Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/5/26: Abdul Wins In Michigan, Houthis Hit Saudi Ship, US Bails Out Japan

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Krystal and Emily discuss Abdul wins in Michigan, Houthis attack Saudi ship, US bails out Japan.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, good morning and welcome to breaking points as we continue our live stream that began last night at 7.30 p.m. We just took a slight break. Yeah. We're back. We have some results in, which we'll get into. You might as well actually have just had someone else. I should have just done a third shift. Yes, you should have. I should have covered until this morning.

Yeah. Where was Sager? Good question. Sauer could do the 1230. He could have the red light on from 1230 to 7.30 and then we'll pick up. That would be a disaster for his whoop score. Yes, it would. So we couldn't have that.

The ring would be screaming for weeks. Would not be good. Would not be good. Crystal is with us as well. Ryan is going to run after the first couple of blocks, so we're lucky to have. What about my whoops score, okay? Does anyone care? Struggling.

Do you rule? Does anyone care about what my Fitbit is telling me this morning? That's what I want to know. Fitbit is barking. Yeah, it's not quite the same, Crystal. Well, if you want to get even more of this lively banter, sign up for the newsletter at breaking points.com. It's a wonderful place.

Breakingpoints.com is where you can get access to the free newsletter. And you can sign up for a premium subscription as well. The newsletter, of course, is where you can just read details that we're going through every show, see some of the links that we're working off of. And there's free month trials. For all month, you can get breaking points trial for free, breaking points.com. So you get access to the premium version of the breaking points experience as well. That's right. And just so people know when you go there, because to be honest with you, when I looked at the website, I was a little confused. There's no, like, thing that says free monthly trial. You just go and sign up and you get the month for free.

That's how that works. So good deal for everybody. If you've been interested in trying it out, now is your chance. And we've got not only election results, we got stuff happening in Iran. We are now bailing out the Japanese yen. So that's interesting all because of, again, the Iran War. We've got a major Epstein slash media slash banking scandal that is being broken open by Ron Wyden.

We've got more developments in the Max Miller saga, Bernie Moreno, his father-in-law coming forward. We had a big Jack Tapper interview, a photo of his daughter that was among the Dropbox files that was released, so a lot to get to there. And then we haven't actually delved into this, but Trump was very, very mad at Janine Piro because she had the audacity to drop the charges against this guy that he claimed had messed up his beautiful reflecting pool. And actually, she's dropped a number of charges against a number of people at this point.

So interesting to dig in to that palace intrigue, I suppose. Yeah, that will be interesting because Trump and Gene Piro, that is one of the most beautiful, long-lasting relationships. So much to discuss, perhaps tells us a little bit of what's happening inside of the White House as well. Now, Crystal and Ryan, you guys were up late. I was surprised at how long the stream went last night. but we didn't have a lot of clear... So was I. We didn't have a lot of clear information coming out, actually, of the big Michigan race, Haley Stevens, and Abdul El-Sayed.

It's still really close with Abdul in first place for now, looking like that's going to hold steady. But let's start by going over to Michigan here and looking at some of the results. As you guys were covering it last night, tell us how the night was transpiring. A little bit closer than people expected it looks like. Oh, yeah. So maybe we should start with A1C, which shows you what the polls were leading into last night. They were across the board. I mean, we were getting Abdul plus 19, plus 17, plus 16, all in double digits with a lead for him.

And so it seemed like all the momentum was on his side. Like he really opened up a gap. And again, this was every single pollster going back, you know, what do we have there? Like 10 different polls that all had him with this double digit. And that's the way the night started off. It looked like it was on trend for this kind of a blowout win for him. And then a batch of results came in from the Detroit area. And these were the absentee votes where Haley Stevens was really racking up large percentages.

And Ryan can talk a little bit more about why that is. Those are basically the people who had just gotten the ads and hadn't seen any of the other pushback against them or had a chance to be contacted by Abdul's campaign, et cetera. So she was racking up big margins there. And all of a sudden, it went from Abdul having this gigantic lead to the race being effectively tied. And from there on, we were just waiting to see what else would come in from Wayne County. They were very, very, very slow in counting. But now we can put a one up on the screen. NBC News has called it.

Abdul al-Syad will be the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Michigan. He has, you know, he has declared victory. Mallory McMorrow, who said she would go ahead and endorse whoever ended up getting the nomination. She has now endorsed Abdul and is backing him. So, um, definitely not on that. Just for a second. That shows Mallory McMorough got 4% of the vote. The NBC News announces, which is called this race.

Kind of significant because it's a larger margin than the difference between them. Now, the confounding factors, I don't actually know who that benefits because it seemed like her supporters were fairly evenly split between McMurrow and between Stevens and Abdul Ayyad. But in any case, she decided to keep her name on the ballot, and that may have ended up being a significant factor in the outcome of this race. Right. Yeah, and the absentee ballots, you know, those are heavily kind of nursing homes and senior centers, and it's a place where the organized democratic establishment to its credit still has the capacity to kind of galvanize that vote. And that went over one.

overwhelmingly for Stevens, whereas the rest of it, as you said, kind of came out kind of a wash, you know, close enough that Abdul El-Sai is likely. New York Times is saying it's still too close to call. I wonder if some of that is the kind of wishful thinking on the part of the editors versus kind of overruling the data folks who are like, well, it's kind of over, it's kind of over, guys. And if you look at the New York Times, if you look at their analysis, you know, they have all they're like, oh, how is so-and-so doing on their benchmarks and what's likely to happen here? And I think that their analysis is, it is very likely that Abdul-Aid will be the nominee over, you know, if you look at the betting apps, they all have them at 99%.

So I think there's not a whole lot of vote left out there. And it's, it doesn't look like there's enough that would be pro-Haley for her to make up the gap of roughly 1.5 percentage points here. You know, it seems like the pollsters need to go back to the landlines because it does seem like they missed the older vote in a significant way. Maybe they've gone, you know, too far into the kind of world of texting and online polls. There's still people answering those landlines, although, you know, if you have a landline at this point, it's just ringing constantly with spam calls. So, you know, I do sympathize with the pollsters, but this was, this is a, you know, this was a wild miss. You know, it's missed by more than 10 points.

I was just going to say the real clear politics average had Al-Said up 10.2. That's the average of the polls. The recent polls that RCP average had them up 14, 15, 10, 16, and 13. Now, the last couple of polls were from the last week of July. I suppose it's possible there was Stephen Surge as a bunch of money came in in the waning days of the race. Is that possibly explain some of the polling gap? I don't know. I mean, 10 points is a huge miss.

Yeah, I think it's more that the universe, to Ryan's point, that they were polling, they just underestimated the number of older voters who would be in the electorate. That's some of the at least early analysis I'm seeing here. And look, to be fair to them, it's difficult to know. Zoran in New York completely changed that electorate and there's way more young people than you would expect. It's hard to know who's going to turn out in a general election, let alone in a primary election, but for every single one of them to have had this gigantic double-digit miss is quite extraordinary. You know, I'm wondering, I'm just thinking about from, look, a win is a win.

So the left is looking at all right, our guys getting through, you know, and against extraordinary odds, right? We have to sort of the bar got reset when we started seeing all these polls. It's like, oh, how big is the margin going to be? But we have to keep in mind. He was up against, what, at 11 to 1 spending deficit, 62 minutes. million dollars came in from Haley Stevens. Like, they really put everything they could behind her. She ran all the ads, making it look like she was endorsed by Obama, which I think, you know,

was a clever strategy and I think had certainly had a significant impact. They went with, you know, from the IE side, they went with all these ads claiming that Abdul hates Michelle Obama and is a secret sexist. I think that also damaged him. She's got my vote. With abortions on the electorate. I was singing your, singing your tune there. And then the endorsements that came in for her, you know, you had Jim Clyburn come up. You had Gretchen Whitmer, who had said previously and Gary Peters, who had said previously, we're not going to get involved in this race. And when they saw what direction it was going, it was going, actually, we are going to get involved in this race.

And Whitmer is a very popular figure, especially with Democrats, in the state of Michigan. So they pulled out all of the stops here from the money, the endorsements, the ads, the, you know, the sort of cynical direction, the weaponization of identity and the, of discord between, you know, Arabs and Muslims in Detroit area. Like, they did it all. And they still came up short. So I think it is, even though it's much narrower than expected,

I think it's an extraordinary victory for the left, the ascendant left. And now, Ryan, we get to see if our theory of electability in a swing state, if that's correct. And I have to tell you after seeing, I'm curious for you guys take, Haley outperformed in the sort of more white rural parts of the state. In spite of the fact that she really had no campaign to speak of

outside of the Detroit area, just the ad spend alone. And, you know, I think, frankly, some discomfort with a Muslim man named Abdul al-Sayed. I think that's part of what was missed in the polls as well. And so it does make me concern that this general election, even as it's a very strong democratic year, is going to be tough for Abdul. It is definitely going to be a dog fight and is you know, very uncertain what will ultimately happen there. Yeah, it's going to be tough. And on the Wayne County vote, we were talking last night about how in 2024, I think there were about 1905,000 votes in the Democratic primary in 2024 in Wayne County.

And we were kind of gaming out what it would look like if you saw a 25% increase this time around and, you know, what the margins would look like is, you know, jumping 25% in two years is a pretty huge number. It's rare to see. So far, we're looking at. at I think 290,000 votes already in. Wow. There could be thousands more, a few thousand more still counted. So you're looking at a 50% increase in turnout in Wayne County over from 2024 to

226. So that's going to be key for Abdul Al-Sai to go in and persuade those people who voted narrowly for Haley Stevens. We're looking at overall five-point win for Steve. in Wayne County, he's going to need all of those Haley Stevens people to come his way. And I, and I don't think he can count much on Gretchen Whitmer, maybe Gary Peters, because he wants, he actually wants to see Democrats win the Senate. But the rest of the party establishment, I don't think El Saeed and the left should rely on them. I think it should be as nice as they

can, be as, you know, conciliatory, like welcome them in and like it makes space for them, but absolutely do not count on them because just as you and I are talking about this being a test case for the entire premise that populism from the left can win in swing seats, whether it's Will Lawrence or whether it's out of California or Maine or here, this being the test case, the powers that be recognize that as well. And so for them, it is a real question that they won't talk about much, I think, publicly, but privately are weighing the question of how much do we want this Senate seat versus how much do we not want to set the precedent that this populism can win versus the true reward of, wow, look, you guys got what you wanted and he lost. So don't ever

bother us again with any of this. And you know, with an eye towards 2028. Exactly. And who, you know, would be able to gain a Democratic nomination for presidency. So, yeah, it's a big prize for them, ultimately, to watch Abdul, you know, quietly watch Abdul go down. That would, that would please them a lot. Especially if the polling starts to show Rogers running away with it before Labor Day and then maybe a little bit even into the fall, that'll be, I would imagine, Ryan and Crystal, that's going to be a sign to Democrats in Washington as to whether they go all in or their

kind of tepid. Right. Although, yes, it's going to be a very difficult dance for them because they have to, you know, publicly, they have to publicly want it. But also in Washington, people have privately, Democrats privately have been saying, you know, it's not, it's not obvious that holding Congress going into the 2028 election is better for Democrats. Like, that might sound strange to people outside of Washington who were like, wait a minute,

I thought you're a political party and you want more votes and you want more ballots. and you want more power. But no, that's not how all Democrats think. There's an argument that that's made in Democratic elite circles that if you have Congress, then even though you don't have much ability to restrain Trump, you then to the voters look partly responsible for whatever is happening in the world. And the best place for Democrats, as far as the establishment is concerned, has always been completely out of power and blameless and without any responsibility for anything so that they can then kind of just run against whatever screw-ups and corruption, the Republican, whoever that may be, is engaged in. So it also fits into that

strategy to say, we did everything we could for Abdul-Saiyad, but he just fell short. So my point is he rather than cry about that, he has to lock in. And so does everybody who did everything to get him over the hump here, they have to lock in from now to November. The work to be done in Detroit is immense, and the work to be done in the rural and suburban areas is significant as well. It's there for the taking,

but nobody's going to hand it to you, is the point. Like this campaign and this national movement is going to have to do it on its own. Yeah, that's right. Let's go ahead and take a listen to. Abdul gave a speech last night before the race had been, called when it, you know, by anyone, but already striking that conciliatory tone with Democrats

saying we all have to come together to defeat Mike Rogers. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. And however we might feel about the campaign we've just come through, I want you to understand that it pales in comparison to the cynicism, in comparison to the corporatism, in comparison to the lies that Mike Rogers and Donald Trump are going to tell. There is so much more that unites us. However much we might disagree with our democratic opponent, there is so much more that unites us than divides us.

And so to all of our supporters here tonight, watching on TV, tomorrow we begin to mend fences. Whatever happens tonight, we have a responsibility to assure that we unite to make sure that Mike Rogers never sees the inside of the U.S. Senate. And, you know, in terms of Mike Rogers, he's got a tall hill to climb here too because he's got a man named Donald Trump in the White House and he's going to have to answer for every insane, stupid, destructive thing that that man does between now and November in a very dismal climate, both politically for Republicans. economically in terms of the level of pessimism. The Iran war, obviously, no end in sight here. Gas price is still very high. So it's a brutal climate for him and Democrats, you know, outside of the elected establishment and the elite tastemakers in the party outside of that

circle, they are highly, highly energized to take the Senate and send a message to Republicans into the country that the Trump administration is unacceptable and that there is a, you know, a wave building to shift power in the other direction. And let's keep going to the down ballot races because Will Lawrence is an example of some of that energy. We can put A2 on the screen. And Crystal and Ryan explained to us, you were watching these results come in last night as well.

Explain to us what this means in the kind of broader constellation of DSA-style wins that we've seen. Obviously, we're going to get into the Cory Bush lost last night. It's kind of a mixed bag, but this is a big one. Yeah, Matt Mazdom there that you see finishing third. He had millions of dollars spent on behalf of him. He's a candidate of that, what's it called, the bridge, like the Liz Smith operation, the same one that did Mallory McMorrow and that kind of politics.

Both of Will Lawrence's opponents were made in a lab Democrats, like one of them, Navy SEAL who carried the nuclear football for Obama. that's Matt, and then Bridget was Ambassador Ukraine, you know, who stood up to Trump. It's like you couldn't kind of do better if you're trying to recruit House Democratic candidates for the Democratic primary base. And yet Will Lawrence, co-founder of Sunrise, on the back of his opposition to both genocide and data centers in the district, is beating both of them fairly comfortably. And this will be another test. And it's probably used. useful for Abdul al-Saiyid to have him here because he is going to be doing everything he can to

bring Michigan State University District, which is in his district, bring those folks out to vote. But in general, to make the case that populism is viable in mid-Michigan, he's going to go up against Tom Barrett and incumbent Republicans. So this is not one of these DSA candidates who wins and can now go around the rest of the country just electing other DSA candidates. Like he has to flip a red seat and trying to run up those margins and beat Tom Barrett is going to be, I think, very helpful to Abdul al-Sayyad showing that this is not a culture war that he's waging. He's not trying to bring communism to mid-Michigan. He's just going to fight against these data centers and kind of actually be conservative, like conserve.

what people love about mid-Michigan. So that will be, that will be fascinating. Crystal, any thoughts on Lawrence kind of, you know, fairly comfortably beating these two Democrats? Well, it's, I mean, it's also a bit of a centrist and disarray kind of a story because I'm sure that there's a lot of recriminations looking at, you know, he didn't get 50% of the vote. So no guarantees that if it was. head-to-head him versus one of these other candidates that he would have lost, but I'm sure they're going to think that that's the case. So there's a lack of coordination there problem. That's an issue. There is a similar dynamic happening in the Wisconsin governor's race with

Francesca Hong, the DSA candidate, really benefiting from that dynamic as well, although she has such a lead that, although who knows what the poll, whether the polls are right at this point or not, but she has such a lead that it seems unlikely, even if it was a head-to-head battle there, that that she would be defeated, but we'll see that primary is next week. So, no, I think Will Lawrence is a very compelling canon. I think we were all impressed with him when we interviewed him. And the data center critique is very natural for him, because obviously as a founder of the sunrise movement, he's deeply concerned about environmental issues. And that is one aspect of what the whole country is deeply concerned about with data centers. And it's only going to become more of an issue. I

saw. I can't remember which state it was in. There was a ballot initiative to block a data center in a certain area that was successful after the local officials had approved it. The public said, we want to say in this and were able to get that on the ballot in their area and they fully rejected it, adding to some, there's some 300 data center bans or moratoriums in place across the country at this point. So he'll be part of that burgeoning movement. And to your point, Ryan, him on the ground, working in collaboration with Abdul and his team is going to be very important. Let's go to A3. We can put this was the other big race for the left in Michigan. This is Donovan McKinney versus Street Thanadar. This is a Detroit area district. Right now,

you've got Donovan McKinney up here by a few points, by about three points, and about 3,000 votes. That one has not been called yet. They say there's about 73% of the expected vote in. It definitely looks very good for Donovan, but still enough vote out for it to be too close to call. But, you know, this is a big one too because you have a lefty taking out here a Democratic incumbent. And anytime that happens, you know, it's very difficult to unseat incumbents.

and, you know, this is a district that does have a lot of, what's that, Emily? A beloved Democratic incumbent. Yes, beloved by all. And this is a district with a large black population as well. And so in terms of some of the challenges that the left has with black voters and older black voters in particular, you know, Donovan McKinney appears to have been able to overcome some of that trepidation in his battle here against Street, Tanedar. Donovan in our interview recently had a kind of a funny line about the DSA because he has had a bit of a rocky relationship with DSA. He ended up getting Metro Detroit DSA's endorsement.

And I think that, you know, that really helped. And he had people from all over the country. All of these different campaigns, Adam Hamaway, Milakiros, and on and on, came in and brought staff and volunteers as well. and with the hope of a relentless get-out-the-vote effort, kind of overcoming what was a polling gap. So it seems like this coming together so far as working for McKinney. There's 38,000 votes outstanding, and he has to maintain this 3,000 vote lead.

But in our interview, he said something funny, but I don't know, Emily, if you remember exactly how he put it, when we asked him about his relationship with the DSA, he's like, I love the DSA, I agree with them on, basically everything, but man, they talk a lot. And sometimes it's not very helpful. It was some version of that. And I think the DSA needs to listen to people like Donovan McKinney.

Because whatever it is he's telling you about what's not working on the ground in Detroit, like listen. Yeah. Because he agrees with you. And yes, you can complain about where he's been in the past and some things. He's with you now. He wants to see Abdul al-Syad win. He endorsed, you know, they cross endorsed each other.

having him running is a great bridge. The thing that El Ceyed has going for him is that the older black community in Wayne County is still very well organized. The younger black community, as the churches, the church attendance has gone down and just the collapse of kind of American society generally in the last couple decades

has become disaggregated, but the older voters are still very well organized. So if you can get the word out that we're going to overcome these differences and we're going to pull together. And this is a rainbow coalition. It was Michigan that almost propelled Jesse Jackson back in 1988 to the Democratic nomination

on the back of a rainbow coalition. Then this becomes possible. And McKinney could be a key player, a key bridge there, I think. Yeah. One other quick comment about DSA is, you know, they are really gaining a reputation as important organizing muscle on the ground. And so you see more and more candidates reaching out for their endorsement because even if it comes

with, you know, the socialist label that may or may not benefit them in the district, just because they actually are a real member organization with real ability and know what they are doing and have demonstrated some prowess in terms of contacting voters and organizing and getting out the vote. It is candidates are increasingly really seeing it as worthwhile to have their backing and being a real difference maker in some of these close votes. We're also looking at what appears to be a double-digit loss for Cory Bush in Missouri to Wesley Bell. Real quick before we go to Missouri, just to update people on what we talked about last night, there were a bunch of other down-ballot DSA slash lefty races. Senate District 1, Iyash lost an effort to ousted incumbent,

but in Senate District 2, Abbas Alawi, who has, I believe he's been on this program, former chief of staff to Cory Bush, former Stafford of both Andy Levin and Rashida Taleb, will be one in Dearborn and ousted the incumbent, will be the first Arab American to go to, to go to the state Senate. And then it looks like Ann Arbor, the insurgents won, Ann Arbor Mayor race and elsewhere in a bunch of other races that we talk about yesterday. It looks like not a completely clean suite, but a pretty significant one. But not the case in Missouri.

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but only with the code power at factormeals. Factor, Canada's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.orgia for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. What's up fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of every day. Everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports.

Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest.

stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it.

Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Now where it stands in Missouri is Wesley Bell has, let me pull this back up, Wesley Bell in District 1 has 59.2% of the vote. This is with just about all the votes. And Cory Bush is at 36.9%.

So resounding victory for Wesley Bell. Not exactly a surprise. Are we surprised at all by the margin of victory for Wesley Bell? I mean, probably not, unfortunately. This was a real long shot for her. And I talked about this last night, but the weird internal polling just showed that the negatives on Cory Bush really stuck.

And the main thing that they hit her for was missing too many votes. You know, she talked about she had two bouts of COVID, which is what led to the votes being missed. But it's not like they give context in attack ads. And Jamal Bowman was telling us last night on the stream when he was going around St. Louis, you guys can take that off by now. When he was going around St. Louis, people were excited. about her but would say like wait i saw um didn't i see that she didn't do her job she never showed up to vote like those ads were absolutely everywhere and they still hit her with voting against the infrastructure bill in order to try to get get the uh bill back better bill you know through um and so the the

negatives on wesley bell for whatever reason weren't landing in the same way and she didn't have also didn't have the money this time uh to kind of really drive those home yeah and um didn't have a lot of you know, Ansepo, you didn't have Bernie, you know, back in coming to the district. There were, you know, some, she didn't have all the sort of organizational endorsement pieces there. And I also think, you know, just in terms of where the left is strongest, I think there was, you know, this is a demographic area, an area demographically that was going to be a challenge as well. So it seems like all of that was just too much to overcome. So APEC did get at least one win there last night, which I'm sure that.

they'll be very, very happy about. I mean, just to remind people when Corey Bush was originally defeated by Wesley Bell, this was the most expensive. At that time, this was the most expensive primary that had ever happened because they were bound and determined to get her out of there. And they succeeded with her, with Jamal Bowman as well. I think if she was an incumbent and they were trying to run that same playbook, I don't think that it would work. But there's a lot of advantages to incumbency. And I think you're right, Ryan, that some of the things, you know, of the claims about absentee voting.

There were also some alleged sort of corruption stories involving her and her husband that probably dinged her image in the district as well. So all of those efforts paid off for them. Right. The things that land are, you know, people think you're, if people think you're petty corrupt, like self-dealing. And if you're not voting, like that, like that, it hits in these attack ads. Because, like, for, you know, I think for voters are like, you're getting paid six figures, your job is to go vote. Go vote. Like, if I was, they're thinking, if I was getting paid six figures, I would vote. And like I said, in an attack ad, you don't get a chance to say, well, here's the reason I missed these votes. Yeah. It's just she had the worst voting record in Congress, you know, whatever the, whatever the hit was. Right. And, I mean, they tried a similar on the sort of petty corruption front. They tried a similar tactic with.

Abdul that I'm sure also dinged his image with all of Haley Stevens really spent a lot of time focusing on where's your tax return, where's your financial disclosure, which he ends up releasing. But, you know, she'd raise these questions about, well, where did this money come from? Where did that money come from? And so to create this similar impression and to muddy the waters as she was getting hit hard for a sort of corruption by taking all of this corporate and lobby money for her campaign. Well, let's finally go to Washington District 9, where Adam Smith has, according to results right now, we've got 53% of votes in. He's not just advancing to the general election, but had 51%, so over 50% of the vote there in Washington 9, the Republican candidate, Doug Basler, at 23.8%.

So that's what the general election will look like. Again, 53% of the votes in, so we don't know if these particular marks are. margin stick, but over the 50% margin for Adam Smith right now. Yeah. So this will be a lock for him in the general because it's a very liberal district, you know, just sort of like suburban Seattle. Obviously, we had both Adam Smith and his socialist challenger, Kashama Sahuant. In Washington, they do a top two primary.

So everybody runs in what's called a jungle primary. And then the top two move on to the general election. So that's why you see socialist, Republican, Democrat all mixed together there in the results. Yeah, and Doug Bazler, the Republican, raised less than $100,000 in the primary, so he's not a serious candidate. He's not going to be a threat to Adam Smith. Koshama Sawan is currently in battling for third with Melissa Chaudry. She's current results have her with 8,000, a little over 8,000 votes. She's 800 votes ahead of Melissa Chaudry. There's still about 60,000 votes to be counted. So it's possible Chaudry could overtake her, but it doesn't matter. Third or fourth,

either way, you don't make it into the top two there. Right. Yeah. And Marie Glous and Camp Perez, by the way, did win. And she did make the top two. She had a left-wing challenger who was trying to squeeze her out of the top two, but she made it through. So it'll be her against a Republican to defend her seat. Yep. So some interesting results. there. And, you know, I think, I think perhaps the, the lack of the DSA endorsement for Kashama was significant there to just given, again, the organizing muscle. And when you have, there were multiple challengers there to Adam Smith's left. So there was, you know, there wasn't an ability to consolidate and be able to get past the Republican. Partisanship is a hell of

a drug. You know, if you have an R or D next to your name, there's a certain. block of voters that's just going to be there for you. So you're not starting from vote number one and, you know, it can provide an advantage. And then real quick before we finish, we put up A4. APEC did have another win here. This is Haley Stevens's district to replace her. The pro-Israel candidate ended up with nearly 50% of the vote. Aisha Faruqi with 32%. So a fairly comfortable win. an expensive win for the pro-Israel crowd here in Stevens District. But this will be, I think, probably a prime target in the next cycle if the opposition can kind of consolidate around a single candidate. They had a bunch of different challengers, and they could never really kind of organize the energy behind a single one.

Cal Blumcoast there at 36%. Oh, yes. Yes. In the Upper Peninsula, District 1. Yes. Yeah, we had Kyle on. He ended up also spent about 100 grand. I ended up losing by 20 points in his Democratic primary. Interesting, interesting Canada to see that we talked to him about data centers as well. And we'll have, honestly, some similar things to discuss next week after the Wisconsin results. So should we move on to Iran updates, everyone? Just one last question for Ryan on the elections, which is just, you know, what's kind of your overall takeaway for the strength of the left within the Democratic primary base and, you know, how people should be thinking about these things overall?

You know, we did a survey with DropSight and Zateo was a sponsor survey back in, I think April it was. and it basically found that Abdul al-Saiya did not have a path to victory in a one-on-one race against either Haley Stevens or Mallory of McMorro, and that his only chance was if all three of them stayed in. And it was right around that time. We did our survey, we put our survey into the field just as the kind of Hassan Piker thing was blowing up, that where McMorro and Third Way were demanding that he be denounced and that ended up polarizing the race around him and around Israel,

Israel, Palestine and, you know, sinking McMurow's candidacy. So if you would have told me at the time that McMorra was going to drop out and that El Saeed was still going to beat Haley Stevens, I would have been very surprised because that was a very tough path for him to walk. And if we had told you, she'd also get the Whitmer in terms. endorsement on top of it. Gary Peters would come in. Whitmer would come in.

She'd have $60 plus million of ads telling people that Obama was supporting her and that you'd have almost 300,000 people vote in Wayne County and that he would still win. I would have been, I would have been very surprised and I would never have expected that anybody would have been suggesting that there was going to be a 15-point victory. So I don't know where on earth that kind of came from out of nowhere. Plus, if you also tell me, oh, by the way, Donovan McKinney is going to come from behind and win. Let's see if he does, but he's up now. And Will Lawrence is going to win in mid-Michigan.

That's a pretty dominant performance for the populist wing of the party kind of across the ideological and racial spectrum in a party that is very obsessed with identity. And it also came as the party establishment after having destroyed Grand Platner was able to focus all of its energy on trying to take down Will Lawrence, who they threw the entire kitchen sink at. You know, Opel was just coming relentlessly. And Abdul al-Said. They were going after him, him and Will Lawrence with really everything we had. And so that's kind of how I take it away rather than the squeaker. But it's going to be a very tough race. And they're going to, like I said, they're going to have to really lock in. I know what's your 30,000 foot look this morning?

You know what I was thinking about is like, you know, in the past, the populace left, there have been lots of sort of like moral victories for us. Like, well, we didn't win, but Bernie came really close. You know, if only X and Y and Z had gone different, really gave them a scare. I feel like now the shoes on the other foot where it's like the centrists are kind of taken like a moral victory. And, you know, I'm personally glad to be moving into the realm of actual victories, not moral victories. So I think you're right that the bar has been raised so extraordinarily high now that in another cycle, just taking out one incumbent Sri Tanedar, if that holds. you know, with Donovan McKinney, that would be seen as a really sort of landmark event in the way

AOC taking out, you know, Crowley was this kind of watershed moment, et cetera. So I think it shows you how much the party is shifted, how much the landscape has shifted, but also obviously you can see the perils of the way they are able to fight back, the amount of resource that they're able to bring to bear, the frankly, you know, deeply cynical tactics that they're willing to use, you know, the constant weaponization of identity is a theme that goes back, you know, certainly to the Hillary Clinton versus burning campaigns as well. So, you know, I think it's a, I think it's a reminder that there are still very, very strong forces that will do everything they can to oppose a true populist movement that will oppose money in politics, will oppose oligarchy. And that is to be

taken seriously, both inside of the Democratic Party and in the, you know, the general election. Yeah. Nothing's going to be. be handed to anybody if you want it, you got to take it. That's for sure. Eating well shouldn't be complicated, but somehow it turns into recipes, prep, cleanup, and half your Sunday gone. Factors solves all that. These are fresh, ready-to-eat meals designed by dietitians, delivered to your door, and ready in just minutes. No prep, no cleanup, no excuses. And it's not just about convenience. You're getting real food, balanced nutrition, and zero artificial stuff. Meals that help you stay on track for all.

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Bell, connection is everything. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I heart women's sports. Because let's be real.

Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo roer to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat. Sabalinka. Shoutouts to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports.

Listen to everyone watches women's sports. on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, we have some breaking news now, actually, in the Red Sea. We could toss this tear shape up on the screen. This is from the New York Times right now reporting this morning, Houthis threatened to expand Red Sea attacks and claim strike on Saudi tanker. The Houthis, they report, said Wednesday they had struck a Saudi oil tanker in the Northern Red Sea, and they threatened to intensify attacks there in an effort to close, quote-unquote,

all access routes to Saudi oil shipments. this obviously comes as the Trump administration is struggling to get itself out of the Iran conflict more broadly. We can put B1 up on the screen now. This just yesterday, this is going to be a SOT. Just one moment, I'll set it up for us. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is saying on CNBC, at least as of yesterday, that a deal was really, really close. And we also have some details to come on a potential deal between Iran and Oman. about opening the Strait of Hormuz. But for now, let's start here just listening to 24 hours ago, Scott Bessent, talking about how

very, very close we were. We've seen President Trump last week threatened what would have been one of the largest military campaigns or the largest military campaigns since World War II against the Iranians. And now we are, because of that, we are in talks with the Iranians. And I think there is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the strait and move towards a more normalized position in this conflict. And that's because their Air Force is wiped out, their Navy is wiped out, substantial portion or their missiles are wiped out. More importantly, their missile production capability is wiped out. So, you know, anything that happens in the Gulf will benefit Japan and indeed the rest of the world, Joe.

If we put the next element up on the screen, the talks of how close this deal were sent the stock market surging yesterday. And now, obviously, there's also this conversation from reading here from Joyce Karam at El Monitor. The next element shows reporting Hormuz deal seen close. Iran controls entry. Aman exits. Iran has the ability to intervene in the waterway, potential service fee, revenue split. That's according to the New York Times. And Bessent was, of course, saying that this could happen any day. Crystal, now that there's additional conflict in the Red Sea and the Houthis seem to be escalating, what do you think this does to the bigger picture in the Middle East right now? Well, I mean, the funny thing is Scott Bessent talking about we're going to have a deal, but the deal

isn't with us. It's between Iran and Oman. And so, and when you say revenues, split, that is going to also not involve us. That is between Iran and Oman. And Iran is saying it has nothing to do with the broader war. Yes, exactly right. And Iran is saying, no, we are not negotiating with the United States right now. And I think the Houthi, you know, action this morning really shows that for their view, the war is very much still on and they're still going to enforce their red lines, both, you know, in the Red Sea and with the Strait of Hormuz. So nothing has really shifted, if anything, the acceptance from the U.S. of this Iranian Oman negotiation is another acknowledgement of the weakness of our position. Because just to back up, what happened here is we had

this MOU memo of understanding. There was some ambiguity in the language around what would happen with the Strait of Hormuz, but the Iranians certainly understood it as we are going to retain control because we secured that on the battlefield and we have no intention of giving that up. the U.S. trying to undermine that deal and see what they could get away with by establishing these separate corridor through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran was not having that. And so that's why we ended, and then we ended up in this, you know, tit for tat situation, which is basically where we are today. So, you know, it continues to be one of the primary issues in terms of the conflict and the Iranians have no intention of ever giving up control over the Strait of Hormuz. So for Bessent

to, you know, tout this quote-unquote deal as something that's positive for the U.S. is kind of extraordinary spin to this because, again, it's sort of de facto and admission of how little control and leverage we have in all of this. I want to put up, I think this is B6 up on the screen. Every day we learn something new about how little we have left in our stockpiles. So yesterday we learned that we are virtually out of long-range missiles. Now we get some reporting from CNN that the U.S. military is used up nearly 80% of key missile interceptors, as commanders warn once again that stockpiles are dangerously low. So that's the other thing that is, I guess, amusing about Bessent talking about,

oh, we destroyed their Navy, we destroyed their Air Force. You know, we've kind of destroyed ourselves here. There's a reason why Trump issues these threats and then backs off because not only does he, I guess, realize that even if he acted on these alleged threats, it would be unlikely to change the dynamics at the negotiating table. But we also just literally don't have what we would need to do to go forward with the sort of mass bombing campaign that we launched this war with. Yeah, reading from the CNN report here, Trump decided to back off after talking with Middle East allies on Saturday, who told him they were afraid of Iranian retaliation, specifically retaliatory attacks on their energy

infrastructure, according to an official, a senior Trump official. Trump agreed to hear them and Iran out. He subsequently told Hegzeth to stand down for now, but is not taking the plan strikes off the table for a future date. And again, in the CNN report, it says Gulf allies have also raised fresh concerns about how a shortage of air defense systems could impact their ability to warn off potential Iranian retaliation if Trump decides to escalate the ongoing conflict. It is just a stunning embarrassment. I mean, not stunning because it's surprising, but stunning because the administration slept walked into exactly what would have been predicted, was predicted, indeed, several months ago. This is what we were leading up to, Crystal.

So it's not surprised to, I guess, people who were always skeptical of this, we would be here in August if the conflict was still going on. I think Trump said at the beginning it was going to three to four weeks at one point. I mean, his timeline was obviously all over the map, but we're now, it's August 5th, and now our Gulf allies are worried because our interceptor supply has been so depleted that they wouldn't be able to fight off an Iranian attack. It is such a dramatic contrast with how our power was being described by our leaders in early March. Yeah, and it really underscores why you had top military officials. saying we have to choose at this point, given how low our stockpiles are, between defending

Israel and defending the homeland. Forget about the Gulf Arab allies or our bases in the region. I mean, most of those, I think, have been basically abandoned at this point. There's been a sort of retrenchment in Jordan. Then you had, you know, that deadly attack in Jordan as well with the Iranians showing that they could, they could hit us there as well. So, you know, the whole situation in every respect is a complete disaster. And yet I don't think that Trump and the U.S. have felt enough pain for him to accept what would be required, which is, you know, to effectively acknowledge defeat at the negotiating table. He keeps trying to find a way out of that impossible predicament, which is why, you know, continue to be fearful of him doing something truly insane, you know, whether it's an invasion,

whether it's a tactical nuke, something of that nature to try to get himself out of the absolute bind that he has placed himself into. Yeah. And meanwhile, Brett Stevens, this is interesting, very pro-Israel columnist at the New York Times, is warning about this public letter that Metan Vilnai, as a retired deputy chief of staff to the IDF, sent Trump just a few days ago. And this is actually Brett Stevens worrying about a potential third intifada. So in the New York Times, Stevens is writing, there's an immediate danger in that the spiraling West Bank violence, which is what Viln I warned Trump about, quote, could easily produce a third intifada that an exhausted Israel can

ill afford militarily or diplomatically to say nothing of the human cost in both Israeli and Palestinian lives. There's still a greater long-term risk that the Netanyahu government's excuse making for Jewish lawlessness and terrorism leads to what the scholar and diplomat Michael Orrin in a oppression commentary, as he from 2009 called the hemorrhaging of sovereignty. So, Crystal, we are now, again, in August, after we heard all of the rosy outlooks, in March that were being, and those same people that were promulgating those rosy outlooks, we're telling everybody who predicted what's coming to pass right now where you have chaos in Israel, you have chaos in the U.S. military and no end in sight in this conflict, potentially

looking at Israeli supporters saying a, quote, third intifada because of spiraling violence in the West Bank, it is a complete and total disaster. And it is a complete and total vindication for people who were predicting it and being dunked on constantly in March and April about what was to come. Yeah. And obviously I have a million issues with the way Brett Stevens frames this thing and always putting, you know, Israel's interest above anything else, including international law or basic human rights, et cetera. But to see him use the words Jewish terrorism, I think is, you know, very significant in the New York Times as a conservative calmness in someone who is a disoferior. diehards a border of the Zionist cause. And, you know, in terms of the West Bank, obviously we've been covering the pogroms there, the extraordinary, and it's not just, you know, the settlers who are committing that violence. They're very much backed up by the IDF, those attacks,

how are state-sanctioned. They have been, they have escalated dramatically over the past several years, but specifically in the past several weeks. And in addition to that, Israel has really been trying to economically squeeze the West Bank and, you know, sort of starve them in that way as well. So, yeah, you're going to get people who are very angry about that. Anyone would be very angry about that. You're going to get a lot of people who are very desperate in an existential way. And no, that's not good for the people who are being, you know, who are having their land stolen and who are being abused and assaulted and imprisoned. It's certainly first and foremost not good for them, but it's not good for anyone's safety to have this level of endemic violence.

You know, turning back to the economic piece here, we had some interesting comments, again, from Scott Besson talking about the state of the economy. And, you know, the thing is that if this was another region of the world, perhaps you could put this thing on the back burner and just have this sort of low grade tip for tad or the U.S. could even just up and leave and sort of like, I will figure it. out later, because of how crucial this region of the world is for everything in terms of the global economy with, you know, the fossil fuels backing, basically, our entire economic structure. We don't really have the luxury of that. So the economic piece continues to really be at the center of this entire war. So in any case, Bessent was asked about the current state of the economy and made some

interesting comments. This is B5. Let's take a listen. So we are starting to see, I got sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy. I can say here definitively, the K-shaped economy is over. Come on. K-shaped economy is over. Just for people who aren't in the know of what that means, it means that the richest

start doing really well and then everybody else is screwed. And the K-shaped economy, Emily, is certainly not over, especially gas prices are going to be one of the things that hit working-class people the hardest. inflation is one of the things that is going to hurt working class people the hardest because, you know, budgets are already stretched. Wages are not going up to keep pace with the level of inflation and just the increase in gas prices alone. So the case-shaped economy is only further diverging at this point. Well, yeah, we just mentioned earlier in the block that the stock markets were surging yesterday on this apparent news that we were close to a deal, what that actually means. Different question, as we talked about earlier.

So when you have markets stop being attached, well, this has been going on for a long time. It's actually where the entire K-shaped economy formula comes from being detached from the reality of the middle class on the ground. That's not an end to the K-shaped economy. It's like exactly when you're seeing the MAG 7 take up, what is it, like 30% of the S&P 500, somewhere around there. The stocks keep going up and up and up. Meanwhile, in Michigan, which we covered earlier in the show because it had so many elections yesterday where populist candidates found success, gas is at $4.28, according to AAA's daily average, $4.28 a gallon in Michigan. So that's just a crazy thing to say. It's obviously a political problem for Republicans going into the election, but a genuine problem for Americans right now as well, Crystal, obviously. the case-shaped economy is unfortunately alive and well.

Yeah, and we talked, Ryan talked about how Democratic establishment maybe doesn't really care all that much about taking back the Senate and is at, I guess, at the very least, cross-p pressured on whether or not they would want Abdul Asai to win in Michigan. But I don't think Trump really cares that much about whether Republicans win in the Senate. He's certainly not really acting like it outside of some shady behind-the-scenes election rigging maneuvers that he's making. But, you know, I don't think that he is particularly committed to whether or not Republicans hold on to the House or the Senate. So you got a weird dynamic of both, I guess, party leaderships being like, yeah, whatever. Gas is over $4 in Maine and in Ohio

as well. So major swing states. I mean, Besson saying the case-shaped economy is over on CNBC might be a good, clever way to spin and frame what he thinks of something. happening, but it's obviously not accurate. And it's just completely, the more that they try to do exactly what we saw the Biden administration do by saying it's fine, inflation, and don't worry about it. We've got it under control. Or blaming the other person or blaming, like, you cannot do that when you're in charge. And I guess maybe that's why Scott Besson is trying to come up with some new spin. I don't know. That's my best guess at what's going on there. Good luck with that, buddy.

Seriously. All right. Well, speaking of Scott Bessett, boy, do we have a story out of Japan. Let's get to it. Eating well shouldn't be complicated. But somehow it turns into recipes, prep, cleanup, and half your Sunday gone. Factor solves all that. These are fresh, ready-to-eat meals designed by dietitians, delivered to your door, and ready in just minutes.

No prep, no cleanup, no excuses. And it's not just about convenience. You're getting real food, balanced nutrition, and zero artificial stuff. Meals that help you stay on track for all of your goals without the grind of doing it all yourself. Grilled chicken, roasted veggies, steak plates, pasta bowls. They taste like something you get in a restaurant, but they come out of your microwave in two minutes flat.

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Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month, price guaranteed for $2,000.

years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real.

Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

So in a sign of the massive impact that the Iran War is having on the global economy, certain things are starting to break. In particular, the Japanese yen, the Japanese currency, which has taken a massive hit. And I'll get into some of the mechanics, although it's a little bit complicated, of what exactly is going on there. But extraordinary scene here. We've got this Scott Besson, almost like he's right now in a grocery list, put C1 up on the screen. We've got a note pad and an eagle-eyed photographer was able to capture the note that was written here. It says, to do, buy Japanese yen $5 to $10 billion. So the TLDR here is that because of the Iran who are causing all kinds of problems for Japan, including surging inflation and employment. place that has not had inflation famously for decades up until COVID. And they got a little bit of

inflation. But now, you know, with gas prices going up in Japan being an island, it has to import most of what they consume, it's causing massive issues for them. And so we're jumping in to bail them out and to help prop up their currency. The reason we care about that and the reason we're doing that is not out of the kindness of our hearts, Emily, and or because we, you know, love the Japanese and their great allies or anything like that, although I'm sure the fact that their allies certainly helps to make the case. But the reason we're doing that is because in order for them to be able to prop up their own currency, they were going to have to sell off a lot of U.S. Treasuries. And they are one of the largest holders of U.S. treasuries in the entire globe. So if they

begin to sell off the holdings of treasury bonds that they have, that would in turn, mean that we would have to pay a higher interest rate in order to get more people to buy our debt. So that means our debt, which is quite high. Japan actually has an even larger debt, which is part of their problem because they've had de facto zero percent interest rates for years and years and years. Our debt is also quite high if you have to pay a higher interest rate on that, that puts a lot of financial strain. And judging, by the way, Trump has, you know, the cycle of the Trump taco in this war and also with regard to his tariff scheme, he is very closely attuned and paying very close attention to what that interest rate is on the Treasury bond yield.

So that is what's going on here. But again, you know, if you want to gloss over some of the more technical mechanics, the TLDR here is that the Japanese are getting screwed because of our war in Iran. And it has reverberating impacts on us and our budget. and the stability is of our treasury market. So we are jumping in to bail them out to the tune of $5 to $10 billion. Yep. I don't know what to say. I really don't even know what to say, Crystal.

It kind of reminds me a bit. It's obviously apples and oranges, but it reminds me a bit of Besson and Argentina, which you and I covered, I think, at the time. Yeah. He's just wheeling and dealing. Like, he still works at a hedge fund. And that's what it looks like from the outside.

Yeah. Well, this is, you know, part of how he, I mean, it really is the way that he made his fortune was working with George Soros on these currency trades. And so that, you know, this is his bread and butter. This is where he shines propping up foreign currencies and manipulating currency markets is kind of where he does his thing. We can put C2 up on the screen just to see, you know, how much the yen has fallen. This says the worries that drove Uncle Sam to buy the yen.

The weakness of the Japanese currency was a problem not just for Tokyo, but also Washington. The yen had slid to a 40-year low, indirectly threatening to bump up U.S. interest rates and restoring a wrench in plans to pull billions of dollars of Japanese investment into the U.S. Let me explain that part of it. So as part of our trade deal with Japan, you know, they made one of these promises of, oh, we're going to invest billions of billions of dollars, et cetera. Well, if you have a very weak yen, that means it's going to, in their currency terms, cost much more to be able to make those investments. And they wouldn't be able to afford to invest as much in the U.S.

So that's the other way in which this was posing a problem for Trump and for the U.S. because they were unlikely to make good on some of their commitments here. There was a great video explaining some of the sort of longer backstory. Japan is a really fascinating economy because they have, unlike most of the world, they have had this long period of either 0% inflation or even deflation. So whereas we're very used to, you know, okay, things are going up in price a little bit year over year. And obviously that spiraled and escalated in the past few years. They've had this long stretch, which was a problem for them economically, of price stability. So because of that, they have kept their interest rates at 0%.

That means that if you are a global financier, you can borrow money at basically 0% in Japan, then you can convert it and invest in anything, you know, any sort of U.S. tech stock or anything that's going to create some sort of a return. So this Japanese carry trade has been a very important part of investments, not only in treasuries, which we discussed about, discussed, but in our entire stock market, you know, the tech build out, all of that stuff. So that's the other issue is maintaining that carry trade ends up being very important for Japan, for source stability, for the, you know, U.S. Treasury market, et cetera. A YouTuber named Andre Jek explained the dynamics here in a way that I think was very understandable and got into the background of what is going on overall in the Japanese economy.

It's worth listening to if you're curious about these sorts of things. Let's go ahead and take a listen to him explaining this carry trade. Now, the yen carry trade meant, if you were a hedge fund or a bank or an investor, you could borrow yen at zero percent interest, converted to dollars, you could buy basically anything in the world that paid you more than zero, meaning you could buy U.S. treasuries paying four, five percent. You could buy tech stocks, bitcoin, anything you wanted, and you made free money. That's estimated to be worth

trillions of dollars of investments all around the world funded by borrowed Japanese money. So Japan was like, we want to get in on this too. So Japan took its savings overseas because for 30 years,

there was nothing worth buying in Japan. Japanese pension funds, insurers, banks, households, they all shipped their money overseas to get some of that interest. And in the process, Japan became the world's biggest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, holding something like over a trillion dollars of U.S. treasuries.

Japan's pension fund, for example, the GPIF, which is the biggest pension fund in the world, holds hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. bonds and stocks. So think about it like this. When the U.S. borrows money, when tech stocks go up, when Bitcoin goes up, there is a strong chance that somewhere in that process, it was partially funding, by Japanese money. But remember, this only works because interest rates were zero. They are no longer zero.

Japan's interest rates are going up. So as we know from our own, you know, the way our central bank operates, okay, what do you do when you start to have inflation, which Japan, in COVID and now exacerbated by the Iran War, has begun to have some inflation? You raise rates. So if you raise the rates, now this carry trade no longer makes sense. because you can no longer just borrow 0% in Japan

and then use it to fund all these tech stocks and buying US treasuries, et cetera. And so that is creating a lot of challenges for them. If they raise the rates, then they're going to have, bond prices that are very high. It's going to be a problem for us in terms of our investment. They have this massive amount of debt that they accumulated because they could borrow it 0%.

So it didn't cause major economic issues for them in the past. So when their interest rates go up on their debt, it's a major problem. However, then if you don't raise interest rates, that's when you see these massive problems with the yen and the depreciation there. And obviously, inflation continues to climb. This is a major problem for, you know, a country of savers. So all of their savings are being eaten away by inflation. So they've really been in this bind, which is why, you know, they're kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't, which is why now the Treasury Secretary is deciding to jump in and bail them out. Because this part, you know, they're kind of damned if they do, they don't. And they're

problem is creating issues for us as well with our treasuries and with our stock market. So I think it's just, Emily, the bottom line here is, I mean, first of all, I think a lot of people are going, wait, why are we bailing out Japan? Like, isn't there, aren't there a lot of other things we could do with that five to ten billion dollars in Japanese yen? What is going on here? We sold off euros for the yen, right? I believe so, yeah. And but the other, I think the broader point to make here is just the global economy is very complicated. and it's very interconnected. And we are really straining it with what we've decided to do in Iran. So, you know, I would not have been thinking about as we got into this. You know, I'm thinking about oil markets.

I'm thinking about the obvious things. I wouldn't have been thinking about, oh, this is going to cause a currency crisis in Japan that we're going to have to intervene in or else our stock market is going to fall apart. And our debt is going to skyrocket and cost. That is, you know, a second order of effect that myself is a light. person would not have imagined. And there are even going to be third and fourth order effects that even people who do this for a living are not going to be able to foresee because we saw that all unfold with regard to COVID. So to me, it's just a sign of the level of fragility in the global economy and how much it is being stressed by, you know, what we've decided to do with this war in Iran. Well, not even just the economy. I'm reading from an NBC news report. Actually, I'm sorry, it's a Reuters report this morning. North Korea's Kim Yojong.

the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un warned on Wednesday that Pyongyang would adopt, quote-unquote, additional military options in response to what she called Japan's transformation into a military power after Tokyo test fired a U.S. made Tomahawk cruise missile. And, Crystal, all of these pieces come together and emphasize just the fragility of geopolitics right now, to your point about the economy, to your point about the economy and being tied up with Iran. This is, this situation is obviously. very fragile to say the least. I want to read from this Financial Times piece that we can put up on the screen as well. The headline is Japan vows further yen intervention with US if needed.

Japan has confirmed the historic joint intervention, the finance ministry intervened on Friday, and then further, they said, we will not hesitate to conduct further joint intervention. That's such a weird way to put it. We will not hesitate to conduct further joint intervention. It's like a threat, Crystal, at this point from Japan, really odd. Yeah, indeed. A very dicey situation here. So in any case, one aspect of the war that is creating massive issues for Japan, but also for the global economy and even for our own debt and stock market.

So definitely wanted to keep an eye on. Yeah, absolutely. New updates in the Epstein investigation from Capitol Hill. Let's get to that. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of

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