Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of week 10/23: Midterm Outlook, Rishi Sunak, Ukraine letter, China's Congress, & More!

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover China's congress, midterm outlook, Rishi Sunak, progressives' Ukraine debacle, Fetterman vs Oz, Elon buying Twitter, & 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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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Let's go ahead and move on to China. There have been so many eyes and takes on what we're about to show you. It is one of the most stunning displays that we've seen in a while.

So Xi Jinping at the People's Congress, really, where he anointed himself the third term, you know, leader for life, proclaiming himself in much more of an autocratic direction in modern Chinese history since we have seen since Mao Zedong, pulled off one of the most crazy stunts that we have seen in the highly choreographed dance of Chinese politics in a long time. And in many ways, whatever the exact circumstances are, they don't matter because the imagery itself was so profound. So let's go ahead and put this up there and I'll talk over it. You can see here, this is the People's Congress, Xi Jinping sitting there with Hu Jintao, the former president who he preceded, who is sitting right next to him. He's a 79-year-old man. Well, in the middle of the Congress, two handlers for Hu Jintao, allegedly his own personal aides,

come over and effectively lift him up by his armpits. So you can actually see one of his handlers, of course, they both have masks on because of zero COVID ADAC in China, and are unwillingly kind of dragging him out of the Congress. Noteworthy to me, look at Xi Jinping's face for those who are just watching. He is staring straight ahead or he's looking to his left. Also, look at all the people in the front crystal. They're either stealing like furtive glances over what's happening or they are solidly just looking forward, pretending as if nothing is going on. What you can also see is that Hu Jintao, sitting right there, is very slowly starting to make his way. And then he does two things. Right

here, what you can see, he puts his hands on Xi's shoulder and says something, to which Xi go ahead and nods. And then he also says something to two of those officials to Xi's right. Those two officials are actually Hu allies, who Xi retired for not being loyal to his regime, even though they were in their mid-60s. Xi Jinping himself is only 67 years old. So for him to retire them at such an early age was a very interesting moment. What this really showed us is that Xi, again, no matter what happened here, and we should note, let's go put this foreign policy piece up. There are basically three explanations. One, and actually this would make a lot of sense, is China's zero COVID idiocy, as in who possibly popped positive on a test. Now, the reason why,

though, that wouldn't make a lot of sense is because why would they put him out there on the stage for them to test positive in the middle of a live television proceeding. I don't think they would ever let that happen. Two, who is 79 years old? He could have been having some sort of like mental health, dementia episode. There's not a lot known about his health. That's the first time he's been seen in public in a really long time. So maybe he himself was like, I need to get out of here and then his own age, but then why would he be resisting? I mean, look, you never know when people are this old. The third is exactly what a lot of people took away, which is that this is Xi humiliating his predecessor in front of 1 billion people. And you can guarantee

that this was shown with no edits, nothing. It was shown to the entire Chinese public. And the crazy part is they're not allowed to discuss it. So if you search on Chinese TikTok, Hu Jintao is a banned search right now. So that clip is really only going viral here in the West. The takeaway, I think, is obvious. Hu, for all of his authoritarianism, he was a capitalist to his heart. GDP increased, like, many times over. He was the pioneer of, like, the Chinese boom times.

Like, him and as many of his allies were oligarchs, and they became multi-billionaires under his presidency. He forged a lot of the ties with Wall Street, great friend of the Bush administration, which is sad, presided over a lot of the economic boom and fulfilling the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. Xi very much sees himself as oppositional to Hu Jintao, reinventing the Chinese economy and the Chinese society. He took a couple of swipes at Hu actually in his speech in the translated version that I looked at. And this is just humiliating. I mean, taking your predecessor and dragging him out as an elderly man, being marched across that entire thing in that zoom out shot of watching this all happen. I mean, it's just stunning. So again, whatever the exact circumstances are, it almost doesn't matter

because the takeaway is Xi is in charge. This is some Stalin stuff. I mean, it really is. The other thing that's interesting is it is pure, if it was intended to humiliate and crush and all of those things, it's also like wildly unnecessary because whose faction has already been crushed?

Like any sort of power that he held or power base that he held, they've already been purged. That purge was basically completed at this Congress with Xi bringing in some of his hardline allies and getting rid of anyone who was at all even remotely potentially adversarial. The other thing to note about it, just to bolster the idea that it was like intentional theater of humiliation, is this all unfolded right after reporters had been let back in. Right.

And it was just before the final votes of that session were about to be taken. So you let the media back in and then this almost immediately is what ultimately unfolds. Again, these things are not typically accidental. Everything about how this unfolded here, this was all choreographed in advance.

All of the real politics of this was settled and locked in months ago. So that also bolsters the idea that this was an intentional bit of theater. I think it was planned. We don't know. I mean, let's go and we can also say what their side of it is. I think it was planned. on Chinese social media, completely censored, completely banned. Yeah, I will say there's a story, a funny story, which kind of highlights to me why I don't think that anything spontaneous happens in China. When Hu visited Washington

while George W. Bush was president, here in the South Lawn, there was actually a protester that had somehow made its way into the event that interrupted Hu when he was speaking. And Hu was shocked and outraged. And the Chinese delegation effectively told Washington, they were like, we know that you planted that protester. And they were like, we don't do that here. They're like, that's not like the guy just slipped in. Like, what are we supposed to do? And it was a real culture clash moment because in China, you can guarantee if there was a protester,

they would have been planted and nobody is slipping through the cracks. So I thought it was, you know, to highlight to me, which is who being outraged whenever he was faced with a spontaneous kind of live thing, he saw it as a great humiliation by the Bush administration and by the United States. They took it as a real snub. I mean, I just don't think spontaneous things happen in the people's, you know, the people's Congress like this. It is choreographed to the last detail. All of us remember the Beijing Olympics, and any time these people put anything on, they weed out any of the possible events. If he had COVID, there's no way he would have let him out there on the stage. If he was so unwell, why also would they seat him next to it and then drag his ass out while Agence France-Presse has a live TV camera trained on him?

I think Xi knew exactly what he was doing. And this was a real message to the Chinese people and especially to the Chinese elite. Because people forget this. I'm really doing my own monologue. China has many competing centers of power. You've got the business elite. You've got the tech oligarchs. You've got the CCP. Even the CCP, there's a lot of Y to raise. He was showing all those people. He said, I'm in charge. I'm in charge. I will drag you out on TV. You're not just going to be like Jack Ma and thrown in a basement for a couple of months. I will humiliate you in the eyes of the public, even when you were once almost a living god as president of the Chinese Communist Party. So anyway, just a tremendously important event,

I think, in what the future looks like. Xi is a young man. He's only 67 years old. I believe Mao died when he was 83. You know, a lot of the analysis that I've read is he's really just getting started. Like, this is really the beginning of Xi Jinping's China. Yeah. It's kind of scary stuff. And the rest of the official moves that happen at the People's Congress really back up that direction, too. The choices of who was retired off of the Politburo standing committee, the choices of who was put on.

One thing that I saw analysts noting is the likely next premier is this guy who was the party's top official in Shanghai. His name is Li Kang. He was the one who presided over like the worst COVID outbreak, the most insane COVID lockdown procedures. So the idea is we don't really care that he is not popular. What we care about is he's loyal to you. He did what I wanted him to do. And that's what matters most, loyalty over everything. And so that was what was really clear, whatever you make of this incident, coming out of this People's

Congress. So total consolidation of power, total, you know, thwarting of any sort of even potential adversaries. And I think this incident is just really perfectly emblematic of that. I think we will look back on it one day in the decades and be like, yep, that was the moment. Let's talk about our own domestic politics here. Kind of, you know, election season is upon us, in case you haven't noticed. And it has been really kind of a roller coaster. So, of course, at first it was like red wave city, no doubt about it, totally clear what was going to happen. Then you had the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the Dobbs decision. Things really shifted.

Also, at the same time, gas prices were going down. Also, at the same time, you know, the Biden administration was accomplishing a few different legislative initiatives and priorities. And you had those couple of open seat special elections where the Democrats actually overperformed. So then you were seeing these polls coming out, you know, Fetterman up 12 points and even Tim Ryan having a shot in Ohio and maybe Mandela Barnes going to have a shot in Wisconsin. That picture has really shifted now as the economy has continued to turn for the worse. That Dobbs decision sort of fades into memory. And also, you know, we always predicted that after Labor Day, when you start looking at likely voters just versus registered voters, the GOP almost always picks up ground then. So here's from The Washington Post.

Mainstream press really starting to take notice that things are starting to slip away from the Democrats. The headline here is from Michael Scherer. Democrats fear the midterm map is slipping away. A couple of the data points that they have here, they start with the liberal navigator public tracking poll flashing a major warning sign for Democrats in mid-October, reporting a 20 percentage point jump since September in the share of independent voters concerned about the economy and about gas prices. That is terrain that the Democrats have basically completely ceded to the Republicans in what I think is one of the most foolish moves you could have possibly made as, you know, voters the whole time, even right after Dobbs, we're still telling you the economy is our number one issue. And they're like, nah, we're not going to talk about that.

They say that was not the only data showing a turning of the tide in the battle for Congress. Regional challenges are showing up in internal Democratic polls. You even have some places like Rhode Island is one place that they are worried about now. Rhode Island has not sent a Republican member to Congress in like decades. So those are the sorts of seats that are in danger. Katie Porter also in a relatively blue district, apparently under pressure as well. Sean Patrick Maloney, who's actually, first of all, he jumped into a seat that he thought would be safe, like big footing some other more progressive Democratic candidates. And now it looks like he might be under pressure as well, even in that supposedly safe district that he jumped into. And this is the dude who is supposed to

be leading Democratic efforts to hold the House, and he's not even able to shore up his own seat here. Let's go ahead and put 538 up on the screen. This is the race for the Senate. So previously, Democratic chances had gotten as high as 71%. Now they have dropped down to basically a coin flip. This model says, you know, Democrats in 55 out of 100 times, they win the Senate, Republicans win in 45 out of 100 times. So a really dramatic reversal and shift towards Republicans at this point.

And, you know, I think if you just look at history and you look at the top line numbers, you think about how the president's party, you know, I think if you just look at history and you look at the top line numbers, you think about how the president's party, you know, when you're in power, how they normally do in the midterms, you think about how people feel about the economy. You think about the reality of inflation. You think about gas prices going back up. You think about how many people are saying the country's on the wrong track. No one should be surprised by these results. No, it's not surprising. It is really funny to watch. It's like something, the vibe shift happened in the media. And they're like, oh, yeah, inflation's bad.

There's high crime and all the fundamentals are moving against Democrats. And also there might actually be problems with polling as there have been for the last six years. Yeah, so this picture as like not good as it is for Democrats is probably still overly rosy. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah. I don't think there's any possible way. I mean, and to me, really, Crystal, what the takeaway is those enthusiasm numbers that we continue to see, like some of the early vote and everything that we look at. Go and put the next one up there

on the screen, guys, because this is what really matters in terms of his worst performing message. They're really leaning into this, which is that the worst performing message per Stan Greenberg, who's really been doing some really excellent work. He was on the Bill Clinton campaign. I actually recommend there's a documentary that followed the 92 Bill Clinton campaign of which Greenberg very prominently is in. I think it's on HBO. People should go and check it out. They were following him when he was like a third tier candidate all the way up until he won the presidency. So it's kind of the first like gonzo doc, which was back anyway, it was in the nineties. It was interesting for the fashion alone. But the point is, is that what Greenberg intuited at that time with James Carville was the, it's the economy,

stupid message that ultimately won the 92 election. And he is pointing out that in all of his private polling, that the democratic party needs to quote, shut up about any of the work that it's done. Because Biden, on all these stump speeches, is like, look what I've done for you with the Inflation Reduction Act. Look what I've done for you with the CARES Act, you know, two years ago. And voters are really like, what have you done for me lately? Because right now, my gas prices are high. Inflation is very high. And in the absence of any message about what you're going to do to solve the problems, instead of here's everything that I've done for you, the GOP message of, well, we're going to attack Biden's policies. Really, it's a vacuum of only one side is saying something that they're going to do.

Now, it may be the wrong thing. Personally, I think that it is. Well, I don't even think the Republicans. It doesn't matter. They're really not even saying anything economically, you're going to be like, and you're not providing people with like a here's specifically what we will do and how we will do it and some sort of counter messaging. Then just by default, Republicans are going to gain the upper hand because they're not in power. I mean, that's just the way that this thing works. So Greenberg has been out with, you know, he did a more perfect union video.

There's a joint memo with him and some others at the prospect. He is doing everything he can to sound the alarm here and say, you all are screwing this up royally. And he, you know, doesn't mince words here either. He says, I am stunned about how much of the Democratic commentariat is winging it. Republicans are hitting us on crime and border and inflation that has huge power. And we have the self-satisfied message of how much we've accomplished rather than being focused on what is happening to people. He was asked if Biden himself perhaps had the message right.

He said, nope. I saw their visuals when they were campaigning with the West in which they were talking about helping families with high costs. So they've made a turn with addressing it, but they're also combining it with a message of how great a job they are doing. They're elites. They live in a world of college educated voters who didn't have child tax credit as a lifeline. Greenberg thinks that child tax credit, re-upping the child tax credit and paying for it by taxing the rich in his testing, that is by far the best message the Democrats could be running on. He says they didn't have

that as a lifeline. They think our own base responds to identity politics rather than economics. If your goal is to win an economic argument, go on Morning Joe. If the goal is to win an election, look at the fucking data. That's what he had to say so i mean and this is a guy i mean he's not like an anti-establishment dude like us this is a pure democratic operative wants democrats to win and is losing his mind over how dumb they are in terms of their lack of any sort of message on the economy and you can see see how, you know, just sitting back and look at all we've done for you, even like naming the Inflation Reduction Act, the Inflation Reduction Act was a stupid move. That's right. Because when inflation then continues to go up,

yeah, you can say, okay, it has this provision, it has that provision that's going to help people eventually. But people just look at it and are like, you said this was your plan. That shit didn't work. So what now? And they have nothing to say about it. It didn't have anything to do with inflation. Like, let's be honest. Really what it was is it was a climate bill. And I think that's fine. I mean, if you mess climate infrastructure bill, they could have run on it as like the electric vehicle bill. They're like, hey, look, like gas is really high right now. We're going to try and make it cheaper for everybody. These are some of the subsidies that we're doing. We finally put technology neutral in on nuclear. There's a defense of the

bill, but it doesn't have anything to do with inflation unless your name is Joe Manchin and you happen to have spent $300 billion on paying down debt, even though our interest rates are sky high right now and it's not going to make a single difference. But that's a discussion for another day. They boxed themselves into this problem and now they can't get out of it. And really, it's their own making. That's why I don't have a lot of sympathy. Greenberg is completely correct about how exactly they should be running. And yet, Crystal, you got a mailer at your house the other day.

And what is it? Abigail Spanberger. Let me pull this bad boy up. Yeah, this is hilarious. I live in a swing district at this point. It's been redistricted. It used to be just hard conservative. Rob Whitman,

the Republican incumbent, he's now been districted into a different area. And so this is like, I don't know, it's like Biden plus six, something like that. This should be a seat the Democrats, if they're going to hold onto the House, they have to hold onto the seat. You have Abigail Spanberger, who's a former CIA op, who is the Democrat. She's an incumbent. And then you have Yesli Vega, who's actually a cop. So we have a lot of law enforcement going on. And this is the mailer that they were actually door knocking that they've been handing out. So a vote for Abigail Spanberger is a vote for abortion rights, voting rights, and accountability, whatever that means. What does that mean?

Nothing about economics. You want to know something even better? Not a word. Not even, you know, she's actually, Spanberger, has actually been great on the stock trading game. She's one of the only people, I've got all sorts of other issues, but she's one of the only people that seems to actually care about this thing and been trying to work across parts and lines to get it done.

Doesn't even say anything about that. Like, that's actually a good issue, too. You could talk about that. You could talk about, you know, economics, child tax credit. But she's one of these, like, corporate centrist types. And so she doesn't actually believe in doing anything for people. So she's leaning into abortion and voting rights instead. Good luck. You're right. She would be better on sock ban. Yeah. Here in northern Virginia, we have somebody who, Kara Lipsman, who's a Republican, actually. All her sign says is Kara Lipsman for Congress. And at the top, it says, stand with Ukraine.

And to be clear, she is not going to have anything to do with Ukraine. Should she actually win her seat? And she's a Republican. Yeah. There's a blue sign that says, stand with Ukraine. But this is like a very liberal area. So, yeah. What I'm pointing out is that this is what politics have gotten to now.

Voting rights, abortion, and stand with Ukraine. Nothing having to do with gas and inflation. area so yeah what i'm pointing out is that this is what politics have gotten to now voting rights abortion and stand with ukraine nothing having to do with gas and inflation i'm not saying to people i mean listen what i'm not saying those issues aren't important that they aren't don't have a place right but you as stan greenberg says look at the fucking data yeah for months people have been saying i care about the economy i I care about inflation. I care about jobs. You have nothing to say to those people, nothing. And in fact, it's worse than that because when, and we'll cover this in a little bit, but when people even express like, hey, maybe you should have a message on the economy because people seem concerned about that, you get scorn and contempt,

scorn and contempt for voicing that people have legitimate concerns in their day-to-day life in like making ends meet. And maybe you should be responsive to that as the supposedly party of the working class. That's like, you know, not something you're supposed to say. Yeah, actually, there was a reporter, Hannah Trudeau, who we used to have over on Rising. Yeah. She put out a tweet which said, abortion as a closing pitch was always going to be a really risky proposition, but up against the economy,

it just makes it look fringe. Of course, many people will disagree, but the cost of gas is extremely important to nearly everyone. Abortion is simply not. Absolute ratio to hell. Total pile on. Basically by the, you know,

quote unquote feminist press who were like, how dare you say that abortion is not fringe, like tell that to so and so that we're not saying that we're not saying it's fringe that people would affect the what her point was, is that gas and inflation affects everyone. And so when you are going to run on something, you should try and run on something that is going to appeal to the broadest mass and also active vote said voters who are affected by abortion. I just thought it was remarkable that somebody was offering a very, frankly, basic political insight. Right. It took courage for her to even say that. And she was piled. I mean, I really am not exaggerating. Like the national political press

made her out as like a villain for saying this. And look, you know, they'll all find out the truth come November 8th. They can wish it were otherwise. You know, they can wish that everybody in the country is going to row, row, row their vote. But yeah, when gas prices are going up and people are struggling with inflation and effectively getting a pay cut, you know, every week, every month, and you're the party in power, it's, I just can't even begin to wrap my head around the political failures that we are witnessing. So Rishi Sunak, poised to be Britain's next prime minister. Big moment, I guess, for Indians. Our first leader in the West already.

You know, you've got the New York Times in front of you. The first person of color who will lead. I tend to think it's probably more important what exactly the man is going to do when he's in office. And look, two couple of things, which is kind of interesting. One, number one, Sunak actually ran against trust saying that her plan wasn't going to work. He said it was a fairy tale. I was going to say, I believe he's called it, quote, fairy tale in the debate between the two. That's on his side. On the other, this is a precarious situation. 2024 is the next general election that's going to get called. The amount

of chaos that's happening right now, Clearly, the conservative party is totally split. They really don't seem to agree on what the path forward is on inflation and on energy. They tried the free marketism, but they're also not going to go all the way in terms of price control and, you know, seizing the energy grid. They have to deal with Ukraine. They also have the cold that's stepping in right now. The party is split almost 50-50. Boris Johnson, when he bowed out of the race yesterday, said that he had received over 100 commitments in the Conservative Party behind his candidacy. Nobody knows if that's true or not.

That's just what Boris says. Well, then why did he bow out? Listen, I don't know. The point is, is that he was in contention in a serious way to possibly be the leader. So he doesn't have a full mandate of the party. And let's back up a full mandate of the party all coming together. And let's back up a little bit for people who haven't been following this super closely. Because obviously Boris Johnson was prime minister. He was involved in any number of scandals that ultimately brought down his time in office, forced him out. Because they were doing parties every week during COVID while everybody else was locked down. And then to make matters worse, he lied about it so many times, like over and over again. He actually sort of tried to use his

quote unquote leadership. I didn't really like the direction he was taking things in, but, you know, going to Kiev and his posturing on the Ukraine war war a lot of that was an attempt to sort of rescue his own domestic political um fallout and so uh what triggered his uh resignation ultimately being pushed out of office was rishi sunak who was a member of his cabinet he ultimately resigned and that what sort of is what kicks off the process that leave ends up with boris johnson out of office. Then you have this race for Tory leadership and to be the next prime minister. It ends up being basically Sunak versus Truss. Sunak is very critical of Truss's just total all-in ideological Thatcher, Reagan, zombie market fundamentalism stuff.

He's like, this is way too far. And there are factions within the conservative party because, you know, Boris Johnson was that sort of like, you know, more economically popular. He did some things that you wouldn't normally associate with Tory leadership. So when Truss announced her market fundamentalist budget with all these tax cuts for the rich and I'm not going to raise taxes on corporations and I'm going to lift the banker bonuses and all of that. There were right wing newspapers that were celebrating. They were like, this is finally we have a true blue Tory budget. So when the bottom fell out of that, ultimately Sunak appears to have been vindicated and in

stunning fashion because he had called this a fairy tale and had been critical from the start. So there's still, I think, you know, the question mark around him was whether the party would get behind him, given the fact that he was seen as kind of a traitor to Boris. And there's still a very large Boris aligned faction. But ultimately, you know, they clearly were able to overcome that and he'll be the next prime minister. Now, the other thing to say here is that like the standing of the conservative party in britain has almost never been lower yeah like there are there's mass clamoring for a general election it is incredibly anti-democratic to just keep swapping in and out these leaders with vote, right? Labor in the last polls had like a, you know, 35-point lead over the Tories, led by Keir Starmer.

They've sort of like crushed the Corbynites and have this more like neoliberal type of dude who's in charge now. So even though they now have a new prime minister, he's facing massive economic problems, massive, worse than us. I mean, inflation is higher. They don't have the world's reserve currency. They have a housing crisis. Housing affordability, I think is even worse. It is. Huge housing issues, huge energy issues.

We've covered the BBC is writing secret scripts in case there's a massive like nationwide blackout. Like that's the sort of thing that he's stepping into, which trust made that much worse with the fallout from her ultimately aborted economic plan. And then there's massive political issues as well because the Tories are in such poor political standing. So it's going to be, you know, it's quite something that he's got on his plate right now. Yeah, that's why I was saying, you know, before all the Indians get so happy, this guy could last just as long as Liz Truss. I mean, the reality is that he's got a divided conservative party.

The country is in turmoil. He's got a bunch of crises. It's very possible that, you know, you get a vote of no confidence that gets called on him. What if there's another snap financial crisis? Nobody knows. And then that's it. Boom. Your government is over. You're resigned. He's only 42 years old. He's actually's another snap financial crisis? Nobody knows. And then that's it. Boom. Your government is over.

You're resigned. He's only 42 years old. He's actually quite young in order to hold the office. So anyway, this is a very precarious political problem. Is he going to outlast the head of lettuce? I think he probably will just because trust was such a disaster. But the previous one, I believe, had lasted three months. That was the previous shortest PM in British history.

I saw a bunch of great takes that trivia writers in the UK had to update all of their stuff because they hadn't had somebody who'd served for such a... Like, it was a staple. Everybody in the country knew, at least in trivia, like, who the shortest-serving PM was, and they had to update it. Now it'll be Liz Truss.

It's a really... It's a complex situation, and he's really walking into the buzzsaw. I kind of agree, which is that, at this point, I think you need to have a general election. I mean, they're not going to do it because they know they'll lose. Because they will lose. Yeah. But trying to govern the country like this is not good for anybody. It really isn't. And just this level of turmoil at the top of the government, it's bad for the economy. It's bad for foreign relations. It's bad for the populace. And if they do keep it up, and if especially he has a divided party and kind of hangs on by a thread up until 24, they are going to get creamed in the next general election. And

then he's out anyway. So it may honestly be to his own benefit. Who knows how it's all going to go. Yeah. And obviously, I mean, this is a huge economy, huge trading partner of ours, massive ally of ours. And then as I tried to lay out in my monologue, also a lot of warning signs coming from the UK and, you know, they foreshadowed political and economic events that lay in our future as well. So it's why it's important to pay close attention to what is happening there across the pond. I agree. Let's go ahead and move on to Ukraine. Some fascinating stuff happening here in Washington.

There's been some major debates. CounterPoints did a great job covering it. But we have an update on the Democratic front. For a while, Crystal and I have been asking, we're like, hey, where is the anti-war movement? Like, does it even exist? So yesterday, heartened to see a letter. Let's put this up there on the screen. This makes it actually bipartisan in terms of criticism of the war. 30 House Democrats, mostly of the House Progressive Caucus, led by Representative Pramila Jayapal, called on Biden to pair their unprecedented economic and military support with, quote, proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire. That's it. If you go ahead and you read their letter, it is one of the most innocuous

things possible. They do not call into question ongoing arms sales to Ukraine. They do not say that the U.S. should force the Ukrainians' hands. They do not say many of the provocative things. They go out of their way, clearly, to not say that with reassuring language about, of course, it's up to the Ukrainians. And of course, we see Russia's not good actors here. Of course, we know this would be very difficult, but maybe kind of, sort of, we should consider possibly thinking about diplomatic action. That's it. That's basically the letter. That is all this. And I will read you the conclusion. In conclusion, we urge you to make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, That's it. That's all they said.

Frankly, innocuous, not particularly groundbreaking. Many much more provocative things have been said on this show, of which, you know, the pro-Ukraine people have been upset about. That's fine. You could be upset about this. But I don't see how this is anything not within the bounds of public debate. And yet, the freakout that this letter caused in Washington is unparalleled. And especially because they're on the Democratic side and they're much more susceptible, I think, tell me if you disagree, to criticism from elite media circles and all of that. They caved within a matter of hours.

That letter came out in the afternoon. Four to five hours later, put this up there on the screen. Pramila Jayapal go ahead and issues a statement. She says, in a letter to President Biden, my colleagues and I advocated for the administration to continue ongoing support. Let me be clear. We are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for democracy and freedom in the face of it. Diplomacy is an important tool that can save lives, but it is just one tool as we also made explicitly clear all of that. I mean, it's a total capitulation where they came out and just said, actually, no, we didn't mean it. And actually we're a hundred percent in line President Biden. And please don't criticize us anymore.

We're not anti-Ukraine. We really just want democracy. It's just hilarious and pathetic to watch this real capitulation in real time. I mean, just instant, right? And I was tracking because even as like moderate and carefully worded and milquetoast as this thing was, I was like, this is 30 Democrats. They're not all squad members. You know, AFC and Cori Bush and those folks, Ilhan, they were on it.

Yeah, that's right. But it was also these sort of like more main, Jamie Raskin and other sort of like mainline figures. Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas. Right. I was like, okay, all right. We're at least opening up a conversation. And I was shocked because I knew they were going to get massive backlash because, you know, we see the way

that this all unfolds. There is zero room to question the direction and the strategy whatsoever. Zero. Okay. So I was truly surprised and I was truly impressed. I was truly impressed. Ro Khanna is the only person that I've heard saying really any of that before this letter comes out. And then I start to watch online. In fact, while we were planning our show, I was looking at these people even some of their fellow members of the quote-unquote progressive caucus like Ruben Gallego going all in trashing them they're being accused of being Russian stooges Marcos Militsis accused them of making quote common cause with Lauren Boebert Marjorie Taylor Greene J.D. V, and the rest of the MAGA crowd. All of this just absolute vicious attacks on these people, questioning their motives, questioning their intelligence, questioning the timing of the letter, everything. And almost instantly, they completely cave.

It's so depressing. It is so incredibly dispiriting to see that you can't even open the door a crack to saying maybe we should think about diplomacy to end this war. And Ryan Grim, I think we have this. Let's put this up on the screen. Of course, our CounterPoints co-host here, he had a great article breaking all of this down. He says 30 House Democrats tried to gently open the door to diplomacy in Ukraine. It was slammed in their face by the end of the day. And he goes into some of the pushback that we saw online and on cable news and in other places. He goes into the timeline of how instantly Pramila Jayapal in particular just completely caved. And it's utterly pathetic. He quotes here Eric Sperling, who's executive director of Just

Foreign Policy, which had endorsed this letter, and he actually made, I thought, an interesting point. He cast the extreme opposition to it as a sign of the fragility of the anti-diplomacy consensus. He says, the shrill response to this utterly moderate letter exposes that war proponents are scared of an open debate about the range of potential approaches to addressing this conflict, as happened with the war in Iraq and many others throughout human history. War proponents attempt to silence debate in large part because they are not confident in their arguments and they are afraid that pro-diplomacy views will appeal to average Americans. And that's exactly what we have seen when the question has been asked. There is a large majority of people who are interested in diplomacy.

Because guess what? If we want this war to end, that's the way that we're going to— I mean, even if you imagine, which most analysts don't say that Ukraine, even if we, you know, continue to arm them and not, most of them don't think that they can outright win and push Russia all the way out of their territory. But let's, let's say, okay, maybe they could. Do you really think that Vladimir Putin is just going to sit back and accept defeat without somehow escalating, without some sort of desperate moves, without creating some sort of chaos and catastrophe? Because I sure don't. So the idea that you can't even say this without being viciously smeared and attacked online and accused both of being, you know, Russian propagandists, but also

the ultimate sin of having anything in common with, you know, people who are supposed to be out of bounds, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I'm no fan of, who I think is a ridiculous person. But you can use that hard partisan divide to just shut people up. It's so disgraceful, I can't even wrap my head around it. I mean, honestly, I am finding some comfort in this, Crystal,

because I am just seeing that there is a massive political hole waiting to be filled that will one day make its voice heard by the democratic process. Americans are not stupid. The closer that we get to nuclear war, they're going to say, hell no, we're not interested in this. The establishment and the Ukrainians have made a tremendous, tremendous error in allying themselves with a mainstream democratic party,

which is about to get its ass kicked in Congress. And guess what? House Republicans, there's already a civil war that is erupting. That's right. Look this up there on the screen, which is that Kevin McCarthy came out and said to Punchbowl News, actually, we are very likely not to approve any more aid to Ukraine. Now, they used fiscal language in order to say that, and whatever, I mean, I guess, better than nothing. But Mitch McConnell said, no, that's not going to stand, all of that. Now, listen, do I think Kevin McCarthy will actually have the stones to stick by his position? No, I think he'll probably cave to the blob as well. But what it does show me is that if the pressure is on enough to McCarthy for him to publicly come out and to question the Washington consensus,

imagine what a Donald Trump-like figure who we showed you is already advocating for negotiation and diplomacy. Let's say the war gets even hotter ahead of the 2024 election. Remember, everybody thought that Americans were going to freak out when Trump was calling out NATO allies. Didn't happen. Everybody thought that the Americans were going to say, my God, he's questioning the free trade consensus. Nope. Actually, it turns out that they support it in wide numbers. So listen, they have ceded the ground for the debate to the fringe and to Donald Trump. He is not a fool. Trump, if his, his greatest skill is intuiting which areas of public consensus and rhetoric are completely out of the bounds, seizing onto it and hammering it home and hammering it and pissing off the establishment who screech and make the, uh, they make the issue even louder for Americans who love to see them melt down.

So the Ukraine consensus of February of 2022 is long gone. Go ahead and take a look at every poll that exists. GOP voters are split right down the middle on continued aid for Ukraine. Every Concerned Veterans of America poll that we've ever showed you has shown a tremendous preference for diplomacy. Right now, the entire Ukraine debate really is shrouded in secrecy. They don't want people to know. And look, you know, we're not stupid. As many people could watch this show, as many people watch the news. Most Americans have no idea what's going on in Ukraine. They have no idea how close we are to a Cuban missile crisis. I said this before. I believe one of the most shameful things that Joe Biden has done is to tell a bunch of rich Democratic donors that we are on the verge of nuclear Armageddon.

And if you believe that, you owe a direct address to the American people to tell it. But he can't tell you that because if you do, you're going to be like, well, hold on a second then. What are we doing about that? Are we going to are we going to stop that? He would prefer everybody go about their lives and go to the gym, you know, argue about inflation or whatever, because the longer that happens, Washington is allowed to continue doing what it wants. It operates in secrecy. And yet they never learn their lesson. They didn't learn it from Iraq. They didn't learn it from Libya. They didn't learn it from Afghanistan. Americans will make their voice heard eventually in some way. And you are not going to like it when that day comes. That's right. And the instinct to just completely shut down any discussion,

like there is literally, you are not allowed to dissent even one inch, which is effectively what this letter was. Yes. This letter was like one inch of dissent, and they had everything thrown at them to shut them down, and, you know, they instantly cave. And this is a repeated problem, obviously, with the, you know, so-called progressive caucus, where they cannot take any heat from Democratic leadership, from the mainstream press, from freaking, you know,

idiot pontificators on Twitter. They can't take it. They just instantly fold. And so it is really depressing. Ro Khanna did have a decent statement even after everybody else around him capitulated. He said to Ryan, it should not be controversial to say we need to explore every diplomatic avenue to seek a just peace and to end the war, including the engagement of our allies to help with that. He's right. It shouldn't be controversial, but apparently this is, you know, considered completely out of bounds to even have the conversation about a diplomatic end to this war when the president of the United States is openly admitting that we could face potential nuclear Armageddon. And yet we're still like, yeah, this direction we're going in is fine. And you can't even question it. You can't even say

anything about it. You can't even say, suggest at all a different direction. It's so depressing to me. I wish they just wouldn't have said anything. And let's show them why. Why did this happen? Put this up there on the screen from the propagandists over at the Washington Post. Here's the headline. Why Putin hopes for a GOP victory, as explained by a top Russia expert. This was the prevailing consensus all up and down the line in terms of the elite press, because if you suggest anything even close to diplomacy, you are a Putin asset. I have no love for Vladimir Putin, okay? I don't want to die in a nuclear Armageddon. I want America to survive and to be better off. I don't think that has anything to do with Vladimir Putin. I don't get to exist, sadly, in a world where he is dead and doesn't exist. We have to accept terms on which they are. We can

hope for many things. I hope for a world with no war, but I'm not an idiot. It's like one of these things where we have to accept the reality of the conditions as they exist in terms of their nuclear power status, in terms of what their red lines are. These are not things that we necessarily should be happy about. We have our red lines. They've been very clearly articulated. It's called NATO. Anything outside of that really is up for debate. This is the part of the thing that drives me insane. Whenever they say, well, if we capitulate in Ukraine, what will stop us from capitulating in NATO? NATO is a Senate ratified treaty. The president has no authority to even withdraw from it, even if he wanted to. If they attack NATO, we will be in a nuclear war. If they attack anywhere outside of NATO,

we have a choice. If we have a choice, we should probably do anything humanly possible in order to make sure that that does not occur. We had a play of this in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had a play of this in Korea. I wish for the days of statesmen who had to confront the reality of war. We had three successive presidents that faced a nuclear crisis. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy. All of them were forged in the crisis of World War II. Truman backed down and fired MacArthur because he feared that war over little Korea would have a conflagration. Basically pursued a strategy which may not have been best on the battlefield. This is controversial,

according to MacArthur, but had an overarching diplomatic aim of, I do not want to confront the Soviet Union. Same thing with Dwight D. Eisenhower. They wanted him to use nukes or threaten them in the Suez crisis at Dien Bien Phu. He said, you're out of your mind. I've been through this. I'm not going to happen. John F. Kennedy, the exact same. I fear that our politicians have just been so far removed from the reality of what a global crisis actually looks like that that's the cavalier nature of why elite media, too, whose sons, of course, have never served in the military or have any generational connection to this. They have no idea. I just watched All Quiet on the Western Front. I urge all of you to watch it whenever it comes out on Netflix. I saw it on its limited theater release.

That's what war looks like. People dying up until the last minute of the armistice for some scrap of France which was turned into mud. That's the reality of what this situation is. Right. And, I mean, it just, there's so much fuzzy thinking here. People love their simplistic narratives. And I get it. The Ukrainians are

the good guys and Putin and the Kremlin and his allies are the bad guys. Like, no disagreement here. But give me some sort of logical endgame that makes any kind of sense that doesn't end in complete catastrophe for the Ukrainians, for Europe, and potentially for the world. Give me some logical step-by-step. How do you see this thing ending? They never tell you that. They never get to that point. And I think, even though obviously we're very clear and very passionate about our own perspective on how this should all play out, I think we have tried to hold space for what the opposing view is, what the opposing arguments are. And I fully admit it is a complex situation and the idea of giving into any of Putin's demands or desires here is terrible. It feels terrible. It doesn't

feel right. It doesn't feel just. I get that instinct and I get that perspective 100%. All I'm asking is that you also allow space for people to have a different view of the best way to approach this conflict and not accuse them of being in bed with this bad actor or this bad actor or being Kremlin stooges or being friends with Marjorie Taylor Greene or whatever. Allow people to have a dissenting view and then guess what, guys? Those who are such big defenders of democracy, allegedly, why don't you let the voters hear out that fulsome debate and see what the American people think about this? Because I do think Sperling is 100 percent correct here. against such a totally tepid, reasonable, couched in a million different phrases and language letter, the reaction to that is incredibly telling

of how fragile their position really is. I completely agree. Very excited about our next guest, someone I have been following for a very long time. Rana Foroohar is author of Don't Be Evil and Makers and Takers, both great books. She's out with a new book. It's called Homecoming, The Path to Prosperity

in a Post-Global World. And she is also global business columnist and associate editor for the Financial Times. Great to see you, Ronna. How are you? Good to see you. So good to see you guys. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't want to butcher your thesis, but basically your idea in Homecoming is that the age of unfettered globalization is ending, that we're headed in a different direction. And you try to sketch out a little bit of, you know, the science of that's already happening and also what this future might look like. So just,

first of all, did I capture that accurately? And second of all, lay on a little bit of what you see happening here. You rock, Crystal. You got next country. I get an A. Yay. Basically, we've been living for the last half century in a world of hyper-globalization, no-holes-barred, financialization. Big companies can put jobs, put money wherever they want. That is the neoliberal paradigm. And that's, you know, that's a mouthful. But neoliberalism is really the political philosophy that's been adopted by both parties, in fact, in the last half century, both by the, you know, Reagan, Thatcher sort of Republicans, but also the Clintonian Democrats. And the idea is that trickle down theory works.

Markets are efficient. And just let people go where they will. let money and goods go where they will, and it's all going to land where it's most productive and best for it to do so. But the problem is, while that created a lot of wealth at a global level, it also created tremendous in-country inequality. And we've been living with the consequences of that. The hollowed out parts of the Rust Belt and the South that have become red states or swing states, the deaths of despair, the sense that American competitiveness has been eroded because we've outsourced our entire supply chain. All these things are now coming to the fore, particularly in the wake of the pandemic

and the war in Ukraine. Right. And so one of the things that a lot of people woke up to with the supply chain crisis and more is like, wow, I can't get stuff that I ordered. But what is the solution to that? You know, we see a lot of people saying, oh, well, we need to build here at home, as we've all found out the hard way. It takes five to 10 years to build. If you want new semiconductors, you got to wait 15 years, you know, at best in some some cases if you can even do it at all. And something I think that you get in the book is about what the solutions to that look like on a practical level. So lay it out for us. Yeah, so there's not one silver bullet, to be fair.

And yeah, building a new semiconductor fab time. But we actually have, and this is really the good news, and it is a good news book, we have a lot more agility and a lot more manufacturing competitiveness in this country than we're aware of. And I'll give you one story because my book, you know, has these big lofty theses, but it sort of looks at them through the lens of three different industries, agriculture, textiles, and technology. And I spent a lot of time in the Carolinas in the textile supply chain before and during the pandemic. And here are these companies, okay, nobody's buying clothes. So they're looking around and thinking, what can we do? Well, they turned on a dime in 48 hours and started making masks. And they were moving

millions of them around the country. Now, what's very interesting is before the pandemic hit, Americans were basically buying 3 cent masks from China China, which, by the way, is dumping because the raw materials would make it a 5 or 6-cent product. But that's another topic. Beijing decides, understandably, it wants those masks for its people. It hoards the masks. We have to start producing them in the USA. The cost of a USA mask is 30 cents. But by the end of the pandemic, these folks, these very nimble, often family-owned private businesses, had driven those costs down to 10 cents. But by the end of the pandemic, these folks, these very nimble, often family-owned

private businesses had driven those costs down to 10 cents. And then when you factor in higher labor standards, good environmental standards in this country, not having to haul things, you know, thousands of miles and spend that energy cost and the emissions cost to bring things through the South China supply chains, you chains, it actually makes a lot of sense to do more at home. All kinds of reasons for this technology that are allowing things to be 3D printed in real time are taking off. I think we're going to be doing a lot more here at home.

What did you make of the sort of instant calamity triggered by the short-lived prime minister of the UK, Liz Truss, who went all in on the sort of most ideological, most strident version of the Reagan, Thatcherism, free market economics, comes in with this proposed mini budget to slash taxes on the rich

and forego a raise in corporate taxes. And even like, I'm going to lift the cap on banker bonuses, like just whole hog on this thing. And the very markets that she revered completely turned on her, and there was an almost complete collapse. I mean, what did you make of that in terms of, you know, what it says about where we are in the era of neoliberalism and what the both public and market reaction is to this type of ideological project at this point? You know, it's a great question, and I couldn't, frankly, have asked for a better peg, a news peg for my book, because if you think

about, okay, trickle-down started with Reagan-Thatcher, that pendulum swung so far that we now have this incredibly bifurcated economy, both in the U.S. and the U.K., you get a prime minister that comes in and says, yeah, you know, we still believe that the way to growth is to cut taxes on the rich. That's worked. No, it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked definitely for 20 years. If you look across the board at all, all workers and all salaries, it hasn't worked for 40 years if you look at working people. So, you know, no big surprise that the market said, hold on, we don't think so. And particularly if you're going to cut taxes, even as you're increasing fuel subsidies and spending, we don't like that. So I think the demise of trustonomics,

if you might call it that, is potentially the apex and the turning point, you know, where we start going down this hill of neoliberalism, hopefully to something better. And what are the downsides to this change? Obviously, deglobalization. We've gone through a period of this with depression and all that in the 1920s and 1930s. Can we avoid some of the pitfalls, both politically and economically, from that time? Or do you think it's maybe just as raucous in the transition? Great questions. So, look, we are in a bumpy period. I mean, the world is not flat, right?

That's one of my big, my big theses. The world is bumpy. It's never been flat. You know, there was, I've been going to China, for example, for 25 years. I never landed in China and looked around and thought, wow, this country, big, rich, old country with its own traditions, own system is going to seamlessly fit into the Washington consensus. Yeah, that's going to happen. But we now see those things, and so we're no longer willfully blind to them. Some people would look at, say, the export bans that the Biden administration has put on high-end chips to dual-use chips to China as being an aggressive action. In fact, this administration is just reacting to China's own stated goal of being totally independent of Western technology

in the next few years. And, you know, the party is really hardening. You saw that at the last party conference over the last few days. So this is reality. But it doesn't have to be a zero sum game. I think, you know, I did an event with Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary of the Atlantic Council, several months ago where she first used that word friend-shoring, which is about let's create a trade system that's about values. Let's make sure we're not buying cotton T-shirts that are made by tiny fingers in a forced labor camp in Xinjiang.

Let's make sure we're trading with companies that treat workers and the environment properly. And, and this is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, let's make sure that we give some carrots as well as sticks. So domestic producers at home that are doing the right things, let's reward them, let's incentivize them, as well as making it harder or more expensive for folks who are doing the wrong thing to bring stuff into the country. So, Rana, I very much see all the signs that you're pointing to. And I think, you know, the trustonomics collapse, it really demonstrates that whatever there was to get out of that worldview has long been gotten. If there ever was anything to get out of that worldview, those gains have already been attained

and it leads to, you know, nothing but catastrophe at this point. But in the same respect, you know, nothing but catastrophe at this point. But in the same respect, you know, I get pushback about the idea that sort of the neoliberal era is ending because they're like, Joe Biden is a consummate neoliberal and he's in charge. And yeah, trust is gone. But now you've got like a Goldman Sachs dude who's prime minister of the UK. A lot of the power is still with this ideology in terms of the institutions that are, you know, supporting our government. So what do you say to that pushback? Oh, well, Crystal, for sure, the neoliberals are not going to die easily. You know, I'm doing personal hand-to-hand street fighting with some of them right now, I can tell you. I would actually, it's funny with Biden, I think Biden is pre-neoliberal. I mean,

you know, I think he actually hearkens back to an era in which the state and business worked together better and also parties worked across the aisle better. You know, I don't think there's been a more labor-friendly president in this country in decades. I mean, this guy has a bust of Cesar Chavez in his office, so I wouldn't call him a neoliberal. That said, there definitely is an existential fight, I would say, within the Democratic Party, not just folks that are in the administration, some of whom are, as you say, hardcore, you know, markets are always right, everything has to be cheaper. You know, you hear Larry Summers saying that drives me crazy. Cheap isn't cheap, by the way, if you factor in the real cost of energy, emissions, quality,

labor, et cetera. But there is also a contingent that's saying, you know, hey, we need to do things a different way. And I know that that contingent has the president's ear. Now, I will say you asked about challenges earlier. The big challenge is inflation because creating this new world, frankly, means pricing products the way they should be priced. We've gotten used to total cheap consumer culture in this country. And we thought, we bought the Kool-Aid that if we outsourced our entire industrial base, didn't care about manufacturing jobs, thought everybody could be a software programmer or a banker or, you know, media people like we are, that the country would be fine. And it wasn't. Cheaper flat screen TVs in Walmart did not make up for the fact that the price of everything that makes us middle class, housing, health care, education, is going up even before the latest bout of inflation, three times the triple, you know, three times the core inflation rate. So that bargain doesn't work. And we've got to get to a better place because, you know, you cannot have an economy that's based simply on asset prices going up

and the rich getting richer. It just, as I think you all would agree, we're really at a social breaking point here with this. Yeah. Very, very well said. You know, Rana, you in Makers and Takers actually have an anecdote that I have referenced a number of times, but I think it's really important for understanding the realities of the modern economy because the system of neoliberalism, one of the promises is like, oh, this is going to fuel all kinds of innovation. But even whatever there was to be gained from that has sort of run its course. And you point to the fact that I think your stats are when Apple decided to, when they created the iPod, this like, you know, sort of transformative device and really popular and all of this, they didn't actually do well in terms of the public markets and their stock price. When they did their financial rigging stock buybacks, oh, then they're rewarded, which is a perfect anecdote for what actually drives our economy at this point. So I wonder if you could explain that piece a little bit, because, you know, I use this term like the economy is really financialized.

Sagar and I have thrown that around, but I'm not sure people really understand what that means. Could you help us help explain that? Yeah, absolutely. It's a great point. So if you look back again to about the 1980s, companies started being incentivized and our whole economy sort of shifted to being incentivized to help companies, global companies, get bigger, get richer. Things like bans on share buybacks, which are when a company goes out and buys its own shares on the open market, that used to be considered manipulation because it automatically jacks up the price of shares because you're ring fencing them. That was turned over. So companies start spending a lot of money on their own shares. They start spending less money on things like R&D or building new factories or retraining workers. There's an idea. And that just gets put on kerosene fuel in the 90s with tax preferential treatment for shares,

the Silicon Valley movement towards paying people in shares. So basically the economy starts to be all about pleasing Wall Street, not building real things on Main Street. And so that's why you have this very weird feeling that, and we all felt this in the pandemic, wait a minute, the sky is falling and yet stock prices are higher than they have ever been. Well, that's because we threw the ball to the Fed for the last 40 years, both parties did

and said, you fix it, keep rates low, you know, but what that does is it just inflates asset prices. It doesn't change the story on Main Street. It doesn't help us create the new, new thing. And we're now at the end of that, too, because interest rates are rising. We're done with cheap capital. We're largely done with cheap labor from China because they're ring fencing their own economy. And we're done with cheap energy from Russia. So that whole cheap model is gone and we need a new plan. And some of it is going to have to be about building resilience at home, paying workers more, having a more balanced production and consumption economy, and then figuring out who's going to pick up the tab for that.

Because there are going to be some costs. And I suspect, and I think it should be this way, that companies should pay more. You know, I support things like the CHIPS Act to create some incentives to build semiconductors in this country, but I sure as heck don't want to see every industry lining up the White House to get a handout or a bailout. They need to be spending their money productively to create real innovation, real growth, and real jobs. And you know, the clean energy

transformation that we're going to be going through is the perfect example of this. If you look back historically, the periods in time where you see long-term sustainable shared growth are when there is a transformative technology like, say, the railroads or the internet, and the public sector puts a floor under it, and then private sector companies come in and commercialize it. And that's when you start to lift all boats, not by doing financial engineering of share buybacks or private equity firms coming in and splicing and dicing companies. We've got to get away from that. We can't compete with China if we keep doing that. Yeah, I think it's really well said. I really encourage everybody to go and buy the book.

We'll have a link down in the description. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Great to see you, Ronna. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? A lot of interesting things to get to today. So we are going to break down that Fetterman-Oz debate that, of course, has caught everyone's attention. A lot of questions there. And also, we have some new allegations against

Herschel Walker down in Georgia. So we'll catch you up to speed on everything related to the midterms as we head down the stretch. New Biden comments with regards to Ukraine and Russia's potential nuclear use. And also those dirty bomb allegations. So we'll break that down for you. Also, supposedly, the Elon Musk Twitter deal is going to close tomorrow. Tomorrow. He showed up at headquarters carrying a sink for some reason. We don't really know.

We'll take it. This also comes amid, this part was actually the most interesting to me. Some new research that came out about how Twitter is kind of dying. Yes. Losing some of their biggest users are, like, not really posting anymore, especially in, like, news and politics, which is the most profitable topic area. So we'll break that down for you as well. Ken Klippenstein had a great scoop about the Fed and really exposed something that goes

on there that almost no one knows about, which is they are lobbied just like legislators here are lobbied by business and banking interests, but without any sort of democratic pushback or accountability on the other side. So he goes deep into how that all works. Also, Senator Menendez, once again, under criminal investigation. So we will tell you what we know about that. I'm also very excited about our guest today. He's a former longtime CIA agent. He was actually station chief in Moscow, which is crazy. And he has a pretty interesting theory about exactly who really murdered JFK. This all comes amid the reason we're doing this now is because the Biden administration is being sued for not releasing the JFK assassination related documents that they are congressionally mandated to. Now, they were supposed to be released under the Trump administration.

Trump administration kicked the ball to the Biden administration. Biden administration still stonewalling. What are they hiding, everybody? We're going to talk to Rolf Moat Larson about all of that. But we did want to start with that Fetterman-Oz debate. You guys know the backstory here. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, current lieutenant governor of the state of Pennsylvania, suffered a stroke just before he won his primary. Now, he has only recently started doing any interviews whatsoever. There was a huge kerfuffle after he gave one interview to NBC News, and the reporter indicated, you know, hey, he had trouble understanding what I was saying in small talk. So this was a much-anticipated debate. It's the only debate that these two are having,

and let's just say it was really rough. It was very rough to watch. We wanted to pull a clip for you that was not sort of like cherry picked or just like, you know, the worst moments or even the best moments. So we decided to pull for you both of their closing statements, both Oz and Fetterman, so you can just get a sense of how this all went. Let's take a look. All right. At this time, we are ready for our closing statements. You each have 90 seconds to convince Pennsylvanians to vote for you on Election Day. Mr. Fetterman, you are first. 90 seconds. Once again, I would just like to say that I my campaign is all about fighting for anyone in

Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down, that had to get back up again. I'm also fighting for any forgotten community all across Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down, that had to get back up. And I've made my entire career dedicating to those kinds of pursuits. I started as a GED instructor back in Braddock over 20 years ago because I believe it's about serving Pennsylvania, not about using Pennsylvania for their own interests as well. To me, careers are refilled by your real underlying values. And my values have always been about fighting for forgotten communities all across Pennsylvania. All right. Thank you, Mr. Fetterman. Mr. Oz, your final thoughts, 90 seconds.

I love traveling to the four corners of the beautiful Commonwealth, and I've heard your problems. I'm a surgeon, doctor. I listen to what you say, and I'm trying to help address them today. I've talked to seniors worried their social security checks wouldn't go far enough with the raging inflation. I've talked to couples want to make their first

down payment on a new house and they can't afford it anymore because of interest rates. I've talked to families. You want to cut Social Security. Mr. Fetterman, it's his turn for his closing. I've talked to families worried about fentanyl showing up in their mailbox and literally taking the lives of their children who they find blue in bed. I've talked to families who won't let their kids go outside because of the crime wave that's been facilitated by left radical policies like the ones John Fetterman has been advocating for. But here's the deal, right? None of this has to happen. This is all very addressable. I'm a surgeon. I'm not a politician. We take big problems, we focus on them, and we fix them. We do it by uniting, by coming together, not dividing. And by doing that, we can get ahead. But I've got one question to challenge you with, just one question. If you take what I'm saying to heart, ask yourself this

and others in your family. Are you unhappy with where America's headed? I am. And if you are as well, then I'm the candidate for change. I'm a living embodiment of the American dream. I believe we're the land of opportunity, the land of plenty. I believe we can balance a budget without recklessly spending. I believe we can have an unleashed energy policy that helps us all.

I believe that we can have safe city streets and a secure border so legal immigrants can come across, but you shut the fentanyl out. I believe we can give parents choice in where their kids go to school. We can have affordable healthcare. But most of all, I believe in you. And if you can do this together and we can, I would ask for your vote on Election Day. So it gives you a sense of

how the debate went. I mean, it was it was difficult to watch. And I honestly, I can't stop thinking about it because I just honestly feel so badly for John Fetterman. I mean, you think about it like here's a man who was, you know, larger than life and this political tour de force. We interviewed him before the stroke. We interviewed him actually before he sort of blew up on the national stage and were impressed with him. You know, he's always he's never been like Oz is very as a television personality is obviously very nimble on his feet and very, you know, smooth talking and all those things like that was never Fetterman. Fetterman was always like very sort of plain spoken, very direct. So they would have stylistically, even without the stroke, come across very different.

But I just can't stop thinking about there you are on the cusp of this primary victory. You're not just, you know, a standard issue political figure. This is a guy who really, you know, cut this imposing figure, was incredibly unique in terms of the Democratic Party, really potential, you know, massive star power, and now struggling to just, you know, basically articulate his thoughts. And again, just so you know that we're not cherry picking here, this was the reaction to the people who watched the debate. 82% said that Oz won. 18% said Fetterman won. So, I mean, overwhelmingly, you know, people felt like Oz had the better night, no doubt about it. And, you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about the media reaction. I do think I listened to him in previous interviews where he definitely, you could tell he had a stroke.

We've seen him on the campaign trail. You could tell he was struggling for words at times, you know, mushing things together. Sometimes something wouldn't come out. Obviously, he had to have the closed captioning in order to process. This was the worst that I'd seen him, though, and I feel like the stress and pressure of the situation really kind of got to him. You know, on the question of what it's going to mean politically, I have no idea. Same. I continue to believe that probably the biggest issue for Fetterman is the same issue that every Democrat across the country is suffering, which is like, you know, Arizona is now a toss up, according to the latest analysis, because trends are moving

in Republicans direction across the board. The head of the DC analysis, because trends are moving in Republicans direction across the board. The head of the DCCC, you know, who's in a Biden plus 10 district is on the ropes. So things, the national wins are probably the biggest problem that he has. I think, you know, it's reasonable for the campaign to feel like, OK, this probably is going to knock us back a few points. And ultimately, in a race that's as close as this, that could be the difference. But, you know, I can't help but admire the guy for having the courage to actually do this because you look in Arizona,

Katie Hobbs in the governor's race, like, she's just not debating. She has no health issue or whatever. She's just afraid that Carrie Lake is going to get the better of her because she's a better debater. I mean, literally. No, you're right. That's true.

And I think that all candidates should have to debate. I think it's important for people to have transparency about, you know, where he is in his recovery. I don't think that should be off the table to discuss. For me personally, it wouldn't be a hard decision because the most important thing to me is how he would ultimately vote. You're up against a dude who doesn't even believe in the federal minimum wage. But ultimately, that's for voters to decide, and we'll see what they think. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to be mean and because I see that many people are upset about this, but I thought that was stunning

in that it was much worse than I think that his campaign and him had ever let on before. And I do think it's an issue, which is that at the end of the day, the man has not actually released his medical records. All he's released is a signed letter from a doctor who is a campaign donor to him

who claims he's going to be better. We were looking previously at a neurologist clip where they said that, look, you know, most recovery, the best recovery comes in three to six months. It's been six months. There's no indication that he's going to get better from here. I don't think we can believe in good faith that the man is telling us the truth, that he has zero cognitive damage. I mean, there's, listen, we are all armchair people. I have no idea what's going on inside of his brain. That's for a neurologist to decide. And they have not released his doctor to questioning. It's on him after that display to prove to us that his brain is not permanently damaged. And unfortunately, like,

I come away from that. And that's the least amount of stress that you might face one day as a senator. And I just disagree wholeheartedly with this ongoing cope and meme I see on the left, which is like, well, what all senators do is just show up and vote. I'm like, okay, hold on a second. This is a, one of the most powerful people in Washington is an individual senator. They can hold up legislation. They can hold up nominees. They vote for judges. They vote for wars. They vote for treaties. They decide immense things. Look at the power of Rand Paul when he wants to be useful. Look at the power of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema when they want to be useful. I am just not going to sit here and be told that

it's OK for somebody whose brain is possibly fried to be a senator from the state of Pennsylvania. Conservatives who are most critical of Fetterman. Yeah, they're pro Herschel Walker. They're full of shit. I really care about the health issues. They care about how he's going to vote. He's not going to vote the way they want him to. Sure. So, you know, I personally, for me, again, it wouldn't be a difficult decision because there's nothing to me that indicates he doesn't know what his values are, that he wouldn't know how to, you know, take a vote on the issues that matter to me. You're up against a dude who literally doesn't support the federal minimum wage, has actually been much cagier about what he views, thinks on a variety of issues, especially abortion. And so, you know, at the end of the day, like how they're

going to vote on the issues and the bills that are in front of them, I think that is the most important thing. Now, you know, would it be better if you had someone like for your normal run of the mill senator? It actually is just the taking the votes. That is the thing. You do have people like, you know, Elizabeth Warren. I have issues with her, but she brings something to the table and her questioning and whatever that obviously goes beyond just like taking a vote. But ultimately, with a lot of just your kind of standard issue, run of the mill senators, basically the job is to vote on issues. So anyway, I mean, the other thing that cuts against this is, you know, Oz does continue to come off as kind of like a smarmy asshole.

And I don't think that he handled this well because he didn't need to take shots at Fetterman. There were some sort of underhanded jabs at Fetterman's health condition currently. And so he continues to be like not a very likable guy. And ultimately, if I had to bet, I would say this was, you know, damaging to Fetterman, probably cuts a couple points off of him. But I also just really don't know because voters have responded in ways that I've been surprised about. Again, you know, I was actually talking to my mom about this and she's my very, my like touchstone for the kind of like normie swing voter type. And her response was empathy and like, God, I give the guy credit for having the courage to do

this. I think you're right, which is that, look, I've I have found myself with the vehemence of old people every time I've gone after Joe Biden. They're like, oh, can't you give him cut him some slack? I'm like, personally, I think we should hold our leaders to a higher thing. But listen, the man won the presidency. So I'm like, what do I know? All right. He won the presidency and he continues to be outside of, you know, a few people, probably a Democrat's strongest chance for the next time around. That's what I'm saying. So I'm like, look, you know, people can make their own minds. As I alluded to, let's put this on the screen. I'll never forget reading this. I actually read this back in college. It's 2012. Big study from political scientists that reviewed reams of political polling data going back over decades, all the way from JFK onward.

Do presidential debates and those are the highest, highest engaged debates, do they matter? Almost never. Not really. They basically are awash. Now, as Ryan Grimm once said on our show, all of the studies that regard candidate quality never had to deal with candidates as poor quality as Oz, Herschel Walker, and Blake Masters. So I don't know, you know, but those people are all tied in the polls. If I were to bet on the fundamentals, I would bet on all three to actually win their race. So in this debate, will it matter? Look, I gave you my personal view. I'm also not going to sit here and tell you that my personal view has any sway or is even in the median mind of the Pennsylvania voter. I was talking recently, the median Pennsylvania voter is a 53-year-old man,

53-year-old white man who did not go to college. I am not that person. I don't live in, I've only been a couple of times. I have no idea what these people are going to vote on. So at the end of the day, I trust in the voters. They can decide what, you know, themselves. I do think the major takeaway is that Oz, you know, for all the so-called backhand, I didn't read into it as much. You know, I watched the whole debate. I didn't see a lot of that. For what I saw, the major takeaway from the RNC was they were playing his loop. He had a terrible answer, to be honest, on fracking, where he was basically like, I support fracking. Fetterman. Yeah, Fetterman.

He was like, I support fracking. It was very stilted. It was garbled. But it was also a flip-flop, right, because he actually did not support fracking. I remember we were talking about this back whenever we interviewed him. So they are playing clips back to back of him used to saying it and now and hammering him actually more on a policy matter, given the gas prices plus the crime. I mean, that's one that I think I honestly don't know that fracking is like the issue that it once was in that region. But I do think, listen, again, my analysis in general, and we're about to talk about Herschel Walker here in a few minutes, but is that as much as I would like candidate quality, I just don't think it really does.

We see all of these races moving in the same direction right now, you know, whether it's Fetterman, who's struggling in Pennsylvania, whether it's Mark Kelly, who, you know, is seen as a very strong candidate out in Arizona. He is strong. Blake Masters is closing the gap there. That's now a toss up race, whether it's, you know, down in Georgia, like every single race seems to be moving and shifting towards the Republicans. I don't see that as having much to do with any of these candidates, individual like personality, charisma, platform, abilities, whatever. I think it has a lot more to do with the national mood. So do I think it might matter on the margins? Yeah.

And if this comes down to a few thousand votes in, you know, a few key districts, then you could talk—you could be making the case that this debate was the difference maker. If it ends up not really being close in either direction, then, you know, obviously not. Just so we have a sense of where this is right now. And this kind of underscores our point right now in the 538 average, Fetterman is plus 2.3. There was a time when he was up 12 in the average. OK, now, again, that's before even before there were any interviews or really any very strong concerns about his recovery process. Those that tightening and closing of the gap really has everything to do with the national wins, because we see that happening in race after race after race. You know, the other thing that I think is important to note here, not only that the gap has closed, but there was a time when Fetterman's average was up over 50 percent and now it's down at 47.2 percent. And I think also a lot

of what's happened in some of these races where the base didn't love the candidate they ended up with or there were candidate quality issues on the Republican side, the Republican base is also starting to come home. And you've seen that, you know, certainly here and you've seen it in Georgia as well. No, I think you're right, Crystal. And actually, I just checked the RCP average. Their average actually has Fetterman only up by 1.3 percent. I mean, given what we know. I think the 538 one like takes into account. 538 is more weighted. So RCP is just like a true average. And if the true average is 1.3,

we know the miss in Pennsylvania to be four points from 2020. No indication that the same miss isn't there. So I would probably rather be Oz right now, given the way that things are trending. But again, like you said, it's not just about Oz. You have to zoom out and just say, all GOP races, national ballot, everything moving in that direction. Fundamentals. Look, I'm just going to keep betting on them from the future. Yeah. I mean, look, maybe we could be completely wrong. Maybe Fetterman pulls it off by two. Who knows? Maybe the miss is in the other direction for some unknown reason. But based on recent history, we can only bet in that direction. We can only go to war with the battle or the information that we have. And with that, look, I personally, I put my money on it. I was like, all right, fine. I think Oz is going to win. This is an interesting story in its own right. I mean, far less interesting, let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Elon Musk will officially take ownership of Twitter on Friday, or at least that's expected. I guess something still could technically happen, but he's notified dealmakers and other equity holders in the company that he will finalize his takeover.

He changed his Twitter bio to, quote, Chief Twit. The real story is, okay, now that Elon has effectively been forced to buy Twitter, what is he going to do with Twitter? He denied yesterday that he would be firing 75% of the workforce, but he still could fire 50 and not claim that. Twitter right now- 74.2%. Yes, 74.2%. I mean, look, Twitter has tremendous problems. They are a business which is long failing. Even though they are put up there with the Facebooks and the Googles of the world, they don't have even close to the same market capitalization. They don't have nearly the same amount of operating revenue or even profit. It's not a particularly profitable company.

Of all the social media giants, from a pure monetary perspective, it is by far the weakest, which is why he's able to buy it effectively with Tesla stock in the first place. Elon himself walked into the Twitter lobby yesterday. Let's go ahead and put the video. For those who are just watching, who are watching, Elon walked into the lobby of Twitter carrying a sink saying, entering Twitter HQ, let that sink in. So a bit of a pun, I guess. Classic Elon pun. It's a real, real dad joke there. Just put it all to this, which is that he just spent $44 billion in cash on a failing business, which was probably worth $20 billion at best. And just to give you some insight, people at Twitter, who are obviously leaking

in order to show you just how much of a mistake really, frankly, was to even buy Twitter, put this up there, which is that internal Twitter data leaked to Reuters shows that the most active users who are, let me get the exact numbers here, the heavy tweeters who account for less than 10% of monthly overall users, but generate 90% of all tweets and half of all Twitter global revenue have been, quote, in absolute decline since the pandemic began. A Twitter researcher has an internal document called, where did the tweeters go? And what they define a heavy tweeter as is somebody who logs into Twitter six or seven times a week and tweets about three to four times a week, which most news people would put them to absolute shame. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't consider myself a heavy tweeter. Yeah, by this definition, even I am.

And I've pared mine back by 90%. I mean, it's a tweet like 100 times a day, which is obviously way too much. So anyway, the point being that the most active English speaking users, which make up most of the global revenue and most of the users on the Twitter platform, have been in absolute decline. Now, this is funny. What are the highest growing topics of interest in the last two years? Cryptocurrency, porn. Crypto and porn, basically. Yeah, that's basically it. And given the crypto crash, not inspiring. They say even crypto now with the crypto crash has been plummeting in that one, too. So now it's just porn.

And the core stuff, the core product of news, sports, and entertainment is apparently waning amongst those users. And the problem is that, you know, no problem with porn. It's fine that it's on there. In fact, I think they actually do a pretty good job of allowing there to be porn on Twitter, but not taking over everybody's timelines. You know what I mean? I've never personally seen it on Twitter. Oh, you haven't?

Not on Twitter. I mean, I occasionally have. Well, there's one porn star who's a male porn star who's a massive fan. I won't even shout him out, but he's a massive fan of our show. And so one time I was like, oh, who is this guy? And I was like, oh, my God.

All right, so shout out to you, I guess. Anyway, the issue from a business perspective is it's not as profitable because, you know, blue chip advertisers, they don't have their ad next to whatever Sagar happened to stumble upon on Twitter. So that's the real issue from a business perspective. I don't know, there's a lot to say about this.

I mean, first with regard to Elon, like my position the whole time has just been, let's wait and see. Let's see if the deal really closes. Let's see what he actually does because he's thrown out all kinds of ideas and plans and, you know, PowerPoints and whatever. Let's see what direction he actually takes it in. Maybe it's better. Maybe it's worse. Maybe it's indifferent. I have no idea. So I'm just going to wait and see. Do I think there are ways that you can improve Twitter? Absolutely. I mean, Twitter is like kind of a hellscape. Like it's sort of great and it's

sort of terrible. And it seems like even putting like the free speech and censorship piece aside, there are things that you could do that would make it less of a like hellscape where no matter what you say, everybody's incentive is to be like, you're stupid and terrible and intentionally misinterpret what you say. There are lots of other platforms that don't have that vibe and ethos. I'm not smart enough to understand why Twitter has that and other places like Instagram don't. But anyway, there seems like there could be improvements in terms of the quality of the discourse on the platform. Put that aside. Yeah. You have a thought? Well, I was just gonna say, I frankly think that that is probably what contributes to engagement, which is how people

make money. Well, maybe, but then on the other hand, why are they losing these heavy tweeters? Maybe because Twitter is a miserable place to hang out. That's true. You know, so ultimately it could be like a penny wise pound foolish kind of a situation of this culture that you've created because, yeah, at any individual day, like the level of outrage and engagement and all of that is really ginned up. But over time, people are like, what? Like you. Like, why do I have this in my brain? Why do I have this in my life? Why am I obsessing over this day to day when it's

making me feel worse? So I don't know. I do think it's also there's a couple of things here. I mean, they point to specifically engagement around liberal politics has taken a heavy slide downward, which is just consistent with overall news media. General vibe. You know, general news media. I mean, yeah, they point to spikes around things like the U.S. attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. But in general, huge declines on that. Also, they say they're losing a, quote, devastating percentage of heavy users who are interested in fashion or celebrities like the Kardashian family. And they think that those particular users are just moving over to places like Instagram, TikTok, in particular, I think TikTok.

Probably. Yeah. It makes sense, which is, look, at the end of the day, it was a great invention for distribution, but I've always been, the greatest critique is your individual power as a Twitter user, as a random small account, is just very low. You know, we see this, which is that disproportionately, that's what they point to. 90% of all tweets come from only 10% of the user, but that's terrible from an engagement. Very unequal.

Exactly. That's why it's such a place for elite thought. Exactly. But, you know, that's not really a particularly good business. Look, he could try a lot of things. The Twitter subscription thing ultimately failed. They did a rollout. Now, if they could possibly force heaviest users to pay, that could work. Once you reach, let's say, over 50,000 followers, you have to pay $3.99 a month in order to maintain access to your followership. Not a terrible idea, actually. But there's a lot of things that you can do on its current trajectory. I just don't see any way without massive layoffs. Let's put this

on the screen, which is that Twitter users or Twitter employees have put out an open letter basically saying, please don't fire 75% of us. But the irony is, is that internal Twitter documents actually show that the vast majority of the workforce was already kind of put at risk. They were already weighing massive layoffs at the company, maybe not in the 75th percentile range, but something like 20% or so of the workforce. So no matter who took over this company, it was going to be a blood bath from day one. And look, I like Jack Dorsey just from a purely ideological perspective. I think his heart was in the right place, but God bless him, he did not do a good job in creating a good business here.

And maybe it's not possible. Maybe it was always impossible for it to be a great business. Maybe it's one of those things, like it's a great service like Google, but it just doesn't have the monetary back end. You know, one of the insights that Elon does have that, I have all kinds of issues with Elon,

but that I think is correct is like, he's very skeptical of public companies and public markets because of the way it messes up incentives. Oh, he's correct. And he's absolutely correct about that. I mean, we talked to Rana Foroohar earlier this week, who's a wonderful thinker and just wrote a great book called Homecoming and has also written books like Makers and Takers, all about the financialization of our economy. And the reality is private businesses really are much more incentivized to focus on the quality of their product. The numbers bear out. They invest way more in research and development versus, you know, your public company, the whole game is like buying back your own stock and all this financial engineering crap. So, I mean, that's another issue here as well. But look, I'm curious to see what he does. If it improves the platform, that would be

wonderful because it really is central to our elite discourse and political dialogue. I mean, in some ways, of course, like what happens on Twitter isn't real, like Twitter's not real life, whatever. But it does really set the agenda in terms of elite opinion makers. And so it is a very critical part of our public square. It's personally why I don't think it should be up to the whims of profit incentives. I think it should either be like basically, you know, public utility is part of the sort of infrastructure of how we conduct democracy. But if there are any marginal improvements that are made here, it would be a positive thing. I would really like it. I mean, I think a return to the chronological feed,

which you can do yourself. I've done that, but most people don't do that. Away from the algorithmic feed would be very beneficial. There's a lot of things I could do for the service, but I just don't see a way that it makes a lot of money. That's why I just don't think there's any world in which you will make any of this money back. But I mean, look, maybe he did the world a favor, which is that you burn your cash and you do, you know, basically eat the cost for the rest of us to have a service, which I do think is vital. But from a business perspective, I really just don't see it from an advertising related business. It's just not going to happen now. He's never bet against him from a business perspective. I think all of us have learned that.

It's very possible he could turn the ship around. He could turn it into a lean, mean machine and then just, you know, increase the operating revenue. And that alone would drive a profit. And then maybe he could even sell the company in the future. We'll see what he ultimately does. Yeah. I mean, I don't really care how the business does. I care about, like, how it is for society.

We'll see. We'll see what he does. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we

should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

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