Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 7/31: Burn Pits Bill, Schumer-Manchin Deal, Pelosi Taiwan Trip, Abortion Vote, & More!

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the burn pits bill, Schumer-Manchin deal, Al-Qaeda leader killed, Pelosi's Taiwan trip, China's escalation with Taiwan, Kansas abortion vote, & 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/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's start with the burn pits. This obviously has become a massive cultural touchstone. I think it should. Jon Stewart single-handedly is the person responsible for advancing this legislation. Before that, there were thousands of people afflicted with all kinds of crazy neurological conditions, health conditions, breathing conditions, having been exposed to these toxic burn pits.

And just, you know, again, if this is your intro to what exactly a burn pit is, in Iraq and Afghanistan, throughout our 20 years of experience there, we would just simply put stuff into these pits, everything from human excrement to weapons to all kinds of just leftover stuff, and then light it on fire with jet fuel. And then, by the way, just post-U.S. troops all around it, either guarding it or within the immediate vicinity. Nobody on Earth can tell you that that's going to be good for you. And as we saw post 9-11, thousands of people years later are really suffering. And from the beginning, the Veterans Affairs Department has been terrible in appropriating funds to the toxic burn pick victims. They haven't recognized it fully as a condition. There's all they blame, you know, complex bureaucracy. And so Congress did what they're supposed to do, which is they

need to appropriate money and they need to make sure that these victims are recognized by U.S. law and are given the care that they deserve the years after, after we put them in harm's way. Now, we had thought that this is called the PACT Act, was a done deal. It was 82 to 14 vote, had passed the Senate and went to the House. There were some small changes that were added within the House of Representatives, and it was kicked back over to the Senate for what was expected to be a routine vote. However, Republicans now, under Senator Pat Toomey, are leading a charge to actually block the bill. So

let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. 41 Republican senators blocked that bill to expand the health care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Now, the objection here, the objection is that from Senator Toomey and apparently backed by many Senate Republicans, is that a specific accounting measure within the bill would supposedly spend the same money twice. And according to Toomey, this is not actually backed up by some several independent analyses, would enable hundreds of billions of dollars in new unrelated spending on the discretionary side of the federal budget. Mitch McConnell, Pat Toomey, and others somehow discovered this in the immediate aftermath,

Crystal, of Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer finding a deal on the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. It's actually just a climate. I think they should just call it what it is, which is an electric vehicle subsidy plus new tax credits. But that's fine. I'm completely fine with those things. Anyway, go ahead. So yes, that is the important context, is Republicans were in the midst of a total hissy fit temper tantrum over the fact that number McConnell had come out and say, listen, if you guys are going to go forward with the reconciliation deal, I'm going to tank the CHIPS Act, which let's, by the way, take a moment to step back and think about the total insanity

of that. Why does this legislation have anything to do with this legislation over here? If the CHIPS Act is a good bill that you think is good for the country, why would you hold this hostage? But anyway, he had made that threat. So they kept it quiet. Democrats uncharacteristically actually kept their mouths shut and had a smart strategy. Hours after the CHIPS Act passes through the Senate, then it's revealed that this Manchin-Schumer deal comes out. Republicans are irate. They're melting down. They're so mad.

They're not used to actually having Democrats have three brain cells to rub together and like actually have a decent strategy. They whip against the CHIPS Act in the House. That's part of the retribution, but it still gets through the House. They still have enough Republican defectors in the Democratic caucus stays together. So lo and behold, the next thing they do is decide to block this bill. Now, let's be really clear, because to me, in fairness, was opposed to this bill last time it came through and has always apparently been hung up on this stupid accounting thing, which it's just the difference between designating this money as mandatory versus discretionary. Well, guess what making it mandatory does? It means that these veterans are going to be able to count on it versus having to come back and continue to beg

hat in hand, as Jon Stewart ultimately puts it, to be able to access these benefits and prove that they're worthy of our support after serving our country. So this accounting piece has always been in this bill. There was an impression that Democrats had like snuck this in at the last minute and tried to pull one over on the Republicans. No, no, no. This is the very same bill that sailed through last time. What was it? Eighty four people voted for it. Thirty some Republicans flipped their votes on the identical bill as part of their hissy fit over the Manchin Schumer bill. I mean, that is the only logical conclusion you can come to, given the fact that it is literally the same thing that they voted for

just weeks ago. Absolutely. And this is something that Jon Stewart, to his credit, has been using both his celebrity, his platform, travel to Washington. He's making sure that everybody who can is hearing about this and is drawing attention to what previously would have just been arcane Senate procedure and some ridiculous objection and now drawing it to the center of public attention. Let's hear what he had to say. I don't even know. Honestly, I don't even know what to say. I haven't come down here 10, 15 years. I'm used to the hypocrisy. Christina Kino tell you from BFW, she sat in an office with Mitch McConnell and a war veteran from Kentucky, and he looked that man in the eyes, and he said,

we'll get it done. And he lied to him, because Mitch McConnell yesterday flipped. I'm used to the lies. I'm used to the hypocrisy. Senator Pat Toomey won't take a meeting with the veterans groups. Sends out his chief of staff. I'm used to the cowardice. I've been here a long time. Senate's where accountability goes to die. These people don't care. They're never losing their jobs. They're never losing their health care. Pat Toomey didn't lose his job. He's walking away. God knows what kind of pot of gold he's stepping into to lobby this government to shit on more people. I'm used to all of it, but I am not used to the cruelty. I mean, there's not a lot you can argue with there. Senator Toomey is retiring. He has been probably one of the number one friends of corporate

America in the United States Senate, which I've always found insane because he is from the state of Pennsylvania. It's a great actually preview into how you can use culture war politics, actually economically punish your own state whenever you're a senator and actually get reelected. So it's kind of a mystifying and interesting test case. Ron Johnson is another one who fits in this category. But these two gentlemen, economic libertarians, really to their core, will it be any wonder when he leaves and he gets, you know, fettered by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and he becomes a lobbyist for some Fortune 500 company? No, it won't. And he is exactly right in pointing that out. What I think beyond to me, though,

is that, as you pointed out, this has been a part of the bill from the beginning. They didn't care when 82 to 14 of them voted for it. Right. And then they flipped overnight. That was the thing that is Steve Daines and Ted Cruz and many others were seen fist bumping on the floor of the Senate

after blocking this. And again, this is done solely as a political move that they happen to just wake up to at the 11th hour and are now saying, oh, well, unless this gets fixed, then we're not going to go through with it, effectively holding it hostage. And again, to the actual implications, I mean, do you remember all those times that they also played footsie with 9-11 healthcare workers funding? Why should we keep putting people through this? Making it mandatory, which we do have for many things, especially for the elderly, they'll never actually vote against that, at least on the record, they won't vote against that one. But we have this arrangement for people who we have decided that we owe.

I mean, who else could we find that we owe as much as people who were their 9-11 first responders or those who were afflicted with a terrible health condition as a result of serving their country and serving overseas in a war that they shouldn't have been in the first place? And if they are, then we sure as hell should do everything we can in order to help them. And I think there's a couple other things to say about this. Number one, I know there's probably a lot of people who look at Jon Stewart as like a partisan actor. But remember, we played, I think we played the interview he did with Dennis McDonough, who's the head of the VA. And he was very harsh with McDonough, who had no good answers on this.

And it is a travesty that what it takes in America to just get the basics of what you are owed is to have a celebrity who's willing to, you know, go and do the interviews and hold people's feet to the fire and shame these legislators into doing the right thing after decades of dragging their feet. It's the exact same thing with the 9-11 survivors. It took Jon Stewart coming out and shaming the lawmakers into thing with the 9-11 survivors. It took Jon Stewart coming out and shaming the lawmakers into finally doing the right thing. And now it looks like he had been able to do the same thing effectively with toxic burn pit victims. And there's also money in here for people who are still struggling with Agent Orange as well. All the money in this bill,

just to be really clear, because I saw a lot of misinformation online about this, all of this money goes to veterans who have suffered conditions because of their service. That's it. That's the whole bill. There's not all this extra this and that and poison. No, it's just money for veterans who have served the country and who have illnesses because of it. The current system, the reason why they're not able to get health care for these rare cancers and other conditions they've developed is because they have to prove that that condition came directly from the burn pits. How the hell are you going to do that? Okay, that's impossible. But when you look at the type of toxic chemicals that they were exposed to, it has been scientifically proven

that these things are cancer causing. So this is the very, very least that we owe these people. And let's be clear, we will never be able to make it up to them. There is no making this thing right. This is the bare minimum of what we can do. And then as I always do, I have to point out the fact that, you know, people who are affiliated with the State Department came up with this Havana syndrome thing, which is thoroughly unproven, which, you know, the sound that they said was associated with

turned out to be crickets. The agency's own analysis says this is probably not any, you know, Russian brainwave, like, weapon or whatever they were theorizing. I wonder what the vote

was in the Senate to appropriate money for Havana syndrome sufferers. This thing, that sailed through, and yet these veterans are having to fight tooth and nail to get the basics of what they deserve. All right, let's give you an update on the Manchin-Schumer climate bill that is the cause of the Republican temper tantrum. Jeff

Stein and others have some reporting into the days leading up to this deal being struck between Manchin-Schumer. This is from the Washington Post. Let's put this up on the screen. So apparently, Democrats, you know, they threw everything at the wall to actually try to persuade Manchin guilt, shame, whatever, you know, calling in Larry Summers and Bill Gates to make the case to him that now is the time to act and that if they don't act right now, you're potentially talking about, you know, decades before you'd be able to really move in a significant way on climate, because there's a recognition that Democrats are not going to have the House, the Senate and the White House for probably past November.

And who's who knows when they may end up back in this situation? So, you know, they talked about how Chris Coons, Senator Chris Coons, of course, is close to Joe Biden, was on a trip trip with Manchin. And he said to him, there are folks in our party who are saying all sorts of terrible things about you who believe you were stringing us along for a year, that you were never going to come to a deal because of your state or because of your conflicts of interest. And Coons then told Manchin, I can't think of a better way for you to prove them all wrong than to sign off on a bold climate deal, prove every credit wrong and mansion thought

for a second and responded it would be like hitting a homer in the bottom of the ninth so calling in larry summers calling in bill gates there was a funny part too because just three days before this deal was announced uh former trump advisor stephen moore remember that dude profusely thanked mansion on a call i'm reading from the article for blocking or this is actually from jeff stein's tweet for blocking these climate energy deal. Quote, I said something to the effect of you're a hero. Thank you for what you've done. You've saved the country. And then days later, this deal is ultimately announced. David Dayen, who I spoke with last week for Crystal Collins and Friends, his theory, which I kind of buy, is that, you know, for Manchin being like trashed by

climate activists, he didn't care about that. But you were starting to have an elite consensus around him being a real villain. And he was not prepared for sort of elites at, you know, the New York Times and Washington Post editorial board to fully turn against him in that way. And that sort of shamed him into doing something here. Yeah. I mean, look, again, I will say in terms of this bill, there is not a lot to hate if you do look at it. Pretty, look, if you think about it in terms of spending, this isn't unpaid for. This is just raising the minimum amount that 200 corporations of the United States will have to pay. It's also, here's an interesting thing. Anytime you see a corporation who's coming out and is saying that this is going to have an undue effect on their business, they're just admitting that they pay less than 15% in taxes a year.

Because all this does is say, hey, no matter what, you just have to pay a minimum of 15%, which means they're gamifying the tax system and are not paying 15% a year. 15, again, which is way lower than the rest of the industrialized world. We talk a lot here about, oh, America has the highest corporate tax. Most people never pay the corporate tax rate. And all of these people are admitting that they are paying less than many countries, some of the most business-friendly countries on earth. So just keep that in mind whenever people object, which is the main revenue raiser in that bill. So that's like $300 billion. Majority of that money is going towards tax credits, both for electric vehicles, sustainable home improvements, and energy neutral tax credits. I just want to emphasize that again, which is that while yes, it is very

annoying to me that much of the nonprofit industrial complex is obsessed with wind and with solar, you can't gamify carbon emissions. And when so, nuclear will finally be able to be put to the test against all the others, geothermal included, biomass, et cetera. It really will just be a game in order to prove on paper, you're like, hey, our energy source is most efficient per capacity and more. Now, of course, we should look at the criteria. And if there is a rigged criteria, you know, happily we call that out. But remember, this is going to be across likely bipartisan administrations and will be doled out on a basis to really just try and lower carbon across the board. On top of that, it actually, according to Rewiring America, which is a non-profit dedicated to electrification from what i could

tell it's not one of those like hippie ones says that most people will save eighteen hundred dollars a year on their annual energy bill within five years that's a lot of money i think that that's a significant benefit towards people and in general look on the evs thing you know i'm a huge ev guy i think they're awesome and I also recognize that given lithium batteries and all that, it's never going to be, we're probably not going to live in a place where everybody can drive an electric vehicle. However, A, making it more affordable is actually a way in order to instigate our companies and our country to get our hands on the critical part of the supply chain so we can start onshoring some of that, which is really only going to be bolstered by demand.

But two, as long as we do it both on the consumer side with electric vehicles and making sure those EVs aren't powered by coal or by natural gas or some sort of high carbon emitting source and from something which is higher capacity and which is low carbon, then it's a better overall system. I mean, a 30% reduction is huge. That's what people always point to with natural gas. It was 50% from coal. Well, if we can go another 50, that's dramatically not only good in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and all of that, but bottom line, this will make better, good technology cheaper and make the electricity that goes into those cheaper and more sustainable as well, which I think these are all net positives. And again, you're not spending one dime in deficit spending to do any of this. No, they're actually one of the requirements, which is, you know, it's annoying to me. But

if you were going to get a deal with Joe Manchin, there were going to be parts of it that I wasn't going to like. But it actually reduces the deficit by, I think, $300 billion. That was a requirement for him in doing this deal. And I do think it's worthwhile spending a few minutes on exactly what is in this. Again, there are some things in here that I could nitpick, like the EV tax credits are means tested, which is annoying. Why not just do it for everyone? Whatever. OK, so that's one thing. There are some incentives in here just to, you know, for you to understand what.

And we actually we have an article about this. We can put up on the screen that has some of the climate provisions here. Incentives, including rebate programs and tax credits that are meant to encourage home improvements that would increase energy efficiency and use more clean energy technologies. For example, the homes rebate program would reward eligible households for energy savings. People would typically receive $2,000 if they make changes that save them 20% or more on overall energy costs, would encourage home electrification projects and efficiency upgrades, provide funding for owners or sponsors of eligible affordable housing to be

able to make their properties more energy and water efficient. So as you were pointing out, all of this together amounts to a significant rebate for sort of, you know, your average consumer out there, which is really significant. So you have that piece. You have the revenue raiser. Is this what they call the 15 percent minimum book tax, which means they actually look at their financial statements and base it off of what they're telling their investors they're making versus the games they play with regards to the IRS. Even that is not quite as advertised because they can still take some tax credits because they were worried about the energy efficiency tax credits being not as effective as they could if they couldn't still take this. So there's still some wiggle room there. But overall, that's going to be a significant

revenue raiser. You also have increased IRS tax enforcement. And then you have they claimed and this one is also very different from advertised. They claim they're closing the carried interest loophole. Not really true. They're modifying, making it harder for them to profit from the carried interest loophole. This is this big tax break giveaway that benefits private equity ghouls by and large. So they're playing a little bit of games there. They're not really closing the loophole. But ultimately, you know, this is, I guess, better than leaving it as it is. Breaking news this morning, which is that the Biden administration and the president himself announcing that a major terrorist target has been taken out by drone strikes.

Yeah, let's get to that. It's pretty amazing news, actually. So Ayman al-Zawahiri, some people may not know who he is. He was the leader of Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed back in 2011. Zawahiri was the founder of Al-Qaeda, basically one of the fathers of radical Islam, a disciple of Saeed Qutb. He was killed in a drone strike in Kabul. That's according to the president who spoke late last night. Let's take a listen. He carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens, American service members, American diplomats, and American interests. And since the United States delivered justice to bin Laden 11 years ago, Zawahiri has been a leader of al Qaeda, the leader. From hiding, he coordinated al Qaeda's branches

and all around the world, including setting priorities for providing operational guidance that call for and inspired attacks against U.S. targets. He made videos, including the recent weeks calling for his followers to attack the United States and our allies. Now, justice has been delivered. And this terrorist leader is no more. Lots to say about this, Crystal.

There really is. Really interesting. I mean, he was killed in downtown Kabul, so not a great look for the Taliban, who clearly were harboring him or at least knew where he was. However, it also does say a lot about our Afghan policy. It's August 2nd, 2022. It's been almost 21 years exactly since 9-11. Zawahiri himself was somebody who rose to prominence in al-Qaeda in the 90s and actually began his radical journey in the 70s and the 80s. I actually encourage people, we were talking before the show, a Gen Z fan had reached out to me and was like, I literally don't know who this guy is.

He was born after 9-11, which is crazy. Yeah, we take for granted these are like household names. They're not anymore. They were household names to you and I. I mean, but The Looming Tower, which I highly recommend people go and read by Lawrence Wright, gives you a deep history into Zawahiri and kind of his intellectual foundations. There is no Al-Qaeda without Ayman al-Zawahiri. There's also no 9-11 without him. A lot of the directed attacks against the United States and the ideology underpinning bin Ladenism and more is solely his responsibility. On the Afghan policy, it's very interesting. So first of all, I was told that it was impossible for the U.S. to conduct counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan without troops on the ground. Well, not only, I mean,

look, from what we know about this drone strike so far, and it's not like we have a great track record in Afghanistan, this drone strike literally only killed him and two Taliban senior operatives in a specific room in this house in Kabul. So clearly there were assets on the ground that were helping coordinate this. Again, this is an official narrative. From what I can tell, it seems to be true from pictures that were taken in the downtown area of Kabul. But also, this is being used by some neocon hawks as justification for why we should still be in Afghanistan. As if the previous status quo, where he was obviously living in Pakistan and we couldn't do anything about it, was somehow preferable. So that's just my immediate reaction to this. The Afghan part, I think, is really important. First of all, I'm going to reserve judgment if this drone strike was actually

executed in the manner that the administration has said, because they've been caught just blatantly lying before about drone strikes and what the civilian collateral damage was. So I'm not taking their word for anything on that. We'll wait for independent evidence to come out on that piece. That's number one. Number two, it really says a lot about our failed 20 year war in Afghanistan that we're actually able to take this guy out after we leave. That's kind of crazy. I mean, that actually to your point about like apparently when we were there and he's in Pakistan, couldn't do anything. But now and also, you know, under the Taliban, he clearly felt like he could live in downtown Kabul. No big deal. And it was going to be fine. So quite quite a brazen act from him. But it does call into question what exactly we were doing in Afghanistan for all of these years.

Because remember, while there was massive mission creep and ultimately, you know, the mission ended up being, no one could really even explain what the mission was, but it had clearly grown from the beginning origins of why we went there. But the whole idea of going into Afghanistan was to avenge 9-11, bring the perpetrators to justice. And so if it took us leaving Afghanistan to actually accomplish that goal, you know, again, raises some serious questions about what the hell we were doing there all of these years, not to mention it again underscores the failure of the policy that the minute we leave, the Taliban feels perfectly comfortable to harbor the very people that, you know, we told them and they had allegedly

agreed not to harbor. So it shows you how little we accomplished during those years other than devastating the civilian population, our own loss of life, massive, massive spending and propping up the worst ghouls around the Beltway in terms of the military industrial complex. But, you know, there was also there was a piece from Spencer Ackerman at his newsletter, Forever Wars, where he writes about, OK, so Biden presents this as this is the, you know, the latest innovation in the war on terror. And this is sort of a proof of concept. And he says, like Obama with Osama bin Laden, Biden did not portray Zawahiri's death as an end to the war on terror, but instead as a kind of a proof of concept. But what did it prove and what is the concept? Because again, if the whole idea of the war on terror was to get the guys who, you know, murdered and massacred our

civilians, our citizens on 9-11, okay, you've done it. You got Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri was arguably even more responsible for 9-11 in terms of being the mastermind than Osama bin Laden. The war on terror has always been used by Republican and Democratic presidents, Bush, Obama, Trump, now Biden, to basically have carte blanche to wage war and do whatever illegal actions and drone strikes they want all over the world with no end in sight. And so this would be a clear time to say, hey, guys, we did it. The original goals have now been accomplished. Here's what we're transitioning to. But of course, that's never what they're interested in doing. Instead, this is seen as a beginning rather than of an end. Yeah. I mean, it's really, like I said, 21 years in order to kill somebody should have been dead 21 years ago. I mean, we invaded Afghanistan, I want to say October of 2001.

So two months after, or more than a month, I think a month and a half after 9-11 is when the first U.S. troops were actually on the ground there. The Battle of Tora Bora was shortly afterwards, where we clearly should have gone in and risked really everything. And I'm being honest here, like many American soldiers would have died, probably a lot less though, that died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And that was part of the reason that we didn't end up going for it. But if we had done so, bin Laden and Zawahiri would be dead. And many of the conversations and ills that we have in our society today really would just not exist. So it is a massive failure for the war on terror that it took 21 years in order to kill Zawahiri. It also calls into a major question all of our entire 20-year experience in Afghanistan. What was the point that it took us leaving for us to be able

to kill him? Everybody knew he was living in Pakistan. Everyone. Nobody wanted to risk another bin Laden situation where you go in and in the dead of night and almost risk getting U.S. troops getting shot by Pakistani fighter jets. That's the only of what the hell we've been doing for the last 20 years. I mean, look, I'm glad he's dead. I'm glad he's dead ahead of the 9-11 anniversary. I hope it gives some closure to the people who are families. KSM is the last one who's alive, and he's in Guantanamo Bay. But it is a fascinating closure on our history. I was talking about the Gen Z comment.

Many people have no idea who this guy is, and that's really bad because it also – they have no political, intellectual buy-in because they didn't have to live with what you and I did, the growing up of – we all knew the leaders of al-Qaeda. And every time al-Qaeda number three or whatever was captured, it was like a big piece of news. But that's long gone in our history. So waiting so long for these things to happen, it's actually very bad just from a societal point of view. I actually don't think it's a bad thing that Gen Z doesn't have this direct formative experience that we had. You as a very young person and me, this was when I was in college that all of this started. And so it's been all of my adult life because just like millennials have a different and fresh and less like jaded and propagandized view of the Cold War. Gen Z has a sort of fresh arm's length distance perspective on the war on terror, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the Middle East in general. And I don't actually think that that's

a bad thing because it's hard to know when you're coming up in that era how much of the media that you're consuming is actually propaganda. Like it's even try as you might to have a lot of skepticism and not just sort of imbibe whatever the cultural narrative is. It's impossible to escape that unless you just weren't subjected to it from the beginning. So I don't think that's a bad thing. But yeah, I mean, it's a moment to reflect on the failures of across multiple administrations of the lies that were told to the American people about what exactly we were doing in these countries. I think it's also a moment to reflect on our continued policy vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia, which has brought Biden right back to the table with them in a way that he said he wasn't going

to be. So our policy with regards to the Middle East hasn't really changed over all of these many years. And perhaps most importantly, to ask, what does this mean in terms of where we're going now and what powers we continue to allow these administrations to hold to get us into wars without even, you know, there having to be a war declared. We've covered here many times the way that this has been used to justify troops on the ground and places that you didn't vote for. There was no public debate about that secret that we don't even know about.

Half of the things that the military is up to around the world right now. So it's ultimately, you know, very significant in thinking about the trajectory of all of this policy and where it's going from here. I would hope it's a bookend like Spencer writes, but unfortunately, it's probably not. It's not. Okay, that's an opening, obviously, to what's happening right now, the major story across the globe, Nancy Pelosi and her visit to Taiwan. Her jet is literally in the air as we speak, military jet flying over the South Pacific. And she apparently will be escorted by U.S. military planes into Taiwan along with Taiwan's air defense force. So let's go and put this up there on the screen from the Financial Times.

Some very significant reporting. They were the first to not only officially confirm that Nancy Pelosi will visit Taiwan, but she will be meeting with the Taiwanese president on Wednesday. Remember, they're significantly ahead of us in terms of timing, so it's a little bit off in terms of the dates and what we're referring to. Now, this is an extraordinarily significant visit. Just to lay out, Nancy Pelosi is the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in the last 25 years. The last time that a U.S. speaker visited Taiwan was 1997 when Newt Gingrich went over there. Now, a lot has changed in the last 25 years. China has been saying this is an extraordinarily escalatory move on behalf of the United States.

And it's caused a real diplomatic, frankly, problem for the Biden administration. Because really what it is, is that let's put this on the screen. After the Pelosi visit was announced, you'll recall shortly before Biden went ahead and got COVID, he was asked on the rope line at the White House. And he said that the military believes it's, quote, not a good idea for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan at the moment. That also came, this is in the Financial Times piece, that Jake Sullivan and other senior U.S. military officials, along with the intel community, actually visited Pelosi in order to try and dissuade her from visiting Taiwan, saying, listen, it's a bad time right now. What's

happening is that, and I think the audience should know this as well, China is, just because it's an authoritarian country, does not mean they don't have domestic politics. COVID zero was a nightmare and a disaster for a significant part of the Chinese population. Just like we had lockdown problems, they had lockdown problems. Their economy is also in turmoil. They're having literal riots in the streets over people who are rioting over the fact that their mortgages, they're trying to pay their mortgages, but buildings aren't being built. We talked previously about Evergrande and the Chinese real estate bubble. Oh, they're housing market crash, like 40% a month. It's difficult for us to comprehend just how precarious things are right now in China. They also have rolling energy blackouts. Beijing has had significant problems. So anyway,

the domestic populace in China is not 100% happy with the regime of Xi Jinping. At the same time, right now is a very critical time for the CCP and for Xi specifically. We are leading up to a fall meeting in which Xi is going to declare for either historic third term or be made president for life. So Xi has to pacify significant parts and political constituencies within the Chinese Communist Party. People here may not be able to get it, but think back to the Soviet Union. Yes, the Soviet Union was an authoritarian regime, but you still have domestic politics as how they exist of the military, the KGB, different constituencies within the Politburo. That is what the CCP is like today. You don't

just, you know, just because you're the leader doesn't mean that you answer to nobody. There are different power centers within these different regimes. So Xi has to look at and pacify those. Now, the difference too is that, remember, this is China. They have a different system of government. So they view this not as a visit by Nancy Pelosi in open defiance as a co-equal branch of government of the president of the United States. They view this as a clear message by the Biden administration and are saying, listen, if this was John Boehner or a GOP speaker, we would hate it, but we would maybe get it. But she's in your party. They refuse to believe that Pelosi is coming here in defiance of President Biden of the U.S. military. They simply don't, they don't believe that such a system could even exist. And actually,

the White House even acknowledged that yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. John Kirby is a Pentagon spokesperson, assuming the podium, saying he, quote, made clear Congress is an independent branch of government and Speaker Pelosi makes her own decisions. That was in a phone call that lasted over two and a half hours between President Xi and Biden just a couple of days ago. So major diplomatic crisis on our front. And the administration, Crystal, is reiterating over and over again. They're like, listen, this is an independent branch of government. It's up to Nancy Pelosi. Nothing about our Taiwan policy has changed. So let's go ahead and take a listen to

that. We have been clear from the very beginning that she will make her own decisions and that Congress is an independent branch of government. Our constitution embeds a separation of powers. This is well known to the PRC, given our more than four decades of diplomatic relations. The Speaker has the right to visit Taiwan, and a Speaker of the House has visited Taiwan before, without incident, as have many members of Congress, including this year. The world has seen the United States government be very clear that nothing has changed, nothing has changed about our one China policy, which is of course guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint US PRC communiques and the six assurances.

I've repeatedly said that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We have said that we do not support Taiwan independence and we have said that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means. being seen, and we're about to get to this, as an extraordinarily eschatory move on behalf of the CCP. And just, Crystal, I just want to say, I think the biggest problem with this is Nancy Pelosi going here to Taiwan has nothing to do with principle. This is about her wanting to, quote, cement her legacy before the waning days of her speakership, because she knows she's not going to be speaker anymore. And she enjoys being feted as a head of state. That's why she's always abroad on a military plane going to go meet the Pope in the Vatican or whatever. Yeah. So that my biggest

problem with this, there's no strategy behind this. You are literally escalating tensions with a nuclear armed power and arguably the world's only other superpower for your own vanity when the president of the United States and the military don't want you to go. So it's a trip of vanity. And look, it could cause it could cause some serious problems. I really. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. That's one explanation. I mean, I can't say 100 percent that the Chinese are wrong here because it is astonishing to see the speaker just in open defiance of the president who is the leader of the Democratic Party. So I'm not 100 percent sold on their narrative like, oh, Jake Sullivan, when we don't want her to go, et cetera, et cetera, because part of the context here is you also have to remember that Biden has multiple times,

not just one slip up, but multiple times said directly that the U.S. would intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan, which is a different policy than the strategic ambiguity that has long been the sort of diplomatic posture for years, for decades at this point. So when I look at that, and again, he was pressed on it and he was as clear as he could be before then walking it back. The White House walked it back. He never walked it back. That's our issue. That's right. So when you hear that rhetoric from the president of the United States, and then you see the Speaker of the House, who is of his same party, taking this trip very intentionally and in a very provocative way, like ultimately China is responsible for Chinese actions if they were to invade Taiwan or do anything else that was escalatory. But this is a very provocative move. I don't blame them for looking at that and assuming that this is backed and sanctioned by the Biden administration.

And one potential explanation is this is Nancy Pelosi on a vanity tour and she has long been a major supporter of Taiwan and been very provocative in her actions with regards to that. But another explanation is actually the Biden administration does want this and is OK with it. I don't think it's crazy to ultimately think that either way. It's a disaster. It's an utter it's just an unnecessary provocation, creating a potential crisis for literally no reason with no clear strategy behind it. I thought Michael Tracy made a good point. He says simultaneous knife edge brinksmanship with multiple nuclear armed powers, anyone's idea of a rational foreign policy, because that's the other context is it's not like we can focus all our energy and attention

on this region of the world. Personally, I think the CHIPS Act and reshoring critical supply lines, that to me is the best China policy, not these provocative escalatory moves. And, you know, I don't support them in general, but I especially extra don't support them when we're already engaged in a proxy war with a nuclear armed superpower. So this is as foolish as it can get. The only just—I have yet to see a single smart justification of this that doesn't just resort to, like, we've got to be strong kind of stuff that really is utterly meaningless nonsense. The only justification for it is now that she has done such a foolish move, she can't back down as a result of Beijing policy, which is, I think, like, personally, I'm going to bet on the Pelosi ego every time. I mean, I'm not sure exactly which is worse, her being a narcissist or this being some sanctioned plan by the Biden

administration. As we said- It almost doesn't matter because of how the Chinese are perceiving it. Exactly. And that's actually, look, we're not the ones ultimately who get to set the narrative. They are responsible also for their actions. We should keep in mind how they view the world, even if you think it's unjust. And that's actually part of the issue, which is that in a give and take of foreign relations, you always have to consider what does the other person think in their cultural context, in their political moment, and more. So this comes at a very bad time. Pelosi, if it is true that the administration asked her not to go, and she decided to go anyway in the U.S. military, I do tend to believe that just because when is the

last time you saw even the military and people in that being like, yeah, this is not so good of an idea. The intel community and others coming out and leaking just exactly giving the context of she is in a very precarious domestic situation right now, you know, going specifically at this moment. And it's not just you and I who are saying this. Even mainstream people like Thomas Friedman has a column out today in the New York Times saying that this is a disastrous move, citing exactly this reason. Ukraine is already unstable. We're already embroiled in this war over there. Also, if you think the Europeans are going to step up when they can barely defend their own backyard in order to back up our policy in Taiwan, you're smoking something.

They don't even have enough money in order to send to Ukraine on top of the economic damage that they've already suffered as a result of sanctions policy. The domestic timing for Xi is also really important that you were pointing to because even people who I really disagree with on a lot of China policy are way more hawkish than I am, I've seen are like, I'm okay with this visit, but not now. Like, this is like the worst possible time that you could be doing this, not only because we're embroiled in Ukraine and this proxy war with Russia, but also because of the domestic political considerations for Xi. And, you know, as potentially hawkish as he is, and sort of aggressive as he is, there are other people in the party who would like him to go a lot further.

So this is a great out for him as well. As you point to, there are so many domestic issues right now that he's having to deal with. round the flag distraction to distract from some of those failings on COVID, on the crashing housing market and inflation and the other economic troubles that China is facing right now. Let's go and move on to the Chinese piece, as we've alluded to some significant rhetoric coming out of the Chinese Communist Party. Is it real? We're not going to find out until she lands and possibly in the weeks or months afterwards. But this is a direct tweet from the U.S. ambassador or for the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Quinn Gong. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Here's what he tweets. This is the People's Liberation Army, the guardian of the Chinese people for 95 years who will not sit idly by when it comes to

safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Let's put the next one up here. This is from a Global Times commentator. This matters. Global Times, for those who don't know, is almost like the most right-wing pro-military, pro-CCP English arm. It's a way of viewing what the most hawkish people in China are saying and what they're thinking is directly sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. Here's what he says, quote, let her go to Taiwan, but pray before departure. Wish herself a safe journey and wish herself not to be defined by history as a sinner who starts a spiral of escalation process, expanding military frictions to a large scale war in the Taiwan Strait. So specifically making a threat there on the Taiwan Strait. I think some context here is also necessary

for people to understand. There have been three Taiwan Strait crises. The first two were in the 1950s. This was regarding the independence of Taiwan, the so-called Republic of China at a time when there was frozen relations between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China. Well, we almost came to a nuclear confrontation in 1958 over the second Taiwan Strait crisis when there was shelling and disputes over a specific island. Many people in the Eisenhower administration actually said that's one of the closest that we ever came to the reuse of nuclear weapons after the Korean War. The third one happened in the 1990s and happened right ahead of Taiwan's first free election, where they really embraced democracy and they democratically elected

a president. So that was whenever missiles were fired into the Taiwan Strait after actually kind of a similar fracas in U.S. policy. So what happened is that at the time, the Taiwanese president attended Cornell Law School. He was coming to the U.S. in order to give a speech to Cornell. So anyway, he landed in Honolulu. And at the time, the Clinton administration did not want to give him a visa. So they made him actually sleep on the plane because they knew it was going to ignite a major global conflagration, possibly. Well, then what happened is that U.S. Congress stepped in and said, no, we're going to give him a visa. They compelled a resolution. The State Department also issued him a visa.

It's a Republican-led Congress at the time. Yeah, but it was unanimous vote. So it's not like anybody dissented. So anyway, this was in the 90s. Well, as a result of that change in the flip in policy, that is ultimately what led, in addition to the new election in Taiwan, to the shelling and the missiles that were fired directly into the Taiwan Strait. That's the last major Taiwan crisis that we've had. I would be remiss if I didn't point out the People's Liberation Army is significantly more powerful today than it was in 1994. China in general is significantly more powerful. This is why some of the comparisons drive me crazy, which is that 1997, the last time Speaker Gingrich went over there, it resulted actually in the most major display of U.S. force post-Vietnam. We put a carrier through the Taiwan

Strait, all this U.S. military. That was the unipolar moment. We were the single most powerful military entity on the globe. And it was also before Iraq. It was before Afghanistan. And it was also before the PLA had, I mean, their capabilities from today to 1997 is like comparing the U.S. military of today to pre-World War I. It really is that drastic in terms of their capabilities, their fifth-generation fighters, their ability to wage war, naval power, and more. I'm not saying that they're equivalent, but they are significantly more powerful and have a lot more economic power also and leverage over the United States. So that is why the rhetoric and all of that is a lot hotter right now. Let's throw this next one up there on the screen from Politico, which is that leaving for Asia amid these Chinese threats over the Taiwan stop. And this actually gets into a little bit more of the reporting we were talking about. Again, Chris, I know that you're skeptical, but I genuinely do believe that she is such an egotist that she does

disregard the warnings from the U.S. intelligence community, from the Biden administration and others. And the reason why I think this stuff matters is that, look, Nancy Pelosi at the end of the day does not have to deal with the actual consequences of her visit. If the consequences of her visit are going to fall on the president who is in charge of foreign affairs and the U.S. military. And those people are very clear. They're like, we do not want you to go for many of the reasons that we laid out in our first block. But at this point, the trip is happening. And it is one of those things where the fallout from it, it could range from this is just China talking. That's one way of reading it, which is they have to say face domestically, ramp up the rhetoric. Maybe they will do something or the other. But the scarier is some of the options laid out by

the White House. Listen specifically here to John Kirby about how a fourth Taiwan Strait crisis might play out. And again, this is being acknowledged from the White House podium. Let's take a listen. Over the weekend, even before Speaker Pelosi arrived in the region, China conducted a live fire exercise. China appears to be positioning itself to potentially take further steps in the coming days and perhaps over longer time horizons. These potential steps from China could include military provocations, such as firing missiles in the Taiwan Strait or around Taiwan, operations that break historical norms, such as large-scale air entry into Taiwan's air defense identification zone, ADIZ, I think you all know that acronym, air or naval activities that cross the median line,

and military exercises that can be highly publicized. So he's talking specifically about military exercises being highly publicized, about missiles being fired. Any missile that gets fired into the Taiwan Strait is a fourth Taiwan crisis. Taiwan Strait crisis, there's no way around it. And that would almost certainly precipitate some U.S. action. And even if it's not U.S., remember, we're not the only ones who live or are in Asia. I mean, the Japanese defense forces are on very high alert. The Singaporeans are very worried about what's happening right now. The South Koreans as well, they are, if you think, you know, a weepy half hawks, you should go and listen to some Japanese

rhetoric. And Japan, you know, specifically in this moment, post-Shinzo Abe, Abe himself was somebody who was very pro-Taiwan and also very anti-China, pro-building up the forces. So it is a precarious situation in Asia, which is precipitated by Pelosi wanting to go over there, lacking any strategy. And we just have to look at U.S. policy. It's not in a vacuum. It's not just about like, oh, you know, people or heads of democracies visit each other. It's like, why right now? Why did you decide to do this? Right. Why are you casting aside advice of the commander in chief and of the U.S. military? Do you have a strategy? Because last time I checked, you're not the person who has to deal with the actual fallout from all of this. And reportedly in a direct phone call between Biden and Xi, Xi said to Biden, those who play with fire get burned. Yeah. So it's not just, you know, an editorial in this paper or state media commentary or whatever.

The warnings and the threats are coming directly from the top in terms of, you know, whether it's Pelosi's vanity or whether she, you know, has sort of tacit endorsement from the Biden administration, even as they publicly protest. I do think it's noteworthy that Biden himself did not call her. If this is really critical to you and you, you know, really think it's important that she not go and that this is precipitating a potential crisis as it is and it's brinksmanship and provocation and it flies in the face of what your actual policy is. If she's not listening to Jake Sullivan and the military or whoever else is calling her, you got to get on the phone with her as president of the United States. And so the fact that he is unwilling and the reason why is politics,

because he doesn't want the Republicans to have this talking point of everything is done to avoid a freaking talking point. He doesn't want them to have a talking point of Biden being directly rebuffed by Pelosi as if that's not already what's happening here. So if you don't want her to go get your hands dirty and get in there, you're supposed to be the great negotiator with all these incredible relationships who can get things done and try to directly persuade her not to do this. He didn't do that. So again, I look at that and say, you know, I don't blame whether they're correct or not. I don't blame the Chinese for looking at the state of affairs and saying, you're not mad that she's going. You're good with this because this is consistent with some of the other rhetoric that has come directly from the president of the United States. So as I said before, you know, with regards to the U.S. and our policy, it does matter whether this was coming from the president or whether it's Pelosi just totally freelancing and

totally rebuffing the leader of her party and the president of the United States and freelancing and foreign affairs. But, you know, for the Chinese looking at this, it really doesn't matter that much because their perception is that this is the new policy of the United States and that it is an intentional provocation and they have their own domestic politics to look after and they are not going to want to look weak in this situation. It's just it is so foolish, especially just in general, but especially, especially in this moment. I just cannot wrap my head around it at all. Yeah. And right now, the People's Liberation Army, again, escalating their rhetoric. They posted a message that said, quote, Get ready for war on the official account of the 80th Army of the PLA on Weibo, which is the largest social network in China. So look, we've also seen reports that they're canceling flights in certain areas because that would lead may make

way for the possible deployment of military aircraft. I mean, there was a direct comment from a Chinese state media commentator threatening Pelosi's plane directly. Now, do I think that will actually that they would actually be crazy enough to do that? No. But you're you are playing with fire. The point is, is that take it seriously. And, you know, we can say, oh, they're just talking, you know, this, this and that. This is an authoritarian regime. Nothing gets posted without approval.

Everything that is public is within the bounds of accepted conversation by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. They are extraordinarily neurotic around their messaging. In terms of policy, I also think people should remember this. Our Taiwan policy is governed by the Taiwan Relations Act, I think of 1995, which effectively declares like we will have quasi diplomatic relations with China, but we have a one China policy recognized the People's Republic of China. The problem on the Chinese side and on the Taiwanese side is really radical departures from a lot of this. So in 2019, Xi Jinping proposed a one country, two systems policy where he effectively said, hey, Taiwan, reunification is inevitable. There is no choice. Thus, you should enter the fray of the People's Republic of China like Hong Kong. Not that it worked out for Hong Kong. You can have one country, two systems. You can continue to be a democracy. But at the end of the day, the major political entity will be the CCP. At the same time, the current president of Taiwan is pretty outwardly pro-Taiwanese independence, saying our country is democratically elected, we are a republic in our

own right, we do not recognize one country, two systems, and we want to be our own country. Again, they are a democracy. It's certainly true. And I don't think it is deniable that the Taiwanese people themselves do not want to be a part of China. So the problem is that Xi Jinping believes at its core, not just him, but the entire CCP in the reunification of Taiwan. They look at it as a massive sore leftover from the 1945, 1949 civil war, and have always looked at it as a diplomatic thumb in the face on behalf of the US as to who cares about it more. I mean, there's no question that the Chinese care about it a lot more. So then the question is, well, what is the reunification timeline? And current reporting, again, reporting, it is very difficult to know whether any of this is true.

Intel community, they got it right on Ukraine. They also got it a lot wrong in some parts of Ukraine. So you take it for what it will. They say that Xi Jinping has moved up his timeline for reunification of Taiwan to possibly within the next 18 months, specifically in order to coincide not only with the 100th year anniversary of the CCP's rule over China or the CCP's founding, I believe, over China, but also in order to coincide with his third term. So keep in mind what the domestic political situation is in China and why that may matter. So, you know, there were also, there was a lot of talk here about we have to defend Ukraine so we can show that, so because then the Chinese won't invade Taiwan. And if they do, yeah, it's going to be

real good that we wasted $40 billion in political capital. How did that position us? Well, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. How well did that position us? Well, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, how well did that position us? And I think the last thing to point out here is that, you know, with Russia and the economic sanctions that we and the Europeans all levied against them, the really all-out economic warfare that we declared on Russia, ultimately we don't get that much stuff from Russia. So while it has been a disaster in terms of global food prices, we're going to talk about that more. I mean, the hunger crisis around the world that has been, that predated the Russia, Russia's war in Ukraine, but has been exacerbated by it is just, it is gut-wrenchingly horrific situation. But in terms of the U.S. domestic situation, our economic entanglements with Russia are obviously nothing compared to our economic entanglements and really dependence on China.

Not just China, but Taiwan. TSMC makes 92 percent of the world's most manufactured. 92 percent. Like I said, that literally would fold the U.S. economy overnight. And we are just beginning to scratch the surface of thinking about reshoring some of those capabilities. And it takes 10 years. I mean, it is going to take a long time, and it will take consistent political will of a type that we have never seen in terms of economic industrial policy and getting both parties on board and all of those things. So, yeah, it is an utter catastrophe, a totally unnecessary potential crisis provocation at the worst possible moment. We'll see how it works out.

Yes, indeed. So we wanted to start with a big Kansas abortion referendum. So as a reminder, there was a ballot initiative that Kansas voters went to vote on on Tuesday, which would have changed the Kansas constitution to allow lawmakers in that state to ban abortion in whatever way they want to do. There had been a Supreme Court decision previously, I think it was in 2019 or 2018 in Kansas that said this line in the Kansas constitution guarantees the right to abortion access. So that has limited what the Republican dominated. They have a super majority Republican dominated legislature has been able to do in that state. So a vote yes on that ballot initiative was the pro-life or anti-abortion position. Vote no, meaning let's leave the Constitution as it is, was the pro-choice position for the vote. And obviously, Kansas is a pretty red state.

And not only that, but most of the other action on Tuesday was all on the Republican side. So there were all kinds of candidates and Chris Kobach back at it and all these things on the Republican side for people to vote on. Democratic side, listen, in Kansas, there's not a whole lot of action going on there. So it seemed like the landscape was kind of tilted in Republicans' favor. They actually pushed to have this ballot initiative on the ballot on this primary day, anticipating that there would be much, much higher Republican turnout. Well, surprise, very different result than what people expected. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So the pro-choice position, the no position, was resoundingly successful. This AP article says Kansas voters resoundingly protect their access to

abortion with most of the vote counted. They were prevailing by roughly 20 percentage points with, and this was the really crazy part, The turnout was insane. Turnout was approaching what's typical for a fall election for governor. You know, it's also interesting to dig into and Sager is going to have a little bit more of this in his monologue. The way that both sides campaigned, the pro-choice side really framed this as an issue of sort of individual liberty and freedom. They didn't say the word abortion one time. The the, you know, yes side of it, the anti-choice side, they really framed this. They didn't want to talk about abortion really either. They wanted to say this is abortion neutral. They really tried to hide the ball about what

legislators might do if this amendment did ultimately pass. And ultimately, it was extremely energizing for the pro-choice side. And I don't even want to say the Democratic side because there was very clearly some crossover vote here of Republicans who voted with the pro-choice position here. Let's go ahead and put Steve Kornacki's tweet up on the screen that gets at just how crazy this turnout was. With just about all votes counted, turnout for the Kansas primary stands at 910,000 votes. So for comparison, back in 2018, which was a hotly contested primary, about half, 473,000 votes in that primary versus 910,000 this time around. Pretty comparable. Not that far off, honestly, from the presidential election vote totals. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Nate Cohn says that Democrats were about 50 percent likelier to vote earlier than

Republicans. He was tweeting this while the results were still coming in, yielding a nearly even partisan split among early voters in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly two to one. So he says, no surprise that no is off to a quick start, but there actually ended up not being that big of a difference between the early vote and the day of voting. And let's put this last Kornacki tweet up on the screen, and then we can talk about all of this. In the first test of the post-Roe atmosphere, Kansas rejects 59 to 41 percent of constitutional amendment declaring abortion not a protected right. In the last decade, it's very interesting, when Roe was still in place, virtually identical amendments went four

for four. So they took the opposite position. In Tennessee, 53-47, so relatively close. Alabama, that anti-choice or pro-life position, won very easily, 59-41. West Virginia, very narrow, 52-48. Louisiana won very easily, 61-39. So it's the first type of amendment like this in a red state to fail. And obviously the difference now is that Roe has been overturned. The Supreme Court has totally upended the landscape here. Oh, yeah, it's absolutely remarkable. And actually you sent this this morning, which actually I think is even more interesting,

which is that we don't have the chart made, but the data just came out that shows that the percent of new registrants in the state who were women in the state of Kansas, the moving seven-day average, had a massive increase in the post-Dobbs era. Basically, it was flat. Everything was between the 50th and the 55th percentile for months and months and months in the lead-up the election. And then as soon as Dobbs went ahead and came out, it jumped from the 55th percentile all the way up until almost 70%. So there's a massive jump right in the weeks after the Dobbs decision, the overturning of Roe versus Wade. So it was not only a ton of women who were activated by this, but look,

here's the basic truth. About a third of the people who came out, just if you look at the data to vote in the Republican primary, also voted no on this amendment, which just so you guys know, tracks almost exactly with the vote share of people who are Republican and who identify as pro-choice. I've said this ad nauseum. At least one-third of the people who voted for Donald Trump, at least, possibly even more, are pro-choice. Now, that showed you that Trump activated a much bigger and broader coalition because his stuff was more about political correctness. I'm going to be talking a ton about this in my monologue. This just does show you that the old social conservatism really does not have even close to a popular mandate, even amongst its actual voters that it claims in order to speak

on behalf of. So this is a remarkable vote. And I think there's a hell of a lot of cope on the Republican side. There is no spinning this. It's not Pennsylvania. It's not Florida. Donald Trump won by less percent in Kansas than this abortion referendum. Wow. Abortion pro-choice position is more popular than Trump in the state of Kansas, which is a 15 percentage point Republican state. Now, look, would this type of stuff pass in Utah? Yeah, maybe Utah, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, maybe again. But if we're talking about you need R plus 30 advantage in order to put this on the ballot or actually win this at a ballot level in your state, look, it's a catastrophe when you consider the national implications again. And you and I have been talking a lot about this, but there does seem to be a, a activation of democratic voters, which has not showed up in polls, which has not showed up

anywhere else, but is showing up in the two data points that we can now point to the special election that we saw previously, which was, I think, uh, the Republicans only won by three points when they'd won by 17 points previously. And now this Kansas referendum. At the end of the day, votes are always going to be better than polls. So as we found out in 2016 and 2020, the polls were off. And it's very possible that the polls are off this time. I am not saying that the Republicans still won't win the House or that they may not take the Senate. Just that this has, as we predicted, thrown a massive wrench into the predictability of it, as shown by voter registrant data and now by this massive turnout that did not exist before. There's just

no question in my mind on a national level that this is going to hurt the Republican Party. Yeah. I mean, listen, let's keep in mind, it's very different when you have just this very specific question directly about abortion versus weighing the whole basket of issues and how do I feel about the economy and what do I feel about Joe Biden, all of those things. So it's not like a one-to-one correlation. But as you said, we already had this other special election where Democrats dramatically outperformed what the polling said. Now you have another very significant polling miss because there wasn't a lot of public polling in this referendum, but all the expectations were that this thing was going to be close. Now,

I remembered, I really had no idea how this was going to ultimately turn out because I did think the Republican strategy of putting on the ballot when they had all their primaries would be difficult to overcome. There was huge amounts of money spent on both sides of the thing. We'll get into a little bit of the Republican cope on the money side in just a minute. But remember, Kansas also, Kansas isn't just any old red state. They have a deep history of institutional pro-life, you know, who I remember was so controversial and so demonized for performing late term abortions. This is the state that he was in and where he was murdered. This is also the state where they had anti-abortion Summer of Mercy protests back in 1991, according to the AP, that inspired abortion opponents to take over the Kansas Republican Party, make the legislature more conservative. So this is kind of a bedrock state

in terms of the pro-life movement. And to see it go so hard against their position here is really quite incredible. It reminded me something I'd forgotten about. Back in 2011, Mississippi voters voted on a personhood amendment, which is another sort of extreme abortion, anti-abortion position. And they also rejected it handily. So listen, the American public is really pretty mixed on choice. They have a pretty complicated, pretty nuanced view. There aren't a lot of absolutists on, you know, that are all the way to the right or all the way to the left on the issue. So when you are in the position, as Republicans are now, of really pushing the extremes or really pushing the fringes, you are going to be on a step with the public, even in a place like Kansas. So listen, overall, you know, I did my monologue earlier

this week on how the landscape has shifted a bit towards Democrats. I think that's true. I think the outcomes for November are a lot murkier than they were before this decision came down. I think that's true. I think the outcomes for November are a lot murkier than they were before this decision came down. I think this seems very much to be, even as voters may not list it as their number one issue, that doesn't mean it's not a very motivating issue for them. And I think specifically in certain races where you have, you know, really clear, there are a couple more states that are going to have ballot initiatives in the fall, where you have governors that are going to be in a position to make some extreme changes here, where there's a really clear connect. I think you're going to see

some significant shifts here, and especially because Republicans have nominated a lot of candidates that are kind of out on a limb on this. If I'm a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, this is all I'm talking about ahead of the fall. This is a green light, I think, to Gretchen Whitmer, which is go all out. This is going to be the case. Same for Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. If you're running in any sort of battleground state, this is clear evidence that this will not only motivate donors, but it will actually motivate your own voters. And if you can get more females to register, disproportionately, they're going to go ahead and vote for Democrats. That's going to help on the down ballot as well. So I think there's a lot of lessons here to be learned

for the Democratic Party. And I'm going to be talking also about messaging. Messaging here is very important. Joe Biden, this was very noteworthy to me, did not use the word abortion one time whenever he celebrated this decision. Not once. He just talked about pro-choice and freedom. Freedom was one of those things which was emphasized strongly by the Kansas position, by the Kansas organization, which drove the vote out here. So how you talk about it and, you know, try to capture the nuance and really just making sure that it's like a pushback against extreme, basically tail conditions where you're like, hey, do you really want a 10 year old case here in Kansas? Do you want a 10 year old to be raped and be forced to carry a

baby term here in the state of Kansas? 90-something percent of people are like, absolutely not. It's horrible. Right? 90%. So if you can capture that spirit, that ethos, and push, not even push back, but don't even acknowledge any of this Lena Dunham type stuff, then you are golden from a political point of view. And it really does put Republicans on the back foot. I have noticed, I have not seen one national GOP politician reckon with these results yet. Not one. And also, if you're Donald Trump, you bet your ass he's watching this very, very closely. Let's go ahead and speak about Taiwan. So obviously, Speaker Pelosi landed in

Taiwan. She was there for a little over 24 hours. She met with the president. She made some appearances and more, and then she quickly departed. But the fallout from her visit is only now beginning, actually today. So there's a lot of eyes on what's happening. First, let's start, though, with her op-ed. The moment she landed, she published an op-ed in The Washington Post. Let's put this up there on the screen. And what she talks about here is not only the passage of the Taiwan's Relations Act, but I thought that the way that she phrased it really bears some scrutiny, which is this, quote, We take this trip at a time when the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.

As Russia wages its premeditated illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents, even children, it is essential America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats. Now, there's a really weird theory behind this, which is that you have to go to Taiwan to show Ukraine that you're willing to stand up against Putin. And you have to defend Ukraine against Putin in order to show the Taiwanese that you'll back them against China. Right. And you're like, well, hold on a second. Wait a second. Which one is it? And why this bothers me is that, look, the idea that we're going to support every democracy in the world is ridiculous. That's just not going to support every democracy in the world is ridiculous. That's just not going to happen. States trade with other states and engage with them based upon their national interests.

It has been like that since the beginning of time. You can make a very hard power, non-democratic case to talk about Taiwan and to talk about Ukraine, frankly. But that's not the case that they make here. It's all wrapped up in this like highfalutin language around democracy and autocracy, which then leads me to be like, well, OK, well, why did we just OK three billion dollars by the Biden administration to the Saudi Arabian government? Because we did. That actually happened yesterday, just so people are aware. And you're like, oh, well, actually, where's our high minded ideals that? Yeah, there's no high minded ideals. Right. Then we're talking about hard power. We're talking about oil. So it's like sometimes we're OK with hard power and sometimes we're not OK with hard power.

The op ed itself was just, you know, classic kind of neoliberal brain. And right. Well, that was actually my biggest takeaway from it. I mean, ultimately, I read through it. She doesn't really make that much of a case for her trip, to be honest with you. It's just like reviewing our relationship with Taiwan. And here's why it's important. But she says by traveling the closest she comes to making a direct case is she says, by traveling to Taiwan, we honor our commitment to democracy, reaffirming that the freedoms of Taiwan and all democracies must be respected. That doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's just like meaningless buzzwords. And I think that's, I mean, that's the real thing of why, like if you could really make a case of what difference this makes.

And why now. Right. And going right now. Why now is the time to go and what it means and where it's going to lead us. But they don't do that. I mean, everybody who's in there, there's a bunch of Republicans mostly who really affirmatively supported Pelosi's trip. It's all just wrapped up in these meaningless buzzwords about standing up to autocrats and standing with democracy or whatever. Listen, as I said before, you know, if you believe that what

we need to do is show China how tough we are, we're not going to back down. Okay, well, you can make an argument by flooding Ukraine with weapons. Certainly things have not gone for Russia the way they thought they would go in Ukraine. You were able to get the, you know, herd the cats of Europe and basically more or less have a sort of united strategy, although there are some cracks in fissures there as well. OK, so you did that. That was the hawkish case for what we've done in Ukraine. We've also done what I think is very intelligent in investing in our own chips, domestic manufacturing. That's the very beginning of these type of strategy vis-a-vis China that I think makes a lot of sense, that just makes us a lot less

dependent on both China and Taiwan. But right now, while we are in this place of vulnerability, wrapped up in the stupid proxy war with Russia, that now's the time? It just makes no sense. That's a really important point to underscore. So like, look, if you care about Taiwan, if you want it to be able to defend itself, you want to kind of turn it into what's called like a porcupine, right? Which is making it very, very difficult for an attack

because a seaborne attack is very likely. Well, actually we're spending the bulk of our javelin reserves to Ukraine. So if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, we actually would not have enough javelin missiles. Why? Because we don't have enough semiconductors in order to put into those javelin missiles. So if you do care, Ukraine is frankly

detracting away from a lot of that case. You can make that if you want, but I'm just telling you that that's what the actual case is. Now, bipartisanship, all bipartisanship on display here. Let's go and put this up there. 25 senators, including Mitch McConnell, put out a letter backing Pelosi's trip to Taiwan and actually attacking President Biden for saying that she shouldn't go. I mean, this, look, Republicans can attack President Biden. That's fine. What bothers me most about the Pelosi trip is she is such a narcissist that she thinks she's going to take American foreign policy into her own hands, not listen to the elected president of the United States who is in charge of foreign policy, who's like, hey, I don't want you to go.

And then also don't listen when the U.S. military is like, just so you know, this could be a real problem. And then lo and behold, immediately after she landed, that is when the rhetoric from China, not only rhetoric, but now action is beginning to ramp up. Let's put this up there. So the Chinese ambassador said on CNN, quote, the speaker's visit is a major event upgrading the substantive relations between the U.S. and Taiwan and sends a wrong signal to Taiwan independence separatist forces. the Global Times commentators, let's go ahead and put this up there, they are touting that the People's Liberation Army says that they will conduct live fire exercises in the six regions surrounding the Taiwan island. He is billing it as a, quote, situation that surpasses the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. This is not just a demonstration, an actual exercise to liberate

Taiwan. Pelosi's visit is bound to speed up China's unification. This is from the most hawkish element of the CCP's global media arm and is directly messaged to us in English so that we can understand. But finally, just this morning, actually, we're getting the news that the Japanese defense forces say that five missiles have been launched by China during military drills near Taiwan that fell into the Japanese exclusive economic zone. Now, this is exactly why conflict in this region is so dangerous. It's not just Taiwan. Taiwan, the Taiwan Straits, some 50% of GDP and stuff moves even through the Taiwan Straits or the Straits of Malacca. We have a treaty, last time I checked, with Japan. We have to come to their defense. And any conflict in that region would embroil us, almost certainly, give us treaty obligations. And so now the Japanese

are dealing with Chinese missiles. This is like their greatest fear, being fired into not only the Japanese exclusive economic zone, but also in six areas that are surrounding Taiwan in very contested water. So now the question is, what are we going to do? Because what the Chinese did is they said, we're going to be conducting live fire drills in these regions, basically saying, don't come here. No aircraft and no ships. Are we going to abide by that? Are the Taiwanese going to abide by that? Are the Japanese going to abide by that? Are the South Koreans going to abide by that? And actually this morning, extraordinary news, Crystal, the South Korean president refused to meet with Nancy Pelosi. And she's in the country. He said scheduling conflicts. Now listen, South Korea, it's a small country. You could fly across it in

like three hours, the entire thing. So there ain't no scheduling conflict. It's going to stop you from meeting with the Speaker of the House. Clearly, he is not happy that whatever, he is not happy with her trip, doesn't want to meet with her, doesn't want to be seen with her, possibly has domestic political considerations. But also, the South Koreans have a hell of a lot of trade with China, and they have been on the back end of Chinese economic warfare. In the past, these live fire drills, we don't yet know what the U.S. military response is going to be. Are we going to respect the Chinese lines and the live fire drills? That's a major question. Last time that there was a problem in the Taiwan Straits, we actually ran an entire naval group through the region as a massive display of U.S. military force. That was

in the 1990s. Is that going to happen again? And then what is their response going to be? So now we have a multifaceted issue that we have to respond to solely of the making of Nancy Pelosi's narcissism. And for those who are like, listen, we can't let the Chinese dictate where our politicians go, I don't disagree with you. But that also doesn't mean that we should not be wise in our decision. Calculated and strategic. Exactly. Listen, and actually, this was the best take I heard so far, which is, Nancy, go in December. You know why? Because that's after Xi gets his third term. And you go over there. It actually makes more sense because then you won't be speaker in January. So it's like a farewell tour. You can do your little, you know, like,

I'm here. I support democracy. Why now? It's like these things are conscious choices on behalf of the U.S. government, and people are trying to turn it into a principle. On the principle, I don't disagree. But my point is she should never have put, she has put us in a terrible position. Well, not to mention, did the American people vote for Nancy Pelosi to run? No, they didn't. They voted for Joe Biden. They voted for Joe Biden. And listen, sometimes that's been OK and sometimes it's been terrible. But at least there was a say from the public about who they wanted to be in charge of these things. So I continue to be skeptical that I continue to not be 100 percent sure that she really did this totally

with the White House saying absolutely not. Biden did not call her directly. But let's take it face value that this was her freelancing and just doing whatever the hell she wanted to do. It is so incredibly insane, so anti-democratic. And, you know, these war games that China is running that almost completely encircle the island of Taiwan. This is essentially like a mock invasion. So it's extraordinarily ominous and troubling if you are on if you are Taiwanese. And they also have are set to impose economic sanctions against Taiwan. Now, they say that that's for they made up some reason why they're doing this, but they've announced a suspension on the import of certain fruits and seafood products from the

island. Chinese customs in a separate statement, they pegged the suspensions to hygiene concerns. But this is apparently not the first time that they have used the weapon of economics and trade in order to punish Taiwan for things that they were not happy about. So the biggest costs immediately that will be borne are the Taiwanese people directly. Yes. And what I worry about the most is unintended miscalculation. So a lot of people forget this because it happened right before 9-11. But there was this incident on, I think it's called Hainan Island, where a U.S. military spy plane was flying and actually collided midair with a Chinese jet. That aircraft, the spy aircraft, was then forced to be downed on, it was a Chinese territory called Hainan Island.

This ignited a global crisis because we had our airmen, spy aircraft airmen, stranded in China, and the Bush administration had to go and get them. It ignited serious issues. The Chinese were like, you're encroaching on our airspace. They accused us of like downing their aircraft. And we had to like send some people over there. It was a high stakes diplomatic gamble. Basically, 9-11 happened, so everybody forgot about it. But look, I mean, it's been 20 years. How would that play right now? I mean, we had these issues. And this only increases the likelihood of exactly something like that. And apparently, I'm not the only one thinking this.

David Sanger, who is like the dean of the Washington foreign policy press in The New York Times, writes specifically that the administration is incredibly worried exactly about some sort of military incursion that leads to airspace midair conflict, which is not only this, but also missiles. You know, look, missiles, whenever they're fired, part of the issue that we were always so terrified with the North Koreans is they wouldn't tell anybody that something was happening. It could hit a 737 and actually it came close one time. So there's all sorts of unintended consequences, especially when you're shooting over Japanese island and landing in economic zones. I mean, there are ships and global shipping containers. There are people

all over these places. And when you start to play with real guns, it can raise the stakes significantly. And what they say is that right now, inside the Pentagon, there is an incredible amount of worry about how to respond to this military exercise. They don't know what to do. They also don't know what the next step is from there. So the amount of uncertainty that Nancy Pelosi has injected into the global strategic environment is just immense. And I want to emphasize again, Ukraine, look, yes, Americans have paid hundreds of billions of dollars with Ukraine. It is nothing compared to what even, let's say, a one-week shutdown of the Taiwan Straits would look like.

Forget about it. The US economy, there are no more phones. There are no more television. There's no consumer electronics. There's no more fridges if TSMC goes down tomorrow. Beyond that, gas, the amount of oil, of hard commodities that ship between China and the United States, not to mention Chinese industry. A lot of people did not notice this. And I have very mixed feelings.

One of the largest EV battery manufacturers in the world, a Chinese company, was about to open a plant here in the US. And now they're like, well, we're not gonna do it because of the Taiwanese. And I'm like, well, it's not a terrible thing because you don't really want the Chinese EV battery manufacturer. But it just tells you like, look, they have a lot of investment. They have a lot of power that they can play. And that was really the tip of the iceberg too. So beyond their own control of our economy, a one week, two week shutdown, even a couple of days, would the amount

of chaos it would inject into the global economy is just very, very difficult to actually convey. And it is worth saying that the politicians who led us to that place deserve a lot of blame for putting us in that state of fragility and state of precarity, which I think is extraordinarily important not to lose sight of. There is one other piece from a legislative perspective that I just saw this morning. So the White House is also lobbying Democrats against a legislative bid to deepen Taiwan ties. This proposal, which is being sponsored by Bob Menendez, who's a Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, who, of course, is a Republican, would designate Taiwan as a major non-NATO ally and could further inflame tensions with China.

And the White House is very concerned about this as well. It would also provide Taiwan with $4.5 billion in additional security aid and support its participation in international organizations. But in some ways, the designation, you know, that sort of official designation as a major non-NATO ally is the most significant part. So the White House is trying to slow that down as well so that they don't further escalate an already tense situation with China. Yeah, I just everybody eyes on Taiwan, on the U.S. military response. Josh Rogin, who actually was supporter of the trip, but I actually think he had quite a good column, which is that the fallout from the Pelosi visit, it starts now. It's really today. August 4th is the first day of the live fire drills. Those are now going to continue over the next couple of days. The next question is,

what's the U.S. military do? So now we're going to have to have a response, the Pacific Command and all of that, where our ships, aircraft carriers, they're going to be stationed. Then the Chinese are going to do something about it. So this is a months-long problem. And I also feel for the people in Taiwan. Like you just said, economic sanctions being placed there on the Taiwanese. China has a tremendous amount of leverage over the Taiwanese economy. We have also prevailed on China not to arm Russia and directly support with military aid Russia. And that has been successful. I mean, China has tacitly supported Russia in a lot of ways, but hasn't sort of directly gotten involved in that conflict. That's another chip they hold in all of this. So. Great point. And also the

Russians did support the, did actually support the Chinese and said that the U.S. should not meddle in Taiwan. And they called it internal sovereignty. Obviously they have an incentive to look at the world that way. But, you know, alliance between the two was one of the nightmares of the Cold War in the 1950s. So lots of stuff that's going on there. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy,

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