Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/29/22: Fed Policy, Trump Investigation, New Polling, Big Pharma War, Facebook Censorship, Populist Dems, & More!

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Fed's next moves on inflation, Trump investigation developments, Issue polling and midterm polling, big pharma vaccine wars, Zuckerberg comments about Facebook censorship, 1971 political shift, populist Democrats, & the possibility Trump gets indicted!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 Bradley Moss: https://markzaid.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Some big stories that have been breaking over the past couple of days. So the Federal Reserve Chairman making some very disturbing comments, sending the markets into a tailspin and basically just outright saying that he is going to cause you pain in order to get inflation under control. Good stuff there. So we'll get into all of that. Also some new legal developments with the former president. Judge indicating that she is

likely to appoint that special master to help go through. We'll talk to you about what that means. Also, on, was it Friday that it came out? The redacted affidavit was revealed. Not a whole lot that was new there because the redactions were fairly extensive, but we will tell you what we learned. A bunch of new polling that is out. CBS News' new battleground tracker showing Democrats making some gains, but Republicans still in position to win control of the House. Biden's approval rating ticking up a bit. And also some new polling showing that overall the student debt relief from Biden is rather popular with the public. We also have this just, I don't even know what to say about this. Moderna suing Pfizer, alleging that Pfizer stole their mRNA technology. Newsflash, the U.S. government and you, the U.S. taxpayer, funded the development of that mRNA technology that they're now suing each other over over even after they made unbelievably, unbelievable amounts of profits off of all of this. So we'll get into those details. Also, some quite interesting comments from Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast with Joe Rogan about what exactly the FBI said to them about the Hunter Biden stuff.

We have a legal expert on Bradley Moss who made a pretty bold prediction. Yes. We had Brad on before. He's very bullish, but I still think it's worth hearing him out. Yeah, I want to hear him make the case. So he made the argument Trump will be indicted based on what he saw in that affidavit that was released. So yeah, we'll have him lay out the case and see what he thinks.

But before we get to any of that... Live show. Let's throw it up there on the screen. Almost a couple of weeks now that we have, and it's going to be 17 days, September 16th. We're going to be there in the city of Atlanta. Thank you to everybody. We even had folks compile entire dossiers of recommendations.

Yes, that was very sweet. Very appreciated. You guys are the best. We have future dates and cities we're literally discussing at this moment, so you're going to have to keep those recommendations coming. Only a few tickets less. Go ahead and nab yours. We want to be 100% sold out.

In order to show the world, that is what we do over here. But let's start with the Fed. That's what's important. Indeed. So as we mentioned to you last week, a bunch of the Fed folks were getting together in Jackson Hole to, you know, these are always these comments are really closely watched to see what direction the Fed is going to go in. And there are some real question marks here because on the one hand, inflation obviously continues to be high. On the other hand, we did just get some recent indications that perhaps it's cooling a bit. Meanwhile, we have some indications that,

you know, the economy is taking a real hit from the Fed's moves to increase the interest rate. This was their goal. It was, we've been discussing their whole approach here is to basically crush you in order to get inflation under control. Jerome Powell mincing no words, really making it quite clear that they intend to stick to a very aggressive course of interest rate hikes. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them. Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions While higher interest rates, slower growth,

and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain. We'll bring some pain. I mean, that is the understatement of the century, because as bad as it is to have rising inflation straining budgets, it is much, much worse to have inflation and also not have a job, which is the direction that the Fed is intentionally pushing the economy into. With the cheering of many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, I might add, let's go ahead and put CNBC's wrap-up of their analysis of this speech. They say Powell warns

of some pain ahead as the Fed fights to bring down inflation. Powell says, delivered a stern commitment Friday to halting inflation, warning he expects the central bank to continue raising rates in a way that will cause some pain to the U.S. economy. Stocks fell more than 500 points. Dow Jones Industrial Average off more than 500 points. Price stability, he said, is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy without price stability. The economy does not work for anyone. And in an early indication of how the markets felt about this anyway, go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Powell's eight-minute speech erases $78 billion from richest Americans. Not that I'm going to cry too hard for them, but it shows you how closely these remarks were watchdogger

and also shows you, listen, we've been talking a lot about the Fed this year, but there's a reason. The Fed is really central to what is happening in the economy, not just for the richest Americans, but for you. And, you know, whether you're able to put food on the table, whether you're able to keep your job, and whether you're able to have the sort of power that we've seen also among workers who have been able to organize because of the state of the economy. Yeah, Chairman Powell basically saying we're going to have high interest rates. What we're seeing currently is maybe even the median point.

We could go even more past that, going to continue to jack things up. Housing markets falling off of a cliff. the Dow Jones, everything going down. Businesses are going to find it much, much more expensive to borrow. This is going to hit the tech sector. This is going to hit small businesses. It's going to hit even major corporations. I think that we should begin to see a lot of business decisions in the context of this new economy. And I also just hate the Fed speak and econ speak for what these like, we're going to see a softening of the labor market. He's like, what he's saying is, is that the unemployment rate is going to go higher. That's, that's really softening of

the labor market means you're going to lose your job. You're going to lose your job. You're going to have on enable a lot of the collective bargaining that we've seen in the union sector. That's going to go down. We're going to have 6%, 7%, maybe 8% unemployment. Remember, 6% really is the target, which is nearly double what the current unemployment rate is. And demand side is just frankly not where we see most of the inflation coming in. We've talked about this. The vast majority of the inflation people are experiencing in their lives have to do with supply-side problems. And as Chairman Powell has admitted himself while being questioned in the Senate, the current Fed playbook does not target the supply side factors, gas, chips, new cars, so much of that. All they can do is just make things so painful that you'll try and reduce your spending. So they're trying to massively curtail consumer spending.

Another reason that this matters for our overall economy is he's making these comments in August. So right now we are entering October, November, and December. Almost 40-something percent or whatever of retail spending for many major corporations happens in this quarter. And the reason why is Christmas gifts, frankly. You know, people spend a lot more during the holidays. This is a massive spending spree. Everybody, Black Friday, all these other things. Well, if you're going to hit consumer demand ahead of that, you're actually targeting the yearly bottom line of a lot of businesses, which they then use that revenue to pay employees in January. Amazon and others, they always hire like 40% or whatever more

seasonal workers. That will likely go down as a result of this. That's why everybody is watching this. They're like, wow, this means that the economy is going to slow down. And that has just major downstream effects on everybody, from small businesses like ours to the biggest corporations in the world. Whenever people have reduced spending power and they are going to lose their jobs, it's just, it really is a catastrophe. I mean, we were saying, I was showing you before the show, Germany, you know, obviously is not here, but their power prices are up 1,000%. Oh, my God. So 1,000% year over year for natural gas. What does that have to do with consumer demand?

Nothing. It's actually the same. It's Russia. It's like the Russian. It's the war and the sanctions like that is what is driving a huge amount of the inflation. The Biden administration doing all these victory laps. Listen, gas is still like 370 a gallon. Yeah.

It's still very, very high. And that, you know, don't see it going down from there. Well, and it's also important to point out, and actually let's put this next piece up on the screen. So Powell's comments come even after you had what's described as the Fed's favorite inflation gauge here cooled in July. The personal consumption expenditures inflation index

fell on a monthly basis in July. Gas prices swooned and annual gauge slowed. Now, gas prices going down, which is what contributed to this gauge cooling in July, that had nothing to do with Fed policy, which again just shows you how disconnected what the Fed is doing from the actual primary drivers of inflation. So there continues to be a real chance that the Fed crushes the economy, causes unemployment to spike, causes millions of Americans to lose their jobs, and all of the—that's not some pain, maybe, experience the labor market's on. That is a total catastrophe in the lives of so many families across the country. Just sort of casually, casually taking this action is completely insane and sort of disconnected from the real pain that that's going to cause. And meanwhile, they could do that and still have inflation running rampant because you are not addressing the real causes. And in fact,

as has been pointed out before, you know, the Fed hiking interest rates actually limits new investments being taken, which can cause increased supply issues, which is part of what is leading to this situation to start with. So if there was any question about the direction the Fed was going to head in, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell making it quite clear they are committed to an aggressive stance. And, you know, casually sort of talking about the incredible pain that is going to be in our leaders take this kind of direct action to create pain for American consumers and American families. But that's exactly what's happening right now. No, you're absolutely correct, Crystal. There's one more piece of this that you found, Sagar. This is a fun one. All right. So while the Fed may be committed to killing your job and, you know, destroying your personal finances,

according to some, there is some good news. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. You literally cannot make this up. This is from the Associated Press. They tweeted this article. They say, leadership of the Federal Reserve has become its most diverse ever. There are more female, black, and gay officials contributing to the central bank's interest rate decisions than at any time in its 109-year history. So guys, don't you feel better that it is diverse leadership that is causing you to potentially lose your job and have your household finances collapse? Doesn't that make you feel better about the whole thing, guys? This is really like the rainbow bombs meme, or they're like people looking up and be like, well, at least it's women pilots who are bombing us today i mean you know it's it's funny too and the offense that people

are taking it but so you know republican candidate uh blake masters look blake he's gotten himself in some trouble we're gonna do a whole segment tomorrow on how he's removed some abortion uh language and i literally do mean a removed yeah and a begging Mitch McConnell for more money, even though McConnell just slashed some money there. Anyway, so he put out a tweet today making fun of this, saying, finally, a compelling explanation for why our economy is doing so well. And he is now being attacked by the national press for supposedly being a bigot. Now, listen, I mean, it's a glib tweet, but the point is, is why should you care what the leadership of the Fed is doing

if they are causing you pain? Like Paul Volcker was a white man. You know, it's like, oh, well, if we'd had more diverse voices in the 1970s, everything would have been hunky-dory. No, we're just repeating actually very similar policy to then. So if anything, we have a more diverse crop of people

who are not learning the same lessons. Well, the problem is that they're not diverse in terms of their thinking. Thinking, yeah. Maybe that's what matters. They continue to all be beholden first and foremost to Wall Street. And until you get some diversity of thought with regards to that, you're going to replay the same mistakes over and foremost to Wall Street. And until you get some diversity of thought with regards to that, you're going to replay the same mistakes over and over and over again. But yeah, I mean, it was just, it was too perfect an encapsulation of like hollow liberal identity

politics brain to not bring it up. And, you know, you live by the sword, you die by the sword too, because I think it's very likely in the next presidential election cycle that Republicans pick a woman or, you know, Tim Scott or, you know, somebody as their vice presidential candidate. It's like, well, look, I thought you're for progress. Here's some diversity. Don't you support. Don't you guys support this? Isn't this what you were after? Listen, diversity is a great thing.

We want everyone to have opportunities to succeed and, you know, whatever, meritocracy, all that good stuff. But it matters a lot more that you have this sort of diversity of thought and that you have actually, like, different policy ideas, not just everybody, you know, a sort of, like, different demographics represented, but the same exact terrible ideology, which is what we usually end up getting. That's where it reminds me of, like, you can't go public on the NASDAQ unless you have like one person of color who's a woman on your board. I'm like, oh, that will certainly impact business practice. That's made capitalism so much better. Yes. Has it had a material change on the way that these companies behave themselves?

Take a look at our block on the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine and you can decide for yourself. All right. Let's talk about Trump. Yes, indeed. Okay, let's go ahead and put this first part up on the screen. So a federal judge just issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago. Okay, what is a special master? You may be asking yourself. I've been asking myself that as well, and I've dug into it a little bit. So these are typically appointed when you need

someone to come in as sort of an independent expert to review materials that were collected to vet them for whether there is a limitation of attorney-client privilege. Now, in this instance, it's a little bit different because what they want these materials to be vetted for is not attorney-client privilege but executive privilege. And even the legal issues around whether or not Trump can sort of assert executive privilege over these documents are pretty thorny because he's not the president anymore. He's now the former president. so a lot of analysts say that, you know, what the current incumbent president thinks about these matters is more significant than any sort of executive privilege that Trump sort of could assert over them given his status as former president. So it's all a little bit legally sticky and a little bit uncharted waters. There are some other issues here as well. Let's go ahead and actually put this next piece up on the screen that has a kind of breakdown here. So this again

says a judge orders redacted affidavit used in Trump's search warrant to be unsealed. They had some details here as well. They say special masters are not uncommon in criminal investigations that include the seizure by the government of disputed materials that could be protected by attorney-client privilege. Michael Cohen had a special master. I think Rudy Giuliani at some point, there was a special master for something he was involved with. But again, what's different here is this isn't just about attorney-client privilege. This is about executive privilege, which is kind of different. There's another peace saga that makes this, I don't know, it makes it potentially irrelevant, which is that the government has had these documents for a few weeks now.

Yes. So, and the judge in issuing, this was not actually an order, like, I'm going to appoint a special master. This was like, I'm probably going to do this. I'm going to decide on Thursday. But she didn't order the government to stop going through these documents.

And now, like I said, what, we're in three weeks since these documents were seized. They've had a lot of time to look at what is here and sort of sort, you know, sort out what's classified and what are we dealing with. And in fact, the judge also ordered the government to provide a more detailed inventory list of exactly what they collected.

So it may be also kind of irrelevant at this point because the government may well have already gone through everything they wanted to go through with regards to these documents. No, you're right. You know, it's odd because actually lawyers on both sides are describing it as such. They're like, look, it's kind of absurd in order to issue this declaration but not actually order the DOJ to do anything. It's like you're almost virtue signaling. And as the Trump people are saying, they're like, well, they didn't actually appoint the special master. I mean, you and I have already said it. I'm like, look, from what I've said, talked to some lawyers, a special master does seem like probably a good idea, but probably

should have been appointed in the beginning. And it's one that we've seen in many of these classified document cases, not just classified documents, but even when there's so-called executive privilege. And if you do believe the government, which is that this is some of the most sensitive classified information that exists on planet Earth, I mean, why wouldn't you want somebody to be going through it? Part of the problem, so what they have in place is what the DOJ calls a taint team, LOL, or a filter team. We'll go with that one. And so they already are supposedly going through this. You may have some skepticism about the government and how fair-minded they're going to be about this. But there's supposed to be a separate filter team sorting through these documents, figuring out what is relevant to the investigation before the team that is actually an investigatory team is able to go through these things.

And by the way, we do have a lawyer on the show today that we're going to ask some of these questions to as well. But so that's the process that is in place as of now. So there's also a question if this special master is ultimately appointed and there's a disagreement between the filter team and the special master, how does that get worked out and how does that get handled? So there are some questions here. Generally, the Trump team saw this as kind of like a minor win for them. Yes. Mostly because it just kind of like bogs things down and makes things a little bit more complicated, which I guess they see as inuring to their benefit. Again, this hasn't officially been decided, but she issued this sort of preliminary order saying this is probably the direction that I'm going to go in. The other challenge is that it's kind of difficult,

honestly, to find a person who can serve in this role given how specialized it is. So, you know, not only do you have to have someone who's qualified in general to serve in the special master role, but you also have to have someone who has, you know, is able to look at these highly classified, you know, to the highest levels of top secret classification documents, who has that sort of like certification and is able to, you know, able to do that. So that's an issue as well. So that's what's going on with the whole special master situation. As I said, we'll ask Bradley Moss what he thinks about that as well. The other piece that came out is that Mar-a-Lago affidavit that was released in part. Now, again, there was not a whole lot that was new here, but we did learn a couple of

little things that were interesting. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. It's from the Washington Post. They say the Mar-a-Lago affidavit says many witnesses interviewed 184 classified files returned in January. Mostly this just kind of confirmed some of the reporting that was already out there about what had been going on. It shows that there was, you know, a back and forth between Trump and the government and the National Archives. It shows that, in fact, there were many documents that were marked as classified. They specifically talk about HCS, a category of highly classified government information. Others related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and material meant not to be shared with foreign nations.

The HCS acronym stands for Human. Human control systems refers to the government systems used to protect intelligence gathered from secret human sources. Again, according to the affidavit. A couple of other things that they found noteworthy were, you know, this mention that they had interviewed a lot of people. So raising the possibility of not just like one mole, but a lot of people informing on the president. The other thing that stood out to me is they also indicated that they expected to find evidence of obstruction during this raid of Mar-a-Lago, which, you know, it's one thing we knew they expected to find evidence that he was holding onto these classified documents. But actually finding some direct evidence on site of obstruction raised a lot of eyebrows about, okay, well, what could that possibly be and what did they expect? Yeah, that was the direct quote that caught my eye. Quote, there is probable cause to believe evidence of obstruction will be found. Now, the more that we learn about this backstory,

the stupider that I think that it all gets based upon discussions with our friend, Ken Klippenstein, about how this is all likely related to Russiagate investigation. Now, there are a couple of flags in that. Now, one of the things we'll be talking about with Bradley is specifically about HSC and about the level of classification on those documents, why they're so sensitive. However, I also do recall that based on the Russiagate reporting, ODNI and all the others, that a lot of Russiagate in determination, quote, that Putin himself personally ordered, you know, the meddling campaign, that was based on a human intelligence source inside the Kremlin.

So that's number one. Number two is there's a lot of stories that have come out now recently about how Trump, when he was debating on whether to give these documents back to the National Archives or not, fielded calls from Tom Fitton. Now, you guys know Tom Fitton. He's often on Fox. He's actually super jacked, which I respect. Anyway, Tom, he's often on Fox News. He's a judicial watch. They're always foiling the government. Posting a lot of selfies on Twitter. Yes, he does post

quite a bit of selfies. Listen, if I had arms like that, I'd probably do the same thing. So, what Tom does is he called President Trump and he's like, no, you shouldn't give these documents back. He's like, you actually have the authority in order to hang on to these documents. So I actually think that that will have very likely play a part in this case. Tuckman is not a lawyer though, right? Well, I mean, I think this is- He runs a legal organization. I don't know. He runs a legal, he runs, what's it called? Judicial Watch. It's like a right-wing sort of like activist organization. But I don't believe he's actually a lawyer. And the other thing that comes out of these analyses of how this all went down is basically Trump decided he wanted to keep these

documents. And then he fished around for someone to tell him what he wanted to hear. Typical Trumpian fashion. He kept sorting through aides until he got the answer that he wanted to get, which is actually these documents are yours and you can just keep them and, you know, tell them no when they come calling. And there's, in fact, so before we get to a little bit of the timeline that kind of lays this out, but this is kind of funny just showing you how extensive the redactions were here. Go ahead and put this tweet up on the screen. The Justice Department's reasons for keeping large portions of its Mar-a-Lago war and application sealed are themselves sealed. So if you do go, and I did go and read through this affidavit, you'll be reading through things that you're like, okay, I knew about that. I knew about that. I knew about that, which is interesting because it's sort of being confirmed in terms of at least the government

side of the case. And then you'll start to get to something that you think is going to be interesting 100% blacked out. So they're, like I said, not a whole lot new here, but let's go and put the New York Times timeline up on the screen because this kind of gets to what I was saying about how he was clearly just like sorting through his aides and advisors until he found someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear. So the talks began between the National Archives and Trump way back in late 2020. So while he was still in office and the impression given is that, you know, they reached out to Mark Meadows and Meadows was like, sure, I'll handle it. And then probably did nothing. Right. Because they were so obsessed at that

point with Stop the Steal. And that was what they were focused on. And they didn't think they were going to leave office. So that kind of goes nowhere. In January, of course, the move to Mar-a-Lago begins. And then it's May, so a few months later, that the archives alerts Trump's team like, hey, y'all, we're really missing some stuff here. And apparently one of the pieces that was really a clue to the National Archives that they were missing some significant documents was the missing Kim Jong-un letters. Which now has been widely reported. Trump loves these things. He displays them to people. He's very proud of them. He feels like, I mean, to now it's been widely reported. Trump loves these things. He displays them to people. He's very proud of them.

He feels like, I mean, to me, it's kind of embarrassing, but he feels like they're a real memento that they belong to him. So after May, when the archives are like, you got to give these things back. Even that summer, Trump is like showing off these letters to visitors to Bar-a-Lago. Then you get into late 2021. And that's when the archives officials really start to warn of consequences and issuing these sort of more sternly worded warnings. And they, in January, are able to recover some of the sensitive material from Mar-a-Lago. Then they start publicly criticizing Trump's destruction of documents and handling of documents.

And then in February, that's when they refer the matter to the Justice Department. And that's when sort of the legal questions really start to tick up. But you can see in their telling here of how Trump was handling this. At the beginning, he's kind of cooperating. He sends some stuff back. He actually tells them, I will send you the Kim letters. And then there's a back and forth with his aides about how to do that. And I guess they didn't like the answer they got from the National Archives about how specifically to get the documents back to D.C.

And so they just don't do it. And it's about at this point where he starts to find advisors who are willing to tell him, like, no, you don't have to do any of this. And then he digs in his heels and ends up where we are today. Yeah, I mean, look, as I said, never underestimate how dumb things can get. It seems that he has some deep emotional attachment to whatever documents are here. We'll see exactly what they are. I bet quite a bit of money that they have something to do with Russiagate, calling Tom Fitton and others to confirm about why he needed to hang on to them.

You know, for his own legal jeopardy, though, having direct evidence of basically saying, no, I'm not going to give it back, could cause some serious issues for him in the future. Well, there's a couple other things I want to say about this, which is, number one, I mean, they really have had a hard time coming up with a legal theory that makes sense and sort of covers their ass with all of this. The Trump team, yeah. Yeah, the Trump team has. Because they seemed like they really wanted to rely on this idea of like, well, the president can declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants. But it does not work.

And there was a standing order and, you know, we just, they automatically were declassified. And this was what Kash Patel was saying. And that was sort of what they were leaning into. And as part of this affidavit, they included a letter from the Trump team basically laying out that case of like, oh, he could have all of this because he had blanket declassified it. But when we saw the search warrant and learned that the laws that the criminal statutes that they were using to investigate him don't necessarily depend on those documents being classified. Well, that kind of, you know, turned their whole legal strategy upside down.

And they've really struggled to land on anything else that sort of covers them and really is a rationale for why he kept these documents, brought them to Mar-a-Lago, and then continued to hold on to them after the government made it very, very clear that they needed to come back. There's also reporting Trump himself was the one that was sorting through the documents. So again, that goes to like, you knew what was there and you intentionally held it back. So that's number one. I mean, it really seems like they're relying not so much on a legal theory that could be exculpatory here, more on a political approach of essentially threatening, hey, if you do this, Lindsey Graham said over the weekend, there's going to be riots in the streets.

Trump sending that sort of like cryptic warning to the DOJ of like, oh, the temperature is really hot and that being repeated on Fox News, et cetera. I really think that's what they've decided their best bet is, is to kind of, you know, say to people, listen, there's going to be basically a civil war in this country and there's going to be riots in the streets if you go forward with this. So even though we don't really have a legal leg to stand on, you shouldn't make this move. Yeah. I mean, look, it's not a bad case. Certainly it's not like political interference didn't have a lot of influence on the Justice Department, you know, before with Hillary.

So it's not like it couldn't work. We'll see. I honestly have no idea. I mean, the thing is, like, Merrick Garland is not really a bomb thrower, at least that's not his reputation. Most of these people who work in the DOJ are, you know, kind of like conservative by nature. They tend to be sort of like Mitt Romney Republican types. So I think he thinks that by threatening this idea of like, if you do this, it's going to create chaos. I don't think it's crazy to imagine that that is the place where they are the most concerned

and where they have the greatest nervousness. So anyway, expect them to be leaning into those kinds of arguments. And of course, immediately after Lindsey Graham said that on TV, Trump was sharing that as well, which also tells you, like, that is exactly what he wants to hear, and that's exactly the case he wants to put out there in the world. So we'll see how it all goes. All right, let's talk about polling. So some interesting times for the Biden administration.

On a macro level, we have to be honest, right? Things don't seem to be going as badly for them. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. And it looks like the American people agree. President Biden, and this is for Gallup, shows that he's got a six percentage point bump up to 44%, his highest approval rating in a year. Now, it, still not great underwater in terms of 44%, but not in the 38th percentile. And I think the reason actually that this matters in the context of major politics is that, look, for the president to not be above water is not a good thing. But Donald Trump was also never above 50% very often throughout his presidency. And what was always noteworthy to me is that Biden was actually less popular than Donald Trump when he was sitting previously at his 38th percentile. Now that he's at 44, that's actually right around where Trump was. And obviously Trump nearly got

reelected to the presidency. So that puts him at least in some sort of contention to at least possibly contest again, the 2024 election. And more importantly, it kind of scrambles how things were going to be with the midterms. As we've discussed, the Dobbs decision seems to have had a major impact. But also gas prices fell from $5 a gallon. I just checked this morning, $3.850. Still not great. Still $5.20 a gallon in California. But it's not $6 a gallon as it used to be. The trend is in the right direction. Not necessarily because of anything Biden has done, but it is what it is. And that was the major pressure point on the Biden administration.

On top of, he does seem to have some intra-party wins having passed Inflation Reduction Act. That was something that I don't know if it will necessarily energize a base, but people can say, oh, the president did something. There's just a sense that he's got some mojo. So he got the CHIPS Act. He got the Inflation Reduction Act. There does seem to be things rolling in the correct direction. And let's put this up there, which is that the direct quote, and I think this is important, the improvement does put him in better standing before the midterms than actually five predecessors over the last 40 years.

Reagan in 82, Clinton in 94, George W. Bush in 06, Obama in 2014, and Trump in 2018. Again, the reason that that matters is we all remember how well the Democrats did in 2018, how well the Republicans did both in 2010, but also people forget the 2014 election. Clinton, massive wash in 94, and also Reagan in 82 took a, quote, shellacking as W did in 2006 as well. Now, we may not see the same level of shellacking. We could see a modest Republican gain in the House of Representatives. And, you know, right now things are like 50-50 as to whether they're even going to really win the Senate at all. So if the Dems keep control of the Senate, that would actually be a major win, I think, by the Biden administration. And then really what it is, is that the House districts

and the swings, how exactly that's going to play out on top of, of course, Biden heading into the general election. I mean, previously when he was sitting at 38% and sometimes even lower in some polls, Crystal, it was not inconceivable that he would not be able to run again in the presidency. Not that he wouldn't still be probably the strongest Democratic candidate, just given the bench that exactly exists at the elite level. But it was inevitable that somebody was probably going to primary him if he continued in Jimmy Carter level. Now, getting a little bit of a bump, it's still obviously he could fall. It's not like he's got the great managerial skills or whatever, but he's in a better position.

I think that's undeniable. Yeah, I think that's right. The CBS News battleground tracker, they still show Republicans with an edge to win the House, but it's much more narrow. And there's a lot less margin for error on the Republican side. And, you know, that's reflected in the special elections that we've been tracking here. The fact that in that New York special election in upstate New York, that Biden only won by a point and a half, the Democrat was able to prevail against what was considered to be quite a strong Republican contender and really outperformed the polls by something like eight to 10 points based on the poll that you were looking at. That was a really significant indicator of how much the ground has shifted from,

if this was going to be a massive red wave election, you would expect a contest like that to not even be close. I mean, if Republicans are going to take the House, which they are still very much favored to do, they're going to have to win seats like that. And so the fact that they didn't was very, very eyebrow racing. They also point to a few other things that are interesting in this CBS News poll. So first of all, abortion, obviously, Roe versus Wade being overturned, that has completely changed the dynamics electorally where, you know, people, especially white college educated women who had been there for Democrats in 2018, been there for Democrats to defeat Trump in 2020. They were starting to back away. Well, now they're basically back in, maybe not at the same levels as 2018, but much more solidly with Democrats than they were previously. And in these sort of suburban swing districts, that obviously matters a lot. The other thing that they point to here is Trump. The fact that he's back at the

center of the news, that his candidates are the ones who prevailed in so many of these Republican primaries. You have way more voters saying that Republican candidates are extreme than saying that Democratic candidates are extreme. So Trump coming back in as this polarizing force has been really detrimental to Republicans. People are much more likely to say they are voting to oppose Trump than they are to say that they're voting to oppose Biden. So Republicans really wanted this to just be a referendum on Biden. You know, McConnell's strategy from the beginning, which at the time was a very smart strategy, is we're not going to put on any policy platform of our own. We are just going to focus on Biden is bad, inflation is high, kick out the Democrats. Now, things kind of out of their control, the Dobbs decision and Trump being back

at the center of the news have made it very difficult to just have the midterms be a referendum. It is now much more of a choice. And on that front, Democrats have a much better shot than they did previously. Yeah, let's put that abortion piece up because it's important to give context. 77% Dems say abortion is, quote, very important. Then describe any other issue in that way. Neck and neck with guns and actually ahead of the economy and inflation. So if that is top of mind, then that is going to get people out to the poll. So the next one up there, which is this is per the generic ballot,

still shows the Republicans at 47% and Democrats at 45%. Now, listen, you should, of course, always remember Republicans have been dramatically underestimated in every poll so far. However, this would kind of-ish track with some of the special election results that we've seen. So whether it's accurate or not, I have no idea. In terms of the enthusiastic number, Republicans have a plus seven spread. They used to, though, have a plus 25 or a plus 30. So really what it is, is you're seeing that number creep down. So I think right now it's multifaceted. We don't really know where things stand. And I would just say in general, it's complicated.

You know, it's going to be one of those things where Republicans could win the House. It's not like that wouldn't be a victory and it would effectively end any sort of future legislative achievement by the Biden administration. But not having the Senate would be very bad. You could also have just a one-seat gain by Republicans. It would still be a win, but it wouldn't even be close to where things are. I was actually reading today, Kevin McCarthy, if they only have a slight majority who take the House, he could be in some serious trouble for a speakership. He would basically get, you know, the Freedom Caucus would smack him across the face and demand all kinds of things from leadership, which they've done previously to John Boehner and make his life miserable. Same with Paul Ryan, who'd seen that dynamic play out. So there's all kinds

of interesting possibilities. Even Mitch McConnell. I mean, we don't know for sure if he's actually going to get fully elected, especially if there's a very slim majority. So we don't know yet. But, you know, where things stand, I would bet on, I mean, probably slight gain, Republicans in the House, Senate, genuinely a toss-up. I have no idea. And there's a lot of money still yet to be spent, both by the Democrats, but, you know,

it's not like Republican billionaires are going to sit on their hands. No, they're going to get in the game. But massively spend in the month of October. I think some massive, massive checks are coming. As the RNC has said, they're out there pleading. They're begging. They're like, we need some Senate money, folks. And we need it now. Somebody's going to come through for them. Don't worry. They'll have plenty of cash. And, you know, ultimately, it matters to have money in these races. But I find that more of an indication of both sort of like financial mismanagement on the Republican side and also the way that Democrats have caught up in terms of grassroots

base enthusiasm when you compare the grassroots fundraising totals on the Democratic side versus the Republican side. Another big issue that Republicans are very excited to make a lot of hay over is Biden's new student debt relief. But the polling indicates that may not be such a winning issue for Republicans here. So the CBS News poll asked the question, do you support or oppose Biden issuing some student debt relief? Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. And they found that overall, you have 54% approving of the student debt relief move, 46% disapproving. And what I found really notable, Sagar, is if you dig into the crosstabs here, not that this is a huge surprise, but there is a massive generational split here.

So voters under 30, 75% support the student debt relief. As you go up, it progressively like gets less and less and less. And then among the oldest age group, 65 plus support is underwater 43 to 57. But they also found that now in this poll, we've been tracking the way that young voters have been so disillusioned with Biden. In this poll now, he has a positive approval rating among those young voters. It's now 59-41. That marks a significant shift, basically directly related to this move on student debt relief. So, you know, this is a key constituency for Democrats. It's a constituency that doesn't always turn out. So I think the fact that they're feeling their lives directly, materially benefited by the Biden

administration could also be very beneficial for the midterms. It's actually going to be a good test. Will young people come out to vote even when they are directly given something? I will be very interested to see what those numbers show. Let's go this up there on the screen as well from the Hill. Same thing, basically showing a major support a little bit more in this one. I think that number seems to be about correct. So this one and we have one more we can put up on the screen. So let me give you some of the details here, because this one's interesting too. So this was a Morning Consult Politico poll, the one before, go ahead and put the one before this back up,

that showed that 64% of respondents supported some form of student loan forgiveness. This one, they asked the question like, okay, do you support forgiving for all Americans? Do you support some student loan forgiveness? Do you support student loan forgiveness for low-income Americans? So it was a little bit complex. But if you add up all of the people who say, yes, I support some student loan forgiveness, it was 64%. What I found most interesting about this poll is 80% of the participants in this poll actually had no student loan debt. So you had a very high support number, almost two-thirds, even though 80% of the participants in the poll were like, this isn't going to benefit me, but I still support it. And then the last one here, this was an Emerson poll, which found very

similar numbers to the last one. They found that 36% of voters think this is too much, 30% say it's too little, and 35% think it's just right. So if you put together those who were like, actually, he should do a lot more, and those who are like, this is perfect, you've got 65% of the population that, again, supports some student loan debt relief. So he seems to be on pretty firm political ground in terms of the actual position that he put out here. And certainly with some key constituencies, not only young voters, but also the racial group that was most supportive was black voters were overwhelmingly supportive

of this move as well. So two key constituencies for Democrats that they really have to turn out for the midterm elections. My thing is, we'll see. Child tax credit was super popular. It didn't really do anything in terms of poll numbers for the Democrats.

If anything, it's only whenever it went away that people said that they wouldn't vote, but it didn't make people affirmatively come out. 5446 is a little bit too close to 50. I mean, this is always, remember Obamacare. Everyone was like, well, if you take out the word Obamacare, people support Obamacare. I was like, yeah, well, it's still called Obamacare. So the political consequences of that are going to be there. In terms of Republican backlash on that, I generally have no idea. In general, boomers, you know, as we saw in the poll, much more 50-50, less likely, disproportionately most likely to vote. Young voters, will they come out to vote? We'll see. There's generally, I mean, there's really not any good test case. This is going to be a good one,

which is given that it happened right before the midterm elections. I, again, I have no idea. I mean, my own objections are obviously clear. By the way, the CBO came out and said I was wrong. It won't be back to current debt levels in four years. It's going to be five years, apparently, for current debt levels to resume. So I don't know. We'll see, Crystal. Our own audience was roughly split 50-50.

So there you go. Well, here's what I'll say. I mean, I think you underestimate how transformative this is for the people who are impacted. I mean, I saw interviews with young people who, you know, just had their entire debt burden or close to their entire debt burden wiped out. And they literally described this as like a life changing moment. Forty three million people impacted. You have, you know, half of student loan borrowers who will have their debt, majority of it wiped out. So you have a really significant, very direct impact on people here. to be a lot of mainstream analysis that's like, oh, there's going to be a backlash. This is going to be terrible for Democrats. I think these polls prove that pretty clearly wrong when you've got like two thirds of Americans saying, yeah, I support this. And even though I don't personally

benefit, I still support it because I think it's the right thing to do. So if nothing else, even if it's not the sort of game changer that say Dobbs was in terms of the electoral cycle, I definitely don't think it's the political liability that a lot of the sort of pundit classes said that is going to be. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where you have to rank everything in terms of importance. It could be one of those things that annoys people and gets some people going. I mean, from my estimation, it's about 12 million people who have their debt actually wiped out. Based on the 43 million, that it will be effective. But Dobbs is going to rank even higher amongst generic ballot choice.

And also, is it one of those things you're going to get Republicans and be like, you know what? I'm really going to stick it to Brandon now that he's wiped out debt. I don't really think that's going to happen. They were already pretty energized. That's what I'm saying. I don't think it has anything to do with debt. I think it is much, much higher on the- Yeah, there's a massive benefit for the people who benefit from it. And from the people who are pissed off about it, it doesn't really directly affect their lives. They're just like irritated by it because whatever. And that's just feeds into a general milieu.

So yeah, I don't know. Politically, it's going to be interesting. Next one. Okay, this is, there is something about this story which really gets me going. So let's put this up there on the screen. It's just unbelievable. Moderna is suing Pfizer over the mRNA technology. The lawsuit,

which was filed in both the US and Germany, alleges financial damages and says Moderna is claiming that two key elements of its intellectual property regarding the, quote, chemical modification of its mRNA platform, which Moderna claims that it was the first to demonstrate in human trials in 2015, has been copied by Pfizer in their COVID vaccine. The second infringement specifically focuses on the way that the vaccines target the spike protein on the outside of the virus. They say, quote, we are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions in creating, and patented during the decade prior to the preceding COVID-19 pandemic.

So, there's a hell of a lot to say about this. Number one, both of these vaccines would not exist without the extraordinary intervention of the Trump administration and the United States government. Moderna and Pfizer received unbelievable gifts from the U.S. government. Number two, in terms of mRNA itself, actually a lot of U.S. government money was developed and put into creating that technology. So it's not just Moderna, by the way, that was one of the people that were quote-unquote pioneers in the development of the platform, of the technology, spike protein research, et cetera. But beyond that, these companies, again, I mean, you remember, I think you did a whole monologue on this on Rising. There was at one point, there was like a road that was blocked that was, you know, people were

unable to, I think it was either Moderna or Pfizer was unable to get some supplies. The government literally took like National Guard military resources to commandeer this road and to make sure that supplies were getting to these folks. Went and stopped trains to get critical parts off of, intervened in their trials to make sure they were able to get the participants that they needed. Moved heaven and earth, pumped $10.5 billion into these companies, and then were like, here you go. Go make billions of dollars in profit at our expense. FDA emergency authorization, full benefit and purchase agreements with the U.S. government, extraordinary intervention on our behalf.

And they went all the way to the bank. I mean, put this up there on the screen. Moderna itself has reaped $12 billion in profits from the vaccine sales just last year. $12 billion in profits from a company which was not necessarily doing all that well before that. Pfizer, put this one up there. Look at this. Pfizer has reached $100 billion behemoth thanks to the COVID vaccine and to Paxlovid and other drugs that they have under their umbrella. Now, look, you know, even if you're, put full-scale communist socialists aside, most people were like, all right, you know, the government came in here, like Pfizer, Moderna, they did

some of the technology. Yeah, it's okay. You know, you make a profit, whatever. But this is just unbelievable because they're taking technology developed by the U.S. government, helped by the U.S. government, purchased agreements by not just our government, governments all over the world. And they're like, now they're scrapping over who gets even a bigger piece of the pie. It's like, what? The bag wasn't big enough. And look, YouTube has revised its content policy. So apparently I can say this, but let's all be honest and just say the vaccine didn't work as well as we were originally promised.

And so it's like you're suing over the vaccine, which by the way, you know, originally in the marketing and the promises by both CDC officials, the FDA and others, and even what you all claimed in the very beginning didn't even work as well as it was supposed to not saying it didn't save hundreds of millions of lives probably did but just on balance just saying a lot of people still got covid even though that wasn't exactly promised in the very beginning including myself and you yeah we're still very effective for severe illness and death yeah that's the most important piece put that aside a lot of people still got let's be honest fair enough um i will tell you this is the type of story that does make me want to be a full fucking communist.

Because you're like, screw these people. This research was funded by you, American taxpayer. Over decades, and then even in this final stretch to get these vaccines to market, $10.5 billion pumped into these companies for them to then go and turn around and hog the recipe. The major vaccine scandal here was not that, you know, they didn't work well enough or whatever. The major vaccine scandal has always been the fact that they maintained their patent protection and that the Biden administration, the Trump administration first, but then the Biden administration allowed

them to do that. And that kept critical vaccines from getting into the arms of people around the world. Moderna, at the beginning of this whole thing, they said they were not going to enforce their patents so that they could help were not going to enforce their patents so that they could help other drug companies to develop their own jabs. What happened to that, Sagar? What the hell happened to that? Now, okay, not only are they in a dispute with Pfizer,

now they're suing Pfizer saying, oh, this is our technology that we developed, thank you very much. They're also in an ongoing dispute with the U.S. National Institutes of Health over credit for key patents relating to the mRNA technology. So this is just so sociopathic

that I cannot even wrap my head around it. You made billions of dollars in profit off of the backs of the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer. And you have the nerve to turn around and pretend like this was all your idea and you developed it all in-house? Get out of here. It's unbelievable.

The U.S. government maintains the right, if they want, to actually come in and knock their patent protection, given the amount of extraordinary intervention. I forget exactly what the legal mechanism is called. Is it March in Rights? Is that what it is? Something. I think it's called March in Rights.

I'll have to go back and read. We were doing, we did a lot on this back in the- I think this is the Bayh-Dole Act that provides the power to be able to do this. Now seems like a reasonable time to come. There was always, you know, at the World Health Organization, there was always a proposal. I think South Africa and other countries, India, I believe, backed this idea of like, listen, this is an extraordinary emergency. At the beginning of the pandemic, remember, everybody was like, we're all in it together. World War II, stale mobilization, we're going to beat this thing. And then the minute there was a little bit of money to be made, suddenly it was every man for

himself. And, you know, they were perfectly happy to charge rich countries a premium, send them, you know, all the doses and hog up the patent technology for themselves and not allow generics to be replicated around the world, even though, and this is something we documented extensively in the Intercept did great reporting on, even though there were factories around the world that were like, ready to go. Just give us the recipe and we can spin out doses right away. That has always been the greatest scandal of the whole vaccine situation. And now this is just salt in the wound that they are willing to go in and say, these are ours and how dare Pfizer even develop their own vaccine. Like that's your complaint is that there were too many vaccines out there, too available to people. Come on. And they're actually ready to make even more money. Let's put this up there. Both of them,

by the way, latest COVID boosters are set to roll out even before human testing has been completed. The U.S. government is now expected to authorize new booster shots without a staple of its normal decision-making process. Data from a study showing whether the shots were safe. These are the ones that are like for the updated. These are like the Omicron specific boosters. I mean, look, you guys can make your own personal decisions. You know, if you're in the risk category or whatever, maybe consider it. Talk to your doctor. But just, again, just shows the extraordinary deference both companies have found in the distribution of this vaccine.

They get all these emergency use authorizations. They're not under the same due scrutiny of even a normal drug through a very flawed FDA approval process. And yeah, I mean, in terms of past statements, efficacy, more, none of it being evaluated. FDA and CDC still pushing these things out there. So you can make your own choice how exactly these things, but at a bottom line, somebody's paying for it. And it's definitely the US government. And while they're in the midst of active litigation, which is unbelievable, really, when you consider it. All right, finally. Now, you guys might have seen Mark Zuckerberg was on the Joe Rogan Experience.

Really interesting conversation, and especially in the beginning, about virtual reality. Joe, to his credit, did push Zuckerberg a little bit about the handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, everything that Zuckerberg says here has already been out there, but still, also I love this. It took what, a year and a half? Zuckerberg has done how many interviews in a year and a half? And no one's asked about it.

And it took a year and a half, it took Rogan, you know, in the middle of a conversation to be like, hey, by the way, like, what happened with that whole thing like 18 months ago? Anyway, Zuckerberg confirming that algorithmically Facebook,

quote unquote meta, did algorithmically suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story on his platform for a period of eight days. Just stunning. Let's take a listen. How do you guys handle things when they're a big news item that's controversial? Like there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the New York Post. Yeah, so you guys censored that as well? So we took a different path than Twitter. I mean, basically the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team. It was like, hey, just so you know, like you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the

2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of, that's similar to that. So just be vigilant. So our protocol is different from Twitter's. What Twitter did is they said, you can't share this at all. We didn't do that. What we do is we have, if something's reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also have this third party fact checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false. And for the – I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it. You could still consume it.

So when you say the distribution has decreased, how does that work? Basically, the ranking in News Feed was a little bit less. So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise. So it definitely... By what percentage? I don't know off the top of my head, but it's meaningful. I don't know off the top of my head. He's like, by what percentage? Come on. It was obviously a meaningful and ridiculous way in order to handle this. And look, in terms of the polling and all this, no one can really know for sure. Let's throw this up there about the truthful. 79% said, quote, truthful coverage would have changed the 2020 election.

I personally doubt that. However, did it have an impact? Maybe. I mean, honestly, like, I always want to put the political part out of this. Like, the fact of the matter is, regardless of whether this would have helped or hurt or been indifferent or whatever, it was a story. There were parts of it that were germane. There were parts of it that were not germane, as we've discussed extensively here. Hunter's social life and personal struggles are not relevant, but his business dealings and how they relate to his dad, of course, extremely relevant.

We have told this story so many times, but I think it's really important to reiterate. When these stories first started to break, we were that morning preparing for Rising, and we were talking about, like, should we put this in the show? And we're like, eh, maybe tomorrow. We'll check it out. I don't know if this is really a game changer. Let's see how this all plays out. This became a massive story and something that now we're continuing to have

to talk about because of the handling. So, you know, it really was a very clear Streisand effect where it, because it was so, that censorship was so heavy. I've never seen anything like that. You couldn't even, you couldn't even DM each other these New York Post articles. You know, like sort of mainline regular journalists were having their accounts suspended because they dared to tweet about it. It was really crazy. So now you start to see like, oh, this is why Twitter behaved in such an insane way because they had the FBI

basically telling them to do that. And then with Facebook, I think the other thing, the algorithmic suppression is in some ways a lot more underhanded, because you have, we knew it was being censored on Twitter. There was no way to know exactly what was going on in Facebook. And this is like the games they play on YouTube as well. They really control what people see and what people don't see. And so you can technically say, oh, yeah, you can share and it's there and we're not censoring it or whatever. But behind the scenes, they're making it so much less prominent that it's going to get so much less oxygen.

And that's not something that we have any visibility into. Yeah, and look, I see that stuff all the time. And we don't censor ourselves in the same way. Like, I know YouTube creators who will use euphemisms for different words. Oh really? Yeah. Oh yeah. They won't say the word rape. I just did. That guarantees that this video is not going to be as successful. China, apparently, if you put that in the headline, that also gets downranked. There are all kinds of people and there's a significant analysis that is done that shows that what you say, because remember, auto transcripts are generated based

on those auto transcripts, sharing based on those auto transcripts. Sharing and all those other things go down. It's all based to them on advertising. I get it. I totally do. But we're here to do the news. We're not here to placate, you know, Pampers diapers or whatever these companies are. So whoever's, you know, stupid ads are, sorry, not,

whosoever ads are getting dynamically inserted into this video. The point is, is that that is in a way a little bit more pernicious. Also, at the behest of the FBI – so the FBI – and again, you have to parse what he says very carefully. He says, the FBI came to us and said something is coming. Well, what does that even mean? Something can come at any time. Who knows what that – you know, and by this standard, anything which has quote-unquote suspect reporting

or about leaked documents or about concerning a foreign actor would then be suppressed. I mean, there's a story right now going around about the Saudi government bribing Twitter employees to rat out dissidents' accounts to them. Now, you know, maybe there's some disinformation being spread around that. Could they, the FBI, come to Facebook and ask them to downrank that? And Twitter, I mean, considering it even concerns Twitter itself,

it just opens up all sorts of insane possibilities. I think the only place where this sort of cooperation should even be existing, and even then is iffy is around legitimate like actual terrorist groups like ISIS. But even on that one you're like, hey, he's a sympathizer.

Hold on a second. What does that mean? Like if somebody's directly out there being like, let us go carry out an attack, that's I think

in one category. And law exists for that reason. That's exactly right. Here's the only question you need to ask yourself. Is it true or not? Right. It doesn't matter. Even if it came need to ask yourself. Is it true or not? Right.

It doesn't matter. Even if it came from Vladimir Putin himself, is it accurate or not? Right. That's it. Once you start getting into, oh, the source is sketchy. I don't like them. They have a weird background. Like, okay, welcome to journalism.

Yes. People get accurate, important information from sketchy-ass people all the freaking time. That's the way it works. So the fact that they, you know, you have the FBI come in and say, watch out, Russian disinformation incoming. And then there was, you will recall, a concerted media campaign to say,

quote, this bears all the hallmarks of a Russian misinformation campaign or whatever, and all these high-level, like, official-type people signing onto it, who, by the way, now can't be found for comment when you go to ask them about the same thing. None of them have ever responded to comment, actually. Right, exactly. Even though, you know, and this was an attempt to call back to 2016 when there was a real shame in the press after Donald Trump wins to basically say, like,

it's your fault and you shouldn't have covered this information that was coming out of WikiLeaks because this is, you know, Russian tied. It was misinformation. You guys dropped the ball. And a lot of journalists were very, oh, we're sorry. We won't do it again. We won't report on anything that comes from sketchy sources, especially not when it's Russian connected. And so now when this happens, they weaponize that to basically stifle any sort of just like honest, accurate assessment of what was in this material. And I don't even think that – I don't really think that ultimately was beneficial to Joe Biden because look at all of the energy around Hunter. Freaking Breitbart is on with some terrible movie about Hunter Biden. You didn't see this?

No, I didn't. Oh, go watch the movie trailer. Oh, my God. It's really something. But, you know, they're definitely, if Republicans take control of the House and Senate, they're going to be doing a whole Hunter Biden investigation. If it wasn't for the insane crackdown and concerted, like, media effort to stifle any sort of conversation about this, I don't know that all of this has the same energy that it does now. Yeah, absolutely. And look, moving on, let's throw this up I don't know that all of this has the same energy that it does now. Yeah, absolutely. And look, moving on, let's throw this up there,

which is that this is, again, the most terrifying part to me. The FBI says it routinely notifies social media companies of potential threats. And given that— That's their defense. Right. They're like, oh, we do this all the time. It's no big deal. I have a lot of questions.

On what basis? Under what legal authority? What type of notification? I mean, under what legal authority, what type of notification. I mean, here's the other one, which is that I think it's pretty clear that the FBI said something along the lines of, if it has the hallmark of Russian disinformation, it could come about Biden. And that's what freaked them out so much and into action. Well, then you need to be a lot more clear in how you issue that guidance so that this stuff doesn't happen in the future. And if they did do it on behalf of the FBI, then it's even more troubling

because of the direct fusion there of security state and the social media platforms. We know that exists. We know it exists, you know, especially on unlawful content. But in this murky regime, there needs to be very specific guidance, language, and more. And maybe it shouldn't even exist. Honestly, I'm getting to the point where I don't think it should. If Facebook is really dumb enough in order to believe, you know, immediately, it was clear. It was like, yeah, this is true. Within 24 hours, if Hunter doesn't say,

no, that laptop is not mine and all of this is fake, yeah, it's called true. All right? Like, sorry. Same with, remember Hillary? They're like, well, it's potential misinformation in the emails. I'm like, point to one, one single email which was wrong. Guess what? Not a single one of them was made up. Not one. And you can reach out to comment to John Podesta and the recipients. They're like, hey, did you send this?

And if they don't respond, well, what do you think, folks? Doesn't take a genius to figure this out. If it's true, let it spread. I mean, just give all information equal weight. Let people share it if they want. As I said, would it have ultimately determined the results of the election? No, I don't think so. So at this point, I don't even think the FBI has the credibility to do this, again, outside of the realms of very specific, like, this guy wants to kill people.

This guy wants to carry out this type of attack. This guy is actively recruiting for a designated FTO by soliciting funds. Outside of those clear-cut cases, they need to get the hell out of this. This is far too important. Like what's in our public square, I mean, in terms of just being able to function as a democracy, it's far too important to be kept in the shadows and determined ultimately the bounds of conversation determined by some deep state ghouls obsessed with Russia. So yeah, very important revelations. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, I think everyone can agree things aren't going so well here in the US. The issue is we can't really all agree on why. Was it Obama, Bush, Clinton?

How far back do you go? Increasingly, I'm going back to 1971, a date that's been highlighted by venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen as a major turning point for the United States. 1971 marked the assumption of office of Richard Nixon, of his second term, breaking of trust between the U.S. government and his populace. 1971 was the year that the U.S. got off the gold standard. 1971 was financialization. Deregulation really took off. 1971 was really the end of America's optimistic period. Perhaps nothing signifies the end of optimism more than the last human visit to interplanetary space in 1971, with the return of Apollo 17. At the time of Apollo 17, nobody cared. It was our fifth trip to the moon, and yeah, it was cool. Astronauts could live on the lunar surface for several days,

drive a car around the public,, had long sat in smooth pass. The Nixon administration made it known to NASA, joy rides to the moon, it's over. The public is over it. The cost was too high. And there was no realistic plan to go to Mars from there. Since then, space travel has languished. We've essentially spent the last 50 years just trying to recapture the glory of July 1969.

We pulled off perhaps the greatest feat in the history of mankind. Since then, the history of space has been a complete snooze. The NASA geeks will say, yeah, but we launched this probe and that. We put a camera on Mars. Sorry. Honestly, I don't care that much. Nothing will be as cool as landing a human on the moon. Or we have a new telescope.

Again, fine. But taking higher resolution photos, it doesn't get me or the rest of the world going. Let's be honest. NASA today simply reflects back the society that we are. Stagnant, corrupted by bureaucratic incompetence and woke politics. Unable to unite the world in a mission and to give people a reason for hope. Trying to recapture the glory of our past rather than do something new. And it's in that vein that I'm going to discuss what is supposed to be a big day. NASA officially was beginning the process of returning an American to the lunar surface. NASA today was scheduled, but has now scrubbed, the launch of an unmanned Orion space capsule

on top of its newly developed SLS rocket for a trip around the moon. The spacecraft was scheduled to orbit the moon for 42 days, journey before returning to Earth and crashing back into the ocean. NASA was billing the rocket launch as a major event, the first of three flights that will ultimately culminate with a landing on the moon in 2005. There's just one problem. Those of us who are familiar with the original Apollo program

cannot believe how unbelievably slow and uncreative this entire thing is. Consider this. The first successful unmanned probe to reach the moon by NASA took place on January 30, 1964. It was only seven months later an unmanned probe called Ranger 7 orbited the moon to take pictures and videos and send them back to Earth. You could say, okay, this is a rocket test. Even then, consider the timeline of the original Apollo missions, which used the Saturn V rocket. The first unmanned launch and test of the Saturn V took place with Apollo 4 on November 9, 1967. The next breakthrough mission from there took place only a year later with Apollo 8

when three American astronauts circled the moon on Christmas 1968 and took one of the most breathtaking photos of all time. Consider NASA's schedule. Today was supposed to be the rocket launch. The next one is not even scheduled until 2024, two years later. And that mission is what?

It's simply recreating Apollo 8, sending four astronauts to circle the moon. They won't even fly there. 53 years after Neil Armstrong and NASA landed on the moon, the Artemis 2 mission is actually less technologically breakthrough than Apollo 9 and 10, which not only circled the moon, but included full testing of entering the lunar orbit and in the case of Apollo 10, coming within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface. After NASA's recreation of Apollo 8, they then plan to recreate Apollo 11 with the final landing sometime in 2025. Their selling point, and I am not kidding, is this. Well, Artemis III is different, because this time, we will land a woman and a person of color on the moon under the American flag. In fact, that was the reason cited by President Biden in his budget request to Congress as why additional billions were required to keep up the mission timeline. To accomplish a box check of landing a woman and a person of color on the moon, not to, you know, further the advancement of knowledge of humankind,

or beat the Soviet Union, or unite the world in the idea of what is technologically possible. A literal diversity checklist. To be clear, I'm not arguing against these missions. I guess they're better than nothing. But when I consider the timeline and the majesty of the original Apollo missions, I cannot help but laugh and cry at how pathetic this all seems more than 50 years after landing on the moon. As for the next step, they have their heads in the clouds. The current NASA timeline estimates a manned mission to Mars will occur sometime in the late 2030s or 40s. In other words,

they got no plan. What made the Apollo missions incredible was how meticulous they were in building towards the goal. Apollo 4 tests the rocket. The next one tests another system. The next one puts men inside of it. Then we circle the moon. Then we test each part of the landing meticulously. Then we land.

Boom. Apollo was undergirded by a strong, confident, booming America that simultaneously worked through its worst wounds and fulfilled its greatest promises. Since that time, we have simply lost all of that. How else can you explain taking longer to accomplish feats 53 years later with technology that is supposedly light years ahead? 1971 really did change everything. I encourage you all to go check out W2Fhappenedin1971.com. Peruse some of these charts. Up until 1971, wages and GDP growth were one-to-one. After

1971, they changed. Up until 1971, income gains were widely shared. Today, inequality is almost as bad as the Gilded Age. My personal favorite graphic is this one. A new house cost $25 in 1971. The average income was $10,600. A new car cost $3,500. Average rent was $150 a month. Tuition at Harvard was $2,600. A movie ticket was $1.50. Gas, $0.40 a gallon. And a postage stamp was $0.08. Consider how simply affordable life was for the average consumer.

And with increasing GDP gains, they were equally distributed, meaning that even costs increased, you were mostly okay. Today, good luck paying for basically any of that on the median income for a family. And also consider in 1971, women didn't have to work if they didn't want to just to pay for those basic goods. Whatever happened that year put us on the road today. We supposedly have the greatest technology in the history of humankind, but our art is stuck. Our culture seems obsessed with recreating trends of the past. We can't even get to the moon as quickly, even though your iPhone is more powerful than the computer that was on board Apollo 11. The technology itself did not save us, as was promised.

In fact, it may have sapped us of the strength that we once had to accomplish the impossible. Whatever comes next, it needs to look more like that. Otherwise, our greatest feat as a society today will be just redoing what we already did. This time, though, with the diversity checklist. How insane is that? They're like, we've got to spend $100 billion so we can put a woman in a person of color. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, guys, for literally decades, we've been told there is one way for candidates to win, to be electable. You've got to be as boring as possible, promise as little as possible, and cater to the center, which, when uttered by Beltway media types, means to carry water for corporate America. If you're a Democrat, make sure to engage in a little rhetorical hippie punching and actual warmongering so that everyone knows you are definitely not a communist. This theory of electability predates Bill Clinton, but he was really the guy that put it into full scale practice. After 12 years of being shut out of the White House, Clinton won. So every Democratic candidate has it beat into them by the party leadership and by their media allies that the Clintonian, triangulating, screwing over your ownbase mode of politics is the only way to win. This theory of electability

has been sold so thoroughly to the public that the Democratic base has been turned into a bunch of little mini-pundits valuating candidates not based on their policy preferences, but on who they imagine and who the media tells them will be electable. But something very interesting has been happening recently. Few of the biggest Dem surprises in the midterms and outperformers are rejecting the Clinton mode of politics for a more outspoken, unapologetic, and economically populist approach. They are going after their opponents for their extreme positions on abortion, yes, but they are also putting promises to challenge corporate power

at the very center of their pitch. So let me give you a couple of examples here. Last week, we brought you the story of Pat Ryan. He's an Army combat veteran, a local county official, and a Democrat. And he just shocked everyone by winning a special election in a swing district in upstate New York. Now, his victory was a huge surprise because, number one, this is a very closely divided district. It's also a supposedly bad year for Democrats, and his victory was a huge surprise because, number one, this is a very closely divided district. It's also a supposedly bad year for Democrats. And his opponent was really considered quite strong. He's a moderate longtime local county official with his own local base of support.

Polls up to Election Day had Pat Ryan down by as much as eight points. But then the Democrat prevailed ultimately by more than the Biden margin in that district. How did he do it? Well, the media analysis, ours included, focused understandably on Ryan's focus on abortion. True enough, hard to imagine him prevailing in this district before Roe was overturned, putting the GOP's abortion extremism front and center in our politics. But Pat Ryan wanted to make it clear that abortion was not his entire message. In an interview with Alex Wagner the day after his victory, he had this to say about which parts of his message resonated most in that district. Our other ad that's gotten a little less sort of national attention but really resonated at home was about how our big corporate utility, power utility, was ripping off customers. I had a lot of people on the ground say that hit

home for me, that I'm struggling to pay my utility bills. And this company is making record breaking profits and paying no taxes. So we were doing both. We're providing relief, talking about what we're going to do to deliver on that relief and stand up for people's freedoms on a foundational level. And that one-two combo, I think that is what we need to do, continue to do and build on. And so here was that ad he just referred to that made up half of his overall ad buy. Big utility companies have a monopoly on our power. So they think they can do whatever they want. I'm Pat Ryan, and as Ulster County Executive, I use my power to hold greedy corporations accountable. Like when Central Hudson Utilities was ripping off our community.

I called for investigation and demanded they repay customers and freeze rate increases. I approve this message because big corporations have too much power. It's time our families had more. And apparently he lived up to this rhetoric as Ulster County Executive, where he not only took on the price gouging of public utilities, but launched a pilot UBI program.

And rather than run and hide like some other swing district Dems did when Biden announced he was canceling up to $20,000 in student debt, Ryan was unapologetic in defending the move, telling the Morning Joe ghouls that it was, quote, huge. So, so far, I'm pretty impressed. And apparently, so are the voters. Now, the other Dem outperformer this cycle is the big guy from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.

Now, Fetterman is a former Steeltown mayor who backed Bernie Sanders in the primary and who came to national prominence for trashing Republicans trying to steal the election for Trump in Pennsylvania. In the primary, he was up against the prototypical Clinton model corporate candidate, Conor Lamb. After Lamb won a swing congressional district, the Beltway media lavished praise on this guy and attention on him for his milquetoast donor-friendly politics, holding him up as the example all Democrats should emulate to get elected in tough districts. Literally every establishment figure lined up behind Lamb in that primary, and he proceeded to get absolutely destroyed by John Fetterman. It was a 30-point landslide rejection of the Dem establishment's

golden boy, in spite of the fact that, as you know, Fetterman literally spent Election Day recovering from a stroke. Now Fetterman is up against Dr. Oz, and we have well-documented Oz's terrible, cringe, crudité-centric campaign, as well as Team Fetterman is up against Dr. Oz, and we have well-documented Oz's terrible, cringe, crudité-centric campaign, as well as Team Fetterman's relentless and very effective trolling. But we spend less time focused on the affirmative parts of Fetterman's message. Take a listen at how he is presenting his agenda to the district. I'm John Fetterman, and I approve this message. The truth is our economy is a mess because of Washington. The rich, powerful, the insiders, and the lobbyists, they're lying about me to take the heat off themselves. It's

Washington's fault. They set the rules, weakened our supply chain, and spiked inflation. But we can fix our economy. We must make more stuff in America. Cut taxes for working families. Congress shouldn't play in the stock market and take on anyone that gets in the way. That's what I believe in. Fight inflation, cut taxes for working families, make stuff here, ban stock trading for members of Congress, an unabashed challenge to corporate power, which is a massive break from typical Clintonian politics, and which again, apparently is really landing with voters. A look at Biden's trajectory in office tells a bit of a similar story, quite frankly. His approval ratings were highest at the beginning of his administration

when he was handing out $1,400 checks. And they were lowest when he was letting Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema run the show on behalf of their donors. But now, dark Brandon has taken control. All of a sudden, in the past several weeks, Biden got the chipsack through. He passed money for toxic burn pit victims. He passed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. That included a big corporate tax hike and a lot of very solid consumer incentives.

And now he's handing out up to $20K in debt cancellation. And there are rumors that the U.S. is about to get back in the Iran nuclear deal. Listen, I've still got a million problems with this administration. But some of these items represent a real break with the corporate neoliberal politics of the Clinton years. Industrial policy, corporate tax hikes, debt cancellation, and a pugilistic rhetorical style that we have not really seen from Biden as president. Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans? Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion dollar businesses, if you want these guys to get involved with that thing? Is that fair? What do you think? What about people who pay their loans? Night and day from the Clinton approach. And oh,

would you look at that? His poll numbers coming back up. And Democrats, they now have an outside shot to actually do well in the midterms. Challenging corporate power, leaning into economic populism, watching with glee as the Bezos editorial board melts down. It's good politics, guys. And if a few more Democratic candidates embrace this direction, they might well have a good year in the midterms. And if Biden continues to channel dark Brandon, voters will happily reelect him at any age, whether he can complete a sentence or not. So I guess, let's go, Brandon. LGB.

We have been talking a lot about the— And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Returning to the show is Bradley Moss. He's a partner at the Markzade Law Firm. He specializes in national security law and specifically classification. So as I said, Brad, you're a bullish man. Always have been on the Twitter platform where we've known each other now for several years, but I have always appreciated your analysis. You put this out. Let's put this up there on the screen after the release of the affidavit. Quote, I've seen enough folks, Donald Trump will be indicted in the classified documents matter. I'm placing my marker. Now, tell us why you came to that conclusion, Brad. You've been involved in several of these

classification cases, defending many clients and others and seen the way the FBI handles itself. Why are you putting that out there, even given the redacted affidavit? Sure. So for two reasons. One is we now know for more, you know that out there, even given the redacted affidavit? Sure. So for two reasons. One is we now know for more, you know, with confirmation, not just from media reporting, we now have, you know, kind of the clarity of what exactly was found in the initial set of boxes that were recovered in January. We now know that there were top secret documents with including markings for human intelligence sources, including markings for signal intercepts and for FISA information. So there's no indication, of course, in any of this that any of this was declassified.

The government even included in the affidavit from what we've been able to see, they preempted the concern about the idea that maybe Donald Trump had somehow declassified all this on his way out the office. Clearly, the magistrate judge didn't find anything to that. The Trump team has had three opportunities to present any evidence beyond speculation and conjecture to indicate that was the case. They provided nothing. So that was one part. But what made it worse, what truly led me to cross this line, is that the obstruction issue is what's going to catch him in the end, because that's almost always what causes the government to actually pursue a prosecution here. It wasn't enough for him to take the documents. It wasn't enough for him to take months to turn it over. It's that they turned over stuff in January and they found there was still stuff missing. More stuff was taken in June with the subpoena. They found more stuff was missing. When they go back with the search warrant here, they've got enough evidence, presumably from these witnesses they reference in the memorandum to seal, to indicate documents have been moved.

They've been relocated. They're not just in the storage room anymore. And sure enough, when they execute the search warrant, lo and behold, they find documents in other locations. They find the classified documents in Donald Trump's personal office, in the closet of the bedroom. That's not where they were told to be, even if to the extent they were still there, they were supposed to be locked up in the storage room. So that rises the issue to that of concealment, of resisting efforts to properly recover these documents. That's why I believe, and this again, just my pure personal opinion based off professional experience, but why I believe there will be an indictment in this case unless something else changes between now and the final decision on that. So there was not a whole, whole lot new that was revealed in this affidavit.

As you put it, it was sort of confirmation of some of the reporting that has been out there already. But a lot of people did note this line about how they expected to find probable cause of, they expected to find evidence of obstruction. Do you think that that's sort of what they were looking for, the fact that the documents had been moved and weren't in the original location where they were meant to be, that that sort of demonstrated there was an intent to conceal these items? Yes, absolutely. And we know from the media reporting that in addition to the witnesses, there have been surveillance videos that were subpoenaed from the Trump organization that cover

that part of Mar-a-Lago. Presumably, that's what was being relied upon by the government here as part of their obstruction argument, that they have proof beyond just the witnesses, but they have video proof of boxes coming in and out, of boxes being relocated, of documents being relocated. That's why Donald Trump is in trouble. And it bears to mention here, we know this amount of information in a way that you normally never know pre-indictment. Probable cause affidavits virtually never get unsealed until there's already an indictment. We have what we have at this point, and it's, you know, admittedly still minor, but we have what we have because of the public interest in this case because it's a former president. Generally speaking, this kind of transparency never occurs. Yeah, it's interesting

also, like as you said, you know, we almost never get that. Now, in terms of the pushback from the Trump administration, what lines of defense can you anticipate working at a legal level should an indictment proceed, if any, given what we've seen from their statements going forward? Sure. So there's going to be a couple. One is going to be that he had designated these documents as personal records. He's going to rely, and this is where Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch come into play because they keep citing this 2012 case. He's going to claim that all this got redesignated as personal under the Presidential Records Act. Therefore, there was no authority at all to ever go after it. No one can reclassify it under that statute. Of course, no evidence has been produced that he ever took such action. No documentation, no letters, no memoranda, no affidavits, nothing has been produced to corroborate that. And the same goes

with this issue about whether or not Donald Trump declassified everything. The government preemptively addressed this. They included Kash Patel's Breitbart article from May in which he goes on record publicly saying, all this was declassified already. I was in the room when it was all declassified. Where's the evidence? Where's the proof? They've provided nothing to corroborate this assertion. Those are the two critical ones up front. They'll also bring up, you know, bad faith prosecution, you know, selective political aims. That's been tried before over and over. Go ask Steve Bannon how well those arguments work. It never goes anywhere. Yeah. So let me ask you about one of the sort of like competing

analyses here from Alan Dershowitz, who at times has sort of sided with some of the Trump legal analysis. He basically says that, yes, they have enough to indict him, but that they shouldn't. And he doesn't think that they will because it would fail to meet what he called the Nixon and Clinton test, the former being the need to establish broad bipartisan support. We actually have an element for this we can put up on the screen. And the latter being a demonstration that Trump's conduct is materially worse than Hillary Clinton's own past mishandling of classified information. So he's basically saying, like, look, if this was a regular citizen, yeah, probably gets indicted. But because it's a former president, doesn't meet this, what he describes as the Nixon and the Clinton test.

What do you make of that argument? Yeah, so it'll be fascinating if there is ultimately an indictment for Donald Trump to stand before the judge. The judge says, how do you plead, sir? And he goes, I plead but Clinton, your honor. Okay, this isn't going to work. One, the Nixon standard was political. Of course, they needed to be bipartisan consensus. They were trying to impeach and convict a sitting president. This is an impeachment. This is a criminal matter. The views of the public are specifically not supposed to be taken into consideration. It's supposed to be the enforcement of the rule of law, not playing to political polling. The Clinton standard, and I keep seeing this, and I saw, I think it was Senator Cornyn was posting an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal saying, well, if they didn't do it for Clinton,

why would they do it for Trump? It's two very different scenarios. And I get why in the mix of all this, in the 24-7 media environment, people aren't necessarily catching the nuance. Hillary Clinton's problem was that there was spillage, that people from their unclassified government accounts were emailing her personal account, which of course was unclassified. And within those emails, which were not marked as classified, within those emails, people let classified information spill into it. They said more than they should have, but they could never prove intent on Hillary's part to create a system designed to send or receive classified information.

They found she was reckless. I said at the time, her staff probably would never get clearances again, but there was no evidence of the intent for the relevant statutory provision. That's not in play for Donald Trump. These are properly marked classified documents. They've got the top secret markings on the headers and the footers. It says things like HCS for human intelligence. It says things like SI for signals intelligence. There's no dispute. There's no doubt these things were marked and anyone seeing them should have known this

was classified information. That's what distinguishes it from the Hillary Clinton saga. And because it's also under a different statutory provision, because it's the Espionage Act, the intent is irrelevant. He had the documents, he was told he couldn't have them, and he didn't turn them back over. End of discussion. Yeah. So in my opinion, regardless of how you feel about the Hillary Clinton situation, the fact that one elite got off the hook doesn't mean that all elites in perpetuity should also get off the hook. So in

my opinion, that's why that standard fails. But, you know, let me ask you, and I tend to be more on your side on these issues, but I want to play devil's advocate here. There are a lot of people who say, listen, it's different when you're talking about a former president, when you're talking about someone who was popularly elected, when you're talking about someone who has a massive base, where there are concerns about, you know, sort of dividing the country apart. And obviously, Trump's allies playing that concern up. Lindsey Graham on the shows over the weekend saying that there will be riots in the street if Trump is ultimately prosecuted.

So what would you say to people who say it should be considered, there should be a different standard for if you're talking about a former president, because we ultimately have a democratic process to adjudicate these things. And the real answer and real response to Donald Trump and his crimes is to defeat him in the election system. Yeah. So my response is that should absolutely be a consideration, of course, when deciding whether or not to move forward with an indictment. You have to consider the politics, of course, but it should not be the final, the dispositive factor. There should not be a separate standard that anybody of particular political importance cannot be held accountable under the laws, under our criminal provisions, just like any other

citizen. Hillary Clinton should not have been above the law. That's why she was investigated. You didn't see Democrats saying, we're going to riot in the streets if Hillary Clinton is indicted. And just like that, Donald Trump should be properly investigated here. And if an indictment is warranted, if the facts and the law meet the crime, that's the job of the Justice Department there to prosecute that case without regard for whether or not it is politically popular. If Donald Trump has a viable legal defense, he can put that forward before the court, just like any other citizen, he shouldn't get a special privilege. Yeah. Well, it's going to be interesting to see how it play out. Always appreciate your analysis, Brad. Thanks for coming back to the show.

Not a problem, anytime. Absolutely, man. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's always fun in order to do this show. And listen, it's a privilege every single day. We've got great stuff in the pipeline literally right after we wrap here. We have a very big and exciting announcement. Not just new live show dates, but some interesting new developments, which is only enabled by our premium subscribers. You guys are the ones who fund our abilities.

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