Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 7/3: Recession Arriving, Highland Park, Biden Incompetence, Airline Chaos, & More!

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the recession coming, Highland Park shooting, Biden's incompetence, airline chaos, oil market swings, Boris Johnson, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Rory Johnston: https://www.commoditycontext.com/ Highland Park Fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/irina-and-kevin-mccarthy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. 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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Crystal, you're at home. You're not feeling so well out of abundance of caution. We're going to make sure that you're all right. You want to tell the folks, give them an update? Yeah. So over the holiday weekend, I tested positive for the old coronavirus. Finally came for me. That's my first bout with it. I mean, I'm fine. I feel probably like,

I'm going to say 92% better. And according to what the doctors are saying, I shouldn't be contagious anymore and any of that stuff, but I just wanted to be super safe and not infect anybody. So doing the show remotely today, but I am well on the path to recovery. Um, and we do have a great show for you today. We've got, uh, some new dire warnings about, uh, the economy actually might already be in recession. So we will break all of that down for you. Um, we're also going to bring you the latest details on that horrific mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb outside of Chicago.

They have arrested what they described as a person of interest. So we've got all those details for you. We also have some pretty stunning polling on how the public feels both about Biden and about Trump, the two dudes who are most likely to be the major party nominees that basically no one wants them to be. So we'll break that down for you. Big developments on Ukraine. How will the public respond? How is the administration responding? New questions there about whether we've been fed an overly rosy picture of what is going on on the ground.

And some new questions about Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and how she is performing in the job. Also, a reminder of our big live show in Atlanta. There it is, Atlanta, September 16th. We're coming, folks. We've done a phenomenal job of selling tickets so well. They tell me that we're blowing expectations out of the water, which is exactly what we want. Just as a reminder, we are coming not just to Atlanta but all over,

but we have to show that we can sell tickets in Atlanta before we can book venues anywhere else across the country. So it's going to be fun. It's a big midterm show. We're going to have special guests and all that stuff. We're already planning the production. So if you can go ahead and buy tickets, it means the world to us, to the show, and just shows the industry we are viable. We are as big as we think we are. So hopefully we can show that to everyone. So let's start then with the economy. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. What do we got here? Which is that the Atlanta Fed, and this is very interesting, the GDP tracker that they use in order to forecast whether the US is in recession or not actually shows that the US is likely in a

recession right now. The GDP gauge says that the second quarter is running at a negative 2.1%. And if you couple that with the first quarter decline at 1.6%, that actually does fit the technical definition of a recession. So let's also throw the next one up there on the screen, please, because that's really what factored into the decision-making, which is that the 1.6% decline in the start to the year really did show you that it was on pace in order to show 1.8% instead of the 3.1% that was estimated in May. You couple all this together, and you just see the economy is getting slammed. The reason that the meat there is the first sign is that food inflation, gas inflation, cost of living inflation, rent inflation and more are just smacking consumers left, right and center. And all of that is impacting the ability of the average consumer, Crystal, in order to go out and spend money, which is 70 percent of the entire U.S. economy.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean, you already have a majority of Americans saying they think we are in a recession or headed to a recession. Now we are seeing some numbers to back that up. You also see economic confidence. Let's put the next element up on the screen. The lowest since 2009. It's plunged to minus 58 as of June. Eighty five percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse. And yet, Sagar, let's put this next piece up. It's a very strange recession because people are getting hit hard. Their wages are not coming anywhere close to keeping up with inflation. So that means they're basically getting a pay cut every period. Growth is negative. So that is the technical definition of a recession. And yet the unemployment rate continues to be quite low. So they say in this piece from the Wall Street Journal,

if the U.S. is in a recession, it's a very strange one. Analysts sometimes talk about jobless recoveries after past recessions in which economic output rose, but employers kept shedding workers. Well, the first half of 2022 was the mirror image, a job full downturn in which output fell and companies kept hiring. Whether it will spiral into a fuller and deeper recession isn't known, though a growing number of economists believe that it will. I mean, I think it's very unlikely that you move forward into full on recession and don't see the unemployment rate go up significantly. But even with the rate where it is, there's still such a large amount of pain growing, especially for working class people, because their wages just aren't going far. So coming out of COVID, you just have such a strange confluence of events and circumstances with the supply chain shocks now with the war on Ukraine,

that it is creating economic conditions which are almost unprecedented and very hard to predict where this ultimately goes. Yeah, no, I think that's the right way. You know, and I actually, I get annoyed by the technical quibbling by the economists on whether we're technically in a recession or not. It's like, look, shit is too expensive. It's simple. You know, everybody feels that cost of living is too expensive. That's why consumer sentiment, as we showed, is all the way down to February of 2009. Whether we retract by 1.2 versus 1.8, the basic fact is that cost of living is way too high for 100% of Americans. And if you consider that in the context of wages, yeah, okay, you could have the unemployment rate at 3.6, as long as wages are only rising by

2% and cost of living is going up by some measures around 10 to 15. If you look at some of the really tough areas of life we've talked about before, that car segment we did on how the average payment was 650, well, now it's over 700, actually. So it jumped up $50 once more in the last month. Supply chain shortage is wrecking everything from what people need in their most basic. So whether we're technically retracting, not retracting, unemployment rate, things are too expensive. And I think from that perspective, nobody can argue that the economy is, what does Biden say, the strongest since World War II. It's like, yeah, well, wage growth then was actually pretty high. So, you know. Yeah. Well, and I mean, one thing I really worry about that we talked

about before is, you know, one of the big hopeful things this year, one of the only big hopeful things this year has been the energy and the labor movement, which really came directly, was enabled by the fact that, number one, you have an NLRB that is actually taking the side of, not even taking the side of workers, but doing their job effectively. But the big reason is that you have these labor market conditions where jobs are plentiful, even if they are not good jobs. So if you see the economy start to turn so that not only are your wages getting undercut by inflation, but you also have fewer and fewer jobs and people more desperate just to hold on to any job that

they can possibly get, that is going to cut the knees right out of the burgeoning labor movement. One of the things that they pointed to in that Wall Street Journal piece, which was very interesting about it's a very weird recession, is part of what's going on with the negative growth is retailers are having a lot of trouble figuring out their inventory needs. So you had, you know, this supply chain issues, which continue, by the way, but some of which have gotten worked out a little bit, some of which have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. But they built up a lot of stock to get ahead of the fact that, okay, we've got all these disruptions, we've got to get enough into warehouses. And now they're caught kind of like

holding the bag with too much inventory. So rather than building more inventory, they're selling that off and trying to get that off their shelves. And so that's part of what's contributing to this negative growth and why you have such a kind of weird situation unfolding with the economy. We are still trying to figure out how to get things back to any semblance of smooth operation post-COVID and post all the supply shocks that have to do with that. And look, it's a long-term question too of how much sustainability versus fragility we want to have in the supply chain. I hope that moving forward, the government puts policies in place to encourage more resilience, but don't hold your breath on that one. I'm not going to hold my breath. Unfortunately, all the signs that we're seeing, the Fed continues to hike rates. That's less investment that companies can make into both capital expenditure, workforce. They're going to have to cut costs in order to keep their share price medium that are dealing with inventory, their response is not to deal with or rent more warehouse space,

which is also, by the way, sky high right now. Their response is to slash and burn and to try and sell as much of it as humanly possible. So we're actually learning, in my opinion, some of the worst lessons from a lot of the supply chain crisis just because of the financialization in the economy. And I think all of it is just going to contribute to everything being more expensive. Gas is going to be expensive for the foreseeable future. I just don't think there's a way around it. I don't think food prices or any of that is going to come down, not just because of Ukraine, but because of so many fertilizer that we've talked about, LNG shortages.

So all of the shortages, nitrogen and inputs into the food and gas supply chain, the basics of life, unless we see a legitimate New Deal-style effort, which you and I know is not coming, then, well, it's like things are just going to be expensive basically from here on out. And I think that's very unfortunate. Let me say one thing about that because this was also interesting to me. There was another article about how a lot of commodity prices are actually coming down. Wheat, corn, oil. And they didn't attribute it in this piece I was reading, it was another Wall Street Journal piece, to, you know, oh, changes in supply and demand. And oh, we now have, you know, better supply here, less demand there. It was all because Wall Street speculators had decided to make different decisions, which I

think, you know, it's also important to remember that these prices don't just reflect the basics of where supply and demand intersect as we're taught in Econ 101. A lot of this, and you see this very clearly in the oil price, in particular the gas price that you're paying at the pump, versus what the price of a barrel of oil is. A lot of this is also driven by Wall Street speculators and the bets that they're making, irrespective of what else is going on in the real economy. So there was some hopefulness in that article that because commodity prices were coming down, maybe inflation has reached its peak. Maybe it's going to go in the other direction. But I think we're a long way from all of these things settling out. I think that's right. Because even as you're describing, you know, $15 drop,

part of the problem with inflation is expectation. So part of the reason the prices are staying high is people are like, oh, well, expectations are chaos. And so we're going to keep the price high just in case going forward. I wish it fluctuated, like you said, with pure supply and demand. But that's not how things work in the U.S. of A right now. Let's talk about inflation as well. So a shocking comment, honestly, from the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, where he was how things work in the U.S. of A right now. Let's talk about inflation as well. So a shocking comment, honestly, from the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, where he was giving a recent speech at a panel in which he basically admitted that the Fed doesn't know anything about inflation. Let's take a listen. One way to say it would be, I think we now understand better

how little we understand about inflation. That's not very reassuring. No, you know, honestly, this was unpredicted. Yeah, so we now understand better how little we understand about inflation. Well, okay. Cool. I guess, Jeremy, very good in order to hear from the person who is probably single-handedly most responsible

for handling all of our fallout from this as a result of our fallout from the government. And let's put this up there, which was a single other takeaway, which is that, you know, we are probably just going to have to accept a much higher risk of recession to combat inflation. And what the chairman points to in this discussion on this panel is looking back at the legacy of the 1980s, you know, he says he doesn't want to be compared to Paul Volcker. And sure, he's not raising rates to 19% or anything like that. But 5% to 9%, all of that looks very much in the realm of possibility. And within that realm of possibility, Crystal, may not be a 1981-style recession, but it could still be a recession in which we would have 6%, 7%, 8%, 9% unemployment. And given the supply chain problems

that we still have, in many ways, the 1980s recession and more was probably easier to deal with from a sheer monetary perspective. Just putting us simply in a recession and causing high unemployment and nuking consumer demand would maybe deal with, what, one third of the problem with high prices right now? So it's not a victory, in my opinion, to have a 30 percent reduction in the gas price or the food price when 70 odd percent could come from dealing with the supply side factors. But of course, the Federal Reserve has no say in any of that. That's all up to our policymakers. Yeah, the cure here could be worse than the disease is basically what you're saying. If there's any doubt whether or not we're in a recession today, Chairman Powell is determined

to make sure it's very clear to all of us that we're actually in a recession in the future. I mean, you hear more and more comments like this from him, you know, saying we need to get wages down when obviously, you know, wages are already not keeping pace with inflation. We know that the Federal Reserve has very limited tools to ultimately deal with inflation, and those tools do not actually target the core, most dominant reasons that we have inflation at this point. Not only that, but something that I just sort of learned about recently with some great writing from Skanda and from the American Prospects is it's not just that the Fed only can target demand. It's that actually when they hike interest rates, it means you make the supply situation worse as

well, which is incredibly logical when you think about that. It makes it less likely that companies invest in building out the infrastructure and supply chain, working through those supply changes and having the cash available to do that. So you're actually having a deleterious effect on one side. So very unclear that their actions are going to solve the problem they are intended to solve. And there is some recognition of that from some dissident voices in Washington. Let's put this last part up on the screen here. Politico has an article. They say no more whispers, recession talk surges in Washington. And they quote, you know, I mean, first of all, the piece is just an acknowledgement that everybody in Washington up to the administration and up to Biden now acknowledges this is likely a reality that we're headed towards. I think it's very unlikely we can avoid it since by some metrics we're already in it. But they do quote a couple of people who say, you know, we're going about this the wrong way. They have Josh Bivens, who's the research director at Economic Policy Institute, Left-Leaning Policy Institute. He says, everyone's screaming about inflation,

but people would really hate a recession too. The mood could get a lot more sour. You also have Senator Elizabeth Warren, who I think has been good at understanding the risks and the type of solutions that could actually meet the moment. Obviously, I have my critiques of her in general, but I give credit where credit is due. She says inflation is like an illness and medicine needs to be tailored to the specific problem. Otherwise, you could make things a lot worse. And right now now the Fed has no control over the main driver of rising prices. So I think she's exactly correct. You know, there's obviously people are suffering because of inflation,

but the only tool that either Biden or the Republicans are really pointing to to get this under control means pain for you, no guarantee that it to get this under control means pain for you. No guarantee that it does get inflation under control. And, you know, corporate profit, we're going to talk about this later in the show, corporate profiteers let off the hook, no dealing with the underlying supply chain issues, no dealing with, you know, our continued role in pushing the war in Ukraine. So it's a really, really ugly landscape ahead of working class people. I couldn't agree more. The thing is about Biden is there is a way, I think, politically to get

out of this. We've talked about it, to acknowledge the pain. But over and over again, it's on gas. I'm talking my whole monologue on this. As long as it takes, is what he says, in order to restore our aims in Ukraine. What does that mean? As long as it takes? As long as what takes? What is the actual aim? So people should continue to- What are we even doing? What are we doing here? Because things are not going so well on the battlefield right now. Also, just acknowledge, this is not the strongest job market since World War II. Again, it comes back to the point I was making in the earlier block, which is technicalities and dealing with, well, the economists say that we're not tech. Listen, it is plain as day. People are fed up with higher prices. So talk about it and then do something. And the do something part is where, you know,

on July 4th, the guy tweets out to the gas companies and asks them to please bring down the price. Like that is not any semblance of a plan whatsoever, even on meatpacking. Over and over again, we've talked about all the vertically integrated supply problems. We've had people on our show, ranchers and others, who point to the gouging that takes place in the industry. There's no roundtable that's happening at the White House. Just on a day-to-day basis, I really just question what the hell he's doing. And I was particularly embarrassed. I don't know if you saw this, but at the NATO summit, Emmanuel Macron and the NATO chair, Jens Stoltenberg, had to beg Biden. They're like, hey, you need to start talking about oil supply. As in like, you know, the United States is the largest country on earth or the largest economic power on earth.

And in the NATO alliance should probably start trying to deal with some of the supply issues. It's like, even they are looking at us and can't even believe that the administration has its approach right now to the global economy. We shouldn't forget also, you know, the Western powers in Europe are getting hammered by, frankly, even higher inflation in some areas of their life. So this is a global phenomenon, as you always point to, like what is the most correlative thing to a social unrest? Bread prices. All the way back until the Roman Empire, we've had bread riots. I mean, we are very much walking ourselves into the same situation.

Let's move on to a very, very sad story about what happened in Highland Park yesterday. July 4th, there's a Chicago suburb, there was a July 4th parade, and there was a mass shooting by a particularly deranged individual. I just want to give a warning here. We are going to play some video about what it was like whenever the shooting broke out. So it's a sensitive warning. If you have kids or anything like that, make sure they're not in the room for this. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what it was like on the ground whenever the shooting broke out. We're just going to play a couple of seconds of this. Yeah, I mean, Chris, you can just see people running. I can't even imagine you're with your

family. You know, you got a stroller, People strewn about, running away in the middle of what's supposed to be like a joyous occasion, day off, birth of the country. It's just so, obviously, it never gets easy in order to do these things. And just the pure details, let's put this up there on the screen. We got six dead in this mass shooting so far. And a number of people who are in the hospital, up to 15 at the last count that we said. So right now, what the officials say is they've recovered a high-powered rifle from the scene. They say the shooting, quote, appears to be completely random.

We don't yet know a lot about this alleged shooter slash person of interest who's been taken into custody. He was taken into custody last night, 6.30 p.m. local time. There was not a shootout or anything like that. We're not going to say his name here today in order to deny some of the glory that obviously was being sought. But let's go ahead and put this next part up on the screen. We're looking at a grade. I mean, this is President Biden. He's saying, I'm monitoring the situation closely, not going to give up the fight on gun violence. Now, obviously, to have that on the birth of the country on a national holiday is just completely horrific. So the next one up there,

which is that from what we know about this gentleman so far, he appears to be a real freak, and I think that that is putting it lightly. Has released several videos over the years, glorifying mass shootings, including cartoons. He had tattoos all over his face and his hair was dyed in various colors. Clears to have been a complete and a total misfit. And really what they're showing here is that for years he's been rapping and producing videos. He even has millions of plays actually Crystal on Spotify had a Discord server in which fans and others

were posting some really deranged content apparently the last thing that he even posted in his Discord was a video of a beheading so look this is somebody who clearly glorified violence and exhibited like every you know I mean I don't know what it takes in order to flag somebody

Illinois does have a red flag law apparently and this is a guy who's and exhibited like every, you know, I mean, I don't know what it takes in order to flag somebody. Illinois does have a red flag law, apparently. And this is a guy who's producing videos where, you know, he literally is mimicking mass shootings and glorifying violence on this. So we don't know the exact motivation. Clearly, you know, I perused his Twitter feed and looked at some of his past posts. But an extraordinarily deranged

individual responsible now for six deaths. Luckily, he's been taken into custody and there was no shootout or anything with police officers. But yeah, I mean, to have it on July 4th is just, is really just so terrible. It's so difficult to even talk about. It is. And I mean, it's a pattern of you just feel like where we're safe. You know, schools aren't safe. The shopping, the supermarkets not safe. The shopping malls not safe. The streets aren't safe. The July 4th parade isn't safe. It's just devastating for the families who have been impacted here. And what they described is apparently he was on the roof, just, you know, sniper style, taking people out, absolute, you know, terrorist act, really, to strike fear in

the heart of not only those people and take precious lives, but I think of the country as a whole. To your point about what a deranged psychopath obsessed with murder and violence this dude was, he released a track on October 15th, 2021, that seemed to indicate there was some life-defining event, act that was beyond his ability to stop. It includes drawings of someone aiming a rifle at another person. It also includes an image of a newspaper clipping about Lee Harvey Oswald, who, of course, according to official narrative anyway, assassinated JFK at a parade. And another image of a victim shot with blood spraying from the body, as you said. So he has his own discord. And I guess people would post a lot of like super nihilistic, some political, like nihilistic political memes there.

There was a different board that he posted the video of the beheading. And that board that he was a frequent poster on was explicitly dedicated to violent images of murder, suicide, and death. So this seems to be a completely deranged person, at least to this point. We don't know of any sort of political motivation.

His family was well-known in the town. Actually, his dad ran for mayor and lost in the town. And, you know, it's just horrific. It's just absolutely horrific. There's nothing else you can say. And I don't know what you do about someone like this. Who's just clearly obsessed with violence and death. The one political point I do want to make is there was this instant obsession with figuring out what sort of political lead this murderer might have. And he's like dueling debates online over whether he was you know what what his political like okay if it comes out this was

politically motivated then we can have the discussion but i hate the instinct always to try to score points like oh he was one of you guys so this has to do with you know all of this political category being evil or no no he was actually one of you guys. It's just another time where instantly these things happen and people want to try to score points for their like political partisan team rather than actually getting the bottom of what happened. Yeah, while people are literally still in the hospital and there's blood still on the street. I'll make one political point broke out this morning. We don't have a terror sheet for this, but apparently, and this is admitted now, this shooter was known to law enforcement. So there remains questions, as usual, with Buffalo, with many of these other people and their interactions with law enforcement in the past.

Like I said, Illinois does have red flag laws that are on the books. The gentleman's father apparently had admitted to close associates that his son had, quote, emotional problems, which it's all on video. You can see it. So neighbors and others describe him as riding an electric scooter around, blaring music, seeking attention. So this is clearly a deranged person who's basically making it known to the world online and clearly racked up millions of views with this type of content. And now we know that he was also, quote unquote, known to law enforcement by their own admission. This is from reporting in the Chicago suburbs from their local news outlets. And I think there remains to be a lot of investigation as to how exactly all of this played out and why previous instances didn't,

maybe he had been arrested before, you know, why hadn't been flag before. Why hadn't it been flagged? Why hadn't they done anything about it in the past? So I think all of that is going to remain to come to light. And like you said, I mean, you know, that type of discussion, it doesn't help anybody, unfortunately. So that level of obsession online is never there. It's not, oh, instead it's like, oh, did he tweet MAGA or whatever? I mean, by all accounts, he seems to have been a shit poster to the highest degree and just a deep nihilist. So I don't really think that's aligned with any real political movement outside of we have a deep sickness in the country. And it also

just shows you some of the deranged depths on which a lot of people on the internet get up to. So if you're out there and you're, you know, looking at this type of content because you think it's funny, you know, there are real consequences to some of these things. And I just think it's on everybody to look at that and also to, you know, remain and report things to law enforcement whenever there's such obvious red flags producing videos where you're, like you said, life-defining events and glorifying Lee Harvey Oswald and drawing cartoons of people getting killed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on there. Mr. Biden and his administration, which is also suffering from a lack of confidence. Some pretty extraordinary reporting coming out now of

mainstream outlets. And before I show it to you, I really think that this comes at a moment when even normie liberals who are like, vote blue no matter who, and you got to back up the Democratic Party brand because the Republicans are so much worse. Even they are seeing the failures of this administration. I really do think it's tied to the overturning of Roe versus Wade and just how manifestly unprepared they were, how lackluster the response has been in spite of having many weeks of warning and ability to sort of get their ducks in a row and know what the response was. They've basically, you know, done sort of less than nothing. And we'll get to that in a minute. But I think that's the context through which this reporting makes some sense and why it's coming right now. So the CNN piece is quite astonishing. I'm going to read you a good bit of this, including the lead,

which is there's a lot going on here. So they say, actress Deborah Messing was fed up. The former Will and Grace star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with the White House aides last Monday to discuss the overturning of Roe versus Wade. The mood was fatalistic, according to people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together. Messing said she had gotten Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn't even seem to be a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening. That afternoon, what did they get? They just got a follow-up email with some basic talking points and suggestions of Biden's speech clips to share on TikTok. So they use that as the lead to lay out this article of just how disenchanted regular

Democrats and people within Congress and within the White House are becoming with the Biden administration. They say top Democrats complain the president isn't acting with or perhaps even capable of the urgency the moment demands. Rudderless, aimless, and hopeless is how one member of Congress described the White House. Two dozen leading Democratic politicians and operatives, several within the West Wing, so in the White House themselves, tell CNN they feel this goes deeper than questions of ideology and posture. Instead, they say it gets to questions of basic management. They go on to detail some of the specific frustrations with the lack of response and lack of ability to respond to the overturning of Roe versus Wade. But put this next piece up. The Washington Post kind of had a follow-up piece to this. Their headline is

Democratic criticisms of Biden get louder and broader. The Washington Post kind of had a follow-up piece to this. Their headline is Democratic Criticisms of Biden Get Louder and Broader. The part that they really emphasize here, Sagar, is that piece about how there is a lack of managerial competence, that it's not just the ideology, but it's the questions of basic management. Because as we've been saying here for quite some time, Biden's central promise wasn't you're going to get the policy of your dreams and desires. It wasn't that he's going to be this transformational figure. It was the adults are going to be back in charge and we're going to have basic competence operating at the White House again. you see even that is completely falling apart. And predictably, by the way, if you followed what this man's career has been like in Washington and what his management style has been, now that this is being openly acknowledged in the papers, you know, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times has had similar stories to this. This is a dire moment for this president. This is not good for the president. He's had a kind of a leak-proof White House, so to speak. A lot of his people weren't

coming out against him. But even his own staff is pretty disgusted with his managing and handling of all this. And I think it's bigger than Biden. I don't think it's just Biden. I think it's the entire Democratic leadership. I was reading a really interesting story actually in Vox this morning, which is that there are a lot of staffers at the level who've been working on abortion now for a decade. And they're like, okay, look, we don't have the votes on Roe versus Wade. You know what we do have? We've got votes on rape and incest exceptions. We've got, or we could put Republicans in a very tough spot, you know, 90, 10 votes on many of these things. And we're not taking any of them. And they point to the fact that if you look in the past, they voted on preexisting

conditions before. They voted on, you know, carve out pieces of their broader legislation because they understood that they could codify that. And Republicans are shocked that they're not trying to put their bosses in any of these positions. Why is the president not doing that? So executive orders is another one. What really struck me was just the sheer lack of competence where they didn't have a statement or action ready to go on the day the decision came because they believed their White House counsel who assured them. He's like, hey, don't worry. The decision's not coming today. First of all, how would he even know? Second, you know, you should probably just plan just in case every single day. We certainly were, you know, the entire time. Didn't know if it was going to come. Had to prepare it just in

case. You know, we knew what to look for, et cetera. You and I were expecting the decision on that day. I mean, that's why you were ready to go and do a segment and get it out in the world. So, like, how is it that we know more than the White House knows about how this is going to unfold? I knew there was a 50% chance. I was like, oh, I think it'll probably drop later. There were only a few days remaining. It had to be one of, like, the next few days.

It was not rocket science. Listen, you know, it just shows you, they quote somebody saying it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall. And just over and over again, you're seeing a lot of people in the administration who are just really disgusted. Because abortion, it just, that's, you know, the normie lib. Obviously, that's what they're going to care about the most. But gas is a good one. You know, what is beyond shouting at gas stations and saying, please bring down this price.

Like, what have you done? Inflation on food. I mean, so many of the pressing issues. We're going to talk soon about polling later on in the show. But if you look further at the number one thing that Americans care about, it's 33% is inflation, 20-something percent is the economy, which is code for inflation. And I think number three is like food prices, which is also inflation. So we're talking here about 60 some percent of people are like, hey, I care about inflation. I want you to talk about inflation. I want you to do something about inflation, inflation, inflation, inflation. Where is the price? What is he doing all day? It's just seems completely feckless. He's either abroad, you know, unable to articulate any sort of vision, both for the world and for us here at home.

And he's floundering. I mean, I don't think we can overstate just how badly he's doing. And this all is going to culminate in the 2024 election. He's about to get shellacked, you know, probably, probably. And you're doing a midterm on this in the midterms. But regardless, it's going to not be a good showing. He has to come out swinging. The presidents in the past who've been able to win,

despite that Obama and Clinton really mounted a full force campaign in the last two years of their first terms in order to try and get reelected. I don't see a lot of that happening here with this pattern. Look, there's no doubt for voters, number one issue is economy, economy, economy. There's just no doubt about

that. But I do think the abortion issue is really key for this sort of like Normie Dems and liberal press turning on Biden. Because this is the issue that they have offered as like, this is the reason why you vote for Democrats, to protect women's right to choose. Like, this has been bedrock of Democratic politics for at least the past decade. And so, you know, first of all, when this happened, there was an instant realization of, when the leak came out even, there was this instant realization of, wait a second, Republicans were not quiet about what their goals were here. You knew this was where we were going. You've had opportunities in the past where you had majorities and supermajorities to codify this, to prevent this exact eventuality. And for some reason, you didn't do it. And then even, okay,

so the leak comes out and then they've got seven weeks to figure out, all right, this is coming. We see it. You know, we've got time to prepare. We can work with the pro-choice groups, figure out what our response is going to be, figure out some legislation we can put, how to divide the GOP caucus, which is like the most obvious no-brainer of all time. And instead, they're caught completely flat-footed to the point that, yeah, the person who's like the point person on responding was like out getting coffee when the decision came down.

No response really prepared. Still here we are, however many days and weeks later, and they still haven't really figured out what it is they're going to do. We had some conference call with governors and, oh, we're going to come up, you know, listen to them and get their ideas, and then we're going to come back to you. Still haven't seen any of those sort of action items come out of that meeting. So I think the fact that on this issue that has been really central to the Democratic message and ideology, that they have so clearly failed to meet the moment, I do think it's been sort of eye-opening for a lot of normie Democrats and the liberal press and has given them permission to take the gloves off and criticize in a way that they normally don't. I think the main thing is, and you're going to

be the major expert is, is to see Democratic politicians begin to turn against him at the state level is very, very significant. We just have a couple of poll numbers to show you that is the backdrop for all of this. Monmouth poll that just came out, put this up on the screen. We've got right direction for the country, 10%. Wrong track, 88%. That's as close to unanimous as you can possibly get. Biden's job approval rating, put the next piece up, now sinking to a new low in this particular poll, 36% approval rating, 58% disapprove. Look at that curve. It's insane. It's bad. And I mean, the thing for him is obviously the Republicans united in opposition to him. He's lost an overwhelming majority of independents, but he also has among self-identified Democrats, especially young ones who also are completely disenchanted. Now, those aren't people

who are going to vote for Republicans, but are they going to show up in the midterms? You know, this is a pretty devastating state of affairs the current president's facing. Total disaster. And the right track, wrong track, which, you know, is the one that I would focus on the most, at 88% wrong track, 10% right direction, that just shows you that they're in serious issue with the feeling of

chaos. And that's what I was getting to about gas and inflation. Everything is chaotic. We're talking about the airlines. Airlines are not functioning properly. It's like, is anything in American life working at all? And the answer is pretty much no. I mean, beyond what is things are expensive. You are seeing the businesses are in a very strange position because many of them at the same time have to pay very much for workers, which, you know, I think that's a good thing. But also, you know, from an inflation perspective, the smallest ones are getting hammered. Also, we're seeing reductions in consumer spending. We could very likely be in a recession. GDP is contracting. But again, we talked about this on Tuesday. I was like,

look, pull away from the technical stuff. Everything is just too expensive. Everything is chaotic. And that's why the wrong track number is going to be where it is. I think it's a huge, huge problem for the Democrats. But at the same time, you know, the generic ballot polling within this only showed the Democrats down by 2%. So it's not necessarily that people will say they'll automatically vote for Republicans. There's still a 2% margin. Again, you know, Chris Lozaga rule probably had like five because they generally underestimate Republican support in all of these polls basically since 2016. So I don't know where things actually stand. YouGov's polling moved eight points on generic ballot towards Democrats in one week.

So this is what the subject of my monologue, like the only thing that could possibly save Democrats from complete disaster is the Republicans who are doing their damnedest to prove to people that they are completely unfit to govern and that their views are like wildly outside of the mainstream and that they've like lost all touch with reality. So that's the only thing that the Democrats have going for them is that the alternative is, you know, bizarre and absurd. But, you know, I think back to Biden and the sense in the country right now, you have this sense of just sort of permanent decline that is set in, coupled with Biden's mission to defeat any sort of political imagination that you might have. Yes. So, you know, his response to everything is, we can't do that because of X, because of Y, that's not possible. It's, you know, there's basically nothing we can do about anything. That's his whole political ideology, seems to be centered around the idea of like, well, there's not really anything we can do about any of this. So when you couple that hopelessness with a situation that seems to be deteriorating in basic ways all the time, yeah, you're going to end up with 90% of the country saying we're on the wrong track. Let's go and talk about the airlines. So this is a very important

story and very interesting as well. So there's an ongoing war, as we've talked about, between the airlines who are blaming the FAA and then the FAA who is saying the airlines are completely full of it. And all of this is obviously resulting in these massive flight cancellations. So let's go ahead. Actually, let's put C2 up there first, please, control room, because here's what's happening, which is that United Airlines came out and put out a statement saying that they actually, what has happened is that they're blaming the FAA for not having enough staffing resources. They said that travel woes are continued to expect. They told their staff they're going to have more summer problems because air traffic controllers can't handle the amount of flights

and that that issue is causing flight disruption. However, they got fact-checked almost immediately in real time. So let's throw this up there. C1, please. Where the FAA basically smacked them down hard. Here's what they said. The department and the FAA appreciate airlines taking steps to improve informants, but clearly more needs to be done to reduce cancellations. It is unfortunate to see United Airlines conflate weather-related air traffic control measures with air traffic control staffing, which would deceptively imply that a majority of those situations are the result of FAA staffing. The reality is that

multiple overlapping factors have affected the system, including airline staffing, weather, high volume, and the air traffic control capacity, but the majority of delays and cancellations are not because of staffing at the FAA. On July 3rd and 4th, there were no FAA staffing-related days at all nationwide, yet airlines canceled 1,100 flights in those two days, a quarter of which were United Airlines flights. We will continue to meet our responsibility to hold airlines accountable, et cetera, et cetera. So they got fact-checked and smacked in real time by the FAA. And it just shows you there's a high level, basically a proxy war playing out. United and American and all the other major carriers, they don't want the wrath that

comes from consumers when they're canceling thousands and thousands of flights per day. It's total chaos right now in airports. Also, like I was talking about earlier, bag check. Nothing is working properly in these places. And they have been trying to blame the FAA now for days. And it's good to see actually the FAA actually come out and be like, no, that's actually completely not true. Because United is trying to tell both its stockholders and its staff it's not their fault. When, look, it's very clear here they have staffing problems that they are a result of their own making from forced retirements that they took COVID money in order to push people out. And also they are booking the money on flights that they basically know they can't fulfill. And so from a cancellation and legal perspective, it's chaos. And of course, outside of whoever this FAA guy is who put out

the statement, I don't see anything else from the Biden administration doing anything about it. Indeed. Pete, what's going on, Pete? What's going on, Pete? Yeah, because on top of all of that, the cancellations and I mean, they really, they needed to pare back their summer schedule. They don't have the staff to fly all of the flights that they put out to the public as available to book. That's the crux of the problem through their own choices after we bailed them out. That's the real major issue here is they

need to pare back their schedule and they were unwilling to do it because they're worried about their bottom line profit margins. But then to add insult to injury, when people are getting canceled and they're entitled to an actual cash refund, the airlines have also been caught trying to coerce people into taking miles instead of the cash that they're entitled to, basically trying to snow them, which was the subject of Pete's little travel agent tip, like, here's how you calculate your miles. So in terms of Pete and what he could do, we've covered here before, Senator Sanders put out a very specific proposal of fines that they could levy on the airlines when they cancel and delay passengers that would have some bite and discourage them from continuing to operate in what is really an unconscionable manner. Pete has now responded to that proposal. He says, quote, he hasn't seen

all the math come back on Senator Sanders' proposal to fine airlines for canceling and delaying flights that they knew could not be staffed. So he's still dodging and deflecting. You'll recall about a month ago, he gathered all the airline CEOs together and said, you better cut it out. And if July 4th weekend isn't good, there's going to be, you know, we're going to look at this again and we're going to see how it goes. Well, the stats came back. It was a disaster. And still he's, you know, doing basically nothing. It is a pathetic state of affairs. So, well, as much as I enjoy seeing the airline sort of like fact-checked and called out like this, I would really prefer to see them actually held to account and somebody with some power do something to curb their behavior, which has just created total chaos

for travelers this summer. Well, as a reminder, I mean, you know, Buttigieg does run the FAA. And I've said this, you know, look, call the airlines bluff, which is that get some air traffic control guys from the National Guard or whatever, put them in the towers and just say, fine, okay, here's all the staffing that you need. I suspect, and from everything I've read so far, it does not seem that the airlines are telling the truth here on why exactly all of this is happening. And really what it is, is that the cancellations are becoming a nightmare for connecting travel, which is snarling things even further. Because Newark Airport, which apparently is the most delayed airport in the country, makes sense every time I've flown out of Newark.

Like anywhere in the New York region. Yeah, New York is a nightmare. Anyway, so they have had to preemptively cancel flights. But part of the problem is whenever you cancel flights out of a hub, then you are going to miss your connecting flights. And then also there's been chaos, not just here, but also abroad. Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, and Dublin were also seeing major delays and cancellations as a result of similar staffing-related problems

because all of this stuff cascades globally. And you consider that, and there's just nobody who has their hand on the system trying to guide it in the right direction, which just leaves it basically up to the airlines who can rebook a flight, cancel the flight if they need to. So like, yeah, like you said, we've got the FAA. It's good that they're fact-checking them in real time,

but they have limited authority beyond the executive branch to actually swoop in and do something about this. Fine, you know, if Sanders' proposal goes too far, do something. I mean, I don't know why you can't do a quarter of it. Maybe it would help. Like, there's no plan right now. Also, people are reporting major wait times at a lot of these airports. Also, not just because of staffing issues, but obviously,

summer travel has bounced back. We're almost basically at pre-pandemic flight level. I have a flight later today, by the way. I'll report back to see how it goes. Now, what they're saying is that wait times are sky high. Also, in terms of the way that the airlines are running their boarding pass system and more, they're making people get paper boarding passes in some cases because they're refusing to assign seats. That's causing even more wait times at counters where there's limited amounts. So it's a real mess right now, I feel, for people who are traveling. Our friend Irami made a really good point to me that I want to share with you, which is he's like, you know how we look at other countries that have these systems of patronage where, you know, the brother, the cousin, the lackey, whatever. And it's like a sign of a totally corrupt, like failing government.

These people are put into jobs that, you know, they have no business doing because no one actually is like cares about good governance. They just care about holding on to power and their access to money. Pete is like the same thing. Yes. Remember when he was being considered for what they floated? Like, oh, you could have the Office of Management and Budget. And he was like, no, that's not high profile. I'm not big enough.

I want this one. He was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. And he wasn't even a good mayor. You know, we talked about that on our show. The people in South Bend were like, this is a shit mayor. You know, we have potholes all over the problem. We have police force issues. Like, it's a tiny town. No disrespect. But now here we are. And it turns out that this position that he was given as the, you know, as the payment for dropping out of the Democratic primary at the

time that Obama told him to. Oh, it turns out this job actually matters, that it actually is important, and that it has real responsibility, and that it has a direct impact on the quality of life in the country. And we've put this, like, you know, McKenzie Flunky, who can't see beyond, like, who has no idea how to actually govern and do the job in charge.

So, you know, it is the exact same type of thing where no one was under any illusion that Mayor Pete was qualified for this job. He got it purely as payback and patronage. Remember when Biden ran that ad during the primary making fun of Pete for like having no idea about any sort of infrastructure project, knocking him for like, oh, you put lights on the bridge. Way to go, Mayor Pete. And then that's the guy you put in charge. Yeah. Listen, it's rough times out there. Right now, we are seeing thousands of flights, 15% right now of summer flights are currently on track to be canceled and 12% of departures, like I said, out of Newark alone are being cut. And Newark is one of the biggest hubs in the U.S.

And on 4th of July weekend, there were 8.8 million passengers who were screened by TSA. I mean, that's a big part of the adult population in the U.S. Was on a plane over the weekend and faced all sorts of these problems. So it's just like gas. It's going to touch many, many households. And when you're traveling with kids, oh my God, it's such a nightmare, these delays and isolations. Joining us now, Rory Johnson. He's an energy analyst and he's the writer over at Commodity Context on Substack. I hope you guys go ahead and subscribe. We'll have a link down there in the description. Welcome back to the show, Rory. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me back on.

Of course, man. Okay. So there's wild swings going on in oil. First, it's down. Then people are saying it could hit 65 a barrel. As you were telling me right before you came on, now the price has gone up. What is going on with oil, Rory? Why are there all these crazy swings? Is it Wall Street? Is it supply?

Break it down for us. Yeah, so I think, you know, just to put in context for people that don't follow the market on a regular basis, the last month has been pretty terrible for crude oil. It was as high on a WTI basis in early June. It's $120. Then it fell kind of a couple of different times. And then two days ago on Tuesday, it just completely collapsed, the third largest daily decline in the market's history. So we're in this extreme volatility moment. I think there's

this open question is, you know, what's causing it? And I think it's a couple of things, but primarily the market is, you know, volatile because the fundamentals, frankly, and our understanding and outlook for the fundamentals are very, very volatile. We're jumping between these kind of extremely, you know, oversupplied moments in the early, in early pandemic too, we've been in this chronic undersupply environment for about the past 18 months or so. And inventories have come down at a record fast pace. So we're in a kind of a precarious environment overall, but that's, you know, within the backdrop of this, you know, overall recessionary risk. And at the end of the day, well, oil is

fundamentally a physical commodity that, you know, you and I put in our planes and our kind of cars and everything else. You know, it is also a financial asset. And what we're seeing right now is a lot of different actors trying to express those views, those macro views through oil. And, you know, oil is getting kind of tossed around the process with along, you know, with the rest of the market. Yeah. So speak to that a little bit more, because I think there's a layman's understanding out there that, you know, the price of a barrel of oil, it's the supply and the demand and where the two curves meet. That's what it is. But obviously, that doesn't make sense when you have these wild swings. Like the fundamentals can't shift minute

to minute and the basics of supply and demand can't shift like that minute to minute. So how much of these swings have to do with financial speculation? Break that down for us a little bit and also tell us whether, you know, whether you think that it's a healthy thing for the market of this commodity that we all really depend on, that it goes through these wild swings based on that speculation. Okay, so I'm going to break this down into two different sections here, because I think, you know, on the one hand, we're certainly seeing what I'm going to call a flush out of speculative positions. You know, crude doesn't move more than $10 a barrel a day without some kind of, you know, financial market positioning at play and people getting washed to those positions. So that's definitely, we have seen that, and particularly on the downsides,

as people kind of, you know, they're holding a crude position, you know, futures contracts or options down the curve. And for whatever reason, you know, prices come down too quickly, or there's this kind of broader recessionary macro fear, prices drop and then people all bail en masse. So that is happening. But at the same time, what's really interesting and what's been occurring since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when prices have been extraordinarily volatile, we've been trapped in this extremely high volatility regime, we've actually seen speculative interest in crude fall through that entire period. So we actually have less speculators in the market than we normally do. But what I think is,

and you were saying, you know, fundamentals don't change that quickly. And I agree on a minute-to-minute basis. And, you know, Tuesday's price action was obviously crazy and obviously some kind of speculative flush out. But I do think over the past, you know, three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, we have honestly been experiencing, you know, unprecedented changes day to day, headline to headline even in our expectations of fundamentals. So I do think to a degree that some of the volatility has been fundamentally justified. Unfortunately, you know, we go between, you know, Russia is going to lose three million barrels a day of supply, according to the EIA. And then, you know, later that day or later that week, you know, China locks down, you know, 60 percent of its economy. So we're seeing, you know, normally, you know, I've been in the industry about a decade.

Most of my time in the industry, we're talking about half a million barrels a day here, maybe a million barrels a day there. These are the kind of numbers we're talking about. This is kind of amplified by three or four fold, you know, now. And each kind of change in a headline can mean a huge change to, you know, your global supply-demand balance. So I think we are in this extremely high volatility fundamental regime. But, you know, as we're seeing, even if there isn't that much speculation, those speculators that do remain in the market can have, you know, weak hands in moments like this when there are so many fears of recession and people just dump their positions and kind of walk away, particularly for many of these funds that are involved. You know, it has actually been a relatively profitable trade. So they're taking money off the table. Okay. So Roy, in general,

let's look forward. What are some of the things people should look to that are going to affect not just the price of oil, but the price at the pump? What are some major events? I know EIA, you guys are looking at supply issues. Are there any major announcements or other policy maneuvers that could affect the global price? What do you think of that? Yeah. So I think, you know, breaking it again into two pieces. So we've had this crude oil crisis and we've also had this refining crisis. And we've talked about this a lot. And the idea is, you know, there aren't enough refineries anymore. COVID kind of spiked retirements in old refineries and delayed the coming online of new refineries.

So the crack spread or the refinery margin that you're paying at the pump is normally for a barrel of gas, you know, for a barrel of gasoline, somewhere like $15, $20 a barrel. It's been trading over $60 a barrel. So the first thing we hope to see over the course of this year is a normalization of those crack spreads and refining margins as more refineries come online that had been delayed by COVID. So that's the first thing. I think that is mostly going to be a good positive story for consumers of the pump kind of over the coming six months. Even, you know, over the last two days, we've already seen crack spreads come in about 25% from their highs, which is a fantastic news both for consumers and for the Federal

Reserve, which has been watching pump prices much more than usual because of this fear of an unanchoring of, you know, an unmooring of inflation expectations. But I do fear that the crude oil crisis is going to become worse again over time. And the reason for that is that, you know, by the end of the summer, OPEC is going to have returned all of the barrels it had planned to return. This is barrels that had still been held off the market from the initial early 2020 kind of emergency action that OPEC took to kind of save the oil market. So that's going to be coming to an end. The SPR, which has been, you know, been pumping between a million and a million and a half barrels a day, depending on how you count it, over the past month or two, and is expected to do that for the rest of the summer,

that will also come to an end. So that's kind of the equivalent of, you know, a small or even medium-sized OPEC producer kind of falling out of the supply balance again. And then, you know, and then all that together. And I think that, you know, we're still going to get demand that's going to continue to accelerate, again, absent some kind of truly deleterious recession or worse. And that's, I think, going to be particularly pronounced in China, where, you know, most of this year, the beginning of the year, we actually have seen reasonably weak global supply-demand balances because of these lockdowns in China. And, you know, crude oil inventories globally have kind of stayed still for a couple months after falling

at their fastest pace on record. My expectation is as that demand normalizes from a rollback of these kind of curtailment policies, but also as some of that supply starts to fall off, I think the crude oil balances are going to start tightening again. I think that's where you're going to see the action going forward as kind of refining kind of sorts itself out and kind of moves to the background. Got it. So bottom line, what do you think is going to happen with gas prices? In the near term, I think they're going to fall. And I think that's going to be a very, very positive thing going into driving season here. I think recessionary fears are still high. Obviously, crude oil is much lower than it has been and crack spreads as well. So I do think

that there is some kind of relief in, you know, over the next month or two for consumers at the pump. But then I think that things are going to, you know, take a turn for the worse again in the fall. And I think, you know, prices are going to begin rising again until we get more, particularly U.S. supply growth. And I think that will be the main, that'll be the only real kind of organic thing that's going to be able to bring the prices, crude prices down in a reasonable manner. Got it. Well, we can always count on you to actually break it down for us. As you know, I hit this guy up like every day being like, what is going on? I appreciate you telling the audience as well.

Like we said, commodity context, Substack. It'll be down there in the description, and we appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Big breaking news as of early this morning. Happened just this morning. We were looking over it last night. Didn't know what exactly the status was going to be. But Boris Johnson has officially resigned the office of prime minister in the United Kingdom.

He was speaking to the British people this morning. Let's take a listen. And to you, the British public, I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks. Them's the breaks, Crystal. I'll tell you what, I always loved Boris. Policy aside, he was a character. He really was a one ofof-a-kind British figure. He will not going

to see anybody like him in British politics again. Now, in terms of what this means, Boris has been in office for about three years after winning that pretty stunning election, which, you know, presaged what I thought could have been something interesting. But COVID really took him off the rails. All of these scandals kind of broke to the fore in the last 48 hours, where there were some decisions to snap ones by his cabinet members, and it led to a mass resignation in the last 48 hours by many of his most high-ranking ministers. All of them basically said they no longer had confidence in his ability to take the government. The biggest problem for Boris was he's just had scandal after scandal after scandal, which seemed very quaint here

in the United States. I think the biggest one was that he was drinking and having parties during COVID in like May of 2020. By the way, after he was in the hospital, which is unconscionable, but he was having parties, high government officials. He was actually fined by the UK police after the investigation found that he did, in fact, break lockdown rules. That kind of was just the beginning. Then he recently appointed somebody who'd been like accused of sexual assault or some sort of lewd, untoward behavior. But just in general, his standing within the Conservative Party has been in question now for some time. And the mass resignation, it does seem kind of planned. You know, two people came and then the rest of them went out. And so from now, what's going to happen is currently the British government is on something called summer vacation. And in the annual party

conference in the fall, there's a committee of the Conservative Party, which is going to vote and elect their new leader. And whoever that will be will become the prime minister of the UK because they do have, I believe they have two more years until there's another general election to be called there. But effectively, he's resigned the office today. They'll vote whoever his leader will be. I assume it will be in the next coming weeks or months. And then that person will succeed Boris Johnson as the next leader in the interim. Yeah. And he sort of wants to hang on until the fall, until they figure out his replacement. But there are a lot of calls for him to be gone basically immediately. I think one of his former aides said that there would be, quote, carnage if he wasn't out of there right away. And, you know, just candidly,

I don't follow this nearly as closely as some people do. But from reading into it, I mean, it seems like this is one of those instances where the cover-ups were worse than the crime. So it's not just that he had these COVID lockdown parties, which I did follow that scandal pretty closely because it had a lot of echoes with different politicians here in the U.S. who were totally hypocrites, who were pro-lockdown. Of course, the U.K. was on pretty stringent lockdown at the time. And not only is he having these weekly parties, but then out and out lying about it multiple times. One of his aides was caught.

They were caught sort of like making fun of the whole situation. And so that was one piece. And then with this latest scandal, which was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back, I suppose, not to minimize the seriousness of allegations here, but it wasn't just that this individual was accused of sexual harassment. It was also that there appeared to have been previous allegations that had been covered up by Boris Johnson. You layer on top of that, there were a number of other scandals within the conservative party of other sexual harassment, other sexual assaults, some of them horrifying, some of them just like bizarre, like some dude who was watching porn on his phone and the House of Commons. Like, what? So all of this added up to a picture of someone who was not trustworthy, who was caught repeatedly

lying to the public, covering up. And so, you know, Boris Johnson, he initially had this very sort of like buffoonish persona, which I think has sort of stayed with him. And this portrait of a very undisciplined, untrustworthy character is what ultimately seems to have done him in. They had 52 of resignations this week alone. One dude who he had just appointed on like Tuesday by Thursday was submitting his resignation.

So it became too much of a snowball effect for him to be able to withstand, even though as recently as yesterday, he was saying, I'm not going anywhere. In their system, it's very difficult. Whenever you know you might either lose a vote of no confidence or when you have no support amongst your party because you wouldn't be able to appoint anybody to your cabinet. So the cabinet there has a very interesting history

in the way that it works in terms of governance and the ability to balance your cabinet is not really the same as it works with ours. It kind of used to work that way in our system back in the 1800s before Abraham Lincoln was president. So anyway, it's an interesting system that they have. So that means that we will have a new PM. The conservative party gets to decide who that person will be. And then that person will most likely stand for a general election against the labor leader. I believe their name is Kerry Sturm. I can never say it correctly. Anyway, sorry, Brits. Anyway, we're tracking very closely. For our purposes and for the world, I actually do think this is a tremendously important development. And here's the reason.

Boris was probably the single most hawkish leader in Europe on Ukraine. So, of course, we covered the two stories here. Number one, whenever his meeting with Zelensky and others, he said, we're not interested in a peace agreement here at all. This was months ago, kind of in the middle of the fighting. And most recently, he took Emmanuel Macron over and said, hey, you need to stop this diplomacy and all this other stuff. So the

Anglosphere, if they do have somebody who is not as hawkish as Boris Johnson, and Boris, really, he was much more of a student of Churchill. He saw himself within that vein. And he very much was much more hawkish towards Russia than any other leader within, not in the EU, but, you know, of his EU compatriots, I guess, who he was also meeting. And alongside Biden, they were pushing the most stringent policy against Russia. So whoever they appoint, it's going to be very, very important to see how they approach the Ukraine conflict. Are they going to have the same policy towards that and actually, you know, could push things in a different direction? So for our purposes, I think that's probably the biggest takeaway. Also, remember, we do a tremendous amount of trade with the UK. We have a bilateral trade agreement that's coming up,

I believe, before Congress and others is being negotiated. So there's other interesting intersection areas as well. Yeah, that occurred to me as well, because the US and the UK have really been a united front in taking a uniformly hawkish approach to Russia's war in Ukraine, making it clear that they want the war to continue rather than trying to negotiate any sort of peace. As you said, Boris Johnson being very aggressive in conveying that to the French leader and very publicly telling everybody that he conveyed that to the French leader, even as the French said, well, that's not quite how it went. So the posture of whoever comes next is going to be incredibly significant to us and to what happens with that war we're going for. Do I expect there's going to be a tremendous shift? No, not really, because

ultimately, I think, you know, U.S. is driving this train, whether they should be or not. The U.S. is overwhelmingly sending the most amount of aid and weapons. And even as Biden loves to use this rhetoric of like, oh, we're just doing what the Ukrainians want. The truth of the matter is that the U.S. is driving the policy here and U.K. is very likely to continue to back us up. Yeah, I completely agree. So look, it'll be interesting. We'll see what happens and we'll keep everybody updated. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Sure. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

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