efforts. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot of talk about, oh, what are the Ukrainians want? And they want to continue fighting. So we have to back them up. But there are some signs that at least some Ukrainians, as the reality of this conflict seeps in, and especially those who are in the hardest-hit conflict zones in the eastern part of the state, they are having regrets that there were not more serious negotiations to avoid this entire disaster. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They have a quote from one resident in that region who says outright,

we should have negotiated. We should have made concessions on both sides because it won't lead to anything good. We have to agree somehow, but we have to let there be big financial losses or some other international relations, but we must find an agreement. We live in the 21st century. And, you know, Sagar, to the point about the shopping mall and the sort of like possibility of unintentional bombings of NATO allies and how terrifying that is and what the you know, what that could ultimately lead to based on our Article five obligations there. easy as a story like this drags on, as a horrific, brutal, bloody, murderous conflict like this drags on, as we're very insulated from it here in the West, to sort of forget about the risks and just how dangerous and fraught a situation it is and how quickly it could escalate, how quickly something could happen that could cause this thing to spin out of control in a direction that no one, not here, not, you know, in Europe, not anywhere, wants it to ultimately go in. So it is really important that we always continue

to remember just how close to the edge we are here and how close we are to a direct conflict with another nuclear superpower. And so, you know, this individual who they quote in the eastern part of Ukraine saying, listen, we should have negotiated, we should have tried to avoid this. I think this is the hard reality that's going to increasingly be setting in not only for Ukrainians, but for people here in the U.S. as well, because for a war to go on and on and on, a horrible grinding stalemate with these indiscriminate weapons that are increasingly hitting civilians. This is a horror. This is a horror for the people of Ukraine for this war to basically last indefinitely, which continues to effectively be, you know, the U.S. and our

U.K. allies. That continues to be our position. Yeah. And there's actually a former general, brigadier general, wrote a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal. Let's throw this up there on the screen. He was actually an assistant secretary of state also under the Obama administration. What they point to and what he points to here is that the West Ukraine strategy will mean a prolonged and a bloody stalemate. NATO is committed to support for, quote, as long as it takes not to win, only to stave off Russian victory. And so what they're pointing to in this is that recent changes in Russian operations suggest they are making a transition from maneuver war

to artillery war, no longer relying on modern day lightning strikes. The Ukrainians are using recently arrived NATO systems with far more range and precision targets, while the Russians are taking a tactical pause after their recent victory in Severnodonetsk. However, rather than win through this maneuver, the goal is now to win through exhaustion. Both Mr. Putin and President Zelensky seek to wear the other side down, and the NATO promise of indefinite resupply to offset the Russian artillery advantage will likely result in an even more static front line. So what does that mean? More grinding up against each other. It's called, Dan Carlin famously referred to it

as the meat grinder in his blueprint for Armageddon World War I podcast. This is very analogous, obviously not the same in terms of the casualties or the horror, but one-tenth of that is still horrific and still a lot of casualties. So this is important also is to then see, okay, is it working?

Is our strategy grinding the Russians down? Are they anywhere close to giving up? Now, should you believe Putin all the time? And is he a bullshit artist in his own right? Absolutely. But let's throw this up there on the screen. Here's what he's telling the Russian people. He says, Russia has barely started its action. He says, quote, it is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it's heading in that direction. Everybody should know that largely speaking, we have not even started yet anything in earnest. He declared Russia remains steady and ready to sit down for talks and the fighting, adding that those who refuse to do so should know that the longer it lasts, the more difficult it will be for them to make a deal with us. We are hearing that they want to defeat us on the battlefield.

Putin says, scoffs, let them try. So he is showing you very clearly he doesn't give, you know, he doesn't care about the strategy. Now, of course, his country is suffering. They've got an 8% or so reduction, but they have a tremendous amount of cars that they can play right now. I did my monologue last week on July 7th about the upcoming shutdown of the Nord Stream pipeline. That pipeline officially shut down today, actually. And just to show you that Western resolve isn't what it is, one of the reasons that they had been trouble with, the Russians said that one of the reasons that gas had already been shut by almost

60% to Germany is, hey, we can't get some of these turbines, which we ordered from Canada. And Germany has put tremendous amount of pressure, which the Canadians have just acceded to, to actually ship those turbines to Russia, to keep the gas flow from Russia to Germany. So Germany is like, listen, we need the gas. They're basically going to do anything that effectively means by giving them that wind turbine or that gas turbine, they are basically committing to hundreds of billions of dollars more to the Russian regime at a time when gas is sky high. So on the one hand, they're shipping weapons to Ukraine. NATO is.

On the other hand, the centerpiece of the European continent's NATO power is sending hundreds of billions of euros a month over to Russia to finance them. On top of, exactly as we predicted, the Biden administration came out over the weekend with their so-called cap on Russian oil. And guess what? The Indians were like, yeah, we're good. We're not going to do that. Okay, so it didn't work. The Indians were like, we're just going to keep buying it at the current rate because we're actually making a killing by not just buying it for us but selling it back to you. Yeah, that's the one. So why would we cap the price when we're making billions of dollars a year and our people are actually getting cheap oil when the rest of the world is suffering? The Chinese also are not committing to do it.

You know why? Because they actually have a geopolitical commitment to supporting Russia, and also they also like cheap gas like everybody else. So the scheme on oil failed. The gas scheme is completely failing. If anything, Europe is becoming even more reliant on Russian gas, like begging policy with regards to Saudi Arabia, too, and has forced their hand on that issue. It's certainly exacerbating the climate crisis. And, by the way, as Sagar is pointing out and as we've pointed out many times, you're not having the effect you wanted to have in terms of, like, bleeding the Russian regime, Putin's regime dry. They are making bank and they're, Russian regime, Putin's regime dry. They are making bank and they're, you know, holding out just fine. There's another piece of this, which we also have covered, which is just how little dissent is allowed on this policy in the U.S.

I don't know if you saw Jackson Hinkle, who no fan of ours, but whatever. His YouTube channel was completely demonetized. Really? Because of what he says on Ukraine and on Russia. So permanently demonetized on YouTube because of what he says on Ukraine and Russia. Noam Chomsky has a bunch of quotes about how this is the worst censorship and manufacturing of consent that he's ever seen. And one thing that he points to is the fact that, you know, there's, you're not even allowed, and this is the official policy of YouTube and a lot of other platforms, you're not even allowed to hear what the Russian media is saying and what Putin is saying outside of the pieces that the Western media finds to be useful for their own propaganda. So it is

incredibly dangerous even to just question like, hey, guys, how about some diplomacy? Wouldn't that be good to actually try to end this war to question the Biden administration and, you know, their strategy along with the UK is extraordinarily dangerous and very fraught, even in circles that are supposedly anti-war. I mean, everyone should be invested in wanting this war to come to a close. And that's the thing that I want people to understand is I think that is the overwhelming priority of the American people. That is not the priority of this administration. So they are not representing your interest in what you would like to see in terms of trying to push for a resolution

to this conflict. Not that I think that that would be easy to accomplish, but they are not pushing in that direction at all. So this is a kind of parable of the situation. So Quincy Institute for Responsible Warcraft, who we talk to a lot here, Dr. Trita Parsi, of course, is with Quincy. This article from Mother Jones says America's top anti-war think tank, that is Quincy, is fracturing over Ukraine. An internal battle over the U.S. response to Russia prompts resignations from the Quincy Institute. There were several sort of high-profile resignations. One of them publicly said that Quincy is taking what they describe as an indefensible, morally bankrupt position on Ukraine. This is clearly an unprovoked invasion, and somehow Quincy keeps justifying it. Now, listen, I can't claim to have seen every word that they've put out on the subject or what every expert there is saying on the subject, but I can tell you when we talked to Dr. Parsi, he is not justifying Russia's

invasion whatsoever. Is he questioning the U.S. response? A hundred percent, as he should be, and as there should be at least one voice in this town on the left doing. So the fact that, you know, to call for diplomacy and to push for some attempt to end this conflict and have a resolution of this conflict, that this is like an out-of-bounds position at what is supposed to be an anti-war think tank is a pretty extraordinary state of events. I wouldn't even describe it as left. I would say the realist position has quite a bit of right, left, white, left, right, and left. I mean, defense priorities. There's long been libertarian organizations here in Washington, and they've always been subject to accusations of being rust and stooges. I covered this a lot, I think even on Rising. It's one of the last things that we did about the Atlantic Council was in complete meltdown because there was like two people there who were Koch funded who said, hey, maybe we should have a semi non-Hawks policy

towards Russia. And they're like, oh my God, they have to be forced out of here. Kremlin stooges. Yeah, Kremlin stooges. And I think it's deeply sad that this is happening. Look, I think that in this country, we should have robust debate all the time,

especially amongst the elites. One of the things that I despise most about them is that they look at you like a crazy person when you articulate basic stances, as I have here. Like, how much longer should America be paying $5 or, okay, excuse me, $4.68 a gallon in order to secure the integrity of eastern Ukraine? Is that worth it for how much longer? How many more square miles of Eastern Ukraine? And is that working? Is that policy even working to secure Ukraine's

territorial integrity? I would ask the same question, by the way, even if it was working. Which we did, yeah. And they won't. They look at you, they're like,

what are you, a Kremlin stooge? You're like, what, you don't care about? I'm like, listen, the world is complicated. There's a lot going on. We have to have checks and balances.

If you have a realist orientation, you're capable of understanding there's human suffering on the globe. And there's not always sometimes something that you can do about it to the most maximal extent, as we found out in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. And then we also found out that if you do do something about it, sometimes it actually ends up way worse than when you originally did. So what exactly is the desired policy? So this has long been a tool of neocons in Washington, which is now being adopted by the establishment to just say that any dissent whatsoever is, you know, helping America's enemies. I actually remember Dr. Parsi, just so people know, he's my professor in graduate school. And I remember, you know, I was very different at the time. And he would articulate pro-Iran deal positions where I was

like, hey, I never thought about that. It was so helpful to me to actually sit with somebody who was completely counter to the way that I thought about the world and just really internalize and think differently about what could happen with America's role in the world, giving an articulate and different view of American foreign policy and its goals. And that really helped me change and kind of arrive to where I am today. So I think that this lack of representation is tremendously, tremendously a disservice because NATO is a good example. We're going to have a vote in the Senate eventually, sometime in the next year, to admit Finland and Sweden into NATO.

You will not hear, beyond this show, one iota of criticism of not just that decision, but of previous NATO expansion. That is counter to modern American history. In the Panama Canal, people forget this, the 1970s, we had a massive national debate. Should we give the canal back to the Panamanians or not? Ronald Reagan launched his campaign off of this in the 1970s. And Jimmy Carter had this big debate. And it was a Senate thing and the treaty. So previous before that, obviously, World War I and even World War II, whenever you had the Marshall Plan in order to rebuild Europe.

These were big democratic consensus- building activities, which have now moved into the elite realm where they squash dissent and use tactics like this, which I think is BS and very upsetting. It is very upsetting. It is very upsetting. I want to give you what Dr. Parsi's response is here. He says, listen, a quick glance at our website would show that the statement about them justifying the invasion is just simply not true. It is true that we are pushing for diplomatic solutions. We are not going along with the idea that it's a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, which was the stated policy of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, because we believe that could lead to endless war.

That's their actual position. That's everything I've ever seen coming from there. And if that is like out of bounds, this is insanity. I think this is part of a trend where, you know, the elite class in particular has really. They feel we have to just, we can't tell the public all of these messy details. We've just got to keep our one side of the story out there and we'll handle all the decision making, whether it's on foreign policy, whether it's on Fed policy or whether it's on health policy or anything else. The masses can't handle all of this messiness. So we've got to keep a tight lid on control. That's why you see increasing, you know, moves in the direction of censorship and this sort of like authoritarian instinct, because there's so much contempt for the general population that they don't think they can handle this type of messy democratic debate. And then also, of course, they have an incentive to keep all of those sort of

like power and control for themselves. So that's why this is such a really worrying and disturbing trend that even an, you know, overtly sort of pro-peace, anti-war think tank like Quincy that I think does phenomenal work is an extremely important part of the ecosystem here in Washington is oftentimes a lonely voice in terms of what they're saying and the view of the world that they are articulating and their view of American foreign policy that they're articulating, that even within that space to say, hey, how about diplomacy, that that's out of bounds, not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. I completely agree with you.

And this is actually a perfect transition to our relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has been completely shifted. The Biden administration has been basically decided to completely turn their policy upside down now that they are forced to go and grovel to the Saudis to try to, you know, increase the oil coming from the spigots. And Biden has decided to meet with Saudi Arabia. And just as a reminder, this is a country that he said on the campaign trail he wanted to make into a pariah state. Now he's writing an op-ed that is justifying his imminent visit to that country. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So it says, Joe Biden, why I'm going to Saudi Arabia. This is in the Washington Post. And there was basically one honest sentence in here, as far as I could tell. He says, its energy resources are vital for

mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia's war in Ukraine. So even though the Saudis have been horrific actors, what they have done in Yemen is an absolute atrocity. Of course, murdering Jamal Khashoggi, which, you know, Washington Post, you know, a writer there, a journalist there. In spite of all of that, he's now like, well, I got to go and beg and bend a knee for them to turn the spigots back on. And he has this line in here that I think is really, really disingenuous, which is, he says, Sagar, from the start, my aim was to reorient, not rupture, relations with a country that's been a strategic partner for 80 years. Today, Saudi Arabia has helped to restore unity among the six countries of Gulf Cooperation Council, has fully supported the truce in Yemen, and is now working with my experts to help stabilize oil markets with other OPEC producers. Okay, again, what he said on the campaign trail is he wanted to make them a pariah state. Those were the words.

So that was your indication there was, oh, you just wanted to re them a pariah state. Those were the words. So that was your indication there was, oh, you just wanted to reorient the relationship. OK. What bothers me about this is that the Biden administration are capable of being realist. They're like, OK, well, Saudi Arabia, they got the most amount of available oil that they could pump immediately to alleviate the global supply. That means that we're going to have to go over there hat in hand to the murderous crown prince MBS hat in hand. So they're capable and they're also capable of saying, and this is a barbaric people who, and I'm talking about the leadership, who behead people in the streets and barely allowed women to drive like a decade ago and continue to cover them up and have lack of human rights for many people who live there. So they're capable of just putting all that in their mind and saying,

but at the end of the day, cheap oil is worth it. But then if I say something like that about Ukraine, then I'm anti-democracy, and then it's all about human rights and the global order and all this stuff, and I can't say, well, why doesn't the same application of thought apply in this instance? And they're like, oh, well, it's just different. Well, why is it different? It's like, well, Saudi Arabia commits effectively a mass famine on Yemen in

their bombing campaign, which we supported them in the past. Why is that not equivalent in any way to what's happening in Ukraine? And the fact is that it is, especially in terms of a humanitarian tragedy. But it all falls apart because they're incapable of just saying the truth, which is they care more about Ukraine than this. And so they're willing to sacrifice on their stated ideals for cheap oil in the Saudi relationship than they are in the Russian relationship. That then opens the question of, well, which one actually is worth it? Also, why are we so dependent on this country in the first place? Second, should we really be allowing this amount of influence, cash, and more to be completely understated by the US elite when they are supplicating themselves to our interests in Eastern Europe, which are supposedly triumph this? All it shows you is how empty the rhetoric of the administration is on human rights,

on standing up to dictators, all of this. And also, that's why I don't really support speaking in that rhetoric at all. All foreign policy is national interest. All. You can try and hide it under guise of whatever you would like. But at the end of the day, oil is oil. And the price is what it is. Our relations with countries should always be dependent on what we get from them and what they get from us. Our relationship with the Saudis has long been one where we hand them some hundred billion dollars a year in arms, and they basically tell us, that's still not enough. You still have to supplicate yourself. Even though we guarantee your defense, even though we basically

have been the guarantor of the regime since the 1970s. So even though 15 out of their 19 citizens crashed into our towers, they're the major exporter of world terrorism, have probably done more to hurt the interests of the United States and the Middle East and elsewhere, especially amongst the Islamic community, than any single other nation on earth, not to mention their own personal barbarism. That's all completely fine. Yeah.

It's like that's what drives me crazy. Yeah. It actually is remarkable how much the Biden foreign policy in the Middle East has turned into the Trump foreign policy in the Middle East. I mean, they have a little bit of different rhetoric around Israel. But in terms of the big dramatic changes that Trump made with regards to Israel and Palestine, the Biden administration has not actually rolled any of those back. And they also, they're not back in the Iranian nuclear deal. I mean, the Trump administration withdrew, pulled us out of the Iranian nuclear deal. So they were more sort of like aggressive about it. The Biden administration is pretending to negotiate it. But at the same time,

they're hardening this anti-Iran alliance that was also the brainchild of the Trump administration. So in a lot of ways, I mean, you'll recall Trump's first overseas visit was to Saudi Arabia. So Biden's a little bit late in getting there, but he also is going hat in hand to suck up to the Saudis. So it is kind of incredible the way that, and a lot of this has been forced by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where they may have wanted to go in a different direction. But now that they've chosen to go all in on this proxy war with Russia and this sort of like global, new global world order, it has forced their hand on Saudi Arabia and basically pushed them into the position where the Trump administration was. So it really is pretty remarkable. And I can't ignore also the media's role in choosing which conflicts, which crises,

which humanitarian disasters are worthy of your outrage and you're sort of like playing on your emotions and which aren't. If you saw Yemen in the news and the on the ground reporting and the horrific atrocities, I mean, the pictures of the kids and the babies there and what they have been put through, in large part by Saudi, with our support, there is no doubt the American people would be just outraged. They'd be beside themselves. They'd

be looking at this trip to Saudi and go, what the hell are you doing? I mean, it's bad enough people know what happened to Jamal Khashoggi and that creates some reluctance, but they saw what was going on in Yemen and explained it in the same emotional terms that are used to talk about the conflict and the disaster and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. There would be a very different public perception around this shift in policy from the Biden administration. So it shows you how powerful the media is in terms of what conflicts they choose to highlight and what conflicts they don't. I haven't seen a lot of Yemeni flags on liberal bumpers around the DMV region, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

100%. And actually, I think the American people are with you. I think the elites are the ones who are not. They know what happened on 9-11. Everybody knows what happened on 9-11. And remember also that the Saudis and the Bush family spent $2 billion in order on an ad campaign to be like, no, it wasn't on us. It was just our citizens and our ideology that happened as a result of all of this. And also, you know, we protected bin Laden and back to the Taliban for a long time. But hey, don't worry about all that. You know,

businessmen, please keep coming to Riyadh and we'll keep the gas pumps on. That's been the American policy for 20 years. I think if you were to ask Americans, it was really elite Americans who cared most about Khashoggi. Most people had already hated Saudi Arabia for a long time. But the elites don't care. And so the Ukrainian flag is the new flag of America that we see here in the Washington suburban area. And we decided that is the one that we care about the most. And it trumps all other interests. And so we're allowed to be realists in every other area of the world except in this one, which has become some sort of a holy war. And that's exactly the problem which leads to bad thinking and which can lead you down a road which you do not want to go to and which you may regret very much in the future.

Okay, let's talk about Biden. This is an especially hilarious one. Yeah. So from that speech that we showed you about Biden on Roe versus Wade, he pulled a Ron Burgundy and quite literally read things on the teleprompter, which you're not supposed to read. I'm not exaggerating. Let's take a listen. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who registered to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so. End of quote.

Repeat the line. Women are not without electoral and or political or or maybe precise, not and or or political power. That's another saying the you, the women of America can determine the outcome of this issue. End of quote. Repeat the line. Okay.

Very clear what's happening here. All right? And by the way, as two people who actually read off a teleprompter, you're like, I know exactly what's happening. Listen, I relate.

I've done it before. I relate. Anybody who's read off a teleprompter has been at war with these things at some point or another. I get it.

And listen, it's not as easy as it looks. Now, when you're the president, you do it a lot more than we do. Also, let just let it stand as a funny moment, you know, just another indication of his doddering age, whatever. The White House is not going to let that stand. The White House has decided to lie to you and to the historical record that what you just saw with your own eyes did not happen. Put this up there on the screen. The White House is now doctoring the official transcript of that event, saying that Biden did not say repeat the line.

He said, quote, let me repeat the line. Now, again, he did not say let me repeat the line. You can hear it with your own ears and you can watch it with your eyes. There is no any time where he was about to say, let me repeat the line. And yet the White House was so upset that they actually replied to the assistant press secretary to that clip on Twitter and said, no, he said, let me repeat the line because that clip was going extraordinarily viral. Current count has 42,000 retweets and over 15 million views because everybody can see it. The guy pulled a Ron Burgundy, maybe even joke about it. Be like, hey, you know, he's Ron Burgundy or like, it's whatever. Make a joke about San Diego. They're not capable of that.

They are lying about what he said and then doctored the official White House transcript so that for all time, despite the video evidence of what we've seen in terms of what historians will use in order to record the Biden era, this actually might be a decent thing to point to, which is since we have video evidence, in the actual written record, they have, let me repeat the line. I also loved whenever he kept saying and or, because it's clear that whoever was editing it just didn't take out the and or and left it up to Biden. Maybe he likes that in his speeches. Who knows? But he's reading these things completely verbatim. So anyway, this is a humiliating incident, more for the White House than anyone,

that they're so sensitive that they're literally trying to lie and cover up an obvious misread on the teleprompter to the American people. They're like, no, that's not what happened. This is Orwell. This actually is Orwell. I mean, their response made it so much worse. Yeah, way worse. Way, way worse. And it does what it reveals is a real sensitivity to the critique of Biden's abilities and his mental fitness and his mental acuity and all of those things. So, like, they couldn't just let it go, which would have been the way better thing to do here. I mean, again, listen, we've all had anybody who's read off a teleprompter, has had a battle with the teleprompter, has read it in a weird way, a sentence that comes out in a strange way, or you butcher a word or whatever. It happens.

It happens all the time. But they are so sensitive to this critique that they had to actually do this like Orwellian weird cover-up thing and deny the reality that you can see and hear for yourselves. And I mean, there's also something to be said too about these are the people who are all like, oh, the war on facts and truth and all of that stuff. And then when they're a little uncomfortable with exactly how something comes in, comes out, they're like, oh, let me just go in and edit that transcript right quick and make sure it accords to what we are telling the public to believe actually happened

in contradiction to their own experience of that moment. What's also weird is that, why this clip? The 4th of July clip where he's like, and you're like, what did you say? What? I mean, he trails off and embarrasses himself all the time. So why is this the one clip that you've decided to go on the attack for? But they did, and they're lying to you.

They're completely lying to your face. And to this date, the White House transcript remains in the position of the administration as he said, let me repeat the line, despite clear evidence. You know, this actually is a problem because I learned this when I was a White House correspondent. Those people are not political staff. They're supposed to be like White House archivists or whatever. They're like staffers. Oh, that does the transcript? Yeah, the people who do the transcript. Specifically for this reason. You're not supposed to be able to politically doctor a transcript. So somehow they were able to convince somebody who has human

ears that they did not hear what they actually did and pressured them to say, let me repeat the line, not actually what happened. I also want to say the transcript is actually supposed to be done by never looking at prepared remarks to prepare the most historically accurate transcript, again, for history's posterity. Yeah, they're supposed to. I watched it happen. I used to know some of them because you kind of work with them when you're next to them as a White House correspondent. Again, these are career staff. They're supposed to be completely void of any political decision making. And at the time, they were having a very hard time with Trump because of the way he speaks. Yeah. So not exactly the easiest guy to transcribe. And probably now, same with Biden,

but they somehow were still able to influence the historical record on this point. So that means they went out of their way in order to push things in this direction. Just a little behind-the-scenes info. Okay, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Mayor Pete got exactly what he asked for after dropping out and endorsing Biden right when President Obama told him to, playing his prescribed role in helping to crush Bernie's chances. Pete won himself a big political spot in the Biden administration, and he chose to be Secretary of Transportation. Now, Pete seems to think that this new gig is working out for him perfectly. From his Washington bubble, he thinks he's got this whole thing figured out and that he has himself perfectly set up to be the next heir to the neoliberal throne.

But while Pete is measuring the drapes, the public is sharpening their pitchforks, and he doesn't even seem to notice. It's worth recalling how Pete ended up as Secretary of Transportation. You might remember that Pete did not intend to just take whatever patronage role was handed out to him. You remember this? Pete was reportedly offered a really powerful position at the helm of the Office of Management and Budget, the kind of job that someone who actually cares about change and governance would salivate over, but not a title that comes with much press acclaim or Washington limelight. And so, Pete rejected it, reportedly saying he wanted a, quote, real cabinet position, not a staff-level job. He was also considered for the position of VA

secretary, but also scoffed at having responsibility for caring for our nation's veterans as beneath him as well. Ultimately, he landed on Department of Transportation, which gave him what he really wanted, the ability to fly around the country, to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, raising his political profile, and doling out goodies in congressional districts across the country. Now, in terms of the actual job, though, he was so incidental to the running of that agency that he apparently thought nothing of taking two months of paternity leave as the nation's supply chains gridlocked and inflation began to mount. Now, to me, the problem wasn't the paternity leave per se. I support new dads having time with their babies, of course.

But it was pretty telling that clearly neither Pete nor anyone else in the administration thought it'd be an issue for him to be away from his desk for two straight months as his agency sat at the heart of one of the nation's most urgent and critical issues. Because Pete, he was never selected to do an actual job. He was doled out in his patronage position so that he might LARP governing for cable news cameras. And it has predictably been a disaster. Because it turns out that running the Department of Transportation is a real job. And it's especially a real job right now. While Pete was doing press avails at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, the nation's airlines were gouging, screwing, and outright defrauding American travelers. Pete himself has been unable to escape the airline's chaos. One day, after lightly scolding airline CEOs but promising no action,

Pete's own flight was canceled. Now, he was headed to New York for, what, another big press event, touring a tunnel project that was a major priority of New York Democratic power players, people like Chuck Schumer, and giving a stamp of approval for funds to flow to that project. Now, that type of thing is easy, and it's popular. What politician doesn't want new goodies in their district? Actually taking on an entrenched and well-organized industry like the airlines? Well, that's hard. And Pete did not sign up for hard. In his mind, though, he seems to think his stint

as Secretary Pete is all going perfectly to plan. He thinks he's killing it. And he's too clueless to notice the mounting public rage at the airline abuses being allowed by his own agency. Pete's busy, after all, not with doing the job, but with pushing forward full steam on his own grand political ambitions. Apparently, the consummate shapeshifter is setting himself as a Michigander now, officially establishing residency in that state and planning to vote there in the fall. Now, you can see why he'd make the move. There's no way he can get elected statewide in Indiana. Michigan's a large, prominent swing state, but he can still hold on to his Midwestern shtick. He's thinking Michigan is the perfect spot to launch either a statewide run that will keep him in the presidential queue

or an actual presidential run should Biden be unable to run again. Pete is meeting with operatives. His PAC is endorsing candidates, etc., etc., etc. But he seems to have not noticed that his failures as Secretary of Transportation are kind of a devastating blow to any and all of his future ambitions. This dude had never had a real job before and didn't have a real record. In fact, to the extent that he did, his tenure as mayor of South Bend was hardly stellar, beset as it was by police racism and angry public protests. But he managed to exude some managerial abilities in his campaign, ran a modestly competent campaign, so a lot of people gave him the benefit of the doubt. This airline mess has really struck a chord among the traveling masses of regular Americans trying to take their first post-COVID vacations and getting run through a gauntlet at airports across the country. And this mess and the customary learned helplessness that is being offered in response is squarely in Pete's court. Bernie is already out humiliating him by demanding specific actions

and fines for airline abuses. Pete's response? Well, he hasn't had the time to do the math on Bernie's proposals. Translation? He doesn't care. And he has no intention of doing more than offer his weird travel agent tips online. After all, he's too busy heading to another ribbon-cutting shoot. Because while Pete thought he was signing up for a fake job, the public actually needs him to govern. Just consider the contrast to what Pete is doing with photo shoots and political glad-handling versus what someone who is actually concerned with governing is approaching with their job. The general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board has turned out to be an absolute beast by contrast. She is quietly and without fanfare going after the captive audience meetings, which have become a routine part of union busting tactics. She's

working to return to a prior era of labor organizing when if a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to unionize, the burden is then on the company to prove that the sentiment does not actually reflect the majority will of the bargaining unit. Her actions have been central to the boldness and success of the new grassroots labor organizing. Meanwhile, Pete is busy hobnobbing a meeting with political operatives to even notice that his failures at his job right now might preclude him from getting the job that he really wants in the future. According to Politico, Pete's confidants deny that he's using his gig as Secretary of Transportation to set himself up for a statewide or presidential campaign. As his former deputy campaign manager said, quote, if that's what he was doing, he'd be running a shit shadow campaign.

Well, I guess he does have a point there. The Michigan move, pretty interesting, you know. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, perhaps the thing that I hate most about living in Washington is how exhausting it is to be around people who are lying all of the time. And I know it sounds cliche, but it really is true. Politicians and lobbying groups and journalists and others, they exude a suffocating lack of honesty where nobody is telling the truth. Everybody is so captured either by ambition, money, a combination of both, that they dance around the truth to push an agenda or to simply

ignore something which is inconvenient for them. That is how we are in the situation where we are today. 614 days since Joe Biden was elected to the presidency of the United States. And it is finally, finally okay now to talk about how freaking old he obviously is. That has been coming for some time in Washington. Obviously, trying to get millions of people who were trying to ignore their lying eyes of an aged and elderly man incapable of speaking properly in the highest office in the land. But what really broke open the floodgates for the media was The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich. Leibovich has long functioned as a kind of inside outsider, someone inside the veneer of respectability but who is biting enough to tell truths when they are barely okay to tell. This time, he wrote bluntly in the pages of The Atlantic, quote, let me put this bluntly, Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024.

He's too old. That sentence, while obvious to some of us for more than 800 days since Biden began running for president, has lifted one of the most bizarre veils in modern American politics, acknowledging the honest truth at last. Soon enough, Peter Baker, himself a respectable and longtime figure of the Washington establishment and the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote a blistering and obvious story on the front page of the Sunday Times yesterday. Headline, quote, at 79, Biden is testing the boundaries of age and the presidency. What's important is not really what's in the piece, though it is stunning, but that it exists

at all. The obvious acknowledgement, Biden is really old. Baker opens a story by noting that Biden's staff originally had planned combining his travel to Europe and to the Middle East all in a single 10-day jaunt for ease of planning sake. But they decided that because he's so old, it would be too exhausting to try and get it all done together. Instead, they planned a week in Europe and then a week-long sojourn back here in the U.S. and then a separate few days in the Middle East later. Here's how Biden describes, Baker describes the mood inside the West Wing. Quote, his energy level, while impressive for a man his age, is not what it was, and aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks. Aides worry he will trip

on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events. They hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe. As we covered earlier in the show, considering that Biden literally reads verbatim off the teleprompter like a scene from Anchorman, their fears are very well-founded. What all of this discussion highlights to me is just how dishonest the entire discussion of Biden's age has been for two and a half years. I can barely describe how vilified Crystal and I have been since early 2020 and late 2019 for bluntly talking about Biden's age. We were called ageists at first, and then the regime discovered their real attack. Biden doesn't speak badly because of his age. It's because he has a stutter. The breakthrough happened in February of 2020.

A writer named John Hendrickson penned a long piece about how Joe Biden overcame a childhood stutter, which reminded him of his own. How anytime Biden slipped up in his speech, it's because of that childhood stutter. Now, miraculously, nobody asked this question. Why was he cogent and a decent speaker for 40 years of politics and then all of a sudden nearing 80, the so-called stutter just rematerializes out of nowhere? Obviously, you're not allowed to ask that question, even though it was obvious to anyone who has watched Biden over the years. I went and selected a random interview from November of 2010 when Biden was vice president. Watch this interview and tell me this is the same guy who is president right now. Do you have faith in President Karzai? Look, I've known President Karzai for a long, long time.

I think he's in a very difficult position. I have, you know, we could argue that there could be a stronger leader, but you deal with the hand you're dealt, as the old saying goes. And we are all on the same page now for the first time. That guy has not been around for years. Let's just be honest about it. In fact, the people who were the least honest about Biden's age were actually Democratic operatives in 2020, which is ironic because as Glenn Greenwald points out, they were the same ones who knew him best and realized how far gone he was in 2019 when they didn't realize he was going to be the nominee. In fact, the first person to notice was the dean of the Washington NBC media, Andrea Mitchell, who in 2019 wondered this about Joe Biden on the air before a Democratic presidential debate.

Look, he has been a skilled debater. We saw him with Sarah Palin. We've seen him in the past. The question is, does he still have his stuff? And- Spontaneity. Yeah, and is he, how sharp is he? Does the Joe Biden tonight,

is he the same Joe Biden who could respond with one word to a younger- You know, you're raising the question by the question. A younger Brian Williams. You were raising the question. How sharp is he? That was before Biden was the front runner when such questions were allowed. As Glenn wrote in March of 2020, a major Democratic pundit, Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone magazine, even wrote, quote,

I'm no doctor and I had a family member where dementia contributed to his death. I will be the last one speculating about Biden's cognitive decline. But his campaign is irresponsible to let this go unexplained or diagnosed if the case may be. That was in August of 2019. It was always evident, most so to the people who knew him best and saw him over the years. But the media cut off and silenced dissent when it was evident he was the nominee only two years later, acknowledging what we all knew all along. It really is a crime against the American people for covering this up. It's completely reasonable to say, hey, Biden is old as hell, but Trump is awful, so I'm still going to vote for him. But bring this full circle. Let's just be honest about what's happening here. It is clear to me

and anyone with eyes, Biden is way too old to be president, let alone right now, let alone six years from now when he'll be 86. But don't worry. Once Trump announces again, people will start the stuttering attack up all over again, and they'll forget ever, even once, that they even acknowledge what was actually going on here. I mean, look, it was obvious. We covered it at the time. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Tobias Harris. He is the biographer and author of The Iconoclast, Shinzo Abe, and The New Japan.

He's also Senior Fellow for Asia at the Center for American Progress. So, Tobias, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So you wrote the biography on Shinzo Abe. He was assassinated, sadly, over the weekend in Japan. Just describe for us what this means in terms of Japanese politics, kind of who Shinzo Abe was for a broader general populace, and then as his biographer, what your reaction to the news of all of this is. Sure. So, you know, when we think about Abe, I mean, and this has become, I think, very apparent in the immediate aftermath of his death. I mean, there's been no Japanese figure probably for a generation or two who's loomed as large as he has. he entered Japanese politics in the early 1990s, you know, almost through force of will,

completely changed the direction, I think, of Japanese politics, of the Japanese state, was just a tremendously influential figure for a very long time, not just during his times as prime minister, I mean, which, of course, I mean, he was the longest serving prime minister from 2012 to 2020. But even before he became prime minister, between his two stints as prime minister, I mean, he's just a tremendously influential figure. And frankly, you know, it's almost hard to imagine what the Japanese political system looks like with him gone. I mean, so with that in mind to your second question, I mean, you know, of course, I've spent, you know, years and years thinking about him.

I mean, even before writing my book about him, he was this figure who occupied a lot of brain space. I mean, just a tremendous shock. I mean, certainly entirely unexpected. I think everyone who watches Japanese politics was anticipating years and years of watching him kind of invent a new role as an ex-prime minister and continue to wield influence. So it's just really shocking to think that that's not going to be the case. Yeah. You have a quote in the piece that you wrote for The New York Times where you're quoting Steve Bannon, of course, former President Trump's former chief strategist, saying that Abe was Trump before Trump, which he, of course, meant as a compliment. Not everyone would certainly take it that way.

What was meant by that? I'm not going to try to read the mind of Steve Bannon. I mean, I think it was a point sort of about nationalism and nationalist appeals and looking at that aspect of Abe. But I actually think they're very, very different figures. And I talk about this in the New York Times piece, you know, you look back at the entire arc of Abe's career and also his family, which really shaped his political identity and the ideas he was pursuing. You know, Abe was a state builder. Abe looked at the long arc of Japanese history, both up until the time he entered politics, but then also looking ahead to the future and wanted to build a strong, top-down, centralized government in a way that the Japanese government hadn't

been after 1945, that was going to be able to have a proper national security establishment that would be able to respond to crises effectively, that would really be able to meet the challenges that Japan was going to face in the coming decades. And he was very clear about this. He was persistent about it. It was something that he always made clear. And also with that came, I think, a certain amount of flexibility and pragmatism. It was always about what do I need to do to make sure that Japan is strong and prosperous

and secure in an increasingly dangerous world. And frankly, that also meant that he was willing to do things like open the Japanese economy to trade, welcome foreign investment, welcome more immigration. I mean, you have a record, by the end of his tenure, you had a record number of foreign workers in Japan. That does not sound like Trump before Trump to me. One thing, though, that is an echo of some of the debates,

at least that we're having now, that are unfolding on the right of American politics is he introduced his own version of patriotic education into schools. There was some white washing of Japanese war crimes in World War II, which is very much a break from the way that this had been dealt with in schools and in sort of national culture before. Could you speak to how significant that was and what he was getting after there? Absolutely. I mean, and, you know, I don't want to downplay that aspect of him. I mean, there was, you know, that was certainly early in his career back in the 1990s when he was a young lawmaker, you know, trying

to make his name. You know, that was an issue he attached himself to. There was this movement to change the textbooks that were being used in schools, you know, fierce enmity towards the teachers unions, which really throughout the entire Cold War period had been some of the most radically left-wing unions among all Japanese unions. So there's, I mean, there's no question that that was part of his agenda. I mean, he very much saw education. In fact, you look at the book he wrote back in 2006, which really, I mean, really lays out his philosophy and his way of thinking quite clearly. You know, education to him was also part of state building.

And, you know, he looked at back going back again, going back to 1945 under the U.S. occupation. One of the things the U.S. did was completely reform the Japanese education system, much more local control, you know, of course, much more room for the teachers union to influence what was happening in the classroom. And he saw that if Japan is, again, believing that Japan needed to be a strong state, he saw the way Japanese children were educated

as an obstacle to that because he believed the Japanese children were being taught to hate their country and that that had to change. And that if you were gonna have Japanese children being willing to sacrifice on behalf of their country, and that that had to change. And that if you were going to have Japanese children being willing to sacrifice on behalf of their country, then they had to be made to feel proud of their country. Personally, I don't think you need to downplay historical atrocities

to make people feel proud of your country. And I think, frankly, lots of Japanese people felt proud of what was built after 1945 and the country that Japan came. But this was absolutely part of his program. It was clearly something that he wanted to change about the country. I think the most fascinating, I've respected Abe for a long time. I think of all the major U.S. allies, Japan is the one which people probably know the least about here in America, but he still had a deep amount of affection, at least amongst the U.S. elite. He was, I think, friends or had appeared with four sitting U.S. presidents, which is remarkable.

And I think what you point to when you write is that his major commitment was to Japan, not only as to an ideal, but something that should be robust in its defense, both against China and North Korea. I was telling you before we went on the air, I actually had the opportunity to ask him a question about North Korea, 2018, whenever he was the prime minister appearing next to President Trump. And that was really the last unfulfilled part of his legacy. So do you think that that legacy will move forward in Japan as a result of his assassination, which is a titanic political moment? Like how will Abe ism, is it like almost like a Kennedy figure and trying to recast and reclaim that? How do you think this is going to affect them going forward? I mean, it's a great question. It's one that I think lots of us are trying to

figure out, you know, once the dust settles, what exactly is going to happen. I mean, there's a few different moving parts of it, I think. I mean, first of all, you know, he did, you know, over the course of his career, he built the Japanese national security establishment in a way that you hadn't seen before. You have a more potent military. You have, I think, a more streamlined command structure. You have a proper Ministry of Defense, which is something he created the first time he became prime minister. You have a national security establishment or secretariat that allows the prime minister to have a much more direct hand in making foreign and security policy. So all of that

now exists. His successors now have these institutions. They're much more able to be national security leaders to serve as global statesmen in the way that he did compared to the past. One other thing that he changed is that I think the LDP, the Liberal Democratic Party, is, I think, a much more uniformly, I guess, call it hawkish party than maybe it had been at the start of his career. There used to be, I think, much in the same way that the Republican Party, of course, used to have, or actually, really, both American parties used to be much more diverse in the kind of views. The LDP has become a much more ideologically coherent party compared to when he entered politics in 1993. And some of that was a result in 2012 when he

came back to the LDP's leadership. A lot of the older, more dovish LDP members retired and ended up being replaced by younger, handpicked politicians who shared Abe's views. And so you now have, I think, a big chunk of the LDP basically wants to press on with Abe's vision for a stronger Japan, a more capable, a Japan more capable of defending itself. And so you do have, of course, with current Prime Minister Kishida, a self-styled dove, liberal.

He's from Hiroshima. But even he, he was elected really thanks to Abe's support last year and made very clear that he was committed to pushing ahead. And so right now in the next couple of months, there's going to be a big debate about defense spending for the budget next year. All signs point to there's going to be an increase of some kind. It's just a question of just how much and what they're going to spend on. And Kishida has also signaled that he's also, he's willing to consider acquiring offensive or not offensive strike capabilities, but the ability to strike targets overseas in a defensive capacity, let's call it.

And so that, I mean, that's where we are right now. There's still some questions about what's going to, what the public's going to sign on for, what members of the coalition government are going to sign on for, but certainly there's a lot of energy behind moving ahead with that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for breaking it down for us, Tobias. We really appreciate it. You were his biographer. We'll have a link down in the description to the book and to the New York Times article that we referenced. And we appreciate you joining us.

Thank you. Thank you. Man, it was really sad whenever I saw that news over the weekend. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's going to be a great week. By the way, live show. Do we have that graphic?

I'm not sure if we do. Anyway, don't forget to buy tickets. We're nearing the end. We're nearing the sellout date. So we've already shown the industry we can and we will sell tickets. So the planning phase, as I said, is currently there. If you are in the Atlanta metro area, go ahead and buy tickets. You can help support us. You can help show the world what we can do. And it's going to be a great show. We're doing a lot of fun planning for it as the midterm stuff begins to ramp up. So we'll have future announcements for everyone in the future. If you're a premium member, we deeply appreciate it. You get future access to all pre-sales for a

week ahead of tickets going on sale to the general public. They bought more than half of the seats before. So there you go. That's amazing. If you want the good seats, thank you very much to everybody else who is out there. Thank you to everyone who supports us. We deeply appreciate it. Link is in the description if you want to join. Thank you to everyone who supports us. We deeply appreciate it. Link is in the description if you want to join and we'll see you all tomorrow. I just want to say one other thing

which is I mentioned in the show about how Jackson Hinkle who again is no fan of ours but that's fine. His entire YouTube channel is demonetized because of his critique

of the sort of DC consensus with regard to Russia and Ukraine and it was another little reminder for me of how That's a good point.

How precarious the YouTube situation is that they could just permanently pull the plug on your ability to generate any revenue off of your content. Just one day, they can just do it. There's no redress. There's not anything you can do about it. That's a good point. Just another reminder why we have the business model,

what we do, how grateful we are to you guys for backing us up so that we can, you know, we can cover the news and say what we really think and present whatever information we think is relevant to you and your life, which is not always a comfortable thing for the DC consensus here. And yeah, we're just really grateful for your support. It's true. You know, we'd lose YouTube tomorrow, and it would suck for sure. But we'd be okay. We'd be okay. Thanks to all of you. Exactly right.

It does give you a lot of confidence in the way that we cover the news. So thank you all to all those who support us. That's exactly the mindset of why we don't have to worry about it in the first place. And we'll see you all tomorrow. Thank you. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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