Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Krystal and Saagar's FULL COVERAGE of Biden's State of the Union

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Krystal and Saagar give pre-speech and post-speech coverage of Biden's State of the Union address with cohosts Kyle Kulinski and Marshall Kosloff to break it all down!!!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/Marianne: https://mariannewilliamson.substack.com/ Zaid: https://www.inquiremore.com/ Kyle Kulinski: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldfgbzNILYZA4dmDt4Cd6A Marshall Kosloff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3O3P7AsOC17INXR5L2APHQ  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our live coverage of President Joe Biden's first

State of the Union speech. I am Crystal Ball, joined by Marshall Kosloff and Sagar Enjeti and Kyle Kalinsky. It is all happening. We got realignment. That's right. We got Crystal Kyle and friends. We got secular talk. We got breaking points. After the speech, we're going to have Marianne Williamson and Zed Jelani on, so make sure you join us afterwards, too. And we're going to stream the speech live on the channel, so you don't have to go anywhere for that. As I mentioned, this is actually Biden's technically his first State of the Union, because the first year that a president is in office,

they deliver an address to Congress, but it's not technically a State of the Union. Another thing that's noteworthy is this is one of the latest State of the Unions that has been done. That was the choice of Speaker Pelosi, wanted to sort of push things off because of coronavirus and because of their own agenda. We do have a couple of excerpts that have been released from the speech, predictably one about Ukraine and one about the economy. I'll just read a little bit of that and then you guys can get a little bit of reaction and get into the polls and some of those things. So on Ukraine, they say, he's planning to say, American diplomacy matters. Putin's war was premeditated and unprovoked. He rejected efforts at diplomacy. He thought the West and NATO would not respond. And he thought he could divide us here at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready. Also, Wall Street Journal reporting that he's

going to announce that Russian flights will be banned from U.S. airspace. A little bit of news out of that. Yeah, that definitely is some of the big news. And the domestic agenda, it's important to look at this as well. We brought you guys during your show about how Biden is going to be talking a significant amount about inflation. And, Crystal, the current, the things that have been released here, guys, actually, we've all been talking about this, is in terms of the way the inflation messaging seems to poll test the best is not necessarily like, oh, about cutting costs. It's about, look, we have two options. We can make you poorer. Biden is set to say that's the Republican plan or I can lower

your costs. And he's going to be going after shipping the industry in particular, trying to target consolidation there. Also talking there about trying to increase the amount of competition. I think, Crystal, it was a poll done a couple of weeks ago, which showed that that was the single best message that was tested whenever it came to inflation. It also happens to be true in terms of helping costs. So I think that's pretty significant. I mean, Kyle, what are you looking at in terms of the excerpts on the speech right now? Well, just first, let me just comment on that real quick, the inflation thing. You made a good point earlier, Crystal. I don't know why he doesn't just blame it on corporate greed and take that. Well, it seems very likely he's going to take some of

that approach. I'll predict he won't. What do you think? Well, I was going to say, I mean, very specifically, like he may say some vague things, but what would actually matter is to put specific corporations on blast. Right. And I mean, we saw this, Marshall, when he did just a little bit with regard to the meatpacking industry.

You know, they put on a little press release. He gave like a little presser that didn't get a whole lot of attention. And for the first time, meat prices actually went down a little bit because you have mass consolidation in that industry. Americans are already a majority of Americans already believe that corporate greed is not the only issue with inflation, but one of the issues with inflation. We've got corporate CEOs admitting on earnings calls that they're jacking up prices beyond what is necessary. They're making record-breaking profits. So if he really wanted to sort of land an easy win on the domestic agenda, I think you go full FDR, calling them out, not just in generalities, but specifics, name names, name companies.

I do not expect him to do that at all. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it, just because, look, it's funny, you said at the start of this that Pelosi delayed this. In retrospect, that was very, very lucky for Biden. This isn't really about specifically the agenda item. It's about the fact that masking is limiting up. I just came to D.C. from New York. It was wild. I did not have to wear a mask in a hotel. That was important. You have the fact that the Biden approach to diplomacy seems to be successful in terms of saying we're not going to intervene with troops. I am not owning this. This is Putin's responsibility. So when you combine those factors with what you're talking about with specifically naming, there's credibility. I get what you were saying in the December sense,

but I don't think until now the credibility would have just been there. I think if you'd thrown out different industries and different companies, people would have just treated it as noise. But right now, the State of the Union, that's an opportunity to say something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, they obviously had to basically rip this whole speech up that they'd been working on for months and totally go back to the drawing board. And anything that was going to be the focus in the economic agenda, we saw some leaks also that they're going to focus on climate change and make that part of the case for this is how we're going to lower inflation. I think that's a harder sell, frankly, than the sort of corporate greed angle. But all of those things are going to be secondary to whatever he says on Ukraine and on foreign policy. And right now he's in, we're going to get into some of the polling specifically,

right now he's in this tricky spot just from the political perspective where if you ask Americans about the approach they want us to take vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, Biden is doing what the American people basically want him to do. But if you ask them how they feel about how Biden is doing on Russia and Ukraine, it was like 42 percent in favor. So that analysis of how he specifically is doing is being fed very much through a partisan lens rather than Americans saying, oh, I want these things done. And actually, the president is doing those things. Yeah. And I think the biggest problem for him right now is that he's basically playing whack-a-mole because you have these like new issues that pop up, whether it's Russia and Ukraine or it's inflation or it's gas prices. And then it's like, so he has to divert his attention to that and talk about that. But then

it's like, you're not laying out a governing vision, which is like something broader, something, you know, philosophical. You can't, he's not really focusing on or tackling giant issues like health care, which usually polls as one of the top issues for the American people. You know, he's not talking about aspects that were part of his Build Back Better agenda, like elder care, like universal pre-K and the $15 minimum wage. So I don't think your speech can really be successful if you're not really defining the terms of the political era. You know, somebody like Reagan, we all know that his thing was what the scariest words in the English language are. I'm from the government. I'm here to help. You had Bill Clinton and we'll get to some of that a little later on in this show.

But he also said the era of big government is over. So you need to sort of, if he wants to really leave a legacy, he would have to pursue the policy agenda, but also let it be known, like, I want to usher in a new New Deal era. And he's not doing that. He's just playing whack-a-mole, and that's not going to get him anywhere. This is a very important point. Crystal, I think we should get to the Gallup numbers that you put specifically. This is the backdrop against which this entire speech unfolds. In addition to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, you have a country that just isn't very happy with how things are going.

Let's go ahead and throw that Gallup poll up on the screen. This is maybe the most significant number to understand our politics today overall. All the debates about CRT or masking or any of these things, I think is not even close to as consequential as the fact that you have just 21 percent of Americans right now, according to Gallup, saying that they are satisfied with the way that things are going. Seventy eight percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied. That is among the lowest ratings that we have seen in terms of issues. Economy is the top concern. Government leadership is the second highest concern.

And then COVID is down to 13 percent. You have 42 percent saying the giving the economy the lowest possible rating, say it is poor. 37 percent saying it's only fair. A mere 21 percent say that the economy is either excellent or good. And oh, by the way, 70% of people say that the economy is getting worse. So Marshall, this is the other issue that Biden faces is, look, they've got some numbers they can point to. They've been out there trying to make the case, look at job growth, you know, up until result, the stock market's good. I mean, there are things that they can point to.

Even wage gain, wage growth has been up, even though that's been eaten away by inflation. But you're not going to persuade the American people that their lives are different than the way that they are experiencing them. Yeah. So that's why, look, I want to go to Kyle's point around Bill Clinton giving the big speech, Reagan. Joe Biden isn't either of those presidents. Why was Joe Biden elected? Joe Biden at his core was elected because this guy is supposed to make things normal. And I think the opportunity here isn't the ideal opportunity.

The ideal opportunity would be a governing vision for this country. But given everything that Biden has, given his 50 plus years in government, what he can actually do tonight is say, hey, this is our reset point. I've stabilized our position in Eastern Europe. I haven't committed troops. I'm not going to escalate. I'm sure you are fearing this, but the number one thing that people are sending me when they're sending in questions or talking to your friends is, hey, is there going to be a nuclear war next week? Joe Biden's only actual job for the next week or so is going to be proving he's not going to do anything to make that any worse. And I think what you could then do once you've

stabilized is then build, because that's the biggest problem with the governing vision issue right now. Yeah, let's put that Gallup tear sheet up there, actually, please. And the important part of that is that when satisfaction is low and the economic concerns remain high is I've got a book behind us. We can't see it right now, but I reference it all the time, Freedom from Fear, which is FDR, you know, very much to this point, confronted major international crises abroad and a massive economic crisis. And what he did is he fused the two into saying America will be strong, we will rebuild, and he combined it with a domestic economic program. And especially

in a major flashpoint like right now, what you're talking about, Marshall, when you have such, and you guys can see those, those wrong track numbers there down at the bottom, that's catastrophic. He needs to combine this in a sense of we're not going to wage war abroad. We're going to wage war on the price increase at the pump. We will guarantee you. And I mean, I've talked so much about this, but so much of this doesn't even have to do with Congress. I mean, a lot of it has to do with, I will guarantee, I will do everything in my power to bring that gas price down, to make sure. I mean, right now, Crystal, is the highest we have ever seen on wheat prices since 2009. The spot commodity index hit the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis. This is catastrophe. Sunflower oil, 75% of it comes from Russia. People are going to see real increase in the price of food, in the price of gas. You know, a $4 a gallon national average is very likely as a national average. Not saying it to scare anybody, but as a problem that the president needs to confront,

he needs to show vigor. And this gets to actually what Kyle said. Look, you know, no fan of a lot of Ronald Reagan policy, but what he was so great at doing was to combine both the confrontation of the Soviet Union with how people were feeling with 1979, with it's morning, we're going to crawl out of this hole. And if he doesn't do that, then Biden is on his way to becoming Jim Carter. I mean, in a lot of ways, much to my chagrin, we are still living in the Reagan era. So it was incredibly politically successful, even though I find almost every part of it to have been a disaster for our country and for the world. Listen, when you're president, you have to play the hand that you're dealt.

OK, this is where we are. And so what I'll look for in this speech is, did they just like take the speech that they wanted to give that has, we saw some details, oh, they're going to call for raising the Pell grants by $2,000. Oh, wow. Big deal. You know, they are going to sort of uselessly call again for the $15 minimum wage, which of course we know they have no intention of or no plan in order to pass. And some other measures, the paid leave that, again, they don't seem to really have a plan to get through. So do you just take that old speech and sort of stick it on to a new beginning with regard to Ukraine? Or do you use what is unfolding in our geopolitics

today to stitch together a narrative around, I mean, climate is obvious here. Part of why American consumers and the working class are so exposed is because we haven't taken the steps to get off of fossil fuel. That has made us incredibly vulnerable, not just to Russia, but to the Saudis as well, who've been colluding with Russia to increase prices. That's part of why you are facing higher prices at the pump. So rally people around a national agenda that has been brought into clear focus of why this matters, given what we see unfolding in Ukraine and Russia. Because the more dependent we are on countries overseas, the more we are dependent on globalization, the more vulnerable we are, Kyle, the more that we have handed our, you know, would-be adversaries and competitors and some of the worst, most malign actors around the world, economic cudgels that they can use against our own

population. I feel, though, like Manchin has hijacked the narrative effectively. I just saw an article on this earlier today where Joe Manchin is out there saying like, look, this proves we need to increase our own reliance on fossil fuels and, you know, but use our stuff from here at home. So my guess is that Biden, in terms of his policy, is more going to go down that path as opposed to what you're talking about, which is like, hey, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to totally try to get off of fossil fuels and usher in the future when it comes to, you know, solar, wind, whatever the new technology is. Because the other thing is there are inevitable patents in those industries that are going to come.

And so the question is, do you want the U.S. to get those patents, or do you want China or some other country to get those patents? And if we get those patents, then there you have it right there. It could be, you know, the future of some sort of new New Deal, and we start the process now. Yeah, so let me go ahead and read this from Joe Manchin. So here's what he said. I mean, three different points here. He says, we need to ban all Russian energy imports now. Now, I've seen some reports here that Russian oil is very likely to be de facto banned from the United States.

Number two, though, he says we need to dramatically increase domestic production of energy. And number three, he says we need to compel every energy company to immediately cease any and all investment operations and production in Russia. I think we should put Joe Manchin's money where his mouth is. And, Marshall, you and I have been discussing this, and you're going to be doing something on nuclear as well. I think this is the nuclear energy moment. I mean, we have here the moment where we could actually call for, and I do think there could at least be some semi-bipartisan consensus, or at least put people's money where their mouth is, where they say, hey, I'm not for wind and solar. Okay, fine. Let's go all in on nuclear. That's great. When we could create an opportunity right now to frame it, as Crystal is saying, in the context of the geopolitical situation that we face, look at Germany.

That's the most compelling use case we possibly can. We have Germany here, decommissions all these nuclear energy plants, increases their reliance on Russian gas, 50% or something of their energy imports now coming from there. And they're about to face economic catastrophe. And as a result, they're actually making sure that they're not going to decommission their nuclear energy plants on the same timeline that they were before. This is a time, and Crystal, one of the immediate things you and I called for at the day, I think on Thursday, the day of the invasion, we were like, we need a nuclear new deal. This is actually one of those times where this is, you know, it's one of those things that doesn't actually track with a lot of partisan politics. And it's a way that Biden could rise above, I think, to where we are right now. And I would actually be very hard pressed to find Joe Manchin a way to rhetorically

slip out of something like that. Yeah. And the key thing here is a lot of I hate to say all the above energy policy, because we know that has certain cringe elements to it. Still a baby drill. This isn't 2008. We should drill in the short term. The key thing is scarcity. This is something you talk about all the time, Crystal. The opportunity here for Joe Biden is,

once again, he can't agree with Joe Manchin on the lowering dependence on Russia. There's the easy tie to the geopolitics with Russia there, too. And then there's just the broad point of, with this nuclear new easy tie to the geopolitics with Russia there, too. And then there's just the broad point of with this nuclear new deal that you're talking about, Sagar, you need investment in science, you need investment in technology, and that also needs to be applied to areas like clean energy and other basic spaces like that, too. So that's something comprehensive. If we're thinking back to why Build Back Better just didn't really catch, what were people just saying in the polling? What were they saying on the street? It just seemed like this big amount of money and there was just no tie to it. I think

what Biden could do, I think we're getting to the vision point you're talking about earlier, Kyle, which is, look, America needs to come back. We can come back. Here are these very specific ways that we can come back. And here are the ways I specifically am going to do that. This isn't just me throwing, you know, $3 trillion. I remember I was listening to Shamath Palapatiya on the All In podcast, and he was saying, you know, what if we just took the $3 trillion and put it towards solar energy? And that's a little silly. That isn't how this works. But there's something directionally accurate about that in the sense that investing large amounts of money in specific ideas would make more sense in these amorphous programs. Well, this is something, Kyle, you talk about all the time, which is channeling people's energy into one big national project that they can sink their teeth into, that everybody

can kind of get on board with, that feels like, you know, feels like a kind of coming together and a way for us to get our mojo back and restore some pride and, oh, by the way, address some of the critical issues that we face as a country right now. And listen, I mean, the thing with Joe Biden, I was actually talking to the leader of a DC progressive organization who has a lot more ties in than any of us do to the Biden administration. And he was asking me, he was like, what do you think this was before Ukraine and Russia? He's like, what do you think they're even going to call for on the economic agenda? I mean, that's the thing is we can all sort of speculate all of these different directions

because Joe Biden has never once made it clear what his actual priorities are. Even during Build Back Better, remember, we would talk to Jeff Stein about like, what do you think are his red lines here? Like, what does he actually care about and pushing for? And he told us like, I think that maybe it's the free community college. And then like a week later, that was out of the bill. So, you know, the hodgepodge of things that we've seen floated as what would be in his speech, it's just sort of random.

There doesn't seem to have been any real specific, like this is my thing. This is my legacy. This is what I'm going to get done. And so, yeah, the Build Back Better debate just ended up being about the price tag rather than any specific program that people could really understand how this is going to benefit my life particularly. I think Joe Biden has totally bought into the conventional wisdom in Washington. And it's what every staffer around him tells him, which is like, look, man,

the squad is defining you. You've gone too far left. You got to reel it in. So my guess is, and you're going to see this in the speech, and afterwards we can tell whether or not I was right, but there's going to be a lot of overtures to the moderate that he thinks he's not in good favor with. So it's going to be a lot of stuff on deficit reduction and things of that nature. I do think he'll probably throw in lines about the $15 minimum wage or this or that. But I think that the heart of the speech is going to be to try to pick off the never-Trump Republican and the moderate voter. And I hope I'm wrong. I hope he goes out there swinging. But my guess is it's going to be that mixed with the whack-a-mole thing I just talked about before,

which is we've got to talk about Russia and Ukraine. We've got to talk about inflation. We We got to talk about high gas prices. But again, this isn't generation-defining stuff. This isn't leaving you a legacy. This is like you're the technocratic manager who's falling flat on his face and falling asleep halfway through his speech. You're like a terrible technocratic manager.

Of course. It would be way better if he was an actually competent technocratic manager. That was Obama. For all of his flaws, that was Obama. At least he spoke well. Let's give it to him. Yeah, yes. I mean, here's the big question. I mean, we all of his flaws, that was Obama. At least he spoke well. Let's give it to him. Yeah, yes.

I mean, here's the big question. We're not even talking about the Republicans here. And that's actually kind of the elf in the room. You all saw Senator Rick Scott's, let's just say, not well-managed plan. I mean, even Mitch McConnell had to disown this plan. Can you explain for the audience? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, I actually can't explain the actual plan.

But the basic idea is Matt Yglesias had a great joke where he said, Can you explain for the audience? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, I actually can't explain the actual plan. But the basic idea is Matt Yglesias had a great joke where he said, it's funny, Rick Scott got in trouble for saying the quiet part out loud when it came to Social Security, increased taxes on working class people. Basically, Mitch McConnell has to disown it because you're not supposed to be talking about the actual economic costs of that actual idea. And it's just like the most cringe like kids are gonna say the pledge of allegiance again and we're gonna finish the border wall and we're gonna name it after donald trump it's like that sort of stuff yeah but he combined that though chris with like we're gonna raise taxes on working class americans and also even brought back the 47 rhetoric which takes skill in order to be that much of an idiot. I genuinely believe he's a low IQ individual. And isn't this the guy who technically is like sort of running the campaign side of the Republican.

Yes. And RSC, which is the National Republican Senatorial Commission. So, you know, it's sad as they're still going to. It doesn't matter. Like you're right. Even if so, McConnell's plan is obviously smarter of just saying nothing and letting Democrats hang themselves. That's clearly the smarter political direction to go. Even if they ran on Rick Scott's complete garbage nonsense, they still are in line for massive wins.

And we're going to show you in a moment what Biden's approval rating looks like and how it compares to other presidents. But the picture is not pretty. This is literally maybe the first time that I've been covering politics where I've flat out agreed with Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell's point was like, say nothing. They're going to fall on their face. Let them fall on their face, and everybody will just fill in the blanks with what they think maybe we believe. It's just a pendulum swing election. We're going to win. Don't worry about it. And then Rick Scott comes out, and he's like, I don't know, education, colorblind equality. Like it's not even, they're not even really policies. They're just like vague right-wing virtue signal things. You know what I mean? Like there's no they're there. And he made, I was saying this earlier on Twitter,

he makes Newt Gingrich's contract with America look like it was written by Noam Chomsky. Hey, listen, at least Contract for America was an actual plan. It was. I'm not saying it was a good plan, but it was certainly a thing. And Gingrich was like, look, we're not going to raise any tax. We're going to do X, Y, and Z, welfare reform, et cetera. And he was largely successful in doing those things. Crystal alluded to this 538 thing. Guys, go ahead and put the third element, please. We're going to skip the second one, how Biden compares with past presidents. Now, what's very important here for you guys to see is that you can see exactly where Biden tracks with past ones. Now, George W. Bush is obviously an aberration. This is the post 9-11 era. So Biden, just so people can see, because it took

me a long time to figure out what the hell this is trying to tell me. The green is Biden. Yeah, the green is Biden. And the black is all these different presidents at the same period in time. For those who are just listening, what we can go ahead and describe it as is he's virtually tied with Donald Trump. Now, the reason why you don't want to be in that situation is that Donald Trump, despite having a low general approval rating, had an extremely high approval rating within the Republican Party up into the high 90th percentile. Biden, on the other hand, only has about 40 percent of Democrats who even want him to run for president again. So has no enthusiasm on his side whatsoever, has a general disapproval as well as a lack of base approval. Compare him also to Barack Obama and you can see the exact same thing.

Obama was sitting right around forty nine point eight percent. Biden currently at forty one point nine percent. To be clear, these are aggregated numbers. So this is about as close as we're going to get. Take all the grains of salt, you know, with the polls. Against George W. Bush, it's not really all that applicable. But even look at Bill Clinton, who himself suffered, you know, the Contract for America defeat. At this same point in his presidency, guys, Bill Clinton was at 48%. He was almost above water. Biden is below that. Biden is below where George W. Bush was at this time.

He was at 73. H.W. Sorry, H.W. Bush. Well, and W. And W, obviously. Everybody's always going to be below W and also above W in an interesting sense. But I think the final and the most important comparison I'm going to continue to track all the way through is Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was more popular than Joe Biden was at this time in his presidency.

Don't get me wrong. Carter does have the all time low at twenty eight point eight percent. But if Biden does not handle himself well, not just necessarily tonight, but throughout this international crisis. And if the inflation, the stagflation continues to come, if we see gas hit, for example, $5 a gallon across the nation or gas lines or anything like that, I think he's done. So here's what I will say as a little bit of maybe a bright spot for Joe Biden is it does seem like in a couple of the very latest approval polls, it's ticked up a couple of points, more to the like 42, 44 range. But... You can work with that. You know, the problem with him being more or less tied with Trump, Marshall, is that the people who liked Trump

really liked Trump. The people who are still with Biden are like, eh, this is maybe the best we could get. It's okay. I certainly like him better than the other guys. He doesn't have... He has the hard opposition now. I mean, that used to be kind of his strength is, yeah, he didn't have like the people who were in love,

passionately in love with him, but he also didn't have the passionate hatred early on in the presidency. He didn't make that good of a villain for Republicans. They were going after other stuff and trying to time to AOC and that sort of stuff. Now he's got the passionate hatred burning for him on the other side, and he does not have a passionate core base that is going to show up for him through thick and thin. So that really creates a worst of all worlds where in a certain way it's even worse than that terrible picture we just showed you of his approval rating being among the lowest of any president in recent history. Crystal, you just set that up perfectly. Sagar and I were talking about this on the way into the show, which is the Republican Party's in a bind, given everything you just said.

Because like you said, there are very few, there's not even a nickname for like the Biden people, because they're the homosexuals. I don't really know what a Biden stan would be. Biden bros? Sleepy stans. Yeah, the sleepy stands. I like sleepy stands.

I'm actually a huge, you should coin that. But the thing is, do you know what people are going to stand for, quote unquote? Opposing Trump. So Trump, the person who would walk away with the Republican nomination, if held today, if held tomorrow, if held a year from now, is the person who would activate the Democratic base. Because guess what? You're right. No one is going to get up and just affirmatively fight for Joe Biden. That's a situation where if you're Governor Ron DeSantis, you're in a good place. There's a couple Republicans where this seems to be a good

situation. But if Trump is nominated, that seems to be the only way out that I could straightforwardly see for Joe Biden. In terms of the enthusiasm gap you're describing there, Trump instantly, instantly changes that. I'm not sure I agree with that. I think Trump still to this day is perpetually underestimated. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of signs that he's sort of off in the wilderness a little bit now. He cannot stop talking about January 6th. It's like, this is the last thing anybody wants you to be talking about. But never underestimate Donald Trump. And by the time the next election comes around, Biden can't just hang out in his basement all day like he did for

the last election. So he's got to actually get out there on the campaign trail. You think Trump would be a more formidable opponent than sort of generic Republican X? No, I think generic Republican X would probably have a higher likelihood of beating Biden. But I think if it's Trump versus Biden again, it's a coin toss. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, this is always the issue with Trump, which is his own worst enemy. And he's also probably the best, quote unquote, Republican, because he has a huge amount of polarization. He can get people to come out to the polls, love him or hate him. He activates almost every citizen in the country, had the highest number of people who came out to vote for him, the most votes of any Republican president. He just doesn't tell you about the other side of that election for a sitting president. But the reason why it's important on this front is Trump is the X factor.

He does literally change everything. The other problem, though, in a lot of our analysis is that the DeSantis's of the world and all of them, if Trump runs, it's not going to happen. He is the nominee if he runs. They won't run. Exactly. So it's the only way in which this entire election will play out. Here's the reason why I think Trump is more formidable in 2024. Make America great again after years of inflation, of Russia, of all of this is a potent symbol. Here's the other thing. The best thing that ever happened to Donald Trump was getting kicked off of Twitter because people forgot how annoying he could be. And I, unfortunately,

still have to read all of his idiotic statements about, did you see so-and-so on Fox News? Thanks for taking one from the team. You're welcome. By the way, Trump team, please unsubscribe me from these. I want to build into that. Look at what Trump said the day, and I'm not trying to build into that. Yeah, it's a key. Like, look at what Trump

said the day and I'll try to be MSNBC here. But the day of Putin's invasion, Trump was like, oh, that was a very smart move. That is an example of how can you imagine how bad the tweets would have been? And now he's praising Zelensky. He's doing his like Trumpy thing. But that's what people don't like. So I think this is really. And look, we know by now we've done done this, Jesus, we've done this for like seven years. He is not going to change. So the question is how much, but I want, I want to say something because what's interesting is it's not just that Trump's running again on MAGA if he runs, he's basically running on Make America 2019 again, which is, and that is a potent argument. And that's going to be very tough on the Biden, on the Biden, in terms of the job numbers, the general,

like what is a mask? What is COVID? When I was president, he could say it over and over. And the polls, and you guys covered this, the polls show that a majority of Americans think that it would not have happened when Trump was president. So it's a weird. I mean, listen, the bottom line of what that matchup is going to be is how people feel about the economy at that point, how they feel about the right track, wrong track. And there are things that could go horribly awry for him. You could continue to have inflation spike. You could continue to have people feel like they're, you know, stuck in reverse. Or you could have some things bounce in their direction, where really through no doing of his own, the economic prospects are looking a lot better.

Mass are, I mean, mass are already coming off. Like that sense of the return to normal is coming into place sort of right now. So that's what it's ultimately going to come down to because Lord knows this man is not really going to accomplish any more agenda before we get to the presidential election. So it's going to be the whims of what the overall climate is, Kyle. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel for Biden because the way out for him, he can't rely on like charisma or like his base. So the way out for him is policy. And he's just shown he doesn't have the chops. He doesn't have the LBJ ability or the FDR ability to arm twist the senators in his own party to get them to come on board. And so he's just stuck in limbo. You guys don't think the bipartisan infrastructure deal or BIF as it's labeled's labeled here, that's not going to get him over the finish line?

Well, I'll defend Biden on this. Someone has to. Look, he doesn't have FDR's majorities. He doesn't have LBJ's majorities. This is the problem for Joe Biden. He's not even trying, though. That's the problem. But what I'm just saying, though, is, I mean, look, let's take this back to 2011.

So the Obama issue, Obama's shellacked in the midterms, but then what the Republican Party does is spend two years of cringe. So the thing I'm also curious about is how are Republicans going to perform during, once they went in the midterms, what is going to, because that's a factor we're not really discussing here, which is, is Marjorie Taylor Greene going to do another

Nazi rally? That's what I'm genuinely wondering, because that pressure is going to be there. Because what happened in 2011, they got cocky. And I think people are going to be so cocky. And I think they, as we saw with Rich Scott, he's planning on running for president. Everyone knows this.

And that plan was a mini preview of what happens when a bunch of people who think they have a shot overreach. High on their own supply. We should actually spend some time on this. This is a good point. We were talking before, like, should we cover the Republican response? And I was like, I don't think anybody cares.

Kim Reynolds, I barely know who she is, and I don't think anybody's going to tune in to these things. These used to be king-making knights, you know? I mean, Marco, Simp, Bobby Jindal. Bobby Jindal. Joe Kennedy. Remember Joe Kennedy? Joe Kennedy.

Oh, my God. Weird lip gloss. The Bobby Jindal one was the best, though. I don't know. Nobody ruined, but Marco Rubio has kind of made a little bit of a comeback. Jindal, that was the last we ever heard of that dude. That was over. I think Stacey Abrams did one to Trump.

These things have not, these were supposed to be, you know, the slot. It was supposed to be like a real thing, but also in the age of primetime TV, a lot of that stuff is dead. The reason Kim Reynolds, I think, was chosen is anodyne. It's just nothing. It's like, okay, generic Republican. Joe Biden is making us weak. She's from Iowa, so I don't even know why I'm saying that. But in that accent.

Mask off. Joe Biden is making us weak, Leslie. What we are going to see is just a generic Biden bad, the country bad, the radical left, and inflation. And by the way, it's going to be extremely potent. It's a good cocktail. The reason why, though, is that it can't have a face on it. It has to be on the macro political trends.

It has to be one of those things where when you vote R, you're not voting for a personality. You're just voting or not even voting for something. You're voting against the status quo. That's the single most important thing for the party. But to Marshall's point, the reason Obama was an eminently beatable politician in 2012. People think about him like he was a god. Remember, he still only won Florida by 0.8% or whatever in 2012. He got God blessed him with Mitt Romney. Now, if you have a formidable candidate who,

if you have a different Republican Party at that time that doesn't go full, you know, I'm trying to remember what even, 2011 politics they were attacking. Oh, don't you remember Paul Ryan? They were doing PowerPoints on cutting Social Security. He's like, look at this one. He said, what?

I remember it well. Pulling some Al Gore, you know, type thing. And then Obama and them truly weaponized against Romney and Paul Ryan in that election. And still, they didn't win by that much. People do forget this. The popular vote was significantly less than 2008. underestimate the Republicans to screw things up, right? So we could see some ridiculous Benghazi sideshow, Marjorie Taylor Greene doing something, Rick Scott, you know, passing a constitutional amendment or whatever that the balance budget or, you know, these are the exact type of things which we could see. We've seen it time and time again, and especially with fringe characters like Claire McCaskill's race in 2006. There are always, especially with the rising number of kooks and especially, you know, the media is obviously going to be gunning for the Republicans, too, in that election. They're going to pick whoever they can. Right now, a lot of the Marjorie Taylor Greene and all that obsession is cringe.

But, hey, look, I mean, they're going to give her a committee seat back, right? That's a whole other news cycle about what's happening. Who knows in terms of some of the riders and things that they're going to insert on these bills. And you know, another thing we should not underestimate, Crystal, is a government shutdown. They would absolutely shut the government down. I'm almost certain of it. They've been floating it constantly about, we've got to defund the Democratic lockdowns and anti-lockdown. But in terms of strategy, all of that, I get why it would play with the base. We have no idea how the national public will respond to that. So the current state of the Republican Party, A, there's no consensus.

Trump has made it more boorish in rhetoric. That is going to come out to no unifying agenda. It could be a boon to Joe Biden. Well, and they're doing these kind of like, it's sort of like identity politics for the working class. Like we're going to say worker a lot and we're going to like maybe float putting a worker without any power or vote on the board. Like, it's the same. It's like a diversity initiative, except for the working class. So when you find out there's no there there in terms of the new rhetoric, it can ring as hollow as I think the identity politics plays do now. But, you know, the other piece of this that I think is really important is that a majority of Democrats don't want Joe Biden to be the nominee next time. And so that opens a huge door where I think it is very likely he faces a primary opponent. Do I think if he's, you know, able to run and all that, all that, that it's going to be easy

for a primary opponent to defeat him. No, he's an incumbent president. He's a leader of the Democratic Party. There's going to be all kinds of rallying of the circling of the wagons. That's the saying. But you've got a major dissatisfied chunk of the Democratic Party who's looking at the writing on the wall just like we are and saying, I don't know if this is our best horse to go up against Donald Trump again. That electability narrative that he had last time, he may have to work to reclaim, especially if the midterms go as poorly as we expect them to. Yeah, you know, I hate to say this because it sounds too definitive, but I think we live in the pendulum age when it comes to politics. And the reason I think that is because nobody is really substantively serving the people.

So what you see is one party wins and people go, oh, this is terrible, let's vote for the other guys. And the other party wins and people go, oh, this is terrible, let's vote for the other guys. And you just go back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth. So, you know, by that logic, it's honestly, anything could happen in 2024 because if the Republicans win big in these midterms,

as we sort of expect them to, then people might go, well, they're acting really weird too, so maybe you do go for a Democrat for 2024. I don't know, but I really do think the overarching theme is that we live in the pendulum age because people just they vote for somebody. They hate them because they don't deliver. Then they just vote for the other people. Yeah, we've basically had like six change elections in a row. Just to give people an update, the president is inside the motorcade. It's about a two minute drive, basically, because he gets the entire street cleared for him. Thank you for the traffic, by the way, Mr. President. He's on his way over

to the Capitol. So usually there's a little bit of a song and dance. He'll be greeted, obviously. Then he goes traditionally to, there's like a chapel where he's supposed to pray. And then after that, they bring him to the floor. And then there's that famous moment, which of course we'll have for all of you, which is the Sergeant You know, the sergeant of arms saying, Madam Speaker, the president of the United States, and he'll enter the building. So I think, Kyle, should we pivot over to you thought it was important in order to put these clips together of historical ones? Why don't you set that up for the audience? Yeah. So I was looking back at the old school, interesting and important and somewhat historic moments from the State of the Union speeches from modern history. And we went ahead and put together a nice compilation here that I want to share with everybody and then we'll react.

So take a look. We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We know and we have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big government is over. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens,

leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. I have no more campaigns to run. My only agenda... I know because I won both of them. But we must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.

Thank you very much. America, thank you very much. Here's what I have to say to that. Wow, thank you, Kyle. Give me the clap for that one. Kyle, you're bringing back memories, man. Some of Crystal and I's early moments on Rising were a lot of these. The resistance types really loved when she ripped up the paper. I didn't realize it went on that long.

I forgot. I have memory holes. Now, the clap thing, interestingly enough, when she was asked about that, she was like, I don't know what you guys were talking about. I was clapping because I actually liked the speech.

Right. So they were trying to be like, yes, queen, oh my God, you're throwing shade with this sarcastic clap. And she's like, no, I actually kind of like the speech.

We didn't get the standing ovation for Juan Guaido in there either. Oh, that's right. Oh my God. You know, out of the correct respect in the way that we put that together, though, isn't that the perfect symbol kind of of in the way that we put that together, though,

isn't that the perfect symbol kind of of the republic, right? So you had these moments, the era of big government is over. Bill Clinton, he changes the entire Democratic Party, eventually does run on, I'm sorry, does enact some policy, not all good, but, you know,

works with the Republicans to get something done. George W. Bush, the axis of evil speech. There is no denying that changed the face of the world forever. Not for the better, but he did certainly change the entire world. There's no getting around that one. And then you start to see the degradation of Obama, celebrity politics.

It's all about him. It's never about actually anything. And then finally, it comes to the Trump clip. We were all trying to decide. We're like, what is a memorable time from the Trump State of the Unions? I was like, honestly, the only ones I can remember are Pelosi clapping and tearing up the speech.

But that is the perfect symbol of what the Trump era was, right? The resistance liberals. And I mean, she, that captured a very, ended up being important political coalition. Wine mumps. And Trump, in his response, also captured a significant coalition of people

who were like, she's so rude, even though Trump will tweet Stormy Daniels horse face or whatever. Really what it came down to was what it collapsed is into this moment of the politics of just nothing, of pure theater, of cultural resentment. We were saying before, oh, man, we should have, while the clip was playing, I was like, man, you know,

we should have put in that you lie moment with Joe Wilson whenever he accused Obama of lying, although it wasn't during the State of the Union. I think it was during some special address or whatever. I think it was State of the Union. I think it was State of the Union. You might be right. You might be right because he was censored and all that. But I remember he raised like $10 million the next day and that changed

everything, right? Like that was the signature moment, Marshall, where you could see these backbench, Joe Wilson was nobody. South Carolina, Congressman, Tea Party, he became a star. He was on Hannity every night. That was actually the first State of the Union.

Right. It was 2009. So, yeah. So that was very early in Obama's presidency. Well, just to build on this, and this is why, look, I'm a foreign policy person, but I'm really, I genuinely care in a way that I haven't typically during the Trump era what Biden has to say around Ukraine in the sense that what is Bill Clinton doing in that big government is over speech? He's responding to the fact that the Democratic Party needed to get its mojo back in the late 90s

after, you know, re-election, after the contract of America. What is George Bush doing? Like, obviously, everyone at this table did not like a single thing George Bush did in that speech. But that being said, he was responding to 9-11 saying, this is what I am doing. Joe Biden, when, once again, I don't think the Afghan withdrawal was the sheer cause of his polls collapsing, but I think it was, timing was just terrible. The timing was inflation. He has

an opportunity tonight to say, look, the reason why the U.S. is playing a stabilizing role in Europe, the reason why we have the energy to pursue these things and build coalitions is because we're not in Afghanistan. And people gave me shit for that. But we're working from the playbook that I built. I said I was going to not go into these wars of choice the way my predecessors have. I am keeping us safe. I think that's the moment that, once again, it cannot be everything like you're saying, Kyle, but I think he needs that as the moment of statement. And once again, that's actually the perfect ground for him to fight

on with Republicans. Because once again, most Republicans actually agree operationally with his policy. This is the one area of actual bipartisan, other than weird congressmen. Mr. Kissinger or Senator Rick Wicker. Yeah. Other than a few like random members who frankly are not driving the debate, he has actual agreement here. Yeah. I guarantee you he's not going to brag about one of the few good things he did, which is pulling out of Afghanistan. I guarantee you the colossal. He could reframe it. I hope he does. But the gigantic media pile on afterwards, I think it scared him off of it. I remember when we were interviewing Ro Khanna and we asked him, like, well, so is Iraq up next?

And even Ro Khanna was like, after this reaction? Like, I don't think so. And, you know, that's the problem. Well, not to mention, and then finish your point, but not to mention that he really has soured the good that he did there by then freezing their assets and helping to trigger a complete financial system collapse, massive famine and economic devastation that could end up being worse than, you know, even the horrors that they suffered over these many years. It's honestly worse than the war, to be honest, with the number of people that are starving and just how devastating it is. But to get a little less serious for a second,

my embarrassing admission is that I thought that Obama moment was actually awesome. Oh, the campaign thing? Yeah. This is where you won the election. That's the point. He's got swagger. He was quick on his feet. He was quick on his feet.

Like, that's not, like, can you imagine Biden saying something like that? He's more likely to fall asleep halfway through his speech. Look fat. I mean, I want to get to your thoughts on this, which is just here's what's here's here's where my pushback on you is, Kyle. You're you're you're you're very rightfully dunking on Biden's sleepiness and all these very obvious flaws. But you're critiquing him for not having this like big vision. Like, it just seems like, you know, going to do a Donald Rumsfeld quote, like,

you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. As a Democrat, you know, you're going to politics with the Biden you have, not the Biden you want. Like, given the constraints they're illustrating, like, what do you actually want him to do? So that's actually a great question, and that kind of translates it or transfers into what we were going to talk about next. So, I mean, first and foremost, what you have to do is brag about the good stuff that you actually did. That's what every president does in one of these speeches. So right off the bat, I would brag about the fact that Biden raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for all federal government employees and federal government contractors.

That's something I would really be aggressive on. The other thing is he did right to repair. Remember that for the farmers. Now, most people don't know what it is. That was a huge deal. Most people don't know what that is, but he has an opportunity did a right to repair. Remember that for the farmers. That's right. That was a big deal. Don't know what it is. That was a huge deal. Most people don't know what that is, but he has an opportunity to explain it to people. He used to be, like, forced to take your equipment into John Deere and then pay them to fix your stuff. And then now he said, no, that's crazy.

You have a right to repair your own stuff. Pulling out of Afghanistan is something else that I would do. One of the things that's not talked about nearly as much as it should be is that he actually massively reduced the drone war, too. Massively reduced the drone war. So those are some of the things that I would brag about if I was him. But the other thing I would do is, look, I would go full, almost like Joker mode if I was Biden, and I would call out the exact people who are blocking his agenda, and I would be specific about why they're blocking it. I would say, it's the Republican Party, and then you got Kyrsten Sinema, and you got Joe Manchin, and these people are taking a tremendous amount of money from giant corporations,

and then they're blocking all these basic things that everybody wants, according to the polling. And I have some of the polling in front of me right now. So people want Medicare price reduction, or lowering drug prices. That's 73% popular. That's being blocked. Lowering the Medicare age, 59% popular. Universal pre-K, 59% popular. Tuition-free community college, 58% popular. That's being blocked. Lowering the Medicare age, 59% popular. Universal pre-K, 59% popular. Tuition-free community college, 58% popular. The list goes on and on here. Extending the child tax benefit, that's nine points over water. And then, of course, the tax hikes. All these things are being—tax hikes on the wealthy, I should be clear. All these things are being blocked by those people right there, and the reason why they're blocking it is because they're corrupt and because they're bought by their donors. So I want you to know who the problem is,

and I want you to know that I'm going to work around that, and what I'm going to do as soon as I'm done with this speech is go sign an executive order on eliminating student loan debt. You know, an executive, let's do free college by doing rolling student loan debt elimination, which you can do through executive order. I would go down a whole list of things. I'm going to legalize marijuana or at the very least decriminalize it. And I'll do it through executive order. That's something that polls are like 60, 70 percent now. But again, I don't think he has it in him. I just don't think he just doesn't agree with the things I'm saying. So I think this gets to what Marshall was saying, which is at the end of the day,

Biden is who he is. All right. Like he's got one strength. He's a pretty empathetic guy. I'll scream Joe's gone. We had it for a brief shining moment, but it's over. Here's what I will say. I mean, he is the one who told us to measure him against FDR. I mean, they were the ones who set up that, like. He put the portrait in there. Yeah, I mean, his team, they were the ones going out there and telling everyone, this is going to be FDR, and this is as transformational as FDR.

And I also would say, and I've kind of changed my thinking on this. You know, when he was running for president, I was like, he's running on nothing. I mean, return to normal, that's nothing. But actually return to normal can be interpreted as an extraordinarily maximalist kind of a thing because, I mean, what does that mean for people? I think when people think about normal, they're not just thinking about, hey, we're going to take off masks. They're thinking about some time in their life where things felt like they were working and like America was moving forward. And we had confidence and we had optimism that, you know, things for

our kids are going to be better than how they are for us. And so on the one hand, it seemed like kind of a nothing of a statement and framing for the election. On the other hand, it set people up for to project a big vision on what that meant to to them that he clearly has failed to deliver on. Now, that's it. That's a good one. One piece of news for the geeks out there. Gina Raimondo is the designated survivor for tonight, the commerce secretary and also we're being told. Former governor of Rhode Island. Former governor of Rhode Island. And being told that we're on standby here, Pelosi apparently has hit the gavel and the president could be walking into the chamber at any moment.

So as soon as the president enters there, we'll go ahead and put him up there on the Gina Raimondo is also a total corporate tool. So if she's the one that's left, we're all screwed. Well, she could- Listen, if you were going to- Not the nuclear annihilation that ended everything, but the corporate policy. The remaining monopolies. If we had nuclear annihilation and we had a return to 1980, I don't really know.

Here's a second question for you, too, because you were talking about the primary. So there's two different versions of a primary for Biden, I see. One is the, holy crap, Kamala can't win. Holy crap, Biden can't win. We need to get a Pete Buttigieg to resign from the cabinet. This is a certain center-left version. That's the center-left version. But then there's the progressive version.

I'm curious how you think Biden should respond or defend against both different versions. Do some stuff and be more popular. I mean, you know, it's not more complicated than just, you know, actually have an agenda. You know, I do think he may get some credit for his handling of the situation with Ukraine and Russia. They were out front. It's being filtered through a partisan lens. Let's actually put up the polling from CNN. It was the second element that we had in the list. We used it in the show earlier today. But, you know, some of the things that the American people, by the way, are like wholesale on board with, I am personally not. But there is a broad consensus among the American public. Eighty three percent of Americans in the CNN poll, that second element

guys said they favor increased economic sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion with just 17% imposed. A majority do not want boots on the ground here. So most Americans are basically saying we want what Biden is doing. Now, on the other hand, and this is kind of, and generationally, it's actually interesting too, there aren't big partisan splits here, but younger Americans were less hawkish when asked the question, like, do you want them to do more, undefined more? They were less sort of hawkish and aggressive on those things. But you also see some partisan differences emerging in the, like, sort of the toughness

of their stance. So you now have 80% of Republicans in a different poll, I think it was Quinnipiac, saying that Biden hadn't done enough, that he needed to do more. This was after you had a kind of Republican emerging conversation about we should just avoid this thing altogether. Now they're all in on it needs to be tougher and it needs to be more. But I do think this is an opportunity where he can take some credit for some foresight, for some leadership, where people are generally behind the direction that he's going in. And, you know, it may ultimately improve his positioning here. You know, something kind of wild that just occurred to me. We've been doing this for 54 minutes.

We have not talked about COVID or national COVID policy one time. I had a mention. I talked about my mask. You talked about masks. That's crazy. I mean, what mean what three weeks ago on the show what were we talking about school mask mandates fax mandates godis uh whether this was going to get rollback at what point dr fauci i think they've like locked him up and put a gag on the guy and thrown him away frankly yeah we should mask him forever um and keep him gone. But frankly, this could be one of the best things that ever happened to Joe Biden.

I'm only judging this in a pure political case. I'm not saying it's a good thing that war erupted in Ukraine. But it changed the media narrative completely and totally, right? And so now he's on ground where most people kind of agree with where he is in the most hot button issue. And this also gives the hyper libs the off ramp that they needed to stop caring. I mean, here today is March 1st. We're taping this to the finally the D.C. mask mandate expired. I was shocked at the number of masks that came off either at my gym or, you know, other places, a coffee shop I usually go to, because I remember in the last time that the mask mandate came off, it was still like 70-30, something like that. This time it was actually completely switched. So this gives people the off-ramp. It gives people with online activism

for something to argue about, which is different. And most importantly, they can kind of just let it all slip and die. I mean, at this point, I don't think that there is a single national mask mandate, I can be totally wrong. Left in the country. There may be some school mask mandates that are expiring in like 15 days. But absent that, this is it's over. And so Biden apparently is going to lay out his whatever next phase of the pandemic. I would say don't even touch it, man. Just be like, hey, look, we declared victory.

We won. That's great. We remember the 800,000 Americans who died from COVID. It was a terrible tragedy. But we're all moving on here. We see the vaccine mandates end in New York, New York City. We see the mask mandates expire, even Marshall, you're from Oregon, even over in Oregon. We're seeing this. So this is a blessing in disguise, I think, really, to Biden for the end of COVID,

because otherwise, let's say Ukraine did not happen. How much COVID talk we're going to be having at this table? I think it would be astronomical. So it's definitely over in terms of the public caring all that much about it. But in terms of what's actually happening, I mean, there's still, what, a thousand deaths a day or something like that? Yeah, but I mean, the public has calibrated itself to that. They're like, at this point, you're vaccinated or you're very old and you're very ill and we're very sorry about that, but that's how it is. In some ways, to Marshall's point, the bar has lowered to like to like please i just don't want to die in a nuclear war yeah so as long as as long as we're not dying in a nuclear war everybody's like you know that by that biden

guy maybe he's not doing as bad of a job as i thought he was yeah but yeah like people are general and by the way to the sanctions thing too i just want to add this for the record is that i do think people are almost too much in favor of it sanctions that would even hurt the russian people like i'm i'm all in favor throw it, sanctions that would even hurt the Russian people. Like, I'm all in favor. Throw the book at the oligarchs. Throw the book at Putin. But in terms of, like, you know, the thing that I saw on Twitter the other day,

all these people couldn't even use the subway in Moscow because they stopped Google Pay and Apple Pay or whatever. They live in a pariah state now. I mean, that's— Their whole orientation towards the world changed overnight. And, yeah, I'm in the 3% that said they did too much. There's like 3% of the public that agrees with us that it went too far in terms of hitting ordinary Russian citizens, but I

recognize that's a very small minority view. If you give people specifics, they might agree with us. I mean, here's the big problem. The big problem is that Russia's using vacuum bombs on civilians by pretty much right as we speak right now. And I think the thing that's, once again, once you, and this is why the polling on this is, this has been, I'll be honest, like

the polling is really depressing. I think Americans with this, with these, have recognized nuance in a way that typically hasn't been allowed in the sense that people say, look, we know that we could send in jets and troops and make a just pretty clear difference on the ground. But that being said, that could risk nuclear war. We don't want to engage in these wars of choice. But that being said, there have to be consequences for this. And I know this is really tough to say, and it feels terrible saying it, but I just do not think we can allow as much as we can like this to stand. So I think what's happening here and what you're pointing to also in terms of the Google Pay and the Apple Pay is you put it specifically.

My fear is not even necessarily that, you know, everybody can't use Google Pay and Apple Pay. It's we got to very clearly lay out here. And I think Biden is probably going to do this from what I've read from the excerpts is, hey, listen, if you stop, all of this will come back. The global financials, you're good. It's back. We can, you know, there is just as an escalation ladder in war, there is a financial escalation ladder. You are vacuum bombing and using cluster munitions in cities. Just today, I saw this horrible video of, it's like the Kiev TV tower, the comms getting completely blown out by a missile. There was another one, a fuel dump, I believe, at an airfield. Same thing. I mean, launched from the Navy. I mean, this is really catastrophic stuff. Also, it being hit

in terms of critical infrastructure, bunkers for the Ukrainian military. You know, all of that is happening. My only thing, and I do believe Biden is actually doing this. It's funny, I always have to end up praising him somehow, even though I don't necessarily want to. But I think having a level head whenever it comes to sanctions being like, listen, these can all go back too. You can come back on this if you just stop what you're doing. Will that work? Probably not. So it's on that front where it could have some success, but we'll see. We don't know. Here's what I'll say, Marshall, to your point, which I think is very compelling and very, I think that obviously the overwhelming majority of people agree with you that these actions in

Russia, by Russia, cannot stand and they should not stand and they should pay a price. I care less about the price that they pay than what the end result is. And I do not see from our past history of levying devastating sanctions that are horrific for the public and waging this kind of financial warfare, economic warfare, which is what we're doing. I don't see that the results have ended in peace and better ties between those countries. Instead, what I see is situations where then authoritarian dictators, people like Putin, can use those sanctions to say, your problem isn't with me, it's with those people who are making your life miserable, and they have a point. And so ultimately, rather than providing that impetus to come back to the table, instead it hardens a population, which to this point

seems to be at least some significant chunk of it opposed to the war. And more or less on our side of we got to deescalate this thing. So that's the position I'm coming from is number one, I do. It is a moral position. The Russian people haven't done anything wrong and they don't deserve to have their lives turned upside down. But number two, it is a strategic and tactical position of I don't see the track record of where this has actually worked. And it feels to me a lot more of just a political response to feed that sense of like, we have to make them pay. We have to assert ourselves in the world.

We have to do something. Yeah. And I just want to follow up on that real quick because I did a realignment episode that's coming out tomorrow on the sanctions issue. And look, it lines up with what you're saying. At the end of the day, the guest I have talks about how he wished, and he's a hawk, he was like, look, let's be honest. These types of devastating sanctions would have been more effective as a deterrent before the invasion happened. So if the discourse, his ideal state would have been, Putin, if you go in,

because once again, the Biden administration said he was going to go in. If you go in, this, this, this, this, and this would happen. Make it clear. You make it clear, you use them as a deterrent. To your point, once the actual invasion happens, you're most likely right.

That's not going to change the actual behavior on the ground. But I think the point that's tough here is the bigger picture here is that we are trying to avoid a nuclear war. So from my perspective, the reason why the sanctions are justified is when we are going to, look, we talked about this, we're not going to let Finland and Sweden into NATO, given just the risk of that.

I think we have to say we are doing something else. I just morally speaking cannot tell Europeans that for your own protection, you cannot join this alliance without also doing something affirmative to. And I think on that front, you know, it's interesting though, and this is also gets to efficacy and around balance. You know, part of the reason we've been talking about this, we're being led by the Europeans. We're not really in the driver's seat. Biden was against SWIFT, right? He was against taking Russia off of SWIFT. He was for keeping the oil transactions. It was the rest of Europe which went to Germany and said, you're going to get with the program here, buddy. They're the ones who are dragging them in terms of the European Union and us by proxy into what is happening here. So that's another area of this entire conflict, which I think is missing some analysis, which is that the Europeans themselves, who are asleep at the wheel for 40 years and doing all

kinds of idiotic stuff, both on defense spending, nuclear policy, and so much more, have now woken up and are panicking, a literal mass panic in Poland, Romania. You know, Crystal, I was reading, luckily, by the way, thank God, the EU is not sending those fighter jets over to Ukraine. Not out of the goodness of their heart, by the way. Or because they necessarily want to reduce. It's because the Poles and the Romanians are like, oh, no. We might need these jets. We might need these jets.

We're not giving these things up. Period. And also, some of them are literally broken down. It's a beyond parody in that situation. The other thing is, they were supposed to take off from Poland, which Putin can interpret as, this is NATO attacking us,

which is World War III. They were like, we are not dealing with this. They're like, we're the ones getting invaded. Well, especially if you have pilots from Poland or another NATO country that are flying the planes in, and it's like even more, it was dice it was dice yes I think focusing on that European part is key and I'm actually really interested from the excerpts so far of

what we've been said by the way I've been told any second now that the president's gonna walk in to the building so we might cut away and start describing that that's what crystals best at given her experience yeah i'm like he's there he's there he's walking senator roach by the way the most cringe thing i heard is that some congressmen get there like 10 hours early because their constituents because so they can shake the president's hand because their constituents like i saw you on the tv yeah whatever they go huh which Yeah. Well, whatever. They go, huh? Which state is that person from? I don't know. Well, this is, I think, especially the case with Obama. That's right. And with Trump.

I don't know if Biden has quite the same point. That's a good point. It's not going to be your campaign photo. It's still, yeah. I mean, although I will say, you know, he is still a less divisive figure than, say, Barack Obama was. Like, I mean, I happened to run in the Tea Party wave in 2010. I was there on the ground. It was not a pretty sight for me or anybody else of my sort of ideological leanings. But Barack Obama was totally, Democrats were running away from that guy in

anything approaching a swing district or a conservative district. And the boogeyman for the Republicans are still Nancy Pelosi, which no one talks about. Everybody points to AOC, who is another one, and the squad members. But Nancy Pelosi has been like a leaden weight around the neck of congressional candidates

since the time of me running for Congress more than a decade ago now. So yeah, here we go. He is now walking in. All right, here we go. He is now walking in. All right, here we go. We just got this dead fire. This is Crystal's time to shine, folks. Does he know where he is?

That's my first question. Unknowable. Unknowable. He seems like he's with it. He's greeting the people there. I don't actually recognize any of those folks in particular. I can't see. I will say as far as the picture thing goes, you know, these members of Congress, especially the backbenchers, the angle to get the photo thing is like, you know, this is a way that they can try to show their constituents that they're relevant.

And so that's what it's really ultimately about. They do have part of why it looks less. Ukrainian flags there in the background. You can see their pistol. Yep. And it looks more empty than usual because they still have, I think, some COVID seating assignment situation going on. And then the other thing that's noteworthy, and this is brand new, is there are no masks. That's right.

Which Pelosi is not wearing tonight. That is a new policy there. So that's part of why the optics are really different. Did they give him his Adderall? We're about to find out, Kyle. I mean, maybe you should break down for us while we're taking this time what you think the recommended cocktail would be to get him on the top of his game for this week. Let me make a substantive point, though, which is that Biden generally, and I do mean this,

he does rise to the occasion generally with these speeches remember the bernie debate well that's how i was gonna remember also the f not the afghan press conference the speech not the press conference where he did that weird thing where he put his elbows on the podium and he's like whispering kind of like the speech itself you know i mean look he i think it's but, you know, he's been doing this for a long time. Muscle memory's a good theory. At this time, like, he actually is pretty good at rising to the occasion. Oh, I think he's about to take the podium there.

So we're going to cut away, guys. We'll be with everybody after the show for an additional one-hour live stream to break everything down. Stay right here. Stay right here to watch the stream. And then we will be back. So don't go anywhere, guys. Check it out.

Yep. All right, guys. Here is the President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden. Joe Biden's first State of the Union. One of the things that we were sort of speculating about going into this was whether or not he would sort of throw the original speech out

and totally rework it to reflect the events in Ukraine, or whether he would just take the old speech with the whole laundry list of whatever that was going to be and just stick it on with the Ukraine piece. That's clearly the route that he went to. Yeah, that's right. The Ukraine at the very top and everything else. Yeah, there was no reframing of the rest of the speech. It was we'll get the Ukraine piece out of the way and then we'll go to

effectively the laundry list of what the what the agenda items are. Yeah. So on Ukraine, I mean, these are obviously it's going to be the most talked about. And in terms of ratings, just so people understand, most people only watch the first 15 minutes. Most people know that who are in the White House. And so the reason being that they stick the most important parts that they want people to take away. So we pulled what we thought was the most important part of the Ukraine speech. First, an unwavering commitment and a threat to Putin, which is do not cross the NATO border. It is a trip wire and we will mount our full force and power, defend every inch is what Biden said. And then another one, trying to allay fears of a general nuclear war. Let's go and take a listen to that. Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the

conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine. Our force is not going to Europe to fight Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west. For that purpose, we have mobilized American ground forces, air squadrons, ship deployments to protect NATO countries, including Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. And as I've made crystal clear, the United States and our allies will defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory with the full force of our collective power. Every single inch. I know news about what's happening can seem alarming to all Americans.

But I want you to know we're going to be OK. We're going to be OK. When the history of this era is written, Putin's war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger. Those were really important there in terms of two, both the NATO commitment that's being watched, obviously, in the Kremlin, and then the second one in terms of trying to allay the concerns there. But I think, you know, for all of us, I guess let's just start, Kyle, with you. What are some of the top recollections from, you know, obviously Ukraine was the top news, but general breakdown of the speech, I think it clocked in

around an hour and 10 minutes, a little shorter side of a State of the Union. What were your general impressions here? So I got two things that I thought were very negative and then one thing that I thought was positive. The negatives are he was stumbling and bumbling a lot. And, you know, I mean, optics. No taking away from that. It's hard to watch. There's no denying that. Yeah. So that was a negative. The other negative thing was, especially in the second half of the speech, it was just a lot of standard politician fluff. I was getting so aggravated because he was going down basically his list of build back better agenda items. And he was saying, we his list of Build Back Better agenda items. And he was saying, we ought to do this. We should do this. We should do that.

You didn't get Build Back Better passed. You didn't propose standalone bills on that. You didn't break out your executive order pen to do any of that. So it's just literally a virtue signal speech. That's all it is. And so I was really frustrated. It's almost like the more you know about politics, then the more angry you get because you're like, I know that this is all just fake in theater and it's not like we're actually going to do these things. But I will say the one positive thing is the speech was, especially for the first half or so after the Ukraine stuff, it was very populist. So he did sort of lean in on the, we got these new factories now opening up in Ohio and in Michigan, semiconductor factories and some other factories. And that's how you made the comment,

Sagar, as we were watching, that's how you made the comment, Sagar, as we were watching. That's exactly something Trump would have done. Yeah, it was a great idea. And that is smart politics. I love how he leaned into the buy America stuff. So the only positive stuff is it was a lot more populist than I thought it would be. But the negatives, again, stumbling and bumbling and just standard politician fluff. Yeah, what do you think, Chris? Before we get to Marshall, because it relates to your discussion there of how he did lean into some populist rhetoric around, you know, bringing jobs back home, made in America.

He said, we want to see that made in America stamp. He talked about the PRO Act. It's always something that I'm looking for. He highlighted a union steel workerist contrast between the Democratic COVID relief plan and the Republican corporate tax cuts, which went largely to the 1%. That didn't that was not received well by the Republicans in the audience. But I actually think this may have been one of the best moments for Biden of the State of the Union speech. Let's take a listen to that. Unlike the $2 trillion tax cut passed in the previous administration, the the top 1% of Americans, the American Rescue Plan helped working people and left no one behind.

That's a good contrast. It's one they should be making all the time. An undeniable fact. Yes, and I mean, it's just factually accurate. They should be making that sort of contrast and be making all the time. An undeniable fact. Yes. And I mean, it's just factually accurate. They should be making that sort of contrast and comparison all of the time. He did talk some about raising taxes on the corporations. There was less talk, you know, ahead of time. There was some like, oh, he's going to go hard on the deficit. There's a little bit of deficit talk that I don't love.

But he didn't go into that in too much detail. To me, the biggest problem is what are people really going to take away from this? The Ukraine part, I think, you know, that's going to stand alone. He made some news there in terms of the U.S. and their allies are going to release 60 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves, also making the news that the U.S. is going to ban Russian flights here in America. And, you know, the strength of the message there, I think, is is, you know, kind of stands on its own. Beyond that, the domestic agenda, it's a laundry list. There's no emphasis on what things he actually prioritizes to get done. There's no plan to actually get any

of these things done. And I loved how it like the three quarters of the way through, Mark, he's like, and now this is the unity agenda. It's like, well, what was the rest of it? And it was like the disunity agenda. So I think to your point, Kyle, what is so frustrating about that is that, listen, it's a tough landscape. We get the realities of divided government, 50 senators. You got to get everybody on board. You got to persuade Joe Manchin a buck is like fossil fuel donors and everybody else. But you have the power of the pen and there are executive orders that you could issue and take power into your own hands. Those issues were somehow completely left on off the table and unacknowledged in terms of things that he could actually do. One exception to that, which I think is important, significant, touches on something that we were saying before going in this about calling out the corporations that are jacking up prices and contributing to inflation.

He did talk about these shipping cartels. This is something David Dayen has been doing, as per usual, fantastic reporting on. Apparently, the shipping industry, the ocean shipping industry, is now dominated by three alliances. Those three cartels make up 80 percent of the global shipping industry. That is massively up from 30 percent as recently as 2011. So Biden very clear on actions they were going to take. That is an area where he has the ability to take more aggressive actions and potentially have an impact. So that part I did like. Yeah. What did you think, Marshall? What were your main takeaways from the speech? Yeah. Two things based on what Crystal and Kyle said. So number one would be the Ukraine statement did exactly what it needed to say. It said, this is not a person who thinks he's in this weird manliness battle with Vladimir Putin. This is the person who very much, and this is hard,

like actually has his finger. And I think on a personal level on the pulse of where the American public broadly is, we don't stand for this. We back our allies. We back Europe. We want the energy independence issues, but we are not going to commit troops. We are not going to escalate. There is not going to be a nuclear war. That is the number one thing he had to convey. And then two, and I was just thinking about this because, you know, Kyle, as you suggested, we watched a, you know, segment from Obama before this. And I was just thinking the second half of the speech, the laundry list of policies we know aren't going to pass is just, it's just exhausting. And I think the Obama energy that I think could be translated into

the executive orders you two are speaking to is just, look, we all know this is a fake list that we put up. It's not going to translate into anything. I'm not really interested, and I think most people aren't interested in hearing things that aren't going to happen are pie in the sky. I would like him to say, here are these five issues I care about. Here are five executive orders that I'm signing, like you all said, first thing tomorrow morning. And that is what my agenda is. I just I there's a huge opportunity for a politician to just get away from the Kabuki theater. I think Obama saw the Kabuki and was exhausted by it. And then you got condescending Obama, which wasn't productive. But I think Biden, because Biden's not cynical. Biden can't. Well, he's right on five different levels. He can't do Professor Biden.

But I actually think he would have an opportunity to channel that in a productive direction. That's actually a good thing that he can't do Professor Biden. You know what I think of regarding your comments, Marshall, is when Andrew Yang made that comment on the debate stage of like, we're all up here wearing our makeup, like posturing and just kind of letting the viewers in on. We know what's really going on here. That is, I think that would be very refreshing for the American people. And we were talking, as you get to the end of the speech, and it's just like, and LGBTQ, you know, and women's rights. I mean, and gun rights. And I mean, listen, I'm on board with all of these things. I'm not saying I'm not. But you also see that there's a clear checking off of I've got this constituency that needs to hear from me.

I've got that constituency that needs to hear from me. And so that's what kind of the latter half of the speech involves, especially when you do have a president like Joe Biden, who does not have a grand vision, who is not able to seize the moment of what's happening with Russia and Ukraine and say, this is why we have to have this agenda at home, why I'm going to introduce it, you know, whether it's a nuclear, a nuclear new deal or something that people can really lean into. He just, you know, he doesn't have that vision. He's never had that vision. His political ideology is like a basket of sort of like anecdotes and truisms and whatever Lindsey Graham will agree to. Right, I'll try. I'll start with the good part. And I do want to give good credit for this.

And the Intel factory, we spent time here on Breaking Points and specifically made a point to do a good news segment because this is one of the seminal, most important pieces of American manufacturing that is coming here and is because of U.S. government policy.

Biden did exactly what any American president should do, including what Trump would have done, touted it, also pointing to where it is being built. We thought it was so important we went ahead and pulled a clip. So let's take a listen to that before we get into some of my analysis. Corporations have to compete. Their profits go up and your prices go up when they don't have to compete. Small businesses and family farmers and ranchers, I need not tell some of my Republican friends from those states. Guess what? You got four basic meatpacking facilities. That's it. You play with them, but you don't get to play

at all. And you pay a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot more because there's only four. See what's happening with ocean carriers and moving goods in and out of America. During the pandemic, about half a dozen or less foreign-owned companies raised prices by as much as 1,000% and made record profits.

Tonight, I'm announcing a crackdown on those companies overcharging American businesses and consumers. Folks, down on those companies overcharging American businesses and consumers. Folks. And as Wall Street firms take over more nursing homes, quality in those homes has gone down and costs have gone up. That ends on my watch. Apologies. That one was actually about inflation, but you know, that was important. That was the thing I was talking about with

the shipping cartels. Also important. But here's what he said. He said, quote, this is, if you travel 20 miles east of Columbus, Ohio, you're going to find a thousand empty acres of land. It won't look like much, but if you stop and look closely, you're going to see a field of dreams, the ground on which America's future will be built. This is where Intel, the American company that helped Silicon Valley, is going to build its $20 billion semiconductor megasite. And there was also a portion of the speech where he listed off again and again, we need to make cars in America again, we need semiconductors in America again, it's time to make things in America again. You could have taken that straight out of a Trump 2016 speech, and that's vitally important.

On the bad part, look, there's no getting around it on the delivery. And, you know, we have to be sensitive in the way that we talk about it. But he had significant stumbling, slurring of his words at certain points. And it's difficult to watch. It really is one of those moments where you're watching an older person, and it's just hard to see, especially when this is the president of the United States. And you think, oh man, he got three more years of this. He's got to stay in his term. And I don't say this in a disrespectful manner. It's just simply a manner of observation. At times the speech was good. Otherwise we have, you know, interruptions

of stuttering, of coughing. You're going to see that on Fox news all day long. So it's a significant part and we can't downplay that. But from a policy perspective, here was my biggest problem, which is that on the energy side, and again, I do believe this is where we have a potential bipartisan coalition, didn't say the word nuclear once. Not once did it appear in the speech. I think it's specifically because of the reason why everything I'm holding here, this is the laundry list part. The vast majority, it's written by these Democratic consultants who are like, well, the activist groups want this. You got to talk about gun control. Check. It's a tick box state of the union, right? Everybody could have predicted this based upon constituencies in DC,

and there is a very anti-nuclear force here. There's no real higher thinking within the speech in order to try and unite everything around a bigger agenda and not some same old crap that everybody has heard a million times before. So look, I give praise for the intel part of the speech. I thought that was important. On Ukraine, I do think he did a good job. But like I said, on the delivery point, you can't take that away. It is just something, you know, what polls have we done on the show? The vast majority of Americans think that Biden has, you know, lost a step. I mean, we talked about in the pre-show Gallup, the number one issue for people is economy and the number two is like government

leadership, which kind of ties into something. Yes. So what you're saying there, one thing that struck me is, you know, we were reading through the text of the speech while he's delivering it. And it was very clear this was one of the excerpts that they released to the press ahead of time on inflation. This was supposed to be a line that he goes in for and that he nails and all the Democrats are like, yes, yeah, that was amazing. And he delivers it weekly and then he coughs. So it's I mean, those are the sort of things that look, it's a missed that was supposed to be a moment that was supposed to be a crescendo in the speech. He's unable to do it. And you can say it's theatrics and it's political, you know, it's just optics and whatever. But listen, when people are looking at their president and wondering if this person is going to be able to avert nuclear war, these are the sort of signs and signals that they may be considering

in that context. I mean, listen, to me, given what is happening overseas, there's a very clear agenda that you could lay out that ties in three things that he did to a small degree in this speech and make those the majors focuses we need to make things in america i mean beef that section up yes he talked about it make that a whole one whole theme of the speech number two we have to end our dependence on fossil fuels. This is making us vulnerable in terms of national security. It's causing you to have to pay more at the pump. We need to state now clearly this is where we're going and do more of the calling out the corporations over inflation that we saw there. of like a thousand other things, it all gets lost. And none of that was connected back to what people are seeing day in and day out in the news right now with regards to Russia and Ukraine.

I look, if he actually meant a lot of the stuff he said there, I'd be out here defending him. Like if I thought he was fighting even a little bit for the stuff he listed as his agenda and like the second half of it, I'd be defending him. But we know he didn't. We know that they de-linked the bills. We know only the weak infrastructure bill got passed and Build Back Better died and Manchin went back on his word and Pramila Jayapal and a lot of the progressives look stupid except the handful who said, I'm not voting for that thing. You guys aren't sticking by the original deal. But that's the thing is, again, it all goes by. It's just a virtue signal speech. Now, I will say one more thing. Some of the mess ups that he had, I tweeted about two of them.

One of them, he was talking about the issue with opioid overdoses and fentanyl. And he said, stop doctors prescribing treatments. Yeah, right. That was weird. And then he also, when he was talking about Ukraine, at one point he said, a pound of Ukrainian people. Yeah. And that was, like, these things were sort of sprinkled in. There was the cough that you talked about. There was a number of, like, very big coughs.

I mean, the cough, what are you going to do? You can't help that. And he also was heckled at one point, or at least one point. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene said something about build that wall. They were chanting build the wall. Right. It sounded a bit like her. What were you saying, Marshall?

I want to build on something which takes it back to what we were saying before we actually watched it, which was this debate over vision and what Biden could say. And hearing what you were just saying, Crystal, what I've realized the issue is, it's not just that Biden doesn't have his version of the New Deal or the FDR framing. It's that he and his team, and I put this more on the team than him, they're not able to have events happen. Like once again, Biden did not cause the Ukraine crisis to happen. Biden did not cause inflation in that super direct way. There's this big, broader conversation. People are pissed at me for saying that, but it's true. But he needs to be as an effective politician, someone who could take those events and tell a story about those events and translate them into an agenda. Like you were saying with energy or nuclear, he should take

this thing happened in Ukraine. We all feel this. This leads into the following agenda that reflects the world we're experiencing today. And that is what he can do. I don't think he could be FDR. No one, frankly, like Obama tried to do, what was it? Oh, Obama tried to do the new foundation. I remember this. Like, back in 2009, they tried to coin their own version of New Deal. It doesn't work.

So that's not my expectation. But they could not tell a story. It was so disjointed. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, Rahm Emanuel, famously, not one to often quote Rahm Emanuel, but said, never let a good crisis go to waste. Yeah, and he was right. Lord knows he's got an abundance of crises that he could work with

here. We're living through a huge one right now. I mean, not only with the tail end of the pandemic, but actually staring face to face with the potential of the annihilation of the human race and through nuclear holocaust. So listen, if there was ever a time to rally the American people around a set of goals that would actually move us into the future, now is a moment when you could do that. There was one other small note I wanted to make, and then we've got Marianne Williamson on the line who can join us here.

There was a report from the Washington Post that an early draft of the speech included a call for a ban on stock trading, something that I think all of us have been looking at. We've covered it a lot on breaking points and what politicians have said about that. Now, Biden, to his credit, his entire time in the Senate, it was his policy to not buy and trade stocks. So he has a lot of credibility on that issue. And yet somehow, somewhere along the lines, that didn't make it into the laundry list. All these other things which are not going to happen are in the laundry list. And this issue,

which has bipartisan interest and bipartisan legislation that could actually potentially be passed gets pulled from the speech. Yeah, so instead we got a piece on banning targeted ads for kids based on Huckster Francis Haugen from the Facebook whistleblower. Oh, cool. Yeah, I'm really glad that that portion made it in here on the last part. Look, obviously that's a totally ridiculous thing that it got taken out. I think we all know she was sitting up there on the dais and probably took it out. She got some tricks she needs to make. Listen, it's not hard to figure out

and invest in the defense talks right now. He couldn't risk her ripping the speech up if that were, I'm joking, I'm joking. I also, I want to give a special shout out to Jon Stewart. Bern Pitts did make it into the State of the Union in terms of getting funding to those veterans. Never special shout out to Jon Stewart. Bern Pitts did make it into the State of the Union in terms of getting funding to those veterans. Never would have happened without Jon Stewart, without his tireless activism on this and pressing the VA secretary, making him look like a complete fool in that interview.

Getting something mentioned in the President's State of the Union is a tremendous win whenever it comes to that level of activism. So, John, and for the many vets out there who suffered, I'm sorry that it took, what, 15 freaking years and a bunch of activism, but it did finally at least make it in there. Now let's hope, let's make the next State of the Union for the stock trading ban. We've got to get it in there. Because without it, I don't think it has a prayer. At least Havana syndrome was not mentioned. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, burn pits is much more of a noble cause than Havana syndrome. And one of those has congressional funding and not the other one. You can guess which. And remember how much he had to fight for the 9-11 victims, too. Jon Stewart got the funding for the 9-11 victims. That's right. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

All right, guys. Let's go ahead and bring in Marianne Williamson. She, of course, is a former presidential candidate. She also has a sub stack called Transform with Marianne Williamson, where you can find many of her thoughts. I highly recommend that you do that. Great friend of all of us. Great to see you, Marianne. Good to see you, Marianne.

It's always good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, our pleasure. So just give us your high level thoughts. What were your big takeaways from the speech? Maybe your sort of like highlights and lowlights. Well, I think I thought he was both better and worse than you guys did. I thought his energy was great. And I think, you know, maybe because I'm older than you are, and a lot of Americans are, and a lot of voting Americans are, wouldn't be quite so down on him because he slurs a word every once in a while.

Also, there's a lot of talk about disabilities in America, and we knew that he had a stutter as a child. So I don't know, I think his energy actually was quite wonderful. I thought he had just the right tone about Ukraine. And if this was the Joe Biden that was out there every day, we would be in a far better position for the 22, for the midterms. I did not feel he was sleepy tonight. I thought he was giving it his all. And I like that. And now what Kyle was saying about how many of those things that he said were just performative at a certain point because they were things that are in the Build Back Better bill. He needs to be out

there saying to the American people, we will have those things. We would have had them if the Build Back Better bill had been passed. This is why I need you to elect Democrats so that we will have them, which of course he couldn't have done in tonight's speech too much. There were things he did not mention that I thought were really sad. There was no mention of race in America. There was no mention, even though he talked about insulin, that was great, capping the price on insulin. Even though we talked about more ability to negotiate drug prices, this man could, once again, as Kyle was saying, he could call a national medical emergency and expand Medicare

to everyone. He could have used tonight to say, I'm canceling the college loan debt. He could have said, I'm using tonight to declassify marijuana. So I thought that in many ways he was better than I expected. But the man is not, the things that are disappointing to me, not that I would have expected it to be much different. Even at the beginning, you know, when he said what the American Rescue Plan did. What the American Rescue Plan did was to give people a temporary fix for what has become a permanentized structural economic injustice in this country. And I don't think he lives in a world in his own experience and in his own mind where he sees how

structurally unjust the system has become. But in terms of the worldview that he does have, where he's trying to fix it for some people, I actually think he did better tonight than I would have expected. That's interesting. Marianne, what you've always done a very good job of, especially during the campaign, was connecting, you know, Bailey politics to a kind of a higher level of the way that people are feeling about the country. We led into the show talking about how a record number of Americans would rate the economy as poor, say that a record number, say that the country is simply on the wrong track. I personally didn't feel as if there was enough in the speech

in order to speak directly to that feeling. What was your assessment on that front? Well, you know what, Sarah? He lives in a world where he doesn't think America is on the wrong track. He is part of the ruling elite privileged classes of America for whom America is okay. And even though he says he understands, you know, like when he talked at the beginning about how, you know, when he was a kid and prices went up on food and he really understood the pain of that. Once again, I think he does understand immediate instances of pain. What he doesn't understand is the chronic economic despair. And that has been a problem. And you know, he was vice president to Obama. It's an elite class of Americans who think we'll fix it for you here, we'll fix it for you there. But we don't want to challenge the underlying forces that make

the return of all this pain inevitable, because then we would be challenging all that corporate ownership of the basic tools of government. So if you want fundamental change, you're not going to get it. But if you want more immediate change and that peripheral change, I think he's trying his best, but he's trying his best. But he needs to go further. And if he doesn't go further, we also won't have the House or the Senate for the Democrats in 2022. Once again, going back to what Kyle said, that has to do with getting out your pen, Mr. President, and using those executive orders and doing what you can, including college loan debt. And I don't know how he expects to give a speech like tonight,

not mention racial injustice, and even go on and on about more funding for the police. Nothing about even reforming the police and expect black America to think you're there for them. You think just one, as much as we're excited about Katonji Jackson, I don't think anybody thinks that that's really going to answer to all the underlying racial injustices in this country that at this point are baked into the cake. Marianne, something I'm curious about, as a former presidential candidate, we were discussing this idea that Biden wasn't telling an interconnected story about America

in the context of Ukraine, COVID, and just the broader economic issues you're describing. What story, especially tonight, would you tell? Well, if you're talking about what's happening in Ukraine, this is the story, as I said. The big story in all this, in addition to all the things which I did feel he articulated very well, we have been told for many, many years that we didn't have to worry about a nuclear war because of the principle of mutually assured destruction. Well, guess what, everybody? That only works if you're talking with what they now call rational actors. You get a nuclear bomb in the hands of somebody that you don't think is that mentally stable, and the entire principle goes down the drain. On the other side of this,

and I agree with the president, we will get to the other side of this. And I hold, I see Ukraine as he did. I hold Ukraine in my prayers as he did. I'm inspired by Ukraine as he did. But we all know that an entire post-World War II era, it's over. This whole thing is going to have to be re-imagined.

And we are going to have to re-imagine, we are going, what's going to happen, it's is going to have to be reimagined. And we are going to have to reimagine. What's going to happen, it's all going to be about nuclear bombs now. Some people are actually going to use this experience to say more countries should have nuclear bombs. What we have to stand for is total nuclear nonproliferation. When I was a young person, we used to go to protests, ban the bomb. We just now we gave up on the whole thing. Well, this was a big wake up call. We have to reimagine what we want, both for our democracy and on the other side of this war.

We're living at a time of two simultaneous phenomena. Fall of Rome. And this country is some things are falling apart on much deeper levels than this president even recognizes. We're also living at a time when a new world is struggling to be born. So my answer to your question is that he is not articulating, he is not compelling the American imagination to imagine what could be on the other side of this era. For that, we can't look to Joe Biden.

But for a State of the Union speech, like I said, I got more from him than I expected. That's interesting. Yeah, just so everybody knows, this is a random point here, but I had to throw it out because I just saw it on Twitter. What's trending right now is the word Iranian, and that's because Joe Biden accidentally said, instead of saying the Ukrainian people, he said the Iranian people.

But you know what I was thinking, he said the Iranian people. But you know what I was thinking when he said that, Kyle? I thought he said the Uranian people. He might have. I guess that's better. Once again, maybe because I'm older. Give him a break. Give him a break on that stuff, guys.

You know what I'm reminded of, though? I don't think we can judge the president on a curve, though, personally. But here's the thing. You know what I'm reminded of, though? I don't think we can judge the president on a curve, though, personally. But here's the thing. You know what I'm reminded of, Marianne? I'm reminded of that very famous Howard Dean moment in 2004. Shut the screen. When he ran for president and he was leading and then he was at a rally and awkwardly was like. And the media just went to town on him for like weeks and then he just plummeted and he was out of it. And I feel like the optics

conversation, even though ultimately it is substanceless to some degree, on the other hand, it's like, well, what's the thing that's trending on Twitter right now? So I feel like those optics, even though it's a sad thing to say, it sort of, in many ways, is going to define the speech. Well, you might be right. And I certainly remember, I remember being in a hotel room watching television when Howard Dean did that, and I knew, boy, it's over for him. I do remember that moment. But I would remind you that a lot of older Americans vote. And a lot of older Americans find themselves not able to come out with words quite the way they used to. That's a good point. quite the way they used to. So, I mean, you know, I and a lot of those older Americans aren't necessarily on on Twitter. And it's, you know, and also the disabilities issue. You know, I thought we were supposed to be so sensitive these days. Yeah, I have to say, though, Marianne,

I think that was kind of invented the whole I mean, he definitely had a stutter and dealt with that. But then he was fine during the obama years it's only as he's gotten beyond the obama years and gone i hear that and remember also because that's why i have to push back on this during the democratic primary this was fair game to discuss andrea mitchell on msn mitchell remember julian castro when after morning joe was talking and then suddenly once he was the nominee, I was like, oh, we can't say anything about this anymore. And it's really just a stutter. So don't worry about it. Listen, it sucks. But it does matter that you have a president who is vigorous, who is in good health, who is up to the moment. And we don't get to interact with him on a daily basis in the White House to know what that looks like. We only get these little bits. And let me also say, he doesn't make himself terribly available to the press in order to have more of a body of, you know, work to judge from here. So I do think that optics matter. Is it the most important thing? Of course not. The substance here, especially when we're facing a nuclear war, is what is most critical. And I hope that's what

people take away from it. I just, if I may, I think you're really right that it was a very legitimate conversation when he was running. It's just that tonight we were talking about his performance and I don't know, I thought his energy was quite strong. So Marianne, one more thing I wanted to ask you. I'm just seeing this now. Representative Lauren Boebert,

apparently, I didn't catch this at the time. You guys could tell me if you did. But when Biden was talking about Afghanistan, he mentioned, you know, 13 American flag-draped coffins coming back. And Lauren Boebert apparently screamed out, you put them in, 13 of them, when he mentioned the flag-draped coffins coming back from Afghanistan. So she sort of heckled him about the deaths of American soldiers. Yeah. That's pretty low. Right.

Well, everybody talked about the drone strikes and the horrors that happened with that exit. And believe me, I think the exit was done horribly. But I don't know what people thought we were doing there for the last 20 years. If they, I mean, people were dying and not just Americans, Afghans as well. So I don't think we could expect any more from Lauren Boebert. I think she was probably well behaved given what she's normally like. Well, she'll definitely raise a lot of money off of it. So I guess everybody wins on this front. Really appreciate you joining us, Marianne. Thank you

so much for your analysis on this. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Of course. I think we also have Zed Jelani standing by. So go ahead and call me out on that control room if I'm incorrect. But we want to talk with him a little bit about COVID. And that's something that, like I said at the top in our analysis, we were like, we haven't really talked about COVID. And yet it did. Two weeks ago was the most important issue in the entire country. So, Zed, I think we have a clip of this control room. I'm not sure exactly which one I'm calling for. I think it's the one ending school shutdowns. And I believe it is the last shot that I had listed for

all of you. Zed, it's great to see you, by the way. Let's have a clip of this and then we're going to get your reaction. You can end the shutdown of schools and businesses. We have the tools we need. It's time for America to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again with people. People working from home can feel safe and begin to return to their offices. We're doing that here in the federal government. The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person. Our schools are open.

Let's keep it that way. Our kids need to be in school. With 75% of adult Americans fully vaccinated and hospitalizations down by 77%, most Americans can remove their masks and stay in the classroom and move forward safely. That's a significant pivot there that we have, Zed, on the politics. Nobody in the chamber, or at least not that I could see, wearing masks. I mean, you know, things have changed completely overnight. You've been tracking a lot of this with the schools and whatnot. What do you make of this portion of the speech? Yeah, I mean, I think the Democrats have collectively decided, at least at the national level, that they're going to strike a more moderate tone on COVID-19. You'll see this in his text.

He says that COVID-19 need no longer control our lives, right? And then he quickly also covers the other flank by saying, I know some are talking about living with COVID-19. I say that we'll never just accept living with COVID-19. So he's trying to kind of cover both sides of it, but he's shifting more towards what's been the Republican position, right? If you're living in most of Florida, you're saying, what are you talking about? We've been doing that for six months. We've been doing it since last summer. But if you're living in, let's say, New York or Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia now, and it's having its changes, these are new things to you, right? To be able to send your children

to school without wearing masks, to be able to, in some parts of the country, go to a restaurant or go to a bar without a vaccine passport. A lot of these restrictions are sort of collectively being taken down now, I think, over the past two or three weeks. And I think that is a political pivot on the Democrat side, right? The virus didn't go anywhere. It hasn't necessarily changed in lethality or in form. But I think the Democrats have acknowledged that a lot of the country does want to get to somewhat more of a normal position on this. I think that's a lot of why Joe Biden was elected in the first place, right? The last guy was introducing a lot of chaos into their lives in many different parts of society.

And I think that part of returning to that normalcy is getting people to a position in a place where they don't have to feel deathly afraid of a virus all the time. They should take some precautions. But, you know, their children don't have you don't have to send two year old kids into classrooms wearing masks where they don't even know what the faces of their of their their teacher looks like or their other or the other kids. And I think the Democrats were kind of dry kicking and screaming to that position a month ago in Virginia. They were all accusing Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor, of all sorts of nasty things about how he doesn't care about the welfare of children or vulnerable people. But I live in northern Virginia, and I can tell you during this entire time I was seeing packed restaurants and bars with massless people. So I think part of this was just political.

I think there had been a political culture created around a lot of these restrictions. And now the Democrats are moving into a position where I think they're going to disarm their side, right? They're going to say, hey, look, we can come to a reasonable compromise on this. And, you know, it's probably a wise move of their part. Maybe they should have done it six months ago. Probably would have been politically beneficial for them to do it. And I don't think it would have made much of a public health difference either, given the nature of the virus. So, Zed, let me ask you this, because to what do you attribute that change? Because I just looked up the numbers now. There's a Washington Post poll that came out. This

is February 20th to 24th. Americans prioritize controlling the spread of the virus more than ending restrictions. 58% of U.S. adults would prefer controlling the virus to having no restrictions. And then another poll, this was in early February, 56% of Americans want indoor mask mandates to continue. So like, to what do we attribute this change in tone among the Democrats? Because, you know, the number of daily COVID deaths, if you take a look at it, at the moment, it is 1,859. That was, you know, the last day we have. So we still have a high death rate. We still have, we have the American people still slightly leaning more in favor of some degree of restrictions. To what do you attribute the change of restrictions we had, I'd say, in 2020. But there is a lot of support, I think, for continued masking in some areas.

I don't think the vaccine mandates have as much support as they have, particularly of the Supreme Court decision. But I think part of what attributes the change is actually like election results. Right. So the Virginia gubernatorial election, you saw a state where there was, you know, it went 10 points for Joe Biden and then the Republican picks it off by a couple of points. I think that scares a lot of the Democrats because they understand that even if the polling is still 50-50 or even a little bit more towards the restrictions, that the side that's against the restrictions is very highly motivated right now. And I imagine that the side against the restrictions is picking off all these wins with Democratic elected officials. That's going to change the Democratic base's point of view and allow these restrictions as well.

And so I think they're kind of seeing the writing on the wall in terms of how that's going for a lot of the country. It was very notable to me that even after this high-pitched battle in Virginia over school mask mandates, the day after Virginia dropped its school mask mandates, that's when New York removed their statewide school wide state mask mandate for the children's schools. So I imagine that this issue is going to become depolarized very quickly now. And I'm sure we'll continue to see waves of COVID. The virus is not going anywhere. And as you mentioned, quite a few people are still passing away from the virus, although those are still mostly elderly people who chose not to get vaccinated. And many of them have underlying

health conditions. And so I think, you know, something notable to point out in the substance of the policy of this issue is that Mexico today is doing a better job as a percentage of people who they're boosting than the United States is. Right. What does that tell you? Well, we're fighting over masking two year olds and almost noyear-olds in the United States have even gotten a bad cold from COVID, let alone perished. We're doing a terrible job, I think, in terms of, again, getting those vulnerable elderly people with underlying health conditions vaccinated. And you only really do that with social trust, right? We tried mandates. Supreme Court didn't allow it. We tried fighting all sorts of culture wars over COVID. End of the day, we have to build trust about this.

It's a virus. It doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or a Republican. Vaccines aren't perfect, but they do offer quite a bit of protection to folks. And I think rebuilding that trust and moving forward together is probably better than fighting some of the more pointless fights about some of the more pointless restrictions. And I think the Democrats are starting to get that now. Seth, speaking of pointless fights, let's talk about the culture war for a second. A good way of summing up what seems to have happened tonight with your comments on COVID, Biden's comments on COVID, and then the reference to not defunding the police.

It seems like Biden is trying to do a culture war reset, just completely putting aside a lot of the discourse there for the past two years, oftentimes that Biden wasn't particularly engaged with. He wasn't the defund the police candidate. Can you just comment on this pivot and whether or not this is a pivot that will address broader concerns people could have going to the Democratic Party, moderate candidates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? I mean, I think it's a challenge because the Democratic Party in the United States, we have basically two major party coalitions here. And we're not a proportional representation country. I think you make a good case that we should be, but we're not. So the Democratic Party has a wide variety of views. Right. I don't think Biden's position personally has ever been towards defunding the police, for instance.

But everywhere in America that did do something of that extent, it is a place that's controlled by the Democratic Party, right? Like Austin, I made a short documentary for Fox News about their defund the police effort and the referendum they had afterwards. Some other major cities have done that. And I think that creates a tension between Biden's positions and what's actually happening in his party. And something you'll note is that even when Biden does this, he never actually says that, like, OK, the mayor of Portland needs to, like, actually support police and, like, get people arrested who are, like, starting a riot every single night for several months. Right. Or the city of Austin was wrong to cut a third of their police budget. Right. He never gets into the more interesting fights with his party. He kind of downplays some of their slogans. So I think it's not entirely

unfair when the Republicans say, hey, you guys keep doing it. You're not actually getting into a lot of these situations and fixing the problem. At the same time, it is somewhat unfair when Republicans would portray Biden himself as holding some of these positions that he doesn't actually hold. But because of the coalitional nature of our politics, it's a push and pull, right? I don't think Biden wants to directly face off with some of the Democrats in his party who do want some of these ideas and have had some success implementing them in some places, given that police is largely a local function. Policing isn't really controlled by the federal government to begin with, so it's not really a presidential issue. But to the extent Americans are concerned about it, it is something they should talk to their local officials about. Yeah, I mean, on the national defunding, the police polls at 18 percent.

And on the national level, I think there's only one Democratic politician who actually ran on it, Cori Bush. And she won. So it's not represents Ferguson, doesn't she? And she does. Exactly. You know where they were. They had issues, to say the least. So, yeah, I get it. But I feel like Joe Biden is the reason why he puts a line like that in there. He doesn't support defund the police, of course. But the reason he puts a line like that in there is because his staffers assure him, hey, man, the left is the reason why you guys are losing. And the reason why Democrats, whenever you do lose, just blame the left. And so he puts that in there to be like, I'm going to tamp down on the crazies in my own party. I think that's why he added the line.

Yeah, well, and that kind of dovetails with what I wanted to ask you about that and the point that I wanted to make, because, listen, I mean, the battles over defund the police, I'm not going to say that they haven't mattered electorally. But I think the much bigger problem for Democrats is that you have 70 percent of the country that's saying we're on the wrong track, that says the economy is going in the wrong direction. And so, you know, I think we all sort of agree that Democrats are looking like they're in very difficult shape for the midterms. But what do you think Biden could have done in this speech to help to reset how Americans are, you know, their expectations for the economy? I don't think you can reset how they feel about what's happening in their lives with their expectations for what he might do and why it might be worth them reelecting Democrats.

And do you think that he accomplished any of that tonight? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it's a really like it's a tall order for a single speech, right? Because I think a lot of like macroeconomic factors, particularly with inflation and what's happening with the supply chain crisis, are what's leading to most of, I think, Biden's woes and worries in terms of him being viewed as a competent leader or a leader who can actually address everyday problems. So it's really difficult to do in a speech. I think that he did his best in many ways and that he was highlighting domestic policy achievements, domestic policy proposals that are actually achievable, even though, you know, Build Back Better obviously

had all sorts of problems and is sort of stalled out. But I think that the main thing I would have done maybe a little bit differently than him is, you know, I think at one point he said something like, you know, let's stop seeing each other as enemies and start seeing each other who we are, fellow Americans. And, you know, pivots to COVID-19. You know, I think taking a little bit of responsibility on some of these issues for his party would have gone a long way in terms of rebuilding credibility with people like independents. Because let's be honest, like the Democrats have basically said that anyone in America who believed in doing the things on COVID that they're doing now wants to kill your grandmother, right? They demonize them to a very extreme extent. And I think Biden, unfortunately, was part of that

when he says things like, you know, Georgia's impact, you know, enacting Jim Crow 2.0 and so on and so forth. If he really wants to shut down the culture war, which I would agree is the most divisive thing in the country, and I think it really drags Democrats down. It does actually matter if you take a little bit of responsibility and say, hey, my party did go a little too far on some of these things. And also, I think he should have taken some responsibility on just being very reactive to a lot of crises, right? If you all remember, when inflation really started hitting Americans, they kept saying that it was transitory, that it would go away quickly, that it wasn't a structural problem. And they did the same thing with the crisis at the border with Afghanistan. I think they were

doing a lot of PR and spinning rather than addressing it. Honestly, Ukraine was probably the first time where they took a crisis head on. And they actually predicted what was happening before it would happen. And we're very transparent about it. I think that was a good that's a good model for them going forward, because I think it's one thing that has some nice lines in a speech. But at the end of the day, you have to take accountability and responsibility for some of the missteps you've made. And I didn't really see that as much from from Joe Biden. You know, Americans have been watching this story the entire time. They know that the administration was not on the ball when it came to a lot of these problems. There's been a lot of, I think, particularly difficulties getting things through Congress and

not entirely Joe Biden's fault, but they exist. And I think putting a happy face on it only goes so far, right? Sometimes you do have to actually level with people and maybe they didn't do that as much. So, yeah, I think that's a good point. They all consider that to be a risk. Right. To be honest about, hey, we fell short on this or that thing. Certainly Trump was not out there admitting any mistakes. They want to project. They want to talk about here's what the wins were. The infrastructure deal where, you know, vaccinating people and the rescue plan and all of that. But it actually, you know, it connects with something we were saying earlier about the American people do want someone who's going to sort of step back from the theatrics and say the thing that we all know about.

Like, you know, instead of this laundry list, I'm going to actually level with you. I do think that that would land with people. Zed, it's always great to have your thoughts. Thank you, my friend. Thanks, Zed. Appreciate it, man. Great to see you. And you know, one thing on the culture war point that is sort of one of my grand theories of politics, such as they are, is that there's no escaping the culture war unless

you deliver for people materially. Because if people's conception of government just collapses down to like who's signaling the right way for my team, then all you're going to get is culture war. Yeah. So, you know, he could have his sister soldier moment and say, I hate defund the police all day long, but culture war is still going to really dominate our politics as long as he is unable to enact and stick to an agenda that actually delivers material for people, materially for people in a way that they can sense. And I don't think that's on Biden at all. I mean, he is the least woke person on the planet. Like there's no, if he comments on the culture war, even to just denounce the culture war. So I've like a meta conversation on the culture war that is distracting from more

lines on a $15 minimum wage or unions or foreign policy. He's always like 10 seconds away from an ethnic slur. Yeah, exactly. So I don't, I don't understand. Like that's, I don't get that criticism of him. I have one bit of pushback on that, though, which is that nine times out of ten, I'd agree with what you're saying. So if it's the Bush era, I would agree with that. But right now, there are some really interesting debates. Once again, you guys did a bunch of stuff on Joe Rogan and censorship. There are some really non-material culture war issues that are up for debate right now. That's a free speech.

And Democrats have to think. That's culture war. I don't consideraterial culture war issues that are up for debate right now. That's a free speech. And Democrats have to think, but that's culture war. I don't consider that culture war. I consider it like, you know, that's literally a constitutional issue in many respects. We would hope so, Kyle, but I don't think the coalition is. We can have a very long conversation about what culture war actually is. I tend to think of culture war as being these sort of signaling issues that are more about just like signaling to your team that I am with you on this or that thing that don't actually have a lot of impact on the direction of the country or people's lives. I would agree with Kyle that free speech issues are profoundly significant beyond just like a cultural signaling issue, even though a lot of the people who engage in those debates are doing so in a way that's just about the signaling and not about substance. Yeah. Ultimately, that's always the biggest problem whenever it comes to this. Okay. It's

nearing everybody's bedtime here. It's past some people's bedtime. It's three hours past my bedtime. Whoop is not going to be happy with me. I want to say a special thank you both to Kyle and Marshall. And we were supposed to do this at the top, but Kyle is going to be posting clips on the Breaking Points channel. Thank you very much to everybody for supporting our work here. Marshall, I'll let him finish his drink. He's going to be doing some great news interviews for us, which are also going to be appearing on the Breaking Points channel. I teased those little partnerships, so we've got six active partnerships now on the Breaking Points channel. Thank you to everybody for the super chats, for all of our premium members who help support this.

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