Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/2/23: Trump Reacts To Indictment, Pence Attacks Trump, DeSantis Unveils Economic Plan, Media Spins Hunter Corruption, BlackRock Investigated By House, Elon Sues Hate Speech Org, Niger Erupts After Coup, And CNN Bashes Trump Supporters

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump's reaction to his 2020 election indictment, Pence attacks Trump on Jan 6th, DeSantis reveals economic plan for 2024, media spins Hunter Biden corruption, House launches inquiry into BlackRock foreign influence, Elon Musk sues anti-hate speech organization, Niger erupts after military coup, and CNN bashes Trump supporters.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Well, good morning. Welcome to CounterPoints. I'm Emily Jashinsky, joined virtually today by Ryan Grim, who's here to give us a little

bit of a French dispatch. Ryan, how are you doing? Yeah, here to cover France's reaction to the coup in Niger, which we'll be reporting on later. But no, I'm checking out Europe with my family. And I got to say, I knew that there was no air conditioning over here, that that wasn't really a thing. I didn't know they also don't have screens, which is just mind blowing to me. And I feel like maybe we should pivot out of kind of this business that we're in here and open up a screen company in Europe. Like once they realized that you could

put screens in the windows and just keep the bugs out, I feel like it would catch on like wildfire. What do you think? So Ryan Graham now both a capitalist and completely opposed to the green agenda that he's been in Europe for several days. It's just totally maybe we could get I mean, maybe we get EU subsidies for them because they are green. You know, they're keeping the windows open and keeping the use of air conditioning down. So maybe, you know, maybe we can get fully subsidized. It seems like it seems like a very strong possibility. Greens for all. Well, Brian, we're so glad to have you here, miss you in studio. But of course, we're going to talk today about reactions that have come in

to Donald Trump's third indictment. We're going to start the show with that in just a bit. We're going to also talk about the economic plan that Ron DeSantis, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, rolled out this week. There is some interesting stuff in there, some predictable stuff, but some interesting stuff as well. We're also going to discuss the Biden administration and the Democratic Party's new spin game that they're playing in relation to the Hunter Biden revelations. They're rolling out some really hilarious talking points, so we're going to break all of that down. BlackRock and Morgan Stanley are under investigation by the House Select Committee on China for some pretty bizarre, well, I shouldn't say bizarre, I guess it's also rather predictable, but some

pretty interesting investments over there in China. So we're gonna break that down for you. And then Elon Musk also is suing an anti-hate speech group that has come after Twitter, now X. Ryan, as he mentioned, is going to talk about the coup in Niger. I am going to talk about CNN's Dana Bash once again just marveling at who the types of people are that vote for Donald Trump. So why don't we start with reaction that has come in to the third Trump indictment, the third Trump indictment.

I remember when the first indictment came down all of those months ago. I'm nostalgic for it now, Ryan. We came into the studio and did a live show with Crystal and Sagar because it was momentous. And indeed, it was momentous. This was the first indictment of a former president. But now we're three in, arguably the most serious. We'll get into that in just a moment. Let's put up on the screen Donald Trump's prediction.

It wasn't hard for him to predict he had gotten that target letter. He's obviously been getting some communications back and forth with the special counsel, Jack Smith's office. He called it, he said he was assuming an indictment from, quote, deranged Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of thugs pertaining to my, quote, peacefully and patriotically speech. That's not a great use of adverbs there. We'll be coming out any day now. Very classic Trump. He said, you know, march peacefully and patriotically or some version of that. So now he's kind of trying to brand the speech that the speech was his peacefully and patriotically speech. See, I can speak Trumpies at this point that I think that's what he's going for. Well, thank you for the translation. at this point. I think that's what he's going for.

Well, thank you for the translation. I actually agree. I think that looks now like a branding attempt. And other presidential candidates have weighed in. We'll get to that in just a moment. Let's play a clip, actually, from special counsel Jack Smith himself, who also indicted Donald Trump the second time around. A lot of people remember the documents case, which is also continuing to pend in the court system. Jack Smith this time is, as Crystal and Sacher discussed on the channel yesterday, coming out with an indictment related to January 6th.

Here's what he had to say last night. Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. Okay, so we can also put the statement from the Trump campaign up on the screen. Not entirely different, at least in tone, from what Donald Trump said right away. This is the statement right now. This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden crime family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere

with the 2024 presidential election in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner and leading by substantial margins. And then the statement ends by saying three years ago, we had strong borders, energy independence, no inflation and a great economy. Today, we are a nation in decline. President Trump will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting. They also question why Jack Smith waited, quote, two and a half years to bring these fake charges right in the middle of President Trump's winning campaign for 2024. Why was it announced the day after the big crooked Joe Biden scandal broke out from the halls of Congress? The answer is election

interference. The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian dictatorial regimes. All right, let's put Ron DeSantis' reaction up on the screen. He said, as president, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans. He said, well, I've seen reports. I've not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts. Goes on to say, no more excuses. I will end the weaponization of the federal government. We have reaction from Mike Pence as well. He says today's indictment serves

as an important reminder. Anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States. That's a very different reaction to Ron DeSantis, as you just saw there. Pence also says I have more to say about the government's case after reviewing the indictment. The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but with his indictment, his candidacy means more talk of January 6th and more distractions. Tim Scott had a reaction as well that a lot of people passed around. He basically said we have two tiers of justice in this country. Maybe people didn't expect that from Tim Scott, given where some folks assume he falls on the kind of Republican candidate spectrum. But Ryan, what do you make of all of those reactions? And give us your early

reaction to the indictment itself as well. Yeah, so Trump's reference to Nazi Germany is an interesting one, because if I were going to refer to Germany, I would say that, well, actually, they should have left Adolf Hitler in prison for the beer hall putsch, rather, you know, because this is the arrangement that we kind of have in society is that if you come for the king and you miss, like, you're done. And so Adolf Hitler launched his beer hall putsch. It flopped, fell apart. He went to prison. They let him back out. And then his Nazi party eventually kind of retakes power. The deal is, you know, if you illegally come for power and you fall short of it, then you don't get the kind of grace of mercy from the public or from the power structure that you tried to take over. And so this is why I was kind of annoyed with the

Alvin Bragg. If you remember, I was annoyed with the Alvin Bragg one. And the documents case, OK, he looks pretty guilty. He is on tape saying he did all these things. But it's documents. Like, it's not that big a deal. It feels like they took a lot of the punch out of this indictment. This is the thing that really matters. Like this, according to the indictment, is an attempt to basically overthrow the government. But I did find it interesting

that they didn't include the highest charges. You know, they didn't include, say, insurrection or another type of charge that would then disqualify him from running for president. So in other words, he's going to win this nomination and he'll be on the ballot, even if he's convicted of everything from here through November, imagining that they can get these cases to trial fast enough, because they didn't charge him with high enough offenses to disqualify him. So in some ways, there'll be accountability, but not the type that's going to kind of keep you, you know, from from running for for office again. Finally, the D.C. jury point that a lot of people have been making, I think, actually is a legitimate one. If I were Jack Smith, I'd be like, look, tell you what, I'm so confident in my case.

You pick the district. Go ahead. You're like, and you can do unprecedented things because this is an unprecedented trial of a former president and not just a former president, but a leading presidential candidate in the next race. Go ahead. Pick a district. What do you want? Alabama, Mississippi? Pick it.

And we'll make our case and we'll still convict you. I don't imagine that he's going to do anything like that, but I think to develop public confidence requires something like that. What did you think of the indictment as you read through it last night? I thought the defraud, a conspiracy to defraud, I have it in front of me right now. I'm going to read. This is the, so Smith says, the defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. And so doing, the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies. dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government in violation of, and then he cites the statute, that the language itself there, I mean, maybe there's an argument people can make that that's really broad language that can be used

by a weaponized federal government, which I think it's, at this point, I think it is absolutely incontrovertible that the Department of Justice is being weaponized against the former president of the United States. Does that make every hit a bad one? No. There's a lot to work with when it comes to Donald Trump, but I mean, maybe someone can make the argument that that language is overly broad in the statute itself. But given where that language is, I think that's very serious for Donald Trump. The others, I think, are more of a stretch, personally. But that first one, that one is pretty brutal. And it also allows people like Mike Pence, who I don't think poses a serious electoral threat to Donald Trump whatsoever. But it does allow people to air this one very

damaging argument and serious argument that Donald Trump was exploiting his own voters, his own fans, his own supporters. And that is, especially as people have taken a look at his campaign finances and how much the money that was raised that's gone to, you know, especially when people look back at when he was raising money for different candidates in the last cycle, 2022, and say a lot of that money didn't go to Blake Masters or whatever else because it was being used for legal defenses. He has good reason to defend himself from some of these cases.

Alvin Braggwin is a good example. We're waiting on a case to be brought by the Fulton County DA, Fannie Willis, possibly this week. There are barricades up around Atlanta where they're expecting a decision and announcement in the grand jury there. So some of this is like ticky tacky lawfare. That particular charge stands out to me as one that could genuinely be damaging. And, you know, the more that it's discussed, the more that conversation about that sort of top down exploitation of Donald Trump,

of people who supported him, gave him money, you know, people, working class people, middle class people who don't have a lot of money to give, and whoops, I just hit the desk, gave it to him. That is, I think, a pretty difficult, that's a pretty difficult charge. And the January 6th charge, I thought, is an interesting one too uh because you've already had people and this goes to two tiers of justice there's actually one tier in this sense you've already had a lot of people who have been convicted of the charge of disrupting the january 6th proceedings like and those people you know did relatively very little compared to what president trump did well you know what they did is they marched with a whole bunch of other people

most of them did not break into the Capitol. It was already broken into and they walked in and they hung out in the Capitol for a while. And then when Trump told them to leave, they left and they were convicted by a jury of, well, if they went to trial, most of them pleaded guilty of disrupting this January 6th certification. So it seems to me like you could arguably then make it stick on the person whose idea the whole thing was that, OK, we're going to gin up all of these fake electors. We're going to get a big crowd here. And the crowd and the fake electors are going to pressure Mike Pence to do something that all of his other lawyers

are saying they just he just simply does not have the right to do. And he's going to you know, he's sending out tweets pressuring Pence. He is really hinging his entire defense on the fact that he told the crowd to be peaceful and to be patriotic. And maybe that is enough to get him off. We don't know. But we also know that he, for how long, an hour, two hours, maybe three hours, there's some amount of time between the breaking into the Capitol and Trump's final kind of video under pressure asking them to leave, where he seems quite content and his public messages seems content with the fact that these folks were putting pressure on the certification in a way that is illegal. There is not, according to the indictment, there is not a process by which a mob of people can pressure, legally pressure the vice president to accept these fake electors. That's not a legal avenue that you're allowed to pursue. And so this was Trump's entire plan.

To then slap on top of it that you need to do it peacefully and patriotically, to me, isn't enough. But maybe it is to a jury. We'll see. What's your sense of how much resonance that argument is having now among people on the right? And what is the way that you're seeing them defend this mainly? Yeah, I mean, it looks definitely like a weaponization of the government, that it looks definitely like election interference, especially because you consider there's ample, ample, ample evidence that Joe Biden is implicated in a pretty vast influence peddling scheme, let alone his son. I mean, it's the sitting president of the United States himself. So if he's not going to have a

special counsel investigating that, if his Department of Justice isn't going to call for a special counsel investigating that, and you're just going to have this hit one candidate. I mean, I remember talking to Crystal about this one time, and we were basically like, yeah, lock them all up if they've done something wrong. But we know that we're not in a country where that happens. And so I think that's really the emergent argument. And there's an interesting thing, too. This is in Trump's statement.

He talks about the timeline and how it came right after the testimony of Devin Archer. Greg Price had a pretty viral tweet on the right where he lays out the timeline. June 7th, FBI releases documents to Congress alleging the Bidens took a $10 million bribe from Burisma. June 8th, Jack Smith indicts Trump in the Mar-a-Lago docks case. Then he does the same with July 26th and 27th, and then the same with July 31 and August 1. So it was interesting that Trump sort of used that argument too, because I think that is really potent.

I think if you're an average Republican primary voter, you see that. And why has Donald Trump's margin or what margin of support over Ron DeSantis and any other candidate only grown since he's been hit with these prosecutions? Well, because the media is talking about them constantly in a way that makes Trump look like the avatar. He becomes the sort of, he looks like the bulwark between the United States of what people thought of and remembered and then what they see as a banana republic. And the more that he is the the avatar the more he takes on that role of being the bulwark between you know the the America before it was weaponized against presidents and anything else the more successful he's gonna be the more oxygen he takes away

from any of the other candidates and again like these are real concerns I understand there are very real concerns about January 6th, too. If the other cases hadn't been brought, this would be a very, very different conversation, I think. I think that I think that's right, too. And it's it's complicated by the fact that something like what you tell me, 60, 70 percent of Republicans seem to think that the election actually was stolen, like that they agree with Trump on that, which makes their prism of this case, you know, completely different because it's like, how can you illegally overthrow an election if you, if you actually believe that it was stolen from you? So I think that contributes to a lot of the, the rallying around Trump

as well. I think on the Biden side, sure, yeah, like open up an investigation. I think actually Democrats would probably benefit if they had an open primary and a bunch of candidates ran instead of Biden. So I'm not sure that would actually kind of help Republicans. If I were going to agree with Trump on something, I would point to his complaint about it taking two and a half years. I complained that they didn't impeach him that night, the night of January 6th or early in the morning on January 7th. Ilhan Omar had written articles of impeachment. They weren't hard to write. You also had a couple of Democrats who were on the Judiciary Committee who had written articles of impeachment, who handed them to Steny Hoyer and said, look, let's just vote on these.

Like, just write them on the bloodstained paper in this room and vote today and kick it over to the Senate and have a trial while he's still president. Barring that, there wasn't a whole lot in this indictment, I don't think, you tell me what you think, that wasn't available to the FBI by around, say, March of 2021. Like most of this stuff is most of the indictment based on interviews and interrogations and, you know, the kind of extensive research the FBI does. But most of it's based on public stuff. Like these are things we know. And so if you could have done this in March 2021,, I think that is, that really is the time to do it. Instead, they went for a, an impeachment after he was out of office, uh, that they knew wasn't going to get two thirds of the vote. And then Merrick Garland kind of just sat around for a long time and

finally kicks it over to Jack Smith. So I think that is a fair criticism. Now, I don't think Trump would agree that he should have been indicted two years ago. I think he thinks he shouldn't be indicted at all. But I think he's right that the delay was a problem. You know, yeah, and they appointed a special counsel. And one thought that I had was actually how little the January 6th committee contributed to anything that is in this indictment from my perspective. It does seem like Mark Meadows flipped. I think a lot of the sort of liberal corporate press pundits are right that it does seem like some of this is from Mark Meadows. I do think there are legitimate concerns about precedent that this sets for attorneys. I think

there are legitimate concerns about precedent that this sets for free speech when people are legitimately concerned about election results going forward. We'll see how the case proceeds. I mean, this all, we actually have to see how it proceeds. I would just raise those questions too. I agree with you on the timing. I thought that it was interesting how little what came out of that select committee on January 6th ended up contributing to all of this. So it's just a, yeah, go ahead. One last point on that. And maybe you know who this is. They're talking about the deputy chief of staff and another top official. That one part that struck me in the indictment was

the guy saying, look, you lost. There's absolutely no legal path for you to stay in office. If you're here past noon on january 20th 2021 there are going to be riots in every city and the official responded that's why we have an insurrection act and there was all of this uh these rumors on the right at the time that trump was going to enact you know or was going to implement the insurrection act and uh other national security protocols that they believed would allow him. So there were people in his inner circle that were genuinely contemplating invoking the Insurrection Act, which means bringing out National Guard troops to basically violently put down protests against him remaining office,

which that is a forceful seizure of power and the end of American democracy. So I think this is really serious stuff that these clowns were contemplating. And the fact that they are clowns doesn't make it any less serious. No, I think that's a good point because it's only going to get more serious. The more that this happens, the more that he's hit with Alvin Bragg charges or documents charges that could theoretically apply to other people, the more you're going to have this total vortex of trust, a lot of which is stemming from very reasonable sentiments and concerns about what's happening in the country, meaning nobody is going to know who to trust anymore.

So if Donald Trump, so if you've thoroughly planted the seeds of distrust and you've discredited the credibility of things that people used to trust, like the FBI, whether or not they should have always trusted the FBI is a different question, but institutions that we sort of need consensus trust levels on to function as a country, if you've sowed a lot of distrust, both because you're exploiting very real concerns and you're facilitating those very real concerns, and to that I would point to the activities of the FBI and the Department of Justice itself, then someone can step in. We've actually seen this historically.

Step in, take power because people don't have anyone to trust except for the one person that is correctly telling them you can't trust anyone. And so that's where you end up in an extremely dangerous situation because nobody knows what's real, what's not. And that means you can sort of more easily manipulate public opinion. You can sort of seize on people's angst and anxieties.

And that's where things get even more violent. And there was a lot leading up to January 6. I think that was similar, actually, to that. And so the fact that we're heading into a place where it's going to get worse is a little bit chilling to think about as well. Yeah, and ironically, if Donald Trump had just conceded that he had lost, he'd probably be up by five to 10 points on Biden right now. If he had just done something that apparently he's incapable of doing and gracefully exited instead,

here he is tangling in a Republican primary and also head-to-head tied with Joe Biden. But let's get to that Republican primary. We have, Ron DeSantis has a plan for that, right? He's got his economic, 10-point economic plan out. Here's how I would describe it. Tell me what you think of it. To me, it's sort of like a kind of muddled together, groping mixture of populism and kind of old school Reaganism, because it combines

the kind of nod toward austerity, where he's saying he's going to kind of cut the deficit, cut the budget. He's going to go after waste, fraud and abuse. He's going to rein in government spending. But he's also leaning in a more populist direction about kind of helping helping the family economically so that he can also help them culturally. And I don't want to like completely dismiss it as an intellectually incoherent product, because I think the Republican Party is going through a transition period. So I think there's going to be some incoherence, you know, on the way to where they finally land on something. And so you're going to wind up with a situation like this where you have things that are kind of often in conflict with each other because, you know, you want less government and more government at the same time.

But what's your read on the DeSantis plan for that? That's so interesting because I've been writing a piece about it over the last couple of days, and you basically just echoed exactly where I've landed on it. It's pretty interesting. So let me actually read from what DeSantis is calling his, quote, Declaration of Economic Independence. He says, it's time to name names and defeat those people and institutions that have formed the root causes of this economic malaise. And a family-focused economy means having the courage to take on our enemies. Now, this next line, imagine a Republican saying this 10 years ago, quote, we are no longer going to kowtow to Wall Street and big corporations who don't have your interests front and center.

He talks about China, and then he says the American dream is slipping away from our nation's middle class. He goes on and talks about COVID lockdowns, reckless borrowing, printing, and spending, making costs of life essential so much so that buying a home, purchasing a car, or starting a family is cost prohibitive. And for many, even affording groceries has become a matter of saving. Now, this next line I thought was the most interesting. He says, the bottom half of American households have less wealth today than in 1989, while the top 10% have added $29 trillion in wealth over the same period. He also adds another good line here, over 6 million prime age men are neither working

or looking for work. The labor force participation rate for this group fell from 98% in 1953 to 89% today. Ryan, that line about the bottom half of American households having less wealth than in 1989, while the top 10% have added, could have been ripped from a speech somebody gave at Occupy Wall Street in 2011 when all of the Republican Party was, and I use this word understanding that it's sort of a joke and for good reason, seizing on class warfare, right? Republicans were lamenting the divisiveness. You definitely remember this better than I do. They were lamenting the divisiveness of, quote, class warfare over and over and over again to their own detriment. They then nominated private equity baron Mitt Romney to take on Barack Obama in 2012 and

got Donald Trump. And we're shocked and surprised by the fact that after all of that, they got Donald Trump. So here's Ron DeSantis, I think, absorbing some of those lessons. And now to your point, Ryan, about whether the plan itself addresses that. How do you address that as Republican policy is it is a lot of, you know, cutting red tape, you know, adding ending regulatory capture, et cetera, et cetera, which I think would be helpful. But it's certainly that's where his policies are going to diverge completely from most

people who share those concerns about income inequality. Would have put an even finer point on it if he said that 47% of people rather than 50%, because famously you had Mitt Romney in 2012 basically just dismiss half the country, and that stuck with him throughout the presidential campaign. And that's the part of the country that's falling behind, and the one that DeSantis is now rhetorically trying to reach out to, particularly with the class warfare rhetoric of, what is it? We lose, they win. Like the we and the they framing, that's kind of left-wing or at least populist stuff, but it's

kind of left-wing populist stuff when you're breaking it down to the 99% and the 1%, the we, the they, it is very, like you said, kind of Occupy inspired. But then, right, you're going to go after corporations and Wall Street and rein them in, but you're also going to cut regulations and red tape. Well, how are you going to do that? It is the regulatory power of the state that is going to do the things that you're saying you're going to do. And you're saying that you're going to weaken the regulatory power of the state. And so, like I said, I'm not I don't want to mock him because I think the right is kind of groping for something interesting here. But the way it's structured now, it is self-defeating. Now, if you were going to be totally cynical, you would say,

he doesn't mean any of this. He's just pandering to this increasingly working class base that they're pulling in, and that in fact, what they're going to do is continue to deliver for the 1%. That would be the cynical interpretation. I like to be more hopeful about our political prospects, even in the face of all of the evidence that, you know, that nobody is actually serious about doing any of this. So, you know, until DeSantis kind of marries, you know, what he's going to do with the government to an agenda that he's that he's saying he stands behind, I don't think it should be taken seriously as a matter of policy, which is ironic given that DeSantis is the one who always talks about how he's kind of the policy wonk, how he's the one who's gonna get things done. And then he puts out a plan that is just in complete contradiction with both ends of it.

And some of that is like a fundamental ideological disagreement. As you know, like he says achieving 3% growth by incentivizing investment, eliminating bureaucracy and red tape and keeping taxes low and outlines in a matter of like 10 bullet points how you get to that number 3% growth with cuts to red tape. So extending individual tax rates and further simplifying the tax code, which is very general. I mean, it's hard to know what that means. He's trying to make permanent full immediate expensing, maintain territoriality, and further strengthen base erosion measures to ensure corporations are investing in America.

And I think you actually can hit that 3% growth number with those targets. If I had more specifics and was able to do the back of the napkin math. I believe that you probably can get to that 3% growth number. He's talking about unleashing American energy independence. I think that would be incredibly helpful. Reforming our immigration system, I think that would be really helpful for wages personally. And what does it mean when he says going to China? He says DeSantis will incentivize the repatriation of U.S. capital from China through strategic tax abatements and aligning market incentives with strategic goals to help secure our supply chains and invest in America.

You can read that as either industrial policy or tax incentives and or crony capitalism, right? Depending on how you want to see it, you could look at that either way. And I think it's hard to know what that would actually in practice be from a President Ron DeSantis, but that's sort of the nature of campaigning. Rhetoric is a good,

I think this is a really good improvement on the Republican Party of 2012. He talks like Blake Masters did about people being able to raise a family on a single income. And so I think it's an interesting, I guess, combination or it's an interesting bridge between the old Republican Party and the And whether they actually want to take the steps of implementing policies that might take a little bit away from the top and bring some to the bottom, not by force of the tax code or anything like that, but of realigning economic incentives

is a different question. But I do think it's at least a little bit of a W that the rhetoric has shifted because that, even if they don't know it, is putting pressure on them to deliver. If you say you're going to do X and you don't do X, that is an added little bit of pressure from the voters. So maybe that's something to celebrate. Our parties have shifted places over the course of American history many different times. The parties themselves have no ideology other than to remain in power. So this is, I think, a much more interesting Republican party for kind of the left to grapple with than the one in, say, 2012 or over the last 40 years before that. So yeah, no, it's interesting.

Agree. Let's talk about Ryan's favorite member of Congress, Dan Goldman from New York, who I think has been trying out, he's been tasked with trying out the Biden allies' new spin narrative, their talking points when it comes to the allegations against Joe Biden pertaining to Hunter Biden and James Biden and all of the Bidens, basically financial interests and business interests. We have a sought we're going to play. Let's let's roll C1 first and we'll get into it. Could you just with specifics, tell us these phone calls that were as matter of such a

discussion yesterday, what were they about? What would then Vice President Biden say in these conversations? You know, walk us through what happened. Right. So let's put this in context. Beau Biden got very sick in early 2015. He died in the spring of 2015, which was right in the middle when Devin Archer had his business dealings with Hunter Biden.

At that point, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden began to speak every day because they were both devastated by Beau's death. They spoke every day. The witness testified that over his 10 year relationship with Hunter Biden, there may be approximately 20 times when in one of those conversations, Hunter Biden would put his father at a dinner, not at a business meeting, at a dinner that he was having if he happened to get a hold of his father, and would ask his father to say hello to whoever was at the table. And that was essentially the extent of it. It was unclear, and the witness testified, this is not me saying saying that the witness testified that a lot of times, most of the time, Joe didn't even know who the people were at the dinner table. It gets better. So that's Dan Goldman. He is a member of the House Oversight Committee, meaning he was in the closed door

testimony with Devin Archer. And that was MSNBC's Morning Joe asking him to kind of debrief what he heard in that testimony. He claims Archer debunked the entire narrative, basically, which we can get into in just a moment. Let's also play Representative Himes on, I think this is also MSNBC, this is C2. The Republicans, it's just this internal primal urge to visit retribution on the Democrats. And the problem is they can't find a fact. So, look, is there problematic questions about Hunter Biden? And I said something that shouldn't be controversial, which is that if you committed a crime, you should be held accountable.

But have they pointed to anything to suggest that Joe Biden engaged in corrupt behavior? No. And on the contrary, Hunter Biden's business problems partner said, yeah, he was on some phone calls talking about the weather, talking about the weather, exchanging pleasantries. Is that in the category of presidential family members that are problematic, Billy Carter, Hugh Rodham? Maybe it's in that category, but it is sure and absolutely not a crime. Okay, so first we have the gross invocation from Dan Goldman of the Biden family tragedy as it pertains to Beau Biden, as though that would somehow prevent Joe Biden from fundamentally understanding right and wrong as a man who has been in Washington, D.C.

And representing, we should add, Delaware for decades, as though he doesn't understand the ethics of business interests and government. And that would somehow reasonably cloud his judgment in a way that makes it hard for us to judge him as voters, as citizens now. And then you have Jim Himes saying they were talking about the weather, according to Devin Archer. And if we go out of order here, I'm so sorry, if we could put C4 up on the screen. This is a tweet from Tom Bevin reacting to reporting that the Bidens were using burner phones. And Tom quotes, need burner phones to talk about the weather because Biden told Archer to get burner phones. And this is just three days before there was a meeting with Joe Biden at the White House. So they were just using those burner phones to talk about the weather, as Tom jokes. So Ryan, what is your reaction to what seems like a coordinated,

and it's hardly unusual to have coordinated talking points, you know, be trotted out by people when they're defending a politician under fire. What do you make of these new defenses from Democrats? Well, let me first say that, you know, Joe Biden has been much more involved with his family's finances than I think people understand. And I've done a lot of reporting on this in the past. And people can look up some of my older reporting on Joe Biden, James Biden, Hunter Biden, going back to the 90s and the 2000s. And so I think we have to bear that context in mind as we're thinking through what Biden's role was here. At the same time, I would say that if Biden is getting on the phone with Hunter Biden and

making pleasantries to, let's say, business partners at a dinner, unless Republicans can come up with something more than that, like unless they can prove or show or have some kind of evidence that that Biden was getting paid or that Biden was aware of who those people were, then I don't think they have what what they think they have here. Now, I I do think it's fair to say that Joe Biden knows that Hunter Biden oftentimes when he's putting him on speakerphone is doing it so that he can impress people. And oftentimes those people are ones who are paying him for his last name and for his access. And I think if you're a liberal watching this right now, you should think about that. Think about what is what is Biden?

What does Biden think in that moment? And he probably knows exactly what's going on. Now, this idea from Comer that therefore Joe Biden is guilty of being a foreign agent. I don't think has been remotely proven because you'd have to show that Biden did something. Now, OK, yes, Biden did fire this. You get this Ukrainian prosecutor fired who was investigating Burisma. But that was also American policy at the time.

So you can't really hang your case on that. Was there anything else that Biden did when it came to Romania or China or anything else related? You know, those things remain just allegations, not even specific allegations, just kind of broad kind of smoke. There is a lot of smoke. And I do think that it was unethical. And I think that Hunter Biden was exploiting his father's grief at that time. You know, it is one thing to talk every day in this in this period of grief. It is another thing to put your dad on speakerphone when you're at a dinner party with your business partners like that. You don't get the kind of grief exception for that move. You

know what you're doing there. And that is so interesting. No, that's so interesting because I think that's why they were doing this, right? Like Joe Biden is not a stupid man when it comes to the blurring of line between government and business. Again, like the man that represented Delaware for decades, like he absolutely understands as a man who's in the Senate for a very long time, exactly how these things are supposed to work, exactly how influence peddling works. He's been the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Like he absolutely knows what these things are. And that's why I actually think this is a really good point because what Republicans are, you know, very, they really feel like each new revelation gets them closer to

maybe an impeachment hearing being opened. And we talked last week about Kevin McCarthy floating that if people stop cooperating and obviously Archer ended up actually testifying. So maybe if that was subtly about Archer or about other things. That's off the table for the speaker now. I don't know. But fundamentally, why would Joe Biden allow Hunter Biden to come with him on Air Force Two? Why would Joe Biden stop by Cafe Milano where he knows damn well that Hunter Biden's clients are there and seeing him is what gets Hunter the money? Why would he say, quote, I hope you know what you're doing? That's his own admission to Hunter Biden when he takes on Burisma as a client when Joe Biden has been

fingered by the Obama administration to lead the Ukraine cause for the Obama White House. Well, because there's always plausible deniability with something like this. All Hunter Biden needs is the Biden last name. Joe Biden doesn't need to actually do anything other than hit the links, go to the golf course with Hunter's clients, go to Cafe Milano, be on speakerphone. And as long as he, like he actually doesn't have to talk about business at all. I find it extremely hard to believe that never happened in any sort of broad context whatsoever. In fact, I'm sure that it did.

But unless you have a smoking gun audio of that conversation and Joe Biden, you know, being explicit about any sort of quid pro quo, which again, like that's what's so slimy about this is that he knows there's always plausible deniability. He knows that all he has to do is show up and show these clients that Hunter is in contact with his father. That's all he has to do. And Hunter can talk to other people that are not his father that can maybe advance his policy interests. And that's where I think Republicans would be wise to focus on for the future. Are there people that aren't on the Biden administration sanctions list that were, you know, in Russia and Ukraine that are tied to Hunter Biden? Are there results that we can see sort of tangibly directly, whether it was in the Obama administration or the Biden administration?

You know, when it came to Tony Podesta, you could look at how many meetings he had with Clinton's State Department, for instance, as he was representing Yanukovych with Paul Manafort when it came to Ukraine. You can look. There are things you can do to show what tangible results were. So I'm interested in where that conversation goes. But to your point, I actually think that's so interesting. I don't know that they're ever going to get a smoking gun precisely because you don't ever need a smoking gun to do influence peddling in this country. I think it's also possible that Hunter Biden, in the grips of a multi-year bender, didn't actually do much. That he was exploiting his father, exploiting his last name, and then exploiting all of his clients, pocketing the money and spending it just as fast without actually kind of delivering.

And I wonder if his not showing up for work is one of the things that could, in the end, get him off of a far-recharge. Because you have to spend a certain amount of your time doing lobbying. I think it's more than 20% of your time doing work. Or you have to do something material to benefit these clients. And you're like, well, guess what? of your time doing lobbying, I think it's more than 20 percent of your time doing work or you have to do something material to benefit these clients. You'd be like, well, you know, well,

guess what? I was on Skid Row. I was not actually lobbying on behalf of these Chinese energy companies or Romania or Ukraine. I wasn't showing up for these board meetings. I was wasted. So anyway, we'll see this. You know, I think the Republicans have their work cut out for them if they're going to, you know, find the evidence that's going to land this. But it is it is unseemly, just like Hunter Biden should not have had one of his first jobs be at MBNA, the bank that Biden represented in the credit card company that Biden represented in Delaware. He shouldn't become a lobbyist for MBNA.

You know, he shouldn't have done all of the things that he's done throughout his career. And Joe Biden could have told him, if you want to do this, you're a grown man, but you cannot use my name and I'm not going to help you along the way because ethically I find this to be repugnant. Joe Biden did not do that. Yeah, and partisan spin is partisan spin. I mean, you know, Himes and Goldman are going to represent their party. This new line of defense feels a bit desperate to me, and especially Himes. It's very rich talking about the Republican Party's lust for retribution as his own party is championing the multiple indictments against Donald Trump. Again, the lust for retribution is pure politics. And we'll just, before we wrap here, put C3 up on the screen because we've been talking a little bit about the Farrah charges. This is Comer on Newsmax

saying basically that he thinks Archer's testimony opens up a Farrah charge for Hunter Biden because, or actually he's even saying potentially Joe Biden. The Democrats have consistently taken Joe Biden's position saying he never spoke with anyone Hunter Biden was doing business with. And yet we learned today that over 20 times, in fact, Joe Biden, while he was vice president, spoke with people who were sending the Biden family members these suspicious wires that the banks nor anyone else in America know the purpose of the wires were for. We've talked about FARA here a lot, because if you're interested in corruption in Washington, D.C., you go to the FARA database. You can just about any day of the week have a bonanza just looking at who's representing who in Washington and exactly how much money they're making for it.

It is basically the quintessential bipartisan grift. It's a World War II era law meant to sniff out people who are spreading propaganda for a foreign agent, foreign country. And you can imagine why that was important at the time that the law was enacted, just for the sake of transparency. They don't make it illegal, but you have to be transparent about it. And so it's been weaponized, I would say, in recent years against kind of Trump allies. But I think it's important here that whether we're talking about Jared Kushner or Hunter Biden, the more information, the better. The more people are being interrogated on this basis, the better, because these are serious laws. They're in place for a reason. And corruption is, again, like this is the quintessential bipartisan grift. So as far as

I'm concerned, the more information we can get on this, the better. I just I guess I wish the media was as curious about Hunter Biden and I guess potentially Joe Biden, although I agree with you, Ryan. I don't know how much is there there. I wish they were as concerned about that as they are about Jared Kushner or Paul Manafort when it comes to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Tony Podesta. But I guess that's a conversation for another day. Speaking of foreign influence, the Republicans are going after BlackRock as well. The House Republicans are investigating whether or not the investment firm has been putting money into Chinese companies that are involved in either human rights abuses or in backstopping the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military. What's your read on this latest move from House Republicans, Emily? Yeah, this is really interesting because if we put the next set of elements up on the screen,

the specific allegations are pretty fascinating. You would think people would have more shame than BlackRock seems to. This is the House Select Committee in China led by Mike Gallagher. The committee found that BlackRock, across just five funds, as Philip Wegman of RealClearPolitics reports, invested more than $429 million in companies that the committee says pose a national security risk to the US. Now, is that just bloated neoconservative language from the committee? I don't know. If we dove in and keep going on on this tweet thread, they have the receipts, they have some really specific receipts. Actually, we're talking about aviation companies.

We're talking about aircrafts for the People's Liberation Army. We're talking about cell phone telecommunications infrastructure in the CCP spy apparatus. If you're watching this, you see these all listed out on the screen. This is Morgan Stanley, not BlackRock, everything that I just listed out. We can then move to the BlackRock slide that we have prepared here that Philip tweeted out of the screenshots. So when it comes to BlackRock, also Aviation Industry Corporation, Morgan Stanley there as well, they are making aircraft for the PLA.

That includes, as the committee says, the fifth generation J-20 fighter jet and a munitions company, a Chinese munitions company that produces artillery shells for the People's Liberation Army. Now, whatever you think of the United States' policy towards China or China's policy towards the United States, the likelihood that those artillery shells could be used against American sailors, members of the American military in the years ahead is not that low. There's a likelihood, sadly, that's where we are,

that the very artillery shells that BlackRock is funneling people's investments into could be used against people in the United States of America. This is, again, an investigation that the Select Committee has opened. I think those receipts are pretty strong. Obviously, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock are denying that they've done anything wrong. Ryan, what do you make of – I keep referring to them as the receipts, like we're at a Real Housewives reunion, but what do you make of the evidence the committee has presented? I mean, the whole thing feels a little schizophrenic to me because our economies are completely entangled with each other as a direct result of American bipartisan foreign policy to make China, you know, to give China permanent, what do they call it, permanent normal relations or a normalized PNTR, permanent

normalized trade relations, which came in the late 1990s. That was a kind of Clinton agenda item that was backed heavily by Republicans. We produce most of our consumer goods over there. They purchase enormous amounts of our debt. And we do draw some lines around what US companies can invest in and not invest in. But now the House Republicans want to take it even further and say, well, OK, this isn't specifically outlawed. But if you look, it is a company that has connections to producing ammunition, which legitimately could be used against Americans in Taiwan at some point.

And I say it feels schizophrenic because it's like, all right, well, look, if that's our policy, then, then ban it. If, or if we're really worried about Chinese shells, you know, landing on the heads of American soldiers, better thing to do would be to make sure that that never happens, that the Chinese never fire shells on American soldiers. I don't think the kind of American soldier is going to be, you know, that the Chinese never fire shells on American soldiers. Because I don't think the American soldier is going to be that much more upset if he gets killed by a BlackRock funded munition or a munition that was funded by some other fungible resources that China put toward its munitions factory. I think primarily the soldier would just prefer not to have been

killed in the war and so i think everything needs to revolve around the question of how do we avoid uh in a completely unnecessary war like it it's it's talked about in washington nowadays almost as if this this is destined to happen that nobody has any choice that we're headed towards this conflict but this would be a war of choice like there are other options that are available This is destined to happen, that nobody has any choice, that we're headed towards this conflict. But this would be a war of choice. There are other options that are available. And so then the question is, does this type of stuff make war more likely or make war less likely?

Does this set us up to have more independence from China? Or does it put us on a collision course for war? And I don't know exactly the answer to that, but I think that there is something incoherent about the way that we're approaching it here. What would you have them do, you think, if House Republicans could write the law and kind of force Biden's hand to sign it? Yeah, that is a really good question because it gets into, you know, when Donald Trump, for instance,

what was referred to as the Muslim ban, tried to identify problematic countries that people shouldn't be traveling to. And if you're just gonna, it's like when they tried to do this with TikTok, one of the TikTok bills didn't actually mention China specifically. It was like broadly trying to define a hostile

foreign nation. And then you get into a lot of different questions about different countries and where there are competing interests, by the way. You can look at the way that people who talk a big game about China look at Saudi Arabia, for instance. And there's a really serious, I think, question of how you decouple. How do you deal with a country that is implicated in sort of intentional, coordinated government human rights abuses on your average citizen, let alone in Xinjiang, for instance? How do you deal with that while also not decoupling in a way that starts a war? Obviously, Taiwan and chips, a huge question on the table. Obviously, BlackRock is going to look at the fact that Intel is here in D.C. right now

pouring millions of dollars into a lobbying effort to allow them to continue to have big business in China that obviously will boost the Chinese government, the spying apparatus, etc., etc. And BlackRock is saying, we are trying to raise money for American pension funds. What makes us so different from Intel? What makes us so different from Walmart or wherever else? If we're all sort of boosting the Chinese economy, which is fundamentally dependent on the American economy, they need us. And that's why this trade war has been so bitter. And if we fully decouple from

China, and there's an argument that there's a desperation that leads to a potential invasion of Taiwan, which is obviously, as our government has said, our red line that involves a hot conflict. I mean, it is an absolute mess. And basically, it's the result of elite mismanagement over the course of decades that we're in this situation now. And nobody should have any confidence whatsoever that that's going to get better to prevent a hot conflict where actual lives are on the line because they're the ones that have screwed this up for decades. And now we're in a position where it's like, okay, so we're just going to, you know, posture about the evils of the CCP and the PLA. And a lot of us can agree on those things. But, you know, what does that look like? Are we going to then take on Intel? Are we

going to take on other companies? Like, how do you decouple in that way? I think obviously there's a difference between Walmart and people who are investing in munitions, investing in aircraft. I think that's obviously glaringly should be something that executives are ashamed. Larry Fink shouldn't for many reasons, but this one particularly, feel comfortable walking into cocktail parties in Manhattan or L or LA, like in a healthier society, he would be, he would be a pariah because of all of this. Um, but at the same time, to your point, like there isn't a fundamental incoherence too. Yeah. And it also feels like with the, the, the increasing climate collapse that we're, we're seeing, you know, what, how many, three weeks of 110 plus degrees in Phoenix, for instance, and that's

just that's just one part of the world that it's pathetic for the world leaders to be this close to like some type of a hot conflict between the two biggest economies rather than sitting down at the final stages of negotiations around how we're going to maintain the inhabitability of this planet. But that would be my ideal world, but that's not the one that we're in now. Let's talk about Elon Musk, whose ex, which formerly was Twitter, filed a lawsuit against an anti-hate speech, purported anti-hate speech group this week that I think raises, actually, I think perhaps one of the most important conversations in American politics and culture in general right now.

But this is from NBC News. XCOR, the parent company of social media platform formerly known as Twitter, it's like Prince, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court Monday against a nonprofit organization that monitors hate speech and disinformation, following through on a threat that had made media headlines hours earlier. So you have just hours between those headlines and the actual lawsuit itself. So it was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and accuses the Center for Countering Digital Hate, so the CCDH, of orchestrating, quote, a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform by publishing research reports claiming that that it could cherry pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful

content. This is actually fascinating because one of the biggest problems social media companies have right now, and in fact, why you see over and over again in the Twitter files and the Facebook files that Jim Jordan has started sharing and people like Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger have been covering excellently, what you start to see is that these companies are so terrified, maybe not under Elon Musk, but they're so terrified of pressure from the media in many cases, which is odd that the media is acting as like the censors, the defenders of free speech and the First Amendment are the ones that are pressuring these companies, and also from the government to crack down on hate speech. And fundamentally, it's a question of how we define hate speech. So here's more from NBC News.

The research report that drew particular ire from XCOR claimed that the platform had failed to take action against 99% of 100 posts flagged by the CCDH staff members that included racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic content. Now, I don't think this research is public. And the NBC thing says that New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NBC, they've cited their research. So that is actually pretty key key how are they defining hate speech how are they define defining racism homophobia and anti-semitism anti-semitism in particular ryan this is where we find it found agreement that sometimes it is defined so broadly that it becomes almost meaningless i think the same thing is true of racism and homophobia when you're calling people

who just disagree with colin kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem racist, whether they're white, black, Hispanic, if you're calling that racist, I think that's a crazy definition of racism. In the same way that I think we agree, some of these definitions of anti-Semitism are crazy and harmful to the cause of actually identifying and stamping out the scourge of anti-Semitism. What do you make of the suit, Ryan? You know, Twitter had, under Elon Musk, the ability to go to these advertisers and show them all of the data that is in their possession, do all of the fancy analysis of that data, and show to, let's, Nabisco or whoever is upset about the alleged hate speech and say, look, no,

this little nonprofit, they cherry picked, they stole our data. It's unfair the way that they're singling us out. And here, I can promise you that this is a platform that is going to be safe for your advertisements to appear on. And here's how we can make those promises. Elon Musk either fired the teams that were capable of doing that or just decided not to do that because the message he himself was delivering publicly was the opposite. He was yelling at these advertisers, saying that they ought to be standing up for free speech. And if they pulled their money, if you remember the very beginning,

he threatened them that he was gonna stick his army of people on them and like boycott them in kind of a proto Bud Light thing. He never managed to kind of pull any of that off. And so the whole, I mean, it almost seems like too easy of a shot to dunk on him for the hypocrisy around the free speech here. He's a free speech absolutist who's suing a nonprofit for speech, saying that its speech was insulting to them and harmed them. But yeah, I have zero sympathy for him because he has all of the Twitter data. Like if Unilever is concerned, if he wants to meet Unilever's concerns about the platform,

he's capable of pitching them just like any other social media platform is. But he doesn't want to. He thinks, rightly or wrongly, but he thinks that Unilever's concerns are flawed and get in the way of his, you know, the way that he wants to run his platform and the people that he wants to allow, you know, onto his platform. And so to me, you can't have it both ways. You don't get to decide for Unilever where they want to advertise. I do agree with you that I've always found it a little bit corrupt when digital media companies are doing this kind of crusading reporting about who's advertising on Facebook or Twitter or like

and and calling all these advertisers. And it really feels like pressuring them to to stop advertising with them. And I call it corrupt because they are direct competitors like digital media wants those advertisers. So if they can get these huge accounts to respond to my request for comment about why you're advertising with Facebook or with Twitter, despite the fact that X person said X terrible thing on Twitter, respond by 12 tomorrow or I'm going to write a story that you're still advertising with them. And so then they pull out. Now they still have this advertising budget.

Lo and behold, they run that advertising budget with the companies, with the digital media companies that drove them away. And so I have never thought that there's a directive coming from the sales team, like, please do this. But the economic and financial incentives are such that it's always kind of made that feel pretty icky. Yeah. And this is a big problem with advertisers, and I think that's actually probably why you see the lawsuit. And I actually don't know what they're going to be able to show that was illegal, unlawful. I think that's pretty difficult, given where, to your point, A, about coming from a free speech absolutist is sort of amusing. But secondly, I actually don't know what in that report is going to actually constitute

defamation or fraud or anything like that. It reminds me actually of the story about the Southern Poverty Law Center we talked about not that long ago, where they had to admit in court filings, you know, they like to act as though their designations, which I think smear Christians and conservatives in ways that are, you know, some of those groups that they identify absolutely deserve to be on their hate map, their hate list, whatever it is. Some do not. And they had to admit in court filings recently, they're being sued by one of those groups. They had to admit that they were subjective and, you know, that their opinion, basically. And that's when we, when we're, when we're throwing around words like racist,

homophobic, anti-Semitic, it's always been a matter of opinion. We haven't always agreed on what the definition of those terms are. And I think that's an important thing to recognize. There was a time when there was just abject and disgusting denial to call racism actual racism. And so, I mean, yes, I think that stuff is all important, but I also think the weaponization of those terms is important. And advertisers are not going to catch on to that because they don't want to risk advertising on a space like Twitter, where people are going to send them messages and easily be able to tweet and be like, why is your advertisement showing up next to this tweet?

So some of I'm looking at, I should correct myself. I think some of this stuff actually is public. I think the research here, a lot of it actually is public. And some of this is a stretch. Some of it is absolutely hate speech. And it's absolutely like just incitement. And as an advertiser, you would never, ever want your content showing up next to, this is one of the tweets, quote, Hitler was right, with a montage of Hitler attached to the words. You can understand why, yeah, Unilever wouldn't want to be next to that tweet, you know, advertising for their soap. So it's both a problem for Elon Musk and a problem for these groups.

Ryan, as you mentioned, it was actually NBC News that contacted Google about the comment section of The Federalist one time trying to get us kicked off of Google's ad platform, which is a monopoly. It wasn't Google. It was actually NBC News, other journalists, again, taking down a competitor by saying our comment section, as opposed to Google, which runs YouTube, by the way, was beyond the pale and meant we should get off of the Google ad platform. So ads are actually where we're testing, stress testing our concept of free speech in an interesting way. So it's a lawsuit definitely to keep an eye on because it does in and of itself microcosmically kind of stress test all of those questions. But I'm not sure what's actually going to be illegal here. So good luck to Elon, I guess. Yeah, there you go. Best of luck out there, buddy. All right, Ryan. Well, you're going to talk to us about some breaking news out

of Niger. You're in France right now, so actually sort of well-placed. What have you got for us? Yeah, so the French interests in Africa have been challenged a lot the last couple of years, and we're going to get into where that all where that all is coming where that all's coming from where it might be going uh you can put we can put up r1 here uh europeans particularly uh french people uh are now being evacuated from niger after this after a coup uh last last week and uh protests against kind of french what they they call occupation, you know, the presence of French troops inside France. It's not just the French, if you can put up R2 here. The U.S. has a military presence in Niger as well, and reporting here from CNN that U.S. troops are being restricted to the American base as things get tense in the country. Part of the politics that are unfolding

here are related to, believe it or not, the Wagner Group. The Wagner Group has been heavily active in Russia and has been able to kind of fill a vacuum that's been created by a lot of anti-French hostility that stems not just from the colonial hangover, but more recently related to kind of the French and incumbent government's inability to put down the Islamic extremist militant movements and put up R3 here. This has been in Niger and other surrounding countries a huge kind of boon for the Wagner group and for Russia. And as you see another great game playing out between the United States, France, Russia,

China, to get a sense of kind of where we're talking about and what's going on. I assume not everybody knows exactly where you know where we're talking about. And if you what what's what's key here and we're going to get it I'm going to get into this in a minute is is the country just to the northeast of of Niger. That is that is Libya. And the crisis in Libya that was fueled by the French and supported by the United States. In the U.S., we think about it as just a U.S. kind of run operation against Gaddafi. It's really kind of French run with U.S. support. And that is how it's viewed in Central Africa. And so the U.S. has did itself know, has did itself no favor supporting that. The French are the ones that have kind of taken a lot of of the the hostility to back up.

If you guys if you remember the, you know, the kind of Islamist organization, terrorist organization Boko Haram, which was famous for kidnapping hundreds of girls, they under pressure ended up allying with the Islamic State and creating kind of a new insurgent movement that operates throughout Central Africa and Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. And the result has been enormous instability. So in 2020, you had a coup in Mali. And then again, another coup in Mali in 2021. So the military junta is in charge over there. January 2022, you had a military coup in Burkina Faso. So the military junta is in charge over there.

That kind of left Niger a little bit isolated. Niger had its first kind of peaceful, quote unquote, peaceful transfer of power in 2021 when President Mohamed Bazoum took over. I say peaceful in quotes because there were a lot of allegations of irregularities and there was like a 10-day

shut off of the internet and, you know, a kind of brutal crackdown. So to say that it was a perfectly peaceful transfer of power wouldn't be fair that it was a perfectly peaceful transfer of power wouldn't be fair, but it was a peaceful transfer of power compared to some of the civil wars in the region in the past. So in Niger recently, you had a movement that's called M62, which people can look up. And it's a fascinating kind of combination of civil society groups, uh, you know,

the trade trade unions, uh, and others who are frustrated, uh, economically, as well as, uh, frustrated at the kind of lack of success in the war against the, uh, the new Boko, the new Boko Haram. Uh, and so, uh, you've, you did not have the M62 movement kind of lead this coup, but you have seen them supporting the coup leaders. And also you've had a lot of people in the streets celebrating the kind of the French, you know, the kind of anti-French sentiment and also then elevating Russia, saying that they would prefer to align themselves with Russia, which, you know, the kind of anti-French sentiment and also then elevating Russia, saying that they would prefer to align themselves with Russia, which, you know, ought to be a huge wake-up call, that if you have, you know, people in the streets, you know, that are massing in numbers higher,

you know, anybody can bring a few people out in the streets and put a camera in their face, but if they're massing in high enough numbers that they're staying out there for several days and waving Russian flags, you have a problem. And so there are now real concerns that we're going to have a war in Central Africa. You have countries, I think Chad is being encouraged to start sending troops into Niger to reinstall the president who's detained. There's this organization over there called the Economic Community of West African States, which is 15 countries, and several of those are the ones that are now of coup governments. The ones that do not have coup governments or are still aligned with the West are threatening Niger that they're going to send troops in and reinstall the president if they don't do that.

But to go back to Libya, for instance, where did this all come from? In 2010, the United States and France decided that it was in our interest to go in and take out Qaddafi and insert ourselves and help produce a civil war that produced one of the most kind of famous hot mic moments from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We can roll R5 here. Yes, we came, we saw, he died. Did it have anything to do with your visit? I'm sure it did. So that's in reference to the killing of Gaddafi. And so here we are now more than 10 years out, kind of still living with the instability. The forces that were unleashed in Libya have created the kind of insurgency that is now spreading throughout the region that russia is is able to uh exploit all of this of course on the backdrop of

the shift towards clean energy uh africa being you know a source of the the rare earth materials uh that you know that china and the united states are competing for in order to power this transition to a clean energy economy. So Emily, it hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention here in the United States, certainly in France it has. Macron has said it's absolutely untrue that he's gonna send troops in, because the coup government,

in order to kind of buttress its own kind of strength with the public, is warning, oh, the French are coming, the French are coming. Because, you know, if you can elevate the boogeyman of Macron sending in troops, then they're hoping people will rally around them. He has said absolutely not, they're not going in there. But Niger is the kind of leading source of uranium for France. And France is a heavier, heavy nuclear industry economy. So, you know, it's unclear where this is going, but it looks like it's not going in a very peaceful place.

Colonialism very much still with us, the story shows pretty clearly and the point you just made about. What is your point today? Let's talk about Dana Bash of CNN who in a conversation with pollster Frank Luntz, who I guess is considered a right of center pollster. She I think just revealed a really problematic sentiment that persists. It will never go away despite years of reckoning with a lot of this from our media. So let's play the clip of Dana Bash. Let's look specifically about the former president and the support before we get to

the focus group that you did. the support that he has nationally has grown since February, 12 points since February. And DeSantis, who was just right behind him at a time, is now even further behind him. Who are these people who aren't part, maybe necessarily, of that Trump core, what we call the Fifth Avenue Republicans who, you know, he famously says, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and those people will support me. But the people on top of that who are looking at everything that's going on that happened on January 6th, and they're saying, OK, I'll throw my support behind Donald Trump. OK, the less educated you are, the more likely you are to support Donald Trump. Lower income. People have been unemployed at some point in the last five years.

It's a socioeconomic level that was once a Democratic voter, which is quite interesting. The people have come over to the GOP. They gave them the majority in 2016. A lot of them, maybe 15 percent% have been voting Democrat in the past, and they were simply frustrated, fed up. They feel ignored, forgotten, even betrayed. And there's a level of anger there that brought them to Donald Trump because he represented and offered to be their voice and to speak for them. And what has happened is that group has actually grown over time. There's a lot to unpack there, but I want to first say, I think it's pathetic that Frank Luntz,

an elite pollster, Kevin McCarthy's roommate, at least at one point, is the intermediary between Dana Bash and those voters, right? So you are going to talk about American politics every single day and ask with befuddlement to a Beltway pollster what explains something that if you went to a bar in Iowa, you could find out with much more context and texture in five minutes than if you sat in CNN's air conditioned studio and talked with your intermediary between the people and you, Frank Luntz, like a multimillionaire beltway inside holster. Dana Bash shouldn't have to ask Frank Luntz this question with confusion. And in fact, the idea, the notion that she's confused by it in and of itself is just, I

don't know, I want to use the word frustrating, but it's beyond frustrating. I mean, it's pathetic, it's sad, and it's a huge story of what's wrong in American media right now because that same question was being asked repeatedly in 2015, not even just 2016. 2015, after Donald Trump said what he said about John McCain, after Donald Trump said what he said, Russia, if you're out there, let's see those emails. After Donald Trump said, you know, if I were president, Hillary Clinton, you'd be in prison. He has all of these moments throughout 2015 and 2016. During his presidency,

we were sort of breathlessly asked who would still support him after the Stormy Daniel stuff. Who are these Christian voters who are electing a man who seems to be of such poor character and doesn't truly care about Christians, as though they're all rubes that don't understand Donald Trump is in no way an evangelical Christian. He's the man who famously at Liberty University referred to, quote, two Corinthians instead of the second Corinthians. He's not a man. He says the Bible is his favorite book. I think that's a Trump quote once, but I'm not confident that he reads it all that often. And I don't think a lot of Christians have been Christian conservatives, evangelical conservatives, white evangelicals have been persuaded otherwise.

And again, the answer to this question is perfectly obvious. And it's one that Dana Bash should actually be asking Democratic pollsters. Why do Republicans who are not, as she refers to, those Fifth Avenue Republican voters, the people who stick with him time and time and again, why do they go with Donald Trump? Because their alternative for years has been Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. That's their alternative. Joe Biden won't even get out there and debate, despite the fact that a lot of his party wants him to at least debate.

Maren Williamson posted a poll yesterday showing Robert F. Kennedy at about 13% of the vote and her around 10%. So that's a quarter of the Democratic electorate. Joe Biden was around 63% in that poll. That's about a quarter of the Democratic electorate right now, openly supporting another candidate other than the sitting president of the United States. Joe Biden is falling asleep in meetings. He's fumbling all kinds of things, mixing up all kinds of things in ways that just continue to test the limits, the possibilities of how incapacitated a president possibly can be. And yet, that's why it's just so abundantly obvious. The media doesn't ask

those questions of Joe Biden. And so then they end up looking like this, trying to figure out why people who are not necessarily MAGA rally goers are voting for Donald Trump. And it's because the media has shielded the Democrats from criticism. It's because the media has in fact allowed Joe Biden to do things that take those swing Republican voters and put them in Trump's camp. They just have allowed that, facilitated it in so many different ways, shielded Democrats from reasonable criticism to the point where, yeah, a whole lot of people are pulling the lever for Donald Trump when their alternative is Joe Biden. It's just so, so obvious. Plus, it's equally obvious. I mean, this is, Sagar and Crystal

talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I think it's worth repeating. The New York Times actually does, they did a poll with Sienna that came out, as Crystal and Sagar discussed, where they were able to break the Republican electorate into three groups. The MAGA base, so that would be Dana Bash's Fifth Avenue Republicans. Donald Trump famously said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for me. Persuadable voters, and then voters who are not open to Trump. So of the Republican electorate, you have 37% MAGA base, 37% persuadable, and 25% not open to Trump. So that 37% of persuadable voters is really who Dana Bash is talking about.

And if we look at that 37% of persuadable voters, they are, less of them earn $100,000 a year or more and less of them have a college degree than people who are not open to Trump. And that continues, as Frank Luntz highlighted rightfully in that segment, that continues to decline the more supportive you are of Donald Trump. And the one that really stood out for me is this is their view on the issue of whether America is in danger of failing. 80% of the MAGA base says, yes, America is in danger of failing. 61% of persuadable voters, America is in danger of failing. 61% of persuadable voters say America is

in danger of failing. I'm sorry, 37% of that chunk that are not open to Donald Trump, only 37% of them say America is in danger of failing. And so why then would people continue to support Donald Trump in the last six or so months after, as Dana Bash says, this information? Did they not watch Liz Cheney's select committee hearings? How could they possibly be coming to this conclusion? Is it because they're simply ignorant? Is it because they're bad people?

They're bigoted, they're racist, or they just simply don't believe anything we journalists, the vanguard, the interpreters of truth and reality are telling them. That has to be the only explanation. Actually, it's because life is not so great outside of the air-conditioned CNN newsroom. That's pretty clear. Again, if she had just taken the time instead of asking Frank Lentz, maybe went into Trump country or the suburbs where people are, those parents in Dearborn, Michigan, evangelicals and Muslims are coming together and talking about books like

genderqueer being in libraries for really young people. And then seeing the teachers union that is allied very closely with the Biden administration, defended by the Biden administration, defend books like that. The alternative, and this is a real problem, like the Fifth Avenue quote has always been interesting because as pathetic as that is, that it's our state of affairs right now, the alternative, so many people don't see it as being better. And that is fundamentally, I think, a huge, continues to be a huge blind spot for the media that knows a lot of powerful people in Democratic circles, trusts a lot of powerful

people in Democratic circles, actually trusts a lot of people in never-Trump Republican circles who are of their same income, class level, and also just say, look around you. America is not in danger of failing when they don't live in communities that are ravaged by the opioid crisis and deindustrialization and you know I'll add though a lot of you may disagree the sexual revolution when they don't see that every single day you obviously are going to struggle to I think really fully come to terms with that and it's not just post JanuaryJanuary 6th. This has been happening since Donald Trump proved to be one of the most bizarre people who has ever

run for office in the history of American politics since 2015, since 2015. And they still have not been able to sort of wrap their heads around this phenomenon. And I think part of that is because they're asking Frank Luntz, Ryan, what did you make of Dana Bash's befuddlement in this context? Maybe I'm being uncharitable. Maybe she was just asking a reasonable question. I think it's fine to ask that question. Although my impression is that she's genuinely stumped and confused by the phenomenon. Yeah, I mean, it's not your job to be charitable. Make sure to subscribe if you want to watch the full show beginning to end. Get a premium subscription.

We appreciate that so much here at CounterPoints. You can watch us from beginning to end. Just the full video if you like to do that. And make sure to subscribe on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe over on iTunes, Spotify, whatever podcast platform you're using. We appreciate it so much. We're so glad to have Ryan here with his giant head in the studio. It makes it seem, Ryan, almost like you're using. We appreciate it so much. We're so glad to have Ryan here with his giant head in the studio. It makes it seem, Ryan, almost like you're here in the States.

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