Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/20/22: Housing Market, Puerto Rico, Midterm Campaigns, Pentagon Psyop, Lab Leak, & More!

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss housing market trends, Puerto Rico hurricane, Biden 2024, 2022 campaigns, civil war rhetoric, Pentagon psyops, lab leak, & midterm forecasting!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/Chicago Tickets: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets J. Miles Coleman: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/author/j-miles-coleman/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do.

Lots of big stories breaking this morning. We have a deep dive for you into the housing market. A lot going on there in terms of housing costs and prices and rent prices continuing to go upward. So we will break all of that down for you because the picture is a little bit complex and a little bit nuanced. Also, an update for you out of Puerto Rico where residents are still without power and without water. This is, what, five years after Hurricane Maria hit? And it seems like, you know, very few of the upgrades that needed to be made to protect Puerto Rico from another storm have actually been made, even though the money has been there. So we are going to take a look at what the hell is going on on the ground there.

Also, some eyebrow-raising comments from former president, not former president, current President Biden. In that 60 Minutes interview, he was asked, is he running again? And he would not answer. So we will break that down. And also Gavin Newsom saying unequivocally, well, his aides are leaking unequivocally that he will run if Biden does not. So we'll break that down. And also Gavin Newsom saying unequivocally, well, his aides are leaking unequivocally that he will run if Biden does not. So we'll break that down for you. Also, some new details about 2022. Kamala Harris out on the road trying to rev up the young people. You know how the young folks just love Kamala Harris.

I'm sure that's going to be a very effective strategy for the Democrats, as well as a prominent journalist sounding the alarm bells about a potential civil war. We'll break all of that down for you. We also have a big picture look at the midterms. There's some new data out that has some warning signs for Democrats. We've had, you know, a lot of numbers that have been pretty positive for Democrats recently, but Republicans have actually been turning out at higher rates in the primaries. Is that indicative of a broader trend for the midterms? We will ask our friend J. Miles Coleman about that. Before we get to any of that, though, live show. Live show. Put it up there on the screen, guys. Chicago, we're coming. The Vic Theater. We're going to be there on October 15th, so go ahead and buy your tickets. Link is right

there down in the description. We put a little teaser out on Atlanta. Just a little preview for everybody. We are going to be sending out the live show for our premium subscribers. They'll be able to watch the entire thing tomorrow on Wednesday. We might put a few clips out there so everybody can get a little bit of a taste. So just so you guys know, that's exactly how we run things. You'll get to be able to see it. So sign up for premium if you actually want to watch the full thing, watch a couple of the clips. And if you like what you see, come and see us in Chicago and beyond. As we said in Chicago, though, that is going to be the flagship Midwest show. So if you're in the area, I highly recommend that you come out in the region.

Second is CounterPoints. We are so excited to have CounterPoints once again on Friday. We've got the discount going on right now, so 10% off on our annual subscriptions just to be able to help fund the expansion of CounterPoints, hiring the new person, and so much more that we're doing over here at Breaking Points. Enough administrative. Let's get to the show. Let's get to the housing market in particular and put this first piece up on the

screen. So some brand new numbers underscoring just how expensive it is getting for people to buy homes. Why? Because mortgage interest rates are skyrocketing along with the Fed's actions. This tweet says the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumps to 6.42%. That is the highest reading since 2008. Let's take a look at this next piece, which is similar. The average monthly mortgage payment in the U.S. has shot up thanks to the Fed. This is from our friend Joe Weisenthal. He says, that might push more people into renting. If I were a landlord, I might be tempted to raise the rent even more. By the way, when you look at these numbers, so the monthly mortgage payment for someone who's buying a home is now over $2,000. That has more than doubled since March 2020. So just two years ago, less than two years ago, if you were buying a house, the average monthly mortgage payment for someone buying a home was $1,000. Now it's $2,000.

I mean, that is insane, the escalation there. Calculations based on the median, existing home price, average 30-year mortgage rate, and assuming a 20% down payment. And at the same time, you can see the way that housing becoming so expensive means that more people are forced to rent. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Guess what? Rising rent prices are keeping inflation high. So we covered this when we got the last inflation numbers, that a significant part of why we continue to see rising inflation numbers is because rents continue to escalate. Shelter prices rose 0.7% in August. That is the biggest

monthly jump since 91. So huge numbers there. One of the biggest drivers of inflation, they say, has been higher rent prices. According to data from Zillow, the typical U.S. monthly rent was $2,090 in August. That is up 12.3% from just a year before. That is much higher than it was before the pandemic in February 2020. The nation's average rent was $1,660. So even though big picture in a majority of markets that are being tracked now, these sort of like, you know, housing price, like the sticker price of houses is going down. The costs are going up because mortgage interest rates are so incredibly high. Also, we haven't seen that great of a decline in these markets. Why? Because people who are in their homes now, they likely have a low mortgage interest rate. So they don't want to

move right now. They don't want to sell. They don't want to move right now. They don't want to sell. They don't want to move because they know they're going to then get hit with these high mortgage interest rate costs and that'll screw them over. So a lot of people are holding onto their houses, even though they might in other conditions sell. That's limiting the inventory that's available. So even though we have seen some price decline, it's not like this huge crash in the prices that makes it compensate for the fact that mortgage interest rates are now so, so high. Yeah, exactly. So once again, just to explain it, whenever the housing market is more inaccessible, even to higher bidders, people who

would have bought otherwise, they're going to rent. Whenever they rent, that pushes out other customers down to a lower tier. So they get lower quality housing roughly at the same price because rents are rising and we have a housing squeeze. At the same time that we already have a major housing shortage, what's happening is that the home builders themselves are going to either delay construction or they're not going to bring their full houses to market because they don't want to sell in the middle of the downturn because they can't recoup their investment. And they know that it would be much better either to hold it, they can pause construction, they can work on other projects and other things. So that means that the available housing stock goes down. So you almost have a squeeze of rental markets. And

once again, it's the poor, the working class, and frankly, even the middle class at this point, who are all basically renting. I mean, it's almost nearly impossible to buy a house. Otherwise, high mortgage also makes it so that buying is not at the same value proposition, even if you do somehow miraculously have the cash in order to save and to buy a house. So it's a very, very bad situation all the way around. And finally, just to bring it back to inflation, I mean, you could say like if rent right now is only up by 0.5%, quote unquote, over last month, here's the issue. Because it went up so high in 2021, so many people are locked into these astronomically high rates. And because the rate of rent has not gone down, whenever they have to re-sign, they still have to re-sign at a very, very high rate compared to previously.

So this really is all in the favor of capital and the ownership class. Because the ownership class, like, if you're a landlord, you don't care if the washing machine is broken. I recently heard a story of somebody who had to rent a house and had to bring their own washer and dryer. Have you ever heard of such a thing? No. And the dryer, the renter was like, what are you going to do? I've rented plenty of apartments that just don't have washer and dryer in them. Right.

And that's certainly in New York City very common. Yeah, this is not New York. But to be like, bring your BYO washer and dryer in them. Yeah, I've rented probably 10 places. And that's certainly in New York City very common. Yeah, this is not New York. But to be like, bring your BYO washer and dryer. This is not New York. They're like, you gotta buy your own washer and dryer. That's crazy. And they're like, are you serious? And it's one of those things where it's like,

okay, well, I can find somebody else who'll do it. So, you know, they have all the power and they don't have to fix anything. You also think about the fact that, okay, so if prices come down, and they have come down in a majority of markets, housing prices have come down, but mortgage interest rates are so high that it's not like your monthly payment is going to be any

lower. In fact, as we're seeing, it's like double what it used to be. Who does that ultimately benefit? Well, it benefits rich people who have cash that they can just, you know, pay a house in cash, and it benefits primarily permanent capital because they can take advantage of the lower prices and not have to deal with the higher financing costs because, again, they have the cash up front. Those are the people who benefit most from a market like this. So in a lot of ways, the Fed's policy, which, let's be clear, is really aimed very directly at the housing market.

I mean, Jerome Powell said flat out, he said, I'd say if you are a homebuyer, somebody or a young person looking to buy a home, you need a bit of a reset. We need to get back to a place where supply and demand are back together and where inflation is down low again and mortgage rates are low again. So he's saying very directly, like, we are targeting the housing market with our actions. What they have created thus far is the worst of all possible worlds. You still have low inventory, both because of the phenomenon I talked about, homebuyers holding onto their houses because they don't want to get hit with these high mortgage interest rates. You have homebuilders not having new housing starts because their financing rates are also higher. So you have a low inventory, which is keeping prices relatively high.

So we are seeing somewhat of a downward turn in terms of that. And then the costs are so high because of mortgage interest rates. And then that trickles down to the rental market. So people there are getting screwed as well. So it really is a bad situation for everyone. And if you're an existing homeowner, I mean, you're in a better position than anybody else. But also because the prices are declining, you're seeing your equity being eaten away. You're just locked in. Yeah, and you're stuck. You're just, you're stuck. Like you're not going anywhere. I saw a story of somebody who had, like, a 1.5% mortgage rate. By the way, I don't even know how that exists.

But apparently they grabbed it. They must have got it at the exact same time. Perfect day. And they're like, I'm not going anywhere. They're like, every house around me could burn down, and I still wouldn't move because I have to stay here. They're like, I have no other options. I will never achieve this deal again. Right.

I mean, they're not wrong. It's not a bad problem to have in that case. Yeah, obviously. This is somebody who, I think, this person I'm talking about is a Washington Post columnist, so they're doing fine in life. But the point being that that's, they're like, behavioral incentives are real. The market is now constructed such that rent is probably either going to rise for the foreseeable future if rates don't come down. Yes, it's nice that the sticker price on the home goes down. It's bad that the mortgage rate goes up. And that generally, without any more access to capital for normal folks, that means that you're still even more out of the league whenever you're trying to buy a house. Yeah. I really wanted to do this segment with the people in mind who say

overwhelmingly they're actually rooting for a housing crash because they see the way that prices have just escalated like crazy and the way that they've been priced down on the market and how insane it's been where it's like, oh, I have to have, you know, 80% cash down in order to even compete in this market. And we were covering those stories of, remember that house here? Yeah, here in DMV. Just, it was unlivable. I mean, it was a total in shambles, and it still sparked this bidding war of, do you remember how it was like- Sold for a million bucks.

It sold for a million dollars, and it had some insane bidding war of like 86 people or whatever. I'm making these numbers up, but it was crazy. There's one in Virginia that had squatters inside of it. They're like, sold as is, squatters in the basement. Squatters included. And you have to deal with it.

Like, yeah, they're like, we haven't resolved this. And somebody bought it. I understand people who are looking at the housing market and saying like, crash, baby, crash, because I want at some point in my life to be able to be a homeowner, especially when that is the most like critical dividing class dividing line at this point in this country is like people who are asset owners and people who aren't. And homes are obviously the primary asset that most like ordinary Americans own.

I just want to say it doesn't look like we're headed in that direction. I mean, even as prices do come down somewhat, it is not nearly enough to make up for the increase in mortgage interest costs. Fortune had a good piece sort of breaking down how this will all go, the different phases, they say, of the housing market downturn. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So they say they have, we now have clear evidence the housing market downturn. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So they say they have, we now have clear evidence the housing market downturn has moved beyond the first stage, which is a drop in housing activity, that's like people buying homes, and into the

second stage, which is falling home prices. So they say the home price correction is spreading, this is what I was talking about, out of 148 regional housing markets that are tracked by some real estate consulting firm, 98 out of 148 have seen home values fall. Only 50 markets remain at their peak. Now, to give you a sense of how much they've fallen and that it's, you know, nowhere near the home price decline that we saw back in the housing crash in 2008. So at that time, we saw a peak to trough U.S. home price decline of 27%. Right now, they're estimating that significantly overvalued housing markets, so places like San Francisco that have been just completely insane, they might see a drop in the 5% to 10% range. So nowhere close to the massive drops we saw during the housing crisis. Not that the housing crisis was ultimately good for anyone.

It was another instance where it was great for Permanent Capital, who bought up all these distressed properties and now are making money hand over fist on them. They also say that the housing downturn, and this is very intentional from the Fed, will soon spread beyond housing. Because you've got massive declines in home sales, both new home sales and existing home sales. They've fallen by 30% in terms of new home sales, 20% in terms of existing home sales. You've got all these home builders and places like Zillow and Opendoor, whatever, struggling financially.

And so as home shoppers put a pause on their searches, that means you see decreased demand for all sorts of other things. I mean, think of all the inputs that go into a house, the washer and dryer, like you were talking, the refrigerators, the appliances, lumber, everything that goes into a house, you see a decline in demand for those things.

So that's why when there's a housing market downturn, it spreads throughout the economy. Now, again, that's actually what the Fed is hoping for because this is apparently the only way that our political class can figure out how to deal with the rising inflation is like, let's screw regular people over and make it so that they're able to purchase less things. So that will be the next phase is basically the housing market downturn spreads to other sectors of the market. And then you've also got some details here. Let's put this last piece up on the screen of some of the housing sort of companies, housing adjacent or affiliated companies

that are really struggling in this market. This home flipper company called Opendoor, which I actually never really heard of, but their whole idea was like facilitating home flipping. They're having big problems. They lost money on 42% of their August resales. They've seen, you know, median home prices because they've declined. That's really screwed them over. But instead of canceling contracts, they decided to make good on the offers they'd already put out there. So they have seen a huge hit and they're not alone in terms of other companies that are in the home buying and selling business. Yeah, I think it's important. I mean, really what's being underscored on all of this

is just how precarious all of the market is. And there's a lot of downstream effects. So I'm glad that you put it the way you did, which is that, yeah, you may wish for a housing collapse, but there's a lot of other stuff going on. So let's all just be very mindful about what's happening. Yeah, unfortunately, it's not likely to benefit those people who are just hoping to get their foot in the door, no pun intended. Okay, the other piece here, which we've

already referenced, is what the Fed is going to do and what they already have done. Ken Klippenstein has really been on top of sort of tracking some of the research about what the Fed's actions may ultimately, you know, what may ultimately happen with them. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So, a new World Bank paper warns of a global recession if central banks continue to jack up interest rates as the Federal Reserve seems poised to do. So when you dig into this, what they're pointing out is the fact that almost unprecedented, very unusual historic situation is unfolding in which it's not just our country that is having central bank hiking interest rates. This is unfolding in which it's not just our country that is having central bank

hiking interest rates. This is happening in almost every nation around the world. This is really a global phenomenon. So you have everybody around the world tightening the screws of monetary policy. It's hard to predict what that outcome is actually going to be. So they model three different scenarios. And in one of them, where everybody continues to tighten the screws and tighten the screws, it leads to a severe global recession, especially when you consider the fact that there are a lot of recession warning signs here by some metrics, as we've discussed before, we're already in a recession. And as we're about to discuss, you also have China with significant financial difficulties

because of their COVID zero policy, because they had like sort of the music has stopped in terms of the housing market there. That has been a huge boon to their economy. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. But the fact that you have the U.S. and China as these big weights in terms of the global economic system means that you could have a really, really ugly situation. Let me just read a tiny bit from this report. So they have a quote here from one person who says, the odds of recession in Europe, the US and China are significant and increasing. A collapse in one region will raise the odds of collapse in others. The risk of a global recession trifecta are rising by the day. They also say the global economy is in

the midst of one of the most internationally synchronous episodes of monetary and fiscal policy tightening of the past five decades. So that's what I was just saying, the fact that all of these countries are paring back spending and also hiking interest rates at their central bank. That means you have this global phenomenon of monetary and fiscal policy tightening. They go on to say these policy actions are necessary to contain inflationary pressures, but their mutually compounding effects could produce larger impacts than intended, both in tightening financial conditions and in steepening the growth slowdown. This synchronous policy tightening contrasts with the policies adopted around the 1975 global recession, but is similar to those implemented ahead of the 1982 recession. So that's what they

really say is unusual right now, is that everybody is sort of acting in concert here, and it's hard to say what that ultimately is going to mean. Yeah, I mean, we're the most globalized economy in the history of the world, obviously. You know, it happens every single year. And we had a global recession in the 1900s. So early, almost 100 years ago. So the idea that we can't have contagion across world markets

has already been dispelled several times over. Now we already have economic precarity in China. We have economic precarity and geopolitical instability in Europe. I was just reading a piece yesterday. European factories all across the continent are going dark because they simply cannot afford the energy bills. What does that mean? Europe is a hub of manufacturing, especially high-tech manufacturing, Germany especially. Their trade surpluses relied on their manufacturing powerhouse. Well, what happens? Well, we've already seen. We've had a trade deficit in the first time in modern German history. What does that mean? Because that backstops the euro, their financial system, the entire continent owes loans in this very complex trading scheme,

which is basically a German trading house backed up by the other nations in Europe. What exactly does it mean whenever you have prolonged actual manufacturing recession and high energy prices? The UK, obviously things over there are a disaster. There are energy inflation, food crisis. They're literally an island, as we found out several times in history. Japan, I was just reading this morning. Japan is forecast to have one of the coldest winters in modern history. That is going to mean that they're going to have to jack up LNG prices to sky high because they're Japan also. Why did they start a war with us in World War II?

Because they didn't have oil and they don't have any natural resources. So they need to buy a ton of LNG in order to heat their homes, which means then what? India recently had to pay double the price in LNG for the first time on modern markets because they needed an emergency backstop to their grid. So these are all like the downstream effects, which is that India, Japan, I mean, even India is a poor nation, but large economies that can afford it, they'll be fine. There's many countries which can't afford it at all, which means they're going to be burning coal, wood, God forbid, that's already happening in Africa and elsewhere. So this is downstream catastrophic effects of which everything is interconnected.

We talked before, too, about how our monetary policy has ripple effects around the globe in terms of developing markets. And it makes it more expensive for them to pay back their dollar-denominated debts. So that's another sort of cascading ripple effect. So yeah, I mean, when you have everybody basically around the world tightening up, both lowering spending, increasing their interest rates at the central bank, we don't know what impact that is going to have, but the World Bank is warning that it could lead to a global recession if we continue to head in this direction. So that's what they're raising the alarms about.

I got a book recommendation. It's called Lords of Finance, The Bankers Who Broke the World. It was written in December 2009, and it's specifically a history, a monetary history of the Great Depression. I can never, it's like Likwat Ahmed, I think. He won the Pulitzer Prize that year. Yeah, I read it recently. It's a fantastic book.

It reminds, a lot of what I'm talking about comes from there. Excellent. All right. Okay. Next, China. Next piece, yes. All right, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. You alluded to this, and of course, this is probably going to have the single biggest

impact on our economic future, not just us, but the entire economy, which is that right now, this is written in Bloomberg, it's a fascinating history, which is that China, this is according again to their analysis, is that going through a financial crisis today, quote, I believe is much more serious than even the global financial crisis in the United States. So they talk specifically about how their housing market and other direct indicators are showing massive slowdown in China, specifically because of housing. Quote, the economy is sputtering under COVID lockdowns. The People's Bank of China has cut interest rates as central bank worldwide increased them, giving investors even more incentive to

shift their money abroad. Together, these forces have pushed the yuan down by 8% against the dollar this year, putting it on course for the biggest annual drop since 1994. Here's what this analyst who's predicting a bigger financial crisis says. Quote, China is going through that financial crisis. For us, the play, he's talking about how to make money, is in currency, but he's talking about an imminent and possible Chinese currency collapse. The part of the issue is that, as they actually point out in the pushback, is everybody's always saying that Yuan is going to collapse. Well, this guy's been betting on the collapse since 2014. Right. So he's like, this time it's going to pay off, so keep that in mind.

I mean, he could be one of these big, short geniuses, or he could just be one of those people who's always saying that China's going to pay off, so keep that in mind. I mean, he could be one of these big, short geniuses, or he could just be one of those people who's always saying that China's going to collapse. But the underlying dynamic he's discussing of the slowdown in housing is absolutely correct. I weirdly have a reference to Evergrande in my monologue, which is about lab leak. But the Evergrande collapse was actually a catastrophic event. And to have all of these ripple effects where, I remember before they even stopped trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and more, you were seeing some real estate companies, multi-billion dollar behemoths backed by the CCP

declined by 75, 80% in value, like overnight. And that explodes, like bonds, it explodes, the ability of people, because remember, if we take it back to that quote unquote crisis, people had put down cash and were waiting for their apartments. And this is like a high status symbol in Chinese society. So the ripple effects were that there were riots, people were upset. And then you combine that with zero COVID and dramatically lower economic activity. Things are a powder keg right now in China domestically. They're, you know, I have read a report even in Western China, like in the Uyghurs, and obviously they're already being horrifically treated right now.

I mean, their level of lockdown is like, makes Shanghai look like a vacation home. Right, and so that's the whole country, no matter where the flare-up happens or not. And they're also not betting on vaccination at all. They are continuing to bet on zero COVID, which is insanity in the age, especially, it was always stupid, but in the age of Omicron, it's like especially stupid,

like orders of magnitude. Yeah, very, very true. That is very true. Yeah. I mean, just to put some numbers to what you're saying here about the housing market, there was a 40% drop in home sales this year in China. 40%. You have people who are demanding their money back over unfinished projects. You have a massive pullback. Now, some of this was actually orchestrated by the government because they saw, okay, we can't continue to have this housing market

escalate and escalate and escalate and escalate. We have to pare things back at some point. But can they navigate that in a way that doesn't trigger a gigantic crash? That is a major, you know, that's a huge question. And so you have the housing market, massive pullback. You have those COVID zero policies. And you also have had extreme heat waves that have really impacted their crop yields and also their power supplies. So they're being hit from all directions right now.

To give you some war numbers about the housing market, this was from a different article that I was reading. They were saying that, you know, the housing market has really driven growth in China for the past two decades. The Chinese housing market is the largest asset class in the world. So that gives you a sense of how central and how critical this is to the Chinese economy,

not to mention the global economy. Now developers are going bust after being deprived of easy credit. Prices are falling. Homeowners are refusing to pay mortgages on unfinished homes. The slump in properties being sold in construction is crippling local governments. This is a really important part because they rely on land sales for income. So the way they fund local governments fund themselves is by selling off land. Now they're unable to do that.

So they're going bankrupt and having extreme financial issues. The other thing that they pointed to in this article is they say that the next shoe to drop for China could be falling external demand. So basically, I mean, these things all feed on each other, right? If we have a downturn here, if there's a downturn in Europe, obviously energy costs are high. So it's very much expected that people will have less money to buy cheap crap from China. They'll be focused on like, let me pay my rent and let me have food on the table and let me not freeze to death. That's a huge issue for the Chinese economy, which obviously

depends on being able to export their goods and make a lot of money around the world. So that's the picture as best as we can, you know, as best as we can decipher it of the Chinese economy right now. And again, obviously, these things all very interconnected and have a lot of feedback loops that can lead to, you know, global contagion, essentially. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's move on to Puerto Rico. This is one which we really wanted to get to the bottom of, which is what the hell is happening on an island where five years ago we watched the power grid completely fail

and then take nearly a year to be restored. It was one of the biggest political stories. There was all these allegations of neglect and more. And I think what we're really learning after the strike of another hurricane tragedy on Puerto Rico, where millions of people, once again, are without power, is that this is a systemic story of corruption. So at the very beginning, though, let's just acknowledge the latest damage that is happening right now in Puerto Rico. Let's put this up there on the screen. A friend, Jeff Stein, pulled this TikTok, which just shows you the side-by-side analysis and just how horrific the water, the flooding,

the absolute damage is that is on the ground, cars there that are floating literally in the middle of the streets. So untold amounts of damage to critical infrastructure, to roads, once again. Now, hurricane, all that, we can put that aside as it's a longtime event in the Atlantic and especially has gotten worse in the last couple of years. But the question remains, this grid failed five years ago. It was one of the biggest stories in the country. Congress appropriated up to $100 billion in order to fix and rebuild. And then five years later, a hurricane strikes and the whole grid is down and 3 million people are without power again. So what the hell

is happening here? And it's not just, it reminds me, sorry to cut you off. It reminds me of Jackson where with the water, where, you know, we covered back when they had that winter storm, there was a massive water crisis and we're like,, my God, this is a disaster. Like, we have to freaking fix this water system. And everybody knew it was a problem. And the national media covered it for five seconds. And then nothing happened. It's the same thing.

They actually had in April, there was a fire at a significant power generation plant. And, again, the, you know, massive loss of electricity for the majority of residents of this island without even having a hurricane. Everyone goes, what the hell is going on here? And still here we are a number of months later. And listen, I mean, you can't only do so much to prepare for a hurricane, but the fact that everyone on the island was without power, and it's not just power too, when you lose electricity, it means you also lose access to clean water because the pumps and the water treatment facilities are also not operable. So you have an overwhelming majority of residents on the island who are also without water to drink. And, you know, this was a problem back after Maria too, where it took close to, it took a year before people got all of these services

restored. And even then you had vast areas that were still on boil, warnings and all of this. So, I mean, this is part of our country that often gets ignored. And it is abhorrent what is being done to these people right now. These are American citizens. And so now here's the question. Let's really dig into it. Like, what's going on here? The American Prospect wrote about this before this grid even failed.

Let's put this up there on the screen. In August 19th, 2022, Puerto Rico's electric grid is on again, off again. Essentially what they point to is that despite the nearly $10 billion that FEMA has appropriated specifically for the Puerto Rico electric grid, and as I alluded to, the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. Congress has delivered to Puerto Rico. That basically what has happened is a colossal story of mismanagement, bureaucratic incompetence, and I'm just going to go ahead and allege that there is some corruption going on here. Because, Crystal, what has happened is that FEMA appropriated this $10 billion. The Puerto Rico Power Authority basically lost all credibility after the shutdown

in Maria. And so they did what everybody always does in this situation. Let's privatize it. And by privatizing it, they hired this firm like Luma Electrical Grid about, I think it was in 2021, in order to run their power system. Turns out Luma continues to charge them very high market prices and has not been able to deliver power consistently without rolling blackouts for this entire period. There also has been standoffs with local authorities where they refuse to turn over documents. This has turned into a colossal story of incompetence, corruption, lack of oversight. Clearly a hell of a lot of people are making a ton of money off of this. And the people of Puerto Rico, five years after Maria,

before this hurricane even hit, were already experiencing massive rolling blackouts, high prices, unreliable power, unreliable grid, unreliable infrastructure. And the crazy thing is, is that to date, they have only spent about 19% of the $28 billion in funding that FEMA committed to the grid recovery. And in fact, they have spent the vast majority of their spending on emergency relief, like debris removal. Now look, obviously debris removal and all that is good. Gotta have that too. I would just think that some sort of hardening of the grid investment and all that probably would have happened. There's also been a delay here in Washington from the Biden administration, just so everybody knows, some $10 billion in funding wasn't released until very recently. Biden's been in power for almost two years, people. And so clearly there

has just been, there's been massive incompetence on the island. There's been massive incompetence here in Washington. And I think it's a media story too, which is that at the time they're like, oh, Trump, you know, all this. And I'm not going to deny that Trump probably did hold up funds, Puerto Rico for some like petty, you know, reason. But this clearly just showed the fact that it happened again. I'm like, this is a much bigger systemic story. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump at this point. I'm like, this is years of corruption, mismanagement, neglect, you know, just insanity that millions of people are paying the price for. Yes, that's exactly right. And I mean, at this point, we only have the broad outlines of what went wrong here. We really need some investigative journalism into like TikTok of

where were the fail points and what the hell happened, where, yeah, you only are spending $5 billion out of the, you know, tens of billions that were appropriate. Like, what the hell happened where, yeah, you only are spending $5 billion out of the tens of billions that were appropriate. Why? What happened here? What was the holdup? Where were the failure points? And then to your point about just how unconscionable this whole situation is. So they've never had a grid now since Maria that's reliable.

It's been on again, off again, blackouts, this fire that I talked about back in, I think it was April that caused massive blackouts on the island. Nevertheless, the price of electricity has increased seven consecutive times this year alone. So in spite of the fact that the service is completely unreliable, you can't depend on it. It's a disaster still hiking up the rates and putting the screws to the people on the island. I mean, it's just, it is a massive, massive failure. It has been overlooked by the media. And, you know, we wanted to shine a light on what these people are going through right now with, at the moment, no end in sight. And again, it's not just electricity, which is bad enough, but you're also talking about access to clean water. And then you're talking about all of the spill-on effects of what that means and the type of illnesses that

can spread when you don't have access to clean water. So it is a true, true humanitarian catastrophe going on in Puerto Rico. Right. And what I alluded to earlier is, again, the media, they can't help themselves. They can't just tell you about what's going on here. Let's put this up there on the screen. New York Times, they say the three reasons that Puerto Rico, what's the number one reason that they say? The Trump administration restricted aid funds. Once again, that may be true, but it's been several years since he was president now. And actually, FEMA's delays in bureaucratic incompetence comes all the way up until 2022, Crystal. I'm just reading, you know, government GAO reports to prepare for this segment from 2021, where they're again talking about the fact that they have this money.

Some of it hasn't been spent. It's not really being oversight, you know, from both from FEMA. Puerto Rico is kind of spending it however it wants. Weirdly enough, is privatizing its power. Power rates are going up. Blackouts are continuing. The guy who's in charge of Luma is like being protected somehow in like some weird quasi legal scheme. This, by the way, does not even to mention their debt

obligations because the debt, the Puerto Rico authority or whatever is like $9 billion in debt. Puerto Rico has all these issues where they're not allowed to like discharge their debt because it's a territory and not a US state, which is like a whole thing that involves bond traders and some other stuff as well. Anyway, the point I'm making is this is like a U.S. state, which is like a whole thing that involves bond traders and some other stuff as well. Anyway, the point I'm making is this is like a colossal disaster that's been slow moving, and they just can't help themselves. They always try to have to make it about Trump instead of telling us, no, what's the fail point on Luma?

Who is this Luma guy? CEO. What's happening with this dude? Because we were trying to figure out yesterday, like, what the hell is going on here? And so we're Googling and finding, oh, the New York Times has a write-up of three things that went wrong. You know, because they sort of contradict themselves immediately after saying, like, well, it's Trump's fault. And it's like, I don't doubt that, especially immediately after Maria, no doubt that he was a disaster, a jerk, and all of that stuff. But then in the very next section, they're like, well, they actually haven't spent all of the money. So it's not that there isn't enough money, but for some reason it hasn't been spent. Well, what are those reasons? Are their projects not getting approved by the government

so that there's these like holdups and they're trying to go forward, but it's just stuck in a bureaucratic morass? Is that the issue? Is it corruption? That's the issue. Is it misfit? Like they don't tell you any of that. I mean, they do point also to, you know, the fact that the climate crisis means that you have wetter storms. But actually, weirdly, there is a prediction that this would be, like, one of the worst hurricane seasons in history. Yeah, people had said that before. I don't know how much to put in these prognostications. Yeah, and then eerily, it's actually been one of the mildest so far, which is kind of like, actually makes me a little bit like uneasy. But in any case,

there's clearly a lot more going on here. And the best write-up we could find was from the prospect who are always doing incredible work. You should really support them regardless of your ideological predisposition because they actually tried to dig into the details of what happened here.

And they were sounding the alarms in August saying that if there is a hurricane that hits this island, which is almost certainly going to happen during this hurricane season, they're going to be screwed. Lo and behold, it didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that all of this was going to happen. So I would love to see a lot more digging into what exactly the chain of events was here. How did they end up right back in the same situation? Look, these are American citizens. We shouldn't tolerate this in Jackson, Mississippi.

We shouldn't tolerate it in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's just not acceptable. And everybody was willing to say that, you know, whenever it was Trump. And now, you know, I mean, this really is a, this, remember the way that FEMA was scrutinized and Katrina and under Trump. Once again, I actually support that, you know, in terms of looking into all these, but you can't selectively apply the president. The president needs to be getting just as much pressure now as Trump did back then. At the time, they were like, oh, this is racism, all of that. It's like, well, you know, the same dynamic is happening here.

And these guys are like more focused on the Queen's funeral. I care about the Queen's funeral too. I don't. You know, but we got 3 million people without power in San Juan or in Puerto Rico. Like that's, you know, it's a colossal disaster. It's a disaster. American citizens. Absolutely.

Once again. Human crisis going on right there. And we'll stay on top of it. Some potentially lighter fare here. We have continued to cover some really interesting comments made by President Biden in that 60 Minutes interview. In particular, he was asked whether he is actually going to run for president again in 2024, and he did not give a direct answer. Let's take a listen to that. Sir, are you committed to running again, or are there certain conditions that have to be right? Look, if I were to say to you, I'm running again, all of a sudden a whole range of things come into play that I have requirements I have to change and move and do.

In terms of election laws? In terms of election laws. In terms of election laws. And it's much too early to make that kind of decision. I'm a great respecter of fate. And so what I'm doing is I'm doing my job. I'm going to do that job. And within the time frame that makes sense after this next election cycle here,

going into next year, make a judgment on what to do. So he dodges the question there. I mean- He's blaming election law. Yeah. Trump, you know, announced for reelection the day after he won the presidency. Well, Trump doesn't give a shit about election law or any other law. Which has caused problems for him. Right. Which is kind of an issue for him at the moment. But it is true that so, you know, they not to get into the nitty gritty of election law, but let me go ahead and lay it out for you. You know how these candidates will form exploratory committees.

Well, if you do that, you're allowed to do everything up to actually saying, I am running for president. That is like a, you know, legally significant act. And then you can no longer have the exploratory committee. You actually have to file. Right. So that's kind of what he's alluding to here. Now, one way to read it is he's just being, you know, trying to avoid getting himself into legal trouble. The other way to read it is that he's trying to give himself an out.

Now, you guys know because I've made the case here before. I think Biden is going to run. I think this man has wanted to be president his entire life. There's no way now that he's got the brass ring. Is it brass ring or gold ring? Brass ring. I don't know. Anyway, now that he's in the White House.

Brass. But that doesn't sound right because brass isn't as valuable. Anyway, whatever, he's got the ring. And I can't imagine him just being like, no, I'm going to give it up. I'm going to walk away. So that continues to be my view. However, you know, I talked to Breonna Joy Gray on Bad Faith about this. And the case she and others would make is, okay, then why is he saying stuff like this? Why doesn't he just be more definitive? Why is it that, you know, his, some of the Democrats that are relatively senior in House leadership said Carolyn Maloney when she was running in the primary was like, it's my understanding

he's not running again. Why is it that, you know, Jerry Nadler wouldn't affirm his support? Why is it that you have these Democrats who seem to feel it's kind of safe to deny him their support where you probably wouldn't have that situation if he really was running again? Usually the sort of thought here isn't that he would step aside, but that because he's a weak president with low approval ratings and not at his best in his older years, that he would be pushed aside by the more powerful powers that be in the same way that, you know, Obama pulled the plug on Pete Buttigieg's presidential run. And so that there'd be some sort of like machinations behind the scene that would force him out and give him some sort of deal and put a Pete or whoever else. You never know with Biden. Like, is he in charge or not? Some days he's lucid. He seems fine. The other days he makes a comment about Taiwan and then his quote unquote handlers at the White House are like, actually, no, that's not U.S. policy. Right. And you're like, well, hold on a second. Like who's in charge here? Right. You think Trump would ever tolerate him saying something and his White House saying that's not what he meant? Never.

I mean, it would never happen. Same thing with the— They always would just say the tweet speaks for itself, right? But it's true, though, right? With Biden, right, they should be like, yeah, his statement speaks for itself. He's the president of the United States. He makes policy. They're like, no, that's not what he meant.

Even Obama. Obama would never tolerate that either. So with Biden, you never seem to know like what exactly is going on here. I think he's in charge when he actually wants to be and happens to be like lucid enough for the day. You know, some days he seems like, I've talked with friends, by the way, recently, they cover him extensively at the White House. And what they say with Biden is like really interesting. They're saying he's his own self for about five minutes. Like he puts on his aviators and he thinks he's 35 years old again.

And he's out there like shaking hands, but he's got like five minutes in him. He's just old. You know, he's one of those things where he could keep it up. He can be Scranton Joe for like very, very limited periods of time. Then he has to go back to the lectern,

open his notes and just be Joe. Lately, I feel like he has been, he has had more pop in his step. He's been more consistently lucid. Like, I mean, this interview, this was a lengthy, intensive interview. And yeah, I don't know if he meant to say the thing about Taiwan or what the hell happened there. He said it multiple times. So he seems to like be really committed to this line of discussion and committed to the policy. But he did seem lucid throughout the interview. So I feel like lately, because he's gotten more momentum, I don't know, that seems to have

restored him in some sort of fundamental way. But putting all of that aside and all the sort of conjecture and speculation about just how there he is, I just can't imagine that this man who has been in Washington all of these years, this is everything he knows. He's there doing the thing that he has always dreamed and always wanted to do, that he's going to step aside. I don't buy it. And then the other thing that I don't buy is who is going to be, yeah, his approval ratings are low, but they're better than Kamala's. They're better probably than Pete's. I mean, there is a lot of power that comes with being the incumbent president. It is much easier to win the presidency if you are already the president than if you are an outside challenger trying to make the case fresh and to come in. So I just think ultimately, yes, there are some,

I would not doubt that just like during the Democratic primary, when there are all these behind the scenes discussions about like, oh, maybe we can get Beto, maybe we can get Pete, maybe we can get Kamala. At the end of the day, they all realized that the only person who was left standing to, you know, take out Bernie was Biden. And I kind of think it's the same thing. They may be wish casting. Donors might be talking. Pete might be moving to Michigan and maneuvering. But at the end of the day, they're all going to realize like we really got no other option but sticking with this dude. Yeah. I mean, put the next one up there on the screen. Like Gavin Newsom apparently says he'll run for president if Biden does it. But again, you know, like, do you think Gavin Newsom is more popular than Joe Biden? No. I mean, he might be more popular than Kamala.

But like this guy, given his handling of the pandemic, like he's got no standing to run for president. Even, you know, even his recall, which he did. That's what looks like a vampire. It does look like a vampire. But beyond that, I mean, even in his recall, remember whenever he did win and he won like semi close to what he got reelected on. But there were still some swings in the down ballot voting, which was not so great for him. Like he didn't hang on by nearly the, uh, he, he, he was presented as a victor because people thought that, including myself, thought

that the recall might've been much closer than it was. And he did win, you know, quite handily, obviously, but that's still not like a bear. That's still not the case for needing to run affirmatively as a national candidate. No one can say that the state, which more people have left than any other in the country, is going so well under your leadership. I just think that's a ludicrous thing to run on. It's funny thinking back about that recall now, because it's kind of a preview of the politics we are facing down right at the moment. Because what really, I don't want to say it saved him because I think he was going to win anyway, but what really expanded his margins is that Texas had just passed that really extreme abortion law.

And he was saying, hey, you want that here in California? Vote for the other dude. And that seemed to really resonate and get Democrats off their asses. Because that was the problem is like, the people who were opposed to him were very animated. And the Democrats were kind of like, eh, I mean, I guess he's better than the other guy, but I don't really know if it's worth showing up to vote for him. That's what motivated Democrats to come out. So this is a side tangent, but a lot of echoes of what's going on right now in our politics. I mean, I do think that like Gavin Newsom, Ron DeSantis,

like fake presidential primary that's going on right now is kind of hilarious. Yeah, it's just, it's BS. Like running ads in each other's states and like Newsom challenged DeSantis to a debate or something like that. And it's like,

there's no way that Newsom is actually going to run against Biden. Biden, in my view, is almost certainly going to run for president again. So, okay, maybe you're looking at 2028. That's fine. But there's a lot of cosplaying going on right now with the two of them, which I think is sort of hilarious. And yeah, the idea that he's this like great talent or democratic savior, I think is ludicrous. The guy has been, he's done, we've given him credit here for a few things he's done recently on nuclear, on the sectoral bargaining law, which he's sort of under pressure, ultimately signs. There were a lot of other areas where I have issues with him. He's

clearly a like finger in the wind politician. He's shifted his political kind of ideology and positioning a number of times throughout his career to respond to whatever the winds of the moment actually were. And I think ultimately people really sense that he's one of those guys that really gives off that vibe of like, this guy's just trying to be where he thinks he should be right now. I think that's a very damaging quality for a politician, regardless of what you think of like,

his ideology at the present moment. I agree. He's a chameleon. San Francisco. Chameleon is the right word. Mega liberal. Then he's like the billionaire guy. He was like, yeah.

He sucked up to the like, tech billionaire sector hardcore. Right. But then turned on them. And now he's, like, the Hollywood guy. You know, it's very strange. He's trying to position himself as, like, the, you know, big thinking progressive right now with, like, you know, the EV policy and the sectoral bargaining. And there were some other things that I'm forgetting about right now as well.

But these, like, big marquee sort of progressive wins, which again, I personally support. There are some other things that he screwed up on, like blocking Medicare for all in the state. But he's clearly trying to position himself. I just think he thinks a lot more of himself than the American people will probably think of him. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. All right. 2022. Yes. Let's talk about that one. So, okay, this is kind of funny to me. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Axios has this breaking news. Vice President Harris is ramping up her midterm travel to focus on young voters. Here's the lead to this story. She's trying to turn out young voters and voters of color for the midterms,

stopping this week in Wisconsin and South Carolina. But, and this is an important caveat, which tells you a lot, so far without scheduled appearances with key Democratic nominees on the ballot. So the way I read this, I mean, it's funny to imagine that anyone would think that Kamala Harris would be like a big motivator for young people to turn out. Like she didn't do well with young people. Young people don't think a lot of her. So that's kind of silly. But what they did here, ultimately, is clearly they leaked this to Axios to be like,

see, we're using her and she's great and we really believe in her. But they sent her to South Carolina. Like, is there a single key race in South Carolina that Democrats are really competitive in? Not that I know of. Also, am I the only guy who remembers that she was polling at like fifth place in South Carolina? Right.

Because I remember that. Yeah, it's like, this is sometimes where I start to feel like I'm taking crazy pills. And they're like, we're going to send her out with young voters. I'm like, okay, well, let's take a look at her approval rating. She's actually less popular than Joe Biden. She's one of the most reviled candidates, even amongst young voters. She was so bad that she didn't make it to the Iowa caucuses because she had bad funding and no polling, even in South Carolina. Yeah. Which candidate exactly are you speaking to? Right. Yeah. I mean, she's speaking

in HBCU. I think that's fine. Cool. You know, I was the nation's vice president, but don't bill that as like some midterm event. It's funny. You know, if she was speaking in Georgia, I would listen. In Athens, I'd be like, oh, okay, that's interesting. No scheduled, you know, appearances right now. Right now, her overall average unfavorable rating is 52%, which is like a historic high for a sitting vice president. She's got absolutely no constituency. Yeah, I'm reading here.

She's speaking on behalf of a guy who's running for governor in South Carolina. She's got absolutely no constituency. Yeah, I'm reading here. She's speaking on behalf of a guy who's running for governor in South Carolina. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, running as a Democrat in South Carolina. Just in general, I mean, on all of these, there's, she's Democratic, they say, Democratic candidates in competitive statewide races, even like Barnes in Wisconsin, have a dilemma on whether it's politically advantageous to campaign with either the president or vice president who suffer from low approval ratings in battleground states. And I just can't think of a better example. I mean, Georgia, obviously that Biden barely won, you know, what's the phrase by the skin of his teeth

in 2020. Right now, he has got a 30-something percent approval rating in Georgia, in a state that he barely won. Like, that's not tenable. And Kamala's is even lower. So what are you going to do in these battleground states? It is funny to me the way they're trying to bury her, though. I mean, they're sending her to Orangeburg, South Carolina. Right.

Like, not exactly a key region in terms of, like, a lot of hot races. That's like sending a Democrat, yeah, that's like sending a Republican to, like, New York City. It's like, what do you do? Like, what is this guy

even doing? And the major, right, and the major, you know, candidates, even in Wisconsin, are like, ah, we're good. Thanks. We're all set.

Sorry, we're really busy, though. We'd love to be there, but we're just super busy that day sorry about Harrison Harris he didn't appear with Biden that was a big that's right

he was like I'm scheduling conflict although Pennsylvania's not that big true to be fair that could have just as easily been because of his stroke recovery

as it is weariness of being by Biden so there were two reasons for him to stay away that's a whole other segment there Crystal yes indeed

we've done that segment too the other piece we wanted to bring up here is we now have a final tally of something that Kamala Harris directly defended, although not that effectively. The fact that Democrats spent millions of dollars in Republican primaries to try to get the nominees that they saw as the most extreme. And especially, I mean, it was nominees who were extreme on abortion, but also on, you know, stop the steal, like election conspiracy nonsense, something that Kamala Harris and Democrats across the board say is a real existential threat. And then you're out there spending, I have the numbers here, $53 million boosting these candidates that, you know, President Biden is out there giving big speeches warning about what a threat they are to democracy and all of this. Like, I mean, those two things

can't coexist. So anyway, it's a long way of saying we now have the final tally of how they did with all of this. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen if we didn't already. Democratic meddling pays off. Well, did it? Let's find out. The final tally is in. Democrats succeeded in boosting right wing candidates in six out of the 13 Republican primaries that they meddled in. So pretty much a 50-50 chance of success that they have here. And I mean, listen, it's a big gamble that they're taking here because we all know how wrong the polls have been historically. So you may think that this gives you a better shot of winning in the fall. You may think that ultimately this puts you in better position to hold on to the House, hold on to the Senate,

etc. But very possible some of these people ultimately get through. Now, in a lot of these races, when these more extreme candidates won, it did shift the sort of prognosticators' analysis and ratings of those races towards Democrats. So the analysts are saying that this was a smart strategy, putting like the ethics and morality of it aside. But again, gigantic gamble here. And something I've been thinking about lately that I may do a monologue on is we talk here a lot about candidate quality because, you know, it's like these are interesting personalities and it's hilarious to dunk on Oz for his curtee situation or like Hershel Walker and whatever things that come out of his mouth. But ultimately, I'm not a big believer that candidate quality matters all that much. I completely agree with you.

So they're betting a lot here on candidate quality really being central. Yes. There's no evidence to back that up, statistically. Especially, you know, listen, I think at the Senate level, it has more of an impact. Right. At the House level, I don't think it really matters at all. Totally agree. Unless you have something that is completely, like, grabs tons of media to way outside of the norm, the House tends to just be about what are the national wins. So if you put these people in place, you know, you help them win their primaries, you really got to what are the national wins. So if you put these people in place, you know, you help them win their primaries, you really got to hope that the national wins end up going the

way that you want them to go. Oh, absolutely, Chris. I'm glad that you put that. Remember this, the most polarizing members of the House, let's say on both sides, Ilhan Omar, probably, Marjorie Taylor Greene, they both won their primaries, folks. Yeah. They get reelected actually quite easily yeah now do they run behind Biden or Trump yeah actually they do which is a fascinating story

in its own right but they still win and most of the people there are like yeah it's kind of annoying how they get all this media attention but whatever

and those are people who are legit famous yes famous like famous random member of congress who like

you know said something about January 6th or whatever. No one knows who the hell this person is, what they did, whatever. So again, I just think, I think it's a hypocritical bet that they've placed. I think it's a foolish gamble that they're making here because I do actually think that these things are serious, especially in the statewide races. Like when you're talking about the governors, the secretaries of state, the attorneys general. These are people who really might be consequential in the next election if it's close, and some of whom have outright said, like,

oh, I wouldn't have certified this election if it was me. Like, that's a legit problem. They're playing with fire here, but so far they feel like this is working out for them. We'll see if they still feel that way on election day. I think Canada equality really died, what, 2010? That really just made it. I mean, I remember because the guy who represented my district was this guy, Chet Edwards. It was interesting, actually, because he was the Democrat who represented the most Republican district of any Democrat.

It was like R plus 26. George W. Bush used to live there. And he got reelected year after year after year. It was wild, right? Yeah. And in 2010, and he lost by the biggest margin in the entire country. That was the year I ran for Congress. And there was a huge wipeout of these blue dog Democrats.

Like the blue dog. Yeah, there was a jet. There was one in Virginia who represented southwestern Virginia. I think his name was Boucher. And he'd been there, again, forever. Chet was there longer than that. It was a lie at the time. You know, this was a small rural area.

People knew him personally. And he was like the old school of, I'm going to deliver this and that amenity or road or bridge or whatever for my district. That was his politics. And yeah, he gets wiped out that year. And that was the story across the country. It's just a matter of the more politics have become purely national, the less that the candidate quality matters.

I agree. And I kind of get it. Me too. Yeah, I mean, I would look at like, you know, Fetterman in Pennsylvania. I don't like, yeah, I wish he hadn't had a stroke for his sake and for all of our sakes and that he was 100%.

But would I even think about voting against him? No, I wouldn't. Because the issues and his alliance with like in that direction, that matters so much more to me. So, you know, I think that people just vote on these more partisan leanings and divides and the way they feel about how the economy is going.

And I don't know that they're really analyzing. In fact, there's a pullout this morning. One of the worst candidates in the country has got to be Herschel Walker. Pullout this morning, has him up in Georgia. Even Raphael Warnock, because you would think he's a very good candidate. I mean, the man was a preacher.

He's phenomenal on the stump. People really genuinely like him and all of these things. And he's up against one of the worst candidates in the country. Doesn't really matter that much. That's how it goes, people. I just want to underscore that.

I mean, Chet Edwards, that guy in my district, he was like the veterans guy. He like saved all this money for veterans. He was on the VA committee. I remember people I was growing up with, they're like, I vote Republican, but I like Chet. And then in 2010, they were like, screw Obama. And like, that was it.

It just had nothing to do with it. He's going to support Pelosi for speaker. And actually, he even ran ads saying, I'm against Nancy Pelosi. And he's still lost by Pelosi for Speaker. Nope. And actually, he even ran ads saying, I'm against Nancy Pelosi. And he still lost by like 32 points. Yeah. Like, at that level, there's just nothing you can do. In that year, they all tried to run away from Pelosi was the big one and Obama.

And it didn't matter. They were like, you're part of that party. I don't care. I don't care if I know you. I don't care what you've done. I don't care you try to make yourself different. Like, and it's, I mean, and this is the same in both directions. So anyway, that's part of how I'm looking at these midterms.

All right, media block. So this is a crazy thing that has happened, which is that I think people in the media are just far too cavalier throwing out the idea that we're like about to be in civil war. Yeah. And that happened recently. So let's put this up there on the screen. Major Garrett, who is actually quite a good reporter, he recently came out with a book called The Big Truth Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie, which is about the actual election of 2020 as in how it was administered. His claim is that 2020 is actually the most secure election in modern American history. I don't know anything about the claims of the book, to be clear. What I'm saying, though, is that in his press tour,

what he's been recently saying is that we're, quote, on the brink of civil war. And I mean, that gets bandied about a lot these days. But in particular, what he said was that we are, quote, holy crap, we're 85% there in an interview with the Daily Beast. I'm like, hold on a second, dude. You are basically claiming, let's make it analogous to American history. When were we 85% of the way to the American Civil War? You're saying it's like, what, 1857 in America? No way, that's not even remotely possible. And so I think we should just be very careful and especially people in the media

to be able to say like, yeah, things are really bad and people are downtrodden and there's like a big class dynamic and all this, but like we're not taking up arms against each other. And then by the way, limited quote unquote conflagrations or riots or anything is not the same thing as opposed to an actual civil war. Like the level of, what, cavalier, the cavalier nature in which he's just willing to like float these things and then it just gets picked up by the media and everybody's like loving it.

I just think people should be much more careful when we're discussing, you know, obviously something so sensitive and just normalizing an idea and almost wishing it to be true. I honestly think that's kind of what part of it is. I'm curious. I want to get to that in a minute. I want to read his full quote, just so we're not accused of like taking him out of context. So he says about the book in this interview with the Daily Beast, we wanted to show people that what we're talking about is just incremental steps from where we already are. I don't think anyone reading the first chapter can honestly say, oh, that could never happen. They have to say, holy crap, we're 85% there. My understanding, I haven't read the book, full disclosure. I might actually read the book.

The way, I mean, it may be- It seems interesting. He normally, I honestly, I don't follow him that closely, but my impression of him was he was a more sober-minded person. He was. I worked with him a little bit. I mean, we weren't like colleagues, but like he covered the White House same time I covered the White House. He was always one of the straight shooters. I mean, he's got a phenomenal name. Yeah. I just do want to say that. That's a great name. Great name.

He also worked, he worked at Fox under Obama. He was the guy who was the White House correspondent under Obama. And the Obama administration tried to kick him out of the press corps. And the press corps actually stood up for him because they were like, hey, this guy's legit. Like, you can't be doing this. He went up to go work for CBS. He's done Face the Nation. I mean, he's a great interviewer, actually, in his own right. One of the first people to ever embrace podcasting to in the biz.

So, like, I do kind of respect him. And that's why I'm looking at this and I'm like, dude, you can't be throwing around words 85% close to civil war without some very serious evidence. And by the way, evidence of wanting to object at the Supreme Court or at the Senate is bad. I think that we've all said that. Evidence of the overstock CEO and Mike Lindell and Mike Flynn wanting to literally seize the election is also very bad. Is it the same thing, though, as what Michael Moore claimed on our show about Bill Barr going to go seize election boxes in battleground states? No, that's actually not the same thing. Bill Barr turned out to be one of the reasons.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So it's like what actually happened is like, okay, sorry. I don't want to downplay the impending risks in terms of a possible constitutional crisis. If we wind up with a replay of 2020 where it's close and there's enough, you know, enough things for Trump to work with to say this is stolen. And honestly, I think he's so brazen now that it doesn't matter whether it's close or not. He'll say it's stolen. The fact that you do have so many people who are now, you know, nominees for governor, nominees for secretary of state who have said we wouldn't have certified the election, like that is a really a genuine problem and a potential constitutional crisis. I don't think we should downplay that whatsoever. Freaking Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania is a terrifying disaster.

There's no doubt about that. I don't think that we should, like, shrink from saying that. I think part of the obsession with we're on the brink of a civil war, which is a different thing from a constitutional crisis of the type that I'm laying out and contemplating here, and which I think is very realistic and scary scenario to think about. I think that comes from the fact that it makes these characters, like Major Garrett and everybody else in DC, it makes them very central. It makes them like, I'm here at this historic moment in history that's unlike any other. It also, I think, comes out of a bit of a bubble mindset. Because their whole world,

and I understand this, like their whole world is these political conflicts. That's what their whole career and their life, and they live mostly in D.C., that's what their whole thing is centered around. So it feels very much like those divisions are the only thing that is really, you know, important in American life right now. Whereas, you know, for the majority of Americans, like they've got a lot of other concerns going on. That's why the threat to democracy never comes up as one of the top issues for voters because they're like, how about I'm able to pay my rent and put food on the table? And also in day-to-day life, you know, I live out in rural America amongst a lot of people who think a lot differently than me. Not a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters in King George County, Virginia, let me tell you. And life is

very like kind and people are good to each other. And, you know, people try to be respectful and they try to see things, you know, it's's not ugly and like we're about to murder each other out there. So I think part of the Civil War idea and obsession comes from genuine concern over things that are real, and part of it comes from being in a bubble where the only thing you see are these political conflicts, and you think that's all there is. And vice versa. I live around cringe pre-Ukraine flag libs, and guess what? They're nice people. They're versa. I live around cringe Ukraine flag libs. And guess what? They're nice people.

They're cool. You know, we walk our dogs. I'm like, how's that dog doing? You know, it's like very basic. Like, can you believe the UPS guy? This guy, the way he puts his packages out there. You know, one guy, one of my neighbors, one of my packages actually got delivered,

and he was distraught because he had accidentally opened it. I'm like, dude, it's chill. Like, he delivered it to you.. Relax, man. He wrote me a whole note. I'm like, it's totally fine. Once again, he's got all the flags. It's all good. It's like we're just living. We can point to other American history. What's more analogous to our time is the 1876 US election. Everybody forgets about that one. Very close, lots of allegation of fraud, corruption gets thrown to the House of Representatives. You get a corrupt backroom deal, Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president. I mean, that's probably a hell of a lot more analogous to like the quote unquote constitutional crisis, close fraud allegation. We're getting into the

Gilded Age, a lot of backroom, you know, dealing going on, lots of fraught times and all that. You know, we've gotten through a lot worse. Yeah. You don't, not everything is, it's like when, you know, everybody says like every online discussion devolves to Hitler. Not everything is a civil war either. Like we have crazy, you know, crazy times, acrimonious times in history and like it was fine.

We lived through it. Everyone got over it eventually. Let me say one more like caveat to this because you pointed this out earlier, but I just want to make this clear. Like that's different from saying that we could very much have a continued escalation in political violence. Like the maniac who tried to shoot up the FBI office and the crazy dude with the pipe bombs and the Trump van and riots. I think it is very possible, if not likely, we continue to have escalations in that direction. That's the fringe of the fringe of the fringe. Right. That's not all of society splitting in two as much as, and

there are other, like, there are a lot of right-wing. Remember after the Trump FBI raid, there were all these, like, you know, people online who were like, the civil war starts now. And it's like, actually, it doesn't. And they just went and did their podcast and have continued, you know, doing their paid speeches like they always do. 100% correct.

Same thing. You know, we've had, you think we've never had anarchist violence in this country before? We had a whole string of like crazy bombings

in the 70s. Also in the early 1900s. Or the early 1990s with Timothy McVeigh. Right, McVeigh. You know, anti-government extremists. There's still a lot

of questions about that. Anyway, I don't even want to go down that rabbit hole right now. Bristol, what are you taking a look at? For years now, we have been subjected to harrowing accounts of Russian bots and disinformation campaigns and malign influence that are supposedly destroying our country. Credulous reporters declare that these troll farms are to blame for everything from Trump's election to Bernie's success to backlash against racial justice protests. Putin is backing Trump. Putin is sowing division. As if Vladimir Putin was some grand

chess master and the American public were just helpless puppets dancing to the beat of the Kremlin drum. This neo-McCarthyism led to basically every dissident voice on the left and on the right being branded as effectively traitorous, useful idiots, gremlin stooges, Putin puppets, etc., etc., etc. Well, the New York Times just dropped a doozy of this general genre about the Women's March and specifically controversy around Linda Sarsour's involvement in that march. So here is that piece, how Russian trolls helped keep the Women's March out of lockstep. They say, as American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia's disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them. Listen, I will spare you the gory and

predictable details of this article, but basically, the Times says that Russian troll farms tweeted a bunch of crap about Linda Sarsour wanting Sharia and being a terrorist. Got picked up and co-opted by right-wing influencers, with the ultimate result being that what looked like a cohesive response to Trump's election, just think of all those pussy hats, instantly devolved into infighting and more or less collapsed. Jacobin writer Bronco Marsetic did a great job tearing this whole piece apart. He writes on Twitter, quote, the central conceit of this very silly article is that Islamophobia, pro-Israel sentiment, accusations of anti-Semitism toward criticism of Israel are all impositions of a shadowy foreign power, not deep-rooted, long-standing features of U.S. political discourse. The other conceit is that because Russian troll farms did stuff, then it goes without saying it had some sort of outsized impact. This is accomplished largely because this genre of article never bothers to compare numbers with non-Russia accounts,

nor with TV and print media. Finally, Marsetic says, the piece relies not only on that sleight of hand, but on dishonestly fudging the timeline, making it seem like the Russian bot account started this line of messaging versus Sarsour, when in fact, at least one account did a day earlier and with far better numbers.

So basically, another piece of dishonest reporting from the New York Times. They have really been churning out some bangers lately. A piece which creates a convenient excuse, by the way, for our nation's divides and dysfunction and distracts from any real inquiry into the underlying causes of our national rot and how elites are responsible for them. But almost poetically, this Russian troll farm women's march disinformation story was quickly followed by some crucial revelations about what our own military is up to online. Now, you probably won't be surprised by this, but guess what, guys? Our government was just caught doing all the same shit as Russia. Bots, misinformation, propaganda, the whole thing. Apparently, the effort was so widespread and poorly run

that the whole project is being subjected to an audit right now. So here's the Washington Post. This report, quote, the Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platform's rules. So apparently, you can torture, drone strike, and overturn governments with impunity, but God help the nation-state that violates the terms of service.

Now, the article goes on to detail the type of content that has caused concern, citing, among others, a tweet suggesting that Iran was harvesting the organs of Afghan refugees and others that were countering Chinese propaganda about the origins of COVID. According to the Post, the review was triggered by really two things. First, an independent report this summer by the Stanford Internet Observatory and Grafica, which noted that a massive network of accounts had been removed by Facebook and Twitter,

and that those accounts appeared to be connected to the United States government. They described this network as the, quote, most extensive case of covert pro-Western influence operations on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open source researchers to date. So a massive network. The other factor triggering a review was that social media executives called the government out for the ham-handed nature of their big PSYOP. Facebook was basically like,

hey, if you're going to run a PSYOP on our site, at least have the decency to do it well. Here's how the Post recounted one Facebook executive's message to the United States government. He said, quote, his point, one person said, was, guys, you got caught. That is a problem. Oh, that's the problem, that they got caught? Facebook, of course, has admitted coordinating with governments, including our own, so it should surprise no one that what they are most irritated by is that the company was denied plausible deniability by the incompetence of our government's secret activities. And that's apparently the key concern of this new government-led review as well, not whether these operations are ethical, but whether they are effective. From the Post, quote,

A key issue for senior policymakers now is determining whether the military's execution of clandestine influence operations is delivering results. Quote, is the juice worth the squeeze? Does our approach really have the potential for the return on investment we hoped, or is it just causing more challenges, one person familiar with the debate said.

So apparently, the Pentagon bot mercenaries are not great posters. The Post notes that the vast majority of these posts only garnered a handful of likes and retweets, and that according to the Stanford research, only 19% of the fake accounts had more than 1,000 followers. But notice how this influence operation is being presented in the Washington Post compared to how the Russian bot's Women's March story was presented in the New York Times. So in the Women's March story, they made sure to find the tweets that had the highest number of retweets to paint a portrait of a devastatingly effective operation. Here, when it's the U.S. government running the bot army, they downplay that this stuff

matters at all. I guess in the news, as in social media, it's kind of hard to sift through the propaganda to figure out the truth. That was the thing that I most, first social media, it's kind of hard to sift through the propaganda to figure out the truth. That was the thing that I most, first of all, it's not a big surprise that they're doing all this stuff. 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, something we haven't forgotten over here at Breaking Points is the lab leak theory and cover-up by Dr. Anthony Fauci, by the media, by the tech companies, and the general powers that be. Sadly, I've made my peace the fact Fauci will probably never be accountable, no matter what happens with the Senate.

At this point, we have enough smoking gun proof to call into question gain-of-function research, their own misdeeds in shutting down any inquiry two years ago, and yet nothing has or probably will be done. LabLeak, though, remains one of the great cover-ups of our lifetime. And anytime there's more color to the story, just to show how big the stakes were at the time, the players involved, and who benefited, I'm going to do my best to bring that out. Which brings us to some stunning new reporting by Right to Know. It's a transparency organization dedicated to revealing the truth of the government's want covered up. Right to Know has now compiled a definitive and a damning timeline of evidence, which is important that I'm going to take you all through. Right to Know notes in a succinct and important timeline that on January 27th, Fauci learned, or at the least was reminded, that he and his organization had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Two days later, Christiane Anderson, a researcher at Scripps Research

Institute in La Jolla, California, discovered a paper describing gain-of-function research techniques with coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. Three days after that, on January 31, 2020, Fauci and Anderson spoke privately in a conversation that we don't know anything about. Additionally, on that day, two other researchers told Fauci that the novel coronavirus was, quote, inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. The next day, Fauci sought more details from his organization on which specific projects he and the NIH had funded at the Wuhan lab. And it was during these critical few days where the lab leak theory was considered as likely as natural origin theory amongst the scientists, and in some cases, even more.

And it's when the full-fledged freakout and cover-up was taking place at the same time. At one point, one of the researchers circulated thoughts amongst virologists, including Fauci, that included analysis from Mike Farzan that said of the furin cleavaved site on the COVID virus, quote, there are possible ways in nature, but it's, quote, highly unlikely and specifically noting that it was, quote, a hard time to explain as an event outside of a lab. At this point is when the cover-up went into full gear. Farrar and others began circulating thoughts of a paper to be published in Nature magazine, which famously declared that COVID did come, did not come from a lab. That paper has been since called into question, though it effectively determined the policy from that day forward of Fauci, the WHO, the Chinese government, the media, and the tech companies to declare truth. In a draft of those notes, Farrar specifically told the research that, quote, they had left out, quote, anomalies which

would have made them, quote, look like loons. In other words, they specifically left out evidence and facts that pointed to a lab leak. And it was then things took an even more deceitful turn. Christian Anderson, who previously had identified COVID as maybe coming from a lab, days earlier had indicated he believed, said he and others had a responsibility to push back, though, against the idea that COVID was specifically engineered by the Chinese government, saying instead that since they hadn't, they should instead say that the virus was, quote, consistent with natural evolution. Now, again, the document and the paper they published, which set policy for over a year, was specifically designed as a messaging document, not a document

of science, to push back against the idea that COVID was engineered as a bioweapon. But we all know that's a canard. It does not address the idea and the magnitude of evidence at this point, and even then, that it was research gone bad and the virus may well have instead accidentally escaped. The paper was accepted and published by Nature March 17th, 2020. Coincided right with the first lockdown. And it was that article that set the tone that said definitively COVID did not leak from the lab. That lasted for nearly a month time period that I took you through just now because it was critical for the next year.

During that period, we learned a lot. Peter Daszak and Eto Health Alliance, the organization that served as a conduit for Fauci money to the Wuhan lab, how Daszak himself marshaled Fauci and much of the scientific community to push back against the lab leak hypothesis before any of this evidence is clear, how Daszak was hired by the WHO to help investigate the theory and miraculously found actually it had no basis and had something directly at stake. Months of FOIAs and investigations have brought us to the point where we see all kinds of sketchy things that were also happening at that time,

including this, how Harvard Medical School and how Harvard-aligned experts changed their tune on lab leak after a $115 million donation to Harvard from Evergrande, the Chinese real estate behemoth that has since had major financial troubles. Even stranger, it showed Fauci was talking to Harvard in some sort of quasi-diplomatic mission, where Evergrande said that they needed info from Fauci on behalf of the Chinese government. Now, obviously, China and Fauci, they had the most to gain from the lab leak theory being dismissed.

And China, because it probably isn't their fault that this plague was unleashed on the world. Fauci, because he probably helped reverse and skirt the policy, which would have stopped the US government from funding this research. But to me, this cover-up is going to be part of an extraordinary story where you can really get away with anything if you're just connected enough. If you run pandemic response and the media makes you a hero, you won't be held accountable. If you basically get all your friends in science to back you up and make yourself synonymous with science, nobody can really do any actual science to say what you're saying is straight up lies, especially when so-called science relies on you for funding. So today, where are we? The Lancet, the so-called gold standard medical journal, now fully acknowledges the lab leak theory may well be the origin of coronavirus and cites terrible safety practices at the Wuhan lab as raising its likelihood. We will probably

never get the proof that COVID did leak from the lab, mostly because the Chinese have long since destroyed the evidence and covered it up. But we already have full enough knowledge that Fauci and the scientific community worked with the media to keep us from even asking the question in that year. If it were up to me, these people should be put on trial at the very least. Instead, they will retire as heroes and move on and retire with wealth. And you know, Crystal, I just can't get over that time. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Joining us now for a little midterms check-in, we have J. Miles Coleman. He is associate editor of Saboteau's Crystal Ball. Great to see you, Miles. Good to see you, man. Thank you, guys. Yeah, of course. So I saw this piece in the Washington Post. Let's go ahead and put it up on the screen. And I wanted to run it by you. And if you thought there was any there, they say this little-known election predictor should worry Democrats, and they point to the primary vote turnout, which has favored Republicans. And what I mean by that is more Republicans have turned out during the primaries than Democrats. Historically, the party where more of their voters turned out in the primaries ends up doing well in the midterm. So if we look back at 2018, Democrats exceeded Republicans in the

primary by eight points. They end up winning the House with a nine-point margin in the popular vote. This time around, Republicans have had a four-point advantage in terms of their primary voters turning out in those elections. Do you think that that translates into a good performance for Republicans ultimately in November? Yeah, sure. So, well, for us forecasters, you know, we like to have all of the signs in one way or the other, right? And kind of this year, the Democrats have pointed to their overperformance in special elections. You know, Joe Biden's approval isn't great, but it's going up.

Meanwhile, Republicans have always been pointing to the turnout in the primaries. What I think is important to keep in mind here is we have to keep looking at the big picture. The state of Ohio, for example, if you look at that. In the Ohio primary, where Republicans outvoted Democrats with something like 68% of the vote, you know, well, J.D. Vance, you know, may end up winning, but, you know, he's not going to be winning with, you know, 68%. But however, I think that does tell me that Ohio, for example, may be a bit tilted in the Republican direction. So I think we have to keep in mind, you know, this is big picture. In the past, as you said, it's performed well. In 06, it was, you know, a 54% Democratic electorate. It was about that in 18 as well. Those were very good Democratic years. In 2010 and 2014, Republicans had, you know, a 55, 56 percent advantage and they went

on to have a good year. So, you know, I think overall this tells me that this cycle is on track to be maybe, you know, a Republican leaning year, but, you know, maybe not as much as 2010 or 2014. And, you know, I think if you told a lot of Democrats that at the start of this cycle, when it was looking like a very much a red wave, they would have taken that deal. Right. I think you're absolutely correct. So, but how does that translate then into close races? Like how exactly do you forecast that not 2010, not 2000, you know, not some crazy red wave election, but still, you know, slight Republican. How does that How does that work in some of the more swing states? What are some of the things you guys look at there?

Yes. So I think, you know, not to be selfish, but kind of going back to Virginia here last year. One of the reasons that our governor, the Republican Glenn Young, can win is because Republican turnout was super high. That's another thing that really caught my attention about these numbers is, you know, compared to 2010 and 2014, which were Obama's rough midterms, they were very low turnout.

Well, guess what? Nothing this year suggests to me that 2022 was going to be a low turnout year. So basically Youngkin won with high Republican turnout. And I think the Roe v. Wade ruling has given Democrats, you know, that may help with their turnout. You know, as I think it was interesting that in this study, they divided the states into, you know, states that voted for Roe and states that voted after Roe. Those states that went after you did see Democrats doing a bit better. So, you know, this is something that Democratic candidates in many key states are running on,

the Supreme Court ruling. So, you know, it's something that could maybe help Democratic enthusiasm in a lot of those key race races like, you know, Pennsylvania or even Florida. That's something that Val Demings is very much trying to run on. Yeah, that's actually a key point is that some of these primaries that are being factored into these midterm turnout numbers, some of these occurred before Dobbs. So the increased Democratic enthusiasm, because, you know, if you're a Democrat and this is your theory of the case, that sort of this Dobbs decision changed everything and now we have the enthusiasm. It wouldn't fully factor that change in the landscape. So that is an interesting note. Maz, there's been a big conversation lately about how the polls are. We have this every year. You know, Nate Cohen of the

New York Times we covered here wrote a big analysis that I'm sure you took a look at saying basically some of the same warning signs are flashing. Some of the same states that had big polling misses previously, places like Ohio and Wisconsin, especially industrial Midwest, especially states with large white working class voters. They seem to be coming out with polls now that are at odds with what some of the other fundamentals might predict in those races. How are you analyzing the state of the polls? How are you factoring those in when you're doing your own, you know, prognostications and analysis of these races? Yeah, it's funny because, you know, prognostications and analysis of these races? Yeah, it's funny because, you know, us in the forecasting world, you know, I think there's that, there's sort of that, there's kind of that military phrase that, you know, you're

always fighting yesterday's war. I mean, that's kind of what we're doing, you know, looking at 2010 and 2016. But actually, there was an interesting piece out today by the other Nate, Nate Silver, in 5338. And one thing he was saying is the polling misses haven't been uniform from cycle to cycle. Back when Obama was running for reelection back in 2012, polls tended to underestimate him. But no one really noticed because he was kind of on track to win anyway. So it's been funny this year because kind of, as you said, Crystal, no one trusts polls from the industrial Midwest. I mean, that's like a

no-poll zone almost. So for us, we try to look at other factors like, OK, well, how much is each party spending in each state? I mean, you know, as they say, kind of in a lot of these races, it's the money that ends up talking. So that's what we track as well. What I'm interested to see is, you know, especially because of the polling misses in 2016 and 2020, how much of that was Trump being on the ballot? What was sort of an interesting case in Georgia back last year when they had those runoffs. Not a lot of pollsters wanted to touch those runoffs because they were sort of a weird situation, right, in early January. If you look at the averages, the Georgia runoff polling was actually decent. So I'm wondering, you know, how much of that is

Trump being off of the ballot? That's interesting. Yeah, that's, yeah, I think about this all the time, Miles. I'm like, is Trump the confounding variable? Or when he's off, and like, when he's off the ballot, does it actually mean polls quote unquote revert to the mean? Or did 2016 just mean some sort of crazy demarcation point for all of polling? I found it useful to look at some issues like the economy and others, like who's trusted on those? Because those were pretty good proxies for the results in 2020. Am I doing the right thing? What are some other things that you guys look at like that? Yeah, that's, you know, what I looked at for a while in presidential elections in the exit polls, there was always a question they asked on exit polls, you know,

which candidate cares more about people like me? It was that candidate who would almost always win. So, you know, I think, I think definitely the Democrats are trying to run on that abortion issue as we saw, as we saw in the special election for New York 19. That's what Congressman now Ryan ran on. And I think something I'm taking away from the abortion issue specifically, there was a poll from Quinnipiac, I think last week, that they asked about specific issues. And yes, the economy was still the sort of top issue, but abortion was next. And they asked voters, okay, well, how important is it that a candidate shares your stance on abortion? Most of the voters who said yes were those college

educated white voters that have trended more Democrat. So that tells me, you know, even if Democrats have a rough midterm, you know, I can see them holding their own in their in those more college educated states like New Hampshire or New Jersey, states like that. That's interesting. Yeah, you're talking about that metric of like, who cares about me more? We're looking at pulling out of Pennsylvania where it wasn't exactly the same question, but they asked voters if they thought that Fetterman said what he believed or was just like saying what he thought people wanted to hear. And, you know, same thing with Oz, same question. And overwhelmingly voters was like 70% thought Oz was just telling them whatever they wanted to hear. And to me, that was almost as significant a result as any of the other polling numbers that came out of that, especially since it was so lopsided. I thought, oh, they just think this guy's really full of it. And that could be an issue for that,

for him ultimately in terms of, you know, when it comes time to vote. What, based on all of the factors that we've talked about here, the midterm turnout, the polls, the special elections, all of these things, what races do you think that control of the Senate is really going to come down to? What are the, like, true toss-up states that you're looking at right now? Well, just very quickly, Crystal, on that point about Dr. Oz. I mean, wasn't it over this weekend where Trump was talking about J.D. Vance, and he's like, yeah, he just kisses my ass. You know, that's what everyone's thinking.

I missed that. That's hilarious. I didn't see that. But in terms of the states we're looking at, there were two polls out this morning from the state of Georgia. One from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had Warnock slightly down. Another from Marist had him slightly up. I think it wouldn't be crazy if this was the second cycle in a row where control of the Senate goes to a Georgia runoff. Wow.

You know, that's definitely in the cards. We, at the crystal ball, we did move a few races recently in favor of Democrats. We moved that Pennsylvania race a few weeks ago from toss-up to lean-down Democratic. You know, we think Oz is at at least a slight disadvantage right now. We think Mark Kelly, at least right now, is looking decently in Arizona. One state that we've been sort of bearish on for Democrats, but we still haven't in the toss-up category, is Nevada.

That's a state that's been sort of unpredictable in recent cycles. Unlike a lot of blue states, you know, I was talking about voters who were more educated being sort of trended towards Democrats. Nevada is a more working class state. So, you know, think about what the Democratic base is there. You know, it's basically tourism workers. It's basically culinary workers, more kind of working class. Well, you know, if the economy is more of an issue there, are those voters going to feel it a bit more, vote a bit more Republican? So I would say those states, you know, it's, I've noticed Democrats are trying to make plays in these kind of light red states like Wisconsin or North Carolina, even in Ohio. So, you know,

we'll see if those come into play as well. But we sort of have those in the lean Republican category. Yeah. Skeptical on those ones. Thank you so much for the breakdown. Super helpful. Always great to see you, Miles. Thanks, Miles. Appreciate it, man. Yeah, our pleasure. See you later. Thanks so much for watching, guys. We really appreciate it. So as we said, we got the Chicago tickets. They're on sale. Please buy them if you, guys. We really appreciate it. So as we said, we got the Chicago tickets. They're on sale. Please buy them if you're somewhere in the Midwest. Or not.

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are capitalizing on that. It's so, so helpful to us here at the show. We have great content for everybody on Wednesday. We've got great content for everybody on Friday. It's very happy for me to say that. And we will see you all on Thursday. Love y'all. See you Thursday. Now, who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's You're Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars?

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