Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 10/16: Truss Resigns, Early Voting, Russian Unrest, Dem Agenda, & More!

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends cover the Liz Truss resignation, early voter turnout, Dem agenda, Russian unrest, NATO exercises, & 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, guys, we have some major happening right now in real time. Breaking news from our friends over there in the UK. Prime Minister Liz Truss has just resigned after only six weeks in office. She, of course, became prime minister after Boris Johnson had to resign under pressure for a whole series of scandals that he was involved in. And Sarah, I've been following this really close. I actually did a monologue here on Liz Truss and her economic plan, what they call a mini budget. Yeah. Which had like eye watering tax cuts for the rich was so sort of doctrinaire that even the, you know, the sort of financial press, the normal sort of like

conservative economic people were like, what are you doing? The British economy nearly collapsed, pound plummeted, created all these issues with their pension funds. The Bank of England had to come in and basically bail them out because the whole thing was in free fall. I mean, they really came very close to the brink, especially because as these pension funds were having to meet margin calls, they were having to fire sale their assets, which was leading to a potential contagion throughout the entire economy. So this was a complete and total disaster.

Her approval rating in the last poll that I saw had plummeted to 8 percent, 8 percent. So even, you know, people who were more friendly towards the Tories who, you know, sort of like this ideological direction in general were like, what the hell are you doing, lady? She has then she then had to reverse course. She fired a bunch of people. She said, OK, we're not actually going to do this, trying to stabilize things, but obviously continued to be under a lot of pressure. And now we see she has, in fact, resigned. This is the, let's see, what are they saying? Shortest serving leader in British political history.

Six weeks on the job, Sagar. Yeah, I was trying to actually think in my head. I'm like, who actually even lasts as long? No, there's some who only lasted like one or two months. But yeah, six weeks, humiliating fall from defeat. Just to reiterate that, she essentially plunged the economy into complete chaos. She had to fire several aspects of her,

several members of her cabinet, the chancellor of the Exchequer. Energy prices have been in complete chaos since they've decided to lift the cap. The economy is literally in shambles and the Bank of England had to bail them out at the time when it's getting colder across the cap. The economy is literally in shambles, and the Bank of England had to bail them out at the time when it's getting colder across the UK. People are freaking out about, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but in Britain, most of them have adjustable rate

mortgages. So when interest rates jack up, well, all of a sudden, they're paying, you know, 7%, 8% or whatever interest rates that they were not prepared for on top of inflation in energy. So they need some serious shock to the system. And now, from what I've read, whoever comes next, this is going to be real tough. Because remember, there was a battle between her and a guy named Rishi Sunak in order to take over. He ended up not being able to get the amount of support that he needed. However, from what I've read, that what's especially chaotic right now is the energy situation because she actually lost a vote just yesterday when her deputy whip and chief whip actually resigned because they weren't able to deliver. That's really what helped bring down the government.

It showed that the party was not behind her and her policy whatsoever. With Sunak, though, he is ideologically a bit similar to Truss. So are they going to go in that direction? Are they going to go back to Boris? Honestly, that seems very likely. The other thing is that if they're unable to get a leader within a week, so according to this, you know, from what I'm reading in her remarks, she said that she will remain the PM for another week until the conservative party can come up. So there is going to be some massive jockeying. Well, and they're under a lot, they will be under a lot of pressure

to call a general election. You can't just like stick different leaders in that no one's voting for and have them make complete messes and think the public is just going to like accept that. And now Labor, which was kind of like back on their heels, latest polling has Labor Party with like a 30 point edge over them now, which is also a really stunning turn of events. And I mean, obviously, this has all kinds of implications for us. But, you know, a couple things to think about here. Adam Tooze has been talking. He studies these like poly crises. And he views what happened in the UK as a potential warning sign for the rest of the world. Why? Because our financial system is so complex and so interconnected, both domestically

and internationally, that no one really saw coming that a drop in the pound and problems in their bond market would trigger such an issue for these pension funds. And that you could have this contagion that really no one saw coming because it is all connected and so complicated in those ways. Well right now obviously we're facing any number of global shocks to our economic system so he's basically raising the question of like you know this little crisis scenario we had playing out in the UK we could be seeing

this happen over and over again in places around the globe because of these various economic shocks, you know, including the actions of our own central bank, including the actions of central banks around the world, continuing to lift interest rates. What is that all going to do? It really underscores the fact that it is a very dangerous situation.

I think the other thing it underscores is how stunningly unpopular this is. I mean, she loves Margaret Thatcher. She is like, you know, modeled herself. She's Thatcherite to the core. She and her cabinet, extremely ideological and had this view of the economy that was just like straight textbook, like right-wing think tank, neoliberal to the core. And it shows you what a disaster those economics policies, when actually implemented, actually are and how incredibly unpopular they are as well. You know, you had newspapers celebrating this budget when it came, like, finally a real Tory budget, all of this nonsense because it was so hard ideologically driven. And in the first days, even as this crisis was unfolding, she wouldn't back down.

She went on BBC. She was defending it. She was trying to blame all the problems on like, oh, it's Putin's fault. It's really, you know, it's really not us. It's these other things that are going on around the world, the war in Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. And so finally, you know, with her approval rating at 8% and her own party completely abandoning her, she is ultimately forced out. This apparently came after a meeting with the chairman of the 1922 committee, which knows how many conservative lawmakers have issued letters of no confidence in her leadership. So clearly they have a majority of the conservative party issuing the letter of no confidence.

The leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, I'm probably saying that wrong. I'm sorry. Keir Starmer? Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer. All right, let's go with that. Keir Starmer has said that they need to call a general election ASAP as to whether a conservative party can even draw enough votes to come to some sort of consensus and avoid this remains totally unclear. So massive political upheaval. As far as Ukraine also, Liz Truss was frankly even more hawkish on Ukraine than Boris Johnson. So Keir, nobody really knows.

From what I've read, he had declared unrelenting support. At the same time, the Labor left is a lot stronger than the Democratic left in this country in terms of their real pushback against some of the Ukraine policy of the government. So how that would work out in terms of for the geopolitical situation, it matters. But, hey, it just shows you there's always 40th order consequences to wars. And this appears to be one of them as it has in almost every general

and almost every European conflict to date. Shameless plug, we're having Owen Jones, who's a British commentator on Crystal Cow and Friends this week because I wanted to dig into this crisis, which he calls the Liz Truster F. Right. And so it'll be a great time to talk to him and really go in depth here. And, you know, he's on the left, so he'll have a

lot of insights into Keir Starmer and the Labor Party. Obviously, all of these parties have different factions and tensions within them. You know, the Corbynites have been sort of like crushing away and the more centrist elements of the labor party have been more ascendant recently. So we'll see what he thinks this all ultimately means, but obviously incredible, shocking, quite historic news out this morning. My personal favorite, uh, the coda to all of this is that the daily star had a live stream, whether a piece of lettuce would outlast Liz Truss and the lettuce actually won. It was hilarious. They dressed it up and all that. And today, actually, on the day that she resigned, they had the lettuce with a wig on

and a keep calm and carry on mug on top of some British flags as well. I saw this picture on Twitter and I was like, what the hell is this? It's the lettuce. The lettuce wins. I didn't want to look into it. Apparently there was a cheeky comment in a column

which was like, a piece of lettuce will outlast Prime Minister Trout. And it actually did. So there you go. Let's move to the midterms and stick with the state of Georgia. Let's go and put this up on the screen. Who knows what this means, but it's interesting. Georgia breaks first day early voting record.

They nearly doubled their figure from the last midterms. Now, I have some updated numbers as of this morning because we're now, today is the fourth day of early in-person voting. So we have all the numbers through the first three days. And they've actually gotten even more stunning because it wasn't just the first day where you had this overwhelming flood of voters. They have now, they are now outpacing the number of votes from the 2020 presidential election. So they're not only outpacing 2018, which of course is pre-pandemic and the pandemic has really shifted everybody's sort of like voting patterns and the way they vote and all of that stuff, but they even now are surpassing by quite a bit the 2020 presidential election, here are the numbers. As of the end of Wednesday,

over 291,700 people had voted. This is from ABC News. 268,050 of those were in person, about 24,000 of them were absentee. Back in 2020, the early vote numbers at that time were 266,000. So they're outpacing them by roughly 30,000 votes. I mean, that's really quite astonishing. Now, what does it mean? Who the hell knows? Who knows, right? You know, if you're inclined to be, you know, a Democratic, hopefully you look at this and go, see, the young people are excited. They're turning out. Our base is showing up. I will say I looked at the demographic numbers. Black voters were accounting for a disproportionate number of Georgia's early voters. You actually had black voters accounted for about 39 percent of the early voters.

That's higher than their 29 percent of the overall registration. That's one thing you could look at. Again, who knows what this ultimately means, except for the fact that people are clearly extremely engaged in this race and showing up in massive numbers. Yeah, I think that that is what my takeaway is. And look, having looked at the enthusiasm numbers and all that, I personally think a lot of that is GOP, but I could be totally wrong. Maybe there is the Dem, Roe versus Wade bump. They're Roe-Roe-Roe-Roe-ing their vote. What do you have?

Roe-Roe their vote. Roe-vember. Man, I hate myself for even doing any of these things. Anyway, our new team member, Mac, put together a fantastic little mashup of some focus group where they had, what was it? Six Republicans, six Democrats and one independent. So these were all people who were Trump voters in 2016 and then flipped to Biden in 2020. So the idea is these are swing voters because in those two presidential elections, they went Trump and then Biden. Right. And I think it's important to just listen to what they have to

say about the midterms, about Dr. Oz, about John Fetterman and what we can learn from it. Let's take a listen. Okay. So for the six ofms, about Dr. Oz, about John Fetterman, and what we can learn from it. Let's take a listen. What words do you associate with him? Oprah and pharmaceuticals. Oprah and pharmaceuticals, okay. Neither of which I'm a fan of. Stephanie? Celebrity.

Celebrity, okay. Joshua? Scam and lies. I always saw him pushing stuff. Casey? He doesn't live quite in the state of Pennsylvania. What words do you associate with him? Fraud. Raised taxes.

Okay. What else? Tax evasion. Tax evasion tax evasion okay cannabis got it Yolanda what word comes to mind I was gonna say the same cannabis weed okay Stephanie um not a specific word but like a phrase helping. He wants to help people get out of jail. I just I'm not aware of Fetterman's stances on Roe v. Wade, so I don't feel like I can speak to it. So, Stephanie, do you know where Fetterman stands on Roe v. Wade and abortion? Not clearly, no. No? John, do you know where Fetterman stands on abortion?

I do not. Yolanda, do you know where Fetterman stands on abortion? I'm not. Yolanda, do you know where Fetterman stands on abortion? I do not. How many of you would say that your decision to vote for either Fetterman or Oz will be driven, at least in part, by a concern for which party controls the U.S. Senate in 2023? By show of fingers. So, John, Brandon, Bob, all of you except for Amy. So, six of you. See, I thought one of the most noteworthy was that right there, which is that they're like, yeah, I think Oz is a fraud, but I care enough about the collection or the, you know,

the importance of having a Senate majority that I'm willing to vote. Well, I have no idea if that's representative, right? Yeah, we don't know. I mean, focus groups, you have no idea. It's just always interesting to hear directly from voters how they're processing the information. Ultimately, when they ask these people who, again, were Trump Biden voters who they would pick to vote for today, nine said they'd vote for Fetterman, two said they'd vote for Oz and two said neither one. But, you know, there's a couple of things to me that are interesting about it. And just, again, a reminder of like we are in up to our eyeballs and details about these candidates and their policies and what's at stake and all of these things. You know, the issue that Democrats have been leaning into almost to the exclusion of everything else is abortion. And they asked them, like, do you know his position

on abortion? None of them, none of them knew. They were like, who knows? And apparently the issue that Fetterman was most known for was weed, which is also, you know, really interesting, especially since so many of them are now saying, you know, they're going to vote for him, apparently, at least according to what they told this pollster here. The other thing you can see is, like, what is landing with them is more of the negative attacks from both sides. So, clearly, they've ingested the Fetterman messaging about Oz, scam, fraud, out of state, all that stuff.

And they also have clearly taken in some of the negative messaging from the Oz side about Fetterman. I was actually surprised the tax fraud thing was what apparently stuck with them, which isn't even something we've really been, I don't even know the details of that, to be honest with you, and what that's all about. I followed it closely.

I agree, again, but didn't even necessarily surface it. It is interesting. I think it's just the feeling that people have when somebody appears a hypocrite is just digs so deep. That's one of those that people, it drives people absolutely crazy. So yeah, look, I mean, I thought it was a good representation. They are not even motivated by the signature issue from what we saw in terms of why they even like Fetterman. They're like, yeah, he wants to help. What I think is important is like, look, that's how most people think about politics. I like that guy. I think he wants to help me. It think is important is, like, look, that's how most people think about politics. Like, I like that guy.

I think he wants to help me. It's a lot of vibes. It's a lot of, you know, yeah, that's why I thought Fetterman's attacks on Oz were so effective. Because this idea that he's, like, rich, out of touch, asshole, scam artist, you know, it lands with, like, it seems believable. And it really landed with people. And I think that's the only reason why he's had a shot in this race really at all, given the overall numbers. And also interesting, I think maybe one of them ultimately brought up, you know, his health and those concerns. But that clearly was not a major focus of their conversation either. They were more concerned about some other like personal characteristics that had been raised by Oz. So that was interesting. They also asked about the governor's race in Pennsylvania,

the same group of voters, and the numbers were fairly similar. They had eight going for Shapiro, one for Mastriano, and four who were like, nah, we're out. And one of them in particular, who I think was, you know, more sort of Republican leaning, said Mastriano was just too out there and he just couldn't just couldn't do it. Another trend that I think is potentially noteworthy in terms of how we've seen these polls converge and Republicans really gaining a lot of ground as we come closer to Election Day. Let's go and put this up on the screen from Seanndy. This is going back to the Georgia race. He shared RealClearPolitics polling average over the course of the Warnock-Walker race. And what you see is when the Walker scandals really started to hit, his numbers really dropped. But Warnock's numbers did not really rise. They sort of stayed more or less where they've been. Now, what a lot of people are reading into with that, and by the way, Walker's

numbers have recovered somewhat, although he still remains behind by about two and a half points in the average of all the polls. What a lot of people are saying is this is a dynamic of like, you know, people are not happy with these candidates, whether it's Oz or Walker or Blake Masters or whoever, like they're not in love with them, but they're basically not really willing to vote for Democrats. So as the election day comes closer, they're more and more reconciling them to the fact of like, well, I'm not really a big Herschel Walker fan, but I guess I'm just going to pull the lever for him. And there were a lot of comparisons to Trump after the like grabber by the P word moment where, yeah, his numbers dropped, but Hillary's didn't rise. And eventually people did find their way back to him. That's my takeaway. I just think

the things are so partisan right now. I think that the fundamentals are so strong in the GOP favor that people are just going to come home. I could be completely wrong. I really could, but I just cannot get over, like, you got high inflation, you got high gas, there's a war going on in Europe. It just feels like there's chaos. Plus the historical trend that the first, the party in power always almost gets clobbered after their first midterms. Yeah. But on the other hand, like, I don't want to let the Democrats off the hook because you have 80% of voters saying that the economy, inflation, the economy, jobs, like you put the basket together. They're like, this is what we care about. Listen to us. This is the thing we care about. And by default, if you don't have any message about that, anything to offer them whatsoever, yeah,

you're the party in power. You're going to get blamed for that situation. They have not focused at all on the economy. I can't tell you what they would do if they take power. Biden gave a big speech saying, OK, if we got, you know, 52 senators, then we'd codify Roe versus Wade. What are you going to do with 52 senators to help people's bottom line? And so I just find it so incredibly frustrating that they've decided to go all in on abortion and completely cede the ground of the economy to Republicans. I am not the only one that is frustrated by that. Senator Bernie Sanders is also very frustrated by that. Let's put this up on the screen. He's decided to jump in and do a couple weekends of barnstorming here across the country. This is from the New York Times. Their headline is,

Bernie Sanders fearing weak Democratic turnout plans midterms blitz. Mr. Sanders said he thought the Democratic Party was, quote, doing rather poorly at selling itself to working class voters. You are not wrong, sir. He's planning an eight state blitz with at least 19 events over the final two weekends before the midterm elections, looking to rally young voters and progressives as Democrats confront daunting national headwinds. He's going to Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And he also has been out,

you know, speaking out and a week covered before he had written an op-ed basically making the point of you guys have to have something to say about the economy since it's the number one issue. Let's take a listen to what he said to Jake Tapper. Well, Jake, first of all, I happen to believe that the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe versus Wade is an absolute outrage. I think Democrats have got to fight to make sure that it is women who control their own bodies, not the government. So I think this is a very important issue, but I don't believe it can be the only issue. At a time when we have an economy in which the wealthiest people, the billionaire class, are getting much, much richer while working people are struggling to put food on the table, it goes without saying that we have got to

focus on the economy and demand that we have a government that works for all of us and not just wealthy campaign contributors. And the irony here is Republicans say, you know, they talk about the economy. Really, not one of them is going to vote to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Not one of them is going to vote for legislation that makes it easier for workers to join unions. Not one of them is going to vote to do what every other major country on earth does and guarantee health care for all people, nor will they vote to raise taxes on billionaires at a time when the richest people in this country, in some cases, pay nothing in federal income tax.

So I happen to think the Republican line is phony and Democrats have got to respond. There's a reason why Bernie Sanders continues to be the most popular prominent Democrat. And there were just new approval ratings that came out that proved that. And it's because he's like literally the only one saying anything about, you know, the issue that people care about the most. I'm covering my monologue today. 50% of inflation during the pandemic was because of corporate profiteering. Like where are Democrats on that issue? There was Stan Greenberg, who's like sort of storied working class

pollster on the Democratic side, tested a bunch of messages. His number one message that moved the most voters was, we're going to have the child tax credit, hardworking families are gonna get $600 a month into their bank accounts, and we're gonna pay for it by taxing the rich. How hard is that?

Where is that messaging? Where is at least... They won in Georgia by saying really clearly, you're going to get checks. You're going to get checks. You're going to get checks. Remember Warnock? Yeah, I remember.

All that stuff. That worked, and they just completely memory-holed it because they're incompetent, because they're ideologically stupid, and because they also don't want to make promises that they ultimately don't really want to follow through on. Well, they're not going to do it. I think that's really what comes through to me. I'm like, at the end of the day, we've seen the whole mansion cinema game

enough times that people just don't believe it. And maybe they shouldn't. I mean, why would you? Like, do you really have confidence if you have 51 votes that some sort of new reconciliation bill is going to come through? Well, what they're saying is if they have two more senators, they can get rid of the filibuster, at least for Roe versus Wade. And again, are they going to actually do that? Or is some new, you know, the rotatingibuster, at least for Roe versus Wade. And again, are they going to actually do that? Or is some new, you know, the rotating villain theory, whatever, someone new going to pop up and say, actually, I decided I love the filibuster too. Very, very possible.

But they're literally, I mean, even, okay, even if you just wanted to lean into abortion, they're not even doing that well. Like, they never put these Republicans on the right, pressured them, made it difficult for them, made them take hard votes. Nancy Pelosi was pressed by Andrea Mitchell of like, well, what's going to be different when you have 52 senators versus you already have power? Why not try to codify it now? Just nothing but excuse making. So even on the issue that they've decided to be all in on, even on that, they're not fighting. So what makes anyone think they're going to fight if they retain power? Yeah, I mean, I remember we said this here, we're like, Hey, look, you know,

Republicans all say that they support a 15 week ban. Republicans, I believe have all voted. Most of the people in the chamber have voted for 22 weeks. So I'm like, all right, put it on the floor then put it, do it. Say, if you actually believe this, like fine, but they won't even do that. And I think that is, you know, that that's a whole other conversation about the abortion groups and all these other people, but they have really squandered what could have been a good moment for them. And I think you're right, which is you can't let them off the hook whatsoever. So, look, I mean, you have fundamentals plus bad politics. It doesn't take a genius to get around.

Let me say one more thing because I really am on a tear with it. I cannot. Republicans have said they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. How does not every American in the country know that fact? And want to put the debt ceiling on the table to do so. They are out saying they want to trigger a government crisis when they come into office. That is their own stated plan. Why does everyone not know that?

It is complete political malpractice. And you know what? Yes, the landscape is still difficult, party in power, all these things. But you're not even trying. You're not even trying. And so, yeah, now, next piece, predictably, instead of actually trying to win, instead they're just trying to figure out who to throw under the bus. It's the left, even though Bernie Sanders is the only one who's saying anything that makes any damn sense politically or otherwise. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from our old friends at the Hill. Democrats ready for midterm blame game. Alexander Bolton, three weeks out, beginning to look more and more like a victory for Republicans. Democrats are playing the blame game. You had Obama preemptively come out. You know, I actually thought some of his comments, I didn't listen to the whole thing, but he talked about, you know, sort of the like over woke language.

He said Democrats and progressives can be a buzzkill by constantly scolding people for being politically incorrect. You've got Alyssa Slotkin and some other younger House Democrats who are in tough spots are arguing the party leadership

has fallen out of touch and have called for a, quote, new generation and new blood in charge of the party. Now, these are the people who are like, you know, they make like the Pete Buttigieg argument of generational change where it's like, let's keep the same terrible politics, but let's just stick some new people in charge ultimately. But I just think it's very telling that already you have people trying to angle to be able to shape the narrative of exactly why they lost. Well, I actually am not sure that the left will get the blame. I mean,

I think the woke stuff is, I mean, look, it's not like the center leftists aren't all woke on their own. They're worse because they're only woke and then they don't even do anything. That's my point. So I'm like, I actually think Biden is going to get a ton of the heat. I think he deserves it. Like he's the leader of the party. He's the person who squandered this moment. He's the person who's going to preside over a loss of some sort and who majority of his people. So I don't think old Biden can wriggle his way out of this one. There's just no way. If you lose an election, it's on you. Obama suffered this in 2010, Bush in 2006, Clinton in 94. Every single one of them effectively had to make a statement where they're like, I take responsibility and I'm either going to adjust

course and try and win my reelection or like this is on me. Ultimately, everyone you just named did win their reelection. Yeah, I know. But they had higher approval ratings than Biden does. And Biden, as we've been covering, consistently a majority of the Democratic Party says we want someone else. Now, that's before suffering what could potentially be a significant midterm defeat. And the whole reason this guy is here is because he's supposedly a winner. You know, I mean, we talk about that with Trump, like his whole, like, we are going to get tired of winning, whatever. The only reason Democrats back this guy when they preferred other policies, especially on economics than what Biden was offering, was because they thought he was the guy who could win. He was the guy that could take out Trump. And they're going to be very concerned about that again, because obviously Trump is waiting in the wings to make his comeback. So

what is it going to look like for Democratic voters if now not only do you not really like what he has to offer in terms of economics, but you also don't really think that this is the guy who's up to the task of beating Trump? And yeah, his age and his, you know, inability to like really coherently speak and his brain meltdowns and all those things like that plays a very significant role into that calculation as well. So I do think you're right. I think if Democrats suffer, you know, real significant defeat in the midterms, if Republicans take the House and they take the Senate, I do think Biden is going to be in a very vulnerable position to a potential inter-primary or party

primary challenge that could very much take him out. Because what is the rationale for keeping him if you're not doing a good job and we don't believe you can win? Yeah. No, look, I think you're right. Also, not for nothing, his 80th birthday is a month away. So just so everybody knows that. Actually, I'm going to be curious if they even acknowledge that he turns 80 years old, like his own birthday. They've been trying to downplay it for sure. Yeah. They're not doing the big Obama birthday bash for sure. Yeah. In the Belgorod region of Russia, you've had a couple of major developments as well that are changing the character of this war. And the first, and we have footage of this too, yes. So there was a shooting, and we'll go to the footage in a second. So this was a mass shooting

carried out at a training center. Now, the Russian government has been explicit in trying to say that these were all recruits and volunteers. These are not draftees. They don't want the impression out there that these are people who have been conscripted into the war, and as soon as they get to the training center, start shooting people full metal jacket style. Now, take that with a grain of salt. These very well could have been conscripts. What they're also saying is that these were Tajiki men, which plays into the kind of ethno-nationalism that is at the heart of Putinism, saying that these are kind of outsiders and others who were attacking the motherland or along those lines. But what you have is at least 11, you know,

that's what they're admitting to. People, you know, soldiers who were supposed to be getting trained and during a live fire drill, these two men just turned on everybody, just start blowing them away. So what was your reaction when you start, because, you know, ever see a mass shooting, you're like, oh, that's a United States story. own country about what this war is about, especially as he is having to rely on sending conscripts into war and kind of going to Iran, all of these different strategies. To you, what does this say about his ability to really seriously carry that out? I mean, clearly he sees that as a central aspect of his strategy, being able to muster this nationalism as a weapon, really, a massive weapon in terms of morale. There's a contradiction in it because he is relying on the kind of outer

regions, the other ethnicities inside the Russian Federation, to make up a disproportionate share, just like we do here in the United States, of his military. So he's trying to have it both ways, and it's not going to work. I think this mobilization is going to prove to be disastrous for him because, as has been talked about by a number of different commentaries. What Putin, what was so successful for Putin over several decades of his rule was mass demobilization, was to make a contract with the Russian people that says there's going to be a significant level of security, stability, both economic and just crime. And, you know, I'm going to cut down on crime.

I'm going to cut down on economic insecurity. You're going to have pride in your country again. And in exchange, the deal is basically don't worry about politics. Like, don't run candidates against me. You know, they'll be kicked off the ballot or they'll be jailed or they'll be killed. And then we'll be cool. Like that was the deal. And so that is demobilization.

And so to mobilize the entire country on behalf of what is now unmistakably a war, which he spent so many months saying is just a special military operation, then undoes the entire bargain that has kept him in power. And you have to think, why did he call it a special military operation if he thought this was going to be popular? And one of the reasons is he wants it to be a sideshow. You can continue to be demobilized. Sit at home, put a Z on your door, support the war, support your country, be a patriot. And that deal held for the first almost year, six months. He's obviously very capable of controlling the flow of information in the country, and that's been a buildup over the course of years. So when he feels that confident controlling the narrative, we are denazifying Ukraine and the country's going to believe that. Who could be against that?

It's a special military operation to denazify Ukraine. And now the speech just a couple of weeks ago he gave sort of broadened the scope of it, though, and said this is about the West. This is about us versus this rotting sort of ideology that is creeping onto our land from the West. And that's what we're taking a stand against. So it is, you know, I feel like that was a broadening to an extent of the way he was willing to frame the war. And it's retconning the whole mission, too. Because you don't get to launch a war and then six months into it say that actually we're doing the war for this reason. Well, actually it is a war.

Right. And actually it is a war. Although you could argue that that has happened in the past. So if you take the U.S. Civil War, for instance. Sure. That was initially a war to preserve the Union. And Lincoln and the other Republican leaders are being very clear this is not about ending slavery. But then in the cauldron of the war

it reshapes itself. I don't see any way that this comes across, though, as anything other than face-saving at this point. Like, you can't lose a war and then start saying, well, actually, this is an existential war against Western civilization. You can if you control the flow of information in your country. It's much easier to make the claim that that's what's really happening. But controlling the flow of information is harder when things are happening inside your borders. Absolutely. Like the fact that they immediately acknowledged this mass shooting at this training center. And another thing going on inside their borders, if we have footage of this Ukrainian strike in the Belgorod region. So this is, you know, for the first six months of the war-ish,

Ukraine, you know, very much refrained from attacking, you know, inside Russian territory outside of, you know, forget who controls Donbass or Crimea. Right, right. Like inside what everybody understands to be Russia's borders. But here we have, you know, missile strikes hitting a power, hitting a civilian center, again, which is ugly, because if you have civilian strike against civilian strike, they hit an airport, they hit a, you know, they hit a power utility. If you could connect the dots for us between the first thing we talked about,

which is these potentially Iranian-made drones coming in from, they have a range of something like 1,200 plus miles coming into Kiev. What is the sort of connection between A and B there? What does it mean that we're seeing both of these things happen within the same time frame? Well, I think Russia is certainly going for kind of maximum pain to inflict on Ukraine in order to try to pump up domestic support for the war to show that we're still capable of raining destruction down on Ukraine. And the subtle implication is always, and we're holding back. That's a central component of the Russian messaging, which is that we actually could be doing a lot worse to Ukraine than we are,

and you should be grateful that we're not. And if we're forced to, if we're backed into a corner, we will do much worse. Right. And that's where the nuclear saber rattling comes in, too. That's where it all comes down to at the end of the day, the willingness to deploy, for instance, tactical nuclear weapons. about the dire urgent need for negotiations and our foreign policy establishments disinterest in actually really meaningfully approaching the negotiating table, go take a look at that. It's really fantastic. And Ryan, this actually- I took a very courageous stand against nuclear war. It was really bold. I was surprised to hear Ryan coming out in favor of peace.

Yeah, against annihilation and Armageddon. Right, yeah. The destruction of the world. Controversial position here in Washington. It's controversial. Somebody's got to say it. Somebody had to do it and you were willing to. You rose your hand and you said, I'll do it. One of the stories we didn't get to.

You wanted to talk about happiness. That's right. We wanted to talk about happiness. And a new survey released by, it was the 2022 American Family Survey. You combine that with a new poll from YouGov and Desiree News that found liberals are about 15 percentage points less likely to be, quote, completely satisfied with their lives. Ryan is laughing. This is from Unheard, Brad Wilcox, a great Brad Wilcox, whose work you should follow. He says, quote, liberals, especially liberal women,

are significantly less likely to be happy with their lives and satisfied with their mental health compared to their conservative peers aged 18 to 55. More from Brad, quote, the survey goes on to find that liberals are about 18 percentage points less likely to be completely satisfied with their mental health than conservatives, but the problem appears to be especially acute for liberal women who register the lowest level of satisfaction with their lives and mental health. Indeed, only 15% of liberal women in the age group surveyed are completely satisfied with their lives compared to 31% of conservative women. Likewise, only 15% of liberal women are completely satisfied with their mental health compared to 36% of conservative women. This is incredibly loaded data because it depends on how you define

terms like complete and satisfied, and then the combination of them being completely satisfied. It depends on how you define mental health and your own satisfaction with mental health. What does that look like? So if you believe mental health is sort of a more pressing daily problem that needs to be addressed, as many people on the left probably do, then you may be less likely just to be completely satisfied with your mental health, even if you're mentally healthy. So this is like a very, very loaded sort of series of questions. And there are a lot of variables to parse here. That said, when you're able to see gaps, there's something there. What do you make of it, Ryan? I mean, one thing off the top, I would would say is that liberals are more likely to have college degrees,

more likely to have graduate degrees. People with college degrees and graduate degrees are more likely to be the types of people who are going to actually something to death or nitpick the kind of definition of it. And so if you say to somebody like that, are you completely satisfied? They're going to overthink it in a way. They're completely satisfied and they'll have some philosophical rationale. Is anyone ever completely satisfied?

Is anyone ever completely satisfied? Right. If I say that I'm completely satisfied, does that mean that I have no aspirational satisfaction in the future? So I can see a non-trivial number of liberals just obnoxiously quibbling with and overthinking the question and then refusing to take part. Some are going to do the not sure or just going to refuse to participate in something that takes something as nuanced as the meaning of life and tries to chunk it into a single polling question. And so

they're going to be gone from that number. Where I think on the conservative side, you just get more people that are like, yeah, I'm completely satisfied. Sure, things are good. So Brad does a lot of really interesting work, and he's the author of the Unheard article on marriage and children and the way that they do create some measure of what you could call satisfaction in people's lives. And his theory in the Unheard article is that liberals are clearly less likely to be married and less likely to have children. And that is eating away at their ability to come to that answer that, yes, I'm completely satisfied with my life. Women, the Institute for Family Studies, Lyman Stone over there, has done some really interesting research on how American women are actually having fewer children than they say they want to, which is an interesting point. And we know that as the marriage rate has gone up,

that's also becoming an issue for women in terms of whether they're able to enter into that institution. And there's a lot of actually research correlated that shows a correlation between marriage and happiness. Now, children is another question. There's some research that shows in certain periods of parenthood, happiness is not at its peak. So there's sort of a different question there. But Ryan, I wanted to ask you, one thing we see, especially in sort of urban areas, you actually have a long marriage and a lot of kids. I do. That's not super common on the left. Do people look at you like you're a freak?

I mean, sometimes. Yeah. What are you doing, man? Yeah, a little bit. Especially among millennials. I mean, sometimes. What are you doing, man? Yeah, a little bit. Especially among millennials. I mean, especially in the younger left. Sure. Yeah, a little bit. Right, right. You have to have explanations. What is your explanation? I don't really want to get into all the explanations. But you kind of need them. Then it's like, oh, okay. Okay. So, yeah. But I think another potential piece of this, because I was trying to think how I would

answer this. Yeah. Another potential piece of it could be liberal guilt about the state of the world. Yeah, absolutely. So if you asked me in my personal life how I would answer this, I would say completely satisfied. But then I would immediately feel guilty for saying that because— I can't be happy. The world is such a miserable place right now. So how dare I? Because my satisfaction has to also be connected to the other people in the world. We're social beings.

If one person isn't free, then nobody's free. That kind of approach. So if one person isn't satisfied, nobody's satisfied. And so for a lot of liberals, they really aren't satisfied unless they feel like the world is moving in a positive direction, because they feel a responsibility for the rest of the world. where I think conservatives probably have what is a mentally healthier way of approaching it, which is to say, I'm looking out for me and my family, and the rest of you are kind of on your own, and it's not my responsibility, and it's not my burden to worry about that. I don't think they would say it's not their responsibility or their burden so much as they would say that it's the sort of immediate question of satisfaction and happiness is one that they have to.

And not that they don't continue to do charity. There's research that shows conservatives tend to be more philanthropic and more charitable. But that the question of happiness is not one that they can control for other people. You can sort of do different things but not necessarily be able to control other people. That said, the mental health question is a really interesting one. I think there's some pretty convincing and persuasive research that social media use, which is increasing for a lot of different reasons, one of which it depends on how you kind of define social media, but even things like Gmail. We are all using these apps on our smartphones and on laptops, more and more and more. And if those are demonstrated to show a decline in mental health,

if you are more likely to be educated, you're more likely to be, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be liberal. And that means you're probably more likely to have a laptop job or Zoom. So being what we now post-COVID call the Zoom class, compared with people who are more likely to be doing manual labor, people who have kids to worry about and can't necessarily, can actually have a good excuse to put the phone down going forward. So yeah, I mean, it's a difficult thing to sort of parse out. I do think there's really something to this question of mental health and lifestyle that is hitting the left harder than it's hitting the right at the moment, given the way the sort of working world is organized.

As a deeply disturbing number, 15% of liberal women saying they're completely satisfied with their mental health. That's a really small number. It's a really small number. And it's 21% for liberal men is not a whole lot better. And it's interesting— But 15 is just brutal. It is interesting that you're more than doubling it when you get to the question of conservatives as well. And so, yes—

But still only a third of people— Only a third, right. But the fact that it's more than double— People are miserable. —based on ideology is striking. And again, it's something that I don't think trickles into the political discourse at all. You hear a little bit of it from actually AOC, who talks about, you know, this sort of, I think she kind of channels the sense

of like millennial misery in ways that you don't have a lot of figures on the right, other than maybe Trump, who talks about American carnage and that sort of language, or speaks in that sort of language, is tapping into. I think it's Marianne Williamson who talks about, you know, this idea that if you look at birth rates or people not wanting to have children, what does that say about the mindset and the mental health, frankly,

of people going forward as well? And so, yeah, these are really big questions. I don't think they're questions that our politics is super focused on addressing. I know you would agree with me on that. We would have different ways of addressing it. But yes, it's, you know, we'll see what happens in the future. But interesting numbers. And I would encourage certainly any politicians who might be watching this to pay attention to that because the country can be going into some really dark places when you have people in abject misery, basically. We should move on here to some stuff that Sager had been passing along. We were going to cover it, and he passed along.

Ryan, what was the tweet that he sent this morning? It was really interesting. Go ahead. Yeah, so, and you can pull it up. So, both NATO and the Russian Federation are preparing for their annual nuclear drills, which, you know, every year they come around, they do these drills. Pre-planned, before the invasion. You know, do your drills, they go off without a hitch, the world survives. It's always been fine, and it's always fine until it's not fine.

To have both of these entities doing nuclear drills with the nuclear tensions ratcheted up to what they are suggests, you know, it has people on edge. It has people praying that everybody is in communication, that each side is going to be able to tell a drill from live action. And it's coming amid increasingly hostile relations. Like, war is obviously hostile. But the war, as we were talking about yesterday, has taken a turn where it's now battering civilian infrastructure in a way we haven't seen in this war. And that's actually what Sager passed along. Zelensky is claiming that up to 30% of power utilities have been taken offline by Russian strikes, which is a war crime. And it's not that, you know, both sides are obviously guilty of war

crimes in every war. This is a war crime on a truly tremendous scale heading into a Ukrainian winter. Right. And so we have a report from Wall Street Journal's reporter in Ukraine, Matthew Lexmore, who is saying Kyiv is telling Ukrainians to prepare for blackouts across the country after days on end of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure. Indeed, Zelensky said 30% of Ukraine's power stations have been destroyed. And then the consequence of that is blackouts heading into winter. And then in the shadow of all of this, you have 14, I think it's like 14 NATO countries doing the exercises.

This is 60 aircraft, and that includes fighter jets, it includes surveillance planes. It feels like a very dystopian moment in the world. And I was thinking about the story of, so seeing that, let's say, a third of the power utilities have been taken offline for now. I was thinking about it in the context of the story that Ukrainians are basically also running out of glass. Did you see that story? No, I didn't see that. And running out of windows, basically. So when your city is getting shelled, even if you don't, even if your building does not take a direct hit, the chance that your window is going to blow out

is pretty significant. And it wasn't something that I had really thought about before, because here you get a window broken, you head down to Ace, you get a new window. If it's too big of a window project, call the window people. And it sucks, but you get a new window put in. Or you do what my friends did in college and use saran wrap. Well, that's what they're doing in Ukraine. This is really the only thing to do. Right. So it's saran wrap, cardboard, plywood Ukrainian winter is going to put tens of millions of people who are just civilians not involved in this, didn't sign up for this war, in just excruciating conditions.

Yeah, and the preparation for blackouts. Yeah, again, as Ryan was just saying, we're going into mid-October, into November, 30%. That's a pretty incredible number. So, is there anything you think that people should be watching with these exercises that you're about to die if it happens. So I don't think you... Just think about how you're going to spend that last five minutes, I guess, from the time you get the alert. I was wondering, who's the person that sends the alert? Because they're probably dying too. Because they're probably a New Yorker, do you see? Do they actually send the alert?

Are they like, you know what? Somebody else can do this. I quit. I'm going out on the street. I'm out of here. I'm going to the basement. Did I bring my iodine pills? Yeah, I'm going to turn some fish on. There you go.

Just go out like this for the last five minutes. So, no, I mean, I expect that these two sides are going to coordinate this. And, you know, hopefully what we're seeing from Russia at this point is kind of a last gasp to get the best leverage that they can from the negotiations that they're forced into to get out of this war that has been disastrous for them and disastrous for Ukraine and a disaster for the world. Because it really,. Because the idea that we're talking about nuclear Armageddon over this, when it can be resolved, when this can just be finished, is absurd. Right. That's exactly it. And we continue to see, the clip of the Finnish prime minister last week, for example, we continue to see resistance

to negotiation. And yes, you don't want to give in to nuclear blackmail. I think we're all on board with the idea of not giving in to nuclear blackmail. At the same time, you do not want to get into a nuclear tit for tat for Russia. And so the ongoing Western resistance to even entertaining the idea of seriously, meaningfully coming to the table and trying to end this. Unbelievable. Somebody responded to my post the other day and said, so, you know, if we came into your apartment and we occupied, you know, two of your bedrooms and then you would just negotiate with us at that point, like, do you have nuclear weapons? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, you with us at that point. Like, do you have nuclear weapons? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Actually, you know, at that point, I probably am ready for some talks. Right. You just crashed your way into my apartment? Yeah, okay, let's figure out a way out of this. Yes, the post-Cold War hubris stems from this idea that we really thought we won forever the idea of nuclear tit-for-tat. Like, this is how it's going to go. And meanwhile, Russia was completely building up its stockpile and that's where we are right now. But it's just so hubristic, I think, to expect that you can bluster your way out of that when people on a daily basis are put in harm's way or targeted by, and it's Putin's fault. There's no question about it. That's why you go to the negotiating table and, you know, try to find an end to the suffering.

And I do think it's fair for people to say like, look, okay, you should not be able to kind of wage a conventional war, invade another country, and then use, you know, nuclear saber rattling to get, to hold on to that territory. You should not be able to do that. And Putin is not doing it cost-free. Like there has been an enormous amount of cost that he's been. And I think that's what people need to remember. And there can be more. And there will be more. Like the Russian power will be a shell of what it was before he launched this. Even if he left the war with every single inch that his troops currently hold, they would still be so dramatically weakened that it would be a cautionary tale to other countries who are thinking about doing something like this. And he's not going to hold on to every inch that he has.

He's losing ground by the day, even as he resorts to just bombing power centers. This is an iHeart Podcast.