Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/19/23: GOP Reacts To Trump Indictment, Jake Tapper Interviews Ron DeSantis, Joe Manchin Flirts With 2024 Run, Congress Explodes After Rep. Jayapal's Israel Statement, Charles Barkley Slams Anti-Bud Light 'Rednecks', Biden Uses MTG As 2024 Ad, And More!

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss the Republican reactions to Trump's Jan 6 indictment, Jake Tapper grills Ron DeSantis on his 2024 run, Joe Manchin flirts with 2024 bid under No Labels, Congress passes pro-Israel legislation after Jayapal's apartheid criticism, Charles Barkley explodes on anti-Bud Light conservatives, Biden uses MTG's criticisms of him as a campaign ad, and Jason Aldean's music video is removed from CMT amid racial controversy.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is

still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into

the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey guys, ready or not. 2024 is here and we here at breaking points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. All right, welcome to CounterPoints, everybody. I'm Ryan Grim here with Emily Jaschinski. We had a big show today.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog is coming to Capitol Hill today. A handful of Democrats are protesting. What else we got? Well, we're going to start with, of course, the news. If you're not sick of indictments yet, that Donald Trump is facing yet another indictment and then potentially another indictment after that. Ron DeSantis sat down with Jake Tapper yesterday, so we have all the highlights from that interview. Joe Manchin, there's some pretty interesting video from Joe Manchin in New Hampshire, maybe a little bit about Gavin Newsom

in that. We'll then get to Israel. We'll get to some wild video footage of Charles Barkley. And then our guest today is Christopher Rufo. We'll be talking to him about his new book. We have lots of questions and are excited for that interview. Yeah. And a quick word on that. You and I both have read the book. And just to tease the interview a little bit, what I would say is that the most dangerous thing about the book is how good it is. It's not dangerous from my perspective. To me, the worldview that it articulates and advocates for is kind of nihilistic and antisocial, but it does it in such an impressively structured way. It's like, it's a piece of intellectual heft that has to be grappled with. And I think it's

filled with contradictions that hopefully we can, some of which I think you'll agree with me on. Probably. And some of which you won't, but I'm curious to see how this goes. Yeah, I agree. We're really looking forward to that. Let's start though with the news of Donald Trump receiving a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith. This is in reference actually to those alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So we'll put a one element up on the screen here. the situation tells Fox News that Smith's office sent Trump a target letter and the former president confirmed the news in a social media post Tuesday. The development indicates that another indictment of Trump could be looming in the near future. You'll remember that actually from the last indictment when the world learned about target letters. It's usually a pretty clear red flag that you are about to be indicted. Now, the Republican

primary field, Sagar and Crystal sort of walked through the breaking news yesterday, but the primary field has had about 24 hours to react. Now, I should start with one tiny little bit of updated news from ABC. They say the target letter mentions three federal statutes, conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. Sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Now, Vivek Ramaswamy has said that these are, quote, different from any of the other prior indictments against Trump, referring to the charges in this case. You also had Nikki Haley. You had former Governor Chris Christie come out and talk about this. Chris Christie said, basically, as a former prosecutor, I want to see any potential indictment before I talk about the case against Donald Trump. Then you had Asa Hutchinson, who I don't even know why I'm mentioning because he's so completely irrelevant, just torch Trump. A lot

of the Never Trump people really loved that. And Ron DeSantis, his first reaction was, I can't speak about that because I haven't seen it. I can tell you one of my jobs as president will be to end the weaponization of these agencies. I will get that job done. He also talked about this on Jake Tapper, which we're going to break down that entire interview later in the show. But he did say this country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that is wrong. He references Alvin Bragg and said, my job is to restore a single standard of justice to end weaponization of these agencies. We can put A2 up on the screen right now. This is a reaction from Julie Kelly, someone who has done a lot of reporting on these types of issues in particular. I'm so sorry, I meant A3. Julie Kelly doing a lot of reporting on this in particular. She says, it won't just be Trump, and I should say from the right, named in a January 6 indictment,

DOJ Smith loved conspiracy charges in every conspiracy account, obstruction, seditious, et cetera, needs at least one co-conspirator. Prepare for lawyers, White House official, campaign aides, and maybe GOP House members to be indicted too. In other words, indictment exhaustion is obviously imminent. And just before I toss to Ryan, let's run the sound bite. Sorry for going out of order, guys, but this is A2 from CNN. But it's a pretty serious moment, and it causes, from both a legal and, in this case, a political standpoint, I imagine a certain degree of circling the wagons. Look, it shows that there is a degree of legal jeopardy coming in the direction of the former president, and that's always serious for anybody

who receives a target letter. So I do think, you know, it's something that needs to be taken seriously. Perhaps an indictment is on its way. We saw in the last case that that preceded an indictment. I think we're likely to see the same thing here. He's probably not gonna go in and testify. And then it's, you know, then we're back to,

okay, this case perhaps gonna be heard in and testify. And then it's, you know, then we're back to, okay, this case perhaps going to be, be heard in the, in the DC district and who's the judge that gets assigned. And we're kind of off to all the questions that we had on the first round. So that's Jim Schultz, somebody who was actually a lawyer in the Trump White House. So Ryan, what do you make of that reaction? Obviously it's not entirely different from what a Chris Christie or maybe an Asa Hutchinson would immediately make of the situation, but also from the broader field as they digest the news publicly. I think Ramaswamy is wrong on his analysis so far. If the ABC News reporting is correct, that those are the three charges that he's going to face,

I think that you can say that colloquially that that amounts to insurrection and therefore you could argue the 14th Amendment or which amendment is it? The 14th Amendment that triggers, that bans you from running for president or in federal office if you've been involved in insurrection. The insurrection they meant specifically was the Civil War, although the law doesn't limit it to that. But I don't see how those three charges would get past a Republican Supreme Court. In other words, they're not going to stop him from running. They're not going to take him off the ballots. And if he won, I just do not see the Supreme Court coming in and saying, you can't take office. So I don't think we're at that place yet. But like you said, this is another indictment thrown on the pile.

And I think it is ammunition for my earlier argument that, in particular, the New York case was a big mistake for Democrats because it looks so trivial. The paperwork around a payoff for Stormy Daniels compared to trying to overthrow an election. Right. Allegedly, violently through an insurrection. Like that is broadly the charge under which these three allegations fall. So you present a scenario where it looks like they're coming after him on just everything that they can find when something like, you know what, lots of politicians pay hush money. Lots of politicians don't try to overthrow the elections that they can find when something like, you know what, lots of politicians pay hush money. Lots of politicians don't try to overthrow the elections that they lost. And so I do wish that they had focused their energy on that particular case. But we still have the documents

case coming, as Trump calls it, documents hoax. That's still waiting in the wings. The Georgia elections indictment may still be coming, coming to from the state attorney general there. Soon, probably. And the Michigan attorney general, I wonder if this is, do we have this here? I wonder if this was a coincidence or if this just, or if this is related to these charges. 16 Michigan residents, several of them very high profile party apparatchiks in Michigan, signed certificates saying that they were the duly elected electors from Michigan. They tried to give that to Ron Johnson. They mailed it to the Senate.

They were trying to get it to Pence so that they would do basically what happened in 1872, where there were multiple electors. In 1960 1960 even. Oh, yeah. Well, that was the DNC. It was a similar situation where you had people in the cases of sort of like actively litigating where the state's electors were going to go. It kind of cast their lot for the one person. And then that's sort of, again, like the fake electors thing is actually that it's a, not an entirely misleading term, but misleading in the respect that it's not like they were

trying to commit fraud or anything. They were openly trying a leadable strategy, basically. Right. So where they're getting hit is signing a paper that says that now I feel bad for one woman. And if she can prove it, I think she should get off. She said she thought she was signing a sign-in sheet. Oh, no. Now, if that's nonsense and that they can prove that she's just coming up with BS, then throw the book at her. But, yeah, one of the women is like, look, I was just at the meeting. Everybody was signing it.

I signed. I'm here. If there's a time next to her signature, then I think she has to be found not guilty. I checked in at 735. Why does it say 735 here? It's when you became a duly elected elector. The others are top party officials who are saying that we are the electors. And yeah, their plan was we're going to send these to Mike Pence and Mike Pence will then look, oh, Michigan sent us two batches of electors, which is exactly what happened in 1872, except it was like South Carolina and

Georgia and Florida. And they say, oh, we have two. I can't rule on anything. This has to go back somewhere else. And then Ted Cruz is saying, send it to a commission. In 1872, they did form a commission that comes up with the compromise around Tilden Hayes. And so that was what they were trying to get to. And so then the question is, did they have enough rational belief that what they were saying was founded in sincerity, or was it just completely fake? Some of that will have to do with text messages, I'm sure, that they've obtained, emails that they've obtained. But that's what's always bothered me about these questions, that if you fundamentally, genuinely, honestly believe that you're the elector, even though you're not, then what? Where do we go from there?

How do we sort that out? Now, you guys on the right are the ones that believe in absolute truth. So I have less sympathy. Facts don't care about feelings. Yeah, exactly. You felt like you were an elector. The facts say otherwise. It's my truth that I was a Trump elector. Yes, you're relying on all this postmodernism that Ruffo loves to dismantle. That's right. So, you know, that's a really interesting point on the Manhattan charges, because as we were making that point, I was thinking there was a really searing imagery to Donald Trump being the first president, first former president indicted,

and every news station had the cameras following his plane up to Manhattan, and they were doing like 24-hour Trump watch basically around that indictment. This one is much more serious. From the perspective of the left, this one is much more substantive and credible. And you've already, I think, lost the public's attention. That's not to say the whole public has tuned out. That is to say now, though, that this is a blob. The indictments are a blob for people who don't have the misfortune that we do of paying attention to every little new development in the breaking news cycle. This is all really going to blend together. And, you know, they're not equal. These indictments are not equal. And that is pretty

clear when you make a side-by-side comparison of them. So the indictment fatigue and exhaustion, it's not just that. It's the just sort of the blending together. It's not just that people are starting to tune out. It's that when you're adding legal layer on top of legal layer, it's really complicated. And I think it gets harder for Democrats, for the left or for the anti-Trump center, maybe even the anti-Trump right, to penetrate the public consciousness every time after you sort of, not you personally, but after the credibility was all these mental gymnastics to say that Alvin Bragg had a grave and serious case. And, you know, that's not to say that... Bookkeeping. Literally bookkeeping. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And things that people

already understood about Donald Trump. So when you've already exhausted these like huge, big breaking news cycles where you have the sirens out and all of that over bookkeeping, I think a lot of the public's attention has been lost. Yeah. But nobody listens to me. So what are you going to do? So you don't think he's going to go to the grand jury. So he has now three days. He was given four days to appear, tell his side of the story, which we don't have a legal analyst here. I'm certainly not one. That seems unusual to me. It feels like usually it's just behind closed doors, and they get to hear from just the prosecutor, and you have no chance to make a defense of yourself.

Maybe for whatever reason in the federal process it's slightly different, or maybe because it's the president, he's different. In any event, they gave him four days. He's now down to three. Jack Smith is, according to CNN, sending signals by going to Subway. We got to play this. Do we have this? We got to play this.

All right, so Ryan just teased this, but this is an actual CNN segment between, by the way, not just random cranks they had on air. This is John King and Dana Bash, two of their most prized and treasured talents. There's nothing more I can say to set it up. You actually just have to watch it. Jack Smith is tight-lipped. He was spotted today by CNN going to Subway for lunch, picking up a sandwich, leaving and not saying a word. So no comment from the special counsel's office on whether they plan to indict Donald Trump and when that is potentially going to happen for the second time for a federal case.

Remember when the classified documents target letter, when Trump announced that, there was a lot of commentary. It was Jack Smith making a mistake here. Is he leaving this all to Donald Trump? And then they released the indictment and we all said, wow, wow. We read it. We saw the documentation. We saw the level of detail. Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people.

He tries to bully people. He tries to scare you away. That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple $5 sub in his hand saying, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, the imagery was intentional and spoke volumes. So what's crazy to me about that is Dana Bash might actually know there was intentionality behind that imagery. Like if Jack Smith is actually seriously going to Subway and leaking the footage or telling CNN to have their cameras there,

and that's why she said it was, that's even more pathetic than CNN. And by the way, I'm just realizing it, that is a Subway around the corner from CNN. That's like two blocks than CNN. And by the way, I'm just realizing it. That is a subway around the corner from CNN. That's like two blocks from CNN, if even. So I've just solved the case on air, just like Sherlock Holmes, the subway video. He took a car, too. Well, the department just has a new building down there, too. Do they?

I don't know. I think maybe they have. Well, there's enormous amounts of office space down there. There's a lot of legal work done in the area. And he's a special whatever, so they probably have a little space down there, but yes. I think your point is interesting. Like, did Dana Bash and John King, like, get a text message from somebody saying, hey, this was intentional? Because otherwise, how do they come up on their own with the idea that a guy getting a sandwich is a signal to Donald Trump? It feels like you have to be told that. Exactly. And if they're told that,

then it's true. He really is, through CNN, sending a signal. Weird. They had their cameras at the subway. That's another part of it. I don't know why we're taking this so seriously, but it is really funny and kind of bizarre because it's like Kim Kardashian tipping off the paparazzi saying, I'm going to be here at this time. Someone told them to have cameras there, and either they were following Jack Smith because there was—the target letter had been announced by Donald Trump on Truth Social, so they had just been following him anyway. But to your point, even if that's not the case, even if, you know, they weren't tipped off to be at the subway, it does sound like they were tipped off that this was intentional. And that's, again, I think that's even more pathetic than CNN just coming to that conclusion on their own. I think we need more analysis of this. It looked like one foot long sub. Is that right? I thought it looked like a six inch sub. We're going to we'll have to go back and look at this footage closer. So it looks like one foot long sub, which is like, wait a minute. OK, Jack's like, hey, I need lunch. I'm going to we'll have to go back and look at this footage closer so it looks like one foot long subway

which is like wait a minute okay Jack's like hey I need lunch I'm going to subway yeah anybody need anything nobody needed anything

nobody else nobody needed like an oatmeal raisin cookie I find that suspicious they have excellent cookies and if somebody's going to subway and they ask you if you want anything

what you're going to tell them you want a cookie most people would so did he not tell his co-workers that he was going to subway or he knew the cameras were going to be on him and he didn't want to send a bad message to the kids about eating cookies for lunch. That could be. I don't know. It's hard

to say. But we'll pay attention to this story as it develops. Be sure to bring you any updates on Jack Smith's lunch preferences. Ron DeSantis sat down with Jake Tapper of CNN yesterday, which is actually interesting in and of itself. Ron DeSantis is obviously pretty known for avoiding or not avoiding so much as eschewing corporate press, legacy media, and being really aggressive about that, making it an intentional strategy. His team, actually, as he's been in the governor's office, has intentionally cut corporate press, legacy media out. And for good reason, by the way, he had an absolute hit job done on him by CBS 60 Minutes once. And after that, it really snowballed into a broader strategy that we are blocking access

if you don't change your ways. If you don't give us a fair shake, just like you would give any Democrat, then we are going to cut off access to you. So it's interesting that he sat down. It's a sign of how well his campaign is going that he's rethinking that strategy. My colleague Eddie Scarry wrote in The Federalist actually a couple of weeks ago a piece that I wonder if this implanted that in DeSantis' team's brain. Basically, DeSantis is best when he's in adversarial conversations with reporters. And to sort of rejuvenate his campaign, he should be doing that all the time. And so here he is on CNN. Let's roll a few clips here, a few highlights. He obviously reacted to the Donald Trump news. And so he also reacted to news about or questions about his campaign, the state of his campaign, his poll numbers.

So let's end wokeness and then Ukraine. But let's start and we'll just we'll run through some of these highlights. Here's the first clip. Some of your supporters are disappointed that your campaign has yet to catch fire the way they would want in terms of polling. One Republican pollster, one who is sympathetic to you, I was asking her about your campaign, and she said she thought the issue was you bumped up at the beginning because voters, Republican voters, saw you as a more electable conservative like Trump, like Trump without the baggage. But then they say as you go further and further to the right on some of these divisive social issues that could alienate moderates, suburban moms, et cetera, Republican voters see you as less and less electable.

What do you say to that analysis? I don't think it's true. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, I took a state that had been a one-point state, and we won it by 20 percentage points, 1.5 million votes. Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms. So that's him being questioned on the state of his campaign. Let's roll the next clip. The biggest issues were the number two issue, women and racial or ethnic minorities are discriminated against in the army. Wokeness is listed here, but it's only number nine.

So that would suggest that wokeness is not as big. Well, but I think there's an issue about, like, not everyone really knows what wokeness is. I mean, I've defined it, but a lot of people who rail against wokeness can't even define it. And so I think it's a sense of, you know, this is not something that's holding true to the core martial values that make the military unique. And I can tell you, the veterans, you don't have to look far and wide. Go to a VFW hall, go to an American Legion. There's a huge amount of concern about the direction that the military is going with. One more before we

start breaking these down. This is DeSantis responding to the Jack Smith target letter to Donald Trump, actually just probably hours after that news broke. If Jack Smith has evidence of criminality, should Donald Trump be held accountable? So here's the problem. This country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that's wrong. Alvin Bragg stretched a statute in Manhattan to be able to try to target Donald Trump. Most people, even people on the left, acknowledge if that wasn't Trump, that case would not have likely been brought against a normal civilian. So Ryan, actually, we do have Chris Ruffo on later in the show, and I think we'll probably

have some questions for him about how he's had conversations with Ron DeSantis about wokeness, defining wokeness, and then once you define it, sort of targeting it with policies. But what did you make of DeSantis' back and forth with Tapper on those questions? First of all, a guy who had a viral and extremely damaging story about eating pudding with his fingers should never say the proof is in the pudding. You are very fixated on food today. Don't go anywhere near pudding. And then he talks about bread and butter. Right.

The knock on him has been some of these viral videos. Does he eat that with his fingers too, the butter? See, now you've got me thinking about that. Maybe. Butter is pudding. the butter. See, now you've got me thinking about that. Maybe if he's hungry and he's stuck in a two hour meeting and all it's in front of him is butter or he's on a private plane, I don't know what he's going to do. Never go full Klobuchar. But I do think it is an important question because as effective as Rufo has been at making his kind of culture war critique to be the thing that we're all wrapped up in and obsessed with,

the candidate who adopted it has flamed out. And the Republicans who have adopted it generally have not seen dividends in the way that you would hope if you're a partisan Republican. The Democrats increased their numbers in the Senate. They lost their numbers in the House by much less than they thought they were going to be. So why? And I thought Jake Tapper, channeling that female GOP pollster, put it well, that DeSantis was Trump without the baggage and electable Trump.

He then went far right in both his style and his policy, which is leading people to think, oh, well, maybe he's not electable. So let's go with the more fun guy. But if it's a long shot anyway, and the problem with electability arguments is that some of it is vibes. Some of it is numbers and polls. Yeah. And he's just not polling as well against Biden as Trump is. And people can see those numbers. So do you think that there was a different path for him that wouldn't have led him to this place where he's Trump without the baggage, but also without the electability? I don't know, because I think we're still seeing that emerge. And I'm curious as to whether Ron DeSantis can kind of, as we get to debate, I mean, the first debate is less than a month away now.

And after debates, you really start to see, for better or worse in some cases, you know, at certain points for Marco Rubio, these were really good. And at other points, they were momentum killing. And, you know, you get, you lose money. People see you in a debate and they see the media coverage of you in a debate, whether or not that's actually reflective of what the public thought, and they pull their funds or they put more funds into you and then the media coverage can change. So I'm curious if he's like right now, if they're going back to the drawing board. He had a great answer to somebody in Iowa yesterday who I think described herself as a super Trump fan. Saw that clip. Yeah, it was

a good clip. And DeSantis comes in and basically says, listen, the way Donald Trump was treated was horrible. I am going to change it. I'm the one that can actually make the change. And that is to the pollster that Tapper is channeling. It wasn't just that he was Trump without the baggage. It was he's Trump, but he has this spirit of Trumpism, as people on the right would describe it. But he's also able to pass legislation. He's not mired in the palace intrigue of the Trump White House. And he's doing things. He's proactive with policy.

He's coming up with new ideas. And I don't think that he has been able to define himself that way in the campaign. He was as governor, but in the campaign when you are, again, he's talking to Jake Tapper in this planned interview for the last few days, it's at least been publicly announced. And what happens? Jack Smith sent a target letter to Donald Trump. Timed it for that. So it just, I mean, I think there's a really possible, and people understand this obviously, but it looks really like Donald Trump dominating the media cycles is also going to have him dominating the polls.

And so far, we have seen no evidence to the contrary. In fact, we've seen Trump's numbers or the gap between Trump and DeSantis grow the more Donald Trump is being hit with indictments and legal challenges, the more he is dominating the media cycle, the more he's dominated the polls so far. And the phrase, to your point, that he keeps using is, get it done. Right. And he used that with that Trump supporting woman. He's like, basically, Trump's good, he's great, he makes you laugh, all those things, but I'm going to actually get the

things done that he said he was going to get done. But I think that momentum and winning is the thing that you need to persuade people that you're actually going to get it done. Like winning begets more winning. And if you are losing, you get the stench of an L on you. And then when you say, I'm going to get it done, people are like, okay, that's great that you're going to get it done, but you can't even win this election. Your poll numbers have cut in whatever they have, a third or whatever, since you've come out. And you saw that on the Democratic primary a lot, that people had a lot of questions about actually Barack Obama's electability in 2008, but winning Iowa and then polling evenly with Hillary Clinton

was it. That was the answer. Yes, that's a good comparison. You can't win? Oh, well, I just won. Now I can win. And Bernie Sanders answered some of those electability questions as well by winning a bunch of races. And then when he lost some key some critical battleground races it all came rushing back that oh yeah he can't win and so you had a but and so the idea of whether you can get something done or whether you're electable is so ephemeral and so related to just how you're doing it's it's an unfair kind of circular reasoning that people have but that's the that's the world that we live in. And right now, he's kind of undermining his own case by flailing around the campaign trail.

Now, they got into actually foreign policy a bit, not something that Ron DeSantis would deal quite as much with as governors who would as president, although Florida is a big state with international waters on it. So he has a little bit of that. But Tapper asked him, obviously, he's also a veteran, but Tapper asked him here about Ukraine. and this is how Ron DeSantis responded. We are going to approach the world, instead of Europe being the focus like it has been since World War II, and it was understandable why it would be after World War II. NATO stopping the Soviets, I get it. But now the Asia Pacific really needs to be to our generation what Europe was to the post-World

War II generation. So I would have the Europeans do more in Europe. That's more in their backyard. That's more of an interest for them. You know, I would be willing to be helpful to try to bring it to a conclusion there, but I am not gonna diminish our stocks and not send to Taiwan.

I'm not gonna make us less capable to respond to exigencies. And you gotta to care at least as much about your own border as you do about foreign borders. Okay. Some people on the right have been a little hesitant on DeSantis when it comes to Ukraine, when it comes to whether or not he's willing to sort of go full Trump or full like new right, as it's called in conservative movement circles. He said, you know, I don't think anybody wants to see U.S. troops in Ukraine in his interview with Jake Tapper as well, in addition to sort of fleshing out that point and making the juxtaposition with China. Ryan, I want to play

one more clip because this one was sort of funny, too, of CNN, a CNN panel reaction to the interview. Let's roll this final clip. I think what we showed today was that I was happy to see him sit down with, I forget what they call you now, corporate media. Corporate media. Yeah, yeah. I'll take that. That's the nice version.

That's the nice version. Trust me, I know. But I was glad to see him sit down outside of his bubble because then it helps him look more electable. I mean, it's one thing to do a Joe Rogan interview or kind of the fringes. It's another thing to sit down with a consummate journalist. And I think today he was able to handle those questions and deal with them. And although I don't I don't believe in his policies per se, but he actually looked

decently presidential today. I'm not sure it was a reset because everything is I'm anti woke, anti woke today. He just inserted in the military. But at least today he started to give the vibe. There's still a Scott Jennings thing. It's a vibe primary. It's a vibe primary. He started to give the vibe that he could be president of the United States. Novel observation there from CNN. It's a vibe primary. There you go. What did you make of that? I'm kind of stealing my bit there. But I do like the idea that they think that appearing on CNN makes you seem like a presidential candidate. Appearing on breaking points and counterpoints, that's what makes a president.

Yeah. I mean, does it make you look electable to talk to the 20,000 remaining people watching CNN in the middle of the day? I mean, I get their point. If the problem that he's having is he's seen as too fringe because he's like half the things he says regular people don't understand. He launched with Elon. He's too online. He's too on Twitter in particular. Then getting off of that and seeming like a more normal person, eating pudding with a spoon rather than your fingers.

Like these are things that you can do as a politician to make yourself appear more palatable to a general electorate, I guess. He's lost the Ryan Grim vote. I can tell just because of the pudding. That was when you were like, don't say gay. That bill, stop woke. That bill. You were still thinking about supporting DeSantis. But when he ate the pudding with his fingers, that's when you said absolutely not.

Check, please. I'm out. I'm out. Can't do this. Gotta maintain some dignity. No, your point about CNN is an interesting one also because they don't, Bacari Sellers, they're just referred to Jake Tapper as a consummate journalist. And it's not so much that Ron DeSantis is unwilling to have conversations with these so-called consummate journalists. It's the problem with the Jake Tappers of the world is that they sort of fundamentally misunderstand DeSantis, but more importantly, DeSantis supporters. And that's one of the things DeSantis said in his back and forth with the woman we referenced earlier, the Trump supporting woman. I think this was in Iowa. He said it's not he did the Trump thing.

He said it's not about me. It's about you. And that is really, really, really powerful. That could be one said, it's not about me, it's about you. And that is really, really, really powerful. That could be one of the things that helps him sort of claw back at Trump. Again, I think this gap is really huge. And the more Trump is in the news, perhaps insurmountable. I don't think it matters very much if CNN sees Ron DeSantis as presidential, but he can generate news cycles when he goes back and forth with somebody like Tapper. And they're positive news cycles for him in a Republican primary.

So I think it was a decent showing for DeSantis on CNN yesterday. Sure. Good enough. Moving on to our next conversation here, we're talking about Joe Manchin, another one of Ryan's favorite politicians. Love Joe Manchin. All right, Ryan, what happened with Joe Manchin this week? So he was in New Hampshire, which may or may not have a primary, but it's still kind of symbolic in our minds of the launching of the presidential campaign season. So anytime you go to New Hampshire, you're sending a signal, hey, talk about me as a presidential candidate,

especially if you're going with a dark money organization that has raised $70 million and says that's going to have ballot access in all 50 states, not the Green Party, talking about no labels, which is basically private equity hedge fund and other moguls putting together money behind this organization to say that, you know, can we just get people like Joe Manchin and John Huntsman, Lisa Murkowski, if she'll join us. So just common sense solutions that involve a lot of cutting taxes and cutting regulations. Get some adults in the room. Yeah. Basically like, you know, 90s era republicanism. Or democratism. Yeah. They just want to go back to the 90s. 90s nostalgia. Yeah. They want low basically. Right, and so we put up A1 here. So Joe Manchin up at this no-labels event where they are very kind of not subtly recruiting him to be their independent candidate.

And he continues to tease it. Dick Durbin the other day called Joe Manchin history's greatest political tease. Accurate. No lies detected in that description. And so he sat down with these moguls to talk about how common sense solutions are needed and maybe he'll be the one to provide it. that the context for this is that you don't want to make any 100% predictions, but he's close to a dead man walking in West Virginia in his reelection race in 2024. Jim Justice has announced he's going to run against him. He's a former Democrat, former friend, who is now a Republican and not a friend. And the partisan structures that he's running up against in West Virginia are, to me, so insurmountable that even somebody who is an adept politician like he is in West Virginia and well-liked, you go around West Virginia, everybody likes Joe Manchin.

Yep. And the left has to acknowledge that. Like, he's good at the kind of the retail politics of it and in a small state where you get to meet most of these people over a long career. He was governor, secretary of state, state senator. His family's been involved in West Virginia politics for three generations. But it's just such a Republican state at this point that you've got too many voters who are just willing to say, I like Joe Manchin, but I'm a Republican. And I also like Jim Justice too. And so. Well, hence Jim Justice becoming a Republican. Right. Yeah, exactly. And, and Manchin, in fact, Manchin helped trigger this. I think in 1994,

Manchin was behind the Republican, the Democrats for the Republican governor movement, which really kind of busted the dam in West Virginia and helped create the Republican Party that is now going to eat him alive. If Manchin ran as a Republican and, say, Jim Justice hadn't gotten into the primary, so it was Manchin and Alex Mooney, if he had switched parties, he would win easily. Just with the R. Ish, maybe. The problem is, and I say this as somebody who's glad that he came back to the IRA and helped pass the biggest climate spending package in world history.

But I think that, his support for the American Rescue Plan, he was a pretty reliable, if annoying, Democratic vote throughout 2021 and 2022. And I think that that really did actually cost him back home. I'm not going to write a Profile in Courage book about Manchin. But compared to what West Virginia would be expected to produce, which is like a Shelley Moore Capito who's going to vote for zero Democratic priorities. Manchin was a godsend for Democrats in 2021 and 22. And I think he's going to and I think he'll pay the price for that. Now, like I said, he was extraordinarily annoying all the way through and cut what could have been a seriously ambitious agenda down to a much smaller one, but still big enough that it's causing him a lot of problems.

And so that leaves him with maybe this escape hatch of a vanity presidential run, and then a deal where, because he's a deal maker at heart, a deal where at some point he drops out for some type of concessions for who knows what. Yeah, there's something really powerful about being able to say, I was at the table when we were debating the American Rescue Act or whatever it is and saying, listen, they pushed me to do X, Y, and Z. And I just could see him.

I don't think he actually ever will become a Republican because I feel like he has this sort of emotional attachment to the Democratic Party. And he did vote. I mean, he voted in that direction, not in a Shelley Moore Capito way, because I think he is sort of an old school Democrat, maybe not in the way that modern Democrats like or would define that now. But he really, I don't know, I feel like if he did decide to become a Republican, a la Jim Justice, he would be a kind of an unstoppable force in West Virginia. But that's pure speculation. Your point is very well taken. Let's actually just roll this clip so people can see him seated next to a well-coiffed John Huntsman, a reporter up in New Hampshire. Take a look at this video. I think people are getting ahead of the, putting the cart ahead of the horse.

We're here to make sure that American people have an option. And the option is, can you move the political parties off their respective sides? They've gone too far right and too far left. If that movement can move, but that can't be done unless they're threatened. The only way you can threaten is to have people out there that says, listen, they can't win. Either side can't win without the independent. Without that independent, that means center left, center right, an independent Republican, an independent Democrat. If they have another option, then they're in trouble. Both parties are in trouble. So they're going to have to say, okay, we're going to look at this again. I don't think unless we stay over here that they're going to vote for us. Maybe we can move. Let's see what happens. It's too early. Everyone thinks we need

to do something. I'm aggressive on this because if you do get in the race and you spoil the election, would that factor into your- I've never been in any race I've ever spoiled. I've been in races to win. And if I get in a race, I'm going to win. So with that being said- Oh, he was ready for that one. He also told Caitlin Collins that he says, I haven't made any decision, nor will I make a decision until the end of the year. And this goes along with C3. If you were wondering, you know, when are they going to talk about Gavin Newsom, the most formidable man in the Democratic primary, potentially, here you have Democratic strategist Doug Schoen saying in an Orange County Register op-ed that Gavin Newsom wants to run for president. This wasn't sort of a spilling of any tea.

It was more just reading the tea leaves, looking at what's out there and saying this is a guy. And I'm sure Doug Schoen knows a little bit of inside stuff, too. And I think it's probably pretty clear. Writing is on the wall for a lot of people that Gavin Newsom wants to run. So I think the question when you look at both those stories side by side, two very powerful Democrats in their own states, it seems to me almost that they're running out the clock and that there's an idea of whether Joe Biden, something happens to Joe Biden, that they are positioned in case something goes wrong medically for Joe Biden, in case there's a surprise decision one day that he doesn't run

because of his age, because of his health. And now they're in a position where they can jump in. And I think Manchin may be using the third party excuse to do that. Or should we be taking the Manchin third party spoiler threat very seriously? I don't think so, because I think, like I was saying earlier, he's such a dealmaker that you could buy him out of that for whatever kind of concession he wants, if it looks like he's going to get seven or eight percent or something like that and throw the election to Trump. But I think you're right about the analysis of the status quo, because right now, the kind of no labels argument and the mansion argument pretends that Joe Biden doesn't exist. Like it pretends that Bernie Sanders won the presidential campaign. It's like the parties are in control, but the far left and the far right.

It's like, I'm pretty sure that Joe Biden is president right now. And Joe Biden is not the far left. He's just the definition of a boring centrist. Like that's who Joe Biden is. Although he's governed the far left. He's just the definition of a boring centrist. Like that's who Joe Biden is. Although he's governed a little differently. I'm glad that he has kind of been dragged a little bit to the left, but he's still Joe Biden. And he still always codes as a centrist either way. To voters.

To voters. And so the idea that somebody is going to look at Joe Biden and Joe Manchin and see much daylight between the two of them is is a fantasy. They also do this, this thing that he did in that clip where they say, you know, 60 percent of the country is is independent. Yes. Like, OK, yeah, that's true. Half those are registered as independents, but are always partisan voters with either Democrats or Republicans. Like another 40% of those are to the left of the Democrats or to the right of the Republicans. So they're not like centrists sitting around waiting for Huntsman and Manchin to team up. You're left with like maybe 10% of those independents who are remotely gettable. And those people don't want to vote for a spoiler in general. Or they'd probably just

rather sit it out than vote for a spoiler. And. And so you'd have to have like some health scare and then maybe Kamala is like the Democratic nominee or something. And then maybe there's some type of an opening or something. But yeah, it's, I don't even think with Gavin Newsom that you have a space for somebody on the kind of center right or center like a mansion. No. Yeah, I agree with that completely. And I think Newsom has sold himself in California. Interestingly, I don't think he flies outside of California. I do think he's charismatic, but I think outside of California, he just gets absolutely torched even in a Democratic primary. But he certainly would be able to have a lot of money and he would be able to get a lot of media. So it's not an insane idea that Gavin Newsom could position himself in a primary. I

think the entire no-label schtick, I'm sure we agree on this, is just so cynical. It's weaponizing this American fatigue with the political system in a way that disadvantages the political system. It's all about exploiting Americans' exhaustion with corruption for the sake of strengthening the ability to stay corrupt, to fortify the corrupt system. And you can see that by the people who flock to no labels, in fact. That's the most obvious thing in the world. It's just low taxes and open borders. It's on the center left and the center right.

You bring both of them together, and it's the worst of both worlds. And I think the one thing that populists have in common with centrists is like, why can't we just compromise? Why can't we just sit down at the table and do something for people? The problem is that centrists aren't actually serious.

What they want is to sit down at the table and do something that benefits them. Their version of compromise is let's help the industry or let's help the political class. And they do it under the veil, which is really powerful of compromise. But typically when people start talking about compromise in Washington, D.C., you should get really nervous. Right. Yeah. Everybody loves the idea of compromise. It's good. Yeah. We're learning kindergarten. They should be doing stuff.

Exactly. They're exploiting that. So Daniel Boguslaw for The Intercept went up to cover this event in New Hampshire. We could put up this last element. So good. So a No Labels board member told Boguslaw that if Martin Luther King were around today, he'd be supporting a mansion centrist run. He would be basically a member of No Labels. He wrote, the board member said, Dr. King was a centrist.

If he were alive today, he would be a member of the No Labels party. Boguslaw then pointed out to him, hey, don't you remember that whole thing where he said the biggest obstacle to progress is white moderates? And the board member was kind of shunted away before he could answer that question. whole thing where he said the biggest obstacle to progress is white moderates. And he was, the board member was kind of shunted away before he could answer that question. But so. Wasn't this board member in particular was like an associate of Martin Luther King's, was he not? Like someone who was in the circle of Martin Luther King. Right. And we also had that AI image going around of Donald Trump and Martin Luther King on Twitter. Did you see that yesterday? No, you can't unsee it.

You can go find that on social media if you want. It's MLK and Trump at a diner. At a diner? Yeah, sitting in a, like an Ohio diner kind of thing, just enjoying each other's company. And ironically, no labels gave Donald Trump an award in 2016 as a problem solver, a guy who, so now they're running against him as too far right. In 2016, they were like elevated him as somebody they would support. So I guess Martin Luther King, too, board member. That's why he's at the diner with Trump. Also a No Labels member. They were just getting some stuff done.

So I wonder what Martin Luther King thinks about No Labels going after their former guy. That would be interesting. Ryan, I'm really curious to get to this next block because it's an issue you've been covering very closely. The Intercept has been covering very closely. Let's talk about everything unfolding as you have Herzog from Israel coming to Washington, D.C. this week and the squad reacting and then establishment Democrats reacting to the squad reaction. Break it down for us. Well, I mentioned that Daniel Bogoslaw was at that New Hampshire event and the No Labels event on Monday. We also had him out at Netroots on Saturday for this moment where, so we'll play this clip. This is, you've got

Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They're on stage at Netroots Nation in Chicago, which is a gathering of kind of progressive operatives. They start getting protested over Israel and specifically over Schakowsky not being on a bill that would bar the use of U.S. money to detain Palestinian children. And it evolved slash devolved into this. I'll just leave. Maybe I should just walk off. Guys, can I say something? Can I say something as somebody that's been in the streets and has participated in a lot of demonstrations, I think I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state,

that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible. It does not even feel possible. And I want you to know that while you may have arguments with whether or not some of us on stage are fighting hard enough, I do want you to know that there is an organized opposition on the other side, and it isn't the people that are on the stage.

What is her staff doing letting her go to Netroots Nation? Because this is exactly from the perspective of your communications people. You don't want to have happen is her get up on the stage, start getting booed at Netroots, which is way more lit than CPAC in terms of booed at Netroots, which is way more lit than CPAC in terms of like boos and audience engagement, and then start riffing and get yourself into this situation. Now, you have a take on how other people reacted to this and not just a take, but reporting on it too. But yeah, you've seen a lot of politicians get tripped up by Netroots. I think famously you had Martin O'Malley. I think

when he was running for president, said, you know, got protested and said all lives matter. And it's like, oh, problem. Not the right place to say that. Don't say that there. Bernie Sanders got protested at a Netroots. Everyone does. And he just did his very grumpy thing. If you don't want me up here, I'll just get out of here. Leave me alone. You invited me here and now you're yelling at me. Come on. And so you've got to be prepared for these moments. And so Jayapal told the New York Times that as soon as she stepped off stage, that phrase, racist state, which is blunt, was rattling around in her head. And she's like, oh, that's not going to go well.

She's in a difficult spot because it is a state that has ministers in it who are proudly racist. One of them was convicted previously of inciting racism and supporting terrorism against Palestinians. Like literally, yeah, literally a minister in the government. They say racist things all the time. They have a explicitly ethno-nationalist orientation that gives rights to citizens based on their ethnicity and their religion. You have half the population living under the control of the country that doesn't have rights, and you have another half that does have rights. And so what is that? She described it in that moment as a racist state. If we can put this up and you can pause it and

read the whole thing, I'll read the entire thing. But here's her clarification of what she meant. What she's basically saying here is that she doesn't believe that Zionism equals racism and that she doesn't believe that the state is fundamentally intrinsically from the day it was born racist but that its practices you know currently are so that of course is not satisfactory to the people who are calling for her head and calling for her to, I guess, apologize more and more. And so they pushed a resolution onto the, which we can talk about later, they pushed a resolution onto the House floor yesterday, which came a day before Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, which is different than the prime minister, is coming to address the Congress. You have most of the squad members saying that they're going to

boycott this speech by Herzog. Here we have, I think, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being asked if she plans on attending. Will you attend this address tomorrow? I will not be attending. There's currently a crisis of democracy and apartheid, and I think that this is something that has been a consensus. Now, the resolution is one of the wildest things I've seen put into the hopper in my time covering Congress. If we can put up the text of it. That's a little small.

We'll have a bigger one for you later. But basically, you don't need to read it. I'll tell you all three things that it says. Interestingly, it condemns anti-Semitism and xenophobia. I was wondering if any Republicans would be like, wait a minute, we're against xenophobia now? Wait, are we condemning Trump here? What's going on here? It says, then the third one, it says, we will always support Israel, always.

Israel's like, hmm, we could even invade Ukraine and he'll still support us? Like, always. It's unconditional. We will always in the future support Israel. And then it says Israel is not a racist or apartheid state. Now, you know why they put racist in there because that's the word that Jayapal used. They slip in apartheid there because they know that everybody's now going to vote for this thing. And it led to a whole bunch of jokes saying my I'm not a racist or apartheid state t-shirt is raising a lot

of questions that I thought were answered by my t-shirt and to me any time that you are pushing the house to just straight-up declare that you are not something that you are not a racist state you're not an apartheid state you might have some problems that are not gonna be sorted out by the house just declaring it I was I was talking to be sorted out by the House just declaring it. I was talking to a reporter up on the Hill, and I told him this afternoon they're going to vote on Israel not being an apartheid state. And of course, like, but it is.

Like, no, but the House is saying it's not. Well, OK, so also then the Biden administration comes in because, again, this is all happening, as you mentioned, in the context of the speech that AOC. And Perzog meeting with Biden. Right. And AOC, it wasn't just AOC, it was other squad members. Bowman, Tlaib, Omar. And Omar and Tlaib's defense, let's be clear. Israel does not allow Omar or Tlaib into the country. Yes.

They're members of Congress elected by 700,000 Americans each, and they're not allowed to go into the country. So Israel has no right to complain if they don't feel like showing up for that speech. So we obviously disagree on this issue. And we've had this conversation many times. I think that where Jayapal actually walks back the racist statement, as you pointed out, that's where her kind of reservations and where she pulls back is really interesting, because to the point about Omar, for instance, when you use the word racist, when you invoke apartheid, as you mentioned, it's sort of the rights that are given, taken, et cetera, in Israel are not based on race. They're based on religion. And that is, it has implications, obviously, for ethnicity and race in Israel and in Palestine, obviously.

But whether it's baked into the state itself, racial policies, I think objectively, no. And that's where I have a really hard time invoking apartheid. There are Palestinian Arabs that serve in the Israeli parliament. There are plenty of people in Israel with different backgrounds, racial backgrounds, and I think specifically invoking race. And then Jayapal realizing specifically invoking race and walking it back. I feel like I'm in a weird position of agreeing with Jayapal at NetRates Nation as she's getting booed. But I actually think it's not so much that I agree with her. It's that I think actually where she walks back is where the meat of that

debate is. And it's so rare we start to talk about actually the center of the debate or the real thing at question. And actually, that's what's happened in this conversation. Yeah. And there's probably some elements of it that get lost in translation between the American culture and Israeli culture in the sense that, you know, race and racism is such an, has such a specific constructed meaning in the United States. It's like the absolute worst thing you can say to anybody. You've got Tommy Tuberville being like, well, they're white nationalists, but don't you dare call them racist. They're Americans. Like, and you, you, unless you're in the United States and in that conversation, you hear somebody like Tuberville say something like that. And they sound like a completely insane person. What do you mean? White nationalism isn't

racism. Huh? Where, where, where are you coming up with this? But understanding that mindset that that cordons off that that one term from everything else uh it helps to explain why it's like whoa whoa whoa whoa uh because if you're a palestinian living uh in under this occupation you go going through four checkpoints on on your way to school uh being taunted you know having having dogs nipping at you, the kind of academic debate between whether that you're a victim of racism or you're a victim of some kind of ethno-nationalist bigoted stew that is just producing this toxicity. It's upstream of racism. It's like whatever it is, it just feels just awful to live under. And then you throw in the apartheid question. I asked a bunch of members of Congress

yesterday on the Hill whether they thought it was an apartheid state. And some of them would say, well, look, Amnesty International says it is. And they would just try to defer to Amnesty International and other human rights groups, including B'Tsalam, an Israeli organization that says, yes, this is an apartheid state. Others would say, no, because an apartheid state requires permanent control over people within its borders. Now, control over some of these areas is going on 75 years. But as long as they can kind of pretend that there's going to be some two-state solution in the future, then this is a temporary occupation rather than an apartheid government. But if you have lived and died your entire life under this quote-unquote temporary system, it's very hard for you to see the difference.

So let's also—we have a clip from the White House. This is D5. This is Karine Jean-Pierre reacting here. The administration's new plan to counter anti-Semitism, as you all know, this past May, we announced a very comprehensive, once-of-a-kind anti-Semitism plan, which we think is incredibly important at this moment. I think they just solved the problem. Yes, they got an anti-Semitism plan. It's good to know. She was pressed a lot in that briefing about these questions. And she didn't really want to, because Democrats are in a difficult position. When, when Jayapal clarified her comments

there, walked them back, then she gets hit from the left saying, why don't you stand by that? Yeah. Like you have people saying, why say it? It doesn't help us for you to say it in the first place if you're not going to stand by it. And so in the same vein, the White House doesn't want to associate itself with that specific comment, but they also don't want to condemn her too hard because then they get hit for being weak on it. And the idea that the House of Representatives is taking time out of its day for this three-part resolution is just so perfect. And the White House as well.

And the White House is getting peppered about it, yeah. So we also have this tear sheet from The Intercept. You've had an article here about Pervez Aguam, really, really interesting article about a bit of a case study here. This is fascinating, yeah. So if you've been following our coverage, you know that in the 2022 cycle,

AIPAC and its allied super PAC or allied organization, Democratic Majority for Israel, they spent collectively close to $50 million in Democratic primaries telling voters that these candidates were bad. And not mentioning Israel-Palestine, just focus grouping whatever they could about Donna Edwards. They spent $7 million against Donna Edwards in Prince George's County in Maryland, basically saying that she was bad at constituent service, like never once talking about the actual issue at hand,

which is their differences on the question of Israel-Palestine. And so as a result, you had a lot of consultants advising their candidates, keep your head down on this issue and also other progressive issues because supporting the Green New Deal and Medicare for All was becoming a proxy for AIPAC and DMFI for also being supportive of Palestinian rights. So not only would they back away from supporting Palestinian rights, they would also back away from issues that they thought might get them in the crosshairs of AIPAC and DMFI because that amount of money in a primary is almost insurmountable. When you're fit like Donna Edwards was up by 30 points or so before they came in with six years six

or seven million dollars and knocked her out of that race. Summer Lee they came in the last three weeks and dropped millions. She got a million from outside from like Justice Democrats and Working Families Party. And she was able to respond. And she wasn't on record in any way that could be kind of used against her in these attack ads. And so she survived, but only by like 4,000 points. They had another two weeks. Maybe they end up beating even Summer Lee, who voted against this resolution, by the way. So now you have an interesting development where this candidate in Houston running against a pretty standard

kind of center-right New Dem, AIPAC-endorsed Lizzie Fletcher in Houston, elected in 2018, it almost seems to be baiting AIPAC and DMFI to get into the race because the district was redrawn by Republicans in Texas. It's now about 75 percent non-white with a significant Muslim population. A lot of – Houston has a big Pakistani population in particular, but also other Muslim American populations. And so he's just straight up saying Jayapal is getting attacked unfairly and that you know he supports restricting aid to Israel and that Basically ticks off every box that would get the attention of a pack And DMF I in my sense is that he feels like this is a chance chance to test

The question of if you actually run toward this issue rather than not mentioning it Like most of the cans would just try to try to not mention. Yeah, you know what make this an issue Yep, my opponent is being funded by outside money organized by a pack rather than not mentioning it, like most of the candidates would just try to not mention it. You know what? Make this an issue. My opponent is being funded by outside money organized by AIPAC. That's bad for democracy. That's bad for this district. I'm the anti-AIPAC candidate. And in a low turnout primary, if you can get people who that matters to to turn out, maybe he can win.

He's raised $300,000, so he's a credible candidate. So it'll be a real test case of whether or not you can actually run this way. Now, the question is, what kind of population do you need for that to work? So this is 75%, like I said, non-white. So that narrows the places where you can kind of run this strategy. But Houston and its suburbs is definitely potentially one of them. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's testing a political strategy that has a lot bigger implications. It's funny because we talk about this a lot on the right, especially when it comes to abortion. Another one of those issues where every sort of establishment politician, like the equivalent of a Jayapal, feels like they're always between a rock and a hard place.

You say one thing, you upset the base. You say another thing, it's a nightmare for them, especially when you throw in their donors and their fundraisers, et cetera. But there's this example of Ronald Reagan at an early CPAC. I want to say this is a CPAC phrase from maybe even the first CPAC. He talks about bold colors, not pale pastels. And especially on the left, a lot of people remember Ronald Reagan as being this sort of arch conservative, but he was a revolutionary. He completely remade the Republican Party. He was the tip of the spear of the remaking of the conservative, of creating the conservative movement, ushering it into the Republican Party, at least. And he really firmly believed that your best political strategy

is actually, in a lot of cases, the moral political strategy of just saying, here's what I believe, here's what I think is a problem, and confronting things head on. So the abortion parallel to me really stood out when you were talking about, I think this hit my inbox last night from your sub stack. That just stood out to me because I actually think it's something a lot of, especially centrist politicians, forget because they constantly have donors tripping in their ear. A lot of times voters just want to believe and trust that you're being honest with them and that they kind of know what you're going to do. And then they can make up their own judgment. And that's not even like hackney.

That really like people want to know that they can generally understand where you're coming from. And if you can pull that off, it's not easy if you're a politician because you want to lie about who's funding you and what you actually believe because you want to win. But sometimes even your most cynical attempt is not even your politically advantageous attempt. The strategy is in some ways cynical, but to go to Reagan, it's an interesting case that you want, as a politician, you want to elevate your least popular enemies so that you look kind of good in comparison to them. And Reagan did that all through California with this counterculture that people were, you know, that the silent majority. I would have been part of that counterculture. So I'm not, you know, but I'm not endorsing this opinion. I would have been beating you up. You would have been, yeah. Your hard hat on, hitting you with a monkey wrench, no doubt.

And so he's trying, he's kind of baiting attacks from the hippies. Right. So that he can be like, look, the hippies don't like me. I must be good. Totally. And so Pervez Aguon is saying, look, AIPAC wants to destroy me. Therefore, I must be good. And the resolution we have this from D6 did, obviously, you'll be shocked to learn, pass. What's that? 412 to nine. And one abstention. Yeah, you had Betty McCollum from Minnesota abstain, and then you had nine, which is basically the squad minus, I think sometimes Becca Ballant, Max Frost, Greg Casarget talked about is kind of squad adjacent. They voted yes, but otherwise it's the people that

you understand as like squad and squad adjacent voting no. Well, speaking of the squad, let's talk about Charles Barkley. How's that for a transition? There you go. Charles Barkley, clearly a member of the sports punditry squad. No doubt about it. I don't know. That's quite a stretch.

Well, Charles Barkley was out in Lake Tahoe over the weekend and actually talked about Bud Light twice, both Friday and Saturday nights. Charles Barkley was out in public weighing in on the Bud Light controversy, which is a really hilarious meeting in and of itself, just that Charles Barkley is so fixated on what's happening at Bud Light. Let's start by rolling the clip here. I got three kisses to put on my face. Hey, and I want to say this. If you're gay, bless you. If you're transgender, bless you.

And if you have a problem with that, fuck you. Okay. Right. Charles Beckley also said, he actually talked about how he's not afraid of cancel culture. And I think what set a lot of people off is that he said, all you rednecks or a-holes who don't want to drink Bud Light, F y'all. Hey, y'all can't cancel me. I ain't worried about getting canceled because let me tell you something. If y'all fire me and give me all that money, I'm going to be playing golf every effing day.

As I last said, if you're gay, as I said last night, if you're gay, God bless you. If you're trans, God bless you. If you have a problem with them, F you. Obviously, the Dylan Mulvaney controversy, which has then turned into a boycott of Bud Light, that has, at least in the short term, absolutely affected their bottom line and their business. It has ignited a conversation over ESG because there's this conversation, why would Bud Light send the influencer kit to Dylan Mulvaney, even though it was only like one or two beers, whatever was sent to Dylan Mulvaney, obviously a major trans influencer. Why would they do that? Why would they want to upset their customers? Then you have the

Bud Light executive saying that their brand is too fratty and they're trying to get away from that. Why would they do that? A lot of people were saying, well, it's for the ESG score. It's because they don't mind having a dip in business in the short run so long as they can seduce investors to put their money in Bud Light based on getting a better score on the ESG list, which is those scores actually do really matter. So the conspiracy theory would be that they would deliberately tank their stock by half so that they can get more investment in the company. It's like that doesn't make any sense. Probably that they didn't anticipate. That would be that much of a hint. I'm sure they did not, yeah.

And that you have people who are operating without the knowledge of, you know, the people really, really high up. You have marketing executives who are so thoroughly steeped in, you know, their sort of ideology that they see all of this as being a benefit for business and not to mention sort of a moral imperative. And so that's why Bud Light, as soon as this happened, got rid of the woman. I believe she was first suspended and then— Canceled. Yeah, canceled. Yeah, canceled the woman who went viral. The right is out canceling everybody.

But Barclay's point about—I think it's actually really interesting that he started by saying, if you're gay, bless you, and then if you're trans, bless you, because this is a country that even among the Bud Light drinking demographic, there is high support for gay marriage and for homosexuality in general. That happened over a really quick period of time. Support really built. It's specifically the Dylan Mulvaney thing. Bud Light has been doing pride stuff for years. It was specifically Mulvaney in 2023 that set this off. What surprised me about the whole thing is like, why is the right now upset about corporations appealing to different sub-communities? Like corporations have always done, like you got people who are into hiking, you know, there's the hiking themed product that they make. And it would be like, well, I don't like to hike.

And so I'm so mad that they marketed their beard of hikers that I'm gonna boycott the thing. It seemed kind of snowflakey to me rather than what I would expect from a previous incarnation of the rite, which is more of a live and let live. Like, you don't like Dylan Mulvaney, fine. But to then never drink Bud Light again is a strange reaction to me. Especially as a conservative, I've always found boycotts to be kind of snowflakey because as a conservative that, you know, I didn't grow up in the 50s and 60s. So

as somebody who grew up in the 90s and aughts, you don't have a lot of options if you start boycotting things. And it's always incredibly selective. And also, I really like Bud Light Lime. So that was problematic from the get-go. But on that note, although I am like, I'll take Miller Lite. I'm from Milwaukee over Bud Light any day, the St. Louis swill. But on that note, unless you put lime in it, that's what's so interesting about the Barclay clip to me, is that it does channel the live and let live populist American sentiment in general. That's not just the American kind of like if you had to say, what is the American attitude on politics? It's not just when it comes to social policy. It's also like when it comes to the size of government. It's really powerful when you talk to people about like gas stoves, when you talk to people about the New York pizza

ovens. I'm not saying that this applies to Americans' approval of every policy down the line, but it is just that resonates with a huge swath of the American public. But that's where it comes into tension with the trans stuff is that it's like live and let live, but stay away from my kids is how people on the right see it. But Dylan's an adult.

But Dylan is an adult influencer that is, first of all, a big TikTok influencer, was brought into the White House. And I think people see Dylan Mulvaney as someone who is kind of contextualized by the cultural, not Bud Light, obviously, because it's not for children, but by the cultural establishment and like trans influencers in general as role models for children. And they pitch themselves, Rachel Levine

has made that pitch too, that like this is an example for children to look up to and follow. But if that's how people feel, parents should just keep their kids off TikTok, right? I mean, I agree with that, obviously. And people are doing it with Disney, too. And so like Disney has gotten a taste of this. But I just think that's interesting of the context or the tension is that there is a really strong live and let live strain in America, which is where I think you saw support for gay marriage skyrocket in the span of like 10 years. And, you know, Obama goes from campaigning against it to championing it in the matter of like four years, like 2008 to 2012. But then this particular issue with like transgenderism, as you have the left push for policies that people feel encroach on their

freedoms, it's different than what people saw with gay marriage, which was opening up freedom from their perspective, the perspective of your sort of like average American. And that's where I think things are fundamentally different for people. I do feel like there's a retrenching going on, though, even in the LGB side. I'm curious if you're seeing that, too. We don't have it handy. But Mark Pocan, Congressman from Wisconsin, openly gay member of the Appropriations Committee, delivered a really searing five-minute speech that people can find it on my Twitter feed, because Republicans in the committee blocked earmarks that were associated with any LGBT groups.

And his point was nobody here would remotely consider blocking an earmark because it was associated with a civil rights group. Like that would, nobody would even today think to even suggest doing that and to block and and he and he talks about the way that the attack on uh the trans movement has has now as now as he said kind of affecting more broadly oh yeah the broader movement so i i don't i don't think the gains are as locked in as uh as people would like no not at all andrew sullivan talks about this a lot and has written about this a lot, that if you are LGB and you have enjoyed a lot of wins over the last couple of decades, and then you see the T sort of being inextricably intertwined with the LGB cause and the T is asking for things that even a lot of people in the LGB camp are uncomfortable with and don't think are smart policy, let alone politically advantageous. This is not going away anytime soon. I think specifically because of that, because it's going to start to cause friction with a cause that a lot of the country supports. And that's going to be, again, like, I just don't think this is going anywhere anytime soon, despite what maybe Charles Barkley wants, I guess. Well, Charles Barkley, I think,

understands that there is a huge portion of the population who supports those rights and will support him for standing up for it, particularly his show's going to be on CNN, right? I think he does have a show with Gayle King debuting on CNN. Right. So I think, yeah, he sees that, you know, he's speaking to millions of people who are going to see that and agree with him, be like, thank you for standing up for us, King Charles. I think the American public is very much on board with the King Charles point when it comes to live and let live. Like, if you're trans, bless you. I think that's a really easy pitch to make. I think, especially for adults, I think when there are policies involved that start,

that people feel are on offense, you know, they're aggressive. The policy is the aggressor as opposed to, you know, opening things up or whatever it is. And children are involved. I think that's really where the King Charles line will not be as politically palatable. King Charles was my hero growing up.

Really? I didn't know that. Read his memoir like three times. It should be on your shelf. I lost it. I mean, it's so tattered. I saw him at a Phillies game once. I didn't know any of this. And got his autograph. Was he nice? He was very nice. It was great. I'm sure he was. I can

see that. Ryan, you're going to be talking to us. I'm going to be talking about the Jason Aldean video controversy. I know you're a huge Jason Aldean fan. I'm kidding. Have you heard of Jason Aldean? Nope. Okay. Before learning about this person. Right. Before that, you're going to be talking to us about Marjorie Taylor Greene. What do you got for us today?

Incredible development in the presidential campaign. An endorsement by Marjorie Taylor Greene of the Biden agenda, the greatest political ad definitely of this cycle, maybe of the last 10 cycles. Let's roll this one. Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started that LBJ expanded on. And Joe Biden is attempting to complete programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions. And he still is working on it. Okay. When I first saw her speech at, which was it? Turning Point.

Yeah, the Turning Point USA thing. I wondered, I was like, are they going to turn this into a 30-second campaign ad? Because I would if I were them. And sure enough, they did. And this is not a deepfake. This is not AI produced. This was the speech that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave. If there was any deception at all, it would be in

where they ended it, because of course she doesn't end it right there. She kind of is upset about what she says is the fallout of some of that FDR, LBJ, Biden agenda. So just for the sake of honesty and transparency, like here is kind of the rest of what MTG said. That is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete, socialism. Meanwhile, we are now $32 trillion in debt with record high homelessness, 40-year record inflation. We're losing the U.S. dollar as the

number one world currency. We're losing our freedoms. Our government is one big, fat, bloated machine. And it's killing the American dream. So a bunch of technocratic stuff about the budget, and it's killing the American dream, and it's socialism. Bernie Sanders gave kind of the same speech during the 2020 campaign where he said, you guys say that I'm a socialist. I call myself a democratic socialist. Let me tell you what I mean by democratic socialism. And he couched it in the spirit of FDR and the legacy of FDR. He said, I'm an FDR Democrat. Biden, when he was really feeling his oats in early 2021, said the same thing, that he wanted to be, you know, wanted to be another FDR. That's when he really pushed forward with this like really aggressive kind of agenda that was then whittled away by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

But if you want to wrap that all in socialism, OK, fine. It's government spending. Fine. Call it socialism. Okay, fine. It's government spending. Fine. Call it socialism. What is Marjorie Taylor Greene doing here? Just reading off what literally was turned into a campaign ad for Joe Biden. I think it's still a blind spot for the right. how favorable... Well, speaking of the developing populist Republican mind, actually speaking of Georgia, another Georgian, we're going to talk about

Jason Aldean, who Ryan said he is excited to learn about who this person is. Country fans know Jason Aldean. He's a very, very popular and has been a very... Oh, this guy. Yeah, yeah.

He's like one of the kings of pop country and has been a mainstay for a very long time. He had a video called Try That in a Small Town, very politically charged. It's for his new single, which I think was actually released in May. The video itself was released pretty recently within, I think, within the last week. But it was pulled, as of today, it was pulled by CMT. And CMT hasn't quite waded into, again, this is just as of we're taping, they haven't answered media comment requests about why they did that.

But the video has gotten a lot of criticism from the left. We can put the first element up on the screen. This is just CMT yanked the video. Again, they haven't said exactly why they did that, but Billboard was the first to report it. Then all of this conversation, I think, started bubbling more and more to the surface. The right started to really pay attention

to the blowback that Aldine had been getting. I think the right had just been kind of enjoying the video and not paying attention to the people who were criticizing it. Just so you can get a little taste of what that video is like. Here's a very short clip. Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store. You think it's cool. So carjacking, pull a gun on an owner of a liquor store.

These are things that as red meat as they sound, are ripped from headlines. Here in Washington, D.C., not too long ago, a man who was a translator in Afghanistan was gunned down during his shift driving. I think he was a Lyft driver. At night, his wife told him, you know, didn't want him to go out, but he said he had to make money. And he clearly was a hardworking man, was gunned down during his shift for absolutely no reason, totally senseless violence. And so, again, I get that that sounds red meat like a lot of it, but it's also pretty ripped from the headlines. And I guarantee you resonates with a whole lot of people, even if it's not people in my immediate area here in Washington, D.C. And actually a couple of weeks back, Crystal and I got into a conversation about country music

and especially pop country music. I said something that I got some tweets about. It was kind of interesting that I really am annoyed by how country music sometimes devolves into redneck mad libs. Like if you grew up in a smaller city in a flyover state, you know a lot of the stuff is just coastal liberals who are getting rich off of dumb stereotypes because it doesn't feel

remotely authentic. And it's like when Hollywood does their Real America depictions, they're just sort of crudely attempting to paint a picture of what they think quote, real America looks like and it's generally laughable. And you get that

in country music a lot, even though it's supposed to be like the one place where it speaks to real people, and I think to some extent it still does that. But sometimes you do just get redneck mad libs. And what's really unfortunate about that happening in country music is that you're undercutting one of America's coolest artistic exports. And people don't think of country music that way, but it really is.

It developed with musical traditions from West Africa, from Ireland, from Italy, blended all of these things together, and even more than that, in a very, very, very American way. And by the way, the story of country music, not all positive. Some very American, but very bad parts of that story, and some very American and very good parts of that story. But, you know, at the end of the day, pop music is always going to be pop music, whether it's country music, whether it's rap, any of that. Some of it is good. But when you get into that redneck Mad Lib territory,

where you have these people in like air-conditioned boardrooms who are just throwing words like tractor and beer and truck together, it's just sucking the soul out of one of this, actually, I would say, like, one of the most valuable American artistic traditions. So, the Aldine video is getting absolutely torched by the left on social media. I'm trying to find some of the quotes here. This is a police reform activist who, you know, said, just look at the lyrics, and you see that beyond this being so insensitive to the small town folks dying from gun violence, it's a reference to mass shootings in places like Uvalde, it is also just a racist dog whistle invoking, quote, urban crimes that we better

not do in, quote, his sundown, quote, town. This is for the, quote, what about Chicago crowd. And then you have a podcast host, Jim Stewartson, who said, this is one of the most dangerous, irresponsible videos from a mainstream artist I have ever seen. Jason Aldean is openly radicalizing his fans into white nationalist vigilante violence. And yeah, there's the, the, interestingly, this is a quote from Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman, who said Jason Aldean shot this at the site where a white lynch mob strung Henry Choate up at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, after dragging his body through the streets with a car in 1927. That's where Aldean chose to sing about murdering people who don't respect the police. Okay, so Aldean responded to all of this. He goes on Instagram and says, quote,

I've been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song, a song that has been out since May, and was subject to the comparison that I, direct quote, was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. He said, no one, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart. Try that in a small town. For me, it refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors regardless of differences or background or belief. That to me is fascinating

because he said, you'll notice something in the past tense. Again, just to get this up to speed or just to get this in there again, he said, it refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief. Again, that is past tense. And it's probably true that you'll have a harder time carjacking someone in small-town Virginia than you would here in Washington, D.C. But small towns are suffering as much, and if not more in some cases, than the bluest cities in other ways. So like the 7,000 person city that I grew up in in Wisconsin, some of these places are thriving because social capital remains really high. Others, though, where NAFTA and WTO absolutely decimated their workforces are not at all what they used to be. People are falling through the safety net. Drugs and crime are

everywhere. Social scientists have looked at the correlation between low social capital in some of these really rural areas and drugs and deaths of despair. This is not a secret at all. These patterns are crystal clear. And that's why people like Aldean and others from a lot of places that have been hit this way, like Donald Trump, some of them express that political sort of angst by liking Bernie Sanders. But Donald Trump, why does someone like Jason Aldean, who's a Trump supporter, flock to him? Because nobody else is comfortable saying things that Aldean is saying in that song, which, by the way, are closer to the truth than a lot of what his critics are saying right now. And he was immediately called racist. Again, this is one of those things that just pushes people to Donald Trump.

There's a really good song by Mark O'Reilly, and I think it actually might be getting covered on the new Grace Potter record, lovely Vermont native. I love this song. It's called Rose-Colored Rearview because in it, the singer remembers better times in a small town, but then wonders whether that's just kind of the sheen of nostalgia. And I think that's a thought process a lot of people are going through right now. So the lyrics are, there was a time this town felt like family I could ride my bike down any street and somebody always knew my name There was a time before the mill pulled out and the pills moved in when we didn't need no medicine

Just to take away the pain was there a time or was it only in my mind? When everything seemed simpler and we all sat down for dinner every night or am I just looking through this rose-colored rear view? The answer is yes in a whole lot of places There was time. And that's where that Aldine song is fascinating. It's not just the cities versus Mayberry anymore. The cities are burning. And while Mayberry might not physically be on fire, it's burning up too. And Ryan, that to me is really obviously sad. But also, there is this, I think, tense. Well, the show is kind of over, but also not quite over, because we have an interview with Christopher Ruffo,

author of the new book, America's Cultural Revolution, coming up. Ryan and I have both read the book, and we're really excited about it. It is going to be posted after the full show. We've got 20 to 30 minutes with Rufo coming up. And so what we want to do is get the show out to subscribers so that we are all up to date. We made a deal with our subscribers. We're not going to break that deal. That's right. Yeah. So we want to get the full show out and then we're going to get that Rufo interview up a little bit later. So basically stay tuned for that. But thank you for watching the show. We appreciate it. We'll of course be back next Wednesday with more counterpoints

and back really soon with the Rufo interview. There you go. See you soon. Stay tuned. Terima kasih telah menonton! Thank you. Terima kasih telah menonton! Thank you. Terima kasih telah menonton! 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. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to address the Tonys.

On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.