Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #48: Kamala Staff, Fetterman Campaign, Instagram Shakeup, Saudi Visit, & More!

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, and friends talk about Kamala Harris, John Fetterman's campaign, Americans moving to Mexico, Olbermann podcast, PTSD, Instagram changes, Saudis & Biden, Taiwan tension, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Kyle Kulinski: https://www.youtube.com/c/SecularTalkMarshall Kosloff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3O3P7AsOC17INXR5L2APHQJason Kander: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/invisible-storm-jason-kander?variant=39935556911138 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. The Kamala Harris story just continues to get better. Let's put this up there on the screen. Her chief speechwriter, after less than four months on the job, is leaving. This is part of a broader Kamala exit. I tried to come up with a good one for that one, but I couldn't. Of her entire senior staff, her top advisor is leaving, comms director left.

She's had a massive reshuffle, more so even than the White House. She's had three or four different people in different iterations of the job. And now the chief speechwriter is on her way out after a variety of gaffes. Now, I think it's frankly unfair to blame the chief speechwriter is on her way out after a variety of gaffes. Now, I think it's frankly unfair to blame the chief speechwriter. It's clearly the communicator. It's not the speechwriter herself. But I think this is a woman, deeply insecure, unable to eat or take responsibilities for any of her own failures, and probably forced this, made this lady's life complete hell. Miserable. And forced her to basically leave because she blamed her for her communications problem.

It ain't the communications team, okay? She could have the best comms people on earth. If the product is bad, there ain't much you can do about it. Yeah, and one of the other things that we had seen come out before is that she doesn't prepare. Yeah't prepare. And then when she's caught unawares or flat-footed, then she yells at her staff who, listen, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it. So if you prepare everything and you've got the briefings

and the binders and all that, and your principal isn't engaging with it, then there's nothing you can do ultimately as staff. This is a long-running theme, not just from Kamala Harris as vice president, but also when she was attorney general and when she was district attorney in San Francisco. There was tons of turnover in her office from all of those places. And I just saw this morning, there's a piece from The Hill by Amy Parnes, who's a very sort of mainstream, you know, respected political journalist, talking about how it's a significant issue for her that she has very few people who have been with her throughout her career. It's always this churn and burn and new people coming in and basically being chewed up and spit out. So the latest one is the vice president's domestic policy advisor, Rohini Kasoglu.

I'm sure I'm butchering that. But this is one of her closest and longest serving staff members who's now leaving her office. Now, they say that she's leaving on good terms. She just was ready to move on, et cetera, et cetera. But it becomes an issue when you don't have people around you who actually know who you are, know how you operate, know what your institutional history is, know what your strengths are, know what your weaknesses are, know what your actual values are to the extent that you have any. It strikes me as kind of the opposite of the problem that Biden has because he has these dudes who have been around him for like literally 50 years.

Like Chris Dodd. Right. I'm like, are you still alive? And so he has an opposite issue of having anyone come in from the outside who may have a more updated view of how politics works because he just trusts this core group of like four people and has trouble letting anyone else in the circle. She has the opposite issue of it's constantly a carousel of new staffers. And ultimately, this is what you always see in D.C. Senators or members of Congress who have a reputation for a lot of staff turnover. It means they're a shitty boss. It means they're an asshole. It means they're miserable to work with. And it seems to be the case in the vice president's office. Everybody in Washington

knows the names of these people. Klobuchar, Sheila Jackson Lee. I'm going to go down the list. There's more. Those are the two worst. Yeah, right. Those are the two worst. But I mean, it's funny. I heard about the Klobuchar thing, not the comb specifically, but I heard she was a horrific boss for years, way before any of the stuff that she ever ran for president. Everybody knows, you know, lists of these names. And she was always up there. And so now, you know, she goes to the vice president. She's behaving exactly as she did. When somebody tells you who they are, believe them. And so when people's staff are leaving after just four months and she's blaming them, a terrible sign. Just absolutely terrible. Indeed. Up in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman just continues to relentlessly troll

his Republican opponent, Dr. Oz, painting him, I think, very effectively as a rich, out-of-touch New Jersey carpetbagger. Here's the latest. So he has started a petition to nominate Dr. Oz to the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He tweets, I'm asking everyone to do something nice today. Help Dr. Oz reach his dream of being inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame. We're celebrating his hashtag Jersey strong legacy. Sign our official petition today. He also went so far. This is very clever. Yeah, this is good.

This is smart. Yeah, you can imagine the brainstorming sessions are just, like, hilariously entertaining. But they also paid for a cameo from Snooki from the Jersey Shore. Also, you know, talking about Dr. Oz and how they won't forget him in New Jersey. Let's take a listen to that. Hey, Maymatt. This is Nicole Snooki. And I'm from Jersey Shore. I don't know if you've seen of it before. But I'm a hot mess on a reality show, basically I enjoy life um but I heard that you moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to look for a new job and personally I don't know why anyone would want to leave Jersey because it's like the best place ever and we're all hot messes um but I want to say

best of luck to you I know you're away from home and you're in a new place but Jersey will not forget you I just want to let you know I will not forget you. And don't worry because you'll be back home in Jersey soon. This is only temporary. So good luck. You got this and Jersey loves you. Amazing. Brilliant troll. You got to give it to the man. Whoever's running that campaign, I don't know if it's him. I don't know if it's team, but look, I mean, he's getting destroyed and Oz is just, I got to give it to the man. Whoever's running that campaign, I don't know if it's him, I don't know if it's team, but look, I mean, he's getting destroyed. And Oz is just, I got to eat a lot of shit on this one. I thought he would be a very effective politician. He is truly flailing.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. He's running like a Trump style, let's set records straight. I'm running against Bernie Sanders 2.0. That's why I'm fighting so hard for you. Pennsylvania deserves better. America deserves better. It's like, did a bot write this tweet? What is happening? As we've already said, don't talk about John Fetterman for a second. Run against Joe Biden. It's not hard. Joe Biden has a 30% approval rating in the state of Pennsylvania, which is like 25 points less than John Fetterman,

who already has won statewide office. Joe Biden is bad. I'll vote against him. How is this difficult? By the way, what are you doing? Bernie Sanders is a lot more popular than Joe Biden. So if you just look at the net favorability ratings, Bernie Sanders, you are choosing to position yourself versus a much more popular politician than Joe Biden, who is the sitting president of the United States. It's just it's just lame. It doesn't land. It doesn't have any sort of like flair or flavor to it. And the bottom line is the carpetbagger stuff. A, I mean, it fits. I mean, it's obviously true. It's obviously true. And I think because it's not just he's from out of state, which, I mean, listen, politicians do this all the time, but that he's this wealthy Hollywood dude with all the mansions around the world and, like, literally filmed a campaign ad from his mansion in New Jersey.

Right. That brings it to a sort of everyman populist level where it's about more than just being from out of state. The proof is in the pudding. Like Fetterman is outperforming the gubernatorial race. He is clearly sort of running uphill in terms of the national environment and right now has secured a outside the margin of error lead over Oz, is in decent position. And this is all while he has still been recovering from a stroke. He recently had a public appearance. He actually looked fine, by the way. So that's good. The reporting that said he couldn't speak was wrong. So listen, I wish the man well. I hope he's healthy. So he looks good. And the more that he's able to go out on the campaign trail, if he doesn't get tired, he says he can do walks

and stuff. I mean, he's nuking. He's nuking Oz right now. Oz is a disaster. He's not up on the airwaves. Clearly, by the way, I know the idiots who write tweets like that. They all work at the RNC. So clearly he's been hiring. Yeah, no fans of mine over here. They all work at the RNC. Clearly he's been hiring them. He's been hiring all these idiot consultants and they're going to do what they do best, which is bleed him dry and try and lose an election. Yeah. And they're performing well at that job right now. Congratulations. Seriously. I really don't even know what to say. I've never been more disappointed in somebody. I really thought, I mean, look, you don't become a massive TV star for no accident. You think there's some requisite amount of talent or something there, but clearly it's just not.

I don't know. You know what can happen sometimes to people who are new to politics is they think that these D.C. people and the political consultants and whatever that they actually know something. I would bet he knows it. You know? And so he probably has certain instincts in a certain direction, but he's just like, oh, these people know. They're the experts.

Let me just listen to them. Because you're getting a totally D.C. cookie-cutter campaign out of him versus someone who, for once, the Democrats actually chose someone who's a good candidate, who understands how to understand the electorate, understands how to win, has a great character and persona, is extraordinarily effective. And yeah, they're, at the moment, they are getting crushed. And I think it's hard. Once a hard caricature like this has been set of who someone is, it becomes very hard to overcome that. And if you do anything that plays into the stereotype, you just kill yourself. Totally agree.

Interesting story in The New York Times about some unexpected migration. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. I mean, it makes perfect sense. The headline here is how the path to home ownership runs through Mexico. San Diego residents are moving to Tijuana to get more for their money. Some hope to save for down payments on houses that are way out of reach north of the border. They say in San Diego, the median sales price of a family home, single family home, hit $1 million in April. And a February report declared the city the least affordable metro area in the U.S., bypassing San Francisco in large part because of a 14% increase in median home sales prices for the year. Rent also has jumped up massively. They say the rise in home sales prices for the year. Rent also has jumped up massively. They say the rise in home prices pales in comparison to the jump in rents. In June, the rent for a one-bedroom home,

almost $3,000, $2,901, according to rent.com. That was 19% higher than a year ago. Two-bedroom apartments averaging almost $4,000, $3,772. Nationally, the average is about $2,000. So you have this increasing trend of people who are able from the pandemic to work remote, who are able to earn their U.S. salaries moving across the border where rents and home prices are actually obtainable so that they can afford to live, afford to live basically and potentially sock away a down payment for a house back on the other side of the border. And apparently the same thing's happening with gas. Ciudad Juarez, gas is $3.11. So apparently gas is that much cheaper in Mexico where people are literally driving across the border, filling up their tanks and coming back

to the United States because the Mexican government is heavily focused on drilling and refining as much gas as possible, and they also have much more protectionist policies in place for their consumers than apparently the United States does as one of the largest energy consumers on Earth. So, I mean, I think this is just insanity, right? Which is, it's like when Bernie on the campaign trail would talk about all those people who go to Canada to go buy insulin. To get medical treatment, yeah. Which is, what is this? You know, literally regulatory arbitrage in order to get cheaper gas or to be able to go afford to buy a home.

This is probably not good for Mexicans either. I mean, they don't probably want all these Americans moving in. Gentrifying and pushing rents up. That's true. Yeah, jacking up their rent and home prices. I'm sure they're pissed off. Actually, I'd heard a story about Mexico City was like posting signs in their cafes being like, Americans, go home because people were pissed that people were coming to Mexico City to live like this itinerant lifestyle while working remotely.

And they're like, you're taking up all this space. Yeah. Look, it causes – obviously it's pitting people against each other. Not necessarily a good thing. So I don't know. I mean it just highlights how, pitting people against each other, not necessarily a good thing. So, I don't know. I mean, it just highlights how broken the system is. It does. The housing piece is really a massive problem.

And, you know, before we started talking about inflation, house prices have been skyrocketing out of reach for decades. But somehow that's not considered inflation, even though it's obviously like a core component of being able to live. Education, housing and health care prices have been going up and up and up and up, way beyond, way outside of what inflation has. And those are the bedrock pieces of a sort of stable middle class life. And that is just increasingly out of reach for Americans. So you see strategies like this. One of the women that they interviewed here, she actually teaches at San Diego City College. She is paying only $700 a month in rent for a two-bedroom, two-story house as opposed to about $4,000 for the same would cost in San Diego. She does say that, you know, it's more stressful.

The roads have more potholes in them. The air quality is less. She said she actually hasn't had much of a problem with crime, even though that's kind of the narrative about Tijuana. So she would rather be in San Diego. She can't afford it. So it is a sad state of affairs that you have so many Americans who just can't afford the basics of living in the town where they work. You see this internal migration as well. You've seen some of these sort

of boom towns around the country. We covered a story of, I think it was somewhere in Oregon, that the local people who had been born and raised there, they were being priced down of their own communities because you had this massive influx of people who are earning, you know, Silicon Valley level salaries but are able to work from anywhere in the country. Now, that's a great thing for them that they're able to move around and have affordability. But we should be able to have, you know, housing that's affordable for everyone. And of course, exacerbating this entire situation is the amount of permanent capital that is going in and buying up single family homes and further jacking up the prices.

So just, I guess, a symptom of a really broad problem across the country. Yeah, I think it is. You know, all this regulatory arbitrage, it has all kinds of insanity and follow-on effects. And it just shows you that, like, when people have to do that, things are bad. Like, driving across the border to go get gas, what kind of country are we living in here? Yeah, indeed. Some new moves from former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Apparently he is moving into the digital game, launching a podcast. Let's go ahead and throw a Wall Street Journal had the report here. They say Keith

Olbermann tries his hand at podcasting. Countdown with Keith Olbermann on iHeartMedia to include mix of political and sports commentary. I guess he owns that name because that was the name of his show on MSNBC. He probably licensed it to them. Back in the day, whatever. Anyway, that's the name he's going with. It's kind of funny reading his justification for this. First of all, he says he has so much money he doesn't need to work anymore. Oh, good. It's just all for the people. Must be nice. It's just all for the cause. Right. And he says that what's going to distinguish him is he says, people do these podcasts with the idea they have to live for a week. This has replaced radio into a large part television.

Why not present something that is there every day for people? My goal is that you'll be able to listen to this thing and get everything that happened. It won't be here we are reacting to last week's news. As if there aren't already like a million podcasts that do daily content reacting to the most recent news. As if there aren't already like a million podcasts that do daily content reacting to the most recent news. So I thought it was interesting. It's always fun to watch people who have an inflated view of their following and relevance jump into what is actually more of sort of a free market competition in the podcast world and see how it works out for them. Yeah. They also, apparently Katie Couric has a podcast. I mean, this is the thing,

these major TV personalities who have had everything done for them their entire lives, this is a hard job. It's actually way more on you as a personality. You don't get to rely on your producers who make up guest segments for you. You and I program every single element of our show, every single one. All the monologues are written by us. I can assure you that's not the case over at any of the major cable networks. I mean, almost every element of production and more is deeply personal to the both of us who come up with systems. These people are so reliant on others. And also, I just hate the way that he denigrates the space of interviewing one another and the material felt outdated.

It's like, what does that mean? As if you're talking about the most relevant stuff and you're not interviewing each other constantly on your idiot GQ show? Like back in 2017? Yeah, because cable is well known for servicing the diversity of views and making sure that they're not talking about outdated material. The number one topic on cable news right now is January 6, 2021. for surfacing the diversity of views and making sure that they're not talking about outdated material. The number one topic on cable news right now is January 6th, 2021, okay? So that's my point. I mean, I don't see how this could be differentiated

whatsoever. And I love how they always point to stuff like The Daily. Guess what? You're not The Daily. The Daily is actually a good show. I don't listen to it, but I mean, I know a lot of people who do. If you're a normal person, you're upper middle class, you're walking to work in New York City,

The Daily is a great way to, quote, feel informed. Same with NPR. They do a great—up first and all that, they do a good job. Yeah. 20 minutes or so. I want to see BBC World News as I listen to it. They do, like, the five-minute thing or whatever, wrap up because they're on a different time zone. This is not a real service that anybody wants.

And so, you know, I wish him the best, I guess. Also, if he really has enough money, watch. I bet you he'll be reading ads on his very first show because he's doing it with iHeartRadio. True, true. Yeah, I mean, Olverman at MSNBC, he really was the person who made MSNBC into a liberal channel. Because it wasn't like Fox News had this ideological project from the beginning, from the jump.

MSNBC, it wasn't that. It was they just wanted to be a sort of generalized news competitor to CNN. And then when Olbermann's show hits and he's relentlessly going after George W. Bush and going after the Iraq war, it met the moment. And why he was so successful is, first of all, I mean, I do think that he's a, like putting his cringe views aside, he's a skilled broadcaster. He's got a big personality. He's also a total asshole, like relentless asshole to the people that work for him and just kind of a horrible human being in that way. That's just a terrible sign to people.

I cannot believe that. I know. I know. But he does have this sort of like, you know, big charismatic personality. He was saying something that people couldn't get anywhere else. And that's the piece that made him such a success there. And then MSNBC goes on to basically replicate his show. Rachel Maddow comes out of, you know, being a guest on his show.

Then she spins off Chris Hayes, who was a regular guest on her show, and they sort of end up going in this liberal direction. But that wasn't the plan to begin with. Now, his views are so commonplace. If you want to hear, you know, Resistance Lib view of the world, you can go to Cable News. You can go to the Pod Save Bros. There's a lot of product. There's even an established space

that is already successful in podcasting. In Resistance Lib world. So, I mean, you already have a variety of products. It's hard to see what your competitive edge here. And his theory of the case that there aren't any or aren't enough daily podcasts, I just don't see that really to be accurate. So we'll see how it pans out.

Yeah. Let's see. So I was minding my own business in India, had some time on my hand, as one does. I open up Instagram and my entire feed has changed. And it turns out this is a major departure for the app, which is changing social media. So let's put this up there on the screen. Facebook has announced that their new site design will basically exactly copy TikTok on the homepage of your Instagram app. So to try and describe it to you guys, the Reels feature in Instagram now exists as your entire home feed. So you know how people would pick posts and you would scroll through them? That doesn't exist anymore. Now, whenever you want to scroll through something, as Crystal is doing right now, you can open it, try and scroll through. What you see is

it takes over your entire phone and keep scrolling. And now you have to go post by post. The thing is, you no longer get to choose whether you're gonna scroll past videos or not. It makes you look at each individual post. It doesn't actually show you the caption all that prominently. And this is a major departure because a lot of people like us not only used to this Instagram,

but like this Instagram. And it's caused a lot of consternation, but it does show you that there's a massive war right now for attention, which is that the reason this is happening, per a lot of tech insiders and others I are, which is sad to admit, are not posting enough in order to keep up with the engagement time, even if you or I may even like the app. And I think it highlights a couple of things. Number one, there is no innovation in social media anymore. The new update to Instagram is to make it the goddamn TikTok, which we did not ask for nor wanted. And yet, they're forcing you to engage in this because they need to spend more time on the app so that they can sell more ads, ruining the user experience.

The other interesting thing that I thought was highlighted is yesterday, actually, an Instagram product manager, he since deleted his tweets, but put out a thread where he basically said, listen, millennials, we don't care about you. We only care about teenagers, about acquiring that market share. That's why we did this. And in order for this to work, we need them to acquire more users. Here's a problem though. According to my Zoomer sources, Instagram is being ruthlessly mocked on TikTok. Because they're like, this is a shitty TikTok. They're like, we're already here. We don't need this. To the extent that we were using it, we were using it to like post, you know, one photo a month. Apparently that's very hot for Zoomers right now. They post like one post and they do like 12. They may call me a boomer if I

post for more than that. I think it's all funny, you know, whatever. We can all have our own thing. But it highlights just the game for attention. The fact that frankly, TikTok won in the social media wars. I think it exposes something really gross too, which is that all that ever mattered was time on app. User experience doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you like it. I hate the current thing. And they don't care because probably, statistically, they'll force me to spend more time as I'm scrolling. And that's the only thing that these people care about. That's the only game that matters. That is the bedrock thing to remember when you are on any of these apps. Your experience of it, they don't care whether you like it or hate it. All

they care about is whether you are on the app. Why? Because that allows them to collect more of your data. It allows them to serve you more ads. So that's who they're serving is those advertisers and being able to bundle your data and sell it to third parties. That's the piece that they actually care about. I mean, this is one of the things that came out of the Facebook leaks that actually was – I mean, it's not a surprise, but it was interesting to get the details. They changed some of the functionality of Facebook. And the response to it was people were like, we don't like this. Like, we find this to be a more unpleasant experience. And basically, I think it had to do with they were serving people more sort of like outrageous content

and making them feel angry and making them feel hate. But it was keeping them on the app longer. And ultimately, that was all they cared about. They didn't care about the fact that users were saying, I like the app less now than I did before. But they're like, yeah, but you're here longer, aren't you? So that's all we ultimately care about. It's really sad.

Yeah, it is. I loved Instagram. I genuinely did. It's always been my favorite social media platform. It has a nicer vibe than others. Yeah, it does. I mean, it's like, so, you know,

Kyle's not on Instagram. So when he looks at my comments under, he's like, people are so nice. Oh, yeah, they're super nice. It's so different from Twitter. But beyond comments, it's fun. Like, there's stuff I've curated. There are certain types of people

I like to check up on, you know. Whatever, not to mention, like, your friends. It's interesting, you know, the Kardashians are speaking out. The Kylie Jenner. Yeah. Well, the reason this matters is because the last time in 2018 that Kylie said she didn't

use Snapchat anymore, they lost a billion dollars in value on their site. Wow. I forgot about that. Both Kylie and Kim have come out and trashed the new update. Who knows? I don't think it will work, to be honest, because they can see the data, they need the teens, and that's all they care about. So it effectively ruined the experience for billions of people. To your point about how there is no innovation with social media in Silicon Valley, it's just like, oh, this is working. Let's copy it. I mean YouTube's doing the same thing. They're pushing their shorts.

That's their big push now because, again, they see the way that TikTok is what's going on with TikTok. And we've seen Facebook has gone through several of these iterations. I mean, they're desperate because their user base is just atrophying like crazy. And yeah, it's just, it's not relevant. It's not cool at all. So if Instagram is dated, Facebook is 10 times more so. So it's kind of a statement. Statement on the business model.

Statement on the way that you have turned into a commodity. Statement on the fact that these people who are allowed it as like geniuses and innovators and whatever, they're not really. They're just copying what everybody else is doing. It honestly sucks. Like it's a great, terrible development. Jason Kander was an up and coming Democratic star. He had had a very successful run for Senate and had been blessed by Barack Obama to potentially run for president when he was forced to take a step back from political life in order to deal with his own internal struggles with PTSD. And Jason is out with a new book and he joins us now. Great to see you, Jason. Great to be seen. Great to be with you.

We've got the book jacket up on the screen there. It's titled Invisible Storm, A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD. I'd titled Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. I'd love for you to just start by actually kind of reintroducing yourself to our audience and laying out that trajectory you were on and how it was completely derailed from where you expected originally. Sure. So I deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence officer for the army in 2006. And then to give the short version, proceeded to have a pretty fast rise in American politics from the state legislature to secretary of state of Missouri to just barely losing a U.S. Senate race in a very red state, Missouri.

And then, you know, was one of like, I don't know, there were a few dozen of us in 2018 who were thinking we were going to run for president in 2020 on the Democratic side, was running around doing that. But the whole time I was having, you know, untreated undiagnosed, I had untreated undiagnosed PTSD from my time in Afghanistan. And I was basically trying to outrun it. And that got harder and harder. And right when I was, you know, really getting to the point where I was going to officially announce for president, I was doing that soft running. Everybody knew I was running, but I legally couldn't say I was running thing. It was getting bad enough where I just couldn't keep going. So I decided, well, I'm going to go back home.

I'm going to run for mayor of my hometown, Kansas City, and I'm going to go get help at the VA. I kept half that promise to myself. I started running for mayor. It was going really well. We were going to win that race. But I didn't go to the VA like I told myself I would do. And I just started getting worse faster. And it went from, you know, the normal stuff that I was having, night terrors, hypervigilance, that kind of thing, to also now including depression and suicidal thoughts. And so, you know, about three months into that campaign for mayor, despite how well the campaign was going, I was not going well. And I said, you know what, this ain't working.

And I dropped out of public life for a while to go get help at the VA. What was that moment for you where you said, I can't, I can't outrun this thing? You know, it's, I describe it in the book as the international capital of zero Fs left to give. It was rock bottom. It was just, it's nice that people tend to give me like a lot of credit for making that decision. But in my life at that moment, it didn't feel like much of a decision. I knew that I didn't want to want to die and it was time to try to do something, anything. And I was running out of ideas. So I actually called the Veterans Crisis Line at the VA. And, you know, for all that time,

over a decade, I had been telling myself this fiction that, well, it can't be PTSD. And I had all these different reasons for that. But when I heard the sound of the woman's voice on the other end of the line at the Veterans Crisis Line, it was just very evident to me that I didn't sound any different than anybody else she had talked to in that job. And that was a really important realization for me that helped me say, you know what, I got to take this seriously. And that's when I decided to go get help. And the reason I decided to publicly state why I was dropping out and that I was going to go get help for PTSD is I just figured, you know, maybe if somebody had done that several years earlier on the platform that I was doing it on, then maybe that would have encouraged me to take a look at my own symptoms

and say, maybe this is PTSD. And it turns out it did have that effect for a lot of people, which is maybe one of the, you know, definitely one of the most important things I've ever actually done. Yeah. I mean, it's incredible the directions life takes you in. You wanted to have a platform to make a difference in people's lives. I'm sure this wasn't the way that you anticipated doing it, but that's the way life throws you curveballs. You never expect, um, you know, one of the things that you write about in the book is how you almost had to give yourself permission to have suffered this trauma and to have the diagnosis of PTSD. I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that because I think that's really important. Yeah. You know, in my case, I was an army intelligence officer who my job was to go

out and to meet with people who were pretty unsavory characters in a lot of cases. And there was always the possibility that my translator and I were being lured into a trap, that there was a possibility of being kidnapped and killed. And that is really the source of a lot of, you know, the cumulative trauma that I experienced, just that constantly knowing where all the exits are, how many people between me and my vehicle, always being ready. But the thing is, I never fired my weapon, my whole deployment. And so I came home believing that that didn't count and that there's no way that could be traumatic. I had friends who had been shot, things like that. And so I went all these years saying like, well, if I say that this is PTSD instead of just something wrong with me, well, that to me was like stealing Bauer from my friends who had been physically wounded.

And the thing about that is, is it's not just the military where that can happen. I mean, I meet so many people now who will tell me about what they've been going through and then they'll caveat what they say with, well, I wasn't in a war or anything. And I always say, look, you know, I spent a lot of years trying to rank my trauma out of existence by saying, well, it's not as bad as this person. And that's a waste of time. All it did was it delayed my opportunity to heal and to go get treatment. Trauma is trauma. It doesn't, a car accident, a bad divorce, surviving cancer, losing a loved one, stuff that happens in your childhood, like, or going to war. It doesn't matter if it's something that you haven't been able to move past in your brain and it's still affecting you. Well, then it's something you have to deal with and there's no point in trying to compare it to someone else's. You're obviously

in a much better place now. What are some of the things that for you personally were effective in terms of treatment? Yeah. So I appreciate you asking that because I'm in a chapter of my life I think of as post-traumatic growth. And it's important that people know that that's achievable. For me, I went to the VA. I did two types of therapy. I did cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure therapy, which the short explanation is, is that cognitive processing therapy is a lot of it for me was just sort of being educated, like going to graduate school about my brain, learning about how the to the trauma, talking about those intrusive thoughts and those memories and talking about them enough where they no longer have the grip on you and then doing some other things. But look, whatever it is that people choose to do, whatever treatment is they're advised to do, you know, I tell people like, look, that's what I did. But if that hadn't

been effective for me, I would have gone on to try the next thing. So it's really worth it. There are people around us all the time who have achieved post-traumatic growth. We don't ever see it depicted on film, very rarely in the news, but it's extremely common. But we can be left with the impression that PTSD is a terminal diagnosis because all we ever see is this voyeuristic PTSD porn depiction where you have like a combat veteran who's been, you know, beating their spouse and abusing drugs and robbing a bank. But that's not common. What's common is people go to treatment and they get better. And it's important for folks to know that so that they'll go pursue it. I think that is incredibly important for people to know. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the work that you're doing now, because I think that's really important. You're the president of national

expansion at Veterans Community Project. What is that? Thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, Crystal. In fact, all the royalties from Invisible Storm go to my royalties, publisher rights to keep their part of the money, go to Veterans Community Project. So Veterans Community Project is an organization based in my hometown, Kansas City. It was founded by some fellow combat veterans who set out to do a couple of things. One, to create walk-in centers. We call them outreach centers to where any veteran, regardless of what their service was like, there's no disqualifiers, can come in and qualify for 100% of our services, which is everything from mental health treatment to dental to, you know, like seeing a physician to financial literacy to job training, all sorts of stuff. What we're much better known for is the residential side of what we do, which is we build villages

of tiny houses for homeless veterans with wraparound case management services. And we have an 85 percent success rate of then transitioning homeless veterans into permanent housing in the community where they're fully contributing and fully reintegrated members of the community. And so it's pretty miraculous work. People can go to VCP, like veteranscommunityproject.org, to learn more. And I appreciate you asking me about it. Oh, I should add, with the work that I do, I'm the president of national expansion. We're taking it from Kansas City to around the country. So we now are expanded into the Denver area, the St. Louis area, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

We just bought property in Oklahoma City to build there. And then we have more cities coming on after that. So, guys, buy the book, Invisible Storm, so you can support that incredible work. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of political questions? You're a podcast host now, so I assume that you're having to weigh into these things. By the way, the podcast is called Majority 54. I wanted to ask you about one of the things that I'm kind of most interested in, which is Missouri is not always a red state, right? It's relatively recent memory that Democrats would routinely win statewide office. You had the sort of Carnahan political dynasty legacy. Of

course, Claire McCaskill was there not that long ago. You came very close to winning your Senate seat. What happened? Why is Missouri shifted so far to the right that now Democrats don't even really pay attention to the state? Yeah, a couple of things. One, I sometimes jokingly say that we officially joined the Southeastern Conference, that it wasn't just college sports. Because it used to be that like Iowa was a much more of a swing state and Missouri was much more in the Iowa category. And now it's sort of slated into being more like Arkansas. Well, that is a result of, you know, demographic changes that didn't keep up with the rest of the country in the like hundred year period where Missouri was the bellwether state that everybody said, so goes Missouri, so goes the nation. There was literally

in that period, one presidential election where the country went a different direction than Missouri. And it was when Adlai Stevenson, who was in neighboring Illinois, ran. And that was it. And what you would see in that period was you could take the map of the United States, including a demographic map, and lay it over Missouri, and it would look exactly the same. You had your population density on the east and west coast of the state or of the country. You had some population density in the middle where we have the college town of Columbia. And then you really had from the age, race, everything, perspective, everything lined up the same. Well, as the Latino population, for instance, grew across the country,

it didn't grow by the same rate in Missouri. And the aging demographics changed. Missouri got older. So when you combine those things, you know, that affected things. But on top of that, I think that there's a, in my opinion, a misnomer out there, a debate in the party that seems to be

about whether or not the party should be more liberal or more moderate in order to win over voters in places like Missouri. And I actually think that that's the wrong discussion. I think that where the disconnect is and that affects places like Missouri, like Iowa, Indiana, places like that, is that for us, the main issue is,

are our kids gonna have to move away in order to find a good job, in order to be able to be successful? And that's what we're all concerned about. I mean, my son is about to turn nine. My daughter is about to turn two. And I'm already like thinking about what can I do to make it so that they want to stay here. They're sixth generation Kansas Citians. I don't want to move to be around my grandkids, but I will. And my point is Democrats miss the fact that our policies actually, in my opinion, are better for that, whether it's about, you know, doing something about college debt, raising wages, making, you know, our communities more safe from gun violence.

All of that stuff are things that make it more likely, not less likely, that our kids are going to stay. But we don't speak to it that way. And that's not because the leadership of the party is too liberal. It's because the leadership of the party usually comes from the places our kids move to for opportunity. So they're less likely to see this. And we also have several decades now of Democratic presidents partnering with Republicans to pass trade deals that have had a devastating impact on some of the places that you're talking about. And so I think that has helped to strip Democrats of credibility when they say, no, we're the people who are looking out for your town. You're going to make sure you have those good middle class jobs.

They say, yeah, well, that's what you said before. And then we had NAFTA and you tried to pass TPP. And, you know, we've had decades of jobs moving overseas that have stripped our communities of that sort of like main job source and vitality. And along with that, a lot of like pride and identity that was built around those industries as well. I mean, do you miss do you miss politics? Do you think about getting back into it? And I'd also love to to hear what you think of. We've been following Lucas Kuntz's race in for Senate in Missouri very closely.

And I think he's running a very interesting model of this very sort of populist, progressive type of campaign that it strikes me it's going to be a long time before Democrats gain back what they've lost in these rural parts of the country and in the Midwest. But it strikes me as a good approach and focusing a lot on antitrust and monopoly issues. So tell me what you think about Lucas Coons and his campaign. And then tell me if you're thinking about jumping back into politics. Look, I've spoken to Lucas. He seems like a really smart guy.

I've also spoken to Trudy Bush Valentine, who's the other person running in that primary. I think they're both great. And look, my deal on this is like I've run for Senate. I know how hard it is. And I know that I have an outsized influence in the state. And so I, you know, for me, yeah, everybody's working hard. I don't want to come in and like, you know, foot stomp this thing. I don't think that'd be fair. But what I will say about the state in general is that people, you know, in any state like Missouri that used to be really competitive and now it's very

hard to make it competitive, what happens is people come to people like me and Claire McCaskill and folks like that, and they're like, we need you to do this. This kind of goes to the second part of your question. And what I keep telling people is, look, if you look at North Carolina, if you look at Georgia, if you look at Colorado, you will see places that didn't go election cycle to election cycle, just trying to find the perfect candidate. What they did is they said, let's build an infrastructure. Let's do something where we can actually make this state competitive in the long term. And there are people in Missouri who are working to do that. People like Laura Granich, people like Steven Weber. And I'm really interested in supporting those sort of efforts because that's the long term play that needs to happen. Now, as far as me getting back in, honestly, I have friends like you who I can call up and I can,

you know, get access to their platforms or, you know, go on TV and talk about what I want to talk about. And then I can go back to coaching little league and playing in an over 30 wood bat baseball league and hanging out with my son and my daughter and my wife. And, and that's really what I'm enjoying and doing this job that I love. I mean, this work at BCP is the best civilian job I've ever had. So I don't miss running, but I do still feel like I'm involved in politics. I'm involved exactly the amount I want to be involved. And for now, that's just exactly where I want it to be. Jason, it's great to see you. I'm glad to hear that you are in a much better place and loving life. And I think the book is really genuinely good and very important as well.

So I really encourage people to check it out. Great to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time. You too. Thank you, Crystal. Hey, everyone. This is Ken Klippenstein with Breaking Points Intercept Edition. I'm joined now by Raeed Jarar. He's the Advocacy Director of Democracy in the Arab World Now, or DON for short. The reason I have you on is because I really appreciate the work that DON does. They provide a useful counterpoint to the hegemony of the think tanks here in Washington that tell a very particular point of view with regard to the Middle East. And I don't think that's a very honest one.

I mean, if you look at, and we'll be talking about President Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia, which in itself is a form of normalization with that country, the way in which the media covered that, I saw a ridiculous story in The Atlantic saying that Jamal Khashoggi would forgive MBS if given the chance. I Googled The Atlantic's funding and I quickly found that they receive large sums of money from a company that itself receives large sums of money from the Saudis. And that, unfortunately, is a dynamic that's true across the board with a lot of the think tanks. That's not the case with Don. They tell a very different picture, I think a more accurate one. So first of all,

thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And so a theme that I wanted to focus on was not just that President Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia, you know, was wrong in a moral sense, but also how humiliating it was for him and for the United States internationally. Just to give you a couple of examples, he touches down Biden and his entourage, and they are greeted by a provincial governor first, not even by a head of state or anybody in MBS's cabinet. And, you know, in diplomatic circles, that's widely understood to be a kind of slap in the face. And not only that, once they ended up meeting, he wasn't greeted by the king when he came out of the car, which has diplomatic significance as well. And then when they ended up speaking, almost immediately after the bilateral meeting, the Saudis start leaking things, saying that Biden didn't bring up Khashoggi. Biden disputes that.

And then subsequent to that, within 24 hours of Biden's leaving the UAE, a country he visited after that, the UAE arrests Jamal Khashoggi's former lawyer, which, again, morally wrong. But in addition to that, humiliating in an international sense. I can't think of any other country that would do something like that to the leader of the United States So could you speak to that a little bit from your knowledge of the region and what this all means and also Crucially for Americans. What did we get out of this out of this visit? Because again, you know, there's morality and there's also Interests and it's not clear to me that the US got anything out of it. I agree with your assessment. I think it was the worst of both worlds. It was the worst of both worlds in the sense that, on the one hand, the Biden administration lost its moral capital and moral standing. So, you know, President Biden promised he will center human rights in our foreign policy.

He's going to do this. He's going to do that. And the mere fact that he was willing to meet with someone like Mohammed bin Salman and other dictators and apartheid regimes in the region in a way that is completely empty of any moral standards by itself made him lose that track. And the other track, like the track of being a pragmatist, the real politik track, where we're told many times by this administration and other administration that we are naive and we don't understand how the real world works and we have to do some concessions to get some stuff out of it. What did we get out of this? Nothing. We got nothing out of it. And when you look at the trip, whether it's the part where President Biden goes to Israel or whether it's the part that President Biden goes to

Saudi Arabia, it is another classic example of the status quo of how Washington runs on autopilot, that we do things because we do these things. We repeat the same policies because they've been of the status quo of how Washington runs on autopilot, that we do things because we do these things. We repeat the same policies because they've been there for decades, completely with no political analysis, with no vision, and there is nothing that came out of it. Even the claim about oil, that oh, we have to go because we need some oil to be pumped out.

Nothing happens. This is a pretext for looking the other way and all these human rights abuses. Khashoggi is an emblem of that, but there are countless people that are jailed on dubious pretexts. They don't really have a rule of law in terms of being able to represent yourself in court. Countless activists, not just jailed, in some cases killed.

So it's much bigger than, you know, Khashoggi is an emblem of all of that. And so we're sort of told by the, you know, quote unquote adults in the room that we've got to be grownups here and, you know, things, you know, you have to break some eggs to have an empire and to get the oil and critical resources that we need. You know, within days of Biden visiting Saudi Arabia, their foreign minister is making statements saying we're unable to increase the oil production. So that's out the window. And I start looking very closely thinking, okay, what could conceivably even be the concession that they're getting out of this?

The only thing I could find was permission for Israeli commercial flights to fly over Saudi Arabia. That's it. That's the only thing that I could find. And why is that in the United States' interest? Like, I don't think that's a concession that the U.S. government. Yeah. I mean, like, it's not like we're not getting anything out of this. And we're not an agent for a third country to go promote their interests.

Like, I think one would expect that the president of the United States will put the U.S. interests first. And we've been asking the same question. We have our moral arguments and ethical arguments about why, as the organization that was founded by the late Jamal Khashoggi, why President Biden should not engage with MBS or with the Saudi government. But we also have the real political argument of what are you getting out of this relationship? That's what struck me in researching all this is initially I thought it was something, you know, I thought it was primarily a human rights thing, but that's absolutely not true. At first glance, you could see, okay, a very oil-rich dictatorship, you know, the kind of supposition here is, okay, well, you've got to make deals with them in order to get that oil.

But oil production has been not sufficient to the needs, particularly after the war with Russia in which they've been sanctioned and their oil is taken off the market. Gas prices are through the roof right now, and that's having very serious effects, not just with respect to filling up your car, but oil is factored into everything that we buy, because that determines the price of international shipping. That's how things are manufactured. So, you know, politically, this is putting Biden in a very difficult position. I would imagine that that factors into his low approval rating. And again, none of that has changed. Those rates of production haven't changed. There hasn't been any plans. I mean, Saudi hasn't made any statements

saying we're going to try to ramp up production in the medium term even. There doesn't seem. So that sort of assumption that, oh, yeah, you got to look the other way, oil. I just haven't seen that to carry any water. That's right. And, I mean, there is a point that you touched on earlier regarding U.S. citizens in the region. Yeah, talk about that a bit. And the US prisoners in Saudi jails, did Biden bring that up or was he able to get them released?

He did not. And before his visit, there were multiple letters sent by family members and human rights organizations asking the Biden administration to bring up issues pertaining to U.S. citizens. And, you know, this is like a no-brainer. You would think that a U.S. citizen... An American citizen. Our government is supposed to... Our government will actually say something about them. So in Israel, there was a recent killing of a Palestinian-American journalist. Very famous journalist.

Very famous journalist, Shireen Abu Akhla. She was killed by Israel with absolutely no accountability. There were calls for the president to at least mention her name or meet with her family while he's there. Nothing. Not a single, even like empty gesture of calling for accountability for a U.S. citizen. Yeah. Or requesting an investigation into how U.S. weapons might have contributed to this violation. Nothing. That's the other thing I want to talk about is how much leverage we have over our country.

That's right. Because people love to say things like, you know, they've got us over a barrel. What can we do about the oil? They don't have much in the way of an indigenous military. They depend on us for not just the weapon systems, but the maintenance of those systems. People don't understand how complex having an F-16 is and, you is and changing parts, teaching them how to use software, things like that. We have so much leverage over a country like this. We do.

And that's also one of the questions that is put out there as a deflection point. What about Iran? What about Hamas? What about... We don't sell Iran hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons. It's an enemy. We don't give Hamas billions of dollars of military aid every year. We have actual leverage over Israel and Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Egypt because we give them billions of dollars of tax dollars money every year. We sell them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons.

And you were saying it's not like weapons are not like vegetables. It's not like they can just go buy a Chinese jet fighter instead of an F-16. The U.S. is the best at this stuff. Not only that like once you have a system you're stuck with it like you need like a generation to switch. I was talking to an intelligence officer and I asked him I said you know all this fear mongering that you see from the think tanks that I was mentioning before saying oh if we don't give the Saudis whatever we want who knows maybe they could turn to the Chinese or we'll drive them into the arms of the Russians. I asked this guy who knows a lot about weapon systems and had worked in the region for a number of years, I said, how long would it take to switch systems? And he said, there's actually

been intelligence assessments on this, which hold that it would take at least a decade. And in a regime like that, deeply unpopular, corrupt, you know, hated by many in the region, illegitimate, it's a literal monarchy. I have to say that they're probably going to be concerned about having the military equipment that they need to be able to stay in power because they're not in power by the consent of the governed. It's not like they're popular. That's right. So your point stands that we do have, as a country, we have huge amounts of leverage over these countries, and we're not using it.

So the other demand from families of US citizens was to speak up about US citizens who are imprisoned in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia. Not a single word. Not a meeting with civil society organizations, not a demand, not even an empty gesture regarding these kinds of issues. And honestly, even regardless of the human rights violations and that angle, using that as an important political pressure point would have been more productive for the president. So that's why I was saying it's the worst of both worlds because he didn't do the right things for the right reasons, but he didn't do the right things for the wrong reasons either.

It's crazy because when you look at the kind of leverage that we have in the form of the armed support that we sell them, this is in the hundreds of billions, like huge sums of money. What's wonderful about that is unlike with our other adversaries

like Iran or China, we don't have to risk going to war with them. All you have to do is, you don't even really have to do something in a positive sense. You just have to stop that flow, just suspend it for a little while. And that would send a clear message.

The US has done that to countries in the past. And what's wonderful about that is it's such a conservative solution that doesn't put us on the hook for, you know, open-ended wars or occupations. Just stop even just some of the support and that would send a clear message to the people in Riyadh I think yeah that's 100% right and like I think many of our organizations in DC have been

saying the same which is you don't have to use a sledgehammer policy with aid like you can suspend parts of aid to Egypt or to Israel or make some conditions. Even just, we're not even getting the symbolic. Not even the symbolic, not even like, not even like 1%, you know, like not even like a symbolic message that we do have control over our resources. We do have control over aid, not even symbolically. So we're stuck in this complete blank check autopilot policies. And countries like Israel or Saudi Arabia, they don't even worry about the flow of arms

and the flow of weapons because it's just on autopilot. Right, so can you speak to, you're a modest guy, you won't admit this, but you're very well connected on the Hill and in Washington, you know a lot of officials. Do you have a sense of why is this? Because we're looking at it and is it just the strength of these, you know, foreign lobby groups and the think tanks and everything? Because there has to be something

Biden is getting out of this, even just for himself. Why do you think this persists, this state of affairs? I mean, I don't think there is one answer to that question. It's a very complex question. It's a question, the real question is, why is there a status quo force in Washington, D.C.? Whether it's Biden or Trump or Obama or Bush, like we saw some of these policies be identical. And whatever the president said before they came to office, during or after. I should remind everyone, Biden said that he was going to make Saudi Arabia a, quote, pariah. That's right. Which is a word that doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation.

That's right. It's pretty strong language, you know. That's right. And then you end up looking at the policy, and it's remarkably similar to, you know, not just Trump, but every predecessor there's been. Yeah, I mean, like, it's sort of like an all the above approach for keeping the status quo in DC. You have very powerful lobbyists for the military industrial complex, special interests.

Saudi Arabia pumps hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying for every administration. There are special interest groups in DC. There are election politics and congressional corruption. It all works together. Like one example that I always give to outsiders of DC just to explain how complicated it is to change the status quo is that there's this very small airplane like A-10 that the Pentagon wanted to cut out. So the Pentagon itself, the DOD said, we don't really need this airplane anymore. And Congress said, yeah, if the Pentagon doesn't need it, let's cut it out. Then the military industrial complex pushes so hard, this airplane, which is as big as a bus, it's very, very small,

it's manufactured in all 50 states. There you go. So it's like one state makes the door, one you go. So then one state makes the door, one state makes the wheel, one state makes the engine. So you get phone calls from all 50 states to senator offices freaking out about jobs, freaking out about like a change of policies. And then you keep an airplane that the Pentagon doesn't need, that Congress doesn't want to push, that we're paying for. So this is like a very tiny example that actually, like no one is going out there fighting against the A-10, you know?

The Pentagon doesn't need it, you know? It's just like a very non-controversial issue. You just see inertia of this system that they've set up and the Saudis have a very aggressive lobbying process. Imagine like how it works for Saudi Arabia or Israel. Like Saudi Arabia and Israel have like just infinite money. Have amazing amounts of influence and power in D.C. Imagine the power that they

can put, the push on Congress and on the administration and the State Department to keep the status quo. It's really very, very difficult to change. Okay, well, Raid, I really want to thank you for joining us, and thanks to our viewers for joining us for the Breaking Points Intercept Edition. All right, y'all.

So Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs Magazine wrote an article, and it's about John Fetterman. Now, John Fetterman is running against Dr. Oz. It's for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. And he's been very effective, let's say. And my evidence for that is he's up in all the polls. Now, that's impressive, especially because there is a, well, whenever the White House, whenever the White House is won by one party in the next midterm election, the other party usually has a wave. And in recent history, that's accurate. Now, I don't think it's a law of nature. I don't think it is perfectly cyclical.

I think if you govern effectively, then you can break that streak. But recently, since neither party really serves the will of the American people, that has happened. So Fetterman is one of the only Democrats who's up, and he's running a very interesting and different campaign. So Nathan J. Robinson is a leftist writer, Current Affairs Magazine, and here's what he says. John Fetterman should ditch the extremely online messaging. Hmm, okay. So let's read some of his argument before, you know, I say anything on the topic. Relentlessly trolling Dr. Oz on Twitter is funny, but we desperately need a campaign with a strong, clear, progressive agenda. One of Bernie Sanders' best qualities is that he is laser-focused on the issues

that matter most to everyday people. You cannot get Bernie off-topic. He does not want to talk about himself he even resisted criticizing his opponents bernie is the most on message politician in american public life hammering relentlessly on the need for adequate health care tackling the climate catastrophe and raising the minimum wage ben burgess and i recently analyzed the debate that bernie did with lindsey graham in which bernie cleaned graham's clock in large part because bernie focused on exposing exposing how Republicans do not care about the needs of working people.

So I broke that down as well. I broke that debate down as well. And I agree with their assessment that Bernie obliterated Lindsey Graham. And of course, obviously, needless to say, I'm a huge Bernie supporter. This is an important source of Bernie's appeal. People get the sense that he is not in politics because he enjoys it. He does not seem to enjoy it, but because he is devoted to improving the lives of others. John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate for this year's Pennsylvania Senate election. He was, it's a U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania. He was a Bernie supporter, and so Democratic centrists disliked him at first, but Fetterman trounced the boring centrist he ran

against in the primary. Now that Fetterman is critical to Democrats retaining control of the Senate, the party is funneling money into his race. I like John Fetterman a lot and have high hopes for him. He speaks movingly about the work he did improving the economic health of down-and-out Braddock, Pennsylvania when he served as its mayor. Fetterman seems to genuinely care about his city. Pete Buttigieg, on the other hand, seemed to very obviously be using his position as mayor as a springboard to higher office. Fetterman is currently recovering from a stroke and has had to campaign mostly online. He has certainly embraced the online aspect of campaigning, using Twitter to relentlessly troll his opponent, celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz. Most of Fetterman's barbs attempt to paint Dr. Oz as a carpetbagger who had not spent much time in

Pennsylvania before running for Senate there. A Fetterman ad shows images of Dr. Oz's New Jersey mansion of a video of him kissing his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and says he's not one of us. Fetterman has put a great deal of effort into pursuing his line of attack, going so far as to get Jersey Shore's Snooki to record a message to Dr. Oz. Previously to troll Oz, Fetterman hired a plane to fly a banner over New Jersey welcoming Oz home. Is that what campaign dollars are going toward? Fetterman's latest stunt is starting a petition to get Dr. Oz

inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Fetterman's tactics have certainly attracted press coverage. The New York Times notes his towel-snapping virtual campaign of sassy online memes, and the Daily Beast asks, could John Fetterman shitpost his way to the Senate? I'll be honest, I think all of this is stupid and morally frivolous, and I wish John Fetterman would not do it. Even if it turns out that in 2022 you can shitpost your way to the Senate, you shouldn't. A progressive Senate

candidate should force a discussion on things that matter, not get the media talking about how sick his Twitter burns are. I also think Fetterman is taking a big risk here by assuming that Pennsylvania voters can actually be influenced by memes. D. Ray McKesson found out the hard way that being big on Twitter doesn't translate into electoral success when he badly lost Baltimore's Democratic primary election for mayor. OK, let's pause here. Here's the thing, Nathan. Fetterman is up in all the polls right now. So, is it possible Fetterman loses? Absolutely.

In fact, I would put it 60-40 that Fetterman does lose. I think Dr. Oz has a better chance in this election, namely because it appears to be a Republican wave election year. Now, having said that, Fetterman, I think, is putting up the best fight he possibly can. And I think it's a little glib to compare Fetterman to D. Ray McKesson. As far as I know, D. Ray McKesson has had no electoral success. John Fetterman has already had electoral success. Now, beyond that, the argument that this is just, well, it's just memes and it's just

online trolling and shitposting, don't agree. And here's the reason I don't agree. The heart of the message from John Fetterman is not just that Dr. Oz is a carpetbagger, which is accurate, by the way. It's an accurate attack. He is that. He's from New Jersey. But it's also that he's an out-of-touch elitist who's not going to represent working people. The line of attack is not just, hey man, you're from New Jersey. It's, you're from New Jersey, you are mega wealthy, you live in a mansion, you're out of touch, and I am a Pennsylvanian and I represent hard-working Pennsylvanians. That's the line of attack.

It's a mischaracterization to say it's just extremely online trolling. It's in part trolling, but at the heart of it is an accurate argument. Now, by the way, I've admitted this before. If I was advising John Fetterman, I wouldn't have said go with a carpetbagger argument, but now watching him do it and seeing how effective it is in terms of the results, I say, oh, that was actually a brilliant argument because it works. People in Pennsylvania, regardless of their political affiliation, can understand and acknowledge the objective reality that Dr. Oz is just trying to buy a Senate seat from there. He's not from there. He's out of state. And again, he's elitist. He's ultra wealthy.

He's not going to represent the interests of working class people. And John Fetterman will do so much better than Dr. Oswald. And so I don't look, there's this strain of lefties who are like anti-fun. Like, okay, yeah, Fetterman can go up there and give a speech or post a 20,000-word essay, as Nathan J. Robinson likes to do oftentimes, and do a dry dissertation on the marginal tax rates. That's not going to work. That's not going to work. Now, I'm not out here saying, hey, don't discuss policy shit. I think you should mostly focus on policy shit. But I also think if you can troll and meme and shitpost and it's substantive

as well and it works, well, that's a win all around. Look, I find it supremely ironic that he compares Fetterman to Bernie Sanders and is like, Fetterman should be more like Bernie Sanders. That's the implication. Bernie Sanders lost, dippy. So it's time to

improve upon what Bernie did. Yes, focusing on policy is central and important, and the main thing when you're talking about politics, because we want to improve people's lives. But in the process of doing that, you should be having fun. You should be attracting people. And turns out, if you have fun, and you joke around, and you meme, and you troll, it's attractive

to people now that's not my opinion nathan that's borne out in the polls now ultimately john federman might lose okay and at that point nathan j robinson might turn around and say see it's because of all the trolling and the online shit posting uh know, I would look at that and say the national mood and the fact that it's a wave election doomed him despite the fact that he ran a phenomenal campaign. That's how I would look at it. I just want lefties

lighten up a little bit and have some fun. It's okay to have fun. It's okay to be relatable. What Fetterman is doing here is massively relatable. Not just to the online left, because if it was just to the online left, he'd be down by 25 points, and he's not. And he's not, Nathan. So it's just funny. You make this argument when he's up in the polls, wait till he's down, and there might come a time when he's

down again. It's a red wave election year. But he makes the argument now, because he can't help himself. This reminds me of the article he wrote about Chris L argument now, because he can't help himself. This reminds me of the article he wrote about Crystal and Sager, which is very, very critical. And there are absolutely criticisms of Sager. I disagree with Sager. He's, you know, on the right, or I don't know, now he might consider himself an enlightened centrist or whatever.

That's fine. But, like, you don't need to drag down Crystal to disagree with Sager. And he did that. And now we have an effective left campaign or relatively left campaign. And Nathan J. Robinson is like, I don't like this. You should do dry dissertations

where you talk about marginal tax rates and bore people. How can you look at something that's working and that's fun and is still substantive at the heart of it because it's not just that he's a carpetbagger at Dr. Oz, it's also that he's elitist and out of touch and not representing working people, and you disagree with it?

I don't get it. I don't get it. One of the core problems with Fetterman's approach is that it assumes voters care more about whether Dr. Oz is from New Jersey than they do about minimum wage growth. Now, that's not fair. That is not fair. It's not like Fetterman doesn't talk about policy.

He, of course, talks about policy. But he's also charismatic and entertaining. And you're focusing on the charisma and the entertaining stuff and besmirching it while pretending like he's not talking about policy. Grocery prices, healthcare costs, or gun violence. Personally, I don't actually think the carpetbagger point is that compelling. Well, look, here's the thing, Nathan. I agree with you, which is why I said, if I was running Fetterman's campaign, I'd tell him, don't go think the carpetbagger point is that compelling. Well, look, here's the thing, Nathan. I agree with you, which is why I said if I was running Fetterman's campaign, I'd tell him, don't go with the carpetbagger thing.

It's not that substantive. But now having watched him do it and looking at the results, I was wrong. I was wrong. Fetterman was right. It works. It works. works because it turns out sometimes people are a little silly and they think like well if you're from out of state you can't possibly care about the people in state or you know somehow your ideas are less relevant now and your policies are less relevant now because you're not one of

us i think that's sort of weak too but people don't think it's weak people respond to it there's something visceral and innate about it. You know, there's something compelling about that of like, I'm one of you. He's not. Because if a candidate had good politics but was from out of state, I'd vote for them in a heartbeat over someone who had terrible politics but deep local roots. And that's why, Nathan, that's why I agree with you on that point. That's why I agree with you that it's not a persuasive argument to me. But there are times when I feel something and most people don't agree with me. And the same is true of you. Because yes,

if I saw a candidate, if there was a left candidate who I loved, who was from out of state, I'd vote for them over, you know, a New Yorker who was in state. A New Yorker who had bad politics or worse politics, but was in state. So I agree with you on the substance of that criticism, but it's also possible for something to not appeal to me and Nathan J. Robinson that appeals to the average voter, and that thing works, and that's what's happening. Fetterman is appealing to an emotional sense of Pennsylvania pride in the state's suspicion of Jerseyites. Oh, God, Nathan. It's fair to say you want candidates who actually know your state well and that there is an arrogance to rich people who simply assume they can represent any state they like. Witness Nick Kristof's entitled delusion that he could run for governor of Oregon

because he was an important man who'd enjoy the job. But ultimately, what is wrong with Dr. Oz is his horrible reactionary politics. Yes, and that is also being highlighted. That's also being highlighted by Fetterman. Oz's campaign platform includes responding to the global Chinese threat, Jesus, being a dear ally to Israel, cracking down on unauthorized immigrants, escalating fossil fuel production, pushing back on cancel culture, stopping abortion, preventing gun control, giving control of elections to the states, and giving police a powerful voice in Washington. He is running as a hard right Republican and needs to be kept out of the Senate because of what he will do to the country. Fetterman made good ads a few months back about unions, climate justice, health care, minimum wage. As a hard right Republican. And needs to be kept out of the Senate. Because of what he will do to the country. Fetterman made good ads a few months back.

About unions, climate justice, health care, minimum wage. Wait, wait, wait. You're destroying your own argument here, Nathan. You are. You're saying, well, now look. Fetterman has been substantive. So then why are you writing this article? Why are you writing this article?

It's like when he wrote the thing about Crystal and Sager. And was like, now I like Crystal. But then you go on to say, like, here's all the reasons why you shouldn't be sitting next to this article. It's like when he wrote the thing about Crystal and Sagar. And I was like, now I like Crystal. But then you go on to say, like, here's all the reasons why you shouldn't be sitting next to this guy. I don't know what you're doing, man. I don't know what you're doing. Look. It's a tough line to walk, right? And we've talked about this a number of times on the show. And I've talked about it in interviews.

When you're on the left, part of you wants to be like, I am the truth teller. And I'm going to keep it real to everybody. People who are not in my camp, people who are in my camp, people who are my closest allies, I'm going to keep it real, and I'm going to call people out when they're wrong, and I'm going to be the sole voice of reason. That's one instinct people have. The other instinct people have is, we need to have solidarity, which kind of flies at odds, and it flies in the face of the idea of like, I'm going to call everybody and everything out. Because solidarity is, you sort of let bygones be bygones,

where there's minor disagreements, sweep it under the rug, no big deal, and you move forward together. Nathan J. Robinson has clearly fallen on the side of, no, I'm going to be the one true voice of reason, and I will critique people, other leftists or nominal leftists, even in an instance where it's strategically dumb. Like, why would you not write an article talking about the effectiveness of Fetterman's campaign

and how other leftists should copy it because it is empirically, objectively working? If you have the right ideas, if you have the right policy beliefs, and you can marry that with a fun edginess that appeals to people. Why would you not support that? It's unbelievable. Anyway, Federer made a few good ads a few months back about unions, climate change, healthcare, minimum wage. But now I keep seeing headlines about his memes and trolling.

Most of this is focused on Oz's residency rather than his scary agenda or his background as a snake oil salesman. In fact, the far more devastating criticism of Dr. Oz is that he is a quack who got rich peddling false hope to sick people. Yeah, that's one of them. But what Fenneman is doing right now is working. So he can add this to the repertoire, but I would definitely not say stop what you're doing because what he's doing is working. You're saying stop what you're doing here and focus on this thing that I just made up and I will pretend like I know that this thing is going to land even better than what you're doing now. Nathan, you don't know. You don't know. Give credit where it's due. The proof is in the pudding. There is at least one well-made anti-odds ad that hits this theme hard. So you're saying he did that?

I can't. I can't. Although it is also going after him for illegally employing undocumented workers. Hypocrisy, of course, but not terribly compelling. That's going to be compelling to Pennsylvania voters. And again, the numbers show it. And it doesn't emphasize enough the harm caused by his prescription of useless miracle cures. Look, Nathan, I like Nathan. I got nothing against Nathan. Him and I, in terms of our politics, we're probably 90% in agreement.

But man, he's a micromanager. He's a micromanager. He's trying to micromanage this campaign into oblivion. Now, there are legitimate criticisms of Fetterman that his extraordinarily successful and cool campaign is not working is not one of them because it is working. As I say, maybe John Fetterman's memes about Dr. Oz residency will be compelling to Pennsylvania voters. He's leading the polls at the moment. Why are you writing this article?

But Democrats who want voters to come out for them really ought to emphasize their agenda rather than just mocking their opponent. Again, I don't know why he's we're going to we're going to stop reading this now. You're setting up a false dichotomy. This is a massive false dichotomy. You can do both. That's what I try to do on this show. I talk about the the issues. I talk about the policies.

I talk about the things that I think would help fix the country. But we also laugh and joke and have a good time. And we're silly and we're stupid and we're funny and we're edgy and we just try to have fun with it. Nathan wants to like get rid of the silly, fun, edgy, you know, that side of it and just, just be serious and just talk about the agenda. Again, I love Bernie, but, and in 2016, I think it was basically stolen from him. And the WikiLeaks email sort of proved that, right? But in 2020, homeboy lost. He lost. And he had...

He made a number of mistakes. And instead of looking at that Bernie campaign and saying, well, how do we improve upon it? Nathan J. Robinson's like, no, that's the only way to run. Because I, Nathan J. Robinson, say so. But if you see something that is in the same spirit, but it's fun and edgy and online, etc., and it's working,

why can't you just be like, oh, cool. Well, I said we'd stop reading. I'll just give a little more. What will you do in the Senate? I want to see progressive candidates get beyond the Economic Bill of Rights. I'd love that.

I want them to show that they're not going to be do-nothing Democrats who think their job is finished when they beat the Republican. It worries me that a Fetterman ad that popped up for me on YouTube was all about how I should donate to help flip the seat blue, not about what John Fetterman would actually do as a senator. Issues went unmentioned.

But he hasn't not talked about issues, Nathan. Look, are there criticisms of Fetterman? Absolutely. The Vanguard guys pointed out. He's terrible on Israel. Criticize him all day long about that, and I'd be agreeing with you nathan j robinson um but this ain't it this ain't it the best criticism of fetterman that i can think of is it was very suspicious to me that um the democratic establishment laid down their weapons against Fetterman. So Fetterman beat who was it?

Conor Lamb, some way worse centrist. And I guess Fetterman met with the Democratic establishment and assured them in one way or another. You ain't got nothing to worry about. I'm with you. That concerns me more than his effective campaign that's working. That concerns me more. So in all seriousness, if Fetterman wins, which is a question mark, we don't know if he's going to win, what I would fear is, yes, he gets to the Senate,

and he becomes a very milquetoast Democrat. You know? He's not in the vein of a Bernie Sanders, and he's more in the vein of, I don't know, I don't want to say a Chuck Schumer, because that's really bad, but maybe he is, right? That's what worries me about him, and there are some signs that maybe that'll happen. But as of this moment right now, the heart of the criticism from Nathan against Fetterman is, stop your extremely online trolling. I don't like that. I don't like your campaign. And that's just not good criticism.

Because it's possible he ends up like Bernie. He supported Bernie, right? And if he ends up like Bernie and he got the power by being edgy and online and trolling while also talking about issues, that's a win. And that's something we should mimic in the future with other left candidates. Not be smirch and poo-poo and put down. So, anyway, I'm not going to keep going here with this article,

but you guys get the gist of it. It's not even this article, but you guys get the gist of it. It's not even that much longer. You guys get the gist of it. Immature mudslinging. He should stop. Ironically, and there's a good note to end this on, I sincerely believe the immature mudslinging is coming from Nathan J. Robinson against Fetterman. That's what I think. Again, you want to criticize him on policy?

I'm with you. In fact, I'm certain that every policy criticism Nathan would have of Fetterman, I almost certainly agree with Robinson and not Fetterman. I think that's all fair game. But the micromanaging and nitpicking strategy and saying it's bad when it's objectively working, that's just dumb. So you're the immature mudslinger right now, Nathan, and you should stop. I sincerely believe you're better than this. While I was gone on vacation, Joe Rogan was a busy man.

He was a busy man. So he's been all over the map recently. He endorsed or came out in support of Ron DeSantis. David Dole did a segment where it was, funny enough, it was in a podcast from either the same week as this one or maybe it was a week apart, but Rogan was talking to Tom Segura and he called

Canada a communist country. So he's sort of, he's been all over the place. He's done a bunch of terrible things. And then we also have this, where somebody clipped this out. Here he is talking to Andrew Schultz, who, by the way, is supposed to be on Crystal Kylan Friends very shortly. I need to confirm that, but we were talking to him the other week.

Anyway, him and Schultz, Rogan and Schultz were, politics came up, and we got this moment. That's why we hate someone like Trump, because Trump believes he should be president, and he wants to be president. Yes, and there's something a little icky about it. Get him out of here. Dude, and I think that was so endearing about Bernie.

It was like, this motherfucker don't want to win. He wants to help. Now, is... Props to Andrew Schultz. I did not know. I had no idea that Schultz was, at the very least, Bernie adjacent. I didn't know that. But clearly, at the very least, he's Bernie adjacent.

If not, you know, would actively vote for Bernie. So props to Andrew Schultz there. His idea of help, do you agree with it? That's to be said by the average person. But did you feel like he cared about winning and controlling no i never got that sense no i got a sense that he genuinely looks out for the working class he genuinely look this i mean i hate to relitigate all the way back in 2016 yet again but this is why the whole hashtag bernie would have won thing blew up because people had the intuitive sense like yeah he probably would have beaten Trump. People looked at Hillary Clinton and they thought, you know, conniving, backstabbing, terrible record on all the policies, deeply corrupt.

I mean, there was an article, what was it, in Politico that said like the Clintons had taken, I forget the exact number, a billion, three billion dollars from donors in their entire careers together. People look at Hillary and they're like, I don't trust her. And I don't think she's looking out for us. Whereas people looked at Bernie, and they thought, just like these guys are describing here, ultimately he just wants to do good and help people. He reluctantly even ran in the first place. There were articles way back in the day, he was trying to get Elizabeth Warren to run so he wouldn't have to run. This isn't a guy who's thirsting for power like they're accurately pointing out Donald Trump does

on a regular basis. He wants to help people. That's why I said that I supported him. 100%. And when he was explaining how his situation works with taxes, that they would just tax a small percentage of speculation, of stock trading, just a tiny percentage of all these trades

that are happening constantly, and that that money could go to education, that money could can go to welfare that money can go to all these different things that would use to benefit society i was like i'm in that sounds good is that real what else you're trying to do you're trying to avoid war that sounds cool what else you're trying to do trying to like eliminate student debt hey what else what about health care free health care i'm in and he's a radical and he's a radical that's why we hate someone like Trump. I mean, Rogan's been all over the place recently. In a sense, he sort of represents your normie American voter. Because he went from Bernie now to DeSantis.

But at the same time, he's liking DeSantis. He's still singing Bernie's praises. I mean, that's... I don't know how one can do that. Because, again, it's like, if you're prioritizing the policy stuff, then you have to drop DeSantis. Because, you know, Rogan supports a higher minimum wage. Ron DeSantis is against it.

Rogan supports legalizing weed federally. Ron DeSantis is against it. You know, we did the whole breakdown of Ron DeSantis' record. He's a deeply corrupt guy. Deeply corrupt. I mean, he shifted the tax burden away from corporations in Florida to working class people. Rogan's for lower taxes on working class people. So he should be against that.

So, I mean, look, there's just... In a sense, he seems confused. But clearly he still genuinely likes Bernieernie sanders and you know this conversation that they're having i think is spot on and i think andrew schultz is correct as well and clearly he's at the very least bernie curious or bernie adjacent but this is you know man gotta gotta get him back from that edge of of the desantis trap because desantis substantively you know i understand if you if you vote or think about politics based on like vibes like who do i feel like is the most normal or the most relatable

then you could see somebody going from wildly different ideological camp to ideological camp but nobody should think about politics that way you have to think about it in terms of policy and um what are people actually going to implement what are they going to fight for what what legislation that that's really all that matters at the end of the day um so now we also have and this is on david packman's channel here i'm going to speed it up to 1.25 joe rogan calls trump a drugged out man baby now this funny enough again this is in the same podcast that he had with uh tom segura now it's the segura podcast where where um joe rogan called canada communist but he's also going to say this in this podcast by the way he also went on like

five seconds after saying canada's communist he's like i don't really know what goes on in that country politically well then maybe you know calling them communist communist is not a good idea if you don't know what's going on there substantively. Anyway, let's see what he says here. He used this sort of like turning on Donald Trump. Rogan now acknowledged that he believes Donald Trump was regularly on. Some people think the reason why Rogan is going after Trump now is because he supports Ron DeSantis. I definitely don't think that's why he's going after Trump now,

because honestly, he's gone after Trump a lot in the past. People just never talked about it, didn't recognize it. He had Sam Harris on, where Sam Harris shit on Trump for like two hours straight, and Rogan was sitting there agreeing with him. You know? I knew, going back a year or more, Trump was trying to get on Rogan's podcast, and Rogan was like, I want to do it

because I don't want to help him even inadvertently. So it's not that he's going after Trump now because he supports DeSantis. It's that people are just recognizing now that he goes after Trump because everybody just assumed he was a Trump supporter because of the stuff he had said on COVID and probably some other stuff as well.

Uppers during his presidency and called him a man baby during a recent show. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, which I will tell you. Daily Beast reporting Joe Rogan calls Trump a drugged out man baby. The mega popular podcaster laughed at Trump's inability to focus on anything but himself in his latest episode. Trump and Rogan now and I guess what we would call a feud and Rogan suggesting that Trump's energy comes from Adderall called him a man. Again, it's funny to me that this is news now because I've been on Rogan's podcast four times. And I think in at least two of those podcasts, we talked about how Trump is probably high as

fuck on Adderall 24 seven. Baby, this was during a conversation with comedian and frequent guest Tom Segura. Let's take a look at this and frequent guest tom segura let's take a look at this and i'll tell you why it's interesting in a moment tom segura is really funny by the way i think his stand-up is good i think his podcast is oftentimes really good well about that guy is that you know i'm saying even when you when you watch him as president he was full of energy full of it every day and they said he slept like four hours a night one of those people god you think he's on adderall by the way way, I don't know, the whole I sleep four hours a night thing, super sleepers,

as they're called, are real, where some people can perform well even with a lot less sleep than your average person. That's real. But, you know, you do hear these stories

about like all these high profile, you know, leader type men who, I'm pro, I only sleep like a couple hours a night. Sleep is the cousin of death, bro.

That's something I heard when I was like in high school. I think it was really stupid. And I don't know if know if i buy i think it's also a little bit of myth building certain people like to pretend like i get by i'm like no sleep because i'm a badass but i think that a lot of that is like posturing and fake in terms of trump i have no idea if it's real or fake i could see it going either way to be honest yes i do only because there were multiple people who used to work on the apprentice that were that were like, he was f***ing gassed up for shoots. Yeah, I covered that as well.

There were a number of people on The Apprentice who were like, we, I think some even said they saw him snort Adderall. Snort it. And by the way, that would make sense. What debate, I think it was the second debate with Hillary. The one where they were standing after the scandal came out with grabbing by the pussy. Where Trump keeps doing the, like he would talk and then sniff. That's the drip. That's the, if you've snort cocaine or you snort Adderall, that's the drip that you get.

So, and again, yeah, his energy. And there are times where you could tell he was crashing from his Adderall. He gave a speech one year at CPAC, or no, was it the UN or CPAC? I don't remember. No, the CPAC one, he was bonkers and through the roof and clearly high as balls. But then the UN one, he was like, and I would say to the people who want to bring about peace in the region. So you've seen you've seen both. You've seen him on the way up.

You've seen him on the way down. Yeah, because he has trouble reading. He doesn't he he he would struggle to read prompter or script when he was... We know that's true because we just watched him do it. He was like, the word yesterday is tough for me. I don't know. Take that one out. It might be overstated. Like, he knows how to read. He knows how to read. But it's very...

He's idiosyncratic with it. He doesn't like certain words to be on there, and he does struggle to get it out coherently. But hey, look, I understand that because I'm the same i don't like reading a proctor i like to shoot from the hip talk off the cuff and that's more engaging by the way when you just talk off the cuff people want to listen to you when you're clearly speaking from the heart if you're reading it it's easy to tune out just uh let's say sober uh-huh so they would give him that and he would dial in more on reading because he gets he gets very bored they said said. He would get bored at the CIA briefing in the mornings.

He's like, I don't want to read that. There's a daily briefing you get as president. He's like, you f***ing read it and then tell me. So they would have to make it more engaging for him because he would just tap out. I heard they would put his name in briefings multiple times to keep him interested. And then Kushner, his son-in-law, said that he came up with a formula to keep him engaged. This is called the bad news sandwich. It's often done in a lot of venues.

Kushner did? Yes, because he obviously was close to him and knew him well. And the formula was two good, one bad. So if they were going to give him bad news, they could go, you start with some good news. So they go, this is going well. Everybody's thrilled with you about this. Here's a bad thing. Also, people love you for this. So that's how they would tell him bad news. They couldn't just go, here's a bad thing also people love you for

this so that's how that's how they would tell him bad news they couldn't just go here's a bunch of bad of course yeah he's a man baby he's a toddler yeah he's a toddler so there's two things here and i think that they're both important yeah all right we don't need to dive into uh pacman's commentary not as a diss to him but you know i just just wanted to show that portion of the video there of Segura and Rogan. Yeah, so Rogan is, I mean, it's classic Rogan, right? It's very, I think this, but then I also think this. And are those things contradictory? Eh, maybe, but, you know, this is what I think in this moment, this is what I think in that moment. And that's, you know, people have pointed this out a number of times.

He has Ben Shapiro on and he agrees with him like 90% of the time. He has me on and he agrees with me 90% of the time. It's just the nature of what it is. But anyway, all you could do is keep, you know, saying, hey man, on this stuff you're wrong and I disagree with you massively, but on this stuff, yeah, fair point. So, hey, look, I'm happy to see that at least he still likes Bernie Sanders, defends Bernie Sanders, openly says, oh, free college. I like that. Oh, eliminating student loan debt. I like that. Oh,

taxing Wall Street speculation. I like that. That's all good. I would just, again, I would implore him for the love of God, Joe. That means you cannot believe those things and then also say, oh, and Ron DeSantis is based. Can't do it because Ron DeSantis stands for the opposite of every single thing you just espoused. But who knows if it's actually going to happen or not? We'll get into that here. Let's just start with the obvious. Why is Speaker Pelosi's prospective trip to Taiwan so controversial? Well, it shouldn't be controversial. The basic point that she's making is that the Chinese Communist Party shouldn't be able to tell Americans when and where they can go places. Seems like a pretty basic point. There's no like, how dare they? What right do they have to tell Nancy Pelosi or anyone else that they can go to Taiwan whenever or they can't whenever they

want to threaten punishment in a crisis? It just shows that the Chinese Communist Party is just getting more aggressive and more reckless and more threatening and more expansionist. And, you know, that should shock a lot of people. Now, the reason it's controversial here in Washington is because President United States blurted out on the tarmac that he didn't like it, you know, and he revealed what had been going on internally between the Biden White House and the Pelosi team for several weeks, which was their long, quiet diplomacy that could impress upon Nancy Pelosi that it was just too risky of a time for a host of reasons that the intelligence showed that, you know, this could spark a crisis. The Chinese were taking it as an escalation, rightly or wrongly, and that the Biden administration, the military were the ones

who are going to have to deal with that. But she was just not convinced. She just didn't care for her. This is her legacy. You know, she's not going to be speaker much longer. She's not going to be in Congress much longer if she wants to go to Taiwan as speaker of the House, this is it, basically. So that's a risk that she's willing to take. It's just not a risk that the White House is willing to take. And there's the rub. Can you speak to the history of U.S. elected officials engaging with Taiwan? So, for example, like President Trump very controversially called the Taiwanese like after he he was elected, the CCP did not like that. Just speak to the history there. I know speaker pre-speaker Gingrich visited Taiwan. What's the history there? Right. Well, you know, congressional delegations have been going to Taiwan for decades.

And there's a typical playbook, the Chinese Communist Party bitches and moans. And then, you know, they back down and everyone goes on with their lives. Now, you know, yes, Speaker Gingrich was the first and so far the only House speaker to go. But at that time he was in the opposition. And so it couldn't really be seen as a U.S. government action per se, rightly or wrongly. And the difference now with Speaker Pelosi is that the Chinese can't understand. They really don't believe us when we say that, like the president of the United States can't tell his speaker from his own party not to do something he doesn't want him to. She doesn't he doesn't want her to do. They don't get that in their system. If you defy the president,

you die. You go to jail. Your your whole family is done forever. So they look at that and they're like, oh, the Biden White House must be screwing with us. And from Pelosi's perspective, it's just like, oh, no, this is a thing that we should be able to do. And she's got sort of an instinct to defend the prerogative of the legislative branch and all of that. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's going to be the administration who has to deal with the crisis if the Chinese do do something reckless. Because what's changed, I mean, the direct answer to your question is what's different now is that the CCP is much, much worse. And there are people inside that leadership who would love a crisis. And by the way, their punishment wouldn't necessarily come down on us. It's not really about them shooting Nancy Pelosi out of the sky. It's about them punishing Taiwan because they always go after the weaker party.

And that could be a range of military and economic pressures that the Taiwanese are going to have to deal with through no fault of their own. So I think there is legitimate risk here. And there is a discussion to be have over cost and benefits. But if you're Nancy Pelosi, you're thinking, well, I want to be in my, you know, I envision myself as some sort of like leader on US China relations. And that means I have to show up in Taiwan, it's gonna be so important, then none of those calculations are going to stop her. Yeah, this is so interesting because a million different questions come up. So I read your piece, we'll link to it in the show notes, obviously, but you asked a couple of relevant questions. So a huge question here is just this, is China bluffing question? A little earlier in this interview you pointed out they routinely will

bluster and say things like that but one could easily say before 1914 there was all sorts of bluster and then finally something big just happened so how do we weigh the track record of these situations not escalating versus the risk of something finally escalating at that last second right i think you know i think the best way to think about it is this, you know, the, the situation is escalating. Okay. Because of what the Beijing is doing, they're constantly escalating. They're becoming more menacing, sending out more planes, doing more dangerous stuff near our stuff,

expanding their military presence, building nuclear weapons, hundreds of nuclear weapons. For what reason? What do they need 500 new nuclear weapons for? It's crazy. And expanding all the time. So that's a change of the status quo. Now, their propaganda says that we're the ones that are escalating and that we're the ones becoming more aggressive. And they're just responding to us, which is a lie. The truth is we're responding to them. But when something like this happens, you could see easily why the Biden administration is concerned. They're going to turn it into propaganda. They're going to be like, see, the U.S. is escalating on us. And they could use that as an excuse to do something to change the status quo on the ground. You know, if they do a flyover of Taiwan proper, just for one example,

or if they close off the street, you know, for a more drastic example, that'll be something that'll be probably irreversible in terms of its impact. And I get it, you know what I mean? Like, we don't want to hand them those easy wins. And if we're going to have a crisis with Beijing over Taiwan, we'd like it to be on our terms. And we'd like it to be when we're ready, not necessarily when Nancy Pelosi happens to have a congressional recess, you know. And so there's a chess game going on here, OK, between the Biden administration and the CCP. And Nancy Pelosi just sat down and made a move for us. And the Biden people are like, wait a second, we didn't ask you to do that. We don't like the move that you made. And she's like, tough shit. So, you know, my instinct and I think a lot of people, especially in Congress,

instinct is to be like, you know, screw you, CCP. We're going to go to Taiwan and that's it. And on balance, I think the funny thing is now because of what Biden did, because he made it so public now, she pretty much has to go now. She can't back down now. It would be a huge signal to Beijing that their bullying works that, and then when we just be living in a world full of bullying. So really the soup that the Biden administration is in is of their own recipe. So the way to think about this then is that if the bullying worked, you could see this extend into more consequential areas long-term in the sense that it could start with Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the

House, can't visit. That's a red line for us. But then it could translate. What would be like higher stakes versions of the Chinese learning? Wait, we could actually escalate rhetorically and cause backdowns to happen. Right. Well, it's not a long term issue. It's a now issue. And it's happening on all elements of our engagement with China on all fronts. OK. And when the NBA gets punished for the tweet of a manager who says stand with Hong Kong, that's the example, because now they're saying Americans can't tweet what they want or we're going to punish your corporations. When we punish when we punish forced labor from them using Uyghurs in Xinjiang to pick cotton. And they threaten Nike. OK, and they do the same thing when they threaten universities with their funding and when they

threaten Wall Street with their investments. And, you know, that's how you have to think about the CCP. It's a huge extortion ring, basically. It's like they go around to every company and country and they say, oh, nice country you got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it. Okay. And, you know, this Taiwan thing is just one piece of that. And so, yeah, every time we, we're only as strong as our weakest link. And every time we back down, it emboldens them to continue using this tactic more. In other words, when they test our resolve, maybe the best thing to do is to show our resolve, you know, and that's the way that you deal with thugs. That's the way that you deal with gangsters. And that's the way we have to deal with the CCP. themselves in these high stakes, quasi second Cold War scenarios, because obviously, from a constitutional perspective, the, you know, Congress is a co equal branch with the executive. However,

obviously, constitutionally speaking, the executive branch has more power over foreign policy than it does domestically. So how should the just how should Congress just think of its role in the situation? Because this is kind of where you sort of see the theory come into real clash with how the real world actually operates. Right. You know, listen, I've been covering Congress and foreign policy in this town for 18 years. OK, and that role that Congress plays, sometimes a coercive one, sometimes a persuasive one, sometimes using the power of the purse, which is really Congress's core mission, is really important and has been really important historically. Just look at Ukraine. You know, there's Democrats and Republicans been dragging this administration into doing what I consider to be the right thing on Ukraine by giving them the weapons and support

that they need to save their country and push the Russians back. And that's, you know, again, with some exceptions, bipartisan congressional pressure has a lot to do with that. Now, they don't always get it right, obviously. But that's our system. That's why we have checks and balances. That's why we don't concentrate all the power in one branch or the other. That's a strength of our system. That's what the Chinese don't have. When Xi Jinping says zero COVID for everybody, you can't say, hey, wait a second, maybe that's crazy because you'll die. You'll be breaking rocks for 20 years. So, you know, I like the fact that the human beings,

the voters, the people in our country have representatives who have power over foreign policies, really important. You know, it's not to say they always make good decisions because they're corrupted by their, you know, paymasters and the lobbyists and all of that but that's a whole nother podcast so i guess the and it's about the egos that's the other thing these congressmen have egos i just think of the ego of a you know joe biden who was in congress for 50 years and nancy pelosi who's in congress for i don't know

how probably almost all that time they've known each other neither of them wants to back down you know what i mean on the china issue this is legacy stuff so you know a lot of this uh policy comes down to politics and personalities that's the truth of it so for our last few questions to sum up your position it seems that we can debate whether or not this was the perfect right timing for speaker pelosi to go but considering the bullying and the risk of like rewarding said bullying you think the trip can and should move forward what would you say though the playbook moving forward should be because i can be sympathetic to that position but still say the freelancing is not is not ideal longer term. So what would you just, you know, speaking to all our representatives, to members of the executive branch, what should our playbook be?

Right. You know, it would be nice if they had worked this out between them and so that America could speak with one voice and we wouldn't be sending mixed signals to our allies because it's like, you know, the Chinese are going to say what they're going to say, but it's really our allies who are looking at this and Asian being being like wait a second do these guys have their act together you know and they've got a point you know so the that's why i say that biden got him his staff into this mess because he's the one well first it leaked that was a big problem and then uh biden confirmed it you know and that kind of soured the negotiations but there's a compromise to be had here.

In other words, if Nancy Pelosi wants to save face, she could go after the election just for one example of a compromise. She wouldn't really she'd still be speaker, but, you know, she wouldn't be on her way out the door. And Xi Jinping would have already won his third term. Maybe he doesn't feel under a lot of pressure to do something crazy in retaliation. That's the theory of the case, is that if she goes after the election, everybody's equally happy and equally unhappy. We all move on with our lives. But if she goes, you know, the Chinese don't have to like it. They're

just going to have to lump it. OK. And at that point, I think it's really important for the Biden administration to stop leaking on her and to start supporting her and to just say clearly to the Chinese, hey, listen, don't do something crazy because that's not going to be good for you. OK, and she's going and it's going to be everything's going to be fine. And if you start a crisis over it, well, then you started the crisis, not us. And I hope they do that. So the concluding question, you just referenced this, but Xi Jinping is up for his third term. And you basically referred to this as a particularly perilous moment before that November ascension with the CCP party Congress meeting. Can you just really explain why this specific late July to November period is so really tenuous for everyone in the environment this is happening

in. To be clear, that's I'm describing that as the Biden administration's argument that these three months or four months before Xi Jinping gets his coronation, after which he'll essentially be, you know, dictator for life or for another five years anyway. The the the realization of the chinese communist party is essentially a one-man rule state like putin like like mbs like kim jong-un okay that's what we're gonna have in china except the fact that they're gonna have the biggest economy and the biggest military in the world okay now what the white house says is until that happens they're under the microscope, the

Xi Jinping and his gang. So anything that they see as a slight, they're going to have to overreact to. That's their theory. Now, what I'm saying is that that really doesn't matter, because I think the most dangerous period is after the dictator gets full power. And that's when Putin got really crazy. And, you know, once he's got his third term and then where I think it's only going to get worse, actually. And if you look at the Taiwan situation, what the admirals say, what the

people in the region say is that they have the intent to attack. It was clear I was in Singapore last month and all the Chinese generals, they're like, we're going to reunify. We're not saying peacefully. We're going to reunify. OK, don't say we didn't warn you this is your warning and if you try to get in the way we're going to fight you that's what they said okay and i heard that okay but the fact fact is they don't have the capability yet and that they're going to need a couple more years to get all the things in place the nuclear deterrent and the landing ships and the missiles and they're learning from the ukraine war so they don't make putin's mistakes so they're siphoning off their banks and building walls around their economy hoarding foodstuffs

20 times the normal imports of all sorts of basic foods why are they doing that they're preparing for something okay it's clear as day so it's true that the next three months are are are dicey but it's not like the danger lifts after that and everything is hunky-dory things are going to go downhill fast and when the crisis in taiwan does come and it will come uh we better be ready for it and you know i think we're very far from that point right now josh thank you so much for joining us on breaking points really appreciate you. A quick shout out to your book, of course. Chaos Under Heaven. Now out in paperback with an exclusive interview with President Donald J. Trump.

Check it out. Awesome. Thanks for joining us on Breaking Points. Anytime. Hey, Breaking Points. I'm joined again by Jules Topak. We're here to talk about Instagram's big changes and why, whether or not you use the app or not, this is a deeply important topic. So Jules, let's just start here with the conversation. What is happening on Instagram? Why is there a backlash? And then

we'll kind of get into why this matters beyond just a who cares what the user experience looks like on this big app. Yeah. And social media is just a silly little thing, but yeah. So what's been happening at Instagram, it's been happening for the past like two and a half years now, ever since TikTok started taking off late 2018 into 2019, Instagram has been trying to replicate a lot of the features on the platform. There was a recent update that only went to a certain percent of users as a test, but it was like a full immersive feed. So basically exactly like the experience you're having on TikTok. And this was kind of a tipping point for outrage. This app now feels exactly- Quick pause, because I want to make this very clear for people. So think about your Instagram experience, especially when using the app for the past 10 years or so. You just scroll down and there's a picture, there's a picture. And then sometimes there's a video, there's a reels, but you're still

just scrolling through. What does this immersive thing really look like folks? So what did these special users see? Yeah. Well, even to your point. So on the feed before there was, you know, a lot of different white space and all this type of stuff. This immersive feed is trying to make so the videos take up your entire screen, as well as if a photo, obviously Instagram has multiple dimensions of content in terms of box photos, et cetera. Even then, they will have a more full screen situation where you're not seeing all the white space that you had previously on the platform. So exactly like the TikTok platform

taking up your full phone screen. So why would a change from this scrolling to a full screen provoke so much backlash from big users and small users alike? Well, I think every platform has a value add, right? So TikTok, it launched in 2018. In the past four years, it has grown to already 1 billion users. That took Instagram twice as much time. It took them eight years. And so people are having an enjoyable time on TikTok. They're spending a lot of time on TikTok more than any other social media platform. The time spent on app keeps going up and up. But still, you leave a platform and go to another platform for a different experience. And now on Instagram, you are experiencing sloppy seconds content.

It's just unoriginal. As well as you are not seeing your friends' content much anymore. It is more so based on a recommendation algorithm when people utilize Instagram before, more so for their friends, their family, and people that they choose to follow for a deeper connection with that they might've discovered on other platforms like TikTok, like YouTube, like Twitter. They follow them on Instagram for that deeper layer of their life. But now you're getting mostly fed a stranger's content like you do on other platforms and people are not happy about that at all. See, it's kind of weird because most people my age came up when Facebook really launched. I stopped spending time on Facebook six years ago. I got a new phone.

I didn't download the Facebook app for like a year, which is really crazy by 2008 standards. But I kept using Instagram. Instagram is obviously owned by Meta. So these are both Facebook products, but I kept using it. But I kept using it because I had a strong connection with my friends, with my family, even celebrities or brands that I'd chosen to follow.

So to your point, not just being randomly served up, I really liked that. But at the same time, if they're transitioning away from that, why would they choose to do that as a company, right? They're doing this not out of either the goodness or the badness of their heart. They're trying to make money. Why would it make sense to push Instagram away from the experience that people like me have drawn to even as we've abandoned Facebook? Yeah. I mean, Instagram has become an archive of your generation's life, my generation's life. It was one of the early social media platforms that has stuck with us up until this point,

like 15 years later. So the relationship with, okay, wait, we might have to cut this part. What was the question again? Yeah. The question was, why would they choose? Yeah, we can edit this. Why would they choose to push away Instagram from a user experience that managed to retain people, let's say like 28 and above who'd abandoned Facebook despite coming up on the app. Yeah. So right now, Instagram has gotten heavily into shopping. And over the years, that was been their main focus. Their focus wasn't creators as creators came up. Their focus was on advertisers and these companies, and they missed a big window of opportunity. So with that,

they noticed that the Gen Z users started to heavily decline on this platform. Of course, when you get to 1 billion users, you can't go up a crazy amount from there considering internet access across the world and everything like that. those 25 and under and trying to gain that audience back so that Instagram can have longevity in the future. Because the reality is all these social media platforms are adding more and more features and they seem very similar. Twitter is still pretty differentiated. Even between Instagram and TikTok now, TikTok added stories the same way Snapchat and Instagram have. All these apps are kind of forming into each other in different ways. And in reality, it's kind of to become ideally a super app situation. China has a super app. They have WeChat and apps like that. In the US, we don't necessarily have one. And what a super app is, is like a platform that can service every aspect of the consumer experience. That's shopping, that's social, that's recommendations, everything like that. And Instagram is kind of further ahead in that way. They have a wide range of features.

Right now, it feels like an identity crisis and a mess, and it's making their user base move elsewhere and obviously get very mad. So are they going to continue on this path, even though there's been user backlash. The way to think about this is when Kylie Jenner wasn't happy with changes at Snapchat, the stock lost billions of dollars of value. It made a bunch of changes. Kylie wasn't happy with these changes either, but all the reporting seems to indicate they're still moving ahead. So what's the difference between these two situations? Yeah. So what the difference is, is Instagram being a copycat platform like they have been since their origin had worked for

them in the past. For example, in 2013, when they added videos to the platform, that's when Vine had started about a year before. And Vine's user base ended up going to Instagram because people were like, oh, it's like a one-stop shop. Vine was kind of messy. It was a startup, everything like that. They also took Snapchat stories, put stories on Instagram, and that took a lot of their user base. And people were utilizing stories on Instagram rather than Snapchat. And where they went wrong is in, I believe, 2018. So June 2018 was a pivotal moment for them because not only did they hit 1 billion users that month, but they also launched IGTV, which is a competitor to YouTube. So instead of realizing that they were like the quick, quick bit short form video content, well not video content, just short form, quick bit content in general, they tried to go at a competitor that was also coming up heavily during that time, but had an entirely different culture set for themselves. And that's where they went wrong because then you had TikTok in 2018

launch and they were kind of what Instagram really should have done, innovating and filling voids within the space that they were strong in rather than trying to continuously copy every platform and be everyone in all in one place. They were doing well with that before again, but that's where it kind of went wrong. So what they're realizing now is that there's a lack of innovation there. People look at them as a copycat platform and they need to reset and go back to their basics, which were mostly community. Shopping makes sense, obviously, because people utilize Instagram as a more high produced platform. There's more aspiration there. You're following people that you trust.

And so shopping obviously goes hand-in-hand with that. And also curation. So something more similar to Pinterest and everything like that. They need to go back to those types of roots and be innovative within that realm, or else they're going to lose their user base right now. Unless, of course, TikTok gets banned, which I'm sure they are betting heavy on. Yeah. And that's a whole other conversation where you will almost certainly be having in the next few months. But I think the last real question is, and I'll just give my reflection on it, is why does this matter? Why is this not just superficial? My take on it is that

social media connecting billions and billions of people together was huge, like 15 years ago, right? Like I remember the transition from MySpace to Facebook, to adding Instagram, to adding all those other different apps. And it's just become so obvious that that's just an aspect of our lives that it really feels as if it just happens. But the way that these apps are structured, the way that these apps are prioritizing different types of bits,

Taylor Lorenz had a good piece on this. She basically said that, look, like Instagram has a choice. Either it's for connecting you with different people or it's not that they have a choice. It does both. It connects you with people you know, and then it also puts stuff in front of you

like it's TV, like it's a form of media. And the decision of which direction the platform goes has always been intention. But it seems like right now they're choosing much more towards the media direction. And I think as most people know during the COVID period, this is how we interact with our friends. This is how you keep up.

This is why everyone is joking about how high school reunions aren't what they used to be because everyone knows what's already happening. So I think that's like my take on why it matters. But like, what's yours to close this out? Yeah, I mean, media sets the tone for all of culture. I think that's my take on why it matters. But what's yours to close this out? Yeah. I mean, media sets the tone for all of culture. I think maybe five plus years ago, something like Instagram and social media in general could be looked at as more silly because you were just following your friends and family, people you already knew in real life. And it was

just another extension of them. But as we are consuming more and more strangers content, it's taken a big role in our lives, especially since the pandemic. It's intensified our relationship with these platforms. And it's just skyrocketed from there. I honestly think how seriously we take conversations about the education system is how seriously we should take conversations about social media at this point. Social media is how I learn all of my information. It is how I network. It's how I get connected in my career, everything like that. It's become a second life and a second brain in a lot of ways, an extension of obviously our real life, but it should be taken very, very seriously. And as we move towards this conversation of a super app and these platforms

wanting to be everything for everyone, that's very intense. That obviously incorporates our finances and everything like that. So these conversations aren't something to take lightly, even though in the past, social media was kind of looked at as this fun, silly thing. It's definitely not just that anymore. Understatement of the century. Jules, thanks for coming on the show. No doubt I'll have you back on next month because there'll be more TikTok and other sorts of news and anything else that we would love to talk about. Thanks for coming on Breaking Points. Thank you, Marshall.

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