Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/25/22: Uvalde Report, Russia-Ukraine, Post-Roe, Airline Chaos, Pelosi Trading, Recession Signs, Civil War, & More!

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about a new Uvalde report, Russia-Ukraine developments, Post-Roe culture wars, airline dysfunction, Pelosi insider trading, tech sector recession, civil war discourse, & Biden admin's press restrictions!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Steven Nelson: https://nypost.com/author/steven-nelson/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. I think everything that might've 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.

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in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing, because we're back. We're finally back, Crystal. Indeed we do. Nice to be back in the chair. We did miss you guys, although it was a little bit nice to have a week off. Yeah, it was nice. Reset, refresh, regroup. If I say anything dumb, blame it on jet lag.

I'm still blaming long COVID for any brain fog that I have from here on out. Before we get to what's in the show, we do have a couple of announcements off the top that I do not want to forget. Number one, live show. Let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen. We're getting closer and closer to that date, September 16th, 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time in Atlanta, Georgia. It's going to be the first of many.

It's going to be around the corner, huh? I know. I'm really excited. We're already planning, making sure it's going to be a great tour. This is going to be the first of many. It's going to be around the corner, huh? I know. I'm really excited. We're already planning, making sure it's going to be a great tour. This is going to be the first of many. But as we've said, if you can help us out by buying tickets to this first one, help show the industry venues, et cetera, that we can indeed sell tickets here at Breaking Points. The link is down there in the description. Second, for our premium subscribers, for those of you who have already done so, we deeply appreciate it. We've got that promotion going on right now. If you're a monthly subscriber, if you can help the show out for

financial planning purposes, if you can realize some cash at this moment, you can upgrade from monthly to yearly for a 20% discount. The link is going to be at the very top of your premium newsletter. For all of those who have done so so far, it is so deeply appreciated. And if you can continue to do so, if you're one of those people, if you can afford it, it deeply, deeply is important to the show. And we're just so grateful to all of you. Absolutely. And a lot of you have already upgraded, which I want to thank you for. The response to the promotion has been really strong. And again, it just really helps us out for this year as we're planning for the midterms and thinking about bringing another person on. It just really helps us to plan all of that. Okay, in the show today, we do have some new developments out of Uvalde and actually some new indications that politically this is hurting Texas Republicans in terms of their failed response to the massacre of those students in that town.

We also have a sort of deal between Russia and Ukraine on shipping out grain through the Black Sea. But then Russia immediately started shelling the port city that the grain is supposed to go out of. So we've got all of those updates for you. Also, Democrats finally making some intelligent political moves in the House and the Senate, putting Republicans on the spot with some tough votes on gay marriage and contraception access and also some related to abortion. So we'll give you those breakdowns. New numbers about exactly who is to blame for the chaos at American airports. And by the way, it is exactly what you think. It is the airline's fault. In spite of all of their attempts to blame shift, it is their fault.

And of course, Pete Buttigieg in charge of the Department of Transportation doing nothing and also sort of really gaslighting the public about exactly how on top of the issue he has been. Also, guys, stock alert here for those of you who are, you know, making moves in the market. Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband, making some big moves ahead of some potential legislation with regards to chips. So we will tell you about that. But Sagar, we did want to start with the very latest out of the investigation in Uvalde. Yeah, we got to stay on top of this story. And when we were looking over the things of the last week, yes, I know Biden has COVID.

He seems fine. You know, wish him the best. But this is always going to be one that we want to try and stick to as much as possible because the reports out of it, everyone seems to be more unbelievable than the next. And we finally have some even more horrific details. Put this up there on the screen. Now, the latest report out of the state of Texas is an 80-page report. It's basically been obtained by multiple media outlets. This was read by authorities, the Texas State Senate and others. 400, 400 law enforcement officials were outside and had rushed to the mass shooting before they had actually gone in, breached the door. This picture that those who are watching can just see in front of you is literally of a officer standing in front of other officers with his hands up like this, preventing them from going into the hallway to where the shooter was located.

And throughout that report, they blame, quote, systemic failures. Yeah, you think? For exactly what exactly happened here. I think it's horrific because they really just point to the fact that, as we'd already learned, if these guys had done their jobs, the shooter could have been neutralized within three minutes of the shooting. Three minutes. And we already know, based upon video evidence, that there were not only officers on the scene. There were officers. They didn't just have handguns. They had high-powered rifles. Like, they had what they needed.

There even was an officer there who had a riot shield or some sort of ballistic shield that could have been used. As we also know, the door itself was unlocked, and they spent 20 to 30-odd minutes, you know, kind of faking around trying to quote, find the key, even though they didn't need a key. Nobody even asked for a key in the initial 30 minutes of what was happening. It ultimately really took a tremendous act of insubordination on behalf of some border patrol officers who were like, you know what, forget it. We're just going to go in. Yeah. And, and, and all of that. So all of that is detailed here in the report. But the top line, 400. That's almost as many kids who are in the damn school who are on scene. Completely insane.

Yeah. And I think what it shows is, you know, we've seen so many shifting narratives. And that is actually another piece that came out, some talking points that they had about the narrative that they wanted to push, that you heard politicians from Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas on down, pushing immediately after this happened, before we knew any of the facts of just how failed this response ultimately was. Then once that narrative starts to fall apart, then there was an attempt to really put 100% of the blame on Pete Arradondo, who is, of course, in charge of the Uvalde School District Police Force. Now, listen, that dude deserves a lot of blame. But when you've got 400 law enforcement officers and we're talking about 150 Border Patrol agents, 91 state police officials, and then you have the local PD,

you had U.S. federal marshals on the scene, every level of law enforcement, and they all just stand around for an hour and 20 minutes and do nothing. It really does show you how there is something that has gone really awry in terms of law enforcement. I mean, we were talking before the show about this Indiana shopping mall where there was a shooting and an ordinary civilian with a gun was able to take this guy out like this. And you just realized that, you know, something we said from the beginning is you honestly would have had a much more effective, much better, much less deadly response if just random parents had been given guns and weapons and been able to go in, because this is an absolute atrocity.

The fact that it was every single level, no, no, no. The blame is not on one person. It is on every single person who stood there and did absolutely nothing and was happy to shift the blame, happy to shift the responsibility, happy to pretend that it wasn't their problem. Yeah, this is the 22-year-old in Indiana, Elisha Dickin. I hope I'm saying that right, Elisha, if you're out there. Definitely a hero. And you know, actually, just exactly what you're talking about. This is a proficient guy in firearms. He had his gun on him. He actually had found cover. He was asking people to move behind him as he moved forward, took the shooter out in a matter of minutes. And you have

400 here. I also do think that, unfortunately, some of the blame, the most blame has gone towards Pete Arradondo. And look, it should, and we're about to get to even more of why that guy should be fired and some more cover-ups that continue. However, there were federal marshals who were on the scene. I actually got some messages from people who watch the show who are in the federal marshal service, U.S. marshals, and they're like, this is outrageous. They're like, these people are a disgrace to our, so they even understand, he was telling me that the way that they train is specifically for situations like this. And they're like, yeah, anybody can expect some small yokel PD not to do the best. But you have guys there with millions of dollars in training for – well, supposedly for situations like this and who don't do anything.

I also want to spend some time on that narrative thing that you brought up because it's very important, which is similar. There were some documents that came out. The city of Uvalde itself, days after the shooting occurs and their meeting with the Texas Department of Public Safety, they're not going over what went wrong. They are lambasting him for criticizing their response and have created an official government document that was titled narrative. And it has a different version of events from what may be described as the facts in which they say, oh, well, he was barricaded. And according to that, well, do we have a different training regimen? Complete BS. They literally trained for this months before in the school where this actually happened. They knew.

And it even says written in the documents, you may be the first person there and you may have to put your life on the line in order to immediately stop. Everybody knows active shooter situation, that the bleeding stops whenever the shooting starts. And also, for those who were coming to these cops' defense, they were like, well, you know, the majority of the shooting took place in the first three minutes. Okay. Let's say you saved one, maybe two lives immediately just in terms of those shots. Worth it. Is that worth it? And then even more so, remember, there are people who bled out on that floor. I mean, everybody who, you know, it's called the golden hour in combat for a reason, because you need an hour. Or within that hour, you have a, I think it's dramatically, exponentially higher likelihood of surviving,

like, even horrific gunshot wounds. So who knows how many kids may have been in critical condition versus who have been bled out on the floor. Another piece that came out in this report is the fact that they did know the 911 calls were coming from inside the room. And there was a lot of question of that initially of like, oh, maybe they didn't know that there were still kids in there and that those kids were still alive. No, this has now been revealed. They knew. They knew that there were kids kids in there and that those kids were still alive. No, this has now been revealed. They knew. They knew that there were kids in there. They're calling 911, begging for help as they, you know, sort of like bumbled around and pretended like they were finding a key. When you've got, I mean, you had even, the door wasn't even locked, number one. They didn't even

try the knob. That's number one. Number two, even if the door was locked, they had everything they needed within three minutes to forcefully breach that door, even if it was locked. So it's just mind-boggling. It really is not mind-boggling to watch 400 law enforcement officials from every single level, all in their gear, all G.I. Joe'd up, standing around and hoping that someone else is going to deal with the issue. And we also have the video that we've seen, that we had been heard described to us. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. You have Officer Ruben Ruiz here. He is actually a Uvalde PD officer. You can see him, for those who are watching, he's coming forward with his gun in his hand and he's saying, she's been shot, she's been shot.

You can see officers there actually putting their hands around him, kind of pushing him back. Look, there's been some judgment of the guy. Like, he didn't fight hard enough. That's all Monday morning quarterbacking. He was clearly in shock and trauma. And actually, we talked previously about an officer who was on his phone.

He was actually the guy who was on his phone because he was checking to make sure he was getting text messages and calls from her. She was getting shot inside of the classroom. He knew she was shot. She ultimately perished. He says there in the video, she said she's been shot. And they still pull him back.

So they know that people are getting shot inside. We know about the 911 calls. We know that her own husband is outside of the room being restrained by his colleagues and pushed back, kind of like that. I mean, it's just a horrific situation. As we said also in terms of the reporting and Pete Arradondo, let's throw this up there. So this school board has now delayed, they were supposed to fire him four days ago, Pete Arradondo. He was placed on leave, obviously, and from the city council as well. Well, they canceled the meeting, which was on Saturday, where they were scheduled to, quote, consider firing the police chief. And they're blaming it on process.

Look, they had the vote ready to go. Then they canceled the meeting ahead of where this guy's been. It's been over a month since the shooting even happened. So in what world is this not even justice, accountability? Most people have made peace with the fact that these guys will never be able to be criminally prosecuted, even though I think many of them should be, specifically Pete Arradondo. At the very least, we want him to be fired. We want him to have his job lost. And yet, they can't even come around to firing him. It's crazy.

What the residents are saying, and I think what any decent human being in the country would say, is that not a single one of these people deserves to have a badge. Yeah, that's right. I mean, all 400 of them that stood by, men and women in their gear that stood by and did nothing, not a one of them deserves to, you know, pretend to protect and serve. So the fact that even this one dude who, you know, really was supposedly in charge and was the one who came up with this idea of, oh, it's, you know, it's not, it's a barricaded subject, so we need to just do nothing for an hour and 20 minutes, and who even when they went in was still reluctant, was like, I guess you guys can go

in, but seemed to not really think it was the right thing to do. At the very least, there could be some accountability for this guy. And I think the failed political response, just as the failed law enforcement response was at every single level from local to state to federal, the failed political response also goes across every single level. Clearly, the local Good Old Boys network is closing ranks around these guys and trying to protect them in every way they can. And they have from the beginning. I mean, blocking media, harassing the mom who did actually ultimately go in after being handcuffed and get her children and was willing to speak out to the press. But then you also see

from the governor on down, everybody sort of trying to close ranks, trying to block any sort of public release of information and zero pressure for accountability at any level of government. And I think that's a good way to transition into there does seem to be some political blowback from this failed response and total lack of accountability in conjunction with other political stories and issues that have come to the forefront. In particular, there's a story in the New York Times about the Texas governor's race, which, listen, I think Greg Abbott is still probably going to get reelected, guys. Beto O'Rourke is not, you know, charging to the front here. But he has closed the gap pretty significantly.

Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. So the headline here for The New York Times is, After recent turmoil, the race for Texas governor is tightening. A series of tragedies and challenges have soured the mood of Texans and made the governor's race perhaps the most competitive since the 90s. So let me go ahead and read this opening graph to you that gives you a sense of what is impacting the political dynamics down there. They say one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

That's, of course, what we've been talking about in Uvalde. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country's worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid which failed during bitter cold and is now straining under soaring heat because they did not really do much of anything to fix the issues that had become quite manifest last time around. They say the unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Governor Greg Abbott and making the race

the most competitive since the 90s. You know, interesting, a couple of notes here from this article. They say the issue of gun control, a top concern among a group that Republicans have been fighting hard to win, Hispanic women. Another poll showed that 59 percent of respondents in the state now think that Texas is on the wrong track. And the latest two polls out of that race have Beto O'Rourke within five percentage points of the governor. Now, I looked at a poll about two months ago, Sagar. Granted, it was an outlier. Beto was down by about 20 points. So if you look at, I looked at 538, I looked at RealClearPolitics, whatever sort of analyst you're looking at, there is no doubt

that this race has tightened significantly. Again, Beto is still behind. I don't think he's an incredible candidate. I think he really harmed himself during his presidential run in terms of his standing with Texans. But the fact that Abbott has taken on some water here over his failed Uvalde response, but also over, I think, abortion in the state of Texas. I mean, this is a generally culturally conservative state, but it's also a state where they are really testing the boundaries of how far you can go to the right on abortion. All of these things have combined to make this race a little bit more competitive. Yeah, it's very interesting because whenever, you know, the Democrat,

I don't think has won a gubernatorial race in Texas since Ann Richards when I was a child. So it was like 1992. Such a character, yeah. She was hilarious. But what's happened since is that Greg Abbott, just to give people the idea of his victory margin, 2018, which remember was also a Democratic wave year, won by 55% of the vote to 42% for the Democrats. So if he even – this was always a thing with Ted Cruz. When Ted only won his Senate race by three points or two something over Beto, that was a seismic shock because you're not supposed to only win by two points. It's not even supposed to be that close, supposed to be a minimum of five and at least 10.

That's usually what the margin of victory is for gubernatorial or at the statewide level for Texans. So if Abbott comes five points of winning, that actually is not good in terms of the trends for the overall Texas GOP. The issue also remains that he is getting hammered on Uvalde. The power grid also was one that people, you know, when you say wrong track, it's very simple. We always talk about it. It's like, look, can you keep the lights on or not? Because if you fail in the middle of cold, and then also in what we're having right now, I don't know if people know this, you know, it's a massive heat wave across the country. Right before we left, there was a horrific heat wave. It was like 113 degrees. I called station

back where I'm from. It was really, really hurting the electrical grid. And they were asking people, like, hey, please turn the AC off. And they were warning about potential rolling blackouts. I've said before, you know, Texas, for some reason, still gets 20% of its power from coal in the year 2022. Well, I pulled this clip because I want to give people a taste for how Uvalde is very politically hot for Texas Democrats who are going after Greg Abbott. Here's a Texas Democratic state senator. He was on CNN making this point. It just gives you a preview of the political case to be made here in terms of not being held accountable to these law enforcement officials. Let's take a listen. But we at the state level, this governor needs to demand accountability of Steve McCraw

and his agency. For 77 minutes, DPS troopers, including a Texas Ranger, sat outside. I want to know who that Ranger that was walking around on the phone, I want to know who he was talking to. I want to know what McCraw knew and when, because we already know all of the evasive answers that he gave us weeks, days and weeks afterwards, the false narratives, the false reports through alert. All of this falls on Greg Abbott. These people direct report to Greg Abbott, and he has failed to ask for accountability, and he has failed to provide adequate resources to this community. People of Texas need to be very aware of that failure. At the end of the day, this has been a colossal failure from the law enforcement response side on the 24th, and it has been a colossal failure from the government's office and the people that work for him from the time of the 24th to present. And so we've got a lot

of work to do here in Texas. Yep. So that's a state senator from the San Antonio area. That's very politically effective, right? I mean, you're like, hey, he's the governor. And I've said it before. I'm like, why is the governor and the attorney general? Please stand up for the state. Steve McCraw, fire him. I mean, if he lied to you in any way, and look, he lied to all of us the day of the shooting and the day after the shooting. We still don't know whether he knew he was lying and where he even lied to. But Texas Governor Abbott, the last thing we heard from the guy is, I am livid. Well, that's been over a month. I don't care if you're livid or not. Do something about it. I mean,

why is nobody stepping up to the plate? If you cede this ground to the tech, why would you cede holding law enforcement accountable on the worst shooting? And this is bipartisan. Even some of the most pro-gun people I know, they probably hate the cops in this situation even more so than your average citizen because they're so repulsive. Because they look at the guy in the Indiana Mall situation and say, that's how it's supposed to be done, especially. He's just a normal guy. He's not even had any training in terms of state government-provided training. And we give these guys all these weapons, G.I. Joe armor, and all this special immunity. The Supreme Court even says they don't have to do anything if they want to. But we entrust them. They're one of the most trusted institutions in the United States. and then they show up this way.

It's a matter of far beyond partisanship, and they're not doing anything. I do think it's going to be very politically effective if he continues to not step up to the plate. At this point, he's had over a month. Like, fire the guy, do something about it, but they're not going to. Right, and now, in retrospect, it's very clear his whole, like, oh, I'm livid comments. It was purely theatrical. Yeah. It was just a political show because, okay, you were livid.

You didn't do anything about it. So what are we to make of that? And as you're pointing out, it's definitely not a partisan. It's a human issue. I mean, it just hits at the core of everyone's humanity to see all of these people who could have stopped the bleeding and the killing doing absolutely nothing. And your guys, Texas Rangers, were there doing, you know, among the 400 who were also doing nothing. And then, you know, their leader lying to you, and I guess you think that that's okay. So I think his points are really well-founded there.

You know, in terms of the abortion landscape, of course, as we've covered before, there aren't a whole lot of voters who will tell you abortion is their number one issue. However, I do think that the issue plays most significantly at the state level because governors do have so much impact on what ultimately gets through and what doesn't. And as I mentioned before, Texas is really at the bleeding edge of pushing how far they can go in terms of abortion bans. So the legislature is pushing to be among those that criminalizes anyone who helps a woman to cross state lines or even provides advice and counsel to a woman, provides any sort of like monetary support, going after companies that are providing these benefits to let women travel out of state. So Texas is at the forefront of that. You also have the attorney general that joined this lawsuit. So, you know, in Biden's executive order on abortion, he said basically that if the woman's life is in danger, if the mother's life is in danger, doctors are under an obligation to

provide the abortion. Well, the Texas attorney general has joined a lawsuit saying, no, we don't think that we should, even in the case where a mother's life is at risk, that we should be in the business of providing abortion. So as I said, they're going, Texas, culturally conservative, generally state, although it is becoming increasingly suburban. And yes, plenty of people have moved from California into the state that may have a different feeling about all these things. But they have put themselves at the very extreme fringe of what people's views are on this that would not be even close to supported by a majority of Texans. So that adds to an overall portrait of, you know, things that just they're on a step with the public. They're frustrated with the fact the electrical grid wasn't fixed and that they're having to worry about blackouts and worry about whether they're going to be able to turn the AC on. And if they did, what it's ultimately going to cost them. You see this total lack of accountability and failures in terms of

Uvalde. You see extremism on abortion and guns and other issues. And it starts to take a political at some point that starts to take a political toll. Again, do I think that Greg Abbott is going to lose? No, I do not. But when you look at this race as kind of a, you know, a test, a testing ground of what the politics are like across the country, you can see the way that recent events have allowed Democrats to make a little bit of gains and gain a little bit of ground here. And also for Republicans to take a little bit of gains and gain a little bit of ground here, and also for Republicans to take on a bit of water with this. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's go ahead and talk about Russia. I've been monitoring the situation there closely. Some mixed news out of the conflict at the geostrategic level. Let's

put this up there on the screen. So at first, it seemed like we actually had some decent news, that Ukraine and Russia had actually signed a deal, which was going to allow Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea. People should remember that Ukraine is Russia had actually signed a deal which was going to allow Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea. People should remember that Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of grain in the world and that that shortage was leading to a potential and actually even realized food crisis in much of the developing world. Africa, many others that import a ton of Ukrainian grain. Ukraine long known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union during that time. So the Russian Navy had been blockading those grain exports, and they agreed to this deal where they said that they would be allowing Kiev in order to export that grain. What's interesting

also about the deal is it highlights the changing nature of diplomacy in the year 2022. In the past, the United States would have been party to this deal, or not even party, would have been the guarantor of this deal. But because of our policy, which is don't ever meet any Russians, don't talk to the Russians, I don't even think that the president has spoken with Putin since after the invasion. There's been no high-level diplomatic contacts. I think Blinken had maybe one phone call with his counterpart over there. Well, Turkish President Erdogan has actually stepped up to the plate. He's been holding a ton of talks between the two governments, and he is really the one who brokered the deal. Obviously, that's noteworthy because Turkey is in NATO, and Turkey and Erdogan specifically probably have the most heterodox of foreign policies within the NATO alliance, especially given they have a complicated relationship with Russia.

But as of recently, they've been talking with them, given what was happening in Syria. So they have a lot of high-level military contacts, specifically. And actually, the Russian top general is one of the people who was there whenever this deal was signed. The deal was set to last for 120 days and was actually going to be monitored out of Istanbul, but also staffed by the UN, Turkey, Russia, and Ukrainian officials. Now, the issue though is, as was highlighted there, is that, well, this deal is only a deal if there's not a military response. And unfortunately, the Russians doing what the Russians do, let's go and put this up there on the screen,

almost immediately went and hit the Black Sea port despite the grain deal. Russian missiles, hours after the deal was signed to resume Ukrainian grain exports, actually came in and fired two caliber cruise missiles, which hit port infrastructure and Ukrainian air defenses, which at least brought down two of the others. That's according to the Ukrainian military command. But it is noteworthy because while they did not strike grain storage facilities, which is what the Turks were highlighting, they did strike port infrastructure. And it does just generally comport with the Russian strategy, not only to starve the Ukrainians out food-wise, but really in order to destroy their economy as much as possible because this is such a critical export. So it is a mixed bag in the diplomatic future for this conflict.

And it doesn't inspire confidence. You know, something you and I have been saying here is like, hey, we need to have some diplomacy. But it's also not easy to have diplomacy if the people who are a party are going to be breaking deals like this and just immediately violating it. I mean, the Ukrainians said this is a spit in our face. I think that's correct. It's hard to argue with that. It's really hard to argue with that. I mean, it definitely puts, I mean, at the best, it puts the deal very much in doubt. And it really is a shame. There's no enforcement mechanism in this deal. It's basically, you know.

What enforcement can you do? What can you do? Right. It's a handshake kind of a deal. And immediately after the deal is supposedly inked and agreed to, Russia goes and does this and completely undermines it. And it's really sad, not just because obviously the Horn of Africa in particular has been extraordinarily hard hit, not only by this war, also by failed crops in part due to the climate crisis. So they were in a very precarious situation to start with. And also because of financial situation around the world and inflation, it's cost more to import grain anyway. So this has been really devastating for poor nations around the world. And so the fact that this was immediately undermined is truly a disaster. And the other piece here, too, was Erdogan was actually hopeful that maybe this could be the first step back to the negotiating table. Because you'll recall back when there were ongoing meetings and talks about a potential negotiated settlement and diplomatic end to this war, those were being facilitated by Turkey. So, you know, Erdogan had said he hoped it would be the first step towards bringing the war to an end. This

joint step we're taking with Ukraine and Russia will hopefully revive the path to peace. Obviously, that has not worked out. Yeah, it hasn't. I mean, I've said this, and this is the only way to look at it, which is that as they've shown in political science, the more temps that you try to have a ceasefire, most ceasefires fail, but eventually some of them work. So the mere fact that you're trying to sign a ceasefire can, again, can be something that indicates some sort of forward direction. But I do think the Erdogan government

has done actually a pretty decent job of at least continuing the talks. It took two months just to get here. Maybe it'll take two months to get to one that actually sticks. And then maybe it'll take a year in order to get to one that is further along the diplomatic process. But we should also not forget, you know, the war is still not going well for the Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country. They haven't suffered any major losses since we last did our show, but the continuing bombardment and artillery is happening on the Eastern Front, and they have not

made any forward progress despite massive shipments of arms from the West. Another thing we wanted to highlight and update, let's put this up there, Kaliningrad. So we talked previously about how the Russians have an exclave outside of their country. Kaliningrad, this is an old Soviet Union type thing, guarantees them access to the Baltic Sea. Well, there had previously been a ban by Lithuania, a NATO country, in terms of rail transport of sanctioned goods in and out of the Russian area of Kaliningrad. How this is governed is very difficult, but the Lithuanians claimed, again, claimed that based upon EU sanctions that they could not allow the transport of these goods, the Russians were like, hey, you're preventing the free movement of goods in between our country. And this was never something that was supposed to even be on the table in the past. Lots of accusations flying between both, Russia accusing and basically threatening, saber-rattling against the Lithuanians, which of course we have an interest in because Lithuania is in NATO and they have Article 5 protection anyway. So they have actually

resumed the lifting of rail restrictions for the Russian exclave. I think that this matters because it generally is a soft folding on many sanctions grounds on the West. So the hardest hitting sanctions against the Russians, it's not just the financial ones, it was against their oil and gas infrastructure. And I talked a lot about before we left the natural gas, which we're about to update everybody on. But the Canadians ultimately did fold. And they're like, all right, you can have your gas turbines. And even the U.S. government was like, okay, ship them the damn gas turbines.

Because we don't want the Germans to be cut off from the Nord Stream pipeline. So we're still pursuing this strange dual track policy where we're not actually sticking to the harshest sanctions. We'll stick to them-ish. But then when the Russians are really threatened and they start ratcheting it up and the stakes of that become clear, then we fold. So we're doing this strange thing where Russians are moving their stuff between Kaliningrad. They're getting their gas turbines. They're printing hundreds of billions of euros a day with gas and with oil. They're richer than they've ever been before. The Moscow government, not the people in Russia. And at the same time, so we're not hurting the Russian war machine, but then we're also not moving towards any sort

of diplomatic solution. It's like the idiocy of the policy. Well, I think it's a recognition that the policy has failed. And so they can't publicly back away from it because they've sold their population. Certainly here in the U.S., people are sold on like, you're going to pay high gas prices, but we're going to stick it to the Russians. This has not worked out at all. But they are too cowardly to actually fess up to that and say, we got to try a different route. And they certainly are not interested in pushing for a diplomatic solution, understanding that that may be unattainable right now, even if we were putting our force behind it. But the fact of the matter is we're not putting our force behind it. And so I think these little movements are a sort of subtle acknowledgement that the overall sanctions policy has been a failure. It has not bled the

Russian war machine. It has not really hurt Putin ultimately. And I'm glad to see them back down here in Kaliningrad because this was a very, even though it may seem like a small thing, this was a major escalatory talking point for Putin and for Russia that he was, you know, and state media there were really taking to their population as see how far the West is going, see how much they hate us, see how far they'll go beyond what even that they've said. And the EU ultimately decided that the transit ban only affects road, not rail. And that's what allowed the transit to be opened back up by rail to this area so you know when we covered this originally we said this is very dangerous situation

I think that is still was still very much the case and it appears the Europeans looked at it and said you know what the juice is not worth the squeeze it's not worth the risk but that's why it's such a foolish policy it's like oh only by road not by road, not by rail. Listen, either do it or don't. Because if you're not going to some half-assed policy, then what's the point? I mean, they're being half-punished, but not really. They can still get their goods. They can still export whatever they want. They can still pump their gas.

But, oh, God forbid, you know, some Russian guy plays in Wimbledon. Yeah. It's like, what? I know. What are we doing here? Those are the ones that make me really crazy. I mean, it's just like complete xenophobia. It's complete theater and xenophobic theater that everyone has just broadly accepted.

It's gross. It's very foolish. All right, let's move on. This is an update again to the story that we previously talked about. We're very worried. Let's put this up there on the screen. Russia has gone ahead and restarted the gas shipments through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. However, it is keeping Germany guessing.

So as I previewed before, Nord Stream was shut down for 11 days for quote-unquote maintenance. And during that maintenance period, there was a lot of fear. Both the French energy minister and the Germans were warning. They're like, hey, they may not turn this gas on. And that gas supplies the vast majority of the natural gas that the Germans use in order to power their electrical grid. Given the fact that they're continuing to shut down their nuclear power plants and burn even more coal, this would have both been a carbon emissions disaster and would have led to outright rolling blackouts across the European continent and specifically within Germany. However, they have decided to turn that gas back on. The reality of the situation,

and what I'm thinking, is that the reason they did so is ultimately because the Germans, the Canadians, and the U.S. folded. The excuse they were giving was, hey, we can't use this gas, we can't run this gas, because you guys won't give us the turbines that we rightfully purchased from Canada. They're like, you need to give us those turbines or we can't run the pipeline. They were saying it wouldn't work for maintenance reasons. The Germans and many others who are experts said they don't need these turbines in order to do this. It's to update it, but they don't want to.

So by giving them the turbines, by folding on policies we were previously talking about, the Russians were like, okay, you've been good, so we'll keep the gas locked on. However, it just shows you the amount of leverage that they really have when they want to use it. So this again, though, highlights the idiocy of the policy. This pipeline provides a vast majority of the energy

that Germany consumes for its electrical grid. So if the Germans were, you know, for all the talk of high gas and all that, when it came to actual blackouts on the table, they're like, no, we're not going to do that. So they're not willing to actually do any of the most maximalist stuff. And they're continuing to ship, like I said, hundreds of billions of euros to the Russians at sky high prices. Well, what is the point of all this policy? And I think we should also update people on the – remember there was that cockamamie scheme in order to set a price cap? Yeah.

Yeah, the Indians were like, no, we're not doing that. And by the way, when I was in India, all of the guys were telling me that Indian oil, which is like the state-run, has the cheapest – they call it petrol there. They're like, yeah, they have the cheapest gas. I was like, yeah, I wonder why. There you go. They sell it back to us. They're a great man. They sell it right back to us. So there's a lot of rich traders in New Delhi and in Mumbai. The government is laughing all the way to the bank because even though, yes, there's high gas, it's cheaper for them. It was roughly actually

equal for the first time in my life for a price per gallon in India that I saw in Hyderabad to the United States. I couldn't believe it. I mean, usually it's double the price in India. And we have a parody with what's happening is there. It's completely crazy. So anyway, it's an update there. However, it still does highlight that they are in phase two out of three of their gas emergency plan. And they are worried not about what's happening right now because it's summer. Yes, there is a record heat wave, but apparently they came out of it okay. And they don't really have AC, a lot of these people, in Europe. But however, they're really worried about winter. They're extraordinarily worried. They have right now plans in order to fire more coal than ever before. And actually, we're moving to the point of maximal leverage that the Russians

will have. Because think about it. If we're in the dead of winter, December, January, that is when they're like, okay, we'll turn the spigot off right now, unless you restore X sanction or Y. And then they truly have them because manufacturing would be destroyed. They wouldn't be able to use their factories. And it would outright affect people on the consumer level and not be able to go to work. I mean, the union ministers out of Germany have already come out and said, they're like, the gas is the, if they shut off the gas, it will destroy the German economy overnight. And already, remember, Germany has, for the first time since the 1990s, moved from trade surplus to deficit. And the euro is at an all-time low. So I think it's trading at parity in terms of US one-to-one for the first time in modern economic, since the inventions of the

currency. At one point, it was like $1.60, which was equal to euro. So Europe is still suffering significantly. And it just shows you the leverage that the Russians have over them if they want to. Russia's got them by the balls. I mean, that's the bottom line. They were getting 55% of their natural gas from Russia. And there is a kind of a, it's not really funny, it's kind of gallows humor at this point, but anecdote at the end of this article where they have this quote from Trump at the UN in 2018 said, Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course. In response, the German delegation, which included the country's foreign minister, left. Yeah. So they did not take seriously the fact that, you know,

they were very dependent on the southern nation. And so, yeah, Russia right now is like, I guess we'll turn it back on. But we'll see for the future. I mean, that is not something you would want to have to depend on. As you said, they're already in phase two of their emergency plan. Phase three is mandatory enforced cutoffs and cutbacks imposed on their citizens. There's another dynamic playing out here in terms of internal EU politics, which is also worth noting, which you'll recall a number of years ago when countries like Greece and Italy

were having debt issues and they were having, you know, major financial issues and they were looking to the E for bailout. Germany was the one that was like, we were responsible. Why should our people be in charge of bailing out these other irresponsible countries? Well, now Germany is asking other countries that are less dependent on Russian energy to have cutbacks on their own. Yeah, like the Italians. They're like, hey, Italy, you guys should suck it up. And they're like, hey, you screwed us for like a decade. Exactly. And so there's actually this quote here from the Spanish energy minister who says,

unlike other countries, we Spaniards have not lived beyond our means from an energy point of view. So Germany has not sowed a lot of goodwill around the EU bloc and they don't feel particularly inclined to bail out the Germans at this point as the Germans did not feel particularly inclined to bail them out at a different point. Good for them. Comes around, I guess. I love it. Spanish honor. Yeah. Yeah. So Democrats are making some moves now. Finally, they've come up with a little bit of a plan, at least, to react after the overturning of that monumental Roe versus Wade decision.

So in particular, they're using a little bit of the tactics that were floated during the force the vote conversation previously and putting Republicans in a tough spot, taking votes to the floor on issues that are going to divide the Republican electeds and also that put them out of step even with a majority of their own base. So first one that we'll talk about here is Democrats in the House put up a bill that would secure access to contraception. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So you'll recall that in that his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas sort of floated, you know, these other things like the right to contraception and gay marriage.

I personally think those, if you follow this logic here, those should also go away. So that has caused Democrats and a lot of people around the country to say, whoa, we need to make sure these rights are protected as well. So Democrats put up this vote on the right to contraception, and the entire House Republican caucus, save for 10, voted against ensuring the right to contraception. The handful that voted for the right to contraception, a number of them, I'll just read you the names. It's Cheney, Mace, Upton, Kinzinger, Katko, Fitzpatrick, Salazar, and Gonzalez. Four of those are about to retire. Cheney is about to lose.

So even the ones that voted for it, there are two present votes. But the, you know, of the eight that actually voted for the And if they don't, well, you know, people are going to have to stand up and are going to have to ask questions about why exactly they voted against it. And this is the perfect example, which is that this was something guaranteed, I think it was 1965. It's like Griswold v. Connecticut in terms of contraception. So, I mean, this is, I mean, obviously this was one of the major breakthroughs in American civil society and it changed the entire country. It's kind of been a foregone conclusion at this point. I don't even know if we have any polling on it because it's just so one of those things where people are just, you know. Okay, so I'll try and represent the opposition.

I actually asked. I was like, is there any reason in order to support this, apparently there is a form of hormonal IUD, which is considered by some people who are religious to be analogous to abortion. What? I'm just – listen. I'm just representing what I have heard. So there is this one particular form. I think it's the copper IUD. And look, I'm sorry for getting into this.

But as I understand it, that is one which they consider to be like abortive in some form. The copper IUD is actually very common and is the most – I don't know if that's actually the one that they're worried about. I think it's the – That's like the most standard one that you can get. Well, I think that's the hormonal IUD versus the – the copper one is – anyway, again, I don't really know. But from what I understood and what was represented to me, that is the quote unquote religious objection to overall contraception. So they're like, well, if they've carved that out, it's like, okay, I mean, I don't really believe it, but I'm just saying that is, that is the justification for which the vote is.

And you actually found this. Well, that actually, I mean, in some ways that makes it worse because the only thing I could come up with is that they just didn't want to give Democrats a win. So it was just like pure political calculation. But if they're actually responding to the 2% of the country that has an issue with this like copper IUD or whatever the hell it is,

that's, I mean, that's in some ways that's even more troubling that they are so responsive to the absolute most extremist part of their base that they would vote against something that, I mean, this has got to be like a 98% issue in the country. That's, that is pretty wild. If I had to guess, it's probably the hardcore folks are the ones talking about copper IUDs, and the rest of them are like, I just don't want to vote for anything that's a Democrat bill.

They're trying to come up with some kind of, anyway, there's at least some conservatives on Reddit who are very confused about this as well. Not representative, but still interesting. Yes, exactly. This isn't, you know... Although, again,

I do think if you polled the Republican base on access to contraception, you would overwhelmingly get people like, yeah, of course, obviously birth control. And if you care about

preventing abortions, by the way, access to contraception, one of the most effective ways to bring down the number of abortions and has been very effective as it has become more widespread in doing so. So here's a little bit of the commentary from conservatives. One of them says, this is from the conservative Reddit, birth control has literally prevented more abortions than any other entity hands down. You have people who are just genuinely trying to figure out why anyone would be voting against this. You have someone saying this is not even a government will pay bill.

So there's no argument here about like, oh, we're funding it, whatever. Someone says, who is voting against this? I really want to know. I'll be watching my Republican congressman regarding this. My mother and I are conservatives and fully support it. We believe birth control prevents abortions. It's a good thing. So there is at least some dissent among the true believers here about why Republicans are having trouble with this. Reddit, obviously, overwhelmingly younger, more representative. So listen, I mean, it's not representative, but I did think it was an interesting catch. The reason why I think this stuff matters is that this is entering pop culture

discourse in a way that politics hasn't in a long time. You know, abortion, most people kind of did, most people were pretty, had their minds made up on abortion. And as we saw, the enthusiasm, it's a slight gap or increasing for the Democrats, but a lot of people, minds were kind of made up. If in the future, to the extent that this will become a thing, it's going to be stories like the 10-year-old rape case. And eventually, I think this will all culminate in some crazy Terry Schiavo situation like nine years from now, after somebody writes a bill and then it gets enforced and somebody who's like dad raped her at age nine is going to be forced to carry a term. Pride and Satan is going to galvanize the whole country and it'll change everything.

But that's a long time away. This, I think, is similar in that the contraception one, again, I see it entering pop culture in a way that I haven't in a long time, almost since Obergefell, like 2015. Yeah. The gay marriage debates. And look, I mean, personally,

I think a lot of these things were very long decided and I don't really know why you would pick a fight. Look, even politically. Yes, move on. Yeah, exactly. Be like, okay. At a certain point, don't you want to deny the opposition the ability in order to club you over the head with one of your most unpopular decisions? The only alternative is either, A, you think that you won't suffer a political price for it, which you may not in the immediate term, but in the future, I certainly think.

I mean, let's say that the, I don't think the court will. However, Justice Thomas, I mean, in a certain way, he made democratic fears. He realized them at the ultimate level because he was like, okay, then all of this is on the table, which the talking point for a long time was just abortion. I mean, if you fall, if you do follow the logic of the Roe decision, the legal logic, it does lead you to all of these places. So, I mean, he's kind of the one that's being upfront about it. And conservatives are like, shh, don't say that because this is uncomfortable for us. To your point, you know, Democrats for a long time have been saying since the sort of politics of the Tea Party era and when you started having all of these increasingly stringent abortion bans and trigger laws and trap laws and all the stuff being passed across the country, Democrats have been saying even contraception is on the table here.

And Republicans are kind of, you're being ridiculous, you're fear-mongering. Well, when you have the entire Republican caucus, save for a few dissenters who are basically wildly out of step with most of the caucus at this point, when you have that entire caucus voting against access to contraception, you are just confirming the worst caricature of your own party. And so I do think for a lot of people, this is kind of a like, wait, what moment? It's like, what do you people actually believe? Who are you actually serving? Like, who are you afraid of? What is this fringe part of the movement that you are really beholden to? There's the other piece here. And by the way, on contraception, very unclear. Obviously, it's passed the House because Democrats have control and you did get support from a handful of Republicans like Liz Cheney.

But very unclear whether this will ultimately get through the Senate. What the future is. Yeah. They may not even take it up. Very unclear whether they take it up, whether there are 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. Very unknown. And also another vote that has been taken in the House and is headed to the Senate most likely is to codify and enshrine the right to gay marriage. That was another thing that Justice Thomas floated of like, hey, I think Obergefell was wrongly decided if we follow this logic as well. So let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is called the Respect for Marriage Act. The House on Tuesday passed this act would protect marriage equality by repealing the Defense of Marriage Act

and providing federal protections for same-sex and interracial couples. This is a position that is supported now by 71% or so of the public. It's supported by a majority of the Republican voting base. But again, you have most of the Republican caucus voting against it. The bill passed 267 to 157, 47 Republicans, so more, I guess, support gay marriage than contraception, joining every Democrat voting in favor of the bill. And again, going to the Senate, so far, right now, publicly, we don't have 10 Republicans who have said that they would vote in favor of gay marriage. And you have a couple of other measures that do directly involve abortion

that Democrats are pushing as well. They think both of those would surely fail in the Senate. One would enshrine the right to an abortion into federal law. The other would ban states from interfering with a woman's right to travel for the procedure. So that, again, is, you know, that's a very mainstream position that they expect to get little or no support from Republicans on. It was interesting, actually. This happened literally the day that we left. We didn't get to cover it, but there was that interesting moment. And I think it was Senator Duckworth who was on the floor, like, saying, hey, we need to have this bill.

And James Lankford, he's, I believe he's one of the founders of, like, the National Prayer Breakfast. Senator from Oklahoma. He's a very evangelical Christian. He was like, look, we're not going to be voting on hypotheticals. And it's like, well, hold on. This is not hypothetical. It's like this actually is being considered. It's a live issue now.

It's not law. Yeah, it's an actual law. It puts people in a difficult position. It is weird and fascinating to me that you got more of them to vote for same-sex marriage than they did for contraception. Honestly, same-sex marriage seems far more controversial, so I don't really get it. But anyway, in terms of the votes in the Senate, this one, so according to Dick Durbin, who I think is a number two, number three Democrat who's in the Senate, he said he believes that the contraception bill and the same-sex marriage bill will garner 60 votes

needed to overcome filibuster. He could be spinning. I have no idea. But Susan Collins actually is a co-sponsor of the legislation. Lisa Murkowski already come out and said this. Senator Rob Portman was already co-sponsoring the Senate version. Senator Tom Stillis said he probably will vote to enshrine the right for same-sex marriage into federal law. And then Ron Johnson kind of coming out of nowhere and also saying that he would vote for it. Johnson is an interesting one to me and really one to look at because Johnson is kind of like a MAGA libertarian, I guess is the best way to put it. You know, he's very pro-business.

But at the end of the day, he's from a swing state. And he's up for election. Off for re-election, of which he barely won the last time around. People forget this, but the Kochs basically dragged his ass across the line, spent $25 million in the last two weeks of the election in order to – I think he was up again against Russ Feingold. Well, anyway, he's in a tough reelection, and so he clearly sees this as politically advantageous. So I found the Johnson crossover to be, frankly, the most interesting one so far. So will there be five more? We don't know. However, we do know that this is something currently being espoused by Ted Cruz. Remember,

he was a Supreme Court, you know, legislator and all that senator from Texas. He came out and said that he believes that the that the court was clearly wrong in their decision here. Let's go and take a listen to that. In Obergefell, the court said, no, we know better than you guys do. And now every state must must sanction and permit gay marriage. I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided. It was the court overreaching. So there you go. I mean, again, most of these guys, the way that they talk about it is exactly in this way, which is, well, the Defense of Marriage Act was the law of the land passed by Congress. So if you want to change it, then Congress has to change it. And they don't really articulate their position on it.

But then if push came to shove, you'd probably vote against it. So it's like, yeah, it's like, there you go. And that is the thing, right? Because after Roe was overturned, that was some of the talking point was like, oh, if you want to change it, go legislate it. Now that they're like, okay, we're going to legislate on it. You have all these guys, go ahead and put Marco Rubio up on the screen and we're like, this is a waste of time. Why are we bothering with this? When their message previously was like, oh, if you want to deal with this issue, then we have a process, go through the legislative process. So he says there's a host of other issues that people don't spend all day on

Twitter care about. Their entire agenda is really responsive to the donor base and their activist base, not responsive to the vast majority of Americans. Again, 71% of Americans support gay marriage. Those aren't real issues. I've never seen a person come up to me and talk about getting rid of gay marriage. This is what their base is demanding they do. Their radical base represents probably 2% of the country, but a significant majority of the people who give them their money. Again, Rubio voting, saying effectively he's going to vote against this because he thinks it's a waste of time. If you think it's a waste of time, just vote yes and move on. I mean, that's the obvious answer here.

So there are some real mental gymnastics going on to try to pretend like this isn't a live issue. When you got your buddy Ted Cruz out there like, yeah, this is a live issue and I think we need to go in the other direction. Ted is playing the game the same way he did in 2016. He's trying to shore up any of the evangelical vote that he possibly could in a primary. And we're going to probably talk tomorrow about Mike Pence also wanting to run. Remember, he wants an outright ban, national ban on abortion. So what I think is interesting is what does Trump think about all this? The guy's going to run soon. Somebody's going to ask him. Somebody should. I mean, frankly, if I get the interview, I'll ask him. I'll be like, hey, what do you think? Should you outlaw it? And I'd love to see what he said. I'd

love to see also what he says about gay marriage, because now these are all things on the table, which he avoided like the plague whenever he was there. He would say something like, yeah, you know, and he would call himself pro-life. But as we know from the reporting, like he even thought that their overturn of Roe was going to be bad for Republicans. And as usual, I actually think he's a better politician than most of these people and knows better. So it will be very interesting to me to see how he's going to handle that question. Because we know where Mike Pence will go. Of course. Mike Pence will side with the evangelicals, no doubt. And he's going to maybe hit Trump over the head with that. Again, I still think Trump would win in primary. I don't think it's a matter.

What does that mean for a general election? Where do you think DeSantis will fall? Because, I mean, he is keep his mouth mighty quiet. Yes, he has. I mean, because he's really cultivated sort of evangelical, right, cultural, conservative base as well. So this will listen. Who at this point in America doesn't have friends who are gay, right? Doesn't have people that they know, love, care about in their family who are gay, who are married. And so just on a personal level, we were thinking about, okay, why did this actually perform a little better in the house than the contraception? I actually think that that is part of it, is because how can you look your friend or loved one or whoever in the eye and explain this vote and this position that is just antithetical to their, you know, the building blocks of their life? So this, it does really put Republicans

in a difficult position because while I think a majority of Republicans at this point in their marriage polling bears that out routinely, most people have accepted and moved on. The base that is most energized about this is very, very opposed. And they have a lot of power in the caucus. That's why they're trying to come up with these rationalizations. Like I think Rubio is a perfect example here of not saying whether he's for it or against it, just trying to come up with a third way. That is a waste of time. Come on. These senators and members of Congress, they waste their time all day long, like naming post offices and whatever. And this is where you draw the line. When in fact, this is a live issue that a lot of people do care about and is really core to

their sort of just basic functioning, basic rights. Yeah. I want to, this is a live issue that a lot of people do care about and is really core to their sort of just basic functioning, basic rights. Yeah, I went in and there was a good story two weeks ago right around when we were doing the show about DeSantis. It says a culture warrior goes quiet. DeSantis dodges questions on abortions. Obviously, he's gone ahead and signed the 15-week ban. You know, the 15-week ban actually is overwhelmingly popular. That's like 70% of people. But he's not going to six.

He says he will, but he's not fighting for it. Hasn't opened his mouth. He's been 70% of people. But he's not going to six. He says he will, but he's not fighting for it. Hasn't opened his mouth. He's been very, very quiet on interviews. They've been very vague about what they would do. No interviews, like what they're doing. The judge struck it down, frankly, doing them a favor politically. So they're in a situation where the state, also Florida is just different. So even Rubio, he could have some trouble. Although Florida is a red state at this point. Rick Scott, I checked, I haven't seen anything that he said on this too. So these guys, you know, remember they only win elections by three, four points. So they still have to worry about how things are going to go their way. And DeSantis himself is running for reelection in the state. So he himself also has to think about that too.

So interesting stuff. And he's going to have to answer some questions at some point. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Another story we've been tracking very closely here is the chaos at American airports across the country. You will recall they got smacked down. Airlines previously got smacked down for trying to say, oh, it's the FAA, which listen, the FAA did have some staffing problems coming out of COVID. Those have not been entirely resolved, but they have done a lot, actually, to get their issues under control. Now we have some hard numbers about exactly what has been the biggest cause of delays, and it does land right at the feet of the major airline carriers. Let's take a look at this. This is from the Washington Post. They say airlines tried shifting blame, but they are the biggest cause of delays. After

faulting air traffic controllers for delays and cancellations, airline industry leaders are now taking a more conciliatory tone. So let me give you some of the numbers here. In terms of delays, air carriers were directly responsible for about 41% of the delays through May. Late arriving aircraft, which is another problem mostly attributable to the airlines, accounted for an additional 37% of delays. So we're talking about almost 80% of the delays caused by the airlines. The other things, problems with the nation's airspace, such as congestion, bad weather, or staffing at air traffic control facilities, that was only 17% of delays. That is the lowest level since officials began tracking the data in 2004. Extreme weather is its own category, accounted for about 5% of delays. When you're talking about cancellations, you again

have problems attributed to airlines cited in 38% of the cases. And that is a rate that has gone up astronomically since 2012. So that is the highest rate of airline-caused cancellations since they have been tracking in 2012. The majority of cancellations did involve circumstances beyond the carrier's control. Weather cited in 55% of cases. National airspace problems counted for about 7% of cancellations did involve circumstances beyond the carrier's control. Weather cited in 55% of cases, national airspace problems counted for about 7% of cancellations. But if you look at these numbers overall, clearly the blame is landing at the feet of the airlines, which again, we bailed out because we said this is an important industry and we will bail you out, but you have to keep your people. They didn't exactly do that, and now they are booking way more flights

than they are really capable of handling. What's also very interesting is that the CEO of United Airlines was actually pressed on his earnings call on Thursday. They're like, hey, you guys said it was the FAA's fault, so do you still stand by that? And he's like, I've apologized to Secretary Buttigieg for mischaracterizing the FAA. I haven't apologized to the people who are getting screwed here. How about that?

Really what has happened is that they got called out, is that the data came out. The FAA was like, hey, you're full of shit. And look, FAA, I got no sympathy. But if it was really their fault, we would flame. But it's not. It's really not. And I think people are beginning to sense that. There's all kinds of insane labor issues that they even point to in the story about people who are taking off and then literally being brought back to the gate because like, oh, it turns out one of the flight

attendants on the flight has reached her mandatory amount of flying hours. All kinds of craziness. I think it just shows us clearly that these airlines are making record profits, which they are now saying the quiet part out loud. Our friend of the show, Matt Stoller, actually flagged this, where, lo and behold, an airline executive, American Air CEO, celebrates his record earnings while also admitting that they have terrible reliability. Let's take a listen. Phil, it's great to be here talking to you today. A quarter ago, we said, hey, we're going to be back here talking to you about profitability and reliability. I'm so pleased of all of our team here that we're out here reporting a net income of $533 million, hitting our margin guide. It's a really important day for American

Airlines. We've got work to do on reliability. Work to do. So he is saying they are making great profit, that they are making a record amount of money. They're hitting their margins. Great. I fly American. He's elated. Awesome. Yeah, he seems very happy. However, we've got work to do on reliability.

So what the hell does that mean? How do you make a record amount of money when you're also canceling a record amount of flights? And we've also pointed this out. Just because they cancel it, they don't necessarily have to pay you back. They can give you flight credit, and then you have to fly on American or fly on United or Southwest or whatever. So it's they get to keep much of the money and then they're supposed to be fined. They're supposed to be. And Secretary Buttigieg, I guess to PBS's credit, actually did press him on what are you doing here? He lies here. We'll point out the lie to you after you listen to his answer.

What about those lawmakers like Bernie Sanders, Democrats in addition to him, who make the case that that $50 billion, that came with strings attached and that the airlines, when they do cancel on folks, when they do have folks waiting on the tarmac for X amount of hours, they should be fined heavily. Well, that's part of what we do as a department.

Look, our preferred outcome is that the passenger doesn't have this problem in the first place. But when we find that an airline is, for example, failing to issue prompt refunds or in some other way, not treating passengers fairly, we will act. As a matter of fact, a few months ago, we issued the stiffest fine in the history of our consumer protection program. And we have ongoing investigations about other practices. Again, we want things to go well, but when they don't, we will act. This dude is so full of shit. Slippery. Slippery. It's a lie because they don't tell, what's the fine number? Yeah. What is it, Crystal?

So Stoller, again, dug into this like, oh, stiff is fine in history, blah, blah, blah. He says he's created an environment ripe for cheating by having his agency issue a record low number of aviation enforcement orders. That's not portrayed at this interview here, is it? They say the most significant action, the one he's talking about here, was a $2 million fine, pennies, in 2021 against Air Canada, which the department issued because the airline openly said it would not adhere to the law. They announced a $25 million amount, got lots of headlines for being tough. Then they negotiated it down to $2 million and only half of that immediately required. The amount so low, Air Canada didn't have to report the fine to investor yet.

Buttigieg is out there on TV bragging about his record fines against airlines. He is so full of shit. I mean, and like you said, and if you don't have all those facts at your disposal, you just hear that. Oh, I guess he's, I guess he's acting. I guess he's doing what Bernie wants him to do. And you know, guess what? Also, this guy, and look, fine, you know, but the administration trots him out on CNN to talk about gay marriage. Fine, okay, whatever. You and your marriage, that's great. But you don't do your job.

It's like he should have been, and this is Stola's point, be the White House press secretary. Frankly, be better than whoever this lady is. She's terrible. He would definitely be a good propaganda for the government. He's a good liar, as we all just saw. But he doesn't actually do his job, as we pointed out. They canceled his own flight. All of this fake, fakery, I mean, United outright lies about the FAA. Then the FAA is like,

no, you're lying. And the CEO is like, I personally apologize. Listen, there should be consequences. I mean, these are massively regulated businesses. And beyond that, consumers, millions of us, I just flew. We rely on this. And I heard stories. I've said before, think about how many people put their weddings on hold and are going on honeymoons. Do you know how many people had their honeymoons delayed, canceled, or whatever for two straight days? I mean, I went to go, my grandfather's 90th birthday. Luckily, flight was okay. I guess maybe because I'm flying international. But I met some people in the airport who were flying through Europe. Their airbags had been lost for six days. I mean, their vacations ruined. Look, I'm not, you know, yeah, okay, cry for people. People saved up for years. People were locked up for a long time. And if they

can afford it, you know, why shouldn't they have a good time? And they're having a bad time directly because of the airlines. I mean, they're pointing to Heathrow, for example. Heathrow has had to cancel millions of flights. Same thing. Bags being lost all across this country. Many people making plans to go to birthdays, weddings, et cetera, and others all getting canceled. Reading about even basic flights like DC to Nashville. Some guy had a flight who was booked. He was going to go celebrate one of his friend's birthdays. They said, oh, the next flight you can't get on until tomorrow. They're like, well, the whole plan was to go today.

So how are you supposed to plan your life whenever these things don't work? So they need to take action on all of our behalf. I mean, as you said, we bailed these people out to the tune of $50 billion. They had a special carve-out in U.S. law, and they won't do their job. And you know what? Everybody felt fine about that. Everyone was. I was completely fine.

I was like, great, we need air travel. I remember talking to Sarah Nelson about it, who's the head of the flight attendants union, and she's like, listen, this is actually a model for how it should be done because the requirement is that people keep their jobs. Yes. So they stay attached to their employment, which was something that we were really encouraging and really in favor of while all the bailouts were being crafted. And then, you know, it's just outright fraud.

One of the things that they do is they actually steal like trillions of dollars from consumers by trying to persuade them that, oh, you should just take the miles when they're actually entitled to cash refunds. And so they directly defraud consumers in that way. And then it is a form of fraud to sell all of these flights that you really have no ability to actually fly. So if you had a corporations are going to corporation, right? They're going to do everything they can to screw people over, make the most amount of money. There's a lot of monopoly consolidation. You all know when you go to fly, you don't have a lot of choices. You need whatever flight at whatever time and whatever works in your schedule. So you don't have a lot of options. So they really do kind of have a lot of leverage over consumers in this situation.

That's where you need a strong regulator to keep these people in check. And that's why having Pete Buttigieg in this position that he was wholly unqualified for and is completely uninterested in doing the job is such a disaster. And I do think that ultimately this will have negative political impacts on him. I mean, he's moving to Michigan and measuring the drapes on some kind of statewide run there, or if Biden doesn't run in 2024, another run for president or whatever. But this is the one thing you were tasked with and you didn't really care to perform. You didn't deliver for people.

So is that going to show up in your next run? I would certainly think that people would notice this. And the other reason why it matters, even if you're not flying, is I do think it just contributes to this general sense of everything is getting worse. It's chaos. Everything is getting worse. There's chaos. I mean, this is what my, when I was talking to my dad last week when I was, you know, when we were off, this is the thing that he was saying to me is like, it just seems like everything is getting worse. because you don't want to have to deal with this kind of mess and chaos and your fate being in the hands of these people who really don't care and are happy to then go on CNBC and basically spit in your face by celebrating their record-breaking profits. Congratulations.

Absolutely. Okay, the final one, great story, which we've been tracking. Just had to cover it here. It really is just disgusting, and both the response and the actual facts of it. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband, fresh off of his DUI arrest outside of his Napa Valley vineyard, gone ahead and purchased $5 million in stock options last week on a computer chip company

ahead of a vote on legislation that would deliver billions of subsidies to boost the chip manufacturing industry. Now, I want to be clear here. I 100% support the CHIPS Act. I think CHIPS is one of the best pieces of legislation in the Senate. And we've been trying to get that thing through for two years. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future that are on the line. Ohio, Arizona, Texas. This is the future of the US economy. We need it if we're going to have any sort of real reliance in the future. There's some specifics we can debate on, etc., and making sure that China doesn't take advantage. But on its face, it's a great piece of legislation. And this is why I'm so pissed off about it, is because they're undermining the trust in this by going and making clear here that he's using knowledge of what's happening in order to try

and make tremendous amounts of money. And as I've already pointed out, Paul Pelosi is well into his 80s. He is an old man. He's also worth at least $100 million, at least, probably north of a quarter of a billion. Why? I mean, they take out these massive positions. And also, once again, they're not just buying stock, they're buying options, which are obviously way more lucrative. So he is state, you know, if this goes through and it goes well, he's actually set to make even more money than your average trader, millions and millions of dollars on specific bets, clearly influenced by government policy, while his wife is the Speaker of the House and obviously has tremendous impact on this legislation. And yet, when she's asked about it, she brushes it off completely and frankly really runs away from the question. Let's take a listen. Over the course of your career, has your husband ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information he's received from you? What are you saying?

Over the course of your career, has your husband ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information he's received from you? What are you saying? Over the course of your career, has your husband ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information he's received from you? No, absolutely not. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

No, absolutely not. Puts the mic down, runs off stage. That's the Kamala trick, pretending not to hear the question. I guess in California, Californians struggle with their hearing, don't they? I forgot about this. She was like, what was that? I didn't hear the question.

It's like, yeah, you heard the question. Remember on the Medicare for All question? Oh, I didn't understand. I didn't hear the question. Okay, whatever. Anyway, this is actually one of the most egregious. I know we've covered a bunch of these. This is one of the most egregious examples I've seen.

And look, yes, publicly available information that this chip steal is active and live and on the table, but it is actually very much in question is one of the most egregious examples I've seen. And look, yes, publicly available information that this chips deal is active and live and on the table, but it is actually very much in question and doubt. Senate Republicans have been sort of holding it hostage and it's been very much a big question mark whether this is ultimately going to go through. I would say based on this purchase, Paul Pelosi feels pretty confident that this is ultimately going to get done. How rich do you want to be? Come on. Don't you have enough money?

Could you not just blatantly? He has a vineyard. Could you stop just blatantly trading on issues that are of direct concern and impact and in front of your wife in the house right now as we speak? 20,000 shares of NVIDIA. This is a position that is worth between $1 and $5 million. So this is not a small amount. This is really significant, sizable chunk of change we're talking about here. Maybe it's nothing to them considering how rich they already are, but

it is absolutely grotesque. And the other thing is, remember how a little while ago, there were a lot of talk about, oh, we're going to have these stock bans. Here's one version. Here's another. We're comparing them. We're figuring out. What happened to all of that? What happened to all of that? Remember her initial response when she was first asked about spouses and members being banned from trading. She was so dismissive. So we live in a free market? This is, it should be part of the free, we should be able to participate in the free market. That

was, that is her true belief and position. Then she sort of, because there was massive bipartisan outrage, she sort of had to walk it back and say, oh, well, if they want to, if the members want to get together and pass it back, I guess I would support that. But has she done anything to move this thing forward? Has she made it a priority? Absolutely not. It's disgraceful. It's just disgraceful. It's just, it's a terrible, you know, example of our political system. Whenever this is just routine and, you know, she's a speaker, literally the top, number three in line for the presidency. Awful. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, several months ago, if you started talking about a recession, people would have looked at you like you were crazy. Yes, inflation sky high,

cash was cheap. Federal Reserve policies and corporate price gouging throughout 2021 was floating the stock market, subsidizing cheap cash to fuel investment, crypto markets, housing prices, all asset goods. The best off in this country were never better off in that very specific moment in time, which really, as a vibe, culminated in Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter for nearly $40 billion. Things pretty much went south a few weeks after that. Inflation finally caught up to the market. The Fed bumped rates. Stocks have never recovered. One industry that forewarned the broader woes that we know well today was Silicon Valley. It's why we continue to watch it very closely, because the first person that presciently even warned me that a recession was coming

were those involved in tech. I vividly recall I had a conversation with venture capitalist David Sachs weeks before the market crash, who described to me in detail how private market valuations were tanking as a result of Fed policy and how it was going to trigger a broader downturn. All of it makes some intuitive sense. Public markets are, by definition, less risky than private ones. Private companies, and specifically startups, are the most reliant both on broader market conditions but on availability of capital to further their life so that macro policy has a big effect on them, as opposed to, say, a public company with robust cash flow and an established market. So as we continue to play the are we in a recession

game or not, spent some time in the last week going and doing some research. The results are really grim. This week is going to be critical for Recession Watch. Big tech companies are going to report earnings. Already, there are major blinking red signs. Snapchat, which was a harbinger of the last crash, crashed 25% additionally in a single day after reporting that a massive drop in advertising earnings on Friday. Meanwhile, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, all are spinning and setting market expectations ahead of earnings to be released this week, with PR phrases like uncertainties related to the operating environment. Apple, the world's largest tech company, one of the most valuable public companies on earth, has decided to massively slow down hiring and investment, which tanked the market on their news. The reason that the behavior of these big firms matter is threefold. If things are bad there, then imagine being a startup. How are you supposed

to make money when Amazon is barely making money? How are you supposed to borrow money on a promise of valuation when the businesses that are worth trillions of dollars are having trouble keeping their stock price? Number two, these major companies have been big buyers, investors, and backers of other startups. Each of these companies acquires a healthy amount of tech startups every year, often using their stock price and widely available cash to do so. If that dries up, a major market player dries up as well. Number three, and probably most important for all of us, is tech is just really big. The tech sector in America for nearly two decades has been thought of as bulletproof. They print money. They have virtual economic monopolies. Why not invest in

them? This has led to the gradual over- overweighting of tech in nearly all portfolios, including the traditional stock indices. So let's say specifically the S&P 500. It's always talked about for amateur investors. Put your money in the S&P 500. Returns an average of X percent a year, meaning in the long term, you're going to make money. Now, that's still probably sound advice in the long run. But in the near term, consider what it means. 20% of the S&P 500's market cap alone is just five companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. But dig deeper, many of the companies within the S&P 500, which is technically only 20% of the index, actually adds up to nearly 40% when you consider overall tech exposure. That means that tech has a massive impact on the overall US public markets,

which of course, look, you may not own stocks or you may not even have, or you may just have a basic 401k, but you will still be affected if there is a bigger crash. 2008 taught us all about the availability of money, about how much valuation impacts overall behavior, the loaning of cash and the tremendous amount of wealth that is generated in financialization and things have frankly only gotten worse since then. Ballooning valuations and stock prices have probably increased the exposure of the overall

economy since then. Slight downturns in tech have a huge impact on everything. Overall stock market, people's retirement portfolios, Fed policy, to how Congress thinks about how should they respond. And another key recession indicator has been the housing market. While we were off, we highlighted how the cancellation rate on housing purchases is spiking across the nation. But we'll also have my eye on the luxury market. Again, that was a major harbinger of things to come when the initial boom happened. Here, we see the same thing. In real estate markets that are fueled by money in tech sector, we are seeing an overnight crash on the luxury market. The luxury market is in some ways a better peg as to how the overall assets are doing because most high-end transactions have nothing to do with mortgage rates.

They deal in straight-up cash. Cash availability to luxury buyers, especially in tech, comes in two forms. Loans against assets, and then asset sales. So tech stocks are sky high. It's really easy. You take a loan based upon the massive value of your technology holdings, you use that to pay for the house, or you sell some portion of your assets, and you use that to pay for your house. Either way, it's simple, an efficient transaction. But the crash has led to a dry up of such offers and overnight properties. There was a $3.5 million luxury penthouse in San Francisco. It would have sold in 24 hours six months ago. They cannot even get

one phone call of an interested buyer in three weeks. Furthermore, the luxury market may actually be trending in the wrong direction. When a lot of people in tech have terrible asset prices in stock, what do they turn to? Real estate. So the luxury real estate that they acquired ends up being last major asset that they hold, which then leads them to try and sell while the price remains possibly high. Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out this could induce in all the prices to drop if a critical mass of people all decide to sell at once, which then leads to decline in the price of assets, which is going to impact you. So the reason I'm spending so much time here is because it's really critical to understand. The major arrangements of our lives are really not up to us at all. How your small business

does, as we have found out also, is only so much in your control. Most of it lies with the Fed, with Wall Street, with other players who are accountable to no one. Small things like changes in luxury markets or advertising dollars can nuke entire businesses overnight through a butterfly effect. Pay close attention to all of these things that are going on, because they could have come to have a big impact

on your ability to live your life. Personally, I'm hoping for the best, but things are not trending good in the right direction for right now. I think that's a major lesson I've been taking away recently. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, the Senate is working on legislation to prevent a future presidential election from being stolen. Democrats are wrapping up hearings into the last blundering attempt to steal a presidential election, and candidates fully bought into the deepest Stop the Steal conspiracies are romping in Republican primaries across the country. But it's not just Democrats who see their political opponents as existential threats. Republican candidates are increasingly framing themselves as combatants in a war which is either at the doorstep or already here. The Washington Post is reporting that Republican candidates are using the language of civil war in their ads and campaign messaging. You might recall Eric

Greitens costumed in tactical gear with a giant gun busting into a house raid style hunting for Republicans who are insufficiently beholden to the president. There's the Republican nominee for attorney general in Maryland outright declaring that the country is, quote, at war and the enemy has co-opted members and agencies and agents of our government. Candidates from Sarah Palin to J.D. Vance are declaring that Biden isn't just incompetent and bad at his job, but that his policies are the result of a sort of evil genius intentionally designed to make Americans suffer with high gas prices and fentanyl deaths. As the Post writes, quote, the argument is not just that Democrats

disagree with conservatives, but that they despise them and hurt them on purpose. New polling and research shows that voters across the political spectrum might be kind of open to this existential rhetoric coming from political candidates and from elites. A growing number of Americans believe that the American project is coming apart completely and may fracture in the coming years. A recent YouGov poll found 49% of Americans say they believe America will cease to be a democracy in the near future. Only 25% thought that democracy would actually persist. Another 25% said that they were not sure. That means about three quarters of the country at least has some

real doubts about the future of our national experiment with democracy. This is across the partisan spectrum, by the way. Those with the bleakest views consumed the most partisan media. So of all the demographic groups that they tested here, Fox News viewers and MSNBC viewers and those who watched the January 6th hearings live, they were the most likely to see democracy as doomed. Even more troubling, similar numbers of Americans believe they will see a civil war in their lifetimes. 46% said it was likely, and 19% said they were not sure. Only about a third of Americans thought it was unlikely that civil war was coming. Once again, consumers of partisan media were most likely to believe that a nation-destroying war was in fact likely. Now, this actually lines up

with a groundbreaking new study that seeks to examine exactly these views. In the preprint of that research, fully half of respondents say they believe we will see a civil war in the next few years. 68% perceive a serious threat to our democracy. And as this existential sense of doom and conflict rises, willingness to resort to violence and to back strongman leaders also seems to have increased. 12% said they were willing to personally commit political violence. Perhaps most troubling of all, 40% said, were willing to personally commit political violence. Perhaps most troubling of all, 40% said, quote, having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy. So you take all these numbers together,

it's a pretty ugly portrait of how Americans are thinking and how they are feeling. About half the country thinks we are heading towards war and the end of democracy. Increasing numbers are actually okay with this violent authoritarian future. How in the world did we get here? Well, first of all, as I've laid out before, and we've talked about a lot on this show, our nation really is at a pivot point. Neoliberalism has run its course, and yet it seems to hold on for dear life. The unipolar moment is over, thrusting us into a new geopolitical realignment that is emerging in real time. Our American institutions have been rigged by the rich to be unresponsive to the public will, leading to a deep nihilism about change happening

through official channels. The crisis moment, the dread, the high stakes, those are all as real as can be. Everyone feels certain the country in a decade is likely to look dramatically different than it does today. You are not wrong to believe that a battle is on to determine what shape the nation might take. Political and media elites, of course, they're seizing on that and they're committed to defining that battle in terms of ordinary citizen versus ordinary citizen instead of ordinary citizens versus the corrupt elites who got us here in the first place. Politicians, of course, they want to keep the blame for our precarity, brokenness, and decline squarely off of their shoulders. Their only move is to point

fingers at their political opponents and the regular citizens who support their political opponents. The media, motivated by ratings and a desire to maintain good standing in the D.C. Club, they're happy to feed that narrative of a nation at war with itself, helping to craft the dividing lines that their political allies want and find convenient. Now, the upshot of these dynamics is a surge in anti-populist, elitist, and authoritarian sentiment. If your fellow citizen is too scary, dumb, and brutal to be part of a democratic society, then you've got to create a bulwark against them, don't you? Consolidating power in the hands of trusted elites who can keep the barbarians from running amok, censoring or criminalizing their views, exiling them from

political life entirely. If everyone on the political left, after all, is dedicated to burning down your town, grooming your kids, and destroying the nation, pretty hard to see how you're going to work that out at the ballot box. And if everyone on the political right is a conspiracy addled nutjob ready to do a coup, force 10-year-olds into childbirth and reinstate Jim Crow, you're going to be similarly skeptical that's really going to work out through the democratic process. The instinct towards cultish faith in figures like Fauci or Mueller or Trump, it all comes from this desperate desire for some elite figure to save us from the terror of democracy when we've been convinced that our fellow citizens cannot be trusted with a democratic voice. And this is the messaging that you get from places like Fox and

MSNBC all day long. So it is no surprise that their viewers are the most likely to see us headed towards a direct civil war and to be among the most likely to endorse political violence and express comfort with authoritarian leaders. Now, are we actually heading to a civil war? I personally don't really buy it. Anyone taking up arms against the U.S. government, with all of its trillions of military might, would have to be on a suicide mission. And you're pretty cute if you think your little home collection of guns is going to amount to much of anything against a nuclear superpower. But all the groundwork has already been laid for the nation to actively, perhaps even democratically, choose to end democracy. Trusting our fellow citizens feels too risky to

too many. The media is going to continue to profit from eating an internal Cold War, and the truth is they've already done their job. Far too many prefer the certainty of the strongman to the messiness of democracy with their imperfect fellow citizens. They see the certainty of the strongman to the messiness of democracy with their imperfect fellow citizens. They see the chaos of the near future and massive challenges the world is up against and have decided they prefer to just outsource the problems to their preferred set of elites. Many are so convinced of the impending death of American democracy that they will fight to see that it ends on their terms. And Sagar, I wonder what you think about the Civil War talk. And if you want to hear my reaction to

Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining me now is Stephen Nelson. He's the DC reporter, White House reporter for the New York Post. He's an old friend of mine. Stephen, came to my attention, you reached out to me, asked me to sign a letter, which I was happy to do. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So 68 White House journalists asked the White House press secretary to end the mysterious prescreening of reporters let into President Biden's events. You're calling it antithetical to the concept of a free press. So first of all, Stephen, I've spent a tremendous amount of time on the show trying to explain to people what it's like in the basement and in the room, just because they don't really understand press access, how much these things impact, how you can actually speak to the

president. You're there covering the Biden administration. What is this mysterious practice of pre-screening? Sure. So Sagar, you know better than most what this is because this was not a thing during the Trump administration or prior administrations. So for the viewers at home, this is on the one hand, a very insidery DC complaint, but it's also a very significant one because it impacts how the press covers the president and what the president has asked. And what the Biden administration has figured out how to do is essentially curate the group of reporters who are asking the president questions. So now viewers at home, they see President Biden usually take questions a couple of times a day. They see a group of reporters shouting them. They don't think. Who are those

people? I don't know how they get there. I assume figure that it is representative of the press corps, but it is not. The Biden administration has come up with this new strategy of requiring reporters to RSVP for events. So when President Trump was there, there was the East Room, which is 3,000 square feet. It's a huge room, so people know. Huge. Like, you can fit hundreds and hundreds of people in there. Biggest room in the White House. Absolutely enormous. So last June, when coronavirus rates started going down because everyone got vaccinated, the press briefing room, which is a very small room, it's basically the size of a double-wide trailer,

it returned to full capacity. 49 seated reporters could be there. Everyone stood up. The East Room never went back to full capacity. And what the White House did is they required reporters like you and I to RSVP, and then through some opaque process decided who got to go in. Now, over time, of course, there are clear patterns.

Who are the people who got to go in, Stephen? You know, I don't want to... Don't name names, give us the outlets. You know, I certainly don't want to embarrass anyone because what's really great about this letter you just mentioned is that we were very unanimous in our pushback. Everyone's represented in there.

The people who do get into these events signed on to the letter. Caitlin Collins and Ed O'Keefe, who are TV front row reporters, they signed on championing our cause. So it's been a very, very, I guess, people of all different stripes and outlet sizes signed on to this letter because we see it as a very worrying precedent. If Biden can do this, so could the next administration. And who's banned today may be different than who's banned tomorrow. You're absolutely right. And I think people should know.

I mean, we were able, you know, anyone could RSVP to these events. You could be a blogger for some random Christian website, which, as you and I know, often did show up at the White House. And it was, hey, that's okay. You can try if their president or whomever is going to call on you.

I mean, what has this had an impact on your career specifically? Or not even career, your ability to ask questions. So people know Stephen is a bit of a bomb thrower. He likes to ask critical questions. I think that's great. He's often critical, not critical, but you ask questions. So people know Stephen is a bit of a bomb thrower. He likes to ask critical questions. I think that's great. He's often critical, not critical, but you ask questions which you don't necessarily see often in the press corps, something I also try to do in my

tenure there. I mean, what impact has that had on you and your ability to do your job? Sure. So I'm the White House reporter for the New York Post, which is the fourth largest newspaper by circulation in the country. And what this mysterious prescreening process or blacklisting, as some people would call it, is it meant that from November until the end of June, I did not get into a single event through this supposedly random process. So seven months I was not in the room in the East Room when the president was taking questions. And what I mean, what that does is it means that the fourth largest newspaper in the country and the various issues that we care about were not as well represented as they could have been. So it significantly shapes press coverage of the president. Yeah. And I mean, so let's think also about the impact that that has. I mean,

in our experience in the past also, why do different questions matter for the president? Like what does that mean for the White House, their ability to prepare and also shape narratives on events and others? Like, why is that a bad precedent to set for the future? You know, it's a horrible precedent to set because having a diverse press corps, it basically reflects America. Yeah. It reflects America and the world. And if you have a diverse press corps, there are diverse questions. And the different demographics and different groups in America are well represented before the president.

And, you know, I'll answer that by pointing to a question that Brian Karam, who wrote this letter, asked the former president. Now, during President Trump's coronavirus briefings, people asked all sorts of questions. But Brian asked around the election, he's also someone known for sometimes throwing curveballs. Yes, he's a true bomb thrower. Yeah. I mean, I think he might come at it a little bit of a different direction, but he asked President Trump around the election, President Trump, are you going to commit to a peaceful transition of power? And President Trump, his answer, his answer, I think. Didn't say yes outright. He didn't say yes outright. So historically, that's of significant interest, especially considering what happened in January 6th. Definitely. So there, I mean, you could argue from both sides of the political spectrum

that it's good to have a diverse press corps. Yeah. I mean, I, again, I just want to reiterate, like I was on the rope line a bunch of times where Trump was there. You were there too, Steven. And you kind of scramble. It's, it's kind of a chaotic situation, but it's important because you get at least a chance in order to shout a question. Trump, who knows what he's going to answer? And we got all kinds of interesting stuff out of him. Biden, I mean, look, whenever they let him ask questions, sometimes he takes them and he'll take ones from whomever who happens to be in front of him. And that is the choke point.

So, OK, it's July 25th now. It's been 25 days since the letter was sent. Has there been any action on the part of the White House? So, you know, we tried to have discussions with the White House. And the interesting thing about this is that- What's that pushback? I mean, anything that you can say here publicly. So the White House Correspondents Association, which wants this practice to be done away with, they understand the horrible precedent it sets. They've been trying from June of last year until now to get an explanation of how this pre-screening works. It's been more than 12 months.

They haven't been successful. We don't know. We're a building full of reporters. None of us have figured out who the chief censorship officer is. None of us have figured this out. There have been really amusing ways that they've explained it. One person told me that they were told by one of the senior press staff that they had a random number generator that figured out who got to go in. Now, of course, I'm not a statistics person. It's been seven months of events for me. Yes, interesting. Yeah, there's not that many, actually, of people who are probably applying.

At least less than, what, let's say less than 100? Yeah, there's a lot less interest. And during the Trump administration, we all fit in the East Room, no problem. That's true. That's true. And we had all kinds of people from all over the world who were coming to these events, and we never had an issue. There was a standing room in the back. They could put out as many seats as possible.

They could seat you on the side if they want to. It's very simple. I mean, we've both seen events. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who are packed into the room. They're experts at it. There's a whole logistics staff that's capable of this. But in terms of response, you know, Brian, who's the letter author, he asked Korean Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, about this at the briefing. She says it's a priority. You know, coronavirus is getting better. We're going to work

on it. That's as best as we've gotten. And, you know, I actually did get into an event, and so did Brian, after seven months of being blacklisted. Yeah. So it seems that someone in the White House heard. But of course, the demand is that this be done away with altogether, not that it be lightened up and made a little more difficult. Yeah, it shouldn't be on an individual basis. You guys helped organize the letter. We very publicly support Glenn Greenwald, many others putting this out there. But it shouldn't take having to cause a storm to even have this. So anyway, I'm very against the practice.

I was happy to sign the letter. I wanted to make sure that people could hear as much about it because I think it's these little things like this that actually impact coverage and the way folks at home can experience it in a way that they don't even know. So thank you very much for joining us, Stephen. We really appreciate it. And thank you all for watching. It's been great to be back and we will see you all on Tuesday. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country

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