Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/11/22: Trump World FBI Rat, Inflation Numbers, Election Results, Trump 2024, Defund FBI, Taiwan Risks, & More!

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Trump FBI Raid, his NY deposition, inflation numbers, special election numbers, Trump 2024 announcement, Ukraine war shifts, media strengthening Trump, defund the FBI, & the China-Taiwan situation!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/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Lyle Goldstein: https://www.defensepriorities.org/programs/asia-engagement  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have some new details. Starting to understand a few more of the pieces of what led up to that raid down at Mar-a-Lago. What the sort of, whether there's a grand scheme or not. There appears not to be a grand scheme from the federal government. How they got the information. All that stuff.

We're starting to get the reporting on it. So we will break all of that down for you. And also some additional subpoenas. A cell phone seized of a member of Congress. Some Pennsylvania fake elector types who also have received subpoenas. So get into all of those details and more. We also have new numbers on inflation, which are potentially good. But, of course, the White House had to take that and, like, completely gaslight and overplay their hand and all of that stuff. So we'll take you inside of these still mixed signals in terms of where the economy stands.

We had some elections this week and very interesting tea leaves there. Yet another indication that the Democratic enthusiasm is definitely up. This is a very different ball game and landscape than what we were looking at before the Dobbs decision. So we have those details for you, some new indications of exactly who the GOP is still with. Of course, they all bent the knee to Trump immediately. Every one of the supposed challengers, contenders, he was going to go up against him. Nah, they all fell in line instantly. There's also some big developments out of Ukraine. And we have a new guest on the show to break down just how potentially dangerous this situation with China and Taiwan is for us and for the world. And how Nancy Pelosi's visit really exacerbated all of that. Before we dive into the details of what is going on with that FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, though, live show in Atlanta.

Reminder, let's put this up there on the screen. Live show, September 16th In Atlanta. Okay, reminder. Let's put this up there on the screen. Live show, September 16th. We are coming to Atlanta. As I mentioned, so those large ticket purchases that are going through have begun. So there is going to be a very limited number of tickets that are left for the general public. Highly advise you to go ahead and buy those tickets so we can officially have our sellout date one month ahead of the schedule. That's right. Which I'm very happy about that.

Next week it's going to be exactly one month now. Exactly one month. So link is down in the description. We would love to see you guys there. We have a great show coming for all of you. Yeah, it's going to be really fun. All right. Okay, so a pretty bombshell piece of reporting here.

Very significant in terms of understanding this raid and what led up to it. A lot of details that I want to get into here. Let's go ahead and throw this Newsweek tear sheet up on the screen. So they have the scoop. Exclusive, an informer told the FBI what docs Trump was hiding and where. They say that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding, and even the location of those documents to senior government officials told

Newsweek. As we speculated and many others had speculated at the time, it was deliberately timed, according to this report, to occur when the former president was away. And this is the part that, I mean, I just almost can't believe it, except you should never underestimate the level of bureaucratic incompetence and myopia and like bubble dwelling. They thought this wasn't going to be a big deal. They thought if they did it when Trump was away, that it'd be like, well, it's just a low key raid of the president's residence. I'm sure this won't cause a massive like political media explosion. So what they say is FBI decision makers in Washington and

Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand or to attempt to thwart the raid would lower the profile of the event. One of the sources that they spoke to says they were seeking to avoid any media circus, so even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid in ignoring the fallout. I mean, I don't know how many people with level three IQs thought that this would not be a big deal no matter how you went about it. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess relevant records in violation of federal law.

And that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago, including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room. So this goes back to they had depended heavily on a confidential informant, must be someone who is fairly close to Trump. A lot of speculation in Trump world right now about who that could be. But down to the specific room, specific safe where they expected these documents to be held in violation. You know, it looks like Trump said, oh, we gave you everything and didn't really give them everything, was lying to the feds. There's now reported that he and his lawyers had met previously with the FBI about these documents and they had apparently good reason to believe that he was still retaining and concealing additional documents

that should be part of the presidential record. A few more pieces here in terms of who authorized the raid. They say that FBI Director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to authorized the raid. They say that FBI Director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid. They say it's really a case of the Bureau misreading the impact. They also suggest in this piece that it may not have gone all the way to Merrick Garland. Now, that could be some sort of ass-covering for Merrick Garland,

trying to keep him separate from it. But, you know, what I really take from all of this is there were some theorizing, and I thought with good basis and good rationale, that the documents were kind of a pretext to go in and get what they were really interested in was like the January 6th stuff. That does not appear to be the case. And I think there's a lot of because this happened, because, you know, Trump, we're going to get to Trump pleading the fifth on this other case. You have the tax returns thing happen. You have this congressman whose cell phone was seized all in the same week. There was once again, this sense of like, there's a grand scheme. Merrick Garland has this whole thing planned out. This is step one of this massive grand plan to ultimately indict and take down Trump. And that is not the case. Or at least the current reporting doesn't indicate that, right? on the side of the people in Washington aren't some 5D chess players, you know, with the thinking 10 moves ahead. They were sort of focused on this one narrow issue where they felt very confident

that there was, you know, wrongdoing. They thought this is the procedure we normally follow, so we're going to normally follow this procedure. We'll give him the grace of being out of town so we can do it while he's away and hopefully avoid a media circus. As silly as it is for them to have thought that that would be the case, it looks to me like this truly was narrowly focused on these records. And to the extent, you know, there are other investigations going on, which we'll get into. But I do actually think that they're separate and this is not part of some grand federal government plan to take down Trump. Whenever you need to bet on master plans by the FBI or bureaucratic incompetence, I know which one I'm going to be betting on. That was my secret suspicion, but now we actually have a decent amount of reporting in order to indicate that. You also see, in terms of the discussions

from the Trump lawyers themselves, they say that they have held discussions with the Justice Department since the spring over these materials at Mar-a-Lago, that they had actually searched through two to three dozen boxes in the basement storage area, hunting for the documents. And also, they said that currently the DOJ had said, well, part of the problem is you're not securing these properly. So they actually went ahead and added, again, according to Trump's lawyer, they added a lock there, which was then breached by the FBI whenever they took it. I mean, if the reporting here is true and there's no current, you know, there's not a lot of evidence in order to dispute it. Nobody's coming out and saying that this is some sort of master plan. It would certainly indicate exactly as you said. I would also refer people back to our interview

with Bradley Moss. One of the things he highlighted is they have to prove a selective and willful want in order to violate the Presidential Records Act for a prosecutorial case to be made. And to be made not only to indict before the grand jury, but then you have to prove basically beyond a reasonable doubt in court that they willfully tried to circumvent this. This also could be a matter of incompetence both on the Trump team's side, and it could be a matter of incompetence on the FBI's side. So they have ignited a massive political firestorm over what appears to be a fight over presidential records. And let's just be honest. Like in terms of the political fallout, I don't think that was worth it whatsoever.

By the way, I also have no idea what's in these documents, which ironically we're almost certain to be learned. Like we're going to learn the contours of this now that it's such a high-profile case, which would probably diminish the classification on it in itself. I'm not saying that the rage isn't justified on its own, but I'm saying obviously, of course, you have to consider it in the political ramifications. Yeah, I mean, I think the political piece to me is debatable, whether it's, quote, worth it or not. There is some reporting that the DOJ is like,

like at the highest levels is like, what were you thinking? And I do think the fact that it was done apparently without really understanding how extraordinary this would be seen and what a nuclear bomb it would set off in terms of like the media's focus on it and the way Republicans would seize on it and all of those things. Look, if you or I took classified documents and then met with the FBI, and the FBI was like, you need to give those back. And we're like, totally. And we give you one of them and then continue to hide and conceal and lie about the other ones. They would be busting down our door and they would be doing it a lot sooner. And they would not give us the courtesy of like, let's do it when you're away and try to downplay it. So based on what we know and also just given what we know about the sloppiness and like cavalier nature of Trump and his relationship to the law, I have no doubt that he is in violation of the law here. I think it's very unlikely that he totally was in the clear and followed the

correct procedures and wasn't still retaining any documents and wouldn't blatantly lie to the FBI. There's also an irony here because of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Trump himself signed into law making the Presidential Records Act and making this a much more stringent offense. He signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents. So there's a great irony here, too, that he's now, you know, in violation, it appears, of the very law that he strengthened in this partisan, like, we're going to go after Hillary Clinton thing. The politics of it and whether it was, quote unquote, worth it, I think it very much remains to be seen how this all plays out. You know, I do think that there's some who are very convinced this is going to ignore to the Republicans benefit because, you know, people are going to see

it as an overreach. I am not as I am not as convinced of that case, because I think if you're talking about the Republican base, yes, this solidifies his control on the GOP. If you're talking about normies who are sick of like his bullshit and like it always being some crisis and whatever, I don't know that it has the same impact. It's possible. It's just hard to say at this point. Yeah. I mean, I'm focusing a lot about this on my monologue. On its face, I think you'd probably be right. But as we always know, there's going to be massive overreach and this will not overreach just by the FBI. I'm saying also by the opponents, MSNBC, trying to cast this as another thing. And that actually generally moves to Trump's benefit. So I have no idea. On its face, the reporting does indicate that that's where they are. You also said this. Let's

put this up there on the screen. Axios saying that Trump world's speculating that they do have a flipped aid after the FBI search, likely as a result of the warrant. And that is another thing which many people have been highlighting, not just me. Trump, I mean, look, this is in dispute. Eric Trump gave an interview to Fox News where he claims that the warrant was never given to them by the FBI. That would be against standard procedure. We don't know if that's true. Again, the FBI has not actually said whether that's true or not. Standard procedure would say that Trump and his lawyers did receive a copy of that search warrant. And if that's true, they should release it.

They can make it public. Yeah, and clear a lot of things up. Exactly. Release it. And they would be able to show us very specifically what the FBI was looking for. As you said and indicated in Newsweek, the specific areas would actually probably, it's possible that they're hiding it because it would only confirm that they do have a mole inside of their organization or somebody very close to the president.

But as we have said, Trump could also just release this tomorrow as if he did actually receive the search warrant, and we would learn a hell of a lot more about what actually happened. There's one other thing I want to say about the politics of this and whether or not it was justified, whether it was a good idea, whether it was just, all of those things. It is obviously political. It has political implications, the decision to serve a search warrant and raid Mar-a-Lago. No doubt about it. But it also is a political decision to look at facts that clearly say

there is a clear violation of the law and if it was an ordinary citizen, we would treat it this way. But because it's the president and because it's fraught, we're not going to. That is a less sort of media explosive political decision, but that's also a political decision. So there's sort of no avoiding making some sort of political decision here if in fact they were very persuaded, which

they appear to have been, that he was in very clear and sort of like intentional violation of this law. So I think that's important to keep in mind. Of course. I mean, one of the things that always pissed me off about the Hillary case is I was like, look, any average citizen, you're going to jail for what Hillary did. It was obvious. It was just so clear. I'm like one of the things that always pissed me off about the Hillary case is I was like, look, any average citizen, you're going to jail for what Hillary did. It was obvious. Yes. It was just so clear. I'm like, if you did this and you're a normal person, we talked previously on our show about the Navy guy who took a picture of the nuclear submarine.

He didn't mean anything by it, and he ended up in jail. Or their, I mean, reality winner. Look at what happened to her. I mean, she literally just photocopied some documents and sent it over to the interstate. She was in jail for like years. So look, I'm generally in favor of equal application of the law. I'm only speaking in terms of how this is being politically coded and how the FBI ultimately came to this decision. If it is true, they didn't think it was going to have political ramifications. Then there's just a bunch of idiots. And I think that that is really,

that I think you could always bet on that. I talked to, you know, someone who is very in the know with this who actually had some pieces of this report as well but could only get a single source. And what he was saying to me is you really can't understand how much of a bubble these people operate in. Like they literally work inside of a skiff. Right. Like they're literally in a bubble. And so they're just looking at, here's the process that we follow, and the National Archives requests us to look into this, and we did it, and we found this evidence, and we took it to a grand jury, and they said, yes,

we believe it, and we took it to, like, just following the steps, chunk, chunk, chunk, and really not thinking about the political landscape. Now, that doesn't mean, ultimately, they made the wrong decision, because, again, you know, I do believe in equal application law. I was very critical of Hillary on the email thing. So it's not like I'm being inconsistent here. And, you know, certainly people who were very concerned about the Hillary thing at the time, there are many of them who are now like, records, who cares?

No big deal. But I think at this point, what we can, what looks pretty clear is that this is not step one of some grand plan to take down Trump. That doesn't mean Trump's not going to be indicted. It doesn't mean that there won't be charges out of Georgia or out of the D.C. grand jury with regards to January 6th. That is all still very much on the table. And the next thing we're going to talk about is some of the steps that they've taken forward on that. But I am convinced at this point that this was kind of a one-off focus just on this specific issue that wasn't connected to some broader plan. I mean, look, that's where all things currently lead. Why don't we go ahead and talk then about

this January 6th related investigation, which some interesting developments going to put this up there on the screen. Representative Scott Perry, he's a member of Congress, says that FBI actually seized his cell phone. This is one day after the Mar-a-Lago raid. The circumstances of the seizure are pretty interesting. He actually had just gotten off of a flight and he was approached by FBI agents who took possession of his cell phone. Here's what he says, quote, this morning while traveling with my family, three FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if it was their wish. I'm outraged, though not surprised the FBI, under the

direction of Merrick Garland's DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress. My phone contains info about my legislative political activities, my personal and private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government's business. Representative Perry actually asserted in a statement that connected this to the presidential raid in Mar-a-Lago, saying the DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys, blah, blah, blah, these kinds of banana republic things. Now, you would ask then, well, why? And who is Mr. Perry? So Congressman Perry, five-term congressman, long-term loyal Trump ally. To our purposes, though, he is most connected to the false elector scheme out of the state of Pennsylvania.

So let's go ahead and put this next one up there. The Post actually did a decent job. Who is Scott Perry? What they run down here is that Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican, was one of the major boosters of some of the election fraud claims. And part of the reason that they may have seized his cell phone is actually probably in relation to the criminal investigation into the use of fake electors to try and overturn the Biden victory and to present a false elector slate. You'll remember that Doug Mastriano was also involved in a lot of this. And so not only was Perry one of the people who was elevating some of these things, it seems now that he was involved in the actual plan to try and get the Department of Justice official, Jeffrey Clark, to be

elevated then to the acting Attorney General slot so that Mr. Clark could then undertake procedures to actually declare the Pennsylvania ballot results invalid or at least throw them in some sort of court proceeding, which would allow the false elector's plan to proceed. All of this, though, traces back to the very difficult charge that we laid out from the very beginning, which is to try and prove a seditious conspiracy charge is extraordinarily difficult. We have seen in the past that DOJ and the FBI have not been able to prove it. Now, that is what they have charged the Oath Keepers and some of the Proud Boys with, to be clear. So we are going through active litigation, but it's very difficult to prove in a court of law. And ultimately,

that's really the only way they'd be able to move forward with an actual indictment against any of these representatives, Crystal. So I think that it is much less likely that they went for seditious conspiracy, which as you said, they charged the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers with. And I read through, you know, both of those indictments. And they were—they had direct text messages of them plotting to bring weapons. And they had, you know, very, like, specific laid-out plans. You can question whether—how much of it was LARPing, how much of it was serious, how likely it was that they were going to accomplish their goals. But they had specific planning involving, violent means, basically, in order to charge seditious conspiracy.

More likely, if Trump or other high-level officials, including these people who, Scott Perry and these other Pennsylvania Republicans who have now been subpoenaed as well, more likely you would see something like the obstruction of a federal proceeding or whatever that one is called. Or you might see the conspiracy to defraud the government. Isn't that what the other one is called? So there are other potential charges. Now, that last one, and I might be getting the name of it wrong, but that one, it would be kind of a novel application of that law. And that makes prosecutors kind of nervous, typically. I think probably the most likely one is obstructing the official proceeding, which we've also seen a number of January 6th folks charged with.

So, you know, I think it's very clear you've got investigations now in New York. It's a civil investigation into Trump's business practices. We'll tell you about that in just a minute. We have these D.C. grand juries impaneled, and we've been getting reporting out recently, which we covered on this show, about how far along they seem to be. So they've been talking to a couple of former Pence aides. They've been looking specifically in detail at what Trump said at different meetings and seem to be focused especially on his involvement. And there's two tracks there. There's one that's looking at his incitement on January 6th. The one that seems to be a sort of more likely direction is the one regarding the fake elector scheme.

And in addition, there's a Georgia investigation that also is looking at the fake elector scheme specifically in Georgia. Now, if you believe Attorney General Eric Holder, that's actually an investigation that is the furthest along. And I think that he believes will result in high level indictments, you know, in the most sort of timely pace. So we'll see whether he's right or not. But there's reason to believe him. He has at least some insight just given his background, given his level of connections, et cetera. So those are all the sort of fronts that Trump is facing jeopardy on.

Not to mention there was also a federal court ruling saying he does have to turn over his tax returns to a House committee. That will continue to be challenged. So we'll see where that ultimately goes. But a lot happening for him on the legal front this week. Yeah, absolutely. And with Perry, I always do think it is worth what the actual objection to these guys in the election fraud was. Perry was the chief booster of something called Italygate. Yes.

Which claimed that a military Italian defense contractor conspired with the CIA to use military satellites to change votes for Trump to Biden. How exactly he came up with this? Or you know, it could just be the Trump loss. Right. That's also the other possibility. This came from, and I'm not kidding, he believed that at the heart of this was a Virginia socialite who brought this to his attention, who he then compiled and had these fake dossiers where he was convinced enough that he was literally asking Mark Meadows and the government in order to try and discuss it with the Italian government at the diplomatic level. Can you imagine? I cannot imagine that. Oh, my God.

And was sending the guy YouTube videos about it. Oh, my God. And badgering the government saying, why don't we just work with the Italian government? So this is up there with the bamboo ballots out of the state of Arizona. I just think it's worth it. This guy's a genuine. Oh, he's a believer. Genuine kook.

I mean, he's just a boomer. Yeah. Clear boomer brain. I mean, you know, if you're willing to believe, this is QAnon level stuff. And it's like, you're in the midst of the election. You see this video when it's like edited exactly the right way. And you're like, hey, this is real.

Like we got to fight all this. And you start saying, I mean, how else are you blow up the phone or the White House chief of staff unless you believe this stuff is real? I don't know why you would otherwise. So, I mean, I guess he was genuine when he was doing it. He also is one, allegedly, who asked for a preemptive pardon. Yeah, that's right. Well, according to Cassidy Hudson, I don't know if it's true. Yeah, but allegedly he's one of the ones that asked for a pardon. He denies it. But, yeah,

I mean, listen, if you don't want to have your phone seized, then like don't try to, don't do this stuff. Italian government. Just don't do that. Italy gate. There are many Italy gates. They start with their coffee. Okay, all right. Getting away from that.

All right. Let's go ahead and discuss the next part of this, the one that you've probably seen the most headlines about. We'll start with Trump's statement. Quote, let's put this up there on the screen, please. In his deposition with the New York Attorney General's office, focusing on fraud surrounding his businesses, he released his full statement, quote, I once asked if you're innocent, why are you taking the fifth amendment? Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated

witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the fake news media, you have no choice. If there's any question in my mind, the rate of my home on Monday by the FBI two days prior to my deposition wiped out uncertainty. I have no choice because the current administration and many prosecutors in this country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency. Accordingly, under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I decline to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution. This is in relation, let's go ahead and put the next one up there, please, which is that the president says that he took the fifth nearly 400 times in that New York civil investigation. That investigation has been

running now for months, if not years, and into specifically his business dealing. So we have seen, essentially, it revolves around whether he inflated the value of assets whenever he was in the sales process, which I'm just going to say I don't have difficulty believing it. As to whether it's true or not, I simply have no idea. They issued a number of subpoenas to many members of the Trump organization themselves. And a lot of this actually stems from before Trump was even president. It's a retroactive view into the Trump Organization and how it conducted itself in business. As I said, he sat for nearly a four-hour deposition. The only answer that he actually gave definitively was when they asked him his name. From that point forward, he pleaded the

fifth nearly 400 times throughout the entire discussion. So if I had to guess, some of that video will be released by the New York Attorney General's Office. As to the furtherance of that investigation, I literally have no idea. We don't have a lot of information. We know at the Manhattan district level, there was all that drama where the top prosecutor actually left under pressure because he was like, they kept wanting me to charge Trump and I wasn't going to do it. So that was a different investigation. That was a criminal investigation. This is a civil investigation.

Now, it is possible that, you know, Attorney General Letitia James and her team turns up something that is significant enough that the criminal investigation gets new legs, which hasn't technically been closed. But to your point, the criminal probe had seemed like it was progressing. And this is, they say it stalled after a new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January. A grand jury that had been hearing evidence disbanded. Top prosecutor had been handling the probe resigned after Bragg raised questions internally about the viability of the case. So they sort of, you know, decided there wasn't, it looks like they decided they didn't have enough to move forward with charging him. But, you know, again, it's possible that this gets new legs with the civil inquiry. Just to give you one of the details about the alleged inflation of the assets, which, again, I don't know what the legal standard is. I'm sure it has

to be willful. I'm sure it has to be fraud. I'm sure it has to, you know, there's a standard that they would have to meet here, although the civil standard is likely less than the criminal standard. They say the company, Trump's company, exaggerated the size of Trump's Manhattan penthouse, as one example, saying it was nearly three times its actual size, a difference in value of about $200 million. So, pretty blatant on that one. Pretty blatant. Not just sort of like, you know, let's round up and set it down kind of stuff.

Like, let's just multiply by three the actual size. We'll see what comes of that ultimately. It is funny. What did you think of his statement?

Because, you know, it's interesting because he knew people were going to pull up those old comments. Yeah, there's a lot of clips.

Of him being like, I don't know why you plead the fifth if you're innocent. I forget exactly what he said. He's like, if you're innocent, you don't plead. Something about the mob. This was a 2016 thing. I do remember it.

And he has, I think he has taken the fifth in the past, but he usually sort of relishes going in and sparring with, you know, in the deposition or whatever. Well, it was a dumb comment when he made it. It's a dumb one now that I've seen. Remember Daniel Goldman? He was the prosecutor in the impeachment trial on the Democrats behalf. He's running for Congress now. He's a lawyer from the Department of Justice formerly. And he's like, you don't plead the fifth unless you're in it. I'm just like, come on. Yeah, there's a reason it's there. Yeah. As part of this is one of the most important things that we have in terms of in terms of your ability to protect yourself from the state and coerce confession and all of that, it's one of the bedrocks of the judicial system, the ability for an American citizen to have to not incriminate themselves under questioning like this, that the government would have to have a standard of proof much higher than that in order to convict you.

So it's incredibly dumb when Trump says it, and it's dumb when these resistance liberals who are criminal lawyers who should know better are saying it too. We should not gaslight millions of people into thinking that, oh, when you plead the fifth, that means that you're automatically guilty. Absolutely not. That's insane. Yeah, that's correct. But I thought from a political perspective, it was kind of interesting that he anticipated that he was going to be, you know, hit with that. It's almost like the closest that Trump ever comes to admitting that he was wrong or that he changed his mind or whatever. I mean, normally his MO is just to ignore whatever the contradictory past statement is and just keep like plowing ahead in the future. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah, it is. I mean,

he's very immune to hypocrisy. He's a man who's hypocritical literally all the time. So it's kind of shocking. He doesn't really care. Why he would actually acknowledge it. But yeah, I mean, it's not a bad thing. I mean, I took note of it. I thought it felt a little different than the normal Trump statement. I absolutely agree. Anyway, that's kind of a big level picture

of where things stand. I think still very murky picture. I think, you know, I just really want to disabuse people of the idea that there is this, you know plot that the FBI raid was the first step of. It does not appear that that is the case. Again, that doesn't mean there won't be other pieces coming all in the same week, seemed like, you know, all the walls are closing in and Merrick Garland is the puppet master and sort of slotting him into the role of Mueller. I don't think that's actually the picture that we have of this week as it comes to a close. Yeah, I think that's right.

All right, let's go and talk about inflation, obviously, always enormously politically consequential. We got some fascinating new numbers yesterday on the month of July. Let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen. Inflation actually dropped to 8.5% in July, down from 9.1% in June. The biggest decline was in gas prices and in airfare. But grocery prices, rent, and electricity are continuing to rise. And I think that this underscores a lot of what is so difficult about talking about inflation generally, which is that that top line number, be it 8.5, be it 9.1, it is so driven by a few specific categories. So we did see a 7% reduction in July on gas prices, similar to

production in airfare, similarly due to jet fuel. But the problem there is that this is a single commodity, and it actually obscures the level of inflation people are still seeing on grocery prices rising, rent rising, electricity. It by no means means that people are out of the woods. And arguing over the top line figure can just be really foolish. That being said, the CPI number, let's go ahead and put this up there. You can see here that the overall one month percent increase for all consumers seasonally adjusted, it's the first time that we've had zero in over a year. Not a terrible thing. The problem though is, as you alluded to, politically saying, yeah, look, it is a good thing. Today, we officially got the news that the

national average of gasoline has dropped below $4. It's $3.99. I think that's fantastic. I also think $3.99 is still way too high. I also think that the fact that grocery prices are up 18%, 20%, electricity continues to rise, natural gas as a commodity is going to explode come wintertime. We still have all kinds of massive warning signs in the economy. Well, the Biden administration trying to embrace this as some sort of full-fledged victory and saying inflation itself is over, just like they've said previously, like the best job market in World War II. Take a listen to how they reacted yesterday. I heard about the news that came out today relative to the economy So yeah, I mean, technically correct at the urban consumer CPI, but doing victory laps like

this on top line figures, which do not comport with the actual reality on the ground is just foolish because let's say it does go up next month or even if it shrinks by 0.5, but electricity goes up by, I don't even know how high, or you still can't, okay, airfare may be down, but you still can't catch a flight. I mean, I was telling you about my experience. I flew to Portland over the weekend to Oregon, and more than half, more than half of the departure board at Reagan was either delayed or canceled. And I was, to be fair, there were weather-related problems, but I was speaking with some of the crew and some of the air crew. What they were telling me is the real issue is, of course, weather is ever-present. But when you have all this chaotic mess and then you add weather, that's how you have mass cancellations that happen all across the board. Society is still not functioning at a very, very basic level. So nothing to

celebrate, in my opinion. And everybody just exaggerates one way or the other. I think the bottom line is things are still not good. 399 gas is still not great. Gas is still $5 a gallon in California. Millions and millions of Americans still paying well over $4. And also, there's no sign that this is nothing but a temporary decrease post-Memorial Day demand. Once people have to start buying fuel oil, middle distillates like diesel and more, natural gas in order to heat houses as things get colder, price is probably just going to go right back up. We'll see what's going to happen. I think politically the messaging is, you know, it's very simple to see what you want to say.

Like, we're encouraged by this news, but we're not satisfied. We know that people are struggling. We want to do a lot more. Here's our plan. Right. It's the same problem that Obama got himself into, like overly celebratory of a very anemic recovery that people just really weren't feeling. And as we've said in the past, if he had like an actually good candidate that he was up against rather than like the epitome of plutocracy, Mitt Romney,

he was very vulnerable to being defeated. You know, specifically because of that, people don't expect you to fix everything immediately, but they do expect you to sort of understand the problem, empathize with it. Especially Joe Biden, one of the qualities people always loved the most about him was his empathy for blue collar working class people. The big question for me, and I think what will be most significant for how things play out moving forward is how the Fed interprets this status. So you have a few contradictory things. You had a jobs report, which came in higher than expected, 528,000 jobs added. That number came out last week. Unemployment rate falls to 3.5%. And you had weirdos like Jason Furman, who was an Obama economist, being like,

this is uncomfortably hot, as if it's a bad thing when we add jobs and the unemployment rate goes down. But those are the sort of numbers that the Fed, thinking about this as they do in this sort of like sociopathic way of we've got to make people pay and we've got to slow down the economy and we got to continue the course, the dose of tough medicine, hiking rates at this extraordinarily fast rate to get things under control because it's not working yet. You aren't suffering enough yet. So it's not working yet. Not to say you're not suffering, but you're not suffering, according to them, enough. Now you have this other, actually two counter indicators came in. You also had a projection of what consumers think inflation is going to be that came in under expectations. So that was another thing arguing against the Fed continuing to hike rates at the pace that they've been doing. And then now you have this inflation report, which also came in lower than expected and with the 0% increase for the past month. So my plea to the Fed is, guys, slow down. You know, it looks like inflation is headed in the right direction.

Of course, it continues to be a mixed bag. But don't send us into a recession and make people pay even more. So not only do you have, you know, high grocery bills and high gas pump bills, but you also then lose your job, there's no need to do that. Slow your roll and let's see where things ultimately go because at least these are some positive indications that things are headed in the right direction and they could make things so much worse if they go too far too fast. Well, we already have the signs of that. Yes, exactly right. So this is, you know, early indication in terms of housing. San Francisco, this is interesting because this is some indicators that kind of the high end. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So San Francisco, quote, frothmulti-millionaires of San Francisco. But they lead this look at the San Francisco housing market

by saying a palatial five-bedroom home built in 1932 with stained glass windows, hand-carved doors, jaw-dropping hillside views of downtown San Francisco hit the market in April for $9.5 million. In June, the owners dropped the price to $7 million. It went up for auction last week, then opening bid of $4.5 million, and no offers emerged. So they slashed the price in half and still didn't get any offers on this multi-million

dollar mansion in San Francisco. Now, why is this happening? Well, you have a number of things. First of all, you know, there's the fact that these tech valuations are way down, market is down. So all of the Silicon Valley types who have so much of their wealth tied up in the market, even they are feeling less like they want to just casually drop a few million dollars in cash on a home. That's one of the biggest things. And then you also have quality of living concerns in San Francisco, massive rise in homelessness, concerns over sort of street crime as well that has taken some of the bloom off the rose in terms of that city. But interestingly, Sagar, San Francisco was actually the only major U.S. city where home prices fell in June year over year. So the tech sector in

particular, they were hit the hardest at the beginning of this market crash. And that is really reverberating throughout the Bay Area economy. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we saw that from the beginning. And this is just, as we said, tech was the leading indicator on the recession. And tech is going to be the leading indicator, San Francisco also, in terms of the housing market. And if the Federal Reserve continues this, I think, believe the average mortgage right now is like six something percent, 6.5 percent, something around that for a 30-year fixed mortgage. That's astronomically much higher than it was even just six months ago or a year ago. So if you consider that, as we're talking about double the average mortgage payment for a lot of people if they're

trying to buy houses, this squeezes the rental market. Already we have a housing problem in San Francisco. Also, we've talked before about housing construction. There's a ton of construction that was coming online. Some of it is going to be stopped, which is actually really bad. You want that housing stock to come online, the new housing stock. Well, if the builders don't feel like they're going to get anything for it, then they're just going to stop building. So we could have a supply crunch, and we could also simultaneously have a rental crunch as well, which is only going to increase higher prices.

But I thought the best piece here was that New York Times one. Let's put it up there on the screen about in the unequal economy, the poor face the inflation now and a job loss later. It just highlights the Fed strategy, which is that right now, the poor are far more likely to feel it hard at the gas pump, at the grocery store, electric bills. And as a result, the Federal Reserve says, okay, well, we're going to have to increase unemployment. Well, who are the people who are most precarious for unemployment in order to reduce their consumption? People who are not in career jobs, people who don't have a lot of

options, more seasonal work, so quote unquote disposable. And I do not mean that in any moral sense of the term, those are the folks who are going to suffer as a result. So they're both being gouged and most likely to get laid off come increase in rate of time. So as you said, I reiterate your plea, which is, look, it's slowing down. It's not like this was going to do anything to solve gas inflation at all. Same with food, as you admitted, as Jerome Powell admitted. So lay off the poor for right now. Yeah. And there's another problem in here, not only with the way that the poor will be hit the hardest, they're already the ones who are

struggling just to make it work month to month, be able to afford their medicine, food, rent, or mortgage payments. But in addition, because there is so much vast inequality in the economy, so much of the wealth and the spending is at the top. So if the top has all this, you know, excess wealth and they're not paring back at all, then it makes it harder to get inflation under control without the Federal Reserve feeling like they've got to, you know, spark high joblessness and, you know, increase unemployment, which is a horrific direction to go in. Just to give you, they have some nice color in this article. I encourage you to read it. They talk to real people about what their lives were actually like. They interview a woman named Teresa Clark.

They describe her as a retiree in Connecticut. She says the rising cost of living means not buying goldfish crackers for her disabled daughter because a carton costs $11.99 at her local stop and shop. It means showering at the YMCA to save on her hot water bill. It means watching her bank account dwindle to $50 because as someone on a fixed income who's never made much money to start with, there aren't many other places she can trim her spending as prices rise. She says there is nothing to cut back on. She already cut out the goldfish crackers. Then they interview a guy named David Schoenfeld, who made about $250,000 in retirement income and consulting fees last year, has about $5 million in savings socked away. He hasn't pared back his spending at all. He just returned from a vacation in Greece with his daughter and two of his grandchildren. And the way they phrase it is that divergence poses a

challenge for the Fed, which is hoping that higher interest rates will slow consumer spending and ease pressure on prices across the economy. But already there are signs that poorer families are cutting back. But if richer families don't pull back as much, if they keep going on vacations, dining out, buying new cars and second homes, many prices could keep rising. The Fed might need to raise interest rates even more to bring inflation under control, and that could cause a sharper slowdown. And really, to your point, the real problem here is that the Fed has no power over the things that are the key drivers of inflation anyway. Yeah, they have no power over any of this, and it just makes people extraordinarily vulnerable, really, to everything. So I think that people should watch out, and I'm hoping that this is getting read in the correct way. And just

again, to highlight some of the signs of precarity, I found the story is very disturbing. Let's put this up there, which is that the workers at the second largest aluminum mill in the United States, which accounts for 20% of U.S. supply, learned that they were losing their jobs because the plant cannot afford an electricity tab that has tripled in a matter of months. So you are going to have these workers pay the price for high energy prices. Then if the Fed pushes us further

and they make unemployment even higher, it's not like these guys are to be able to get rehired. And it's also not like energy has anything to do with any of this anyway. So you'll have high energy prices, and you'll have high unemployment. And these guys are getting completely screwed. Also, last time I checked, aluminum, we probably need it as a society. Not to mention, when you shut down these industrial concerns, it's not like, oh, you can just flip the switch back on. They talk about

how it'll actually take months to close down this aluminum mill because you have to bleed out all of the molten metal so that it doesn't just like freeze up into a giant brick. And then the process of bringing it back online, if they ever do, similarly takes months and months and months to be able to get it up to speed again. So when you lose these sorts of manufacturing concerns, it's very unlikely that you ultimately get them back. And, of course, that's a big problem for the economy as a whole. Yep, that's right. A few little interesting political indicators from the primaries that unfolded this week. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen.

So this is a look from the Cook Political Report on the overall picture as we head into the midterms. Their takeaways from this week is that Trump's grip on the GOP remains strong. He had several of his contenders who came through, you know, quite easily, especially his governor pick in Wisconsin. But they say the red wave is looking smaller. A couple things that they point to. Number one, over the summer, the Dems have gained two points on that generic congressional ballot. So they're sort of looking the average of the polls has a more or less tied in the generic ballot, which still translates into them losing in the fall control of the House because of the way that the House is structured and the way that the gerrymanders work.

But that is a significant improvement from where they were prior to Dobbs. You also they also point to the fact that a lot of candidates in these races seem to be outpacing Biden. Ordinarily, presidential approval rating is like it is what it is and it bleeds down into all the congressional races. And it's very difficult to separate yourself from that. But I think partly because you have so many Democrats, especially on the left, who are dissatisfied with Biden, but who aren't going to vote for Republicans. You have candidates who are able to outpace Biden, but also independents are much more likely to pick the Democratic congressional candidate, even as they say they're very disappointed and

disaffected in terms of Biden. So that's another thing. But the big factor that came into view this week is we've had a couple of these kind of canary in the coal mine or bellwether races where you get to take the temperature of how electoral performance lines up with what the polls are saying. And you added this week another race to the list where Dems outperformed what they did in this district when Biden was on the ballot and also outperformed what the polling looked like. So that makes a list of roughly three. You had that Nebraska special election where the Democratic candidates still lost, but outperformed what you would expect, given how well Trump did in that district. You had, of course, the Kansas abortion ballot

initiative, where the Democratic side was super energized. You had an overwhelming defeat for the pro-life position. You had plenty of Republicans who also crossed over to vote in that one. Now you have Minnesota's first congressional district where, once again, the Republican won in this special election. But it was a lot closer than you would have predicted given that this was a Trump plus 11 seat. So let's put this next piece up on the screen. This is Dave Wasserman. He says, my best guess is Brad Finstad, who's the Republican, ends up winning Minnesota's first congressional district, which was a Trump plus 10, sorry, I just said plus 11, that's a Trump plus 10 district by just 51-47. And that

is what the final margin ended up being or so when the final four counties finished reporting. That would be remarkably consistent with the June 28th Nebraska first special election when the Republican there won a Trump plus 11 seat by just 53-47. So a six point margin versus the 11 points that Trump won it with. So really interesting results here. And the last piece, just to add in a little bit of the, fill in a little bit of the detail here of what exactly is happening on the ground, let's put this last piece up on the screen. So the Republican performed about seven to eight percentage points worse than Trump in the swing and Democratic parts of the district.

So in the blue and purple counties, the Republican underperformed Trump. The red counties basically stayed exactly where they were. And so, Sagar, that's very consistent with the idea that it's the suburbs that have really gotten energized and the independents there have really swung back to the Democrats when they were more in line with the Republicans back, say, when Glenn Youngkin was winning for governor. This is why it matters, which is that we are not looking at polls here. We're looking at actual votes. So now we have three indicators around how the Dobbs decision has affected voting patterns. We had the special election that Dave pointed to. We had obviously what happened in Kansas, which people are very, very quiet about currently, of what exactly happened there, Crystal.

And now we have this special election. And in every single case, we have seen a Democratic overperformance by almost 7% to 8% points. And in that environment, then, you could say, well, let's extrapolate, possibly, given the current conditions, to what will happen in November, and you would see an overperformance. Does that overperformance mean the Dems are going to keep the House? Probably not. Does it give them more of a chance than previously?

Yeah, absolutely so. Does it mean that Senate races like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be a little bit more dicey for Republicans, I would say, yeah, that's probably the most impact that it's going to have in the actual swing states, Arizona and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, any of the three. Also in Georgia, it could give Warnock just a bit more of a boost over Hershel Walker. These are all the things where I think it's going to matter the most. Well, because I think the question is whether or not the red wave was going to be so overwhelming that it even swept into office candidates that are manifestly terrible like

Herschel Walker. Sure. Right. And so that's happened before, right? Like 2006 for Democrats. Absolutely happened before 2008, also for Democrats. So it does not where things stand now. And again, we had a massive event happen in politics this week that could shift things again entirely. We don't know what the impact of that looks like, but where things stand now, it looks less like that type of historic, overwhelming red wave where Republicans end up with, earlier they were on track for literal historical, historic margins in the House of Representatives. The indications now are that it's going to be a more modest year for them, but probably still a good year.

Probably still they take back the House Senate, much more dicey for them. You might even say Democrats are favored to retain the Senate at this point, at least if you believe the 538 modeling. But I would say it's it's very close in terms of the Senate at this point, at least if you believe the 538 modeling. But I would say it's very close in terms of the Senate. And they're going to have a harder time overcoming some of the candidate quality issues that they have in a lot of these states. There was one where I just saw this morning. I have it on my phone. You know, Washington state also had primaries this week, and they do like the what's called a jungle primary where everybody is on the ballot, Democrat, Republican, et cetera. And then you take the top two into the general election, even if they are both Democrats or both Republicans or whatever they end up being.

And Axios has an analysis here that shows similar Democratic overperformance. state where candidates from all parties were on the same ballot. The Democrats won 49.6 percent of the vote. Republicans tallied slightly less, 49.2 percent of the vote. And they say this is the kind of bellwether contest that Republicans should be winning decisively, overwhelmingly, if this is going to be a wave year. Similarly, in Washington's Senate race, Democratic Senator Patty Murray, who has recently become a Republican target, mostly because Dr. Oz is performing so poorly in Pennsylvania, and they're like, we got to have a backup plan here. She won 52.5% of the vote and Republicans tallied 41.2%. So what they say is the results show Republicans are making inroads, but not nearly enough to unseat the veteran senator in a solid blue state.

So once again, you see significant shifts in the suburbs. You see that Republicans are not performing in a way that would indicate this massive red wave. They still are in a strong position. They still have a lot more factors going for them than the Democrats do. But it clearly is a different landscape based on the election results than we were seeing prior to Dobbs. Yeah, I think that that's the best way to phrase it. Look, we have actual votes here, people,

and that's all that actually matters when it comes to these things. One other thing I'll say, there's another one of these special elections in New York State swing district that's going to be very interesting to watch. I believe the date is August 23rd that they'll go to vote on that one. And Democrats in that race, it's, it's a, will be a very interesting one

because they are all in on abortion. Like all of their ads are about abortion in that race. So that'll be an interesting one to watch a couple other little notes from the night. Let's go ahead and put this next one up on the screen. I think all of the squad members have faced significant primary challenges. All of them have dispatched with them easily, but this one was very close. Representative Ilhan Omar defeated Don Samuels, but it was narrow. She won by just a few points here. And, you know, there were some indications, I guess she didn't run TV ads. There was a significant amount of money on Don Samuels' side. He was running on a more sort of like tough on crime messaging. So she barely squeaks through. And also she was doing

a lot of campaigning for other squad members and not so much in her district. So I think next time around she'll probably be a little closer to home, probably go up on TV and make sure she's got

that totally locked down. The other interesting one, which I noted a little bit before, let's go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen, is that Tim, how do you say this? Michael? I don't actually know. Anyway, Tim is the winner. a little bit before, let's go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen, is that Tim, how do you say this, Michaels?

I think it's, I don't actually know. Anyway, Tim is the winner of the Republican nomination for governor in Wisconsin. This one was interesting because Mike Pence had backed a different candidate who was the former lieutenant governor of the state. She was a Tea Party icon, actually, during the Scott Walker. Right, so this was someone who had been prominent, who had been seen as sort of like a conservative stalwart, and now defeated by old

Timmy here, who was backed by Trump, you know, and now the Pence-backed candidate who used to be the bleeding edge of the conservative movement is seen as sort of like establishment and rhino. That's how it goes, folks. Yes. Well, Wisconsin is the one I'm going to watch really, really close. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, any of the battleground states which have been flipped since the 2016 election, that is where a lot of this stuff is going to matter the most.

And those are also where the suburban coalitions both flipped or didn't come out in 2016 and then flipped to Biden from Republican traditional vote in 2020. And I think gubernatorial candidate quality matters the most of every level we're talking about here. Especially in the abortion age, right? Because Wisconsin is very split on abortion as well. Yes, that's exactly right. So the fact that you have a sort of more fringe or Trumpier candidate who wins probably makes it more difficult for Republicans in the fall. And I think there are a number of gubernatorial races where Republicans could have had a really good shot and they've made it much, much more difficult for themselves based on the nominees that they've chosen. So this is probably another instance of that. Because I do think, you know, at the House, I think candidate quality almost doesn't matter

at all unless you have a really extreme case. I think at the Senate, it can matter some. Like, you know, I do think some of the candidates Republicans nominated are going to have some issues based on prior statements and just based on inexperience. And at the gubernatorial level, you can even have, you know, I mean, in Kentucky has a Democratic governor right now and Vermont has a Republican governor right now. Maryland has a Republican governor right now, even though these are, you know, states that are crossing and voting in a cross-partisan way because they're actually doing more like evaluating the individual candidates. We'll see how that all plays out.

100 percent. All right. Let's talk about the GOP. We teased this a little bit earlier, but it's obvious now that Trump has never been in a position better to be the quote unquote undisputed leader of the GOP than probably what, the day, January 5th, 2021. And the reason for that is the FBI raid. Even if the circumstances do turn out to be piecemeal, not that significant, the fact that it did happen basically caused every single possible challenger to come out to his defense,

really just showing that if you have to do that, then you are at least at some level bending the knee to the undisputed leader of the GOP. And we're not just the ones saying that. Many Republican allies to President Trump actually want him to announce immediately that he will be running in 2024. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Many top Republicans who have been trying to get him to announce for months now, before the midterms, are actually coming around to the idea. And Trump himself is also apparently weighing the decision. The reason that, given that you had all of these candidates, Mike Pompeo, even Mike Pence, obviously, who's been critical, or at least tacitly critical of the former president,

Ron DeSantis, even Glenn Youngkin, not exactly the Trumpiest guy on the planet who didn't even want Trump to come to Virginia to campaign for him. All of them had to come out and speak against this raid. And so what they said is that Trump has really been weighing, should I announce before Labor Day, possibly on Labor Day, maybe after the midterms? The reason why he wouldn't want to announce before the midterms, some Republicans didn't want him to, is they don't want the midterm elections to also be about Trump. Obviously, Trump is a drag on the ballot. There's just no question. Yeah, but he doesn't care about that. He doesn't care at all. He wants to freeze. He basically wants to freeze the race and make it so that these people cannot

outsmart him, come out ahead of him. He wants to be their very first, freeze it basically completely, really, as he did in 2016. Remember, I think he was one of the very first presidents ever who the day after he won election was like, I'm running for reelection. He never shut down his reelection campaign. It's actually not really done in history. Biden has basically been doing that as well. But with Trump kind of setting that precedent, by freezing the race, you basically make it so that there's not going to be any sort of primary. Or if there is, it's just going to be a much more of a contestant. So the CNN report is really interesting. Great reporters who are there on the byline. And what they point to is that this would also freeze out any sort of potential, quote unquote, anti-Trump challengers

like Larry Hogan or Mike Pompeo or others. And now look, those people didn't have a chance in hell, but they would have gotten a significant amount of media attention if they announced ahead of Trump's actual announcement. And he, because he's just been in the strongest possible position, really puts him in an advantageous space. So look, it's certainly possible. The other thing to note, as we said, let's put this up there. It's just remarkable to look at how many of the people who have come out and voiced their concern for him. Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz. Every one of them. Every single one of them.

As I said, freaking Glenn Youngkin, who is the governor of a barely Republican purple state here in Virginia, had felt compelled to come and speak on his behalf. Like that is just shows you how undisputed that this is to the GOP identity. Even Mike Pence, let's throw Mike Pence's tweet up there. Quote, I share the deep concern of millions of Americans over the unprecedented search of the personal residence of President Trump. No former president of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history. Yesterday's action undermines public confidence in our system, and Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken, and he must do so immediately. So look, the fact that Pence, who clearly has said that, I mean, privately has told

people, yeah, I might run against Trump. He's got the honor of how he behaved on January 6th. He had the break with Trump post where Trump trashed him as a coward. He even is bending the knee. This just shows you that, and I think this just confirms really what I thought all along, which is that if Trump was truly in the crosshairs of Ron DeSantis or any of these people, that he would just destroy them. That people, you know, have to come to his defense. The fact that DeSantis doesn't even have it, that he would just destroy them, that people have to come to his defense. The fact that DeSantis doesn't even have it in him to ask Trump to endorse him but still has to send out a tweet trying to defend Trump whenever he's in the barrel, it's just like, dude, that's just how it is.

There's just no beating the man. He rules American politics. And in a way, he just doesn't rule the GOP. He rules American politics. Look at our media environment, the level at which it gets activated by Trump. It's like, this is still the Trump era, even if Biden is the president. It's just remarkable. I think that's really well said. And I hate that because I don't like it. I think that the, I mean, this is, in my opinion, I don't want to say it's the worst part about Trump, but one of the things that I really hate about the Trump era is that he becomes the dividing line.

Yeah. And it really does make our politics just terrible. Just terrible. Where you end up with, like, you know, liberals donating to Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney making a comeback and George W. Bush being rehabbed and Nicole Wallace getting 14 hours on MSNBC or how many hours she hosts at this point. And you end up with Republicans who literally stand for nothing except for sucking up to this guy. And that's the only, like, he makes it so that is the most significant dividing line in politics. And that sucks because it's a stupid way to think about our country and our democracy and what we want it to look like. So that's what I've always found the most frustrating and the most difficult to deal with

in the Trump era is it is very much like you're with him or you're against him. And anything you think about health care or education or even cultural issues doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is where you stand on that one thing. And that freaking sucks and is terrible. And I will say in terms of these Republicans who, this is all so predictable. I mean, I do feel like we are kind of validated in what we've been saying here, which is that it's just total wish casting the idea that he's about to be knocked off his perch in terms of being the dominant force in the Republican Party. They might have had a chance right after January 6th. If there was an opportunity, that was the moment. And remember, Mitch McConnell kind of like flirted with it. There were a few people who kind of flirted with it.

And then ultimately, very quickly, they fell back in line. And that was their shot. If they didn't take that shot then, when there was somewhat of a chance to knock this guy out, knock him down, make it so we can't run again, get him out of the way, that was the moment. Now, forget about it. It's done. You missed your chance. So, you know, and frankly, you were cowards at the time to not even really mount some sort of an effort to try if you thought this was important and you thought that there was a better direction that you could take the party in. I think the media response is also very revelatory. There were all these pieces, some of which we covered about like, oh, the Murdoch empire splitting from Trump and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal put out these op-eds against him and they haven't had him on Fox News and maybe they're trying to shift

away and they ran that like DeSantis puppies utter propaganda, pro-DeSantis propaganda. No, they all fell in line too. Because ultimately, it's, you know, it's business. And the base is with Trump. And so when it's time to go and do whatever it is that he wants them to do and to say, they didn't think about it for an instant. There wasn't a single moment of hesitation. Every single host on the Talking Points, just like that, the minute it happened, they didn't need to wait for the details. They didn't need information. They think in terms of his own personal political interest, I think the people that are saying go for it now are right. I think it would be another blow to the Republican Party's chances in the midterms.

That is my assessment. Because what they want is to make this all about Biden, be a referendum on Biden. He's got trash approval ratings. People are very dissatisfied with the economy. 80% say it's on the wrong track. If the election is about that, they romp. If it's more like a 2018 dynamic where it's all about Trump and how you feel about him and how you feel about Stop the Steal and, oh, by the way, what about what they're going to do with you with abortion and, you know, the extremism there? That's a very different landscape. So, yeah, I'm sure that Republican congressional leaders are

very much hoping that Trump waits till after the midterms, but he doesn't definitely doesn't care. And I do think it serves his personal interests while everyone, literally everyone on that side just bent the knee to go ahead and announce now. Yep, I think you're right. Okay, let's talk about Ukraine. Usually we have a media block, but we had to talk about so much about Trump. We can't drop what's happening in the most consequential war in Europe since World War II. So there's been actually a pretty significant political development with Finland, our new NATO ally. Let's go and put that up there on the screen. Finland and Estonia, who is also in NATO, are urging the European Union to stop issuing tourist visa to all Russian citizens. So Helsinki

says that Russians are entering their country and using their airports to actually fly elsewhere within the EU. They do not want Russians to be able to traverse the EU whatsoever. They're saying that this is a violation of some of the sanctions, and especially a circumvention of air travel in order to try and destroy the Russian air travel industry. Now, Moscow and Aeroflot and all of them have always actually kind of operated as a waypoint for some airlines. And I'm already seeing reports that the Aeroflot and others are having trouble servicing their Boeing 737s. This happened to Iran. They've been flying the same jets since like the 1970s. They got quite adept actually at figuring out how to still run Iran air, but

Russia is still in trouble. I think though that this just shows you a tremendous, really frankly, escalation on their part. Because actually it's interesting, I was traveling when I was coming back from India and I saw a bunch of Russians in the airport and I was like, really, frankly, escalation on their part. Because actually, it's interesting. I was traveling when I was coming back from India, and I saw a bunch of Russians in the airport. And I was like, wow, where are you guys going? I was like, I can't even believe you're allowed to go anywhere. But what it is, is that the tourist visa ban would effectively apply to hundreds of thousands of not only people who are students, but it would bleed into sports events. It would bleed into all sorts of civil society activity, which had been continuing. We talked about Wimbledon. So it's not like Wimbledon had already banned them,

but there are many other, obviously, equal applications of this. And the vice versa treatment of that would really bring back an iron curtain, the likes of which Europe has not seen since the 1950s, the 1960s, which is just remarkable when you consider it. So this is a big escalation on their part. And if anything, this would really, I wouldn't say escalate things with the government,

but at the citizenry level for Russians, I think this would probably send a very hostile message. I'm not saying there isn't necessarily a reason to do it, but just telling you, like, if you care about making sure that the Russian population isn't as susceptible to Putin and all of that, this would almost certainly send that signal to the Russian people of, like, hey, you can't even go to Berlin. Places that you've been going for decades. It's completely unjustifiable. I mean, how can you say this is basically a dictator in Putin who's doing whatever he wants without any democratic consent and then impose these kind of sanctions on ordinary people who you just said have no say in what the government is ultimately doing? It's just rank xenophobia. I mean, it plays to the worst sort of grotesque human instincts. And then to your point, just in terms of strategic calculation, it plays right into Putin's hands because his narrative has always been they hate you. The West is against us. They want to destroy us.

And then when you levy these kinds of sanctions that hit just indiscriminately ordinary Russians, which, you know, these aren't the first ones that would do that, but very sort of personalized. Yeah, you're backing up basically what he's been trying to sell to the population. So I think it's gross. There was another headline that I also thought was really gross and frankly sort of sociopathic. The U.S. is telling Africa that they can buy Russian grain, but they can't buy Russian oil. And some of these nations are suffering on a massive scale. Here's what they say. African nations are free to buy grain from Russia but could face consequences if they trade in U.S. sanctioned commodities such as Russian oil.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said Thursday, here's her quote. This is Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Countries can buy Russian agricultural products including fertilizer and wheat. But if a country decides to engage with Russia where there are sanctions, then they are breaking those sanctions. This was said while she was visiting Uganda. These nations are suffering. I mean, the amount of famine, the amount of impoverishment, just how much they are struggling with inflation and with climate crisis and droughts and all kinds of issues with their own crops. And then you're going to say, like, sorry, you can't buy the cheaper Russian oil.

It's, I think it's really gross. I think it's really heartless. And I think it's really wrong. There's just no two ways around it. Well, the real issue, too, and actually they even pointed this, is they're like, hey, you know, this would actually have a major impact also on people who are in Russia who don't want to be in Russia. It's not like you have a lot of brain drain, which already happened probably continuing daily.

So it would actually penalize also like any friendly – Western-friendly Russians who live in Russia. And one of the major concerns that we saw is that one possibility that's being floated in Estonia is a possible closure of the Estonian-Russian border, where there's actually a significant amount of cross-trade that occurs there, but also is a major entry point for Russians into the European Union and into NATO space. Finland also reportedly considering this. Now, it's being currently talked off, but look, we're entering that phase of the war where there's like a grinding things going on. And some people are searching for like that one weird trick that might push things in the right direction. And that's usually when escalation goes to the next level. Let's go to the next one up there. This actually shows what's happening on the ground in Ukraine.

So we have floated that the Ukraine is going to be launched or Ukraine is going to be launching a counteroffensive. And they officially began that. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. They launched their southern counteroffensive, actually beginning with a major strike on Crimea on a Russian airbase. So that blast is what Ukraine is saying as a major counteroffensive that is being launched both in the south to reclaim Russian seized territory. The strike itself was largely symbolic. It was meant as a strike by the Ukrainian government, obviously, on Crimea, which was annexed by Russia back in 2014, considered by the Russians as actual Russian territory. However, Zelensky saying that Crimea will always be Ukrainian and that this is a major

strike to show that they're not going to give up on any fronts. The Ukrainians confirming also say that this is the beginning of their actual counteroffensive. So this is something that we all need to watch very, very closely. The actual progress of this counteroffensive is going to tell us a lot about the Ukrainian military's actual ability to conduct an offensive mission. Now, currently they've been fighting defensively. They've been fighting quite well, but they did lose a significant amount of ground in the East. If they are unable with the multi-billion dollars of aid given to them by the United States, by the EU, by all of the European countries, and they're unable to take back any significant territory, it just tells us that it's not going to happen at this point. So all eyes currently on this. It literally just began

yesterday. Major symbolic strike on Crimea, and we're going to see how it goes. Yeah, and there's, I think, two other things to say about it. One is, you know, this shows the Ukrainians still have maximal stains. Oh yeah, bingo. They don't want to just go back to the status quo prior to the war. They want it all back, because remember, before the war, Russia had Crimea. Of course, the Ukrainians didn't like it, but they also weren't really fighting it. That was sort of the reality and the facts on the ground. Russia had Crimea. Of course, the Ukrainians didn't like it, but they also weren't really fighting it. That was sort of the reality and the facts on the ground. And Russia also controlled these sort of, you know, breakaway regions in the east. So this signals, you know,

Ukrainians have complete maximalist objectives and aims in the war that's significant. There's also questions about what this means in terms of the types of missiles that we have been supplying. There's a headline here in The Times that says a strike suggests Ukraine may have longer-range missiles and particularly raises the questions whether the U.S. has provided Ukraine with longer-range tactical missiles. They have a quote here from a former Ukrainian official who hinted that the U.S. had supplied missiles with a longer range to Kiev, quote, as you can see, missiles with a range of 200 to 300 kilometers are already being used in our country. This is according to a former advisor to Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs. So take all of that for what it's worth. But why is this significant? Because Russia has always been very sensitive to the idea that the weapons we are providing Ukraine with could be used on Russian territory.

The longer range the missile, the more that they see that as a direct threat to their own nation. And it's something that the Biden administration has claimed to be very sensitive to. So that's something to keep an eye on. Let's keep an eye on all those things. And, you know, also, if the Ukrainians, this is the other thing with precision military equipment, are striking inside of Crimea, which again, the Russians consider Russian, I'm not saying that's just, I'm saying that's what they consider it, that also could put us in a tough spot. So we also should watch to see how they are going to be conducting themselves in that regard and how they'll be reacting to this specific situation.

Indeed. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the first time I learned that Trump was just different was weeks after the first 2016 presidential debate. If you don't remember, it began with the famous exchange between Megyn Kelly and Trump when she asked him about his past language on women, and he responded, quote,

only Rosie O'Donnell. I remember thinking, that is one of the most insane things I've ever seen in my life. There's no way he's going to last. And then he surged to the very top of the polls, and he basically stayed there for the rest of the election. The Teflon aspect of Trump is one of the most maddening things about him to his opponents, as he also intuited he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and some people would still support him. Trying to understand exactly why, in many ways, is basically what I've spent the majority of my career trying to understand. And what I ultimately settled on is that it has a lot less to do with Trump and a lot more to do with his opponents. For all of the hand-wringing about how can these rednecks stand by him, there's never any real self-reflection as

to why they would even be willing to cheer on such a deeply flawed man through everything. And that occupies my mind in the context of this FBI raid. There is an aspect to where the most giddy MSNBC resistance liberals are cheering. The walls are finally closing in and it's finally over. The raid is the tip of the iceberg. He's being deposed by the New York AG. As for the raid itself, there's just no way it's about classified materials, right? They have to have more. And while I confess at least some of that was in my thinking, I've also to apply the hard-earned cynicism that governed the way that I approach these so-called scandals throughout the Trump years. Truly consider the maddening number of scandals that we were supposedly career enders and groundbreakers, which years later you don't even remember. Trump was me too'd by dozens of women. Melania Trump had that plagiarized speech. He didn't divest himself from the Trump hotel. There was the Muslim ban. There was Qasir Khan's

wife. John McCain is not a war hero. Insulting Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz is why. Making fun of the disabled reporter. Access Hollywood. Russia if you're Listening. And look, I left many of those out, but notice the theme. Every single one I listed happened before he even won the presidency. From there, the list is genuinely endless, and I'll get PTSD if I list them all out. But the theme to every single one was clear. Breathless news coverage in disbelief. This has simply never been done before. This will be the end. Inviting Russians into the Oval Office. Firing Comey.

The tapes. Obamagate. Spying. The appointment of Robert Mueller. The will-he-won't-he dance of firing Jeff Sessions. The obstruction of justice speculation. The back and forth on whether Mueller would depose him or not. The final release of the Mueller report. Then when that wasn't enough, the testimony of Mueller himself. Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen. Michael Avenatti. Shall I continue?

The common theme, if you will remember, is everything that I just listened for grounds was why he was truly done this time. And with Mueller in particular, I'm really getting flashbacks right now. Nearly every week in 2017, there was a headline that basically read something like this. Mueller is investigating possible X. Then people would take that as proof that Mueller actually had evidence of X and had Trump dead to rights. The conversation then came around to what would happen when this inevitable proof would materialize. And then the media and the MSNBC and others would forget that actually they hadn't proven anything. And that just because the FBI has brought, and in

my opinion, far too much leeway, they can actually, quote, investigate anything. For years, we lived through those headlines. Mueller has subpoenaed this. Ivanka has sat with Congress. Oh my God, he interviewed Jared. Oh my God, he interviewed Bannon. Oh my God, he interviewed Paul Manafort. And in the end, what happened? He investigated a lot. And he came up with what? Nothing. Simply, the portrait of a campaign run by a bunch of morons who associated with unsavory characters.

I mean, yeah, I could have told you that one. There is nobody on earth who voted for Donald Trump and thought, you know what? That's a real stand-up guy who conducts himself in a perfect business manner. The real point I'm making is that the Teflon aspect that Trump appears to have really is not a testament to any particular genius or skill that he has. It is a testament to the mediocrity and the idiocy of his opponents. The opposition party and the media hand in glove for years set the expectation for their base that Trump was a once-in-a-lifetime threat for whom norms and rules do not apply, and which any break-the-glass measure that existed should be breached to banish him from history. Again and again, they look to Mueller or the DOJ to save them from a political

reality they created by overreaching and by corrupting higher institutions like the FBI, the DOJ, and polarizing them politically, that the condition is now set that basically no matter what people find here, no one will be satisfied. My personal bet is we are likely to land somewhere in the middle. The FBI will find something perhaps of consequence, minor consequence, after some significant legal wrangling and months of speculation, we will land at some point of settlement where Trump basically just walks away. This will simply vindicate all sides. The Trump people will declare victory to show that he survived and is quote, innocent, even if he's not. The MSNBC crowd, it isn't enough. It shows he's a criminal. Donnie will live to fight another day. This will only feed both the persecution complexes of the right, justifying a paradigm shift in how

they approach the FBI and the DOJ, and will actually erode confidence in the actual justice system amongst the liberal set, who will say, well, then even more extraordinary measures are justified. And to me, it actually vindicates that we did a segment on our show on Tuesday, when people were breathlessly sharing speculation that if Trump was convicted of mishandling classified information, it would bar him from holding federal office. What the people sharing it forgot to mention is the Supreme Court has already ruled that the only stipulation on qualifications for holding office stand in the Constitution for the president. That even Congress cannot change them. Thus, there is no one cool trick to disqualify Trump

from office. There is actually one cool trick, and it's the hardest one. Beat him. It is more of a testament to the horrific handling of U.S. policy under Joe Biden, the hollowness of the current Democratic Party, and their sheer weakness that Trump is even in a plausible position to win again. It is not because the system is rigged. It's because you suck. And the better he does, the more of an opportunity he has is only a vindication of his opponent's lack of strength. If you cannot beat Trump, then honestly, you deserve to lose. You deserve the backlash to the raid and the radicalization of the GOP, because honestly, it is just as much your fault as it is theirs. And that's really what it's coming back to,

Crystal. I mean, you can look at Trump as a symptom or the cause. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, I know most see the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago as a potentially very divisive moment in American politics. But guys, you know I'm always looking for an opportunity for some American unity. And thus, I was cheered to see a rush of prominent conservatives embrace a longtime lefty position,

coming around to a just and patriotic cause, defunding the FBI. Candace Owens announced on Twitter, quote, The FBI must be legally and formally dissolved. Then she said some other stuff. Don't worry too much about that. But then she concluded with this base call for action, quote, left or right, we must all come together to fight this evil. Amen. Marjorie Taylor Greene was more direct with a principled abolitionist take, tweeting, defund the FBI. And a former Trump official offered some specific and laudable steps in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham. And I think this is a wake-up call for those in Congress to be able to use the tools at their

disposal to defund the FBI, to ask the right questions, and to prepare for a church-style commission next year, if given a Republican majority, to dismantle the FBI into a thousand bits. A thousand bits? I like the way that sounds. Now, you'll recall that the Church Committee was a congressional inquiry into massive deep state abuses perpetrated by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, along with the CIA, mostly during the civil rights era. Its findings shocked the American public with revelations about how the FBI infiltrated, targeted, harassed, and surveilled a variety of leftist groups, from the Black Panthers to anti-war groups to gay rights activists, all under the COINTELPRO program.

They murdered charismatic and groundbreaking Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. They systematically bugged the home and hotel rooms of MLK Jr. And just wait until our new comrades find out about what the CIA did. Now, remarkably, the origins of the FBI were actually quite noble. It was launched under Teddy Roosevelt as an executive branch investigatory team focused on trust-busting and rooting out corporate abuse. This original mission, however, quickly expanded, and before long, the FBI, then known as the Bureau of Investigation, was up to the sorts of corrupt behavior and domestic spying that we all know and hate it for. Here is how author Brian Burrow described it. After the FBI's founding, quote, it had devolved over the ensuing 15 years into a nest of nepotism and corruption. By the early

1920s, its agents, scattered across 50 domestic offices, were hired mostly as favors to politicians. Its most notorious employee, a con man named Gaston Means, earned his money blackmailing congressmen, selling liquor licenses to bootleggers, and auctioning presidential pardons. In the wake of a mid-1920s congressional investigation, the Bureau acquired the nickname the Department of Easy Virtue. Love that. And it only got worse from there, because the guy they brought in to clean up the joint? One and only J. Edgar Hoover of murdering, surveilling, unaccountable infamy. He ruled the FBI as his own personal kingdom with complete lawlessness for decades,

leading eventually to public outcry after the revelations of the aforementioned church committee. But FBI abuses are not just something to read about in the history books. They're real, and they're continuing right up to this very day. The Bureau has routinely racially profiled, surveilled, and entrapped a generation of young Muslim men post-9-11, preying on those who were either desperate, mentally unwell, or unintelligent and easily manipulated. And with a new focus on domestic terrorism, they decided to use the skills they gained creating terror plots that they could then pretend to disrupt in order to manufacture a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. A jury took the highly unusual step of letting two of those indicted off due to these bureau abuses. Just recently, they violently raided the property of the African People's Socialist Party as part of what they said was an investigation into a Russian-influenced campaign. So yeah, bring on the church committee, expose their lies and abuse, defund them and strip them of power.

Let's effing go. Now, what Candace and I both understand, I'm sure, is that it's not that we're opposed to the law being upheld. On the contrary, what's outrageous about the FBI and our entire criminal justice system is the two-tier system of justice that protects elites while criminalizing the poor and the working class. What's outrageous is that it routinely violates our civil rights rather than fighting to uphold the law by protecting those civil rights. What's outrageous is that throughout its history, the FBI has put itself above the law. And no one, not law enforcement, not Wall Street bankers, not the president or former president of the United States

should be above the law. Right, Candace? Now, as one astute online observer put it, the only correct position on the Trump-Mar-a-Lago raid is F-Trump, but also F the FBI. And if you can't say both, let's be honest, you're not serious. Been pretty funny. As Ken Klippenstein... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So amidst everything else that is going on in Washington this week, we didn't want to lose sight of some really critical world affairs that continue to brew and bubble and cause a lot of reason for angst. There was an interview that caught my eye in Jacobin magazine. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Interview conducted by Bronco Marsetic, friend of the show, with Lyle Goldstein, who is a director of Asia Engagement and Defense Priorities and a former research professor at the U.S. Naval War College. And he argues that we should not underestimate the incredible danger posed by the Taiwan crisis and makes a pretty compelling case that the media is not helping us to understand just how dangerous a situation this is. And Lyle, we are fortunate to have him join us now. Great to see you, sir. Welcome.

Good to see you, Lyle. Yeah, glad to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So just lay out the case here for why you think this is such a dangerous situation and, you know, frankly, why you think that Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was such a foolish and provocative move? Well, as I see it, you know, China and the U.S. are really on a collision course here. It's exceedingly dangerous. You know, I don't rule out that if there is a conflict, that it could be a nuclear conflict. You know, I did my dissertation on nuclear strategy, so I'm well versed on this.

And unfortunately, I see plenty of paths toward dangerous escalation. So, you know, it seems to me that, you know, both sides are quite entrenched in their viewpoint. You know, I don't really have any doubt about China's intent to, you know, to try to bring Taiwan under its control, maybe even in the near term. And, you know, Washington seems highly uncertain. I mean, the very title of the strategy is strategic ambiguity. And, you know, there's little agreement about what that means. All attempts at clarification seem to fail. And, you know, in this crisis, I think we've seen, you know, some of the worst dynamics of how American domestic politics, you know, try to cope with foreign policy where, you know,

more or less the Pentagon and national security advisors appear to have been saying this is a bad idea. Certainly right now, it's a bad idea, the visit I'm talking about. And, you know, Pelosi indicating, well, maybe she wouldn't go if the president was willing to step forward and say he advised her not to go. And then, you know, President Biden if the president was willing to step forward and say he advised her not to go. And then, you know, President Biden, though apparently unwilling to, you know, go on record saying she shouldn't go. So it's been, you know, kind of a Hydra-headed approach that has just led to more confusion. And of course, the Chinese are watching these signals. And I'm troubled by all of this. You know, I agree. I think most regional experts, but others like Tom Friedman, for example,

said this was utterly reckless. And I agree. I think we're in a worse place today than we were a week ago. Yeah. I mean, one of the things, Lyle, that we pointed to after is that China is no longer answering even the phone calls of the Secretary of Defense. Something that you pointed to that I was not aware of is how the U.S. has been shown in the open press to lose war games that they've been gaming around the Taiwan situation. Could you elaborate a little bit further for the audience? Well, you can read plenty of articles in the open press if you just Google that. You'll see there have been plenty of reports about war games. You know, there's a famous RAND analyst, David Akmanek. He's been cited in many reports making this statement.

I think he works for RAND. So, you know, I don't want to speak about, you know, games I've been involved with, but it, you know, this has just been reported openly in the press. So if you read about this and it was an iterated set of conclusions. So, you know, to me, that's quite powerful, but it checks with everything else we see. I mean, if you just look at the vast asymmetry of firepower, which mainly is due to geography, it's not that China is stronger than the U.S. The U.S. remains stronger in most respects.

But this fight is not, you know, in mid-Pacific or off the California coast. This is right in China's backyard. And therefore, they can bring everythingific or off the California coast. This is right in China's backyard, and therefore they can bring everything they have into the fight immediately. And what that means is there's a, you know, vast asymmetry of firepower, like I said. When you add to that, that China considers this a core interest, by contrast, most Americans couldn't find Taiwan on a map and have no idea what its relationship to China is. So when you put those two together, this is a really, really dangerous situation in which we could be sleepwalking into a catastrophic war, one that we could potentially lose, but also one

that could quite easily, as I said, go nuclear. You know, China is building up its nuclear forces. And from my observation, most analysts who think about this don't really take it, you know, that next step. You know, how do we ensure that this does not lead to, you know, use of nuclear weapons? I would go further, though. There's more at stake here even than that, which is hard to believe. But, you know, China just said they're not going to work with us on climate change anymore. That's, you know, I think for people who are concerned about climate change, that's a pretty devastating result and one we should think very hard about. All kinds of other areas we need to work closely with China on. And, you know, the more we poison the relationship by needling on this Taiwan issue, the more in jeopardy so many of these, you know, major issues for the 21st century are in doubt, you know. And so, and one more thing I would add, sorry,

is that, you know, the amount of money that the U.S. has to put forward to try, if we're going to try to defend Taiwan, like I said, the asymmetry of firepower is so grave. We're talking trillions and trillions, and we still may not get there. So, you know, there's a much wiser approach. And that's to, you know, use realism and restraint and draw red lines at another place, not over Taiwan. Well, and while one of the cases you make as well is that a lot of folks have drawn some of the wrong conclusions and wrong lessons from Ukraine, Russia. The wrong conclusion being, all right, the right approach here is to sort of flood the zone with weapons versus what you say a smart approach would have been to actually engage in diplomacy

from the beginning to try to avoid this warfare from the jump. Yeah, that's exactly right. I think, of course, Putin bears primary responsibility for the war, and it's a huge catastrophe for Europe and for Russia and for Ukraine. But I believe much more could have been done in terms of diplomacy. You know, most of us who watch this carefully, and I speak Russian as well, you know, it's clear that if Ukraine had simply declared neutrality, that probably would have gone a long way toward ending that crisis. So what we need here in the Taiwan situation is a similar attempt at diplomacy, you know, but this, we have to make this diplomacy succeed. And here the U.S. needs to get a lot more creative and a lot more active. You know, mostly the United States has been passive and just sort of pushing weapons into Taiwan. I don't think

that's a smart approach at all. In fact, arguably, you know, those, all those videos of javelins flowing into Ukraine between November and February last year, I think, I was kind of waving a red flag in front of a bull. The Russians said, well, we've got to go now. And I'm very concerned that China may be approaching this with a similar logic, is that they don't like all these weapons piling up in Taiwan, and they decide now is the time. So I'm very, very concerned, and I think we need to put much more energy into looking for diplomatic solutions. Most people who look carefully at the Taiwan issue come around to a conclusion that basically you have to reach for some kind of confederation. And that's a very squishy concept, obviously, but it's sort of a meeting halfway, and that's what's absolutely necessary. By the way, like I said, creative diplomacy should have prevented the Ukraine war in my view too. Yeah. Yeah. You can't wish away the red lines of great powers, even if you may wish or hope or, you know, want them to be different than what they

ultimately are. You have to listen to what they're saying. Lyle, thank you so much for helping us understand this because I do agree with you. I think the media is doing a very poor job of helping Americans to understand exactly how grave the stakes are here. Great to have you. Thank you, Lyle. Appreciate it. Thanks very much. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's been a fun Newsweek here on Breaking Points. I've been trying to hit all of the

top stories, break it down, explain it to everybody. I know it can be fraught times and all that, but it's actually probably the most fun in order to engage at this time. As exhausting as it often may be. So we appreciate all of your support very much. We've got exciting things in the works, not only the live show, but some new people who will be hopefully joining us that you'll be seeing very, very soon,

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