Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #51: Hillary vs Bernie, FBI Trump Raid, Sinema's Wall St Giveaway, Abortion Debate, & More!

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends cover the sexism claims against Bernie Sanders, Biden's re election campaign, Sinema's Wall Street money, FBI raiding Mar-a-Lago, Starbucks workers, & more! We apologize for the delay in getting the mini show out today. 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 The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/The Lever: https://www.levernews.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Very interesting, sort of perplexing moment in the interview that Carolyn Maloney, who's a current Democratic congresswoman from Manhattan, in the interview she was doing with the New York Times editorial board, hoping for an endorsement in a race she's up against. This is crazy New York stuff because of all the redistricting. So she and another Democratic incumbent, Jerry Nadler, and another candidate as well are all facing off against each other in this primary. So go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen because she said something that was strange and maybe revealing or maybe she's just confused. Hard to say. This is from Business Insider Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney said off the record that Biden is not running for reelection in 2024. Of course, these editorial board interviews are on the record. They are not off the record. So they went ahead and published this. Here's the full exchange as published by the New York Times. New York Times' Eleanor Randolph asked,

should President Biden run again? Maloney says, off the record, he's not running again, to which another New York Times board member said, not off the record, on the record. And Maloney said, on the record, no, he should not run again. This comes after they had done a debate where Nadler had indicated that, you know, what was his take? He was like, he basically wouldn't answer. Yeah, he was like, I commit to the president or, you know, whatever decision you make. Yeah. Sort of dodge the question. Wouldn't really answer it, which was extraordinary in and of itself. Maloney said there as well, it's my understanding that he's not running. So clearly she really has it in her head from somewhere that Biden is not running again. Now, all of the public signs from Biden and

his team are that he is. He has said repeatedly he's running again. You know, the reporting is he'll probably do his meeting with his family over the holiday and then he'll run again. But and Maloney, she's getting up there in age. I wouldn't say that she's all, you know, totally with it all the time. And so she could just be confused or she could have some information here that we're not privy to. I don't know.

I have no idea. I mean, my bet is probably confused. She herself is like 80 years old and she's obviously just conducting herself in a very erratic and strange manner because she keeps doing these interviews where she is willed, won't they? And I'm just like, I don't know.

But look, she didn't get endorsed by The New York Times. Chuck Schumer came out and endorsed Jerry Nadler. So I think her days in Congress are probably more numbered than President Biden in American politics. Probably. Who knows, though? I mean, it's an interesting. So what they did is there used to be a seat that was mostly the Upper East Side and then a seat that was mostly the Upper West Side. Nadler represented the Upper West Side seat and she represented the Upper East Side seat. They instead drew a line like across the middle of the city and now

the Upper East Side and West Side are in this primary together. And like I said, there's another candidate as well who's using this all as an opening to be like, I'm the one who's really standing with President Biden and hasn't thrown him under the bus, even though I thought he was supposed to be the progressive. I don't know. Anyway, so that's the contours of this race. I think you're right. Nadler probably has the edge here ultimately

because he's gotten the establishment backing and he doesn't do weird, confusing stuff like this. And he got the New York Times endorsement. But again, who knows how this ultimately is all going to go. But maybe she'll turn out. Maybe this is she has some insight. Maybe she's spilling something that other people, you know, are keeping quiet. It's possible. Or I think you're probably right. The more likely explanation is she's just kind of confused. She has some weird info because I still am working on the assumption Biden is running again.

Yes. Not because people are that enamored with him, but because they don't know how to get around Kamala Harris being the next in line and know that she would be a disaster. The only reason he wouldn't run again is for health reasons. And look, as far as I know, that doesn't exist. I mean, it's possible. I'm not talking about like a very acute health condition. It'd have to be really serious. Yeah.

I'm going to die of a heart attack if I continue. Outside of that, given current deterioration, he's still going to run. I just don't see any other way. That's what I'm working with as well, but we'll see. See how it goes. All right, guys, more for y'all later. We have been tracking here the pretty extraordinary movement of Starbucks workers across the country who've been unionizing. I mean, they have lost very few of these elections in stores since the very first union election happened, successful union vote happened in Buffalo. Starbucks has made no secret of the fact that they are very upset about the wave of unionization. They've engaged in every union busting tactic you can possibly imagine through, you know, trying to use legal means to delay these votes.

They've, you know, fired workers who've been involved in union drives. They fired some of their executives who they felt weren't union busting effectively enough. They brought back former CEO and founder Howard Schultz. They've tried to withhold benefits from the workers who are unionizing and try to create this sort of like two-tier system where the non-union workers, they're saying are gonna get better deals than the union workers, which is illegal, by the way.

And now we have a new play in their playbook, which echoes some of the stop the steal rhetoric. Yes, same as Amazon did. It's kind of amazing, right? Yes, exactly. Amazon did the same thing. So let's go and put this up on the screen. Starbucks is asking the Federal Labor Board to suspend all mail-in ballot

union elections nationwide, alleging misconduct in the voting process by the board's personnel. They're saying the government is in on it and the union organizing its baristas. So they allege that a whistleblower has come to them and has called into question the process and said that the board is biased and that basically these elections are rigged and they need to have only in-person balloting because the mail-in ballots can't be trusted, Sager. Again, it's very reminiscent of the claims of like ballot harvesting and calling into question the mail-in balloting that the president and his people engaged in. It's also going to be funny how Howard Schultz could square this if he ever does talk about stop this deal, given that he probably is greenlining this.

But listen, they all point to the same thing. They're all claiming it's rigged based upon some fake insider. Listen, you've been losing the votes dramatically. It has nothing to do with mail-in ballots. And yeah, I just think it's hilarious because when you look at their concerns, they have no actual specific allegation. They're like, oh, also, of course, the government is in on it because there's nowhere else to explain this. Like just give everybody a break.

And also, you know, I got to say, I wonder if this is going to have major backlash on their actual workforce in terms of hiring. Like if people who are thinking about going to work there, they're like, why would I go work for people? We covered that weird kidnapping case where the guy claimed to have been kidnapped. Yeah, that was last week. That was so hilarious, honestly. Look at how they're comporting themselves on a corporate level. It's just completely nuts. Yeah, the kidnapping thing. So you had, you know, a Union 9 store, I think it was in South Carolina? Yes. And the workers collectively approached their manager to ask for, I think it was a better pay and maybe some other benefits or something like that. And the manager claimed that

they had been assaulted and they had been kidnapped and basically like held hostage, filed a police report. Meanwhile, the workers had recorded the whole incident, proving quite definitively that no such thing of, you such thing of the sort happened at all. But those workers were all suspended based on the false allegations of this manager. So totally insane behavior. And I think you're right that in a lot of instances, this is totally backfired because the workers see through the tactics. They see what they're doing here. And that's why in a lot of instances, more instances than not, it's not like the votes have been close. It's been in many stores, it's been unanimous or you've had, you know, like 20 in favor and maybe one or two opposed. So it's not like it's a close margin where a little bit of manipulation could swing the balance one way or the other.

So I do think you see in the era of social media and the way that this was a very grassroots movement, really sort of worker-led and driven by the baristas themselves, that the company faces a harder task to sort of gaslight their workforce and convince them that the union is really bad for them. They're seeing through their tactics. And so I think in a lot of instances it is backfiring. Probably will do so again with these latest allegations. Yep, absolutely.

All right, guys, more for y'all later. There was a really interesting conversation on the Joe Rogan podcast with Rogan and Seth Dillon. Seth Dillon is the CEO of the Babylon Bee. I think he's an evangelical Christian. And they had a real argument around abortion, which I found really – I thought it was important that this actually happened on the biggest podcast in the world and just exposes some of the interesting arguments around everything. Let's take a listen. You don't have the right to tell my 14-year-old daughter she has to carry her rapist baby. You understand that?

To look that woman in the eye who was the born of a rape. Do you understand that? That's a 14-year-old child. If a 14-year-old child gets raped, you say that they have to carry that baby? I don't think two wrongs make a right. I don't think murder is an answer to – I don't think murder fixes a rape. What if we're talking about an abortion when the fetus – literally it's like six weeks four weeks three days What if you just turn positive just now positive for pregnancy? I don't I well I just disagree that what if it just happened they can like draw a line on when you can't once

So you can't at the very moment. I would lay it out like this I would say it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human life Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human life therefore abortion is wrong And I don think any of the, I don't think any of the examples of like, oh, well, how developed is it? You know, can it, can it think, is it conscious? Can it dream? Can it feel pain? So for you, it's the moment of conception. I think that if it's a, if it's a human life, a distinct human life, then I think it's wrong to, to end its life. So you think that once, do you think that like once the conception happens, there's some sort of a miraculous event, like at the very moment, like you could literally get to the point

where the sperm cracks the egg. If you could scoop that egg out right there, would that be abortion? Well, I mean, at some point you're going to have to say there was a magic moment that happened because you believe that we eventually become valuable humans, right? So I was really, right? Look, I want to say at the top, like I get it where Seth is coming from. I think it's a very religious position. I think that's fine. People are entitled to believe whatever they want. But Rogan did an excellent job there of actually drilling down into what the application of that means on policy and then how it is then extrapolated onto the general public. Because it's like, well, okay, hold on a second. So you believe this. Well, that means you're telling me what to do in this particular context.

Now, I understand that that is the basics of religion and specifically Christianity. But we don't necessarily live in a country where we have to abide by all of our laws as to what the Bible says. So anyway, I thought it was exposing the arguments at their core and in very stark fashion. Yeah. Which you never hear about, right? You never really. And so in a way, I respect him for sticking to his guns. He's very forceful there.

He's like, you are not going to tell my 14-year-old daughter she has to. I mean, I— Well, but I respect Seth also for sticking to his guns in that and being like, no, listen, this is what I believe and, you know, this is what I would tell you. And like I said, I get it. I get where they're coming from. I grew up around a lot of these folks, but they really do never grapple with what it means in terms of actual political application.

Yes, and even, I mean, most self-identified Christians do not have this view, do not support this view. I mean, this is an overwhelmingly majority self-identified Christian nation, like in terms of how people identify. And they do not support this view. It is a very, very fringe minority that would go to this extreme of literally after you have sex, the moment of conception, it's done.

It's a life. I'm going to treat it as equal to a fully developed human being who's out, you know, 14 years old living their life. And you saw in some of the things that have already happened, their inability to intellectually grapple with the consequences of what their position is. The most obvious example being the 10-year-old who was raped and impregnated and went to get an abortion in Ohio. And because she was like literally six weeks and three days pregnant, she could not get the abortion in Ohio, had to travel to Indiana in order to get that abortion. And you saw the reaction in real time wasn't a willingness, as he did, to defend that position. It was, this couldn't have happened.

I mean, they couldn't intellectually deal with the fact that this is the direct consequence of the laws that you are pursuing. There's a couple of more cases in the news this week that are grabbing a lot of attention. One is a woman, I believe in Louisiana, who has, her fetus does not have a skull. It will not live. But she is being forced to carry that baby without a skull to term based on the laws in Louisiana. Now, she can theoretically travel to another state. But in terms of the laws in her state and also in terms of what, you know, Seth is his name? What Seth would want this on a national level so that you would be forced to carry your fetus with no skull to term and all of the horrific trauma. And just, I mean, it's just a horrible thing to imagine. In Florida, you had a girl who's 16 who is pregnant and doesn't have parents who can sign and consent on her behalf.

So she went to court to seek to be able to decide for herself to have an abortion, and the judge denied it because they said she wasn't mature enough. That was the reasoning. So she's not mature enough to decide for herself whether to have the abortion, but she is mature enough to be forced into parenthood. These are things that, again, look, you know, Seth has his position. It's, you know, he's willing to stick to it. I, you know, I understand that. I understand that these are very difficult positions, but this is wildly out of step with where even the majority

of Christians and certainly with where the majority of most Americans are who do see nuance on, who see the competing claims, who are able to weigh, you know, the difference between, like, you know, the moment of conception and a sperm and an egg, and further down in the pregnancy where, you know, yes, there's feeling, yes, this is much closer to being a fully formed human being. So, anyway. Yeah, and I think the latter position is that it's actually one that transcends religion, and it's one that really gets to how, like, and I know this sounds trite, but it's like how people feel. Well, look, we live in a democracy, a popular democracy. It's like that's kind of how things should be reflected.

So, anyway, I mean, this has always been my pushback against these folks. And I actually think Rogan did a good job of speaking it in the most stark terms. Yes. Because that is really where, that's where the whole debate comes down to. Really drilling down to. Yeah, to be like, well, how about this? You literally think when the sperm and the egg come together that that's a human life the same as any other.

And you have to get specific, the way that he has, you know, in these so-called edge cases. Look, it's a country of 330 million people. Yeah. But yeah, sometimes you're going to have free cases where a baby gets, you know, developed or whatever without a skull. It's like, what? You want that to be delivered? You're out of your mind.

Horrible. And it's also become very clear that, I mean, this has been a real pivot point in terms of politics, more so than I expected. Yeah, same. The number of women who have registered post-obs, not just in Kansas, but in state after state, way more women registering, way more Democratic women registering. We're seeing these special elections, the way things are going. We've seen the way the generic ballot has moved. Will it be enough? I think the, you know, landscape still very much favors Republicans. But because this issue is so visceral, and you can see that from Rogan's reaction to it, because it is such a visceral issue, it really has completely turned the political landscape on its head. Definitely.

So there is a new book out by an NBC News reporter, Ali Vitale, full disclosure, knew her very well at MSNBC, friends, all that good stuff. But it's about, she actually, she was an embed on the Trump campaign in 2016. And then she was an embed on the Elizabeth Warren campaign in 2020. And so there's an excerpt of this book out in Politico. And one of the things that people noted was she got comment from Hillary Clinton about that whole moment when Elizabeth Warren's team accused Bernie Sanders of being a secret sexist. Yes. You guys probably remember this, but just as a reminder of the context at the time, you're kind of coming down to it in terms of people are about to vote. And Elizabeth Warren

is getting like a little bit desperate. Frankly, her polls are sliding. Things are kind of the wheels are coming off of her campaign a bit. And it's it's already looking like it's not going all for her. And then her team, it had to be her team, leaked to CNN that in a private conversation when Warren told Bernie that she was going to run, he said that a woman could not win. Now, the only people in the room was Bernie and Warren and maybe Warren's husband. So there's no way Bernie leaked this. So it definitely came from, you know, Warren or her husband or somebody that they had talked to and was in their camp. Of course, Bernie says, this is ridiculous. I never said anything like that.

I think what it appears may have happened is they were talking about the race. And he probably said, like, you know, Trump will weaponize anything against people like their, you know, gender race. So anyway, this became this whole thing. And then I forgot, Sagar, that when Warren got asked about this on the debate stage, so first it was, what's her name? Abby Phillips at CNN. That's right. She asked Bernie, like, basically, why did you say this? And he says, well, I didn't say that. You know, that's not what happened in the conversation at all. And then she turns to Elizabeth Warren and says, how did you feel when Bernie said to you that a woman can't win? So totally siding with Warren.

Anyway, that was the whole thing that happened. So now this book is coming out about how hard it is for women to run in politics. And she asked Hillary Clinton for comment about that moment. And she says that she believed Warren. And hold on Hillary Clinton for comment about that moment. And she says that she believed Warren and hold on, I lost the quote. Where did it go? I know the kinds of things he says. Yes, I believed her because I know Sanders and I know the kind of things that he says about women and to women. So I thought that she was telling an accurate version of the conversation that they had had. So Hillary Clinton, still extremely bitter. Call me a sexist if you want. She is a

bitter woman. All right. That's what she is. And I, you know, look, I don't even think her female gender has anything to do with it. She just has a massive ego. She can't even, first of all, she won the democratic primary. Like, what are you pissed off about? The guy campaigned for you. You lost. It's your fault. Yes. And you're the one, she won the Democratic primary. Like, what are you pissed off about? The guy campaigned for you. And they rigged it for your ad. It's your fault. Yes. And you're the one. That's the thing that drives me crazy.

Yeah. Like, if you want to blame any one specific person for the ascent of Donald Trump, she is clearly the person who is most to blame. I know. Like, for the reason that we had this dude for four years. And yet, somehow, nobody ever seems to and the other thing that drives me crazy about this is there's a real there's a real to use the the term of the current term of art there's a real invisibilizing of the women that supported bernie sanders um and clearly this like attack from the warren camp desperate attack from the warren camp on bernie

did not land with women because she ended up, you know, not even able to win her home state in the end. So anyway, it's just extraordinary that Hillary still cannot evaluate any of her own failings, flaws, how it ended up that she, you know, first narrowly wins the primary with some helping hand from the DNC, to say the least, and then ends up losing Trump. And she still is blaming everyone else but herself. And we have a second corollary to this, which I love. You don't have to speak to it. I will. Let's pull this up. According to this book, Elizabeth Warren said, quote, everyone comes up to me and says, I would vote for you if you had a penis. I'm just going to say it. I don't think a single person ever came up to her

and said that in any sense of the word. First of all, you're talking there about Democratic primary voters. Second of all, nobody speaks that way at all. So I'm just going to say, I think that is total and complete bullshit. And one of the things that bothers me about this, look, I know you're friends with Ali. And by the way, Ali's always been very nice to me. I met her also when she was a White House correspondent and all that, is you cannot quote Elizabeth Warren

saying that somebody said that to you without corroboration. What kind of a direct, by direct quoting the whole, like, I would vote for you, you're basically saying that that quote happened. You can't say that. You can't say that this happened unless you go and find the voter and actually speak to them before you make that the title of a highly inflammatory article and accusation against a lot of people who voted in the state of New Hampshire. Maybe you lost because you suck, because you also definitely had an advantage

given that you were the senator from Massachusetts, which also, just like Vermont, is neighboring to this region. So don't act like people in there didn't know who you were. Right. Yeah, I mean, the media propped up Elizabeth Warren. They loved her. The fawning articles about her selfie lines and whatever. And the problem for Elizabeth Warren, look, sexism is real. I don't doubt that there were like

challenges for the women candidates that were, you know, different for the guys. I don't doubt that. I do doubt that anyone said this directly because, okay. I don't think anyone would like admit that blatantly in a Democratic primary. I just don believe and and that's him and this isn't just she doesn't say that like one person you might believe it if it was like one weirdo like i did when i ran for congress i had someone literally say to me i don't think you should be running for anything except after your kids so there are some weirdos out there who will say like just the most obnoxious blatantly sexist stuff that you can possibly imagine so if you had said one person said this to you maybe quote everyone comes up to me and says uh no i that's definitely it's like i just genuinely just don't believe that whatsoever and you already lied about what bernie said to you in that meeting. So I have no reason to trust you whatsoever. But the other thing that bothers me here is that when you put out this idea repeatedly over and over again,

that women can't win, you know, everyone, I would vote for you if you had a penis. I mean, what is the message that that is sending to young women that it's not worth trying that there's too much sexism that you can't overcome it. even someone who's as perfect and wonderful as Elizabeth Warren couldn't overcome it so why bother so you are sort of undermining the very thing that you're you know wanting to accomplish here which is to encourage women to run for office and have great success there so um anyway yeah it's just it's really really something it did It did bring me back to the snake emoji era, and I have no regrets. Yeah, I stand by. I stand by every single time I called her a liar.

Okay, all right. More for y'all later. Time now for our weekly partnership segment with our friends over at The Lever. And joining us this week is the man himself, David Sirota. Great to see you, David. Good to see you, too. So you have a look this week at the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by Joe Biden this week. And let's go ahead and put your tear sheet up on the screen here. You're focused in particular on some of the major blatant Wall Street giveaways that ended up in

the final package. You say the Wall Street vote that screamed the quiet part out loud. Senators gave their Wall Street donors another gift after blocking the expanded child tax credit. Before we dig into the specifics of Ms. Sinema and her allies here, though, I would love for you, David, because we haven't heard your view on the show yet, just to give your overall view of this package, the end result and whether it was worth voting for in your estimation? I think it's hard to know whether this bill will do more good than harm. I think if you force me to answer whether it does, I guess there's a decent chance that this bill marginally improves the climate situation, marginally reduces emissions. It was sold as a

bill to reduce 40% of emissions. That's not actually what it does. It adds, at best, another 10% of emissions reductions. The current policy gets about 30% of emissions reductions, according to the same estimates. So a marginal reduction in emissions if everything goes right, and that's the big if. When making a climate bill, attaching to a climate bill a vast expansion of fossil fuel development, you are inherently creating a gamble on the climate. You are putting good investments into renewable energy, but then tying those investments effectively to a potential expansion of oil and gas leasing in the future. And so you said that's a huge roll of the dice.

Yes, maybe the renewable energy stuff takes and outpaces the fossil fuel development. That's a win for the climate. An alternate scenario is the renewable energy stuff doesn't take. The oil and gas industry exploits the new leases, the expansion of leases in this bill. And that's not a win for the climate. So I think what happened here was the Democratic Party decided to cut a big giant check to every part of the energy economy because they didn't want to make a choice. They didn't want to create an enemy out of the oil industry. This is why the oil industry celebrated the passage of the bill. And that was their political formula.

But science is telling us we need to stop all fossil fuel, all new fossil fuel development, if we have a chance to really deal with the climate crisis. So to my mind, again, a big gamble. Now, on the other side of this, the sort of social policy side of this, I think there was great investments in IRS enforcement that were long overdue. I think they unfortunately very seriously watered down the Medicare prescription drug pricing stuff. There's still a couple of good things in there, but they seriously watered it down. And then they included some real tax giveaways to Wall Street in this bill. Well, and that's a great transition because you can see the fingerprints of corporate America on every single piece of this legislation.

I agree with you on balance. I think it was better than doing nothing. I think it's a marginal benefit. And so, you know, I don't want to I don't want to say otherwise. But you see it certainly in the approach to climate. You see it in the approach to health care, which ends up getting watered down. And then you see it in these tax provisions. So let's talk about that piece, because this was extremely blatant and you picked up on a real asymmetry here. So when Senator Sanders was saying, hey, guys, all 50 of you claim to be in support of a child tax credit.

Why don't we add that to the bill? It was, he was voted down. I think this is one of the ones where he was voted down 99 to 1 on something that they allegedly all care about. And the argument from Senator Sherrod Brown, supposedly a progressive and others, was Bernie, we have to stay unified. This will, for some reason, tank the bill. So we can't vote with you on these things. However, when it came to Kyrsten Sinema and her being like, no, we can't close the carried interest loophole. And actually, I want these other giveaways for Wall Street put into the bill.

Then they were willing to get on board and go along with that. Break down how all of that went down for us, David. Sure. So the Democratic leadership, as you said, enforced party unity against Bernie Sanders' series of amendments that were designed to add back into the bill Democratic Party priorities. One of the big ones was the expanded child tax credit. He put a bill, an amendment on the floor. The Democratic leadership, the Democratic senators joined with the Republicans to vote that down. And as you floor, the Democratic leadership, the Democratic senators joined with the Republicans to vote that down. And as you said, the Democratic leadership said, we have to preserve the integrity of this fragile deal. This legislation represents a very fragile

deal. And even though we may supposedly want to do this good thing, reinstate the expanded child tax credit, we can't do that because we have to preserve this fragile balance. They voted that down. And then a few hours later, they joined with Sinema and Republicans to add into the bill. And I should mention, it wasn't all the Democrats. It was seven Democrats. So party unity not enforced. Seven Democrats joined with the Republicans to add into the bill a $35 billion

tax break for the private equity industry. It basically said that the private equity industry in facing the new corporate minimum tax doesn't have to effectively tally the revenues of its portfolio companies in deciding or in terms of whether it qualifies and faces that tax. So basically, it shields, it creates a special carve-out for the private equity industry that has dumped a quarter of a billion dollars of campaign contributions into the federal political process in the last two election cycles. So a blatant and naked giveaway to the donor class hours after the same Senate voted down an expansion of the wildly popular child tax credit. And Kyrsten Sinema obviously sort of led the charge on this. I mean, how much money has she personally gotten from private equity? I know

oftentimes the media likes to paint her and Joe Manchin as like acting in their state's best interest, and that's what they really care about. Arizona not known as like a hotbed of private equity activity here. So she's just – rarely do you see such a blatant quid pro quo, even though they're there all the time, as was on evidence here. Larry Summers even was like, wow, this is gross even by my standards. Yes. I mean, look, Sinema, the Associated Press reported about a million dollars of campaign contributions from the private equity industry flowed into her campaign in the lead up to this, into the lead up of the negotiations over this bill. Sinema obviously working for her private

equity donors. There's just really no pretense here. By the way, there's no pretense with Joe Manchin, either the top recipient of oil and gas money, adding in the oil and gas giveaways in this bill. I mean, one thing we can say is we are living in an era where the corrupt folks in Washington have stopped really trying to pretend like they're not corrupt, right? I mean, it's just out in the open. And in some ways, that makes it easier to report on. It's easier to see. But I think what it's kind of an admission of is that corruption is now so normalized, so accepted, so part of the process out in the open that these legislators don't even feel a deterrent in terms of the optics of it. They are just doing the bidding of their donors. There's no other way to put it.

It's literally shameless. Like, they literally can't be shamed on it. Have no shame. They cannot be shamed. They do not care. The thing that, you know, to me, I mean, listen, I guess encourage that something got through, right? And I think all the histrionics are historic

and it's landmark and whatever is obviously dramatically overstated. But it was encouraging that something happened. However, on the other hand, I look at it and because it is so clear how it was curtailed at every turn and watered down at every turn by corporate America. It also really demonstrates how constrained our political system is as long as big money is so dominant. Like, you may want Medicare to negotiate on prescription drug prices, but they're like, yeah, well, maybe we'll give you a few, you know, a few drugs, maybe a few years down the road. You may want Medicare for all, but they're like, how about we just keep some little bit of extra

Affordable Care Act subsidies in here. It's all what corporate America is willing to tolerate to, you know, all the way to the point of the oil and gas companies were actually, they were cool with this bill. They were celebrating it. So what does it say at a larger scale about what is possible in our politics with our current political system? You are touching on such an important point here, which is that I think this bill is another example of the political paradigm of the best that you can hope for in our current politics are policies that do not make a choice. Now, the good side of that, the best side of that is you can get good things funded, right? You can get investments, for instance, in renewable energy, things that do not have

a natural opposition. You can get those things funded. But the cost of getting those things funded is to give giveaways to the industries creating the problem. So this bill did not have an organized opposition because the oil industry got huge gifts in this bill. Now, you can say that that's good short-term politics, but I would argue if the oil and gas companies are happy about a bill, then it is not a bill that is seriously taking on the climate crisis. I would argue to you that if the health insurance companies are happy about a health care bill, then you are not

fundamentally taking on the problem in the health care economy. And on and on the list goes. So I guess the point is, is that we are in a situation where neither party is willing to make any kind of choice that asks the powerful economic actors creating problems to sacrifice anything at all. And you cannot fundamentally and systemically solve those problems unless you challenge the interests creating those problems. I think that is very well said and very important point for people to reflect on as this week comes to a close. David Soto, great to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hey, everyone. This is another episode of Breaking Point's Intercept Edition. I'm Ken Klippenstein, and I'm joined today by award-winning senior editor of Newsweek, William Arkin. The reason I'm having him on today is to get his perspective on the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI. And I think that what William brings to the table is a perspective that isn't attached to the White House, which if you look at a lot of the, I think, mainstream reporting, so much of it is hobbled by reliance on political appointees, by the White House, by Congress. And in William's case, he has a really amazing understanding of the

national security apparatus and the people that work in it on a rank and file level. As one example, he reported last week on citing two senior FBI sources the fact that the raid of Mar-a-Lago had begun with information given to the FBI by a confidential human source. William, can you talk a little bit about the significance of that and the difference between a confidential human source and a informant? Because I saw a lot of people describing it as informant, but that's not really accurate. What are the differences? Well, first of all, Ken, if you don't call me Bill, I'm going to wring your neck. You know, I reluctantly got into the Mar-a-Lago reporting because I was somewhat frustrated with in which it was being portrayed in the media. And also because of what appeared to me to be giant misunderstanding

on the part of most people who were reporting on this about what are secret documents? What were these particular documents? What authorities do there exist for donald trump to possess them declassify them eat them put them in the toilet and so i wanted to uh dip into the subject even though i've been covering the ukraine war for the last six months. And I quickly found out that if you talk to people on the inside, they were extremely nervous about what was going on and didn't think that this was a slam dunk by any means.

And that, in fact, it was another political misstep on the part of the FBI and the Justice Department. Can you speak to the ambivalence a little bit? Because from the perspective of the official statements from the Attorney General and the Justice Department, you would get the impression that everything's by the book and they don't have any concerns. But you're describing some anxiety among the ranks about how this could turn out. Could you speak to that a little bit? Well, first of all, people need to understand that the paperwork can be immaculate and the decision-making process can be perfect and they can still be naive about the political consequences of what they've done and also wrong. Wrong in even undertaking the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in the first place,

because had they really exhausted every possibility of getting the documents from Donald Trump, and if they knew from a confidential human source, from a person inside Trump's camp, that there were documents that Trump was continuing to squirrel away, despite the fact that he had been in negotiations for over a year about returning secret documents to the archives, even if all of those things were true, it still boils down to the Justice Department doing everything it can do to not undertake this unprecedented raid on his home. I mean, it's never been done in American history.

We need to remind ourselves of that. So I don't care how beautiful the paperwork was. I don't care that Merrick Garland approved the raid. I don't care that they think that everything was done by the book. They are still putting their thumb on the scale of the presidential elections, both in 2024 and then the midterm elections in this November. They are doing so. And by virtue of that, they have got to find even a less confrontational way in which they are going to try to retrieve these documents. So what would you say to people who, you know, look at this and see that the National Archives and Records Administration had requested these highly classified documents that for whatever

reason, over the course of months of what appear to be negotiations with them in the Justice Department, the president never produced them? I mean, did the FBI have any choice at this point, you know, when Trump doesn't produce these things? Were they sort of forced in a situation where it's like, well, we've got to do something about this. I mean, he's not giving it to us. We have to execute the raid. What do you think? How could it have turned out differently? Well, I'll correct one part of your question, Ken, which is that the National Archives didn't ask for highly classified documents. They asked for everything. Any papers that Donald Trump possesses that are considered presidential records under

the Presidential Records Act and are not his personal records. So the National Archive is not engaged in a process of saying this document or that document or this classification is what we want. They want handwritten notes that are completely and utterly unclassified as long as they are presidential records. That's the only task of the National Archives. Now, the FBI, which has its own investigations against Donald Trump. They are interested in protecting the national security and in seeing whether there is law breaking, not just in regards to the Presidential Records Act, but in regards to overall national security law. And so if people think that this was just the National Archives, they are wrong. This is the National Archives that prov to get into the question of classification.

So even now, you know, we are— Yeah, this is why I wanted to have you speak to this, because there's so much complex national security law. And when I look at the, you know, mainstream reporting on this, they're not doing a great job of explaining to the public. I'll give you an example. You know, when it was found from the charges that one of the laws that might have been broken was the Espionage Act, I saw so many people, including legal analysts from mainstream outlets, saying, Trump, guilty of espionage. Now, you know, what he's being accused of is very serious. There's no doubt about that. But can you talk a little bit about

why Espionage Act doesn't necessarily mean, for example, you can have broken the Espionage Act without committing espionage because it's such an old and vaguely worded law. Can you talk to that a little bit? word for the day, and then they have beaten it to death, right? So one day it was nuclear, and then the next day it was espionage. And in each of those, what's the point of going nuclear and saying nuclear except to make sure that everyone understands how important it is because it's nuclear. But the reality is that there's no evidence other than one, I don't know, offhand remark by the Washington Post that the documents had to do with nuclear weapons. I'm not sure that that's even true. Espionage Act that they are referencing in the search warrant is a section that also deals with returning documents to the government when you are requested to return them. So literally it's not that Donald Trump is being accused of espionage and or anything related to espionage it's just that the espionage act of 1917 happens to be the law under which references are made to and i here i have to

even correct myself not classified documents documents, national defense information. That's what the law says, national defense information. And so all it really covers in Section 793 of the Espionage Act of 1917 is that a person in possession of national defense information, if requested by a federal authority to return that information, their failure to return that information is a violation of Section 793. So all of the reporting has been exaggerated to the point of where even we, you know, just people who are discussing it, are pushed into a corner of saying classified, highly sensitive, you know, where that's not what the Justice Department is claiming. Right. And it's amazing to me how subtle these laws are.

I mean, you mentioned the fact that it was passed in, I think, 1918, and the fact that they used phrases like national defense information. This was before the term national security even existed. So to some extent, we're projecting a certain modern frame on this very old law. Now, that's not to say that this isn't a serious crime of which he's committed. I don't understand why things need to be exaggerated. Like if he retained things after being asked for them, that's still very serious. You know, there's good reason for people to be concerned about that. But kind of, you know, having this sort of hysterical perspective on it. And I've dug in in my own reporting to try to find out, you know, is there any evidence for espionage? Has he been trading these documents or selling them? I haven't found anything along those lines.

What are you hearing from your sources about what the nature of the documents might be and what his motive might have been in keeping these things? Well, OK, so let's review a little bit of the history. Donald Trump left the White House, and he did it in a bit of a hurry, right? Up until very close to January 6th, Trump, in his demented mind, thought that he had won the election and that this was going to be proven and overturned. And so part of that conviction on President Trump's part was, I'm not packing to leave. It's like as simple as that. No one's going to make me pack. And so finally, as January 20th came, the transition day between the two administrations, they kind of like, holy shit, we have to pack our boxes now and Melania's shoes and get out of the White House. And it was done in a kind of haphazard manner. And it was soon discovered, it really was soon discovered, that a lot of presidential records had been taken to Mar-a-Lago. So I don't think, it's an interesting question to ask whether or not that was intentional.

And so here's what we do know. You know, we now know that there were 15 boxes of documents returned to the National Archives in January of this year. So that was an admission on the part of the Trump camp that they had taken documents that didn't rightfully belong to President Trump. And then there was a subpoena in May delivered asking for additional documents. And that is admission that the FBI was investigating Trump because it was a grand jury subpoena. And on June 3rd, three FBI agents and a Justice Department official visited Mar-a-Lago and took away additional documents. Some documents is all we've been told.

But in doing so, they did recognize that there were additional documents at Mar-a-Lago because they asked that a better lock be put on the door of the storage room where the boxes were being kept. Sometime in this process, someone in the Trump camp became a confidential human source. If you want to say informant in a loose colloquial way, I'm kind of okay with it. But informant connotes like someone on the inside who's regularly reporting to the FBI. And this is more a person who came forward in this particular map.

And whoever it was, and based upon the FBI's investigation, however, that has unfolded, which we don't really know, they determined that there were additional documents. And not only that, and this is where the raid comes in, that Trump himself had squirreled away highly classified documents during his presidency, that he was kind of like, if you will, his favorites of what the CIA or the intelligence community had delivered to him in different ways. And John Bolton, who was his national security advisor, has said this week that Trump would rip a page out of a document or like a graphic in particular, he liked pictures, And put them in his own file. And there's nothing wrong with it per se. I mean, he's the president of the United States and commander in chief of the armed

forces. But whatever those personal Donald Trump favorites of his four years in office, you know, became the basis for the FBI to be somewhat alarmed that he possessed something. When you lay out the timeline like that, it's still, as I've said, is, you know, sounds quite serious and is something that they should be concerned about because these documents could, you know, contain sources and methods, stuff that could put, you know, human sources, lives at risk, could put our collection efforts at risk. But it sounds a little different than I think this narrative that's taken hold of that it's, you know, Trump is a spy for some foreign government, is handling all these things. It's like, you don't have to go to that maximalist position to say that what he's done is irresponsible or bad or terrible. And so it's sort of amazing to me that it's taken on that character because, you know,

the timeline that you described sounds like something that, you know, was more process oriented and maybe DOJ got to a point where they didn't know what else to do. And I guess for that reason, I have some sympathy for them. I mean, you're right that there are a lot of political risks involved in a search like that. But, you know, if he's not complying, what are they, I don't know, what do you think they're supposed to do? Well, first of all, Ken, you're an idiot. I mean, I have sympathy for Trump. I look at this guy and now see seven years of investigations on the part of the FBI. And I say to myself, if that's not the definition of political persecution, I don't know what is. Donald Trump has not been indicted for anything. He might be the stupidest man alive and he might be the most inattentive president we ever had.

But he is innocent until proven guilty. That's America. And so if the FBI is not going to indict him, their continued dogging of Donald Trump with these kinds of imaginary actions on his part. He's going to reveal U.S. intelligence sources to the enemy. He's going to trade top secret information for money. You know, whatever those accusations or rumors are that are being spread around, the truth of the matter is, if we have any evidence that Donald Trump was preparing to sell documents to a foreign country,

or we have any evidence that Donald Trump has intentionally divulged American sources and methods. Those are crimes. Indict him for the crime. But up until now, I operate on the assumption that Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty. It doesn't matter how much I like or dislike him. I want Donald Trump to have the same rights under the Constitution that I have because I want to preserve my rights. And so I look at Mar-a-Lago and I say, hey, look, we have intelligence information that indicates that you are hiding highly classified documents that we have asked you to return and you had better return them because if you don't return them in one week, we are going to execute a search warrant and recover them. Now, we're talking about Donald Trump. He might have said, go ahead,

I don't care. But the reality is that I'm not sure that that conversation ever took place. And so therefore, what Merrick Garland says, which is we exhausted all possibilities, is a bureaucratic, lame, and false statement, right? Donald Trump has documents. The FBI knew it in June when they put the bigger lock on the storage room. And now the question becomes, what transpired between June and this last Monday that changed things so significantly that they felt like they needed to do this unprecedented raid on a former president's private residence. We don't know the answer to that question. And I am willing to accept that maybe something seriously did happen. That maybe one of Trump's lawyers or someone in his camp did say to the FBI, I know for a fact that Donald Trump has squirreled away documents in his safe

and that he is not planning to return them when he returns the other boxes of material that are still in his possession. But even there, was the phone call made? Was the back channel discussion made? Like, can't we avoid this confrontation between the federal government? We don't want to have a confrontation. Will you return that material?

And again, Donald Trump might've said, go to hell. I'm not, you know, what are you going to do? Break into my house, go into my bedroom and open the safe? But evidently, while Donald Trump might have made that political calculation, the Justice Department seems to have made no political calculation. And that is the tragedy of Mar-a-Lago. Look, we're going to see many more episodes of the Mar-a-Lago drama. Right. You know, now Senator Collins, Susan Collins of Maine, has said that the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she sits, is discussing forcing the Justice Department to show them the affidavit.

Now, it's not just a search warrant, right? They have to convince a judge that something is, that there's a law breaking going on. And the affidavit contains the details of what it is that the FBI knew and what it is that were the laws that Donald Trump was breaking. And it has details about what the FBI knew. The investigation, it's a statement of fact on the part of the FBI special agent

and the US attorney. This is what we know. This is what justifies this act. If, in fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee asks for that affidavit, which will be denied to them, then we're just going to see this snowball into a much larger legal fight. And that's not just like the Republican Party who is hoping to capitalize on what happened here. This is the system of balance of powers. This is the constitutional system in operation. And so what I'm talking about here is essential to understanding what's going to happen in November and what's going to happen in 2024. Has the FBI just elected Donald Trump president as a result of Mar-a-Lago?

Is it going to continue to bubble up and continue to be a grievance on the part of many who think that Donald Trump has been politically persecuted? Is Mar-a-Lago just going to disappear from the news and be like another ho-hum story? Because the extraordinary Donald Trump can even be embroiled in a question of whether or not he took classified documents from the government and it just will go away because welcome to the Trump show, this is how it goes? Or is it actually going to be an indictment? And the answer to all three of those questions bear upon the future of our nation. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for joining us on another edition of Breaking Points Intercept Edition I'm Ken Klippenstein this is an iHeart Podcast