Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/6/22: Biden v Trump, Special Master, GOP In Disarray, British PM, Sectoral Bargaining, Euro Energy Crisis, & More!

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Biden and Trump speeches, GOP internal disputes, UK prime minister, sectoral bargaining, Trump investigations, Eurozone energy crisis, Jackson water situation, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Opening: [e-mail] Jordan Chariton: https://www.youtube.com/c/StatusCoup  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 election news, lots of legal news, lots of 2024 news. First of all, I'm sure you guys saw us, our dueling speeches in Pennsylvania over the past several days with President Biden and former President Trump. Both the kickoff to the, like, launch to the midterms, the final stretch here, but also kind of the unofficial kickoff for 2024. So we'll start with that. We've also got some legal updates. The judge sided with the Trump team is saying, yes, let's go forward with a special master. We'll break down what that means. Definitely a setback for the government. How much of a setback for the government? Unclear. So we'll dig into all of that. Also, there's been a big question about what the hell is going on over at the National Republican Senatorial Committee

with their money in particular. Rick Scott is heading up that outfit. First of all, it's become very clear that a lot of people completely hate Rick Scott because they are leaking to the press on him like crazy. There's also a feud between him and McConnell, but we have some new details about how exactly they spent all of that money and put themselves in a very difficult position. Down the stretch here, we have a new prime minister of the UK. We will tell you about her and what it might mean for our war with Russia in Ukraine. We also have an update out of California that is actually potentially very positive. Last week, I told you about how they were considering something called sectoral bargaining for the fast food sector, where basically all workers at fast

food restaurants, large chains would be able to be subject to the same conditions negotiated at the statewide level. So everybody's wages would be lifted theoretically. That is going through, so could have major implications there and around the country. We have Jordan Cheriton. His team has been on the ground in Jackson, Mississippi, where they have been without water. So we've got an update for you there. With all of that out of the way, let's get to these two dueling speeches from current President Biden and former President Trump. We'll start with Biden. So they really sort of built up to this speech as this is going to be, you know, a big discussion about the future of the country and the threats to democracy, etc. They did this in Philadelphia. We'll get to this in a minute.

The staging of it was quite dramatic, let's say. Here's a little taste of what the president had to say. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. But there's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.

And that is a threat to this country. MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose. No right to privacy. No right to contraception. No right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. Throwback to 2020 campaigns.

Yeah, for sure. So I got kind of excited when I saw the commentary about this speech because I didn't watch it in real time. I watched it after the fact. And I saw the visuals, which let's go ahead and throw the picture up on the screen. A lot of people like really honestly melting down over this photo because, of course, the real threat to democracy is red LED lights. There was a whole discussion about the optics.

And I got excited. I was like, oh, my God, he's like embracing dark Brandon. And I do think that's kind of what they were trying to channel, right? I think that was kind of intentional. And then there was a whole freak out about the content of the speech. So I was like, oh, maybe this is like really something. And then I listened to it and I was like, this sounds like the same thing that I've heard for four years. I mean, it's fine.

I don't have an issue with it. There was a major meltdown over the speech, over the optics around it, over the whole thing. And I was like, my problem with it is just sort of like not actually that powerful of a speech and just similar banal language that we've heard for Democrats for years. This is just a clear banality of I mean, listen, what the this as we I think we did this in our last show on Thursday. This is the correct strategy. If you're Joe Biden, you do not want to run on the economy.

You do not want to run on inflation to the extent that you've had limited political success. You know, CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, all of those other things. As we've all said, that's very likely not to move the needle. What moves the needle? It's getting people to come out and vote against something. And by getting people to come out and vote against Trump, that's how he got elected to the Oval Office. So he is returning right back to that frame. We've got Trump at the top of mind. We're going to be talking about Trump here in the show. Trump himself, very happy to embrace this because it helps solidify his hold over the Republican Party. And Ben Shapiro's analysis, I think that we brought everybody last Tuesday, is eminently correct, which is that the more that you make this about personalities and about these two dueling figures rather than any underlying social force of which people originally were coming to vote out against as Republicans, this is exactly what any unpopular politician or semi, you know, 41 percent or whatever approval rating.

This is exactly what you want, which is you're not voting for me. You're voting against the other side, especially by tying it to abortion. I think very strategic choice there by the Biden administration. And I think there's a couple of things that are because, I mean, it does sound to me, to my ears, very similar to rhetoric we've been hearing from Biden since, you know, it sounds like an echo to his 2020 campaign and the way that he ran that and the sort of themes that he ran on. So there was nothing to me shocking about that. The couple of things that are new that makes it hit a little bit different is, number one, as you're pointing out, Sagar, now we have the overturning of Roe versus Wade. So that gets layered into making the case that Republicans are outside of the mainstream, that Republican elites and the elected officials and Trump are sort of, you know, on the extreme fringe. So that's sort of added into it and I think does give the argument more heft because we are seeing, and we're going to cover this more in the midterms block,

the way that women have been extraordinarily moved and it really has shifted the ground, that decision. The other thing is, I mean, you know, last time Biden was running, we hadn't had stop this deal yet. We hadn't had January 6th yet. We hadn't had fake elector schemes yet and all of that part of our history now. So I do think that that sort of changes the context and the backdrop for it. But look, we know that as much as I would love for them to be running on an affirmative vision, Democrats haven't told us what they would do if they win, if they manage to keep control of the Senate, if they manage to add a couple seats and have a crack at doing something bigger than what they were able to do with Manchin and Sinema by basically running the show. Republicans also haven't told us what they're going to do. So I do think that it's an effective argument. I think it's the argument that has led

to Democrats having a shot at keeping control. But, you know, I found the like panic attack over it. I found it kind of amusing. And there are a lot of people who are like, oh, my God, the norms and the guardrails who, you know, when it comes to Trump, they were like laughing at the pearl clutchers for the same thing. Let me just say this. Anybody who's like, oh, my God, he used the military. You ever heard of the Mission Accomplished speech by George W. Bush? Like, I'm just going to say like these norms were shattered a long, long time ago. And this also just gets to, are the norms being shattered right now or were they shattered already? And that's why Donald Trump got elected in the first place. I'm going to go with the latter. Now Biden, his problem is

he's like, I'm the norms respecter whenever he just does what any president does, which is use the mantle of the Oval Office in order to promote your agenda and yourself politically. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I did hear a lot of crocodile tears from the right, and everyone's like, oh, he looks like a dictator. Trump had his re-election rally on the South Lawn at the White House, okay? Like, I don't, and by the way, I was fine with it. I was like, whatever.

And Trump is right now out there like, they should just go ahead and install me as president. Let's just toss out the election and just install me as president. He's said multiple times now. The president gets to use the White House and all of the majesty of the Oval Office in order to run for re-election. Is it unfair? Yeah. Trump used to roll up in Air Force One, get off the plane, have Air Force One behind him, and do multiple rallies.

Once again, that's how it goes, folks. I don't really want to hear complaints, especially whenever we all know Trump is just as flagrant of a norms violator. And maybe those norms are stupid and annoying and were always fake in the first place. The norms were never my issue. I have many issues with Donald Trump that we've talked about here plenty of times. But the, like, you know, all the pearl clutching about, like,

oh my gosh, the grid rails, the norms, how could you? The civility, where's the civility? Okay, relax everybody. That's right. And this is the additional context for this speech. Let's go ahead and put the latest polling for this, this is from the Wall Street Journal that just continues to show Democrats gaining ground. You've got, this is A4, Democrats gaining on the generic ballot for Congress, 47-44. You've got President Biden's job approval disapproval rating at 45-54. Still underwater, but markedly improved from where he used to be. And then in the head-to-head, you've got Biden 50, Trump 44. U.S. headed in the right direction, wrong direction, though still a disaster. Only 23% say we are headed in the right direction.

68% say we are headed in the right direction. 68% say we are headed in the wrong direction. So the other thing that Republicans, Fox News, et cetera, were trying to make a big deal of out of Biden's speech is even though, in my opinion, he's gone out of his way to be like, I'm not talking about all Republicans. I'm just talking about mega Republicans and this extreme fringe and people with a tendency to violence. They really want to seize on his comments to try to turn them into another sort of deplorable moment and make it like, oh, you're talking about every single Republican in the country. So Biden was asked about that by, I think it was Peter Doocy who asked him this.

Let's take a listen to what he had to say. I don't consider any troubles. I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence fails to contend with violence when it's used. It's used to acknowledge that an election has been won. It insists upon changing the way in which the rules't consider any Trump supporter a threat to democracy. I do have a problem with people who support violence. So getting a lot of questions on this. Again, this is the thing that a lot of Fox News types are sort of seizing on to say, oh, he hates all of you. And he's saying you're all fringe and that every Republican.

But and he does have to continue to make it clear that's not what he's saying, because they definitely want to make that case that like they just hate you and think you're evil and think you're extreme, et cetera, et cetera. But in my opinion, he made it pretty clear in the speech. That's not what he was beyond even that beyond the strategy. That's the smart thing to do. I mean, what you want to do. And I'm not saying it's moral. What I'm saying is that it's not like Republicans haven't said that a vote for any Democrat is a vote for radical left policy. I've watched and lived

through the last several of these campaigns. Being divisive is good for politics. I'm not saying it's good for the country. What you want is to rile up your base, get the people who are against whatever's happening, cast everybody who is even marginally connected to that movement as extreme, and then say, a vote for me is the vote for normalcy. It's the candidacy and the tactic that has been used by both major parties for basically the last 25 years. It was used against George W. Bush,

against John Kerry. It was used by W. against the Al Gore campaign. Gore used it against W. 2008. That's exactly what the McCain campaign, when Obama. It really comes actually from the Newt Gingrich playbook in the 90s. Yeah, it's like the 94 era. He was really sort of like the pioneering figure in this and sent out a famous memo that said, describe your opponents as anti-family, as anti-American.

So it really stems from those sorts of politics. And I think does, again, illustrate just, you know, when as long as Trump is at the center of our politics, like he is going to be the central dividing line. It is it works very well for him within the Republican base. It doesn't work out particularly well for the Republican Party as a whole. We saw that in 2018. We saw it again in 2020 when they lost the White House. We saw it very much in those two Georgia Senate races where Democrats are then able by this narrow margin to gain control. And I think you see it now where I have no doubt if Trump was not such a central figure to the election right now, Republicans would be in a better spot for the midterms. Again, Dobbs and overturning of Roe versus Wade has also been a major part of shifting the ground towards

Democrats. But I think Trump is further complicating the situation for the Republican Party right now. And y'all better get used to it because he is definitely not going anywhere. His candidates, by and large, won their primaries. They are at the forefront of the Republicans' efforts to take back both the House and the Senate. And as we're about to get to in a moment, you know, he is now out on the stump campaigning for them. Yeah. I mean, look, 80% of the people who voted in the Republican Party to impeach Trump are now gone. They're either retired or got their asses kicked out of office. So you tell me who's in charge. And as long as he's at the forefront, as the Dems ran against Trump in 2018 and in 2020 and 2016 as deplorables, these people, you know, are with him

extreme. Why wouldn't you do it again? I'm not, you know, obviously it didn't work for Hillary, but it worked for Joe Biden. It worked in 2018. For the midterms, they have a decent hit rate. The problem is, is it guarantees pretty much a close election, more divisiveness. But this is always the thing. It's like, is Trump the cause? Is he the effect? I would say he's both, right? But the fact is, he's here. He's here to stay. And the way he gives a speech. I mean, look, we're about to talk about it, but it's not like you see anything all that different over what's going on there. Yeah, for sure. So he gave a speech kind of in a way, a response to Biden. He also went to Pennsylvania to Wilkes-Barre campaigning for the Republican candidates there, Mastriano and Dr. Oz. I did listen to the whole

speech just so I wasn't, you know, only listen to the snippets that were getting clipped out on Twitter or whatever. And, you know, it's exactly what you expect. It's Trump's speech. He's obsessed with Stop the Steal. He's still obsessed with Russiagate. Oh, my God, like relived a whole story about Adam Schiff and Donald Trump Jr. and all this stuff and, you know, newly obsessed with the FBI raid. And that was the bulk of what he talked about. Let's get a little taste of that. The evil and malice of this demented persecution of you and me should be obvious to all. And it is. Even media companies that are pretty far left have come out and said,

we can't believe this is happening in the USA. We are being assaulted by the same group at the FBI and DOJ that just a few years ago declared no reasonable prosecutor would charge crooked Hillary Clinton. Now these same people, the exact same people, are sending the FBI storming through the home of their number one political rival. It's a disgrace, a disgrace like possibly never before. Our country's never seen anything like it. They talk about documents not being properly stored, yet they go in and

take documents, dump them on the floor, stage a photo shoot, and pretend that I had done it, like I had put them all over the floor. They took that back after a lot of prodding. Then they put out for public consumption a picture which is seen all over the world. This is what they do. It's called disinformation. These are very dishonest, sick people. He was so upset about that photo. He was very upset about the photo.

But notice what that speech is about. Me, me, me, me, me. And look, it works, right? And this also is what translates to the people who are seen as the most astridid allies of Trump. So I was looking especially at some of the reporters who were in attendance. And the snippets to me that really jumped out were Dr. Oz came on the stage. People clapped. They didn't boo, at least, like they did the first time that Trump endorsed him.

But Mastriano came out there. He was a rock star. Well. Rock star when he came out on the stage. And what was it that Trump praised him for? It was stop the steal. Exactly. He was there.

He was fighting for us. And so it does illustrate perfectly the bind that these Republican candidates are in. Because, yeah, Mastriano is rock star with the base. You know, for Oz, he's got to go and sort of pay homage to Trump and bend the knee so that he can try to consolidate the Republican base. Because that's part of his problem in these midterms and why his polling numbers have struggled is because there isn't a lot of trust and love there with the GOP base. But at the same time, like the way Republicans view stop the steal, the FBI raid, et cetera. I mean, Russiagate, everybody except them has basically moved on from, is very different from how independents and certainly how Democrats or sort of like moderates might view it. So the fact that they're still obsessed with these things, that that's what it's all about, yeah, it might help

them rally the base. And that matters a lot in a midterm election, but it is not going to move the needle in terms of bringing new people over to the cause. Yeah. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So when Trump, you know, if you look and you pepper through, we're like, what exactly is the attack on Biden? Here's what he says, quote, above all this election is a referendum on corruption and extremism of Biden and Democrats. And that is what he is tying both to Stop the Steal, to his general election message for the midterms, and then highlighting Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano. But as you said, to him, corruption and extremism is solely based on Stop the Steal and on the FBI investigation against him. That's what he's praising Doug Mastriano for. He attacked John

Fetterman a little bit. I think he said he was like a teenager, looked like a teenager getting high in his parents' basement. But beyond that, he didn't have an affirmative enough message for Oz. And in general, this just reminds me of a lot of the problems with the 2020 campaign. I remember Trump was on the stage at the debate and he was like recounting the exact problems with some sort of Russiagate. And I was like, dude, nobody knows what you're talking. I'm like, I know what you're talking about because I do this for a living in terms of declassification and the documents and what they showed here, Obamagate and the FISA. Normal folks don't care. And to the extent that Republicans were doing the best, it was when they

were against the tides of social change, against inflation, against the general feeling of everything is in chaos. But now with kind of the narrowing with Trump in particular, you are seeing the effect. At the same time, look, let's be honest. Can a single other Republican bring out that many people to a rally? No, absolutely not. There's no way. People love him. The people in the base, they come out not to vote. They come out to vote for his allies. They come out in numbers that have never been seen before. I watched a rally or a video of the rally, the comparison between Biden and Trump. Look, a lot of people were at the Biden rally, like don't get me wrong,

but the reception that Trump gets is unlike anything anyone has ever seen in modern American politics. Like if you've ever been to a Trump rally and you, I've been to a lot of other types of political rallies as a journalist, I've never seen anything like it. And it reminded me, same energy, same energy as 2016, honestly, even 2015. I mean, the guy just inspires people in a way that nobody has seen in a long time. This core, this core group. I mean, it does remind me of the, like the early days of Obama. Yeah. The sort of rock star following that he had in those days. But, you know,

listening to the speech, I was actually reminded of something Ann Coulter had said when she's, I mean, she's out there and she's been over Trump for a long time. And so it's nothing new

for her to be like, this guy is done and over. But she wrote a recent column that was like, Trump is done. And she compared his speeches and the reception to him as like you know like the dead heads that follow the grateful dead around concert to concert wanting to hear the greatest hits and like relive

the old memories it really does especially with the Russiagate stuff and going through all of that and you know I mean he'll still sometimes riff on how he won the 2016 Olympics go through that like blow by blow. It does kind of feel that way. I think at one point they were chanting Locker Up. I mean, it is really kind of like, let's get the old magic back. Let's get the band back together and relive our nostalgia from the good old days. It does have that kind of quality.

But at the same time, there's no denying, you know, this is the guy in terms of the Republican Party. And every candidate in the Republican Party, they sort of live by Trump and they die by Trump. Because on the one hand, he was the kingmaker in the primaries. A lot of these candidates would not be their nominees. Certainly Dr. Oz, possibly Mastriano, but definitely Dr. Oz. No way Mastriano, yeah. Yeah, without Trump. So, I mean, he made both of these candidates. On the other hand, not just is he such a divisive figure and a lightning rod whose obsessions do not align with what the public is actually interested in. He also sucks up all the money. So you're also very dependent on him for any sort of fundraising.

We're going to get to the problems with the National Republican Senatorial Committee. But part of the details that came out in that article is how dependent they are on Trump for their fundraising. Like every fundraising email they send out is about Trump. It's not about, hey, here's what we're going to do. Or even about like, oh, the Democrats are terrible and here's how they're destroying the country. It's like all about Trump.

They are completely dependent on him, but they also are extraordinarily limited by him for how far they can go. Yeah, that's right. And let's put the poll up there on the screen as well. Just again, to underscore this, the Mar-a-Lago raid boosted Trump amongst GOP voters. Yeah. They say may damage him with most voters. I don't know. I mean, listen, I never have any way to know.

What history teaches us in general is that the more the country becomes mired in the details of these idiotic investigations, well, the more that people generally lose interest, and in general, it the more the country becomes mired in the details of these idiotic investigations, well, the more that people generally lose interest and in general, it has helped Trump. Is this one different? Because this one might actually lead to his actual indictment, which all signs currently point to. To be clear, on what timeline, I have no idea. Will it damage him? Maybe. Will it damage him as much as January 6th? Probably not. I don't think so. I mean, I do—look, in my opinion, I've expressed this before. This is qualitatively different than Russiagate in that there is very clear they're there. And you see that certainly, by the way, Republicans who were initially very enthusiastic about defending him have now gone pretty quiet, with some exceptions.

As more details have come out, so there's that. There's the fact that he's not president anymore, so he doesn't have, you know, all of the sort of stature of that office. And he doesn't have as much of an ability to just control the narrative the way that he used to be able to do. You got to go over to freaking Truth Social to find out what the hell he's saying these days. So I do think that those things make a difference. And clearly, like now we've had enough polling to see overwhelmingly American people think like the search was justified and they think that, that those things make a difference. And clearly, like now we've had enough polling to see overwhelmingly American people think like the search was justified and they think that, you know, a majority thinks he should be prosecuted if he is in fact in violation of the law. So I do think

it continues to kind of like harm him with normies who, like it or not, are still very like, you know, they respect the FBI. They want law and order. Like, you know, I mean, really. And so it's definitely bolstered him with the base. I really think it strengthens his position in terms of making sure he secures the Republican nomination. All of the talk from a couple months ago about DeSantis rising the polls and whatever, I think this kind of nips that in the bud. But I do think it's one more thing that reminds people who had kind of forgotten a little bit in him being a bit quieter how obnoxious, how chaotic it is when he's around, how divisive it is, and how much they were swayed by the Biden narrative of like, let's just calm things down and let's just try to get back to whatever normal actually is. We'll see how that looks. And listen, I mean, I think the Dems are in a better position than they've been in for a long time. There's a lot of multifaceted reasons as to why.

Trump is certainly one of them. At the same time, the reemergence and reascendance of Trump more from, you know, not to say he wasn't already in charge, but especially to put him at the top is very good for him personally. Well, listen, this really, you know, obviously is the kickoff to the final stretch for the midterms. No doubt about that. Both these guys out there making their respective cases and Trump and the Republicans are, there's no splitting them apart. So that's, that it is going to be a choice election. I think that's pretty clear at this point. Welcome to hell, folks. I also would say this is the, you know, this is the unofficial kickoff for 2024. This is,

these campaigns and elections start earlier and earlier. Trump could announce any time. The expectation is Biden will also announce fairly soon. So this is the path we're going to be headed down for quite a while now, friends. Yes, the redux is truly here. Just like Hollywood, the sequel, nobody asked for it. And yet, we'll get shoved down their throat. All right, let's go ahead and talk about the special master. Let's throw this up there on the screen. It broke last night.

Judge Cannon, the federal judge, is granted Trump's request for a special master to review attorney-client and executive privilege, executive there being the key. She also says that her order will not stop the intelligence community review of the record. So this is a fascinating case. And as we have talked about previously, the attorney client privilege stuff, if you trust the FBI, just saying, they do have that so-called filter team. I believe the official term is taint team, as we discussed. Let's go with filter here for breaking points canon. Well, that filter team has already actually completed its attorney-client privilege review. However, from the order by the judge, we do learn why is this so different? Because frankly, it's the former president. Let's throw

this up there. Just from the document seized, we know that they include Trump's medical documents, correspondence related to his taxes, accounting information. As the former president, the judge says, quote, the stigma associated with the subject's seizure is in a league of its own. And another reason I think it's important to even publicize what type of documents have come out is, look, these people leak like a sieve. You know, would you truly be surprised, Crystal, if some of these documents just happened to end up in the hands of the New York Times? No. And that's part of the case that the judge makes, actually. Which is correct. Yeah, that's the right case, which is, listen, at the end of the day, it's the former president. I don't support the FBI

doing that to anybody, and they are known to be very political. Just look at how much information we even know about this case. We were getting the lists of documents and the types of classified information, the et cetera, being leaked to the Times almost instantly after the raid even occurred. And I think the judge making the case here that what makes this different, it's the former president. And you and I were discussing it before the show, and I don't really understand why. The legal community is in an uproar. Yeah, they are. By this, I mean the, like, quote, unquote, resistance liberal, you know, the Preet Bhararas and all those people.

They're like, this is outrageous. This is obstructing the investigation. I mean, look, all the person is tasked with doing is going through privileged information. And will it delay the case? Yeah, probably. But that doesn't mean that the eventual case won't be brought. That's what they seem to be the most upset at, from what I can tell. So, from what I can tell, listen, I'm not a lawyer.

Yeah, we're not lawyers. I'm humble enough to say, like, I couldn't tell you right now whether this is a big deal or whether it, like, really violates precedent and is outside of the norms. I mean, listen, we're dealing with a former president. We are in uncharted territory. So, sort of definitionally, any decision that was made here would be something new and different. The part that they seemed to me most upset about was, like, the precedent that was being set, especially with regards to, you know, I mean, lots of people have their homes raided and documents seized, etc. There's no doubt that the president is getting sort of special treatment here. Most people do not have it taken into consideration that like, oh, some of your personal effects were taken. Let's give you some redress and give you some relief

so that you can potentially get those things back. And so what I could tell is that there was an upset over the precedent that was being set here. Even among some of those people, though, they were like, I'm not sure it really makes a difference in terms of the case. Because ultimately, we weren't going to have charges filed until after the midterms anyway.

So I'm not even like it will cause some delay as now the government has been blocked from continuing to use these documents in the criminal investigation part. They are allowed to continue their national security review. And that's an analysis to find out what, if any, damage would be done if any of these documents were leaked, released, made public, etc., or got into the wrong hands. So that review is able to continue, but they're not allowed to use the documents in terms of the criminal investigation. So yeah, that sets things back. It's a little bit of a win for the Trump team, helps them to kind of confuse things, muddy the waters. They did not rule on whether, and she's very explicit in saying like, this does not mean that I agree that a former president

can assert executive privilege, especially when they're sort of at loggerheads with the current incumbent president. She said, we'll leave that ruling for another day. But it does open the door more for the Trump team to be able to claim executive privilege over some of these documents. So I guess the big takeaway is like, we'll see. We'll see whether this time is the investigation. We'll see how long this process takes. The next piece of the puzzle here is both sides have to submit suggestions for who the special master should be. It's not an easy person to find who can sort of fill this role, who has to be able to review all these extraordinarily classified documents and, you know, have the ability to do that and also have whatever the qualifications are for people

to serve as a special master in the first place. Let me just read this one section of the ruling that I think kind of explains the decision here. She says the court takes into account the undeniably unprecedented nature of the search of a former president's residence. Plaintiffs' inability to examine these materials in formulating his arguments to date. Again, I assume most plaintiffs don't have that ability either. Plaintiffs' stated reliance on the customary cooperation between former and incumbent administrations regarding the ownership and exchange of documents. The power imbalance between the parties. Interesting.

I'm sure there's always quite a power imbalance between the government and the plaintiff. Less so in this case when you're dealing with the former president. The importance of maintaining institutional trust. Good luck with that one. And the interest in ensuring the integrity of an orderly process amid swirling allegations of bias and media leaks. So and then she finishes here. Plaintiff ultimately may not be entitled to return much of the seized property or to prevail on his anticipated claims of privilege. That inquiry remains for another day. So she's saying, look, I'm not saying you're actually going to get much of your stuff back, if any. I'm not saying that we're actually going down the path of ruling on executive privilege and getting into all of that. We're going to push that off for another day. But

for now, yes, we're putting the special master in and the government is blocked from being able to continue using the documents for the criminal investigation. Now, there's some speculation about whether or not the government will actually appeal this ruling. It would go to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is quite conservative. And six of the, I believe, 11 members were Trump appointees. But I think most people expect it will be appealed. That's what I could tell from the analysis that I saw. And even there's some like complicated legal stuff here about even the way the government argued the case was sort of seen as attempting to make the case more appealable and make them, give them a better shot of prevailing upon appeal. But given the

makeup of that court, I wouldn't be extraordinarily hopeful if I was the government that this would ultimately succeed. I agree on the appeals function. I also just think that this sets us up for something we previewed before, which is that let's put this attorney-proclaimed privilege aside. The judge zeroed in on executive privilege and said that the Justice Department was potentially overstating. Again, she's not saying that she buys their – she's not saying that adjudicating it, but she says the government is overstating the fact that executive privilege does not apply at all in these cases, which sets up complicated possible jurisprudence all the way up to the Supreme Court in the future about what type of executive privilege can be extended as to when, as when you're president, not president, the actual declassification process. Does that even violate the law? All of that. So put that aside also because that's also what the special master will be focusing on

and that's another area of jurisprudence that could be wrangled all the way up to the court. Some of the people I've spoken with have pointed to that specifically and maybe again to justify and underline this order why a special master might be beneficial in the first place just to try and avoid and check some boxes before we head to that point with the appeals courts. It's just going to be it's a mess. I mean when a former president and you're dealing with this stuff, just the level of authority that we give that person and then they leave office, it's an unprecedented situation. I mean, when's the last time they even had somebody who was defeated or had one term? And I think it's Grover Cleveland, right? Or Teddy Roosevelt in the 1900s. That's really the last time that we had

even a similar dynamic of somebody wanting to run again. It's been a long time. And I would just say the administrative state has probably changed. Yeah. So while I'm not a legal analyst, what I'll say in terms of the political front, which I think is more of what him and his legal team, Trump and his legal team are really playing towards is anything that gets bogged down in these complicated jurisprudence questions over executive privilege and these sorts of things and takes away from just the, like, bald-faced facts that there were highly classified documents at his beach resort for some reason, that he lied to the government and didn't give them back. We don't know why. We also know now there was, like, a more detailed list of inventory that was released by the government and didn't give them back. We don't know why. We also know now there was like a more detailed list of inventory that was released by the government. In addition to the classified

documents, he also had like all of these empty folders that used to contain classified documents, which you're like, what happened to those ones? Where did they go? Anything that distracts from those just like basic facts of what's going on, I think is good for them. Because then, yeah, we get mired in these legal analyses where it is contested territory. I mean, it seems like the bulk of the legal profession thinks that this was wrongly decided, this piece about the special master, and takes a different view of executive privilege. But it is contested, and it's not entirely clear based on past Supreme Court rulings. The more you get into those details versus the really clear and simple case, I think the better it is politically for them. So that's their strategy is let's just like muddy the waters,

kick things down the road, buy some time, see what we can do, and hope that we can sort of come up with a political case that's going to ultimately get us off the hook here. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, let's talk about the midterms. One of my favorite stories that I read over the break, just a perfect encapsulation of the corruption within the campaign financial system, the idiocy of Rick Scott, and just, again, a preview of why Republicans are not doing as well as they should be. Let's throw this up there on the screen. From the New York Times, how a record cash haul vanished for Senate Republicans. Hmm, and this is the most stark. The campaign arm of the Senate Republicans collected $181.5 million by the end of July,

but they have spent 95% of it. A lot of it was invested in, quote, digital. Hyper-aggressive tactics have not yet paid off. And by have not paid off, they haven't paid at all in terms of what they were invested for. So essentially what they did is a time-honored tradition, Crystal, which is they took their money and then they invested it in trying to get more money. Except, here's the issue, most people are not giving to the NRSC, they're giving to Trump. And what they point to specifically is that the incompetence of the NRSC, of Rick Scott specifically, has led to the

organization of donor meetings and others which are paying out almost nothing to some of these big donors. One of the ones that really caught my eye was this particular anecdote. The NRSC's large donor program has struggled. In August, four Senate candidates, including J.D. Vance, tracked to Nantucket, Massachusetts, it's an island in Cape Cod, for an event that netted an initial $25,000. A paltry payout for a...

Like, for a candidate to get on a plane and to go out of their state, it should be... I mean, look, I don't know the exact dollar figure, but I'm going to assume many, many multiples. Hundreds of thousands. I believe John Fetterman just did this by going to the Hamptons and raised like untold amounts of money at a single party. Right.

Yeah. I mean, you can get 25K. If you're a Senate candidate in a hot race, you can get 25K dialing for dollars on the phone in a matter of hours and never have to leave your state. Never like, yeah. And miss time on the campaign trail and have the optics of having to fly to the Hamptons or fly to Nantucket or whatever. 25K is pathetic. That might be a decent haul if you're like a sort of mid-tier congressional candidate, but for a top tier Senate race statewide, that is really, really sad.

It's absolutely pathetic. And again, what they point to is that Scott's, quote, enormous gamble on trying to find new online donors has been a total flop. He tried to, but this is classic NBA brain. He's like, I'm the businessman. I was very successful. I'm worth a lot of money. So I'm going to come in and invest all this money on finding new people for the Republican Party. And he pours all this money into it instead of just normal, you know, just doing cringe, typical RNC stuff would have been better than what they're doing here. Absolutely. And now they don't have cash to spend in Arizona, in Ohio, in Georgia, in Pennsylvania. And if they do get bailed out, it's going to be Mitch McConnell's super PAC, which has to do so. Or, and this doesn't have

a chance in hell, Trump himself will have to pony up his money to try. Let me tell you something, that has never happened in the history of Donald Trump. He won't even pay his own legal bills, like his bills, let alone other people's bills. So how do you think that is going to go? Just the TikTok here, which is basically like a time by time and initial description is just a colossal waste of money, Crystal. In one point into this online point, there's more than a $17 million deficit in this campaign to find new donors. So it's just a total waste. They've basically tried this far-flung strategy, didn't work. Now, in the crunch time, they don't have money. I mean, I was talking with some people. They actually said, they're like, look, put

candidate equality aside. If we lose the Senate, this has just as much to do with it than just pure candidate equality. I hate to say it, but political fundraising works and works very, very well. Television and more. A lot of old people watch it, and a lot of them are motivated by it. The big dynamics in this election continue to be the national factors we're talking about. This is an exacerbating issue for the Republicans. And they keep saying, well, we spent all this money early, so that's why we're behind the eight ball here. But that actually makes things worse. Because if you spent all this money early and your candidates are still down in the polls, like, okay, so what did you do? That was such a bad investment.

And they have the numbers. I mean, the Senate Republicans, they originally looked like they had a gigantic war chest. They had collected $181.5 million by the end of July. They were way ahead of the Democrats. But now they've spent 95% of that. And it's not a Republican party issue. The House arm is doing fine. No problem, fundraising-wise. Obviously, Mitch McConnell's packed. They're also flush with cash. And this really, they are loving this. He and his people, oh my God. I mean, they're loving this whole thing

because there were all these noises in the primary of this person, that person. Oh, I'm not going to vote for McConnell for majority leader. Oh, I don't like Mitch McConnell. He's not a good leader, et cetera, et cetera. And now, as we showed you with Blake Masters, they are completely dependent on the war chest that McConnell has amassed because this is a disaster. And I think you're right. Like, there's a few things, there's a few things that this seems to smack of.

First of all, yes, the, like, MBA brain, the rich arrogance of, like, sure, people have been doing political fundraising for decades and decades, but I know how to do it differently and I know how to do it better. So there's, number one, there's, like, the rich guy MBA arrogance. There's also the fact that, you know, he's also got there's like the rich guy MBA arrogance. There's also the fact that,

you know, I don't, he's also got some like rich guy laziness. He's out there like on his super yacht in Italy rather than here trying to fix what is a massive problem that he ultimately created. And then the third thing is this guy's a like noted fraudster. And that comes out in the tactics that they're using too, which are also a problem for them because they've really burned their own fundraising base. One scheme, I'm going to read from a bit of the article, one fundraising scheme that was used by the Senate committee involves sending an estimated millions of text messages that ask provocative questions like, should Biden resign? And then they would say, reply yes to donate.

And those who replied yes would immediately have a donation process. So you think you're just like, yes, Biden should resign. And then meanwhile, they're hitting your bank account right then and there. So that has meant that their refund rate, so the percentage of people who are saying, I didn't mean to give this money, you better send this back to me, is way higher than on the Democratic side. They have 6.6% of direct individual donations this cycle, which are having to be refunded. That compares to, you know, the equivalent committee on the Democrat side, only 1.67%, because they're using these, like, super aggressive, really shady tactics and burning their own fundraising base. So you have a situation now, which we'd covered before, where Democrats, as is typical in as you get closer to a midterm

election, grassroots fundraising increase and increases as your base gets more excited, more focused on what's going on. Republicans going in the opposite direction, I think in part because of the way that they have been burned by some of these tactics, and also by the way that Trump really abuses the donor lists and where they're most enthusiastic about him above anything else, really. And another one that always pisses me off, let me just read you this. Gary Kobe, Trump's longtime digital director, is an advisor to the committee, widely seen as the man behind the scenes of influence of the current digital operations. Two of his companies, Direct Persuasion, a digital agency, and Open Sesame, a texting firm,

have been paid $4.6 million combined. Two others he has promoted, DirectSend and RedSpark Strategy, have received another $9.2 million. So, they take your money and then they give it to themselves. And there's a lot of houses

on the Potomac, mansions in McLean and elsewhere that are being paid for. Boats, Nantucket vacation homes getting paid for off of, listen, you know, you may want to say, who amongst us really does reply to these tax measures like, yes, Biden should resign. However, they're Americans too. They don't deserve to be defrauded.

And that's what their money is being put towards. It's just totally outrageous. They're literally stealing their money. And they are worse doing damage to the cause that they raised that money supposedly to do anything about. So this is just a total like cluster. It's a huge problem for many of the senators in the, or many Senate candidates in the battleground states. And they are very much making it known. I didn't know Rick Scott was quite hated this much because that's the other piece of this. Well, I think they're very upset with him. Yeah, clearly there's a lot of leaks coming out of all quarters. I think it's not just this, Crystal.

Remember whenever he put out his plan to like tax Medicare? I think that pissed a lot of people off because they're like, why are you saying this? Like, shut the F up. Yeah, like shut up. They're like, yeah, obviously we agree, but don't say it, for God's sake. Yeah, that did not endear him to the National Republican administration. And so I do think it's important to say, we're going to get into, like, the Rick Scott, Mitch McConnell, like, tension in a minute. The Republican Civil War here. But I do think it's worth keeping in mind that, yeah, they have these fundraising issues.

Yeah, it's disgusting the way they're burning their own base. These tactics were so aggressive that WinRed, which is the primary online fundraising platform for the Republican Party, they banned them from using these tactics. Fundraising is always gross. And there are various levels of grossness that you can go to. And there is no doubt that people across the political spectrum abuse these tactics and prey on people who, usually older people, don't really understand what they're getting into. I see this with my parents who are more prey to these sort of, like, scams that they'll get on their phones and stuff like that. So this is definitely a bipartisan phenomenon. But this particular tactic was so shady that even the Republican-specific fundraising platform was like, no, this is too far. But the

bigger problems continue to be with the candidates, with Dobbs, with Trump being central to the election. There's clearly a lot of the dynamics that's going on here is people trying to throw somebody else under the bus for what is shaping up to be at the very least a disappointing election cycle for Republicans. But there's also no doubt these money issues are real and are actually an issue. Absolutely. And to that feud, let's get to that. Put this up there on the screen. Rick Scott is now explaining his, quote, strategic disagreement with Mitch McConnell over the Senate. Basically, he is upset because he says that McConnell has been, quote, trash-talking Republican candidates. In reality, here's what happened. McConnell said a very specific and not untrue thing, which is,

hey, if we lose the Senate, candidate quality could be a part of that. That's it. That's basically all he said. And here's what he gave in an interview, which is a real shot across the bow. Senator McConnell and I clearly have a strategic disagreement. We have great candidates. He wants to do the same thing I do. I want to get a majority. I think it's important that we're all cheerleaders for our candidates. And it's all because of that comment that we brought you guys earlier from August when McConnell said, hey, look, it's possible. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome. And what it points to is that Scott is upset because of the leaks that are coming out about his strategy. He's upset about the fact that he has been bad mouth. Also, you know, this gets to what I just referenced earlier.

We should remember that whenever Scott put out his idiotic plan to like privatize Social Security and raise taxes on the middle class, McConnell's the one who shot it down. He was like, no, I have no affiliation with that. And when Rick Scott went to the podium to describe his plan, McConnell actually left the press conference to make clear. He's like, I have nothing to do with this at all. And that's exactly the feud which is basically breaking out. Let's put this up there. Sure. The super yacht leak also he took quite personally. And that, I'm confident, came from Republicans who were like, screw this guy. We're going to get him. Put the Hill tear sheet up there because it describes this well, which is that McConnell

has privately raised doubts for months about his party's roster of Senate candidates and the chances of recapturing control of the Senate and those concerns apparent. Scott has begun to dig in his heels. Scott, in a lot of ways also, is penning, he wrote a new op-ed for the Washington Examiner where he accused, quote, the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle of trash-talking our Republican candidates. Now, first of all, the person responsible for losing the Senate last cycle, his name is Donald Trump. So, I mean, look, McConnell has something to do with it because he refused to pass the $2,000 checks. But, I mean, let's be honest, it's not like he is the sole determiner of that, and Trump had a hell of a lot to do

with losing the Senate seats at Georgia. I also don't think Rick Scott was really, like, upset about not passing the $2,000 checks. I'm sure he was on board with that. What a fantastic point. I didn't even think about that. I bet you, if, I don't even have the time right now, but if anyone wants to go out and Google,

I would be willing to bet he was on record as against, as against the checks in the first place, or one of the people saying that, you know, we should go against it, kind of like David Perdue did until he flip-flopped whenever he was running for re-election. Just tells you what you need to know in terms of what that was politically popular at the time. So clearly, there's a lot of Washington wrangling here, but I just think overall, it is a pathetic view of the mediocrity of the top echelons of the Republican Party, of the people who are supposedly such fantastic business managers and others scamming their own voters. Meanwhile, Trump is sucking up all of the real grassroots dollars. And if you are a Republican who pretends to care about the Senate, your money is being chronically mismanaged. And if you're

a Republican who supposedly hates Mitch McConnell, this mismanagement has made McConnell more powerful than ever because his super PAC is now the one that gets to dole out the real big dollars that gets to be the deciding factor in these races. That is right. Now, one thing I want to say about the candidate quality issue, because part of why this is getting pinned on Scott is because oftentimes Republican, like the Republican Senatorial Committee has gotten involved in these primaries and they have picked a candidate that they want. And I think McConnell and others thought that Rick Scott should have done that to, you know, short circuit potentially Dr. Oz or Herschel Walker or J.D. Vance or some of these other candidates who are seen as not of the highest quality.

Right. I can't really blame Scott on that front, though, because how are you like? I just don't think it would work to go up against whoever Trump endorses what the Republican base voters are going to be like. Oh, but Rick Scott says that I should go for whatever that dude's name was over Dr. Oz. I don't think that he really had a choice in the matter. And he would have ended up, the Republicans would have ended up just like putting their impotence on display if they tried to go head to head against Trump in some of these matchups. So on that piece, again,

I think the blame lies entirely with Donald Trump. And I, you know, I'm not really like in the mood to defend Rick Scott now or at any point in my life, but I don't really think that part is his fault. Absolutely correct. Okay. And then finally, this is a data point which, you know, relates and overlays on top of this. Let's put this up there, which is that this is from a CEO of a voter turnout operation, quote, in my 28 years analyzing elections, I have never seen anything like what's happening in the past two months of American politics. Women are registering to vote in numbers I have never witnessed. And this plays out in terms of what we've seen from the special elections, but more importantly what we saw in Kansas, which is that a huge portion, a number of women, far more than outside the norm,

came out to register to vote in order to make sure that they could vote in that referendum. So to have here the explosion of women registering to vote and to tie it specifically to the Dobbs decision and just see the spike that has come after that is undoubtedly going to have an impact in the election. Will it mean a Democratic victory? I don't know. Probably not. Will it have an impact in the election. Will it mean a Democratic victory? I don't know. Probably not. Will it have an impact in some of the swing races? I would say, yeah, probably. And especially down ballot ones. And most importantly, the gubernatorial races where Doug Mastriano, you know, people forget in Washington, we talk about Doug Mastriano and stop with steel. In Pennsylvania, they're talking

about abortion. In Michigan with Tudor Dixon, you know, here we're talking about Mike Pence and Betsy DeVos. In Gresham-Whitmer, she's talking about abortion. This is basically the same in every single swing state where there is a gubernatorial election, where the Republican has taken a position which is outside of the Roe consensus, which shows you it is going to be potent in drawing out those votes. And maybe they don't vote nationally, but odds are they probably do if they're going to come out to vote at the state by state level, it will have an impact. And I think that watching those numbers, there's just no way that you can say, given that, you know, in general, women vote mostly for Democrats and especially these types of

women, most likely going to be voting Democratic, that this is going to be a boon to them, not saying it's going to rescue, but it can lessen the margins. Yeah. So this is the numbers regarding Kansas. In the six months before Dobbs, women outnumbered men by just three points. So very close, basically even, among new voter registrations. After Dobbs, that gender gap skyrocketed to 40 points. Wow. From three points to 40. Now, Kansas is an outlier because you did have this very direct ballot initiative, and this was what people registering to be able to vote on. And Target Smart had put out—and this is, by the way, this is a Democratic-aligned group, so just keep that in mind in terms of their data. But they're relied on as, like, you know, sort of the deepest data analyst on the Democratic side, they went through state by state and they found the more direct a tie there was to like my vote equals abortion access, the more of a gender

gap you had in terms of women registrants. So it's like very direct. In states where there's not as much, like in New York, where there's not as much angst about abortion access and people feel like, okay, this is relatively protected. We've got a democratic legislature and all likelihood we're going to continue to have a democratic governor. There hasn't been this massive gender gap. The more directly you see like my vote is about abortion, the higher the gender gap ultimately is. So that's number one. And they also had some numbers from that special election in New York where abortion was a central issue. This was Pat Ryan versus Mark Molinaro.

True swing district. Biden won it by one and a half points. Pat Ryan ultimately is able to win by a little bit more even than Biden was able to win in that district. They said the same thing among the male and early votes cast in the district. Women outnumbered men by an 18-point margin. So that spike in women voting and being motivated alone likely accounts for Pat Ryan being able to prevail in a very difficult part of New York in a really swing district against who, you know, quite a credible and quite a well-liked Republican candidate in that region. And the other reason that this has really shifted the

grounds in terms of the election is previously suburban white women in particular were moving towards the Republicans on issues around schools, especially, yes, and crime. And I think there were a couple other things that were sort of pushing them more towards the Republican Party. That's why Glenn Youngkin is able to prevail in the gubernatorial election was because a lot of shifts from white suburban women who voted for Biden because they wanted to vote against Trump, and then they kind of were swinging towards Republicans because of schools and COVID and other issues. Well, now they're coming back to the Democratic Party camp, perhaps not in as high a numbers as they were there in 2018, but starting to rival that type of momentum. And, you know, that's putting aside the money

issues for Republicans and all these other things. This is clearly where the ground started to shift for them. Absolutely correct. Okay, let's move on to the next block. We've got some interesting updates on Ukraine, and then our friends across the pond have a new prime minister. Let's start with our politics first. Let's throw this up there on the screen. President Biden is seeking an additional $13.7 billion for Ukraine as USAID to the war-torn country is, quote, running out. As a reminder, we've already appropriated $44 billion. It is part of a $47 billion emergency spending request. Now, of the $13 billion, it's actually important that we dive into it because, again, media is not doing this. Now, most of this money is for new weapons and ammunition, equipment, intelligence support, and direct budgetary support in order to shore up the Ukrainian government's finances so that it can continue to ask for foreign direct investment. Zelensky, by the way, will be ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell this morning remotely and a campaign for foreign direct

investment into the country, we are literally shoring up and backstopping their debt and their economy so that they are able to not just use our money, but also to buy weapons with that. So it's like a secondary form of financing. Now, the important thing about this here is that also much of this money also is needed in order to buy back multiple stocks of ammunition and weapons that we need to replace the stocks that we have sent to Ukraine. I've laid out here specifically how it takes, in some cases, two to three years. Stinger missiles, for example, are literally not in production. So they take two or three years in order to make them. So the stocks that we have sent over there, we're now at one-fourth stock, same whenever it comes to some of the howitzers and other rounds of ammunition, literally not

available right now and won't be back in stock for two to three years as a result of production. But I think it's just always important to put it in context of all of the European powers, the extraordinary extent to which the United States has been giving aid to Ukraine. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So when what we see here is by total bilateral aid, now this one shows it by GDP, which I also do think is important. What it shows you here is that the United States, while yes, has spent less percent of its GDP in order to support Ukraine. And to be fair, the Baltic states actually are stepping up. What you see in the foreign aid to Ukraine by country is that we

are outspending these people to an extent that is genuinely difficult to describe in multiples. So just to give everybody an example, now on military assistance alone, the United States has spent $25 billion so far in terms of what we're giving to Ukraine. No other country comes even close to one-fifth of that, save for the UK in military assistance. And now we are adding an additional $8 billion. Again, more than double what every other country in all of Europe has appropriated there. So when you look at the sheer military number and you just try to understand the extent to which we are the ones shipping the vast majority of the weapons to this area, you then see the extent to which we should, frankly, then be able to tell the Ukrainians,

like, hey, do this, don't do that, because you literally won't exist without us. We should have far more of a diplomatic role in either trying to bring this thing to the close or not. But second, to describe this as some sort of allied mission is ludicrous. Whenever the UK and Poland are the only two countries in the entire NATO alliance to even pony up more than a billion dollars in military aid. And we are outspending them in our brand new appropriation by eight to one in most of these cases. And it is not in doubt at all that Biden will get the money that he's- Of course he'll get this money. Yeah. Jackson, Mississippi doesn't have water to drink, but we can, you know, 13.7 billion more dollars to Ukraine. And there's not even like, there's no doubt it will go through. This is package number, I don't know, 15, 16, something like that.

Really? And the part that bothers me the most isn't even like supporting any of that. The issue for me is like, what is the plan? Is this just what we're going to do forever? Just like a, you know, a 10 billion there, 20 billion there, you know, we were, the last big appropriation, the idea was like, okay, this is the thing. This is going to give them the tools they need to be able to have this counter offensive and be able to push Russia out and really show what they're made of. Well, that has all fallen completely by the wayside. And now we seem to just be in this

sort of endless, all right, we're just going to every month or so send them another $15 billion and not really talk about it or not really talk about where we're headed with any of this. And I will never get over the fact that there was a potential peace plan that was basically negotiated and on the table when former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson travels to Kiev and says, no, we do not want this. And the we there is definitely the UK and the US because we have been a solid alliance in our approach to this war the entire time. Now you are nowhere close to having any sort of negotiation, any sort of diplomacy

that could potentially break through this. Now you have Zelensky saying very clearly they want to not just go back to where they were before this invasion, but they want to retake all of Ukraine, including Crimea. So we have gone so far backwards. And the only strategy here seems to be to continue to send tens of billion dollars in aid every couple months to Ukraine in perpetuity. Yeah, and look, how is the summer offensive going? Here's what we got so far. So it's mixed news, apparently. The Ukrainian offensive has at least, at least prompted the Kursan occupiers to pause the poll on joining Ukraine. You'll recall that the Russian state said, so Russian state media said there was a plan in Kursan in order to have a referendum and that that fake referendum would then be used in

order to justify like an official annexation and some sort of, quote, democratic legitimacy as to their occupation. For now, that has been paused. Now, from what I can see, there have been at least two towns. Now, this is according to the Ukrainians that say that they have had counteroffensive success. The Russians are saying that that isn't true. Do we know the truth? No, that's the answer. We're not on the ground. However, there have not been any quote-unquote decisive victory. As to the actual battle itself, like I said, there's a lot of misinformation and propaganda really coming out. From what we can generally see, the fact the Russians have deposit, that's probably not good. There was an interesting report out this morning.

The Russians are apparently buying a lot of weapons and ammunition from North Korea, which is probably not a good thing whenever you have to stoop to the lowest level on the planet in order to try and go buy weapons. Though, to be fair, the North Koreans, they do have a large stockpile, and they definitely do need the money. So from what we can see, Putin, the Russian military, and them are trying to keep the war effort going, but also not disrupt Russian life even more.

They're not doing conscription. There's a piece in The Times, the lead story today, which is basically, in Moscow, the war seems like it's worlds away. It's kind of like us in Iraq. We were vaguely aware that it was happening. Most people here supported it. And to the extent that people turned on it, it took years of a lot of suffering,

you know, thousands of people dead. And that's in a democratic society with quote unquote free media. Not that the media was all that great at that time. But anyway, in Moscow, general support. People are like, yeah, fine, whatever. The Russian people as well. And Putin is trying very much

in order to keep these two worlds apart from each other as long as possible. Fascinating little bit of a dynamic. But beyond that, it does show you, though, that if this is what we got for $40 billion, and we'll see. I hope they have a decisive victory. We'll see. I highly doubt it.

But if they are unable to do that, and then we have to keep shipping $13 billion more, billion more, and again and again and again, and then the rest of the European powers are just sitting on their hands doing nothing, how much longer are we going to just simply be writing them a blank check? Where then, if this passes, this will be more than $50 billion appropriated to the Ukrainian military effort in total. Then again, we have to answer the question of what is our end goal? At what point do we say no more? You know, at what point do we tell Zelensky, like, sorry, you can't have any more. We'll be giving you $50 billion.

Yeah, you got to figure this thing out on your own. Like, the American people have done so much. The Western society, my whole monologue is on this. The economic damage alone on this to the West is well over a trillion dollars at this point. The UK today is talking about a 170 billion pound bailout just for

its small businesses on energy bills. So it's like this cascades all the way down. And this is what we're about to talk about. This is with the new Margaret Thatcher acolyte free market, whatever. And it's what we're about to talk about. This is with the new, like, Margaret Thatcher acolyte free market, whatever, yeah. And even with this new prime minister, they're still thinking, like, we might have to do a bailout. Yes, there's no question. Because that's how dire the situation is. Right. Okay, let's talk about Liz Truss. So, let's go ahead and put this

up there on the screen. Last night, the news broke. British Conservative Party members have chosen Ms. Truss, the, quote, hawkish foreign minister, foreign secretary, sorry, over Rishi Sunak, who is the chancellor of the Exchequer. She will take over the country in a, quote, serious economic crisis. And from what we have seen this morning, our time, Ms. Truss went over to Balmoral Castle in Scotland and officially was, I forget the exact process, but having watched The Crown, I know something involves kissing the hand and becoming the leader of Her Majesty's government. So Boris Johnson has, I believe, resigned at this point in the show, gave a speech, a farewell speech, warning about the economic crisis, about the problems ahead.

Liz Truss, having been the foreign secretary under Johnson and having been intimately involved in Ukraine policy, that's probably what matters the most for our purposes. Now, don't take a genius when even the New York Times is describing you as the, quote, hawkish foreign secretary. In general, we're going to see a continuation of UK policy. Maybe they can ship some weapons over to Ukraine under this government instead of bailing out their own businesses. However, more importantly, again, is that the posture of the UK government, which there were possibilities of change in terms of some of the other candidates who were up for grabs, really has not changed at all in terms of how the Anglosphere will be presenting itself and towards the conflict with Russia. Michael Tracy found this insane portion of a Q&A with Liz Truss

about her willingness to use nuclear weapons. We forget that Britain is, of course, a nuclear-armed power. Here's what she had to say. Now, here's another question. One of the first things, and very briefly, if I could, one of the first things that will happen when and if you become prime minister, you'll be ushered into a room very privately at number 10. We'll be laid out in front of you what are called the letters of last resort.

Your orders to our Trident boat captain on whether you, Prime Minister Liz Truss, is giving the order to unleash our nuclear weapons. It would mean global annihilation. I won't ask you, would you press the button? You will say yes. But faced with that task, I would feel physically sick. How does that thought make you feel? I think it's an important duty of the Prime Minister. I'm ready to do that. I asked how it would make you feel. I'm ready to do it. That's your answer. Liz Truss, thank you for those answers.

Ladies and gentlemen, Liz Truss. I mean, I would just hope for a little bit more empathy or like, yeah, it's the most solemn responsibility a leader can have uh of course you know you know in the defense of our nation like even i could give a better answer than that it's like we would do everything we possibly could to avoid of course as the leader was the leader of the uk i would do everything to defend our homeland and only in the defense of our most horrific times would we even consider that option. If I'm prime minister, we will never get to that place.

Yeah, yeah, great. Whatever. We can both come up with it. But also, what a weird question. Strange question. British media is very... I know you do it. How would you feel about it?

Like, wait, what? The way that they question their politicians over there is insane. Also, their laws are nuts, you know, in terms of... They have this whole thing where you can basically, if you have enough complaints against you, the government can investigate you, Oxfam or whatever it's called. I remember this whole thing

whenever the Piers Morgan, Meghan Markle thing was going down. So, anyway, sorry UK, you actually don't have nearly enough of the free press as we do, even though they're going to protest. I'm also just going to say this, and y'all can call me sexist or whatever, but there is a problem with these neoliberal-type women wanting to prove that there is toughness, hawkish neocons. Yeah, it is. It's Hillary.

I mean, you see, there's a pattern of this. They've got to prove that there is warmongering as the dudes. And so I think that's also part of what you see there, and she's been extremely hawkish in her language when it comes to Ukraine as well. So listen, I mean, we shouldn't delude ourselves that the war that is going on in Ukraine started by Russia, no doubt about it, but we have fully joined as a proxy partner here. And the UK has been our primary backup and support. They have been our ally in the way that we want to prosecute that war. France and Germany wanted a different approach. They were much more

in favor of diplomacy. Macron, of course, was on the phone constantly with Putin, trying to keep them at the table. And we and the UK blew it up. So no doubt about it that she is going to continue to be a full partner in whatever it is that Biden wants to do with regards to this war. Here's what she said in March, quote, Putin must lose in Ukraine as the foreign secretary of the UK, making it very clear here what the posture will be. In fact, people are saying that she could not only double down, but increase British support to Ukraine. And here's my thing, you know, in terms of their positions and all that, you can have position whatever you want, but then you need to pony up and you need to be a major actor in the conflict. And they're not, let's be honest. I mean, they are, if anything, some sort of client

state of ours, you know, Johnson going over there. I don't know if it was on his own behalf or on ours. I don't know what those conversations look like. I'd be willing to bet there probably was some input on our side. We just seem to be taking this very odd, like, backseat, but also interventionist policy, which is the worst of all worlds, right? Which is that you're basically writing a blank check to a foreign government. No foreign government is ever going to act purely on your interest. And then we don't seem to be really taking any steps in the other direction. And then we're letting these euros basically sit on their hands and do nothing, bailing out their own people, and we're supposedly

stepping up and doing all of the military assistance. I mean, you know, if it's so important to you that you're willing to spend, in France, Germany, and Britain's case, hundreds of billions of euros or pounds, then you would want to see some sort of requisite step up. If it's so existential, then you do something in Ukraine as well. And yet, I don't see them as the ones driving the train here at all. Like I said, I mean, they wanted a different approach. And we basically were like, no. Well, the UK is having the same. Yeah, absolutely.

It's very hypocritical on their part. A hundred percent. Well, and she says she wants to increase their defense budget. Well, then do it. We can send less. So I think, you know, she's happy to go even further in terms of hawkishness than Boris Johnson. So, yeah, I mean, ultimately, probably very much the status quo prevailing here, both in terms of economic ideology, also in terms of foreign affairs ideology. Nothing much appears to have changed. That's right. Well, we have a good news story. Yeah, we do. So last week I brought you some details about some pretty bold policy moves that are being made in the state of California. And one of those that I personally am very excited

about is a move towards what is called sectoral bargaining. So the TLDR is right now, as you know, if you want to form a union, if you want to be able to collectively bargain, it is shop by shop by shop. We see this with Starbucks right now where they're having to win election, election, election. You see it with Amazon. You got one warehouse. There's another warehouse that just filed. It is tedious. It's painstaking.

The game is rigged. Well, in some limited sectors of the U.S., but mostly in Europe, they take a different approach where wages and working conditions are literally set by sector, hence the name sectoral bargaining. Well, California, let's go and put this up on the screen. Their governor, Gavin Newsom, has just signed a bill that they describe as Axios that increases wages for fast food workers up to $22 per hour in what labor advocates are touting as a groundbreaking step for low-wage workers. So the details here, right now, California's minimum wage law said at $15 an hour. And actually fast food workers in California already earn a little bit more than that on average. They have just passed a bill that will set up a 10-member board with representatives from government, business, and from labor

that will, across the fast food industry, for large chains, larger than 100 locations, set the wages and some working conditions. Now, there were a couple pieces that were left out of this as like a SOP to industry. They're not setting paid sick leave conditions as one example, and they're also not making it so that the corporate overlords are responsible for if the franchisees fall short. So there were a couple of things here brought in to sort of like moderate this for business. But ultimately, this is a huge deal. Fast food workers in California are now across the board going to have, you know, representatives who bargain for them and achieve likely much better situation than they have now. Also, this is really being touted as a model for other states potentially.

And you've seen this, you know, California has set the, because it is such a large state and such a large economy, they have been trendsetters previously in terms of policy. So you have Mary Kay Henry, who's the international president of the SEIU saying, we want California to be the first in the nation as it is in so many fronts and be able to spread this to other states. So clearly this is a new goal of labor and really marks a very different approach to sort of like worker-corporate relations. And it's quite interesting. I think the other context here is that labor unions have never been more popular than they are right now, 71% support in the last Gallup poll. So that's why, I mean, Gavin Newsom is a, you know, he's

got his finger in the wind, and he's looking at presidential ambitions. And fast food industry was very upset about this bill, lobbying hard against it, spending lots of money to try to prevent this from ultimately happening. And he ultimately looked at the polls and said, eh, I got to go forward with this and signs it into law, even though it was quite unclear that he would do that. Yeah, it does suck though. From what I was saying about the fact that the national McDonald's and all of them won't be responsible for the wage and pushing it out of the franchise owners. I hate that because it actually pits them against it. These franchise guys, they're making, in some cases, like $100,000 a year. These are not like multi-millionaires. Some of them are multi-millionaires, but they're much

more akin to like a small business person. So the fact that they would have to step up and not national to who are the people making all the money and are essentially functioning as real estate companies who are multi-billionaires, that's terrible. That being said, though, sectoral bargaining is an interesting model. And bringing it back makes it so that you have representation at the table. And having the council makes it so that there are better working conditions. And also, you can make it more flexible in the future. So, of course, the 10-person Council can adjust up and down based upon market conditions. You don't have some of the contract problems that happened at UAW and elsewhere that led to some of the problems at GM and at Ford. So I think it's a great model. I think

it's interesting. And look, I think it's sort of very, very desperately needed in terms of the fact is the wage gap that we have has never been higher. And more importantly, did that monologue on 1971, the ability for the median wage to not pay, the median, not even some of these people, to even give you a temp, you know, not even a chance of access to home ownership,

to any of these other, you know, barometers of success in American life. We have to change that somehow. I do think this is a very important step. That's right. And the other thing in terms of, I mean, it just sets uniform labor costs and conditions across the industry. So you don't have that race to the bottom of employers trying to cheap out and trying to, you know, get an edge that way. So everybody's sort of got a uniform standard across the board. And just, I mean,

the thing that to me is a really transformational idea is having service workers or fast food workers, having these be reasonably well-paid jobs where you can actually live and support yourself, that is absolutely revolutionary. Remember, factory jobs were not always good middle-class jobs. They were dirty. They were dangerous. They were low paid. They employed children. It was the union movement that made these, okay, the bedrock of the middle class and sort of middle class prosperity in America. So being able to move towards that for the sectors that are growing in this country, which is, you know, if you look at the top few occupations, it's like cashiers, it's fast food work, and it's pink collar jobs, especially like home health care

aides and things of that nature, which are only going to continue to be critical and grow to make those decent jobs. That is, to me, extremely, extremely exciting, even as we acknowledge, we want to bring back more industry, want to have more of that industrial capacity as well, not just for the middle class base, but also for national security and a whole lot of other reasons as well. I think that's right. Crystal, what are you looking at? Well... And I'll say this. If there's a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle, which you presided over and did a hell of a good job, there'll be riots in the streets.

Senator Graham made a lot of waves with his cynical threat there that a Trump indictment would lead to riots in the streets. The comments, in my opinion, were rightly seen as an attempt to bully the Justice Department out of charging Trump after Trump and his legal team failed to come up with a legal argument

that would protect him from prosecution over some of the very same crimes that he was so eager to lock Hillary Clinton up over. But it is worth asking the question, is Lindsey Graham right? What will actually happen if Trump is in fact indicted? After all, even some of those who were sympathetic to Trump on Russiagate, like Andrew McCarthy, now believe that the government is planning to pursue a case against Donald Trump, at least on the government is planning to pursue a case against Donald Trump, at least on the Mar-a-Lago documents. Biden's big speech could be seen as helping to build the public case for an indictment of the man he sees as leading a movement that is beyond normal political disagreements. And remember, that's not even close to the only investigation

that Trump is facing right now. He's also facing D.C.-based investigations into his January 6th actions and his fake elector scheme. A Fulton County, Georgia grand jury is also looking at the Georgia fake elector scheme. What will it look like if, after all of these years, the walls actually close in on Trump? So first, let's talk about the overall American public reaction. Judging by the polling, a majority of the public would, in in fact back such an indictment. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, by a 33-point margin, Americans believe Trump acted inappropriately in his handling of these documents. 64% believe the allegations against Trump regarding the

documents are either very serious or somewhat serious. 50% say that they are already convinced Trump should be charged, while 41% are against it. That's to say nothing of the nearly 6 in 10 who believe Trump should be indicted for his actions related to January 6th. And that's also without even knowing directly what was in those documents or why Trump held onto them after attesting that he had turned everything over. As more details emerge and Republicans leave Trump without his typical chorus of affirmation, I can only see those numbers going up. But of course, there will be plenty who will view this not as an application of the law, but as a politically motivated attack of the Biden Justice Department on his political opponent. Justice's thousands bought every lie about Stop the Stealing, became genuinely convinced that

the election had in fact been stolen, and then, encouraged by Trump, became convinced that it was their patriotic duty to break into the Capitol on January 6th to try to stop what was in their had in fact been stolen, and then, encouraged by Trump, became convinced that it was their patriotic duty to break into the Capitol on January 6th to try to stop what was, in their view, an assault on democracy. If Trump encourages them in that direction again, we certainly could have riots in the streets, just as Graham predicted. Given that already at least one lunatic tried to murder FBI agents over this whole thing, I think it'd be the height of naivete to rule out all political violence. These threats of violence, of course, are not a reason not to move forward with the prosecution if it's justified. To be deterred by potential riots or possible law enforcement

assassinations would mean letting the violent mob run the country. In the same way I don't want public health officials psychoanalyzing the public to determine what facts we can and can't handle, I similarly don't want Justice Department officials trying to babysit or micromanage the public sentiment. Nor do I buy all the civil war talk that is apparently in fashion in some corners of the internet. Following the Mar-a-Lago raid, a bunch of right-wing commentators insisted that the raid meant literal war. But apparently, by war, what they actually meant was continuing to host their podcasts and give their paid speeches. There was a spontaneous protest outside of Mar-a-Lago, but it remained completely peaceful. And thankfully, the attempted FBI shooter was killed before he could murder anyone.

In other words, recent history says it might not be pretty, but the country can survive the fringe extremists who follow every one of Trump's actual or implied demands. I would say, in terms of threats to democracy, allowing elites to go on crime sprees with zero accountability, that is a much scarier issue. Now, the last piece to contemplate here is whether Trump is actually going to end up in prison. Trump being let out in handcuffs has been a central theme in liberal fantasies for years now, and yet it still kind of blows your mind to think that it might really happen. In fact, it feels impossible. In the American justice system, you're usually safe when you bet on the side of the 1% getting away with their crimes.

But Trump's polite society card has been pulled. So on the one hand, he's obviously receiving extraordinary deference as the former president. On the other, he is not entirely welcome in the full elites club these days. According to the unsealed search warrant, the government is actively investigating Trump pursuant to three criminal statutes related to the Espionage Act, obstruction, and destroying documents. The most serious of those could land you in prison for up to 20 years. Not that I feel confident even such an extraordinary outcome would be enough to kill Trump's political career. Legally, he could technically run for president from prison. Eugene Debs did it in 1920 and claimed nearly a million votes.

Trump's legal jeopardy has been pushing independence away from Republicans, but with his base, Trump has only gotten stronger. Certainly, whether he ran or not, he would continue to dominate our politics as the next presidential election would be fought on the grounds of whether he'd get a pardon or not. So, riots in the street or not, there is no avoiding an ugly future here. I wonder what you make of Graham's comments there, and what would actually... And if you want to hear my reaction

to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Alright, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, everyone, if you haven't noticed, it's getting colder. Just a little bit. In fact, here on the East Coast, or in Montana, where I just was, it's positively lovely. But as anyone who's cursed with four-season understands well, the price of a pleasant fall is the impending blackness of winter.

That is especially true in Europe, where Americans really do tend to forget how far north the entire European continent is on a map. Consider this. The capitals of the UK, France, and Germany all lie so far north in latitude, not one of them line up with a single American city. Europe is really far north. Now, before meteorologists get mad, yes, I know there are many other factors for European weather that help it remain hotter than its North American counterparts, including the Gulf Stream. But I still think it is important for those of us here to just let it sink in. Things are very different over there. It's a different place across the Atlantic. And why

the timetable I'm about to lay out matters so much. Every single day that ticks by brings us closer to more energy demand in Europe as it gets colder, both for industrial capacity to run as normal and for consumers who need power to heat their homes. It's exactly here at the most vulnerable point. The idiocy of Western policy towards Russia and decades of kowtowing to green idiocy is teaching the entire globe a valuable lesson for decades to come. The news came over Labor Day weekend that Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth which delivers natural gas to Europe, will further reduce its shipments to the continent. Gazprom blamed the stoppage on a so-called maintenance issue,

but the announcement of further reduction in cuts just so happened to occur hours after the G7 agreed to implement a price cap on Russian oil formally. The news sent another seismic shock across the European continent, where, while this was still expected, still sent natural gas prices again soaring by 26%, sparking major questions. What is this winter going to look like for some of the largest economies on Earth, and especially for the main powers, the UK, Germany, and France? In the UK, signs of major societal dysfunction are beginning to show. UK residents are seeing a staggering 80% increase in annual household energy bills, bringing the yearly cost to a total of £3,500 a year.

For context, the average household income in the UK is just £31,000, meaning that 10% of household pre-tax income in the UK is going to energy alone. The most insane thing about this is that isn't even the market price. That is just what the government will let the power people charge with their true price cap, meaning the real cost is many, many more times that. Worse, it could just be the beginning of things to come, from rolling blackouts in the UK to further increases in price caps, with each individual hike meaning massive pain to the average household, to small businesses like local pubs across the UK, which are already in danger

of closing and perhaps even requiring Parliament to spend untold billions of pounds in pandemic relief to try and survive. Those who work with poor households in the UK say that the rise in price is leading to the biggest drop in living standards in the country in more than 50 years. In France, they are facing the same catastrophe. Already, businesses across the second largest economy in Europe are required to cut their energy use by 10 percent or face government-enforced rationing of electricity and gas. Furthermore, the government is forcing companies to appoint, quote, energy sobriety ministers whose sole job is to encourage municipalities and industry to reduce demand more. Already, schools in Normandy, France, are literally heating their classrooms with wood in a

shining emblem of their failed policy. France is also a cautionary tale. The country has dozens of nuclear power plants, and it should be able to draw on decades, though. Instead, they have now had incompetence and lack of maintenance, which is leading the majority of these nuclear power plants to be inoperable at this time, meaning they rely on natural gas and need it to power their society through the long winter that is approaching, where currently French leaders see two nightmare scenarios. They either institute rolling blackouts, or they have to use coal-fired power plants, which are filthy for the environment. Finally, of course, there is Germany, the most idiotic of nations, the most vulnerable, who before the crisis was getting 60% of its power from Russian natural gas. The country just announced they will need to spend 65 billion euros to combat soaring energy costs, with most of it going to consumer subsidy and

industry, who even with the subsidy are seeing huge spikes in power bills and cutting manufacturing output, contributing to inflation and wreaking havoc in their society. So the main three powers and their societies are literally in chaos. Their economies are going into the red. We are entering a basic repeat of the Eurozone crisis at its best. So is it working? No. You already know that answer.

Russian oil profits are booming regardless of this idiotic, unenforceable cap the G7 is trying to introduce. Their war effort continues to hum along. The Ukrainian military is relatively static. Both sides are dug in for years to come. Just to show you how especially idiotic this entire thing is, the current stage of the crisis was precipitated by the official enforcement of that price cap on Russian oil by the European economies. And yet, on the very same day of the price cap, China and India, which are the largest buyers of Russian oil,

not only reject the cap, but are India, which are the largest buyers of Russian oil, not only reject the cap, but are starting to buy even more of it. As I've already laid out, if you think we in the West are also still not buying Russian oil, you're a fool. They are just shipping it to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They are building it up or labeling it differently and then selling it to us at a major premium. You're still buying it, whether it's officially from Russia or not. So what are our lessons from this? Financialized and ideological economies are good for profit, but terrible for resiliency. All that counts in the end is what you hold in your hands, what you can pump out of your ground, and can you rely on

should the rug actually get pulled out from under you. Resiliency, the ability to survive a hit and maybe even multiple in a row, is all that matters in the long run. Ideological debates about fossil fuels and high-profile so-called activists get shoved aside when it looks like people could freeze or society could revert to the pre-industrial age. In the meantime, don't fool yourself. The clown show will continue. I have no doubt the European governments will continue their policy towards Russia, don't fool yourself. The clown show will continue. I have no doubt the European governments will continue their policy towards Russia, sanction their own economies. I have no doubt the Biden administration will continue to prop up this farce of so-called policy, which is punishing us, even though it's still to a lesser extent. I have no doubt the war in Ukraine

won't fundamentally change over the next few years. And I have no doubt that New Delhi and Beijing won't continue to print money from Russian oil. But at least the clowns show we might learn something. And history tells us it really isn't all that likely in the short term, but should teach us something in the long run. I mean, by the way, right after I wrote this, Crystal, Germany decided they're gonna decommission.

And if you wanna hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. As we told you last week, Jackson, Mississippi has been without water. They actually have been on a boil alert since July. The residents of the city have not had clean water to drink, and this has been a recurring problem in the city that has gone completely neglected and obviously ignored by the media. Jordan Cheriton of Status Quo is with us now. His team has been on the ground talking to residents of Jackson, Mississippi about exactly what is going on there. Great to see you, Jordan. Good to see you, man.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go ahead and put, we've got your YouTube site there up on the screen so people can see your channel. You guys are always doing great on the ground reporting of critical issues that are being ignored by the media. So anyone, if you are able to go ahead and subscribe to what they are up to. But Jordan, just give us a little bit of a sense of who you all were able to talk to and what the situation is on the ground right now. Yeah, Louis DeAngelis, who's a reporter for us, is down there and kind of just popping around different water distribution sites. Yesterday was Labor Day, so folks finally got some time off, the folks that were volunteering, to kind of rest. But he's been speaking with activists who are delivering water, older residents who obviously are more vulnerable in really, really hot

temperatures without water. And it's really a pattern in what we're hearing. I mean, he's talking to people who are describing their grandparents, watching their grandparents boil water in Jackson, Mississippi. So this is a generational issue. It's not, yes, the current situation is acute, but this has been going on for a long time. Parts of Jackson have infrastructure over 100 years old. And there has definitely been a race aspect here between the state government and the white state leadership and the black leadership of Jackson. Yeah. And I think we have some footage from there. Let's take a listen to some of that. Do you want to just talk about kind of your situation, how the water crisis has been affecting you here so far? Well, it's very slow and you can't drink

the water. And then I got two young babies in the house. So, of course, it's rough because you got to feed bottles and then you got to be careful of how they bathe and not put the water in their mouth. Because one of them has allergies so bad, you know, so we've got to make sure that they don't get anything, or else they have to go to the emergency room. See, I already had to take them to the doctor because the allergy flared up since the warning I started. And we pay our water bills. Yeah. And I've had, I haven't been affected with a high water bill, but I've had members at our church who are elderly people. So we know they're not using a whole lot of water, you know, and they're using the same consistent water. Right. And last month, your water bill might

have been $45, $50, $60, but then here you come with an $1,800 water bill and that shouldn't be so. I don't drink the water and I'm afraid to drink the water because it's got some kind of disease in it and I don't want to get no disease and I don't want to go to no hospital and I got a a husband disabled, and I'm disabled, and we can't take no chance being sick or going to the hospital because my insurance would pay for me to go, but Medicaid don't pay for all his. And I've been going down getting water, bottled water, to take care of me and my husband and take care of my animals. Oh, my God. That's just horrific, Jordan. I mean, you know, these are just some of the stories that we were able to play.

I mean, beyond that, just what does that mean to the people in Jackson? Because you were mentioning to us before, media cameras are leaving. But, like, this thing is just getting started. It's a lot like Flint in a lot of ways, which you covered too. Yeah, it's really deja vu to the beginning of Flint in 2016. Basically, you know, this is over $1 billion problem. The infrastructure is very old. You have levees that need repair. A surrounding river in this situation flooded. The water treatment plant, like most water treatment plants around

the country, very outdated, very understaffed. So it's not just the infrastructure, it's all the surrounding things and the water plant, equipment, staffing that's problematic, not just in Jackson, all over the country in a lot of major cities. And you have a governor, frankly, who has vetoed repeatedly bills that would have provided relief to residents for water bills, would have provided infrastructure upgrades in Jackson. He's even vetoed bills that would provide funding for Jackson's hospitals, parks. Seems to be an issue where he keeps vetoing relief to Jackson, Mississippi, while providing funds for surrounding white suburbs.

So yeah, this is a major problem. The federal government, frankly, needs to step in here. There's also the issue, which doesn't really get a lot of attention, federal money that's been earmarked for Jackson somehow has been diverted to other entities and suburbs. This happened in Flint, too. A lot of people don't realize $370 million that was earmarked from Congress for Flint, very little of that went to Flint, as well as the state money that was earmarked for Flint. It was going to foundations and law firms and banks. A lot of boondoggle is going on here.

So, yeah, I think the federal government needs to step in here. And they're saying the water pressure is back, but that's not consistent throughout the city. And then there's the issue of the water quality. Yeah, I mean, we covered back in that when we were rising and there was a winter storm there that also, you know, devastated the city in terms of, I think there were pipes that were freezing and the whole system went down and people were unable to drink the water. They were unable to get water at that time. So this has been known for years and years. You know, it does remind me a lot of Flint because obviously you have two cities that have been, you know, basically abandoned by the state, both poor, both largely black. What are the residents saying about

how this makes them feel about, you know, how they're treated by society, how they're treated by their state, how they're viewed by the nation that they would be so abandoned and neglected that it could get to this point? Yeah. Lewis has been speaking with a lot of residents. I spoke with residents last week and you kind of hear a similar tone, which is just they're used to this. They're used to kind of just fighting for scraps. It's sad that that has steeped in that kind of complacency, but they're used to kind of getting the short end. Jackson is nearly 25% poverty rate. There's some people making less than $15,000 a year. Some folks that Louis spoke with were talking about like, this might put me over the edge to leave.

But where do you go if you're obviously not making a ton of money for your family? But they're used to it. A lot of the folks, even young people, know the history. After desegregation in schools, there was white flight, which cratered the taxpayer base, left the black population rising but the white population shrinking. And this has happened in Flint, Detroit, I mean, many areas around the country where progress in civil rights have left major cities really stuck financially. And you also have, I mean, little things. The governor at his press conferences didn't invite the black mayor to stand with him until recently. There's been kind of this tug of war, the March 2020 time period you talked about with the last time there was a water shutdown. The governor was saying, well, maybe the residents should pay their water bills before asking for more help. So it's not just the water is poisonous. There's a real poisonous climate with government. And this governor on a broader scale, he's talking about now sending $130 million back to the federal government that was earmarked for Mississippi as part of rental relief, saying we don't need these liberal handouts.

I mean, that money would disproportionately go to places like Jackson. And I saw also this morning that the governor is suggesting maybe they should privatize the water system. How do you think that would work out, Jordan? It's working out great in Flint, Detroit, and many other cities. Right. Isn't that what precipitated Flint? Can you give the background on that? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize Flint had gotten its water from Detroit for almost 50 years. Glacial fresh water from Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes.

And local officials in Flint and state officials created a completely brand new water system called the Karagandi Water Authority. In a nutshell, it was going along the same exact path as the existing pipeline that Flint got its water from with no problem. And this new water system, they call it a public authority, as the existing pipeline that Flint got its water from with no problem. And this new water system, they call it a public authority, but a lot of private interests, Wall Street banks wrote the bonds.

And that deal, which somehow Flint was allowed to borrow nearly $100 million to join this new water system, that deal precipitated Flint using the Flint River in the first place. So this new water system is largely a privatized system. A lot of Flint residents, government officials actually believed it was really designed so that Michigan could frack more because this new water system was raw water, which you need a lot of that for fracking, whereas the water Flint got from Detroit was already treated. So yeah, that privatization was very, very prevalent underneath the Flint water prices. Got it. Well, as always, we're

grateful that you all are on the ground speaking with residents and really understanding what this has meant for their life, because that's obviously the most important aspect of this story. And I know that you'll stay on top of it. Jordan, great to see you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jordan. Thanks, everyone. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. If you guys are able, as we said,

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