Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 5/22: Uvalde Shooting, Uvalde Timeline, Primary Results, Housing Market, & More!

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Uvalde shooting news, timeline leading up to the Uvalde slaughter, Georgia GOP primaries, Dem battle in Texas, housing market, Elon accusation & Hillary's Russiagate lies!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. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. It is Wednesday. Special schedule, obviously. Can't really give you a cheery opening because we've just got such a tragic event happening in Uvalde, Texas. So obviously, we went ahead and scrapped the guest segment just to make sure that we had as much time to go over everything as possible. But that's what we have today, Crystal.

Yeah, that's what we're going to start with. Of course, we're also going to cover the primary results. So some big news there, some big news on housing, on Trump. But we do want to start with the horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Elementary school, what we know is that 19 children at least were murdered in cold blood, along with two of their teachers. Others are wounded as well. We heard from Governor Abbott yesterday about what we know thus far. Let's go ahead and take a listen. The shooter was Salvador Romas, an 18-year-old male who resided in Uvalde. It's believed that he abandoned his vehicle and entered into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun, and he may have also had a rifle, but that is not yet confirmed according to my most recent report. He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher.

Mr. Romas, the shooter, he himself is deceased and is believed that responding officers killed him. So here's what we know thus far. And I do want to warn everybody, first of all, obviously, this is an extraordinarily horrific event. So those sensitivities always are to be considered. But also, as I've covered a lot of these mass shooting events, the details as we learn more can always shift. So just take the reports that are coming out right now immediately in the wake of those events. With a grain of salt already, we have seen some key details, including the number killed and including the type of guns used, including the response from law enforcement on the scene, have been moving and shifting. So I just want to put

all of that out there. Go ahead and put this first tweet up on the screen. So what we know about the shooter is that he apparently on his 18th birthday or the day after went out and bought an assault rifle. The very first person that he shot was his grandmother. Now, this tweet says that his grandmother was killed. The reporting I saw is that she is in the hospital. She was wounded, but she is still alive, at least at this point. So that is the reporting we know. Then, and let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen from the Daily Mail. Then he drives near to this elementary school, crashes his truck. We saw pictures of the truck sort of crashed into a ditch. Reporting says that law enforcement was engaging him at that point,

you know, shooting probably between both this murderer and law enforcement. He goes into the school and goes room to room and starts shooting children before ultimately being taken out. In advance of the killing, some of his social media presence has come out. His Instagram profile in particular featured pictures of him with assault rifles, also other pictures of guns that he apparently had just purchased on his 18th birthday. One of those, and this is bizarre, he had tagged a sort of random woman on Instagram who apparently he had some tangential connection to. And he wrote her a message that said, I got a little secret I want to tell you. Be grateful I tagged you. To which she replied, no, it's just

scary. Adding, I barely know you and you tagged me in a picture with some guns. So that is what we know at this point. And of course, this is the deadliest mass school shooting since Sandy Hook. And, you know, the nation once again is shocked in an absolute grief coming so shortly to on the heels of that horrific shooting we just covered in Buffalo from a racist killer there, Sagar. Yeah. I mean, some of the details here, like you said, it's very unclear. So we already showed you that video of Governor Abbott saying that a handgun was used. That no longer appears to be the case. It appears to be two legally purchased firearms from a licensed dealer on his 18th birthday. Now, again, too, in terms of what happened in the initial moments, I think there needs to be a lot of scrutiny on this. Indeed. Current Texas Department of Public Safety says

that, and this was on CNN last night, said that the shooter shot his way past the school district police officer and then two additional cops from local PD who appeared to be on the scene. So what they're saying is that there were three officers there who had engaged him before he even got into the school. Now, obviously he had his body armor on, but we don't know what the status of those three officers are. I have a lot of questions about what exactly went on down there. And then even, frankly, Crystal, the circumstances

of the killing of Mr. Ramos are also unclear. So the initial reports I saw was that a border patrol tactical agent who appeared to be in the city, who was in the area, off duty, rushed in there with no backup and is the guy who killed him while there were also other cops on the scene. So there needs to be quite a bit of scrutiny here on the law enforcement response and what exactly happened here.

Like you said, I mean, we were talking earlier, like you have three cops. I don't know what's going on in terms of the shootout. We cannot second guess what happened. I'm going to reserve judgment, but you do have to look at this and just go, how the hell did this guy get into a school? Well, I think about what happened at Parkland and the Broward County Sheriff's Office and then that guy who clearly, you know, was – I'm not disparaging these people's character.

I have no idea currently yet what happened, but that is where a bulk of my attention is also on the social media side. I mean, apparently the grandma is alive. We should have a lot of questions for this woman if she is the one who he was living with and clearly was a disturbed guy, I mean, in terms of what he was posting on social media, a lot of the reports out there saying that he was bullied for wearing eyeliner and for having a lisp. I mean, you know, these are like kind of classic 18-year-old problems, I guess, in high school. But it's obvious that given his social media presence and others, these things don't happen in a vacuum. And there are probably people around him, of which I also have quite a bit of questions in terms of this investigation.

Honestly, a completely enraging show, the more that we learn about what unfolded down in Texas. So we will get to that. There's also, though, a lot else to talk about this morning, including what the Democratic response might be, some really unhinged takes as all of this was unfolding. Also, kind of flying a little bit under the radar that we wanted to bring to your attention, a massive signature fraud scandal in Michigan that may well kick some of their top, the Republicans' top gubernatorial candidates off of the ballot. This is nuts. It is crazy. Five out of ten of the Republicans' candidates for governors were caught with, like, thousands of forged signatures.

It looks like they all used the same consultant that all, you know, just basically, like, filled out the sheets themselves. So we'll talk to you about all of that. Also some new signs that Mike Pence may be looking at a run against Trump in 2024. But we have to start with some absolutely, just completely enraging developments that we are learning right now this morning about the law enforcement response, or lack thereof, as a killer was slaughtering babies inside of that elementary school. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, Crystal, our worst suspicions, which we alluded to on our show yesterday, that there was a bungled law enforcement response just seems to be almost unambiguously true at this point. So we're going to start first with an interview with Tony Gonzalez. So he is the

GOP congressman from Uvalde, Texas, and he's pressed here by CNN's Jake Tapper specifically about the timeline because the major question was, all right, this guy gets to the school, Mr. Ramos, Salvador Ramos. He is, quote, encountered by a police officer. Nobody knows what the hell that means. Then an hour later, he is killed. What the hell transpired in that interim hour? Right. Well, and immediately, both of us thought, wait a second. So you engaged with him outside, and not only is he able to get inside the school. Yes.

So law enforcement is on the scene from the beginning. Not only is he able to get inside that school, but he's able to be there long enough to murder over 20 people, including 19 children. And immediately, the law enforcement story didn't add up. But we said, we're going to hold judgment. Yeah, give them the benefit of the doubt. Things are going to change. We're going to get a clearer picture of what unfolded. But the clearer the picture becomes, the graver the indictment of law enforcement on the scene actually is. Yeah, and just to clear something up also before we get

even to this clip, which is that law enforcement initially told us that Ramos was wearing a body armor vest. That appears to not be true. He's wearing a tactical vest in which you could insert plates, but he did not have plates inserted. So that again raises the question, why did three uniformed police officers not able to stop an armed gunman who had a single AR-15 and no body armor on him at that time? He was able to barricade, their words, in a single classroom. You'll recall that all of the children and the teacher were killed inside of that single classroom. Let's hear now from Congressman Gonzalez. This is kind of the pro-police spin on what happened, and then we're going to get to some more of the facts that unravel. Let's get to it. So I have two questions

about this, and maybe you can clear this up. How was the gunman able to get into the school if the resource officer had engaged with him but no gunfire was exchanged. How did he get in? Yeah, so it started at his home. You know, he he tragically shoots his his grandmother and then he gets in a vehicle and he drives to the school. It's it's less than a mile away. So it's really right around the corner. And as he comes to the school, he wrecks, he kind of goes into this ditch and it's when he got into that ditch is when law enforcement was called and engaged. So that's part of the initial contact. It was no firing that I understand. He actually enters through the back of one of the buildings, through the teacher parking lot, if you will, he immediately enters one room.

And then essentially that's when the police, the law enforcement officer, because it's not just police officers. It's sheriffs. It's Border Patrol agents. I mean, everybody came together. People are not even even in this county. And they basically cornered him into one room. There are hundreds of children in that school. Part of the story, there's a there's a lieutenant named Javier Martinez engages this this assailant. He takes fire. He actually was wounded. You know, it's tragic to see so many children be murdered. But this could have been a whole lot worse. People like Javier Martinez and Chief Arredondo, they saved hundreds of lives.

So that's where you see him get pinned in. Well, he was pinned. But just to be clear, he's pinned down or pinned in in a classroom where he was slaughtering kids, right? I mean, is that what you mean by pinned down? I understand that he went in that classroom and he begins to fire. He begins to murder people, starting with that wonderful teacher that was defending her students. And he doesn't stop. The police officer actually engages him. Javier Martinez engages him. He kind of takes fire through the door and then it stops and he barricades himself in. That's where there's kind of a lull in the action. All of it, I understand,

lasted about an hour. But this is where there's kind of a 30-minute lull. They feel as if they got barricaded in. The rest of the students in the school are now leaving. You know, they're trying to get people out to safety. And this assailant is barricaded in. It's moments later or minutes later when they breach it. And then ultimately a Border Patrol agent is the one that neutralizes this assailant. All right. It still seems like a lot of time that the police were outside the classroom

and the shooter was inside the classroom where there were kids. That's the instincts at the very end there by Jake are exactly correct. And unfortunately, this morning, we are learning just exactly how dire the situation is. Let's put this up there on the screen from the Associated Press. Onlookers urged police to charge into the Texas school. Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas school while a gunman killed 19 children. Witnesses and investigators worked to track the massacre. Go in there. Go in there. People shouted at police officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, who saw the scene from outside of his house. Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter Jacqueline was actually killed in the attack,

said that he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting arriving while police are still gathered outside of the building. Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders. Let's rush in there because the cops aren't doing anything like he are supposed to. They were unprepared. So look, I mean, you here have the father of a slain child who was ready to storm into this school, watching police officers do basically nothing while the gunman was standing in there. And you know, Crystal, the main word that I'm looking at here is they're trying to frame it as some tactical containment. We know every single child was killed in one classroom. So let's also understand that we know as of this morning

from Tom Winters over at NBC News that the timeline does not add up again, that whenever they say police encountered him, he did not exchange gunfire at all in the initial whatever encountering that happened. Right. So that means that Mr. Ramos was able to crash this car, encounter a police officer, go into a classroom, barricade himself into the classroom, all without a single shot fired yet by this police officer. Eventually, only after he starts shooting and killing people inside of this classroom is he engaged.

And, you know, the other thing, it takes a long time, and this is macabre, but it takes a long time to kill 22 people. That's not, you know, it's not something that needs to be accomplished in a single second. So during this entire period in which there are supposedly, I mean, officers, three officers there who are on the scene,

some of them were wounded, but many others were outside. I think that we can generally infer what happened here is that you have some local PD cops who were either afraid or wanted to wait until a tactical team arrived. And they, frankly, got bailed out by Border Patrol tactical agents who happened to live and be in Uvalde, who ended up showing here. A lot of the kids in this school, because it is pretty close to the border, their parents are CBP. Yep. They're Customs and Border Patrol. That's right. So can you imagine you're there on this?

I can't imagine that. Going back to that congressman. You'd have to tell me, yeah. He describes the gunman being in this classroom as there being a lull in the action. A lull. Can you imagine if you're one of the babies or the teachers that's in that classroom with this monster? Is that a lull in the action to you? And what was making me insane yesterday is news article after news article, official spokesperson of the police department, after person, after person, after person, describing him as being contained. Yeah, that's right.

In this classroom. Like, this was an intentional strategy to allow him into this classroom where he massacres 19 kids. And the story keeps changing. We still, still, even with what we've learned, do not have a clear picture of what happened. We don't know how many people were on the scene initially. They said he had body armor. Oh, it turns out he didn't because that was the initial excuse for how he's able to get into the school. Well, he's, you know, he's armored up. So we, yeah, sure. Of course we fired at him, but he was able to get past us. No, that was a lie. Then we find out you didn't even fire your weapon at him. And he's able to just casually go into

the school and barricade himself. You didn't contain him in that classroom. He went into that classroom in order to kill those babies and the teachers in that room. And you stood by for an hour while this is unfolding. There's this video, I've already watched it and I will never be able to unsee what these parents are going through at that time. As Sagar just said, the AP was, I think, the first to report that parents who were outside were begging the police, go in, do something, go in the building, we'll go in ourselves. And what you're about to see in this video is that scene unfolding. And the police officers, if you look closely, some of them have their tasers drawn,

ready to shock the parents who are beside themselves saying, please, for the love of God, do something. And these officers are standing there in all their, you know, G.I. Joe military style gear doing nothing but keeping the parents from rushing in to save their own children. Let's take a look. Oh, my God! I cannot stop imagining what I would be going through if it was my baby in that scene. I can't imagine it either. I mean, you also can, if you watch it further, it goes on for two minutes and 20 seconds. I know it's difficult if you're just listening to this, but they actually do detain somebody and put them in handcuffs for basically trying to storm past all of them, which is just – I mean I can't imagine if this is your child.

And all of this is just becoming clear as day. some sort of ragtag panic operation. We have here an interview shortly afterwards with local television where a local reporter asks a police spokesperson and says, we have reports here of police officers going into the school and taking their own kids out while they're waiting for this tactical team to arrive. He actually confirms that here on camera. Let's take a listen to that. We've heard that some law enforcement officers actually went into school to get their kids out. Can you talk about that? Right. So we do know, Vanessa, right now that there was some police officers, families trying to get their children out of the school because it was an active shooter

situation right now. It's a terrible situation right now. And of course, just as we mentioned, the loss of life, it's just terrible. It's a terrible tragedy right now. And of course, just as we mentioned, the loss of life, it's just terrible. It's a terrible tragedy now that took place. But again, we got to keep acknowledging those brave men and women that actually were there on scene that met this suspect. And of course, we know that they were met with gunfire. Some of them were shot. But at the end of this, the suspect was shot, is now deceased.

The threat is now neutralized. I think we have a very unfortunately clear picture of the imbroglio that has happened here, which is that Ramos shoots his grandma in the face. She does not die. She calls 911 immediately, almost afterwards after she gets shot. He peels out of his driveway, gets into this car, crashes the car. He texts a person that he meets on the live streaming app. I'm going to go shoot up an elementary school right now. Arrives there, crashes the car. At that point, a school resource officer sees him. Ramos enters through the back building entrance, the teacher's entrance, down the hallway, goes into the classroom with the 10-year-olds, and barricades himself in there

and begins murdering both the teacher and the children. So at some point during this, the school resource officer or two of the other Uvalde PD officers who managed to get on the scene within the first couple of minutes engage Ramos. Then there's like a half-hour, 45-minute period. And that is the true scandal to me. I mean, you have here police officers in that interim lull who are waiting outside, you know, waiting and asking for somebody to actually go in there. You have people who went in there to go and save their own kids and didn't go in and engage. And look, I know, okay, we're, you know, sideways or sideline

quarterbacking, but I mean, what is the job of law enforcement then? What did you sign up for? I mean, I really don't know what to say. If not for this day, if your oath to protect and serve isn't about this day and not about making sure your own ass ends up back at home safe and sound at the end of the day or just your – you're there to protect the whole community, to protect these people's babies. And they're watching you do nothing. They're watching you go in and take care of your own and do nothing for them and their children. I mean, I can't, I just cannot imagine what these parents are thinking and feeling and going through, watching how many of these guys were on the scene. Oh, that's a question. One, there was one gunman with no body armor. And this was not some, you know, professionally trained kid.

It's a random loser with a fucking gun. And you useless cowards stood outside for an hour and let him massacre these children. I, the good guys with guns in this one completely failed. And thank God that that tactical border patrol team eventually showed up. I can only imagine what they were thinking once they landed on the scene and saw the total level of cowardice and incompetence that was unfolding. We need to hear some interviews here, I think, with those gentlemen. Because I think what happened, very likely, is that these guys who happen to be off-duty, who even live in the area or around the area, they probably showed up. These are real professionals, probably trained for these types of situations

came up and they were like what the hell is going on here and then even then you know there's a lot for example uh the border patrol tactical agent who arrived on the scene and was with the team that eventually killed Ramos when they arrived they found the door locked and had to go get a key to unlock the door now Now, first of all, I don't understand why, you know, with the weapons and the material they have at their disposal, why you even would take the time to go, you know, find the key. But here's the other thing. Does that mean that the police officers who were there initially did not think to try to open the door? That's what I'm saying. They did not even try to open the door. I mean, they didn't even try to go and get the key. So all indications here really just show us

a pretty tremendous bungling here by the police. And I put this out this morning. I mean, look, Governor Abbott, Attorney General Paxton, you owe it to the people of Texas, to all of us. We need a full-scale actual investigation of Texas DPS, Uvalde PD, Border Patrol, the initial response. This is Parkland 2.0. I mean, that's exactly what happened with Steve Israel and his crew, the Broward County officer there in Parkland. He was securing the perimeter while there were kids slaughtered there. You know, Nicholas Cruz, like I said, I mean, it takes a while to kill this many kids. And I know it's macabre, but that's why Nicholas Cruz was able to go and kill so many people

was because he was, I think he was in there for 40 some odd minutes. Officer on the scene. I mean, he basically came out and he was basically hiding. Yeah, he's a coward. He's a coward. Let's talk about the primary results. Let's put this up there on the screen. We'll start here with Brian Kemp. So here's what happened last night. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp doesn't

just win the GOP primary. He absolutely obliterates David Perdue. 72% of the vote to Perdue's 22% of the vote. And you guys will recall David Perdue famously said, we may not win, but we're not gonna lose by 30. Well, he was right. He was actually down by 50 in that race. I mean, there's no other way to describe this except a complete and utter humiliation of David Perdue, who was once a high-ranking member of the United States Senate on the Republican Party, and of Donald Trump. Let's put this up

there on the screen. This is a great Politico report, actually, on how we're going to go effing scorched earth, how Brian Kemp crushed Trump in Georgia. And what they point to is that Kemp is honestly a very savvy politician. He never said a goddamn word about Trump. He just did what he had to do. He moved on from the election. He courted the base on every issue, CRT, voting, all this stuff. Then he actually strategically appointed many of his biggest critics to high office in the state of Georgia. He never really addressed any of Trump's major concerns. And I think the Republican base was said, yeah, we want to move on from 2020. They're like, yeah, I guess we think the election was stolen, but you know, Brian Kemp, he seems

like a good guy. And I can't help but come back to this, which is that I love whenever this happens, just to show you that people are not automatons. They don't just go, well, Donald Trump said to vote for him, so I'm going to vote for him. People think for themselves. Americans are smart. They could look at David Perdue and say, this guy's a moron. He literally doesn't want to be governor for any other reason except his own personal vanity. And because of whatever happened in 2020, this guy, Brian Kemp, at least, you know, purports to do what we asked him to do. And so we're going to vote for him no matter what Trump has to say. So a massive rebuke of Donald Trump here in terms of how much he can translate his

personal political brand to issues which people do not care about. Yeah. I think that's the number one thing you can say. Stop the steal is not enough. Yeah. It's just not. I mean, listen, I never want to overstate these things because Donald Trump's endorsement is still the most important and most powerful endorsement in all of politics. There's just no doubt about it. I mean, you know, he endorsed Vance at kind of the right moment when Vance was already rising the polls. That's right. But, you know, he did help him get over the finish line. It appears that he may have given Oz the boost that he needed to get over the finish line. I do also think that partly these executive offices are a bit of a different deal than federal legislators.

So to your point about Kemp, this guy, I mean, this is a very right-wing guy. He checked the box for the Republican base on literally every issue from guns to abortion, to CRT, to voting. I think taxes too. I think he lowered taxes. He lowered taxes. And so when it came time for people to vote, they said, OK, that's nice. Donald Trump, you're not real happy with him. But listen, we've seen who he is and we kind of we're good with him right now. And so you really see the limit, like the size of the pure stop the steal Donald Trump vote. And it looks to be around 20 percent. The other one that is really incredible is maybe even more remarkable is Brad Raffensperger, who is the secretary of state, who the only thing that you would ever know this man for is his opposition to Donald Trump and stop the steal. I mean, what else do you know?

A secretary. You don't know a secretary of state. That's the only thing that they really have to do with. And so Donald Trump has his handpicked candidate, Jody Heiss. This thing in the polling looked like it was going to be very close. Raffensperger not only won, but he won with over 50% of the vote. Also avoiding runoff. Meaning that he avoids a runoff.

To me, that's almost more humiliating than what happened here with Kemp. Because, yeah, Kemp had other things that he could lean on, other things people knew him for. This was just a pure kind of litmus test of how you feel about Stop the Steal and Donald Trump. And ultimately, he comes up dramatically short. Trump's endorsements in a couple other governor's races, and I think we're going to talk a little bit more about this later, also failed. Notably, in Idaho, he endorsed the sitting lieutenant governor against the incumbent governor. And she also came up, I mean, she did very, very poorly in that Republican primary. So listen, as I said, the man's endorsement still matters a lot. Jody Heiss wouldn't have even been

in the game. David Perdue wouldn't have even been in the game without Donald Trump pumping and supporting these candidates. But ultimately, it's going to take more than just saying stop this deal over and over again to entice even Republican-based voters. And that is a warning sign for him for 2024 because he is obsessed with this and almost to the exclusion of everything else. Yeah, and that's why it matters, which is that if this is his only pet issue on whether you're MAGA or not, or whether you've gone awoke, as we'll talk about in a bit with respect to Mr. Mo Brooks, well, voters are going to say, you know, Donald, it was a long time ago, and we've got inflation. Biden is president. we have all sorts of problems in this country,

and in that case, we're just gonna go ahead and vote with the guy who we kind of agree with. And I personally think that that is a very welcome and good development for this country. I mean, look, Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp both obviously did the right thing. And every once in a while, the good guy, or okay, the person who does the right thing

and then is attacked explicitly for doing the right thing does pull it off in America. And it's nice to see because what you can see here is that people, even the people, the MAGA faithful, which I think the majority of, here's a good one to square. GA primary voters voted to keep three politicians in office yesterday. Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, Marjorie Taylor Greene. So even people who vote for Marjorie are willing to say, I'm going to vote for Brian Kemp. I'm going to vote for Raffensperger. And she also won easily. Yeah, I know. That was also Cope in order to the idea. But my point being here is that even so

called MAGA faithful and all those people are not going to follow him down a path that they just do not care about. So as much as they like Trump, as much as they trust Trump, it has to be in an area which aligns already with the things that they care the most about and not a personal vanity project, which ultimately that's what all Stop the Steal actually is about. Okay, why don't we get to the Democrats? Okay, so the big race on the Democratic side, another sort of war between the establishment and progressive wings of the party, is Henry Cuellar sitting incumbent. Really, you have to call him sort of a conservative Democrat, maybe the most conservative Democrat remaining in the House, versus progressive Jessica Cisneros.

This is her second time taking him on. She's made it very close every single time. And this one still this race has not been called. The very latest per Steve Kornacki is that Cuellar leads by one hundred and seventy seven votes. That's it. There's still, he says, a very small number of provisional ballots to be counted. And there are several counties that could still have a few uncounted votes. And a recount certainly looms. So NBC is not yet calling the race. What is extraordinary here, Sagar, is if you look at the map of this district, this district goes from San Antonio down to the border. And it was very

divided in terms of the vote. Overwhelmingly, those border counties, which is Cuellar's base, went for Cuellar. Overwhelmingly, the more northern parts of the district that are close to San Antonio went for Cisneros. And those margins hardened from the original primary and from this runoff, which raises the question of whether potentially Roe versus Wade and the question of abortion rights sort of hardened and furthered the divides in this district. But it is very interesting. Now, Cuellar, for those of you guys who don't know, not only is he pro-life, he supports, you know, he's opposed to Roe versus Wade. So he's culturally conservative on that issue. He also is the only Democrat in the House to vote against the PRO Act. So he's also anti-union.

He's very close to big oil. He gets a lot of donations from the oil and gas industry, which is kind of like, you know, given where his district is, that makes sense. He also, his office and his home was raided by the FBI, seemingly for some very questionable dealings with Azerbaijan. Yeah, it was Azerbaijan. Yeah, he and his wife both. She has some businesses. He's like been the leader of the Friends of Azerbaijan Caucus. As one does. Anyway, and the FBI said they're not going to clear him before Election Day. So that also was looming over this. Now, there was a lot of big money that came in for Cuellar from the places that we have been seeing big money come in to try to crush progressive candidates, in particular, DMFI, Democrat majority for Israel. And what appears to be a sort of aligned super PAC backed by billionaire Reid Hoffman called the mainstream Democrats that came in big for him in the final weeks. And if indeed this less than 200 vote margin holds, that may have ultimately been the difference. Now, I do want to say,

the other thing that's interesting here is unions also despise Cuellar. CWA in particular has a beef with him. And so there was also union money that came in on the side of Cisneros. So she did have some backup in terms of independent expenditures in this thing, but it is as close as it possibly could be. Right now, it looks like Cuellar is going to be able to narrowly hold on, but pretty the counties here that we talked a lot about back in 2020, Zapata County and Starr County, these are those South Texas border towns, which either went for Trump in the case of one of them or came within five points. So Joe Biden only won Starr County by about five points over Donald Trump, even though Hillary won that by 58 points. So a bit of a swing in terms of how it worked down there. These are places where there really is kind of an emerging GOP-ish coalition

with a lot of these voters. And I'm looking at the map and it makes total sense the way that you broke it down, which is that the Texas border counties came in for Cuellar at like 70% of the vote. I mean, talking, you know, in Starr County, 80% Cuellar. Zapata, 88% Cuellar. Jim Hogg County, 78%.

Jim Webb County, 70%. Jim Webb County, 70%. Duval County, 68%. But then those surrounding more urban areas around San Antonio came in equally hard for Cisneros. You know, the one nearest Guadalupe County at 91%. Bexar at 85%, Atatasca at 67, and McClellan at 52. That was a little bit more of a split. But that just shows you just how different the dynamics are, even though, and this is what I do love about Texas, this is a majority Hispanic district.

Like most of these people are Hispanic. But culturally, if you live near the city, you're more likely to be liberal. Culturally, if you live down on the border town, you're more of a vaquero Texas mindset. So the type of cultural difference between these two distinct Texans, disproportionately likely to be Hispanic, is just on display in the same way that it's on display across the entire country. And it just splits so hard. I think that's the crazy part. It really is pretty fascinating. I think also for Cuellar, he's just got very deep roots in those border communities. And so I think, you know, that certainly bolsters him in that area. I was talking to our friend Colin Rojero, who's done a lot of

work in that region and is one of the better Latino strategists on the Democratic side and was actually doing some of the union IEs in this particular race. And I was asking him, you know, kind of tell me about the typical voter in these border counties. And he said there do tend to be obviously more culturally conservative, but that's not necessary. Like abortion isn't necessarily the voting issue. But he said, you know, they both are very are sort of pro worker rights and pro labor, but also very business oriented, very entrepreneurial. So it's just a different cultural dynamic than you're going to find in almost any other part of the country. And then

to see the divide in this district so clearly. And that's why, you know, that's why it's so hard to say definitively what's going to happen here also, because if there's another little pocket of voters in the San Antonio suburbs, then she wins. If the remaining pocket of voters is down in Zapata County or Starr County, that's going to go overwhelmingly for Cuero. And then he's going to have a more clear victory on his hands. So that's why this one is still too close to call here ultimately. But you know, this is also, Cuero looks like he's going to pull it off, but it is embarrassing for the Democratic establishment that they go all in with this dude, Nancy Pelosi and Clyburn, and they can barely, I mean, their endorsement just counts for less than nothing.

Biden stayed out of this race, even though he's endorsed out there, like he endorsed Kurt Schrader. My guess is because Biden's approval rating is so dismal in the region that it probably wouldn't really help Guayar. It might not really be a benefit to him. He may have said just like, I got this. Why don't you just go do your thing in Washington? I'm not sure it would have ultimately been useful, but definitely a fascinating race here on this one. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to see more of it. I just, I really do love this part of the country.

And it's fun to see it all play out. Finally, okay, let's move on to some more of the deeper problems in American society to housing. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is very significant economic data. U.S. new home sales have plunged to the lowest since the start of the pandemic. Now, the purchases of new single-family homes have fallen by most since 2013, but the median house price continues to set a record as housing inventory is improving. I think there's only one culprit in this entire thing, Crystal, and that is the Federal Reserve.

But the reason why that this matters is what did we all find out in 2008? It turns out the housing market is deeply financialized, and you can say whatever you want about Dodd-Frank and all of that. It still continues to be massively financialized. Big money, big capital is moving in here. And actually, the current rise in interest rates, while yes, it will slow the housing market, I mean, how much of this is basically going to guarantee that millennials will be a relative permanent rentier class. Because if you could not afford a home during the pandemic, which obviously it was crazy, boomers were paying cash and all this stuff, but at least the interest rates were low. We're talking

like 2% to 3%. How the hell are you supposed to do so when the interest rate is at 5%, which it was last week, 5.25, increase up from three, which is the single highest increase in the mortgage rate in modern American history. Yeah. And it's only going to, look, we all know inflation is going to be here now for years. It's for a variety of reasons, supply and all of that. And the only blunt instrument we have is the interest rate. I mean, what are they going to jack it up to? 8%? In that environment, it's not going to be possible. If you were a young person out there and the mortgage rate is 8%, I mean, just say goodbye. Well, I mean, you're just, you're like, screw it either way. Because if the housing market continues to be extremely hot,

the prices continue to escalate. And you can't afford that. And you can't afford it. If they jack up the interest rates, then just to give you a sense of how much this matters in terms of your monthly mortgage payment, in April of your monthly mortgage payment, in April, the monthly mortgage payment on the typical home jumped to almost $1,500. That's assuming a 30-year fixed rate mortgage with a 20% down payment. That's up 34% since December and 53% from just a year ago. So that's how much it matters. Because it sounds like a little, oh, it's just

lifted a couple of percent. No, no. This has increased the monthly mortgage payment by 50%. So it makes a huge difference. And the housing market is actually what the Fed is directly targeting because it is such a large percentage of the economy. And because it is the one thing that these mortgage rates are very sensitive to whatever the Fed rate ultimately is, whereas the Fed can't do anything about a supply chain crisis directly, so it's less likely to have as much of an impact there. There's some signs that as opposed to previous times when the Fed has tried to use the lifting

interest rates to cool the housing market, there's some signs that there's a little bit of resistance here. More buyers say that they don't really care what the interest rate is. They've decided they want a home and that's that. Now, ultimately, when the rubber meets the road and they're looking at their payments, they get afforded, that might change things. We'll see. at their payments, they can't afford it, that might change things. But the other piece here is that so much of the housing stock is being snatched up by investors and by permanent capital that are less price sensitive, that that also could make it more difficult to cool the hot housing market. Corporate individual investors accounted for 21% of home purchases in December. That's up from 17% just a year earlier. So as we've discussed before,

the fact that you have permanent capital coming in, in some cases, buying up entire communities en masse and attempting to turn millennials and Zoomers into a permanent renter class has also contributed to just the complete inability of first-time home buyers to get into this market. And it matters a lot. You guys know this. I mean, I don't have to explain this to you, but because asset prices have appreciated so rapidly and gone up and up and up in this country, really the only way to get your foot into that sort of stable middle class life is to be an asset owner, be a homeowner.

And for the people who are locked out of that, that puts them on a lifetime path of precarity and never building their own wealth, but always lining the pockets of the landlord class. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can't emphasize that enough, which is that boomers are flush with cash right now from the ability to sell their houses, the ability to take loans based upon their assets, on their stock portfolios, which they're now being able to access. I mean, the amount of money that they have relative to most other young people in this country is insane and astronomical. Even when you compare how much money they had at that time in their lives versus how much money we have at this time in our life. So it's a very tough situation. And the worst thing is, is what did we all learn from 08? When the housing market flips, it takes, it took what, a decade, 12 years to come back? I mean, if you're on the older side of millennials,

you're like 35, 38, something like that. I mean, 12 years, like do you, you're gonna be 50 years old. Like that will mean that you literally will be nearing retirement without being able to buy a house. That's insane. And you'll have two basic depressions slash recessions that happen in your lifetime.

And even when we were technically out of the recession in 2012, I mean, I don't have to tell everybody who's watching this show, that is really when we started to get hollowed out. 12, 13, 14, 15, you know, the latter parts of the Obama administration. That is when the majority of the money was,

the last parts of the money that in manufacturing and more that we even had here was going away. So the current thing that we're looking at, a downturn in the housing market, which is the real way only that you're going to be able to build wealth, combined with the decline in retirement portfolios and the stock market and all of that, which, again, you may not make money on the way up, but you will lose money on the way down because of the ripple effects in the economy. It's really bad. I even look at retailers. on the way up, but you will lose money on the way down because of the ripple effects in the economy. It's really bad. I even look at retailers. We're looking at Target and Walmart. I mean, they're getting hammered because people are not spending money anymore. People just don't have disposable cash. And I see it everywhere. Every day I drive home, the gas station is, you know, first it was $4.50, then it was $4.75. Now it's up to $5.10 a gallon, even here on the East Coast. Yeah, if you hunt around, you can find some which aren't too bad.

You know, in the Bay Area, in Menlo Park, California, the gas, there's a gas station there with $7.75 a gallon. I mean, that's crazy town. So when you consider the just dramatic reduction in disposable income that Americans are experiencing, so on the wage side and then the inability to build wealth, we're looking at a very, very bad picture, I think, over the next decade, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that's right. And it'll be very difficult for the Federal Reserve wants to bring us in for a soft landing that's's going to be, that's going to be almost impossible because I mean, the, the tools they have are blunt tools. They are, you know, there's a delayed response to them. So it's, it's hard to see any path forward

other than paying, which the American people already know. I mean, we've been covering the numbers of 70 plus percent expecting a recession, saying the economy's on the wrong track and feeling that they're getting a pay cut every single week. They know. Yeah, they're not stupid. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, guys, earmuffs for any kids out there. I regret to inform you, we now have to talk about Elon Musk's dick. Let's go ahead and put the tear sheet up on the screen. I'm just going to read a significant amount of this. So a space that this is from Business Insider. I do want to say this from a reporter, Rich McHugh, who is not a hack whatsoever. He was the producer who worked with Ronan Farrow to take down Harvey Weinstein, you know, much of the sugar and of the Clintons. He also is the reporter who did the serious journalism investigating

Tara Reade's claims against Joe Biden. So he has a new story about Elon Musk regarding a settlement paid by SpaceX for some claims made by a flight attendant. So here's the headline. SpaceX flight attendant said Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex. Documents show that the company paid $250,000 for her silence. Let me give you the details here. So this attendant worked as a member of the cabin crew on a contract basis for SpaceX's corporate jet fleet. She accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. Okay. Sorry, I shouldn't laugh. That's so weird.

According to interviews and documents obtained by Insider, the incident, which took place in 2016, is alleged in a declaration signed by a friend of the attendant and prepared in support of her claim. So this document, this declaration from the friend, and the friend is the person who was the source here for Rich McHugh, this was as part of the mediation process by which they came to this $250,000 settlement amount. He says the details in the story are drawn from this declaration as well as other documents, including email correspondence and other records shared with Insider by The Friend. According to that declaration, the attendant confided to that friend that after taking the flight attendant job, she was encouraged to get licensed as a masseuse so that she could give Musk messages.

Gross. Massages, rather. It's sort of gross to me that she was encouraged or sort of forced to get this masseuse license on her own dime, by the way. It was during one such massage in a private cabin on Musk's Gulfstream that she told the friend Musk propositioned her. The flight attendant told her friend the billionaire, SpaceX and Tesla founder, asked her to come to his room during a flight for a, quote, full body massage. When she arrived, she found that Musk was completely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body. During the massage, the declaration says Musk, quote, exposed his genitals and then, quote, touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would, quote, do more, referring to the performance of

sex acts. Apparently she was into horses, so the horse thing was not completely insane. The attendant's complaint was resolved quickly after a session with the mediator that Musk personally attended. The matter never reached a court of law or an arbitration proceeding. In November 2018, Musk, SpaceX, and the flight attendant

entered into a severance agreement, granting the attendant a $250,000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claim. So basically what happened here is she gets hired on a contract basis as a flight attendant. She says that she was pressured to get this massage license on her own dime so she could give massages. Apparently, I didn't know on SpaceX like massages. I was going to say, my main takeaway from this thing is why does a company need an in-house masseuse as a perk for executives? I think that's pretty weird.

Especially, listen, if that's it is weird. And if that is part of the job, then you hire people who are professionally trained masseuses or if you want your attendance to get that certification, then you pay for it. Okay, so I have an issue with that. Okay. So then the, you know, allegations unfold. She was reportedly, according to the details from the friend,

she was very stressed about it, but she thought, okay, we can just put it behind and I'm just going to pretend like nothing happens and move forward. She also alleges she was basically retaliated against for not going along with the horse for sex deal. So that's what we know. The part we can say for sure is that there was this $250,000 settlement between the company and this woman who is not being named in the piece to protect her privacy. She also, I mean, this kind of gets the free speech thing. She also is bound by a nondisclosure agreement. She's not allowed to talk about it legally. Those type of nondisclosure agreements in cases of sexual harassment and

assault have been banned in certain states like California, but she is still under one. So that's why, you know, one of the reasons why she's not talking here. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, I really don't know whether that's true or not. Obviously there's no way to, right? So this is based on the affidavit of a friend. Also, in terms of the payout, it was not actually about the sexual harassment claim. It was about the fact that she was retaliated against. That's what she would file under California employment law. So $250,000, I mean, you know, it's not actually that much money.

Yeah, but retaliated against. Right, because of the sexual harassment. Because of sexual harassment. Right, certainly. Again, I don't know if it's true or not. Musk himself appeared to know whether it was coming. So here, seemed to know that it was coming. Let's put this up there on the screen.

He had tweeted previously that in the past, I'd voted Democrat because they were mostly the kindness party. Now they've become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them. I will vote Republican. Now watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold. And he followed

up by that saying political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in the coming months. And so he's casting this as a part of this. I, in general, have not seen this kind of take the world by storm exactly with this story. I think the most important thing with these things is that you should also look for others and whether there was any retaliatory actions or other people to come out of the woodwork. So we're kind of in that phase. And especially if there's any reporters who are working on that, that will serve as a very big corroboration. I will say what they have said is that at least six women have sued Tesla, alleging sexual harassment at a Tesla factory. But none of the people who were there

were alleged against Musk himself. So this is the only one that we know of currently. I did read Musk. I've said I've read Musk's biography and some other pretty critical stuff into him. And in general, I'd never seen any reporting around this, but obviously this was paid. So that's not deniable. Yeah, right. Listen, you know, that's not deniable. Yeah, right. Listen, there's no way to know what happens. I think you're right in terms of the public perception. If now there are more women who come out. Yeah, then it's, you know.

Then it definitely. Now, I mean, listen, there can be it can be that there is only one woman that's only done to one person. That doesn't mean that the claims are invalid or not true. And as we said, the thing we definitely know is they did pay it very quickly, pay a settlement to this woman to keep her quiet and make sure that she doesn't sue. So that's what we know. I do want to say one thing about his tweet there

about like Democrats are the kindest party. First of all, I think it's a very childish way of viewing politics. But second of all, the first comments he made saying that it was at that convention for the what is it called? All in podcast. That's right. And his first comments were mostly focused on Democrats are too close to unions and unions, he said, are another form of monopoly, which I don't even understand how you can make that case. But whatever. But it was sort of like a very it was, and he didn't like that they were close to trial lawyers. It was this very just

like standard issue plutocrat critique of like, I don't like that I might have to deal with a union or that I might get sued for bad behavior. And then once there was kind of an outcry about the way he framed that, then he puts out this tweet that's much more and you know, the, oh, they're not, they're divisive, et cetera, et cetera. I will defend him on the union thing only within what happened. Now, you guys know I'm pro-union and I've always supported it. That being said, I think it's BS that he got, that there was that lobby that the unions pushed that make it so that the EV tax credits did not apply as much to Tesla and applied more to Ford and GM. Yeah, but he also is a notorious union buster.

Listen, I'm not going to support him on that. A typical Wall Street capitalist view of why they don't support the Democratic Party. They have explicitly lobbied against Tesla. And by the way, if the Tesla people want to unionize, I would 100% support that. But what I'm saying is that the unions have used their political power to strike against him with the EV tax credits. But here's the other thing that- Which I think is wrong. I mean, it's a good electric- Here's the other thing he said that was ridiculous. Yeah. Because he was like, Biden is so close to the unions and does the

bidding of the unions and so different from Barack Obama on this, which is also silly because we see Biden right now has the power to back up the Amazon labor union and isn't lifting a finger to do it. He'll have the photo op with him. So the analysis was silly. I agree. I'm saying in his mind, and look, I think every person is selfish and his context is Tesla. Tesla has been explicitly screwed over by the Biden administration. Pete Buttigieg won't even meet with Elon Musk.

Yeah, but don't you think it's telling that after he says that, then he switches to, no, no, it's because they're divisive. Totally, 100%. But I'm just, you know, I will say, I think that if you're a serious person,

then EV tax credits should be flat. And we should encourage EVs as much as humanly possible. And that in that case, the unions messed up by using their political power on that. But he didn't even mention that. No, no, no, I agree. But I'm saying the Biden people too, the fact that they're ostracizing Elon Musk,

who has done more for this country in terms of the electric revolution than any other person. I think that's BS. Okay. But that's not even what he was talking about. I think that's the context of his response. He didn't even, it's not even what he said in his statement though. I mean, I guess my bottom line here is he's acting exactly like you would expect a self-interested billionaire to act. Very true. Especially for his company, which I agree with. I don't agree with it. Let's move on. Anyway, let's talk about Hillary Clinton. All right. Let's go ahead and talk about

Hillary. So this has been all over the place and there's a lot going on in terms of the actual findings. So the long awaited Durham trial, which has basically become a meme online, has actually been happening. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is according to testimony from Robbie Mook. You guys might remember that name. It was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager testifying in the campaign itself had not fully confirmed. This is the infamous Alpha Bank report that took the world by storm in the closing days of the 2016 election, in which there was an allegation that there was a data between some servers linking the Trump organization and Alpha Bank. That is a Russian financial institution with ties to the Kremlin. That was originally reported by Franklin Foer

over at the Atlantic and in Slate, where he wrote this up and was used as a so-called corroborating evidence. This is the infamous tweet that Hillary sent on that day. Let's put this up there on the screen. October 31st, 2016, computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking

the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This was regarding the Franklin Four report, who also works at The Atlantic, but he wrote it up in Slate, showing that the Trump Organization has a, quote, secret server registered to Trump Tower that has been covertly communicating with Russia. Noteworthy, it was signed at that time by Hillary for America senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan, who is the current national security advisor to the United States for President Biden. So obviously, he remains well ensconced in democratic politics. And I think that all of this matters because, first of all, I mean, I know it was six years ago, but I do think

it is empirically nuts that Hillary, at this point, we know that she lied for years about whether they funded the dossier, the Steele dossier, and they did. We know that her lawyers and the Perkins Coie law firm and others were intimately involved in pushing a lot of this, that it basically was a Democratic, and by that I mean it was a Hillary Clinton operation that was in conjunction with the FBI that they explicitly went and briefed them on all of these fake accusations. And really, I mean, Alpha Bank and others, while it did show the most insanity of Russiagate, this was a national conversation for two straight years about Trump and Russia, which at the time did, I think, tremendous damage to this country. I mean, beyond the Democratic base gaslighting them into thinking that the election was stolen by Russians, which a majority of them did, actually, at the time, you also had a complete media obsession

when there could have been an obsession around, I don't know, literally anything else, which was actually true. So, you know, it's been six years. I guess everybody also knew that this was the case, but it just shows you that Hillary's fingerprints were on this at the very, very highest level. There's a lot that's relevant here. I mean, first of all, the fact that so much, there was an intentional effort by the Clinton campaign to basically say, like, how do we spin this law so it doesn't fall on us?

Because obviously you lose to Donald Trump. Like, the obvious person to blame is you, right? You didn't campaign in the Midwest. You were a terrible candidate. You leaned into this campaign strategy of just sort of like going wherever Trump went, responding to his tweets and responding to his actions rather than trying to lay out your own campaign. Like you are to blame for this loss. And so to the extent that, you know, Donald Trump was seen as this existential threat by the Democratic base, the very obvious person to blame would be Hillary Clinton. Instead, they've engaged in this very intentional campaign of subterfuge to push the blame off to all sorts of people. One of them,

you know, one of those claims being like, oh, it's Russia's fault, basically. So this is also part of that effort for the Clintons and that whole world, which is the entirety of establishment Democratic politics, to escape any kind of scrutiny for how you could possibly lose to this man and put the country in this situation. So that's number one. Number two, in terms of the actual details here, and this was like this was Robbie Mook that testified. So this was the, you know. Under oath on the stand. Right. So, I mean, this isn't like some nobody. This was the chair of the campaign, the head of the campaign.

He said effectively Hillary signed off on this idea that even though they couldn't as a campaign confirm these claims that this connection was real, that they would leak it to press outlets. And at that very same time, Slate runs with it and gives them the piece that they want. And that's the one that they go with. New York Times also runs an article, but it is much more cautious. And it includes the key piece of information that the FBI had already basically investigated and debunked these claims. So if it had just been the New York Times piece, they wouldn't have had much to work with. But because Slate went with a much more sensationalistic and much more sort of leading piece here that left the question open, that was what enabled them to kind of lean into this. So that's extremely significant to your point about the damage that was done and why

we're still talking about this so many years later. It really did change the way that the Democratic base viewed Russia, and it changed the way the Republican base viewed Russia. So now you have a situation where views have, in certain instances, flipped. You have much more room on the Republican side of the aisle, for example, to be questioning of the amount of military aid that is flowing to Ukraine. And of course, I've talked about how disingenuous some of these actors ultimately are. But the fact remains that the only no votes against this gigantic tens of billions of dollars in new aid, most of it, you know, military aid going to Ukraine came to the Republican side of the aisle. This whole episode made the Democratic base much more hawkish towards Russia. And, you

know, the very latest is, let's go ahead and put this last tear sheet up on the screen. The very latest is the Pentagon is apparently weighing deploying special forces to guard the Kiev embassy. So basically, you know, a small number of boots on the ground in Ukraine, something that was supposed to be totally off the table. And the reason why we've been able to so easily slide down the slippery slope, closer and closer to direct confrontation with a nuclear armed superpower in Russia, is because you have a democratic base that has been primed to see Russia as this like all powerful, all knowing, existential world dominating election interfering threat. And that has made it a lot more difficult to have clear thinking

and any sort of public debate and scrutiny over the administration's truly extraordinary actions with regard to Russia right now. Yeah, it's a huge thing. I mean, the impact this has had on our... I think I did one of my last monologues on Rising was actually about this. It was like the real cost of Russiagate.

And it was about how, I think at the time it was the Atlantic Council. And there was this like democratic aligned people who were promoting a realist foreign policy view, which I mostly subscribe to, were basically railroaded and forced out of the Institute. And there was like an uproar over there just because, I don't even remember exactly what they said,

but they were like, hey, maybe expanding NATO might have increased tension with it was like something completely anodyne and then boom it was just went completely against them so that was at an institutional level at a democratic based level and on a policy level it changed our posture to Russia forever I think towards that nation and all you have to do is compare how Barack Obama reacted to the Russian annexation of Crimea to how the Biden administration has approached it now. And you can go back and read quotes of Obama saying things which would call him a traitor now, where he says things like, Crimea is a core Russian national security interest. If you think we should go to war for that, you should justify it because I don't think that that's one as core to Ukraine.

It's like, wow, you know, that's something I haven't heard anybody in national politics espouse that type of sentiment. What was his line to Romney? Like the 80s called? Yeah, the 80s called. He was right, you know, about in terms of moving towards the Asia Pacific

and how that was the future. But all of that worldview has been completely cast out the window all because of Russia. And you can go and look back at, you know, Obamagate, which I'm reliving now in my head. And it all is a direct result

of the fact that the Clinton campaign and actually did also push the FBI and even the high levels of the Obama administration to all try and conjure up this narrative, which simply did not exist and not only hampered the incoming administration, but changed our politics probably forever. And that was not done in a good way. it, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's You're Not the Father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family

fortune worth millions from my son even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts. about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.