Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/16/22: FBI Trump Witness, Trump Lawyers, Midterm Fundraising, Dr. Oz, Housing Market, Coal Country Jobs, & More!

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the news about the FBI's Trump investigation, Trump's associates, midterm fundraising, housing market, NYT endorsements, Biden censorship, Liz Cheney election, & Biden climate provisions!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 Jeff Stein: https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Sagar and I were discussing yesterday. It certainly seems like the news comes in waves, tidal waves at times. And it's definitely a feast,

not a famine moment in terms of news. All kinds of new developments about the various inquiries that Trump and his allies are facing, including Rudy Giuliani being told that he is in fact the target of a probe. We also have interesting back and forth between Trump and the FBI about did they take his passports? Do they still have his passports? told that he is, in fact, the target of a probe. We also have interesting back and forth between

Trump and the FBI about did they take his passports? Do they still have his passports? What does it all mean? So we'll get into that. The Justice Department saying, arguing in court that they do not want the affidavit of giving all of the reasons why they wanted to conduct this search. They do not want that released to the public. So we have those details. Also, today is another primary day. A couple of interesting races on the ballot. I'm going to be taking a look at Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney. We also have some new indications about some of the midterm races. Republicans continuing to struggle with fundraising in a way that is quite surprising. Major turnaround from how things were going for them previously. And maybe the most hilarious,

unintentionally hilarious campaign video I've ever seen coming from Dr. Oz. No bueno, Dr. Oz. Yes. Let's just say it involves the word crudité. It involves French, which is you're already going on the wrong. Also, some interesting info about the housing market. People expect a crash, but actually also a lot of people cheering for a crash who have not been able to buy a home and would like to be able to. And a New York Times endorsement that

failed to disclose a major conflict of interest. We also have Jeff Stein on today to break down the Inflation Reduction Act, which has now passed the House and is going to be the law of the land. So dig into all of that with him. But first, we asked you how you wanted, if you were a premium subscriber, to receive the show. Did you want it to continue to be on YouTube but have the quality degraded, or did you want it to be uploaded to Vimeo? And, Sagar, the results are? The results are in, and there has been a vicious battle.

I can best describe it as East Coast versus West Coast. The East Coasters, very adamant that they want their show on time. The West Coasters are saying, I don't care. Just release it in higher quality. So as a result, in order to please it. Central timers, by the way, seem apparently split. It's a great privilege to have so many people who care so much about this show. You all really had some feelings about this.

Yeah, people had a lot of feelings. We got hundreds and hundreds of emails about this. So we have decided that this is what we're going to do. We will do both. We will both release it on Vimeo so that you can get it as soon as humanly possible for those who are on the East Coast. And we will also include the YouTube link. Now, to be clear, that YouTube link can and often will take a little bit longer than the 11 a.m. EST arrival time. And so if the checks are running, if the link is not working, you can then, if you

need your fix immediately, go ahead on Vimeo. We will not degrade the quality whatsoever. We'll keep the quality for those of you who watch it on your 4K television. And we will include Vimeo for those who want their immediate fix. So I'm assuming this middle ground can please everybody. That is what everybody's asked for. And yeah. I would tell in soccer, you know, democracy is messy. We're not going to strangle anyone's voices. We welcome all of your opinions. Very divided house here. Yeah, and I was saying,

you know, the vote is actually 50-50 in terms of, I was like, oh my God. I genuinely thought that people would arrive to a consensus,

but they didn't and look, we're not the country so we can actually come up with a solution that pleases everybody. Try to accommodate it. That's what we're going to do

from here going forward. If you have any more issues, you can send us an email. Okay. Oh, and live show. Live show tickets. Indeed. Don't forget to buy your live show tickets coming right around the corner. Exactly one month from today, 7.30 p.m. Center Stage Theater in Atlanta.

We will be there. We're going to have a great show for everybody. But enough of the administrative topics. Let's get to the actual show. Now, as Crystal alluded to, when it rains, it pours. It certainly comes with this Trump raid in the FBI, the more details that we are learning. So as we had talked about previously, now we have the search warrant. We have the inventory list. We know it involves some sort

of classified documents. We also know that in terms of the three laws that were cited by the FBI in their search warrant, none of the documents necessarily even have to be classified. Simply having the classification markings may be enough in order to violate the Espionage Act. Furthermore, we are also aware by open reporting that the Trump lawyers themselves, at least one lawyer, had signed a message to the FBI in June claiming that all classified marking documents had been delivered back to the FBI, again opening themselves up for investigation, ultimately what led to the search warrant itself. As I said yesterday, part of the problem with the search warrant is we don't know a lot

about the facts in the actual investigation that led to said search warrant actually being executed. And, as I was saying, I was really hoping we'd get the affidavit. Well, news organizations, think like-mindedly, all are filing in requests in order for the Department of Justice to release the actual affidavit themselves. And now we are learning from the Department of Justice in their protest of doing so a little bit more about their investigation. Let's throw this up there on the screen. In a new filing that came out late last night, in a response to organizations' request to unseal the

affidavit. The Department of Justice says that it is objecting to the unsealing of that Trump search warrant. Throw the next one up there on the screen, please. Part of the reason why that they are objecting is because the FBI affidavit, and let's pay very close attention to this language, people, makes reference to, quote, cooperating witnesses. And the DOJ says that their identities need to remain protected. Second, the Department of Justice confirms the investigation, quote, implicates highly classified materials. So why do those two things matter? Number one, in terms of the classification, obviously it upholds the general contours,

but they're making it and saying that it is in such highly sensitive documents that even describing themselves, as we saw in the FBI inventory, it just said highly classified documents. It didn't say anything that in and of itself they say would threaten national security. But really what I think it is is that they said and confirmed that they have cooperating – well, they didn't confirm they have cooperating witnesses. But they said unsealing it would cause undue harm to any cooperating witnesses they may have. Gives a significant amount of credence to that theory that there is some sort of FBI mole, rat, whatever you want to describe it, in the operation. It could be a member of the Trump legal team. It could be a Secret Service agent. It could be any of the number of people who are around Donald Trump himself. And then finally, some language that they used in their objection to the unsealing. The third one, let's please put it up there, is that they said disclosure of the

warrant affidavit would irreparably harm the government's ongoing criminal investigation because there had been some speculation here, Crystal, on whether the search warrant was an end in and of itself to just seize the Right. Not part of an ongoing and active criminal investigation. So those are, I would say, the three main things that we have learned from this filing. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to read the tea leaves on all this stuff as best we can, the little bit of limited information. It would be so interesting to see all of the details of this affidavit, and certainly as someone who works in the news business, I would very much love for them to disclose this. Ultimately, it's not surprising though, because, you know,

I think there's two considerations. One is they don't want to compromise their investigation. They don't want Trump and his allies to know exactly how they were able to glean all of this information. They certainly don't want them to know who the rat or multiple rats, what's like the, is it a warren of rats? A den of rats? I don't know. It's a den of rats, I believe. Anyway, they don't want them to know the identities of those people. And you mentioned it could be someone on his legal team. I mean, the more I think about that, the more I wonder if that actually makes a lot of sense. Because, you know, if you think about it, they're trying to help him work with it through this issue with the National Archives. He's maybe potentially telling them like, yeah, of course, I can't over everything. And if they

discover that that's not the case, they could find themselves in potential legal jeopardy. So you may have someone involved here who's trying to save their own ass by informing on Trump and giving the FBI the information that ultimately they put into this affidavit and helped to secure this search warrant. So those are the major revelations here. Now, it is theoretically possible that the judge could say, no, government, I don't agree. We're going to go ahead and unseal the affidavit. But that is highly, highly unlikely, especially with the government making the case that the affidavit should remain sealed. And as I said before, I'm not really sure that Trump would also want this to be unsealed because, you know, ultimately then you end up with a situation where he's sort of being tried in the court of public

opinion. An affidavit is not the same as a trial. There are things in there that could turn out to, you know, not pan out. It may be more suggestive than based on, you know, concrete, here's what we know happened. So anyway, not clear to me that he would really be in favor of this being released either. Yeah, affidavits aren't like statements of fact. It's like the government's case against somebody in a court in order to justify a search warrant. So like you said, it would include no pushback from the Trump legal team. It would simply be the FBI agents. Their side of the story. Their entire side of the story. And actually, I have personally learned the hard way covering terrorism cases.

I mean, think about it. If you read the Gretchen Whitmer just affidavit, you'd be like, oh my God, there's a horrific kidnapping plot going on. And you're like, oh, hold on a second here. And by the way, we should cover that trial soon in terms of some of the stuff that's coming out, even more so about FBI behavior. But what's remarkable to me about this is just the admission, both on the criminal investigation side and on the cooperating witness. I think the fact that, I think it was always expected that they would not release the affidavit, but by objecting to the affidavit and specifically saying why they don't want to release it, that tells us a little bit about what's happening. Also probably confirms, honestly, I mean, at this point, Crystal, we don't know how

much more is going to come out about this investigation. Yeah. Because this kind of is it, at least for the next couple of months, barring leaks, of course. I'm talking at a very official level. Probably. There was one other piece of reporting I saw come out yesterday from the Wall Street Journal that was in direct contradiction to, remember that original Newsweek report that basically said this whole search was basically kind of a freelance operation from the Miami FBI office. And they were kind of in a bubble and didn't realize this would be so

politically explosive. Well, the latest information reporting from the Wall Street Journal says, no, no, no. They weighed this very carefully. Merrick Garland weighed this for weeks before he decided to go in and, you know, really considered the costs and the benefits and the extraordinary measure that this was. So, you know, take from that what you will. But the very latest indication, which I think is backed up by the fact that Merrick Garland did give that press conference saying, taking ownership and saying, no, it was, I was the one who made this decision. I think it backs up, you know, that fact and really shows that they definitely thought long and hard before they went ahead and did this, whether you think it was ultimately the right call or not.

Yeah, I think that that's right. So anyway, lots of deliberation, a confirmation about a so-called cooperating witness, the criminal investigation piece, obviously. To be clear, we don't actually know who the target of that criminal investigation is. But anyway, take that. So now let's move on to Passportgate. This has been a fun one. All right, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It was ignited by this truth that the former president put out.

Wow, in the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three passports, one expired, along with everything else. This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our country, Third World. Exclamation mark. Now, why does this matter? First of all, there was rampant speculation online, Crystal, of, oh, my God, this means the Department of Justice thinks he's a flight risk. They're going to charge him imminently. They're going to charge him imminently. They're going to charge him imminently, stop him from leaving the country. No, that's not how flight risks work.

Those actually are ordered by a judge. We don't live in a country where the attorney general can simply decide you don't get a passport or not. Thank God, by the way, that we live in said country. Now, it came to the question, though, of did they actually seize those passports? And immediately the FBI actually objected to this. Let's throw this up there. Nora O'Donnell, she's the host of CBS News, she says, New, according to a DOJ official, the FBI is not in possession of a former President Trump's passports.

Trump had accused the FBI of stealing his three passports during the search of Mar-a-Lago. So immediately, the narrative became, oh, Trump is lying about the passports. Well, further though, the Trump team has now released actually the email traffic go ahead and says. This was sent August 15th, to be clear, yesterday at 10 50 AM mountain time. So you can do the conversion in your head. Evan and Jim with, this is from Jay Bratt at the national security division of the department of justice. I'm reading directly Evan, Jim, presumably members of Trump's legal team. We have learned that filter agencies, three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired and one being his active diplomatic passport. We are returning them. They will be ready for pickup at the Washington field office at 2 p.m. today. I am traveling, but you can coordinate further with blank who was copied above. Thanks. So what do we learn from that? Yeah, they did take his passports. They took all three of his passports,

as Trump claimed. Now they're offering them back. However, it was very disingenuous, Crystal, of the FBI to say, no, no, no, we don't have his passport at all. I mean, you took the guy's passports. Now, I mean, in some ways you could say this is quasi-legal, but whatever. Their job is to basically sift through everything that's taken, determine what is privileged and non-pertinent information, and return that over. And then the investigative team is supposedly, again, supposedly, not allowed to use that information. I don't know. It seems a little sketchy to me. That being said, they did take the passport, and then they did offer to return it. So it's kind of a middle ground, but the fact is they did take his passports, all three of his passports, interestingly enough. I should have picked up right away on the way they phrased that. So freaking weaselly. Yeah, it is. We are not in possession of the passports, which maybe technically

was true at that point because they'd already returned them. Right. But it's like, I don't know why they felt the need to like like, push back so strongly on this one. It is the case that they took them and then, yeah, they returned them and it's all fine and good, I guess. But I don't know. Very weaselly on the FBI's part, I guess also. Oh, absolutely.

And look, I mean, it is extraordinary to seize the former president's passports, as they actually alluded to. And I didn't know this. Apparently, ex-presidents do get to keep diplomatic passports, which is fascinating because they're not actually government figures. Yes, suddenly everybody became experts in passport protocol yesterday after being online. All I know about diplomatic passports is I get pissed off when I'm in the immigration line and I see those people get to zip through on the side. And apparently, as I understand it, what it is is that diplomatic passport obviously means

you're an agent of the U.S. government or, you know, in some affiliation. And thus your travel and your visa and all that is just a little bit different whenever you're going through both security and also whenever you're entering other countries as to your visa requirements. So apparently that's what it is. I guess it would make sense that it would apply to a former president, regardless of whether they were still in office or not. But anyway, it is true that they did take his passports. And look, I mean, they could just justify it and say, as I did, it was like, well, you know, the filter team took it and then we gave it back and it's available, whatever, at the field office. But I mean, personally, I think that they just tried to quash the story and to spin things when they should have just been upfront and told the truth. The email traffic

reveals clearly that they took the damn passports and then offered it back. Okay, fine. Just say that. But this was really a disingenuous move on their part and also on the media for not checking. What they should have said is, well, wait, hold on a second. Did you ever have them in your possession? Were they ever in your possession at any time? And it's also little things like this that give the Trump people real credence to be like, look, like these people are liars. You know, they're spinning things in the media and the media doesn't ask critical questions, which is true. You should not be doing this. You can't give them a single opening.

Yeah. And they've done that now. They really have. This is like, you know, classic example of fake news. Yeah. Yeah. You know, classic example of fake news. Yeah, yeah. And the filter team thing is really ultra relevant because, you know, Trump's latest yesterday went through all of his various defenses. You know, oh, they planted stuff. Oh, no, there was stuff.

But it was not classified as we all take work home from time to time. And one of the things he landed on was they took privileged information, both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege information. Now, as others pointed out, this is the way it works. These filter teams are supposed to sift through and pull that stuff down and then move forward with the investigatory relevant material.

So I guess this shows that, you know, those are the teams that are in place to try to handle that sifting and sorting. Yeah. So that's the very latest that we know in terms of Trump. All right. Oh, there was one more piece.

One more. Part three. From the Fox News. He did give a little interview. Oh, that's right. Sorry. So this is kind of funny because there had been one line in another report, I don't know, the New York Times or something, that said that he had, through an ally, given a message

to Merrick Garland in the Justice Department saying basically like, I want to turn the temperature down. Well, now he's saying this to Fox News. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Trump, here's a headline from Fox News, a very favorable headline here. Trump, quote, will do whatever he can to help the country after FBI raid. Temperature has to be brought down. He's, you know, here's a little bit more. He says that American people are not going to stand for another scam. The country's in a very dangerous position. There's

tremendous anger, like I've never seen before, over all of the scams in this new one, years of scams and witch hunts, and now this. The country is in a very dangerous position. There's tremendous anger, like I've never seen before, over all of the scams in this new one, years of scams and witch hunts. It's repetitive. People are so one, years of scams, and which ends as repetitive. People are so angry at what is taking place, whatever we can do to help, because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn't, terrible things are going to happen. Then he goes on to make all sorts of inflammatory comments himself.

Of course, continues to post all sorts of inflammatory stuff on Truth Social. So I don't think anyone should take at face value the idea that Donald J. Trump is trying to turn the temperature down in this country, because that is just not what he does ever in any instance in his entire life. So given the fact, that fact, I mean, I guess this is like a version of another defense, basically, like you shouldn't go after me because the country can't take it, regardless of whether there was wrongdoing, regardless of, you know of what you found at Mar-a-Lago, whether it was classified or not, or sensitive national security information or not. You shouldn't go after me because the country is a tinderbox and it just can't take it. So it's almost sort of like a veiled threat of if you continue down this path,

bad things are going to happen. I also read it another way, which is that he saw what happened at the FBI and he's like, I don't want this on me. He's like, I don't want any of these incidents to actually be traced back to me because as you've seen post January 6th, it can cause you some serious issues, not only from a criminal investigation point of view, obviously also from a public hit perspective and just basic expansion of security state and more against his own supporters, which has really been a net negative for literally everybody. So I think you can read it literally both ways. I think you're right though, Crystal. I mean, certainly, look, anybody who's in a public position is going to be like, hey, you really want to go down this road?

So anyway, I think on both sides, he both is using his personal profile, but also is probably weary of being tied to any more violence across the country, which, look, that's not a bad thing if he does have that in his head. Let's move on then. There was one little nugget at the end of this interview, though, that I wanted to take note of, which is they say sources close to Trump told Fox News the former president will soon be making an announcement about a potential presidential run in 2024. We had before talked about speculation that he may move up his announcement. We covered yesterday the polls that show basically his position with the GOP base has never been better, never been stronger since he lost the last

election. And so he could potentially announce before the midterms, you know, maybe post Labor Day, which I'm quite sure that Republicans wanting to take control of the House and Senate do not want whatsoever. He doesn't care. He definitely doesn't care. The last thing that they want is for this midterm election to be any sort of referendum on Trump versus Biden. They want it to just be about Biden, just be about inflation. So him inserting himself into the political fray just before the midterms could be another sort of disaster for them.

For the national GOP, yes. For his own personal profile, he'd be a fool. It's probably wise. Yeah, agreed. I think he'd be a fool. He should have done it two days ago. The moment that Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis are all coming to his defense,

he should have been like, I am the 2024 nominee. Freeze the entire thing in place. None of them have any standing to run against him. So, yeah, look, I mean, it's one of those cases where the national GOP and their fate is not tied with Trump's own personal incentives whatsoever. The longer he waits, frankly, he's doing himself a disservice. I am not saying this as somebody who's advocating for it.

Yeah, just an analysis of what the facts are at this point. Okay, so moving a little bit away from directly Trump and some of the people surrounding Trump, there was also a lot of news that broke yesterday. Let's put this first piece up on the screen. This is probably the biggest one. Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Mayor, former America's mayor, he has been told that he is a target of the Trump election inquiry in Georgia. Now, you will recall we have a number of Trump related investigations going on across the country. We, of course, have the one we know about now that's associated with the raid down in Mar-a-Lago. We have grand juries here in D.C. We have Letitia James in a civil civil action in New York investigating his businesses.

And we have this inquiry in Fulton County, Georgia, which also has a grand jury empaneled and has been subpoenaing witnesses. We talked to a filmmaker yesterday who's do with the fake elector scheme in Georgia. Now we are getting official confirmation that he has been told, his lawyers have been informed, that he is in fact a direct target of that investigation. Let me read you a little bit of this New York Times piece. They say that the legal pressures on Donald Trump and his closest allies intensified further on Monday as prosecutors informed his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that he is a target of a wide range of criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. Now, important to note, just being so identified doesn't guarantee that a person will be indicted, though you wouldn't want to be in that person's shoes.

Rather, it usually means the prosecutors believe an indictment is possible based on evidence they have seen up to that point. They go on to talk about how the prosecutors who were questioning witnesses last week, they really focused on Giuliani's appearances before state legislative panels after the 2020 vote. The crux of his conduct came during two hearings at that time. He appeared before those panels. He spent hours, as they say, peddling false conspiracy theories about secret suitcases of Democratic ballots and corrupted voting machines. And he told members of the state house, quote, you cannot possibly certify Georgia in good faith. Now, his lawyer, just to give his response, said that he would probably invoke attorney and client privilege if he was asked about questions about his dealings with Trump. And he says if these

people think he's going to talk about conversations between him and President Trump, they are delusional. One expert that they spoke to really thought that, you know, this could potentially mean that Trump will eventually be a target of this investigation as well. They say there's no way Giuliani is a target of the DA's investigation and Trump does not end up as one. They are simply too entangled factually and legally in the attempt to use fake electors and other means to overturn the Georgia election results. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but that makes some logical sense to me. I mean, Giuliani wasn't acting on his own behalf.

He was acting on behalf of the president. So you could see him being, you know, what they try to do in a lot of these cases is they go for the person that they know they can get based on the facts, and then they try to get them to flip and cooperate on some sort of a plea deal to go ahead and inform on, you know, the person next up the chain. So it could be that that is the direction that they're going in here. But, you know, I referenced before former Attorney General Eric Holder had mentioned he thought this investigation was the furthest along. And the fact that they are now informing Giuliani he's a target, I think sort of squares with what he was saying there. Well, I think the crazy thing that they

actually point to is, and we're going to discuss this even more, is the seizure of documents and analyzing of documents by the Trump team of actually sensitive election data. Yes. election infrastructure, apparently, and again, this is through emails and texts, that the Georgia Justice Department has got their hands on, was actually confirmation that this county's electoral system had been breached by an unauthorized outside group. Now, who that group is, who they were working for, who they can be tied to, we have no idea. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it involves Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and whoever that overstocked CEO is. I forgot who that guy is. Patrick something. He's like a multi-millionaire. I think Lindell was involved. Yes, Lindell. This circle, the people, the craziest folks that Giuliani and Trump both not only aligned, but elevated at the very top

of this campaign. So I think that's going to be the biggest problem that they have. And also it ensnares a hell of a lot of other lawmakers. So this next one up there on the screen, which is that Lindsey Graham is actually going to be forced to at least testify, or so he was subpoenaed by Georgia. He sought to get the Fulton County District Attorney subpoena quashed by a federal judge. They actually denied that and said that Senator Graham had to have testimony on issues relating to attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia's 2020 election. So I do think you're

right, Crystal, which is that all of these lawmakers and others who played footsie with Trump, maybe even made a call or two on his behalf, even entertained any of these discussions with Sidney Powell or with Lin Wood or any of these other folks, I think they're going to have some serious legal issues. Like beyond being charged, like they're going to have issues just like Mueller. I mean, you know, they cost thousands of dollars to testify before these lawyers, minimize your legal exposure, obviously guarantee a press story. So I think that's very much what the future is looking for. And you don't have Trump in the White House to beg for a pardon anymore. Bingo. You know, so, you know, you don't have a legal get out of jail free card like they did when the big guy was there in the presidency looking out for him.

Graham has been informed he is not a target of this investigation. So unlike Giuliani, it's not like he's facing criminal indictment, potential criminal indictment. What they want to ask him about, according to the reporting, is he placed at least two phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and members of his staff in the weeks following the election seeking, quote, additional review of the absentee ballots, according to court documents filed in support of the subpoena request. Now, apparently, this isn't the end of the legal road in terms of Graham trying to avoid having to testify. He can appeal this decision, and he has further, I guess, appeals that he can exhaust, and they're going to continue to fight this. Basically, their argument is that, you know, this was him doing his job as

a senator, as, you know, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that you can't compel him to testify about the work that he was doing on behalf of the people is effectively their legal argument that so far the federal courts have not been impressed by. You also have apparently prosecutors demanding two other lawyers for the Trump team, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman. They also want them to appear before the special grand jury as well. So we keep my eye on this particular investigation down in Georgia, which seems to be, you know, fairly advanced, fairly far along and, you know, zeroing in on a couple targets, whether it ends up with the president in their sights or not. Next piece, which is related,

was a big old long story in the Washington Post about how Trump allied lawyers, some of which we just mentioned, pursued voting machine data in multiple states. Let's go ahead and put this Washington Post story up on the screen here. This is some new reporting. I think we had some indications before that they had been able to access voting systems in a couple of places, but this is the most comprehensive and fulsome picture we have of the activities. Sidney Powell intimately involved in this whole sort of convoluted scheme. Here's the lead to their story. lawyers allied with President Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia, Coffey County, and Sager mentioned before, as part of a secretive multi-state effort to access

voting equipment that was broader, more organized, and more successful than previously reported. That's according to emails and other records obtained by the Washington Post. As they worked to overturn Trump's election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. Firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000. Just to give you a sample of the type of behavior they were engaged in here, they say Sidney Powell sent that team to Michigan to copy a rural county's election data. She later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada.

And the day after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, the team was in southern Georgia copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffey County. Because the people who were involved in administering the elections in Coffey County were sympathetic to the cause, they basically got access to everything. And so you have the irony of these people who claim to be out there, you know, fighting the, stopping the steal and stopping the election fraud, actually compromising sensitive election systems and voting data and gaining access to this voting data in a way that is highly questionable at best. So this is another piece of the story that we're just starting to fall into place that

could be also relevant to this Georgia inquiry. Oh, yeah. I forget where I did the monologue. It might have been at Rising. It might have been here. Probably here. About Arizona and this post-audit and how actually the audit ended up compromising thousands of voting machines.

This is insanity. It's the same thing. They even point to the fact, this is serious business. There's a Republican, Tina Peters, she was a local election figure in Mesa County, Colorado. She was indicted on a felony conspiracy charge and a conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant by trying to get access to these rural election data. And all of this, again, all of this is based on the insane claims that Dominion voting systems and that, you know, bamboo ballots and Cubans and, you know, Chinese operatives and Italians were influencing the vote in Coffey County, Georgia. Once again, it has nothing to do with, oh, well, big tech and Mark Zuckerberg spent. No, it doesn't have anything to do with that. It doesn't have anything to do with Pennsylvania election law and mail-in balloting. It doesn't have anything to do with ballot drop boxes. It has to do with the actual physical claim that the 2020 election was purposefully manipulated at the actual individual data level in these corrupt voting machines.

That is the level of insanity of which this actions were taken upon, which look, I mean, many people said it at the time, too. It's like, you need to be careful because you're dealing with some of the most nation's critical election infrastructure. And by claiming stop the steal and trying to prove your insane theories, I mean, I guess in a way they did believe it because they were willing to go to possibly criminal lengths in order to do so. They opened themselves up to extraordinary legal jeopardy. And that seems to be the case. Yeah. State by state. You know, this isn't even a federal case. Yeah. No, that's that's exactly right. I think that's actually a

really good way to put it is what we're talking about here is the most insane of the election conspiracies. I mean, after the fact, they've tried to sort of clean it up. And, you know, Dinesh D'Souza put out his effort with the mules and all this stuff to make it seem somewhat more plausible than like, you know, dead Venezuelan dictators and Italian whatever spy satellites and whatever other insanity they were floating at the time. But these efforts that Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and the others were engaged with were directly as a result of the craziest, most unhinged versions of these conspiracy theories. We have one more legal

update for you here, guys, which is another White House lawyer that was subpoenaed. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is Eric Hirschman. The Justice Department has subpoenaed him. He was a former Trump White House lawyer. He has also been cooperating with the January 6th committee. He reportedly was one of the people who was clashing with the more insane people like the Sidney Powells of the world who pushed the defeated president to fight the election results. He was present for many of the most consequential meetings in that period of time. Among them, they say, was a high-stakes meeting where most of the Trump Justice Department's top brass threatened to resign rather than work under a colleague who

wanted to advance spurious claims of widespread voter fraud. They say he sparred with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn when they urged Trump to have the military seize voting machines. I remember that when that all came out in the press as well. So they say he represented Trump in the former president's first impeachment trial. You might remember him from that. Later joined the White House as a senior advisor. Did not work in the White House counsel's office, but did provide Trump with legal advice. And because of that responsibility, there will likely be litigation over the scope of the subpoena and over how executive and attorney-client privileges may limit his ability to comply. Just another indicator of another person who a grand jury

is wanting to question and who has a lot of knowledge of what was going on in those wild days when there were these major battles happening in the White House and these sort of totally unhinged characters trying to do insane things like have the military seize voting machines. Yep, very well said. A little bit of a midterm update here for you. Interesting new details about some honestly quite surprising fundraising issues that the Republican Senate candidates are having in particular. Let's put this up on the screen. So they say the Senate GOP campaign arm slashes TV ad buys in three states in a sign that fundraising trouble is taking a serious toll. A key political committee cancels ad plans in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, they have cut now more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, including their reservations in the Philly media market.

They've also slashed reservations in Wisconsin in the Madison and Green Bay markets. Those have been curtailed by more than 2 million. In Arizona, all reservations after September 30th have been cut in Phoenix and Tucson. That is the state's only two major media markets, amounting to roughly $2 million more. So far, around $10 million has been canceled as of midday Monday, though more changes to the fall reservations were in progress. Now, in fairness, the response from the Republican Senatorial Committee was basically like, look, we're not canceling these, we're moving money around, we're reallocating, whatever. But if you look overall, it's pretty clear that they've pulled back from the amount that they are spending in these states and in these media markets. This comes on the heels of another report that we had covered

here as well that showed that the total amount of online donations to Republican candidates, direct candidates, so not to the senatorial committee, but directly to the candidates, has actually been falling. So it fell by more than 12 percent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, according to an analysis of WinRed. That's the main online Republican fundraising platform. And that's very unusual. Usually, as you get closer to an election, online donations go up and up and up. So the fact that in the second quarter they saw them fall off was quite significant. Republicans said, well, it's inflation. It's a bad economy. So, of course, our people are getting hit. However, Democratic contributions at the same time surged and Democrats are living in the same before the midterms. Part of their issue is that he sucks up so much

of the online fundraising. He's the total pig when it comes to like, you know, he's super greedy. He doesn't dole it out. Abusing. Yeah, doesn't dole it out. Really hitting those fundraising lists over and over and over again and has so centered the party around the person of himself that, yeah, that's where the grassroots base is overwhelmingly giving. And you can only imagine that if he does announce for president before the midterm election, that's only going to, you know, only going to exacerbate some of the fundraising issues that the rest of the party is having right now. Yeah. And actually Politico had a story out this morning where they say that the midterm election campaign and the NRSC's decision to cancel millions of dollars

is actually also a commentary on the inability of states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina to raise enough money. So essentially what they're saying is that J.D. Vance, Doug Mastriano, and Dr. Oz, and also in North Carolina are not raising enough money on their own. And so they need to be able to pull money away from other states and slash budgets so that they can bombard the airwaves. Yeah. And this has never happened before. It's also the case that they shouldn't have had to spend money in Ohio. I mean, Ohio should have been a gimme. They shouldn't have had to worry about that state. They're having to worry about, you know, they're having to pour more resources into a place like Georgia that also,

frankly, in a year like this should have been a gimme, even with an incumbent Democrat in place right now. So the fact that, you know, their candidates have dramatically underperformed, both in terms of their positioning with the electorate, but also in terms of their fundraising ability, has put them in a bit of a squeeze. I think also the fact that a number of these candidates have no electoral experience. So they haven't built out, they haven't done fundraising before. And just like anything else, political fundraising is a skill. It takes time to learn.

It really sucks having, you know, being someone who dialed for dollars long ago. I can tell you it is no fun to do whatsoever. But it takes time to like build out those specific political donor networks. And so if you have all of this slate of brand new candidates who have never done this before, you know, there are other advantages to having outsiders who don't have a sort of like electoral track record in that baggage. But one of the downsides of going with these sorts of candidates is they don't have established sort of networks and established abilities in fundraising. And I think that is a drag on them. That's a point Kyle Kondik made.

I think it's an excellent point. You know, at the same time, the Democrats are washing cash, like a lot of cash in many of these specific states and are hitting Republicans where it hurts. Really interesting story here. Let's put this up there, which is that in all of the battleground states, Democrats are going all in on abortion in terms of their messaging, as basically we predicted here on this show. And given the results of what happened in Kansas and in many of the special elections that we have now seen, it seems like a good choice. And you'll see there this four different screenshots from ads in Arizona, blanketing the ads space in Blake Masters, who had previously alluded to wanting a national ban on abortion. I think he's going to come to regret that one

in terms of his messaging. Tudor Dixon, who is the so-called moderate nominee, she has said previously she doesn't want any exceptions for rape or incest in an abortion law. And they're, of course, putting that and highlighting that. Doug Mastriano specifically saying in May, quote, my body, my choice is ridiculous nonsense. And they're calling him, Doug Mastriano, make all abortion illegal. And even in Alaska, saying Alaskans should have a right to choose, Alaska being probably a much more kind of libertarian type state. But really, it just shows you that across all of these states, all swings, all of them are immediately picking on abortion as their top issue, that they're spending money. Apparently, even with Michigan and Tudor Dixon, they're not talking about election conspiracy, nothing.

It's just all abortion. Georgia, they're doing the same thing. And Arizona and Pennsylvania, I think, are going to be the most significant. Arizona, of course, is a conservative state, but also went for Biden. But as I alluded to, you're going to have a little bit more of a libertarian ethos. Pennsylvania also, I mean, a true actual swing. And that is where a place like that to say actually no exceptions whatsoever. That's just, you know, no matter how you feel in terms of public opinion, that does not track with public opinion. Yeah. So that is a, it's an issue. Extremely fringe view. Yeah. And the case that they're making, um, the sort of like broader

portrait they're trying to paint is like, you know, look, guys, you might not be thrilled with the Biden administration and how the economy is going right now, but these people are crazy. Like they are out there. They are way too extreme. They are sort of ideologues and zealots. And so abortion is the entree to making that larger case that, you know, these candidates are way too out of the mainstream for you to ultimately elect. Just to give you some of the numbers on this, because I do think it's really interesting. Democrats have spent nearly eight times as much as Republicans on ads talking about abortion. $31.9 million just this far spent on abortion ads compared with $4.2 million on the

Republican side. And in the closest Senate and governor's contest, Republicans have spent virtually nothing countering the Democrats' offensive. Now, I've seen Democrats make this mistake in the past where they're getting hit on an issue that they're taking on water. I think CRT is a good example of that. And they just try to like, let's not talk about it. It doesn't work. Like, you have to respond. You have to give your side of the story. You have to lay out, no, here's not talk about it. It doesn't work. Like you have to respond. You have to give your side of the story. You have to lay out, no, here's what my actual views are.

Here's why that's wrong. Or here's why I believe what I believe. Just sort of staying quiet on this and hoping it goes away, I don't think is going to be a good strategy here. And a lot of what they're doing in these campaigns is they're using these abortion ads as like the opening message. So to define these candidates out of the gates as like, these people are extreme. And then they move on to whatever the broader case is that they ultimately want to make. I thought it was interesting that a quote here from Anna Greenberg, she's a Democratic pollster, but the way she phrases it is,

rarely has an issue been handed on a silver platter to Democrats that is so clear cut. It took an election that was going to be mostly about inflation and immigration and made it also about abortion. And the polling at this point is really clear that there was a shift after the Dobbs decision. And this is a very different race than it was before the Dobbs decision. The generic ballot is basically tied. You have a much better chance of Democrats being able to hold on to the Senate. I still would maintain, given how the polls have been biased against Republicans and in favor of Democrats, that Republicans are still very much

the favorite, that the landscape still very much favors them. But Democrats, in a rare act of political intelligence, have done a few things that have given them a-shot chance to have a better midterm than was previously expected. Yeah, I think that's right. Although it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out, looking at polling data. Listen, that hasn't stopped them before. Yes, they have in the past gone out of their way to do the dumbest possible thing. So we'll give them, we'll damn them with a praise here. Okay, and this is a little bit of a look at why the republicans are having some issues here because i continue to maintain this election when you look

at it like the further you step back and look at the macro you know oh the economy inflation wrong track right biden's approval numbers somewhere you're like oh republicans are gonna just clean up it's gonna be a shellacking and the closer you zoom in at the actual races and the actual candidates, the more you're like, oh, this is not going too well. Case in point, Pennsylvania, John Fetterman versus Dr. Oz. So Fetterman has been raking Oz across the coals of being an elitist, of being an outsider, of being from New Jersey. I mean, we played some of the stuff here, which has been really quite funny and amusing and I think very politically effective as borne out by the polls where Fetterman now has in the average of polls, a 10 point lead on Dr. Oz in the state of Pennsylvania, a state that really should be Republicans to lose this year. So Oz apparently decides,

I'm going to do my everyman thing. I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'm going to talk about prices. It's going to be super relatable my everyman thing. I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'm going to talk about prices. It's going to be super relatable. Here's how that went. Thought I'd do some grocery shopping. I'm at Wagner's and my wife wants some vegetables for crudite, right? So here's a broccoli. That's two bucks.

Not a ton of broccoli there. Here's some asparagus. That's $4. Yep. Carrots. That's four more dollars. That's $4. Yep. Carrots. That's $4 more. That's $10 of vegetables there. And then we need some guacamole.

That's $4 more. And she loves salsa. Yeah, there's salsa there. $6? Must be as short as her salsa. Guys, that's $20 for crouton. This doesn't include the tequila. I mean, that's outrageous. And we got Joe Biden to thank for this.

So literally campaigning on the outrageous price of crudités. So I was asking you before. I'm like, I have literally never heard crudités. Like, look, maybe I'm just unrefined, you know, haven't spent enough time in Paris or in France. Apparently, it just means a vegetable platter. Like, you know, like a raw vegetable platter. It literally just means, like, veggies and dip. Why couldn't you say that? Just say that. Be like, all right means a vegetable platter. Like, you know, like a raw vegetable platter. It literally just means like veggies and dip.

Why couldn't you say that? Just say that. Be like, all right, my wife wants veggie dip, so I'm gonna go get some. You could make the exact same point. Also, it's called Wegmans, not Wegners. Well, apparently. Which is a little bit of a problem.

So apparently, there was a lot of internet investigation into this video. So what is the investigation? There is Wegmans, obviously, and there's also a Pennsylvania chain called Redners. He was actually

at Redners, but he morphed the two together and made it, what do you say, Wegners? Yeah, he said Wegners. So apparently that's

what happened. Honestly, it's even worse. I, honestly, I have to admit, I watched this video so many times and I could not stop laughing

because every time I watched it, I noticed something else that was just, like, bizarre. Like, for example, what kind of a maniac goes to the grocery store and is just, like, piling vegetables into their arm? I'm like, why don't you have a cart? Why don't you have a basket? Have you been to a grocery store recently? Also, are you really going to, like, dip that raw asparagus in some salsa now, bro? Is that what you're doing? Good point.

There's the chips. Yeah. There's the chips and some salsa now, bro? Is that what you're doing? Good point. There's the chips. Yeah. There's the chips and some crackers. And then at the end, he's like, gotta get the tequila because that's what people have with veggies and dip. That's like totally logical there. Anyway, it was,

it reminded me so much of the weird rich guy stuff that Mitt Romney would say during 2012. Oh yeah, that's right. Where you're like, are you even a human being? Like, do you live on the ground on the planet

with the rest of us? Have you been to a grocery store in the last, like, 40 years? What is going on here? So, the other point that I thought

a very good observer made online is this definitively proves that his campaign team definitely hates him. Because otherwise... Yeah, they would never have put this out. No way

you let him go forward with this video where he's talking about Wegener's and crudités. Not a chance. This could not have been better scripted if the Fetterman campaign did it themselves. Yeah, and Fetterman actually quote tweeted and he said, in PA, we just call this a veggie tray. I was like, yeah, you know?

It's like, why is this so hard? And his ads have just been so cringe. This again is further evidence to me that Oz's problem is that he is turning his campaign over to the absolute most brain-dead GOP consultants who used to work for Mitch McConnell. And this latest ad is the most perfect example. You could put it in a capsule as to what they think is, quote, politically effective. Let's take a listen. Fetterman wants to release one third of all prisoners. That's crazy. Spend more tax dollars. Everything will cost more. That's nuts. Slow energy production. Gas prices will skyrocket that's ridiculous socialized medicine we don't get these crazy ideas now it makes sense better close it up john fetterman is crazier than you think

that's genuinely one of the worst ads I've ever seen. And that's the thing. You can make the case on all of that. The other issue is, is you should not be talking about John Fetterman, period. You should just put his face next to Joe Biden and then run, honestly, say nothing and just

run that for 30 seconds straight of Fetterman on a highlight reel being like, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, meeting with Joe Biden, shaking hands with Joe Biden. Joe Biden has like a minus 30 approval rating in the state of Pennsylvania. That's all you have to do. Just be like, John Fetterman will go to Washington and vote for Joe Biden. Do you like Joe Biden? These things haven't worked well about Joe Biden.

I would say Biden's name, like, remember when the Republicans ran against the Democrats in 2010? Actually, yeah, you were running then. They didn't talk about even the candidates. They just said Obama's name over and over again. Obama-Pelosi. Obama-Pelosi agenda. I lived at that time. You would be better off going after Pelosi.

Yes. Bernie Sanders is like one of the more popular Democratic politicians. So he's not even in leadership. So it doesn't even matter. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I mean, we were, of course, on on the left laughing at they have for those of you who are just listening they have like aoc pop up with a sign that says free health care for all and we're like yeah that'd be good like don't threaten us with a good time anyway it's very clear that number one it's being run just by this like

totally tired standard republican like socialism bad play Number two, it's not even intelligent given that the least popular figure and the leader of the party is Joe Biden. Like, that is the person clearly you should be aiming your fire at. And number three, you know, I was thinking about the, like, rich guy problem that he has.

I mean, you can pull off being the rich guy who's the, you know, successful, like, somebody that everybody should aspire to. That's what Donald Trump did. I mean, Donald Trump never tried to be the everyman because it just would be ridiculous. That wasn't his thing. He just leaned into it.

Remember when at the Iowa Fair, he had his helicopter take people up and around, and everything was about him looking this, his family being glamorous and all this stuff. This picture of American success, the vaunted businessman, all of that. But Oz is trying to pretend like he's an everyman and then failing so hard at it. And I've seen so many politicians. It's so standard to like, you know, we're going to buy a pickup truck and put on a flannel shirt for the campaign ad. So I've seen a lot of cringy attempts at being the everyman. This is potentially the worst that I have ever seen. And that is

saying a lot in terms of politics. Just be who you are. You're a television star. Just be that. I think that's honestly fine. You know what he'd be better off doing in terms of ads would be holding some sort of like fake focus group thing where just like the Dr. Oz show. And he'd be like, tell me how Joe Biden's policies has affected you. How is this difficult? Lead into your strength. Do an ad, which is a 30-second version of the Dr. Oz show, where you, look, what was his strength?

Being empathetic, talking with people, feeling their struggles, prescribing a solution. Okay, I mean, why is this difficult? I don't even work in this business, and I can figure this out. You are not going to out every man John Fetterman. Never. Like, if you're trying,

you are trying to compete on his turf. That's his lane. That's what he, like, people get that authentically from him and feel that that is actually who he is. You are never going to be able to compete with him on that ground. So that's why you're losing by 10 points.

Yeah. And, you know, we should point out, like, you know, it's not like Fetterman is in a phenomenal position right now. He just came back on the campaign trail, obviously had a stroke. It was very serious. He was out in the public eye for quite a while. And it really is quite incredible that during that time when he was basically not campaigning is when they just have been destroying us.

On the air, online, defining him in this totally caricature-ish way that he then goes and completely leans into and like 100% validates. And Fetterman recently did return to the trail, did a rally, gave a speech. And look, you can tell that he's still not 100 percent. Now, it's incredible this short period of time he's recovered as much as he has, but you can still tell in his speech that he's not 100 percent back to where he was. Let's take a listen to that. If you come out and step with us, we will be able to stand with you in D.C. I gave away the lieutenant governor governor in Pennsylvania, the only lieutenant governor in the history to do that. And let's let's get some stuff done for America. Who would ever think that I would be the normal one in the race area? So that is obviously clipped to show some of the toughest moments in that speech. But I did go back.

It's not deniable. I watched the whole thing so that I could give a fair assessment of it. And you could tell he's a little slow. I mean, there's no doubt. This was not like over the top, like outrageous, out of context or anything like that compilation of how he was able to perform in that speech. So you have a guy who is struggling health-wise,

you know, still recovering from a significant and life-threatening health event. And you're getting your ass kicked by him. Like undeniably so at this point. Yeah, I mean, look, as you said, at the end of the day, if you zoom out, the conditions are very favorable. So does Oz still have a fighting chance

despite all of this cringe? Yeah, he does. Now, should he even have to have a fighting chance? Should he have way more of that and should he be a shoo-in? Yeah, so like that, I would say, is the fact that it is anywhere even close to some sort of 50-50 proposition, maybe even, 60-40, 55-45 or whatever on Fetterman. It should never even be within that margin of error.

You should have absolutely cleaned up given the way that Joe Biden has his approval rating there. So he needs to step it up. But, I mean, it's clear he's just not going to. At this point, he's not going to do what needs to be done. He better just hope and pray for a terrible economy. And, look, I mean, Fetterman doesn't have a lot of public events scheduled. Clearly, you know, he's recovering from a horrific health condition. There's just no, it's one of the most serious health events that can happen to you. I wish the man the best, but you know, nobody on earth would tell you that

the best thing you can do after you have a stroke is continue to campaign on the campaign trail. So, you know, each side has its own pluses and minuses, but I think it's just insane that things even got to this point, truly. All right, let's talk about housing. This is a hilarious study, Crystal, that you found. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that right now, obviously, we're in the middle of a housing— Providing for Facebook or other platforms to— Where did that come from? That's from mine.

Oh, that's in yours? I'm like, what the hell is that? It's okay. All right. Three, two, one. Right now, we're obviously in the middle of a housing slowdown. And it turns out that a lot of people are actually pretty happy about that. So right now, 78% of Americans expect to have a housing market crash. This is according to the latest Consumer

Affairs study, which is a major consumer information service that businesses buy in order to tell what consumer sentiment is. However, 63% of those people actually want to see a housing crash. And if you dig deeper, 75% of people say they have cash stored away to buy a house should the market crash. They actually have an actual crash savings account. Dig even deeper than that, and you find that the youngest generation of adults, Generation Z, is actually the most eager for the crash. 84% are hoping for a housing crash and actually have some money that is saved up specifically in order to try and take advantage should this all happen. And look, perhaps they will get their wish. Let's put this up there. That U.S. home builder confidence right now

is at the worst slump since 2007. As I actually have said before, that's a big problem because home builder confidence means that people who are, let's say, like halfway through a project may actually not finish their project. And if they don't finish their project, then we are going to continue to have a massive housing shortage across the nation.

But I just think it's great. I mean, when is the last time that you've had a sizable chunk of Americans who are like, no, I want these markets to crash? And I think it's because of the disparate ownership, which is predominantly it's the wealth class and boomers who hold property. Everybody else is frozen out of the market or frozen out far more so than they have been in previous generations. So they're like, yeah, screw you. I want this thing to crash so that I can buy in. And especially Gen Z. I mean, for Gen Z, they don't have a chance of buying a house. Realistically, on average, even if you live in a normal metropolitan area, it is just mostly unattainable without decades of savings. And if you have student debt or credit card debt, it's almost entirely out of the question.

Yeah. I mean, this is becoming the real class dividing line is asset owners and not. And, of course, the primary asset that most Americans own is a home. If you aren't able to get your foot in that door of home ownership, it becomes very difficult for you to sort of establish that, you know, a base of some sort of net wealth, a base of financial middle class or working class stability. And so I have been wondering, as we've been covering the housing market a lot here, as you guys know, I've actually been wondering about these numbers of like, how many people are listening to this and hoping that the housing prices and the market crashes, because then that gives them some hope

and possibility that they will be able to at some point in their life, also buy a home and have the stability that can come with that. And now we have the numbers to back it up. So I did think that was really interesting. I mean, the problem, of course, is that the reason that the housing market is falling off and you have this, you know, home builder sentiment at the lowest level since the housing market collapsed in 2007 is because as the Fed hikes rates, the thing that is most sensitive to it is the mortgage rates. And as the mortgage rates go up, yeah, the top line number might be going down. But in terms of your monthly payment, that is going up and up. So it's really, you know, even if the market continues to go down and have problems and housing overall, the sales price becomes more affordable. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be easier for you to get your foot in the door. And then the other problem here, of course, is that,

you know, the real issues we have in our economy are about supply, about a lack of supply. And that is certainly the case in the housing market where we have not built sufficient housing stock, especially post the last financial crash, to accommodate a large and growing population. When you have those interest rates going up, you have a slump in home building. And that then, again, exacerbates the price and the shortage in the home supply market. So there's a lot of complicating factors here that make it unlikely that even if the market really does crash, unless you're in a position to just plunk down $500K in cash, that you're still going to be in a very difficult position

when it comes to acquiring a home. And I think that is reflected in the concerns of renters as well. 91% of them fear that increased mortgage rates will price them out of the home buying market. So, yeah, I mean, that is definitely the case. Yeah. I mean, your caution is warranted, which is that, yeah, look, the price may come down, but how are you supposed to afford it if the price does go down? Do you have enough cash in order to make sure that you don't do that? Otherwise, you end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest. And just because you may have, you know, people said that average person has like 15 grand or some people who are saving for a house have something like 15 grand saved away. I mean, how are you supposed to make any sort of down payment with only $15,000 or even $29,000, which is the on average for anybody who's not Gen Z?

So look, it's a cluster basically all the way around. Because at the same time, I mean, you don't want retirees to see their main source of wealth just dwindle away, possibly what they were betting on in order to make sure that they didn't have to work anymore. So all the way, it's just not good. The solution generally is actually probably lower rates and just a ton more housing. How you achieve that without also feeding the wealth gap, I genuinely just have no idea. It's keep the rates low so mortgages are affordable. And then you need, in addition to the government help in terms of securing a mortgage, you also need some help with that initial down payment so that it's not just people

who have rich parents who are fronting their down payment that can get a house. And then you need rules basically blocking permanent capital from buying up the existing available housing stock because that's the other problem. And as you said, you need to build a whole lot more housing. So I guess the bottom line here is, you know, the same moral of the story that we have a lot of times when we talk about the Fed, which is that like the Fed messing around with interest rates is not going to fix the problems in the housing market. They don't have the tools at their disposal to, you know, create a lot more housing stock, to help people get that initial down payment, to block private equity and other permanent capital for buying up entire communities so that they're able to come in with all cash and basically muscle out every first-time homebuyer from the market. Those are things that only legislators in Congress and some executive action can do.

And since we have a more or less dysfunctional political system, that is not really on the table at this point. Yeah. And so, you know, hilariously enough, literally as we're filming this, the U.S. housing start numbers came out in terms of the number of building permits and starts on single family housing, and it plunged 18.8% year over year just for this month, 9% in the last month. See, and this is the problem with the Fed increasing interest rates. Is it actually, it's not just that it's, you know, dealing with some of the wrong problems and causing a lot of pain for people and potentially triggering a recession. It actually is actively exacerbating the supply issues that led to inflation in some of these

categories to start with. And I think that's a perfect example of that. Yeah, there we go. All right, let's talk about the New York Times. This is an interesting grab from Ryan Grim. And it just is a very good preview into elite media, how these circles all work. So New York has had a lot of redistricting, specifically the city of New York with some major battles, Jerry Nadler, Carolyn Monroney, and others in major primary. It's going on right now. And in one of those, in the New York 10th District, there has been a massive fight for not only the New York

Times endorsement, but for all of the major figures in the area. And the New York Times has come out and endorsed Danny Goldman. You guys might remember Danny Goldman as the prosecutor for Impeachment One. He made a lot of rounds on MSNBC, former DOJ figure. Obviously, that made him a little bit of a resistance media figure, which is perfectly poised to run in the city of New York for Congress. Well, it turns out, let's put this up there on the screen, that the Times has endorsed Danny Goldman out of several candidates in the race. And in their endorsement, they fail to mention that he also happens to be a family friend of the Salzberger family. This is per Ryan. Ryan points out that Goldman actually

went to Sidwell Friends here in Washington, D.C., which is where the president's kids usually go, with several of the Salzberger, that his mother was actually chairman of the board of the trustees for that school, that his Kathy Salzberger, who also served on that board, that their son actually were just a year or so behind, and that their son is now an executive over at the Times Company, and that last year after Goldman dropped out of the race, his father actually gave him $1,000. So a member of the family that owns the New York Times actually gave this guy's race a thousand bucks. Now, look, I'm not alleging some sort of grand conspiracy, but what Ryan points out is they did

not even disclose this family relationship. Now, our producer James apparently is from the district, so he was telling us, he's like, well, you know, if you look at the ideology of the candidates, it doesn't even, you know, it actually does align in terms of, you know, it would make sense some resistance figure gets endorsed by the Times. And it's like, yeah, okay, fine, on ideological grounds. But you still have to disclose and admit these things. And I just think it is a perfect preview into like these most elite, you know, New England almost circles of these people, how they cavort amongst each other, giving money, and then just happen to get the Times endorsement. Maybe he deserved the Times endorsement.

In fact, looking at the candidates and others, he probably did align most. Again, completely fine. But you do need to disclose these types of connections that you have, especially when you bill yourself as the whole paper of record and all that. And apparently in their coverage, and this is what Ryan points to, it's not like they were all that fair to his opponents. That's the other issue with him. Yeah, I mean, dude is a cringy neolib, and the New York Times loves cringy neolibs.

But that doesn't mean you can't, you can just bury the fact that there's a direct connection to your paper. I think it's also like, there's some sad statements here too. Because this guy is leading the field. He is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, one of a number of big money heirs that the Democrats are elevating this primary season. He would actually, if he's elected, he would be one of the wealthiest members of Congress. And as you pointed out, his big claim to fame was, you know, being the lawyer on Donald Trump's first impeachment, which, you know, ultimately wasn't able to secure a conviction. So, you know, apparently that's not being held against him. Didn't actually, you know, work.

The other storyline here is, and actually we need to get Ryan on to break down all of these New York races because he's just like super in the weeds on all of this stuff. But Mondaire Jones, who's a squad member, who you'll recall there was a whole thing that we did cover here about when the district lines were redrawn. Sean Patrick Maloney, who is the head of the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee, he's the one who's supposed to be in charge of making sure Democrats keep control of the House. He immediately, without talking to anyone, announces for this district that Mondaire Jones also lives in. Right. And so there was this whole question of like,

dude, are you really just without like talking to him, just big footing him like this? And then what ended up happening is, so he decides to run for this district. Jamal Bowman was also involved. He decides to run for a different district. And then Mondaire Jones decides to run for this district. But it looks like it's not going that well for Mondaire Jones, I think partly because he doesn't live in this district, and he was sort of

forced into running in this area by the big footing of Sean Patrick Maloney. So there's like a little subplot there as well. Now, I mean, he still is in the hunt, still has a shot, but some of the other contenders, I was talking to Ryan about this last night, because again, he's followed this more closely than I have. Some of the other contenders have real bases of support and are longtime political figures in this district specifically. And so they've been able to perform better than Mondaire Jones has being not you know, not from this area and not actually living like right in Manhattan in the city. So anyway, that's as much as I know about it. But, you know, you do have to love Democrats going for this like big money political heir who's claimed to fame as Donald Trump impeachment lawyer. Also, if you read the actual endorsement itself, what they point to

is that they're like his experience in the his experience prosecuting Donald Trump in Congress will make him well equipped to fight for what New Yorkers want. When actually there are people in the primary who are already representatives in Congress. So they have far more experience actually legislating. And all they point to is he's a lawyer, he was on TV, and he delivered this powerful impeachment case against Trump. Number one, it did not actually lead to a conviction. So powerful that he didn't sway Republicans.

And also so powerful that it led to the highest GOP identification ever in January of 2020. So politically it didn't even work. Yeah, and some of Trump's highest approval ratings. Exactly, his highest approval ratings during Ukrainegate. So combine all of that, that is the case. Once again, it probably does align most with the ideology of The New York Times.

But you do need to disclose some of these family connections. And, you know, they don't disclose any of that. Par for the course, frankly, for most of them. Yeah. What's the saying? It's a small club and you win in it. Oh, yes. That's right.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's been nearly two and a half years since COVID hit the world. And really, only six months or so since things got fully back to normal in most of American life. Yes, some annoying places ask you to wear a mask. Many people, for reasons that genuinely mystify me, continue to wear them on airplanes or in grocery stores or strap them to kids' faces. But look, it's a free country. They can do as they wish. It is, however, important to remember that it really was not all that long ago that we lived in one of the most prolonged moral panics of our time.

When it seemed that the rules were genuinely being cast out by those in power to institute a censorship regime that we have yet to fully grapple with. Some of it, to be honest, I can understand. We were dealing with a disease we knew nothing about. The people in power had yet to fully lose their credibility. Debates aside around hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, when some people on YouTube were legitimately recommending imbibing beach or other poisons, of course it made sense to act quickly. That regime, however, struck at a far more complicated debate very fast, around the efficacy of masking, around various drugs, including and up to literally removing medical doctors' testimony before Congress, and then debates around the efficacy of social policy,

like lockdowns or school closure or vaccine mandates. The rapidity with which that escalated was of course highlighted by this show at the time, but the single most egregious act occurred really only months into the new Biden administration, in one of the most Orwellian government debates that had come out yet. Let's relive that experience. Providing for Facebook or other platforms to measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation on their platform and the audience it's reaching. Also with the public, with all of you, to create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules. You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others if you are for providing misinformation out there.

That was over a year ago at this point, July 16th, 2021. We denounced it at the time as a direct call by the White House and the U.S. government to censor American citizens into direct content moderation online, well outside their purview. And while we denounced it as dangerous rhetoric, we now know that it actually went much further than that in a landmark case involving Alex Berenson. Berenson, you might know, is a prominent COVID skeptic. To be honest, I have always had a complicated relationship with Berenson. On the one hand, he is probably one of the most important modern figures in reigniting the debate away from reefer

madness and highlighting the fact that marijuana, in fact, it does have consequences at scale for millions of people. On the other, he got a lot wrong during this pandemic. But at a basic level, what I really think about Berenson does not matter. He's an American citizen. He's a well-credentialed reporter who used to work at the New York Times. And he deserves the right to free speech, like any of us. Berenson, who runs a very popular substack and gained prominence during the pandemic, was permanently suspended from Twitter on August 28, 2021, approximately one month after the White House statement. Allegedly, Berenson was suspended for, quote, approximately one month after the White House statement. Allegedly, Berenson was suspended for, quote,

repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules on Twitter. And that should have been that, right? But then something really crazy happened. Berenson, about a month ago, had his account reinstated. Not only that, his allegation of a conspiracy by both Twitter and the U.S. government to silence him actually does look to be completely true. Berenson maintained throughout his suspension he would prove in court he was unjustly removed from the platform because Twitter arbitrarily changed its rules surrounding content moderation

despite assurances from executives at the company he was not going to be targeted for censorship. And while that may sound outlandish, a federal judge at least agreed that his suit could proceed because he specifically did have evidence to the fact that he was at least guaranteed in part by someone at the company who would not be taken off. Now, however, more information released by Berenson has come to light. And it's crazy. Berenson revealed private internal messages from Twitter's Slack in which employees are seen discussing the aftermath of a meeting between the White House and senior executives at Twitter. Inside those messages, after a member of the staff asked how the White House meeting went, a senior exec replies, quote, Overall, pretty good.

They had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn't been kicked off the platform. What I just read you is a direct quote. They continue, quote, They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson. Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz. He was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public. So it's important to note in that same conversation that an executive wrote, quote, I have taken a pretty close look at his account.

I don't think any of it is violative. As Berenson notes in his substack, his reinstatement has now come after Twitter has been forced to acknowledge that by their own rules, he should not have been suspended for his claims around vaccine efficacy at the time. Now, for those who also don't know, Andy Slavitt, who was mentioned there at the time, was a senior advisor and one of the most prominent members of the White House pandemic response team. Meaning that in April of 2021, at the time of this meeting, his capacity as a member of the United States government and advisor to the President of the United States, he was actively pressuring Twitter to ban Berenson, and that in the same message, a Twitter executive said Berenson was not violating the rules. Months later, as the vaccination campaign escalated and the rhetoric became

more heated, Berenson was banned, only to now return. Take a closer look at the graphic that the White House actually cited, and it becomes really crazy. You know who else is on there? Elon Musk, sports commentator Clay Travis, various anonymous Twitter accounts, even people like Charlie Kirk. The methodology of the graphic isn't even clear, and the extension of the logic is obvious. If you're there, the government of the United States identified you at the time as a quote-unquote disinformation spreader, and it was using it as power to get you kicked off of social media. The Jen Psaki statement actually becomes more sinister in retrospect. It was only the continuation of an internal war to pressure social media companies, a war that

did actually work in this case. Here, I urge you to take Berenson out of it and to understand this as these are just American citizens. Their government should not be in the business of deciding what they get to say and where they get to say it. Their job is to put out information. It is a job of Berenson, people like myself, and many others. Parse it, debate it, yell at each other, tell you what we think. Then it's up to you to decide. That is foundational to a free country. The silence on this has now revealed a concerted campaign to target a journalist like Berenson. It's outrageous. And per his substack, there's actually a lot more to come. Berenson says he even has messages that prove that journalists

themselves were pushing Twitter to deplatform him. Again, revealing how little you can rely on the established fourth estate to uphold the principles that even allow them to exist in the first place. I say, let it all come out. Reveal every single one of these people for who they are. And let's really internalize what the government did here so that we do not let it happen again. And Crystal, you and I were very careful at the time. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, guys, it is once again primary day, and I'm highlighting a couple of fascinating races that are on the ballot, and I think kind of tell the tale of the GOP past, present, and future. So you've got Liz Cheney in Wyoming and Sarah Palin up in Alaska. And if the polls are to be believed,

Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president and one-time former heir apparent to the neocon crown, she's set to be defeated in pretty stunning fashion. Punished not for the terrible ideology that she still holds tight to, but because of arguably the most honorable thing she's actually done since arriving on the political scene. Then you've got Sarah Palin. She's on the ballot in a special election to fill the House seat of Don Young, who died in office. Now, Palin was actually the top vote-getter in the open primary to fill that seat, and now she's up against two other candidates, one Republican and one Democrat, to try to close the deal. The rise and fall and potential rise again of these two women says a lot about where we stand with the Republican Party

right now. Just take a look at the closing pitch for each. After enlisting her father to record a viral ad calling Donald Trump a coward and saying there's never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Trump, I can think of a couple, one in particular, Cheney is now closing out her campaign with this message. As election day nears, I want to talk to citizens across our great state and all across our country. America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the So her continued unapologetic Trump opposition in a Republican primary in a state that he won overwhelmingly is basically an acknowledgement that this race is already over.

And Liz Cheney is looking towards her next act, maybe as a lobbyist or potentially as a talking head. Her near certain defeat is exhibit number, let's say, three million, that this is in fact Trump's GOP. The fact that she voted with him on nearly everything and is conservative on just about everything doesn't matter at all. She's on the wrong side of the only dividing line in the GOP that actually counts, and that is her views on Donald J. Trump. The fact that she has such high approval ratings with Democrats tells you that the Donald Trump dividing line has become nearly the only thing that matters in all of politics,

not just with the Republican base. Now, up in Alaska, Sarah Palin is trying to recapture her mama bear magic. Here's some throwback content that she is still posting to this day on her Twitter timeline. Give a little shout out to all of the hockey moms out there on National Lipstick Day. And here's a taste of her recent CPAC appearance. What are you calling him these days? Yeah, well, sleepy Joe.

Pretty sleepy, kind of slow, bless his heart. Yeah, that was quite an experience. And man, had I to do it all over again, I would not hold back. It's a shame that the McCain-Falin campaign kind of had some shackles on me, not allowed to go rogue, because that's what our country needs right now, are fighters who are willing to go rogue and get out there and fight for what's right to save our country because you all know, y'all know the trajectory that our country is on right now, not real good, but we can turn that around. In case you're wondering, she also relives the whole hockey mom pit bull

lipstick thing in that interview there as well. It's kind of weird, and it's honestly kind of sad to watch Sarah Palin now. Her vibes are exactly that of the guy who peaked as high school quarterback and is constantly trying to relive the glory days. When I was preparing this monologue, acquainting myself with Palin's current rhetoric, I actually expected to be kind of floored by some really wild wingnut type of stuff. And I ended up being a little bit surprised at how tame she seems now compared to the new MAGA stars, people like Matt Gaetz or Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Palin was kind of a precursor to this type of politics, a canary in the coal mine of the rise of Trumpism. John McCain wasn't really willing to directly scratch the itch of the Republican base, but Palin was. She leaned into trashing the media. She coined the drill baby drill line as a kind of rallying cry before Trump leaned in to build that wall. She dabbled in the very same birther conspiracies that helped raise Trump's esteem with the GOP base too. But now she's caught in a bit of an odd spot. She's still a polarizing figure nationally because of her infamous vice presidential run and in Alaska because she abruptly quit as that state's governor. Yeah, because she isn't quite as wild as the new crop of Republican political character, she doesn't inspire fully ecstatic and committed support either. As a result, Palin has struggled

with fundraising in her campaign. She appears to be locked in a pretty tough battle in her special election in spite of her top finish in the initial round. And that's another thing that's a challenge for Palin here. Alaska's new ranked choice system means that she's got to be the top choice for a lot of voters, but she's also got to be the second choice for a lot of voters too. And that makes it more difficult for a polarizing candidate such as herself. Voters are likely to either have her as their top pick or want absolutely nothing to do with her. That makes it tough in ranked choice voting. So two figures connected to the GOP past, one from the George W. Bush era, one from the early stirrings of Trumpism, one a almost certain goner, the other trying to regain her footing in the political era that she helped to birth. The irony is that in terms of how they would actually vote in Congress, they're probably nearly identical. But policy is completely irrelevant in these contests, so long as Trump

continues to be at the center of everything. And Sagar, there's one other really interesting race on the- And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So President Joe Biden is set to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law. It was a shocking turn of events. Secret surprise deal worked out between Schumer and Manchin that they managed to keep the entire Democratic caucus on board with. And joining us to talk about what this means, what's in it, all of the details is the perfect guest who has been following the ins and outs of this all the way along, even when it looked like there was no hope that anything would actually come of it.

Jeff Stein, economics reporter for The Washington Post. Great to see you, Jeff. Good to see you, man. Thanks for reminding me how painful this whole thing has been. Yeah, but it's done now. Yes, just about done and dusted. Let's go ahead and put your latest reporting up on the screen, which I thought was a very interesting look at this legislation and what it hopes to accomplish. Your headline here is West Virginia coal country will test power of Democrats climate bill.

You interview a man who has been a coal miner and, you know, of course, has seen ups and downs as that industry has declined and is now hoping to get a green energy job in West Virginia as part of this deal. Why don't you use that as an entree to talk about the approach to climate that this particular deal and particular legislation hopes to enact? Yeah, so just to zoom out for a second here and give sort of the broader historical context, when climate change first emerged as a clear national international crisis, the initial response from policymakers was to put a price on carbon. So you got carbon tax proposals, cap and trade proposals, kinds of things that would directly disincentivize and raise the cost of using and consuming carbon. And for reasons that I don't have to tell you guys about, that was a political disaster. People don't want to have to spend more. Sagar, I really enjoyed your clip the other day

about, you know, blaming people for higher gas prices and sort of the stupidity of that. People, you know, are often struggling and high gas prices and higher gas prices is a very difficult way politically to force through a change to deal with climate change. And so in the last really just 10, 15 years, we've had a complete 180, complete revolution in the approach that in particularly the Democratic Party, I think in large part or in part because of the Green New Deal and AOC and the left sort of pushing a different approach. And that approach has said instead of sacrificing economic growth, what if we, instead of targeting sort of the supply side of raising carbon, we instead dramatically reduce the cost of renewable

solar. And we tied that to a new attempt to revive the American industrial core, the Appalachian core that has been so hollowed out by the decline of the old energy economy. And so, and thanks for identifying that, Chris, I really appreciate it. But I think the attempt of that story was to say, there's all this talk about the bill, but sort of what's the core thing that this bill is trying to do? And I think we, it's become so obvious to so many people that people aren't really talking about the main intention of the bill. And that's really this profound attempt at reviving America's manufacturing base with clean energy jobs. And we can get into the odds that has of success, but I think that's the core philosophy here. And I talked to a lot

of coal miners and others in West Virginia who are optimistic. Right now, West Virginia used to be this industrial powerhouse, manufacturing powerhouse, and it's obviously now one of the poorest states in the country. And so that has been a really devastating transition. And there's this hope that maybe this will bring in these new high-paying jobs. Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting about the piece and just generally about the attempt at bringing down costs, which I'm a major proponent of, is that this is both a departure in a different direction, but also shows you very much like what Joe Manchin's philosophy is around all of this. So can you point to the specific program that you talk about here about moving from a coal job to working in a battery facility? How plausible is that on a mass scale for people who are involved in those declining industries? That's a great question. So I think just the first thing you mentioned about Manchin's

philosophy, right? If you were just designing a climate bill, there's tons of stuff in here that you would have no reason of including, including, you know, expediting fossil fuel projects, money for mining. There is stuff in here that only makes sense from an energy abundance, American energy independence, and lower energy cost for consumer perspective, which is not what a lot of the Democratic Party wanted to do, but was forced through by Manchin and his sort of demands. On the question of, can this really work? You know, I talked to a lot of mainstream centrist economists, some might accuse them of being more on the more neoliberal side of things, who say that this is a climate bill, a deficit reduction bill, and a health care bill. It is not an economic manufacturing bill. Even the most optimistic readings, there's about 12, 13 million manufacturing jobs in America right now. This would add roughly $100,000 a year over

100,000 new manufacturing jobs a year over the next 10 years. So, you know, that's something, but it's pretty small relative to the overall number. One of the big problems is solar and wind production. You sort of, you need the construction jobs to build the thing, but unlike coal, which requires tons of manpower to sustain, they kind of run on their own accord. And so the per job output per energy produced is relatively minimal. The estimates for West Virginia, you know, I talked to the owners of this battery production plant. Lots of people are looking at West Virginia because it has a really trained workforce. It has lots of natural resources, abundant water, and sort of the logistical trucking and supply routes that have fallen dormant,

but that could actually be used as an export base. There's some hope for West Virginia in that reason, but the biggest facility that could open with renewable jobs is this battery plant that you mentioned. They're building sort of long-duration battery storage that could go into decarbonizing agriculture and other heavy industries. There's lots of money in that, both in the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act to sort of encourage those kinds of jobs. At most, we're thinking that could be 3,000 jobs,

maybe a little more. But that's the equivalent of, I think we say in the piece that every six coal mines that have closed is the closed have 15,000 jobs. And over the last 20, 30 years, West Virginia has lost, I think, something on the order of 60,000, 70,000 coal mining jobs. So they have a long, long way to climb from where they were. And, you know, obviously, I think I don't want to sound too redundant or too obvious to people, but you drive around West Virginia and the remnants and the vestiges of a formerly great industrial power are just everywhere. You can see the poverty.

You can see what once was. And, you know, just the statistic that blew my mind the most from the story was that in the 1970s, the biggest employer in West Virginia was West Virginia Steel. They paid an average of $16 an hour. And now the biggest employer in West Virginia is Walmart, which pays an average of about $15 an hour. And that is not adjusting for inflation. So over 40, 50 years, the main employer in West Virginia now pays less than they did in the 1970s. And so that decline is evident everywhere. And so I think some people are saying, look, this isn't going to revive the core of America's manufacturing hub, but it might be a start. Yeah. West Virginia near and dear to my heart because that's where my dad and his side of the family are all from. So I spent a good deal

of time in the state and I've seen exactly what you're talking about. There's a misperception that, or misconception that, you know, people there are just like, they just love coal and they're just all about coal. And it's like, no, this is just the one industry that's provided stable middle-class jobs and has supported, you know, entire communities around this industry. So of course, they're not going to just willingly give that up without something to come in and make sure that they're going to be able to provide for their family on a basic level. Absolutely. And a lot of the coal miners I spoke to who are now working in renewables are trying to make that point that in particular, a lot of the solar industry, when they first started coming

into West Virginia and Appalachia, they were paying pretty low wages. And a lot of people on the left don't like to talk about this, but there are a lot of non-union firms. And the UMWA provided union membership to coal miners for decades. And so, yeah, I mean, after the story came out, I got a lot of responses from sort of like smug people on the coast being like, you know, these people will never learn and kind of discuss about how their, about their intelligence. And besides the fact that most of these people would be completely lost doing the kind of manufacturing production jobs that coal miners know how to do, to your point, there's like a real rational economic reason that a lot of former coal miners have been reluctant to be part of this transition but i think the hope is that with mansion sort of bringing all this money specifically

i'll just mention one thing very quickly the bill has specific tax credits for former um i think the technical term they use in the bill is like energy producing regions. And so money that's directly intended to flow to high coal producing areas that go above and beyond all the other credits in the bill. So that's kind of a hope to say, like, let's directly target West Virginia. So we'll have to see if that works. And then what do you make of some of the critique I've seen from the left that, you know, you're in the same bill that you're supposedly dealing with the climate. You're also giving a lot of goodies to the oil industry. And one of the most telling things is that actually big oil was kind of fine and cool with this bill. What do you make of that? And I know you're not, you know, specifically a climate

reporter, but you've dug into this, these numbers. What does the analysis look like of what this will do on balance to emissions? Yeah, I think there's no doubt that there's things in here that are going to be bad for the climate. You know, the amount of new approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure is clearly putting us in the wrong direction in terms of reducing emissions. And so I don't want to really pick a side, and I've seen those critiques too, and I understand where they're coming from. And I think in particular, I'm trying to work on a story about this, but a lot of the indigenous groups are particularly very upset because the approval process will be expedited in a way that has historically and traditionally been very devastating for indigenous communities.

From a biological diversity perspective, there's a lot of things to be worried about from the expediting process that you're referring to. I do think that overwhelmingly, I haven't talked to a climate expert who doesn't think that this will in aggregate drive down a huge number of emissions. On balance, this is a huge, huge win for carbon reduction and for the climate, even though those provisions are, as you said, potentially driving up carbon costs. I think the one thing I would stress is that maybe 10, 15 years ago, the opposition to new fossil fuel infrastructure was at a much higher pitch among climate experts, in part because at the time, renewables were still so not cost competitive with fossil

fuel infrastructure. And so like the Mountain Valley Pipeline that Manchin approved as part of this deal, you know, will carry all of this natural gas out from West Virginia to export to Europe. That's the hope. And 10 years ago, that would be a very, very scary prospect from a climate perspective because we didn't know if solar and wind would ever be able to catch up. But now one of the climate experts I talked to are not that worried about that because they think that even if it gets built now, natural gas has come up relative to renewables

and costs so much that we think that that will not be cost competitive in 10 years anyway. Basically, what's happened to the coal industry is not competitive. Exactly. So it's less of a reason to be afraid. The other thing that I would point out in terms of the oil industry being happy, and people can have totally legitimate different opinions about this, but there's a lot of money in here for carbon capture sequestration, the 45Q credits, money basically that's going to the oil and gas companies that they are supposed to use to lower their carbon footprint and sort of put money into other forms of renewable energy and to expedite other forms of renewable production. I talked to one, you know, traditionally natural gas and coal company that's now investing in wind because of this. And provisions like that, I think there's a lot of legitimate criticism that they are basically handouts to the fossil fuel companies, especially oil companies that get this money for sort of unquestionably good

carbon reduction schemes, putting money, carbon in the ground. Some climate people think that actually will, you know, is important and will lead to emission reduction. And other people think that it's just kind of a show. I think at the worst case that that is kind of just like a necessary federal giveaway, but it's not the same as saying it will increase emissions. Does that make sense? Like for the people who are saying this is a giveaway to the oil company, like yes, but that's different from saying it's a giveaway to the oil company

that will dramatically increase emissions. Yeah, gotcha. So it's just a giveaway, but without planetary devastation accompanying it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you could be mad about like giving federal money and taxpayer money to the oil companies. Like I get being angry about that, but it's a different critique than saying we're giving all this money to the oil companies to destroy the planet.

All very well said. I recommend not just this particular piece of reporting from you to folks to really understand what's in this bill, but all of the work that you've been doing on this all the way along, and of course, always, guys, go and follow Jeff on Twitter so you can see what is coming next. Jeff, thank you so much for taking some time with us. I know you're very busy. Appreciate it, man. Great to see you. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. As we said, the results

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