Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/3/23: Trump In Court Today As Co Conspirators Revealed, US Debt Downgraded, Obama Warns Biden Could Lose, Ukraine Counter Offensive Failing, Hunter Business Partner, LK99 Superconductor, Trucking Company Collapse, Panel On Trump Indictment

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump in court today as nightmare election kick off, Trump's co conspirators revealed, Biden freaks as US Debt Downgraded, Obama warns Biden could lose to Trump, MSNBC wonders when Biden's Black Voters will "fall in line", NYT admits Ukraine Counteroffensive failing, Tucker stuns with Hunter Business partner revelations, Saagar looks into the LK99 Superconductor as a potentially world changing tech, Krystal looks into Yellow Trucking company failing after corrupt bailouts, and we're joined for a Debate Panel on the latest Trump Indictment charges and if they're "BS or Legit" with Bradley Moss (@BradMossEsq) and Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten).To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do.

Big day here in D.C. where we are expecting the former President Trump to appear in a courthouse right here not too far from the studio. So we'll give you all of the details about that and everything that we know thus far. Also some big economic news. One of the major credit rating agencies downgrading the credit of the United States of America. We'll tell you about that and also about the Biden White House's reaction. We have reporting on an interesting meeting between former President Obama and current President Biden, with Obama apparently sounding the alarm that Trump is a lot politically stronger than Democrats have maybe been thinking. So we will take you inside all of that. And we also have MSNBC kind of freaking out about the Cornel West presidential bid and how black voters

will do for the Democratic Party, what they will do, who they will vote for this year. We've got some news from The New York Times. Even they are admitting that the Ukraine counteroffensive not going well. And big sit down interview between Devin Archer. That's that dude who was Hunter Biden's former business partner. He sat down with Tucker Carlson. Very interesting stuff there. And very excited to have a panel joining us this morning, both sides of the case in terms of the Trump indictments. We've got someone who says this is a violation of free speech. They're going after him for, you know, wrong thing. We've got someone who says, no, this is justified. So we'll get into

all of that and attempt to have a very nuanced conversation about the legal analysis of these latest Trump indictments. Before we get to any of that, though, thanks so much to everyone who has been signing up to become a premium subscriber this week. And just as a reminder, we have been having more ads inserted even into the premium YouTube feed. So if you want to get the whole show completely ad-free, the best way to do that at this point is through Spotify. Yes, that's right.

Unfortunately, as we said, they reserve the right to put ads on it, even though we don't want them to. We select the option not to. They've been doing it for some time, but it's especially gotten worse in recent times. So yeah, if you want to connect to Spotify, our customer service team has been doing a great job, Griffin as well, making sure that we're connecting everybody to the Spotify feed if they want to. That's also a good reminder. You can watch the full show in your Spotify app if you become a premium member, breakingpoints.com. Also, I thought we should mention this too. I realized, Crystal, given our posting schedule, we've been posting things on a different timeline these days. So if you actually want to watch the full show right when it comes

out and not on a staggered schedule of what our team thinks is appropriate for that day, just sign up. You can become a premium member. You can watch it all at the exact same time. So anyway, those are two important shout outs. Thank you to everybody who has been signing up this week. It's been very helpful in terms of being able to do snap coverage, what we were doing last week, booking some big guests or working with down the pipeline. And then also, of course, you know, with the studio and all of that. So it's just really a testament to everything that you guys have been helping us build. And we just want to thank you all again. Really can't thank you enough. Absolutely. All right. So let's get to the big news today, which, as I said, former President Trump appearing in court once again here in D.C. Expectation is that we'll start at 4 p.m. today.

Let's put this up on the screen from The Guardian headline here. Donald Trump to appear in court over attempt to overturn 2020 U.S. election. They give you a sense in this article. Let's go to the next piece of exactly what to expect. I mean, these are mostly perfunctory. We probably won't get anything particularly new here. They say prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts, and a judge will set bail conditions in the latest criminal case involving the ex-president weeks after he was charged with putting government secrets at risk. They also say, of course, this is Trump's third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant. And in a possible preview of Trump's defense,

his lawyer, John Lauro, has called the indictment, quote, an attack on free speech and political advocacy, implying Trump's lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to have a panel on to debate the legal piece of this. And one of the individuals we're going to have on is certainly going to be making that case that this was all about free speech. And we've got someone on to make the other side of that as well. The judge in the case has gotten a lot of attention. This is an Obama appointee who has handed down some pretty harsh sentences in terms of January 6th defendants.

She also actually ruled against Trump in a separate January 6th case. She refused to his request to block the release of documents to a House committee investigating the January 6th attack. I don't know if you all remember following that. And in what The Guardian describes as a memorable line from her ruling, the judge wrote, presidents are not kings and plaintiff is not president. So like I said, Sagar, not expecting anything super dramatic today. It's not even 100% certain that Trump is actually going to appear in court. There is some possibility that it'll be via Zoom, but D.C. seems to be certainly preparing for him to be here. They are prepping for it. I can tell you the city's been kind of on edge. I keep hearing people, especially

neighbors. If anyone uses the Ring app, like neighbors, people are always like, there's helicopters downtown. Yeah, people are always on watch. I'm like, relax, everyone. We'll know whenever we know. It's Washington. It's not like we don't have presidents, former presidents, all those people rolling around here. I actually found, it's not the immediate court proceedings, but now the current timeline of Trump's legal drama to be one of the most insane things on a political level. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was assembled by Fox News.

So as you can see, Thursday, that's today, we've got the Jan 6th court appearance. August 23rd is the first GOP debate, which current indications seem he's gonna skip it. October 2nd, then you've got the Trump Organization civil suit that will proceed in court. Then January 15th, you have the Iowa caucuses. The exact same day, there's a civil defamation suit, the continuing suit of E. Jean Carroll. Then a pyramid scheme class action scheme- I didn't even know about that one. So that one, I also did not know about. March 5th, I've heard of this one. It's called Super Tuesday.

Then March 25th, the New York State criminal hush money lawsuit. Then March 20th, the classified documents trial. Then July 15th, the Republican National Convention, and Election Day, November 5th, 2024. And this just underscores what is going to be the biggest element to all of this is the political drama layered on top of the legal problems. We don't yet have a trial date set for this. So remember, this is going to be somewhere in that timeline, Crystal. And just the true insanity. I mean, you and I have said this. On the documents, listen, I think it was charged relatively in a timely manner.

With this one, they took two and a half years, almost three years, to bring this case now against Trump. And now we're thrown into this insane situation where, you know, very likely the most legal jeopardy really that he faces here on this case, just because of the, you know, not exactly friendly judge and not exactly a friendly jury in terms of facing jail time. When are we going to find this out? Are we going to find out before Super Tuesday or not? Because that seems pretty damn relevant. If it happens after Super Tuesday, look, current indications, he's going to wrap this thing up on that day in terms of at least, look, everybody always usually knows by that time whether you're on the path to the nomination or not, unless it's a very, very tightly held election. I'm trying to think

in modern memory. I think the last time that things really got clenched up post-Super Tuesday was probably Bill Clinton in 1992. So let's just put that there. If we know then he's on a dramatic path, then we are on the collision course to one of those most insane outcomes where he gets convicted. Then we have, what, an immediate kick of the case to SCOTUS? Imagine in the final days of the election, you know, ahead, Trump gets convicted. SCOTUS vacates it, like vacates a conviction or upholds a conviction. Either is an insane outcome that could lead to who the hell knows what in terms of the argument pre-election day. It makes the Comey press conference and all that look like the total

JV squad compared to the drama we are setting ourselves up for is just absolutely nuts. Any hope that, not that I had any hope that this election was going to be about policy issues, because neither Biden or Trump is really running on any policy issues. So it's not going to be about that. It's going to be about policy issues. It's because neither Biden or Trump is really running on any policy issues. So it's not going to be about that. It's going to be about this timeline. I mean, that's the whole of what this election season is going to be about. I mean, in my opinion, Trump's already all but sewn up the Republican nominee. It's going to be very difficult to come from behind for any of these candidates. And, you know, for him as a non incumbent to have the sizable lead he has at this point, it's just hard to see how how anyone makes that comeback. And, you know, keep in mind with this timeline, too, this is not fully fleshed out.

Like we still have the trial for these January 6th related charges. We still have whatever is going to happen in Georgia and whenever that trial is going to be scheduled. So between now and election day, there is going to just be a lot of legal news about all of this. And, you know, I was thinking about the timeline piece on the documents part. That makes sense to me. What, how the timeline unfolded, they were trying to get the documents back. They were actually trying not to use the criminal justice process, but he was so uncooperative that ultimately their hand was forced. That one, this one, I don't know why Merrick Garland doesn't appoint special counsel on day one. If he believed it, if he believed that this was worth a criminal inquiry. So Jack Smith, since he was handed the case, that timeline from when he got it to this outcome is relatively expeditious.

I don't know what Merrick Garland was doing for the first like year and a half of the Biden administration. I really genuinely don't understand. And to me, you know, this, that really doesn't serve anyone, regardless of how you feel about president. I saw Chris Hayes on MSNBC saying the same thing. Like you had enough time for the Senate to come up with their whole thing and, you know, make their whole presentation and for Congress to at least have some, you know, assembling of the facts. What took so long to launch this investigation when we all saw January 6th unfold? Like, there was enough already on the public record to say this at least bears some investigating. So I do think that it was a disservice to the American people to wait so

long. Now, that doesn't mean that I think the I personally, from my analysis as a non-legal person looking at the charges, I think they're appropriate. I think Trump deserves to be held accountable for trying to steal the election. I think it is a horrible look to see all of the people who like stormed the Capitol on January 6th going to prison and the guy who fomented and created the conditions that led to that whole situation getting off scot-free. So I don't oppose the charges, but I am confused and do think that the timeline, you know, has created an even more fraught, chaotic, tense situation than we had to have. Yeah. I mean, look, and I think that's what I would try to say. I still have a lot of questions around the free speech one. I genuinely do want to see it adjudicated because I want to see how that actually, how

it matters in terms of elected officials and in terms of like what you can and cannot say and what it means whenever it turns to criminal law. I think those are legitimate and important points. So luckily, because it's Trump, we will actually get that adjudicated in terms of court. Now, on the political side, I just can't get over it. It's like you can't wait two and a half to almost three years after the event to charge somebody. You can't decide not to charge the guy. Effectively, what's been coming out, Crystal, is they decided not to charge him,

kind of, by Merrick Garland. Then he kicks the case in some weird way to Jack Smith, even though Jack Smith was appointed for the documents case. But like anything Trump related, we'll just kick it to you. And then Jack Smith suddenly like expeditiously puts it. If you read the indictment, all of the evidence that was gathered before there has been available for what, three months, six months or whatever after the fact, all the emails, everything is actually pre January 6th, 2021. So, I mean, look, if you look at that and then you check the timeline, there is just no question that if you're a Republican, you can you look at that and you check the timeline, there is just no question that if you're a Republican, you can't look at this and be like, this is the most politically

convenient timing ever. Like right whenever he's surging, how about during the Biden situation? I mean, look, these, I think these are legitimate points. I will say like on our show, we've got both, we've got Trump and Archer here, but you know, you and I know this, like Fox is not going to be talking about both and neither is MSNBC. So the vast majority of people in this country are going to be imbibing like kind of one narrative on this. And I can, I can actually understand really for specifically a lot of these Trump voters are like, Hey, this is BS. This is political. This isn't real. That's, there's a reason they don't really use that on the documents case because it's so indefensible.

But I think they've actually opened themselves up for, like you said, for people who do believe that Trump should be charged and criminally liable for January 6th to use that political attack against the genuine merits of the case because they didn't conduct themselves in a timely enough manner. And actually, Trump could possibly argue much of this in court as well, be like, what exactly took so long? I don't see how that's a, like, I don't see how that's a valid defense. The interesting thing from what I read is that because he's gonna have the impanel defense

and the ability to subpoena, he will be able to use subpoena power to actually subpoena some of the investigators and other folks if you can use and mount a defense around the political timing and around the free speech aspect to his defense. I mean, he to his defense in order in terms of getting people like a deposition. Sure. I don't, the timing of it, I don't really see how that works as a defense other than in the political realm. And look, I think that that definitely sells with Republicans. They don't

think that these charges are justified anyway. Does it sell with independence and any sort of persuadable voters? I don't really think so, because this does get to the core of what people really despise about Donald Trump. And if they were, you know, thinking of not voting for him, like this is this is one of the core reasons why the chaos, the willingness. One thing that comes across in this indictment is just like the casual approach to creating total mayhem. You've got this Justice Department official who's like casually like, yeah, there'll be riots in every city in the country if we do this. But that's what the Insurrection Act is for. So I personally don't know that the timing piece really sells as a political argument for Trump that's going to be persuadable. People can hold two thoughts in their head. And this is what the polling has showed thus far with the documents case, with the Alvin

Bragg case. They both feel like, OK, yeah, it's kind of political, these charges. Also, we think he did it and we think it's serious and we think it's real. So, you know, I think that they're the overwhelming, based on polling, the overwhelming majority of people feel like Donald Trump committed crimes with regards to trying to overturn the election. And just on the free speech part, Jack Smith goes out of his way in this indictment to say, listen, he's allowed to say the election is stolen. We're not going after him for that. He is allowed to take these claims to court, which he did.

OK. And basically, you know, didn't have any success there whatsoever because there was no there there. But he was allowed to do that. None of that is criminal. What you can't do is then use those lies to perpetrate a fraud that involves, you know, these seven states of fake elector schemes and you pressuring Mike Pence to try to overturn the results and obstruct quote unquote official government proceeding. That's what you can't do. And that is the case that we're going to make in court. So listen, we're going to have both sides of that coin argued in our panel today. So look forward to hearing what the legal experts have to say about

that. But to me, the idea that the Republican talking point about, oh, this violates free speech, it almost seems pre-baked and like they had this locked and loaded before they really absorbed the details of the indictment. That's just my humble opinion. Let's go and get to one of the other interesting was kind of a mystery, but maybe not so much of a mystery anymore. Pieces of this indictment, which is who are these six unindicted co-conspirators? Let's put this up on the screen from The Wall Street Journal. They say six co-conspirators described in Trump's 2020 election indictment.

Descriptions in the document indicate that they are former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesbrough, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. They, at this point, said a sixth person is described as a political consultant whose identity is unclear. Well, I think we now know who that political consultant actually was. We got some reporting from The New York Times. Go ahead and put A4 up on the screen. Looks like the political consultant was Boris Epstein based on some emails that he sent back and forth, I think, with Rudy Giuliani and the role that he is known to have played in terms of the fake electors scheme and election conspiracy.

So it looks like we have all six of the unindicted co-conspirators sort of identified in terms of their roles, matches up with what's already been publicly reported. Just to remind you some of the, you know, some of what was going on with these folks at the time, we played this sound recently because Rudy Giuliani is actually being sued for defamation of two election workers that he just out and out lied about.

And I can say that, you know, flatly as a statement of fact at this point, because even Rudy Giuliani at this point has admitted that he lied about these two election workers down in Georgia. Let's take a listen to some of what he was saying about them. Quite obviously, surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine. I mean, it's obvious to anyone who's a criminal investigator or prosecutor,

they are engaged in surreptitious illegal activity again that day. And that's a week ago, and they're still walking around Georgia lying. He repeated this crap over and over. They were passing mints back and forth. It was like immediately debunked, and he has now admitted that he was just out and out lying about these regular people who were trying to like do their civic duty. Many of you will recall some of the comments and interviews of a Trump lawyer, former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell. This particular instance was at a press conference where she was laying out some fairly wild claims that turned out to be obviously not true about the way that this alleged fraud was all perpetrated on the American public.

Let's take a listen to that. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States. So the Venezuela theory of the case, which according to the indictment, yes, according to the indictment, even Trump said sounded crazy. Venezuelan Chinese dominions, my personal favorite theories of stop the steal. I liked the bamboo ballots. I guess that ties in with the China piece. Yeah, that's from Arizona. That one's actually quite excellent. Yeah, there's many schools of

stop the steal. These are all my personal favorites because they're real. That's what actual voters and Trump, maybe Trump didn't believe per se, at least from what we see in the indictment, but he's certainly made other people believe it. I can tell you that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think what comes through in the co-conspirators is there has actually been a lot of legal wrangling, specifically around John Eastman and whether he was responsible or whether he should be criminally charged or disbarred for this scheme.

But more troubling, I think the most worst one to me was actually Jeffrey Clark, the acting Attorney General, around the actual push by Trump and by Jeffrey Clark to try and use the power of the federal government in order to try and take this to a whole other step, which would have been the actual intervention of the DOJ in seizing ballot boxes and in trying to officially spark investigations based, though, on completely spurious claims. So if you put those together, Epstein and Giuliani, Eastman and Jeffrey Clark all seem to be the three centers of the most nefarious plot. Sidney Powell, I mean, she comes across in the indictment. And also, at the time, it was just completely nuts, like out of her mind.

So much so that even the people in the room were like, what are you talking about? And it's funny because even Mike Pence took a shot at Sidney Powell after the indictment came out. And he's like, yeah, the president surrounded himself by all these crackpot lawyers. We all know who he's referring to. Yeah, I think we all know exactly who he was referring to. So the other final thing, we mentioned this in our immediate breakdown. In the indictment press conference by Jack Smith, he said this will not stop our continuing investigation of individuals. So these are not

necessarily the last of the co-conspirators. There are others who may still be. I still think Mike Lindell, look, you know, I don't wish this on Mike Lindell, but I'm like the man has had his hands in so many things and been funding so many types of things. Him and the overstock CEO guy, I forget his Patrick something. Those two, because they were funding different schemes and things like this, they might have put themselves in some serious legal jeopardy. Yeah, that is true. The other question people are asking is why isn't Mark Meadows anywhere in this indictment? And, you know, one of the theories about him is he may have already flipped.

That might be why he is not present in this indictment. There's also a lot of speculation about why these particular individuals were in there perhaps it's put pressure on them to try to cooperate try to strike some sort of a deal this is all just speculation but those are the sorts of tactics that that could be used you know with regard to Sidney Powell her claims were so wild that and after I think it was pretty close after that press conference that I just showed you where she was an official part of the team she got pulled from being an official part of the team. And we know from the indictment that Trump was even saying privately, like, she sounds crazy. But she continued to be really central and

certainly was publicly making the case, but also was deeply involved in a bunch of the meetings that were happening at the White House. And there's a whole bunch of reporting about how wild things were then where some of the aides were trying to keep people like Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell or whatever out of the White House and Trump was having them in anyway. And there were, you know, a bunch of battles over what was going on there. But, you know, this is these are the folks that the government has at this point identified as sort of central to the plot. So I'm sure they are all in a very uncomfortable position right now based on their actions. Certainly. That's right. All right. Let's talk about credit. A pretty crazy story going on with the dead. This actually, Crystal, was all happening at the exact same moment as the

indictment. Yeah. When it broke, it kind of was overshadowed. But if you've been following the business press. They kind of tie together in a way. Yeah. Interestingly enough, that's a good point. So let's go ahead and actually put this up there on the screen about the actual downgrading of the U.S. debt by Fitch. Their credit rating was downgraded at the exact moment, actually, of the overall indictment from AAA down to AA+. You might be asking, like, why does that matter? But it's the outlook for the $25 trillion treasury markets. And actually, a representative from Fitch appeared on Business TV in order to break all of this down. Here's what he said. When it comes to the argument about governance and responsibility, government responsibility. Why not?

I know you referenced January 6th as part of this call. Why not do this a couple of years ago? Yeah, I mean, I think, again, like the debt and the fiscal burden, we've seen a pretty steady deterioration in governance over the last couple of decades. And I think that you can highlight a few key elements. One would be the January 6th. But secondly, I think more importantly for us is the constant brinkmanship surrounding the debt ceiling, the debt ceiling debate, the fact that the government, both sides, Republicans and Democrats, haven't been able to come up with kind of meaningful long-term

solutions to deal with growing fiscal issues, especially around entitlement programs, so security and Medicare. I mean, I think these are the type of things that highlight the importance of the government and also the inability of the government and both parties to come up with some kind of solution. So what's interesting, Crystal, this is the first downgrade of U.S. debt since 2011 during the debt ceiling standoff, where standards and pours actually knocked us one notch down below top grade. And the point that you actually just made is very important, is that the Fitch, I mean, he's framing it in terms of fiscal, but at the core of what they said in their statement around the downgrade of U.S. debt was we feel like the American governance system is brittle and will allow things to fall through the cracks such that we cannot rely entirely and fully upon the American political system to be 100 percent behind its debts. While I don't think that is true in practice, as in like with the debt ceiling standoff, eventually we did figure something out.

We got something passed, like whatever. And we always do seem to have it happen in the end. We are still playing chicken though with our full faith credit and debt. But beyond that, they don't just point to the debt ceiling. They point to the overall like system of like, can you deal with irreconcilable issues or not even irreconcilable? Can you deal with like very tough, longstanding problems, coalitions, sit down and actually talk to each other? When that has broken down so much that they look at it, that they feel like that can't be evolved not only now, but long time in the future, they're onto something there. They're not wrong in terms of the political system. They are not wrong. And they point to January 6th

as I think the foremost symbol of those irreconcilable differences, the fact that you have a significant part of the population that doesn't even accept the results of this election, that you have the interests of the two political parties have very much diverged, and that there is so little ability even just to do like the basics of government at this point. Yeah, I can't say that they're wrong. And then the other piece that I would say, and of course, the Biden administration is very offended by this downgrade. It does make them look terrible. And look, it's not all their fault. Like the Republicans are the assholes that took the country hostage to start with. But the Biden administration decided, instead of taking the debt ceiling off the table forever, that they were going to play this game.

And so that means that we are set up for indefinite hostage-taking situations from here on out. Now, sure, in the past, at the very last minute, these things have always been resolved. They've always figured out some way to avoid completely going over the cliff. But it only takes one time of failing to do that, of playing chicken and, you know, one side taking it a little too seriously and actually pushing us over the edge for it to be a complete catastrophe. So, you know, I mean, knocking it down a notch,

saying, listen, we still have a lot of faith in the U.S. government to stand behind its debt, but we don't have 100 percent faith. I think that's pretty reasonable. Yeah. And you referenced Biden's the Biden statement. Let's put this up there on the screen. Here was the statement from Corrie Jean-Pierre, quote, We strongly disagree with this decision. The ratings model used by Fitch declined under President Trump and then improved under President Biden. It defies reality to downgrade the United States at a time when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world. And it's clear that extremism by Republican officials from cheerleading default to undermining government's democracy to seeking to extend

deficit-busting tax giveaways for the wealthy is continuing to threaten our economy. I mean, the part that begs belief here is the whole President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world. They're continuing to stick with this freaking Bidenomics narrative. And listen, I mean, they can try and point their finger at the Republicans all they want. Here's the truth. They have just as much as a role in systemic problems in the US economy as in the Republican officials. If you listen to what Fitch and them said, it wasn't just about the debt ceiling and about January 6th or any of that. Really, what it was is that it comes down to the actual fundamentals of our economy. And something that we talked a lot about, I've been thinking about this a lot, what went wrong for Biden. And the entire first year of his presidency is just one of the biggest own goals, in my opinion, in like modern presidential history.

He was elected for one simple reason, which was to be normal and to not be Trump. And then one of the things that he almost immediately did was continue to go down not only mask mandates, vaccine mandates, but finally, the problem of inflation was not a problem that he tried to tackle until almost 18 months into his presidency. We had shipping problems almost immediately. The economy was going haywire. That's actually whenever things start to went to go negative for him. It was pushed fully over the cliff on Afghanistan because it was like a physical manifestation of failures. But I think that all came down from a vibe of like things are falling apart. And then eventually we get to the invasion of Ukraine, and that's where things really take a dive for him.

But on the economic piece, totally. You could view it from many different angles. But he didn't make it a priority of his administration those first nine months. And by doing that, he lost the whole country. And look, you can say, oh, well, the masks and the vaccine. I'm saying when you combine all of that together, it clearly eventually came to October of 2021, where things went off a cliff for him, approval rating wise. And I don't think that's an accident. I really think that it all comes back to the economy. And he has lost people since then. And actually, you know, he could have put himself in a position. Imagine how popular he would be if he had actually gotten something done, if he had lowered gas prices, you know, in those first nine months, if he'd actually attacked inflation, if he'd done tried to do something around wages, both either on the legislation front or in terms of using his administration.

But many of these initiatives were dropped. And now it's like, what do you know? What is what have you done for me in the last three years? That's right. Biden had his highest approval rating, the beginning of his administration. It was like 70-something percent. It was crazy. Yes, and very high among young people who now are a major impediment to him being reelected, and we'll get to some of the White House fears about that. But the beginning part of his presidency was actually very active.

You know, there were lots of executive orders coming out. There was, you know, pandemic relief being passed. There were efforts to pass, you know, bipartisan legislation. There was a lot going on. And some of the things that went through, like I always use the example of the child tax credit, they really worked. They really helped people. They really insulated a lot of people from the worst parts of the COVID economy and the post-COVID economy.

And then inflation starts to creep in. And there was no sense of urgency from the White House in tackling that. I mean, there was a lot of sort of hand-w waving it away. And I genuinely think that the American people do not expect the president to be a magician. I don't think they have unrealistic expectations of what they want this individual to be able to accomplish. But they at least wanted to see him trying to fight. Because we can see, OK, inflation is coming down, even though it doesn't really look like it had that much to do with the Federal Reserve policy. It has more to do with the fact that the supply chain kinks got worked down and the fact that we've sort of moved forward into post-pandemic, et cetera. And it's made it more difficult for corporations to engage in the type of price gouging that they were. But there was no fight from him in terms of calling on the carpet people who were just out and out gouging American consumers. And it was very listless.

And since then, you know, whatever programs were put in place that were really helpful to people, one after another, those have expired. So what's the experience of most people over the course of the Biden administration? It's their economic situation getting a little bit worse and a little bit worse and a little bit worse. I just saw this morning a poll from CNN that, you know, we're going to get a lot of commentary on, I'm sure much of it extremely annoying, about how half of the country thinks the economy is getting worse in spite of the fact that the Biden administration will go out and say, oh, this top line number is great and that top line number is great. And actually, the economy is wonderful. People just don't really understand it. They need to read the New York Times more, I guess. The reality is for most people, those top line numbers do not reflect their reality.

Because you have such vast gulfs between the people who have so much wealth and income on one side and the vast bulk of America, you can have those top line numbers look very different than the actual lived reality of so many Americans. And so, listen, this is a long way to get around back to like the Fitch credit rating decision here, but they're not wrong to look at the American political system and say, this is completely dysfunctional. They're courting disaster. There seems to be, we're about to face an election where it's not even about policy, where it's just about, you know, Trump's legal issues, which are quite significant and quite important. And I'm not trying to sidetrack at all.

But how can you look at that landscape and say, yes, I've got full, full belief in the American political system that it's going to be A-OK. Yes. Well said. All right. Why don't we talk about Obama? OK, so this this kind of ties in. Let's put this up on the screen from The Washington Post. Apparently, former President Obama was recently here in D.C. meeting with current President Biden

and warning him that Trump has a lot more political strength than Democrats may think. Here are the specifics from that article. They said former President Obama at a private lunch with President Biden earlier this summer voiced concern about Donald Trump's political strengths, including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized country, underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize. They go on to say that during their lunch, Obama made it clear, Sagar, that his concerns weren't about Biden's political ability. Right. Of course not. Of course. Biden's great. It's nothing to do with him, but rather a recognition of Trump's iron grip on the Republican Party, according to the people.

It's funny, too, because in this article, they go to great lengths to report out and NBC News confirmed and whatever that Obama says he's going to do everything he can for Joe Biden. Is that news? Like, I mean, I just assumed that that would be the case. But I guess I guess after the fact that, you know, in 2016, Obama actively pushed Biden out of that primary and, you know, tried to anoint Hillary. We all know how that turned out. And then in 2020, Obama sat on his hands until it was clear that he wasn't going to be able to get Pete or someone else. And there's a bunch of reporting, too, about how even when they were together in the White House, Obama and his brainiac side of the team basically had contempt for Joe Biden. So I guess there was some question about how hard Obama would go for Joe in this election.

But anyway, you can put your fears to rest. Barack Obama will be fully engaged in this campaign. Good. Yeah, good for him. I'm sure it'll work out. It always does, right? Look, the thing is, too, about Obama, you and I also know how these stories go. This was such a well-planned, like, execution by their teams. They're like, well, we'll have the lunch, and then afterwards we'll call friendly reporters of The Washington Post and we'll read out, you know, like a press release, effectively. And then they can bill it as a scoop around what exists.

It's not a scoop whenever somebody literally dictates to you on the phone. It's also ridiculous because there are only two people presumably inside the room. So obviously one of them leaked it and it's not like it was made in, what is it? It's not exactly done in such a way that is supposed to be anonymous. Anyway, so you look at this and what becomes clear? Obama is trying to telegraph two things. I'm going to help Biden, so you can't blame me for not. But also, he is trying to telegraph his political genius, his above-it-all almost approach, where he still believes, I think rightfully, that he's a better politician than Joe

Biden. And he kind of wants to put it across. He's like, I'm not the one underestimating Trump. I'm pushing Biden to do everything he can. I want to dispel with any narrative that this thing isn't as in a tight race. And it's interesting too, that actually came on the heels of the New York Times poll, which showed them completely neck and neck. And Obama's political analysis too is not wrong. But it's also just funny coming from the guy who, in many ways, is the most responsible for Donald Trump's presidency. If he did a better job as president, then Trump would never be president. It's simple. You know, and in many ways, like, Trump didn't just beat Hillary. He destroyed the Obama consensus.

And really all the Obama-ization of politics was basically dead in all of his ideas, both on the left and the right, in terms of how everything was supposed to work. That's where Trump really kind of came in and blew up. So I don't know. I found it interesting on a very meta level about how Obama is still trying to, because he's a young man. He can't still yet be seen to be, he can't be shown yet to be kind of the political fool that he is. And what I mean by that is he's turned himself effectively into a lifestyle brand. He's ceased being an actual human being a very long time ago, him and Michelle. And so he's got to keep his like political bona fides by calling up the Washington Post reporter and giving his analysis. So there's actually quite a bit going

on here, I think. Yeah, there are a lot of layers to this. I mean, there's also, there's a lot of like Democratic freak out porn in the media right now. Like, we're worried about this group. We're worried about that group. We're going to play you a little bit of that in a minute. But also, there was an article about how Democrats have reassessed. They did think that Ron DeSantis would be a more formidable candidate than Trump. And now they've kind of decided Trump may actually be harder to beat. And I understand that for a while, the polls showed

that DeSantis would be a tougher general election candidate. But I always thought there was major reason for skepticism of that analysis, at least, you know, to be sort of of agnostic on that analysis because we know Donald Trump has won before. So we know he can. And we know the fervent support that he inspires. We know the way he brings people out of the woodwork who don't answer polls but then show up and vote for Donald Trump no matter what. So I always thought it was,

remember all those articles of Democrats, like delighting in the idea that Republicans were going to nominate Donald Trump again? It was like, you people have learned absolutely nothing. So apparently, belatedly, allegedly, according to what's being leaked to the Washington Post, they're finally starting to realize that this is no slam dunk, even with, and I do think Trump's legal issues, I do think those are a problem for him with normie voters. I think, you know, if he's found guilty, if he's facing some sort of prison sentence or

whatever, I think that is a real issue for him in terms of getting reelected. But you also can't deny the reality that his polling versus Biden right now is way better than his polling versus Biden was last time around. It's also better than his polling was versus Hillary Clinton, an election that he obviously went on to actually win back in 2016. So, you know, they're kind of waking up to the fact that they have a genuine political fight on their hands and could be, once again, responsible for handing the country over to Donald Trump. And they're willing to do anything, leak to any reporter, you know, wring their hands in the media, shame voters. They're willing to do anything except actually deliver a real reason for voters to be excited about voting for Joe Biden. And Crystal, I mean, we have, you know, you referenced a CNN poll here. Now, the approval rating here of June and July of the third year

of presidents, here's the rankings for the last, like, what, 60 or so years. Eisenhower, 72%. Bush, 91%. 70%. He, of course, went on to be defeated. Kennedy, 61%. Bush, 03%. 58%. Obama 51, Nixon 50, Clinton 46, Trump 43, Reagan 42, Biden 41, Carter 29. Joe Biden is the second least popular president in modern times in the third July or whatever of his presidency. That does not bode well. I mean, listen, Obama barely won reelection in 2012. And then if you're looking at this, Clinton won reelection, I guess with 46%, went on to win in 1996, but it wasn't all that easy going. And there were a lot of, Dole kind of screwed up that campaign.

There's a lot of interesting stuff actually about how things could have gone differently. But Biden is lower than all of them. And then of course, Carter, we all know how that worked out. So he's not in Jimmy Carter territory yet, but he's getting pretty damn close. You don't want to be next to his name there when you're running for reelection. There's a lot of cope about these kind of numbers that like, well, it's just different now. People are so polarized. You're

just, every president is going to have basically a low approval rating. But Biden's own presidency disproves that because this is not what his ratings look like at the beginning of the presidency. And, you know, Obama wasn't so long ago that he had a 51 percent. And at times during his presidency, he had a much higher approval rating than that, especially at the beginning and kind of the honeymoon period. So even within the very recent memory, we see that that is not the case. It's just if you want to play the political game as it exists now and deliver very little for people except for, you know, sort of like emotional sucker and cultural signaling and the, yeah, you might not like me that much, but the other guy is worse. If that's the political game you want to play, yeah, you're probably going to be in the forties.

That is true. If that is, if you're accepting like the mode of politics as it has existed for many years now, yes, that is true. You will probably be in 40 percent no matter what. But there is a different possibility, which is like you could actually make people's lives better and actually fight for them and make it clear you're fighting for them. And by the way, not be 80 million years old and able to form a coherent sentence. And I have a feeling based even with this guy, Joe Biden, who, you know, is not in his prime, even with him, he had a much higher approval rating at a different time because people felt like he was really doing something for them and fighting for them. So let's move on to some interesting analysis over at MSNBC. There have been a number of pieces now recently, and I think justifiably so, about Democratic concerns that white women and white men, that there

was a surge for the Democratic ticket. And that's what forestalled the red wave. But if you dig into those numbers, there were some troubling signs among black men in the cities. It's not that they showed up and voted for Republicans. It's that they just didn't show up. There was a fall off in the vote for black men, in particular in urban areas. So MSNBC decided to do some reporting on this. There's also a lot of hand-wringing here about Cornel West, who, of course, is running on the Green Party line. So they're concerned about what he might do in terms of voters overall, but Black voters in particular. Let's take a listen to what they had to say. Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win a presidential election in Georgia since 1992,

when he won in 2020. And just to show how crucial Black voters were to that win, by our calculations, if less than 1% of Black voters stayed home or voted for Trump, the outcome of this election could have been very different. And basically, something that we heard on the ground from the director of organizer from the New Georgia Project, which is easily pushing the largest voters registration efforts in the state. They registered about 30,000 people alone this year. He said people are just frankly not running and jumping about another term of President Biden. And they're frankly keeping their options open. And that's something that I

heard from voters consistently is that while they're aware that Joe Biden could be the default, they're still wanting to see who else could potentially get in this race. At least one voter told me they were considering Cornel West. But the majority of people here said, even though they may just be voting for Joe Biden in the end of this, their big concerns right now is the economy. They're still feeling the stress of inflation and jobs are drying up in the state. Even though we've seen some of this good economic data, we just haven't seen those perceptions seem to catch up yet. And as you mentioned, these unfulfilled promises, student debt was something that we heard consistently from voters that they really wanted to see that policy come to fruition. But obviously, after the Supreme Court struck it down, we know Biden is trying again,

but they were really disappointed that that hasn't happened yet. And you mentioned Cornel West, who by any measure is a pretty fringe candidate. But we all remember Jill Stein in 2016. If West even pulls off a sliver of voters, Black voters in particular, that could be the difference in some of these states. So tell us, what's the Biden campaigns? Are they aware of this potential issue? And what's their plan to try to make sure they keep those voters in line? Certainly, strategists have raised concerns about third-party candidates, not just Cornel West, but also the snow labels candidates that we're hearing about. But I think the thing that the Biden world is banking on is Donald Trump.

Their hope is that if he is, in fact, the nominee, that will galvanize people in the same way that it did in 2020. There was voters who purely cast a vote against Donald Trump, their hope is that if he is, in fact, the nominee, that will galvanize people in the same way that it did in 2020. There was voters who purely cast a vote against Donald Trump, and they're hoping that threats to democracy and him being on the ballot again will have the same effect that it did then. There's so much to unpack in that analysis. That was wild. Right? There's so much to unpack there. First of all, so what do voters tell this reporter that they're concerned about? First of all, they're like, what are my other options here?

Because I'm not sold on Joe Biden. Of course, this is a network that like studiously avoids covering the fact that Joe Biden actually has opponents in the primary. These voters do have other choices that they can evaluate. So there's that. The voters told this reporter, hey, my number one is the economy. I'm worried about the economy. And by the way, you know, pretty disappointed about how this whole student debt thing has gone down. And what is the White

House's theory of the case? It's like, yeah, well, we're not going to really do anything on that. But we're hoping that Donald Trump is enough to, in the words of that host, keep these voters in line as if anyone is entitled to anyone's vote and doesn't have to go out there and earn it. And then, of course, there's the, you know, spurious analysis that it was Jill Stein's fault that the Democrats screwed up 2016 and that, you know, if they lose this time, it won't be their fault again. It'll be the fault of Cordell West or the fault of potentially Joe Manchin, no labels ticket, whatever. It's not anybody's fault except yours for not getting people to want to vote for you.

You know, even in the latest New York Times poll, they have a really interesting graphic. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, which even shows you that, quote, Trump has made gains amongst men, black, Hispanic, low income, less educated voters. That's one of the reasons why it's a tighter race, is mainly it seems to do because of these additional Trump gains. So Crystal, Trump has made gains amongst all of the demographics which Democrats take for granted. And now whenever, as she said, oh, we can only lose less than 1% and something like that would still have an impact. It's like, well, it's not difficult. Do something for these people and maybe they'll vote for you, but you can't be blaming Cornel West. There's also something very racist about

that. I'll never stop thinking. It's like, what, because he's a black guy, you think black people are gonna go vote for him? Is that it? Is that where you're reducing people to? Yes, that is. You think people are so stupid? Yes, that is what they're reducing people to. How can you say that? I mean, imagine if people were like, Vivek Ramaswamy, S's going to support him, right, because he's an Indian guy. I'm like, what? Like, what are you talking about? That's not how people, most normal people are like, oh, he's a white guy.

I'm going to go vote for somebody because he's white. What are we saying? But apparently, like, whenever it's black people and we're talking about it, that it's okay to just reduce people down to that function. It's ridiculous. It's deeply racist. It's so funny you say that because I was just reading this morning. I think it was in Politico, this similar, like, type of concern about what's going on, how are they going to win?

How are we going to convince black voters that it's worth it to come out and vote even though they feel like their lives have not gotten better under Joe Biden in the same way they didn't feel their lives got better under Republican presidents as well. It's just like, you know, very understandable apathy there. And all of the Democratic spokespeople, leaders, DNC types that they interviewed were like, oh, we know what's going to get black voters to the polls. It's the fact that we have Kamala Harris on the ticket. No, it's not. It's the fact that we put Katonji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court. It's the fact this one really this one really made me chuckle that we have Hakeem Jeffries as minority.

Do you think there is a single person in the entire country that is going to change their vote based on the fact that Hakeem Jeffries is in a position of power? And listen, representation is important. It's not nothing. But when you're talking about what actually matters, like these voters are telling you what is important to them. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out the way to message to people and like not just a message to actually deliver for people. So they feel like they have some sort of freaking stake in this election. Washington Post had a piece with a lot of this very similar analysis. Let's put this up on the screen. They say Democrats worry their most loyal voters, that would be black voters, won't turn out for Biden in 2024. They got a quote here. Let's put

this up on the screen from the founder of the Black Male Voter Project, a guy named W. Mondale Robinson. He says, quote, the Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of black men. And that's sad to say, black men are your second most stable base overwhelmingly, and you can't reach them in a way that makes your work easier. I appreciate the way that he frames that because so much of the analysis of this, it's almost like blaming black men. Like that host said, he's like,

how do we get them in line? Like, I just find that framing so disgusting. So I appreciate the way that he's framing this as, listen, the onus is on you all to explain why people should bother to show up and vote for you. And most of what comes out in this piece is the Democratic strategy is just like, oh, we need a new field program. We need to put some more money into like voter outreach and whatever. And like, okay, sure. But if you're not selling something that is compelling to people, all the voter outreach in the world

isn't going to do a damn thing. They also cite a poll here, Washington Post, Ipsos poll, black Americans back in May found what they describe as a tepid reaction to Biden's reelection. Something that I'm sure many people can relate to out there.

Only 17% of black Americans said they would be enthusiastic if he wins. 48% said they'd be satisfied, but not enthusiastic. 25% said they would be dissatisfied, but not angry. And 8% said they would be angry about another Biden term. So just keep in mind, some of these shifts might be small, few few percentage points here, a few percentage points there. But we're talking about the last time these two men went up against each other, it was razor thin. What you're just talking about just loses the state of Georgia. That's it.

10,000 votes. That's it. You just lost Georgia. And that's where these interviews were taking place, by the way. Yeah, exactly. You know, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, there's a lot of people. You know, you switch things up a little bit in terms of voter turnout in inner city Philadelphia, the whole thing goes a whole other way. Same thing, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, many of these other cities with large black populations.

If the rain is a little bit there, if there's a little vibe in the city that, oh, I actually don't like Biden that much, well, Trump just won the presidency. And I can, I mean, every single one of these places, that was Wisconsin, Michigan as well, Detroit. It's one of those where it's very clear here that you barely won the presidency and then they don't act like it by either doing anything. And then whenever it does come time to vote, you come and you scold these people because a black guy is on the ticket and they think so little of them that they're going to go and vote for them. I always think about this story, but the majority of black voters supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary until Obama actually started winning votes. So it's one of those where it's

like, yeah, they knew the black guy was running. It was not enough for them. How many times do we have to go over the fact that Kamala didn't win a lot of black votes in South Carolina? That's one of the reasons that she dropped out. Same with Cory Booker. The two black candidates in the race actually had to drop out or didn't even make it because they were getting so low. They ended up voting for Biden and for Bernie because they don't, people don't think that way. And we never learned that. And apparently it's permissible. And even there are race obsessed media. I don't know why they don't get called out on it. Yeah. Yeah. So true. I mean, I, I do think that they are correct that they have a problem with Cornel West. I do think it is a problem for them. It is a problem entirely of

their own making. And to the extent I'm sure there are going to be black voters among many other voters, particularly young voters who, you know, cast their ballots for Cornel West. It doesn't have anything to do with the color of his skin. It has to do with the ideas that he's pushing and the fact that he has demonstrated over his life a commitment to working class people and making sure that their material lives are improved. So yeah, they need to reflect. If they actually want to win, they need to reflect on what voters are actually telling them and not what they imagine voters want to hear or to see from the Democratic Party. Yeah, I completely agree with that.

All right, let's talk about Ukraine. And this is always, it's always just fun because of the information deficit with Ukraine. We're getting propagandized by Ukraine, propagandized by the government, and then we're getting propagandized by the Russians. Who the hell knows what actually is going on? Even the number of dead and all of that is completely, you know, every once in a while, some gamer leaks something on Discord, and then we all actually find out the truth. But every once in a while, you know, you still have to rely on like what's going there. And you hear one guy who's on the ground, and then you hear another guy always getting paid by this and that. But it's always important to try and read the tea leaves even within side

the propaganda. So whenever the propagandists can no longer spin something in a way because the facts don't match up with it, that's when real turning points start to come and you start to get a little bit of a glimmer of the truth. This was in the New York Times just yesterday morning, and this is a pretty damn good insight into what is happening in terms of the clear shift where even they have to admit what's going on. They say, quote, Ukrainian troops trained by the West stumble in battle. Ukraine's army has for now set aside U.S. fighting methods and reverted to tactics that it knows best. They say that the first several weeks of Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive have not been kind to troops who were trained and armed by the United States and its allies. Equipped with advanced American

weapons, heralded as the vanguard of a major assault, the troops became bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery, helicopter gunships. Units got lost. One unit delayed a nighttime attack till dawn, losing advantage. Another fared so badly, commanders yanked it off the battlefield altogether. Now the Western-trained Ukrainian brigades are trying to turn things around by changing tactics, focusing instead on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire, a troop surge is now underway in the country's south.

Second wave of Western trained forces launching mostly small-scale attacks to punch through Russian lines. There's a lot to actually think about this. Number one, they have just admitted something very basic, that U.S. aid outside of sheer bullets and of artillery, which is the most basic form of aid that we've basically been, you know, you can go read books from the 1890s. We were providing militaries with that. All of the advanced weaponry, all that other stuff that was supposed to turn the tide, it just didn't work. And this is a testament for, look, there are a lot of people

who watch the show in the U.S. military. I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever, because this is never a denigration of the actual service members. I'm saying as an institution, let's look at the track record of training and equipping. Iraq, how did that go? That was great, right? It was awesome. So much so that they threw their weapons down and they flew, flee whenever ISIS takes over the city of Mosul. Okay, so that costs $2 trillion. Now let's talk about Afghanistan. We spent, let's say, $700 billion training and equipping

the Afghan National Security Forces. Oh, that was great. The moment that these guys get into the city of Kabul, the guy who salary paying gets on a plane laden with gold. He's like, peace, I'm out. And then the US military has to lock down an airport to try and get down interpreters out, even though we just prop these people up for the last 20 years. Syria, anyone want to remember that one? I would rather not. Yeah, my personal favorite is that the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, I will never forget this, covering it at the time, is whenever he was testifying before the Senate. And they're like, so how many people have you actually successfully trained and equipped for 500 million or whatever? And they're like, oh, you know, like a dozen. They're like, wait, what? So that's what ended

up happening. A dozen and they were like Al Qaeda too. Yes, exactly. And then the only way we've ever been able to turn the tide in any of these conflicts is actually just putting direct U.S. military boots on the ground. So in the Syrian context, well, we had a couple thousand people. We started arming and equipping the YPG. But then even then, it was a deeply like U.S. influence. We were basically running all the ops. And you think about Iraq. Iraq had some phenomenal counterterrorism forces.

Let's all be honest here. They were not only trained by the Navy SEALs, they were deeply embedded like Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and all these other guys, special operators within that when they were at their most combat effective. And then same whenever it comes to Syria and then Afghanistan, same thing. The moment that the US special operators and the US ISR and all that other stuff either got pulled or wasn't as robust, they fell apart completely. And so, I mean, again, I mean, as an institution, it is clear here, we don't know how to do this very well. We know how to do one thing. We're good at like the office management part of war, as in with the Ukrainians. We're like, yeah, the Russian ship is over there. Take this missile,

go fire it. But in terms of being like, here's the weapons, here's how you train, combine our tactics, all this, and how to use also, it's not going to work. And so whenever they also point to here, reverting to the tactics of simply trying to wear down the Russians, OK, well, we've tried this battle a million times throughout history. The person who wins is the one who can last out the longest. How are you going to last out the longest? You don't make any shells. You only

rely on charity from Western nations. Why do you think that you're going to beat a nation which has a genuine industry, which is Russia? They have oil, which they can sell to people who aren't in the West. And they have a populace which is relatively untouched completely by the war. I mean, the thing is, is that the nation who folds is usually the one after many years of bloody and horrific conflict, is the one that just can no longer sustain itself from the home front. And this is deeply sad. And already we're actually getting indications just about how brutal this war is.

From the Wall Street Journal, they actually talk about how the number of people inside of Ukraine who appear to have lost limbs, this is based on prosthetic limb-like data inside, is now at least by some estimations equivalent to the number of Britons who lost limbs in all of the First World War. Nearly equivalent to the number of Germans that lost limbs in the First World War. I don't need, you know, listen, if you have the stomach for it, I actually encourage you to go look at what some of those wounds and all those look like because they have a profound impact on me personally, just to see like, you know, before the invention of a lot of prosthetic surgery and

stuff like that's what the actual face of war look like is somebody's nose gone because a shell hit them right in the face. Luckily, we've gotten to the point where things war looked like, is somebody's nose gone because a shell hit them right in the face. Luckily, we've gotten to the point where things look better, I guess, but you can't take away the psychological damage, the trauma, the generational impact that that has on the people that they interact with and on a day-to-day basis. So, I mean, all of this is just a very long way of saying, like, look, obviously the Ukrainians, I mean, it takes a hell of a lot of guts to march into a minefield, to lose tens of thousands of limbs and to still live to fight another day. We have to look at this from a geopolitical level and be like, what are we doing here? What are we getting? And I also was thinking about this. One of the most common talking points in Washington is, you know, this is the best money we've ever spent. We're wearing down the Russians. That is like looking at the Ukrainians as pawns. You know, it's literally thinking of these people

like, oh yeah, they lose a couple limbs here and there, whatever. You know, I know some people who've lost limbs in combat. It's no joke. I mean, it stays with you forever. And they think about it and they talk about it, not even on a shameful level. Just, you know, there's, of course,

it's gonna impact your life. It's a physical representation of what was lost and what you gave and family. And there's so much impact that happens there. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just think it's one of those where you come back to and you're reading things like this. It's just so clear what is happening. And yet nobody wants to grapple or face with reality. The only response, Crystal, by Washington is let's give him $500 million. I guess we better give him more. I guess we better give him more. I mean, to me, I just look at this and I feel like reality is taking hold. I mean, the Ukrainians really

defied the odds, right? Yes. Incredible. Dramatically outperformed what anyone possibly could have expected. But much of that came when they were much more effective in defense than we thought that they could be. And but, you. But reality, the laws of gravity eventually take hold and you are up against an adversary that made all kinds of mistakes, but some of them they've learned from. They seem to be in Russia moving towards a more full-scale mobilization. They certainly are gearing up to be on war footing for a long time. And, you know, when it came to, okay, now it's time to try to employ these more complicated battlefield tactics and retake the territory that's been lost, like, they're not miracle

workers, right? So, yes, reality has taken hold. It looks like this is a very, very difficult situation for the Ukrainians to be able to push forward. And I just think there was such – I just think the U.S. government has had such blinders on the whole time. Even the idea that, oh, this is such great money spent because we're weakening Russia. Like, are we? Do we know that for a fact? Because, I mean, honestly, actually, their GDP numbers look just fine and dandy. Economically, you know, the all-out economic

war that we attempted to wage on them has basically completely failed. So that hasn't worked out. You know, we had the whole Prokosian situation. There was a lot of cheerleading of, like, you know, cheerleading on this maniac to try to take control of Russia, which could have been really disastrous and very chaotic. Not that it's great having Putin there, but you know, there's no imminent sign of Putin's government collapsing, nor is it clear that that would be a good thing for anyone, by the way, when you're dealing with such a volatile situation and nuclear armed superpowers. So I just, I, all I want is a straight answer from Joe Biden of how this ends. Like, how do you see this playing out? It seems increasingly clear to me that the moment when the Ukrainians and the Western

coalition probably had the greatest leverage was very early in this conflict when we were going out of our way to try to scuttle any potential diplomatic resolution. That was probably the best time to settle and before tens of thousands of Ukrainians lost limbs and many lost their lives as well. That's right. Okay, let's go to the next part here. Devin Archer sitting down with Tucker Carlson.

We cut together some of the most important parts of the interview. There will be a second part apparently of a longer form conversation between the two. The clip that was put out was only about 11 minutes. Devin Archer, for context, was Hunter Biden's business partner in BHG Holdings, which is one of the holding companies that Hunter Biden was a part of. They had business dealings with Moscow. They had business dealings with China. He was also at the center of a lot of the Burisma dealings. New Hunter for over a decade and says here in this interview that he heard at least on 20 occasions President Biden, then Vice President Biden, phone into business meetings with Hunter Biden.

Here, let's take a listen. Our partnership started in 2008, 2009-ish. Conversation started. That's when I re-met Hunter and actually had a sit down and a meal with him. Talked about the transition from lobbying into strategic advisory and then some type of coalescence around having a private equity fund that would have this unique access and understanding of a regulatory environment. Joe Biden, then the sitting vice president, knew that there were Hunter's business associates in the room. Yeah, I think I can definitively say at particular dinners or meetings, he knew there were business associates.

And he, you know, we, or if I was there, I was a business associate too. I don't know if it was an orchestrated call in or not. It certainly was powerful, though, because, though, because if you're sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president's voice, that's prize enough. I mean, that's pretty impactful stuff for anyone. It's just the president. You have to be, I mean, you understand DC, right? So the power to have that access and that conversation, and it's not in a scheduled conference call and it's a part of your family, that's like the pinnacle of power in DC. You're taking a call from the vice president and you put it on speaker. It's not just,

hey, dad, I'm in a meeting with some buddies. It's, let me put my dad, the vice president, on speaker. Yeah. Yep. In the rear view, it's an abuse of soft power, I'd say. An abuse of soft power. Abuse of soft power. I gotta be honest, Crystal, I found Archer incredibly slimy throughout this interview. Wow. What do you expect? I think the reason why is there was this intense self-awareness from Archer.

He's like, listen, you know how Washington works. You get the guy. He had a lot of connections. He's like, Hunter, he was the regulation guy. And Tucker would be like, well, you know how Washington works. You get the guy. He had a lot of connections. He's like, Hunter, he was the regulation guy. And Tucker would be like, well, what do you mean? He'd be like, you know how Washington works. He didn't want to say it really out loud, and he kept kind of smiling around the truth. But the truth enough about calling in 20 times and that real moment that stuck out to me.

He's like, look, it's the pinnacle of power in Washington. You're in a meeting with some Ukrainian guys who are paying you $83,000 a month, and you put the guy on speaker. And Tucker even, he was like, he's like, look, I love my kids. I talk to him every day. He's like, I don't, and he has adult children. He's like, I don't call them into business meetings. It's super weird. And if they did that to me, vice versa, what the hell is going on? So clearly something was happening to the extent where Biden knew he was calling into a business meeting because he literally would put him on.

And that, you know, Dan Goldman, the Democratic representative, his defense was, well, they didn't really talk about business. They were talking about the weather. The illusion of access. The illusion of access. As Archer says, the mere fact that the man is on the phone was clearly worth millions of dollars to Hunter's foreign business partners. At the very least, it was part of the sales pitch that he was able to monetize his last name. There's no denying it now, like looking through this and in this interview. And of course, we were talking about this before.

It's hilarious. One, this interview is not allowed to be covered on Fox News apparently because Tucker's in it and he's fired and he's persona non grata now. But also, the actual allegations here are completely ignored by the Dan Goldmans and all of them of the type. All the spin around it was obviously wrong when from the horse's mouth, he's like, yeah, the mere fact that he was on the phone was worth a lot of money to us. He's like, that's what we paid him for. That's why I was in business with Hunter. It's obvious. Yeah, I know it's obvious.

It's totally obvious. And we talk a lot about the problem of just the appearance of corruption and what that does in terms of the public trust. Because then how do you know when Joe Biden is acting as vice president or Joe Biden is acting as president or Joe Biden's, you know, a powerful member of the Senate. How do you know that he's not influenced at all by what he knows his son is up to and his business dealings and his associates? Do we really have confidence that, listen, human beings are human beings, that you're not impacted by that at all when you're making decisions on, you know, supposedly on behalf of the American people? And, you know, we talk about this with regard to Trump and Kushner and the Saudi money and all of that stuff as well. Like the fact that you're getting those funds and the fact that, you know, your son's livelihood is dependent on his access to you, his last name, his affiliation with this, you know, group of sketchy foreign businessmen.

And we're expected to believe that you remain pure as the driven snow in terms of your business and in terms of your doing the business of the American people. It's just, you know, it's hard to believe that. And then the other piece of this is just astonishing to me. It kind of reminds me of the defense that's being mounted for Trump of like, oh, this guy's so dumb that he actually believed that the election was stolen. It's sort of the same. It's like, no, no, Joe Biden is so dumb that he actually didn't realize Hunter Biden was calling him into these business meetings to trade on his name. It's like, no, no, Joe Biden is so dumb that he actually didn't realize Hunter Biden was calling him into these business meetings to trade on his name. Like, I'm sorry. I don't believe that. I do not believe that whatsoever because Joe Biden has been in DC for debt longer than we have been

alive, way longer than you've been alive. And we're expected to believe he doesn't also have some basic understanding of how DC works. Come on, get out of here. Totally agree. And it's actually, you know, I was in a meeting once with this guy. He was a very sketchy guy. And he was trying to prove to me that he knew a lot of very powerful people in the White House.

And I was skeptical. I was like, yeah, prove it. And he's like, all right, stay quiet. I was like, okay. And he started calling people in the White House on the phone and put them on speakerphone and was talking to him while I was in the room, which is pretty scummy, actually, on his behalf. But I remember it was like, it's like a power

move. And I was like, whoa, I was like, all right, so the guy knows the guy. He's like, all right, I'll listen to him. I'll hear what the person has to say. This is like a power move, I think, that was, it's a flex in front of these business guys. And that's what they're paying for. That's what they're paying him, $83,000 a month. The currency in DC, and Tucker gets at those, isn't money, it's power. It's access to power. And so, yeah, if you're able to put your dad on speakerphone and your dad is the vice president of the United States, Hunter was monetizing that. Now, maybe it's not illegal. Is it gross? Absolutely. Did Joe Biden lie about what was going on? I think that's pretty undeniable. 100%. That's actually the key.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, if you took a snapshot and showed it to people 100 years from now, of today, you would think that they would be deeply sympathetic to us. What an awful time. Two geriatrics running for president, Trump indictment, Bidenomics in all its glory, awful housing shortages. But it's possible though, they may not remember any of that. In fact, all of that may be a footnote to what is happening right now, with possibly one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century. It has captured the minds of engineers, venture capitalists, and technologists everywhere. I'm talking about the LK99 superconductor. Luckily, my dad is a professor

of electrical engineering, and he's able to translate the implications of this technology for my fellow uninitiated through me. Basically, it matters because our current infrastructure that supplies power to devices, our homes, our cars, our data centers, and more, have a central enemy, heat. When electrons flow through the current conductors, they create resistance. This causes two problems. It reduces the flow of the overall electrical current, and it creates heat, which degrades the infrastructure around it. That is conductivity. Thus, a so-called superconductor is a conductor of electricity that functions without this heat. The problem is that achieving superconductivity

requires using liquid nitrogen to cool materials down to minus 300 degrees or so Fahrenheit. It can only function at certain artificial pressures, and this poses a lot of problems from an engineering point of view. You got to make space for cooling. You need temperature control. You need atmospheric control. You need materials that can withstand both of these things. It can be done, but it's tricky. That's why engineers make the big bucks. Now, if you think about these principles, it starts to make sense. It's why data centers have to stay cool. This is why your laptop or computer has a fan built inside of it. It's why electronics can get hot whenever they're charging or not.

In essence, heat is the enemy of two things. It is inefficient, and it's hard to build around whenever you're making real products. Thus, the holy grail has always been, what if we don't have to worry about all this pesky heat and pressure? And this is where the hype of recent days is coming from. A team of scientists in South Korea have published the preprint of a paper

in which they claim to have developed a superconductor which functions at temperatures above 260 degrees Fahrenheit and with ambient pressure. So basically, doesn't need to be cold anymore. You don't need some crazy atmospheric pressures. The thing just works in normal temperature, normal climate. The team claims to have replicated

a genuine superconductor status in a video that they published showing a magnetic effect that is supposed to be the hallmark of superconductivity. So why are we not popping champagne and celebrating? Well, some people are still very skeptical of all of this and are reiterating a scientific principle. Sounds great. Can you replicate it? As Scientific American notes, in 1987, there was actually similar hype around a compound that was discovered that could function as a superconductor, but after closer inspection, it ended up fizzling out. Apparently, these claims do pop up

every once in a while in academia, and then they fizzle out. It's just that this time, Twitter exists, and people are getting seriously hyped. So at the same time, we still shouldn't pour water on the entire thing. Some Chinese researchers at Wazong University, they have claimed to replicate

the superconductor manufacturing process and posted as proof the magnetic effect that I referenced by cooking up the same materials as published by the South Korean team. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California system also claimed that it had simulated the South Korean team's findings and believed that it was theoretically possible, and they were joined in that by the Shenyang National Lab in China. So we're in the wait and see mode. It's kind of like the lottery, though. The best part, it's not the drawing itself, it's that part, the three hours or so before

the drawing when you get to sit back and you imagine what life could be like with the small chance that actually it will be that way. If this works, what does it mean? It means smaller electronics. It means abundantly cheap energy because so much will no longer be lost in transmission. It means a revolution in cars, frictionless technology, and it means massive advancements in quantum computing. But I think more importantly, it means that we are no longer living in a stagnant technological era.

One of the most important quotes about technology was said by venture capitalist Peter Thiel almost a decade ago. We were promised flying cars. All we got was 140 characters. There's something profoundly true about this and our last scientific advancement in the last two decades. Watch a movie from the 1990s. Other than the cell phone, what's really all that different from their life and yours? The only advancement that we've made is consumer electronics. And while we think that and the internet are incredible in their own right, put it up against previous eras of scientific discovery, they pale in comparison. For those who have watched the movie Oppenheimer, one of the most exciting parts of the film

is the first hour and a half or so as they show Oppenheimer traversing through the universities of Europe, meeting some of the most important scientific minds in the world, and collaborating. In those days, it seemed as if world-changing Nobel Prize-winning discoveries were being made on a near daily basis and then accelerated by things like the Manhattan Project. And the crazy thing is it really didn't even stop there. We went from President Kennedy's wish to a man on the moon within a decade, and then along the way accelerated the development of technologies, computers, microprocessors. These never would have taken off without the funding that these programs provided and the scientific inquiry. But then it all came crashing down sometime around

1971. As Thiel himself has said, we stopped going to space. We became a financialized and consumer-obsessed economy. Life got easier. Americans got fatter and richer on paper. But our pace of advancement basically kind of stopped. Even now, consider two countries that were at the forefront of this, South Korea and China. While we're apparently only in the replication game, not the advancement game, if there's any hope to LK99, it's that it could give us, the world, another shot at greatness, and we can actually ditch the 140 characters or whatever the hell the limit is now on X for real flying cars. So I want flying cars, Crystal.

That's what I've always wanted. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what do you take a look at? Have I got a story for you. It's about greed, corruption, mismanagement, and the way workers get smeared and screwed. You see, this week, tens of thousands of workers organized by the Teamsters are likely out of work after Yellow Trucking Company went

under. Now, the company was quick to blame supposedly unreasonable demands from workers for their woes, but the true story of their demise goes back decades, with mismanagement so egregious that even a massive taxpayer bailout gifted to them basically by Jared Kushner and certainly the Trump administration could not rescue the company. And the end result, my friends, is that American taxpayers now have the proud owners of a massive stake in a company that just went belly up. Let me unpack all of this for you. So Yellow's desperate financial straits really begin in the early 2000s. They placed a massive bet on a $1.1 billion merger with a top competitor called Roadway Corp. Bold bet, I guess, but instead of benefiting from their new dominant

market position, Yellow struggled under that massive debt load after they failed to effectively navigate the merger. This debt almost pushed them over the edge after the 2008 financial crash, but they managed to narrowly escape bankruptcy by wiping out their shareholders and forcing their workers to take a huge pay cut. At that time, the Teamsters agreed to billions of dollars in painful worker concessions in order to try to keep the company afloat. But it still wasn't enough to right the ship. And then when COVID hit, Yellow was once again facing financial collapse. But unlike you or me and the vast majority of workers and small business owners in the country, Yellow had an ace up their sleeve by the name of Jared Kushner.

You see, in one of their attempts to refinance that giant debt burden, Yellow had refinanced through private equity giant Apollo Global, which kept the company going with a massive $600 million loan back in 2019. So Apollo Global then had a big interest in keeping yellow afloat. And they also had a big favor to call in from the White House. Because a few years before rescuing yellow, they'd also rescued the presidential failed son-in-law Jared Kushner with a big old loan on a Chicago skyscraper that his company had foolishly purchased at the height of the real estate bubble. Given what commercial real estate valuations look like today, I can only imagine how screwed that loan investment is at this point. That Apollo loan to Kushner was fishy as hell to start with, coming as it did after Kushner brought

Apollo in to advise on infrastructure and even discussed a White House job with an Apollo founder. So when the pandemic shuttered businesses and pushed millions into unemployment, yellow, thanks to their high-level government connections, they were able to secure a sweetheart deal from none other than you and I. And it was a doozy. $700 million authorized under the CARES Act, even though that legislation was supposedly for relatively small loans to small businesses. That loan to Yellow was so gigantic that at the time it was authorized, it represented 95% of all the funds that had been dispersed through the program. If you owned or were employed by a small business, you probably remember how tough it was to get the paperwork done, approve them, and the money released. All of that was a mess.

Not so for the chronically mismanaged but politically connected Yellow. yellow. With the administration access provided by Apollo, they argued that the company was critical to national defense and therefore deserved to be part of a special carve-out program within CARES. This was complete bullshit. In fact, in 2022, the House issued a scathing report announcing the decision as politically driven, including direct intervention that may have gone all the way to the big guy, Donald Trump himself. What made this massive bailout even more extraordinary is that Yello was actually being sued by the government for overcharging the Department of Defense for trucking services, a suit that was eventually settled for millions of dollars.

So you see how this works? Kushner used White House access to help out Apollo. Apollo returns the favor with a big loan to Kushner. Kushner returns that favor with a big loan to Kushner. Kushner returns that favor with a massive bailout to an Apollo company. And round and round the favor trading for elites who can fail and screw up in every way possible, but still somehow secure the sweetheart deal they need when they need it. And you know what? If the company had actually been able to turn itself around and keep those workers employed, that would be one thing. But even with taxpayers bailing their asses out,

they still were not able to turn around. And now about 30,000 workers are facing unemployment, and we are stuck with the bill. To add insult to injury, the company and some in the media have had the temerity to blame yellow workers for this disgraceful state of affairs, blaming the union's strike notice for the company's failure. Words cannot describe how misleading this is. Yes, negotiations between the union and the company were increasingly acrimonious as the company entered its death rattle phase, but the workers had every reason to be pissed off. Under self-inflicted financial pressure

combined with a post-pandemic freight slowdown, the company decided to skip required payments for worker pensions and healthcare. What that meant is that workers were facing expulsion from their pension plans and complete loss of the health care that they had been promised as part of their employment. I suspect you would probably be pretty pissed off too. But no, as always, workers were expected to just take this quietly, along with taxpayers, eat the losses forged by decades of failed company management.

And when they didn't, they got blamed for not sitting down and taking it on the chin and bailing the company out once again. There are like 18 elements of this story that are just absolutely classic American capitalism. Favor trading, sweetheart deals, scapegoating workers and unions for daring to speak up while they are getting screwed, socializing the losses to taxpayers while privatizing any potential gains. But yeah, let's just pretend this country is a free market meritocracy where the brilliant and deserving succeed instead of the connected and the craven, where the elites can never fail, they can only be failed. And by the way, where corruption gets a pass if it's corruption from your own side of the aisle. But hey, at least Kushner got his skyscraper loan. This one was

really, when I started reading into the details. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. So very excited to be joined by two gentlemen to make the case for and against these latest Trump indictments. We've got Ben Weingarten. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, and we also have Bradley Moss rejoining us on the show. He is a national security lawyer. Super grateful to both of you for joining us this morning. Good to see you guys. Absolutely. Happy to be here. All right. So let's just start by sort of laying out our positions here.

Brad, explain to us your thoughts on these latest set of Trump indictments. Sure. So the new indictment is sort of what we always expected was going to come out of the January 6th investigation, given where the grand jury testimony we were hearing about and all this various media reporting was going. Quite simply, it's a very clear-cut and direct indictment. It doesn't get into issues about insurrection. It doesn't get into issues about seditious conspiracy, tied to the Oath Keepers, way too attenuated into First Amendment issues. All it does is just very simply the idea of Donald Trump was told by everyone in the government, told by everyone in the White House, told by his own campaign advisors, told by his own personal lawyers,

you lost the election. These fraud allegations have no merit. There's certainly nothing to warrant overturning anything or to believe there's going to be any merit to the lawsuits. He said, that's nice. I don't care. I'm going to go find some other lawyers who are going to tell me something otherwise, give me some fantasies, and I'm going to start conspiring with them to try to get fake electors, you know, coordinated to submit paperwork, to get Jeffrey Clark installed, to use the power of the DOJ, and then to try to leverage

that power against Mike Pence to stop him from doing his duty on January 6th. That is the crux of the case. It's not about speech. It's about conduct. Ben, give us the counter case. Well, first, I think it's notable that Jack Smith kind of wants to have it both ways. He wants to create the appearance that Trump incited an insurrection or engaged in seditious conspiracy, but doesn't charge him accordingly, which I think points to the political nature of the indictment, of course, on top of the timing that just so happens to drop as arguably impeachable or pointing towards impeachable conduct continues to filter out around the Bidens. Set aside the political aspect for a moment. I'll address the merits. So to some extent, I agree with Bradley, except that I do believe that this is, at the end of the day, about speech.

Because in addition to the political aspect of the indictment, there's the fact that special counsel Jack Smith also apparently is a mind reader. And what he is arguing here is that all of these people, many of them, by the way, who were not Trump allies in any way, but set that aside for a moment, like as if some government bureaucrat tells Donald Trump something that's going to sway him and he must have known. Essentially, what the case boils down to is Trump knew he lost, but claimed that he won. And so everything that he tried to do to pursue every single possible remedy, pleading to state legislatures, assembling alternate slates of electors,

debating with Vice President Pence and others about what could be done with respect to certification, et cetera, all of that is evidence of a fraudulent conspiracy because he really knew that he lost. And so Jack Smith is gonna have to prove that he can get inside Donald Trump's mind, know what he truly believed in his heart, that all the advisors around him conspired to defraud the American people,

and that there was this malign intent associated with it as well. And I think it's very telling, by the way, that in addition to the case boiling down to Trump knew he lost, but claimed he won, and then everything that he did after that was fraudulent. There's also the aspect of the fact that Jack Smith had to twist and contort these statutes to try and fit the case, these shoehorn, these charges that have really never been applied in any sort of analogous situation, a couple of them being, first, this invocation of this charge, which is usually used for law enforcement abuses or hate crimes, for example, which I think is attempted in part to smear

President Trump, but which really has no relevance to this idea of depriving people of their right to vote somehow. And then the obstruction of an official proceeding charge, which had never been applied previously to political protests, but then was applied for the first time in a novel way with respect to the Jan 6 protests. This is a Sarbanes-Oxley slash Enron driven law. And it's probably going to come before the Supreme Court whether or not that could even be applied to protests. But it's not as if Jack Smith is even necessarily drawing a direct line to Donald Trump led these protests, incited them, led a riot, et cetera.

So from my vantage point, this is trying to fit statutes to meet what are in effect thought crimes, even if the idea is they're fraudulent actions, because the actions are made fraudulent by the fact that Donald Trump really knew he lost but claimed he won anyway. Let me focus on that part and then I'll get Bradley to respond on the piece regarding the charges themselves and whether these are the appropriate things

to have been charged. But on this idea that Trump or any reasonable person with the information that Trump had knew that what he was saying was bogus. Let me go ahead and put G2 up on the screen here. We've got a list of all the people who, you know, told Trump that he was wrong. Most of these are Republicans. You've got Mike Pence, senior leaders of the Justice Department, director of national intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, cybersecurity

and infrastructure security agency, senior White House attorneys. Go on to the next page here as well, guys. Got an additional list here. Senior staffers on the reelection campaign, state legislators and officials, state and federal courts. And in addition, actually put the next piece up on the screen as well. You have a part that I think relates to Sidney Powell with regard to one of the key swing states here, Georgia. They say in the indictment that on November 25th, co-conspirator three, which everyone thinks of

Sidney Powell, filed a lawsuit against the governor of Georgia falsely alleging massive election fraud accomplished through the voting machine company's election software and hardware. Before the lawsuit was even filed, Trump retweeted a post promoting it. Trump did this despite the fact that when he had discussed Sidney Powell's far-fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company, I presume this is Dominion, in private with advisors, Trump had conceded they were unsupported and that co-conspirator three sounded crazy. Co-conspirator Georgia lawsuit was dismissed on December 7th. So, Bradley, can you explain from your perspective how central to this case is it that they're able to prove that Donald Trump actually knew that the things that he was saying were complete and utter nonsense? Yeah, no, it's very significant.

And a lot of the evidence that we will presumably see if this gets to trial will be part and parcel what Donald Trump said to people in private, what he was telling people in these various meetings when they were discussing the crackpot lawsuits Sidney Powell was bringing, the crackpot lawsuits Rudy Giuliani was trying to bring, the insane ideas being provided by Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman. All these things combined, showing that not only had he been told by not just some random bureaucrat, his own appointees in government, there is no truth to this. His own lawyers in the White House, there is no truth to this. His own paid campaign staff, like Jason Miller, telling him there is no truth to this. And he privately says, yeah, these people are all nuts

and crazy. But then he keeps going forward with it. He's signing verified complaints in states and submitting paperwork saying, yeah, these allegations are factually true. And the courts have already ruled, at least in one of those instances, that was not accurate. He knew these were false. He did not care because he wanted to hold on to power. And to address, you know, kind of Ben's point of, will Jack Smith have to be a mind reader? No, this is what prosecutors have to do all the time in intent cases. Juries can infer intent based off conduct in private, separate remarks made by the person to other individuals. This will be stuff that obviously Donald Trump's

lawyers will try to fight in pretrial motions. They'll try to detect the sufficiency of it at trial if needs be. But this is not novel. Prosecutors do this every single day. So Ben, I want to get into kind of what you were talking over there about statute and in terms of the application of statute here, both on civil rights law, the deprivation of the right to vote. I've heard this discussed a lot in conservative circles. I'd like for you to explain it a little bit more, specifically on the civil rights piece. Yeah, well, I mean, what the indictment itself says is that he was trying to effectively invalidate people's votes. And I think very clearly what the Trump response would be

is actually I wanted to make sure that people's votes weren't diluted by the fact that there may have been unlawfully cast ballots or ballots that were accepted after the time they should have been, or the fact that masses of ballots might never have even gone through the wire, had changes to election rules and law not been made by state executives rather than legislators. And, you know, of course, the government is going to

make the case. And it's worth noting that all of the assertions in the indictment, of course, are going to present the worst possible case for Trump. And Trump is going to marshal a substantial amount of evidence on the other side and maybe get into discovery. And we'll see where that goes. But I think that that argument can be probably pretty quickly dispensed with, in addition to the fact that, again, if you just go on the Department of Justice's

Civil Rights Division website, they lay out what this, I believe it's 18 U.S. Code 241, if you look at what it's applied for, it has nothing to do with one's vote. And even if it does get to dealing with the idea of Trump was trying to invalidate lawful votes on the merits, I think that argument probably fails on the legal merits. But all of that said, the politics here is obviously integral. Who knows to the extent this actually does go to trial, how long the case goes.

And Jack Smith obviously has said he wants to expedite it. But I think at the end of the day, Donald Trump is going up against probably the most inhospitable and hostile judge he could possibly find in a January 6th related case and a jury pool that's almost 100 percent Democrat and certainly anti-Trump. So I think it'll be a huge uphill battle within that case. And what will be interesting to see is to the extent it does go to trial again, what comes out in that discovery? Those are all great points. Bradley, can you respond to this piece that Ben has raised about the specific charges, not only the civil rights charge, but the appropriateness that you see to the charges that have been laid out in the indictment. And also talk to us a little bit about how some of them have been used against other

January 6th defendants as well. Sure. To go to Ben's point about the civil rights statute, it's been used in recent years against anyone who's tried to dilute or try to deprive someone else of having their lawful ballot being counted. So in the context of Donald Trump, where they're going with this is the efforts to have ballots thrown out in Detroit, the efforts to have ballots thrown out in Philadelphia and Atlanta. The idea is that it's not just saying we want to make sure this was done properly. You could have speech along those lines. That's fine. But it's that he was told, again, by his own government, by his own lawyers, there is no merit to these claims that the ballots weren't properly cast, that there was fraudulent need to get 11,000 votes to dilute the votes of those who were lawfully cast. And I'm sorry that it hurts his feelings, but he lost in Georgia. They didn't vote for him. That's the reality. And it goes to the

whole point with these other charges, conspiracy to defraud, that's been brought up throughout the January 6th stuff. And every time it's come up on appeal, it's been upheld in terms of the government's indication of it to conspiracy to defraud or conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings. I'm sorry. It applies to this concept. It applies to these efforts, not just January 6th rioters, but to Donald Trump. You tried to stop the lawful certification of the Electoral College votes. End of discussion. You did it.

It's done. I don't know that it's end of discussion on the obstruction of an official proceeding aspect of it. Because, again, I think you would concede this has never been applied before in this sort of instance until January 6th. We've never had this applied before in terms of other protests or riots outside a proceeding or that disrupted a proceeding. And not every appeals court judge, when this did go to a higher court, did agree with that assertion. And there's a reason why there's an application right now, at least one or two, for the Supreme Court to hear this argument. So I don't think that we have the final word on the obstruction of an official proceeding. But to your point about all of these different individuals, experts, authorities telling Donald Trump one thing, and he zagged where they zigged. I mean, first of all, that's pretty common in the Donald Trump

White House. Second of all, if you're talking about a president and you're charging a president, and this is for conduct when he was a president, and yes, we are, of course, in the middle of an election where his successor and chief opponent, his DOJ, is the one bringing this case, the bar has to be really high and really clear-cut. Now, Brad, you're making the case it is really clear-cut here. But what I would say is these are political questions at the end of the day. They have not been dealt with typically in a court of law. And in fact, the political system and the legal system did check Donald Trump during 2020. So why is this indictment being dropped now when to some extent this was already dealt with in an impeachment proceeding where he was acquitted in the Senate? Well, I think the thing speaks for itself, it being in the middle of an election.

And I think there are many political aims to this. One of them is I think the left and Democrats believe that making Republicans have to grapple with January 6th or quote unquote election denialism is going to be a winning political argument. I think another aspect is though- The politics of it, I want to kind of put it aside because the piece that you guys are really experts on that we want your analysis on is the legal piece of this. And Ben, one of the things I'm curious for you about is number one, what do you think is the most difficult piece of this indictment for Trump, the evidence that's proffered here that looks the worst. And number two, if you think

that there was no there there and these offenses really weren't chargeable and these weren't the right charges, et cetera, et cetera, where would be the line? Like what would Trump have had to have done for you to say, nah, he crossed the line. This was actually criminal. He should be charged. There should be accountability. Well, I think on the second point, and I'll have to think through a specific to it, but it has to be incredibly clear that someone actually had intent. They knew they had proven data in front of them, and it was clear beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. And obviously, you're going to have jurors who are going to have to make this call, that what was being done was obviously an intent to pull the wool over people's eyes, setting aside that there were millions of people who had questions about an unprecedented election

with unprecedented rule and law changes down the stretch. Well, they had questions because of what Trump was saying, but go on. Well, I think on the merit of the ballot- Questions are not proof. Questions are not proof. Okay. Well, let me just say, this is the first, I think questions are not questions are not proof. OK, well, let me just say this is the first I think we'd all we'd all acknowledge this is the first mass mail in ballot general election we ever had in our lifetime. And I think we can all agree also that executives made changes to laws down the stretch of a campaign that we have not seen historically. But even if you dispute that, if you're asking me what do I think is the most difficult aspects of the indictment to defend, I think you have aspects of, for example, I think that there's some insinuation or allegation that Trump asserted or he signed off and verified certain information that Jack Smith claims. And I think this might have been, I don't know if this was respect to certification or with respect to electors.

He signed off on the fact that something was true as he understood it. But at the time, there is knowledge or there was indication in correspondence that he knew it was not true. Certainly, to the extent you sign off on a document to a court or another official body, and there's going to be evidence presented to show that actually you did know what was true and you signed off on something that was false, obviously that's going to be a challenge in court. Jonathan Turley has raised the point, though, that you're going to be able to argue, well, this is what lawyers advised me, et cetera.

So, you know, lawyers are obviously going to be able to craft great arguments on both sides, but I would point to that as probably one aspect that would be a challenge. And Brad, similar sort of in reverse question for you. If you were advising Trump, if you were his lawyer, stepped up to the plate, what sort of a defense would you try to mount? What do you think is his strongest argument to try to combat these charges? I would throw every single one of his former lawyers under the bus and put all the blame on them. Now, here's the problem. They're his listed co-conspirators. It's Rudy Giuliani. It's Sidney Pollack.

It's John Eastman, Jeff Clark, Ken Gisbrough. I would throw them all under the bus, say these people led him astray. Yes, he had this other information from the government. Yes, his own campaign was coming to him and saying this is all garbage and these people have conspiracies beamed down from the mothership. But I would throw these folks under the bus saying he believed in good faith. He understood that their allegations on his mind had credibility. You know, Sidney Powell, this grand lawyer, had these affidavits from Spider and all these other people who claimed they had proof of these voting fraud issues. And so that was the basis on which he moved forward with things.

I would chuck every single one of these people under the bus in a desperate attempt to save the client. It won't work. You can't conspire with your lawyer to commit a new crime. But that's what I would try to do in some bid to basically push off blame, which is what every good head of a criminal enterprise does. You'll blame it on the lawyers first. Interesting. Gentlemen, really appreciate both of you taking the time. I hope you'll come back and join us again as this case unfolds. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Have a good one.

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