Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/25/26: Bessent Threatens Blowing Up Global Finance, Canada Trade War Begins, SCOTUS Mail In Decision

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Ryan and Emily discuss Bessent unveiling Operation Economic Outcast on Iran, Canada raging at Trump's new trade war, and SCOTUS making a huge decision on mail in voting as a gift to Trump. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Did you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Menzel. I audition for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today?

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Hey, guys, Sager and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning and welcome to Brain Points. We have an amazing show today, don't we? Oh, it's so good. Couldn't be better. It's just not giving people what they want.

No, but you have a bro show tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to. That's true. We do have that. We have a kind of depressing show, I think, today. Pretty usual, but. Well, Scott Besant declared his D-Day yesterday afternoon. We're going to walk through. What he said he's going, he might do, but he doesn't want to do. He's going to hurt him more than it hurts the rest of the world. Please don't make him blow up the financial system. It's basically a direct quote. Trump doubling down on his trade war with Canada for some reason. We're going to try to figure out why he's doing that. The auto workers don't want it. The auto executives

don't want it. Canada doesn't want it. We don't want it. Nobody wants it. Susan Collins doesn't want it. Susan Collins definitely doesn't want it. Yeah, Troy Jackson might be the only person benefiting from this trade war that Trump is launching with Canada for absolutely no reason. The Supreme Court came in and stayed a ruling that's allowing Trump to go forward with his monkeying with mail-in voting. We'll talk about the details of that ruling. There's a little bit more to it than appears from the headline. Abdul al-Sayed went on the Jesse Waters program, which was the entire thing was kind of amusing all the way through. We'll talk about the implications of that. very delicately chucked Hassan Piker under the bus after Mike Rogers, Nehra Tandon, and others who seem to oppose him.

Mike Rogers certainly opposes him. The centrist Democrats only kind of are pretending to support Abdul al-Sad. They circulated this deceptively edited clip and then condemned him for what was said in that deceptibly edited clip. We'll talk about that. What else we got? We got the... You're going to tell us about the South Carolina race, which is getting very interesting. Well, and actually, you've tracked this solar lobbying issue for a while, but people don't realize what's happened under the surface in some of these races.

So we covered it when Andy Ogles lost. We covered a bit when Chip Roy lost. But there's this interesting solar lobbying effort to quietly oust people who fought against the Biden solar subsidies with the one big beautiful bill. And they're coming for, it came for Andy Ogles, Chipproy. Now they're coming for Ralph Norman in the South Carolina runoff. He has a chance, though, to beat Darlene Graham. We'll see. That's the day. But we have some interesting details that a lot of people aren't talking about. And finally, Ryan.

Some sunshine on this, on what's been unfolding in the dark. Sunshine on the sunshine, right? But we also have a guest. Yes. We're going to talk to Jamie Elcito, who's running. in Massachusetts 6th district, a fascinating dynamic unfolding there where some,

she, actually, I don't want to tease it too much. No spoilers. No spoilers on this one. You're really going to like this race. It involves some of your favorite characters that you've been following throughout this race, particularly A-PAC and organizations that call themselves women's rights organizations that have been colluding with A-PAC,

we're going to get into all of that. You're going to want to watch that one. All right. And finally, the free month-long trial is still up over at breakingpoints.com. So if you ever wanted to check out the premium subscription, which allows the show to get into your inbox early, totally uncut, supports the journalism that we're doing here at Breaking Points. You can try it for free for the next month, breakingpoints.com. That also has a free version. I'm sorry, you also have access to a premium version of the newsletter and the AMAs as well. So breakingpoints.com, once again, if you want to try,

for a month. Ryan, let's dig into the show. Well, let's start with Iran because Scott Benson formally rolled out what economic D-Day is going to look like. We discussed yesterday his op-ed in the Financial Times, threatening economic D-Day. He did a press conference at the Treasury Department yesterday where he gave us a little bit more information on what economic D-Day would look like for countries that are doing any trade with Iran. Let's listen to A-1. Beginning today, the actions of Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the IRGC and the evil Iranian regime. We are enforcing a zero leakage approach. There will be no minimal breathing space for the regime to rebuild its capacity to inflict terror against America and the world.

The final refuge of this regime is a mistaken conclusion. of nations that still finance the Iranian threat in the hopes of evading it. It is no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces of this conflict. Countries cannot claim they are blind to enabling this activity. The top trading partners with Iran are China, UAE, Turkey, Iraq, EU, India, Pakistan, Russian Federation, and Oman, according to CNBC. So as you hear, Scott Bessent line all of this, keep that in mind. mind. Let's now listen to A2. He got a question from a journalist about China in particular.

Here's how Besson responded. One of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal is the ability to impose secondary sanctions on banks and financial institutions that facilitate transactions for Iran. Chinese banks have often been talked about being targeted, but we don't see any of those institutions targeted here. Is that something that is coming in this campaign or is the very delicate trade truce

with China something that could prohibit you from, you know, going that far and taking that very big step? We want to make clear to hear today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions. That if they facilitate

transactions and are part of the ecosystem, the term Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted. We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy, and we are level-setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are, they know who they are, so when the hammer of U.S. Treasury actions falls upon them, they will have no one to blame but themselves. What'd you make of that response, Ryan?

Yes, I mean, he is very clearly threatening to sanction China, basically the countries that you just listed. Right. Like he's threatening to sanction China, all of our allies in the Gulf, India, Pakistan. And then he says, I don't want to blow up. Why would I want to blow up the global economy? Yeah. Like, well, I haven't you done it all right? Why would I want to?

So he's already admitted that if he executes on his plan, it will blow up the global economy. At another point, he said he was very close to sanctioning an entire major financial institution for moving Iranian money. He said, what, to expect it by the end of the week? Maybe. You know, he's like Trumpian. Yeah. It might happen by the end of the week. I'm really close to doing it.

A major financial institution like, say, Lehman Brothers, the reason that these institutions are structural is that they have, there are counterparties that have all of their trades that are closing there or moving through there or their collateral is there. And so everybody that, if you seize that up and everybody runs out, Or it's seized up and people can't get access to whatever their assets are that are in there, then all the counterparties that are all spread around it are also then at risk. And then anybody who's a counterparty to anybody around there.

That's why when Lehman went down, it spread a financial crisis through the entire world. So Besson is saying that he's considering doing that. He also says if he does the things he's saying he's going to do, it's going to blow up the global financial system. Therefore, he's not going to do that. Right. Because as he said, why would I want to do that? You wouldn't want to do that.

Therefore, he has put no time and no specifics on who and what. Yeah. So why does anybody believe, and maybe we can put up this next element, why would anybody believe that he's actually going to do anything? So put up A3. This is Mohamed Ghalibov, the top Iranian negotiator, Speaker of Parliament. Americans know that no one buys their bombast. The United States is not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries.

Iran's trading partners, both in the media and through messages sent to us, have made it clear that they don't take these statements into account anywhere. Because if he would follow through on his threat, he'd destroy himself. So what did you make of it? Well, here's what it's really all about. So Doug Collins, we were talking about this yesterday, but Doug Collins then goes on Newsmax. He's cabinet secretary, his VA secretary, and I think really gives a game away.

This is what it's all about. We were speculating, and I think it's pretty obvious speculation, but he essentially, without attempting to reveal what's happening, kind of revealed what's happening, let's roll A4. But the biggest issue is you just saw what we just heard. The Iranians are reacting to this. And very, okay, oh, so they are in the standing. We've finally gotten to the real heart of the matter.

We've already beat them down with the best military in the world. Now it's time to take their money and go from there. We've already beat them militarily. So now it's time to take their money. And Ryan, this is what we were discussing yesterday. And I think the fact that he went on TV and said that, again, just gives the game away. We have exhausted military options. He says he framed it as we have defeated them militarily.

But we've exhausted the military options that we are willing to use. Well, they're not playing fair because we beat them, but they just won't admit it. They won't admit it, which is, yeah, it's deeply unfair. Deeply unfair. Games over, scoreboard, we won, they're still out there playing. Yeah, amazing how that works. You can't do that. Give us your money.

Shouldn't someone step in? Yeah. Give us your money. Someone should step in. But that's what it's really all about, is that they have military options. The military options that remain involve escalation, escalation trap. And if they were to pursue them. It's on tomorrow?

Yeah, I think he was on tomorrow. I think you do have rubber paper on tomorrow. Escalation tape. But that is really what this is all about. They're trying desperately to avoid the escalation trap and to squeeze Iran. One other thing that Besson said, let's actually jump here to A6 because this underscores what you heard from Doug Collins. This is another line that Besson delivered from Treasury yesterday. To the ordinary soldiers supporting this regime, as more and more of your paychecks stop or supposedly just delayed, ask whether you're, your commanders are leading your country to triumph or to ruin and recall that the Berlin wall fell when ordinary soldiers decided not to shoot at their own people. Okay, lay down your arms, overthrow the government, and we can get back to business as usual. Right, because we won. Yeah.

But that's what this is all about is they're still desperately trying to find some way without escalating militarily, without losing more Americans, and without continuing to expose this crunch in our weapons supply. So now they've turned to this hazy, vague, economic threatening that they're rolling out in a really Trumpian way where it's framed grandly, it's framed like some super cohesive strategy, and it's escalating threats instead of escalating military or escalating real hard financial decisions. Unless he rolls something out by the end of the week, I mean, we'll see.

even the tariffs we're going to get to in a moment, aren't supposed to take place until January 1st. So they're doing threats to try and bring Iran to the table. I don't know. And Iran was at the table. We broke, well, Iran was at the table multiple times over the past decade, but they were at the table in February when we launched the war. And then they were at the table again throughout the MOU

in which they agreed to keep the straight open while negotiating the remaining pieces. Trump couldn't keep the 60-day truce going just to get through the negotiations. So in February, while Iran was at the table, Netanyahu made a certain series of promises. We could kill the Ayatollah and his top commanders. With the Kurds, we would go in and we would spark an uprising. We would overthrow the regime, greeted as liberators. it would go very quickly

and none of that has oh they would not close the Strait of Hormuz and they would not turn it into a regional war where they attacked our bases throughout the region and our allies throughout the Gulf we did kill the Ayatollah and his top commanders

everything else for the most part they you know has not happened so clearly what followed was Trump saying hey Scott what can you do Like, choke them out. Because I can't, I'm, like, my guy peed over here, he's done everything he can. Like, he's got nothing left.

Literally has nothing left. Because we won. Because we won. Yes. So now you go in and you do the mop-up with the, you choke them out. And Scott has this interesting life history where he, along with George Soros, where he used to work, they broke the back of the British pound with this famous trade. and so he is really approaching this

from an interesting perspective he's not looking at the world as kind of run by forces he's the force he's looking at it as run by men and by traders and by trades and so

because he's been one of those right but the problem is Britain was tin pot economy in the early 9th 90s, that was like propping up its currency in an unsustainable way. And, you know, Soros Investment could come in and poke at it with their big short and break it because they were able to hold out longer than the central bank was able to prop it up. Now what he thinks he can do is he can take this $40 trillion of debt that we have circulating.

and which which wants to push yields up because the world is like, we don't really trust the leadership of this country. I can't imagine why. Didn't the guy, the guy looked really like he wasn't sweating and jittery yesterday. Calm and cool, like. Calm and cool, like that was confidence inspiring, no doubt. Yet for some reason, others are not receiving it with the same level of confidence at all. So they're demanding a higher premium in order to fund our debt.

And so he's thinking, I can go in and trade. I've got this $4 billion that he flushed down the toilet last week. Now he's identified this trillion dollar bucket of cash that he is going to try to use to try to push down the tail end of the bonds because he thinks he can do, He thinks that trades and men can override the structural forces at work. But he's comparing 1992 Britain to 2026 United States. And that, to me, is, like, insane. Like, those are completely different things that we're talking about here.

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The new Red Bull, Dragonberry and Tropicberry Energizers, now at McDonald's, made with freeze-dried fruit and an electric... Burst of flavor. The all-new Red Bull Energizers. Now at McDonald's. This product may not be right for you. High in caffeine, details of McDonald's.ca.com. At participating Canadian restaurants excluding Quebec. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting. voice next to my ear saying shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who

live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about... about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to skip ahead here again. I want to put A8 up on the screen. So this is remarkable criticism. I'm quoting Greg Ip, who's chief economics commentator for the Wall Street Journal.

Remarkable criticism of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett by his former boss, Nan Drucken Miller, especially this, quote, once markets believe Treasury is different. defending a price, every rise in yields becomes a test of official resolve, and the operations must grow to survive the tests. Now, skip ahead to the next element. This is Charles Gasparino over at Fox Business, who said, scoop. Besant will do whatever it takes to, quote, put the fear of God into the bond vigilantes, shorting the long end of the curve in an attempt to drive the 10-year yield to 5%, Wall Street

executives with direct knowledge of his thinking say. That would include buybacks selling short-term debt. possible elimination of long-dated bonds like the 20-year, etc. It's a short-term solution to keep yields from storing further, strangling growth as the midterms approach, they say, and it doesn't address the real problem. Debt is now at the $40 trillion level and competition for capital from the AI buildout. So, rang, your analysis is basically echoed, I think, by people within Besson World. Yeah, so Gasparino is basically saying that what I just said, it seems to be his mindset, actually is his mindset.

That he's conveying to Wall Street executives. Apparently. He's that he thinks he has the ability to go in and threaten traders who want to get on the wrong side of the trades, that he's going to make them lose their shirts. It's possible that this could work for several weeks because now you have traders who might, if any big traders are going to go in and try to go short here. what Besson could do is come in at a well-time moment and for an hour cost them a lot of money. He can't, he can't structurally change things, but he's hoping that he can scare enough people out of the market.

But it's completely, it's completely insane. I was going to say, it sounds like... This is not a way to run a global economy. It sounds like a public relations effort, basically, to get through the midterms. It, yeah, I mean, it's, it basically is. I mean, he's out there saying that he has, that he's going to do this for like 90 days. Like, it's, everything he's doing, he's timing it to November. Like, it's a complete joke. And it's not going to work in terms of, I mean, it may prevent, like, massive price hikes in the short term. But people are still going to be squeezed. Right. And so actually, let's go to A5 here. This is the U.S. You can see the chart here from Bank of America Global Investment Strategy. This is what Goli, is referring to not having enough, you know, economic power. Yeah, check this out. U.S. now has 41 days of crude oil inventory left.

That is the lowest level that we have had in half a century. Right. And so there's a good analogy here to why Trump isn't restarting the war. He started the war in February with his ammo, you know, full stock, like ready to go. multiple aircraft carriers, the sailors were fresh, their ballistic missile interceptors were basically stocked up. They depleted a bunch in the 12-day war, but... Not nearly stocked up enough, but yeah.

Right, but they were ready to go. They went to war. Oh, and our oil inventories were flush, you know, not as flush as they could have or should have been, but pretty flush. Economy was coming along. The inflation was coming down. Like things were good. Yeah, it literally was.

Things were getting better in February. So he went in with all of that and still lost. So when he went back to Pete, let's do it again. Pete's like, well, you know, we lost already. I'm sure he didn't admit that. Yeah. We did all of this. It didn't work.

And now we don't have the same amount of ammo. So we turn to Treasury. So let's go to Treasury. Now the problem is we've been doing this for 47 years to them. We've been trying to do it for the last several years. maximum pressure. And we were doing that from a position of economic strength. We are now in a position of extraordinary weakness where we are hours away at any given moment from a financial crisis. And we are, as they say, 41 days away from basically being out of oil inventories. The Panama Canal, because of El Nino, has also cut the amount of ships that that it's enabling to go through. The Gulf had been producing extra amounts of oil

and shipping it to Asia through the Panama Canal. Prices for that have gone through the roof and the number of people that can, number ships that can transit has now collapsed. They claim they're getting a decent amount through the Strait of Hormuz. If that was true, for some reason, it's not slowing the drawdown of our strategic reserves.

Like if it was true that we were getting this insane amount of oil, through that Axios is claiming, that the White House is claiming to Axios, then we wouldn't be drawing from our reserves, but we are. So that's why Ghalyboff is saying that we can't, that we don't have the economic power to do what we're claiming. Before we left Drucken Miller, I did want to highlight this other quote of his. He said, if the 30-year must trade at 5.5% to clear, that isn't a crisis. It is an invoice. And it's an interesting moment that that is obviously an AI written line.

I didn't even think about that, but you're right. It sounds like it. Like Besson's thing was AI slop. Besson's mentor is now criticizing him with his own AI, which I don't think of slop. I think that's a decent line. I thought it was pretty good. Although it also is a crisis. It can be both.

But they say it isn't a crisis. It isn't anyway. Because AI only knows how to do the, it's not this, it's that. kind of writing. But it's an invoice. It's good line. When I read that, I was like, Claude, you delivered on this one. This is quality stuff.

And I bet Dracke in the Lord was reading, he's like, sounds like AI, but it's a pretty snappy line. Just going to have to leave that. So this is what we're bringing to bear in this war against Iran. It is a bunch of AI slop when we're out of ammo, out of money, and out of oil. And don't forget, our economy. is running on people demanding AI slop. Right. And it's fascinating that one of the reasons that interest rates are up, which Dr.

Miller alluded to, or Gasparino did. Gasparino alluded to, is that they are out in the market with many, many billions of dollars of bonds that they are raising. And so that competition is pushing up interest rates for everybody. So you thought you hated AI? It's also the reason your car loan is going up. Yeah. Your mortgage prices are going up that we're getting a credit contraction.

And the U.S. is having a hard time funding. It's dead. Okay, but Ryan, to be fair, it's not a crisis. It's an invoice. It's an invoice. It's an invoice. Keep that in mind. Before we leave this block, let's put Secretary Rubio's post as A7 on the screen.

He announced that he formally rescinded yesterday. Syria's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. This action unlocks new potential for serious economic revitalization. and progress. The Trump administration continues to advance U.S. national security to achieve peace, prosperity, and security in the Middle East reign. So think about this in comparison to Cuba. So Syria is run by a former al-Qaeda leader. We're fine with that. Like that, they're lifted from the state sponsor terrorism list. Cuba, citing stuff from the 1960s is on that list. Right. I was talking to Ed Augustine reporter in Cuba the other day. He said they're now up to

three and a half million people out of roughly 10 million people. They're about 10 million people on that island because so many have left. Three and a half million don't have running water at this point because of the complete and total blockade of Cuba. And it's August. Like this is not a time you want to be in Cuba without water on top of the like the disease. that spreads in the summer, which, you know, I shouldn't have to, like, link it back to us. But the diseases that we're breeding on Cuba right now aren't going to stay in Cuba. So, yeah, so congratulations to Syria, I guess. Huge.

Yeah. Not a crisis and invoice. All right. just doesn't happen. That's why I started using Factor. Factor delivers fresh, never frozen, ready to eat meals, designed by dietitians for balanced nutrition that actually fits my life. No prep, no cleanup, just heat, eat, and move on. And just like that, I get my time back. No dishes, no poor choices, no dinner stress. I don't have to plan. And somehow, I'm still eating meals like grilled salmon, creamy shrimp pasta, and flavorful chicken bowls. Food that tastes like I

worked for it, even though, well, I didn't. Factor helps me stay on track. High protein, low carb, no dairy, whatever the goal. Right now, get up to $90 off and free shipping. Hurry, this offer won't last long. Go to factormeals.ca and use code easy. That's up to $90 off and free shipping, but only with the code easy at factormeals.ca. Factor. Canada's number one meal delivery service. Tropicberry energizers, now at McDonald's. Made with freeze-dried fruit. And an electric burst of flavor. The all-new Red Bull Energizers, now at McDonald's.

This product may not be right for you. High in caffeine, details at McDonald's.ca. At participating Canadian restaurants, excluding Quebec. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable.

I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked. controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Trade War with Canada continues to heat up, although I will note. Trump says his retaliatory tariffs in this case aren't starting until January 1. We'll get into that. But Treasury Secretary Scott Besson was asked about this at his arrest. economic deed day over Iran press conference yesterday. Here's a bit of how he responded, B1. Does the United States and President Trump still want Canada to become a state? He did say that they're getting all the benefits of being a state without being one. I think he would like Canada to come to the table and negotiate in good faith. They were offered quite a good deal last week.

They chose to reject it. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Carney, Carney rose to power on an anti-American anti-Trump platform. I believe he was more than 20 points behind. And, you know, he seems to have gone back to his old playbook. And I think one has to ask oneself, is he trying to benefit himself, the Liberal Party, or the Canadian people? Because they were offered a very good job. So obviously, as a reminder, I'm reading from BBC here, Trump threatened to hike tariffs

on cars. And this was a truck's auto parts. that's sort of stuff, 25% to 50% increase as of January 1. So while the talk is getting tougher, there's a huge amount of buffer room. But speaking of tough talk, let's listen to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday as well. It's not a surprise for us that the U.S. would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariff, which was on top of other unjustified tariffs. That's not a surprise. But what message does that send to the workers in Michigan and Ohio and Kentucky and Alabama

who rely on Canadian demand? We're their largest customer for automobiles, more than the European Union, Japan, Korea, many others combined. And the United Kingdom, I can throw them in as well. This is the most successful automotive partnership in history. It's existed for all my life for 60 years. And the president is doing what we, not just suspected, but we had confirmed through the terms that they were offering. Instead of a quick change to the terms in the automobile industry, they were putting on the table terms that gradually would have that impact. And we wouldn't accept that.

So it's very revealing that this is where they go. For a little bit more spice, let's turn to Doug Ford, brother, of course, of duly departed Toronto mayor. Rob Ford, he is the premier of Alberta currently. This is what Doug Ford had to say, B3. You sound a little more subdued than you did this morning on the radio when you said Donald Trump could kiss your ass.

Did the prime minister tell you to ask you to tone it down a bit? No, he didn't. I'm kind of comment, but he wasn't against that. And I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass. So I just do.

I'm a big dude. What can I say? All right, Premier of Ontario. I'm sorry, I'll park up, but that's how Doug Ford responded. Now, the U.S. keeps talking about how Canada walked away. This is more from BBC on Friday than when Canadian officials did walk away. BBC says they're claiming the U.S. introduced last-minute demands that were, quote, unacceptable, including a clause limiting which countries Canada could sign trade deals with.

Jameson Greer, on the other hand, is saying Canada was introducing, last-minute changes, he said, quote, they wanted more, a bit unclear what actually happened on Friday. But Mark Carney said he was, quote, focused on supporting Canadian businesses impacted by the new 50% U.S. tariffs after the Friday deadline expired, as well as building infrastructure to diversify Canada's trade, which historically has relied on the U.S. You know, I actually think a lot of people would say that's a good thing. Canada should build infrastructure internally.

The United States should be doing the same precisely because people's jobs and lives are vulnerable to trade wars that can bubble up exactly like this. But, you know, it's to see the back and forth, but realize this 25 to 50% increase isn't happening until January, Ryan, it does feel a bit like what we were talking about with Iran earlier that the Trump administration learned through the Liberation Day, I was going to say fiasco, but the Liberation Day adventure, misadventure, choose your own adventure with the word that you want to use in that case. but he learned that he can do so much.

He could do so very much with words alone. Because this, again, the 25% to 50% increase doesn't happen until January 1st. Yeah, and the reporting is that it was Howard Lutnik, Commerce Secretary, who blew up the talks. Like, that seems to be what both sides are kind of saying. James and Greer is the U.S. trade representative, who was supposed to be leading the talks, but there were areas that involved commerce,

including the cars, aluminum, steel. And Lutnik was directly communicating with Carney by text and by phone and seemed like to go back to your point about like what elements of the deal and who they're allowed to trade with. It seems like he insisted on some things that Canada was like, no, like we're not we're not doing that. And Trump announced last week we had a deal. Remember? So we got a deal. Yep. And it was all all done except for the signing.

And then so then what is Lutnik doing on the phone and texting with? with Carney. Like, either way, it's a, it's a complete mess. Like, like, and in the very beginning, if you remember, um, they didn't want to deal with Ludnik. Yes. Like, they, they have never wanted to deal with Ludnik. I don't know how much Trump wants to deal with Ludnik, honestly.

The people around Trump. Yeah. Yeah. He's just kind of a crazy person. Just going rogue. Like, right. He just, he seems funny. He tells a good story.

But like, I'm sure he's like, like, fun. at dinners or whatever, but like, what, what's this guy doing? Right. Other than having his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, break in all the tariff money. Yeah. Like, that is incredible. And the crypto money, isn't Candidstich Gerald also behind the stable coin move? They're making so much money.

Right. Just making absolutely incredible amounts of money. They bought up, so people understand. Before the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had to give the tariff. back money back to the companies. Cantor Fitzgerald, his firm, run by his kids, went around buying up for pennies on the dollar the right to get that tariff money back. So that's why you paid more for stuff that came in and was tariffed. And then when there were refunds, you didn't get the refund. Howard Lutnik's getting the refund. And now he's in there blowing up this Canadian deal.

By the way, we already have a USMCA, like the renegotiated NAFTA, the tax. And that's a renegotiated NAFTA. Trump was so proud of. Like, he already did this. What are we doing? Like, why did you do these years-long negotiations and sign a long-term agreement if you just want to, like, do it again? Yeah. Susan Collins came out interestingly against, I mean, it's not interesting. It's kind of obvious, but came out against this. As she's been campaigning across Maine, it was interesting because J.D. Vance, I don't think, if I'm remembering correctly, Collins didn't go to the Vance rally that he had in Maine. And he was defending the administration's trade policy. Collins was opposing it. So that tells you a bit about how it's playing out in Maine. Ryan, let's put this drop site on this drop site report up on the

screen of this drop site comment on the Canadian wildfires. So drop site reporting on X wildfires and maintenance are set to squeeze Canadian oil that U.S. relies on at the worst possible time. U.S. refiners are bracing for a drop in supply from Canada, their largest foreign source of crude, at a moment when they can least afford it, Bloomberg reported this weekend. Canada supplies over 4 million barrels a day, and Midwest refiners cut off from seaborne imports lead on it especially hard. How could this play into the next few weeks, few months? We've got four months until that January 1st implementation on the automobile tariffs.

But how does that play into this now? Disaster. Disaster for the U.S. Yeah, so the combination of wildfires and maintenance are shutting down many hundreds of thousands of barrels a day from getting. into the U.S. And these are in their oil. This is wildfires that broke out what last week,

the last couple of weeks in their oil sands region? Yeah. Yeah. And so it's hitting as everything else is hitting. Ukraine's lighting up all of Russia's oil infrastructure, straight-of-Harmuz, crimped, Panama Canal, tightened up because of El Nino. And this wildfires plus the maintenance where, you know,

is it scheduled maintenance or is it? Canada putting some pressure on us, probably a combination. But we're not in a place of strength where we can handle a few El Nino and Wildfire-related crises because we have inflicted eight crises on top of it by our own hand. And I should mention just on the Stablecoin point, Cantor Fitzgerald is one of the big investors in Tether. So if that's the tie on that end, let's listen to more of Jameson Greer. So he's on CNBC yesterday. Here's what he had to say.

So we don't have any issue proceeding with our trade policy as planned. And I think the market understands that. I think the market knows that at the end of the day, this is 5% of imports from Canada. It's 0.06% of our overall consumption in this economy. So there's no possible way it can really affect U.S. well. being, right? I mean, we've been having great prints on inflation the past couple of months going down in June and staying flat here, real wages for manufacturing workers going up. So we're on the right trajectory. The fundamentals are good, and I don't think this is going to affect anything.

That's why I think the markets are shrugging at all. Okay, well, obviously, it affects some states more than others. It's fine as long as you don't live in Michigan. Yeah, or Maine, yeah. So Trump's true social post, put it this way. Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years. the ridiculously high tariffs on our farmers and farm products has made life impossible for these great American patriots and has long created. By the way, I'll just pause there and say that's kind of true. The question of how you're addressing it remains significant. He goes on and said they've long created a $60 billion deficit between our two countries. It's not sustainable and not anymore.

On January 1st, 2027 tariffs on all cars, trucks, both large and small automotive parts and steel will be increased to 50% billed in the U.S. And there are zero tariffs. Canada will be treated like a state no longer. on trade and in other ways also they're among the worst nations in the world to deal with. They feel entitled. And yet, all caps, we don't need Canada. They need us. They do 95% of their business with the U.S. with us, the exact opposite.

And then he ended with the classic, thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump, reassuring, no doubt, to people in states that are going to be hit hard. Yeah. But the problem, I mean, a lot of those states, Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, this is actually a problem. and people want to see a dress. It's the same thing, like with farmers during the first Trump administration. You'd have some corporate media reporter going out talking to farmers, expecting them to be furious about the tariffs, which were genuinely hurting them. And what you would get was them saying, we're willing to be patient because we know we have structural problems.

Like time and again, every time you would go out and try to find someone, corporate press would go out, try to find someone, you would hear them saying, listen, we know this is a problem. We're just hoping that he can fix it. Like, fingers crossed, we know something structurally needs to change. But I don't. I don't think people have confidence that those structural changes are, as James and Greer put it, really, really going in the right direction. No, I don't think they'll, they do. We were going to cover the cattle crisis that Trump sparked in the last couple of days, but we're punting that until tomorrow. But I was watching some of the kind of the cattle podcasts yesterday.

Yep. And they're just, it's just watching these guys go through the stages of grief. Right. Like this, this America First president was our last hope. This is truly what we invested in our hopes and dreams in. And he has betrayed us. And we're going to be like a bunch of their dissent. We're just going to leave the industry.

Like, we're giving up. Like, we can't even, we can't compete anymore with this. And, and, and watching them kind of walk themselves through that, those stages of grief was, It was fascinating. And it's like, damn, like, wow. A lot of Republicans really, really angry about the beef decision as well. And I know you guys are going to cover this, but Tim Sheehe, Chuck Grassley, if you're from an Ag State, they're furious about it.

And those are people who wanted something to be done, who are open to structural, drastic policy maneuvers, but not that structural drastic policy maneuver. Basically, Trump wants to bring in a bunch of diseased Brazilian. and Argentinian beef to smash the domestic cattle industry. To get to the midterms because he started a war and around. 90 days. Yeah. Again, he's doing it for 90 days.

Speaking of the midterms, let's move on to the Supreme Court decision. I like to eat well. But after work, after errands, after everything else, cooking just doesn't happen. That's why I started using Factor. Factor delivers fresh, never frozen, ready to eat meals. Designed by dietitians for balanced nutrition that actually fits my life. No prep, no cleanup. Just heat, eat, and move on. And just like that, I get my time back. No dishes, no poor choices, no dinner stress. I don't have to plan. And somehow, I'm still eating meals like grilled salmon, creamy shrimp pasta, and flavorful chicken bowls. Food that tastes like I worked for it, even though, well, I didn't. Factor helps me stay on track. High protein, low carb, no dairy, whatever the goal. Right now, get up to $90 off and free shipping.

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made with freeze-dried fruit and an electric burst of flavor. The all-new Red Bull Energizers, now at McDonald's. This product may not be right for you. High in caffeine, details at McDonald's.ca. At participating Canadian restaurants excluding Quebec. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A big victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court yesterday, you can put up this New York Times element. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed his executive order on mail-in voting to go forward. So let's unpack a little bit what actually has. happened here. So the court and Emily step in and you think I'm steering the wrong. The executive came in, Trump came in. In March. That was a three-part executive order. But the thrust of it was, we're going to send the states a list of citizens.

And we are going to insist on a certain set of rules and regulations that you're going to have to follow or else the mail will not deliver your ballots and officials involved with the programs will be prosecuted if we find if we believe that you did not follow this executive order as as as the law as it applies to the law and a bunch of states sued to enjoin this saying very clearly in the Constitution, it says the administration of the elections is left to the states. Like it's not ambiguous. It's just right there and that precursive in the Constitution. There it is. And that having us go through all this work damages, you know, it damages us. It damages us. It costs us money. And living with this threat of prosecution is crazy. You don't have to.

have any authority whatsoever in this realm go away and the lower courts said yes they're correct they should not have to deal with this states run the elections uh leave them alone the this executive order is unconstitutional and invalid and we've stated the trump administration then went to the supreme court and the supreme court has agreed to lift the stay temporarily right temporarily Their argument is that they haven't issued a final ruling. Right. A final rule. That they did the order, but not the rule.

And that because they haven't issued the rule, that at this point, there's no, there are no damages. There's no problem for the states. Except the states, as they've said, they're already scrambling to respond to all this stuff. On the other side, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump, as the executive, would be irreparably harmed if they did not allow it. temporarily to go into action, right? That was the flip side of it is that the states can't prove the harm. The administration would have, would suffer irreparable harm to the implementation of the executive order. Yeah, and Sotomayor and Jackson and I forget who else in dissent, you know, pointed out that there's, there was no, yeah, Kagan, there was no effort by the Trump administration to even explain or assert how it is that they would prevail and overcome the obvious.

obstacle, which is that the Constitution says you can't do this. Very specifically the Constitution says that the voting is left up to the states. And the Supreme Court also said that

the states can't sue because they're speculative harm, because they might be prosecuted, but they may not be prosecuted. Which if you're an election official, that's not a very... It's not comforting. It's not very comforting. But we're not guaranteeing that you're going to be prosecuted for not following this executive order.

So therefore, you can't challenge it beforehand. Yeah, it's interesting because it's all over mail and ballots. So that for Republicans means a lot of elderly Republican-friendly voters vote by mail. And so this is also a challenge for them. It's a challenge to even get Republicans who now have, if you're a hardcore maga-type voter, to get you out to the polls, does it cause problems with that? I mean, that's, someone was saying, some Republican strategist was saying as much on CNN last night. I could see how that would be true, but this is also going to keep seesawing.

So reading from NPR here, they report a broader injunction remains in place against that executive order for March. As part of a separate but related lawsuit, the postal service is blocked from following Trump's directives under a nationwide ruling. That was from the district judge in Boston. But in a court filing late Monday, the administration says it plans to ask the First Circuit Court of Appeals to pause that ruling. If the judge does not pause or cancel the ruling by 5.30 p.m. today, a dozen Republican-led states have already appealed that ruling and PR reports. So it's actually a really confusing legal tangle of what actually might be happening come election day. And if you're the states, I mean, it's a mess. There's no question about it. Mikey Sherrill just obviously anticipating how difficult this was going to be purged a bunch of non-citizens from the voting rules.

That was an actual thing that Mikey Sherrill dealt with. But now, if you're a blue state, it's just unclear what's going to happen. And you have to start prepping mail-in ballots. That's the start happening soon. Right, yeah. This there is a lot of concern out there about what plans Trump is hatching to try to, because if you followed the previous couple of segments that we did today, Trump is driving the country and the world into a ditch.

And as a, you know, nominally democratic society, usually that comes with major repercussions. That's why presidents care about the unemployment rate. GDP, inflation, because they are punished at the polls. Right. If their stewardship of the economy is such that people are angry about how things are going. Trump is trying to sever the link between his performance as president and the Democratic checks on that performance. Rather than perform better, Trump has been very clear.

he is more interested in waging his war on Iran than he is with the well-being, the immediate well-being of Americans' economic situations. He has said people can suffer higher gas prices. It's okay. I'm not worried about it. He said, or he, remember, he did not sign the housing bill, the Elizabeth Warren, Tim Scott housing bill. He would not sign it because he was demanding the SAVE Act.

And actually, a lot of the reason... It went in a law anyway. Right, of course. Right, because it was so bipartisan. But one of the big reasons that Republicans are hesitant to get on board with the SAVE Act is actually because of this federalization of elections we're talking about here. Now, this is an executive order, as Ryan explained, that tells DHS to come up with a list of citizen voters and send it, of citizens, and send it to the states and say, compare this list, the federal government's list, and then purge basically people who are not on this list because they're non-citizens from your voter rolls. Non-citizens should absolutely not be voting in federal elections. Unless it's, you know, here in D.C., non-citizens can vote in local elections.

That's D.C.'s jurisdiction. I don't think it's particularly good policy, but that's a debate for another day. But non-citizens are also not going to swing the midterm elections. It's also not going to happen. And with the SAVE Act, a lot of Republicans were saying, you are federalizing elections by stepping in and telling states what they can and cannot do. do in how they decide to run their local elections, and they were uncomfortable with that. So it's different shades, I guess, of federal control over elections when you look at the two

policies. Josh Shapiro put out a post yesterday, saying, not so fast. Today, Scoti's decision does not deal with the substance of Trump's unconstitutional executive order and does not mean his illegal attempt to restrict mail-in voting will go forward. Donald Trump does not run elections here in Pennsylvania or in any state. We'll see the Trump administration in court. In the meantime, I'll keep defending Pennsylvania's right to free, fair, and secure elections.

So all this is to say, these legal decisions about to what degree the federal government can stick its kind of, I was going to say no's, but I mean, it's the federal government so can control how states run their elections. It's playing out on a very, very short timeline, very short timeline. Right, which is another argument that the states had made that you can't do this at this moment. Also, yeah, to your point about non-citizens not being the thing they're going to sort of. between the midterms, something like 50% of our citizens don't vote. Like we have a not voting problem in the United States. We don't have a voting problem. If there was an epidemic of non-citizens voting,

we would hear about it nonstop. They found like, what, three or something? I mean, it happens. Over years, they found like a handful of people who like misunderstood They've never found any systematic voting by non-citizens. They never found any actual project to try to get non-citizens to vote. Because think about it, you don't have to do that. There are tens of millions of legal citizens who do not vote.

So if you are a political campaign or a political party, you have tens of millions of people to try to get the vote. Yeah. before like imagine how hard it is to get somebody to go out and vote even when they are already registered to vote and they're a citizen and you still can't get them to vote because there's nothing to vote for now you're going to try to talk somebody into doing it when they know they could go to prison for it so you're going to you're going to risk prison when you're not even a citizen to vote for some liar, like, not a citizen's aren't idiots either. Like, they,

like, they're not moved by these candidates. Like, nobody's, nobody's moved by any of these candidates. Like, most people do some level of civic duty and harm reduction at the polls. Reduction at the polls. That's a really good way to put it. That's all they do. So, why would you risk your freedom to do that? That's why this is just not a thing that exists. Yeah, I mean, on the other hand, I think when we look at some of the scary polls with Americans losing faith in the accuracy of election results, and you do have, according to the New York Times, David Leonhard's estimate, I think this is probably on the low end as well, 8 million non-citizens coming to the United States in a period of about three years, and you don't have national voter ID. I think there are

some fair concerns that people have about what might be happening, but it's very unlikely that's swaying. It's a decisive factor in elections. I also think if Republicans would, and Democrats should do this. Just put a bill on the floor, that's voter ID. Yeah, and that's what SAVE should have been. Because Democrats, I think, have moved beyond. Like, for a long time, they were pretty hostile to voter ID. Right.

Now, I think they're actually, basically, everybody's fine with it. But the SAVE Act has all these other weird things in it. So just, if they just put voter ID on the floor, I bet it would actually pass. I think they're mostly fine on a national level. I think it's state Democrats who know in the short term that would be difficult. because it is true that for voters, especially in low-income areas, that you're adding an

extra hurdle. So you are eating in the margins of likely Democratic votes in close elections. So I think probably the biggest issue is on the state level. People would be hesitant. But federal level, I think you're right. It's, you know, if SAVE had just been

a voter ID bill, that would have actually been kind of interesting. Also, the first line of the Supreme Court ruling is kind of funny, because to me, it's just a straight-up lie. I saw you posting about this. Yes. The first line is, about five months ago, President Trump issued an executive order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections. That's all he does. Is there anybody who believes that President Trump issued this order to maintain public

confidence in federal elections? He just wants us to have some trust again. My confidence in federal elections, thanks to the design of this order and the Supreme Court's ruling. just rock solid. Yeah, it's, we can only go, we can only keep going up. It should have said about five months ago, President Trump issued an executive order designed to tilt the elections in his favor. Ryan Grimm, just be honest.

Sick of winning. Yeah, sick of winning. All right, well, let's move to Michigan, speaking of the midterms, where Abdul Al-Said's campaign has had an interesting 48 hours. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,

and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell.

I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more.

And I guess I can share that... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, Solita. We share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B.

I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.