Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 10/30: Pelosi Attack, Elon's Plan, Affirmative Action, Midterm Races, & More!

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Paul Pelosi attack, Elon buying Twitter, DHS surveillance, Affirmative Action, midterm senate races, & North Korea launching missiles!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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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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big news breaking this morning. First of all, we have some brand new details about that horrific hammer attack on Paul Pelosi. We'll break all of that down for you. We also have some new numbers about the midterm election showing that Republican messaging does seem to be taking a toll, landing a little bit more effectively with voters than Democratic messaging or lack thereof, perhaps, is really landing. We also have new developments out of Ukraine, especially with regards to that grain deal that Russia and Ukraine had struck that was allowing at least some grain to be exported out of the country.

That has changed. We also have new reports of attacks throughout the country this morning. So we'll break all of that down for you. Big news with regards to Elon Musk and Twitter, even some new developments this morning about what some of Musk's first moves might be. And we have the results out of that big presidential election down in Brazil. Lula will be the next president. What does that mean? How close was it? Why are the polls right or wrong? What does it all mean? We'll get into all of that. And plus, very excited to have Ken Klippenstein here in the studio. Dude just has gotten some crazy scoops lately. And this one, I think you all are going to be very, very interested in. You remember that whole misinformation governance board thing that supposedly was dismantled? Well, they still

decided to do the same thing. They're just not calling it that. And the details of exactly what they are working with tech companies to censor are quite chilling. So he will break all of that down for you in an exclusive for us. But we wanted to start with the new details of that attack on Paul Pelosi. That's right. So lots of questions around that attack. Emily and Ryan did a great job in a snap reaction on Friday. So let's start with the details. We want to start at the very beginning because I know there's still quite a bit of speculation, questions about details that were erroneously reported and such.

And we'll start at the very beginning with the San Francisco Police Department. Here was their initial response as to what happened in that attack on Paul Pelosi. Let's take a listen. At approximately 2.27 this morning, San Francisco police officers were dispatched to the residence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding an a priority well-being check. When the officers arrived on scene, they encountered an adult male and Mr. Pelosi's husband, Paul. Our officers observed Mr. Pelosi and the suspect both holding a hammer. The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it. Our officers immediately tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took him into custody, requested emergency backup,

and rendered medical aid. The suspect has been identified as 42-year-old David DePepe. The motive for this attack is still being determined. Mr. DePepe will be booked at the San Francisco County Jail on the following charges, attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary, and several other additional felonies. So important stuff. A, getting charged with attempted burglary, attempted homicide. B, that there was a phone call and a wellness check. There were a lot of questions as to why exactly this was a response as a wellness check and then the suspect's name, David DePapp. Now, in terms of how Paul Pelosi is right now, let's put this up there on the screen. This was a dear colleague letter sent by Speaker Pelosi to all of her House colleagues yesterday.

I'll read it in full. She says, dear colleague, yesterday morning, a violent man broke into our family home, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband, Paul. Our children, grandfather, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our pop. We are grateful for the quick response of law enforcement. Please know the outpouring of prayers. We are comforted by the book of Isaiah. Do not fear. I am with you. Do not be dismayed, or I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.

We thank you and pray for the continued safety and well-being of our family. Now, the Pelosi family also previously had said that Paul Pelosi had undergone brain surgery. However, his doctors and others saying that he's expected to make a full recovery, 81 years old. Now to the question of the attack itself. Let's put this up there. This was one of the major details with a lot of questions. Politico erroneously reported and said, quote, officers arrived at the house, knocked on the front door, and were let inside by an unknown person where they discovered DePap and Pelosi struggling for the hammer and after they instructed them to drop the weapon, DePapp took the hammer and quote violently attacked Pelosi. So there were a lot of questions there

as to who is this unnamed third person? Why was the third person also in the house? However, now in an interview, let's put this up there on the screen, details getting clarified, quote San Francisco PD telling NBC that they were just two people in the Pelosi home at the time of the attack, not three as had previously been reported, and that neither the suspect nor Paul Pelosi knew each other prior to the attack. NBC also said that they had confirmed, quote, zip ties were found on the scene. So that was a follow-up on a report about the zip ties as well. As to how exactly and why this was dispatched as a quote, a wellness check. There were a lot of questions as to why this was a wellness check and why didn't Paul Pelosi call 911. Let's fill the next one up there. Essentially what happened, and according to, this is again, according to Pelosi and some

of the initial details and all that were a little bit unclear. What happened is, is that Pelosi told this guy that he wanted to go, David DePapp, that he wanted to go in to use the bathroom. So while he was in the bathroom, secretly called 911 and then left 911 on speaker essentially. And while he put the phone in his pocket and then went back and was like, Hey, what are you trying to do to me? What are you doing? Why are you here? The 911 call operator listens to this and is like, something fishy and weird is going on here right now, Crystal. And she then dispatches it as a, quote, high-priority wellness check. That's why it was called in as a wellness check and not necessarily as a confirmed attack. So lots of details. Right. And it seems like this is also the reason why in the 911 call

there was a report that this was someone he knew that was a friend. And it was also sort of contradictory because it was like, they don't know each other, but he says he's a friend. It seems like that confusion may also have come from the fact that essentially what they're saying happened with Paul Pelosi is he was able to dial 911, but wasn't able to say to them like, oh my God, I'm under attack, help me. He's just able to put it on speakerphone so that they can hear the events unfolding. And he's trying to communicate with his attacker

in a way where the 911 dispatcher understands, oh shit, there's something going on, we gotta go help this guy. So originally, for those who have a healthy skepticism of official narratives. Yeah, including that the big question marks were this report that there was another person at the house was like, hmm, why, the fact that it was dispatched as a wellness check. And then there was also another erroneous report that the two men were in their underwear. And there are all kinds of salacious conspiracies out there that this was a gay lover that attacked him. There was a report that Elon Musk, we'll get to that, shared from this sort of like, you know,

rag that puts out all kinds of crazy stuff all the time that was to that effect. At this point, it seems like those conspiracy theories are much more sort of like cope from conservatives who don't want to acknowledge that there was anything ideologically about this guy that may have, you know, mixed with his mental illness to lead to this kind of attack because one by one, each of those pieces is at least being debunked by the San Francisco police department. And, you know, it seems like I continue, look, I'm open to the idea that there was something else going on here that, you know, is more than has been told or more than meets the eye, et cetera, et cetera. But probably the most likely explanation is that you had a guy who's a drug addict, who is mentally ill, who has fallen down

a million different internet conspiracy theory rabbit holes and ended up in this like deranged state. Now, the question I still have is like, where the hell was the security? I mean, that's what's most surprising to me is like, I can't, I am shocked that it would be this easy to gain entry to the Pelosi home. But that's basically, you know, that's what we know this morning. I'm very open to asking questions, as everybody knows. That's why I've spent a lot of time actually putting all these details together. Like, here's the things that were reported that a lot of people were picking up on, including me. I was like, hey, this is very strange. This

is very odd. And I think it does stem from the unbelievable nature of, you know, the idea that you could break into a person's home who's worth over a hundred million dollars in a $6 million house in a violent city where crime is way up, uh, and that they don't have any security. I mean, listen, you know, any normal dad who has a ring alarm has better security apparently than these people. So that's a little odd. There's no security camera footage. Uh, you know, allegedly, you know, the sliding glass door was broken or at least at some part. Yeah. There were pictures of that. Right. And it's like, well, you know, if you break my door, same thing, like I'm just a guy who can order stuff on Amazon, like that's going

to dispatch a 911 call. So how exactly does that work? So anyway, I remain incredulous and really stunned that it's even possible for a violent break-in or something like this to happen to people who have extraordinary high net worth and third in line to the presidency. Although I guess you should generally always bet on incompetence in some of these situations. In terms of the reports, look, again, I mean, I'm sympathetic. And stuff coming out on this, I was like, this whole thing just doesn't add up. However, according to the police, and that's a very strong caveat, you know, many of these things are no longer there. I think, and you brought this up this morning,

at the end of the day, the body camera footage actually will tell us a lot. It'll tell us everything, you know, exactly whether that detail is true. Did he start attacking him when they got there? Did he attack him before? What the position they found themselves in? Who broke the door? Some people said the police broke the door. Some people said that it was David DePop that broke the door. Also, questions remain about Mr. DePop himself we're about to get to as well as, you know, his own like craziness and mental conspiracy combined with obviously a penchant for going down internet rabbit holes put that together i think it's a sad attack i'm at the end of the day look i don't wish the man ill he's 81 years

old that's a tough time to get attacked i mean with a hammer and have to recover the hospital i would say so i would say at the least i mean the just derangement of attacking an 80 year old man with a hammer is yeah it's crazy. I mean, it really is. And, you know, it's not uncommon for in the wake of any of these sorts of events, whether it's a shooting or a crime or an attack like this, for some of the details to be a little garbled in the beginning. Right. And so probably the most likely explanation

for why some of these pieces were kind of head-scratching is that, listen, again, I remain open to the idea if the body camera footage comes out and it shows some other things were going on, I wouldn't be shocked by that. But to me, at this point, Occam's razor of what likely happened is that they let their guard down with security, which is hard to wrap your head around, but certainly possible. Nancy, I guess, was out of town so the Secret Service detail that normally accompanies her wouldn't have been present and that this dude, you know, was a toxic combination of like

deranged mentally ill and then fueled by these right-wing conspiracy theories and we also should say like there's an incentive part of the people who are propagating these conspiracy theories and really we also should say, like, there's an incentive. Part of the people who are propagating these conspiracy theories and really latched onto them, well, it's because they don't want to acknowledge that any of the ideological parts that came from the right may have had

anything to do with this attack. The thing that always drives me crazy about these incidents, and we have just like, you know, every time it's the same thing everybody goes to the internet looks at what their social media history is this guy was a prolific writer he previously had been more of like you know sort of left-wing fringe lunatic seems to have made a change apparently reportedly gamer gate shifted him to the right now he was all in on q anon he wanted trump to pick tulsi gabbard as his vice presidential nominee. He was into, you know, the obsession with like the pedophilia that comes out of QAnon. Epstein stuff certainly is true, but there are parts of that they think that politicians are like eating babies and all this sort of stuff. He went down every internet rabbit hole. You combine

that with the mental illness. And I think that seems like the most likely explanation for what ultimately happened here. I mean, we have some of the details about what exactly he was writing. Let's go ahead and put this next up on the screen. They haven't been able to totally verify that these writings were him, but he seems to be the only person by this name living in California. It seems like it goes back to him. You know, he was in on like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories suggesting there had been no mass gassing of prisoners at Auschwitz. He reposted a video lecture defending Adolf Hitler. Like I said before, he was, you know, picking vice presidential candidates for Donald Trump. He also had, though, things that weren't

political at all. Things, you know, he was like imagining there were fairies that he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging system. He was tracking culture war issues, talking about Alex Jones's $1 billion defamation judgment. So those are the sorts of, you know, political content that he was apparently interested in. And then, of course, the report from the scene is that he was saying, where's Nancy? And that's why people are drawing this conclusion that the his ideology connected to the attack. Although we should be clear, the police haven't said that they have they have not asserted a motive yet. So I think that's important. Well, I mean, look, I mean, does it is the motive belied by the fact that she's a speaker? Of course, it has to be part of the reason from what we've seen right now. I mean, look, I mean, does it, is the motive belied by the fact that she's a speaker? Of course. Like, it has to be part of the reason from what we've seen right now. I mean, look, it's also San Francisco. It's not a crazy idea to have a crazy person breaking into your house as a homeless drug dealer.

Yeah, but when you're running around with a hammer and these kind of postings and you're saying, where's Nancy? I mean, there's a pretty logical conclusion to come to. this like disgusting dash by everybody to go and see like what somebody used to watch and then blame it on that person as to their motive for the attack I generally think is insane like you know look people are crazy in this country there's like 330 million people like it's not always about ideology it's not Bernie Sanders fault that James Hodgkinson like shot up a bunch of congressmen just because he happens to like Bernie like it's not uh it reminds me it reminds me of the Gabby Giffords yeah shooting where this guy there was an ideological component combined with mental illness. And, you know, all of these things, like, there's a real human desire to understand how someone could do this thing. And the truth of the matter is, you're never really going to get what leads a person to attack an 80-year-old man with a hammer. Like, you're never really going to be able to wrap your head around it.

Now, some of these attacks that we've seen were much more, like, clearly idealized. They write a whole manifesto and they lay out, like, I'm a white supremacist and I want to start a race war. And mental illness may be a factor there, but it's actually less of a factor than they've convinced themselves that they're some like warrior for their race or whatever ideological nonsense that they've fed themselves on. And then there's instances like this where, you know, the mental illness combines with the ideological inclination to lead to this like hate-fueled attack, and you

really can't separate the two. And it sort of irritates me when people want to latch on to just exclusively one explanation or the other because it's convenient for whatever their particular hobby horse or narrative ultimately is. Elon Musk taking control of Twitter. Let's put this up there on the screen. Lots of questions originally about content moderation. I thought it was kind of hilarious

that one of the very first things that he announces is that Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. So essentially, Elon takes control of Twitter and then institutes, Crystal, the exact same policy that Mark Zuckerberg has over at Facebook

by kicking it to some fake oversight board. I guess the only redeeming thing that you could say is that this oversight board might actually have ideological diversity. But even then, you know, trying to create quasi-governmental institutions and essentially what are private companies just always seems ridiculous. At the end of the day, it's up to suck whether Trump gets banned or not. I think, you know, look, I'm not saying it should be this way, but I'm saying under current law and all this, stop trying to insulate yourself. You bought the platform. You own it now. You have to own all the problems. You know, there's an interesting story.

Bob Iger, who was the chairman of Disney, back in like 2017, Disney almost bought Twitter. They were at like near the closing final. Yeah. And at the last minute, Iger just called him, Jack Dorsey. He's like, you know what? I just don't want to deal with this. Because what he realized is that this $1 billion business would become a massive headache for him. That he would have to litigate what gets banned and what doesn't and content moderation, which would then go on to affect the overall, you know, that could then have spillover effects on people boycotting the Lion King. And he was like, you know what? Easily. And he was right. I thought he made the right call.

So anyway, the point is, is that at the end of the day, this is always going to remain complicated. Now, news out of the actual newsroom itself, let's put this up there, which is that Elon has said to have ordered job cuts across Twitter. It's actually unclear the level. You know, originally some had said

there were going to be 75%. Layoffs are going to be beginning pretty much as soon as possible. Rumors obviously going around. The fact of the matter was, whether Elon took it over or not, a lot of people were getting fired at Twitter regardless. That was based on that leaked document that came out. Parag Agarwal essentially had no choice either. Given the state of their business, advertising rates are going to record lows. It was funny, you know, whenever he went ahead and fired the CEO, Agarwal and Vijayagade, who, you know, I've had my own issues and troubles with here on the show. Well, it turns out that originally they were set to have these massive

severance packages to the tune of over $100 million total. However, let's put this up there. Apparently, Elon fired them. He didn't fire them in the way that they would have had to to get their pay, their severance package. He fired them for, quote, for cause, which legally gives him some ground to argue that he doesn't then need to pay them out nearly $100 million in severance to the total group. They don't get their little golden parachutes, but don't worry, everyone. It's not like they hadn't been getting paid fantastically well. But Jayagade, the chief censor who everyone can remember from the Joe Rogan podcast, she was getting paid like $17 million a year. Agarwal himself also, multimillionaire many times over. So all these

people are fine. I do not cry for them. For the lowly engineers, I feel somewhat bad. However, really what we're seeing is that A, they that we're probably going to lose our job anyway. But this morning, really only in the last 24 hours, some interesting news is broken that we don't have an element for. And I'm curious your thoughts on this, which is that at the very least, they are considering charging verified users $4.99 a month, basically to keep access to their verified badge. Yeah. One report from The Verge this morning is they are considering $20 a month. It's a lot. To charge.

It is a lot. What, 400,000 verified users, something like that is the number? Oh, I think it's more than that. It's a lot more than 400,000 verified users. I think it might even, honestly, be like over a million. Anyway, so the point is, is that why? Why would they consider that? I actually think it's a very elegant solution, which gets at what is the actual value of Twitter. On many other social media platforms, Instagram, others, there is, I think, a decent case for somebody who doesn't have a real following to

make them. You know, I had an Instagram account far before I was ever in this job, you know, in order to keep up with friends. Same with Facebook, same with even TikTok to a certain extent. On Twitter, the value creation is amongst those like 1% of users who tweet all the time. Right. And then everybody follows those people for information. Well, then the value to accounts like Your or Mine, which has hundreds of thousands of followers, would be the access to this audience. You know, at this point, what do we really use Twitter? What real value does Twitter have for us? Frankly, not that much beyond, you know, getting myself in trouble. But at best, what is it? An efficient way for me or you to promote breaking points, our live shows, an announcement,

right? So the value creation there is like, we use their platform to have access to all these people. It used to be they would place ads, but now, really what it would be is like, no, we're going to have to charge you like any enterprise software, essentially. You need to pay us to have that priority access to your people. First of all, it is actually only 360,000

who are verified. Only about 0.2%, they say, of Twitter's monetizable daily active who are verified. Only about 0.2%, they say, of Twitter's monetizable daily active users are verified. So at least in terms of active users, only 360,000 accounts are verified. This is according to CNET is where I'm getting this information. So it's a smaller number than I would have expected as well. I would say millions. There's a lot to say about this. First of all, at this point, my main value that I get on a Twitter isn't even from my own tweeting or promotion of what we do. It's more from just being able to

source stories. Yeah, absolutely. And take a pulse of what at least the super online people are obsessing over. You know, it can be useful to see, like, what the topics of conversation are, see what other smart people are saying about various issues. It's actually very helpful with breaking news because you get information faster on Twitter than you do on other platforms. None of that actually has to do with me having a blue checkmark by my name.

Like, that I can all get access to without having the blue checkmark. So that's one piece. Bigger picture, what I've been thinking about is the fact that, you know, last weekend, I think Ryan and Emily covered this. Immediately after Elon buys Twitter and he's had all this rhetoric about free speech, et cetera, he immediately puts out this like letter to advertisers is basically like, no, no, no, I'm really not going to change. It's going to be fine. You can still advertise here. It's still going to be all good, which was a reminder to me that, you know, ultimately, if you're trying to turn a profit,

the business is structured in a certain way, has certain incentives, like the content moderation policy that comes out of these platforms. It doesn't just like fall from the ether or even from the whims of these individual billionaires who, you know, ultimately they have the decision making power, but it comes out of the business model and the incentives that are inherent to that business model. Advertisers are worried about, just like on YouTube when they had an apocalypse, about like having their ad placed next to some crazy like conspiracy theorist or white nationalist or whatever. And so that leads these platforms to be more cautious and more censorious than they should be if your real concern wasn't profit, but it was the functioning

of a healthy and vibrant society and democracy. Those two things are sort of always going to be at odds and attention. And so to me, when I saw Elon immediately put out this like letter to advertisers, it was just a reminder of the fact that like the business model is what it is. And so to me, when I saw Elon immediately put out this like letter to advertisers, it was just a reminder of the fact that like the business model is what it is. And as long as it's in the business of being, you know, a public company and caring first and foremost about profit, you probably only expect so much of a change to what the content moderation policies are, which is why, you know, the model of having all of our, our sort of like, he calls it the digital town square. I think it's absolutely right about that. Subject to the whims of profit versus making decisions about what would be best for the country, why that is always going to lead

to an inferior outcome, no matter who is in charge. I totally agree, which is part of why I would want some sort of recurring revenue. That being said, it's still not that hard. So I just went ahead and did, you know, some like back of the napkin math. Even $360,000 at $20,000, you're only talking about, and I know this sounds silly, hundreds of millions, but that's not enough in order to justify a $44 billion purchase. different incentives and not end up with basically the same content moderation policy with maybe a few tweaks around the edges, you let Trump back on or you let Kanye back on or whatever, you would have to change the business model. You would have to make it. I mean, these are things we thought about a lot when we set up this business. And it is analogous in a lot of ways. You have to have it, your revenue dependent on something else. Like if you had people who were willing to pay for the service

and they're more interested in the quality of the service than like whether advertisers are going to be comfortable, well, that changes the incentives and it might ultimately change what the content moderation policy is that makes sense. So I don't think that, you know, charging people for the blue checkmark is probably sufficient to really change what the ultimate incentives are.

But moving in that direction, it would also really change if you leaned into it being a like paid subscription service. I mean, that would really change what Twitter ultimately is. I think it would have to be enterprise change. So it's free for most people, but you charge. Here's the other thing. It'd be a very elegant solution. AP and Reuters. All right, you guys need to pay. You need to pay a hell of a lot of money now in order to distribute. Guess what? I think they would pay it. I really do. I mean, at the end of the day, that's where the people are.

That's where people go for news. It's basically the best news platform that has ever existed on planet Earth. Charge them the hell of a lot of money to do it. Dare them. I mean, honestly, I think they fold and they pay. They could pay, frankly, millions of dollars in order to do so just because they understand. However, some of the value is based on everybody being there. But I think the flaw from the beginning was that at the end of the day, the vast majority, people like us, in the top 1% or

whatever of Twitter users, both from a posting and a follower perspective, we are creating the vast majority of the, quote, value on said platform. Even though whatever value is for us, clearly people don't follow us for no reason, right? There's some reason that they're doing. Well, that's worth something to us. I think it's an elegant solution to try and put a dollar amount on that. I like where their head is at, at least from that example. Because as you and I have found out, a subscription business is anti-fragile in many ways. It doesn't matter.

You know, cancellations are what they are, but relative churn is not that low. And you have money coming in through the door. If you lock it in to a certain extent, it's much more reliable. Why do you think software as a service businesses are worth many, many multiples over? That's why. Advertising platforms really only work at a tremendous scale, which is essentially monopoly. Google, Facebook, you know, even Snapchat to a certain extent. You can see, like, they may be booming, but if ad rates go down by 40%, your stock goes off of a cliff. Anyway, I'm mostly just musing here. I think it's interesting.

You know, full disclosure, I know some of the people who are involved in making these decisions. I haven't spoken to them about it or whatever, but I don't want anybody to think I'm shilling on behalf of my friends. It does make sense, though, that we all kind of think about things similarly. So it's cool. Yeah. And I guess it's also worth saying, remember they tried that thing of like, what are they called? Twitter blue. The power user or the…

Super follow. Super follow. That's like a tipping function. Yeah, where it's like, or you can pay to get special tweets from the people you really care about. That didn't really, that didn't pan out. It's not enough value. You've got to get something real. I mean, you and I see this, which is that our premium subs, in terms of the way that we charge,

A, you're paying to support our work, number one. At the core, you have to believe in the mission. That's what you're doing. And we're actually far more upfront than most people. We're like, here, here's what your money is getting spent on. We did our one-year anniversary thing where we were like, Hey, everybody, here's what we say. Here's what cameras that we bought. Here's the people that we're here's exactly how much money that we doled out on X, Y, and Z nice desk. Uh, they're sitting here. The point being

that we had, I think a much more explicit value than most people who were like, Hey, if you just like my work, throw us something in our experience, you can't do that. You have to be very upfront and really give people a real reason as to what they're doing and why and what they want to buy into. Right. And also, you premium subscribers can tell us that we're wrong,

but it seems like what people are really paying for is their belief in what you're doing. I mean, we do a lot to make sure the premium experience is, you know, it's ad-free, you get it early, we do the AMA, like we do a lot to make sure the premium experience is ad-free, you get it early, we do the AMA, we do a lot to make it special and give you perks. But I think at core, people are just paying for, we support the project and we want to be part of building it together.

So there isn't quite an analogous thing going on on Twitter. And then there's the other piece of like, you know, we get our content on YouTube is monetized through their ad revenue and content on the podcasting platforms is monetized in a similar way through like arm's length ad revenue there as well. But we also, obviously our like primary goal isn't how much profit can we suck out of our audience? Whereas if you're a public company, that's definitely going to be your thing. So even if you have enough subscription revenue where you don't, you know,

it's a good profitable business without even really worrying about the advertisers, they're still going to worry about the advertisers because they want to be able to juice it as much as possible. So anyway, I don't envy Elon's task at this point. I think he stepped into quite a complex and difficult situation,

both from a business perspective and also trying to square his purported stated values with, you know, the reality of what you have to do when you run any of these platforms. And, you know, bottom line, I don't think we should be counting on Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or any other plutocrat for our quote unquote free speech, because as our friend Igor told me, like, how free is your speech when you're dependent on a billionaire for it? Not very free ultimately. So joining us now in studio, we have our great friend Ken Klippenstein, who is an investigative reporter for The Intercept. Great to see you, my friend. Great to be with you guys. You got a big old scoop this morning. A lot to unpack here. And it's quite explosive,

actually. Let's go ahead and put the element we have up on the screen. The article that's out this morning is titled Truth Cops Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans to Police Disinformation. quote, disinformation governance board. What you have found is that underlying work is still going on. You also found some of the specifics about what they're targeting here on the origins of COVID-19, efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and also the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine. So just to start with, what are your sources here? What's the information that you were able to gather? And give us the big picture of what the government is up to here. Yeah. So this came from sources that I have within DHS, FBI, and also court records that are coming out from an investigation by, I think it was the Missouri Attorney General looking at these things. And under discovery, they're able to release some of the primary source documents that

they're getting. And then just the kind of big strategy assessments that they tend to put out that nobody reads because so much of it is so boring. But if you can stay awake for long enough, you can find some really interesting details in them. Interesting. OK, so talk to us about this portal. You said that Facebook has created a special portal for DHS and government partners to

report disinformation directly. Do we have an indication that's still in existence? Like the takeaway for me from the story was they fired, you know, the Nina Jankowicz lady, but they essentially just renamed it and are keeping the entire project alive and actually keeping it going even far past that. Yeah, that was essentially my interest in doing this story is I saw this huge end zone dance on the part of, you know, civil libertarian types that the Disinformation Governance Board, you know, very Orwellian title that people can get around and see how, you know, crazy this is, celebrating that it was shut down. And I very quickly, almost instantly was hearing from sources within DHS that that's not the case. Like that, that Disinformation Governance Board was an attempt to sort of centralize and formalize

at a leadership and headquarters level what was going on, but that was still going on at the component level of all of the different child agencies that are within DHS. So this story is an attempt to try to sketch out, okay, so what does that mean? What does it look like? Because there's so much speculation and sort of guessing as to what it is, and there's very little in the way of just what are the facts of what's happening? How are they doing this? And what is their authority?

So lay that out for us. How does this actually, like what are the interactions between DHS officials and these tech platforms? What sorts of content are they flagging as potentially problematic? Because they have these disclaimers in their emails, like, of course we're not telling you to censor.

We're just saying you might want to look into this. Give me like a specific example of how this might all unfold. Yeah. So they've been having bi-weekly meetings as recently as summer. That's as recently as I'm able to get proof. Doesn't mean that it's not still happening. I assume it still is. Between these DHS sub-agencies kind of taking point is CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, but also FBI and other agencies are meeting with these social media companies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. And what's interesting about it is just like you said, their rationale for it is we're not actually telling them what to do. We're just recommending it.

Just making suggestions. Right. And it's so disingenuous because it's like these companies are lobbying the federal government on different things. You think they're going to want to alienate the guys that they're trying very hard to ingratiate themselves to to get certain forms of treatment. And so that's the kind of like hand's length that they try pull themselves at is that we're not mandating it. We're just recommending it. But when you look at the documents that we found, there's no indication that the social media companies are saying, whoa, we're not doing this. We're putting a red line here. They've gone ahead with it. I mean, the crazy one to me is Afghanistan. Like, you know,

the fact that things that are outright just politically bad for the Biden administration are being included in terms of recommendations. So do we know – does anything happen as a result of this? Like what does the data suggest? Did Facebook ultimately take action? Like what – do they describe the type of action? What does the interplay look like on behalf of the tech companies as to the actual effect of these policies? Well, on the public side, sometimes you're able to see when they literally just take a post down as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was some bizarre thing where it was like they froze the post. They didn't take it down.

They're so clever about these things. They try to do things where they're not actually taking it down. For example, I have a source in Google who was describing to me. They didn't actually make it so you can't find it. They just made it so that the search results put it so far down that realistically you're not going to see it. So then they say, well, we're not actually censoring it. You can still go to it.

We're just, in effect, going to make it so no one can find it. That's honestly crazier. It's almost crazier than deleting. Same with Twitter. So I think there is a lot of awareness on their part that we don't want to go so far that it's going to be completely naked and try to give ourselves some deniability in terms of saying, you know, we're putting recommendations out there, we're throttling traffic to it, we're not taking it down.

So they really like to operate in the gray, I think. Well, because honestly, if Twitter had taken that approach with the Hunter Biden story, it probably wouldn't have blown up into the big national example of censorship that it ended up being because they went much further than, let's just suppress this in the algorithm. Let's make it so this isn't the first thing that's showing up. Like, you know, now people in their Twitter feed, unless they select to have it just by time, they're just getting the tweets that Twitter thinks that they will like or wants them to like and see. So ultimately, if they had gone about it in a savvier way, I mean, that's what's so nefarious about this. People wouldn't have even been able to really say exactly what was going on here. One of the

other things that you uncover is the Hunter Biden censorship incident, as notorious as it ultimately is here. The people who are involved in that are still involved in this project. Right. And so the FBI has something called the Foreign Influence Task Force, which the Department of Homeland Security does as well. And it's almost exactly the same name. I think it's the Countering Foreign Interference Task Force. And so what that gives you a sense of is the burgeoning nature of these authorities. It just keeps growing. And if you look at it, a lot of it starts in 2018 under the Trump administration. So a little more complicated than people think. That's not to say that Trump liked it. He actually fired his CISA director, I think, Brian Krebs. And so, you know, he was against it, but he didn't

have the kind of bureaucratic knowledge to say to be able to stop a lot of these things. And then it, you know, continues to proliferate under the Biden administration. I think that the origin of this all is, you know, the 2016 election disinformation, Russian election disinformation. Not that it starts then, but that's sort of when the concerns begin. And then by 2018, come midterms, I think DHS is trying to position itself as, hey, you know that problem you guys have, we can help with it. Let us handle this. So then in 2018, it's the midterm elections. And by 2020 with coronavirus, then they have a really strong case. And I've looked at polling on this. It does suggest that there's surprisingly large amounts of public support for, frankly, censorship of, you know, would they consider COVID disinformation?

I think that they can sense that there's an opening for them there to, you know, take advantage of that and say, hey, let us have a role in communicating with these social media platforms. I mean, it seems to me, and you tell me if this timeline is inaccurate, but you first start in the early days of social media, you've got like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and there's an effort to find people who are sympathizers, spreading their propaganda or beheading videos or whatever. That's the first step. Then you have the Russian efforts, whatever they amounted to, in the 2016 election. And then, you know, that's a further step of, okay, we got to see who's sharing this Russian content and what impact is that having?

Well, now this seems to have gone even a further step where there's no even artifice of this has to do with foreign actors. Like we're talking about American citizens talking to other American citizens without even any sort of tie to potential international terrorism, which seems to be where these programs really originally had their origins. Exactly. And that's where DHS had its origin. It's a counter-terror post-911 department. And if you look at some of the documents that I referenced in the story, I was given the quadrennial review for DHS that kind of sketches out the next four years,

what the next four years are going to look like and what their kind of big picture strategy is. And they're perfectly open in this draft document about that, okay, well, war and terror is sort of ramping down. We're going to change our focus essentially to domestic American affairs. And what's interesting about that shift from foreign to domestic is that I tried very hard to find anything in the way of documentary or legal basis saying, okay, now we're authorized to do this. It doesn't exist as far as I can tell. It was just a gradual shift that is happening at the sub-White House level, at the administrative level in both the Trump and Biden administrations. And I wonder how much people even know that it's happening. It's like they've taken advantage of this.

And then, as I said before, Trump tried to stop it. They disbanded the disinformation board. But so much of this happens at the level that people like me who have sources and are talking to people can find out that it's happening. But there's no way for the public to know that these things are still going on. Not at all. There is no way. Yeah, and one of the ones that broke out to me at the very end of the story is about a Twitter account that has like 56 followers and that they, is specifically flagged by

a government official, sent to Twitter, and Twitter is like, we will escalate this. Thank you. A guy who's literally 56 followers. Like how is that, in what way? Who says in his bio like, this is a parody account. And by the, something about like weed stores or something like this. Yeah, it says, hoes be mad. This is a parody account.

Yeah. And why are they spending any time under a banner image of Blucifer, a demonic horse featured at the entrance of Denver Airport? You have to have something better to do than this. You're not the only ones that think that this is outrageous. a demonic horse featured at the entrance of Denver Airport. You have to have something better to do than this. You're not the only ones that think that this is outrageous. FBI agents I interviewed during when all that was happening, who themselves were tasked with things like tracking foreign spies, they were outraged that they were put into these temporary units

to monitor these social media accounts. They were telling me, yeah, it's clear my boss doesn't have any idea like what irony is on the internet like what what sarcasm is because you know my job now is just tracking commie kid 69 posts something and we're supposed to respond like it's some national security crisis so they were very irritated by it as well and there were my understanding is there were a lot of FBI agents that were you know taken from their normal responsibilities and assigned to this kind of stuff. Well, I said to you, it's like dystopian police state meets Keystone Cops.

Exactly. But the fact that it in some ways is like absurd doesn't take away from the fact that it's really, really disturbing. disturbing because effectively what you have is a worst of all worlds where, you know, we covered extensively on the show, Elon Musk and Twitter and billionaires control these platforms that are so essential to our speech. And then, so not only do you not have any democratic accountability there, but then you also have the government directly interfacing with them and shaping what type of speech is allowed and what type of speech is not allowed, again, with zero transparency, zero ability to have democratic pushback. And so that's why, you know, reporting like yours that at least gives us a little bit of a window into what's happening here is ultimately so essential, Ken.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Just give, because I realized there was no attempt to sort of give a comprehensive picture of like what's out there, what are we able to find, what the heck's going on. And in the absence of that, people are going to just, you know, guess. And that's, I mean, if you're really worried about disinformation, I tend to think darkness is where that stuff thrives, you know, when people aren't candid about what the heck is going on. I mean, my view has always been like,

if you are going to accept the slings and arrows of a democracy, you have to accept that sometimes there's going to be things that are crazy conspiracy theories. There's going to be things that are crazy conspiracy theories. There's going to be things that are inaccurate and you have to have enough faith in the citizenry that they can handle that, that they can process that,

that they can move forward, that they can find accurate information. But, you know, clearly, like we've been under this attempts at censorship since basically 2016. And I don't know if you guys know this, but there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are out there still thriving. So I'm not sure that this has really worked out for us.

Very unfortunate. Ken, thank you so much. Congratulations. Great reporting. All right, let's go and move on to the next part. This is really interesting and potentially earth shattering in terms of its impact on American society. Let's put this up there on the screen. So the Supreme Court, the conservative majority there, signaling major skepticism of race-conscious college admissions. So what happened yesterday,

which is that at issue are these two policies, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, that permit their admissions offices to weigh the race of applicants as one of many factors that will help decide who is being accepted. Depending on the scope of the court's ruling, and this is important, they could rule in many different ways. The outcome could have impact on workplace and other longstanding, quote, anti-discrimination law. And I want to be very clear, which is that how exactly they rule and the scope through which could restrict it completely to admissions. This is why we're even spending any time covering it.

Or it could go all the way out into the way that diversity practices work even at a quote unquote private company. Anyway, so there were over five hours of arguments. I was even considering doing a monologue, but the arguments weren't wrapping up. And I was like, I can't do it. I was like, I can't do a whole monologue on this until it's actually done. Luckily, it ended last night. What we effectively noted is that the conservatives on the bench were talking about the 2003 precedent that does permit the you can keep in mind race. You cannot use points based admissions. That's just not on the table. But to say that you can't keep it in mind at all is not going to happen. That said, you do not, you need to come up with a system so that you don't

rely on this indefinitely. And what I found really interesting in the court and a lot of the arguments that I was looking at is that none of the universities, neither Harvard nor the University of North Carolina, could actually spell out a time frame as to when it was going to be appropriate or not. That's like being like on this state in 2032, we will have total racial justice. We will have solved racism. So, I mean, it's kind of fair to be like, I don't know. We're not there yet. But hopefully at some point in the future we get to that. I don't even disagree. But I was looking at it and I was like, you know, that just part to me makes the whole idea of the 03 case being like, yeah, but it eventually has to end.

Just even more patently ridiculous because you could probably always make an argument. So we're like, okay, so then we should consider it on what is the actual impact. This goes to the Harvard University portion of which we've covered now for several years, which is that Harvard by, you know, from the lawsuit and the court rulings and all that have come out, it has been shown repeatedly that it is highly discriminatory against Asian American students by giving them lower scores for, quote, personal attributes. I mean, some of the stuff that came out. Yeah. It's outrageous. I don't think there's any denying that whatever you think of affirmative action, that the current system has discriminated against Asian Americans in a very perverse way.

Right. And because they'll be like, well, they., so I mean, they literally can show that you can have the same test scores. You can have the same basically attributes on every single thing. And then on the personal section, they're getting rated dramatically lower. It's all these very like racist tropes of like, doesn't show leadership qualities. Not social. Yeah.

It's like, oh, this is bad. This is really bad. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh, this is bad. This is really bad. Anyway, so the point is, is that in that 2003 case, they set that 25-year timeline, but they didn't necessarily cap themselves on when race-conscious admissions were coming up. This, of course, would take place 2022 and is based really on both anti-discrimination practices and the way that affirmative action is being used against Asian Americans, but also just in general on the idea of race consciousness. And the reason I thought it was important is not only in terms of the scope of American society, but really politically. This is one of the great disconnects, and Crystal, you did a fantastic monologue on this a while back over at Rising, between really elites and the rest of the public. Affirmative

action is perhaps one of the most single unpopular positions that exists in the United States, was defeated in the state of California on a ballot level in 2020. And yet, you have the Biden administration that went to bat for it, actually, at the court, the U.S. Solicitor General saying that it was a national security imperative to keep it. Let's take a listen. That truth is vitally important to our nation's military. Our armed forces know from hard experience that when we do not have a diverse officer corps that is broadly reflective of a diverse fighting force, our strength and cohesion and military readiness suffer. So it is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity

within the officer corps. And at present, it's not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions, including at the nation's service academies. The military experience confirms what this court recognized in Grutter, that in a society where race unfortunately still matters in countless ways, achieving diversity can sometimes require conscious acts by our leading educational institutions. So that was the U.S. Solicitor General, effectively like the chief litigator on behalf of the United States, making it, of course, in the purview of what they have, which is the U.S. Service Academies, because as we said, if it does impact higher education, even at a private university like Harvard, it would, of course, also apply to the service academies. Let's consider it, though, in the public context. Put this up there on the screen. Most Americans actually say that

colleges and universities should not consider applicants' race in order to further student student body diversity in education. So U.S. adult citizens, 23% yes, 23% not sure. A majority, 54% say no. Even amongst Democrats, Crystal, only 40% say yes. 26% say not sure. 34% say no. Independents, 17% yes, 28% not sure, 55% no. Republicans, overwhelming majority, say no. I also think it's important to note, if you ask black Americans, only 36% say yes, 33% say not sure, and 33% say no. The same fits with quote unquote Hispanic, whatever that means. And then amongst white Americans, 16% say yes and 64% say no. I would love to see the class breakdown. Of course, that's what I'm about to get to. I would love to see the class breakdown. I mean, I have a lot to say about this because I think the reason why it's so unpopular is because it really rubs up against the notion

that Americans want to strive for a colorblind society. And so there is this real rub there. I mean, the issue that I always have talking about affirmative action and why it's such sort of tricky ground for me personally is I sort of feel like I disagree with everyone on it. There's a lot of presumptions behind the policy in the debate on affirmative action that I just don't accept and don't agree with. The whole debate takes as fact the idea that we have a meritocracy, that the meritocracy is generally functioning, that the thing we should be striving for is to perfect that meritocracy rather than, you know, my goal as a leftist, which is to make sure that everyone is able to succeed. I also think, like I said, Asian Americans are getting screwed by this policy. There's just no denying that. And I think that's

something that people who are big proponents of this policy really have to grapple with and really have struggled to grapple with. That's number one. Number two, I don't agree with the arguments that are being put forth by the conservatives on the court, which is basically like, mission accomplished, colorblind society done, don't need this policy anymore. And we shouldn't pretend that the arguments that were being offered on the court, which is why I don't even spend a lot of time, like I read through the gist of what they were, but ultimately, this is an ideological debate. It has very little to do with what their actual interpretation of the Constitution is. The six conservatives on the court, they don't like affirmative action. They're going to find a way to strike it down,

regardless of the arguments that are being made to them and whether they're persuaded on the constitutionality of it or whatever, and the liberals are on the other side. This is an ideological debate. The Supreme Court is partisan. We should keep all of that in mind as well. So those are some of my thoughts. But the other thing that I always come back to is like, what is your goal? What is your goal with this policy? If the only option on the table for me is let's diversify the elite class. Which is what this is. This policy is effective. Yeah, that's true. And you know what? I would rather, if that is my only option,

is have a non-diverse elite class, and I'm just talking about racial diversity here, or have a diverse, racially diverse elite class, then I will take the diverse elite class, okay, if that's my only option on the table. However, if your goal is actually to reduce the racial wealth gap, we know from history, which is a goal that I personally care a lot more about than I care about the technical racial

diversity of the elite class, we know from history that this policy does not do that. That in fact, the policies that have been most effective throughout our history to help to close the racial wealth gap, which we still have a very long way to go on, are universal policies that lift the floor for everyone. Things like lifting the minimum wage, things like making sure that Social Security and living wage benefits apply across all job categories and we don't carve out the job categories that are disproportionately filled by black and brown people. So if that's your goal, and when you layer on top of that, how much we know this policy is really unpopular, there's also a pragmatism here of like, we shouldn't assume that we can use our political capital to do absolutely everything. We should invest our political capital in the policies that are going to have the largest effect at achieving ultimately our goals. And I think we have one other piece on from David Shore on the last element here.

Fascinating, actually. That if you track, these are like all of the different sort of like democratic aligned policies. Affirmative action is one of the least popular. So again, it has been beneficial primarily for middle and upper middle class minorities to get into college and to ascend into the elite class. I don't think that's a bad thing. I do think diversity is an important value. But it goes back to the question of what are you really trying to accomplish and what are the policies that will most help you effectuate that goal that have broad

public support. The last thing I will say on this, because I cannot leave this out, is that it is kind of a screwed up world where this gets struck down, but you still have legacy admissions, which are affirmative action for rich white people. And it's like disgraceful that that is something that goes on and is so important, especially at our elite universities. It's actually interesting that this could have an impact on legacy admissions as well. I also want to concur with almost everything that you said. And I think one of the most impactful pieces that ever been had on me was written by the

socialist Matt Brunig about the racial wealth gap. And I think people should know this. The vast majority of the racial wealth gap in the United States is about the top two deciles of blacks and whites. As in, you know, when everyone's like black wealth and white wealth, that's between the top 20 percent in both groups. As in the top 20 percent white people are much richer earners, there is a gap, but it's not even close to what the gap is of what we're looking at, which gets directly to your point, which is that, do you want a society where the NASDAQ remains the same, but there is a black person that's on the board of the directors? Or do you want a society where NASDAQ companies chase policies

which are better for their workers and for the median American. And in general, my problem and why my politics are the way they are was coming to the Northeast and seeing the way that elite liberals talk about so many of these issues and realize like this is all just a game for all of you. As in like you want to protect whatever this little slice is and diversify this very small slice of the economy, the elite, the electorate, and not talk about anything that impacts any of the people I grew up with or even grew up around. It's like, they're used as pawns. And I think that generally is why I get so annoyed by it and why I like pointing to the political popularity, as you said. If you can't get affirmative action passed on the

ballot in California, how are you going to defend it as the national law of the land for, or at the very least, as allowing it in some of our, not just major institutions in government, military, all across the workplace? The polling is not in and of itself determinative. I support other policies that don't poll well because I think they're the right policy and you should be willing to argue for that. But when you couple that with the fact that this really doesn't, to me, help to deal with what should be the core goal, which is closing the racial wealth gap, and you're really antagonizing a majority of the public with this policy, then it gets to the question of, okay, is this really ultimately worth it? And I can imagine

situations where, you know, I'm generally a big supporter of universal policies, as you guys know, Medicare for all, living wage, unions for all. Like, I think those are the best ways. And again, the track record bears it out to not only support the entire working class, but specifically, those policies are most beneficial for black and brown people who are disproportionately impoverished and in low wage jobs and, you know, struggling at that end of the economy. So in general, I think those are the best policies. Can I imagine a policy that would be sort of like specific to, you know, to racial discrimination? A hundred percent. Absolutely. I don't think we should put that off the table whatsoever. But I do want to emphasize again, the part of this that, you know, I really do chafe at from conservatives is their view is basically like

meritocracy already good to go, no racial discrimination, everybody can compete, everybody can make it. So we don't need to do anything about this. And I don't agree with that either. I just think that we can aspire to more than diversifying our elite class. And ultimately, that's, you know, the thrust of my politics and where I like to spend my time. I think we totally agree on that one. Let's break down state by state where we are. And big picture, basically, every one of these averages, even the ones where Democrats still hold on to a slim or even significant lead, every one of them has been moving in favor of Republicans. And now you have, you know, 538. I didn't check it this morning, but for the first time, they are giving Republicans a narrow

edge in terms of winning the Senate. So you can just see the way the momentum is going right now, even while saying, listen, polls could be wrong in a variety of directions, even though it's mostly been wrong in recent history in favor of the Democrats rather than in favor of the Republicans. But who the hell knows what's going to happen? But I can just tell you the trend right now has been very much towards Republicans in every single one of these races. So let's look at Georgia first. We pulled the RealClearPolitics average for all of these. You can see the trend line at the bottom, which has Warnock falling off somewhat, Walker rising significantly. Walker is now favored in, again, the real clear politics average by 1.6 percentage points. I went ahead and took a look at the last two polls in this race,

and it's a split decision in terms of the last two polls. The Fox 5 Insider Advantage poll had Walker plus three, the Republican. The New York Times-Siena poll had Warnock plus three. We went through last time how New York Times-Siena has been, in recent years, more favorable towards Democrats. They've had a miss. So I would take anything that they have. And I think in Georgia, the miss was about three points. So you would have this as basically a total toss-up. Actually, I believe the miss was four, which, if anything, for Walker, plus one, which sounds right on the money with the rest.

Which is exactly what the RealClearPolitics average is. The average is 1.5. That's where, again, if I had to put my money, that's probably where it would go. I think we're really just learning about structural advantages whenever you are the party in power in a national political environment. The days of local politics effectively died in 2010 with the Tea Party wave and the referendum on Barack Obama. And from that year forward, every single election, downstream, upstream, primary, everything has been on the major national questions. There are some marginal cases where we can argue that that's not the case. But by and large, that seems to be the overwhelming trend of politics. And candidate quality increasingly, as we have seen, the data is bearing out that even if it's a really, really bad candidate, at best, you are talking about maybe a point or two, which is sad whenever you do think about it. But on the one hand, some localism does matter. Let's throw the next one up there, which is Arizona. This is where I think you could make a case where candidate quality has made

it so that it is a much tighter race crystal than arguably and structurally that it should be. The RCP average has Mark Kelly with a 2.3% advantage. Now, that's even with the Fox poll that shows Mark Kelly up by one. As we have seen, he actually is outrunning Joe Biden in his approval rating in the state. He's far above 50%. He consistently hammers Biden on the border. He's talking about inflation. It's a very strange situation because on the one hand, he does vote with the National Democratic Party, right? He's never been the Kissin' Cinema, stick in the mud on any of that.

And yet, locally has been able to make the case. He's like, no, I am an independent minded figure. I don't necessarily go along with the Biden consent. He's even running ads, you know, even saying, talking about the president. I found it fascinating. Maggie Hassan is actually running her latest ad is I'm standing up to president Biden, which anytime you have to do that, by the way, is not good for you. And by the way, it rarely works. I was going to say, by the way, never. I'll never forget. You know, I've told the story. Chet Edwards, my congressman, who lost by the largest margin in 2010, and he represented a Democrat for our plus 25 district. He ran. I remember one of his last ads. He was like, I'm standing up to Nancy Pelosi. And that's when I was like, yeah, he's going to lose.

This is the last gasp effort here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing that was really persuasive to me in the New York Times polling about this race is even putting the candidates aside, which I think Mark Kelly is a strong candidate for Democrats. I think Blake Masters has been a very weak candidate for Republicans just because of some of the extreme views he's taken both on abortion but also on economic issues. But they also found in Arizona that social cultural issues were weighing more heavily on the electorate than in other states. And they've had some sort of like fierce local state level battles around abortion rights and whether it's going to be completely banned in the state and those sorts of things. So it makes sense to me that in that way, there is a little bit of localism there where abortion is weighing more heavily on voters' minds. So that would certainly give

Mark Kelly a bit more of an edge. I think, you know, this is the race where consistently Democrats have held the largest margin. It too is closing, you know, the gap is closing there as well. So I certainly don't think that it's out of the realm of possibility that Masters would win. But I think as you look at these races, the Arizona one has to be the one where Democrats feel the most comfortable, have the best shot at being able to hold on ultimately. I think you're right. And let's throw, and why it's fascinating too is demographically, Arizona should be much more in play for the Republicans or for the Democrats than,

sorry, Nevada, which we're about to talk to. Let's put that up there on the screen, which is that Nevada demographically, historically, electorally, all of that should be far more favorable to the Democrats here, given that you have an incumbent Democratic senator, you have the state having gone for Biden, or for Democrats in the last two presidential elections. It has been tight. And yet, we have had Adam Laxalt there up far more

over Catherine Cortez Masto than Mark Kelly has, or Blake Masters has, over Mark Kelly. And I actually have been trying to figure out exactly why. You know, Cortez Masto is a very run-of-the-mill, just like median Democratic senator. That possibly could be why. She just doesn't have as big of a statewide type profile, which means that the national wins would move more in the Republican direction. But it is a really difficult one to square, right? Arizona, you know, Biden barely won the state in 2020. And before that, obviously, it was a solidly Republican state for decades. So to just look at Nevada trending so much right now in the GOP direction really does ask us a lot of questions about what that means. I'm fascinated by politics in Nevada because this is one of the few states where union support really, really makes a difference.

Because, you know, the Culinary Workers Union is so powerful there. You have such a significant sizable chunk of the workforce that is actually organized. And that's why in previous years, even as other places have swung to the right, especially places with large working class bases, Nevada has actually held pretty strong for Democrats. They've been able to hold on to that state, even as large swaths of the working class start to move towards the Republican Party. That's all because of the union base of support there, which, you know, we know that some union members, certainly a significant chunk at this point, vote for Republicans. But being in a union is still one of the most significant indicators of voting Democratic. So it still really matters a lot that you have a strong union base of support. So that's one point in favor of the most significant indicators of voting Democratic. So it still really matters a

lot that you have a strong union base of support. So that's one point in favor of the Democrats. On the other hand, no state was hit harder during the pandemic than Nevada. You do have a population that is heavily working class, working in the service sector, food prices, gas prices, all of these things weighing very, very heavily on this electorate. So whereas in Arizona, you have more voters saying they're focused on the social cultural issues, in Nevada, it's the mirror image situation where you have more, even more voters saying, no, no, this is all about the economy. And that's just very difficult waters for Democrats at this point. Now, Nevada is one of the states where the polls have been the closest to accurate. So you've got the Republican with

about a two point lead right now. I mean, this thing has been tight the whole way through. It's basically been a jump ball in terms of the polling the whole way through, whereas some of these other states you had, you know, at times Democrats with like a double digit lead. This one has always been extremely close. I pulled the last two polls here. The Hill, Emerson had the Republican Laxalt up five. USA Today, Suffolk had Catherine Cortez Masto up by one. But again, the overall polling average has the Republican by almost two points. So yeah, I definitely think you would rather be the Republicans just because again, economic concerns, Democratic failures to message

on economic concerns, probably going to override the benefits that they have there in terms of unionization. If you didn't have that strong union presence there, this thing would be done and over and not even a question mark. That's a great point. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a crazy landscape. And with every single one of these states, some flavor of localism is coming out. But the national trends are just really bearing so strongly behind the Republicans that in almost every case, except maybe Arizona, you just have to look at it and be like, well, that seems to be where things are blowing. By the way, we didn't include New Hampshire. But as I alluded to earlier, actually this morning, a new Trafalgar poll actually came out showing Bolduc up for the very first time by just one percentage point over Maggie Hassan there in New Hampshire.

That would be a major upset because it would be a gain for the Republicans over that seat. And it's not just Trafalgar. You also had a Saina Anselm poll was the other most recent poll that also had Baldock with a one point lead. The overall average is now just point five in favor of Maggie Hassan. So, yeah, this is this one has become a real toss up. You know, one thing on Georgia that I just want to make sure we note, which is that if neither of these candidates get to 50 percent, which is entirely possible, then that goes to a runoff. And, you know, that's a whole other situation. But in terms of who has the edge right now to win the most votes on Election Day, looking like Walker.

The last one is, you know, one we focus and the media is focused a lot of attention on, which is the Pennsylvania race between Fetterman and Oz. Let's go ahead and put those numbers up on the screen here. And you can see Fetterman still clinging to a small lead here in terms of the average. He's up by 1.2 in the RealClearPolitics average. And I pulled the last two polls. Monmouth has Fetterman plus four and Muhlenberg, Mullenberg College? Yes. Mullenberg?

I don't know. Whatever. Has it even? Has it as a jump ball? I mean, this one is, again, total jump ball. And Pennsylvania is one of those states where pollsters have been missing and they've been missing big. Yes. Because this is a state that has a significant white working class population, especially the western part of the state. They've been, you know, sort of consistently undercounting Republican support. And so the fact that Fetterman in the average,

only with 1.2 of a lead, that looks pretty dicey. And two polls came out this morning, actually, with Oz at plus one. So the Hill-Emerson, yeah, putting him up at Oz, taking first time lead in that poll. And Susquehanna, I believe I said that correctly. Susquehanna?

Whatever. All right. Sorry, Pennsylvania. It has them up by one as well. So very interesting. I mean, you're effectively total jump there, which again, you know, given the way that the polling misses have been in the past, just the wins at the backs of the Republican. Yes, indeed. Once upon a time, this would have been front page news because we are on the brink of a major war in East Asia, of which nobody apparently appears to be taking very seriously because it would just be inconvenient for everybody's picture of the global narrative. So let's go ahead and put up the next one on the screen from part two, please, the Reuters tear sheet about North Korea. This is very important. North Korea has fired 23 missiles with one landing off the South Korean coast for the first time ever. This comes from a slew of different missile

launches by the North Koreans, both towards the Japanese, towards South Korean waters in a response to South Korean military drills with the United States, and spawning major panic in Japan, Crystal. They did overflies of Japan for the second time since 2017. Can you imagine watching television, evening television, and the emergency system? You know whenever there's like a flood warning on your phone? Imagine it says, missile incoming. Take shelter. Take shelter now. That is what our Japanese allies are dealing with on a daily basis now. And this is a real bad situation because right now the South Koreans, let's go and put this

up there, have fired three air-to-ground missiles from warplanes into the sea north of the disputed border on top of U.S. military exercises, which are happening. So why does this matter in the context of what we were just talking about in Ukraine at all? Well, Donald Trump, I believe, made one of the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs of all time in modern U.S. history. Whenever he said, screw it, I'm meeting with Kim Jong-un with zero preconditions because the other option was war. That doesn't sound very good. From everything I have read, the North Koreans have a major stockpile of horrific chemical weapons, VX, sarin gas, on top of massive ammunition stockpile.

They could level the city of Seoul in like 45 minutes. It would be horrific. Tens of millions of people would die on top of tens of thousands of American soldiers. Something like two-thirds of the South Korean population lives in Seoul. Within 45 minutes of the DMZ, we also have tens of thousands of troops, American soldiers, who are on, I think it's Osan Air Force Base, and others, who basically their job is to die in the middle of one of these conflicts. That's how grave the military plans for all of this look like.

Well, we had two options in 2017. Kim Jong-un is not giving up his nuclear program. He's not going to stop firing missiles because he wants entry into the global economy because his country is suffering, mostly because of him, but he wants access to global markets and end of sanctions. So he's willing to go all in and risk war for that. We had to decide, well, do we want the Korean Peninsula to be wiped off the face of the earth? Or should we just try and put an end to this thing, this madness? Trump went to go meet with him. At the total, like, he was hailed as, like, legitimizing this dictator. Yeah.

He was said to be abandoning the longstanding U.S. position that we must have denuclearization as a pretext for talks. And he's like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to go and meet with the guy. And guess what? They didn't do anything for five years. And it was great. It was actually very nice to not have random ballistic missiles flying into the sea in East Asia, which could even, you know, one issue is that they fire these missiles into the air and they don't give any heads up to like commercial airline pilots. There's a real fear that they can just shoot a plane out of the sky accidentally. Very real consequences. The point is, is that Trump bucked the Washington establishment by saying, no, I'm just going to meet with them. And also,

even though he ended up also not dropping denuclearization from the demand of North Korea, we got them talking. They were exchanging letters. Mike Pompeo was over there all the time. And we were presenting the North Koreans. We were like, hey, look, you can have a great life if you guys give up your nukes now. Ultimately, I personally think that's just not on the table at all. They would personally, like, if I were them, I would never give it up. As they always say in their negotiations, look what happened to Gaddafi.

Yeah, they're like, you guys, you know, he died with a ramrod up his ass. He's like, that's not going to happen to me. So that's something that they are wholly wedded to. The point is, is that this shows you, because the Biden administration immediately reverted back to the Obama position, which is no, we're not going to talk to them at all. And it's up to them whether they want to start a war or not. This demonstrates the power and lasting legacy of diplomacy. We had five years of relative peace in East Asia, even though nothing happened. Talking was all that happened. It also shows you, I mean, you know, Americans have a finite ability to consume news. There's a finite ability of the news media to, you know, focus in on any particular

story. And, you know, they're all consumed with the Ukraine war. It's a very important story. We're very consumed with it as well, possibility of nuclear war. But, you know, don't forget that we have other incredibly dangerous, volatile situations unfolding with North Korea, Taiwan, other places. And we don't want to let that fall off the table. And Obama handed off to Trump, that was the thing that he said he thought would be the biggest threat, the largest danger, the most sort of like consuming issue on the international stage. So, you know, that has not gone away. And even after those first 23 missiles, and then South Korea does their, you know, sort of retaliation, North Korea continued then afterwards and launched four more, including an ICBM, which they say that test failed.

But, you know, further escalating even after the initial launch of those 23 missiles. So it is a very, very dangerous situation. And look, maybe I'll say something controversial, which will piss off a lot of the Euros that watch our show. Japan and South Korea are 15,000 times more valuable to the US economy, to the US way of life, and as allies than any place in Eastern Europe. And I know it's difficult to talk that way, but just look at a chart of global GDP and look at trading relationships, longtime alliances, military spending, commitment actually to the U.S. military alliance, the U.S. way of life, the U.S. global order vis-a-vis China. Asia is, look, 50-something percent of world GDP. And I think there's a real

chauvinism the way that we talk about allies and the way that we look at the world, considering how important this part of the world is, maybe just because we don't have ancestry. Maybe I'm Indian, so I just don't have the European ancestry, so I'm willing to look at it like on a balance sheet. Any war in East Asia would be 10 to 15 to 25 times more impactful on U.S. interests than anything that is going on right now in Ukraine. And part of the issue, as I'm always worried about, is that we are blowing our wad on terms of our military industrial complex, in terms of our supplies, in terms of our just energy, our attention. Public will. While there is, yeah, public will. While there is a real possibility of a war which could end

the American way of life as we know it. Already, China's zero COVID lockdowns are making it so that the new iPhone 14 is not going to get delivered on time. This is outrageous. I really believe that people should understand. If there's a war over Taiwan or in East Asia, this will be the last iPhone that you ever have. And you'll likely have to turn it into the government because they need the chips that are inside of it. So look, it's a serious situation. We can learn. We had a five-year reprieve from over 70 years of war or tensions on the Korean peninsula. And it came from just talking between two leaders and having high-level conversations. And it led to extraordinary results. The South Korean president goes to North Korea, does the handshake. It's never happened before.

It's like we were on the path to a good outcome. And instead, the Biden administration reverted back to the brain-dead policy of we're going to insist that a country with the capability to nuke us should give up their nukes. Why would they do that? These past several years have really exposed how so much of what is taken for granted is like foreign policy, conventional wisdom, and the blob was not just like, it was just completely wrong. It was like total opposite of what you should be doing. I mean, you know, our sanction policy with regard to Russia, how is that? Has that curbed their appetite for war? Yeah, you're talking about nukes. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, there's been a lot of potential learning, but unfortunately the foreign policy establishment doesn't seem to want to learn those lessons.

No, they don't want to learn it at all. 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.

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