Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/23/22: Fauci Out, NY Elections, Stocks Plunge, Trump Lawsuit, UPS Workers, Andrew Tate, Afghanistan Policy, & More!

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss Anthony Fauci's retirement, primary night in New York, stocks plunging yesterday, Russian claims about the Dugin murder, Trump's DOJ lawsuit, UPS workers, Andrew Tate's popularity, & Afghanistan one year later! We are once again sending the show out via MailChimp!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 Adam Weinstein: https://quincyinst.org/report/strategic-patience-sustainable-engagement-with-a-changed-afghanistan/  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. We have a whole lot of things breaking yesterday and even into yesterday evening. So Dr. Fauci is officially announcing his retirement as head of the NIH after a very long tenure. So we won't break all of that down for you. And also a little trip down memory lane from the Fauci time during coronavirus. We also have primaries today, especially so in the state of New York and Florida,

a lot going on, especially on the Democratic side in New York, including a very key bellwether congressional race. It's a special election. One of the candidates on the Democratic side really focusing on abortion. On the Republican side, really focusing in on inflation.

It's a swing seat. So interesting to see how that all shakes out. Big movement in the stock market yesterday. You know, the analysts are like, this is anticipation of the Fed's meeting and Jackson Hole and concerns about what Fed Chair Jerome Powell is going to say. So we will tell you about that. Also, new details about the assassination of that Russian intellectual, I guess you would call him, Dugan's daughter, and exactly what is going on there. And we have new details about the Trump-Mar-a-Lago raid, affidavit, new comments from the judge, new reporting that is coming out, new moves from the Trump team, all of that.

But we wanted to start with Dr. Fauci. That's right. Pretty big news that came out yesterday. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Fauci doing two exclusive interviews with the New York Times and the Washington Post to announce officially he will be stepping down in December to pursue, quote, his next chapter. So this is the man who is advised, as they say, seven presidents and spent more than 50 years at the National Institute of Health resigning at the NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He's 81 years old. The reason why this is a little bit strange is that Fauci had previously said, yeah, I am going to leave. But then he came out and he's like, no, no, no, no. But I'll stay on until 2024. And now he's like, no, but I am actually going to leave this time. And it caught some

people by surprise. We don't exactly know what the impetus for that was. Previously, he had committed to reigning all the way through the end of President Biden's at least first term. Now, in it, he says, as he said, he's moving on to the next chapter as long as he's healthy, all of that. I think the reason why it is noteworthy is just, look, I mean, I think undoubtedly Fauci will be one of the most significant figures of our lifetime, really, whether we like it or not, in terms of impact on policy, initial pandemic response. And, I mean, in a lot of ways, responsible for some of the major dividing lines that we had in American society, many of the cleavages and more that have hardened both sides into where they are. I think the scars of COVID are going to be felt for many, many years, as much as everybody wants to move on. And one of the things that we wanted to do, and we did the same with CDC, whenever the CDC announced like, hey, by the way, we actually did screw up, everyone's like,

oh yeah, you think? Really? Interesting. Amazing. It took you two years in order to figure that out. With Fauci though, unfortunately, Crystal, he's basically just being hagiographically treated. We'll end this segment with an MSNBC on Rachel Maddow, where they're like, why does everybody hate you? What's so wrong with you? You didn't do anything wrong. The reaction to this, even in The Times and elsewhere, is like, he's some sort of major American hero. And so we, again, did the same thing that we did with the CDC. Put the vaccine question aside, of which there are, of course, many debates continue to be had. Just the pure pandemic response from the beginning, the lies, the manipulation of the public,

and perhaps one of the great scandals of all time, the cover-up of a very likely leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, of which he was directly connected to. Let's take a listen to all of that. The one thing that's paramount here that we want to make sure that people don't all of a sudden go out, buy and hoard masks that are most appropriately used and necessary for the frontline healthcare workers who do need it for the clear and present danger that they find themselves in when they are taking care of people who are actually sick with coronavirus disease. We still don't know what the origin is. That if you look historically and the way things rolled out, we all felt and still do actually, Willie, that it is more likely to be a natural jumping of species from an animal reservoir to a human. However, since we don't know that for sure, that you've got to keep an open mind.

I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you were referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function. Let me finish. You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You're saying that's not gain of function? Yeah, that is correct. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there's a person there. So it's easy to criticize. But they're really criticizing science because I represent science, that's dangerous.

And of course, that last one I think will always be his legacy in my mind, which is that he basically aligned himself with the quote-unquote, the definition of science, and unfortunately actually politicized what science is, which is really just a scientific method. I always point to this, and so do you, let's put this up there, which is that the straight-up acknowledgement by Dr. Anthony Fauci, more than a year ago now at this point, in which is that the straight up acknowledgement by Dr. Anthony Fauci at more than a year ago now at this point, in which he had basically admitted that he was fudging the numbers as to what level of herd immunity would be needed in order to quote, go back to normal in order to try and manipulate public opinion. He said, well, when polls said only half of

Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75. Then when new surveys said 60% would take it, I said, oh, I can nudge this up a bit. So I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here. We really don't know what the real number is. So just say that. Yeah, just be like, I don't know. Don't be like, I told the American people what I thought they could handle at one time. I do think that last thought we played with him talking about how, you know, they're really attacking science because that's what I represent. I am science. You know, it actually is very revealing because he did become this total lightning rod where Republicans wanted to make everything about him and he was evil incarn and they're going to launch investigations, and we're going to get into that.

And Democrats wanted to worship him as a hero, and they wanted to have their votive candles, and all around D.C. you would see these signs, like, in praise and worship of him. worship or demonization of one person in particular, one very fallible human being who, as we document, made some very significant and very consequential mistakes, that is going to ultimately poison your public health response. It is ultimately going to make it very difficult to just assess the evidence as it is because people become too wrapped up in just defending whatever it is that this person is saying or doing or attacking whatever it is that this person is saying or doing. We see this in our politics all the time. It's just another reflection of the intense partisanship with which, you know, D.C. elites and some core of the Republican base and the sort of Democratic liberal base with which they view politics. Everything is filtered through the lens of like, is this person a good person or an evil person? Then if they're on the good side, I'm going to just take whatever they say, no matter what it is.

I'm going to justify it. I'm going to assume it's the truth. And if they're on the evil side, I'm going to do the polar opposite. He, during the coronavirus response, really became that sort of lightning rod figure. I mean, I will say, like, in terms of, you mentioned he was at the core of some of the politicization. I always have trouble saying that word. I mean, Donald Trump was by far the worst offender there when he was the president of the United States, and he's supposed to be at that time bringing people together and not, you know, going off on these crazy tangents as he did. So let's lay a lot of blame at his feet. But the inability for liberals to recognize some of the very crucial failures of Fauci on masks, on herd immunity, on other things

that we're talking about here, I think really hampered the response and was a sort of, it was an indication and at the center of how our coronavirus response became so partisan in a way that did not happen in other countries. Like it wasn't, it didn't have to go this way, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I completely agree. I mean, if you think back to the very beginning, there were a lot of, I mean, myself included, I was like, wow, you know, what often brings a great country together, which is in the middle of strife, is a major disaster and everybody can unite. And that lasted for like two weeks. And then look, I mean, no denying what Trump did in terms of, well, we're going to, the churches are going to be full by Easter. That may continue to be one of

the worst things that he did, or likening it to just the flu in the very beginning, not taking much of the response seriously. However, and this is the other thing that you said, by the media playing actually into that dynamic and turning him essentially into a god for, let's say, millions of people, we never still, to this day, have an honest accounting of what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Look, at this point, we have got reams of evidence in the lab leak direction, and we've got some very, very scant, very biased studies that continue to come out that say, well, maybe it did come out of the Wuhan wet market, even though the Chinese government still does not stick to. And this is the key thing. Still, they do not even stick to the wet market theory. They're like, ah, it just kind of happened.

By the way, let's all just move on. Let's not talk about that anymore. We could get into the details ad nauseum. But at a very basic level, they did implicate Dr. Anthony Fauci. And that's part of the reason why I have always looked at him as a real villain. Because what he did was he was able to use his public position in order to cover up, again, one of the great scandals. And perhaps what's worse is that we have not done anything to rectify that situation. All of the talk about let's ban gain-of-function research, let's have an actual discussion around when it's appropriate, when not, what are the guardrails, U.S. guidelines, none of that happened.

Instead, we ended up, as Josh Rogin has often pointed out, we ended up actually okaying the tune of billions of dollars of new money in order to be spent on this. None of the public health figures who are involved in gain of function, who, you know, paved the way for all this, quote, scientific collaboration with the Wuhan lab, none of those people have ever been held to account. Peter Daszak, many of these, I mean, these are liars, absolute liars that should be held to account. That hasn't come, unfortunately, Crystal. Yeah, no. And I mean, I will say in terms of the Republicans like chomping at the bit for this investigation, which I totally support. And I would love to in a like actually fact finding type of way, which I'm not totally confident they'll be able to accomplish. But I would love to get to the bottom of it. But I do also have to say like the only thing we really know about what Republicans will do if they take power is which investigations they're going to obsess over. You know, Hunter Biden and Tony Fauci. We know that's going to be the focus of their efforts. Have they told us a single thing about what they would actually do about

inflation or tax policy or children or educate? No, not really. They're, you know, very clear on who they want to go after and who they want to sort of demonize and continue to dig into. Not so clear on their agenda for the American people. Be that as it may, look, I 100% support getting to the bottom of what happened. I think Fauci was, this is one of the prime areas where he was extremely dishonest with the American people. He is implicated in some of the very early conversations in terms of trying to completely shut down any discussion and debate and inquiry into whether this was a possible plausible theory that caused, you know, the entire response and investigation to lose a lot of critical time and, you know, may ultimately

lead to the fact that we never know definitively what exactly happened here because so much time was ultimately lost. Yeah, I think that's right. And look, Fauci going out with a bang, of course, on the Rachel. And this is what I love too, which is that of all the places for his last cable news interview, or the very first at least of the day after his announcement, where does he choose? The Rachel Maddow program with Rachel Maddow himself, in which he says that we're dealing with the distortion of reality as to why anybody does not like him. Let's take a listen to that. What we're dealing with now is just a distortion of reality, Rachel. I mean, conspiracy theories, which don't make any sense at all, pushing back on sound public health measures, you know, making it look like trying to save lives is encroaching on

people's freedom. He'll never learn. I just think it's too perfect. Let's move on then to what you were discussing, Crystal, which is that, you know, it's not like the Republican fervor is going anywhere. Rand Paul, who has really been probably his main antagonist in the Senate and is a doctor, so it actually at least helps in terms of his questioning. Let's put this up there on the screen. He says, quote, Fauci's resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions that he participated in concerning the lab leak. One of the problems that we've had, actually, is that in terms of the questioning of Dr. Fauci so far before Congress is that despite the fact that he has been under oath, he has been

at the very best, let's just say, massaging the truth. One of those clips that we shared, everybody, in the first block was whenever he was testifying and he was under questioning by Rand Paul. And he said, it is correct that the definition of gain of function research, that's not how we internally define it in the National Institute of Health. Thus, we never funded gain-of-function research. No serious researcher in the field, and you can go out, Richard Albright and others, have completely debunked this idea from top to bottom. And of course, though, people in scientific establishment, just too afraid. I mean, one of the other things that really was shocking to me, and I probably shouldn't have been, which is that scientific funding is just as corrupt as everything else. Yeah.

Which is, the National Institute of Health and the NIAID provides the vast majority of funding to all of these universities and these labs. And so they can't say anything. They don't want to say anything against Fauci and be like, yeah, actually, he did lie about this, or he's massaging shoes, because then, boom, they're going to get cut off from billions of dollars. And they have all their staff. They've got to pay their salaries, justify their tenure at their university. It's a whole racket, this entire thing.

There's a couple of nonprofits in the government that basically support this entire field of research. So with no actual private donations or others, Fauci was a legitimate king in this area on top of Francis Collins, who also ran the NIH. He also very much had a hand in this cover-up. So I do think, Crystal, and let's throw this next one up there on the screen as well. This kind of alludes to what you're saying, which is that, look, one of the things that we know for sure is that some sort of investigation will happen. And look, Rand Paul may actually not be the one who's able to even do the questioning given the murky prospects of the GOP in the Senate. But I could say with relative confidence that the House is likely to go for the GOP and Jim Jordan and others have already pledged to have that investigation. So we may-

Yes, Jim Jordan, that beacon of truth and fair-mindedness. Listen, you take what you can get. You fight with the army that you have. I mean, look, there is a model for, there are models for bipartisan commissions that if, you know, there was an interest in actually getting at the truth, they could potentially pursue. Do I have any confidence that's going to happen? No, I don't. I mean, that's the problem is like, yeah, I support the idea of investigating this. And I think it's extremely important to actually understand how this pandemic started, not just for the sake of history and knowing what the hell happened, but this type of gain-of-function research continues to occur. And there still has not been any deep reflection, as far as I can tell, within the scientific community about how far we should go, what are the risks, is it really worth it? And, you know, I mean, if you are that scientist who's trying to further your career and you're excited about getting this grant and you want to push things as far as you can, there's an

incentive to not check yourself and ask the question, but should we? Should we ultimately pursue this research? And that's why it's ultimately so important to really understand in a just factual way what happened here and what led to this leak that caused, you know, caused a million deaths here in the U.S. alone. This was a horrific world tragedy that we continue to, 400 people a day continue to die from coronavirus. And you continue to have these massive economic reverberations that have become extremely chaotic and very hard to predict how it's ultimately all going to play out. So, yes, it matters to get to the bottom of these things. I don't have a lot of confidence in Rand Paul or Jim Jordan to do that in a sort of neutral fact finding way, but we'll see. And, you know, I think just in terms of Fauci to kind of bring this full circle and wrap it up, it really is

a perfect emblem of the way that our politics has become so dumb where you either have to justify every action of someone or demonize every action of someone. There's no ability to actually evaluate the facts and the data and the science. And it's also a really devastating commentary on the media because, as you were saying, you know, we hadn't really fully thought through all of the weird incentive structures within the scientific community. And I think we could be forgiven for that a little bit because this isn't our realm. We're not health reporters. You're not focused on, like, this isn't our beat. But you had journalists who supposedly this was their beat. And you would think that they would understand some of the

strange incentives and the way that they might be getting spun by some members of the sort of public health apparatus who didn't seem to see that at all, who allowed themselves to get completely spun, who allowed themselves to even go down the path of saying, not only are we not going to investigate the lab leak theory or, you know, put it, posit it as a plausible potential way that this pandemic started, we are going to tell you that if you even talk about this, you are bad and wrong and racist.

And that was for, you know, at least a year. At least one. That was the dominant ethos. It was, you know, at least a year. At least one year. That was the dominant ethos. It was, you know, it was censored on social media platforms. Outlets from the New York Times to CNN to basically everywhere else were like, this has been debunked. It's absolutely not the case. And again, if you even suggest that it might be otherwise, there's something wrong with you. Yeah, I mean, that reminds me of Donald McNeil.

People might remember him. He was canceled and fired from the New York Times for supposedly saying the N-word on a high school class trip in 2017. Anyway, five years later, during the racial reckoning, he lost his job. Well, Donald McNeil was actually the chief science reporter at the New York Times, and he wrote a long reckoning with exactly what you're saying. And he's like, look, I'm going to be honest. I've known Peter Daszak for 20 years. When he told me that they didn't do it, I believed him. And it's like, that was enough? That was it? And he essentially admitted that he never published anything on LabLeak, that he took the EcoHealth Alliance word for it, Dr. Fout. He's like, I've known him for a long time. You know, all these people.

And look, I mean, they cashed. The cover-up is insane when you really look at it in retrospect. Because you have that, what, January 2020 email where they're like, the virus is consistent with, you know, not consistent with evolutionary origin or something like that. And it's like, wow, like clear as day. Right there. It's possibly a man-made virus, wow, like clear as day. It's possibly man-made virus, manipulated virus inside of a lab. Then a week later, they're like, no,

it didn't come from a lab. Then what? A month later, it gets published in The Lancet, which is like this major scientific journal. It's like this credential washing that we now know is all complete BS. They've had to retract many of those. They've had to explain all this as a result of FOIA and more. And now it's just, you know, where is Peter Dezak? I don't know. He was interviewed on PBS, what, a year and a half ago, 18 months ago? Nobody cares anymore.

Fauci, he's going to sail off in the sun. He'll become a hero. The guy's going to write a book. He'll probably make a couple million dollars, $5 million minimum, right? You know, for what he's like, I'm not going to work in the pharmaceutical industry. I'm like, bro, you don't need to.'re you're gonna be a multi-millionaire i think he personally is actually worth something like 10 15 million dollars so for him i cannot get over how old this man is it blows my mind and that's what i really want a congressional inquiry into is how

he looks so damn good yeah that's what i need we need to know uh we need to subpoena his diet his drinking habits like i want to know his life. I want to know everything about him. It's like the entire regime, those centenarian Okinawans. I'm like, tell me everything about him. I mean, that is suspicious in and of itself. Okay. I'm just going to put that out there. Right. Okay. All right. Let's talk about the crime. All right. Lots of very interesting little dramas playing out today in New York. And a lot of them have to do with the fact that you had this big redistricting effort. And so now you have totally new districts that have been drawn and it has thrown the whole thing into total chaos. And now you have a bunch of these

primaries that are happening today, which are like, you know, established Democratic incumbent versus incumbent and progressives versus corporates, all sorts of storylines that are playing out right now. So let's start with the first one that we actually have covered this one a little bit before. So in this district, it's New York 10. It's like lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. You've got Dan Goldman, who is the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune. And he also became known in like resistance lib circles because he was the lawyer on the first Trump impeachment. And he is the more sort of centrist, moderate, corporate candidate. And then he is up against a number of individuals who position themselves as being the sort of progressive in the race. You have Yulene Ngu, who is, I think, seems to be leading the pack in terms of the sort

of progressive side of the race. You also have Mondaire Jones, who, of course, is a squad member. And there's an interesting thing that happened with him too, because he was living in a different district and sort of representing a different district. Then when they did all this redistricting, Sean Patrick Maloney, who's the head of the DCCC, basically bigfooted him, came in and announced, I'm going to run for this district now. And sorry, Mondaire Jones, like you're screwed. Mondaire Jones decided, all right, well, I'm going to go and try to run in this other New York City district, even though he didn't really live there. And so that's, I think, created issues for him.

So bottom line is you have Dan Goldman versus a bunch of progressives who seem to be splitting the vote at this point. And very likely, based on the limit of public polling that we have, that Goldman ultimately prevails. So the poll that we have out of PICS 11, Emerson College and The Hill, conducted from August 10th to August 13th, before Goldman was actually endorsed by The New York Times under very shady circumstances where they failed to reveal their direct conflict of interest with Mr. Goldman, he was at 22% support. Then you had Yulene Ngu, who's an assembly member that represents the district and has a strong base of support in the district already at 17% in second place. She's running with the support of the Working Families Party and local progressive elected officials. Then you had

Carlina Rivera at 13%, who also has some local elected officials, political clubs, and labor groups. And then you have also Mondaire Jones also at 13%. So it's a bit of a wide open race, especially since you have very limited public polling. But as I said, it kind of looks like what happened here is the left didn't get their act together. They didn't consolidate behind one candidate. And so it's very possible that Dan Goldman ultimately wins this one. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Goldman in particular, right, is just like the perfect commentary on where exactly we are today. Like the multimillionaire Yale lawyer who's famous for literally only one reason, and that is trying to impeach me. However, turned himself into a legitimate hero. Now he wants to be a congressman. I mean, who doesn't, right? It's a nice job, apparently.

And so now he's at the very top of this primary. He got the New York Times to endorse him. Trump himself even endorsed him. Oh, that's right. Which is hilarious. Tongue in cheek. Yeah, Trump gave a tongue. He's like, I fully endorse Dan Goldman.

He's like, he's my complete and total endorsement. They're like, this is a ploy by Donald Trump, and why we have to throw him in jail immediately. And actually, his opponents were using it against him, which I do think is pretty humorous. Yeah, I mean, I would too. Look, I think that, yeah, I mean, screw this guy, fine. Look, I think he's probably going to win, unfortunately.

I mean, he'll be what, a replacement level, like Dem, resistance? Standard, totally standard issue, forgettable Dem congressman. That's what he will be. The Acela just got a new customer. Now, I do want to say, like, it is far from certain that he ends up prevailing here just because we do have really limited polling. It's hard to, you know, figure out what exactly is going to happen. And as I said, it seems like of the progressives, Yulene Ngu, who right now represents sort of around the Chinatown area, seems to have the strongest support. So we'll see. There still is some drama here as to how it ultimately plays out. But it's looking like

it's shaking out that the progressives divided the vote amongst themselves and allowing Mr. Goldman with his Levi Strauss fortune, who will be one of the wealthiest members of Congress, which is something. It's a wealthy group out there. Congratulations. He ultimately gets elected. Okay, so that's the first one. The second one is, this is a really interesting one. So they used to have districts that one of them was sort of like centered in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The other one was centered in the Upper East Side. The Upper West Side was Jerry Nadler. The Upper East Side was Carolyn Maloney. Well, they decided instead to sort of like divide the city in half and have the Upper East Side and the

Upper West Side in one district. And now you have Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, both of whom are very senior members of the Democratic caucus, going up against each other. And there's a third candidate in the race as well, Siraj Patel, who's previously challenged Carolyn Maloney and actually came very, very close to defeating her. And there was a lot of, there was actual election ballot issues in that race that may have denied him victory ultimately. But so you've got a three-way race here. As far as I can tell, I think it's more likely that either Nadler or Maloney prevails. They seem to be getting most of the media attention here, although Siraj Patel is doing his damnedest to try to break through. But it has gotten ugly between Maloney and Nadler, who are, you know, colleagues and I presume have had a decent relationship throughout the years. Let's go ahead and put this Mediaite article up on the screen. Carolyn Maloney says, you know, that these reporters should check out a New York Post editorial about Jerry Nadler.

She says they call him senile. They cite his performance at the debate where he couldn't even remember who he impeached. He said he impeached Bush. So the actual quote from the Post editorial board was that Nadler during the August 10th debate, quote, exposed himself as this close to senile by saying he impeached former President George W. Bush. He was attempting to reference his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump. Carolyn Maloney has also made some very eyebrow raising comments in this race that may call into question her own mental state. And these are both, you know, relatively older people that we're talking about here with regards to Maloney and Nadler. First in a debate, they were both asked, everybody on the stage was asked, you know, would you support President Biden? Nadler basically

dodges. And she says, it's my understanding he's not running again, to which everyone was like, wait, what? Siraj Patel has tried to make hay out of the fact that, you know, neither one of them sort of just affirmatively backed Biden. Then in her interview with the New York Times editorial board, they asked her this again. And she says, off the record, it's not, it's my understanding he's not running again. And they're like, that's not how an editorial board interview works. They're like, no, this is on the record. It's all on the record. And she's like, oh, then, you know, I will, we'll see what happens or something like that. So anyway, they're not sending their best, but it's been an interesting sort of mudslinging fight between these two incumbents and with Suraj Patel as, listen, you never know when, because things get ugly between the top two contenders, someone sneaks through. So I guess that's the case for him. It's certainly possible. No idea. Schumer, actually, it was interesting to me that Schumer came in and outright endorsed just because Maroney and Schumer are, I mean, sorry, Maroney and Nadler are both, you know, like New York

warhorses. They're like very old. They've been around for decades. Been around forever. On the scene. So I think the fact that the time, I mean, I guess the times coming in and Schumer actually coming in for Nadler was the biggest surprise. And I actually think it might have been a move by the White House and by Dem leadership against Carol Maroney where they're like, hey, you should have kept your mouth shut about Joe Biden. They're like, and if you're not going to toe the line, they're like, we're going to knife you. Not even knife you in the back.

We'll stab you in the front for crossing us. It was shocking. Well, I mean, Nadler didn't back him either, though. I mean, this is shocking. This really is shocking because Biden is the incumbent president. And these are this is a deep blue district. The Republican doesn't stand a chance. So it's not like you see some of these centrist types who don't want to say how they feel about Biden.

In fact, in one of the upstate like sort of swing seats that is up today as well, the candidate there was like, I don't want to say whether I back Biden. Now that you can see the political logic because they're trying to win over Republicans. Biden's deeply unpopular. Okay. I see what's going on there here. There's not a lot of like political logic behind not supporting Biden. And to have two senior members of the Democratic caucus who hold, you know, relatively senior, like, leadership positions because they've been there for so damn long, to have both of them be like, eh, I'm not really going to dive into that. I don't really want to say. That's pretty extraordinary. Very interesting there. So I don't know what's going to come of that. I will say, having been around, I've been around both Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney. It might be a low bar, but I would say

he is more cogent than she is, if we're going to go down the who's more senile route. You're talking about eight-year-olds. It's all slim pickings. Yeah, indeed. Okay. So the next one that is interesting that I referenced earlier is New York Times 17. Let's go ahead and put this one up on the screen. So they say this is the New York primary being watched by AOC, Pelosi, and the Clintons. All right. Sean Patrick Maloney, who I think many of his colleagues would agree is a tremendous asshole. Immediately after the new district lines were announced, he jumps in and basically bigfoots Mondaire Jones in the district that Mondaire represents the bulk of

and is like, I'm going to run here. And the reason that he did it is because it's a slightly bluer district than the one that it would have been logical for him to run in. So he jumps into this race because he thinks this is an easier path for me to get back into Congress. Now, the other thing that is really obnoxious about that and really sort of pathetic is the fact that Sean Patrick Maloney

is actually in charge of the Democrats' efforts to hold the House. So if he is not even confident enough in his ability to win in a Biden seat that I think is like Biden plus seven or something, the one that would have been logical for him to run in. He wants to jump over to this one that's like Biden plus 11. Kind of a pathetic sign of how things are going under his leadership of Democrats' attempts to hold the House. So anyway, that all shakes out. Mondaire Jones goes and runs in the district we already talked about. But Sean Patrick Maloney does face a challenger from the left. He's a very centrist corporate Democrat, Alessandra Biagi, who's kind of a rising star in terms of the Democratic left. Now, you've got Maloney backed by Pelosi,

backed by Bill Clinton. And this is, I think, the district that Chappaqua is in. It's like Westchester County and the Hudson Valley. Alessandra Biagi, who's a state senator, she defeated a kind of came out of nowhere, defeated a powerful incumbent in 2018. So that gave her a big footprint. She has the support of AOC and some other a bunch of progressive organizations, Working Families Party and things like that. Now, I think Biagi has struggled to raise money. Sean Patrick Maloney has been awash in cash. He's been up on the airwaves.

She hasn't been. All indications are that he kind of has this thing sewed up. So it looks like his ploy is going to work. And also, you know, Westchester County and Hudson Valley, these are not leftist. Yeah, exactly. These are not leftist areas. I'm sure there are plenty of progressives there, especially among younger people. But this is more, I mean, this is Hillary Clinton turf. She won this district over Bernie Sanders. They're comfortable with her type of politics. The only reason she's staying out of this, she actually, I think, officiated Biagi's wedding, but they made sure to get the husband involved to signal where the

Clinton's heart really lies. So that's what that one looks like. Again, with these primaries, you never know. She could pull off a shocking upset, an AOC-type upset win over Sean Patrick Maloney. But the sort of fundraising disparity alone augurs against that outcome actually occurring. It's not looking good necessarily. But again, here's the other thing too. Unfortunately, it's not like we can just tell you exactly what happened. Because it takes weeks in order to count votes in the state of New York, which is insane. Yes.

I think the most noteworthy thing, as you were saying about Patrick Maloney, is that he was the DCCC head and still outright just knifed one of his own colleagues. Yeah. And his own neck was on the line, which, you know, probably not collegial at best. Also, you're the guy who supposedly, like, knows how to win in these swing districts. But you're, like, terrified of, you know, guy who supposedly knows how to win in these swing districts, but you're terrified of an actually swing district. You can't even put yourself in that sort of jeopardy. It's pathetic, ultimately. And yesterday, literally yesterday, he was on Fox, and they were like, hey, do you see the moral problem with running against threats to democracy and then spending millions of dollars behind Republicans who are pro-stop the steal in GOP primaries,

he said, no, we have a moral imperative to do so so that we can defeat them. Oh, my God. So literally yesterday. Wow. So maybe voters there will take notice, although something tells me that they're of the cringe variety who probably love something. Yeah. Well, Biagi has tried to make a lot out of that.

Yeah, good. Especially, right, which is logical. And I think a lot of just mainline liberal Democrats were also upset about this move. So that has been one of her attacks on Sean Patrick Maloney. But again, she she has not had the money to be on the in against her because of her comments about defunding the police. And so that has been up on the airwaves sort of defining her, but she hasn't really been able to respond, at least in paid communication. So that's the way that one is shaking out. I do want to mention, too, tomorrow, we don't normally have a show. Yes. But I'm going to interview Dan Marans of the Huffington Post, who is really deeply knowledgeable and has been following all of these primaries in extraordinary detail. He actually has an article up right now about Sean Patrick Maloney and Alessandra Biaggi.

So I'm going to talk to him tomorrow so you'll get to get whatever we know about these primaries, whether they have been called yet or not. We'll have a reaction video. It'll be here on the channel for premium subs. Of course, we'll email it to you. And if it's long enough, we'll make it available on the podcast feed to everybody. Yeah. It's a standalone product. Okay.

The last one I want to get into is in some ways the most interesting. We have been tracking a number of these special elections. And in several instances, Democrats have outperformed their polls. And even in cases where, you know, they don't end up pulling off the win, they're really outperforming in some of these special elections where Biden is and Republicans have been underperforming where Trump was in those districts. So this has been seen by some political observers as a potential indication that Republican momentum is flagging, that Democratic support may be not

only on the rise, but somewhat underestimated by the polling. We saw this certainly in the Kansas ballot initiative as well. And so in New York 19, you have an upstate New York district that is truly, truly a swing district. Like it goes for Republican, it goes for a Democrat. I think Biden won it by like a point. Yeah, Biden won it by a point and a half. So this is as swingy as an area as it possibly as you possibly could get. And you have two relatively high quality candidates in terms of having established bases in this district. Republican Mark Molinaro, he is the executive in Dutchess County. And you've got Democrat Pat Ryan. He is the executive in Ulster County. You also have, making this even more interesting, the Republican has leaned 100% into a message about the economy and inflation. And the Democrat Pat Ryan has leaned nearly 100% into a message about abortion.

So not only do you have this, you know, okay, who's showing up, Democrat, Republican, but you also have which message is actually effective right now. Now, the dynamics of this are a little bit weird. The winner here is only going to win four months in office. This seat became open because Democrats elevated Antonio Delgado to be New York's lieutenant governor after Cuomo resigned and all that stuff. And then the next time that they run for this seat, it will actually be totally different district lines. So it really is just important as like a bellwether of Democratic and Republican sentiment. So that is another one to watch. And again, one of the other things that is interesting about this area is this is a part of the state that has seen tens of thousands of New York City residents

move into the area post-COVID, basically fleeing the city and moving here, especially as they're able to work remotely. So there's also a question over whether those new residents, tens of thousands of them who moved to this area, might sort of shake up the political dynamic here as well. Yeah, Ryan's an interesting candidate. He graduated from West Point. He's somebody who's kind of been at the top of the field. Molinaro also is actually pretty well known. So they actually have a pretty equal amount of national or state profile. I mean, the influx of the NYC residents actually probably could change everything from the 2020 actual election results and would, of course, make abortion much more salient. But regardless, it will be a very, very good test case for everything that we look at.

Generic overperformance. If it's Biden plus one and let's say the Democrat wins it by five points, you're like, hey, that's crazy. But also, I mean, Youngkin was a real harbinger of the political climate for what, basically a year or six months or so after he was elected. So that's why these things, of course, matter the most. They can tell us a lot about where things are trending, and it's a good message-by-message test. Also, in terms of GOP enthusiasm, people still feeling as enthusiastic as they were eight months ago in order to come out and vote no against Biden or the Biden agenda or like the general feeling of how things are going. So it'll be really interesting to watch what happens there. Yeah, and just a couple other little notes as you're watching Returns Tonight,

there is another special election in a different district that is very hard Republican, but this is another one where you could watch the margin. Trump won this district by 11 points. So if the Democrat outperforms, that would be another indication. If they underperform, that would be a different indication. And you do have races down in Florida. I think the most interesting one is probably the Democratic primary for governor. It's Nikki Freed, who I think is the Agriculture Secretary versus Charlie Criss. Freed is running as more of like the, she's running more as the progressive, he's running more as the establishment. So we'll see how that shakes out. And I think most people expect Criss to win, but we will see. You never know until they actually vote. So we'll see how that shakes out. And I think most people expect Chris to win, but we will see.

You never know until they actually vote. It'll be fun. Yes, indeed. Whoever they do, we'll face DeSantis, who maybe we should talk on Thursday about his new cringe ad, which we can- Oh, what's the cringe ad? I didn't see it.

Let's not even tell people. All right. Is it a tease even for me? I want you to watch it live. And react. It's something else. Okay, we'll do that. Okay, so yesterday, some big movements in the stock markets.

Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So Wall Street stumbled Monday, extending last week's sell-off as investors resumed agitating about inflation and the pace of interest rate increases ahead of the Federal Reserve's annual economic symposium. They say the Dow sinks more than 600 points as investors fret over Fed's next move. I do love the way, I mean, I guess this is what is going on, but I do love the way these analysts assign, like, this is the reason why the market is doing whatever it is. This morning, you know, we're recording this early

and the markets aren't open yet, but futures were up. So it's like, okay, well, I guess now they're comfortable without whatever Jerome Powell is going to say. Anyway, Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day down 643 points or 1.9%. S&P 500 shed 2.1% to close just shy of 4,138. The NASDAQ, tech-heavy, of course, erased 2.5%. So pretty dramatic. Losses, worst day in the market since I think they said June.

And what they do point to is all the Federal Reserve people are meeting in Jackson Hole. They do this every year. This isn't like one of their committee meetings where they decide what the interest rates are going to be and what movements they're going to make. But this is where investors watch very closely what comments are made because they can set the direction of – give some indications, some tea leaves of where things are ultimately going to come. So they say the gathering is set for – Monday's market jitters come as Fed officials are preparing to gather in Jackson Hole for their annual economic symposium. Investors are keenly interested in what Jerome Powell might have to say about inflation on Friday and any sign the central bank might change its course in its efforts to combat it. Let's put this next piece up on the screen. The Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole meeting could shake up markets in the week ahead. So this is really what they're looking at. And I did some

digging into some of the specifics about the Jackson Hole meeting. Only about 120 people attend the event every year. But the papers and speeches which are released, which are made public, as well as media engagements by policymakers, have made the Kansas City Fed's Economic Policy Symposium a landmark event for Fed watchers and investors tuned in from afar. And, you know, we did have some indications that maybe inflation was possibly easing up. Certainly gas prices have come down, which has been significant, although prices are still way, way too high. So there's an open question of whether the Fed is just going to continue marching forward with a very aggressive policy of rate increases, which could trigger a recession and is certainly going to create a lot of pain for you,

or whether they might say, you know what, let's hang back and see what's going on here, which of course is the outcome that I'd like to see. Yeah, that's the major question. I mean, nobody really knows. The real issue too is the global climate, which is not good. I mean, even what we're dealing with here in the US, power prices in Europe continue. Every day when you wake up, it's up by like 6% or 7%. It's actually difficult to comprehend. So we not only have to balance our own inflation and what our monetary policy is, but also consider that I think the euro yesterday reached 0.97 in terms of parity to the dollar. So below a one-to-one. I mean, that hasn't happened in a long time. Maybe even in the history of the entire euro. Unprecedented in terms of the European economy. Haven't done

as much recently. Maybe we should return to the gas markets and all that, because even though petroleum is down, natural gas continues to go absolutely wild. And there's a lot of problems just in general, market-wise, because outside of the Fed, this is not only what they point to, but China, we're seeing a slowdown there. Energy, Shanghai today, they said, oh, skyscrapers, you have to turn your lights off for two whole days because we don't have enough power. I mean, that's crazy. This is supposed to be the next Silicon Valley tech center of all of China. There's like 30 million people who live in the city. That's happening. There's been real estate bubbles and issues.

So market demand plus COVID zero. Europe, we've got like a general recessionary feeling amongst the American public. Consumer spending going down, even though the gas prices have gone down a little bit, down to I think 385 yesterday is the national average. On top of that, the Fed too, though, this is always the issue with their policy. They can't do anything about the current inflation. The current inflation has almost nothing to do with any of that. All they can continue to do is continue to hammer global demand down by trying to induce more unemployment and more of a recession. And I mean, I guess it's working. Consumer spending is going down. Credit card debt, I think you said 20-year high?

Yeah. I want to say that we're at 20-year high of new credit card debt amassed in just the last six months. So the last thing people need is some sort of recession. So we could both crash the market and you could crash consumer demand. I don't even know how you climb out of a hole like that. Yeah, that's exactly right. So it'd be important to see what they say at this meeting. I think that's why there's a little bit of drama and suspense because, I mean, the Fed, you really cannot overstate how significant what the Fed does is for the economy, is for the housing market, is for the stock market. And as we always say, you may not have benefited on the way up, but you will

get hurt on the way down. So continue to watch that. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Okay, let's talk about Russia and the fallout from the murder of Alexander Dugin. He's kind of a Russian public intellectual. The murder, not of him, but of his daughter recently. She died in a car bomb outside of Moscow. There were some reports that Dugin himself was supposed to be in the vehicle and decided not to go. Anyway, her death has caused a lot of consternation inside of Russia, but more in terms of what the fallout from said assassination will be. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. Russia is now claiming that the so-called Dugan bomber has escaped to Estonia. They say, quote, if the Kremlin decides to confront Estonia by backing up its demand for the extradition of

the alleged suspect with threats, it will put Russia on a collision course with a NATO state. I think that is exactly why this matters so much. So again, to recap, the FFSB, it's kind of the Russian successor to the KGB, FBI, CIA, whatever, all rolled into one. They say that they solved the murder almost immediately. They're like, oh, we know exactly who this is. It's a Ukrainian woman. She fled to Estonia. Here's all these pictures that we have of her. Did this with her 12-year-old daughter.

And then she fled to Estonia after she followed her along. Immediately, they were like, we know exactly who it is. A little bit suspicious as to how exactly that happened. But it just so happens that that person, they claim, is connected to the Ukrainian Secret Service. And they're like, actually, this is all in Ukraine. And now this is perhaps a pretext in order to escalate against Ukraine. And also, the Estonia part is very scary, too. Obviously, Estonia is a NATO ally of the United States. So, we have to watch this all very closely. Let's throw the next one up there. As I said, the Russians already officially accusing the Ukrainian special services of actually organizing the

killing of Alexander Dugin's daughter. And in terms of the cry out in Moscow itself, there does seem to be state TV and others echoing these accusations. As far as Dugin, we tried to explain this yesterday. It's kind of complicated, which is that he is not, you know, the brainchild of Putin. He's actually very influential here in the West because he knows how to speak English. And, you know, he's kind of cultivated Western public intellectuals to try and take him a little bit more seriously. He's even been fired at times by Putin himself and ostracized away from the regime. But at his core, he's kind of a revanchist of the Russian czardom. And he wants to restore the Russian empire and preserve the Russian people and sees themselves very, very distinct from Europe itself.

And a real antagonist both for he wanted to split. I think I did a whole monologue on this a couple of months ago, if anyone's interested. But he wrote a book in the 90s where he's like, Russia and policy should have three goals. Number one, split Britain away from the rest of the EU. Again, this was written in the 90s. Number two, Russia should invade Georgia. And number three, Russia should retake Ukraine. So all three of those things actually did happen. Now, as I mentioned before the monologue, the people who are the Russiagate basically level people in Britain like to point to that first one as evidence that it's Russia's fault. A Brexit? Yeah, exactly. They're like Brexit was a Russian plot. They have their own Russiagate version over there. But put that aside, the other two actually did happen.

So Putin is at the very least like familiar with this thinking. And some of his books are recommended. Now, the reason why that matters is that now that he is much more of a cause celeb in Russia, I mean, he's a sympathetic figure, his daughter was killed. Not only is he justifying the initial invasion of Ukraine, his daughter was as well. But after his daughter was killed, now let's put this up there. Immediately he comes out and he says that we need to have revenge against Ukraine and for Russia to push on in its invasion. increased brutality and increase of an invasion within Ukraine. And all of this comes ahead of reporting just a couple of weeks ago that Putin, in terms of his phase of the campaign and what they're all looking at, and U.S. intelligence does effectively confirm this,

is that they want to actually step up and intensify attacks, not only on Ukraine and its civilian infrastructure, but specifically on the port city of Odessa. Odessa is a port from the Black Sea. It's where Ukraine has exported the vast majority of its grain to the world. Crimea, they not only have much more maritime control, but they cut Ukraine off from arguably the most important economic lifeline that they even have, considering that's a vast majority of their exports and GDP. So what we actually know is that this is all happening right ahead of that. Putin looking for a way to message the wars. We approach the official six-month anniversary. And then, actually, Ukrainian Independence Day is coming up soon. And so the U.S. intelligence is actually leaking. They're like, hey, you guys need to prepare. They are planning major attacks on civilian

infrastructure. They say that the intensification is going to come right, not only in that port area, but also in terms of trying to batten down Ukrainian morale ahead of this. So if you are of the school of thought that this is some like planned attack by Russian authorities and a two, you know, some sort of like two for one deal in order to make people more sympathetic, it wouldn't be a bad time. And look, I'm not, we have no idea. Yeah. Wouldn't put it past the FSB and the Kremlin. Also wouldn't put it past some people who are in the opposition. You know, it's not like she was beloved by everybody in Russia. Right. Yeah. No. I mean, we may never know who actually planted this car bomb. And also

important to remember, Dugan himself was supposed to be in this car. So a lot of speculation that he was really the intended target here, which is even more inflammatory of an action, provocative of an action. Could have been the Ukrainians. Could be some internal Russian resistance, you know, partisans. Could be the sort of direct, like, Putin allies. Could be hardliners who want to force Putin's hand into exactly the actions that Dugin is pushing for now. He called the attack an act of terror, which I think is fair to say, that had been, quote, carried out by the Nazi Ukrainian regime. Not fair to say. And then he said, our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or

retribution. We only need our victory. My daughter laid her maiden life on its altar, so win, please. The specific calls that are coming on Russian state TV are for things like attacking Ukrainian government buildings and going directly after officials in Kyiv, going after their security apparatus in Kyiv. So, you know, if your goal was to strengthen the hardliner stance and put pressure on Putin to go even further and commit even, you know, further atrocities than what he's already done, that seems to be the direction that at least the hardliners are trying to take this in. Seems likely. I mean, all of this, again, just points to even more like Chechen Civil War 2.0, which is that the initial response doesn't work. Then they start to go scorched earth. They try and figure out how exactly to change their military personnel and what exactly the strategy will be and then grind into attrition. And, fortunately, major consequences for the world, for Russia, and sadly for the Ukrainians.

I read a terrible story about these guys who are working in the nuclear power plant, literally at gunpoint, and are the only, Ukrainians, and the Russians have guns in their head, and they're like, you better have this plant going up. And they use these nuclear power plants kind of as shields to make sure, because nobody can fire against them. And they're too afraid. It's just a trap, because look, they need the power, and it's also a way in order to control and manipulate Ukraine. So we're entering only that phase of the campaign. And I just, you know, we talked about this in the stocks block, but the energy crisis is still real. It's, you know, we're starting to get to fall. Things in Europe are starting to get cold. The colder and colder it gets, the more Russian gas they're going to need. They may not have AC, but they do all need heating in their houses. And come that time, we could see major, major crunch by the Russians in an outright just cut off of gas in that area, which would induce a genuine global crisis if something like that happens. So that is,

do not rule that out whatsoever. Really now could be just a transitional period in the future of the war. All right. Let's talk about Donald Trump. And Crystal, I'm going to need your help with this one just because so much has happened. There's a bunch of stuff breaking law. Literally in the last 12 hours. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. All right. So let's start first with a lawsuit filed by President Trump.

Let's put this up there on the screen. So here's what happened. President Trump filed this lawsuit to block the Department of Justice from actually reviewing any of the materials that the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago until a watchdog is appointed. That watchdog would be known as a, quote, special master. And effectively, what a special master does is they're like an independent person who is appointed in a criminal case where there is a concern that material should not be viewed by investigators because it protected by attorney client privilege or other factors that weigh against it being used in the prosecution. So they're pointing not only to

attorney-client privilege, but as to the other factors being highly classified documents, the Presidential Records Act. There's all sorts of crazy executive power law implications for how exactly this is going to go. It's possible this could actually even work its way up to the Supreme Court because this is in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in the federal level. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in terms of the Fourth Amendment seizure, Presidential Records Act, executive power, etc. Yeah. Effectively.

In my opinion, I think it's a reasonable request. Yeah, I agree. Used as special master in other, you know, cases with Rudy Giuliani. Yes. So this is not like a crazy request from the Trump team. Yeah, absolutely. So the lawsuit itself, though, kind of sets up the ground for what exactly the Trump strategy is here, which is that they're saying this is a violation, that this is going past the limits of,

and actually beyond executive power, mistreatment, and that this is a special case devoid of anything of the previous three laws that were cited. And it's not your standard classified information kind of criminal case. So I think that's kind of a good sum up of the lawsuit. The DOJ itself has responded. They're like, we're reviewing what the lawsuit itself says, and that will expect it to be paddled in court. So I think that is number one, a pretty significant development. But number two is actually something that broke last night, which is that, actually, let's throw E3 up there on the screen, please, because Donald Trump actually issued a response himself. Here's what he said.

He said that it was a, quote, major motion and they are strongly asserting his rights and claiming that evidence was planted. He says that they demanded the security cameras be turned off, a request that we rightfully denied. They requested my preparedness from observing from being taken in the raid, saying no. They took documents covered by attorney, client, and executive privilege, which was not allowed. They took my passports and they even bought a safe cracker

and successfully broke into my personal safe. We are now demanding the DOJ be instructed to immediately stop the review of documents illegally seized, and we demand the appointment of a special master. We are further demanding the DOJ be forced to turn over a real, without quote, plants inventory of my property that was

taken and disclosed where that property is now located. We are demanding all items wrongfully taken from my home be immediately returned. So claiming, planting, and wanting special master. What I love about this response is it checks all the boxes of his various responses. He's like, I would, I would have, why didn't you just ask? I would have given you these documents. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. And then like two sentences later, he's like,

these documents are mine and I want them all back. And then, you know, he goes ahead and throws in there that, oh, and actually there aren't even documents. They were just planted by the FBI. So he does, does all the defenses in one statement here. Classic Trump. Yeah, but now he can always say that he was vindicated. And then actually what broke even later last night is a report, we don't have an element for this, but about how Trump had more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. So this comes from a disclosure that the National Archives found more than 150 sensitive documents when it first got the batch of materials from the former president in January of 2022. Now, that is what

then spurred the seizure of the rest of the quote-unquote classified documents. Now, in terms of the documents themselves, are they currently classified? I don't know. All we know, and this terminology is important, is quote quote, marked as classified. Because, Crystal, that relates to the laws of which this raid was justified at the pretext and the warrant in the first place. Yes, which don't necessarily require the documents to be actually classified. They just have to be sensitive and, you know, under this Presidential Records Act, etc cetera, et cetera. So there were a couple of other pieces in this latest, this is a New York Times report about, you know, they recovered more than 300 individual classified documents during three different interactions at Mar-a-Lago in the last eight months, more than 150 in the boxes that

went to the National Archives in January alone. This was also, this was kind of interesting to me. They say that the Justice Department, they sought a second round of footage from surveillance cameras at Mar-a-Lago. So we already knew that they had subpoenaed some of the surveillance footage and what was apparently used to help justify the, you know, present evidence to the judge that justified ultimately the raid. Now they're saying they subpoenaed another round that goes through the date of the search. So that's a new piece of information here. They also say that, according to The Times, Trump himself is said to have gone throughlessness and I forgot I had these documents, you know, these super, super top secret nuclear documents or whatever he has. It shows that he was like directly involved in sorting through and arranging these things. And they said the documents were found in the storage area and in a container in a closet in his office. So they don't say that anything was found in that safe. So that's the

latest from the New York Times reporting. Then this other thing happened, which is, I don't really totally understand it, but John Solomon, who actually we used to work with at the Hill. Absolutely. Could say a lot about that, but we'll save that for another day. He is now one of Trump's designated representatives to the National Archives. So he is, you know, he's a Trump ally, conduit, et cetera. And he also runs this, you know, right-leaning media outlet. And so he posted a column earlier in the day yesterday, I think, that was suggesting that the Biden administration, even though they claimed they weren't involved

with this thing, they actually were involved in some of the questions over executive privilege. Then they went ahead and released the entire letter. They posted it to this news website that came from the National Archives to Trump. And they posted this like this would be some like sort of bombshell exculpatory thing. But I don't, I genuinely don't understand why they think that this makes him look good. Because in fact, what the letter shows is, you know is repeated efforts and inquiries and sort of like a back and forth between the National Archives and Trump's lawyers where they're trying to get access to these documents. There's an indication of documents they say were secret and the documents he had were at those highest, highest levels of classification and also confirms that, you know, this raid didn't just come out of nowhere. They've been trying to get control of these documents and get them back. So anyway, that's the latest piece that came out last night.

Yeah. I mean, look, I have no idea whatsoever to make of that. It basically confirms that Trump may be in trouble as to how this is all going to play out. Again, I think, unfortunately, this will just have to drag through the legal system for a long time, given the executive power implications, the special master.

I mean, like you said, I mean, it seems reasonable enough, but more of a delay, then we also are still going to wait on the affidavit as to the extent of how much trouble Trump is in if he was involved. Again, you always got to remember, anytime these stories show up in The Times, it's leaked by senior DOJ figures. Not a mistake, I think, that it's the exact same people who had all these scoops during Russiagate, during the Mueller investigation. So they're trying to shape things as much as possible. I do think that's important to keep in mind, is when you see reporting, you know, in the

Times or with NBC News, they have some, you know, favorite DOJ reporters over there as well. This is clearly, this is the information they want to put out there. So definitely, definitely keep that in mind as you're reading these stories and, you know, take it all with a grain of salt that this is sort of like the government's version of events. But it is interesting to know the government's version of events. It is always very interesting to know Donald Trump's version of events here. in all of this, has asked the Department of Justice to submit their list of suggested redactions to that affidavit, which was used to justify then the search. And you'll recall we covered

this yesterday, that the judge has said they want to try to release parts of the affidavit. They have gone on to say that, like, you know, ultimately with all the redactions, you may not find it all that useful, but we do want to try to put out there in the public sphere everything that we can. So there's a Thursday deadline for the Department of Justice to submit their suggestions in terms of redactions, which I'm sure will be probably, like, basically everything. And then I don't know how long—I have no idea how long it will take for the judge to go through those and decide what's going to be released and what's ultimately not going to be released. So that's probably the next piece that we are likely to get. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? A recent video of a UPS driver collapsing in 110 degree Arizona heat has exposed just how

dangerous working conditions are for the people who are delivering your packages every day. So here's the video, which was captured on a ring doorbell system. You can see the driver here. He's walking up to the house, very sort of unsteady on his feet. He goes ahead and places the package and then just collapses on the front porch. He actually has to lay down, trying to recover from obvious extreme heat and potential heat stroke. Incredibly, he actually gets up and finishes the delivery there at the end, ringing the doorbell before he stumbles back towards his truck, presumably to continue on to the next delivery. It is horrible to watch and made more horrific,

actually, by his determination to follow UPS package delivery protocol, even as his life is at risk. Now, in response to massive public outrage, UPS put out a statement saying, quote, we appreciate the concern for our employee. UPS drivers are trained to work outdoors, and for the effects of hot weather, our employee used his training to be aware of his situation and contacted his manager, who immediately provided assistance. We never want our employees to continue working to the point that they risk their health or work in an unsafe manner. Now, the company has also pointed to the training they provide to workers on how to prevent heat-related injuries, things including nutrition advice and recommendations to get a good night's sleep.

But the one thing they haven't provided is the most obvious solution, air conditioning inside of the trucks, something that their major competitors, FedEx and Amazon, both provide. Just think about that for a second. The conditions facing UPS drivers are so brutal that even Amazon, the company that was caught forcing their workers into such a grinding schedule they had to piss in bottles and shit in bags to keep up the pace, even Amazon thinks no AC in the trucks is going too far and too inhumane. And obviously, they are correct. UPS drivers have literally died from heat exhaustion because of these extreme conditions. In June, a 24-year-old driver named

Esteban Chavez, he died in LA from what his family says was heat stroke. In response, the Teamsters Union, which represents UPS workers, they've been asking drivers to share the temperature readings from inside of their trucks, and the results are truly shocking. Drivers have been recording temperatures in their trucks of up to 150 degrees. Drivers describe how the trucks magnify the sun's rays, turning them into literal ovens. No amount of driver training from UPS can prepare human beings for work in 150 degrees. And this job is insanely challenging, even in the best of conditions. It's extremely dangerous to labor in these conditions,

no matter how many tips your corporate bosses give you about drinking water and getting a good night's sleep. I'd like to see the suits last a single day without air conditioning during an Arizona summer. Meanwhile, UPS is, of course, raking in record profits, sufficient to give their execs and their stockholders a nice little gift through a $5 billion stock buyback.

Now, they did spend some money to invest in the UPS trucks. They managed to cough up the cash to install cameras in the trucks to surveil their drivers, but just can't seem to be able to find the money to install air conditioning so that their workers can avoid the ER and life-threatening illness. Now, our friends over at UPS do have one thing going for them, though. They've got a union, the Teamsters. And that union has new militant leadership elected specifically because of their promise to take on the corporate bosses. The last time the UPS contract was up in 2018, the national Teamsters leadership, which at that time was led by Jimmy Hoffa Jr., they crammed a contract with a bunch

of concessions down membership's throat, in spite of the fact that a majority of the members actually voted to reject it. But that contract is now up in 2023, just next year. And the new president, O'Brien, has already signaled they will be ready and willing to strike if necessary in order to win a good contract, and heat safety is a major priority. Needless to say, if the entire UPS workforce goes on strike next, that's going to be kind of a big deal for all of us. Now, heat exhaustion among UPS drivers, though, is really just the tip of the iceberg. Manual laborers from factories to farms are suffering with extreme temperatures, most without a union to even advocate for them. In fact, Amazon was just caught quietly installing improved AC in a New Jersey warehouse after one

of their workers, Rafael Frias, died. Now, his co-workers and Amazon labor union president Chris Smalls, they all say this death was heat-related. Amazon claimed he had some unrelated personal medical condition. That's how they put it. Interesting, then, that they felt like they needed better AC if his death had absolutely nothing to do with the heat. And with climate change, of course, these conditions are only set to worsen. According to Axios, in 30 years' time, an extreme heat belt will emerge in this nation, stretching from Texas to Illinois. And in these locales, temperatures will soar to 125 degrees on at least one day per year. Currently, the number of Americans subjected to those sorts

of extreme temperatures is just 8 million. In just a few decades, that number is expected to balloon to 107 million. The hottest locations in America could see stretches of 70-plus days in a row with temperatures surpassing 100 degrees. Meanwhile, data from Europe shows that thousands were killed in that continent's heat wave last month. In a single week, Spain recorded 1,682 deaths from heat, while Portugal estimated there's at least 1,000 deaths in that same week. In Spain, a 60-year-old street sweeper actually collapsed and died in blistering conditions, prompting national outrage in that country and demands for reform. Clearly, it is long past time for air conditioning to be considered a human right, when lack of this essential technology is leaving people sick and outright killing them. In a wealthy nation, there is simply no excuse for allowing workers to be treated like

this, and to wonder whether going to work will be a death penalty, all because some air-conditioned corporate exec decides they'd rather fatten their bank account than keep their workers alive. That video from UPS, I think, pretty shocking, but it also just shows... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Saigon, what are you looking at? Well, everyone, I hope you stick with me through this one. I'm going to attempt to parse the story of one Andrew Tate.

If you have not heard of Andrew Tate yet, it is legitimately difficult to describe to the general public. He is an American raised in the UK who resides in Romania. He appeared on Big Brother UK in 2016 and also has participated in kickboxing and combat sports and at one point was even rated on human trafficking suspicions. Since then, he has built a burgeoning online presence that is probably best described as a central part of the manosphere, which at its best is a celebration of masculinity, how to be a well-functioning man in a turbulent society, and at its worst is mostly a bunch of losers complaining that women do not like them with extreme rhetoric. Tate has become a cause celeb for teenage boys in particular over the last several months as his online following reached critical mass.

Much of his virality was driven by a scheme he had going, which was called Hustlers University. I will not bore you with the specifics. It essentially was a multi-level marketing scheme where you pay $50 a month to post on his behalf about the benefits. The more people that you sign up, you make money, thus feeding itself more into the scheme. Scheme aside, it's obvious though, the guy struck a chord. The real question is why? Tate at his core is basically a self-help guru. He is a guy selling the prospect of quote, escaping the matrix to help disaffected men who feel like they're down in life. That spans

pretty much everything from money advice to lack of success with women to a general feeling of listlessness, which is often translated into rage. Tate's Instagram profile was rife with pictures in front of flashy cars, guns, smoking cigars, and beautiful women. His basic worldview is that the modern world is designed to keep men down, that men have let go of their masculinity, and all of this is downstream of the decline of Western civilization, the feminization of Western culture. Now that sounds good in the abstract, but it's not great considering its specific instances. He's at least alluded to needing to be, quote, tough with women, and even at times making it seem like he'd be okay with outright violence. Again, I will not get into the specifics. Because he and his fans claim he's

being taken out of context, I will encourage you to do a deep dive of your own. All of this has roiled to the surface in the last month, as videos of Tate and about Tate amassed literally a billion views on TikTok in just a month. And in July, he actually surpassed Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump as one of the most Googled people on planet Earth. Now, people immediately began freaking out, from feminist organizations to teachers who noticed how animated their teenage male students were in their praise of him,

and a concerted cancellation effort began, which basically succeeded in the last week, when Tate was officially banned from all major social media platforms. He was banned from Instagram, Facebook, and despite not having a TikTok account, was banned there too, with the company saying they were removing not only accounts associated with him, but perhaps even videos of all of his content. Both companies banned Tate effectively on the same day for violating their, quote, misogyny policy. Now, I am not going to defend anything Andrew Tate said. From nearly everything, though, from what I can tell, it amounts to a moral panic, and it refuses to actually grapple with why Tate

was even popular in the first place. The core accusation of so-called feminist groups is that Tate is, quote, normalizing misogyny amongst teenagers and that it is the responsibility of TikTok and Instagram to not promote such content. Teachers across the world from the US, the UK, and Australia have blamed Tate for a market change in their students for unruly behavior. Now, first, I do not think teenage boys need a prompting by anyone to act like idiots. But again, I ask, why is Tate popular in the first place? To me, it's obvious. Something is wrong with young men across the West. We've covered it trends deeply on Breaking Points, but it bears repeating. Men are dropping out of college at a historic degree, widening the education gender gap. Men are much more likely today to be single

than at any time in modern Western history. Male wages have stagnated, which has led to a crisis of marriageability. Declining single male wages over the last 30 years have made many men in America much less desirable partners. Now, you might think there's nothing wrong with that. Single days were fun, after all. But on a society-wide level, more single men has all sorts of downstream effects which are actually terrible. Listen to this quote. Single men are much more likely to be unemployed, financially fragile, lack a college degree than those with a partner. They're likely to have lower median earnings. Single men earned less in 2019 than in 1990, even adjusting for inflation. What's even stranger is this. Single women are

actually earning the exact same amount that they were 30 years ago, but those with partners are earning 50% more than previously. Acknowledging this reality reveals a terrible reality for a lot of American men. The more and longer you are a single male, the worse your economic, health, and marriage prospects become. The more likely you are to live with your parents and longer, the more and longer it happens, the larger the trend amongst the male U.S. population is, and the worst outcomes for men on a society-wide level. That cold, hard reality is what created Andrew Tate and the conditions why he's popular. The explosion of popularity of figures like him, Liver King, many other similar ones, is really just a commentary on the failure of popular culture

to provide men of all stripes, especially young ones, with figures they can look up to, which acknowledge the status quo and offer people a way out to things that men have always valued. Fitness, status, seeking a partner. The real problem that we have is that all of those have been denounced as misogynists. They're values that you're not even allowed to acknowledge even exist, let alone place a value judgment on them as good. In a world where MSNBC is claiming fitness is far right, and it sounds cringe to the mainstream ear to even say it's okay to want to be a man and pursue masculine activities, is it any wonder why guys like Tate

are so popular? My critique of Tate of who I see is really just an heir to the 2010 era internet that I grew up on, with people like Tucker Max, Neil Strauss, Dan Belzerian. They were worshipped similarly. Here's the newsflash, though. With the exception of Belzerian, both Max and Strauss moved on from that message, both advocating one today of living a fulsome and a balanced life that doesn't celebrate the extremes that they were once known for popularizing, and instead one of self-knowledge and growth. That's the real antidote to Andrew Tate. But the more social media companies and the more these so-called feminist organizations

want to ban him, they will only embolden his ilk and his followers. You cannot ban an idea. You can only counter it. Until they learn that, this cycle will literally only repeat itself. It was actually fascinating to me, Crystal, to watch this play out because I watched some of these entertainment videos. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at since the U.S. officially withdrew from Afghanistan.

Some of it was overshadowed by the strike on Zawahiri, obviously Ukraine, and all of that is happening. But it's important to think about not only what happened, but what is continuing to happen since we left. So we've got the guest, Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute. Let's go ahead and bring him in here. Adam, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So there's a new report that you guys put out, let's put it up there on the screen, about strategic patience, the sustainable engagement with the changed Afghanistan. Just give us a little bit of a rundown on what exactly has happened in Afghanistan since the US pulled out, our policy, how is the nation faring,

and what should we do about it? Well, I think it's an uncertain time in Afghanistan, because the country was basically operating off of a war economy. In other words, much of the economy in Afghanistan was related to the U.S. military intervention and other countries as well, such as bulk fuel shipping and things like that. And it was also an aid-dependent economy. And so once the withdrawal occurred, a lot of that aid went away, although over time it came back. And, of course, the war economy evaporated. And so the real economy of the country is quite underdeveloped. And in addition to that, sanctions that were intended for the Taliban as a terrorist organization became sanctions on the Taliban as a de facto government overnight, which is kind of an unprecedented situation in sanctions

history. And in addition to that, the foreign exchange reserves of the central bank were frozen. So that created a liquidity crisis. Well, there were other causes of that as well. So the idea of our sanctions on Taliban, which, as you said, is now the acting government of Afghanistan, was intended to sort of compel better behavior. Has that worked? I don't think it has. And that's what we have to remember about sanctions. Sanctions are not intended just for bad guys. Sanctions are intended to change the behaviors of bad guys in a very simple way. Right. And the problem with putting sanctions into force is that once you employ sanctions, it's very hard to rescind them because the question will be,

well, what's changed? In the case of the Taliban, not much. They still abuse human rights. They still have connections to Al-Qaeda. But the sanctions really aren't changing the Taliban's behavior. They're just hurting the people of Afghanistan. So what the Treasury Department has tried to do is create all these sanctions exemptions by issuing things called general licenses. But that doesn't get around the chilling effect of the sanctions. And so, look, in terms of policy, what you lay out here, what are the risks of the current Biden administration's posture?

I think the risks of the current posture that we're a little bit disengaged. We've still contributed a significant amount of aid to the country. But when our diplomats aren't on the ground, the sanctions are in full effect, aside from the general licenses that I mentioned. And we're really not engaged enough, I think. For the last 20 years, we were too engaged through a military intervention. And now the pendulum has swung all the way to the other direction. And if Afghanistan becomes a failed state, I think that's a problem for the region and the security of the world. Certainly, we don't want to see a Taliban at Afghanistan, but that's the reality we have to live with right now.

And it's still a better reality than a failed state. What is the reality, the humanitarian reality for the Afghan people? And how much did our decision to freeze the nation's central bank reserves, how much is that contributing to that humanitarian crisis? Well, it's contributing in the sense that the central bank can't regulate the economy the way a central bank typically would, and there's a bit of a liquidity crisis. I think we have to remember that even if the sanctions were lifted tomorrow and the frozen foreign exchange reserves were returned the same day, the economy would still be in dire straits. Much of this has to do with the fact that Afghanistan is landlocked, the Taliban are mismanaging things, but we are adding to that harm. And I think that's something we have to be cognizant of.

Yeah. Well, I think you lay out a pretty compelling case for how exactly to go forward. Everybody supposedly cared a lot on withdrawal. And then after about three months, it evaporated. But those people still live there, of course, and it's always going to exist no matter whether we like it or not. Really appreciate you joining us, Adam. Very informative. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. As we mentioned, stay tuned. Tomorrow, we are going to have Crystal's live reaction with Dan Marans on the New York primaries. Thank you all to our premium subscribers. You guys enable all the technical stuff that makes sure that that can happen and that we can get that to you as soon as possible. So we deeply appreciate your support.

Don't forget, we're coming to Atlanta September 16th. Live show tickets will be in the description as well. And if you want to help us out, become a premium member today. Link is down in the description. We deeply appreciate you guys, your support, and we have some fun things coming down the pipeline. I think that you all are really going to enjoy it. We will see you all on Thursday. Love you guys. See you soon.