Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 7/17: CNN Ratings, Institutional Decay, Ukraine Lobbying, & More!

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, and friends talk about CNN ratings, institutional decay, Ukraine's DC lobbying, the 'disinfo' czar, housing markets, & Elon Musk!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/The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell,

and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it.

That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build 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. CNN's got a new strategy. They fired their terrible president. They've said that they're going to be less partisan. They're going after the middle of the road. They've got the new boss.

They're trying to tamper down all of the crazy stuff in their chyrons, not overuse the breaking news banner. But inside CNN, employees are, quote, freaking out over bad ratings. Let's put this up there on the screen. It's especially hilarious. They say that they're freaking out because the ratings are absolutely tanking. They blame, actually, the new strategy of trying to appeal to Republicans. And in a way, you know, I think they may not be wrong, which is that because their terrible ratings, which did exist, were so reliant on bashing Republicans and on trying to play to mainstream Democrats all the time. By ditching that, they've already have a situation where

Republicans don't trust them and are never coming back. And then they're also going to lose and betray their core audience. So they really are between a rock and a hard place. I don't trust them and are never coming back. And then they're also going to lose and betray their core audience. So they really are between a rock and a hard place. I don't see how they could possibly come back. Like there's no way that strategy is going to work. It's not possible. The trust is gone. This is what I've said from the beginning. I have seen how this played out before at MSNBC.

They had the same idea of we're going to bring in the NBC news people. It's going to be neutral journalism, which, again, I don't have an issue with partisan or ideological journalism. I have an issue with dishonesty and lying and carrying water for the powerful. That's the problem I have with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. And one of the sources who, I guess, talked to New York Post said, in terms of their concerns over the strategy, the problem is we're not a neutral country. The ratings are getting worse because they are taking out all the bells and whistles. That's very telling, isn't it?

CNN's ratings are as bad as local news ratings. They say new management is not freaking out, but everyone else at CNN is. They want to fix the shows first, but they don't realize the shows and ratings are connected. And this was all in response to ratings for the network hit a low not seen since the year 2000, just a few weeks ago. So yeah, that's what's going to happen. The ratings are going to tank because they're not giving this like feeding the infotainment beast in the way that they were. Trump is going to come back on the scene like imminently. I mean, he's going to be back in presidential contention here in mere weeks, days, months, very, very soon.

And the people who lean the most into the previous model are the ones who once again are going to get the highest ratings and they're going to look at the writing and the numbers on the wall and that's the direction they're going to go in. I think you're right. I think there's inevitable that they cave, that they go in this direction. Just the current strategy is not going to work. Whoever these guys are who are like, oh, you know, it's all fake because the Biden administration is currently there. When they have their villain, the audience will come back,

at least even though it's small, like it will come back, and they'll make enough money, and they'll get caught up in the maelstrom, and they'll be right back to square one. But luckily, this show will still be here. So we'll be okay. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on breaking points. Today, I want to take a moment to reflect about why all of our major institutions are in shambles. To help set the stage for today's conversation, let's examine a recent Gallup poll measuring Americans' confidence in major U.S. institutions from 2021 to 2022. Taking a look at this graphic, the only two institutions with a majority of respondents answering a great deal or quite a lot of confidence are small businesses and the military. Everything else is underwater. The medical system, 38% confidence. Big tech,

26%. The Supreme Court, 25%. A big drop there, no surprise, based on recent events. The presidency, 23%. TV news, 11%. Congress, 7%. Wow. Now, today I want to explore one of the reasons why I think this is the case. Institutions have shown signs of decay for decades, and I don't mean to keep relitigating the topic of COVID-19, but I do think the coronavirus pandemic really stressed our institutions to the breaking point. The analogy I like to use is that it's kind of like a piece of metal that's been damaged, a support beam or something like that, that's been fatiguing for years and years. And finally, it buckles under a prolonged trauma. I'll give you a specific example.

Last month, former COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx appeared before a select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis to testify on former President Donald Trump's response to the pandemic. And she said something pretty revealing. When the government told us that the vaccine, it couldn't transmit it. Was that a lie or was that a guess? I think it was hope that the vaccine would work in that way. And that's why I think scientists and public health leaders always have to be at the table, being very clear what we know and what we don't know. This is important for the country to know. So when I asked the question, when the government told us that the vaccinated couldn't get it, and I asked you if it was a guess or a lie, you said you don't know. You said you think it was hope. So what we do know is it wasn't

the truth. So they were either guessing, lying, or hoping and communicating that information to the citizens of this country. We knew early on in January of 2021 and late December of 2020 that reinfection was occurring after natural infection. Once you see that, and I want to make it clear to you all and to anyone that is listening, this is not measles, mumps, and rubella. Those vaccines produce long-term immunity and can create herd immunity. I just want to interrupt for a second, Dr. Bursch. You said something important. You said in early 2021, January 2021, you knew that people who had been vaccinated could be reinfected. All I know is there was evidence from the global pandemic that natural reinfection was incurring. And since the vaccine was based on natural immunity, you cannot make the conclusion that the vaccine will do better than natural infection.

So I'll come back to the hope versus a guess versus a lie issue in just a second. But the fact is, although they knew that COVID-19 reinfection was occurring even before the mass rollout of the vaccine, that's obviously not the information they chose to convey to the American public. And here are a couple of clips from President Biden and Dr. Fauci to remind you of the messaging they chose instead throughout much of 2021. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, the unvaccinated, not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated. That's the problem. And so everybody talks about freedom and not to have a shot or have a test. Well, guess what? So how about patriotism? How about making sure that you're vaccinated so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? The fact is, this is one of the

encouraging aspects about the efficacy of the vaccine. It'll lead to protect you completely against infection. If you do get infected, the chances are that you're going to be without symptoms and the chances are very likely that you'll not be able to transmit it to other people. Pandemic of the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you won't transmit the virus. These are all things we were told by our government and the legacy media throughout all of 2021. And yes, I understand that the official guidance and establishment sanctioned narrative have since changed, maybe because it became impossible to deny that vaccines cannot stop the spread of COVID-19. But what Dr. Birx's testimony confirmed was that the official guidance was not based on any kind of science.

It was not necessarily even new information that resulted in a shift of the official guidance and narrative. It was actually information they knew all along but chose to suppress. For what reason? Was it hope? A guess? A deliberate lie? We don't really know. And to me, it doesn't necessarily even matter because that's only half of the story here in terms of why Americans have no confidence in any of our major institutions. Quoting a Reuters article from July of last year, Facebook is not doing enough to stop the spread of false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at the time, part of a new administration pushback on misinformation in the United States.

Now, I know that big tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are all independent theoretically, and the White House obviously can't enforce certain censorship policies onto these companies, but it's hard not to argue that the Biden administration is closely tied to a lot of these social media companies. Taking a look at Facebook's content guidelines, quote, under our community standards, we remove misinformation during public health emergencies when public health authorities conclude

that the information is false. Twitter, their misinformation policy states that the platform will flag, quote, false or misleading information that misrepresent the protective effect of vaccines and to make claims contrary to health authorities. YouTube's vaccine misinformation policy states that they will remove videos that quote contradicts local health authorities or the WHO's guidance on vaccine

safety, efficacy, and ingredients. I just want to point out the common thread, which is when public health authorities conclude the information is false or claims contrary to health authorities, videos that contradict health authorities guidelines. So basically, none of the most popular social media platforms allowed for conversations, discussions or opinions about vaccines that contradicted or deviated from whatever guidance that was explicitly endorsed by public health authorities. They were essentially given carte blanche over deciding what is and what isn't misinformation. If they concluded the information to be false, then it must be false. Never mind Dr. Fauci's many quote-unquote noble lies in the past two years about mask wearing, what constitutes herd immunity, and whether or not the U.S. funded gain-of-function research in China. I understand that this is a sensitive issue and that there were a lot of people making nefarious claims about COVID-19 and the vaccine.

And I do think that social media certainly makes things worse in those cases by amplifying their voices. But I also think actually have the unintended consequence of further weakening our already ailing institutions. NYU professor Jonathan Haidt spoke to this point in a recent interview with Radio New Zealand, saying, quote, when critics go silent, the institution gets stupid. Now, Haidt, he's founded an organization called the Heterodox Academy, which aims to foster free institutional debate. He continues by saying that, quote, we're scientists and social scientists, and we know how hard it is to find the truth. When you have a bunch of people with PhDs and expertise in an area trying to study something, especially complex social policy, half the time we're going to get it wrong. And it's really hard to find the truth. And if people are afraid to dissent, then you're guaranteed to not find it. And you're going to be wrong about almost everything. Now, this ethos is specifically aimed towards debates within academia, but I think it rings true for institutions throughout American life. My takeaway is that our institutions are struggling

not because of nefarious online actors, Russian bots and the like seeking to cause chaos, although admittedly, those situations definitely do exist. But rather, I think our institutions are rotting from the inside out because of a pattern of deliberate decisions made to obfuscate the truth from the public and then suppressing discussion for the sake of maintaining control over the narrative. The reason why this is so damaging is because when the public inevitably finds out the truth, this type of repeated behavior conditions us to question the very institutions, the government, the media, the public health system, etc. The institutions that are fundamental to maintaining our democracy and holding our country together. The problem that I've laid out here today with

regards to COVID began actually much earlier, going all the way back to Vietnam. The Pentagon papers probably seem like ancient history at this point, but they do reveal deep institutional lies that were designed not only to deceive the American public, but also control media narratives. Then when you have events like Watergate, Iran-Contra, the 2000 election, Iraq WMDs, the 2008 recession, along with so many promises being broken along the way, I think distrust then becomes the norm. And besides these defining institutional scandals of the past, there are also quieter reasons why distrust has collapsed. On a daily level, the corruption, the fraud and run society, legitimacy stems from those

institutions delivering when asked to function for the American people. When those social contracts break down across politics, economics, culture, media, etc., distrust comes pretty naturally from there. I think the example from the COVID-19 pandemic that we discussed today was just a glaring example that removed any and all doubts. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about the unfortunate state of our crumbling institutions and found it to be helpful. If you want more videos like this, please check out my channel, 5149 with James Lee, where I release weekly videos relating to the intersection of business, politics, and society. The link will be in the description below. And of course, subscribe to Breaking Points. And thank you so much for

your time today. Hey guys, this is Ken Klippenstein, investigative reporter with The Intercept, with Jonathan Geyer, senior foreign policy writer for Vox. He had a very insightful story on the robust lobbying presence that Ukraine has here in Washington that I think is evident to folks in this town, but is invisible to a lot of people outside of it. Can you talk a little bit about what you found? Thanks for having me, Ken. So I've been in Washington throughout this really heinous assault on Ukraine that Vladimir Putin has launched, and there is just an unprecedented lobbying campaign from the Ukrainians. Now, totally understandable.

They want to get the right weapons in the hands of Ukrainians. But by my count, there are 24 registered lobbyists for Ukraine at the moment or Ukrainian entities. A 25th actually in response to my reporting now. So they've sent parliamentarians, human rights activists, corruption activists, or pardon me, anti-corruption activists to meet with all the kind of influencers in Washington to really shape the narrative about Ukraine, the weapons they need, and the requests are incredibly specific. They want drones. They want F-16s. So part of my reporting was just looking at what is Ukraine asking for and who's asking. The most interesting or kind of quirky thing is most recently Ukraine sent

two fighter jet pilots to Washington to meet with reporters, to meet with Sean Penn, to go on TV. And I don't know. I mean, we are the country that made Top Gun twice. I was going to say, fighter jet pilots. It's a compelling narrative. And I think the notion was, you know, the influencers of Washington were getting bored of hearing from politicians from Ukraine. They wanted to hear from jet fighters on the front line. So I had the pleasure of having dinner with two of these fighter pilots. But what was a little murky was the PR agency that was hosting them was not officially registered to lobby for Ukraine. We have something called FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

You have to register. And what FARA experts have told me is that in the lead up to the war this fall, there were about 10,000 contacts made between Ukrainian lobbyists and folks in Washington in the US. And just to give folks a sense of proportion here, that is greater than the lobbying you see from states like Saudi Arabia, which itself has an extremely robust lobby. And you guys at The Intercept have done a huge amount of reporting on this. It's super interesting. And we won't get the new numbers about since the February invasion. That's what's fascinating to me about that story.

So when you say 10,000 contacts with journalists, members of Congress, think tanks, that's prior to the invasion, correct? Exactly. So we don't even know what it is yet because it hasn't been reported yet, what the figures are now. Exactly. And one of the really interesting things is we have about 2,000 foreign agents registered to lobby on behalf of foreign countries, foreign entities in the US. I spoke with Department of Justice officials. There's just over a dozen Department of Justice officials monitoring this whole area, which... All foreign lobbying. It comes down to 12 guys. And a couple interns. That's what amazed me, that you were able to get that on record from the Justice Department, the figures. Because I would always assume they didn't have, you know, the resources they needed, as the Justice Department

doesn't in many respects. But 12 for a country like ours, where it's probably going to be the most intensely lobbied government on the earth. And I would say, look, none of this is illegal if you're registered. Farah doesn't regulate free speech. Speech is still free. We're the United States. And we're a powerful country. We're giving this staggering amount of military aid to Ukraine. And what my reporting was trying to

do is just shed light on what are the sources of influence, part of this Ukrainian campaign? What are the levers being pulled? And I don't think we yet have the complete picture. So in your story, you describe attending this fancy dinner where these two jet pilots who, you know, go by their call signs. Juice and Moonfish. Juice and Moonfish. I love those names. Very romantic. Yeah.

And so what ends up happening after you look up this organization that organized this fancy dinner that a bunch of other journalists attended, and you see if they registered under Farah? So they haven't registered as far as I could tell. So I called up their founder, their CEO. I asked them if they were going to register for working on Ukraine. The founder says, hold on, let me call you right back. And as I say in the story, at advice of her counsel, she decided to register. I haven't seen that filing yet, but I'm sure it's due any day now. So that number changed by one, whatever the number is now. I would guess so.

Yeah, exactly. That's incredible. And that kind of speaks to how informally this law sort of works, in my experience. How much discretion, that's another interesting quote that you managed to get in this story, was the Justice Department just openly saying, if the country that individual is lobbying or a group is lobbying on behalf of is an adversary nation or a national security concern, we're going to bring more resources or more concern to bear in terms of getting them to register and being concerned. And that's kind of interesting to me because on the one hand, you know, that kind of makes sense. You know, the Chinese, the Russians are going to have, you know, potentially more malevolent interests in terms of what's going on in the United States. But on the other hand, that discretion is concerning to me just because, to give you an example, I know an army officer that was advising a group, a political group in Lebanon, advising them on how to pursue diplomatic channels to try to—this was like years ago.

I don't remember exactly what the conflict was. And he told me that his lawyer advised him. He says, you should really register under FARA. And he said, well, why? I'm not taking direction from them. I'm telling them like how you try to, you know, go through the international system to try to pursue a diplomatic solution to whatever the problem was at the time. And he said, well, you know, this party in Lebanon is not liked by the United States. And so there's going to be more risk that they're going to, you know, come after you and say, hey, you have to register or, you know, fine you or something. And so that discretion, it doesn't necessarily mean, I mean, if you're defending

something horrible, that's one thing. But I would imagine there are cases where you could be pursuing something that's not necessarily malevolent. And then if it's just one of these countries that the US is not on good terms with, that you're going to be more anxious about. Well, this law, I mean, yes, it requires the affirmative kind of reporting of foreign lobbying agents, but it's also maybe just not really suited for 2022. This is a 1938 law. It doesn't really work for tweets or Facebook posts or all the other forms of media that didn't exist when this was meant to kind of identify Nazi or Soviet propaganda. Right. And this was what, 1936?

1938. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, there were only about seven prosecutions under this law until the mid-2000s. So over 50 years, about 70 people got in trouble for violating Farah. Then in the Trump era, all these people from his inner circle are working, you know, Michael Flynn working for the Turks. Manafort working for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. All this stuff unregistered, getting into huge trouble. So now it's a headline-making law and issue, but really it's pretty obscure. And I was just glad to give it a little bit more attention.

Yeah. So after the case of Manafort, who I believe was prosecuted in relation to Farah, was it? Did you find that – has there been a change in terms of compliance? Because my understanding is that Farah has always been something that there's not been very much compliance with. Well, people are definitely thinking about it more. And I guess the lawyers I spoke to would say that's probably a good thing. I think the funniest dynamic here – I don't know if it's so funny. Ha-ha.

But groups that were lobbying for Russian interests that got sanctioned. So some of the major PR shops in Washington were lobbying for a Russian bank to evade sanctions or stuff like that. Then after the invasion in February, all the sanctions get thrown on Russia. It's really difficult to work for Russian entities. And then what happens, a lot of these groups are now doing pro bono work for Ukrainian entities as a way to kind of shore up their public image. Interesting. You saw that after the Khashoggi murder, a number of prominent lobby shops dropped him. They ended up, many of them going back to working on behalf of the

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But at the time, they dropped them. So it's interesting that you see this sort of response to the political environment and how that comes through to the conduct of these lobbying shops. Yeah, I mean, I love reading through these FARA filings. You get them a little bit of a lag, but you can see every journalist they've called these foreign agents. You know, my name appears on there

because I'm seeking comment from various foreign agents at various times. Any briefing they hold. And I just think there needs to be a lot more transparency about this and a lot more clarity. Because, look, we are giving this, as the United States, a tremendous amount of money to Ukraine, a tremendous amount of weapons. They have corruption problems. We have corruption problems, we have corruption problems. It would be great for there to be a lot more transparency about who's lobbying for what and when and how that's influencing US policy. Yeah, and talking to people that work in that space, attorneys and former DOJ officials,

I'm sort of sympathetic to the challenges of what, because the law, as you say, is so vague. Implementation, part of the problem is lack of resources, as it always is. But another part is, like you said, this was a 1938 law and something that, you know, most of the cases brought against people, I think, were during the Cold War. You know, we've got a different media landscape since then. We've got something called the internet. We have cable TV. Things are a little different now. Oh, yeah. There's this hilarious thing where you're supposed to have a conspicuous statement if you're a foreign lobbyist. So, you know, so-and-so is lobbying on behalf of the presidency of Ukraine.

It's about a three-sentence statement. How are you going to add that onto a tweet or a post or a, you know, doesn't really make sense in our, you know, 280-character world. Exactly. Okay, well, we're going to leave it there. Jonathan, where can people find your work? Vox.com. Look out for my name, Jonathan Geyer. I'm writing about Biden and the world. All right. Thanks very much for joining us for this edition of Breaking Points Intercept Edition.

Nina Jankiewicz is the person who just simply will not disappear from American politics. She's the gift that keeps on giving, isn't she? The gift that keeps on giving, at least to us. She's been recently appeared on the Brian Stelter program over at CNN to deny that she ever herself spread disinformation while she was the head of the Disinformation Governance Board. Let's take a listen. when I had fewer than a thousand Twitter followers, that, you know, I was just sharing information about a presidential election as it was happening, as millions of other Americans were doing, using their right to freedom of speech. That wasn't disinformation, right? It was just sharing news. Other people honed in on tweets that were, they completely stripped of context. The one that the conservatives loved to really amplify was a tweet that they claimed that made me seem like I was calling the Hunter Biden laptop disinformation when in fact I was just live tweeting a debate, you know, saying the exact words that then candidate Biden and President Trump were saying during a debate.

Totally stripped of context. So you still think you were the right hire? And people didn't want to look further into the context. So you still think you were the right hire? Absolutely, Brian. Absolutely, I was the right hire. Also, that's not true what she was saying. She was live tweeting it and also trying to add the context

about how the laptop, what she was calling disinformation. You mean she's spreading a little bit of disinformation there about what she was doing? We can go on forever

at the number of things that this lady said which were straight up false. She was promoting the Hunter Biden conspiracy that it was some Russian plant. I mean, she was even an election truther 2016 with Hillary. I mean, on COVID was spreading all kinds of insanity. She literally tweeted, please lock us down in like March of 2020. So

listen, it's very clear that she was not the right person of any authority to be the arbiter or not. I also think it was a ludicrous interview because he didn't even push back. He didn't ask her about any of the specifics. He just let her be like, yeah, I was the right person. No, I didn't spread any untruths or misinformation. What is that? Also, why don't you – here's the other thing. His show is called Reliable Sources.

So you're talking to a former government official who is trying to decide what's true and what's not and was actively pushing meetings with social media companies like Twitter, including the person who actually censored the Hunter Biden laptop story over Twitter. Why don't you ask her about it? That's open source information that's available right now. I don't know why they are incapable of doing this. Even some of his colleagues at CNN were uncomfortable with it. Really?

Asked hard questions, remember, about Dana Bash. Oh, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, to, about Dana Bash. Oh, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, it was asking difficult questions of the DHS secretary about what exactly this board is and what exactly this board does, which, you know, I mean, as cringe as Nina Jankowicz is, that's really the bigger problem is that it would not be better, it would not be a good outcome if they put a less cringe person as the head of this board. This board just should not exist. That's really the bottom line here,

ultimately. Now, in a way, they kind of did us a favor by picking someone who was so clearly not a neutral actor who had, you know, herself spread incredibly questionable and outright false information because it made it much easier for people to be able to sort of go on the offense and say, this idea is ludicrous, and this is really not something that the government should be doing whatsoever. And we literally never got a straight answer about what this board was meant to do. They would, on one hand, be like, stop worrying. Like, this is no big deal. This board is barely a thing. Like, it barely is going to do anything. And on the other hand, they'd be like, this is an attack on our ability to deal with misinformation, and this is going to do anything. And on the other hand, they'd be like, this is an attack on our ability

to deal with misinformation, and this is so super important that you let us have our truth board here at the DHS. So, anyway. It's interesting all around. I wonder how long Brian Stelter's going to continue to have his show. I would love, listen,

I would love to see that. A lot of rumors that he might be on the shopping blog as part of the new regime at CNN. So we'll see. Totally. Something we have been tracking very closely here is how the housing market will respond to the Fed raising interest rates. And we already have brought to you how just the small moves the Fed has made so far have had massive implications in terms of the cost of borrowing and the mortgage interest rates. And that has a huge effect on people's ability to ultimately purchase a home. We're now starting to see the data that in the housing market, I mean, there really is kind of an imminent collapse coming. And we're seeing the early warning signs. Go ahead and put this up on

the screen. So home sale cancellations jumped in June as buyers backed away. 60,000 deals fell through, equal to 15% of homes that entered into contract. This is by far the highest number that we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic, when the entire economy collapsed and was shut down. And at that point, people said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I can't go through with this because I'm not sure I'm going to have a job. We are now back to approaching those levels in terms of home sale cancellation. So again, nearly eight, about 15% of homes that buyers are planning to buy, they enter into a contract, are being canceled and they're backing away from and directly, directly tied to the actions that

the Fed is taking here. The cancel rate, like you said, it hasn't been this high basically since 2020, like right after that. And it's continuing to rise at a precipitous rate. It's just going to continue to rise. And if it gets to the 20, 20, 25 percent, it's just going to make the housing market even more of a chaos. And something I've been trying to point to is when high-priced buyers are pushed out of the home market. Let's be honest, the home market is mostly for upper-middle-class people at this point, just given what the price is. Definitely. I mean, median housing price is half a million dollars. Exactly. It's sanity. So you have to be upper-middle-class just to be able to get into it. Well, whenever the interest rates get it so that not even the upper class, and only basically the upper class can be the

people who afford it, then the upper-middle-class are going to turn to the renting market. And they are going to rent luxury property and squeeze everybody down the value chain, which is going to increase the price of the rent. We're seeing this already in the hottest housing markets across the country, which was a response to rising rates. So where the rates are, where they are right now, it's a total disaster because it pushes people into a place where they have to be able to choose between, I mean, I don't know why anyone would basically choose to have a 6% mortgage rate is what I was also looking at. And another thing that makes this more dangerous, I didn't realize this, when rates go up to like 6%, it no longer is necessarily to your benefit to take the fixed rate mortgage, which creates all, again, I'm not a mortgage expert, but there

are all other kinds of like wonky adjustable rate type mortgages that you can go for where you might be able to pay less, at least in the long term. But those are much more subject to market conditions. They're not as locked in and friendly to the consumer, more subject to financialization. So what I was reading is that by increasing their mortgage rate and going away from the low fixed rate mortgages that were typical of the last 10, 15 years, or yeah, I guess last 10 years of low interest rates from the Fed, it changes the whole dynamics of all of U.S. housing. Interesting. Which is just not good.

Yeah, it's just not good for people. Well, the adjustable rate mortgages were part of the story in terms of the housing collapse because, remember, they had the ballooning payments that consumers didn't understand what they were getting into at the beginning. And then their payment jumps and escalates to a point where immediately they can't afford it and they're being pushed down essentially because they were tricked into signing on to something that was well outside of what their actual means were.

I mean, this is what we're seeing. Like, I think it's really important that you understand this is the goal of our policymakers is to make it impossible for you to buy a house, to, you know to tank the housing market with follow-on effects, as you're pointing out, in the rental market as well. This is their goal because they are unable, because of political gridlock and lack of political imagination, to deal with the supply-side issues that are fueling inflation. So the only thing they can do is take a hammer to the American consumer. And the housing market is the area that is most sensitive, typically, to these Fed rate increases. The other thing that you pointed to

before, which is a part of this picture, Americans have never paid higher interest rates to finance car purchases. So also in terms of being able to afford a vehicle, to be able to get to and from work, consumers are already being hit really, really hard. And we are just at the beginning of what the Fed is ultimately planning to do. So, you know, it's a real warning sign that this early on, you're seeing these kind of dire numbers in terms of home sale cancellations, people who thought they were going to be able to, you know, to purchase a home, maybe for the first time, you know, maybe be able to move somewhere that was better for them and for their family. And they're having to say, man, I just can't do it right now because of these rates. Yeah, I mean, it could delay it for 10 years.

Who knows whenever these things are going to come back. And then you're going to be, what, like 45, maybe 50. You're not even going to own a house. It's not good. A fun moment between Elon Musk and Stephanie Ruhle over at MSNBC. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Elon tweeted out a meme of Hunter Biden saying, Hunter Biden, anytime he does crack, with a bunch of cameras around him. There is a mystifying amount of footage, by the way, from Hunter, which I don't particularly understand. But anyway,

he replies, she replies, quote, imagine the positive impact that you could have on the world if you use the extraordinary amount of influence and power you have to spread decency, kindness, and positivity. And he replied, imagine if MSNBC did that. True to both. True to both. True to both, indeed. And this is always a problem with the decency mongers, so quote unquote, who think they are from CNN or MSNBC, whatever they try. They stoop to the lowest levels and bring utter trash to everybody else

whenever it's to an ideology or somebody that they support. And yet if somebody else does it, then they go after them. It's like, guys, this is why all of it is bad. And they have no ground to stand on when they try and police other people's tone yeah i mean from the p-tape network like shut up like oh yeah it's like you're you're gonna go after me oh you're never trafficking decency i mean look i don't have no problem with stephanie rule personally outside of her park avenue comment which i were it was a great work my damn butt off at Deutsche Bank. Okay. But beyond my beef with that one moment, I think in general that the network itself has no ground to stand on for promoting decent. Harvey Weinstein, man, Jeffrey, I can go down the list, you know, for all of this. I'm sure you could as well, having worked there.

I don't live on Park Avenue, but I live pretty close. And I worked my butt off to get there. It was like after Joe Biden said one halfway decent thing and that was the thing that she was outraged about. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm not an Elon Musk fan. There's no, uh, I don't think anyone has any doubt about that at this point. It was a stupid meme. Like, why are you getting all pearl clutchy about it? That's the thing that's so irritating about these people is they're all full of moral righteousness and, you know, indignation and pearl clutching about all of these breaches of decorum and people not conducting themselves in the manner they see fit. But, yeah, they don't want to turn the lens back on themselves. And think about the huge platform that they have.

Yes. The gigantic channel with all kinds. Well, it's gigantic in terms of the budget, not so much in terms of the viewing audience, but they have a lot of cultural power and it doesn't seem to occur to them the way that they have failed to use that in a way that would benefit the country. Yeah, I completely agree.

All right, we'll have more for you guys later. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into.

We're gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

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