Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/12/22: Ukraine Counteroffensive, Fed Policy, GOP Agenda, Jackson Water Crisis, US Healthcare System, & More!

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Ukraine counteroffensive, Federal Reserve policy, GOP agenda, Jackson water crisis, 9/11 in retrospect, US healthcare system, punishing big colleges, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. And we have Crystal. Indeed, we do. Big, big developments in Russia's war against Ukraine over the weekend. That Ukrainian counteroffensive, highly effective. Stunning. Shockingly so. Stunning victory. So big moves there. We'll tell you all about that.

Also, new indications from the Fed. They are going to continue their aggressive move of hiking interest rates. That comes in spite of the fact that one of their own economists is warning that their moves could cause a severe recession. So important to follow that as well. New developments in the midterms. Republicans realizing that their original strategy of, hey, let's just talk about inflation is not landing the way that it once was, especially now that gas prices look, they're still high, but they have come down quite significantly since June. We also have some new legal developments for former President Trump. Now his, and we've covered this from the beginning, his Save America PAC, which was all about, we're going to stop this deal. And he raised like $150

million or something for that. And then they spent none of it on any, like hardly any of it on any election related activities. That is coming under scrutiny now by a D.C. grand jury as well. So we've got the details of that. At the same time, we do not want to lose sight of the fact that in Jackson, Mississippi, residents still cannot drink the water. They are still under a Boyle advisory. The mainstream media is already losing interest in the story. But some new stunning pictures coming out of Jackson,

as well as a federal investigation into exactly what the hell is going on there. Yesterday, as you guys know, was 9-11. We've got some clips from just before the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, just to remember what it was like before that moment, the way that 9-11 turned everything upside down, you know, the trajectory we've been on since then. So a little bit of reflection we're going to do there. Jeff Stein is going to join us to talk about the legal effort to overturn Biden's student loan debt relief action. But we've got a couple announcements to start off. First of all, as you guys know, we are right now offering a discount if you subscribe. Annual membership. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. You guys know we're launching CounterPoints this week on Friday. Super excited about that. Ryan and Emily, they're ready to go. So there's the CounterPoints graphic. And to help us continue to build, we are giving a 10% off discount

if you sign up as an annual member. That's right. We've got the annual membership. Thank you to all of those who have already signed up. It's really, really helpful in the financial planning for the show

to be able to hire that new person as we sift through the hundreds of resumes. Thank you to everybody who has applied so far. Give us a little bit of time on that one too. Keep coming. Yeah, you're going to have to give us a small operation here. But listen, it's fun to be nimble and it's fun to be able to plan properly. So thank you all so much. You're also enabling us really to continue the expansion in order to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. We've got some fun studio updates also coming for everyone. Number two, as promised, the next date can finally be announced. Let's put it up there

on the screen. Chicago, Illinois, October 15th. Tickets are on sale right now for premium subscribers. It will be that way until Friday when they go on sale to the general public. So once again, if you want to be a premium subscriber, you want access to the pre-sale, you can go ahead and sign up now and you'll have a link for you where you can buy early tickets. Now, as previously promised, for the Lifetime members in the Midwest, you can go ahead and buy tickets, reserve your spot, and then you go ahead and you forward us your receipt. It will be refunded in full. By the way, Atlantis Lifetime people, that refund will be coming sometime this week on your credit card that you use to sign up. So as promised, we're people of our word.

So Lifetime Subs, as we recall, they have absolute access to any show that they want. Guaranteed VIP tickets. Go ahead and purchase yours. Just send us the receipt. It will be refunded. Thank you to all of you. You guys are really the ones who got us off the ground. Yeah.

Absolutely. No question. Kind of a big week for us here. It's a huge week. We got counterpoints. We're coming to Atlanta. Live shows to Atlanta. We're going to Chicago. Also on Chicago. So after much planning, all of that, we looked at the dates, the financial viability of all this. Chicago is really going to be the main Midwest flagship. So if you are in the Midwest area and the surrounding states and all that, the likelihood is that this is probably the only

place that we're coming that will be close to you. So please go ahead and purchase those tickets if you're anywhere in the area. Make arrangements, all of that. As previously promised, we will do some research as to what to do in the Chicago area, as people did for us in Atlanta. I haven't been to Chicago, actually. Yeah, so you guys, I have been to Chicago. I actually like Chicago a lot in spite of the, you know, very, very cold and wintry.

It is too cold for me. I'm just looking on the map. Yeah, you're more sensitive to the cold and you're more tolerant of the heat. Yes, that's true. I don't actually mind, like, hard winters. You just got to have the right gear. All right, we'll see. We'll check it out.

I'll get one of those Canada goose things everybody has around here and I'll show up in a parka in October. What is it going to be like in October? I have no idea. Chicago wins. Let us know. Could be anything. All right. So, yeah, if you guys have some suggestions for us, we always appreciate those. Okay, with all of that out of the way, Sagar, what's going on in Ukraine? Let's start with Ukraine. Stunning development. So we brought everybody the news on Thursday. There was an initial campaign in which Ukraine seemed to be suffering some pretty major losses. Now, it turns out that that was actually a feint attack of what we were watching and what has now resulted in a absolutely stunning victory on the part of the Ukrainian forces and a

humiliating defeat on the battlefield so far for the Russians. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I chose the most complicated map that I could possibly find. Because all of my research, I think actually just looking at it from a territorial perspective doesn't really convey just how complicated and really sophisticated the attack was by Ukrainian forces. I'm going to have a link down to this tweet in the description so everybody can go and look at it for themselves. It has the exact units, the exact forces, where the attacks occurred, and all that. But the top line, here's what you need to know. Now, according to the Ukrainian military forces, they have seized 3,000 square kilometers of territory. For those who are wondering, that's about 1,100 square miles.

Again, that is coming from the Ukrainian military defense forces. So not exactly 100% reliable. Now, what we do know, though, in terms of what's actually happened on the ground is the Ukrainians have obviously seized major towns and areas in the, quote, Kharkiv Oblast, Oblast being region in Ukraine. The reason that this matters is that that Oblast really was serving as the jump-off point for future Russian operations. The fact that the Ukrainians were able to take and seize so much territory so quickly, only in a couple of days, one of the things I mentioned in our last show is they really don't have that long. And that's

something that Zelensky himself acknowledged ahead of the fighting season, is that by reclaiming this Kharkiv Oblast, they have retaken and pushed back Russian defense lines away from a potential jump-off point that they could use in order to seize full military control of the entire Eastern Donbass and Luhansk region. So everything that I've read so far on this is that it really is a stunning advance in combined arms operations and in maneuver warfare. It reminds actually a lot of people of the 1973 Israeli push in the Yom Kippur War. It also reminds us the tank is still very, very useful in warfare. Geeks like myself are very interested in that and watching it be very effective.

Let's go to the next one up there on the screen, which is that the Ukrainian army is saying that it has essentially tripled the retaken area just in the last three days. So 48 hours, thousands know, thousands of square kilometers, 1,100 square miles of territory gained. Now, of course, you know, all news organizations, including us, have to make the caveat. We cannot verify the Ukrainian figures. What we can verify is that even the Russians are claiming that they have had to pull back. They have confirmed they've pulled back their defensive lines. And the reason why that these particular towns mattered so much is they were major hubs for supply lines. And really what we're seeing is a humiliating crumble for the Russian

defenses and their inability both to solidify supply lines. Some of the videos that are coming out here are stunning for a great power military. You're seeing tanks straight up abandoned and unsupplied with no gas, no maintenance. I mean, clearly, this is unprecedented for a great power military to show such basic incompetence in shoring up your supply lines, shoring up your defenses. And look, I mean, there's no doubt about it. The Ukrainians would not be able to do this with the United States without U.S. provided weaponry and all of that. But this is just not supposed to happen in the annals of great power war. To watch it is just, I mean, stunning. There's barely words to describe what's happening right now. That's right. One military expert said that this advance from Ukraine marks the first time since World War II that whole Russian units have been lost. That gives you a sense of the scale of the defeat here. And I mean,

first of all, it's incredibly humiliating for Russia. It's incredibly humiliating for Putin. They are even, you know, in Russian state media having to acknowledge that there were defeats that they had to retreat. I mean, they put a spin on it, like we're regathering for the next defensive. But some of the images that are coming out, too, and some of the reports say, you know, these Russian soldiers are— Like, ran away. Yeah, they literally were, like, dropping their rifles, running, taking civilian clothes from the local residents and stealing their bicycles to try to escape. So this was not, like, some, you know, organized retreat even. This was everybody like fleeing for their lives is at least what the reports coming out are. And we're

going to talk a little bit about how even the sort of like hard right, ultra-nationalist Russian bloggers are melting down over this, which puts a lot of pressure on Putin domestically as well. And we've always talked about how, you know, as hawkish as Putin is, there is a much more hawkish contingent in the Russian body politic and also within the Kremlin to keep an eye on as well. So as important as this is for Ukrainian morale, that's, you know, really significant. We had said before that this was kind of Zelensky's put up or shut up moment. The winner is coming. If they were going to be able to make any significant advances back into the territory that had been taken by Russia, this was really the time to do it. Well, they showed they could do that. And, you know, that allows them to go and make the case to us and other European allies.

Hey, look what we can do when you give us the weapons. We are able to make advances. We can win this war. So for Zelensky and the Ukrainians, incredible morale boost, incredible sort of like tactical strategic boost. In terms of Putin, this is really a difficult moment for him because they're in the exact opposite position. Remember, he really thought at the beginning of this thing that they could wage this war without the Russian population really being taxed or stretched or really feeling it. And so as this was all going on, they were having these big celebrations in Moscow, trying to pretend like life was going on as normal, big fireworks display. And there were even some people who were saying

like, this fireworks display looks like you're celebrating the Ukrainian military given the day that it's coming. So it's becoming increasingly untenable for him to be able to continue to prosecute this war without a broader national mobilization, which by the way is exactly what the hard right factions are pushing for. So it really is a difficult position that he's in right now, and it sort of undermines his whole project and branding effort that he's set up over decades now to portray himself as this tough-minded leader and this strategic genius as they have these incredibly embarrassing defeats. Now, let's be clear, Russia still holds a lot more territory than they did before this invasion. There is a

lot more that the Ukrainian military would have to do to push them back to the February 24th lines, let alone back to, you know, all the way out of the original Ukrainian territory. But in terms of when this is coming in the overall context, it's hard to understate just how significant it is. Right. And Zelensky also casting everything in terms of the winter. Let's put this up there. In his Saturday address, he said that the harsh winter will determine the fate of Ukrainian independence, that the country's fate lies on what happens in the next couple of months. They said this is the most difficult winter for the world. Russia is doing everything in 90 days of this winter to break the resistance of Ukraine,

the resistance of Europe, because this is what Russia hopes for. This is its last argument. These 90 days ahead will decide more than 30 years of Ukraine's independence. 90 days that will decide more than all the years of existence of the European Union. Winter will determine our future. Casting it very much as, you know, really the decisive point. It's like Game of Thrones-esque if winter is coming. Listen, I mean, you know, if I lived there, I would think of the same thing. It's a tough winter out there. Absolutely. So it's interesting from a couple of perspectives, which is that, number one,

I mean, look, the Ukrainian military did show its fighting capability, let alone the fact that with U.S. assistance where it's at did lead to a battlefield victory. Now, as we said and cautioned, the Ukraine's minister, defense minister, actually came out this morning saying, he's like, look, our guys are tired. They've been fighting six days straight. This is a tough thing. A lot of Western analysts are pointing out that, listen, if the Ukrainians do get too far ahead of their skis, they could stretch their supply lines and would be vulnerable to counterattack. The Russians are regrouping currently in the east. They are making their defense lines as impenetrable as possible. And now they are launching basically a full-scale air campaign against the town and the region of Kharkiv.

They're launching a lot of rockets, bombs. They wiped out power for the city and for the region. Some of it has been restored, but they're making it a full-scale total war. So don't, you know, obviously don't count them out just yet. But I don't think there's a way to describe it other than just an absolutely stunning fold. I mean, the way it is is that Ukraine, the way the Russians are governing it, militarily campaigning there, is they have four different regions that military commanders are in charge of. You effectively had the collapse of the entire northernmost region of that force. I mean, that would be like, it's difficult to describe in a U.S. context,

but I mean, just imagine, you know, a regional commander just effectively folding in 72 hours. Again, it just does not happen for great power military. So clearly they have a lot of issues, supply issues. The North Korea stuff looks a lot more important in this context where it seems that they have been having major ammunition and resupply problems as well. So maybe they're a lot closer to crumbling than people think. Although, you know, we should also be cautious of that possibility. So once again, you know, Ukrainians have seized about 3,000 square miles of territory at their very, very best. That's what they're claiming. The Russians still hang on to a significant portion of Ukraine that they did seize from the very beginning. But this is just no question. I mean, this is going to boost morale in Kiev. Apparently there, you know,

there's absolutely jubilant atmosphere. Same in the West, you know, in the Pentagon. We don't want to underscore that this was done with a tremendous amount of U.S. help. Let's put this up there, which is that the Ukrainian officials drew heavily actually on U.S. intelligence to plan the counteroffensive. They basically, the Ukrainians were able to use U.S. resources to identify key Russian targets and effectively U.S. satellite intelligence and other intel that we were able to gather, who knows, you know, from where and more were used by the Ukrainian military to drop exactly where they wanted to attack. And it does seem clear that, right, that obviously our intel identified, they're like, well, they have resupply issues here. This general, you know,

think their troops here, probably conscripts. They are, you know, the least amount of morale. It's like, you should faint here and attack right here. But listen, I mean, for military, people who are interested in military campaigns like me, like, this is crazy. I mean, this really will be studied for a long time. Yeah, well, and that is part of why they were able to be so successful. Because, you know, we were talking about, okay, they're preparing for this counteroffensive. When is it coming? What's going on? And they were really focused on the more southern region of Ukraine. And so there were reports that Russia sent their more seasoned troops in that direction and left them more vulnerable in this northeast area. Now, apparently, there's still a plan to move forward with the counteroffensive in the Kherson region down in the south. But going so strong and so hard in

the northeast really allowed them to sort of trick the Russians into letting their guard down up there. And that's part of the story of why they were able to have such a stunning victory and success over such a short period of time. But that too, even that sort of tactical feint that they deployed here, which obviously was extraordinarily effective, kind of has U.S. fingerprints on it. They say that the decision by Ukraine to tout its counteroffensive in the South before striking the Northeast is a standard technique for misdirection used by the American special operations troops who've been training the Ukrainians since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. They have a quote here from the top Pentagon official for Ukraine

and Russia in the Obama administration. She says, these guys have been trained for eight years by special ops. They've been taught about irregular warfare. They've been taught by our intelligence operators about deception and psychological operations. So even that decision and the way they approach this has U.S. fingerprints on it. And the other thing they talk about here is, I don't know if you guys remember, we covered before how the U.S. actually had more insight early in the summer into what the Russians were doing on the battlefield than what the Ukrainians were. Because, of course, over decades and decades, we have developed all kinds of intelligence assets to help us understand what the Russians are up to. But with Ukraine, which was an ally, we didn't have the same sort of insight.

And they were very reluctant to share what exactly they were up to and how exactly it was going. According to this report, at least, they have now started to coordinate more directly and share more information so that the U.S. side could be more useful and could really help them in terms of intelligence sharing. So that's a piece of this as well. But listen, it was the put up or shut up moment. We sent them, you know, tens of billions of dollars in weapons. We've been training them for almost a decade. And this is the result where just before the winter hits, they are able to have this incredibly successful counteroffensive,

which is absolutely humiliating for Russia and could be a real game changer in this war. They deserve credit where due. I personally didn't think they could do it, and they did. And they deserve that credit because it's a tremendous thing. I mean, when you can beat a great power military in any battle like this, unlike, you know, I mean, if you think about it, the U.S. never quote-unquote lost a military campaign in Iraq or in Afghanistan. We were defeated strategically.

This is an actual tactical defeat on the battlefield. Again, I mean, you don't see this happening. It's not even considered within the realm of possibility. So obviously, you know, it happened with Kiev and all that. But, you know, I personally thought, you know, given the ability and the, given the strategic advantage that you have when you take territory and you're on the defensive to just crumble like this, stunning. advantage that you have when you take territory and you're on the defensive to just crumble like this. Yeah. Stunning. I do want to, one more warning before we move on to the next part,

which is also very revealing about the sort of Russian psyche and mindset, which is that now we have to see what the response is. And as we've warned from the beginning, the more desperate your adversary gets, you know, that can be a scary situation as well. And Putin domestically under increasing pressure as well to show that this can be a success, that they can still win this war in some sort of way. Because, you know, I mean, the original idea of, oh, we're just going to march into Kiev is going to be over in a few days and the Russian public is barely even going to know what's going on. Obviously, that didn't pan out. And now they're having massive setbacks. I mean, when things will really get difficult for Putin is if they are faced with retreating even back beyond those February 24th lines.

So we'll see if the Ukrainians are able to get there. We're a long way from that. Absolutely. Let's get to that part then in terms of what Russians are saying, even pro-Russians, like pro-Russian militaries. Let's put this up there, which is that they are being absolutely savage towards Putin and the Russian military saying, quote, we have already lost many bloggers and people on Telegram slamming the military failures. They're showing they're getting much angrier, especially given the gap between the official line and the reality on the ground. You can't deny whenever you have to give up territory. And remember this, Russia itself has not published its actual military losses since March in the

early days of the campaign. We have no idea how many thousands of troops that they have lost. Could be tens of thousands, actually, at this point. It really is just stunning. And I think what we are seeing with Russia is Putin has tried to avoid mass conscription, any sort of mobilization of society towards total war because that would require political buy-in by the populace that this is really worth it. He's tried to keep this as a sideshow, kind of like what we did in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In the first couple of years of the Iraq war, 2004, 2005, most of the public, I wouldn't say lost interest like it was on the news, but it wasn't fully driving everything until things really went awry in 05. This is going to require Putin to make a real choice. He's like, okay, am I going to go all in or not? I was actually just reading that the defense manufacturing capabilities there, the workers are now no longer

allowed to take vacation. So they need them to stay on the line pumping out different material and more to send to the front line. He has the choice of he can respond to this with basically giving into this criticism. No more just like sideshow war, like a full scale war. But that has major political ramifications for him. And I do think this is going to test his popularity too, which is that he's got toifications for him. And I do think this is going to test his popularity too, which is that he's got to make that choice. Are you going to full-scale mobilize Russian society towards this goal or not? Or, I mean, even if they do increase the amount of materiel or conscripts or the Russian army, some major other reforms, it could still

will mean major, it will have major domestic political ramifications in Russia. So, but to have the Russian commentariat, you know, even the pro-Kremlin commentariat and all of this just hammer the Russians domestically and online, which is, look, it's an important political force in its own right, and probably has more sway over Putin and the, you know, pro-Kremlin people than anything else. They're like, no, now you need to, quote, take the gloves off. That's also very within the realm of possibility. And remember, they still have a tremendous amount of arms and other power that they can bring to bear in the conflict.

They just haven't because they've been treating it kind of as a sideshow. Yeah, that's the important thing to understand is when these, like, ultra-nationalist, pro-war Russian bloggers who have deep connections to the FSB and also to directly the military. When they are complaining about how the war is being executed, they mean we need to go further. We can't have this half in, half out. We need a full scale mobilization. We need to sell this war to the public and we need to go all the way in.

That's really important to keep in mind is that there is a more hawkish faction, and that is the pressure they are putting on Putin, is you have to go full scale, declare war, mobilize the public. That's very difficult at this point because, yeah, from the beginning, I mean, he didn't sell this as a war at all. You weren't even allowed to say that it's a war on Russian state TV. So then to convince the public like, oh, not only is this a war, it's just war and we need you to sacrifice and we need you

to step up and we need to have conscription. That's a tough sell at this point. And he's obviously been going in the opposite direction of doing that. So I mentioned before they were having these big Moscow city, the celebrations of the city's birthday and big fireworks displays, even as these humiliating defeats are going on on the battlefield. Putin was like inaugurating a new Ferris wheel on the very day that this is all going down. So he's still trying to play this game of like, oh, well, it's no big deal over here. We're doing fine. Everything's great. And life can go on as normal in Moscow and throughout Russia. But that is becoming an increasingly untenable position.

And just to tell you how much little glimmers of truth are starting to seep in and how many people are starting to get frustrated with how this effort is going, that dude who's the strongman leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. How does that how you say his name? He's even acknowledging and accusing the Russian military of making, quote, mistakes and failing to explain the retreat to the public. You've got Sergei Muranov, who's a leader of a pro-Putin party in parliament, criticizing the authorities for celebrating that Moscow's annual city day this weekend, posting on Twitter, quote, it cannot be and should not be that our guys are dying today and we're pretending that nothing is happening. You have another Kremlin analyst who appears on state TV saying because

of some mistakes unknown to us, control over political processes is being lost. I guarantee you this confusion will not last long, but right now it's a mess. So you have people also agitating for more accurate information and being more straight with the public about what is going on. And there were a lot of clips floating around also of Russian state TV with some sort of like, some candor, some very unusual candor and soul searching happening where there were some realization that things are really not going well and they've got to change taxes. Hey, listen, that's only a good thing.

I mean, if we could get it so the domestic political calculation makes it so that no more offensive is supported by the Russians, that's a fantastic victory. And maybe then the Russians will actually come to the negotiating table in a different form, and we would see how even that is received by the Ukrainians. So, look, once again, successful military campaign by Ukraine has two options. They can go all in or they can go the other way. I hope that they go the diplomatic route, but I, you know, there's no evidence to support that right now from Putin. He is jobbled down. I think he's probably too far in at this point. At this point, he's so tied to the campaign and all that. He just simply can't

admit defeat. For him personally, it's existential. Seems to be. And that, I mean, but that, and that's a scary situation. We should never lose sight of that when you're talking about a nuclear power. And any sort of, you know, in the most maximalist situation, the Ukrainians actually win. It does trigger some sort of like, you know, Putin being pushed down and some sort of power vacuum in Russia, like chaos and instability in a nuclear power is a scary thing to contemplate. Big time. Absolutely. All right. So big moves here domestically with obviously global implications as well. But of course, you know that the Fed has been hiking interest rates to try to get inflation under control, even though, of course, the Fed's interest rate hikes can't really directly impact the major causes of inflation.

But nevertheless, they continue down that direction in a very aggressive fashion. And we got new indications last week that they plan to 100% continue this course. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. So this is Lael Brannard, who is seen as more of a dovish figure within the Fed. She's the number two policymaker. And she still is saying that, yes, at some point in the tightening cycle, the risks will become more two-sided. But she says that they need to keep going. If history is any guide, it's important to avoid the risk of pulling back too soon. Following a lengthy sequence of adverse supply shocks to

goods, labor, and commodities that, in combination with strong demand, drove inflation to multi-decade highs, we must maintain a risk management posture to defend against the risk consumers and businesses will expect higher inflation to continue. So Sagar, she's saying full steam ahead. They are not changing course, even though there are some indications that inflation has come down, even though certainly gas prices have fallen, even though there are major risks on the other side of pushing the economy into a severe recession with massive impacts in terms of unemployment, in terms of consumer and just regular American pain. They still have no intention of changing course.

Yeah, absolutely. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, look, many disagreements aside, I think she's actually done a decent job when discussing the Fed. She was actually on CNN discussing this. Let's take a listen. What he calls some pain means putting people out of work, shutting down small businesses because the cost of money goes up because the interest rates go up. So it sounds like you do think it's a mistake to raise interest rates again. I am very, I am very worried about this because the causes of inflation, things like the fact that COVID is still shutting down parts of the economy around the world, that we still have supply chain kinks, that we still have a war going on in Ukraine that drives up the cost of energy, and that we still have these giant corporations that are engaging in price gouging. There is nothing in raising the interest rates, nothing in Jerome Powell's tool bag

that deals directly with those. And he has admitted as much in congressional hearings when I've asked him about it. There you go. Yeah, it's actually I mean, look, it's true. He said it won't do anything about gas. The reason gas prices are down right now have much more to do with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which we were begging the Biden administration to release for months, and they've depleted about a third of the SPR so far. By the way, I think that's fine. We topped it up during the pandemic specifically for reasons like this, but that's the reason that gas prices have gone down. We'll go into that a little bit more. Same on food. I mean, food is dramatically impacted more by the supply chain, by fertilizer rates, nitrogen, and by drought than it has anything to do with demand. Demand has some to do with it, of course, but that's the only thing

they can control, and they're going after that. I mean, on the one hand, it's very difficult for me because I also see some companies which relied on cheap cash, like Google, for example. Google has come out and they're like, well, guys, effectively Sundar Pichai is like, we need to boost productivity by 20%. Effectively admitting that cheap cash was underwriting a whole lot of Google expansion and basically just like Google screwery. That probably was the case at the very much on the corporate level. So some of that quote unquote tightening had to happen, but Google will survive. Small businesses, they actually may not survive. And the people with unemployment, you know, who unemployment impacts and all that, they especially are really hurting.

I'm most worried about housing. I mean, the fact that the average mortgage rate continues to come up, I think it's like 6% right now, more than double, fastest rise in modern history, crushing the housing market. Housing market obviously needed to come down some, but you know, we also need new housing stock. And a lot of that new housing stock either goes on pause in construction or just doesn't get sold, which that's the other problem. That's exactly right. I mean, it is really, it really is a complicated situation because on the one hand, the fact that you have had effective zero interest rates for so long, you have created this incredibly financialized economy, this bizarre and unsustainable froth. Companies that really don't deserve to exist and aren't profitable, but because cash was so easy to come by, they could just continue and continue and continue. Massively inflating asset bubbles, which has been a huge driver of inequality so that, you know, if you're someone who owns

stuff and, you know, those prices kept going up and up and up. We didn't call it inflation at that point, but that's what was going on with assets and certainly with the housing market. So if you're on the lucky side of that divide, that was great for you for a lot of years. So on the one hand, yeah, it's inevitable and it's not a bad thing to pull that froth back because that's part of what has been driving inequality. On the other hand, while it was great for, didn't really benefit a lot of people on the way up, it was a small sliver, it is really, really going to be devastating if there's a severe recession. This all comes back to the fact that you have Congress and most of our government that is sort of unable to really act, that is stuck in gridlock, that is unable to be

responsive to the needs of the American people. So, for example, Matt Stoller is floating. What you really need is higher rates for big companies to get some of this froth out and lower rates, lower interest rates for consumers and small get some of this froth out and lower rates, lower interest rates for consumers and small businesses so that they're able to borrow and do the things that they need to do and be able to hire and expand and survive this difficult time. But unless there's some mechanism I am not aware of with the Fed, that would have to come through government congressional action. And of course, we're nowhere inside of that. So it really is very difficult. But the worst possible world is that you have

continued inflation because you aren't dealing with those real problems. And as Elizabeth Warren says, and you have a severe recession. That's exactly what one Fed economist is warning of. They don't want to talk about this, but this was a report, some research that was done here under the Fed's umbrella. Here, this is reporting from our friend Ken Klippenstein. He says, Fed's own economist warns of severe recession from Chair Powell's rate hikes. That study, which was published back in July and sort of swept under the rug, was conducted by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And they're saying this is very reminiscent of actions taken by the Fed in 1920 that led to a severe recession.

It was a very eerily similar dynamics. You'd just come out of the Spanish flu at that time. Of course, that killed 657,000 Americans. Many of those who died were workers. That meant there were more job openings than workers to fill them. So the surviving workers had more bargaining power. You had a tight labor market. What does this all sound like?

You had rising real wages. The study doesn't mention it. Labor strikes were also proliferating that were spurred by that low unemployment rate. So a very similar landscape to what we're facing now. Also, like today, consumer spending was also recovering. Then because World War I had ended. Now, of course, because of the pandemic being over. Despite the strong job market, inflation was also relatively high and for similar reasons.

The quote from the study says at the end of World War I, the U.S. was experiencing strong growth and unruly inflation driven in part by an expansionary fiscal policy and accommodative monetary policy. That's exactly what we had now. We have low interest rates. That's the accommodative monetary policy. But we also had stimulus in the form of direct checks and other support during the coronavirus pandemic. So very similar things there. And what they said is in 1920, the Federal Reserve Banks hiked their discount rates to tame inflation and the U.S. economy entered a severe recession now known as the Depression of 1920. And what they say in their warning here is that it's not that interest rates shouldn't be raised at all, but you've got to be really careful because there's a delay between when you hike the rates and when the impact hits. And so if you just keep hiking and hiking and hiking without waiting to see how that's going

to impact the economy, you can end up tripping the economy into a severe recession because there is that delay in the tightening and how it hits. So that's what they're warning about. Yeah. No, I mean, look, it's very interesting. I mean, their counter would be, the counter to that right is, well, we came out of it and we had the roaring 20 Twenties. It's like, well, there was still a terrible time. A lot of people did suffer in the 19s. It took a couple of years for the Roaring Twenties to really take off. And, you know, not like things worked out all that well at the end of the 1920s. So it's not like the structural problems were fixed.

You wouldn't want to use that as your model to follow. Exactly. It's like anybody who's pointing to any economic policy between 1919 and 1929 as quote-unquote effective, probably not the best thing to do and not exactly a path that we would go down. Look, the economy also is fundamentally different. The fact is that we're probably much more financialized today than we ever were before. So in a way, we may actually may even be more vulnerable to rate hikes like that than before. And for how we come out of it and the possible ramifications of that, I'm really worried. I'm probably most worried about housing, you know, because that back then we didn't have the same level of housing crisis. You could quite

more easily build housing if you needed to. There was a big housing boom all throughout, you know, the post 1800s all the way up until even 1950. So some of the supply constraints and other, plus we're much more globalized, vulnerable to major global supply shocks. I'm especially worried about Europe and the effect of their energy crisis as well. Not the only one. A lot of people are talking about it, even apparently the White House this morning, this new report out that the White House thinks that one of their biggest fears is that the European energy crisis will bleed home and actually drive up the price of oil and will only continue inflation on the onward trajectory as rate hikes are going up. Another thing to remember, Europe also just hiked their rates by 0.75.

Yes, that's right. So almost the exact same thing. That's right. I mean, even the housing market thing is complicated because, as we covered before, there are a lot of people cheering for the housing market crash. Yeah, I mean, it's too high. Because the prices are insane. First-time buyers have been completely priced down. Now, there are more effective ways to do that than crash the economy. The biggest

one is to build more houses. I mean, that's one of the huge issues that we have is a lack of supply of housing and especially affordable housing, but really housing of all kinds. And hiking interest rates is actually counterproductive in terms of increasing the housing supply. That's number one. Number two, there's some impact from permanent capital buying up so many of the houses. I mean, we were talking about in some of these cities, it's like a quarter to a third of the homes being purchased are from private equity and other permanent capital. So that also is creating more demand and creating more competitive landscape,

where if you don't have that whole thing in cash or close to it, very difficult to be able to compete. You also have in some local markets the impact, which is big picture positive, but can be very difficult in individual places, where because of the work revolution coming out of the pandemic, where more people are working from home, working remotely, more people are just like changing their careers altogether and changing their priorities of life. You had some of these cities that if you're coming from San Francisco or you're coming from New York and you're moving into Boise or wherever, and you've still got your New York and your California salary, you're bidding up the housing prices locally, making things very difficult as well. So

even with the housing market, it's sort of complex because, yeah, a lot of people would really like prices to come down, but crashing the economy, and by the way, when mortgage rates are very high, that also makes housing unaffordable, not the best way to achieve that end. That's right. At the same time, you know, because primarily because gas prices have come down, Americans are feeling a little bit better about the economy. And I think that's important to note. Let's go and put this up on the screen.

This is from the Washington Post. The headline here says Americans are finally feeling better about the economy. Gas prices are falling. There are signs households are learning to deal with inflation. In particular, they point to consumer sentiment, which hit rock bottom in June. It's begun inching back up in recent weeks. Gas prices are down. Decades high inflation appears to be easing.

And at the same time, Americans are making small changes. Buying meat in bulk, for example, or shifting more of their shopping to discount chains, suggesting many families are learning to deal with higher prices in Sagar. I mean, first of all, I have always thought there is, even beyond the real pocketbook impact of gas prices, which is huge, especially for working class people just like trying to get to work and go about their lives, who oftentimes have to live outside of major cities, again, because of housing affordability. Even outside of that real impact, there is a huge psychological impact of watching gas prices go up and up and up, but also of watching them go down. And we've now had

several months consistently where gas prices are declining. Let's go ahead. We actually have that up on the screen right now. This was as of yesterday. I think the national average gas price was $3.72. That is down from a high of $5 a gallon back in June. And it's been sort of consistently, slowly, but steadily dropping. And because we are better at gauging things in relative terms versus absolute terms, even though that still is a high number as compared to just a year ago, the fact that it's going down makes people feel like, ah, I'm going to get through this. I'm going to be okay. I've figured this out.

I've cut back in these various ways. I'm kind of used to that now. And I feel like things are going in the right direction versus I feel like I'm getting squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed with no end in sight. This is politics. Politics is about directionality, which is that, you know, just because things are way worse right now than they were two years ago, it's better than

six months ago. And so people are like, well, it came down. It's going in the right direction. People always vote like this. I mean, remember, it's not like the economy was better in 2012. It's just that people trusted Obama whenever he was like, look, I did my best to get us to this point, got us off the brink, and now we're going towards this way. Well, they also didn't trust Mitt Romney. And didn't trust Romney, right? and now we're going towards this way. Well, they also didn't trust Mitt Romney. And didn't trust Romney, right? Okay, we see what you're- But that's even more of an important point.

Rich, out-of-touch guy. Right, which is like, things are bad, but it's all about directionality. So here, things directionally are going well. And I guess what the Biden people can at least point to is that their policy is working. I mean, their policy is very directly impacting the price of gas in a beneficial way for households, which I think is very important. It took them probably a year in order to really get their act together, which I, you know, I will not forgive them for that. And I think it showed tremendous, just bureaucratic stasis. But they got their stuff together. And as predicted, it really isn't that hard to get

people to give you credit whenever you do something for them. But, you know, on the horizon, not everything is solved. Let's throw this up there. So OPEC Plus has actually said that they will have a small production cut. That production cut, combined with the so-called price on Russian oil cap by the G7, not exactly going the way that they wanted to, also really combined with how things go for Europe this winter, still very much could push the price of gas to record and to new highs. You know, you can't run the SPR forever. At a certain point, they're going to have to figure out how much is going to come from the SPR and how much from the market. The fact is, is that if Russia does make some different moves on oil, completely cuts off the G7, both from natural gas and from

petroleum, that would have a major impact. It wouldn't take maybe one shock or more in order to send the price of gas high. Another reason the gas is low right now is China is still committed to COVID zero. So their demand is much lower than normal. They've been selling a lot of their excess natural gas capacity to the Europeans. Also, their use of petroleum is down pretty significantly. So if China does open up and doesn't commit to COVID, I mean, I don't know how much longer they can keep it going, but they kept it longer going than I thought. But let's say three months, Shanghai and all those other places become much more active. Well, that also would boost supply and you could have gas go back over

four. So the structural problems in our oil markets are not fixed whatsoever. There's still a hell of a lot more that they need to do. Well, let's go ahead and move on to the midterms block because they're a direct tie in here, which is basically Republicans with the gas prices going down and fewer Americans. Inflation is still the number one concern, by the way, when pollsters ask. But that number has been steadily ticking downwards in terms of the percentage of Americans who say inflation is their top political issue. Republicans are realizing it's not going to be enough for them, at least not for the red wave that they were

originally envisioning. Let's go ahead and put this Washington Post report up on the screen. This was a very interesting report. So the headline here says, GOP seeks midterm reset as inflation, abortion, temper, ambitions. Republican Party's hopes are a red wave. This November dimmed on flagging fundraising and an emphasis on inflation that has lost some of its potency. Now, the way that you know that this is actually the case is you can see what they're talking about now in their ad campaigns. So back in July, about one in every six ads mentioned gas prices. In early September, only 1% of GOP ads mentioned gas prices.

So you can tell they've switched dramatically in their messaging here in just a few months. Instead, they're focusing on crime. That's become a central message of Republicans. The word has been used in 29% of ads. That's up from about 12% back in July. The NRCC chairman is trying to cast the election as a campaign over security. That ties in immigration, crime, and economic concerns. But, you know, it wasn't that long ago that they really felt all they had to do

was say inflation, inflation, inflation, gas prices, gas prices, gas prices. And that was going to be enough. I mean, that looked like a pretty good bet at the time. And now it just doesn't. It's still the number one concern. But as abortion increases in terms of its potency in this election, and that obviously very salient on the Democratic side, they are realizing they're going to have to do something else that sort of like aesthetics and saying the word inflation not going to be enough for them. Yeah, I mean, this is a problem of their own making. When you've got nothing else to talk about, it's like you just run on the greatest hits. And, you know, I've always thought is a problem of their own making. When you've got nothing else to talk about, it's like you just run on the greatest hits.

And, you know, I've always thought about this with the crime message, which is that it really only impacts at least us the most who live in the bluest areas. Like, you don't really have much interaction with crime when you live in a suburban area. So really, it's a reflection of, like, what's happening in Blue City and kind of hoping that people who live in the suburbs are pissed off enough about it in order to vote. Obviously, that could happen. But it's not as much as in your face as when you go to the gas pump or when you go and you have to buy food and your grocery bill is double the price. That's always going to be the issue. You have to get some having having to motivate someone on what's happening somewhere else, as opposed to what's happening directly towards you. That's always going to matter the most. That's why I always thought inflation was the most potent thing that they had. And the real problem also remains is the Biden actually did

something about it. And they never really gave us anything. You know, look, drill more oil. Like, sure, I think that's fine. But they didn't have anything even more actionable. Same whenever it came to food. They didn't really make their case in the same way. The problem they had is they were on the upswing whenever it was forces that were outside of the control. And now they're downside whenever they're forces they're out of their control. You don't want to be at the whims of wherever the national things, wherever the national winds are going. And to be fair to them, in some respects, that's just the nature of being a party out of power.

Because when you have the presidency and you have the House and you have the Senate, you just have a lot more tools in your control to set the agenda, to set the narrative. I mean, Trump was obviously the best at this of all time, probably, in forcing the media to cover the things that he wanted them to cover.

But yeah, when you're the party out of power, that becomes a lot more difficult. And so normally in these midterm elections, when you have a president who is not that popular now, even with his little tick up in approval ratings, still underwater, still not by historic metrics, doing all that well, that should be very fertile national grounds for them.

But obviously everything changed with Dobbs in a way that, frankly, I'm surprised how much Dobbs and the overturning of Roe versus Wade really shifted the landscape. And the more that you look at the numbers, the more you see women registering, the more you see young people registering, and obviously the outperformance of Democrats in these special elections. So I would say Republicans, really their prospects peaked about the time Glenn Youngkin was winning the gubernatorial election in the state of Virginia. That was when the national wins were sort of the best for Republicans where you had crime concerns, I would say were at their height then.

You also had COVID school concerns and the lockdown conversation. That was still extraordinarily potent. That has lost a lot of its potency because schools are open and people are back to normal life. COVID as a priority on the right and the left has completely fallen off. So those cultural issues are no longer booing Republicans. And they're left trying to figure out, okay, well, just saying, hey, the Democrats are terrible, that's not really working out for us anymore because they have done a few things because of abortion, because inflation

is going down. So what are we going to run on? Kevin McCarthy has been working with Newt Gingrich to come up with some sort of like positive GOP agenda that they can announce. He's planning to unveil that in Pittsburgh on September 19th. Axios got a little bit of a peek at some of the things that they're talking about. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. And they say, scoop McCarthy's commitment to America. Roll out. I mean, the sections they've got here, first of all, it's very vague.

It's a lot of generalities. These are not the specifics. We'll get the specifics, I guess, on September 19th. But, you know, they have these four categories. Number one, an economy that is strong, focusing specifically on inflation, high gas prices, supply chain issues and competition with China. McCarthy says members should pledge to, quote, put an end to build back better and eliminate wasteful government spending. So basically deficit cutting. That's, you know, the focus of that one, a little Paul Ryan throwback.

A nation that is safe. That's the crime and immigration one. A future Paul Ryan throwback. A nation that is safe, that's the crime and immigration one. A future that is free. Okay, whatever that means. Make sure every kid in every neighborhood can succeed. Confront big tech and advance free speech. Of course, when they've had an opportunity to confront big tech, they have failed to do that. We'll put that aside.

And finally, a government that is accountable. This is the part that they actually will do if they get control, which is all of their oversight efforts, which is endless investigations. And Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, January 6th Commission, I can't remember what the other ones were. Oh, Merrick Garland, they wanted to investigate all of their various investigations. One thing I did find noteworthy, Sagar, is remember how McCarthy was like, oh, we're totally going to ban stock trading by members. That's not mentioned here. Yeah, I mean, this is just boring. This is just standard, you know, very just be—how many times do we have to watch this?

It's like my least favorite are these fake commitments. And then also every president after the State of the Union is like, we're going to barnstorm the country with this new slogan. And then after like two months, you don't hear anything about it. It's like, just come on. Cut us all a break. Please. I feel like in the modern era, it's even shorter. It's like two days. Yeah, you're right. By the next week, they've moved on. Two days. It's just pathetic by what's

happening to them. At this point, they should just be like, yeah, look, we're banking on the national wins. At the same time, look, with the polls and all that, we should always add the caveat, which is that, I think I'll do something on this tomorrow, which is that all of the polls where things are most enthusiastic for Dems are where the biggest misses for Dems were in 2020. It's possible that things actually haven't changed that much at all, or that all of the structurals really aren't that different, and that really it's just 2020 all over again, where it's a

pretty tight election. I think that's actually, I'd probably put my money on that. That's probably the most, it's so important that we say because part of why we talk about this so much is because there's been such a shift. I mean, we were really looking at massive Republican gains in the House, like historic level margins, like huge gains in the Senate, definitely taking control, Mitch McConnell back in. And so don't mistake any of this for us saying like, oh, Democrats are going to romp now and they're going to keep the House and whatever. It's still very likely Republicans win the House. Senate is probably 50-50 in terms of what's going to happen there. But this is just very, very different from what the landscape was looking like previously. Yeah, that's right.

At the same time, this is funny. So Republicans are now, you know, they are having a lot of trouble in terms of cash shortage. And Trump, with his PAC, they raised a ton of money that they didn't spend. And we'll get into some legal jeopardy over that momentarily. But they're trying to push him to spend his PAC money in these Senate races in particular.

Put this up on the screen. Now, of course, so here's the tweet says, News, Republicans want Trump to move his $99 million in PAC money into the Senate races. McConnell, who is not really on speaking terms with Trump, I think, advising Trump-friendly candidates and senators to urge Trump to transfer millions into Super PAC-supporting GOP candidates. There has been a lot of maneuvering behind the scenes to try to fill the coffers and backstop the fundraising of candidates, Blake Masters in particular, J.D. Vance as well. But the Senate Republican candidates across the board, they have

a lot of very inexperienced candidates who have turned out to be extremely poor fundraisers. You have Rick Scott heading up the Republican senatorial arm that wasted, like blew through their entire cash haul on trying to build their digital fundraising, which did not work out whatsoever. So they're in desperate straits. McConnell was sort of begging Peter Thiel to get back in, in the Blake Masters race in particular. That seems to be one where the cash shortage in particular is a big problem. Not a lot of ads reserved for the fall. Mark Kelly has been a prolific fundraiser.

The Democrat, who's the obvious incumbent there. So this is the latest effort is like, where can we drum up some cash? Something tells me that Trump is not going to be that receptive to this message. Yeah, I don't think so. Look, I think it's funny because Trump is the juggernaut, but he just doesn't care about the rest of Republicans, leaving them

scrambling. Right now, McConnell and Peter Thiel are like in a standoff on who's going to try and bail out Blake Masters. We'll see how that goes. I think it's outrageous, you know, frankly. Arizona is clearly like a battleground. McConnell, you know, using his like status of masters being former Teal person, be like, you need to cough up money if you want me to spend anything at the same time. Like, why should McConnell have all that power in the first place? It shouldn't be that way.

Trump is a big part of that too. So I'm not saying I feel bad. I just think it's funny. It's yeah. I've just find the whole thing hilarious. Um, yeah. And a lot of the reason that they have this lineup of candidates is because of Trump. So it does make sense that they'd be like, hey buddy, you're going to support

your guys here, but of course he doesn't care, so he wants to sit on his cash and do whatever he's going to ultimately do with it. McConnell really in the really in a strong position now in spite of all the rhetoric out of the primaries about, oh, we're not going to vote for him

for leader and whatever, and now Blake Masters having to suck up to him to be able to get the cash to be able to compete in the state. So we'll see how that all goes. Okay, so at the same time, that very same PAC is coming under some federal scrutiny, a grand jury investigation into Trump's Save America PAC. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen for this next portion. So this was revealed last week. Trump's post-election fundraising comes under scrutiny by the Justice Department. A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas seeking information about Save America PAC, which was formed as Donald J. Trump promoted baseless assertions about election fraud. They go on to say that a federal grand jury is examining, here in D.C., by the way, is examining the

formation of and spending by a fundraising operation created by Trump right after his loss as he was soliciting millions of dollars, asserting widespread voting fraud, which, of course, was not true. According to the subpoenas issued by that grand jury, the Justice Department is interested in the inner workings of Save America PAC, and they have been sending subpoenas to junior and mid-level aides who worked in the White House and for Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. Now, this PAC, we've been covering it for a long time, actually. Years, yeah. Was founded, I think it was two days after Election Day. So this was, they were sending

out sometimes 25 solicitations a day for this freaking thing saying like, fight back against election fraud. We're going to stop this deal. And so people poured money by millions of dollars into this. Most of that money was never spent. Well, on stop the steal. No, most of it was never spent. Yes. $135 million was brought in.

They spent $36 million. And yeah, even that $36 million that they spent, a tiny, tiny fraction of it had anything to do with election fraud. Now, I'm surprised that there are questions. Unfortunately, because our campaign finance laws are so loose, I'm actually surprised that there are legit legal questions about the spending. They, you know, in his defense, they're saying like, oh, it's just a marketing ploy to get people to donate. But there's a lot of looseness in terms of how you raise the money and how it has to be spent. But this got a lot more attention also after the January 6th committee talked some about how they were raising money for this, what they described as an official election defense

fund, even though no such fund existed. So apparently there are some questions over whether there was actual illegality in the way that this was formed and the way that the fundraising was conducted. It could be the fundraising. It could also be the role in the Save America PACs giving money to the false elector scheme. So it could be funding towards that. Remember, there's also that state investigation going on in Georgia. I think we should look. Grand jury's issued something. We don't know anything about it. Yeah. But, you know, probably not looking good for all of them. Trump is just getting attacked really on all fronts. But, you know, an easy way to do that is not scam people out of $100 million. Yeah. How about that? How about that? Well, you are mentioning that apparently Trump is in D.C. this week. Yes. Okay. Nobody really knows why. I don't have a lot of details. Trump is here. He's here in the Washington area.

He landed at Dulles Airport last night. None of us have any idea why. We don't even know where he's staying. We don't know what he's doing. He doesn't have his hotel anymore, huh? He has not scheduled, yeah, not scheduled to give a speech. He's not scheduled to do anything. So there's rampant speculation online.

I can't give you any of that. I'm just going to tell you. The man is here. We don't really know why. Maybe we'll have an update for you tomorrow. So what's the speculation? Speculation is... Okay, let me couch it all in the most deranged conspiracy.

Yeah, this is total rampant, baseless speculation. I have no... There's no evidence for any of this. So please... Okay. Number one, he could be here to visit Walter Reed Medical Center. He's a former president. That would be his hospital.

Yeah, could be getting standard care or whatever. But presumably, at the same time, he can receive standard medical care anyway. So why would he even be here? Number two, surprise speech. Could be surprise re-election. Could be surprise rally. Could be surprise appearance. Or he could be announcing his re-elect.

Could be announcing re-elect. Could be announcing a midterm campaign. Could be headlining an RNC fundraiser that we don't know about. So that put that there. And then the craziest one would be is meeting with federal investigators of some kind, either sitting down for a subpoena, for an interview. But I do feel like he would release that. I don't think they would happen in secret. Maybe they negotiate it that way. I have no idea. Anyway, all I know is the man is here. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah. Very interesting. All right. Next, we want to move on to, because we don't want to lose sight of the fact that in Jackson, Mississippi, the residents

still cannot drink the water. And now we actually have the EPA launching an investigation into what the hell is going on there. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So this is CBS News. They say EPA launches investigation into Jackson, Mississippi water crisis. The EPA has launched a review of that water crisis, which of course left thousands of residents without water for days. And they have been on, I really think it's important not to lose sight of, this city has been on a boil alert for well over a month at this point, which continues to

this day. The EPA's Office of Inspector General told CBS News the agency had launched a multidisciplinary review. They have sent personnel to Jackson who are currently on the ground collecting data and conducting interviews surrounding work related to the city's water system. And listen, as we have been covering now for quite a while, Jackson, back two winters ago, had a disaster in terms of their water system. So this has been ongoing problems for years and years of this system, which is, you know, 100 years old. It's decaying. It's a disaster for these residents. Broke down during this winter crisis. Sufficient fixes were not undertaken in spite of the fact Mississippi did, in fact, get a lot of money from the federal infrastructure package.

The overwhelming majority of that has not gone to Jackson. And let me just show you. I mean, still now, this is from, I think, two days ago. This is what the water looks like for some residents in Jackson. For those of you who can't see this or are just listening, I mean, it is as brown as it looks like coffee. It looks actually darker than coffee, to be honest with you, coming out of the tap. It's just absolutely disgusting. And this is the capital city of Mississippi, and this is what residents are dealing with.

Yeah, it's really horrific. And, look, I mean, it's just obviously systemic. The interesting thing on the EPA and other regulations is that that might subsume an investigation of whatever the state is going to try and do. Because I do think a lot of eyes should stay on this. I mean, look, the city of Flint, I mean, and what happened there? There was a hell of a lot of criminality

that was involved all the way at the very, very top. And all those people basically got away with it. So if the feds are able to come in and at least provide some oversight or have an investigation, it will give us a clearer view of what happened than Flint. I mean, Obama and them really did drop. I mean, Trump too, really dropped the ball on what happened in that investigation. So this would actually be an area for them to be able to step up and actually tell us about what the hell happened here. Because Jackson is just the bleeding edge, right? With Jackson is the worst of the worst of the worst. How many cities are close to this? I really want to know. I mean, it's interesting. I live in a historic area and they tell us all the time. They're like, hey, you know, the cities from

1700s, like the sewage system just backs up sometimes. I'm like, hold on. Like, wait, what? We live five miles from Washington, D.C. How's that even possible? So this is a problem, I think, that plagues huge portions of the country. We just learn about it in the most failed areas of our state. That's right. That's exactly right. And I mean, West Virginia has had huge problems with their water systems. There was, I think it's Martin County, Kentucky, that for years was having similar problems where, I mean, you know, some of these places where the tax base has massively declined. And in Jackson, you had huge white flights.

So you now have a very like high poverty level and majority black population. So you've had this huge decline in the tax base and they don't have the local money in order to keep the infrastructure updated. And it is not just the water system. And this is what you would see in these towns in West Virginia and the eastern part of Kentucky, too, where they used to have this huge tax base because of coal mining. And then as coal mining has declined, they just don't have the money to support this crumbling infrastructure. So the sewage treatment, the water treatment, everything starts to fall apart. The roads,

the parks, the bridges, everything starts to fall apart. And that's what you really see in Jackson. And it's so incredibly sad to see these people treated in this way, just discarded and really uncared for. Our friend Jordan Sheridan, status quo, he has been probably the best and most dogged reporter in terms of the Flint water crisis. He and his team still on the ground in Jackson, not letting go of this story, shining a light on just how neglected this entire population has been. They had an interview with a resident here. I just want to describe the scene for people who can't see it. As he's interviewing had an interview with a resident here. I just want to describe the scene for people who can't see it. As he's interviewing this man who's a resident of

Jackson, you see in the background these huge, not potholes, literal holes. Like sinkholes. In the road, where if you go and look, you can see there's nothing underneath the road, and you can see the water pipes there. And all the city has done is like shoved cones into them so that people don't drive over them. And it's been like this for years. Like this didn't just happen. So that's the state of the infrastructure in the city. Let's take a listen to a little of that interview. This is one example, right? Two years, no one's fixing the giant fucking hole in the ground. That's a problem. What do you think of the responses from

some of these folks so far? They haven't said too much i think the responses are okay but like i said there's not much that they're saying that they can do at the moment and what the governor and the mayor is saying that there's no predicted end date for this is outrageous man i feel like you know more people should be speaking up more people should be stepping up and that's not and i just see in madison it's no, you know, more people should be speaking up, more people should be stepping up, and that's not, and I just see in Madison, it's no problem, you know, everything's completely fine, shower, water, whatever you need, and then I come down here on the, during the weekend, it's just like the complete opposite, you know, it's just like two different views of, two different views of life, and I just see how things work completely fine, and now,

this was a problem in Madison, I feel like it would have been fixed. Or a different part of a wider area, it would have been taken care of. So Madison that he's talking about there is a more affluent, suburban part of Jackson see is impoverished parts of America just abandoned, neglected. And the message to the citizens get there is y'all don't care about us. You do not care whether we live or die. Yeah, that's true. Look, I mean, we're going to stay on it as much as we can, but I think we should admit like the reality is, is that probably it won't get fixed all that quickly. And whatever fix does come will be so precarious that it'll probably just break again next time that there is flooding. That's the reality. I wish it wasn't that way, but that's probably the truth, unfortunately.

And there's probably a hell of a lot of corruption. And actually, that's probably the area I'll try and look at, which is how I'm ever... Because you know there's some funds being sent from somewhere. I'm like, is it going to be properly used like Flint? Probably not. Not a lot of evidence to actually point that direction. Yeah, well, I mean, they've been asking for significant funding to try to fix this thing. The state's just like, no.

Yeah. No. I mean, it's partly on a political spike. You know, you've got a Democratic-run city, and you've got a Republican-dominated legislature, a Republican governor, and they just haven't cared to do anything. Yeah, it reminds me of New Orleans, too, right? It always happens in some of these states. And eventually, the country moves on, but the people there actually can't move on. It's really sad. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Let's talk about 9-11. You know, I always think it's important. It's been 21 years. Sometimes

when I look at our demographic data, it's stunning because a sizable chunk of our audience, Crystal, either has no memory of 9-11 or was not even alive on 9-11. I can wrap my head around no memory because I was young, but not alive is crazy. Yeah. You are now eligible to drink if you were born on 9-12, 2001. The doo-doo just won the U.S. Open, Carlos Alcaraz. Yes. Not born on 9-11.

He's 19 years old. It's crazy. I mean, it's nuts. That guy's a phenom, by the way. The reason I think it's important in order to do these segments, not just about the day itself, although I do encourage people, there's books like The Looming Tower and, you know, things like that that people should check out is, you know, I'm just young enough to remember that there was a before time. And to try and describe what that time in America was like compared to the post-9-11 era is really difficult. And I always come back to this clip. Steve Kornacki tweeted it out last year.

It's just been on my mind really ever since. It's the last broadcast from NBC News on the night of September 10, 2001. And just the concerns and what's happening, it just seemed so pedestrian, you know, to compare to eventually what we knew was happening. So let's take a listen to that. We'll talk about it on the other side. It's the economy, and it's not going well. President Bush under new pressure to stop the slide. Will another tax cut turn it around? In depth tonight, the right stuff. No engines, more than 300 on board. The pilots land the plane, but new questions.

Was it heroic flying or an avoidable mistake? Lifeline, new hope for a test to predict the risk of Alzheimer's. But would you really want to know the truth? And the Fleecing of America, They call it the Fountain of Youth. Tonight, new information on the danger and waste of money involving those popular herbal supplements. From NBC News World Headquarters in New York, this is NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. Good evening. President Bush tonight is under increasing pressure to do something about the troubles in the American economy,

troubles that have a ripple effect around the world. There is no sign of a recovery anywhere, anytime soon. And the consequences are piling up every day. We begin tonight with NBC's David Gregory, who is traveling with the president in Florida. David. And Tom, many of those consequences are political, both for the president and congressional Republicans who have an election next year. It is Republicans who are putting increasing pressure on the president to do something more for the economy and soon. As somebody pointed out, he found a way to boost the economy, all right? He certainly did, didn't he?

True. Unfortunately. Yeah, it's just crazy. I mean, you know, David Gregory was there, Florida. That's where President Bush was on the day of 9-11, famously with all those school kids. It's also just funny, you know, when they think about the numbers, like a trillion dollar deficit. I'm like, wow, can't imagine that one. Just wait to see what Iraq turns out to be.

Yeah, it's just, I don't know. I think it's fascinating to think about what life was like before, not even the security state, but just the way the United States was perceived, our economic strength. I mean, the president getting a blowjob in the Oval Office was like the worst thing that had happened in this country. You know, it like tore everything apart. He still left with 60 something percent approval rating. We had a budget surplus. It's like the, in the extent to how the economy was the unipolar moment of what we were at from a strength wise and how it was all squandered by then by the Bush administration post 9-11. I don't know. It's sad to me that people who were

born after have no memory of that. They only have memory of the turmoil. The horror of that day, which was, I mean, which is unspeakable, in the end, didn't come close to the horror of our response and what it did to our country, what it did to the world. You know, I was reflecting on, there's a lot of conversation about Biden and calling Republicans fascists and Trump and all this stuff. Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept had this tweet thread that I've really been thinking about. And he said, I still consider the high watermark of what felt like fascism in the U.S. The Bush-Cheney years, extrajudicial disappearances, state-sanctioned torture, expanding list of wars. Most of the media transformed into cheerleading zombies. Nothing since compares with that. He goes on to say,

substantively speaking, the Bush viewers had the most practical steps taken towards an actual fascist government, including attempts to legally grant the executive absolute power. And there was just almost no room for dissent. No. And you had, you know, and the population was so shocked and horrified, understandably, by that day, that then a bipartisan group of leaders, including Bush, including our current president, really came together to create this huge, massive amounts of executive power, torture, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib. I mean, all of these unbelievable abuses. And now in hindsight, we have a different view of the Iraq war. We have a different view of this time period, but it's not like those powers have been rolled back. We've only continued further and further and further down that road. So

it is worth reflecting on the way that we responded and the way that shaped our society and the fact that, you know, that was really the moment when we could have invested a lot in our future, invested a lot here, you know, got in Jackson, Mississippi, a freaking working like water supply and other places around the country, like rebuilding our infrastructure, making sure we're set up for the next century. And we didn't do that. Instead, we thought we could spread democracy around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, massive cost to our own citizens, population, of course, to our men and women in uniform. Huge, huge, devastating mistake for our nation and also for the world. Yeah. I mean, people always are like, why do you hate Bush so much? It's like, it's difficult

to describe if you understood where we were and where we could have gone and what happened. I mean, September 12, 2001, exactly 20 years ago, 21 years ago today, is when Paul Wolfowitz, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and others made the decision to start using 9-11 to link to Saddam Hussein and set the stage for the eventual invasion of Iraq, the squandering of $6 trillion, not to mention thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis, Syrians, and others who paid the price. It's like that decision was one of the worst decisions and responses by an American president, a conscious decision, a man thrust into the office who had to respond. I mean, it really put him up there with like James

Buchanan in terms of you didn't meet the moment and millions of people paid the price as a result of that. And it's one of those areas where sometimes you have things which are structural forces, right? Which is things happening in Europe and others. Certainly you can't control 9-11, but you can control the response. And by having a bad response, you effectively set the stage to where we are today. So I really think everything hinges on 9-11. Everything as to where we are. Donald Trump. Look at Afghanistan today.

Yeah. I mean, I was much more hot about this a year ago because it was 20 years and also we were coming off the Afghan withdrawal. But this time it seemed like it kind of just went under the radar. And, you know, never forget, it shouldn't just be about what happened on the day of 9-11. I mean, I don't ever forget what happened in response. And all those people are fat and filthy rich, you know, as a result. Dick Cheney is a hero. George W. Bush is some pro-democracy figure.

Condoleezza Rice, I think she worked for the NFL or something like that. Dropbox board. Paul Wolfowitz is fine. I saw him the other day on the street. Not to mention all these defense contractors. Put them aside. I'm saying the people who actually got us into it, Doug Fyfe, all these people, they're fine. They've got big-ass homes in McLean in Northern Virginia.

They're multimillionaires. They'll die fat and happy. And it's like there's a lot of people who didn't die happy or who died very premature deaths as a result of their decision. And they'll never be held accountable for it. And even more unfortunately, I think the media today, people like Nicole Wallace and others, David Frum, I mean, they committed— Oh, they're totally invested in resuscitating all these people. They committed unforgivable sins, and we have somehow just whitewashed against it.

So, you know, with Trump and all this, like, I always look at it as I'm like, if you don't understand just how bad the Bush years were for the country, for everything, and are unable to adjust your magnitude and more, like, I really can't help it. We do not have to rehab George W. Bush. Yes, you do not, in fact, have to do that. You don't have to do that. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

For years now, Sagar and I have been covering the unprecedented decline in U.S. lifespans, one of the most revealing signs of a nation that, despite its wealth, is failing its citizens in the most basic ways. The latest data is stunning in its severity. It is alarming when life expectancy drops year over year by even a fraction of a point. But accelerated by the pandemic between 2020 and 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped an entire year. In 2019, Americans could expect to live an average of 79 years. By the end of 2021, that number had plummeted to 76 years. Some groups were harder hit than others. Native Americans and Alaska Natives saw their average lifespans drop by four years in 2020 alone. Astonishing. But it's not just the absolute decline that matters here. Equally revealing

is how we are faring compared to our peer nations. And that story, if anything, is even more grim. Just take a look at this graphic plotting the income levels of OECD nations with their average life expectancy. You can see the U.S. hanging out there all on its own. Our little dot is high on the graph because we are high income. But over towards the left side of the chart, in line with countries like Slovakia and Turkey when it comes to life expectancy. We are a rich nation that dies like we are poor.

Our GDP per capita is $66,000 and we are performing about as poorly on this metric as a nation with only $8,000 in GDP per capita. Countries with far lower GDP per capita like Costa Rica and Chile, Slovenia and Greece are easily outpacing us in terms of how many years their citizens can expect to live. Not only that, but there are some indications that during the pandemic, U.S. life expectancy actually dropped well below that of China's. In a viral tweet, Ian Brummer shared

this graphic showing how Chinese life expectancy closed the gap and then jumped ahead of U.S. life expectancy by a full year. Now, on the chart, you can see the purple Chinese line leaps upwards and then steadily rises from 1980 on, not even declining during the COVID pandemic. Our blue line, on the other hand, flattens out and dips modestly around 2016 before dropping precipitously during the pandemic. Now, if this data is correct, Chinese life expectancy is now a full year ahead of ours. It does come with a lot of caveats here, though. The U.S. data, for one, is provisional and might be adjusted, though I think we can pretty well assume it's pretty close to being accurate. The bigger question, of course, is on the Chinese side, where data is notoriously difficult to come by, especially accurate data. The 2020

data for China on this chart comes from OECD estimates, but the new 2021 data relies on Chinese government statistics. The Chinese government, of course, has an interest in cooking the books to prove that their COVID-0 policy was effective and saved Chinese lives. But even if we throw out the 2021 Chinese government data, these numbers still show China surpassing the U.S. back in 2020. So friends, what do we make of all of this? Well, first of all, the comparison with China is a good reminder that the number of days you spend alive is not the only metric of a good life. I don't doubt that China's COVID zero policy kept more of their people living than our approach, but what was the quality of that life? What was it like when residents were trapped in their apartments with drones buzzing overhead, warning them of the

consequences of leaving even to obtain basic supplies like, for example, food? Every society strikes a different balance when it comes to liberty versus safety, and I think it's safe to say culturally, we lean more into the give me liberty or give me death mentality. As a culture, we are willing to accept some higher loss of lives in exchange for individual freedoms. This is, of course, clearest in our gun and our car culture, both of which are significant contributors to American deaths. The public would like to place more limits on gun ownership, yes, than we presently have, and supports more public transit than we presently have, but I would still accept that our attitude is still more pro-car and pro-gun, even with the

drawbacks, than a lot of other peer nations. Now, it's tempting to simply put our more libertarian COVID approach into this category as well. Sure, we had more deaths, but we had liberty, am I right? But the reason we fail to protect American lives during COVID is mostly the same reason we fail to protect American lives from overdoses, diabetes, heart disease every single day, our immoral for-profit health care system. In fact, a Yale study found that if, like our wealthy peers, the U.S. had single-payer health care, around one-third of all COVID deaths could have been prevented. Didn't need new lockdowns or more mask mandates, just having single-payer could have prevented a third of all COVID deaths. What's

more, having such a system would have actually saved billions of dollars. In a single year, universal health care could have saved $110 billion in COVID hospital costs alone. In a normal non-pandemic year, some $438 billion could be saved overall. And the reason for this is pretty straightforward. Makes a lot of sense. When Americans don't have access to health care, they put off going to the doctor until their problems are acute. And acute emergency problems are a lot more expensive to deal with than if you catch issues early and keep your population healthy. That is why we spend more than every other OECD nation on health care, but still manage to get much, much worse outcomes. The other major contributor to our falling lifespan,

drug overdoses, is more complex, admittedly, but also directly tied to our broader healthcare system failures. Our drug laws, yes, are obviously a failure on this front by criminalizing addiction rather than treating it as a health issue. And our general societal rot contributes to these deaths of despair as well. But the fact that counseling and treatment are only available to a select few, that is a core reason why we have so many overdose deaths. Not to mention the corrupt incentives at the center of our for-profit healthcare system, which launched the opioid epidemic in the first place. When drug companies discovered they could make billions off of addiction, they were more than happy to stoke that crisis. There's big money in creating addicts,

not so much in recovery, and certainly not in healthy living. Those who profit off this corrupt evil system of medical gouging justify its continued existence by making appeals to our love of liberty and our love of individual freedom. Every attack on single payer insists it's going to constrain choice and put health decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats instead of individuals. We get lies about death panels and losing access to your favorite doctor. But what kind of freedom is it to not be able to go to a doctor at all, or to have your treatment options in the hands of sociopaths at health insurance companies, or to be among the millions who lose everything in bankruptcy because of medical debt? So while there is a lot that is complex about our drops in life expectancy,

our failures as compared to China and the rest of the world. One big part is actually really simple. We have a terrible health care system, and so we get terrible health outcomes, including dying earlier. We put profits at the center of our system, and so we get a lot of sick people and a lot of wealthy executives. If we put health at the center instead, it could change everything. And we do not have to sacrifice personal freedom in order to live longer, healthier, higher quality lives. Give us liberty and give us less death. And Sagar, you know, it's stunning these comparisons. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, during the student debt cancellation episode, I made my views clear. I'm for major student debt cancellation as long as it deals with the underlying colleges themselves. Why do I care about the colleges? Because they are not only crooks and criminals who have bankrupted millions of American youths, but they have specifically defrauded the U.S. government, the taxpayers, students themselves, to prop up an army of useless diversity bureaucrats who are ruining our society. The argument was, well, we can't let them be the perfect enemy of the good. And I'm glad people got some relief. I want to make that very clear. But let's take a real hard look into the exact

institutions that we just handed a trillion-dollar lifeline. Let's start with Oberlin College. Oberlin is a poster child for the problem. Private liberal arts college in Ohio charges $80,000 a year in total for students. Tuition at the university has been spiking for years. It caters to the children of the PMC elite to further its kind, and its racial politics are about exactly what you would expect. Ironically, this is now a huge problem for them. After Oberlin was ordered by a judge to pay $37 million in damages to a local bakery that it defamed as racist. The circumstances of the situation are very ugly. They reveal exactly who tuition money is propping up. In 2016, there was an incident at

a local bakery near the campus in which a student tried to buy a bottle of wine with a fake ID while shoplifting two more under his coat. Is it the crime of the century? No. Not great, though. At the time, a son of the owner, he was a manning the cash register, noticed the shoplifting and chased the student out onto the street. They got into some sort of scuffle. Once again, seems pretty pedestrian. The student was shoplifting, was arrested. Should have probably ended there. But oh no. Because the student who was shoplifting was black, almost instantly the campus exploded with hundreds of people surrounding the bakery and branding it as racist. Now, cringe students organizing boycotts is one thing.

Where things got worse is in the Oberlin administration, specifically the dean of students, joined in by not only attending these protests outside the bakery, but printing out and distributing flyers from the university that said the bakery was a, quote, racist establishment in all caps that, quote, had a long account of racial profiling and discrimination. The dean had not one shred of evidence to back up this egregious claim. Furthermore, Oberlin said that it would stop placing orders from the bakery for campus events and only would do so if the bakery dropped the charges against its students who were literally caught in the act of shoplifting.

And by the way, do not even claim they weren't breaking the law. The campaign by administrators continued, including literally using the institution to combat the bakery. After years of wrangling the judicial system and a final ruling in the Ohio Supreme Court, they now have to pay up big time on the charge of libel. But what really got me is this. Oberlin, in its decision to pay the Gibson family and the bakery, they admitted no wrongdoing. They said they only, quote, hoped healing could now continue with the city that they now have the college in. And they had the gall to say, quote, with careful financial planning, they could afford

the judgment without impacting our academic and student experience. What they neglected to say is their endowment is a whopping $1 billion. They could afford that judgment 20 times over, but they're framing it as if they're somehow detracting funds for students and it is a pretext possibly for inevitable tuition raise next year. Again, to be 100% clear, Oberlin has never admitted wrongdoing. After the jury found for the bakery in 2019, they continued to claim, with zero evidence, that the bakery was the one who was responsible. Now, once again, you can say this stuff doesn't matter, Sagar, but I beg to differ. The people who are indoctrinated and participate in this madness not only grow up, they work at powerful institutions in this country. And the behavior we are normalizing,

but now subsidizing, matters a hell of a lot. And there's another recent incident that also underscores the insanity of these institutions that we're propping up. At a recent women's volleyball match between Duke University and Brigham Young University, a Duke player claimed that students in the BYU crowd had racially heckled her and hurled slurs at her during the match. BYU appeared to have identified the person involved, and they took the word of the player, saying that person would be banned from future sporting events. But then, the person they banned claimed they actually had never said anything. Campus police got involved. They reviewed a video camera that was directly trained on the man, which didn't show him speaking at all. BYU then said, oh, well, maybe someone else said something. They asked people to send in videos from the crowd surrounding Arias. Well, hmm. After looking at all

video evidence and audio evidence, including interviewing more than 50 people who were in the stands, the people who worked at Duke, the people who work for BYU, event security, management, etc., here's what they say, quote, they have not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engage in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event. Now, look, I'm not saying the player is lying. Maybe she thought she heard something and she got upset. I actually get that. People have said racially disparaging things to me before. After that, you become very hypersensitive.

But the student is sticking to her story. That's her right. But worse is that Duke, who has said this, is, quote, We unequivocally stand with and champion our student, especially when their character is called into question. So in other words, even if there isn't a shred of evidence to back up this accusation, the university is backing it up and portraying it as a racist incident, slandering another university and its fans as racist. They're refusing to back down. Given what happened with their fake Duke Lacrosse rape case in 2007, you would think they would learn their lesson.

But of course, they've only learned to triple down. This mind virus infects the institutions of education across this country. It is genuinely difficult to believe if you don't delve every once in a while into the crazy cases like this that happen all the time. All I'm saying, is it the most important thing in the world? No. But it's a perfect view why these institutions really do need to be destroyed and a new breed of faculty in order to particularly to get the boot. To date, I have not heard really a single credible response from people who back up student loan forgiveness to genuinely grapple with this problem financially and ideologically. Once again, I'm reiterating my call. You need to burn these

places to the ground if they are all good for is trying to split us up right now on false pretenses. And that's something that I just can't get out of my head, Crystal. I mean, this Duke incident is- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Hey, guys, we had some technical difficulties in connecting with Jeff. We're going to post the interview. We just want to make sure that the show isn't late. So that'll come a little bit later today.

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