Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/26/22: Recession Spin, Trump Battles, Insider Trading, Ukraine Blacklist, CNN Stunned, Public Health, & More!

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the recession coming to America, Trump's beef with Fox News, Nordstream 1 pipeline, insider trading indictments, Ukraine's blacklist of prominent political figures, Dems' meddling in GOP primaries, scientific failures on Alzheimers and depression, and Trump world's plan to remake the federal bureaucracy!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/Jonathan Swan: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A lot of big stories to get to. First of all, are we in a recession already? Are we heading towards a recession? The White House very much out there trying to parse and come up with their own alternative facts around the state of the economy. Also, as we have been previewing, the Fed set to raise interest rates.

The expectation is they will probably lift at 75 basis points or 0.75 percent. There is an outside chance that they'll lift at one percentage point. Either way, this is an extraordinary move with major implications for you and for the economy. So we will break all of that down. Also, some new questions about whether the Murdoch's and Fox News are turning on Trump. Yeah, it's an interesting one. Big debate out there. So we'll read some of the tea leaves, see what they're up to. Also, yesterday, we brought you the news that Nord Stream 1, that critical pipeline bringing natural gas in particular to Germany, had been turned back on. Now we're getting numbers about how much capacity. It may be on, but not really. That critical pipeline bringing natural gas in particular to Germany had been turned back on.

Now we're getting numbers about how much capacity. It may be on, but not really. Not a full blast. And also a new deal just breaking this morning among EU member nations to curb their natural gas consumption. So we'll break all of that down for you. Also another insider trading scandal, this time with a former congressman. And we have, this is kind of a stunning development. Friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald, along with a lot of other figures, Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul Lula, the former president of Brazil, put on a blacklist in

Ukraine of people who are, quote unquote, spreading Russian propaganda. It's outrageous. It's completely insane. And it's part of a really disturbing trend in Ukraine of cracking down on any dissent. So bring that to you. We also have a've got to sell those tickets, people. Let's put this up there on the screen. September 16th in Atlanta. Obviously, we're going to have a lot to discuss. It's going to be election season. Part of a bigger midterm tour that Crystal and I are doing. With many other friends of the show, we'll be making appearances across the country. Yeah, I mean, we're obviously going to drag Marshall and Kyle down there.

Of course, of course. But we're still looking at some others. All right? It's going to be great. And listen, this tour, this is the first show. As we've said, we have to show people that we can sell these tickets. We'd really, really like to sell this one out as soon as possible just to prove it to many other venues who we're speaking with. Exactly how many tickets we can sell, booking, et cetera.

I don't want to bring people too far in, but that is why we've been pushing it so hard. So we deeply appreciate it. Number two, also, as a reminder, our premium monthly subscribers. Just if you could help out the show for financial planning purposes, we are as a reminder, our premium monthly subscribers. Just if you could help out the show for financial planning purposes, we are offering a discount to upgrade to yearly. It is deeply appreciative on our part. It really helps, as we said, financial planning as we're looking to hire and expand further out into the show. Just given everything with the economic situation, we thought it was best. And as such, we're offering those existing monthly subscribers

the ability to upgrade. There is a link in your premium newsletter at the very, very top for you to do so. For many of you who have already done so, we appreciate it so much. And they've been sending in such nice messages like, of course I can. If you can't afford it, no worries whatsoever. We totally get it, you know, given what's happening with the economy right now. And so that's probably a good segue, actually, to what we should discuss, which is the Biden administration is facing down the barrel of a, quote, technical recession second consecutive quarter of negative growth. Now, technically, that should be a recession. However, the Council of Economic Advisors,

which is appointed by the White House and which provides supposed to be nonpartisan economic analysis to the executive branch, is now changing the definition ahead of that Thursday GDP report. And so Jackie Henrich, who is over at Fox News, points out very clearly that the White House release says, what is a recession? Oh, please tell us. While some maintain two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constituted recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recession economist assessments are based on a holistic look at the data. Based on these data, it is unlikely the decline in the GDP of the first quarter of this year, even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter,

indicates a recession. Well, there's a little bit of a problem with that. Let's go ahead and throw this next one, or let's go ahead and actually, and listen on CNN whenever the White House economic advisor is pressed for changing this definition. And then we'll also show you some historical stuff, which outright proves that the White House is lying. Let's take a listen to the White House spin first. What will be comments from some saying two quarters of negative growth in a row, that's a recession. Right. And certainly in terms of the technical definition, it's not a recession. The technical definition considers a much broader spectrum of data points. But in practical terms, what matters to the American people is whether they have a little

economic breathing room, they have more job opportunities, their wages are going up. That has been Joe Biden's focus since coming into office. Yeah. So are any of those things happening? No. So it also is a recession. But as Michael Strain points out, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Of the past 10 times that the U.S. economy has experienced two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. How many times was a recession officially declared? Ten. So ten out of ten times. Now, look, I get that it's not great PR optics, but redefining definitions of recession is frankly, in my opinion, worse than saying, yeah, we're living through hard times. I'm doing everything I possibly can about it. I will give one counter defense, Crystal.

I spoke with Joe Weisenthal, friend over at Bloomberg. Here's what he says. Every single post-World War II recession saw unemployment rise before it or during it. However, in the first half of 2022, we saw unemployment fall from 3.9 to 3.6. So that is the defense of like the White House position. And Joe is not spinning.

He's just giving you the facts of why this one is wonky. Fine, say that. Hey, this is a wonky recession. But redefining the term recession and really gaslighting people, also using criteria which clearly are negatively trending for all of the American people, on top of the fact that everybody knows that nothing is working in American society, you're not fooling everybody. It's such an insane move on their part. Nominal wages may be rising, but of course, when you count inflation, everyone is getting a pay cut basically every week. So the idea that wages are going up, I mean, again, it's very gaslighting. And the bottom line is, this isn't going to work. People know what's going on in their own lives. I just was looking. Earlier this month, there was a poll that found 58% of Americans already think the country is in a recession. So they don't need

your like technical parsing definition to figure out what's going on in the economy. And I think politicians really err when they try to persuade people that things are going better than what they actually think and feel. I think Obama made this same mistake in his second term when he tried to sell the recovery as something that was really robust and really amazing when people were really still struggling. And it made him vulnerable to defeat if the Republicans had run anyone other than like a cartoon character, like monopoly, plutocratic villain. And so I think the Biden team throughout this period has consistently made this same mistake of trying to sell the unemployment numbers, trying to sell the nominal wage gains as this incredible recovery. And the

media is just spinning and the economy is actually great. You just don't understand it. When people know that things are really tight for them, they know that, you know, the job market already there are signs of significant deterioration that we're going to get to in a moment. You have new unemployment claims coming in higher. So you see that starting to ebb. Well, you already see massive impacts in terms of the housing market. So I was actually just reading an article about how upper middle class Americans, not that they're the most compelling or most sympathetic group, but they're really being squeezed right now, too, because they didn't benefit from the pandemic programs, which remains tested. And now their stock portfolios,

which made them feel like they had a lot of money, have all crashed. Their housing values, which also made them feel like they had a lot of money, are starting to crash. They recognize they can't sell into this market. If they did and tried to move somewhere else, they couldn't afford a new home. So you have people increasingly in their lives feeling like things are tight, like they can't afford what they could at the grocery store, like they're having to cut back. And the White House's like technical parsing of whether or not it's a recession is not going to change their minds on that. Yeah, and Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, sticking to the same spin. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. She says the economy shows no signs of recession. And once again, this is BS because Janet Yellen should know better.

Her background is as a technical economist. Her and her husband are both, I think her husband is a Nobel Prize in the field of economics. They're the ones who came up with this definition. And yet now they are saying, you don't see any of the signs. A recession is a broad-based contraction that affects many sectors of the economy. We just don't have that. In the very same breath, she acknowledges the impact of high inflation numbers on America, specifically gas, food, and other economic problems. And the issue that I really have on this is that they are all over the place. Remember, it was not even three months ago, Joe Biden was standing in front of the Port of Los Angeles telling us that we lived in the strongest economic recovery since World War II. Look, again, they're using technical definition. They're like, whoa,

economy's gone. Unemployment's 3.9. What does the unemployment rate matter if you cannot literally afford anything in your daily life, if you can't buy a car. I mean, even just recently, I was looking again, especially with this Fed rate hike, which is like, we're about to talk about it. It's about to come down the pipe. That's going to raise the average car price to like $800 a month. That's not even including insurance and all the other attendant costs. And that's if you can buy a car. So the used car market is on fire. People are having real trouble taking out loans. Their credit card usage is sky high. We're seeing all sorts of insanity happen in the mortgage markets, in the loan markets. That's on top of what, have anyone been to a grocery store lately? It's crazy. Like you'll

look at a price, you know, price of a pound of ground beef is going for like eight, $9. And you know, we've even seen a reduction. And this is again, what really bothers me. People are making really material cutbacks in their daily lives. I told you about the booming YouTube channel about how to cook like a depression housewife. Like this is not good for Americans. Yeah. They literally have these old videos. I have a lot of friends who could fill out that YouTube content. They're very effective at this. There's this grandma who has now died, but in 2013 did, like, a whole series with her grandson. She's like, here's how we used to cook in the Depression.

And now her views are going, like, booming right now because people are like, oh, how do I make, like, a single Costco rotisserie chicken last for a week? We don't want the American people. And that's a terrible situation to be in. You know, that leaves generational scars. No acknowledgement by the government. That's the single failure, I think, by the administration. Yeah, I think that's right. You have to level with people. I mean, they just, they know what's going on. They see it and feel it better than you do. I mean, you know, we're talking about officials who aren't worried about their next paycheck. They're not

worried about having to stretch a Costco chicken all week for their families. So the American people have a much better sense of what is really happening on the ground. There's another reason why people like Janet Yellen in particular would be interested in sort of spinning the numbers and pointing to, oh, we have these really great, you know, low unemployment numbers, which is true, but does not even come close to telling the whole story of what's going on here. But if you have the economy already slipping into a recession, you can't have the Fed continuing to move forward with these incredibly drastic hawkish measures. Because, you know, if you already have tipped things into a recession and you still have this high inflation, this proves the point that the Fed policy, the direction they're going in, is really not working and is actually just making things worse. And I guess that's a great transition to talk about what the Fed is set to

do this week. Let's go ahead and put this Bloomberg article up on the screen. They're on track at their Wednesday meeting to raise interest rates by 75 basis points. Again, that's just 0.75%. That's for the second straight month when they meet later in July. As you know, they raised interest rates by a quarter point in March, a half point in May, three quarters of a point in June. That was the biggest move since 1994, and they are set to replicate it this week on Wednesday. Now, there had been some expectation, which is not completely out the window, but seems like a very outside chance now, that they might go so far as to lift the rates a full 100 basis points. That's a full percentage point. So that would be, you know, quite astonishing and quite

significant of a move. But 75 basis points is no joke either. This is in an extraordinarily hawkish direction that the Fed is pushing things in. And, you know, they're kind of flying blind. No one really has a great sense of exactly how these interest rates increases are going to trickle down throughout the economy. We already see huge impacts in terms of financing cars, in terms especially of the housing market. As I was saying before, you're starting to see impacts even in the employment market as well, in spite of the fact that you have had these low unemployment numbers for a long time. The reason that they

seem to have backed off of the full 100 basis point move is because they got some data showing that U.S. consumers' long-term inflation expectations actually declined in early July. So they were forecast to go 2.8 percent versus 3.1 percent the month before. That's what people's expectations of inflation were. So they sort of looked at that and said, OK, maybe we don't need to go quite so far. But I don't want to underplay how extraordinary of a move this still is to have, for the second month in a row, an interest rate increase that we have not seen since 1994. Yeah. And actually, by the way, the 100 basis points is not off the table. I was just reading

this morning that Citibank and many other major traders on Wall Street are still betting on the 100. They're willing to be surprised if they do go ahead and hit 75 basis points. And the reason, again, that this matters is that not only was the previous rate hike the highest since 1994, and then you do it again, but it just shows you that given where inflation is right now, which is that we continue to have 40-year highs almost every month since the number comes out, there still doesn't seem to be any indication that they're going to stop. So what others are pointing to, the chief economist over at JP Morgan says the real question is what comes after? Because they're going to have to continue hiking rates. They could go up as high as 5, 6, 7, 8,

9%. And they could continue month after month every time that they have these quarterly meetings. And if they increase 75 basis points over a period of time, I mean, we could be looking at mortgage rates, which are 9% or 10%. Now, those of you who bought houses in like the 90s won't be that sympathetic, but it's a different country. We haven't lived in a country like that for 30-some years. And I was actually reading that the real issue also is the housing stock. So obviously, we have a major housing shortage across the United States, low interest rates

and low mortgage rates. The housing boom was actually fueling a hell of a lot of construction. But now, guess what the problem is? We actually need that construction to finish. We really do. But why would general contractors finish their houses if they can't sell them? So it actually, the housing increase, while yes, will slow down the housing market, it also will probably increase the housing shortage that we have across the United States. So the investment that we have right now is really a major problem. And also, I just can't emphasize enough in the past, which is that the key tool that the Fed has here is targeting demand and increasing unemployment. That is not going to solve the vast majority

of inflation that we have right now in 2022. And you've flagged this. And look, no fan of Elizabeth Warren here. But to be fair, she's been actually pretty relentless. Let's put this up there on the screen. Listen, she can be good on economics when she's good. I agree. Her trade policy and all that, I always support it. So let's go ahead and put this on the screen. Wall Street Journal opinion page. So very clearly targeted the business economic elite. And she specifically points out here, more aggressive rate hikes cost millions of jobs and will not address the cause of high prices. And she quotes the Federal Reserve chairman when she asked him whether that was going to bring down the price of gas or food. And he said, quote, there are many things that we can't affect. Again, the reason it matters is your demand at the

grocery store is not the reason that we have seen 7% to 10% to 20% increase, 20%, for example, in the price of egg. It's supply. We have massive supply problems. We have fertilizer problems. Climate, obviously, there's a scorcher all across the country. It's supply. We have massive supply problems. We have fertilizer problems. Climate, obviously, you know, there's a scorcher all across the country. There's wildfires all the way out west, not just here. Brazil had a massive shortage. So coffee is down by, you know, there's a shortage of like 40%. That's the reason that there's such crazy increases. And we've had shortages in the economy now for two years. We've had bad corporate planning and we've had over-financialization. The Fed can't do anything about all those things. And she very articulately lays that out.

Yeah, this was well-written, very easy for anyone to understand because she makes the argument very clearly. And, I mean, it echoes a lot of what we've been saying on this show, frankly. We played for you before that moment when she questioned Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell about, so hiking interest rates by the Fed, is that going to deal with increased gas prices? Is that going to deal with supply chain shocks? And he very honestly said, no. So it's like, OK, she lays down here. She says, all right, so then if raising interest rates by the Fed, if that doesn't solve these underlying issues that are actually the main problem right now, what do they actually do? And she says when the Fed raises interest rates, increasing the cost of borrowing money, it becomes more expensive for businesses to invest in their operations.

As a result, employers will slow hiring, cut hours, and fire workers, leaving families with less money. In the bloodless language of economists, that's referred to as dampening demand. But make no mistake, if the Fed cuts too much or too abruptly, the resulting recession will leave millions of people, disproportionately lower wage workers and workers of color, with smaller paychecks or no paycheck at all. So making it clear that, listen,

as bad as the inflation situation is, the inflation continuing to soar on top of a recession is a way worse situation. She closes by saying, before the Federal Reserve triggers a recession, Mr. Powell should remember that the one medicine in his kit does not treat every economic illness. Low unemployment and high inflation are painful, but a Fed-manufactured recession that puts millions of Americans out of work without addressing high prices would be far worse. And as I pointed to before, The Washington Post has an article pointing to some of the

signs that the job market is starting to slow down. In other words, that, yes, not only are we going to have two quarters of GDP contraction, which is the sort of standard issue definition of a recession, but even the metrics that the White House is using here are heading in the wrong direction. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. This is according to The Washington Post. They say the job market is beginning to show cracks. Job growth is slowing. Vacancies are down and unemployment claims are ticking up. They point in particular to the tech sector, which has, of course, taken a beating in terms of the stock market.

We're going to get a lot of earnings out this week to get a better picture even of what's going on there. Sagar talked about some of this in his monologue yesterday. But they say that tech hiring has fallen 9 percent in just the past month. That's compared with a 5.4 percent dip in hiring across all industries. Number of tech firms and startups laying off workers has picked up in recent weeks. You've had Netflix, Tesla, Coinbase all announcing job cuts or hiring freezes. Vimeo, the online video platform and one-time tech darling announced this week it is laying off 6% of their staff. They also interview a lot of

job recruiters and ordinary workers, some people who, when the job market was super hot, switched jobs or actually recruited into new jobs with big pay increases and exciting new roles and responsibilities, only to see themselves laid off months later because of fears of recession and because of the fact that everything is slowing down. So even the one number that the White House really loves to point to and highlight, the low unemployment number, that is also beginning to show signs of cracking. And as I mentioned before, new unemployment claims are ticking up.

Not a good sign. Yeah, the stuff that I pay even more attention to is like they point here, 7-Eleven, 800 workers at the corporate level. Ford, 8,000 positions in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Rivian, the electric car maker, down 700. Delivery, down 1,500. That thing has always been a mess, though, hasn't it? Yeah, although I'm going to say this.

Bezos aside, the Rivian looks cool. I've never driven one. I saw one on the road. It looks sweet. However, the mortgage lender, Loan Depot, 4,800 jobs gone ahead and slashed this year. So it's not just tech. And this stuff will bleed into the broader economy, especially if it hits manufacturing. And why this is such a tragedy is we are finally building more stuff in America for the first time in several years. The supply chain crisis, the tariffs,

all of it for the first year on record. We actually brought more manufacturing back to the United States. They said it couldn't be done, people. Well, we proved to them that we actually could. And now, all of a sudden, decrease in demand, specifically Fed policy, would absolutely hammer many of these new jobs and would frankly only increase the pressure on the White House right now in order to remove tariffs, to outsource even more, and to cut costs. Because I think that's the other point that we should remember, which is that manufacturing, investment, and all of that doesn't just come out of capital. It comes out of your ability to borrow. And if borrowing is way more expensive, you can't hire more people and you can't invest in your future workforce. And we already know what Wall Street's going to do.

They're going to cut jobs, try and buy back their own stock in order to try and save their pensions and all this other stuff. But none of that translates into a better economic future, I think, for people. It's a grim picture. It really is. And the high level view is that the reason why they are leaning so heavily on this, as Elizabeth Warren puts it, this medicine that is not the right cure for the disease that ails us is because the only institutions that still function, and I mean function in terms of actually being able to do anything, are basically the ones that are beholden to rich people. Also non-elect.

All of, and undemocratic, right? I mean, everything else has been completely unintentionally, by the way, hamstrung, gridlocked, made so it, you know, is not responsive to the people whatsoever. And so the only institutions that are left that actually have power and are able to operate, not in a good fashion, but able to operate, are the ones that have been sort of designed by and for rich people, the Fed being key among those. All right, let's move on to what's going on with our former and potentially future President Trump.

Some shots fired from Trump at his former friends over at Fox and Friends. I guess now it's no longer Fox and Friends of Trump. Yeah, that's right. Fox and Friends. Former friends. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. He sent out a truth saying. It's too long.

Fox and Friends. Everything's wrong with that. I mean, for a man who's so good at branding. Right. You really screw, you really drop the ball on this one. Anyway, he says, Fox and friends just really botched my poll numbers, no doubt on purpose. That show has been terrible, gone to the, quote, dark side. They quickly quote the big turning point poll victory of almost 60 points over the number two Republican. Funny he won't say DeSantis' name.

And then hammer me without liars. Actually, almost all polls have me leading all Republicans and Biden by a lot. Rhino Paul Ryan, one of the weakest and worst speakers ever, must be running the place anyway. Thank you to Turning Point. The crowd and love, he puts in quotes, was amazing, in all caps. Classic Trump. A couple things to note about what he says there. First of all, as I said, funny, this is the number two Republican, which is Ron DeSantis. Second of all, I I said, funny, this is the number two Republican, which is Ron DeSantis. Second of all, I think the poll he's referring to is like a straw poll at the Turning Points conference or whatever. In terms of him, you know, overall how he's doing in the polls, he's definitely still leading the Republican field by quite a lot.

He's right about that. Most of the polls head-to-head against Biden, though, are pretty much neck and neck. Most of the ones that I've seen have Biden with a small edge over Trump. So he's not correct about that one. But the bigger question here, which has been sparked over the past several weeks, is whether there is a true schism between Trump and the Murdoch family, which, of course, owns Fox News, not to mention Wall Street Journal, New York Post and other outlets around the world. Oh, the one other thing to note about his truth there is he mentions Paul Ryan. Yes. That's because Paul Ryan now sits on the board of Fox News. So he's sort of laying the blame at Paul Ryan's fee for saying,

oh, they're taking this anti-Trump turn because of that. Fuel to the fire of the idea that there might be some sort of split between the Murdochs and Trump is the fact, and let's put this next piece up on the screen. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, again, Murdoch-owned papers, published op-eds critical, very critical of Trump and his behavior on January 6th. The Wall Street Journal, which, of course, is sort of the mouthpiece to the business community, says the brute facts remain. Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution. He had a duty as commander in chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused. They went on to say that Trump utterly failed his character, you know, his test of character in this crisis while Pence passed his January 6th trial.

So interesting developments here. Now, in terms of Fox News, they've been more, you know, just continuing down the path of supporting Trump and backing him up. And a lot of their personality is very much, you know, downplaying January 6th, not talking about it, not covering it, all of those things. But it is kind of interesting to see here. And my guess, Sagar, is that the Murdochs and the Fox News brass, they would rather have someone other than Trump, just like they would have rather had someone other than Trump back in 2016. Are they going to go like hard to the mat to try to prop up a Ron DeSantis or anyone else? No. It is a little bit of a trial.

It's complicated. And that's why I think you phrased it correctly, which is that they'll do everything in their power in the very, very early stages to make sure that Trump doesn't win. However, they need ratings. And their base loves Trump. You know, Ted Cruz had a very interesting discussion on this. I think it was like 2017 where he gave a retrospective. that one of the major death knells to his campaign was November 2015, whenever Murdoch and Trump, and Fox decided to go all in for Trump. Previous, remember, I mean, Megyn Kelly was critical of Trump. Obviously, there was quite a bit of anti-Trump sentiment on Fox News. At least it was allowed, and Ailes was still running the network at that time. But Ted Cruz, very, very

in name, which almost never happens, actually went after Roger Ailes and was like, Roger Ailes turned on me November 2015. I do got to say, though, that's also at the time when Trump really almost surged to the very top of the polls. I don't know if people remember, November 2015 was San Bernardino. And that is what led to the Muslim ban. Whatever you think of that, it was very popular amongst Republican voters. And that's really what surged him all the way to the top and encouraged some of the tabloid treatment. And whenever Ailes and others saw the way that Trump rated with the audience, they just decided to go all in for him. But right now, you flagged this, and I found it fascinating, which is that

Fox basically aired a three-minute commercial for Ron DeSantis, where they started interviewing all of these Trump voters who said that they wouldn't vote for Trump. So we've cut like a minute and a half of this thing. Why don't you guys all just take a listen? Because it's remarkable that this aired on the Fox News channel in the year 2022. Let's take a listen. Yes. I don't want him to. I like what he stands for. I like what he does. But he upset too many people.

And he upset them really bad. So I don't think he's good for the party. He needs to get back in. He already had gained that respect from all the world leaders. And finish what he started. It's too bad that he did what he did do and was fought the whole way along on darn near everything that he did but that's what happened so i'd like to see him not run if he did i would vote for him but i would not recommend he runs i i voted for trump both times and i i love him i think he was a good candidate but i think his time has passed i couldn't care

less about uh president trump uh personally um i prefer somebody different, but if he is the nominee, I'll probably vote for him. You know what, I voted for him for my very first time I voted for him. I don't think it'll be best for our country for him to run for reelection. You know, I'm thankful for everything that he's done, but I think that our Republican Party needs to be united. At this point, he's a little too polarizing, and I think that there are candidates out there, Republican candidates obviously, that maybe be able to pull in people that he would lose to be able to change this. I would like to see, you know, Governor DeSantis or someone like that, some new blood in the race.

DeSantis, we're president. If he wants to, then he can pick up Donald as the vice president. We're from Florida. DeSantis, we're big fans of DeSantis on this one. He seems to be much more common sense and able to communicate better to both sides to get those people back to switch. Kind of crazy. I mean, that's like a DeSantis campaign ad. Yeah, they literally put his face up there like this. And then they just interview after interview after interview. I'm like, wow. I mean, look. And you know, this has to be cherry picked because, I mean, Trump was just in Arizona and received an incredibly raucous, you know, response. His candidate for governor is ahead by 12 points in the polls.

Clearly, there's still a lot of affinity for Trump in Arizona. Of course there is. I mean, there's no question. Look, I mean, people for all the New Hampshire polls and others that we've pointed to, there are many other polls, including out of New Hampshire, which show him winning by a massive and wide margin. So again, look, a black swan event aside, I just don't think that Ron DeSantis could beat him in a Republican primary. And I think the other reason that people should think is there's no world where Ron DeSantis is the only person running against Trump. As I've said, there are already open indications Ron DeSantis may run against Trump, but he's not the only one. Mike Pence, which we're about to get to, Mike Pompeo apparently has been telling billionaire donors that he thinks he can beat Trump in the Iowa caucuses.

The level of delusional. I would love to know what it's like to have this level of delusional self-confidence. Just for one day, I'd like to know what that feels like. I just think to be president, you simply have to have that. That's what people always say, which is that. I remember Peter Baker, who we talked about previously, he's interviewed like seven presidents. He's like the only thing that unites them is that they're all egomaniacs. Total narcissists.

I think it's definitely true. They're God's gift. Absolutely. I mean, there's no other way that you sacrifice your entire family life in order to become the president. I mean, Pence literally thinks he's God's gift. He thinks he's on a mission from God to be president of the United States. So did George W. Bush. Very evangelical in his favor.

Romney thought the same thing. Romney thought he was like the fulfillment of some prophecy. There's a psychology to this, which I don't think a lot of us will ever understand, but that's why they are who they are and we are who we are. There's one other thing I want to say about the Fox News piece before we move on, because it is, I mean, the arc of Trump and his relationship with Fox News is very interesting, right? They were the ones that first gave him a sort of platform into politics. 2011. Yeah. I mean, he would come on. I think it was Fox and Friends that he would call into all the time. He had a regular segment. This is where he's pushing like the birther conspiracy nonsense. But this really gave him sort of traction and a

base of support with the Republican base that allowed him to kind of fake it till he made it until he actually gained a lot of significant support in the Republican primary. And it seems to me at this point in terms of Fox News and the Republican Party base, if they were ever able to just completely drive the train in whatever direction they wanted, those days are now past. And you saw this very much with Stop the Steal. I mean, they tried, especially in the early days. Didn't matter. They certified Arizona. They were the first down to the gates there. People like Brett Baer and others who were there tried to press the Trump people and the Trump spokespeople that they would

have on the show about the nonsense that they were spewing. But ultimately, you know, they have fallen more in line with what the base thinks, which is believing Trump and believing his conspiracies. So they just try not to talk about it much now, but they'll flirt with the idea that it was rigged or that it was somehow unfair. So I think that their ability to just totally shape sentiment and direction of the Republican base, I think that's gone. And I really think Trump is the one who kind of broke that in 2016 because they did want to go in a different direction. They were unable to overcome the level of intense support

that was there among their viewership for Trump. I don't think it was just Trump. I think Trump came at the perfect time, which was the internet. I mean, what people don't forget, I used to work in this, so I remember this, the Daily Caller, which is that the conservative media infrastructure was brand new. And really, 2012, they didn't play as big of a role because the internet at that time and the blogosphere was not as influential. But I worked at The Daily Caller in 2015.

We knew in the data in, like, October 2015, they're like, the base loves Trump because we knew. You could see it literally. And that became the vector for spread, quote spread, quote unquote, for Trump support. So it didn't even matter what was happening on Fox. People were posting on Facebook, sharing stuff, Twitter. I mean, online really became the battleground versus Fox. I think the Internet just disrupted Fox in the same way it disrupted everything. So you just Trump is the he's the ruler of conservative Internet.

Everybody knows that. And having been both on the cable news side and now in the online media space, you just have so much more granular feel for what the audience is into, what they're excited about, what their emotions are about any given subject, whereas Fox News, which for a cable news network has done much better than any of their competitors in terms of understanding their audience, you still can't come close to the level of sort of detailed understanding of who your audience is and what they're really into. So I think that's a really great point. Moving on to one of the would-be contenders against Trump, his former vice president, Mike Pence, is out there. Let's go ahead and put Washington Post up on the screen. Pence is out there trying his darndest to find his own lane. The Washington Post headline here is Pence seeks distance from Trump as he considers 2024 presidential run. As the January 6th committee focuses on Pence's role in certifying Biden's win. The former vice president is making

moves toward a campaign whether Trump runs or not. They have some details here about the workings of this now sort of fully functioning operation. He is aggressively working to build on a team, they say. He's got a nonprofit with a $20 million budget and a Washington office. He's prepared for a possible announcement for president in the spring. So we're looking at, you know, less than a year from now, making regular visits to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. This was a funny detail. Splurging on a 54-inch zero-turn John Deere mower he can brag about on the campaign trail. Began flying commercial again when donors aren't available to lend him a plane,

remarking with surprise to aides at how Southwest Airlines seats customers. Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it, Mike? I haven't been on a game for a while. I actually like the Southwest model, but we'll table that for another day. He's writing two different books that could anchor his next campaign,

a memoir of his life that's due out this fall and a book about his faith journey that's aimed at evangelical voters, which he clearly sees as, you know, his ticket to the White House. And we've tracked here how he's, as Roe versus Wade was overturned and, you know, in these fights, cultural fights, which are in some way throwbacks to the past decades, he knows where he stands and he is unafraid of being unabashedly on the far right of cultural conservatism when it comes to gay marriage and abortion in particular. He's expected to offer his most extensive and critical comments about Trump on January 6th

in that forthcoming memoir. He got a nice little seven-figure book contract from Simon & Schuster because he vowed to be so open about it. But to me, Sagar, the most important detail from this piece was they talked to a pollster. She's an anti-Trump Republican strategist. So this is someone who would like to see Pence or someone like him get some traction in order to get away from Trump. She's been doing focus groups, a woman named Sarah Longwell. And she says Pence's name has almost never volunteered as a preferred alternative candidate to the extent that people

are offering an alternative name. It's Ron DeSantis. She says, quote, we ask people, so what about Mike Pence? And you get a lot of, eh, she said. That's the sound people make. Eh. And I think that kind of says it all. That does says it all. I don't know. I mean, there's, as we were just talking about previously, there is obviously a massive level of delusion to even think that you could do this, which is probably a prerequisite for the job. But you should also have some level of rationality.

And a lot of this war has now broken out into the public sphere with the MAGA world really making sure that they're going after Pence because Pence, remember this, he not only campaigned for Brian Kemp, but he's been endorsing alternative slates of candidates, often not the same as Donald Trump. He's been making inroads with the Heritage Foundation. He's been giving speeches kind of with the conservative ink, quote unquote, of all of the high dollar donors who've always liked Mike Pence. Everybody thinks he's honorable for January 6th, et cetera. But nobody seems to understand the political realities of all of this.

But if you want to know what the party faithful think, check this out. Matt Gaetz attacking Mike Pence on the stage at CPAC and listen to the audience. On that note, let me just say what everybody here knows. Mike Pence will never be president. Nice guy, not a leader. There you go. That's the response. Roaring applause there. And at the same time, Crystal, we had Mike Pence. So this is now kind of erupting into open warfare. Mike Pence's former chief advisor, Mark Short, longtime kind of Koch guy. He worked for Mike Pence while he was in the White House. He then went after Matt Gaetz, erupting into open warfare on the airwaves. Let's take a listen to that. Mike Pence will never be president. Nice guy, not a leader.

Mark? Well, I don't know if Mike Pence will run for president 2024, but I don't think Matt Gaetz will have an impact on that. In fact, I'd be surprised if he was still voting. It's more likely he'll be in prison for child sex trafficking by 2024. And I'm actually surprised that Florida law enforcement still allows him to speak to teenage conferences like that. So I'm not too worried about Matt Gates. Thanks. Wow. Child sex trafficking, not being on stage in front of teenagers. A great burn, no doubt. However, you've got to admit the base is definitely on Matt Gaetz's side here. I mean, there's just no question. And the eruption of this really just gives me 2015 vibes. I'm like, make the, I'm going to be the devil's advocate and make a case for Pence, which is that, you know, the thing I've been saying with DeSantis is what is the case

you're going to make against Trump? Because you have to convince people that they need to go in another direction. And it's not clear to me that this idea of like, oh, a highbrow version of Trump is really what the majority of the Republican base is after. There is a subset, and we're seeing that already, of largely college educated voters who are saying are saying sort of like what was said in that Fox News montage, he's too divisive, we want to go in another direction. But a lot of people are there for the divisive. They're there for the, you know, owning the libs and causing everybody to melt down on cable news. I mean, to me, that is the best part of Trump, right? And I think that's the case for a lot of his base. Pence, I understand how he could have a critique of Trump, right? And I think that's the case for a lot of his base. Pence, I understand

how he could have a critique of Trump, and that's not focused on January 6th. You're not going to make an effective January 6th case against Trump. That's not going to be the way to go, even as I do think that January 6th has kind of damaged his image broadly with the general public and with some segments of the Republican base, certainly with the Republican establishment. That's not going to be the route. Pence, though, if these battles over abortion, gay marriage, if that is the battleground that's being fought over right now, he is very comfortable and very willing to go further on those issues and with a lot more credibility than Trump at this point. So I do see more of how he could get to Trump's right on some issues where he has sort of core credibility and which are central to his,

you know, evangelical worldview for forever. But ultimately, do I think that that's what's going to decide the Republican primary? I don't. I just don't see it. That's only 20-something percent of the base. At the end of the day, the vast majority of the people who love Trump, they're non-college-educated whites and not particularly religious. They identify as, quote, Christian, but they don't really go to church. And Trump has the Trump card, sorry, of being able to say, I put these justices on the Supreme Court. Which is true. That was me. with how this all went down, you have me to thank for it. Of all the groups that make up the, you

know, coalition of the Republican Party, the white evangelical base has been his most lockstep hardest supporters because of exactly this reason. You know, they've been trying to get to the promised land of the super conservative Supreme Court that would overturn Roe versus Wade for literally 50 years, Trump got them there. So that's why I don't think that Pence is going to be able to really penetrate with that argument. And I also just think, stylistically, he's such a throwback. You know, he really feels like a—

It's like a George W. Bush compassionate conservative type. I mean, he almost feels like a late 90s kind of Republican conservative or, yeah, George W. Bush era. I mean, it just doesn't feel like the vibe or the aesthetic of the Republican base today. I completely agree. I don't think he has a chance in hell, but I guess it'll be fun in Nord Stream pipeline. We brought you all the news that Nord Stream in Russia had decided to turn the pipeline back on after shutting down for 11 days. This is a high stakes game because Germany gets the vast majority of its natural gas supply, which is predominant use for consumer power from Russia. However, some news actually just broke that, let's put this up there on the screen, Russia, while it has gone ahead and restarted the Nord Stream pipeline, they have cut an additional 20% of the gas supply to Germany. This brings the total to nearly 80% cut to the German consumer since the beginning of the

invasion of Ukraine, which, you know, I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that an 80% drop in the supply of natural gas when the vast majority of your gas is coming from a country is a huge problem, both from an energy perspective, but also for natural gas markets in general. And it is leading to all sorts of insanity in Germany. We've talked about they're already in phase two of their energy cut plan. Phase three requires actual blackouts. It's already destroying the German economy. German manufacturing and the trade deficit has gone reverse for the first time since the 1990s.

And it's an outright political and economic catastrophe for them. If they're beginning to slide, we're seeing problems with the Eurozone, given that German banks and Germany is the most powerful actor within the euro system. This has all kinds of spillover effects. On the natural gas markets, it also is having a major impact. Let's put this up there on the screen from the Financial Times, which is that traders are expecting European gas prices to remain elevated for years to come. And again, why does this matter? One of the benefits of natural gas and LNG

was that it was cheap and its cheap ability to supply power and influence manufacturing in Germany, not just Germany, Pakistan, Thailand, many other Asian countries across the globe were having access to this cheaper power, which also, I believe it's carbon emissions or something like 50% or whatever of coal-fired plants. So it was better for the climate and it was cheaper. Well, the increase in the price and given the ability and the conscious decision to cut ourselves off from Russian gas has now made it so that the West is going to be paying sky-high natural gas prices. This also impacts us here at home because some 40-something percent of power crystal in 2021 came from natural

gas. And natural gas is a globally traded commodity. We ship out huge portions of our natural gas to the global market. And then you put everything on top. The EU decided today, this morning, this news just broke, has agreed to a sweeping curb on natural gas usage. So the EU has come together and said that they are going to cut natural gas consumption between now and spring by a total of 15%. This is being billed to the global community as we're standing up to Russia. But if you care about carbon emissions, this is a disaster. Because at the very same time that they are curbing 15% of natural gas, guess what? The Germans are going to continue to decommission nuclear power plants, which leaves you one option, coal.

So they are going to be burning coal out the wazoo. And they don't even have enough coal in order to do so. So they're inducing an energy crisis on their own shores, increasing their carbon emissions. And frankly, they're making the entire world less safe as a result of all of this, all in order to, quote, own Putin and reduce his ability to screw with them. But the truth is, 15% is still not going to cut it. If Putin wants to cut them off, they're still screwed, even if they try and reduce their natural gas consumption. And that's exactly what he's doing. He's toying with them. Yeah. Why wouldn't he?

The Russians are saying like, oh, this is just about a turbine and we need a car. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they want the Europeans and the Germans in particular to know that they have their own weapons at their disposal that they can make their people suffer. And there was a quote in the article actually that we cited yesterday where one analyst was saying, this is exactly what Putin wants to achieve, that when we make the next decision about arms deliveries to Ukraine, that somewhere in the back of our heads, and this is a German analyst, there is this thought, well, what is this think it's wrong for people to have that thought. Right. To understand because it's not like the policy that we have pursued has worked in terms of, you know, hurting Putin's – bleeding the worms. That was the whole idea. You know, this concept that we could achieve or that the Ukrainians backed by our military, you know, by our military might would be able to achieve total victory. That does not seem anywhere would be able to achieve total victory. That does not seem anywhere close to able to happen. So I don't think it's wrong for German citizens or other

European citizens to weigh the costs and the benefits of the approach, especially when the approach has been so ineffective thus far. Oh, absolutely. And this is going to be, like I said, it's not going to solve the problem. You know, reducing gas consumption by 15%, 100% means tons of more coal and carbon being emitted into the atmosphere as long as they decide not to pursue nuclear. But also 15% is just still not going to do anything. The fact is, 40% of all EU gas, not just Germany, EU gas comes from Russia. So it's fine. You can cut 15%. That still leaves nearly a third of your grid vulnerable to what the Russians want to do. No country on earth can survive a one-third cut in their grid power. It's just not possible,

especially with the lack of nuclear capacity. And what are we all learning here in real time? It takes 10 years to build this shit from LNG terminals, a nuclear power plant, coal, all of it. It takes decades for investment, shipping things across the globe. They're extraordinarily vulnerable. The Russians will still be able to influence their economies and wage economic warfare if they want. And the price of all of this is going to have long-time ramifications. Oil, of course, we all feel that at the pump, but you absorb increases in natural gas for your heating bills and others. And the thing that really worries me is in this article, they also talk about from the trader's perspective

that the inventories are supposed to be very high right now because they stock up in the summer while winter is going to come. So deal with volatility. Nobody knows how the hell weather is going to be. I mean, right now there's like a crazy heat wave in Europe that doesn't at all rule out a crazy cold spell that also would happen. And if that happens, you know, increase in extreme weather events, which we're beginning to see more of also within Europe, that's going to be a real test of their ability to heat their homes. And it's not a joke, because if you have rolling blackouts in the middle of winter, old people die. People literally freeze to death. It happens every year, not just from homeless

people, but literally anytime there's blackouts, hospital grids, all that other stuff. So it's a real problem. The energy blackmail remains. Carbon-wise, it's a real problem. And I just think it really highlights the real just hypocrisy and lack of foresight to our overall strategy towards Russia. All of it is signaling. They're like, we're cutting off the gas, but not enough to actually do anything. They're still paying them hundreds of billions of euros, and the leverage remains there if they want it. So I don't know. There's a lot that's happening. But I do want to also add on the diplomatic front, it's not like the Russians are doing their best in order to try and bring an end to this thing. Let's put this up there on the screen. You know, Sergei Lavrov, who is the foreign minister of Russia, the top diplomat, said yesterday that the overarching goal of Moscow is to, quote, free its people from an unacceptable regime. So even after all this, after their economy has suffered, tens of thousands of their troops are dead. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dead. They've been embarrassed on the world stage. Yes, they're still printing money, but it hasn't exactly worked out, you know, as how they thought it would. They're still pursuing regime change in Kiev and trying to oust Zelensky. So

it's not like they're giving anything on the diplomatic front. They're not creating any sort of an opening. Exactly. So as long as they want to act like this and then bomb stuff in Odessa minutes after signing a grain deal, how are we supposed to get to any solution? I think anybody who's like us who also wants peace should also emphasize, like, man, these damn Russians, they're not giving any ground here. Like, what are you people doing? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right.

That doesn't change the fact that our administration's policy should be doing everything that is in our power to push for negotiations and a diplomatic resolution because that will be the best thing for the world, for the Ukrainians, for our people, etc. But that doesn't mean there are a lot of openings right now. And I think, frankly, the Russians feel like they're in a pretty good position. They've weathered a lot of the economic storm. They've figured out their strategy in terms of waging war using food prices and energy prices, which this is, again, something we said from the beginning of don't fall into the hubris of thinking that your enemy doesn't have any tools and weapons at their disposal to make you pay as well.

So when we're launching all out economic warfare against them, guess what? They're going to respond. I mean, this is just this is utterly predictable. And it was a tremendous act of hubris to imagine any differently. But yeah, I think the Russians feel like they, you know, secured a lot of territory in the eastern part of Ukraine, that they're kind of on the offense, that they've got worked down some of their early failures and total embarrassing catastrophes, and they're pursuing a much more effective strategy now. And so they feel like, why should we negotiate right now when we have the upper hand? So in a

lot of ways, too, I think the moment when negotiations would have been more likely, that time when you had the Ukrainian side and the Russian side meeting together in Turkey, and there was some actual effort to come to a resolution and the Ukrainians were much more stronger on, much stronger on the battlefield at that point, I think, you know, we didn't want the Ukrainians to strike a deal at that point. We didn't put any pressure in that direction. And so in a lot of ways, that moment has been lost. And that is, that is really, truly a tragedy. That's the moment when Boris Johnson, former prime minister of the UK, went to Kiev specifically to deliver the message to Zelensky that we were not ready for the war to be over.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I really think, unfortunately, at this point, we are locked in. The Russians are not going to give anything. Their policy, if anything, they are now at a point where they see no option but to continue this. Also, reporting currently indicates, and this is going to be a key thing to watch, it broke this morning, that the Ukrainians are actually planning a major counterattack on the city of Kherson. And the fate of that counterattack is going to matter a lot. It will actually give us quite a bit of insight into the offensive capability of the Ukrainian military. We have now shipped tens of billions of dollars to these people. And predominantly, all of the stuff we've been giving them is very useful for defense. So if they don't have the ability to mount a capable offensive attack on the Russian

military and retake this city, well, that also spells a lot of questions for what's the future here? I mean, we're going to have an endless front line because if it ends up being that way, it also could amount to the ability for the Russians then to counterattack that and say, well, we have to keep pushing further because the Ukrainians are going to attack us. I have no, I'm not saying that's a good thing. Like, if I was Ukraine, I would counterattack too. What I'm saying from our perspective is it will give us a real insight into their ability militarily on the ground. So that's another thing in order to watch. Is it realistic for them to retake any of the territories they've lost at this point?

And at that point, what are they going to say? I mean, I already know what the Hawks are going to say. That means we need to give them more weapons. We need to give them more weapons. There you go. I mean, a realistic analysis will tell us whether that could be a demarcation point, but we are not even close to the end of this thing. Russians are still saying they want regime change in Ukraine. As long as that's a default policy, nothing is going to happen. And they're going to guarantee the Western reaction. And then the Western reaction is guaranteeing the Russian reaction.

It's a mutually reinforcing force, which makes the world less safe. And a lot more people are going to die. I just don't think there's any other way. That is the sad state of affairs. All right. We wanted to update you on something that broke yesterday, which was some major indictments in an insider trading scandal. Specifically, some indictments of a U.S. former congressman from Indiana. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

Ex-congressman among nine charged in insider trading cases. Here are some of the details. This guy's name is Stephen Beyer. Can't make it up. Spelled B-U-Y-E-R. Was accused in court papers of engaging in insider trading during the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint that was announced back in April 2018.

Basically, he is accused, he denies wrongdoing, of misappropriating secrets that he learned as a consultant to cash in to the tune of $350,000 illegally. He was arrested on Monday in his home state of Indiana when he was in Congress, which he served for a long time, from 1993 to 2011. Lo and behold, he served on committees with oversight over the telecoms industry. So he's a member of Congress overseeing this key committee with regards to telecoms. He leaves. He goes to cash in, as members do. But it's not enough for him just to get, like, the lobbying gig or whatever.

He has to also use this insider info that he got, allegedly, in order to, you know, buy stock at a key moment before this merger became public and cash in. They said, but that's not all. They said that he also engaged in illegal trading in 2019 ahead of Navigant Consulting Inc.'s acquisition by consulting an advisory firm, Guidehouse. Documents said he leveraged his work again as a consultant and as a lobbyist to make illegal profits. There's another case in here that I wanted to highlight of a dude who was training to be an FBI agent who was also just arrested for insider trading. This guy allegedly stole information from his girlfriend. They're not boyfriend and girlfriend anymore, apparently, who was working

at a major DC law firm. And according to court papers, he and a friend then made more than $1.4 million in illegal profits after he learned that Merck was going to acquire Pandion Therapeutics. I'm sure he denies wrongdoing, whatever, whatever, allegedly. And we don't, everybody's innocent until proven guilty. With regard to the former congressman, I mean, if you're engaged in this kind of crooked, shady shit once you get out, pretty likely you weren't a paragon of moral virtue when you were head of this committee and privy to all sorts of insider information about what type of legislation that's going to affect the industry is going to come down. I think the stuff, the details of this are literally like out of a movie. Because if you see the details on how exactly he got the tip that a merger was coming between Sprint and T-Mobile, it was on the golf course. It's like you couldn't, it's literally out of a film where he's there working his high level connections and then immediately leaves the golf course. The next day buys a ton of, and makes a profit of nearly $100,000. And then in the same next tip in 2021, makes a profit of $207,000. So this is not just like

middling stuff. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. So that means that millions of dollars of capital might have even been employed. Again, betting on individual stocks. I don't know how he possibly thought it wasn't going to get caught. But the other one- I mean, just the arrogance. They think the rules don't apply to them. I mean, here's the thing. And oftentimes they don't. This is just one where they could prove it, right? I mean, this is just one where they could prove the timing of the deal, the meeting, all of this. And insider trading is difficult. Very hard to prove. Yeah. Because you have to prove that they had confidential information and that they acted on that confidential information. It's part of the reason why even all this Paul Pelosi stuff, it's hard to prove unless you tap the phones of the Speaker of the House.

Yeah. And then even then you need him on the phone being like, I am doing this because my wife told me. I am engaged in insider trading right now. As long as you can credibly say, like, oh, I had public access to X information and took a bet, it's hard for the SEC to win that case against you. This other one of the FBI training, I mean, that's literally out of the movie Wall Street, of going to, like, your girlfriend's briefcase, like, looking at the details. Rifling through the papers. And then making a million dollars.

It's like, what? How is this possible? I mean, but it does show you that this stuff is alive and well for all of the so-called electronic triggers and all of that on insider trading. We have people in high levels of authority with connections to power who are using theirs connections, abilities. Maybe he used his FBI training or whatever to spy on his girlfriend's deal binder, et cetera, in order to make themselves a hell of a lot. He employed the things he learned in the FBI training to be able to spy on his girlfriend. Yeah. Smart. I get it. By the way, it says then girlfriend. So she did dump his ex. Yeah. They're no longer together. Good for her. With regards to

the Congressman, I also think it exposes this mentality that Dan Crenshaw accidentally revealed of like, well, I mean, if we can't trade stock, how are we going to better ourselves? It's the sense of entitlement that their position, you know, having attained this office of quote unquote public service, they have this sense of entitlement that they should be able to profit off of that position and not just a little bit to the tune of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. It's not enough for this guy that he could go and then cash in in what I consider to be a disgusting way, becoming a lobbyist and consultant to industry, a total revolving door after being the head of the committee that was charged with regulating this industry. Then you walk across the street and you cash in on that, quote unquote, expertise. That's gross enough and, in my opinion, should be illegal as well. But that wasn't enough. No, then you have to go above and beyond and use insider information to illegally acquire an

additional $300,000-some in profits, I think that just speaks to a really endemic mentality here in Washington. Pelosi said the same thing when she was initially asked about, hey, should spouses be banned from trading stocks? And she said, no, they should be able to participate in the free market. Sense of entitlement to being able to cash in on these positions. Complete loss of the idea that this is supposed to be public service. You are supposed to be there to serve the public, not to

better yourself or play in the free market. But that's not the way that these people see their jobs. They don't. And this guy served in Congress for nearly 20 years, had insight. I mean, it's shady enough that you preside over the telecom committee and now you work for the telecom industry. And then you use your work in the telecom industry to trade on inside information. So look, my only advice or my only input on this would tell the SEC, hey, start going after active congressmen and see what they're working on. I would love to see more of that information. We never got any update, by the way, on the Richard Burr case. You know, remember the FBI seized his phones? They never gave us anything to date yet. I mean, there's still a hell of a lot more to investigate on what was happening there.

Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I know that they tend to be very conservative in terms, like cautious in terms of going after members of Congress, especially if they aren't 100% convinced that they can actually prove insider trading, which, again, is a very high bar you of going after members of Congress, especially if they aren't 100% convinced that they can actually prove insider trading, which again is very high bar. You have to essentially have like, you know, direct wiretapped information about what you received and that it was not in public

and that you traded based on that. But I don't think it's a bad thing to have some investigations to, you know, really make people feel like they are being watched and they are under scrutiny. In a lot of ways, the public has done some of that by really closely tracking the stock trades of these members of Congress and letting them know they're not going to be able to just get away with it and not have to answer for it. That's an important step forward. Enforcement is important, so this is a good first step. But let's start going after the

actual Congress. Yes. Okay, let's talk about Ukraine. This is a really troubling development, and you should be able to both separate the obvious view that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is unjust from your also ability to critique the Ukrainian government and the way that it acts domestically. They are not holy gods. They are able to criticize them supposedly as allies, given that we provide them billions of dollars, we should probably hold them to a standard of which we try to hold all of the people who are in the West. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government has really pursued something that I find very troubling. Let's put this up there on the screen. They have issued a, quote, blacklist of Russian propagandists. And this was from the Center for Countering Disinformation established in 2021.

That sounds familiar. Under President Zelensky and headed by a former lawyer who sits on the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. And its aim is to, quote, detect and counter propaganda and destructive disinformation

and to prevent the, quote, manipulation of public opinion. Well, on July 14th, it went ahead and published a list of politicians, academics, quote, manipulation of public opinion. Well, on July 14th, it went ahead and published a list of politicians, academics, activists that they say are, quote, promoting Russian propaganda, including some not only Western intellectuals, but politicians. So let me read you some of the list. Rand Paul, the current Republican senator, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward Luttwak, realist and political scientist John Mersheimer, and finally,

heterodox journalist Glenn Greenwald. Now, again, the criteria for the inclusion is completely unclear. They simply label them in a list of having, quote, pro-Russian opinions. Now, I love this because really dig into what exactly the reasons for being labeled this are. Edward Lutwak, for example, was labeled a Russian propagandist for suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Mersheimer is recorded as a Russian propagandist for saying this, quote, NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014, and for saying, quote, NATO provoked Putin. As far as Greenwald and others, they don't even give a proper reason. And I really think that going through the details of this matters because the quote Russian propagandist label is thrown out willy-nilly, but the Ukrainian

government is taking its cue from the Twitter activists and the Western intellectuals here in Washington. And Edward Lutwak actually gives a perfect retort. He says, from 24th of February, day one of the war, I have relentlessly argued not just the United States, the UK, Norway, and others should send weapons to Ukraine, but also called out the reluctance of France, Germany, and Italy to do so. I have personally lobbied the defense ministers of NATO countries to send more weapons as the part of a war effort. I am not exactly Putin's most faithful agent. What's happened is this. I said there is victory party, and the victory party is not realistic.

Their idea is if Russia can be defeated, then Putin will fall. This is also a moment when nuclear escalations becomes a feasibility. It is a fantasy to believe Russia can be squarely defeated. In Kiev, they have interpreted this stance as meaning I am pro-Russia. I think that's the perfect example. Giving a realistic analysis, Edward Lutwak is an American strategist. He's trying to think about what is best for the United States, best for peace. He's not Ukrainian, and it's not his job to faithfully tout the Ukrainian party line. Same when we think about John Mearsheimer, and we played even the clip here. Mearsheimer is a realist. He's long been against NATO expansion. But by the same definition of John Mearsheimer, John Mearsheimer as a, quote, Russian propagandist, well, then George Kennan, the father of containment against the Cold War, a victory against the Soviet Union, he wrote the same thing in the 1990s

in the New York Times. Well, by the way, Mearsheimer was way more correct about a lot of this. Yeah, of course he was. I mean, he actually predicted very accurately this exact sequence of events. So while, no, I don't co-sign everything that he says, the idea that he should be blacklisted, he's a Russian aide, this is crazy. I mean, maybe the most disturbing one is actually Senator Rand Paul. I agree. He's a sitting United States politician. Exactly. I mean, whatever you think of any of these characters and their views on the issues, we have to be able to have a debate that takes into account what the enemy is thinking as well.

Rand Paul, you know, maybe his greatest great crime here in their view is that he didn't even say don't send the weapons. He said we should be tracking them. He said we should have Inspector General to keep track of where these weapons are going. And lo and behold, just I think a few weeks later, and we covered this on the show, too, you had European law enforcement saying we have a problem with a lot of, you know, black market weapons coming out of Ukraine. And this is something we really need to pay attention to because this is a big problem, because once those weapons are shipped into the country, we have no idea what happens next. So this was an incredibly rational, reasonable idea that everyone acted like, oh, this is ridiculous. And you just are like a Russian puppet. And you know what? Here's the other thing is even people who do, I think, go too far and do, you know, echo some of the Kremlin talking points or whatever, they should be allowed to do that.

You should be allowed to hear what the enemy's line is, what they're thinking. you know, cracking down on, oh, we can't see RT on YouTube and we can't have any of the sort of Kremlin state TV or state media available in the West because it really does hinder our ability to understand how they're approaching this and what they are thinking, what they're selling to their population. Absolutely. I completely agree with that. And, you know, call me whatever you want for saying this, but, you know, Rand Paul is a sitting United States member, senator, an elected member of the United States government. And last time I checked, we shipped you and $40 billion of weapons guaranteed your security to, quote unquote, fight for freedom. So how about you keep your mouth shut about our politicians,

given the fact that we are literally guaranteeing the existence of your country? Right. And another one who's on the list, Lula da Silva, who is very likely to, I mean, he's the former president of Brazil. He's very likely to be the next president of Brazil, leading significantly in the polls. Last I saw, not that I follow Brazilian politics, like extraordinarily closely, but this isn't Marine Le Pen is on there. Again, I don't care what you think about these people. And this is a broader trend in Ukraine that is very uncomfortable, I think, for people to talk about. Because they just want to, you know, put up the Ukrainian flag and be in support of the Ukrainian people. I totally get it.

I share the same sentiment. We also have to be honest about the fact that this is a state that has suffered from a lot of corruption. That before the war and since the war has started has cracked down on a lot of dissent, banning opposition political parties, banning dissent in terms of what their population can consume, and then coming out with blacklists like this, which I do want to be clear, it is not at all spelled out what this list means, how they're going to use it. It is sort of like the disinformation board that they floated here, where it's very vague what the actual purpose of the list is.

Here's my question. What if Rand Paul wants to go on a congressional delegation to Ukraine? Are they going to ban him from doing so? Also, Glenn, you know, Glenn is a journalist. Why shouldn't he be? He should absolutely be allowed to go into Ukraine and to maybe report on how some of these weapons are doing. Save this for last.

I love Glenn's response. Here's what he says. War proponents in the West and other functionaries of the Western security state have used the same tactics for decades to demonize anyone questioning the foreign policy of the US and NATO. Chief among them, going back to the start of the Cold War, is accusing any dissident of spreading Russian propaganda or otherwise serving the Kremlin. That's all this is. The Ukrainians is just standard McCarthyite idiocy. The Ukrainians have the absolute right to pursue whatever war policies they want, but then they start demanding that my country and my government use its resources to fuel their effort. Then I, along with all other Americans, have the absolute right to question that policy or to point out its dangers and risks. I don't care at all about Ukraine's attempts to

shut down debate in our country by smearing journalists and politicians who are questioning U.S. and NATO policy as being Russian propagandists. That tactic is as inconsequential as it is cheap, tawdry, and discredited. I completely agree with that sentiment. In our country, we have a robust debate about who we support and who we don't. The whole reason, supposedly, by the way, for supporting these people. Kind of out of bounds sometimes here, too. Okay, fine. But at least we should try and aspire to that. But the whole reason that we supposedly support these people is the cause of freedom, et cetera.

Well, if you're gonna be behaving just like the Russians, who also, by the way, probably have many of the people who accuse Glenn of being a Russian propagandist on their blacklist, then what is the point of this entire thing? It exposes a hell of a lot of hypocrisy and people who really believe in the supposed free Ukraine, Western Ukraine, that's the whole reason for letting them in the EU and all this. Yeah, joining the EU, potential NATO member.

Potential NATO member, an EU person is issuing blacklists against US politicians and US journalists. That's not how they're supposed to behave. Nobody will say it, though, because they themselves will also be accused of a Russian propagandist. Ukraine, please don't put me on the list. I still do want to visit your beautiful. Okay. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? For the Democratic Party, you know you've really messed up when even CNN is calling you out for hypocrisy. And that is exactly what happened on a recent CNN panel where every guest and the host blasted

Dems for propping up Stop the Steal candidates to the tune of millions of dollars, while at the same time declaring that preserving democracy is a sacred duty that should be beyond politics. Take a listen. It's like, okay, you've got this political message about our democracy and about what's important. Propping up these kinds of candidates like a Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania or a Kerry Lake potentially in Arizona, that is contrary to everything else that you are telling the American people about where you stand and what you believe and what's important. And if we end up, if it ends up that some of these extreme candidates that they propped up get elected and actually do make moves in 2024 that jeopardize our presidential election process,

like they're going to have to answer for that. Yeah, it's not just contrary. It undercuts the whole argument. It does. Yeah. I mean, when Democrats tell you that the greatest threat to democracy is Donald Trump-like candidates and that the very fate of our republic rests on defeating them, and at the same time they're bolstering them for partisan advantage in a tight race, the first argument, both arguments can't be true. Right. And so it's, you see why they're doing it, and you see their obvious strategic advantages and tactical advantages. They're more likely to win an election if they do it.

And it'll probably work in most cases, but there is that. But it might not. That's the difference. And it's not just because some of our moms are listening, but in the back of my head I always hear, like, be careful what you wish for. Yeah. I mean, that's just the little thing that I just keep hearing on these arguments. Right. I mean, they wished to run against Donald Trump. Right.

In 2016. And they lost. And they win again. It's certainly possible. This year's midterm is so critical. The gobsmacked panelists here are 100% correct. You can't take up massive congressional resources diving into the details of what happened on January 6th, solemnly vowing you will do whatever it takes to protect democracy from conspiracy-addled insurrectionists,

and then turn right around and spend millions ushering a gaggle of those conspiracy-addled insurrectionists through their primary contests. Let me give you some of the numbers surrounding the strategy because it is really astounding. In Maryland, Democrats spent $1.2 million on ads persuading conservative voters that gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox was the most conservative candidate. According to Vox, that was more than what Cox and the other GOP candidates spent combined in the primary. He ultimately prevailed. Current Republican Governor Larry Hogan says Dems are playing with fire and that he himself will not vote for his party's nominee. In Illinois, Democrats spent an eye-watering $35 million propping up state Senator Darren Bailey. He's a Trump-backed candidate who once pushed to kick Chicago out of the state altogether. Bailey also prevailed in

his primary. Now, Maryland and Illinois, they're both generally blue states, so Democrats will be favored to prevail in both of those races in the fall. But Democrats have also meddled in races in hotly contested swing states where the national mood could easily sweep a Republican, no matter how fringe, into office. As we've covered before, Dems back Stop the Steal true believer Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, buying more ads to back him than the campaign did itself. And they are now flirting with another Trump-backed election denier in Arizona. Carrie Lake has been leading in the GOP primary polls for governor and has leaned into every election conspiracy outright declaring she would not have certified the results if she had been governor in 2020.

Dems have been helping Lake prevail by highlighting her opponent's past donations to Democrats. and the very latest poll of the race has Lake up in the primary by 12. And new reporting by Axios reveals that Democrats are working to unseat one of Trump's few remaining GOP critics in the House. They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a GOP primary on behalf of a Trump-backed far-right candidate. That candidate is looking to defeat incumbent Peter Meyer, who voted for Trump's impeachment after January 6th. Let me just repeat that. Democrats are trying to oust in a primary one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his actions on January 6th. All in all, according to an Open Secrets analysis, Democrats have spent at least $44 million propping up extreme candidates in Republican primaries. In their article for Open Secrets, they point out that these candidates ultimately winning is not the only danger.

Elevating extremists back in conspiracy nonsense who are hostile to democracy helps to mainstream and legitimize those views, even if the candidates do not ultimately prevail. Some of these candidates, though, are pretty likely to prevail. There's a long history, of course, of political parties playing in the opposite team's primary. The most storied recent example is Claire McCaskill, former Missouri senator, helping Todd legitimate rape Aiken to victory. Now, Aiken's assent to the GOP nomination, that helped McCaskill win another term against all the odds. And although now even McCaskill is wary of the Dem strategy and skeptical it's going to actually work, given how stiff the national winds are blowing against the Democratic

Party. I was not familiar with a more historic Dem meddling, which ended up massively and spectacularly backfiring. As a Washington Examiner writes, in the California gubernatorial race back in 1966, Democrats worried that the moderate Republican mayor of San Francisco, a guy named George Christopher, would be a formidable challenge for them in the general election. So they dug up an old milk price fixing scandal and leaked it to a friendly columnist. This actually kneecapped Christopher's chances. So instead of Christopher, Dems got their political wish and faced off in the general against a hard-right political neophyte named Ronald Reagan. Reagan, of course, went on to not only romp in the general, but ultimately to remake the entire Republican Party and the nation,

destroying the New Deal order. Way to go, guys. Now, the current Dems strategy might work out for them, might hand them some governor mansions in key states. Given Biden's record low approval ratings and the dire state of the economy, though, it could also easily backfire, stacking those very same governor's mansions with candidates who have outright said they would trigger a constitutional crisis if they were given the opportunity. One thing is absolutely clear. When Democrats inveigh about the threats to democracy and existential stakes, they do not actually mean it.

They're still playing their games. They're still only concerned first with servicing their donors and second with winning so long as it doesn't interfere with the donor servicing. They are telling you these aren't normal times, but they are approaching politics as if they are completely normal times. That's why, even though I do think the January 6th hearings have done some damage to Trump and the GOP, the most important thing Democrats could do right now, if they actually considered the Republican threat to be existential, is to try to win. And you do that by relentlessly focusing on the economic concerns that voters have routinely

told you they care the most about. If the future of democracy depends on this nation, then act like it. Buck your donors, deliver for voters, and stop putting lunatic psychos in position to win. The latest example is really something. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? If there's one thing that COVID baked into me,

it's this. I'm never going to trust the scientific establishment again. Before the pandemic, I honestly was pretty trusting. And while the phrase, do your own research, has become a meme, watching the public health authorities outright lie to us about masking and social distancing and pushing policy that makes no sense for two years straight has really made it my baseline assumption. They're full of it. But more importantly, COVID what really happened is I started to understand that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Take the lab leak theory. While yes, the fact that COVID likely leaked from a lab is important in and of itself, the cover-up was way worse. And it showed to us that the scientific establishment was too afraid to admit the truth because of how powerful the National Institute of Health was.

If scientists told the truth about gain-of-function research, then it meant that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, two of the people who control billions of dollars in scientific funding, could end their incomes overnight. It showed to me how the science is just like any other discipline, corrupt. Once you start to understand that dynamic involving the NIH, pharmaceutical companies, and more, the medical outcomes in our society start to make a hell of a lot more sense. And furthermore, the internet revolution that has come to disrupt every area of American life is now coming for science, where ruthless scrutiny by those who were not able to

critique people before is exposing truths that are genuinely shocking. Let's take the first revelation that has come to light. Recently, it is a massive indictment of the scientific establishment. Science Magazine reports that critical elements of one of the most cited pieces in the history of Alzheimer's research disease may have been purposefully manipulated and outright fraudulent. This paper, published in Nature in 2006, proposed that specific proteins in your body were responsible for cognitive decline. This became one of the baseline assumptions of research and of drug companies, which the government funded to the tune of billions and billions of dollars to try and target for a cure. Well, guess what? Prominent researchers,

more than a decade later, who are trying to replicate the results of the study, they can't. In fact, current scrutiny shows that images included in the initial paper have signs of manipulation. So consider the consequences. A potentially false study from 2006 has wasted tens of billions of dollars with a B in research. Not only taxpayer dollars, how many well-meaning people who saw parents or loved ones waylaid by Alzheimer's who donated their hard-earned money only for it to be pissed away for nearly a decade? This is a scandal of epic proportions. And frankly, if it's proven that the data was manipulated, these people should be punished for at least fraud. But on a broader level, it shows us the horrific choke

points that we have in our system. Why is the NIH the major funder of research in the United States? How did academics get so captured by one single government bureaucracy, and more so as we saw with COVID? Why is it so hard to get these people to admit when they were wrong and not waste money and actually focus on doing the right thing and saving lives. And Alzheimer's is not the only scientific area that we've seen effectively upended overnight in this same week. Another landmark study has just come out involving depression and its causes. A new meta-analysis of massive bodies of scientific evidence finds, quote, no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, or that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations. Researchers reached this conclusion after looking at research that spanned hundreds of thousands of people. Again, this is

shocking because the current major intervention against depression are antidepressants, or SSRIs, otherwise known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The medical theory behind SSRIs are that chemically intervening to affect serotonin levels in the brain can have a major impact on depression because it was previously thought of as a major cause. And yet now we know that's not true. Now to be clear, it does appear though that SSRIs are still effective against depression, but we have no idea why. Again, why does this matter? Well, the United States is awash in antidepressants. In fact, if you look at per capita usage, we are among the highest in the world with 110 people per 1,000 on

some sort of antidepressant. The only people who even come close are in Iceland. We far outstrip other developed nations. Now, to be clear, Korea, last on the list, they have a sky-high suicide rate, so I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but it does show you how much our nation has leaned on this specific medication. In fact, a recent disclosure from the CDC found that one in eight Americans over the age of 18 at one point has been prescribed an antidepressant medication. SSRI pushers have long pointed to the faulty research that we just described as to why it's the number one intervention against depression. Yet, most studies beyond the so-called chemical fix to depression focused on subjects only within 8 to 12 weeks.

If you zoom out and you look at people two years out post-antidepressant intervention, you see no difference between those who took them and those who did not. Beyond that, what are the risks to screwing with your brain chemistry? Well, here's what we know. There are withdrawal symptoms from SSRIs that can last for weeks or months. The drug can pose major risks for strokes, heart attacks, falls, death, not to mention untold side effects. I want to acknowledge there are millions of people for whom these drugs have benefited massively. But isn't it a bit crazy that the one that so many Americans are on, one that doctors reach for so quickly,

that the underlying research backing them is shoddy at best. As with Alzheimer's, it again raises big questions around money. In 2020 alone, the sale of antidepressant drugs grew to $13.5 billion. It is anticipated to keep growing 7% per year from 2021 to 2027. Specific drugs have netted nearly $2 billion in their life cycle of profit so far. So not as much money in exercise or groundbreaking current research, labs on psychedelics or fish oil or a host of other lifestyle interventions or vitamins that are proven to work, not nearly as studied. Both of those instances show that the incentive structure in our current system is not built to keep us healthy at all.

They succumb to the same influences that all powerful institutions do. Money, corruption, politicization. So while yes, you should listen to your doctors and the scientists, you should also be comfortable asking them why. Because if you don't do it, and if you do it enough times now, you may find out they don't have very good answers. The forces behind what they are saying don't have your interest at heart at all. So you need to dig deeper. I think the depression one is just mind boggling. I mean, look, again, I want to acknowledge that there are people, as I've said, derogatory things about SSRIs. Many people have found them to be useful in your life.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is a great guest, Jonathan Swan. He's a reporter over at Axios. He has a fascinating new story on the plans for a second Trump administration, if one to materialize. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It goes ahead and details the radical plan for Trump's second term that focuses on something called Schedule F. So, Jonathan, this is one of those things we focus a hell of a lot here on this show and try to emphasize to people. That personnel is policy, something that not many can understand.

So this is an entirely personnel plan that details an executive order and more that you've spent a long time reporting out. Why don't you go ahead and lay this out for the audience? Well, President Trump's, or former President Trump's biggest regret from his first term is personnel. And it's not even close. I mean, of all the things that he wishes he could have done differently, it's the people he hired.

And every time he sees one of his former cabinet secretaries come out with a new book or go on television and criticize him, it reignites his animus towards them. And how the F did we pick these people who, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's just, you know, it's sort of well-worn rant. Fine. Okay. Great. He was ranting about that for a long time. The question I embarked upon actually really started thinking about this a year ago, but the reporting got much more intense in the last six months was, fine, you can whine about this, but is anyone serious actually doing anything about it? Because if they're not, then who cares? I'm

not writing a story about Trump, you know, whining about people being disloyal. And what I discovered, and it took me a while to kind of piece all the bits of it together, is there are actually serious people working on this problem who have Trump's blessing. In some cases, they have Trump's funding. And they're, sorry, let me just put this on more stable footing. No worries. Yeah. So there are actually serious people working on this problem and they're well-funded and they're experienced. Some of them are quite adept at using government power. And there are sort of a network of groups out there. The Conservative Partnership Institute, which has got people like Ed Corrigan,

who worked on Trump's transition, Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff. There's Russ Vogt's group. Russ was Trump's director of office and management of budget. And there's this group, America First Policy Institute, run by President Trump's former domestic policy director. And each group fits into this ecosystem in a different way. And then there are some interesting groups that aren't affiliated with Trump, but I would say are affiliated with the America First movement. They're ideologically simpatico. And one of them is a group that I featured is a younger group, which actually you're on the board of, which is American Moment, which I think what they're doing is really interesting.

They're younger guys, Saurabh Sharma, 24-year-old guy from Texas, very smart guy, and has very good connections in, I would just say, the younger America First movement. And they're developing a pipeline of talent at that more mid-level junior job. So you can sort of see it. What the piece lays out is how it all comes together. And at the centre of all of it is this legal instrument, which most of your viewers probably weren't aware of. It's called Schedule F.

Basically, every time a new president comes in, they can replace about 4,000 so-called political appointees, right? It's this rotating layer of personnel at the top level of the government. But below that sits this mass of people, around 2 million federal employees, and they're effectively insulated from being replaced or fired. It's extremely difficult to fire them. They have really strong civil service protections that are enshrined in law. And to grossly simplify it, what this executive order does is it allows a cabinet secretary on behalf of the president to reassign potentially tens of thousands of civil servants

into a new employment category called Schedule F, which removes all of their employment protections, or certainly almost all of them, and allows the President or the Cabinet Secretary to very quickly replace them. So what it does is it stipulates that any federal government employee who's working on policy, who's influencing policy, so that doesn't apply to someone who's answering the phones in a field office. But people who are at that top layer influencing policy, they become replaceable. And so what is happening now on the outside of people affiliated with Trump is they're building an alternative labor source to meet that scale, which would be unprecedented scale. They don't think, to be clear, they don't think they're going to need to fire 50,000 people,

but they might need to fire an additional 6,000 or 7,000 people. And so therefore you need a talent pool of not just 4,000, but probably 10,000, 11,000, 12,000. That's a lot of people. That's a very ambitious undertaking, and that's what's going on right now. So I think there are a couple of things to to point out here. First of all, part of what you're describing sounds a lot like what normal political operations do all the time.

You think about, you know, the Clinton campaign. They had their sort of like administration in waiting, primarily the Center for American Progress. The Biden team, they had West Exec Advisors, which was essentially their like foreign policy team in waiting or their cabinet in waiting that they're able then to pluck directly from to staff up their administration. The piece that is different is the Schedule F piece, which allows them to get rid of a much larger number of individuals and sort of put in place their true believers and the ideologues who are committed to their cause. I guess my big question reading this is whether you actually think that a Trump administration could pull this off, because they're certainly, the last time around, they were not known for their discipline

or their competence or their ability to follow through with a plan. I'm just thinking about, like, you know, how many times did they, oh, this is going to be infrastructure week, and it never actually ended up being infrastructure week. So when you talk about something of the level of scale and complexity that you're laying out in this piece, do you actually think that a second Trump administration is going to have the kind of discipline that it takes to carry something like this out? Well, I'm skeptical and that's why I have throughout the piece, it's laced pretty heavily with skepticism. It's a huge undertaking. And as I said, developing that labor source, it would be of unprecedented scale. But there's a few things that I would just put in the column of it's possible and shouldn't be dismissed. The first

is, I'm not suggesting in this article that Donald Trump himself has changed, that he is now some disciplined, you know, monastic figure who's transformed himself in exile and is sort of reading Marcus Aurelius and is ready to, you know, come onto the scene as a complete. No, that's absurd. Obviously, that's absurd. What's changed is the people working on this and the people around him. And he has a very hardened mentality against having any of these sort of people who I would just call them the sort of restrainers, the people who wanted to restrain him from what they saw as his most extreme impulses. And there are some people working on it that I would say have a track record of implementation inside government. Russ Vogt is a very good example of that. that I would say have a track record of implementation inside government. Russ Vought

is a very good example of that. The other thing I would just say to you is this is not some fantastical document. This is an executive order that went through legal vetting and it was issued, it was signed into law at the end of 2020. And Democrats are alarmed enough about its resurrection that Representative Gerry Connolly from Virginia, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Federal Civil Service, he's attached an amendment to the annual defense bill this year to try to prevent a future president from reviving Schedule F. It passed the House. Republicans probably going to try and I know they're going to try and block it in the Senate. So Democrats are very worried about it. The other thing I would just say is it actually doesn't require a sort of you don't

need to be Oliver Wendell Holmes to fire a whole bunch of people. You can do that pretty freaking easily. And actually, if you look at a big part of what they want to do, which is fire people in the intelligence community, they actually you don't even need Schedule F for that. A lot of those people are not protected by these civil service protections. So you might say, well, can they pull this off? Well, sending a letter and firing someone is actually not that difficult. And so you don't need, you know, the great geniuses of the world to come together to pull this off. What would be interesting to know is who's going to replace these people? Are you going to have that labor source?

That's the part that I remain skeptical about. But implementing a purge is not actually that difficult necessarily if they have this legal instrument combined with the will to do it. Absolutely. I think one thing I also want to focus on is what do these people believe? Because the real, you know, you can fire people, you can appoint them. But I think one of the things that stung Trump was that many of the people who he would hire and even many of these groups, they don't even necessarily ideologically agree with each other on anything. So when Trump has a criterion for who he wants to elevate and put into a personnel office, does he have any policy behind that?

Or is it simply he's never criticized me on TV and he believes or at least mouths the language of stop the steal? I mean, beyond that, does it matter for to be able to end up in one of these jobs? That's what I'm most curious about this. Well, this is where you distinguish between Trump himself and the people he appoints. And so what's interesting is, so the answer for Trump is, no, he doesn't really care that much about policy. It stopped the seal and loyalty to him. Absolutely. Like he said, this is a million times people. I want people who are loyal and you can get very closely, you can get very quickly into his inner circle by just sucking up to him. Of course, we know that. What's interesting though, is the person that I expect him to appoint to run his transition, which is John McEntee, who ran his personnel

office. John McEntee is an ideologue, actually, and he does believe in these policies. He is very, very anti-interventionist on foreign policy, and he is hardcore on immigration. And so by dint of appointing John McEntee and people like him, Russ Vogt is authentically is sort of comes out of the Ross Perot type of Republican. So some of the key people that will be, I expect, I expect things could change and, you know, nothing certain in Trump world. But some of the key people that I expect to be running is actually are America first ideologues. And so that's why I do believe there will be a pretty strong ideological criteria applied to these selections. And by the way,

a lot of the groups that are developing this, you're absolutely right. Like, I don't know, I wouldn't describe the America first policy Institute, I wouldn't describe their foreign policy proposals. You know, what they put out on Ukraine could have been written by John Bolton. So I'm not suggesting that there's ideological uniformity across these groups. There absolutely isn't. But I do believe that if he has people like McEntee running it, they will be discerning, they're deep enough in this that they can discern between these groups and see the types of people that they want to have in key roles. Can that be done at scale? I'm very skeptical. Yeah, that's the excellent, excellent.

Yeah, absolutely. And then lastly, you mentioned that Democrats, including Congressman Jerry Connolly from Virginia, are trying to block their ability to reimpose this Schedule F executive order. What do you think the fate of that is? I think it's unlikely because I do think it's going to be very hard to get that through the Senate. And if they don't manage to block it, they'll certainly challenge it. There'll be huge legal challenges against it. But Trump's advisers lack their chances in a court system that's now dominated by conservatives at the highest level. If they do get Schedule F into, sorry, if they do get this amendment into force to prevent a future president from introducing Schedule F, Trump could still execute, as far as I understand from talking to experts on this, a pretty large scale purge of

the intelligence community, even without Schedule F. Ah, that's a great point, right? Because I believe they're governed by their different authority. Jonathan, this is fascinating, absolutely fascinating reporting. It's long, but I encourage everybody to go and read it. It just influences everything that we talk about here all the time. So we're going to put a link down there in the description. And we really appreciate you making the time for us this morning. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. And it's a two part series. So it really goes deep in the second part on Schedule F. So thanks for having me. Absolutely. Yeah, our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it.

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