Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/23/26: Beef Prices Skyrocket, Susan Collins Corruption, Troy Jackson Hijacked By Dem Elites

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump AG Sec says eat eggs as beef prices skyrocket, Susan Collins massive corruption scandal, DC Dems hijack Troy Jackson campaign.   Alvaro Bedoya: ​https://x.com/BedoyaUSA    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.za for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions.

And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhain. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.

Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, ready or not? 24 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, ad staff, give you guys the best. independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Well, some very bad news. Wendy's looks like it's about to face 300 closures. You can put this first headline up on the screen. This is from the Associated Press. Wendy's faces 300 closures across 15 states due to

crippling beef prices. The report here says one of the largest U.S. franchisees for Wendy's has filed for bankruptcy protection after the restaurant chain tried to terminate its franchise agreement, Meridage Hospitality Group, which operates 314 Wendy's restaurants in 15 states. Said in a statement last week, it intends to keep operating its restaurants and paying its 9,000 employees during the bankruptcy process. So this is a franchise based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And they are now facing, according to court documents, a notice of termination from Wendy's from Wendy's of that company's agreement for the franchising. And that was effective immediately on September 16th. Wendy's is claiming that this franchise owes.

almost $30 million in royalties and fees. So looking pretty brutal, but coming, of course, as beef prices are very high. This franchise has 54 Wendy's locations in Michigan, but they also run Wendy's in Georgia, Florida. They have a lot of Wendy's in Connecticut, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and then less than 20 Wendy's in Arkansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia. All those to say, this is a huge, a huge franchisee of Wendy's that is now. coming under court filings from the parent company.

Yeah, we want to talk for a minute about how Wendy's got to this situation. But first, the good news, if you can't afford beef, there are other things that you can eat. Let's roll Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins. But if it is too expensive, unlike fuel, Benny, you can eat chicken, pork, salmon, eggs. There are other sources of really good protein. and all of those prices are coming down as well. So it isn't necessarily breaking out there. And listen, I'm a mom of four.

I'm still feeding a whole bunch of kids, very hungry kids. We realize the price of groceries are too high. We're doing everything we can to bring them down after the Biden years of crazy, crazy inflation. I would argue as a farm girl, as a cattle girl, and as a maha mom of four teenagers, that $6.50 for a pound of ground beef probably isn't that bad. You know, things got pretty good quotes there.

Yeah. So first she's saying you can get salmon instead, and second, she's saying it's that's, that price is not that bad. Yeah, and things got pretty bad for Joe Biden during COVID and inflation. But it never got to a place where he was telling people that they can eat eggs or veggie burgers, as I've seen some people on the right kind of circulating like something, saying like, hey, you know, if you really pile that veggie burger up with a whole bunch of other stuff, it's basically the same. just an incredible level of cope. But the Wendy's hit here is, and it's not fair to blame all of this on Trump. Wendy's has been a struggling company for a very long time, but this is kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's like a patient who is unwell and gets a cold, and the cold is the thing that takes them out. This was kind of the cold that took out this franchisee, but may end up taking the entire thing down. But Emily, let's roll through some Wendy's history here. Because I think it is kind of instructive about, you know, how things have unfolded in our political and corporate economy over the last couple of decades. When Wendy's came in, they did the always fresh, never frozen, you know, quality is the thing that was going to differentiate them. And it was.

Like, it was compared to like McDonald's and other fast food company, it was a little bit better. It then gets bought by, you know, basically private equity in the 2000s, Nelson Peltz, who's this, you know, activist private equity investor. And also Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman came in, and Bill Ackman had a bunch of ideas for how they were going to make Wendy's better. One big, beautiful Bill. One big, beautiful Bill Ackman. And then a lot went wrong.

But Stavros actually had, you know, said this well recently on podcast. Let's roll a little bit of E4. I think it's clear that what's f***ing us up is like private equity and money taking over these things that are all products that are awesome, right? Sports is the easiest one, but the one I've actually latched on to recently I think goes hand in hand with sports is fast food because everybody understands that Wendy's has gotten shittier. The spicy chicken sandwich now uses shredded lettuce.

Exactly right there, that is private equity. someone saying we don't want a fresh head of lettuce that costs more money so we're going to get you bagged shitty lettuce and i know that in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal but people will notice jersey mics was bought i think two years ago it started to get shit it was one of the it was the best sandwich chain it's getting shir because some kid who's never fucking spread mayo in his life decided oh no actually instead of a sandwich this is now a commodity right and what's important is that by turning the buyer experience, the consumer experience shittier, I, some dickhead that's never made a sandwich, gets a billion extra dollars, right?

I was just looking up. So Blackstone. Blackstone. Of course, acquired a controlling majority stake in Jersey Mike's subs in early 2025 for approximately $8 billion. Insane. Insane. Those people don't give a fuck about sandwiches. The before and after.

I mean, you're right. There are only so many active, active fan community. Totally. It'll be like, this is what it used to be like. This is how much salami I was getting. And now look at this shit. Emily, when was the last time you were at Jersey mics or Wendy's? Not that long ago. I like both of those restaurants. I completely agree on Jersey mics. I hadn't noticed Wendy's so much. But Jersey mics, I feel like is the most obvious. What about you? Notably boring. It's just like, you're getting like, what happened to Jersey mics? And low quality, too. I didn't realize they've been.

bought by private equity when I went and I'm like, this is not as all how I remembered it. What is what is going on here? And so it's not just private equity. There's, it's also, you hear people talk about the K-shaped economy, which kind of means things are doing well on the top and the bottom, but not in the middle. And Wendy's got hit with this because they were like, they were somewhere in the middle. They were better than McDonald's, but they weren't that good. And then along comes stuff like Shake Shack, where it's a couple bucks more than Wendy's,

but it's way, way better. And so people who can afford it are going to shake shack. And then stuff like Chick-fil-A comes along and blows up, which is a little bit cheaper, but probably arguably better. But regardless, it's giving people options underneath there. But then within that private equity just spent 20 years doing its financial engineering, one of the craziest things they did was, so the way that these companies work is they get royalties from all of the franchise.

So, you know, you buy a franchise, you make a profit, you have to send it back to headquarters. What Wendy's did is they securitized those future royalties. So basically it'd be like, you're due a salary over the next, you know, two years, and you go to a payday lender and say, I want all of that right. I want all of that upfront. So they borrowed money from these private credit folks, right, out of the private equity world, they secure. the future flow of these royalty fees and give it all to private equity. Like they give all that away to themselves, basically. And then when royalty fees are not coming in anymore like they used to,

then the stockholders are left holding the bag. And then it just crashes. So kind of the people who own it in their 401ks and their pensions and such. That was one of the kind of like different financial engineering. moves they made it. I've talked about this before. One thing they do is they sell the land out from underneath the... It's a huge thing with the franchise. It's like one of the biggest parts is just owning the land. It's an enormous part of the business is land ownership. And they'll sell what they also will sell the franchise to the franchisee. So you're not just like a franchise anymore. Now you

straight up own the thing. So you're getting and so then the private equity goon is getting like a big lump sum payment right there. They're basically trying to extract as much wealth as possible. from it before the party ends and they file for bankruptcy and everybody's screwed as a result. The thing that might have active, actually destroyed them was, you remember in 2024, their CEO came out and said they were rolling out all this new software and they were going to start doing dynamic pricing where if it was busy, then you were going to get charged more. And people lost it over that. Like, no, like, I'm paying, I'm going to pay what I'm going to pay.

You can't change the price just based on how long the line is. And the free market folks are like, why not? Supply and demand. You don't like that? And it really does show you how anathema, the kind of, quote, unquote, free market is to the human spirit. Like, we don't actually like pure unfettered supply and demand. Like, we think that that is gross. And I was telling Saga, I'm reading this book on the history of capitalism,

we have always thought that's gross. Like the people think that price gougers are gross, that they are, that they run contrary to the human spirit, which is, which is really one of community. And so to exploit people like that, people just find it to be wrong. And so people reacted extraordinarily harshly to that. Globalism has totally changed the bargain that was the engine of free markets, which is that you're trading as, as it's gotten easier. to travel. This has totally changed the bargain. You started and you still hear hardcore capitalists speaking reverently about the earliest days of the free market where people were trading goods. But what made that possible is that you had a physical in-person relationship where you were

trusting and haggling over what was fair. And that bargain is almost impossible, almost impossible on a global level where there's such consolidation. I mean, we haven't even talked about that with beef prices. It's not, I don't think it's just private equity. I think it's also that there's so much consolidation with the U.S. cattle herd. It's a nightmare right now. There are all kinds of factors that explain why these prices keep going up. It's not necessarily just a Trump or a Biden thing. Solar would tell us it's a antitrust thing. And I think he's correct about that. I'm sure he would agree on the private equity level too. But that's how gummed up the works are of this quote unquote free market. And for anybody to look at this and say, well, that's just capitalism.

baby, it's damaging to their own cause, but also doesn't make any sense whatsoever because this is, I mean, sure, it's unfettered. You could say it's unfettered. It's Randian capitalism, perhaps, but it's certainly not free and fair markets. Yeah. And what Wendy's can't, and I don't think we'll be able to withstand is this beef price explosion. Because, you know, their whole thing is fresh beef, never frozen. And McDonald's recently, you know, invested in, you know, their supply chain so that their quarter pounders are not frozen so like they can compete with them uh on that but now with the you know they just don't have the cushion i i think to withstand this blow or at least this this 300 you know plus franchises didn't we'll see how we'll see how the rest of them

end up doing that's right uh i did want to talk real briefly before we move on the next thing about this uh trump administration announcement that they were kicking uh 750 000 i'm going to put people in quotes off of the Affordable Care Act, and they're saying that they're investigating another 400,000 plus for potential fraud. So, but I did want to zag on this a little bit. I like everything the Trump administration does, it's like totally chaotic and we'll probably blow up in their face because it's, for some reason, they just don't do things effectively. But the principle of it is, I actually think sound. So basically over the last several years, and really fueling, you know, firing up during COVID, it became a lot easier to sign up for the ACA,

but in particular to have brokers get paid to sign people up for the ACA. And so when you introduce something like that into a system, what you're then going to get is scammers who come in and set up a healthcare brokerage company and then basically make up people. and claim that they have signed people up for the ACA and then go to the federal government and say, look, we've signed up 10,000 people to the ACA, to these gold, platinum, you know, copper plans. And so here's an invoice for our brokerage fee for setting them up. And then, but the people don't exist,

or they're stolen social security numbers, the people don't know that they've ever been signed up, or they're going around to people who are kind of mentally incapacitated and just having them kind of giving them $100 to like sign a piece of paper. And then the person has no idea that they're even signed up so they can't use it. And so one positive development of AI is that it's much more, it's much easier to put in major data sets into these systems and have them do some pattern recognition and find,

find us hundreds of thousands of people who are enrolled in the ACA but have never once used it. Or who didn't put a social security number in? That's one of the things that they caught. And this is less than a million of 20 million plus. So it's yeah, to your point, I think that's probably what they did. It probably was AI being like, why are all these accounts without a social security number and not using the plans and you're able to identify brokers? Yeah. And so I think, think like for some on the left the initial response was to say this is outrageous and you're kicking people off of health care but i would just encourage people on the left to pause on that and to say well hold on we do want the ACA to work like we want public health care to work and for public

health care to work people have to have faith in it and so then we have to we have to crack down on scammers and nobody's getting health care by some mentally disabled person getting tricked into signing up for something that they don't know how to use and don't and haven't used so i think this is actually a step in the right direction will like will they do it accurately are they like effectively we'll see um i hope they do because i i do want there to be faith in the government's ability to implement these programs without fraud i didn't know where you were going to go with this and that was sort of my thoughts on the whole thing so i'm nothing to argue about no nothing to argue about it Because the headlines were kind of scary.

Like, oh, people. I know. I was angry, too, when I first saw the headline. Like, oh, I see what's going on here. This has actually been a problem for a while. Right. Maybe the administration wanted the headlines to be scary. But also, you know, 750,000 on millions and millions and millions,

not necessarily even the huge fraud number. Still a ridiculous number. It's billions. It's billions of dollars. For sure. So, all right. Anyway. A little zag at the end there for you.

Perfect. Let's go to Maine. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.orgia for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all.

I'm not going to get anywhere fighting. That is wild. learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree.

Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight, I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal.

I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class?

No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore. yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way.

You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.

You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists. on artists, on artists, on artists, on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ProPublica dropped a massive investigation into Susan Collins, Senator Susan Collins, who's obviously up for reelection in Maine. The headline was, the FBI Anti-Corruption Squad was circling Susan Collins until Trump got in the way.

So the story really has two parts. Some of this is new reporting on Susan Collins' super PAC. So that technically should be a distinction between Senator Susan Collins and the SuperPack, of course, dating back to the 2020 election cycle, particularly and a defense firm that was spending money through a shell group to the Collins SuperPack, expecting to get defense contracts in return. Now, the second part of the story, so there's some new reporting on that front. A lot of this was already known. The Collins campaign said they returned the money.

They cooperated with the FBI back when this investigation. for Spring 4th, but ProPublica is now reporting that Trump's FBI has squashed the investigation when it could have produced more fruit. So that's the claim of the ProPublica story. And Ryan has been digging into this. I'll be in Maine later today, actually, not related to this story, but going to be checking things out with obviously this big election cycle. And Ryan, curious for your take, as you've gone through the story, basically line by line, to try and understand what exactly the Trump administration might have been squashing with the investigation. What are you looking at here?

Yeah, and we might disagree on how big of a scandal this is. So I think it would be helpful to go through a bunch of it because people don't read anymore, including me. Like, it's just, it's a thing that it's a lost art for him. But I actually read this one. And let's share some of the, like, you know, key. details of it because if you're just following this on Instagram or on on Twitter, you're seeing Republicans push back and say, you're taking the word of a fraud, liar, and a criminal and just running this when there's a lot more evidence that they're going with. But let's,

let's roll through. But yeah, that is the cons campaign, just to download that everybody. Yeah, the Collins campaign is saying that this, you're going to meet him in just one moment, but that he has motivation basically to lie because he's trying to get a lighter sentence. He was sentenced in bribery. And so he's now trying to get a lighter sentence. And I'll say, honestly, I don't doubt the back and forth between this guy and the campaign being shady and corrupt at all. I mean, there's just naked corruption on display in the story. I doubt ProPublica's, I guess, context giving.

But anyway, let's get into it. So the basic thing that people need to understand is that there is, there is, is a law on the books that bars defense contractors from contributing to campaigns. And there's hilarious, first of all. Right. But it's an obvious reason why that should be the case. You don't want corruption to seep into the military industrial complex. That's so cute.

We cannot. We cannot have that. And so it is one of the few like red lines that we have. You absolutely cannot do that. And so this guy, and allegedly, Scott Reed, who is a kind of legendary fundraiser and DC operative. He was a Chamber of Commerce operative for many years. He's very close to Susan Collins. He is currently, as we speak, running the super PAC that is supporting Susan Collins.

So he's still not in prison, is still in the game. in order to get around this law against defense contractors giving money to campaigns, candidates, or super PACs, they came up with the idea of creating a shell company. So the defense contractor would move the money to a shell company, and the shell company then would make the contribution. And so let's put up this first element here. They write, to skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of funds, Navitech plan to funnel the donation through a shell company.

The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from, as you would. You don't want to blow $150,000 and they don't know that you bribe them. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said, and that Navitech would get its government contracts. After the corner bakery meeting, Navitech's CEO, Martin Cow, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins Superpack using the Shell Company. Two months later, he told Navitech executives that Collins committed to getting the company a $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica. They ended up that year getting at least $10 million. And ProPublica has the image of the check that they cut.

Now, one delightful piece of this, Emily, is the name of the company. It's just so perfectly kind of woke one. the name of the company they came up with was society of scientists and engineers society of young women scientists and engineers and maybe they only had one scientist but because they didn't put the S on it I think that's one of the things that got them caught

that's like a quality leering situation there was like a watchdog going through and was like what is this society It's the quality leering center of nonprofits for engineers. And so they filed a, this is back in 2020, they filed a FEC complaint, and then they were able to dig up the LLC paperwork. And also a society of young scientists giving $150,000 out of nowhere to a Collins super PAC. People are like, what, that's not normal behavior. So what's happening here?

So they look at, they look up the paperwork and the LLC is his wife, is like registered. to his wife. And so people are very quickly like, oh, this is clearly a shell company that's that's using this here. So let's let's roll the next, the next quote up here. So after the budgets became law, Collins office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navitec email seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive. Quote, I spoke with Senator Collins' office regarding the $8 million, a naval official wrote in an email on February 6, The interested company is Navitech. In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Cal said,

the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him, you've seen me deliver, Cal said. Reed knew Cal was behind the $150,000. Anonymous donation emails showed because Cow told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company. Very smart, Reed replied in an email viewed by ProPublican. That's pretty bad. That's bad. And so the more extensive back and forth shows him laying out.

I just spoke to my lawyer. He said, do this shell company, LLCs are very well protected. And then, you know, Reid tells him this is very smart and blah, blah, blah. So then the question is, what did Collins know about this? Like, did he actually know anything about this? So let's put this next element up. And so this is the Collins campaign saying they have no idea what's going on here. But then ProPublica writes,

but an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Cow's donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do in Cow's recounting of the Corner Bakery meeting. Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Cow's shell company, one of Reed's subordinates, emailed a Navitech lobbyist asking for Cow's phone number. Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him. Now, last night, the Collins campaign said that there's nothing. to see here because this is actually very normal stuff that you don't have to know why somebody gave you the donation, you see a donation, you call them and you thank them for it. However,

notice the timeline here. This is seven days after the Super PAC cash the check. Super PACs don't disclose their fundraising until oftentimes months later. So it raises the question. It raises the How did they know that the check had been written to the SuperPack if the SuperPack did not tell the campaign? Yes, I was going to say, I'm glad you picked up on this exact line because this was the one that jumped out to me as well, not just because of the potential like transactionality of it, because some of that is perfectly normal. And a lot of this piece or a lot of my sort of eye rolling with the piece is that ProPublica is describing as like shocking novel information, the most normal things ever. and they're bad, normal things, to be clear. But it's like entirely normal, unfortunately. But this one is significant because it's not just the timeline,

but also the fact that you have someone from Collins' staff, not from the Super PAC staff, but from Collins' staff, would have had to convey that information to her. And previously, as you're reading the entire story, it's possible to say that Reed was freelancing. So there's plausible deniability, which is exactly why Super PACs kind of function the way that they do between saying, well, Reed was dealing with Cal in the way that Reed was

dealing with Cal when you have that email you previously mentioned right, where it says, quote unquote, very smart as cow indicates he's planning to give through a shell group. That, again, can stop with Reed. It can be, well, maybe Susan Collins shouldn't have, you know, somebody who's willing to engage in this kind of wink wink wink behavior leading her super PAC. But when you actually see this happening, that does implicate the Collins operation, I think, overall, because now you have super PAC coordination on the table. Yes, indeed. Now, less people think, I'm just being a partisan hack here,

let's drag the good Brian Schatz, who's also an Appropriations Committee member, a Democrat, who is being pushed. He's sort of like understood to be one of kind of Schumer's choices to replace him if Schumer departs the Senate world put up the next element here. In another message, Andy Weiner, who former executives said was Navitex chief strategist,

reminded Cow to budget money for political contributions based on how much the company wanted in congressional funding the following year. That would be criminal in the defense world. Weiner was his guide to the political underbelly, Cal said. A consummate insider, Weiner had parlayed six years as chief of staff to Democratic Senator Brian's shots of Hawaii into a lucrative lobbying career with a firm called Strategies 360. One of Weiner's former colleagues compared him to the slick lobbyist on the Netflix show House of Cards who toggles between the political and corporate worlds. And again, to point out how bipartisan this is, the entire reason this company exists is former Senator Daniel Inouye, the legendary, they called

him what the Prince of Pork or the King of Pork. He passed away in the 2010s and left a lot of defense companies in Hawaii hanging because they were. were all getting their taxpayer money through in a way, and this company was among them. And so they had to then, they changed your name and redeveloped relationships. And that's why they became so tight with Susan Collins. So let's roll this next one here. So less than one month after the event, the Senate released a draft of the defense budget containing $21.5 million of Navitech's pet projects in Maine.

cow emailed a Collins campaign fundraiser, who would in theory have nothing to do with a government contract, four days later saying, thanks again for all the support from Senator Collins. I've been involved in many tight races in the past and understand that last minute needs come up, he continued. We are here to help any way we can financially or whatever. Cow's desire to donate even more money led to the fateful corner bakery meeting with the head of the Collins Super Pack, called the 1820 Pack, Cowell told the Fow. FBI. Unlike Collins campaign, which could accept only $5,600 per election from individuals, the Super PAC could accept unlimited contributions. The Super PAC emailed Cow a memo before the meeting, stressing the need to raise money with, quote, urgency. At the meeting, Cal and Reid, the Super PAC's chair, hammered out a deal for a six-figure donation, Cal told the FBI over email. Cow informed Reed of his shell company scheme, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer.

They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on. Cow reassured him talking about LCs, thanks for doing this, Reid replied. So notice the timeline here. Collins gets this company a contract after they give some money. He reaches out to the Collins campaign. The Collins campaign, we're not talking about the Super PAC here, reaches out to the Collins campaign says, thank you for getting me this government money. Let me know if you need more money. Then Scott Reed reaches out to him saying, we do need a lot more money and as, for this extraordinary amount of money. That again suggests that the campaign and Scott Reed are working directly together on that. Right. And what was kind of frustrating to me about this story is that

ProPublica, I don't know if you picked up on this, I thought it was weird that ProPublica's reporting nowhere really made the connection with the Super PAC and the campaign coordination. It was mostly focused on the transactionality, potentially a transactionality of Cow and Reed, which again, And it's an unfortunate reality. Reed sounded like he was being fairly careful and how he was catching cow to talk and what to put in print and otherwise, according to the emails. What it looks like is somebody who was let go by the DOJ because Trump was getting rid of people who went after 2020 election stuff, then leaked to ProPublica. I think that's pretty clearly the sourcing chain here because they have all of the documents that apparently the DOJ had and the FBI had. And so those documents show a pretty normal soft corruption, which is coaching you on what to say, what not to say, knowing full well, that there's a transactionality happening.

And you just don't want it in print precisely for these reasons. So I was sort of frustrated that ProPublica, again, wasn't, you know, normally if you're reporting on this, you would say, well, the law about coordination between SuperPax in the campaign. Like, there's literally none of that in the ProPublica story. It's as though they thought the real story was just that the FBI squashed this investment. investigation into transactionality rather than the FBI squashing an investigation into potential super PAC coordination. And I honestly found that weird. Well, to me, not so much. Maybe they could have included a little bit more about it. But to me, the coordination between super PACs and campaigns is an inside baseball kind of tic-y-tac paperwork violation. It's... But it seems to me like

there's much more evidence of that here than there is of violating the sort of corruption, and transactionality thing. And to your point, I think, if they more tightly linked the campaign to the SuperPack, then you can more tightly show the relationship between Collins and the bribe. On the other hand, Collins herself. Everything I'm telling you here is from the article. So it was all in there. So I want to give them that credit.

This is the last one that we'll read for now. A few weeks after the $150,000 check to the Collins SuperPack cleared, In February 2020, Cow and his team met with Collins' office and secured a new round of funding. We were very warmly received, Cal reported to his colleagues in an email obtained by the FBI. So this is not taking his word for stuff. This is like these are emails that from the time, excellent meeting, total of $32 million will be supported. Records show the Senate allocated at least $10 million that year based on Navitex proposals. Now, what Cal also says, and you can back.

back this up too, is that it was junk. What they were selling was junk. They were selling nothing. They were selling like research. And 3D printed boats that the Navy didn't want. Like just total garbage. And the scam is even worse. What he would do is he would find his idea was let's find a university that we can then funnel the money through. So the University of Maine, which did not respond to request for comment from ProPublica, is part of this scheme where he tells Collins, Basically, we're going to do the research through the University of Maine. So he's going to then give University of Maine a little cut, and then they're going to take the rest of it. And then it operates underneath the rubric of the University of Maine, which is offensive across the board.

And we end up as a public with nothing. Like, nothing that they made, take his word for it or not. Nothing that they made for many, many, many million dollars over the years. is used by the military at all. It's just money that was burned up. He was driving a Ferrari to work every day and living this lavish life, $5 million home in Hawaii.

Like, that's what the taxpayers got out of it. Is this guy getting fantastically rich? But we didn't even get anything out of it. Meanwhile, service members are, you know, are lacking, you know, decent food, like supplies. Like they're like, undies are catching fire on the aircraft carrier. you know, they're the ones who are like putting themselves out there are getting stiff while

people like this are getting enormously rich, enabled directly by Susan Collins in a flagrantly and directly illegal way. Like there aren't many laws left on corruption, but you can't take money from a defense contractor for contracts. It's like the last law that's left on the books. and she had to go out there and break it. I mean, my strong assumption is that this is happening every day with everyone. It doesn't make it any better. But I just get frustrated with ProPublica, which I think traffic's really heavily in a new window. And there's a bigger picture story than the Susan Collins.

Although there's more coming. And yeah, they identified a whole bunch of people. And apparently there are more stories coming. Well, next one, Lindsay Graham, apparently. There has to be because there's, again, this is, it's all bad. Like, don't get me wrong. I just got frustrated with the story, but it's all bad. And there's this part where they say, this one drove me crazy. In one back and forth, a lobbyist and a company executive described another senator as quote unquote fundamentally transactional and having a reputation as a pay-to-play office. Please name for me the lobbyist and the senator rather than just putting that in the story. Maybe it's because this is going to be a series and there's more to come. But there were a couple of notes like that. It's like, driving me insane. Tell me who it is. You have the records. I want to know who it is. If that's the case, tell me. If lobbyists are walking around saying that, which they are all of the time, and you have it in your possession, I want to know. Ask them for comment, of course, but tell me who it is.

Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumber? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show.

Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Yuwanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGulio, the old one, which. which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not gonna get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today.

Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business, and I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, they would be so much more peace in the world. We're gonna talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me.

Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman.

Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colane, Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts. of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal.

I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th.

That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.

You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we can put this New York Magazine element up on the screen. It's kind of a 7,000 word investigation into the Troy Jackson campaign and particularly the way that Washington consultants after kind of grand platinum volunteers pushed him through the kind of rapid fire nomination contest that came right after Platner withdrew from the race, they were all pushed aside and in came pollsters and campaign managers and consultants from the Dan Goldman campaign from the Colin Allred campaign from the Mallory McMorrow campaign, effectively also from

kind of Schumer world in Washington, D.C., and it gets into some detail about the ways that they're telling him to stop being an interesting candidate. Like, his, he's a genuinely working class candidate from, you know, far northern Maine, would be the only senator with just an associate's degree, the logger, his entire life, very clearly a regular person. They told him, basically, you know, stop taking questions from people, like you're killing us, stop telling people what you honestly think. They have given him new talking points around Medicare for All. He can't back off of Medicare for All,

but if you hear him talk about it, now it sounds much more like a public option, and he wants to be very, you know, be very, you know, be very assuring to people that don't worry. He's not actually going to do anything too radical. the biggest kind of push from them seems to be over his calling what's going on in Gaza from Israel a genocide. And they tell him you can't walk back to your previous position. Like you said it and you can't unsay it, but we want you to kind of basically stop saying it again. I spoke to some

people familiar with the campaign and obtained some of the same documents that Rebecca Tracer did and confirm and kind of advanced some of the reporting. If we could put up F5, no, F6 here, put F6 up on the screen. So I obtained this campaign document and the document tells Troy Jackson to say, quote, I think this is when asked about Israel and Palestine and the genocide. quote, this is what he's supposed to say. I think what's happening in Israel and Palestine is horrific, senseless violence. I think Israel has the right to defend itself, but I do not support the United States

sending offensive weapons that enable more killing. It also goes on to say that he should call for, quote, the release of the hostages. And so a couple things on that. This banning offensive weapons, this is over. Like this is a position that is way. more to the right. I'm going to say to the right because there are people on the right that are against this also. It's just behind the times. Like Jay Street, others, like they're all abandoning this distinction between offensive what Rahmahmanuel is done with it. Like Netanyahu has said he doesn't want American support anymore except, of course he does. But they're bringing in this anachronistic offensive weapons thing for him to try to say that he's opposed to. The release of the hostages is, literally bizarre, right? There are no hostages, unless you're talking about the thousands of Palestinian detainees who are in without charge, which I'm sure he's not talking about.

In all of his talking points that we've obtained, he's instructed to call for the release of the hostages. Like, broke. Are they copying pacing from 2024, actually? I don't know. Like, what are you doing? I don't know. Like, what on earth are you doing? Like, this is, like, he won in, like, what, July of this year? There are no hostages. Like, what is going on? And so, then if he has asked about the previous position on the genocide, document instructs him to say, quote, start with, I've said what I've said. It was perfect circular Washington talking point. Start with, I've said what I've said. Do not sound like you're walking back the previous position and do not invite an argument over semantics. And so... Do not sound like you're walking it back,

but walk it back. But walk it back. It's so bad. Now, what we've been told is that And we've obtained a bunch of different invites and calendar records that show that he has over the last several weeks. I've been doing a huge number of high dollar fundraisers with a lot of corporate CEOs, very wealthy people, and also people with strong pro-Israel bona fides. One of them being Susie Levine, who was a former ambassador to Switzerland, who in the spring of 2024, was one of the signatories of a letter to President Biden saying, effectively, keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for standing up for us. She's in the liberal Zionist camp, you know, two-state solution.

Let's hope that we can get in aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But fundamentally, the thrust of the letter was, thank you for standing strong in support of Israel. This is while Israel was killing tens of thousands of Palestinians. and Biden was overseeing this absolutely horrific policy. And so he's meeting privately with people like her who are then conveying their sense of the situation. And because he's working class from Northern Maine, you can imagine this is not an issue that he has spent his life.

It'd be weird if it was an issue that he'd spent his life kind of steeped in. And so what he's hearing from people is this word genocide is deeply offensive to us. So please stop saying it. And so some of this is very clever on the part of his campaign operatives to kind of surround that they'll give him the talking points, but then they'll also surround him with people who are going to very earnestly and emotionally tell him, you know, how impactful it is to them to hear words like genocide. and without being without being without being without having a grounding in the issue to begin with and then also by cutting him off from the grassroots supporters around main who propelled grand platon to the nomination he then doesn't hear the other side of of this and so he doesn't even get at both sides he just gets the one side and that's and uh tracer talks in her article about being in a a room where he's giving his his speech and then someone asks him about his

Israel, Palestine, and he does this, Israel has the right to defend itself, and does this, like, mealy-mouthed, incoherent, both sidesism. And she said, you could just feel all the energy in the room, just evaporate. And she said, somebody gave him, like, a visible thumbs down. And it was a metaphor for the kind of sucking out of the energy of the entire campaign. Well, first of all, midterm elections are about turnout. And what you are going to succeed with in a state like Maine is if you turn out just about every single member of the grassroots, that would be excited about a position someone like Graham Platner would take on this particular foreign policy issue. And so you're already sucking the energy and the enthusiasm out that you need to support the

enthusiasm gap. And on the other hand, independent voters are going to, they don't agree, actually, with the kind of liberal Democrat position on this anymore. That's pretty clear at this point. If you look across polling, people are closer to the original Troy Jackson position on this than they are otherwise. And so even if you take the kind of enthusiasm question away and you talk just about swing voters,

they want to believe that you believe what you're saying. And they're more likely to agree at this point with the Troy Jackson anyway. So like the math doesn't make sense. The politics of it don't make sense. It's so backwards. Yeah. Now, maybe the Collins campaign and it's this corruption story coming out of the ProPublica and the environment that we're in, the trade war with Canada, which is really hurting Maine. Fuel oil is absolutely crushing families in Maine right now because fuel oil is basically diesel. And so people are paying extraordinary amounts for it. There's reporting that I've done the shows that,

that people who are trying to lock in their fuel oil for the winter are being told by the companies. It's just not possible this year. You can't lock in a price. They're going to get absolutely murdered. New England for people who don't know it in the winter basically relies almost exclusively on home heating oil for heating for these very long and cold winters. So maybe the combination of all the misery. Plus, it's like, okay, well, I've got a wood stove. I don't need the heating oil.

Oh, yeah, well, guess what wood cost now. Trump's in a trade war with Canada, and he's driven up a court of wood is also going to set you back insanely. Chop your own wood. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say was trying to do both at the same time. Like, Tala Rico on some of the, like, quote, unquote, woke one stuff, who's winning, by the way, in Texas, has flat out said, I was wrong. He said, I misspoke. I got that wrong.

What you can't do is straddle both lines. You either have to stand by yourself completely and say, like, go, and this is just on a political level. We're not even talking about morally. Obviously, morally, it's correct to own what you believe. But even politically, it's not helpful to play both camps. You either have to say, I was wrong or hell no, I was right. I'm standing firm on this despite what Washington wants me to say. But to try to do the both ways thing is a disaster. It's like the worst thing you can do because it makes you look like you don't. believe in anything. Yep. Yes, indeed. All right, well, that'll do it for us. When you back in D.C., Emily? I'll be back Thursday, so it's a quick one, but I'm eager to check out the vibes in Maine. Excellent. Good election cycle. I'm speaking up at Colby, so if folks are around, I'll be there this evening. Very exciting. Yeah, check in on our main reporter, Nathan. He's up there. Amazing. What a life. He and I should have a piece, I hope, out soon, more on this Troy Jackson campaign. I'll be on tomorrow, I believe, with Crystal. Is that the, something like that? But, you know, have a great time in Maine and I will see everybody tomorrow.

Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for a hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping

a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane.

Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up?

He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.